The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:00:57.000 I'm Stephen Blackwood, and I have the great honor today to be here with Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:01:19.000 Let's get right down to it. Jordan, I know you have questions you're keen to pose to Sir Roger. Over to you.

00:01:25.000 Yeah, well, I've wanted to talk to a theoretical physicist for about 30 years, and so I'm pretty happy that you're the theoretical physicist that I get to talk to.

00:01:35.000 I'm probably not representative.

00:01:37.000 Well, that might be even better.

00:01:40.000 So, I want to jump right into it.

00:01:42.000 A colleague and friend of mine is an AI engineer and a computer engineer, and he's built a lot of the world's great chips, iPhone chip, and first 64-bit chip, the Alpha, back in 1985.

00:01:57.000 And we were having a conversation. I said I was coming to meet you, and that you, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, believe me, but that you believe that consciousness is in some fundamental sense non-computational.

00:02:11.000 And I asked him what he thought about that, and part of the reason I asked him is because he's, of all the people I've ever met, and maybe of all the people in the world, he's the person who's done most to build arguably brain-like algorithmic systems.

00:02:25.000 And so I asked him if he thought that there was a distinction between the algorithmic computation of cognition, per se, and whatever consciousness might be, and he thought it was algorithmic all the way down.

00:02:42.000 And I understand that you don't believe that. I also went with him a couple of times to a consciousness conference in Tucson where Hameroff spoke.

00:02:51.000 So we got familiar with that line of reasoning. And I also understand, I believe, that part of the reason that you think that consciousness is necessarily non-computational is because of Goodell's theorem.

00:03:06.000 And so maybe we could enter there. I'm very curious about your proposition that consciousness, per se, is non-computational.

00:03:16.000 And I'm curious about why you came to that conclusion, and if you think that's a warranted conclusion, what do you think about that in relationship to these complex AI systems and also in relationship to Goodell's theorem?

00:03:30.220 Well, I've never seen the argument refuted. I've just talked to people who've never really understood it, as far as I know.

00:03:36.240 No, the argument goes back to when I was a graduate student, and I was doing pure mathematics, algebraic geometry, and I went to three courses, which were nothing to do with what I was supposed to be doing.

00:03:49.400 One of them was a wonderful course by Herman Bondi on general relativity, which had a big influence on what I did later on.

00:03:56.520 One was a talk by the great physicist Paul Dirac, and that taught me about quantum mechanics.

00:04:02.480 And their third one was a course by a logician called Steen, and he taught me about Turing machines, the notion of computability, what it is and how you understand that, and the Goodell theorem.

00:04:17.900 And I had heard vaguely about the Goodell theorem previously and had been rather worried because it seemed to show that there were things in mathematics that you couldn't prove.

00:04:27.520 What I learned was that it's not like that at all.

00:04:30.140 Well, it is like that in a sense.

00:04:31.620 If you lay down the rules of what you call a proof, and if those rules are such that they could be checked by a computer, checked whether they've been correctly applied by a computer, so computation rules in that sense,

00:04:46.700 then you can construct a sentence, this is what Goodell did, which by the way it's constructed, you can see that if you trust the rules, let's say, if you believe that the rules do, if they say, yes, you've proved it, tick, then you believe it's correct.

00:05:08.840 But, let's say, if you have trust in the rules, that trust extends beyond the rules.

00:05:14.040 In other words, you can see that a certain statement is true by virtue of your belief that the rules only give you truths, yet that statement is underivable, unprovable using the rules.

00:05:27.260 That statement of faith about the rules?

00:05:30.460 It's not a statement of faith.

00:05:31.620 I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.

00:05:32.900 Oh, well, I...

00:05:34.020 The faith is, it's not a faith.

00:05:35.940 You understand the rules, you check them, you say, yes, that's okay, if that rule is correctly applied, I agree, it does, you know, it's a lot, it's a, it's a rule which is within something that you believe to be appropriate.

00:05:50.540 And these rules, it's built up out of things like this, which nobody would dispute.

00:05:55.380 You say, okay, if you follow those rules, and it says, yes, that's a proof, then you believe that the thing that it says, yes, it's a proof, is actually a true statement.

