The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2184 - Sara Imari Walker

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:13.000 So your subject matter is so fascinating to me.

00:00:18.000 So first, please explain what this idea of assembly theory.

00:00:24.000 Yeah.

00:00:26.000 Assembly theory is born out of an interest in solving the origin of life and finding aliens.

00:00:30.000 So that's sort of the motivation I think is really important to be clear about that to start because it introduces some kind of radical reconceptions of the way we think about fundamental physics, at least I think so.

00:00:41.000 But the key idea of the theory is that the universe cannot generate complexity outside of living processes.

00:00:47.000 And so we have a way of formalizing what seems kind of intuitively obvious that the universe doesn't generate complex objects for free.

00:00:55.000 And we do this with this idea of assembly theory of thinking about the assembly space, which is like the space of all constructible objects.

00:01:03.000 And you can talk about the complexity in that space as a minimal number of steps for making an object.

00:01:08.000 And if you see objects that require a lot of steps to make them and they're in high abundance, life is the only thing that can make them.

00:01:16.000 Wow.

00:01:18.000 So this includes plant life, this includes...

00:01:23.000 Everything.

00:01:24.000 Everything on your table, you know, requires billions of years of evolution, evolution of intelligence, and technology to generate.

00:01:33.000 So...

00:01:34.000 When you say life to generate, what about like crystals?

00:01:38.000 Have you ever seen that enormous cave in Mexico where they have these insane crystal structures?

00:01:45.000 Is that the one that's like hot inside?

00:01:46.000 Yes.

00:01:47.000 Yes, I have seen that.

00:01:48.000 It's gorgeous.

00:01:48.000 I've never been there.

00:01:50.000 Amazing.

00:01:50.000 Yeah, totally.

00:01:51.000 But it kind of looks like somebody made it, but it's just natural processes.

00:01:54.000 Yes.

00:01:55.000 So I'm actually really interested in understanding to what degree we can consider minerals on our planet alive or artifacts of life.

00:02:04.000 But we haven't formalized the theory entirely for minerals yet.

00:02:08.000 So I think that one of the sort of key results we have so far is actually quantifying in molecules a complexity boundary above which if a molecule is so complex that we can say it's definitively of life and we've experimentally verified Measuring this property of assembly of molecules to say these are derived from life.

00:02:26.000 These are, you know, and that there's a clear boundary.

00:02:30.000 For minerals, we haven't done that yet because we're still formalizing the theory and the kind of measurements we need to take.

00:02:34.000 But I expect there to be a boundary that planets can make some kinds of crystal complexity, but not all of it that we see on this planet.

00:02:43.000 So what's the conventional definition of life?

00:02:49.000 Yeah, so there's a lot of debate about what definitions of life should hold, but the one that is usually cited by astrobiologists is life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.

00:03:01.000 And I've memorized it because I find it so annoying.

00:03:05.000 So I'm like, I got it down.

00:03:06.000 I got to know what I'm annoyed with.

00:03:08.000 What annoys you about it?

00:03:10.000 Everything.

00:03:11.000 It was very funny writing the book because I wanted to get into the new ideas.

00:03:15.000 And my editor was like, you've got to explain how people think about life now.

00:03:20.000 And I was like, okay, well, this definition is the most annoying one.

00:03:23.000 I'll just pick it apart.

00:03:24.000 And it's actually like all the words in it are annoying in some sense.

00:03:28.000 So the first one is that life is chemical.

00:03:30.000 I've never really thought about chemistry being the defining feature of life.

00:03:33.000 I think you have to Separate out that life emerges, at least as we understand it, from a chemical soup on a planet, right?

00:03:40.000 So it emerges in chemistry, but it doesn't mean it's a chemical phenomena.

00:03:44.000 And the sort of analogy from the physicist's conception of nature I could draw there is we don't think that gravity is a phenomena of rocks.

00:03:51.000 Gravity represents some universal physics in our universe.

00:03:54.000 And so when we're thinking about, you know, planets and things, we don't think that they obey the laws of gravity because they're made of rocks.

00:04:03.000 We understand that there's some property called mass that's much more abstract and applies to everything.

00:04:08.000 I think life's kind of the same.

00:04:09.000 It emerges in chemistry, but there are some informational properties, these things about how life generates complex structures and how it does that so uniquely.

00:04:18.000 That is universal physics that happens to emerge in chemistry.

00:04:21.000 So chemistry has to go out.

00:04:22.000 It's not just a chemical phenomena.

00:04:24.000 And I think you need to recognize that if you're going to talk about like technology and artificial intelligence and like are they alive or not?

00:04:30.000 Because they're very different than, you know, like what's happening inside a cell.

00:04:34.000 Right.

00:04:34.000 Non-biological.

00:04:35.000 Yeah.

00:04:36.000 But still seemingly alive.

00:04:38.000 Yes.

00:04:38.000 Maybe.

00:04:39.000 Maybe.

00:04:40.000 Maybe.

00:04:40.000 Perhaps.

00:04:40.000 Yeah.

00:04:41.000 Open to debate.

00:04:42.000 I've said that about technology, that technology does seem to be a life form that requires us to give birth to it.

00:04:48.000 Yes.

00:04:48.000 Didn't Marshall McLuhan- I like that way of thinking about it.

00:04:51.000 Yeah.

00:04:52.000 Marshall McLuhan had a great quote, and I believe this was in the 1960s.

00:04:56.000 He said that we are the sex organs of the machine world.

00:05:01.000 Isn't that incredible?

00:05:02.000 Yeah, I like that a lot, actually.

00:05:04.000 I don't disagree with that.

00:05:06.000 Especially if it does become some sort of digital life.

00:05:10.000 That's essentially what we are.

00:05:12.000 We're just by proxy moms. 0.85

00:05:14.000 We are.

00:05:15.000 So the way that I think about it is to think about life not in terms of individuals but lineages.

00:05:21.000 So, you know, there's a lineage of how information has been structuring the material world, what we talk about in assembly theory in terms of all of the configurations of objects created on our planet over four billion years.

00:05:32.000 And that's a process that's continuous with objects making other objects.

00:05:39.000 And there's no reason that that should stop with biological forms of life and it just moves into technology.

00:05:44.000 So I like this idea that we're the reproductive organs though.

00:05:49.000 Because I always think about like societies and like global integrated systems as being living things and we're just like component parts of them.

00:05:56.000 Well, they certainly look like it.

00:05:58.000 When you look at traffic from overhead and you compare it to blood moving through arteries, it's really kind of extraordinary.

00:06:05.000 Because if you see the ebb and flow of the white lights and the red taillights back and forth, and then you see blood cells moving through a person's body, it's Kind of similar.

00:06:15.000 Yeah.

00:06:37.000 We're like a form of like the city itself is like a living thing that we're making.

00:06:42.000 Yeah.

00:06:42.000 And I think it's really important for us to recognize that.

00:06:45.000 Actually, it's interesting that you use cars as your analogy because Carl Sagan actually had like the same analogy.

00:06:49.000 He would have liked that a lot.

00:06:51.000 You know, thinking about aliens coming to life would have thought cars were the dominant life form.

00:06:55.000 Yeah.

00:06:55.000 Which I think is great, right?

00:06:57.000 Because exactly like you're describing, it looks like the lifeblood of our planet.

00:07:01.000 And I always think about cities at night as kind of the key signature of life on this planet.

00:07:06.000 If you look at it remotely, you can see all this structure on the planet.

00:07:10.000 Right, sure.

00:07:11.000 It is hard for us because we're so much wanting to think about ourselves as individuals and like the apex of all of the evolutionary processes, not to think about ourselves as part of systems that are much larger than us.

00:07:22.000 And I think it's critically important that we kind of change our reference frame on that because we're also seeing right now with like We're good to go.

00:07:50.000 Yet that process is also what gives us our agency.

00:07:52.000 So it's kind of paradoxical.

00:07:54.000 Right.

00:07:55.000 I've often said that if an alien race that was completely outside of our understanding of life and our understanding of biology, if they observed us and they'd say, well, what is this dominant species doing?

00:08:09.000 Well, it makes better things.

00:08:11.000 That's all it does.

00:08:12.000 Yes.

00:08:13.000 We do a lot of things, but ultimately those things, even war, which is essentially about acquiring money and resources, we use those resources and that money to make better things.

00:08:24.000 And in engaging in war, you're constantly advancing technology to have an advantage over the universe, so you're making better things.

00:08:30.000 Everything is making better things, which, when you scale it up, ultimately will lead to another life form.

00:08:37.000 It will lead to some new thing.

00:08:40.000 I hope so.

00:08:40.000 Well, if we don't kill ourselves or if we don't get super volcano, asteroid.

00:08:44.000 I'm not a pessimist.

00:08:46.000 I think we'll be around for a while.

00:08:47.000 You think so?

00:08:48.000 Yeah, but I have a pathology that I'm really optimistic as a person, so I have a hard time.

00:08:53.000 That's good.

00:08:53.000 That's not a pathology.

00:08:54.000 I think that's a pathology.

00:08:56.000 I think because I think being overly optimistic can leave blind spots but part of the reason that I imbue so much optimism in my work is like I think we need more optimistic narratives about the future because so many people are really bleak.

00:09:08.000 I agree.

00:09:09.000 I don't think that helps anybody and I think ultimately most of the things that you're really terrified about do not come to pass.

00:09:15.000 Yes, I think us being terrified of them is like an immune response.

00:09:19.000 So usually I'm not afraid of the things that people are really scared of and talking about because it means society is dealing with it.

00:09:24.000 Right.

00:09:25.000 Which I, you know, maybe that's just sort of a scapegoat.

00:09:27.000 I don't have to worry about those things because someone else is.

00:09:29.000 But I think actually there's something rather deep there that like the things that we're trying to work through at this moment in history are being worked through.

00:09:35.000 My fear about those kind of thoughts is when I worry about things and I say, well, I don't have to worry because society's working through it.

00:09:42.000 I also say, yeah, but someone's probably not and they're enhancing the actual threat so they could profit off of it.

00:09:50.000 Yeah.

00:09:50.000 I mean, that's the military-industrial complex.

00:09:52.000 That's a lot of different things.

00:09:53.000 I think that's...

00:09:54.000 There's a lot of that, unfortunately, that's attached to green energy.

00:09:58.000 I think the idea of having green energy is wonderful.

00:10:01.000 Everybody should agree to that.

00:10:02.000 But the idea that you're going to give massive corporations this completely philanthropic view of the world all of a sudden, that's not.

00:10:09.000 Yeah.

00:10:10.000 That's not real.

00:10:11.000 I know.

00:10:11.000 They make money.

00:10:11.000 They're trying to make more money.

00:10:12.000 They're going to lie to you.

00:10:13.000 Everyone's trying to make money and get power.

00:10:14.000 And I think once you realize that, it's a lot easier to see motives.

00:10:18.000 Yeah.

00:10:19.000 It's freaky.

00:10:19.000 But that also leads to the acquisition of resources, which leads to making better things.

00:10:26.000 I mean, I am...

00:10:28.000 I'm all goo goo.

00:10:28.000 I was reading articles all day today on the iPhone 16. Why?

00:10:32.000 Why do I care about the iPhone 16?

00:10:34.000 My iPhone 15 is perfect.

00:10:35.000 It works great.

00:10:36.000 What's wrong with me?

00:10:37.000 I don't know.

00:10:38.000 But I think that's also built into materialism.

00:10:41.000 I think materialism sort of facilitates the creation of newer and better things consistently and constantly.

00:10:47.000 Because everybody's like, what do you got an iPhone 14?

00:10:50.000 What are you poor, Sarah?

00:10:51.000 You know, like people get crazy. 0.94

00:10:53.000 I'm slumming it.

00:10:54.000 But you know what I'm saying?

00:10:55.000 You know how people get weird?

00:10:56.000 Like, where's your car?

00:10:57.000 You have a 2018 car?

00:10:59.000 Don't you want a new one?

00:11:00.000 Look, they got the new one.

00:11:02.000 The new one has this and that.

00:11:03.000 It's a better gas mileage.

00:11:04.000 Faster zero to 60. And it never ends.

00:11:06.000 And it never ends until we create sentient life, I think.

00:11:11.000 Yeah, so part of your argument is sort of our materialistic culture is about building newer and better things and eventually this is like sort of just more fundamental to the process of life.

00:11:21.000 I think this pathology of materialism, this thing that has possessed so many people where they live their entire lives to acquire things to impress other people, which is a huge number of people that are involved specifically in finance, like all the amphetamine people, 1.00

00:11:37.000 all the people that like to do coke and fucking look at my boat. 0.95

00:11:40.000 That's what they're doing. 0.99

00:11:41.000 They're just constantly getting better and better things.

00:11:43.000 It sounds so boring.

00:11:44.000 It does sound boring to you because you're a brilliant woman, but it's not necessarily more boring than their normal life, right?

00:11:52.000 Yeah.

00:11:52.000 There's some sort of reward to showing up with a half a million dollar watch on with diamonds and this.

00:12:00.000 Some crazy thing where people go, ooh, he's got that thing.

00:12:03.000 Yeah.

00:12:03.000 Oh, look at those shoes she's got.

00:12:05.000 Oh, look at that purse. 1.00

00:12:06.000 Oh, look at this car.

00:12:07.000 Look at the house they live in.

00:12:10.000 It's weird.

00:12:11.000 It's weird.

00:12:12.000 Well, I know.

00:12:12.000 I sympathize.

00:12:13.000 I am seduced by good fashion aesthetics.

00:12:16.000 I mean, who isn't?

00:12:18.000 Yeah.

00:12:18.000 Well, a lot of men aren't, but a lot of women are.

00:12:21.000 I love it.

00:12:21.000 I think it's great.

00:12:22.000 Yeah, sure.

00:12:23.000 It's beautiful.

00:12:24.000 It's an expression of art.

00:12:25.000 Yeah.

00:12:25.000 I mean, that's what it is.

00:12:26.000 Exactly.

00:12:26.000 It makes things look cooler.

00:12:28.000 And, you know, like the way my wife looks at dresses and stuff, it's like she's looking at the way I look at other forms of art, things that I like.

00:12:35.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:12:36.000 You know, it's just a different aesthetic, a different mindset, but it's art.

00:12:39.000 Totally.

00:12:39.000 It is art.

00:12:40.000 Yes, it is.

00:12:40.000 And we are attracted to that, too.

00:12:42.000 Yeah.

00:12:43.000 And we're attracted to creation.

00:12:45.000 I think so.

00:12:45.000 We love when people make things.

00:12:47.000 Yeah, and I think you're right to point that this is like maybe hinting at something deeper.

00:12:52.000 So, you know, with this assembly theory stuff, my original motivation was really to get at, you know, what fundamentally explains life in the universe.

00:13:01.000 And, you know, to me, the thing that life does that no other physical system does is creativity.

00:13:07.000 And Life is a mechanism for the universe generating things it couldn't generate otherwise.

00:13:13.000 And so one way to think about that is there's this huge possibility space of things that could exist, and there's just not enough resource or time for all of them to exist.

00:13:21.000 So by a planet constructing things like us over time, it actually sort of maximizes the number of weird things that can be made.

00:13:30.000 And I really like this.

00:13:31.000 I like this idea that we're actually really literally the universe's mechanism of expressing creativity and making things possible that would not be possible without things like us.

00:13:43.000 Do you know who Terrence Howard is, the actor?

00:13:45.000 I am familiar with him.

00:13:48.000 Fascinating person.

00:13:49.000 Yes.

00:13:50.000 A brilliant guy who has some crazy ideas.

00:13:52.000 But one of the craziest ideas he has is that whenever a planet gets far enough away from the Sun, it will generate life and then that life will give birth to people.

00:14:05.000 People will eventually emerge.

00:14:07.000 And he calls it like peopling.

00:14:09.000 Like a planet is peopling.

00:14:11.000 Interesting.

00:14:12.000 And that as these civilizations become more advanced, they're going to have to deal with the fact that the planet is further and further away from the sun.

00:14:19.000 Like over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the climate will change, things will become cooler.

00:14:24.000 They're going to have to figure out a way to develop some sort of an artificial atmosphere or some way of sustaining.

00:14:31.000 Along with, of course, biological things that will change with the animal as it adapts.

00:14:36.000 Yeah.

00:14:38.000 I don't really think that humans, like ourselves, as currently constructed, are a universal phenomenon.

00:14:47.000 I think we're pretty special to this planet, but I think there are certain attributes of humans that Like, you know, the theory of computation and its universality that, like, we invented in the last century that might be universal to any intelligent species that emerges on any planet.

00:15:03.000 So I think it's really hard to say, like, what here is universal to other places versus, yeah.

00:15:09.000 It's certainly a big leap, right?

00:15:10.000 We have no evidence.

00:15:11.000 There's no evidence of people anywhere else.

00:15:13.000 Or any other life form.

00:15:14.000 No real evidence.

00:15:16.000 There's a lot of shenanigans.

00:15:17.000 There's a lot of weirdness.

00:15:18.000 But there's no real evidence.

00:15:19.000 Yeah, there's no evidence for life on any other planet.

00:15:21.000 And the mechanism of how life even got on this planet is not known. 0.93

00:15:25.000 I spent my entire career working on this fucking hard problem. 0.76

00:15:29.000 But I think it's the appropriate descriptor of it. 0.98

00:15:31.000 It's really hard.

00:15:32.000 So I think it's easy to speculate on what we think life on other worlds will be like.

00:15:37.000 And we tend to do it from a very anthropocentric lens where we'll say, It will be like us.

00:15:42.000 And, you know, even professional astrobiologists will do the same kind of thought experiments, and they'll say, oh, well, the geochemistry on a planet should give rise to things like DNA and proteins, and so we should look for those in the universe.

00:15:52.000 And I think that's really underestimating how large the space of possibilities actually is.

00:15:58.000 So when you're thinking about the emergence of life, is the only way to do it, I mean it can't be the only way it has to emerge with certain temperatures the way ours has in water.

00:16:11.000 It seems like there could be a wide variety of possibilities that things could adapt to whatever particularly unique environment that this planet provides.

00:16:21.000 Given a sustainable temperature and given enough resources that it can survive that we could have...

00:16:28.000 Like we have jellyfish, right?

00:16:29.000 Yes.

00:16:30.000 We have lots of weird stuff on this planet.

00:16:32.000 They've been around as long as us, right?

00:16:34.000 Like octopi.

00:16:35.000 Octopi are really weird.

00:16:37.000 Crazy! 0.98

00:16:38.000 Crazy. 0.59

00:16:39.000 Totally batshit crazy. 0.94

00:16:40.000 When my friend Remy Warren, he used to host a show called Apex Predator.

00:16:44.000 And what essentially the show was about was like examining...

00:16:47.000 Apex Predators and their particular adaptation they have for their environment and seeing like what a human can imitate like what are these things that they do and he said Octopus by far was the most bizarre thing to dive into.

00:16:59.000 Yeah.

00:17:00.000 He said they're aliens.

00:17:01.000 They are.

00:17:02.000 I mean not literally but like yeah, but yeah, no, no, I totally agree I mean they independently evolved a nervous system so and like and you know like they're crazy and I think they're the most alien thing on this planet from us as far as like trying to look at comparable intelligence and really understanding a different evolutionary trajectory.

00:17:22.000 Also like how they can take their body and completely morph it to look like coral.

00:17:29.000 Instantaneously.

00:17:29.000 Within seconds.

00:17:31.000 I know.

00:17:31.000 The color changes are shocking.

00:17:32.000 Incredible.

00:17:33.000 And the texture.

00:17:34.000 It's everything.

00:17:35.000 How does it even know what it's doing?

00:17:38.000 How does it know what it looks like on the outside?

00:17:39.000 It doesn't have a mirror.

00:17:41.000 How did it adapt to that?

00:17:42.000 I don't know.

00:17:42.000 They're making a lot of progress.

00:17:44.000 There was like the first cephaloneuro conference this year, which I sent one of my students to.

00:17:47.000 I didn't go to, but I know, right?

00:17:49.000 That's a great term.

00:17:50.000 I know.

00:17:50.000 The neuroscience of cephalopods.

00:17:53.000 But yeah, I don't think we know a lot about how they work or how they think.

00:17:57.000 And their lifespan is incredibly short.

00:17:59.000 It's only like a year or two.

00:18:01.000 It's just crazy.

00:18:01.000 Yeah, I have a friend who is building this office building and I talked him out of putting a jellyfish tank in it.

00:18:08.000 He's like, because he wanted to have this big cylindrical jellyfish tank in the center.

00:18:13.000 Like when you walk in, I go, dude, trust me.

00:18:16.000 That's going to be such a headache.

00:18:18.000 They die all the time.

00:18:19.000 They don't live.

00:18:20.000 Oh, sure.

00:18:20.000 Yeah.

00:18:21.000 Oh, it's like a constant...

00:18:23.000 But they're so beautiful.

00:18:23.000 Oh, gorgeous.

00:18:24.000 But there's one of those tanks in the Mandalay Bay shark exhibit.

00:18:28.000 Have you ever been in that?

00:18:28.000 No, I haven't.

00:18:29.000 Incredible.

00:18:30.000 Mandalay Bay has this enormous aquarium.

00:18:33.000 I've always wanted to go.

00:18:34.000 I want to take my kids, but yeah, I haven't been yet.

00:18:36.000 It's so cool.

00:18:36.000 I've been taking my kids since they were really little.

00:18:38.000 It's one of the dopest places because you go in there and there's sharks swimming around and all these incredible fish and people are diving in there with them and it's enormous.

00:18:48.000 So we went on a tour of it, and one of the things they showed us was their jellyfish habitat.

00:18:52.000 That's it right there. 0.99

00:18:53.000 So that thing is a damn nightmare. 0.99

00:18:56.000 And they have all these pipes and filtration systems. 0.99

00:19:00.000 Do they just fish the dead jellyfish out?

00:19:03.000 That's a good question.

00:19:03.000 I'm not sure.

00:19:04.000 I'm not sure if they get sucked into the vents.

00:19:07.000 Yeah, I wonder.

00:19:07.000 They have like a thing that they just like filter them every day to make sure there's no dead ones hanging out.

00:19:11.000 I don't know how they do that.

00:19:12.000 But the interior of it, look how beautiful.

00:19:15.000 Yeah, they're amazing.

00:19:16.000 God, they're so incredible.

00:19:17.000 I mean, just imagine if we found that on another planet, how excited we would be.

00:19:21.000 We'd be trying to talk to it.

00:19:23.000 We'd be blown away.

00:19:23.000 We'd be doing everything, yeah.

00:19:24.000 We'd be sending it sound and various codes to try to see if we can communicate with it.

00:19:30.000 We'd try to understand its nervous system.

00:19:32.000 Where's its brain?

00:19:33.000 It doesn't have a brain.

00:19:34.000 Where is it?

00:19:35.000 Where's the brain?

00:19:37.000 Where's the blood?

00:19:38.000 Does it have blood?

00:19:38.000 What is that?

00:19:39.000 We would be freaking out.

00:19:41.000 We would be.

00:19:42.000 But it's in the ocean.

00:19:43.000 We're like, oh, don't get stung.

00:19:44.000 Yeah, but I mean, there's a certain level of excitement seeing it here.

00:19:48.000 I think how diverse life on Earth is is rather shocking. 1.00

00:19:52.000 I guess probably we're decent.

00:19:53.000 We're like, you know, used to it, as you're saying.

00:19:57.000 So we don't find it as shocking as we should.

00:19:59.000 Do you think that...

00:20:02.000 This is that human life.

00:20:04.000 I mean, I'm sure you've thought about this.

00:20:06.000 Do you think that this is a very unusual circumstance that it creates this?

00:20:11.000 Or do you think there's versions of this is just rare?

00:20:15.000 I, you know, I don't know.

00:20:17.000 Will be my honest, scientific, professional answer.

00:20:20.000 Sure.