00:06:05.340 So, does a proof really mean that it's true?

00:06:08.500 If you believe that, that conviction, that the proofs actually do what they're supposed to do, gives you something beyond the rules themselves.

00:06:20.320 Okay, that, that's, sorry, that's what I was referring to with, with the word faith, is that the statement of belief, well, I shouldn't maybe use that word.

00:06:27.700 Well, I guess I'm wondering, what, what do you think it is that constitutes that belief?

00:06:34.300 Okay, and why the word understanding specifically?

00:06:37.380 Because that's the thing in some sense that's outside the system, the understanding?

00:06:40.900 Yes, it is, because you can see it is, because it's the understanding that the rules give you only truths that enables you to understand that this Gödel statement is actually true.

00:06:57.140 And so, is that belief in that truth of that proof, that is one of the things that Gödel pointed out, would be necessarily outside any system that's both, what is it, formal, logical, and coherent?

00:07:11.480 It shows, it shows that, I mean, I read it in this particular way, I don't think he said it quite like this, but I read it in the following way, that understanding, whatever that word means, is not computational.

00:07:27.060 Okay, okay, okay, so that is what I...

00:07:29.280 It's not the following of rules, it's something else.

00:07:32.120 Okay, so let me ask you a question about that. So, this is a three-pronged question, let's say.

00:07:39.380 Okay, yes.

00:07:41.220 It seems to me that there's a high probability that the future is actually indeterminately different than the present and the past, that it's actually unpredictably different.

00:07:52.380 Oh, this is a different question. Now you're talking about determinism.

00:07:55.800 Yes, yes, but I think it seems to me that it's tied to this idea that computation can be complete and algorithmic. I don't think it can be, because if the future differs in a fundamental manner, an unpredictable manner from the present or the past, then a deterministic algorithmic system can't maintain a grip on the horizon of the future. And I have another part of that question.

00:08:21.080 It's a different question. So, I think it's important to distinguish these things.

00:08:24.780 Yes.

00:08:25.240 Because up to this point, I was not talking about indeterminism.

00:08:28.300 No, no, no.

00:08:29.000 I was talking about rules, well, just yes or no. I mean, it's not a question of maybe. I mean, it isn't even talking about the laws of physics at this stage. That's the second step, if you like.

00:08:43.260 I guess I looked forward to something like the potential necessary function of consciousness.

00:08:49.380 So, because one of the things consciousness seems to do from a neurophysiological perspective, for example, we tend to become conscious of our procedural errors.

00:08:59.420 And so, consciousness becomes alerted to the errors and then zeroes in on the source of the error in some sense and corrects it.

00:09:07.200 And so, it looks to me like it's something like a correction system for underlying algorithmic systems.

00:09:12.840 So, for example, if you practice a motor routine for a long time, you build specialized algorithmic machinery in your brain that runs it.

00:09:22.020 But maybe you've put in an error. You're playing a difficult piano phrase, for example, and you stumble over a note.

00:09:28.380 You've automatized that. You play it and you listen and you hear the anomaly, which is the error.

00:09:34.300 Your consciousness focuses in on that.

00:09:36.140 In fact, a large brain area will activate as a consequence of becoming aware of that error.

00:09:42.380 Then when you practice the new routine that's corrected, the brain area will shrink and shrink and shrink until it's a small part of the brain, usually in the back of the left hemisphere.

00:09:51.740 And now you've built another automated machine to play out that phrase.

00:09:56.140 And consciousness, I think it was Whitehead who said that at least the purpose of consciousness, although he might have used thought, was to increase the number of things that we can do without consciousness or thought.

00:10:09.220 But it seems to be this horizon phenomena.

00:10:12.380 And the reason I was asking about the indeterminacy of the future was twofold, is that if the future is deterministic, then an algorithmic system could, in principle, adapt to it.

00:10:23.660 But I don't, it doesn't seem to me that the future can be predictable.

00:10:28.500 And I think that that might be grounded in something like quantum indeterminacy, because there isn't a fundamental determinism that propagates all the way up.

00:10:37.940 So, well, you see, I mean, we have to, the things I was talking about up to this point were not to do, they weren't even to do with the laws of physics.