00:20:21.000 How could you?

00:20:22.000 Yeah, no.

00:20:23.000 Of course, how could you?

00:20:24.000 But I think it's really important to be, like, honest about the fact that we don't know and just, like, put it out there.

00:20:28.000 Because it's very tempting to speculate.

00:20:31.000 But I think, you know, the more I think about how large the universe really is, and I don't even mean physically large, like, you know, like, you can look at the Hubble Deep Field and you can see, you know, 10,000 galaxies at, like, the size of your, like, Pen tip on the night sky and you're like,

00:20:46.000 oh my god, the universe is a huge place.

00:20:48.000 But if you go into a chemistry lab and you ask a chem informatician how many molecules there are, they can't even estimate how many molecules there are.

00:20:56.000 Chemical space is so big.

00:20:59.000 It's really crazy.

00:21:00.000 There's one molecule, I usually use an example, it's called Taxol, which is an anti-cancer drug.

00:21:05.000 And if you wanted to make every permutation of that molecular structure and every three-dimensional shape you could with those atoms, It would fill 1.5 universes in volume.

00:21:17.000 1.5 universes.

00:21:18.000 One molecular formula.

00:21:20.000 This is how big chemistry is.

00:21:22.000 And then if you want to get to technological artifacts or biological forms, like the space that we live in is so exponentially large, it's unimaginable.

00:21:30.000 And to think that other life out there would traverse the same path I think the universe is far larger in the kind of living things that could exist than we can even imagine.

00:21:50.000 Wow.

00:21:51.000 The molecule thing is hard to absorb.

00:21:54.000 Yeah, it's totally crazy.

00:21:55.000 Like, I mean, if you want to think about, like, you know, you've got this, like, crazy stuff on your desk and you took the atoms in those things and you thought about all the ways that you could arrange them, it would fill universes of interesting artifacts.

00:22:06.000 Right.

00:22:07.000 Universes.

00:22:07.000 And, like, why is this one sitting on your desk?

00:22:10.000 Right.

00:22:10.000 Like, why is this the aesthetic humans chose?

00:22:12.000 I mean, it's kind of cool, but, you know, like, it's crazy to think about how much stuff could exist but doesn't exist because it wasn't selected and evolution didn't build it over time.

00:22:21.000 Right.

00:22:23.000 That's such a fascinating way to think about it.

00:22:25.000 The overwhelming possibilities.

00:22:29.000 The overwhelming number of different variations.

00:22:33.000 Yes.

00:22:33.000 And so on your question about humans and our specialness, I think what is special about us is we're actually capable of imagining Some of that space and not just imagining it but constructing it with our technology.

00:22:45.000 That was your point about societies and things.

00:22:47.000 So there is something special about quote-unquote human level intelligence or whatever is going on in the human brain.

00:22:52.000 I don't know if it, whatever that thing is, I think is pretty universal and pretty deep about the structure of reality.

00:22:58.000 I don't know if it would be in something that's like a human on another planet.

00:23:03.000 But I think our ability to abstract, imagine and create is probably universal.

00:23:09.000 There's another thing about us that I think is bizarre, and it speaks to this concept.

00:23:15.000 There's a theory about the creation of human beings, right?

00:23:19.000 That human beings, the wackiest one of all, is that human beings are the product of accelerated evolution.

00:23:25.000 Something has manipulated our genome.

00:23:27.000 Something has manipulated the lower primates.

00:23:29.000 That's why the human brain size doubled over a period of two million years.

00:23:34.000 And that this thing...

00:23:36.000 Well, when I think about it, one of the things that intrigues me is I'm a lover of nature and I'm completely fascinated by how animals interact with each other.

00:23:48.000 I mean, I can watch nature documentaries all day long.

00:23:51.000 Yeah.

00:23:52.000 Invasive species are weird, right?

00:23:55.000 Because when something happens and someone brings a turtle to an island where it doesn't belong or when someone brings a goat to a place that doesn't belong or Australia, which is a fantastic example, there's like so many animals that are non-native invasive species.

00:24:11.000 These Asiatic buffalos, there's millions of them.

00:24:14.000 They have to fly overhead and shoot them down with helicopters because there's so many of them.

00:24:19.000 Humans are kind of like that.

00:24:20.000 Aren't we kind of like that?

00:24:22.000 I mean, if there's an animal that doesn't live in sync with its environment in nature and overwhelms the boundaries and seems to exist in some different sort of space than everything else, everything else there's sort of a balance between predator and prey resources and birth rates.

00:24:39.000 There's all this sort of Symbiotic interaction with nature, with a natural world.

00:24:46.000 But we're wild. 0.97

00:24:47.000 Like, we're just dumping shit into the ocean and killing all the fish and polluting the sky and driving in our cars and flying in our planes and still talking about climate change and, you know, injecting people with chemicals and trying to make more babies. 0.99

00:25:03.000 Yeah, we're also doing a lot of good for the planet. 0.99

00:25:05.000 Again, optimists.

00:25:06.000 Sure, sort of.

00:25:07.000 But there's so many of us. 0.97

00:25:09.000 We are on every damn rock that you could find that's habitable. 0.99

00:25:13.000 We are essentially like rats. 0.98

00:25:15.000 We go everywhere we can go, which is like an invasive species thing.

00:25:19.000 Yeah, I think you could talk about it that way.

00:25:22.000 And I think people do.

00:25:24.000 I don't really think that's a useful narrative.

00:25:26.000 I love us.

00:25:27.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:25:28.000 I'm not an anti-person, but I'm just objectively analyzing our behavior and our impact on our environment.

00:25:36.000 And it's very similar to wild pigs getting introduced into an area where they don't have natural predators.

00:25:41.000 Yeah.

00:25:42.000 I think part of the challenge is actually thinking about the levels of organization that biology has.

00:25:49.000 So what I mean is like You know, individuals are not actually the problem what you're describing.

00:25:53.000 It would be like human societies are the problem and humans have because we have societies and, you know, organization that enable us to do these things like we're able to, you know, take over all these environments and things.

00:26:04.000 But I like the way I think about life is much more at the planetary scale.

00:26:08.000 So for me, you know, going all the way back to the origin of life.

00:26:12.000 You know, life doesn't happen just in one environment.

00:26:15.000 It happens in all environments.

00:26:16.000 And it's really like a planetary scale transition.

00:26:19.000 Like something happened on our planet with enough geochemical environments mixing to mediate this global transition.

00:26:24.000 And when you look at the evolution of life, you get these kind of hierarchies where like cells evolved and then multicellular organisms like cephalopods and plants and fungi and us.

00:26:35.000 And then we get things that build societies like ant colonies or human societies.

00:26:41.000 It just seems to me it's like it's a natural progression of the evolutionary process to build more complex systems at larger collective scales that are having more impact on the planet and restructuring more of it.

00:26:53.000 And, you know, if life wants to get off this planet, it has to go through something like us.

00:26:57.000 So I don't think, you know, I think we can look at it from the, you know, couple hundred year timescale and say these things are terribly negative and predator, prey, this, that, and the other thing.

00:27:06.000 But if you look at it over the billions years timescale, there's a really different picture that emerges about what we are and what we're doing.

00:27:12.000 Isn't it a fascinating thought, though, that you immediately, and we all do, go to if life gets off this planet?

00:27:20.000 Yes.

00:27:21.000 So that seems to be something that we have baked into us.

00:27:23.000 We have this idea of exploring the universe.

00:27:26.000 So wouldn't something else have that, too?

00:27:28.000 And if something else had that, and it was a hundred million years more advanced than us, and it found us still throwing shit at each other and beating each other to death with sticks, wouldn't it come in and go... 0.58

00:27:38.000 Would you? 0.93

00:27:40.000 Yes.

00:27:40.000 You would?

00:27:41.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:27:42.000 Would you fuck with it? 1.00

00:27:43.000 Like, what would you do? 1.00

00:27:44.000 100%.

00:27:45.000 Yeah, I would do exactly what they did.

00:27:46.000 I think that's what curious things do.

00:27:50.000 Oh, like experiment on them?

00:27:51.000 Yes, 100%.

00:27:52.000 Yeah.

00:27:53.000 We do it with animals all the time.

00:27:55.000 Yeah.

00:27:56.000 We make different kinds of- That's how you learn.

00:27:57.000 Yeah.

00:27:57.000 We also, we don't seem to have a problem with- With sort of manipulating things that we consider lower than us.

00:28:05.000 Yeah.

00:28:05.000 On the evolutionary scale.

00:28:06.000 Yeah.

00:28:07.000 I think that's a problem, but I don't know that that's one that can be solved.

00:28:10.000 So this issue of, you know, trying to treat every living entity, you know, in sort of a quality, like, I don't actually think it's possible.

00:28:19.000 Well, you can't because they won't do that to you.

00:28:21.000 No, but you can't even, like, you have to eat something, right?

00:28:24.000 So, like, if you value plants more than animals and you want to eat plants, then you're valuing, you know, like, you're making value statements.

00:28:33.000 But, like, you know, plants are, you know, like, they're still alive when you eat them.

00:28:37.000 So it's, like, kind of weird.

00:28:38.000 Not only that, there's evidence that they're sentient.

00:28:41.000 Plants exchange resources.

00:28:42.000 They communicate through mycelium.

00:28:44.000 There's a lot more to plants.

00:28:44.000 There's all kinds of very complicated information processing going on in plants, yeah.

00:28:48.000 Yeah.

00:28:49.000 We are very sort of egocentric to think that our version of consciousness is the only version of consciousness.

00:28:57.000 And I always say that when I talk about dolphins and orcas.

00:29:00.000 To me, it's one of the biggest crimes of modern civilization.

00:29:04.000 That we keep those things in fish tanks.

00:29:07.000 Yes, I totally agree with that.

00:29:08.000 I totally agree.

00:29:09.000 I think they're just like us.

00:29:10.000 I just think they can't manipulate their environment.

00:29:12.000 Yes.

00:29:13.000 So we essentially have these slave pools where people celebrate with your children to stare at the slaves.

00:29:19.000 I think they're an insanely intelligent species that just doesn't manipulate its environment.

00:29:24.000 And we're so egocentric in our concept of like, what does intelligent mean?

00:29:29.000 Can you control your environment?

00:29:31.000 Do you have a house?

00:29:32.000 Did you make a house?

00:29:33.000 Do you have a car?

00:29:34.000 How do you get around?

00:30:00.000 Yeah.

00:30:01.000 Yeah.

00:30:03.000 Yeah.

00:30:09.000 We don't even know what they're saying.

00:30:10.000 We're trying to use AI to recognize the speech patterns.

00:30:13.000 I love the stuff about digital bioacustics and decoding languages for animals.

00:30:17.000 It might be our only way.

00:30:19.000 It's an amazing field.

00:30:21.000 I think it's going to take a while before we really realize the potential of it.

00:30:24.000 But it's super exciting what people are trying to do.

00:30:26.000 Well, they've been doing interspecies communication research forever.

00:30:30.000 They've gotten nowhere.

00:30:31.000 They've gotten nowhere.

00:30:32.000 The Leary stuff.

00:30:34.000 Not Leary.

00:30:36.000 The guy who made the sensory deprivation tank. 1.00

00:30:38.000 God damn it. 0.99

00:30:39.000 I don't know who that is. 1.00

00:30:42.000 It's locked in my head.

00:30:43.000 I always know this guy's name.

00:30:48.000 What is it?

00:30:50.000 Oh.

00:30:54.000 John Lilly.

00:30:55.000 Thank you.

00:30:56.000 Whew.

00:30:57.000 Why does that happen?

00:30:58.000 Like, that's a problem with the mind.

00:30:59.000 Yeah, because you can't remember everything.

00:31:01.000 You forget things, so you have more information. 0.99

00:31:03.000 I have too much shit in there. 0.99

00:31:04.000 I need a clean house. 1.00

00:31:06.000 It's hard.

00:31:06.000 It's really hard.

00:31:07.000 But Lily, he invented a sensory deprivation tank, and one of the things that he would do with a sensory deprivation tank, he was trying to...

00:31:15.000 Create an environment where your body, in the physical senses of the body, don't influence the mind at all, so there's more resources for the mind.

00:31:24.000 And he was setting up these tanks next to dolphin tanks and taking LSD and trying to communicate with dolphins.

00:31:30.000 I have heard about these studies, yeah.

00:31:30.000 He did a lot of really wild things with dolphins, but none of it really...

00:31:38.000 Yeah, I think there's a lot of progress in animal communication, but I think we're very far from understanding whether animals are communicating at all like us and in what ways.

00:31:49.000 Right.

00:31:49.000 We might be very limited in thinking that this is the only way.

00:31:53.000 Well, it's like your point about anthropocentrizing.

00:31:56.000 We have our bubble, we think about the world this way, and the human way is the only way and the right way, and we put our notions of intelligence on other species, and if they don't match, we think they're not intelligent.

00:32:07.000 Right.

00:32:07.000 And that's just not right.

00:32:09.000 Also, we're thinking about this animal, like an orca or a dolphin, with a 40% larger cerebral cortex.

00:32:16.000 And why are we discounting the possibility of some sort of telepathic communication?

00:32:21.000 Like that sounds and frequencies are attached to feelings, and that there's something going on that's not like, I love you, like in words, but some sort of expression that's different than our concept of language.

00:32:35.000 Yeah, I would say it's certainly possible that they're communicating things that are emotional or much more intelligent than we give them credit for just like with their patterns of speech because they're pretty complex.

00:32:47.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:48.000 And then if you think about alien life, you always think about alien life like us.

00:32:56.000 You think about an alien life that, well, we kind of physically needed to do that in order to conquer the surrounding predators.

00:33:03.000 Yeah.

00:33:04.000 If we wanted to evolve and we wanted to stay alive and gather resources, we had to figure out a way to keep the animals from eating us, right?

00:33:12.000 Yeah.

00:33:13.000 And then just survive in our environment, right?

00:33:16.000 Right.

00:33:16.000 Animals are one danger, but there's plenty of other ones.

00:33:19.000 You don't want to eat the wrong berries.

00:33:20.000 You want to make sure that you have warm clothes in winter.

00:33:23.000 Right.

00:33:23.000 I mean, it's...

00:33:24.000 Hell out there.

00:33:25.000 Yeah, it's a lot.

00:33:26.000 Survival's hard.

00:33:27.000 Whereas dolphins are in warm water.

00:33:29.000 Yeah.

00:33:29.000 Before we came along, there was an abundance of fish.

00:33:32.000 Right.

00:33:32.000 Seems like you don't have to do too much more.

00:33:34.000 You guys got it nailed.

00:33:35.000 Yeah.

00:33:35.000 They're probably living in paradise until we came along and stuck them in swimming pools.

00:33:38.000 Now they live in these noisy oceans or they're in a pool.

00:33:40.000 Yep.

00:33:41.000 Yeah, both things, right?

00:33:42.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:33:44.000 I think this is one of the things that really motivated me to really...

00:33:47.000 I mean, obviously, I love theoretical physics and thinking deeply about the nature of reality, but why pick the problem of life?

00:33:53.000 And I think life is so complicated.

00:33:57.000 All the examples you're giving, we don't really understand what it's like to be another species or even to be another human, quite honestly.

00:34:04.000 And I think if we had a deep understanding of the nature of life, these kind of questions would be much easier.

00:34:10.000 I mean, when you want to talk about a psychedelic experience, imagine if VR could put you...

00:34:17.000 I mean, if there was some sort of an integrated VR that gets to, like, a real, like, matrix sort of state where it allows you to have the thought processes of a being for a short amount of time.

00:34:29.000 Like, if they could record octopus thought process...

00:34:32.000 And put it in your brain.

00:34:33.000 Yes.

00:34:34.000 And give you the feeling of what it means.

00:34:36.000 You want to be human for a little while.

00:34:37.000 For a little while, yeah.

00:34:38.000 But imagine the feeling of what it is to be an octopus.

00:34:42.000 Not just like, wow, I can see the ocean in my language.

00:34:45.000 But instead, think like an octopus for a brief period of time.

00:34:49.000 Yeah, I think that would be amazing.

00:34:51.000 Amazing.

00:34:51.000 I've thought about it, like, what must it be like to be a plant?

00:34:54.000 I mean, like, you know, most places have, like, a plant in every room, and it's like the plant's experiencing the room right now.

00:34:59.000 Like, what is it doing?

00:35:00.000 It's, like, just weird if you actually try to think about it.

00:35:02.000 Like, what does it feel like to be a plant?

00:35:04.000 And it grows better if you play classical music?

00:35:07.000 Yeah.

00:35:07.000 I mean, their way of expressing their personality, so to speak, or like their morphology is like, you know, like their shape is like their expression of their behavior, right?

00:35:18.000 Like animals can move around in an environment, but a plant just grows.

00:35:21.000 Right.

00:35:22.000 So its shape is its behavior, which is kind of crazy.

00:35:24.000 It is kind of crazy.

00:35:26.000 Just the whole interaction that they have with each other, the fact that we've only figured that out over the last few decades.

00:35:32.000 And have you ever seen time-lapsed photos of plants?

00:35:36.000 Yeah.

00:35:36.000 And they interact with each other.

00:35:37.000 I know.

00:35:37.000 Yeah, it's been amazing.

00:35:39.000 Wrap around each other and hug each other.

00:35:40.000 It's crazy.

00:35:41.000 But we have a hard time even with plants not anthropocentrizing with the kind of experiments we want to do to learn how they're intelligent because they're using a lot of animal-based experimental programs to try to test plant intelligence and they probably don't fit plant intelligence because their intelligence is so different.

00:35:57.000 So it's really hard to say what kinds of properties they actually have.

00:36:01.000 And so, if we think about the wide potential for variability in terms of planets out there in the known universe, you would imagine that there'd probably be a lot of intelligent animals that would find some sort of Goldilocks thing like dolphins had.

00:36:20.000 Yeah.

00:36:21.000 Where they don't really need to manipulate their environment.

00:36:24.000 They're kind of dominant over sharks.

00:36:26.000 You know, they're not really worried about getting eaten by other things.

00:36:29.000 These are the aliens we'll never meet because they had no reason to go out and explore and conquer.

00:36:34.000 So like the Na'vi in Avatar. 0.65

00:36:37.000 Yeah.

00:36:38.000 They're aliens but they're kind of like...

00:36:40.000 You know, synced up.

00:36:41.000 Right.

00:36:41.000 Which is really fascinating, too, because, like, that movie caused people to get depressed that they don't live like the Na'vi.

00:36:46.000 Do you know that that was like a real, like, diagnosed thing?

00:36:48.000 I didn't know that was a real thing.

00:36:50.000 That's crazy.

00:36:50.000 Yeah, it's called Avatar Depression.

00:36:52.000 Really?

00:36:52.000 Yeah, and people would go to see that movie, and those people lived in such spiritual harmony with their mother planet.

00:36:58.000 Yeah.

00:36:58.000 And they rode around on these flying dragons, and they were honest and noble, and, like, we were like, God, I want to be them!

00:37:07.000 And so people would, like, go back to their...

00:37:09.000 You know, apartment people beeping their horns and pollution and garbage on the street and crazy homeless people. 0.99

00:37:16.000 He'd be like, fuck, I want to live in Navi and land. 1.00

00:37:18.000 I want to live in Pandora. 1.00

00:37:20.000 I want to live like them.

00:37:21.000 So people got depressed.

00:37:23.000 Weird.

00:37:24.000 Yeah.

00:37:24.000 Avatar depression was like a real thing.

00:37:26.000 That's so crazy.

00:37:27.000 Psychologists were dealing with it.

00:37:28.000 They had to sit people on the couch. 0.84

00:37:29.000 But the idea of utopia is like so oversold.

00:37:32.000 I mean, I think there's something like, like, it's, I don't know, like, I don't think such things exist.

00:37:37.000 I don't think utopia exists, but I think harmony exists.

00:37:40.000 Harmony for sure.

00:37:42.000 But you have to work hard for it.

00:37:44.000 And I think that's the thing.

00:37:46.000 I think there's some conception that there's some easy path to harmony.

00:37:50.000 And harmony requires work, and it requires constant work.

00:37:52.000 Constant work.

00:37:53.000 Yeah, there's no days off.

00:37:54.000 No.

00:37:54.000 And I also think that we have created a world in which harmony is very difficult to acquire.

00:38:01.000 Yeah.

00:38:01.000 Because our world and the structure of doing a thing that you probably do not want to do for most of your day, to pay off debt for something that you really didn't need, education that you turned out to don't use, and all this different stuff that keeps...

00:38:16.000 It's very difficult for people in this environment, especially urban environments that we've...

00:38:21.000 Yeah.

00:38:22.000 To create harmony.

00:38:24.000 Whereas people that live in hunter-gatherer tribes and people that live subsistence lifestyles in particular, they report much higher levels of satisfaction and happiness, less depression.

00:38:37.000 I think debt's really hard because you're constantly aspiring to things.

00:38:40.000 And you're right.

00:38:40.000 It's just totally baked in.

00:38:42.000 Even I still have student loan debt from...

00:38:45.000 You know, it's just like, it's like, you want to do, you want to be, yeah, you just, you take on debt, you try to do something, but yeah, it's pretty bad.

00:38:52.000 There was a Vice series a long time ago, back when Vice, like, was really first starting out, and it was a Vice guide to travel, and they went to visit this guy who lives in the Arctic Circle, and he's been there since, like, the 1970s.

00:39:05.000 I think he went out there initially as a logger.

00:39:07.000 He's one of the last few people to have a It's nice for like six hours.

00:39:28.000 I can't even imagine.

00:39:29.000 The point is that this guy does live in harmony, though, and he's very healthy and very happy.

00:39:34.000 And, you know, the way he talks about, he's a very intelligent person.

00:39:39.000 Yeah.

00:39:39.000 You know, he's not like some weird caveman who's out there in the woods just hunting caribou.

00:39:43.000 No, I think mostly people that do, like, it's a choice, right, to actually decide to live that way, so...

00:39:49.000 Well, for him it certainly is.

00:39:50.000 But it's also, he has an ability to communicate that's unique for a guy who does that.

00:39:55.000 Because it's not like he's talking to a lot of intelligent people all the time.

00:39:58.000 I mean, he's essentially out there by himself.

00:40:00.000 Yeah, that's super hard.

00:40:01.000 Does he read a lot?

00:40:02.000 I don't know.

00:40:03.000 It's a good question.

00:40:04.000 But he seems to have, like, he's synced up with nature.

00:40:09.000 I mean, he's catching fish and he's hunting animals and that's all he's eating.

00:40:13.000 He lives off of that.

00:40:15.000 And this guy wakes up every morning and says, what do I need to do to stay alive another day?

00:40:19.000 And he just goes out and does that.

00:40:20.000 Which seems like, for us, we're like, oh my god, that sounds terrible. 0.98

00:40:24.000 But does that really sound more terrible than going to a job at some corporation that doesn't give a shit about you, that will cut you if the stock is down? 0.96

00:40:33.000 And you've dedicated 25 years of your life to this company and all of a sudden you're gone and now you don't know what to do and you're on unemployment. 0.96

00:40:38.000 You're like, what did I do with my life?

00:40:39.000 I'm 46. What the fuck happened? 0.99

00:40:42.000 That's a lot of people. 0.99

00:40:43.000 Whereas this guy, he knows what he's going to do tomorrow.

00:40:46.000 He knows what he's going to do the next day.

00:40:48.000 And also, he knows his life matters every day, right?

00:40:51.000 I think this is a thing we forget.

00:40:53.000 Our life is a choice, and you're fighting for whatever way you want to live your life.

00:40:59.000 But we're kind of just in the daily grind.

00:41:01.000 We lose our connection to that existential reality that our lives are finite.

00:41:07.000 I think it really changes your perception of things when you really think about the fact that you have a finite amount of time.

00:41:11.000 Yes.

00:41:12.000 And food's not guaranteed.

00:41:14.000 Yes.

00:41:14.000 That's another thing.

00:41:15.000 Well, survival's not guaranteed, right?

00:41:16.000 Right.

00:41:16.000 So we take for granted survival, and therefore we take for granted that we're alive at all in some sense.

00:41:21.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:41:23.000 Exactly.

00:41:24.000 So when you start studying all these things and thinking about life and thinking about the various possibilities of life, what's the lowest single-celled organism?

00:41:38.000 How long ago do we think that that emerged?

00:41:41.000 I think current estimates are that life, like the oldest fossils that we can identify and like tracing back genomically about 3.8 billion years ago.

00:41:51.000 So essentially somewhere around a billion or so years that we can find from the time Earth was formed?

00:41:57.000 Yeah.

00:41:58.000 So Earth, we think, formed between 4.5 and 4 billion years ago.

00:42:02.000 So like 4 billion years ago, we kind of had Earth as we understand it.

00:42:05.000 Mostly now we don't know if there were oceans, but the moon forming impact had happened.

00:42:10.000 That's Earth-1 and Earth-2, the impact with some other planet?

00:42:13.000 Yeah.

00:42:13.000 Thea, I think it was called.

00:42:15.000 Yeah.

00:42:15.000 Just smacked into Earth and then made our moon.

00:42:18.000 Must have been really traumatic.

00:42:19.000 Imagine.

00:42:20.000 So I think most people think, like, life didn't happen before that, because if it did, it would have been obliterated.

00:42:24.000 But we really don't know.

00:42:25.000 So, yeah, current estimates are around, you know, like, 4 to 3.7, 3.8 billion years ago.

00:42:31.000 So somewhere a billion or less than a billion years later, something emerges.

00:42:36.000 Yes.

00:42:37.000 And how do we think that happened?

00:42:39.000 There is no consensus.

00:42:42.000 None.

00:42:43.000 Yeah, I know.

00:42:44.000 It's not fun.

00:42:45.000 It's fun.

00:42:46.000 Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

00:42:48.000 It's totally crazy.

00:42:49.000 That's why I like this problem because nobody knows what happened.

00:42:52.000 Wow.

00:42:53.000 So what are the primary theories?

00:42:55.000 There's a lot of speculation.

00:42:57.000 You know, the sort of canonical ones that you'll hear about are usually like the RNA world that life started with an RNA molecule, which like RNA is still in our bodies today.

00:43:06.000 So like DNA, most people are probably familiar with, gets translated, like transcribed into RNA and then the RNA is what's used to make proteins.

00:43:15.000 So RNA, you know, kind of does a dual role.

00:43:19.000 So people think, oh, maybe it happened early on and it was the first life.

00:43:23.000 And then there's like other hypotheses like hydrothermal vents and, you know, sort of energy first approaches to origins of life that like we had some metabolism that was organizing.

00:43:32.000 But all of these are really speculative, and I think the issue is that we're trying to take molecules that are in modern living systems and trying to understand how they can emerge in a prebiotic environment on early Earth and not really thinking about how the Earth...

00:43:50.000 And the geochemistry on the Earth had to evolve into a living system.

00:43:53.000 So it had, like, selection had to happen, evolution had to happen before life.

00:43:58.000 And this is sort of the critical gap that we're really missing, is, like, what is that mechanism?

00:44:02.000 And that's where assembly theory is supposed to be coming in, is trying to give us a mechanism for how chemical systems can evolve before we even have a living cell, for example.

00:44:10.000 And, like, in trying to iterate what those missing stages are, because we just don't know what they look like right now.

00:44:15.000 Well, also, like, what would the evolutionary advantage of becoming a cell be?

00:44:20.000 I think, well, so that's a great question, but one of the problems with this area is we don't know what questions to ask.

00:44:28.000 So I actually don't know that that's the right question.

00:44:30.000 I think when you think about it much more deeply about the physics of life and the way that we've been describing it already, if you think physics, like what life is doing as a mechanism, In the universe is maximizing the amount of stuff that gets to exist, for example.

00:44:43.000 There's this whole world of complex objects that cannot exist unless there's a living architecture that can select and constrain the space to make something like this instead of the universes of other things those atoms could be arranged in.

00:44:55.000 So if you think that there's something that deep and that fundamental about the nature of life, the origin of life transition has something to do with the emergence of systems that basically can persist.

00:45:07.000 They can survive against this sort of random chemical noise, like the chemical soup is just a mess of things being created and destroyed, created and destroyed.

00:45:14.000 And you get something that basically can reinforce its own existence enough to keep existing and then building more complex stuff.

00:45:21.000 And that's really the origin life transition is pretty simple to say like that, but trying to build an experiment and understand the sort of chemical architecture that mediates that transition is quite hard and that's where we're at right now.

00:45:31.000 And so experiments are being done to try?

00:45:33.000 Yes.

00:45:34.000 How do they conduct these?

00:45:35.000 So that's my collaborator Lee Cronin is a chemist and he's totally brilliant and actually him and I are probably, you know, I don't know, like what we're trying to do is a little bit crazy.

00:45:48.000 To solve the origin of life.

00:45:52.000 He's doing the experimental stuff, but the sort of idea we had in mind is like, I'll write a book, try to get the ideas out there, get people excited about thinking about this space, and he'll start a company that will digitize chemistry and try to raise the funds to actually do the experiments.

00:46:05.000 So he's trying to build the technology and experiments that's built on this platform he has for...

00:46:10.000 Building robots that basically do the chemistry for you.

00:46:13.000 And the idea being, if we could build a large enough experiment, we could search that huge space of chemistry, a little bit like a search algorithm for chemistry, and then be able to look in chemical space and try to discover aliens in an original life experiment on Earth.

00:46:30.000 And so that's what we're trying to do.

00:46:32.000 I'm really excited.

00:46:34.000 I hope it happens.

00:46:36.000 Imagine if you guys, if someone does something like this, maybe it's you, maybe it's someone else, someone does something like this and creates an artificial life form and then starts manipulating that life form and evolving that life form through some extraneous processes.

00:46:53.000 Yeah.

00:46:54.000 So, I mean, there are benefits to that, right?

00:46:56.000 So Lee's company, Chemify, is a digital chemistry company, and their stated aim is to be able to 3D print any molecule on demand, right?

00:47:04.000 So this has huge impact for the pharmaceutical industry.

00:47:06.000 But, like, the real goal is to make an artificial life form in the lab.

00:47:09.000 But that also has huge impact for humanity because you imagine that...

00:47:13.000 Now you have the ability to study in this other system all of these other kinds of chemistries, like what can you do for like antibiotic discovery or pharmaceutical drug discovery or even psychedelic drug discovery, people like that.

00:47:26.000 But, you know, like there's a crazy amount of new technology.

00:47:30.000 And new insights fundamentally to come out of that.

00:47:33.000 But I also don't think that we're really going to understand these other kind of technologies that we're building.

00:47:38.000 Like when we're thinking about artificial intelligence and like, is that alive or not?

00:47:41.000 Unless we solve this chemical problem of what life is, because I think the chemical problem is much harder, but much more direct as far as like understanding the fundamental nature of life when you solve it in an experimental program.

00:47:52.000 Biological life. 1.00

00:47:53.000 Biological life. 1.00

00:47:54.000 Chemical life.

00:47:56.000 Because it won't be biology as we know it, right?

00:47:58.000 That's the whole point.

00:47:59.000 It'll be alien biology that we evolve in the lab. 0.66

00:48:02.000 And I actually think this is how we're going to make first contact with alien life because I think we won't recognize it unless we understand what it is.

00:48:09.000 Wow.

00:48:10.000 What ethical concerns would arise when you take a thing, like, let's say, let's advance this whole process a few hundred years from now, and you've created artificial life, you've created this thing that doesn't exist anywhere else, and then instead of it being subject to natural selection as a vehicle for its advancement, 0.92

00:48:31.000 instead, we just start fucking with it. 0.92

00:48:34.000 And then it gets to a point where there's an ethical concern, like, hey, this thing's about to get smarter than us. 0.98

00:48:38.000 What do we do?

00:48:39.000 I think there's ethical concerns right along the way.

00:48:42.000 And I don't know that I know immediate answers to those.

00:48:46.000 So, you know, it's kind of like this is the part where it's a little existentially traumatic to work on these kind of problems.

00:48:51.000 So I have a friend that's a philosopher, Ben Bratton, and he says the best kind of like ideas are the ones that are like equally like really exciting and horrifying.

00:49:00.000 And you want to work on those ideas because you don't know what its future is going to be.

00:49:03.000 And I tend to be on the optimistic side.

00:49:05.000 I think we need to solve this problem because I think we have this sort of existential crisis in some sense that humanity is facing because we don't understand what we are.

00:49:13.000 We don't understand what our technologies are doing.

00:49:15.000 We don't understand what our long-term future holds.

00:49:17.000 We don't even understand all the life around us on this planet.

00:49:19.000 So we solve that problem.

00:49:21.000 I think that the lens through which we will look at the kind of ethical things that you're talking about will be radically different because the knowledge itself will have transformed us.

00:49:29.000 So I can't even anticipate what those kind of dialogues are going to be like.

00:49:32.000 Imagine if like instead of just wondering about cephalopods and plants and stuff on this conversation, we actually had a fundamental understanding.

00:49:39.000 Of what it is to be other life forms and life as a, you know, as part of the fundamental structure of reality and like participatory in actually like what the universe builds.

00:49:51.000 And you have that kind of understanding.

00:49:53.000 I think it radically changes the way that we conceptualize who we are and what we're doing.

00:49:58.000 And I don't, you know, I don't know what that looks like.

00:50:02.000 And we would assume that if we continue, especially down the path of AI and quantum computing, they are probably going to solve a lot of these problems.

00:50:10.000 Yeah, I think we're flying blind in those areas, though, really, especially AI. I mean, I think that that's pretty obvious that, you know, there's a huge amount of debate about the nature of intelligence in these artificial algorithms.

00:50:21.000 I certainly think that they're life, but I think they're life in the sense that the lineage of information necessary to train a large language model, for example, you know, requires a planet to evolve something like us and evolve language and then enough data about that language to train the model.

00:50:35.000 So it's a direct descendant, like you were saying, like, you know, or technologies or babies.

00:50:42.000 So there's that part of it.

00:50:44.000 But I think...

00:50:45.000 I don't know.

00:50:46.000 I totally lost my train of thought.

00:50:47.000 This is very funny.

00:50:48.000 It went two ways and I don't know which way I want to go.

00:50:52.000 That's very funny.

00:50:54.000 Yeah.

00:50:55.000 What was your question again?

00:50:56.000 I'm so sorry.

00:50:57.000 That's a good question.

00:50:58.000 I don't remember what my question was, so we're both in the same boat.

00:51:01.000 The idea was that artificial intelligence would enhance our understanding of what it means to be biological life.

00:51:09.000 Oh, I see.

00:51:10.000 Yeah, and you were asking about quantum information.

00:51:12.000 Yes, and that when computing power is massively increased and you have a sentient artificial intelligence that essentially has all the information that we have of Every human being, every database, everything all over the world, but yet far more capable of processing this and advancing these things that maybe it'll have a more complex understanding of what life is.

00:51:33.000 Yeah, so I think there's a sort of subtlety here when you're talking about artificial intelligence and whether it could compete with natural intelligence.

00:51:41.000 So this is sort of the canonical debate about the nature of artificial intelligence.

00:51:45.000 But I think we really underestimate what chemistry can do.

00:51:50.000 And I think some of the most powerful computers on this planet are still chemical.

00:51:53.000 And if we actually understand chemistry better, you know, with these kind of new digital chemistry technologies, the kind of compute we can get out of chemistry might actually out-compete silicon in the long run.

00:52:04.000 Hmm.

00:52:05.000 Well, then there's also the concept of hybrids, right?

00:52:08.000 Yes.

00:52:08.000 When it becomes hybrids.

00:52:09.000 I like that concept.

00:52:12.000 But this gets into the blurry area of like, are you human anymore?

00:52:15.000 Like, if you have a chip in your brain and you're like being a cephalopod and then you morph into like, you know, being, you know, on your own desktop, like, are you still human?

00:52:26.000 Right.

00:52:26.000 Well, that's what I always say about if you go back to Australopithecus and explain to him airplanes and cell phones, but you can't be Australopithecus anymore.

00:52:34.000 I'd be like, whoa, I don't want to stop being me.

00:52:37.000 Wouldn't that be the same reaction that they have?

00:52:40.000 I think, yeah.

00:52:41.000 Probably.

00:52:41.000 Probably terrified.

00:52:43.000 I don't want to become a person.

00:52:44.000 I don't want to become an alien.

00:52:45.000 I don't want to be some gray dude with a giant head and big black eyes, but maybe that's what we become. 1.00

00:52:49.000 Yeah, I think also intergenerationally we're already doing that.

00:52:52.000 So like the sort of, you know, people will always talk about how kids are more comfortable with technology than their parents or grandparents were.

00:52:59.000 Oh, yeah.

00:52:59.000 And why are they more comfortable?

00:53:00.000 Because they grew up in a totally different environment.

00:53:03.000 Right.

00:53:03.000 Like the world has literally changed in the last few decades.

00:53:06.000 So like the world that kids are growing up today is not the world that it was when kids are growing up like 50 years ago.

00:53:11.000 Right.

00:53:12.000 And so they are quote unquote alien, not really alien, but like they're really fundamentally different in a lot of ways.

00:53:18.000 And I think it's okay to recognize that.

00:53:20.000 Like that's, you know, part of the progression of understanding and the fact that the world is changing.

00:53:26.000 And if we're looking at it from generation to generation, let's scale that up a thousand years or a hundred thousand years or a million years.

00:53:33.000 Those are fun thought experiments.

00:53:34.000 Yeah, it really is.

00:53:35.000 Because the amount of change that's happened in terms of technology and our ability to access it over the past hundred years is enormous.

00:53:43.000 But yet we're still the same biological creature.

00:53:45.000 How long does that stay?

00:53:47.000 When do we start integrating?

00:53:51.000 Even if we didn't integrate, how much of it would change us?

00:53:54.000 Yeah.

00:53:55.000 I mean, I think we're already seeing signs of that, right?

00:53:58.000 Like, people's, like, fear of leaving their cell phone behind.

00:54:01.000 You know, it's like an extensible brain.

00:54:03.000 So, like, we're all pretty much attached to our cell phone already.

00:54:05.000 So, when you just, you know, you can imagine in a generation or two, it's more comfortable just to have that inside your body so then you don't lose it.

00:54:11.000 Yes.

00:54:12.000 Some people are choosing to have it on their wrist now.

00:54:14.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:15.000 It seems like we're in the very bizarre doorway period where we're about to go through this doorway of transhumanism. 0.85

00:54:26.000 Like the phone thing.

00:54:27.000 We don't want to let it go.

00:54:28.000 The car.

00:54:29.000 I don't know how to get anywhere without my navigation system.

00:54:32.000 You know, all that stuff.

00:54:33.000 We're completely connected in some new strange way that we've just sort of accepted as normal now.

00:54:39.000 And accepted, I mean, for you and I, it's over the course of our lifetime.

00:54:43.000 I mean, when I was a child, there was no internet.

00:54:45.000 I remember very distinctly when it emerged.

00:54:48.000 I was like 27 years old was the first time I got a computer and I got online.

00:54:53.000 I'm like, this is crazy!

00:54:55.000 And that was the you've got mail days.

00:54:57.000 Yeah, AOL was like mind-blowing to me.

00:55:00.000 Mind-blowing.

00:55:01.000 I know, instant messaging.

00:55:02.000 Mind-blowing.

00:55:03.000 You could chat with people back and forth with a computer.

00:55:06.000 This was crazy.

00:55:07.000 Totally mind-blowing.

00:55:08.000 And then you could research things and find out things.

00:55:11.000 And then when bandwidth started increasing and then you started to be able to watch videos and YouTube comes along.

00:55:17.000 There's obviously a lot of nonsense on things like YouTube, but how many people have become educated on so many different things because of YouTube?

00:55:25.000 It's incredible!

00:55:27.000 There's so much to know on any subject.

00:55:32.000 Quantum physics, on carpentry, whatever it is, there's millions of videos.

00:55:38.000 And all of a sudden you're instantaneously watching some professor discuss what it means to be alive.

00:55:44.000 Yeah.

00:55:45.000 That's crazy.

00:55:46.000 I love the time we're living in.

00:55:48.000 I think a lot of people want to complain about it, but I think it's fabulous.

00:55:50.000 It's the best.

00:55:51.000 You wouldn't want to live in the 80s.

00:55:53.000 No. 0.99

00:55:53.000 All the music sucked. 0.99

00:55:54.000 People were on coke. 0.99

00:55:54.000 The hair was great. 0.99

00:55:55.000 The hair was interesting. 0.97

00:55:58.000 But it was like, that was a dumb time. 0.83

00:56:00.000 This is a better time. 0.97

00:56:02.000 It's a better time to go live.

00:56:03.000 No, I think now is perfect.

00:56:04.000 For us.

00:56:05.000 Yeah.

00:56:06.000 The people in the future are going to be like, imagine living in 2024. I know.

00:56:08.000 Right.

00:56:09.000 Yeah.

00:56:09.000 Imagine that presidential election they had to go through.

00:56:12.000 Imagine this and that and Israel and Gaza and whoa, whoa, whoa. 0.95

00:56:16.000 Yeah.

00:56:17.000 I mean, they're going to look back at us like, how did we do it the way we look back at cave people? 0.68

00:56:22.000 Right.

00:56:22.000 But I think the things that they're going to ask about are not the things that we think that they're going to ask about.

00:56:27.000 What do you think they're going to ask about?

00:56:30.000 I don't know.

00:56:30.000 I set myself up for that.

00:56:31.000 Now I don't have an easy answer.

00:56:32.000 That's so bad.

00:56:33.000 I totally did that.

00:56:36.000 Well, I think...

00:56:37.000 I don't know.

00:56:39.000 You don't know what the historical moments are right now.

00:56:42.000 We cite things that we think are historical, and I don't think that they are.

00:56:46.000 Sometimes it's really interesting because people imagine the future, you know, being radically different than the present.

00:56:52.000 But Ken Liu is a science fiction author.

00:56:55.000 He's got this great take that like, if you want to actually predict the future, look at the things that haven't changed in centuries or haven't changed in decades.

00:57:02.000 And those things are likely still to persist and be the same.

00:57:05.000 And so like, like when he was talking about this, he had a picture of like, you know, some futuristic thing from like the 1930s.

00:57:10.000 And there was like a maid in like the black outfit with the white thing. 1.00

00:57:13.000 And they're like, Which of these things is still around?

00:57:15.000 Like, she's vacuuming.

00:57:16.000 And it's, like, just, you know, on the side of the photo.

00:57:18.000 And there's all these, like, robots and things, you know, like, outside.

00:57:20.000 And, like, nothing looks the same except for, like, we still have the same maid outfits and vacuums.

00:57:24.000 And we recognize those.

00:57:25.000 Interesting.

00:57:26.000 And that was, like, predicted 100 years ago, right?

00:57:28.000 So it's, like, it's weird, our conception of things and, like, how much change there is.

00:57:32.000 And, of course, we, you know, we're, our brains are tuned to look out for the things that are dangerous and changing in our environment.

00:57:38.000 And so we're always hypersensitive to the things that are not changing, right?

00:57:42.000 Are changing without recognizing how much is still the same.

00:57:46.000 Interesting.

00:57:47.000 And I also think we're aware of how much of an impact technology, in particular, the internet has had on us, but probably not as much as someone who's studying history will be aware of it.

00:58:00.000 Yeah.

00:58:00.000 To them, it'll almost be like a bomb went off.

00:58:03.000 Yeah.

00:58:04.000 Yeah, and I love talking with historians, especially about the ideas I work on, right?

00:58:07.000 So one of the sort of fundamental ideas in assembly theory, which is really radical in some sense from a perspective of physics, but just generally, is that history is actually embedded in objects.

00:58:17.000 So I actually think any evolved structure has a physical size.

00:58:23.000 It might be sitting on the desk, but it also has a size in time.

00:58:26.000 And this is actually like a fundamental feature of the physics of life that living objects, the things that life creates, are large in time.

00:58:34.000 And this kind of idea has been sitting around humanity for millennia that like, Contingency history might still be alive in the present, but we don't really think about that in a fundamental way.

00:58:47.000 So, you know, like I was talking with Thomas Moynihan, who's a historian, was just saying that there's so many threads through history that kind of point to this idea being like, you know, super interesting and very relevant.

00:58:58.000 And so when you think about like the future history, are they going to be like, oh, they finally realized these kind of things were true?

00:59:04.000 And I think about this with the history of physics.

00:59:06.000 It's kind of crazy at what generation we started realizing certain things.

00:59:10.000 Like, when did humanity first start abstracting and building mathematics?

00:59:13.000 Or when did we build mechanical clocks and start recognizing that we could track things at the level of seconds?

00:59:18.000 Like, we had to invent seconds.

00:59:20.000 And now we take them for granted.

00:59:21.000 Right.

00:59:22.000 When did China invent the mechanical clock?

00:59:24.000 What year was that?

00:59:25.000 I don't know.

00:59:26.000 Let's see if Jamie can find that out.

00:59:27.000 That's a fascinating thought, right?

00:59:29.000 I know.

00:59:30.000 Because before that, they required sundials.

00:59:32.000 Right.

00:59:33.000 You know, and I don't know how much of an effect.

00:59:35.000 How much of an effect is, like, the sun position?

00:59:37.000 Well, all our clocks before that were based on sun.

00:59:39.000 725 A.D. I mean, that's just incredible.

00:59:42.000 Look at that.

00:59:42.000 The world's first mechanical clock, water-driven spherical birds, was invented by Yijing, a Buddhist monk, and 725 AD. Is there a photo of what that looks like?

00:59:51.000 That's a good question.

00:59:53.000 Does that what it looks like?

00:59:54.000 Whoa.

00:59:55.000 Let's see what it looks like.

00:59:56.000 Whoa.

00:59:57.000 I want to see, like, a real one.

00:59:59.000 Imagine you would go visit that thing.

01:00:01.000 I know.

01:00:01.000 Like, I need to find out what time it is.

01:00:02.000 Well, imagine, but I mean, this is a good thought experiment, right?

01:00:05.000 Like, imagine being one of the first people to see a mechanical clock.

01:00:07.000 How big was the first mechanical clock?

01:00:10.000 It doesn't look small. 0.98

01:00:12.000 It looks fucking huge. 0.97

01:00:13.000 Is that the first one? 0.96

01:00:16.000 Just imagine the calculations involved in figuring out how to make all these gears sort of click, click, click and sync.

01:00:25.000 Or even having a concept that you could keep time with that kind of regularity.

01:00:29.000 Because like you're saying, our clocks before were based on like sand or shadows or water.

01:00:35.000 Like they were very elemental, right?

01:00:37.000 And they were not incredibly precise.

01:00:40.000 Right.

01:00:40.000 And then the sort of subsequent human knowledge that comes out of timekeeping precision is things like the laws of gravitation, which we wouldn't understand.

01:00:49.000 Newton and Galileo couldn't have done what they did in their generation unless mechanical clocks existed before they did.

01:00:54.000 Right.

01:00:55.000 And the tolerances are so tight that they've created things like tourbillon movements so that they're not affected by gravity.

01:01:03.000 Yeah.

01:01:04.000 Like these constant force gears.

01:01:06.000 Have you ever seen tourbillon watches?

01:01:07.000 No.

01:01:08.000 I feel like I should build a watch now.

01:01:09.000 This is kind of like, I'm going to get like this weird hobby where I'm going to become like a watchmaker or something.

01:01:13.000 Oh, watches are amazing.

01:01:14.000 I know, they're cool.

01:01:14.000 Mechanical watches are so damn cool.