00:10:45.680 So that's a separate question.

00:10:46.820 I mean, it did relate to that, which is my own views, certainly did depend on that.

00:10:52.320 But the question of determinism is a separate issue.

00:10:58.640 And the normal way we look at quantum mechanics is it does involve an indeterminism, which you can have a theory which does that too.

00:11:08.320 But that's different, you see.

00:11:09.900 If it's just indeterministic, it's not connected.

00:11:16.900 You see, the kernel argument is to do with things where you have definite rules, you can check whether these rules have been followed or not.

00:11:25.480 And the question is whether it coincides with your understanding about what things are true or false in mathematics.

00:11:35.460 So that's what it's to do with.

00:11:37.120 Now, you see, you can question how you move from that into other aspects of what consciousness does.

00:11:44.040 And also, the question you were referring to is whether something is automatic and your pianist can play things.

00:11:49.380 And obviously, where the little finger goes next is not something that he or she decides to do.

00:11:56.240 It's all largely controlled by the cerebellum, probably, which, as far as we know, is entirely unconscious.

00:12:02.060 So the greater number of neurons in the brain, which are in the cerebellum, seem not to be acting according to conscious actions at all.

00:12:14.380 It's something completely unconscious, as far as we can see.

00:12:16.460 That's a very strange thing that, you know, people make the case as well that there's some simple relationship between neuronal function and consciousness.

00:12:23.280 But as you pointed out, the cerebellar activity doesn't seem to be conscious at all.

00:12:27.820 And then there's a tremendous amount of neurons in your autonomic nervous system distributed throughout your body.

00:12:33.680 And there may be some consciousness associated with that, but it's not particularly acute.

00:12:38.380 And most of the time, it's entirely unconscious.

00:12:41.140 And the autonomic nervous system is running your digestive system and your heart and all of these inner automated systems.

00:12:47.380 And it's interesting, too, because often becoming consciously aware of a highly functional unconscious system actually impairs its function rather than improving it.

00:12:57.300 That could be, yeah, sure.

00:12:59.700 I'm not quite sure what this tells us about consciousness.

00:13:03.620 It just tells us certain things are not conscious, which are controlled by neurons in the brain.

00:13:09.360 And so it's a different issue.

00:13:11.000 Right.

00:13:11.560 May I just jump in to ask Sir Roger if you would say a word or two more about why it is that consciousness cannot be reduced simply to mechanistic processes?

00:13:21.620 Well, you see, I'm very careful to say I'm not talking about consciousness in all its aspects.

00:13:27.780 Yes.

00:13:28.220 For example, I mean, I have nothing to say about the perception of the color green, for instance.

00:13:33.740 I mean, sure, there's something going on which makes green have a certain impression on one.

00:13:39.940 But this is not what I'm talking about.

00:13:41.840 And probably most of the things that we think about when we talk about consciousness are not what I'm talking about.

00:13:47.740 So I'm only talking about a very specific part of what consciousness does.

00:13:54.000 And the argument is that if this is something which is not a computational process, then it sort of sheds a question mark on the whole thing.

00:14:05.820 But it's only very specific to the question of understanding.

00:14:10.740 So I tend to make that point clear.

00:14:13.080 And understanding is something which, certainly in the normal usage of the word, implies conscious.

00:14:20.980 I mean, you wouldn't say of a device normally that it understands something without it being aware of something.

00:14:28.300 And aware means being conscious of it.

00:14:30.780 So that's just normal usage, and I'm going along with that.

00:14:33.080 So I don't know what most of these words mean, but I would say that understanding is something which requires consciousness.

00:14:44.780 Yes.

00:14:44.980 Is one way into this to speak about, I mean, so much of our thinking, of course, is calculative.

00:14:51.060 There's a goal there.

00:14:52.340 We're calculating how to get to it.

00:14:55.100 And so there's a huge amount of life that is like that.

00:14:58.320 But to then ask the question about why this is a goal or why this is worthy of being a goal or what would make it worthy of being a goal or what would make that worthy of being a justification for that to be a goal,

00:15:12.440 the kinds of thinking that you have to engage in in order to reflect upon the nature of the ends and purposes is distinct from the kinds of thinking you engage in to calculate your way to a goal.

00:15:24.760 And that seems to point towards the realm or a kind of thinking or awareness that is clearly distinct from a simply mechanistic calculation.

00:15:40.180 Yes.

00:15:40.720 I mean, I certainly wouldn't disagree with that.

00:15:44.560 It's just it's hard to know whether those things could be put into a computational system.

00:15:52.900 The reason for concentrating on this very specific area is that I can say something about it.

00:15:58.140 That's all.

00:15:59.420 So the particular area is mathematical proof.

00:16:04.320 I see most people don't bother themselves with mathematical proof.

00:16:07.140 So and they're conscious, too.

00:16:08.560 So I'm certainly not saying that's an indicator of consciousness.

00:16:13.180 I mean, I'm saying it is something which requires consciousness.

00:16:17.140 But I completely accept that there are all sorts of other aspects of consciousness which are going on all the time and which are much more important.

00:16:26.100 I've gone along with that, too.

00:16:27.520 But it's just that if you can find something in what consciousness seems to do, which is not which is demonstrably not computational, that's saying something.

00:16:39.080 And that's the limited little thing I'm trying to say.

00:16:41.840 Now, you started working with Hameroff, as I understand it, to try to provide something approximating a localization or a neurophysiological account of what this non-deterministic process might be.

00:16:55.720 But I didn't say that's usually non-deterministic.

00:16:58.020 That's different.

00:16:59.140 OK.

00:16:59.660 See, it's very easy to confuse it.

00:17:02.160 Well, and I am confused about them, apparently.

00:17:04.420 You see, non-deterministic means that rules don't have a clear statement about what happens next.

00:17:10.140 And maybe there is a choice about what happens next.

00:17:13.540 And that choice might be random or maybe choice in some more personal sense that you have a reason.

00:17:22.060 I don't know.

00:17:23.220 But usually one talks about randomness there.

00:17:25.720 You say that the theory does not have a complete description of what it tells you happens in the future because there is a random element in it.

00:17:35.400 And the way quantum mechanics…

00:17:36.140 In the future, random element in the future.

00:17:37.620 In the future, that's what normally, the way in which one talks about quantum mechanics normally.

00:17:41.680 I mean, I'd have…

00:17:42.400 Right.

00:17:42.720 And that's a truly random feature.

00:17:44.760 So it's not predictable.

00:17:46.480 In current quantum mechanics, that's correct.

00:17:48.780 Yes.

00:17:49.640 OK.

00:17:49.940 So that's what I was referring to when I was referring to the indeterminacy of the future horizon.

00:17:56.100 It was, sorry, it was that randomness that I was trying to point to.

00:17:58.520 I mean, but this is another question.

00:18:00.820 You could have a random device which is otherwise computational.

00:18:06.880 I mean, it's just that you put in at certain points, OK, do something randomly.

00:18:12.480 The thing is that don't think…

00:18:14.260 An interesting question there.

00:18:15.560 I don't think that gives you anything in the way of establishing results which seem to be a non-computational process, like with the Gödel thing.

00:18:27.580 OK.

00:18:27.840 So, OK.

00:18:29.000 So there's an evolutionary answer to the problem of emergent randomness.

00:18:33.880 And the answer is, so a mosquito, a mosquito is a good example, or a fish, any animal that lays a tremendous number of eggs that could conceivably march to maturity.

00:18:50.340 So there's genetic mutation in all.

00:18:53.660 So maybe, let's say, just for the sake of argument that a given mosquito lays a million eggs, fertile eggs in its lifetime.

00:19:00.740 Yeah.

00:19:00.980 Now, there's variation in those mosquito patterns.

00:19:07.080 And at least a certain amount of that variation is random.

00:19:10.360 That's a consequence.

00:19:11.260 And it's actually a consequence, I would say, of events that are actually manifesting themselves in some sense at a quantum level.

00:19:17.160 Because at least some of the mutations are caused by solar, by radiation.

00:19:21.880 And so there's disruption at a molecular level.

00:19:24.140 And so evolution seems to be able to use the admixture of randomness into structure as a means of dealing with the determinacy of the future.

00:19:34.140 And to some degree, it does that through death, right?