01:01:16.000 Yeah.

01:01:16.000 They're so fascinating.

01:01:18.000 There's a company called Grand Seiko, and Grand Seiko is like the advanced version of Seiko.

01:01:25.000 Seiko makes like a bunch of different kinds of levels of watches in terms of price points, but then Grand Seiko is their luxury line.

01:01:32.000 And Grand Seiko has created watches that are mechanical, but also have quartz involved in the movement.

01:01:40.000 So their accuracy is insane to within a half a second a day.

01:01:44.000 And it's all just these gears spinning around in springs.

01:01:48.000 Amazing.

01:01:49.000 And half a second a day.

01:01:50.000 And they have a 72-hour power reserve.

01:01:53.000 Wow.

01:01:54.000 Some of them even more than that.

01:01:55.000 It's bananas.

01:01:56.000 Yeah, I know it is.

01:01:57.000 It really is bananas that they've figured out a way to do this with these tiny...

01:02:01.000 And this is one right here.

01:02:02.000 So look how thin it is.

01:02:03.000 It's awesome.

01:02:04.000 It just sits right there.

01:02:05.000 Is it heavy?

01:02:06.000 No, not that heavy.

01:02:07.000 But I have some of them.

01:02:08.000 That's a Grand Seiko right there.

01:02:10.000 It's called the Spring Drive.

01:02:11.000 It's not that heavy.

01:02:12.000 But that's all.

01:02:13.000 That is also a Grand Seiko.

01:02:15.000 Wow.

01:02:15.000 But there's mechanical gears and stuff inside of them.

01:02:18.000 So much cooler knowing what's going on inside.

01:02:19.000 This one is different, too, because this one actually has a battery as well.

01:02:22.000 And so this one is super-duper accurate.

01:02:25.000 Oh, very cool.

01:02:26.000 They just tried to figure out a way to make these things work.

01:02:31.000 Over time, more and more accurate, more and more precise, and what they've gotten it down to now is extraordinary.

01:02:38.000 But show it the tourbillon movement, because it's bananas.

01:02:41.000 When you see what those look like in some of these tourbillon watches, they go for hundreds of thousands of dollars for a watch.

01:02:48.000 Just because of the complexity of the gears, and then they also have clear windows over the movement so you can stare at it while it's doing its thing.

01:02:56.000 This is a tourbillon watch.

01:02:58.000 Look at all that jazz.

01:03:01.000 That's amazing.

01:03:02.000 Bananas! 0.93

01:03:03.000 Look at all these gears!

01:03:04.000 I know!

01:03:05.000 I'm trying to figure out how many gears are actually in it, but it's pretty insane.

01:03:08.000 These sync up.

01:03:09.000 I mean, I don't know what the accuracy of...

01:03:12.000 This is another Grand Seiko.

01:03:14.000 This is their constant force tourbillon movement.

01:03:17.000 That watch is several hundred thousand dollars.

01:03:20.000 Wow.

01:03:21.000 Because it was just so insanely complex.

01:03:24.000 It's gorgeous.

01:03:25.000 To create.

01:03:25.000 Yeah, I love the see-through that you can actually see.

01:03:28.000 See, find out how accurate that thing is today.

01:03:32.000 Because the dive watch or the spring drive is accurate within a half a second a day. 0.99

01:03:37.000 So how accurate is that damn thing? 0.99

01:03:39.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:03:40.000 Nutty.

01:03:40.000 You could do physics with it.

01:03:42.000 So the fact that you're doing this with seconds, I mean, the precision involved in making sure that every gear and every spring represents a second so perfectly with no deviation that it's a half a second over 24 hours.

01:03:57.000 That's bananas.

01:03:58.000 Okay.

01:03:59.000 Plus or minus 12 seconds a day.

01:04:02.000 Is that a different tourbillon?

01:04:04.000 That's a different tourbillon.

01:04:05.000 That's a seagull tourbillon.

01:04:06.000 I was trying to find an answer for one of them.

01:04:07.000 Yeah, that's a different one.

01:04:08.000 This was saying a tourbillon doesn't...

01:04:11.000 It doesn't improve accuracy.

01:04:12.000 Okay.

01:04:13.000 So the idea is that it's not affected by gravity, but it doesn't improve accuracy.

01:04:16.000 The same gravity-fighting effect as tourbillon mechanism in fact has been proven that tourbillons offer no more accuracy than a traditional escapement on a wristwatch.

01:04:24.000 In some cases, even less.

01:04:25.000 But it's kind of a nerd thing.

01:04:28.000 Yeah, no, I can see that.

01:04:29.000 People love the tourbillon movements.

01:04:30.000 That's good.

01:04:30.000 It's so...

01:04:31.000 I could nerd out on those.

01:04:33.000 They're amazing.

01:04:33.000 Oh, for sure.

01:04:34.000 And you can go deep and deep and deep.

01:04:36.000 And they're also, some of them are like wafer thin, wafer thin, and they have this automatic movement inside of them.

01:04:42.000 So the movement of your hand, like every time you move your arm, it's winding the watch.

01:04:47.000 Yeah.

01:04:48.000 So as you move around.

01:04:49.000 Oh, really?

01:04:49.000 Yes.

01:04:50.000 Yes.

01:04:50.000 Like a Rolex.

01:04:51.000 Wow.

01:04:52.000 Yes.

01:04:52.000 If you have like an automatic watch, like a Rolex Submariner, you don't wind it.

01:04:57.000 You move it around.

01:04:59.000 Yeah.

01:04:59.000 And as you move it around, that's what causes it to have the power to keep going.

01:05:03.000 So as you're wearing it throughout the day, and then there's some that you do wind.

01:05:09.000 I just had a morbid thought that you could tell how long someone was dead for by like how many seconds off that watch is because it wasn't wound up anymore.

01:05:16.000 Sort of, but you'd only tell within, you know, 12 hours.

01:05:19.000 Yeah, yeah, I know.

01:05:20.000 That's funny though.

01:05:21.000 It is funny.

01:05:22.000 Yeah.

01:05:23.000 Well, you'd have to find out what kind of a movement it is.

01:05:26.000 Is this a 48-hour movement or a 72-hour movement?

01:05:29.000 How long does it last for?

01:05:31.000 Yeah.

01:05:32.000 That's incredible technology.

01:05:33.000 Was the watch broken already?

01:05:34.000 Yeah.

01:05:35.000 Time Rolex watch helped solve a murder mystery.

01:05:37.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:05:38.000 Okay, there you go.

01:05:39.000 See, I wasn't totally off.

01:05:40.000 Look at that.

01:05:41.000 Wow.

01:05:42.000 Is that how it solved it?

01:05:44.000 I don't know.

01:05:45.000 I just made that up, but cool.

01:05:46.000 Interesting.

01:05:47.000 Well, it makes sense.

01:05:49.000 So that's the Oyster Perpetual, right?

01:05:52.000 That's one of those watches that also has an automatic movement.

01:05:55.000 I just love the idea of recovering information and figuring out puzzles.

01:05:59.000 All right.

01:05:59.000 The Rolex is known to be 48 hours, the power reserve.

01:06:03.000 Police were able to determine the date of death within a reasonable margin of error by subtracting the watch's power reserve from the date that was displayed on the watch when it was found.

01:06:12.000 Yep.

01:06:12.000 According to his Rolex watch, Ronald Platt was murdered on July 20th, 1996. The problem with that is a lot of people don't set their date correctly, so that wouldn't hold up in court.

01:06:20.000 It seems like, how do you know the guy was accurate with his date?

01:06:23.000 Oh, sorry. 0.62

01:06:24.000 How do you know if he had shitty vision?

01:06:27.000 Like, you can't even see. 0.88

01:06:28.000 I can't read that.

01:06:29.000 Unless I have good lighting.

01:06:31.000 Yeah.

01:06:31.000 I can't read that.

01:06:32.000 Is yours set to the right date or no?

01:06:34.000 Mine probably isn't.

01:06:35.000 Hold on a second.

01:06:36.000 Let me tell you right now.

01:06:38.000 It'd be funny if it's not.

01:06:39.000 Oh, this one doesn't even have a date.

01:06:41.000 Oh, there you go.

01:06:41.000 That's not going to hold up in court.

01:06:43.000 This one doesn't have a date.

01:06:44.000 You're safe.

01:06:46.000 Why did I think it does?

01:06:47.000 That's funny.

01:06:48.000 But some of them do.

01:06:49.000 And that's a different – there's like a different mechanism inside of there.

01:06:56.000 They call them complications.

01:06:57.000 But these different ones, like they'll have one – I have one that I gave to Lex.

01:07:02.000 That's an Omega, and it has a moon on it.

01:07:07.000 And so it has a moon-faced thing where there's a high-resolution photograph of the moon, and as the moon rises and moves through the sky, it becomes a full moon, and a half moon, a quarter moon, it shows it on the watch.

01:07:20.000 And so it's accurate.

01:07:22.000 So you have to go to a website, you find out what the moon phase is, you set the moon phase for where the watch is, and then you set the time and the date on the watch, and then it stays in sync.

01:07:30.000 Love it.

01:07:31.000 It's crazy.

01:07:32.000 That's so amazing.

01:07:33.000 The Omega's really cool because it's a little image, but it's a high-resolution image of the moon.

01:07:39.000 Can you see if you can find one of those?

01:07:41.000 It's an Omega Speedmaster moon watch.

01:07:45.000 And so this little moon sort of moves through this little night sky window in the bottom of the watch.

01:07:53.000 I love the phases of the moon.

01:07:56.000 Yeah, that's not it.

01:07:57.000 Find the one with the moon on it, Jamie.

01:08:00.000 Say...

01:08:01.000 No, no, that's the...

01:08:02.000 No, no, no.

01:08:03.000 Moon watch is the watch they wore during the moon landings.

01:08:06.000 Moon phase is what you're looking for.

01:08:10.000 Yeah.

01:08:11.000 So that one's different.

01:08:13.000 That's it right there.

01:08:14.000 Click on the one where you just had your cursor.

01:08:16.000 So that, see the image of the moon at the bottom?

01:08:18.000 Got it.

01:08:18.000 Isn't that dope?

01:08:19.000 So it even has like a bunch of little stars back there.

01:08:21.000 And that's all run by Gears too.

01:08:22.000 Yes.

01:08:23.000 So cool.

01:08:23.000 It's so cool.

01:08:24.000 And then the one above it, that's the calendar.

01:08:27.000 The window to the upper left of it, that's its calendar.

01:08:30.000 It's amazing that they can sync all those different sort of scales of time within one device with just a bunch of Gears.

01:08:36.000 And incredibly accurate too.

01:08:37.000 Yeah.

01:08:38.000 Yeah.

01:08:39.000 Amazing.

01:08:39.000 That's my favorite watch.

01:08:41.000 I love that thing.

01:08:41.000 I love it.

01:08:41.000 That's great.

01:08:42.000 So cool.

01:08:42.000 It's a great gift.

01:08:43.000 Yeah, but it's just an amazing piece of human ingenuity.

01:08:48.000 Someone's figured out how to do that.

01:08:49.000 And again, that's fully mechanical.

01:08:52.000 That's just you move your hand around and it does all the winding.

01:08:55.000 Yeah.

01:08:55.000 And it keeps it accurate.

01:08:56.000 Yeah.

01:08:57.000 It's nuts.

01:08:58.000 It is nuts. 0.94

01:08:58.000 That's our simple little simian brains. 0.94

01:09:01.000 Human brains.

01:09:01.000 I know.

01:09:01.000 It's amazing.

01:09:03.000 And when you think about what could possibly become of advanced life if we could exist in, you know, just stay alive and advance another million years, which doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.

01:09:15.000 I think it'll happen.

01:09:16.000 You think so?

01:09:17.000 I think so.

01:09:17.000 What do you think we look like in the future?

01:09:21.000 I mean, I think, as we've been talking about, it's some kind of hybrid existence.

01:09:25.000 I think we are becoming more integrated with our technology.

01:09:28.000 I don't feel existentially traumatized by that.

01:09:32.000 And I also don't think...

01:09:34.000 There's all these tropes about machines completely replacing biological life, and I just don't think that's a realistic possibility either.

01:09:41.000 And again, it goes back to looking at the history of life on Earth.

01:09:45.000 There's no technology that life invented That was completely replaced if subsequent architecture was built on it.

01:09:54.000 So I always think about the ribosome, which mediates the translation in a cell, as one of the most important and oldest technologies on our planet.

01:10:01.000 We don't think about molecules as technologies, but life had to invent that thing, and it's still here.

01:10:06.000 And there's billions of ribosomes on this planet, and they're kind of the engines of existence in some sense because cells require them to function.

01:10:14.000 And so I think a lot of the stuff that we're building now, like it's an interesting question what's going to be around billions of years from now.

01:10:20.000 I don't think that we as humans have invented any technology that will last that long.

01:10:24.000 But I do think the idea that we're not going to be replaced because we are like sort of a key part of the infrastructure of what comes next is compelling to me based on looking at the history of life on Earth.

01:10:37.000 Yeah, we may not be replaced, but we probably won't remain the same.

01:10:40.000 No, we won't.

01:10:41.000 Yeah.

01:10:42.000 When we do integrate, if we do have some sort of a technological cyborg existence, what does that look like?

01:10:49.000 Well, the question of, like, what does it mean to integrate, though?

01:10:52.000 So, like, already in this discussion, we've been talking about, like, being in a society or not in a society.

01:10:57.000 And the lifestyle of a human and what a human is is fundamentally different if you're an individual living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle on your own versus if you're living in a modern society and you have all this technological aid and this, like, social constraints imposed on you that you have to hold a nine-to-five job and you have to have an income and all these other things,

01:11:14.000 like...

01:11:15.000 You're a fundamentally different kind of entity than you would be as someone living in the wild on their own.

01:11:21.000 And so we're already part of a technological infrastructure.

01:11:25.000 We just don't really recognize societies as that.

01:11:28.000 But it's being built more and more into us that we're kind of stuck in that.

01:11:34.000 Most of us couldn't survive on our own.

01:11:36.000 And then we're going to become more integrated with that system.

01:11:38.000 So I think of analogies with other kinds of life.

01:11:42.000 You know, molecules inside a cell can't exist on their own either, but they're alive as part of a cell.

01:11:46.000 Or, you know, ants in a society can't exist on their own.

01:11:50.000 Like, they need to be in the colony.

01:11:51.000 And I think humans are already the same.

01:11:53.000 I think so, too.

01:11:54.000 And I think the way we make distinctions with animals, like feral pigs versus domesticated pigs and things along those lines, we think of them as different things.

01:12:03.000 Yeah.

01:12:04.000 I think they are different.

01:12:06.000 And you could say there's superficial physical resemblances, but I think those are kind of superficial.

01:12:12.000 I think it's fundamentally different to be a wild species versus a domesticated one, or a wild human, so to speak, versus a domesticated human.

01:12:20.000 Right, right.

01:12:21.000 And I think when you look at that guy who lives in Antarctica, or in the Arctic Circle rather, and you compare him to like the saddest overweight gamer who's drinking Mountain Dew all day.

01:12:32.000 Oh Mountain Dew, that sounds painful.

01:12:36.000 What if someone's just pale, no sunlight at all, just eating garbage and playing Call of Duty all day long?

01:12:46.000 They're completely different animals.

01:12:48.000 They are.

01:12:49.000 One of them is walking through the mountains with a rifle looking for caribou, and the other one is just calling Uber Eats.

01:12:55.000 And I suspect that, like, even the way they feel about the world is totally different, right?

01:12:59.000 So it's not just, like, obviously the physiological differences manifest in, like, mental differences about, like, the acuity of their mental architecture, how they feel about their environment and, like, what's happening to them.

01:13:10.000 It's just totally different.

01:13:11.000 How much, if any, do you pay attention to the UFO, UAP world?

01:13:16.000 I don't pay too much attention to it, to be quite honest.

01:13:22.000 I think, for me, it's not very exciting, to be honest.

01:13:29.000 I'm much more interested in understanding fundamentally what life is and I think the UFO discussion really hasn't afforded me a deeper understanding of the problems I'm interested in solving.

01:13:40.000 So I don't pay too much attention to it.

01:13:42.000 I think it's much more interesting as a cultural discussion and like some of these things that we've also been talking about, like augmented humans and all these other things, it's like there's a lot of discussions happening Culturally that I think are preparing us for the next phase.

01:13:56.000 And so I kind of see the UFO discussion as being one like, you know, we culturally need to understand how we want to think about alien life, what it is, how we intersect with it.

01:14:05.000 And so there needs to be a lot of discussions about the nature of that problem and people interested in believing in that problem.

01:14:13.000 But I don't really see a lot intellectually for me personally coming out of that discussion.

01:14:19.000 Yeah, there's no meat.

01:14:20.000 No.

01:14:21.000 It's just a lot of talk and a lot of stories that some of them from very respected people that I believe them.

01:14:28.000 And their encounters are fascinating.

01:14:31.000 But you could waste your whole life thinking about what that means and what's true.

01:14:38.000 There's not enough data.

01:14:39.000 There's very, very, very little data.

01:14:41.000 Yeah, that's the problem.

01:14:41.000 So I find it interesting.

01:14:43.000 It's certainly intriguing to think about the possibilities.

01:14:46.000 But it's sort of like mythology versus...

01:14:49.000 Yes.

01:14:50.000 And like individual knowledge versus shared knowledge.

01:14:53.000 And I think what science, like, you know, you can question the sort of academic establishment and the way that we do science and it's very dogmatic and all those things.

01:15:00.000 And I can agree with a lot of those criticisms.

01:15:03.000 But science fundamentally is about shared knowledge and the ability to like, Have a joint conversation about something we both understand and to be able to use that to do things like, you know, the laws of gravitation are things that we can easily state and we can build satellites and new technologies out of that knowledge.

01:15:18.000 And I think, you know, the discussion on alien life is fundamentally about new knowledge that we need to have about how the universe works.

01:15:24.000 And that's going to come from a lot of different places.

01:15:27.000 But for me, I don't see the UFO discussion fundamentally advancing.

01:15:32.000 That question.

01:15:32.000 It's just raising some of the mystery about, you know, certain experiences people have had, but not in a way that allows us to really answer the question of what is an alien.

01:15:41.000 There's also a fundamental problem of accuracy of information and how much of this whistleblower stuff is nonsense.

01:15:49.000 How much of it is true?

01:15:51.000 When you're relying on person A to discuss classified documents.

01:15:58.000 There's a lot of control of narratives.

01:15:59.000 Which I don't like.

01:16:01.000 So I don't like people telling people how to think.

01:16:03.000 And I think what I see in the UFO discussion a lot that actually makes me stay out of that community is a lot of people that claim authority on knowledge and then they claim they can't share the knowledge.

01:16:13.000 And I don't like that.

01:16:14.000 I think if you have knowledge, you should share it.

01:16:16.000 You should discuss it.

01:16:17.000 You should try to figure out what it means for everybody and you should not protect it.

01:16:20.000 That's why you're a scientist.

01:16:21.000 Yes.

01:16:22.000 Yeah, that's what people should be doing.

01:16:25.000 I don't trust people when they claim to have absolute knowledge they can't share with people.

01:16:31.000 The only thing that gives me pause is the possibility that they're dealing with top secret programs that could get them in great trouble and would limit their access to this technology.

01:16:43.000 That gives me pause.

01:16:44.000 And it's the only thing that gives me pause.

01:16:46.000 But it's such a good story though, right?

01:16:47.000 It's the best story.

01:16:48.000 I know, right? 0.98

01:16:49.000 That's the problem is I'm a sucker. 0.96

01:16:50.000 I'm a giant sucker for that kind of story. 0.95

01:16:52.000 I love those stories.

01:16:53.000 Yeah, I think we all do.

01:16:54.000 I hear about those stories and I'm like, oh my god.

01:16:56.000 I love it.

01:16:57.000 I want to hear all of them.

01:16:58.000 Yeah.

01:16:59.000 Yeah, but I think that's like a sort of also standard play that like, you know, if the government needs to keep knowledge a secret, suddenly it becomes more valuable, right?

01:17:07.000 I don't even necessarily think it's the government as much as I think it's the government and military contractors.

01:17:14.000 Yes.

01:17:14.000 So if you have some sort of technology that is literally out of this world and you're trying to figure out how it works, it's within your best interest to keep that as secret as possible.

01:17:24.000 Yeah, right.

01:17:26.000 Well, we see the cases of that in Arizona.

01:17:28.000 It's like, you know, like they're testing, you know, whatever new technology for fighter jets or whatever.

01:17:32.000 And it's like a million UFO sightings.

01:17:33.000 And then it's like released later that it was, you know, the military.

01:17:36.000 Have you ever seen a military jet, like a stealth bomber?

01:17:39.000 No.

01:17:41.000 When we were filming Fear Factor way back in the day, we were...

01:17:46.000 Out near Edwards Air Force Base.

01:17:48.000 And one of those stealth bombers flew overhead.

01:17:50.000 And if I didn't know what it was, I would swear that was from another planet.

01:17:55.000 It looks so cool.

01:17:57.000 It looks so cool.

01:17:58.000 And it does not look like anything else you've ever seen flying in the sky.

01:18:02.000 Yeah.

01:18:03.000 This is post 9-11, 2001. Right.

01:18:06.000 So this is the very beginning of Fear Factor and right after 9-11 and we were out there in the desert and you see this thing, it's near Palmdale, and you see this thing fly overhead and it's like, it looks like something Batman owns.

01:18:19.000 Yeah.

01:18:19.000 See if you can find one of those.

01:18:21.000 Yeah.

01:18:21.000 See if you can find like a video of a stealth bomber flying overhead.

01:18:24.000 It flew right past us.

01:18:25.000 I was like, whoa.

01:18:26.000 I would love to see that.

01:18:28.000 Part of it was terrifying, because like, oh my god, are we going to war?

01:18:30.000 Like, why am I seeing these alien warships?

01:18:33.000 Yeah, I always feel like that when I see military stuff.

01:18:36.000 It's equal parts amazing and profound, and then totally existentially traumatizing.

01:18:41.000 Yes, exactly. 0.99

01:18:42.000 It's cool, but it's designed to kill people really quick. 0.98

01:18:46.000 It's designed to sneak in and mess people up and then get out of there without anybody knowing you're there. 0.97

01:18:51.000 That's literally what it is, a stealth bomber.

01:18:54.000 Yeah, but I do find it exciting that so many people want to talk about UFOs and are, like, really excited about the possibilities for aliens.

01:19:00.000 The thing is, like, my point is, I mean, was that Einstein's quote?

01:19:08.000 Sufficient technology is indistinguishable from magic.

01:19:11.000 Yeah.

01:19:12.000 Was it Asimov maybe?

01:19:14.000 Might have been Asimov.

01:19:15.000 Yeah.

01:19:16.000 So here's one flying overhead.

01:19:18.000 Look at this.

01:19:18.000 Come on.

01:19:19.000 Like if you saw this, you'd be like, oh my God, they're here.

01:19:23.000 Yeah.

01:19:24.000 Like if you saw that fly overhead, you'd go, oh my God, aliens are real.

01:19:28.000 Right?

01:19:29.000 That's how I felt.

01:19:30.000 It's kind of epic that the most alien thing on the planet is the human mind and like what it can create.

01:19:34.000 Oh my God.

01:19:34.000 The most epic.

01:19:35.000 We're responsible for every single thing.

01:19:37.000 Every single thing that's an object that didn't grow, we made it.

01:19:42.000 Nuts.

01:19:42.000 Blows my mind.

01:19:43.000 Blows my mind. 0.93

01:19:44.000 And if I think about the possibility of something even more advanced than us coming here and manipulating us, the same way we're willing to take a chance in creating artificial life in a laboratory, if we're willing to do that, if they're so much more advanced than us that they think we're just these silly territorial apes...