00:19:36.840 Because of those million mosquitoes, on average, only one manages to propagate itself to reproduction.

00:19:42.980 Or we'd be knee-deep in mosquitoes.

00:19:44.740 No, I understand what we're saying, yes.

00:19:46.480 But what I'm trying to say is that what's going on with consciousness is different from that.

00:19:50.680 Because I don't see how this, you know, you putting randomness in the way you're suggesting, and clearly that is an important aspect to evolution and so on.

00:20:03.640 I certainly wouldn't deny that at all.

00:20:06.500 But it's not the same thing.

00:20:08.280 So that consciousness isn't producing randomness in response to indeterminacy.

00:20:13.960 When I say non-computational, I don't mean that it's random at certain times.

00:20:21.420 I mean something quite different.

00:20:23.360 So what, okay, let's zero in on that.

00:20:26.040 So, well, because I'm very curious about what you do mean.

00:20:29.220 I mean, this is obviously a tremendously important distinction between the computational algorithmic domain and something that's in some sense outside of it.

00:20:40.480 And I'm struggling to understand at the most detailed level, let's say, how you envision the structure and function of consciousness or maybe just the function.

00:20:54.800 It's not producing mere random variance.

00:20:57.520 And that can't be because random is too widespread.

00:21:01.780 So at least, at the very least, so for example, if you study creative people, we've done a lot of this, there is in some sense more randomness in their speech.

00:21:12.260 Because imagine that if you utter a given word, there's a certain probability that another word will emerge in the field around that.

00:21:20.940 The creative people use lower probability concepts and words in their approach.

00:21:27.520 So there's a kind of randomness.

00:21:29.500 They go farther out into the word association field.

00:21:32.600 And that does help them generate more creative solutions.

00:21:36.260 But that's not, if that becomes unconstrained to too great a degree, you get, well, maybe like a manic creativity that's counterproductive and too random.

00:21:46.820 People are jumping too much from disconnected point to disconnected point.

00:21:50.620 And so consciousness doesn't seem to be, creative consciousness doesn't seem to be a mere random walk.

00:21:58.280 So that's a psychological take on that.

00:22:00.360 But so what do you think is, what do you think, I'm still struggling to understand what you think consciousness does.

00:22:06.900 It does understand.

00:22:08.480 You see, I think probably you're trying to make me be more specific than I can be, because I don't know what it is that, how to make a device that can understand something.

00:22:24.880 So I'm just trying to say that whatever understanding is, it's not a computational process.

00:22:29.960 And that's the argument I'm making.

00:22:31.140 Okay, so you're not trying to specify what it might be.

00:22:34.840 You're just saying it has to be something that's non-computational.

00:22:37.500 Yes, that's right.

00:22:38.360 Yes.

00:22:38.740 Okay.

00:22:39.700 Is there a fundamental link?

00:22:41.080 I mean, when we say it is not non-computational, does that mean, or does that not mean, by definition, that consciousness in some deep level is free?

00:22:54.700 No.

00:22:55.400 It is not.

00:22:55.880 That's right.

00:22:56.520 I'm not saying, I mean, these are open questions.

00:22:58.600 I'm not saying that.

00:22:59.360 I mean, it may be there is an aspect of indeterminism in it, and that could be.

00:23:07.380 But that's not what I'm saying.

00:23:09.840 And the trouble is, I think it's not a concept which people appreciate usually.

00:23:14.400 So I can give you examples of non-computational things.

00:23:17.900 And one of the examples I often give is if you take, imagine a pattern of squares, equal squares or just a normal square array.

00:23:29.360 And you can consider a finite shape made out of squares.

00:23:33.340 I think it's called a polyomino, shape made out of squares.

00:23:36.660 And if you're given a finite set of these polyominoes, and the question is, can you cover the plane with those shapes, only those shapes, no gaps, no overlaps?

00:23:50.640 Now, that question, the answer, yes or no.

00:23:55.940 The answer is definite yes or no.

00:23:57.420 Either you can or you can't.

00:23:59.320 But it's not an algorithmic process.

00:24:01.560 It's shown mathematically that there is no algorithm which can tell you, yes or no, whether these shapes will cover the plane.