01:20:01.000 So why is it always a narrative that they're so much more advanced?

01:20:04.000 Like, where does this come from?

01:20:05.000 Because they got here.

01:20:06.000 We can't get there.

01:20:07.000 I see.

01:20:08.000 But I don't think that technological progress is linear.

01:20:12.000 So they might have the technology to come and visit us, say, but not have other kinds of technology that we've advanced.

01:20:19.000 Perhaps.

01:20:20.000 But the idea that they have...

01:20:23.000 They've gone so far in one area that is so perplexing, which is deep space travel and vast distances of space and time, and that they've conquered that.

01:20:34.000 So the closest planets that we think we have Goldilocks zones are how far away?

01:20:39.000 How many light years away?

01:20:41.000 I mean, the closest planetary system is probably, you know, about four light years away.

01:20:47.000 With a recognized Goldilocks zone?

01:20:50.000 There's planets there.

01:20:51.000 It's very debatable about, like, whether it's a Trappist system, like, whether those planets are actually habitable or not.

01:20:57.000 Because we don't know if they have atmospheres and there's all kinds of debate in the community.

01:21:00.000 But, like, potentially, yeah.

01:21:01.000 So let's take the closest planetary system.

01:21:03.000 So four light years?

01:21:05.000 Yeah.

01:21:05.000 Okay.

01:21:06.000 Is that?

01:21:06.000 Yeah.

01:21:07.000 So imagine something coming here every four years because it takes that long.

01:21:12.000 Well, that's assuming they can travel at light speed, which is a big if.

01:21:16.000 Or assuming they can do something.

01:21:18.000 Well, we're also assuming that speed is you're taking an object and you're moving that object through some method of propulsion to a new place.

01:21:27.000 Instead of moving the space around it...

01:21:30.000 Folding that and having it instantaneously travel from one point to point, which is the way the real super eggheads describe the potential future, like long distance space travel.

01:21:42.000 Based on sort of extensions of current theories of gravity, but yeah.

01:21:46.000 And, you know, obviously extrapolating greatly our ability to generate power, right? 0.95

01:21:50.000 But if they did figure out a way to get here, they would probably be so unimpressed with us, especially if they caught us a few hundred years ago, you know, and we're basically like making stupid houses and burning coal and riding horses. 0.96

01:22:04.000 And making mechanical clocks. 0.98

01:22:05.000 That's true.

01:22:05.000 Right.

01:22:06.000 That was quite a while ago.

01:22:06.000 Yeah, that's true.

01:22:08.000 Was that AD or 725 AD? Is that what it was?

01:22:12.000 Yeah.

01:22:13.000 I mean, just the idea that we have come so far in such a short period of time, you would just imagine that if that keeps going, it's going to get to the point where everything expands exponentially and the ability to travel through space will be on the list.

01:22:29.000 Yes.

01:22:29.000 And then you're going to go, okay, what are they doing?

01:22:31.000 Oh, they only have rocks.

01:22:33.000 They only have sticks and rocks.

01:22:34.000 They haven't figured out metallurgy yet.

01:22:36.000 They haven't figured out Right.

01:22:38.000 But the challenge with these kind of like thought experiments is we're always applying today's standard and understanding to long term futures.

01:22:44.000 And if you imagine that we go through this process of, you know, creating the kind of technologies that you're describing, we will be so fundamentally different in the process, we'll be having a different discussion.

01:22:54.000 Right.

01:22:54.000 And we won't be able to reason about what that looks like based on the way that we think about things now.

01:22:58.000 So I think this kind of, you know, I've never really been a fan of like these sort of, you know, survival of the fittest, predator, prey, like the aliens are just going to be so much more advanced than us and come and take over everything kind of narratives because it just doesn't seem to be, first off, it's not consistent with what we actually observe because we don't observe aliens yet.

01:23:16.000 And second off, it doesn't seem consistent with the trajectory of what we're doing overall, especially if you think about us not individually but like much more as just like a biosphere evolving into a technologic, like a technosphere.

01:23:32.000 Yeah.

01:23:33.000 I agree with you there.

01:23:34.000 I think this predator-prey thing sort of got sidelined the moment we created agriculture in cities.

01:23:41.000 That kind of stopped, and then it became a new thing.

01:23:44.000 And as we advance technologically, it becomes another new thing.

01:23:47.000 My thought is...

01:23:50.000 There's going to be a moment in time.

01:23:52.000 The way we've integrated with each other digitally through cell phones and through social media and interaction online, there will be another level of that that is exponentially more bizarre.

01:24:03.000 It's probably going to take place with Neuralink and similar type technologies that we're going to integrate with each other and communicate telepathically and communicate with large groups of people telepathically.

01:24:16.000 And I think Isn't it amazing that things that were once myths become fact through technology?

01:24:22.000 I think this is just absolutely amazing like how much our ancestors thought about these things that they called magic and like we're making you know like actual physical reality through technology.

01:24:32.000 We had the gentleman who received the first Neuralink implant here.

01:24:37.000 We talked to him about what it's like.

01:24:39.000 I look at him like, this is, you're the future.

01:24:43.000 We're probably all going to have something similar to that in our bodies.

01:24:48.000 And then eventually we're going to go, why do we have these fragile feet when you can have these immense deluxe carbon fiber feet that allow you to run over hot coals and not feel a thing?

01:24:58.000 Wouldn't you rather have those?

01:24:59.000 They're better.

01:25:00.000 You can control them better.

01:25:01.000 It depends on what you want to do.

01:25:02.000 Right.

01:25:02.000 It depends on what you do.

01:25:03.000 But we're very connected to our biological existence.

01:25:09.000 But my thought is that our biological existence comes with all the baggage of all the human reward systems that have been put in place in order to ensure our survival.

01:25:18.000 Yes.

01:25:19.000 And this is what's led us to war.

01:25:20.000 This is what's led us to violence.

01:25:22.000 This is what's led us to all the terrible things.

01:25:25.000 Yes.

01:25:26.000 We have a lot of baggage.

01:25:27.000 Yes.

01:25:27.000 And that baggage, I think, is a byproduct of survival of the fittest mentality that came out of our biological life.

01:25:34.000 As we integrate digitally, I think that might be one of the primary benefits, is that we realize, oh, we can't kill each other.

01:25:41.000 We're all one.

01:25:42.000 We really are all one and we really are all connected.

01:25:46.000 And instead of doing that, why don't we figure out a way to solve all this and work together?

01:25:50.000 And if we are all one of the same mindset, this whole idea of stealing resources and covert operations, that's all going to go away.

01:25:58.000 Right.

01:26:21.000 Territorial lines in the sand where you're not allowed to cross unless you have a passport or, you know, you have to paperwork.

01:26:28.000 Some sort of an integration with all human beings.

01:26:31.000 The way we have with cell phones, but way more sophisticated.

01:26:35.000 Yeah.

01:26:35.000 I mean, something I find really shocking is how difficult it is for humans to think of other humans as human.

01:26:41.000 Right.

01:26:42.000 Like, so we have like our severe friends or like people that we find socially acceptable.

01:26:46.000 And then like, pretty much anybody outside of that space is like beyond our cognitive horizon.

01:26:51.000 And we just can't treat them as people anymore.

01:26:53.000 And I find this very perplexing and, you know, about a bit of an issue in making the kind of transition that you're talking about that we just like can't even see each other as humans.

01:27:04.000 Sure.

01:27:04.000 I mean, that's the whole concept of the other, right?

01:27:07.000 They're different than us.

01:27:08.000 They're different.

01:27:09.000 We're allowed to do this because they're those people.

01:27:12.000 Exactly.

01:27:12.000 And that permeates so much of modern society right now.

01:27:14.000 It's hard to look at anybody and see them as a person.

01:27:17.000 And I think that's baked into us, first of all, because we all evolved in tribal groups of very small numbers of people, which is where Dunbar's number comes from, right?

01:27:26.000 We only have a certain amount of people that we can keep intimately connected to in our minds.

01:27:30.000 Yeah, and our social networks are much larger than that now, so most of the people in our network we can't actually humanize.

01:27:35.000 Well, it's even worse if you're famous because you don't remember anybody's name.

01:27:38.000 Yeah.

01:27:39.000 Because I meet so many people.

01:27:40.000 And then you have all kinds of people that have a parasocial relationship with you and, like, they think they know you and they don't know you.

01:27:45.000 Especially me because I do this, right?

01:27:47.000 So I'm talking all the time.

01:27:48.000 It's like, I talk to you every day.

01:27:49.000 Yeah.

01:27:49.000 It must be very weird.

01:27:50.000 Fucking strange. 0.93

01:27:51.000 But it's also I feel like that sort of connection with people. 0.96

01:27:57.000 This is what I'm what anybody who's doing any sort of a podcast or something like that is kind of doing is like a one way version of what I think is going to exist universally on the planet.

01:28:09.000 Yes.

01:28:10.000 I agree with that.

01:28:10.000 I think actually the thing that I find really interesting about the podcasting space is this kind of like very intimate conversation, but it's technologically mediated and shared, right?

01:28:21.000 And I think that's exactly what you're talking about.

01:28:23.000 And so like this transition phase and like why are podcasting becoming so popular, I think is because it's part of this kind of transition that we're all undergoing.

01:28:31.000 There's also an unusual authenticity in having access to individual minds without influence of producers and directors and a bunch of different people.

01:28:41.000 So like this conversation in particular, I had zero conversations with any person before I got you on.

01:28:49.000 I had a text message that I sent to my friend who's the booking guy.

01:28:53.000 I said, hey, reach out to her. 0.89

01:28:55.000 This sounds cool.

01:28:56.000 See if she can do this date. 0.89

01:28:57.000 And that's it.

01:28:58.000 And then it goes on my phone and that's it.

01:29:00.000 And then so I start watching some of the conversations you had.

01:29:03.000 I watched your thing on Lex.

01:29:04.000 I start looking into these concepts and assembly theory and all these different things.

01:29:08.000 And so all it is is something I'm interested in.

01:29:13.000 There's no other reason to have this conversation other than I'm interested in it.

01:29:16.000 Yep.

01:29:17.000 And so that, I think, resonates with other people because I love when someone's interested in something.

01:29:22.000 If they're interested in making baseballs by hand or whatever it is.

01:29:26.000 I think we should all be more excited about things.

01:29:28.000 Things are exciting, especially creative spaces and new ideas and people that are thinking about Like, changing things.

01:29:35.000 But for me, it's someone who's passionate about something.

01:29:39.000 Yeah.

01:29:39.000 For sure.

01:29:40.000 I totally get what you mean about the baseballs.

01:29:41.000 It's infectious.

01:29:42.000 Anything.

01:29:42.000 I mean, this is why I like the watch discussion.

01:29:43.000 Yes.

01:29:44.000 Because it's very clearly, like, drawn from enthusiasm.

01:29:46.000 And somebody, like, designed that thing.

01:29:47.000 That's crazy.

01:29:48.000 Oh, yeah.

01:29:48.000 And I am, by the way, I am a Luddite when it comes to watches.

01:29:51.000 There are watch nerds.

01:29:53.000 Yeah.

01:29:53.000 Like serious watch nerds that can tell you like all the models and what this movement has on that movement in it.

01:30:01.000 They know all the pieces.

01:30:02.000 Some of them take them apart and put them back together again on their own. 0.99

01:30:05.000 They got these giant goggles and little tweezers and shit. 0.97

01:30:08.000 It's crazy. 0.98

01:30:09.000 I mean, but I love when people are really excited about things.

01:30:13.000 Whether it's about playing the guitar or making a painting.

01:30:16.000 Like something about that to me is infectious.

01:30:19.000 And it makes me excited about other things.

01:30:22.000 If I see someone who's really excited about making furniture, I start getting excited about what I do.

01:30:26.000 It's like there's something about that energy.

01:30:29.000 Passion is infectious.

01:30:30.000 And I think enabling people to find their own passion is really important.

01:30:34.000 Very much so.

01:30:35.000 And when you do what we're doing on this podcast and have conversations about things that are just interesting.

01:30:43.000 That's all it is.

01:30:44.000 It's just interesting.

01:30:46.000 Interesting is good.

01:30:47.000 It's far better than the opposite.

01:30:48.000 Yes, it's just fascinating.

01:30:50.000 And so that stimulates minds.

01:30:53.000 It stimulates people.

01:30:54.000 There's people at home that are listening like, I have a question.

01:30:57.000 How did this happen?

01:31:00.000 How did that happen?

01:31:01.000 What would have happened if it was a little bit colder?

01:31:03.000 What would have happened if it was a little bit warmer?

01:31:05.000 What would have happened if there was no this or no that?

01:31:09.000 Imagine a world where no one figures out the wheel.

01:31:12.000 I think about alternate histories all the time.

01:31:15.000 Well, the bizarre thing is they do not think the Egyptians had the wheel.

01:31:20.000 Yeah.

01:31:20.000 Like, what are you talking about?

01:31:22.000 How is that even possible?

01:31:23.000 Yeah.

01:31:24.000 And so no theory there.

01:31:25.000 That's like the massive mystery of human civilization itself, just in the structures that were left behind with no explanation.

01:31:33.000 Yeah.

01:31:33.000 That alone makes us go, well, we have this bizarre idea in our head of how things progress based on our current understanding of the world we live in right now.

01:31:41.000 But that has no bearing on Egypt.

01:31:43.000 Like, what did they do?

01:31:44.000 How'd they do that?

01:31:45.000 We don't know.

01:31:46.000 I know.

01:31:46.000 History is a predictive science, which is like a weird thing, but like people don't like think about this, but like, you know, you have to have theories of the past and then test it against the record, right?

01:31:55.000 So it's not really any different than any other domain of knowledge where we're trying to make predictions and test them against current data.

01:32:01.000 It's just like history, for some reason, we think it actually happened.

01:32:04.000 Therefore, like there's one narrative, but it's usually constructed based on what we know and we're learning all the time.

01:32:09.000 Well, also the problem in- And we forget all the time.

01:32:11.000 The collapse of that civilization, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, all the records lost.

01:32:16.000 So they probably had written down how they did everything. 0.99

01:32:20.000 And some assholes came along and burnt everything. 0.99

01:32:22.000 And now we're like, what did you do? 1.00

01:32:24.000 They were definitely assholes. 1.00

01:32:26.000 That was such an amazing list. 1.00

01:32:27.000 Assholes. 0.99

01:32:28.000 When I first heard about the Library of Alexandria, I was like, that was heartbroken. 0.99

01:32:34.000 I was like, can you even imagine what was lost?

01:32:36.000 If we knew what they knew, the amount of advancement...

01:32:40.000 Just Egypt, just that one part of Africa where they figured out how to do some things that to this day, 4,500 plus years later, we are perplexed.

01:32:51.000 Yeah.

01:32:52.000 Perplexed. 0.98

01:32:53.000 There's shitty theories. 1.00

01:32:54.000 They all suck. 1.00

01:32:56.000 Every theory sucks. 1.00

01:32:57.000 They've just recently discovered some sort of hydraulic technology that was in one of the pyramids. 0.98

01:33:02.000 Oh, really?

01:33:03.000 Yeah, see if you can find that.

01:33:04.000 That's crazy.

01:33:04.000 There's some recent research that was published where it wasn't the Khufu pyramid.

01:33:10.000 It was another pyramid.

01:33:12.000 And in one of these other pyramids, they believe they have evidence of some sort of hydraulic technology that was used.

01:33:19.000 Oh, that's so cool.

01:33:19.000 A study published Monday in a journal PLOS. One researcher proposed that ancient people may have relied on water to build the step pyramid.

01:33:28.000 The suspect hydraulic system may have helped lift stones from the center of the pyramid.

01:33:34.000 Wow.

01:33:35.000 So, like, we're still trying to figure out what they did.

01:33:39.000 So, long before I got into science, like, one of the first places I actually encountered in astronomy was, like, reading about the Orion mystery when I was, like, in fifth grade.

01:33:47.000 And I, like, I was, like, got obsessed with it for a little while about, like, whether the chambers and the pyramids were actually aligned with the stars and stuff.

01:33:53.000 And, like...

01:33:53.000 How did they possibly do that?

01:33:55.000 It was kind of crazy.

01:33:56.000 There's a guy named Christopher Dunn, who's an engineer, and he has the wildest theory.

01:34:01.000 He thinks that the construction of the pyramid, and this is, by the way, both maligned by some archaeologists, completely dismissed, but also embraced by younger archaeologists.

01:34:15.000 Oh, interesting.

01:34:16.000 So this theory is that the way the Great Pyramid was set up was not set up as a tomb, but was set up as some sort of a way to generate electricity.

01:34:27.000 And that there was a chamber, a subterranean chamber, and that this chamber had something in it that was like pounding on the stone and creating a certain vibration.

01:34:40.000 And then they had this...

01:34:42.000 These shafts that they had access to that had – they know these shafts existed and they know the structure of these shafts and these shafts that existed in the marble or whatever the stone, granite rather, and they would fill these shafts up with some sort of chemicals.

01:34:59.000 And then at the end of the shaft was limestone, and so the limestone is porous, and the limestone allows the gases to escape from all these chemicals and contain itself inside this chamber.

01:35:10.000 This chamber is constantly being vibrated, and then there are these pathways that lead up to what they're calling the King's Chamber, which is this insane structure.

01:35:19.000 It's one of the most perplexing things about the pyramid, because these are immense stones that are positioned— I mean, they're just a phenomenal piece of architecture.

01:35:26.000 And then in those, they have shafts that go straight out into space that he thinks is gathering gamma rays.

01:35:33.000 And so the gamma rays are interacting with this hydrogen that's being created by these chemicals and the vibrations and that all these things are used to generate electricity.

01:35:42.000 And this is why there's a gold capstone on the top of the period and smooth limestone on the outside.

01:35:47.000 It's a nutty theory, but this guy's a brilliant man.

01:35:51.000 No, I mean, it's incredibly creative.

01:35:53.000 And if it's testable and, like, there's ways to validate that that could work, that would be...

01:35:58.000 Well, the problem is you'd have to do it at scale.

01:36:01.000 Well, you could look for traces of, like, whatever chemistry is talking about on the pyramid walls.

01:36:05.000 And, like, it would be possible to experimentally verify whether gamma rays could do that.

01:36:10.000 I don't suspect that they could, but...

01:36:11.000 But, like, there's pieces of it.

01:36:13.000 Like, this is how science works.

01:36:14.000 You have, like, a story of a set of hypotheses and you can test individual parts of it and then try to validate it.

01:36:20.000 So it'd be kind of cool if, you know, like, he wanted to try to do that.

01:36:23.000 Right.

01:36:24.000 And so then the question is...

01:36:26.000 How'd they figure that out?

01:36:27.000 I don't know.

01:36:28.000 Imagine if it turns out to be correct and this was some sort of a way of generating power from the earth and space itself.

01:36:36.000 How'd you figure that out?

01:36:37.000 But also why?

01:36:38.000 Because where would they put the power?

01:36:39.000 They didn't have any electric grids or anywhere to put it.

01:36:41.000 Not that we know of, right?

01:36:43.000 The problem is...

01:36:45.000 It all gets to this weirdness of how much evidence would be left from 10,000 years ago?

01:36:53.000 How much evidence would be left from 20,000 years ago?

01:36:55.000 How long did it take people to figure that out?

01:36:58.000 Was it 2,000 or 3,000 years?

01:37:00.000 How much tinkering?

01:37:02.000 Yeah, and yeah.

01:37:03.000 I mean, there's all kinds of interesting questions you can ask about that kind of stuff, even in like deep time.

01:37:08.000 So, you know, one of my colleagues, Adam Frank, had this paper on like the Silurian hypothesis, which is like the idea that there was like intelligent beings around the time of dinosaurs, like a dinosaur race, and like how would you actually look in the geological record for it?

01:37:21.000 Right.

01:37:21.000 And so, like, people can work out the mathematics of, like, you know, what would be the traces of these, you know, like, if the Egyptians had this capability or if, you know, there were intelligent species that emerged on the planet long before humans and had enough technology, say, to, like, have radioactive waste or anything.

01:37:37.000 Like, you can actually, like, bound, you know, like, what would we actually see in the record.

01:37:42.000 So it is possible still to constrain this stuff.

01:37:46.000 Even the most radical hypotheses.

01:37:48.000 So I've been raised in a tradition scientifically of entertaining any idea as long as it's something that we can actually test and measure.

01:37:58.000 And so I guess for me, I think some of the most creative ideas in science are things that people completely didn't expect.

01:38:06.000 Like what?

01:38:08.000 Well, I mean, I think Einstein's a great example.

01:38:12.000 You know, like, he was one of the few people that took seriously that the speed of light, you know, is constant.

01:38:18.000 Like, we take that for granted now, but everybody thought that was kind of ridiculous and the experiments must be wrong because there's no way that the speed of light could be constant.

01:38:25.000 And he was like, no, the laws of nature are invariant.

01:38:28.000 And this invariance also implies that the speed of light could be invariant because it's a law of nature.

01:38:33.000 And then he was able to derive relativity from that and that has all kinds of, you know, radical consequences about the way that we think about space and time and, you know, the fact that time is, you know, like, it's actually a relative concept.

01:38:46.000 At least simultaneity is a relative concept.

01:38:48.000 I think there's many concepts of time in physics.

01:38:51.000 But yeah, so I think that's one.

01:38:53.000 But like quantum mechanics is another.

01:38:55.000 Like if you actually look at the observational evidence and you try to build a theory from the observational evidence, you get to like really interesting spaces that are completely different than what you thought.

01:39:05.000 And so it's easy to have theories and creative ideas.

01:39:07.000 It's actually harder to go from the observational constraints and work into a theory that's consistent with all of those.

01:39:14.000 And that's actually where most of our more radical conceptions and foundational shifts come from.

01:39:20.000 And so that's why I'm actually particularly excited about what we're doing with assembly theory as an example, because what we're trying to do there is say, if life is actually a real property of the physical world, like whatever we call life, it'll have to be redefined, then we should be able to have a measurable consequence.

01:39:37.000 And the way we talk about that is actually to measure this complexity of molecules, assembly of molecules, Which you can go in the lab and measure with standard instrumentation like a mass spec and an NMR and infrared.

01:39:47.000 Like you can measure this property of a molecule.

01:39:49.000 It's a real physical feature. 0.97

01:39:51.000 And then you can derive all kinds of weird shit from that.

01:39:54.000 And I think this has been the tradition of physics in general, but science also more broadly, that, you know, the reason that we get so convinced about things and they work is because we're working backward from what we observe and measure. 0.91

01:40:06.000 And then we test it against what we can observe and measure.

01:40:09.000 And the things that happen with reality are far stranger than the things that we could dream up, which is why I love it.

01:40:15.000 It's just crazy, like, the kind of ideas you get out of that process.

01:40:19.000 Well, it's just the process that allows you and I to be staring at each other.

01:40:22.000 First of all, the fact that we can see each other is crazy.

01:40:25.000 Evolution of eyes is amazing.

01:40:27.000 Nuts.

01:40:28.000 Nuts.

01:40:28.000 Totally nuts.

01:40:29.000 And then also, octopi have them too.

01:40:31.000 They just evolved on a completely different branch of the evolutionary tree.

01:40:34.000 Totally crazy.

01:40:35.000 But they all evolved eyes.

01:40:36.000 It seems like a property that almost every animal has.

01:40:39.000 Yeah.

01:40:40.000 Seeing is pretty deep.

01:40:41.000 I mean, I think, I don't know when the first photon receptors evolved in cells, but, you know, even cells have light sensing capabilities.

01:40:48.000 So, I mean, that's how photosynthesis evolved also.

01:40:50.000 But, yeah, but it's crazy.

01:40:52.000 So, like, the idea of, you know, like, when life first emerged on the planet, nothing could see, but it evolved later.

01:40:57.000 And it is something that is fairly consistent.

01:41:00.000 And even if you think about our technology, so I always think about the progression of biology into technology.

01:41:04.000 It is fascinating also that a lot of our technologies that allow us to understand the world are technologies of sight, like telescopes and microscopes.

01:41:12.000 And, you know, like we think we knew life on this planet and then we invented the microscope.

01:41:16.000 And it's like, you know, just you don't need that much more resolution.

01:41:18.000 And you can suddenly see that this table is completely covered in cells, for example, that we didn't know were there.

01:41:24.000 Right.

01:41:24.000 Which is just mind-blowing.

01:41:25.000 Mind-blowing.

01:41:26.000 Mind-blowing.

01:41:27.000 It's like we evolved from cells billions of years ago.

01:41:29.000 It took us billions of years to evolve into an intelligence that could build a technology and then look and be like, oh, biology's made out of cells.

01:41:37.000 And then if you think you understand any of it, the people that understand subatomic particles are like, hold my beer.

01:41:42.000 Yeah.

01:41:42.000 Because this whole thing's empty space.

01:41:44.000 Yeah.

01:41:44.000 And it's all operating in some bizarre quantum state where it's like both still and moving at the same time.

01:41:51.000 Yeah.

01:41:52.000 Those wave functions, yeah.

01:41:54.000 What?

01:41:54.000 I know.

01:41:55.000 Like, what is everything?

01:41:57.000 Everything's weird.

01:41:58.000 Every single thing.

01:41:59.000 This is what got me into it, though.

01:42:00.000 Like, that feeling is just like, I love that feeling.

01:42:04.000 I love not understanding and thinking, like, we live in a really trippy reality.

01:42:07.000 And the fact that our minds are capable of understanding any of it, to me, is pretty profound.

01:42:12.000 Absolutely.

01:42:12.000 I feel like we're just emerging from it the same way the ability to see things was this emerging technology, this emerging ability that probably changed everything, right?

01:42:23.000 The ability to actually recognize distances and to see objects and recognize them.

01:42:30.000 That is this emergent phenomenon that we sort of take for granted because we have But there could be other things like that that have not emerged yet.

01:42:42.000 Yes.

01:42:43.000 So much.

01:42:44.000 Psychic phenomenon is one of the things that I connect with that.

01:42:48.000 I don't believe in psychics, like a person could read tarot cards.

01:42:51.000 But I do think there's some weirdness involved in human beings that you can't put on a scale.

01:42:57.000 I think some people are really good at reading patterns in their environment.

01:43:00.000 I think there's that too.

01:43:01.000 But there's also like phone rings and it was a person you were talking about that you haven't talked to in forever, and all of a sudden they feel you and they call you.

01:43:08.000 There's something trippy to that, that maybe not every time, not maybe repeatable, but occasionally you catch it.

01:43:17.000 Occasionally there's this connection that seems to emerge.

01:43:19.000 And I always wonder if that's an emergent form of a new ability that human beings will eventually possess.

01:43:26.000 Yeah, I have lots of thoughts.

01:43:29.000 But I think the first one is, I think we forget often that we are all connected by a common history.

01:43:37.000 And so a lot of the features about like, why is it that we can be sitting here having this conversation?

01:43:42.000 You know, obviously, we both have to speak the same language, but we also have to emerge from the same evolutionary architecture, have the same kinds of sensory apparatus to like to be able to communicate with each other.

01:43:52.000 Implies shared history.

01:43:54.000 And so, you know, I think about life as these kind of, you know, like these structures that are emerging over time and generating novel, you know, things.

01:44:06.000 But like the whole temporal relation, this idea of like objects being in time means that they're connected through time.

01:44:12.000 So, you know, like if you assume a living object actually has a time and size, it means that like every living object in this planet is not really a distinct object.

01:44:19.000 They're all part of that same Yeah.

01:44:44.000 And so we think things are just happening, you know, spontaneously and like there's some magic behind it where really all it is is contingency and causation.

01:44:52.000 But I think the other thing that is interesting about what you're saying, which we already touched on a little bit, is these kind of stories that there's ancient myths.

01:45:04.000 I'm a huge Joseph Campbell fan and thinking about the history of mythology.

01:45:08.000 But we've had these myths for most of human history, and there's been a lot of recurring motifs in them about telepathy, psychics, miracles.

01:45:20.000 You know, all of these stories.

01:45:22.000 And it's super interesting to see how some of them are becoming, you know, like embodied through our technology, like, like the things that we imagine, like, are we're making real.

01:45:32.000 And that's the part that's interesting to me.

01:45:35.000 And that's much more physical.

01:45:38.000 Yeah.

01:45:39.000 The things we're imagining we're making real.

01:45:42.000 Yeah.

01:45:42.000 So it's not impossible that people that are psychic at quote-unquote could exist.

01:45:48.000 But I think what will happen is the stories that we're telling become embodied in the observations that we're making and the things that we're actually implementing in the world.

01:45:58.000 But I don't know that historically I would say...

01:46:01.000 I don't believe in magic.

01:46:03.000 I think magic is...

01:46:06.000 I do believe in mystery.

01:46:08.000 When I say I don't believe in magic, it's not that I don't believe that people have personal knowledge or things, but I think what's more important is when those things become shareable, they actually become things that we can use collectively, and I'm much more interested in that kind of knowledge.

01:46:23.000 So it's not that I don't value mysticism or the kind of personal narratives that people have about experiences.

01:46:34.000 I think those are incredibly valuable and I think that we need those stories in our culture.

01:46:37.000 It's just for me, I'm much more interested in when do we make those kinds of things regularized in the way that we understand them as really fundamental properties and we can use them and we can share that information.

01:46:51.000 That's what I like about science because it's like, it's like shareable deep thoughts that are universally usable.

01:46:58.000 Yes.

01:46:59.000 Yes.

01:46:59.000 Yeah.

01:47:00.000 Universally usable is a great way to put it.

01:47:02.000 I've often entertained the idea of, you know, I'm sure you're aware of the concept of the muse, right?

01:47:08.000 Maybe, but I'll probably explain it anyway just because it's hopeful.

01:47:12.000 One of the best representations of this is a gentleman named Steven Pressfield.

01:47:15.000 He's a great author.

01:47:16.000 He wrote Legend of Bagger Vance and a bunch of other great movies.

01:47:20.000 He wrote this book called The War of Art.

01:47:23.000 The book is essentially like a guidebook for creative types to avoid procrastination resistance and to develop a structure that allows you to sit down in your desk at a very specific time every day and summon the muse.

01:47:37.000 And this idea has persisted throughout time.

01:47:43.000 I'm sure you've had ideas that have come to you like, where does that even come from?

01:47:47.000 Yes.

01:47:47.000 What is that?

01:47:48.000 I think everyone has.

01:47:49.000 I love creativity for that reason because it's so mysterious even to the person having the creative act.

01:47:53.000 Yes, yes.

01:47:54.000 Which is just crazy.

01:47:55.000 Yeah, I almost always think of my best ideas as not even really mine but like a gift.

01:48:00.000 Yes.

01:48:01.000 I do too.

01:48:02.000 This is the concept of the muse.

01:48:04.000 You summon the muse.

01:48:06.000 You treat the muse with respect.

01:48:07.000 You literally communicate with the muse.

01:48:09.000 You put this intention out there.

01:48:11.000 And if you do this every day, she will reward you.

01:48:13.000 And she will consistently bring you ideas.

01:48:16.000 And if you are a person who can develop that kind of discipline to sit there and do that, you'll become productive through the muse.

01:48:25.000 Is the Muse like a placeholder for your unconscious brain?

01:48:28.000 Could be.

01:48:28.000 Yeah, certainly.

01:48:29.000 But if you treat it like it's a real thing, it behaves like a real thing.

01:48:32.000 No, no, no.

01:48:32.000 I mean, I think the unconscious is a real thing.

01:48:34.000 The reason I'm bringing it up is like so many people are really interested in consciousness and then, you know, like really focused on that.

01:48:41.000 But part of the reason that, you know, like where creativity comes from and like part of this idea of using intuition to guide how you think about the world I think is like there's so much happening in your brain that you're just not even consciously aware of.

01:48:53.000 Right.

01:48:53.000 And I think a lot of the information processing architecture and like where like I've kind of resigned myself to like almost all of my thinking is my unconscious brain and I should just like leave it there.

01:49:03.000 And if I get an idea emerging out of it, it seems like it came from nowhere.

01:49:07.000 But it's just it's I'm just not consciously aware of all the processing in my brain.

01:49:10.000 I also wonder if the term consciousness is connected far too much to language.

01:49:16.000 Yes.

01:49:16.000 Because, right, we think of things that we can describe with language and processes that we examine with language, words that we attribute to specific objects and specific tasks and things that we do.

01:49:30.000 And then there's this other thing that's going on.

01:49:32.000 Maybe you feel bad that day.

01:49:34.000 Maybe you feel lonely.

01:49:35.000 Maybe you feel this.

01:49:36.000 These sort of subconscious things are very conscious.

01:49:39.000 They're conscious, but they're not attached to language.

01:49:43.000 And so when we're interacting with people on a conscious level, we're communicating constantly through words.

01:49:49.000 So we have sounds that we make, and these represent things, and we all understand them, and so we use this as a way to express this thing that's going on with this thought process, the consciousness.

01:50:01.000 We're attaching it to language.

01:50:03.000 Yeah.

01:50:04.000 No, I think most of us do because I think a lot of us, you know, construct words or visuals in our brains.

01:50:09.000 But it's super interesting when you have people that don't do that.

01:50:11.000 Like Lee Cronin that I work with a lot and, you know, he's the person I originally did at Assembly Theory as chemist.

01:50:16.000 Like he doesn't have any visuals in his brain or like language in his brain.

01:50:19.000 And it's super interesting talking to him because he's like completely and utterly brilliant.

01:50:23.000 But I think like his mental architecture is really different.

01:50:25.000 Yeah.

01:50:25.000 And I love working on deep foundational questions because I think when you talk about these deep ideas and you talk, and maybe this is also why people like psychedelics, because if you're not trained at the sort of frontier of intellectual debate,

01:50:41.000 where do you have these kind of experiences?

01:50:43.000 But the kind I'm talking about is you have really thought about how reality works and you have an architecture in your mind about what you think is.

01:50:50.000 Is fundamental about the nature of reality because you're asking this particular scientific question.

01:50:55.000 And I think some of my best discussions with some of my colleagues have been, you know, those kind of discussions and you really realize how people's brains are so different.

01:51:02.000 Very, very different.

01:51:04.000 So different.

01:51:04.000 What is the estimation?

01:51:05.000 There's some percentage of us that do not have an inner voice.

01:51:10.000 Yeah, I think it's like 4%, but I don't know.

01:51:14.000 I think it's higher than that.

01:51:14.000 Is it?

01:51:15.000 I think it's quite a bit higher.

01:51:15.000 I thought it was like...

01:51:16.000 I think it's in the 20s.

01:51:17.000 Oh.

01:51:18.000 What's that?

01:51:19.000 It's higher than that.

01:51:19.000 I just made up a number.

01:51:20.000 It's up to 60%, but I've tried to look into this many times.

01:51:24.000 I don't understand anything.

01:51:25.000 Well, I think it's hard to report, though, because people don't even know they don't have an inner voice, or people don't know they do have an inner voice, because you don't know what it's like to be in someone else's mind, so everybody just thinks their mind is normal.

01:51:35.000 Right, right.

01:51:36.000 So if you talk to a schizophrenic, you're like, what?

01:51:38.000 What's going on in there?

01:51:39.000 What is that?

01:51:40.000 What's that misfiring?

01:51:42.000 Well, this is one of the things I'm really excited about, these neural enhancement technologies, because I think we really underestimate the diversity of human minds.

01:51:51.000 It might be the most diverse things on this planet are actually just what's going on in our heads.

01:51:56.000 Most certainly.

01:51:56.000 I mean, I know so many different unique people.

01:51:59.000 I'm so lucky that I've met so many unique people from talking on this podcast.

01:52:04.000 Yeah.

01:52:04.000 And then just through walks of life.

01:52:06.000 I know so many people who think so differently.

01:52:09.000 Yeah.

01:52:09.000 And I know great athletes and great scientists and great comedians and great musicians and they're all different.

01:52:16.000 Yeah.

01:52:16.000 They think different.

01:52:17.000 They just have a different way.

01:52:19.000 Like some people will look at a problem and go...

01:52:22.000 Why is that?

01:52:23.000 What about this thing? 0.97

01:52:24.000 And I'm like, how the fuck did you even see that? 0.97

01:52:26.000 Why did you look at it that way? 0.98

01:52:28.000 Everyone has...

01:52:29.000 I mean, it's based on your life experiences, your genetics, but there's also...

01:52:35.000 I think everyone's interface is different.

01:52:37.000 I don't know even what you see.

01:52:41.000 I assume that it looks...

01:52:42.000 I know!

01:52:43.000 This blows my mind.

01:52:44.000 I think about this all the time.

01:52:45.000 I'm like, I have no idea what it looks like to anybody else when we look out in the world.

01:52:49.000 Right.

01:52:49.000 Well, it makes sense to me that it has to be different.

01:52:51.000 Yeah.

01:52:52.000 Because if it wasn't different, why would you like things I don't like?

01:52:54.000 Everybody would like the same thing.

01:52:55.000 Yeah.

01:52:56.000 Like the way that things look.

01:52:57.000 That's true.

01:52:57.000 Or food tastes.

01:52:58.000 Yeah.

01:52:58.000 Like I have two children that have totally different ability to absorb hot, spicy food.

01:53:05.000 Oh, yeah.

01:53:06.000 My kids are like that, too.

01:53:07.000 So my youngest is like me.

01:53:09.000 My youngest...

01:53:10.000 I mean, she might have a better version of it than me.

01:53:12.000 Like, that kid can eat anything.

01:53:14.000 Yeah.

01:53:15.000 Ghost peppers.

01:53:16.000 Like, she likes it hot.

01:53:17.000 Oh, my God.

01:53:18.000 And she loves, like, really...

01:53:19.000 Those are really hot.

01:53:20.000 From times when she was a little kid, like, reapers.

01:53:22.000 Like, I get this hot sauce called Senor Lechuga.

01:53:26.000 It's really good stuff.

01:53:27.000 It's...

01:53:28.000 Organic and really strong.

01:53:30.000 If you like it, really spicy.

01:53:32.000 And I told her, I'm like, this is pretty spicy.

01:53:34.000 Kid dips her finger in it. 1.00

01:53:37.000 Sucks on it. 1.00

01:53:38.000 She's like, it's not that spicy. 0.99

01:53:39.000 I'm like, it's pretty damn spicy. 0.79

01:53:41.000 You freak. 0.98

01:53:42.000 What the hell's wrong with you? 1.00

01:53:43.000 Wow. 0.99

01:53:44.000 Wow.

01:53:44.000 It's kind of incredible.

01:53:46.000 And then the other one, like a little bit of a jalapeno and she's hiccuping and coughing. 0.95

01:53:51.000 Like she can't take it at all.

01:53:52.000 Yeah.

01:53:52.000 It's bizarre.

01:53:53.000 Yeah.

01:53:54.000 Because they both came from the same parents.

01:53:55.000 Right.

01:53:56.000 So obviously things taste different to them.

01:54:00.000 Yeah, totally different.

01:54:01.000 So whatever that is, where some people love the taste of hot dogs, some people think they're disgusting, and they like, whatever, broccoli.

01:54:09.000 Whatever it is.

01:54:10.000 Why?

01:54:11.000 What is it?

01:54:12.000 What are you experiencing when you're eating this?

01:54:15.000 I don't know.

01:54:15.000 What are you experiencing when you're seeing it?

01:54:17.000 I'm just guessing that you're seeing what I see.

01:54:19.000 It's a total guess.

01:54:21.000 Yeah.

01:54:21.000 And it's probably a bad guess, as you're pointing out, right?

01:54:24.000 Probably.

01:54:25.000 Yeah.

01:54:25.000 I mean, it has to have some...

01:54:27.000 There has to be a bunch of other factors that we're not taking into consideration that are going on internally.

01:54:32.000 Yeah.

01:54:33.000 They're allowing this person to process this in a pleasing or an unpleasing manner.

01:54:36.000 Yeah.

01:54:37.000 Like, what is going...

01:54:38.000 And then the actual structure of the eye, right?

01:54:42.000 We know some people's eyes aren't that good.

01:54:44.000 Like, why is that?

01:54:44.000 Yeah.

01:54:45.000 Like, what's going on in there?

01:54:46.000 Like, it stops working so good, and so you see things blurry, and like, Or colorblind is also interesting.

01:54:52.000 Crazy.

01:54:52.000 Yeah, totally crazy.

01:54:54.000 The world could all be colorblind.

01:54:55.000 We'd be lost.

01:54:56.000 The idea that we're in this spectrum of how light interacts with objects and this incredible variety of different shades of things.

01:55:04.000 Yeah.

01:55:05.000 And like people that have a major shift in that, like I read this Oliver Sacks story once about this person got hit in the head and then they could only see the world in black and white.

01:55:12.000 And how existential that experience was transitioning.

01:55:16.000 That's really depressing.

01:55:17.000 You see a world of color, then everything's black and white.

01:55:19.000 It's like you're living in a movie or something.

01:55:21.000 But the story was about how they were an artist and they came to understand the world quite differently.

01:55:26.000 And you can see a lot more shadow and light.

01:55:28.000 You start paying attention to different detail.

01:55:30.000 But it's just mind-blowing that that can happen.

01:55:32.000 It's like the same brain.

01:55:33.000 Yeah, same brain.

01:55:34.000 And then you have to completely readjust your experience to reality because now you see the world differently.

01:55:39.000 I have a friend who got a concussion and he lost his sense of smell.

01:55:41.000 Oh, really?

01:55:42.000 Yeah, for years.

01:55:43.000 That's probably pretty traumatic.

01:55:44.000 Well, a lot of people got it during COVID as well, right?

01:55:46.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:55:47.000 But he got it through a concussion way back, at least 15 years ago, and lost his sense of smell.

01:55:54.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

01:55:56.000 Yeah, I like to, you know, when I started thinking about how people think differently, I was like, I think I was listening to a podcast running one day, and it's like, you know, like, imagine an apple and now taste the apple.

01:56:05.000 And I was like, I can imagine an apple, I can see an apple in my brain, and I can bite in the apple, but I cannot taste it.

01:56:11.000 I cannot imagine tasting food.

01:56:14.000 And this was really perplexing to me, because like, I never thought about the fact that like, inside my head, I don't have taste.

01:56:21.000 I only have taste when I'm eating food.

01:56:22.000 I can definitely taste things.

01:56:24.000 But it's a weird thing about my brain, but I don't know how common that is.

01:56:29.000 But I think everybody has things like that.

01:56:31.000 And if we just do experiments with our own minds, it's kind of interesting to probe the boundary of things you take for granted that you think you can do or you can visualize and you just can't.

01:56:41.000 It's just not in your head.

01:56:43.000 Well, the sense of smell we take for granted because everybody has it.

01:56:46.000 And obviously there's an evolutionary advantage in terms of food being rotten and there's a bunch of different factors, gases that are poisonous.

01:56:52.000 But it's invisible.

01:56:55.000 Yeah.

01:56:56.000 Do you know if your friend could still imagine smell or did they lose the ability to even recall what smells like?

01:57:01.000 I haven't talked to him in years.

01:57:02.000 I'd have to reach out.

01:57:03.000 I don't even know if he got his smell back.

01:57:04.000 Yeah.

01:57:05.000 He's a guy who used to fight in the UFC. Oh, I see.

01:57:07.000 And he got...

01:57:08.000 Knocked out once and lost his sense of smell.

01:57:10.000 Wow. 0.76

01:57:11.000 Crazy.

01:57:12.000 Crazy.

01:57:12.000 Not good.

01:57:15.000 But the idea is that sense of smell, we all just take for granted.

01:57:18.000 We have it.

01:57:19.000 Oh my god, you smell that apple pie.

01:57:22.000 Oh, it's coming.

01:57:23.000 It's coming.

01:57:23.000 Oh, this is so exciting.

01:57:24.000 You know, you smell it.

01:57:25.000 You walk in the house.

01:57:26.000 Someone's cooking bacon.

01:57:27.000 We take that for granted.

01:57:29.000 But that is an invisible thing.

01:57:32.000 And who knows how many other things there are like that that we don't have.

01:57:36.000 We don't have the ability to detect neutrinos.

01:57:43.000 Imagine if we could feel all the neutrinos passing through us at any given moment.

01:57:47.000 I'm trying to visualize it as you're saying that.

01:57:49.000 I'm like, there's just a thousand I mean, they're literally going through the entire earth.

01:57:53.000 They're flying through the earth right now.

01:57:54.000 But we don't have the ability to detect that.

01:57:56.000 But why not?

01:57:57.000 Right?

01:57:58.000 I mean, that's a thing that's real that we don't have the tools for.

01:58:02.000 But we do have the tools for smells.

01:58:04.000 So we have the tools to detect gases, but we don't have the tools to detect other things that we know are real.

01:58:10.000 Right.

01:58:10.000 Well, our sensory perception that evolved biologically only took us so far.

01:58:15.000 But obviously we're sitting here talking about neutrinos because we have built technologies that can detect their existence and validate that they're there.

01:58:23.000 And then we have theories that would be consistent with what you're just saying.

01:58:25.000 Yeah.

01:58:26.000 So the ways that we see the world, I guess my point is, are not just the biological ones, but they're becoming enhanced by technology in all sorts of ways.

01:58:34.000 And theories and explanations are part of that technological infrastructure, which is why we can talk about that.

01:58:38.000 Our gravitational waves, for example, is another one.

01:58:41.000 Yes.

01:58:41.000 Going through us right now, too.

01:58:43.000 Right.

01:58:43.000 We can't detect them.

01:58:44.000 We can feel the effects of gravity itself.

01:58:47.000 Yeah.

01:58:48.000 But we also know that that's entirely based on mass, right?

01:58:52.000 So we also know that gravity, the more weight you have on you, the harder it is for you to get around because you're being pulled, which is bizarre.

01:58:59.000 Yeah.

01:59:00.000 And you can use that to your advantage by rucking.

01:59:02.000 You can get in better shape by putting a heavy backpack on and going up a hill.

01:59:05.000 It's bizarre.

01:59:07.000 Yeah.

01:59:07.000 So you change your physical structure by adding weight.

01:59:11.000 That's what weightlifting is too, right?

01:59:13.000 You're changing your physical structure and your ability to move through space and time by resisting constantly.

01:59:19.000 So developing these biological tools to get past gravity.

01:59:23.000 Well, I think it's amazing how much of the physical world you can get a sense of by simple things like that.

01:59:31.000 We really do live in a physical reality.

01:59:34.000 I know some people want to think we live in a simulation, but there's a real physical world.

01:59:38.000 And I think we only kind of misconceive of it as a simulation because so much of our environment now is architected by human minds that it seems not real, but it is real.

01:59:47.000 So you don't subscribe to the possibility of simulation theater?

01:59:51.000 No, I find it inadequate.

01:59:54.000 It doesn't seem like it's a better explanation than any other current explanation for how the universe works.

02:00:00.000 So, you know, I put the simulation, argument, intelligent design, and even sort of the current laws of physics on kind of equal footing as far as their ability to explain why the universe exists the way it does.

02:00:11.000 Because what all three theories do is they basically push explanation to the boundary and And in physics, we do that by saying there was an initial state of the universe that was low entropy, and the laws of physics have described what it's done ever since, but you can't explain where the universe came from.

02:00:25.000 And in intelligent design, it's like the universe is designed by some being, but where did that thing come from?

02:00:35.000 And in the simulation argument, it's just the great programmer in the sky made us.

02:00:39.000 And I think, you know, the nuance there is, like, if any entities like us could evolve that could build simulations, then it's far more likely that we live in a simulation.