00:24:10.840 Okay, so when I was talking to my brother-in-law, I was talking to him about these AI systems that learn how to recognize, let's say, caps from photographs.

00:24:22.440 He told me there is no way of algorithmically determining the program that the machine learning systems will eventually apply to the problem of identifying cats in a photograph.

00:24:37.200 But if you let the AI neural networks run and then you analyze their output, you often get something that resembles an algorithmic program as an output that you could have hypothetically calculated if you could have specified the search space.

00:24:52.080 It's something like that.

00:24:53.040 But there's no way of doing that without letting the program do its walk through the domain of cat photographs with its differentially weighted neural network architecture.

00:25:05.540 You can't a priori predict it.

00:25:08.780 Yeah, well, I still don't think it's the same thing.

00:25:14.140 I could certainly give it different shapes and you could say, tell the machine, you know, which of these will tile the plane and which won't.

00:25:22.160 Now, will that learn to give you correct answers?

00:25:26.740 Probably, usually it does.

00:25:28.320 I suppose once it's tiled, you could formalize the process by which it was tiled, right?

00:25:34.720 Because you could describe the mechanisms or the order in which the tiles were located and the rotation of them.

00:25:42.760 You could specify it after it had all been laid down.

00:25:46.560 And I think that's analogous to what the AI systems seem to be doing when they're learning to perceive.

00:25:50.940 Well, the trouble is that it's not, the methods whereby you can tile the plane are, I mean, just the theorems tell you that you can't put them on the computer.

00:26:04.780 I mean, you might get the thing which works most of the time.

00:26:07.060 Right.

00:26:07.340 It's quite possible.

00:26:07.800 Well, so in those tiling problems that you're describing, and so that is, I guess I kind of see why you're interested in the tiling issue.

00:26:15.520 So that has to do in some sense with the ability to map a surface with a certain representational form.

00:26:23.020 And so if you have these tiles that you described and you're trying to completely cover a given surface, that's a mapping problem.

00:26:29.300 I see what you're doing with that.

00:26:31.720 Are there different ways that you could conceivably solve that problem?

00:26:35.600 So, okay, so even if you do converge on a solution, you haven't converged on the only solution.

00:26:42.020 Oh, absolutely.

00:26:42.840 I mean, there was an earlier result which showed that if it were true, that any way of tiling that plane with these shapes, with, say, some given set of shapes, finite set of shapes, if it tiles the plane, you can do it periodically with a repeating pattern.

00:27:00.380 If that were true, then there would be an algorithm.

00:27:03.500 But it's not true, because there are certain ways of tiling a plane which do not have repeating patterns.

00:27:11.820 Oh, oh.

00:27:12.880 So now, that's so cool, because I was wondering today, I was wondering, why in the world is he obsessed with tiles?

00:27:17.620 What's going on?

00:27:18.260 Well, the fact that you're, that the tiles are, they're essentially, you're essentially mapping an area with a, with a predetermined concept in some sense.

00:27:29.540 That's the, that's the tile shape.

00:27:31.560 Well.

00:27:31.900 And you said it can be non-repeating and still solve the problem.

00:27:34.520 Well, you see the one in front of the mass building, that's an example.

00:27:37.340 That's an example of a tiling set, only two different shapes there.

00:27:40.700 I mean, these aren't polyominoes, but never mind about that.

00:27:43.860 Those two shapes will tile right out to infinity.

00:27:48.280 But there is no way of doing this which is periodic.

00:27:53.460 And you can see, it's almost, you can see this sort of repeats itself.

00:27:56.780 So how do people actually do it then?

00:27:59.380 Because there's another way of telling you how to do it.

00:28:01.400 With the tiling, so do you, so you designed the tiling in front of the building.

00:28:07.160 So do you actually tell the workmen how to start the tile?

00:28:10.880 And then how do they figure out how to do it?

00:28:12.980 They had a plan for the whole thing.

00:28:15.000 And you, you devised the plan for the whole thing.

00:28:17.020 Yes.

00:28:17.360 So you provided the map.

00:28:18.620 Yes.

00:28:19.080 Okay.

00:28:19.820 How in the world did you get interested?