02:00:49.000 But I think you still have to assume a physical reality that evolves the capability of building simulations.

02:00:55.000 Yes.

02:00:56.000 So it seems all very circular to me.

02:00:58.000 Yes.

02:00:59.000 Yeah, I completely agree.

02:01:01.000 Yeah, I just, I don't understand why people are so confident in stating that, like Elon said, the chances of it not being a simulation are in the billions.

02:01:09.000 It's like one in billions that we are not in a simulation.

02:01:13.000 But he's also crazy.

02:01:16.000 Well, I think it's easy to throw numbers out there, though, and not have them be founded in anything.

02:01:21.000 There has to have been a thing before the simulation existed in order for that thing to create the simulation, for the simulation to emerge.

02:01:28.000 It's super interesting also to me that a lot of the people that are proponents of the simulation argument tend to be in the tech world.

02:01:33.000 And so I think it's in their favor to think that it's great to think that...

02:01:38.000 Computers are like gods and to build this kind of mysticism around these technologies.

02:01:43.000 But if you really want an explanation for what simulations are, there has to be a continuity between the physical world and the simulation.

02:01:50.000 You have to be able to explain how it is that computation emerged on a planet and simulations became possible on our planet.

02:01:59.000 They emerged out of something.

02:02:02.000 So I think I'm much more interested in like what is the unification of the virtual and the physical and like how can you think about them as similar kinds of systems than to just say the universe is a simulation therefore I'll tell why the universe exists.

02:02:15.000 Right.

02:02:15.000 It doesn't get you anywhere.

02:02:16.000 It doesn't.

02:02:17.000 Well I always think about the universe itself.

02:02:20.000 We always want to look at a birth of a universe and the end of the universe.

02:02:24.000 And I always say I wonder if we do that because of our own biological limitations.

02:02:28.000 If we Think that a thing had to emerge because we emerged.

02:02:33.000 But why does it have to have emerged if it exists?

02:02:39.000 Why didn't it always exist?

02:02:41.000 But then that's a huge problem.

02:02:43.000 You can't have everything exist forever is part of the problem.

02:02:47.000 But what could possibly exist to make everything exist?

02:02:51.000 Which is the other one.

02:02:52.000 Yeah, the prime mover.

02:02:53.000 Well, not only that, but the craziest theory of all is the primary theory of the creation of the universe itself, which is the Big Bang Theory, which is the absolute nuttiest theory that's ever existed.

02:03:03.000 Everything that exists came out of something so small, was smaller than the head of a pin, and then in one massive moment, it creates the universe itself.

02:03:12.000 And that's one that universally is agreed upon.

02:03:14.000 Yeah, I know.

02:03:15.000 I agree.

02:03:15.000 And there seems to be a signature of it.

02:03:16.000 So you can study it.

02:03:17.000 Yeah, there's no problem with crazy ideas, by the way.

02:03:19.000 I love crazy ideas.

02:03:20.000 They're the craziest.

02:03:21.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:03:22.000 But that's the craziest, right?

02:03:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:03:24.000 But even going back to the simulation, I'd like...

02:03:26.000 But yeah, the Big Bang is...

02:03:27.000 I mean, but I think, you know, when you're trying to understand how reality works, it should surprise you.

02:03:33.000 And it should have counterintuitive properties.

02:03:36.000 I mean, I think that's how we really know we're learning things.

02:03:38.000 And I'm also of the perspective that I think any theory can be replaced by a better one.

02:03:43.000 Any explanation is not an ultimate explanation.

02:03:45.000 So we're constantly learning more and we're constantly refining our ideas.

02:03:50.000 Is that a problem in science in that when people have espoused a very particular idea of how the world works, they have a hard time backing off of that?

02:04:02.000 Collectively, yes.

02:04:03.000 I think scientists have a hard time doing that.

02:04:05.000 And so I confront this a lot in my work because the kind of ideas we're proposing are new and They say very different things than sort of the standard canon would say.

02:04:18.000 We're seeing structure that isn't part of the way that people talk scientifically about the nature of life or its fundamental properties.

02:04:25.000 And what I see is a lot of resistance to new ideas because people think things are already explained.

02:04:31.000 And so this is really funny for me.

02:04:33.000 The original life, it's like, It's like, we already have an evolutionary theory.

02:04:37.000 The original life is solved.

02:04:39.000 And it's like, have you been to a meeting on the original life?

02:04:42.000 It's like, that problem is not solved.

02:04:43.000 I'm sorry.

02:04:44.000 But so many people think it is.

02:04:46.000 They just think it's easy.

02:04:47.000 It's been done.

02:04:48.000 You'll get really prominent physicists, too, being like, oh, you get the first replicator on the planet, and then you get life.

02:04:55.000 And the real hard problems are like...

02:04:57.000 You know, the long-term future of the universe and things.

02:04:59.000 And I think we're just reasoning based on assuming absolute knowledge sometimes when we don't have absolute knowledge.

02:05:06.000 Do you think that some of that Well, some of that sort of trying to define things in a definite way that we do know it, we understand it, is in response to some religious ideas about the creation of life and that they propose that these scientific riddles have been solved because if you leave them open,

02:05:25.000 that kind of opens the door to the possibility of a creator or of intelligent design and they want to kind of rush to say, no, we figured it out.

02:05:34.000 That's what I've been told.

02:05:38.000 There have been a lot of reactions to the work that we've been doing, both positive and interacting with people's dogmas in certain ways, so they're very reactionary, and then some people that are much more thoughtful and critical, and then some people that are very not thoughtful but very critical.

02:05:52.000 And so you get the whole spectrum.

02:05:54.000 And I guess if you do any kind of high-profile science, you're going to get everything thrown at you.

02:05:58.000 And part of the reason that I want the ideas out there is because I want that critical feedback.

02:06:02.000 So that's fine.

02:06:03.000 If it's intelligent feedback, that's amazing.

02:06:06.000 But I think the thing that I've noticed is...

02:06:11.000 Is that the way that different communities interact with the ideas are totally different.

02:06:14.000 So it's like, you know, the evolutionary biologists, you know, where some of them, not all of them, you can't make blatant statements about any group, you know, really don't understand what we're trying to do.

02:06:23.000 And then but the creationists don't either.

02:06:25.000 And they don't want it either.

02:06:26.000 So it's like you're in this weird space and they're dueling with each other because they think they have totally different ideas.

02:06:34.000 I have been told that that field is particularly protective of its ideas because it's had to battle with intelligent design for so many decades and really stand its ground.

02:06:46.000 And original life is like a really separate community from biology writ large.

02:06:50.000 I was even told early in my career When I was a postdoc by a very prominent biologist that I shouldn't work on origins of life.

02:06:58.000 I want to understand what life is.

02:07:00.000 I should just pick a standard biology problem.

02:07:02.000 And I thought to myself, like, the one problem you want to pick is the one everyone can't answer because that's where you have the most progress.

02:07:08.000 So it's just very funny to me that it's often it's swept under the rug as solved or too hard to solve, both simultaneously at the same time.

02:07:18.000 It sounds insane to me that someone would tell you not to look into the origin of life.

02:07:23.000 Yeah.

02:07:24.000 Because the idea that we have figured everything out about...

02:07:26.000 Even if we understand the processes involved, right?

02:07:30.000 How often does this take place in the universe?

02:07:32.000 What is this?

02:07:34.000 Are there other ways to do it?

02:07:36.000 It's fascinating.

02:07:37.000 I mean, we don't have an idea what an alien is, right? 0.79

02:07:40.000 I mean, just that should slap you in the face.

02:07:42.000 The multitude of ways we talk about alien, we don't know what we mean when we say that.

02:07:47.000 It brings me back to this concept of the muse.

02:07:49.000 So my thought, I had this bizarre thought once that ideas are life forms.

02:07:54.000 Oh, sure.

02:07:55.000 I totally agree with that.

02:07:56.000 Really?

02:07:56.000 Yeah.

02:07:57.000 So my thought is every physical object that human beings have ever created came out of an idea.

02:08:03.000 Yes.

02:08:04.000 So idea gets into primate brain.

02:08:07.000 Primate brain goes, oh, I think I can make a canoe.

02:08:10.000 And then primate brain figures out a way to hollow out a tree and turn it into a canoe.

02:08:16.000 And then primate brain says, you know what?

02:08:18.000 When I let go of this stick, if I pull it back, it goes forward, right?

02:08:23.000 If I let go of it and it springs, what if I could tie a string?

02:08:26.000 And what if I could pull it further?

02:08:28.000 And what if I get a stick?

02:08:30.000 I think I can get that stick to fly.

02:08:32.000 I think?

02:08:54.000 And they create more and more complex versions.

02:08:57.000 Then you get quantum computing.

02:08:58.000 It's not like one person's idea.

02:09:00.000 No, these are things that happen over centuries.

02:09:03.000 No, I totally agree with this.

02:09:04.000 I actually make similar arguments in my book about rockets as a good example of this.

02:09:10.000 They were imagined long before they became actual physical objects.

02:09:13.000 Another Chinese invention, by the way. 0.92

02:09:14.000 Yeah, the Chinese were onto lots of stuff. 1.00

02:09:16.000 Everything.

02:09:17.000 Paper, alcohol, everything.

02:09:19.000 Mechanical clock, everything.

02:09:20.000 Yeah.

02:09:22.000 Yeah.

02:09:22.000 So I think, yeah, I think this gets to the idea of like living objects being deep in time because you like and this and I also think a lot about the nature of like abstract things versus physical things.

02:09:32.000 So I think everything is physical.

02:09:34.000 And when we think of ideas as being abstract, it's just because, you know, like they're not physical objects yet in the same way that we see these kind of physical objects.

02:09:44.000 But they come to our mind in some weird way that doesn't seem like you...

02:09:48.000 Look, if I dig a hole, I know I dug that hole.

02:09:51.000 I know I stuck that shovel, I exerted effort, I put force, I lifted the dirt out, I made the hole.

02:09:57.000 So if someone says, where'd that hole come from?

02:09:58.000 I go, oh, I dug the hole.

02:09:59.000 Simple.

02:10:01.000 But if someone says, where'd you get the idea for a joke?

02:10:04.000 I'll go, oh, I don't know.

02:10:06.000 It came to me one day.

02:10:08.000 I was just laughing with my friends and a thought popped in.

02:10:11.000 It wasn't a calculated thing where I worked on it forever and ever.

02:10:16.000 It's just it got entered into my mind out of nowhere and then it came out my mouth and everybody laughed and I'm not sure where it came from.

02:10:24.000 That's weird.

02:10:25.000 It is totally weird.

02:10:26.000 It's weird.

02:10:26.000 Now imagine that, someone figuring out an airplane.

02:10:29.000 Like some Wilbur and Orville writer.

02:10:31.000 Well, people did.

02:10:31.000 But you're right.

02:10:32.000 It's also distributed over many human minds.

02:10:34.000 So it's not like a single mind architecture.

02:10:37.000 It's like the interaction of many minds and the physical world that generates these things.

02:10:42.000 But I think...

02:10:43.000 Yeah.

02:10:44.000 I think it's time.

02:10:46.000 It's time.

02:10:46.000 Time.

02:10:47.000 Literally.

02:10:48.000 Yeah.

02:10:48.000 So in assembly theory, we think time is fundamental, but you might think of doubt time as in terms of causation.

02:10:53.000 And things like you that take billions of years for the universe to generate have a lot of time embedded in you.

02:11:00.000 And time is actually the creative mechanism that's expanding the space of possibilities and maybe the universe itself.

02:11:07.000 But that's how I think about it.

02:11:08.000 So you actually have an incredible amount of time in a small volume of space.

02:11:14.000 That's what you are as an evolved object.

02:11:16.000 At least that's sort of my current thinking with this theory that we're developing and how we're trying to test the transition to life.

02:11:22.000 And so where are those things coming from?

02:11:24.000 They're coming from the fact that you are an architecture that's deep in time and you have all of this internal space in you.

02:11:29.000 That's And if you are reading people's work and interacting with people's research and you're learning things that people have discovered, you're essentially interacting with their time.

02:11:46.000 Yes.

02:11:46.000 You're looking at all their traces of time and you're doing it over time and that's becoming part of your architecture in time and all of that structure is still in you.

02:11:54.000 And the more time you spend on it, the more you'll absorb that.

02:11:57.000 Yeah.

02:11:57.000 You'll absorb more and more and more of it.

02:11:59.000 Yeah.

02:12:00.000 And the more people's thoughts and more people's work you take in, you're taking all of their time.

02:12:06.000 Yes.

02:12:06.000 And you're putting it all into your head.

02:12:07.000 We're just like bundles.

02:12:09.000 You know, I think about time and information kind of being the same thing, but we're just all of that causation bundled up in like these small...

02:12:16.000 Yeah.

02:12:37.000 Earth is giant as far as the amount of stuff that can be made here and how much history is embodied in every object.

02:12:45.000 It's just this huge causal structure.

02:12:48.000 And I think we're representations of that physics.

02:12:51.000 And that's one of the reasons that we have this kind of perplexing feature of...

02:12:55.000 These things seem abstract.

02:12:56.000 Well, they're not abstract.

02:12:58.000 They don't look like they're in physical space, like knock on wood on the table, but the table is like an object that has like 4 billion years of history in it.

02:13:05.000 So it's like the physicality of the table is mostly in time, not space.

02:13:10.000 And that's true, I think, for us as living things.

02:13:13.000 It makes sense.

02:13:15.000 And it also, if you could go to the original collision of Earth-1, when Earth-1 creates the moon, and just imagine being able to...

02:13:25.000 It's so fabulous we have a giant moon.

02:13:27.000 So crazy.

02:13:28.000 Like, so crazy.

02:13:28.000 It's the only thing that keeps our atmosphere stable.

02:13:30.000 That's the only reason why we're here.

02:13:32.000 Yeah.

02:13:32.000 In this form.

02:13:33.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:13:33.000 With the stable temperatures.

02:13:35.000 Such a chance event.

02:13:36.000 And it's so big.

02:13:37.000 Yeah.

02:13:37.000 It's one quarter the size of us.

02:13:38.000 I know.

02:13:39.000 And it looks nice on watches.

02:13:40.000 Yeah.

02:13:41.000 It's beautiful.

02:13:41.000 Yeah.

02:13:42.000 And it's floating in the sky and it makes a summer night look incredible.

02:13:45.000 Look at the moon!

02:13:46.000 I know.

02:13:46.000 And we get eclipses.

02:13:47.000 Yeah.

02:13:48.000 So much of human history is dictated by the moon.

02:13:50.000 It's amazing.

02:13:50.000 Anyway, sorry.

02:13:50.000 It is.

02:13:51.000 No, it's incredible.

02:13:52.000 But this whole thing, if you could watch it take place, I wonder if...

02:13:59.000 I've often thought, like, there's so many mysteries of history, but I've almost wondered that if...

02:14:08.000 If calculations get to a point, if computers get to a point where they could examine all of the objects in all the places that they are currently in the world and all the force that would cause them to exist and all the history that caused them to exist,

02:14:25.000 you could accurately go back and see exactly what happened every step of the way.

02:14:32.000 Yeah.

02:14:34.000 I think it might be possible.

02:14:36.000 It's an interesting kind of thought experiment about like whether the universe is deterministic and fully predictable.

02:14:42.000 And I think in the past, like one of the reasons that we think the laws of physics are deterministic is because in the past you can determine things, but I think the future is undetermined until it happens.

02:14:50.000 Probably.

02:14:51.000 Yeah.

02:14:52.000 So it might be possible, but I don't know how much you can reconstruct because things die out, like extinction of entire lines of life or like things disappear, like they don't exist anymore.

02:15:01.000 And so I think that you can reconstruct the past, but I don't believe personally in an exact history for the universe.

02:15:07.000 Well, if we can reconstruct the past based on our current understanding, which is fairly limited and much greater than it used to be three or four hundred years ago, if we could expand that knowledge for the next thousand, five hundred thousand years ago, whatever it is from now into the future,

02:15:23.000 to develop some sort of a computation system, some sort of an ability to have an accurate assessment of everything that took place, And then be able to lay it out how it took place because of all the objects and all the places and all the species that died off and all the records when they do core samples and they understand the iridium content,

02:15:42.000 which meant asteroids impacted here and carbon, which is some sort of a fire here.

02:15:47.000 And just calculate it out where you can get some accurate...

02:15:51.000 Like in principle, it makes sense.

02:15:53.000 But I think in practice, I'm not even sure that's physically possible because as you're like trying to compute everything that the universe has done, you also have to like make sure that that physical thing actually can calculate itself and continue to exist in the future.

02:16:06.000 So if you're like there, it's not it's it's it's.

02:16:11.000 It's an interesting thought experiment about how much of the universe can be computed.

02:16:15.000 But you have to deal with resource bounds.

02:16:17.000 And so you have to deal with an actual physical implementation of that computer, and that computer has to be able to persist long enough to do the calculations and have enough energy to do it, which means there has to be things external to the computer.

02:16:29.000 So you can't use all the resources.

02:16:42.000 I was going to say infinite resolution, but I don't believe in infinities anyway, but like really precise resolution that you could reconstruct everything that has happened in the history of the universe.

02:16:51.000 I think our universe forgets things, and I think it does so on purpose because that's part of the, not purpose, but like not in an anthropocentric way.

02:16:58.000 But it does so because the act of forgetting things is actually in part how the universe generates novelty.

02:17:05.000 If it remembered everything in the past and only those things persisted, like we live in an incredibly boring universe.

02:17:10.000 We live in a universe that's constantly creating things and sometimes it, you know, like some of those things can't be generated anymore but it makes more space for other things to be created.

02:17:18.000 You don't believe in infinity?

02:17:20.000 I don't.

02:17:20.000 Interesting.

02:17:22.000 I mean, as a mathematical construct, sure.

02:17:25.000 But as a real physical thing, no.

02:17:27.000 But I have a really different view of mathematics than most people.

02:17:29.000 Like, I think mathematics is a physical system that exists on our planet.

02:17:32.000 And I don't believe in, like, a Euclidean world that's, like, a perfect mathematical form.

02:17:36.000 I think they're a thing that our biosphere has invented.

02:17:38.000 And one of the reasons that we think mathematics is universal...

02:17:41.000 It's because it's a language that we understand that actually is information that's embedded in pretty much every object in our environment.

02:17:51.000 But it doesn't mean that it has universal reach.

02:17:54.000 Yeah, there's some problems with mathematics too, right?

02:17:58.000 Eric Weinstein, who's a mathematician, is kind of explaining the number two.

02:18:02.000 There's a bunch of different things that are bizarre with math.

02:18:05.000 So it almost hints to an incomplete understanding of mathematics, even as we currently know it.

02:18:11.000 Right.

02:18:11.000 Well, there's always that.

02:18:13.000 I mean, you know, it always perplexes me that, you know, people accepted Euclidean geometry as the only form of geometry for, like, 2,000 years.

02:18:20.000 I mean, it's, like, literally, like, that was it.

02:18:22.000 And then we were like, oh, well, there could be non-Euclidean geometries, and we just never imagined them because, like, they don't reflect our physical environment.

02:18:28.000 I mean, that's crazy.

02:18:29.000 So that's, like, that's saying that there's mathematics we don't understand.

02:18:32.000 But then there's a question about whether there's a That math might be derived from.

02:18:39.000 Like, is there a language deeper than math?

02:18:42.000 What could that be?

02:18:43.000 Don't know.

02:18:44.000 Have you thought about it?

02:18:45.000 I have.

02:18:47.000 I think about it a lot.

02:18:48.000 What are the theories?

02:18:48.000 I'm sure you do.

02:18:49.000 Kind of a rhetorical question.

02:18:51.000 Yeah, no, it's okay.

02:18:52.000 Well, I worry about this a lot with the nature of the relationship between the theory of computation and assembly theory, for example.

02:18:57.000 So, computation is a way that we kind of understand the formalization of mathematical things that we actually can You know, algorithmically do, right?

02:19:08.000 So anything that you can calculate, you can compute.

02:19:12.000 And so there are obviously, like, uncomputable numbers and things like that, but they live in some abstract, you know, like...

02:19:18.000 But anyway, so assembly theory has some features that look like theories of complexity and computation in that, you know, like people talk about a minimal complexity for a computer program as being the way that you talk about complexity, and we talk about a minimal causal history to construct an object...

02:19:35.000 But I think what assembly theory is that is a bit different and super interesting is it's NP, like, it's actually hard to compute the assembly index.

02:19:44.000 It's harder than classes of computational algorithms that are kind of similar to it.

02:19:48.000 But the universe generates these molecules that are computationally incredibly complex, but causally the universe can generate them.

02:19:57.000 And so you couldn't compute necessarily on a supercomputer the complexity of a cell.

02:20:05.000 Like you're saying, could I reconstruct the whole history?

02:20:07.000 Yet the universe can generate that structure.

02:20:09.000 So it suggests to me that there's something else going on and the space is actually a lot larger than what you can computationally compress.

02:20:16.000 So what else could be going on?

02:20:19.000 I think that the best language I have for it right now, and I really don't know, like I'm really struggling with this in my work right now, and Lee and I are going back and forth about these things all the time, but is causation.

02:20:32.000 And also that the other part about like why the universe is maybe not computable is Is this mechanism of novelty generation?

02:20:40.000 If the universe genuinely creates novelty that can't be predicted on prior history, and the future really is not determined, that's just suggesting something fundamentally different than the way that we understand the way the world works right now.

02:20:53.000 And I don't know what it is, but I think it has to do with something with causation and something about the physicality of objects.

02:20:59.000 Like objects really do exist.

02:21:00.000 They really do encode their histories.

02:21:02.000 And those histories are interacting all the time, which is making everything much more complicated.

02:21:08.000 Like that idea of these time threads interacting that you were talking about.

02:21:12.000 And then there's the fundamental question of why.

02:21:14.000 Yes.

02:21:16.000 I think, I mean, when I think about, like, what life is, like, why does life exist, I think the universe is trying to maximize the number of things that exist.

02:21:24.000 Because if you think, like, things exist or they don't, and, you know, like, the universe is the constructor for things to get to exist, like, it's building, all of existence is, you know, like, what physically exists in our universe.

02:21:36.000 You know, wouldn't it be great if, like, there was a principle of nature where it's just trying to pack as much existence in as possible?

02:21:42.000 Well, it makes sense also if physical things these human beings create and life creates physical things, that that would be the best way to maximize it.

02:21:53.000 Yes, which is also why I think we have free will.

02:21:56.000 Because if we act independently, we're actually more creative than if we didn't.

02:22:00.000 Do you ever butt heads with determinism people?

02:22:03.000 I buy heads with everyone.

02:22:05.000 Nothing wrong with that.

02:22:07.000 No.

02:22:07.000 That's what it's all about, right?

02:22:09.000 Yeah.

02:22:09.000 No, I fundamentally love disagreeing with smart people.

02:22:13.000 And so I think...

02:22:15.000 And I try to surround myself with colleagues that share that mentality.

02:22:19.000 So I think...

02:22:20.000 Yeah, and I think being around people that challenge you is so critical.

02:22:24.000 And you disagree with them on fundamental things.

02:22:27.000 That's okay.

02:22:29.000 Some of my closest friends boil my blood on some things, but you have to respect that they're thinking smart people.

02:22:36.000 I always put myself in their head.

02:22:39.000 I think we have a huge problem as human beings.

02:22:42.000 We attach ideas to ourself and so we defend these ideas as if we're defending our very existence.

02:22:50.000 Yes, I know.

02:22:51.000 I think we do have a tendency to do that.

02:22:54.000 I've developed that through having so many conversations with people that I don't see eye to eye with on the podcast of instead of arguing with them, I try to ask them how they think, why they think, the way they think, what is it, challenge a little bit just to try to get a response out of them and try to figure out what is your process and why is it so different than mine.