00:28:22.700 Do you have any idea how you initially got interested in the tiling problem?

00:28:26.900 Yes.

00:28:27.600 Well, you see, it certainly was this computability question.

00:28:31.400 That is the connection.

00:28:33.240 Yeah.

00:28:33.860 I had learned, I think I'd seen an article in the Maths Reviews, Reviews, Mathematical

00:28:40.560 Papers, and so on.

00:28:42.060 And I'd seen that there was somebody who produced a set of tiles which would tile the

00:28:48.660 plane only in a non-periodic way.

00:28:54.720 And I hadn't seen what they were like.

00:28:57.580 And there was a conversation.

00:28:58.640 I think it was just after I'd been appointed to my chair here, the Raspoil chair, but before

00:29:07.280 I'd taken it up.

00:29:08.160 And I had a conversation with an American mathematician, and he had told me in detail about, I think there's

00:29:21.520 a mathematician called Raphael Robinson who'd got the number down to six, and he'd got a

00:29:25.560 set of six tiles which could only tile the plane in a non-repeating way.

00:29:30.000 And he said that Raphael Robinson, this was Simon Cochin, who's an American mathematician,

00:29:37.000 and he said that Raphael Robinson was somebody who liked to get the number to the smallest

00:29:40.800 number.

00:29:41.220 He was sort of perfectionist in this way.

00:29:43.420 And he said he's got this running, it started out with several thousand, you see, and he

00:29:47.140 got it down to six.

00:29:48.600 And he'd be pretty pleased with that.

00:29:49.880 And I said, well, I can do it five.

00:29:54.000 I happen to know.

00:29:55.040 I had a set with six, you see, but I knew that I could reduce it to five.

00:29:59.100 How did you know?

00:30:01.100 How did I know that?

00:30:02.160 You could reduce it to five.

00:30:04.540 Because the way that the, I mean, it's just a technical point, there was a certain shape

00:30:09.200 for matching, and this shape only fitted into one other tile.

00:30:13.560 So that I could glue the, the ones with, it's just a slight detail point.

00:30:19.040 I could glue some of the tiles together to make them five.

00:30:22.920 And when you're, when you're mapping the plane, do you map it to the precise borders of the

00:30:28.720 plane, or can there be overlap?

00:30:31.400 You know what I mean?

00:30:32.620 Can it be messy on the edges, or are you trying to precisely cover, let's say, a rectangle?

00:30:37.580 It keeps on going beyond the edge, and then you cut it along the edge.

00:30:40.520 Yeah.

00:30:40.840 Okay.

00:30:41.480 That's right.

00:30:42.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:42.740 Okay.

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00:33:29.780 So now you also had some interactions, at least at arm's length, with Escher.

00:33:38.200 Oh yeah.

00:33:38.940 So what I read was that you and your father had been interested in Escher's work,

00:33:44.100 and you worked out with him the ever-ascending staircase,

00:33:48.540 which, by the way, seems to me quite similar, especially to the music in Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto,

00:33:55.380 which, and I talked to a musician this week about how Bach managed to make this continual ascending spiral

00:34:01.980 that never really goes up.

00:34:04.360 That's true.

00:34:04.900 There is a thing like that.

00:34:05.840 Yeah, right, yes.

00:34:07.240 So, and then you sent the drawings of the staircase to Escher.

00:34:10.540 Well, the story was a little bit longer than that, because I had been at this, I was a graduate student,

00:34:17.320 I think in my second year, I can't quite remember.

00:34:19.880 And I and a colleague went to Amsterdam to go to the International Congress of Mathematicians,

00:34:26.060 which happened every four years.

00:34:27.240 And at this Congress, I happened to see one of my lecturers, and he had a catalogue,

00:34:33.420 which had one of these Escher pictures.

00:34:34.920 I said, what on earth is that, you see?

00:34:37.080 And he said, well, there's an exhibition in the Van Gogh Museum by this artist, M.C. Escher.

00:34:43.580 Never heard of him before.

00:34:44.940 I went to see the exhibition.

00:34:46.360 I was absolutely blown over by these pictures.

00:34:49.040 One in particular, I think, was called Relativity.

00:34:52.000 And I came away thinking, gosh, that's amazing.