02:23:12.000 Well, that's good for you too because you grow more and you understand more by doing that.

02:23:16.000 Doing this thing over the last 15 years has been like the most radical, unexpected education that I could have ever had.

02:23:21.000 That's amazing.

02:23:21.000 I'm a different human.

02:23:23.000 Yeah.

02:23:23.000 Like completely different human than I was 15 years ago.

02:23:26.000 Yeah.

02:23:27.000 I think that is something that's really hard is like if you close yourself to ideas that you don't agree with, you're closing off like yourself to potential to grow.

02:23:35.000 Yes.

02:23:36.000 And understand the world better.

02:23:37.000 And I think Unquestionably.

02:23:39.000 Unquestionably.

02:23:40.000 And these ideas, the problem when we start defending them is like, then we stop looking at them.

02:23:47.000 We put them as like a protected thing that we're trying to argue against and we're trying to, instead of invite criticism and some sort of an analysis of our thought process, we're trying to defend it.

02:23:59.000 No, so I'm happy professionally also to change my mind all the time.

02:24:03.000 So I was a determinist.

02:24:04.000 I'm not a determinist anymore.

02:24:05.000 Right now I'm a presentist.

02:24:07.000 When did that change?

02:24:08.000 I think that probably changed in the last few years.

02:24:13.000 And it's mostly because of the structure of what I understand of what we're doing with assembly theory.

02:24:19.000 So assembly theory is still very much in development and we're still really trying to work on the ideas.

02:24:24.000 But I always had these ideas about...

02:24:28.000 I think?

02:24:56.000 That mathematical form existing on our planet as a description of reality, right?

02:25:00.000 So that's an object.

02:25:01.000 And so these kind of things were always really perplexing to me.

02:25:04.000 And so, you know, I started working with Lee on assembly theory and like Lee's very radical and very thought-provoking and always pushing.

02:25:12.000 And, you know, he was really on this idea of the universe not being deterministic and getting larger in time.

02:25:20.000 And like part of that was not like it was...

02:25:25.000 He's like, I'm a chemist. 1.00

02:25:27.000 I burn shit. 1.00

02:25:28.000 I see this in the lab. 1.00

02:25:29.000 The second law is not the right description of what's going on here.

02:25:32.000 But there is some underlying undeterminism and novelty mechanism in chemistry that life seems to be really manifesting.

02:25:42.000 So what is free will then?

02:25:44.000 For me, so what happened was when I started reading assembly theory, I started to see that there was a really different structure, especially associated with the way information gets embodied in physical objects and the history being physical in the objects.

02:25:57.000 And free will becomes...

02:25:59.000 This idea that like, you know, you can't, you actually can't, you know, in standard physics, you would say like an emergent thing like us can be reduced to our atoms and all of the fundamental description is down there.

02:26:08.000 But what you've done is stripped that physical system of all the time inside of it, right?

02:26:13.000 So elementary particles, they don't require memory for the universe to generate them. 0.78

02:26:17.000 They just, they're spontaneous.

02:26:19.000 The universe has them for free.

02:26:20.000 But things like us require memory and And things that know how to build things like us in order for us to exist.

02:26:26.000 And then once we exist, we're encoding all of that history and information in us as objects.

02:26:31.000 All of that causation is in us, which means that all of the selection over all the histories to generate us is still part of us and allows us to actually work in this combinatorial space that we can actually generate new structures.

02:26:45.000 And that is actually, like, where free will comes from.

02:26:50.000 It's basically if you assume you can't reduce things to elementary particles all the time and you actually have time in objects, things become causal agents, actually have some navigability over the combinatorial space of the possibilities they live in that they have some control over.

02:27:06.000 That's what I think free will is.

02:27:07.000 You don't have control over everything.

02:27:08.000 So it's not like free will is not all free or all determinism.

02:27:12.000 And I think Dan Dennett was really brilliant on this point.

02:27:15.000 He talked about free will inflation, which I thought was a hysterical concept.

02:27:19.000 It's really funny.

02:27:20.000 But it's like either people think the universe is random and you absolutely have free will and control over everything.

02:27:24.000 I think it's fully deterministic and you have no freedom.

02:27:27.000 But actually what it is is determinism is built over lineages because things get selected to exist and they become part of the regular structure of our universe.

02:27:35.000 So determinism itself is an emergent property and things that are very deterministic like us actually have more causal control over the kind of things that can happen to them but they can't control everything.

02:27:45.000 So we have limited free will.

02:27:46.000 Like I couldn't be home in Arizona this exact second but I can be there later today because I planned ahead for it.

02:27:52.000 Like that's where your free will executes over time.

02:27:54.000 So this concept of determinism is just too simplistic.

02:27:59.000 Yeah.

02:28:00.000 I mean to think that the universe is all like one human concept anyway is too simplistic.

02:28:05.000 It's like it's deterministic or it's not deterministic.

02:28:07.000 Actually, there are cases where you can model it as being deterministic because you're looking at the past and there are places you cannot model it as being deterministic because you're looking at the future.

02:28:16.000 Right, right.

02:28:17.000 And I think that's a pretty simple concept and very evident when you're looking at living things.

02:28:21.000 Like, no one can predict the future technologies, like, or the future of the biosphere.

02:28:26.000 Right.

02:28:26.000 Some of the information's there, like we were talking about before, like, maids will probably still be present 50 years from now, so, like, I might be able to predict some things about the future, but the novelty's really hard.

02:28:36.000 Right.

02:28:36.000 The problem I've always had with determinism is that people seem too sure of it.

02:28:40.000 Yes.

02:28:41.000 And the people that espouse it, they seem very sure of it.

02:28:42.000 And I think, how can you be sure when you know for a fact, in your own mind, you make decisions?

02:28:48.000 Yeah.

02:28:48.000 And you think that these decisions are made entirely based on your life experiences, your education, your biology, yada yada yada.

02:28:56.000 But maybe not.

02:28:57.000 Maybe not.

02:28:58.000 Because there's things going on that are weird.

02:29:00.000 There's moments.

02:29:01.000 There's inspiration.

02:29:02.000 There's a lot of stuff happening.

02:29:03.000 Intuition is a big one for me.

02:29:04.000 I always find that very mysterious.

02:29:06.000 I live my whole life on instincts.

02:29:09.000 I do things that a lot of people go, why are you doing that?

02:29:12.000 I feel like that's what I should do.

02:29:14.000 I feel like that's what I should do.

02:29:16.000 It feels like a thing to do.

02:29:18.000 And that seems to be, for lack of a better term, free will.

02:29:23.000 You know, discipline itself, for lack of a better term, is free will.

02:29:27.000 What is it about the idea of being rewarded by doing something difficult that you don't want to do, but you force yourself to do it?

02:29:36.000 If that is not free will, what is?

02:29:38.000 Yeah.

02:29:39.000 It seems like nothing can make you get up and go for a run if you don't want to go for a run.

02:29:44.000 But you decide to do it, which is the embodiment of free will.

02:29:48.000 Right.

02:29:48.000 That is free will manifested in a physical action.

02:29:50.000 I 100% agree.

02:29:52.000 I think the issue about why people really want to say free will doesn't exist is because it's not compatible with standard theories in physics.

02:30:01.000 And therefore...

02:30:02.000 We know how our universe works.

02:30:04.000 You can't have free will.

02:30:05.000 But our standard theories in physics can't explain life.

02:30:08.000 They can't explain mind.

02:30:09.000 And free will lives in the space of whatever physics describes life and mind.

02:30:13.000 It doesn't live in the physics of gravitation or the physics of quantum particles.

02:30:17.000 Those are totally different areas of physical reality that have nothing to do with you as an evolved structure over 4 billion years that now has agency in the universe.

02:30:27.000 You're a different component of physical reality than those theories are describing.

02:30:31.000 And I think, you know, we have a tendency to think physics is complete.

02:30:34.000 We have done this throughout, like, the history of physics.

02:30:38.000 It's like every century, they think the last century did it.

02:30:40.000 Like, we understand reality now.

02:30:42.000 It's like every century has a new description.

02:30:44.000 I will never forget, like, bouncing between my classes as an undergrad physics student.

02:30:49.000 And how many times I was told, like, you know, it's like, it's really comical at the end of the 1800s, they thought physics was complete.

02:30:56.000 And like, then there was general relativity and quantum mechanics.

02:30:58.000 This is so funny.

02:30:59.000 But it's like, I go in a physics department, and I'm like talking about this.

02:31:02.000 And I'm like, we don't need new physics for life.

02:31:04.000 Like, physics is already done.

02:31:06.000 Like, we have the standard model.

02:31:07.000 And I'm just like, are you not like understanding the dichotomy here between what we teach like students and like how we talk about where we are now in history?

02:31:14.000 It's like crazy.

02:31:15.000 Yeah, totally crazy.

02:31:16.000 It is crazy that we repeat these problems, repeat these issues over and over and over again. 1.00

02:31:23.000 And we go, oh, back then they were stupid. 0.98

02:31:24.000 Don't you think in the future, if you could just look at the history of human beings and what they believed, and don't you think there's got to be some stuff like that right now? 1.00

02:31:32.000 It has to be.

02:31:33.000 There has to be.

02:31:34.000 There's no way we figured it out.

02:31:35.000 No.

02:31:36.000 No, I definitely think fundamental physics has a very bright future of having some really fundamentally earth-shattering...

02:31:47.000 Like, ways of thinking about things that I don't even think, like, our current theories are, like, that, like, they're going to be replaced by things even more awesome.

02:31:56.000 And I'm really excited about that.

02:31:58.000 I mean, that's, like, why you want to do, like, physics, right?

02:32:00.000 Like, you don't want to work on the theories of, like, you know, the guys that were around 100 years ago.

02:32:04.000 Like, why don't you work on the new ideas that describe the reality as, like, you're coming to understand it now in history.

02:32:08.000 Right.

02:32:09.000 Yeah.

02:32:09.000 So it's funny that people want to just accept what previous generations taught them as, like, absolute fact.

02:32:15.000 And then not be confronted with the changing times, the changing understanding of the world around us, the changing sets of observations.

02:32:22.000 Because I can imagine many thousands of years ago when humans were still being hunter-gatherers, not really thinking we have a lot of causal agency in the world.

02:32:33.000 You see the seasons, you have no control over them.

02:32:36.000 Obviously, we're born out of this idea that the universe is objective and existing outside of us because of a deep history of not having control.

02:32:45.000 But now, in a modern technological society, we see how much of reality we've shaped and changed.

02:32:50.000 I don't know how you could hold that view anymore.

02:32:54.000 It's very deep in our history that we think these things, but the evidence around us right now is completely to the contrary.

02:33:01.000 And this also seems like an emergent property of human beings.

02:33:04.000 Yes, humans in particular.

02:33:06.000 I think animals do it to an extent.

02:33:07.000 But I think our ability to abstract and our ability to build technologies based on our abstractions and like what we're doing now is fundamentally different than anything that our biosphere has done over the last four billion years.

02:33:16.000 I think we're pretty special.

02:33:17.000 And I have no problem saying that.

02:33:19.000 Like, I think we're the most interesting thing in the universe.

02:33:22.000 Yeah, I think so.

02:33:23.000 Well, the known universe.

02:33:24.000 Known universe, yeah.

02:33:25.000 I think it's quite possible there's something else out there that's a little bit more interesting than us.

02:33:29.000 Yeah, I'm sure there is, but I don't think that we're ever going to recognize what that thing is until we actually really appreciate what we are.

02:33:36.000 Interesting.

02:33:38.000 You glossed over this, but I want to get back to it.

02:33:40.000 Sure.

02:33:40.000 Why don't you believe in infinity?

02:33:42.000 Oh, so I just, I think it's not possible for, like, I guess people want to say the universe is infinite in size, and I don't know what that means.

02:33:52.000 I think it just is a placeholder of, like, we don't understand.

02:33:56.000 So infinity helps in, like, certain theories of physics, like, to actually make your mathematics tractable.

02:34:03.000 But to say it's actually, like, a physical thing, to me, is...

02:34:09.000 It doesn't make any sense.

02:34:10.000 And it doesn't make any sense because I think if you assume, you know, like there's an infinity of things that could exist and that infinity of things exists somewhere, right?

02:34:20.000 Like so you have like, you know, Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis, all mathematical objects exist somewhere and obviously there's like an infinite number of them.

02:34:27.000 It doesn't actually explain anything about here.

02:34:30.000 Or like, why do we have the things that we have in this universe?

02:34:33.000 And I think what infinity is, is it's a feature of humans' imagination to define the space of what's possible.

02:34:42.000 And it physically exists as the boundary of that space.

02:34:45.000 But it doesn't physically exist out there as a real physical thing.

02:34:49.000 There is no infinite space.

02:34:51.000 There is no infinite possibilities of a multiverse.

02:34:54.000 Those are abstractions that exist in human minds that allow us to think about how the world works and reason in what we can actually construct here as far as theories we understand or things we can build.

02:35:06.000 But the concept of infinity, if the universe is not infinite, then the universe has a defined boundary.

02:35:13.000 So what's beyond that boundary?

02:35:14.000 I don't know.

02:35:16.000 That's weird, right?

02:35:17.000 Yes.

02:35:18.000 It seems like maybe that's what infinity is.

02:35:21.000 Yeah, so I think we could be saying the same.

02:35:23.000 I think about it sort of like there's a boundary that is like the physical size of the universe and the physical stuff in the universe.

02:35:32.000 And then there's another boundary which is part of that physical boundary.

02:35:36.000 But it's like the things that we can imagine.

02:35:39.000 And the things we can imagine at least can possibly be physically real.

02:35:42.000 And then there's another boundary we can't even imagine.

02:35:44.000 I don't even know if there's stuff out there that's like beyond that.

02:35:48.000 And like you can't even talk about it because you can't even imagine what it is.

02:35:51.000 Right.

02:35:52.000 One of the most perplexing theories that I've ever heard was the concept of in the center of every galaxy there's a supermassive black hole and that going through that supermassive black hole you will go into another universe.

02:36:06.000 Yeah.

02:36:07.000 Yeah, these are kind of interesting and fun.

02:36:10.000 Fun?

02:36:10.000 Yeah.

02:36:11.000 But like, what are you saying?

02:36:13.000 Yeah, no, I mean, well, there's a lot of theories about like the multiverse, and I think they're intellectually interesting.

02:36:19.000 And they bring interesting philosophy into physics, but I don't know that I can assign physical realism to To anything that we can't observe directly.

02:36:28.000 And I would rather take the mathematics and the theories of physics themselves.

02:36:33.000 I do these thought experiments about the theoretical physics of theoretical physicists.

02:36:38.000 It's like if I were outside of myself and I was watching what I was as a theoretical physicist writing down equations and trying to describe the world, what would those mathematical objects look like as physical things?

02:36:48.000 And so this to me is the perspective that I find much more productive because I don't think people have looked at that Through that lens at what mathematics is.

02:36:56.000 We tend to take the Euclidean and Plato's cave type paradigm from the ancient Greeks that there's a perfect world of forms and we're just seeing the shadows of this perfect reality.

02:37:07.000 And I think the universe is constructing itself and mathematics is a particular thing our universe has constructed that enables things to be possible that wouldn't be possible without mathematics existing.

02:37:18.000 The people that are proponents of this concept of infinity and that do believe in it, when you steel man that, what's the best argument for it?

02:37:27.000 Well, I think the idea, it's kind of like what you're saying.

02:37:30.000 If you take the limit, it actually is consistent with our equations to assume that the universe could be infinite or the time in the future could be infinite.

02:37:41.000 And to them, I think it seems like it has some physicality to it.

02:37:47.000 But it always seems to me to be a placeholder of the boundary.

02:37:54.000 But also it depends on what you think is satisfactory.

02:37:57.000 So if you want to believe a multiverse hypothesis and there's sort of an infinite number of realities because you find that more explanatory to assume that everything exists and therefore we're just one thing in that space, some people find that satisfactory.

02:38:11.000 I don't find that satisfactory because it doesn't explain why we exist.

02:38:15.000 And I want to explain to us.

02:38:19.000 I want to know what we are.

02:38:22.000 Yeah, but it's a hard set of questions around infinity and mathematics just generally.

02:38:27.000 And I find it really fun to think about.

02:38:30.000 The multiverse to me is the most bizarre mind experiment because there's no evidence that it exists, but it's a concept that's universally shared a lot and it's debated a lot.

02:38:43.000 Some people, they'll pontificate on it, but you might be thinking about nonsense.

02:38:48.000 Right.

02:38:48.000 So I think, you know, another reason I don't really think infinity is like a real construct is I really am a big fan of Nick Jissen.

02:38:57.000 He's a physicist that's kind of arguing that real numbers aren't real.

02:39:00.000 And what he means by that is like if you want to compute a real number and like, you know, we use real numbers like, you know, like they require infinite precision to compute all the digits.

02:39:11.000 And, you know, you're assuming a lot of resource for a universe built on real numbers because basically it means anything that you look at, you can look at with infinite resolution.

02:39:20.000 And it's probably the case, especially if you think the universe is constructed or even if you believe in a simulation argument, that there has to be a granularity there because the universe has to do these things in finite time with finite resource.

02:39:32.000 There isn't evidence that there's infinite time or infinite resource in our universe.

02:39:36.000 And therefore, if you want something to actually be physically real, the universe has to be able to implement it.

02:39:42.000 The universe cannot implement infinity in finite time.

02:39:48.000 It just can't do it!

02:39:51.000 Right.

02:39:53.000 Finite time.

02:39:54.000 Yeah.

02:39:54.000 And I think time is finite.

02:39:56.000 I think time is a resource.

02:39:57.000 And I think time is part of the mechanism that the universe is actually constructing itself.

02:40:01.000 The universe is constructing itself from moment to moment.

02:40:05.000 And we persist over a certain set of moments.

02:40:08.000 But yeah, this is why I said I'm a presentist.

02:40:10.000 And I don't even know if I agree with myself on this.

02:40:12.000 I disagree with myself on a lot of things.

02:40:13.000 And I might change my mind tomorrow.

02:40:15.000 But it's like the idea only the present exists.

02:40:17.000 So the past is rolled up in the present.

02:40:19.000 I think that the past structure exists in the present and the present is now constructing the next moment, right?

02:40:25.000 But the space, like the future is expanding.

02:40:29.000 It's getting larger and larger and larger because there's so much combinatorial structure, like all these past histories now entwined in the modern structure, that they can now intertwine to make the future bigger and bigger.

02:40:40.000 And this is from our current observable position.

02:40:44.000 Yes.

02:40:44.000 And then you go...

02:40:45.000 Which is the only one we can talk about.

02:40:46.000 Right.

02:40:46.000 And then you expand down to the whole universe and it's like, what is going on out there?

02:40:50.000 Yeah.

02:40:50.000 So it's interesting you say that because, you know, most theories of physics are actually constructed with the observer living outside the universe, right?

02:40:57.000 So like Newton had this conception of, you know, like you could take a God's eye view, literal God's eye view of the universe and describe it objectively from the outside.

02:41:06.000 And all of our theories of physics have this problem.

02:41:08.000 This is why quantum mechanics is so existentially hard, because it confronts us with the fact that if you have a physics where the observer is not part of the physics, it leads to really big problems with how we structure theories of physics.

02:41:19.000 And this is why there's no one quantum theory.

02:41:22.000 There's a whole bunch of interpretations of quantum experiments, and people call those different theories of quantum mechanics.

02:41:28.000 But there's no accepted standard interpretation that people would point to and say, This is the theory of quantum mechanics.

02:41:36.000 There's interpretations.

02:41:37.000 And I think that's...

02:41:37.000 They're great.

02:41:38.000 You know, there's great theories.

02:41:40.000 It's great, like, amazing, insightful stuff.

02:41:42.000 But it's not quite on the same footing as, like, general relativity, which is like a widely accepted theory that describes a set of observations.

02:41:50.000 But it's because quantum mechanics has observers and people don't know how to interpret the observer.

02:41:54.000 And we don't have a physics that was built from starting from observers like us, things like us that are constructing theories of physics.

02:42:01.000 How do we think about the world and put us inside the world?

02:42:04.000 And I think a theory of life has to have that property.

02:42:07.000 It has to account for the fact that we live inside the universe.

02:42:10.000 We cannot escape the universe.

02:42:11.000 We're always going to be physically stuck here.

02:42:13.000 This is it.

02:42:14.000 This is all we got.

02:42:16.000 And describe what is the observational horizon we interact with and how did we get structured out of that space?

02:42:23.000 Why do we exist the way we do within that space?

02:42:26.000 Why do we?

02:42:29.000 I don't know.

02:42:30.000 But, I mean, I like the why questions.

02:42:32.000 I was also told by a really prominent senior physicist not to ask why.

02:42:36.000 And I was like, why should we not ask why?

02:42:38.000 Like, you should ask the why questions.

02:42:40.000 They're good questions.

02:42:41.000 Isn't it interesting that some people that are at the top of their field still have these bizarre ideas that you just completely disagree with?

02:42:49.000 Yeah.

02:42:50.000 Do I find that bizarre?

02:42:51.000 No.

02:42:51.000 I've had that since, you know, it's very funny because I think sometimes people are like, oh, Sarah, you're really successful in your career.

02:42:57.000 Now you can say these things.

02:42:58.000 And I'm like, I think I've been saying these things since I was like, I don't know, forever.

02:43:04.000 Like I haven't changed.

02:43:05.000 My personality hasn't changed.

02:43:06.000 I just like I'm deeply curious and I want to understand things.

02:43:10.000 And I think, you know, you have to be able to follow what you rationally think and what the evidence is telling you and the questions you think are interesting to answer.

02:43:18.000 And I think the thing that I guess I've done is like the questions I want to answer are not ones that people have really taken as seriously as I've taken them because of the reasons that they think they're not answerable or they're already answered.

02:43:29.000 And I just see this gaping hole in our understanding of reality that needs to be filled.

02:43:34.000 Well, listen, Sarah, I'm glad you're out there.

02:43:36.000 I really am.

02:43:37.000 This is a really fun conversation.

02:43:39.000 I really appreciate it.

02:43:40.000 Tell everybody how they can see some of your work or read about it.

02:43:44.000 Yeah, I have a book out.

02:43:45.000 It actually is out today called Life as No One Knows It, The Physics of Life's Emergence, where I talk about assembly theory and, you know, like what's needed to solve the physics of life.

02:43:56.000 There it is.

02:44:12.000 I love that.

02:44:26.000 That makes me happy.

02:44:27.000 Yeah, it was kind of funny.

02:44:29.000 I was really shy about doing it because some people criticize my voice on all the YouTube channels and stuff.

02:44:33.000 And I was like, you know what?

02:44:34.000 I'm going to do it.

02:44:35.000 Listen, stop reading the comments.

02:44:37.000 I know.

02:44:37.000 You should never read the comments.

02:44:38.000 You got a great voice.

02:44:38.000 Thank you.

02:44:39.000 But anyway, it was really fun.

02:44:40.000 And it was deeply personal, so that was cool.

02:44:43.000 And I'm on Twitter X thing and Instagram.

02:44:48.000 Who are you on?

02:44:48.000 How does someone find you on Twitter?

02:44:51.000 Sarah Amari.

02:44:51.000 There, you can find me that way.

02:44:52.000 Instagram as well?

02:44:54.000 Alien Matter.

02:44:55.000 Alien Matter.

02:44:56.000 Okay.

02:44:57.000 I don't use that one as much, but it's fun.

02:44:58.000 Okay.

02:44:59.000 Yeah.

02:44:59.000 Anyway.

02:45:00.000 Thank you very much.

02:45:01.000 I really appreciate it.

02:45:01.000 It was a lot of fun.

02:45:02.000 It was fun.

02:45:02.000 Thank you.

02:45:03.000 Thank you.

02:45:03.000 Bye everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 07, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2184 - Sara Imari Walker

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Summary

Transcript