00:34:55.000 I mean, I wonder whether I could do something a little bit different

00:34:58.160 that I hadn't actually seen in the exhibition.

00:35:01.200 And so I tried to make a construction with bridges and roads going in impossible ways.

00:35:06.280 And I simplified it down to this thing that people refer to as a tri-bar.

00:35:09.960 I've seen the tri-bar.

00:35:11.560 And I showed my father.

00:35:13.840 I mean, I didn't know that there's a Swedish artist called Oskar Reutersvad

00:35:19.120 who had done things very similar earlier.

00:35:22.160 But Escher didn't know about him either.

00:35:23.900 But anyway, and there are other artists who've done things like,

00:35:27.840 if you look carefully in the old, there's a Bruegel which has a picture of gallows

00:35:33.620 and it's joined up differently in the top.

00:35:35.800 Yes, I've seen that.

00:35:36.820 I've seen that picture.

00:35:38.100 So there are other people who hadn't played with these ideas,

00:35:40.640 but hadn't quite seen it in Escher.

00:35:43.500 And so my father and I wrote an article.

00:35:46.700 He developed this.

00:35:47.900 The staircase was his, actually.

00:35:49.280 He was designing buildings and then he produced the staircase, which went round and round.

00:35:54.640 And we decided to write a paper on this.

00:35:57.220 We had no idea what the subject was.

00:35:59.200 What journal did we send it to?

00:36:00.400 So my father said, well, I happen to know the editor of the British Journal of Psychology.

00:36:04.320 So let's call it Psychology.

00:36:05.460 So we sent it to them and they accepted it.

00:36:09.920 He said he thought he could get the editor to accept it.

00:36:12.860 They did.

00:36:13.340 And this was, we gave reference to Escher's, the catalog to Escher's exhibition.

00:36:19.040 And then my father had a correspondence with Escher with letters going backwards and forwards.

00:36:26.960 And then I think I was driving in the Netherlands for some other, I was a conference, I think.

00:36:34.740 And I was curious.

00:36:37.020 And I, when I was reasonably close to Escher, I phoned him up.

00:36:41.020 I got the phone number from my father and he was very nice and he invited me and my then wife to tea and he, I just had a chat with him.

00:36:52.860 And he sat at one end of a long table, I was the other end, and he had two piles of prints.

00:36:58.320 And he said, well, this pile, I don't have many left, I'm afraid.

00:37:02.860 And he pushed the other pile to me, choose one.

00:37:05.620 So I sort of went through these things and I picked one out, pretty hard to choose one out of all that.

00:37:14.760 And I chose one called Fish and Scales, which he was actually rather pleased because he said, well, most people don't understand that one.

00:37:23.220 So I felt a bit flattered by that.

00:37:26.100 But this, I then gave him a set of little pieces of just one shape.

00:37:33.400 And I gave him a set of them and said, well, can you tile with those?

00:37:40.860 And then a little while later, he wrote to me and said he'd seen how to do it, but he wants to know what the underlying principle was.

00:37:49.020 So I did.

00:37:49.740 I was afraid I was a very bad correspondent.

00:37:51.560 It took me a little while before I got back to him.

00:37:53.560 But I showed him what it was based on.

00:37:56.660 And on the basis of that, he produced, I believe, with his last watercolor, maybe for his last picture, as far as I know, a thing called Ghosts, which is based on this.

00:38:08.640 It's the only tiling, as far as I know, that he ever did, which is what's called non-isohedral.

00:38:16.220 You see, usually he did periodic ones, but they're periodic in a strong sense that if you find a shape, the next time you see it, it has the same relation to the pattern as a whole.

00:38:27.340 So you could move this one into that shape, and the whole pattern goes with it into itself.

00:38:33.600 But the one I showed him was what's called non-isohedral, that you can have different instances of the shape.

00:38:39.300 So this one has a different relation to the pattern as a whole from that one.

00:38:44.300 And so if I move this one into that, I can't bring the whole pattern along with it.

00:38:49.640 So you have two different roles that the shape plays.

00:38:53.700 And the last one of his pictures showed this.

00:38:57.700 So I'm curious, too, about two things now.

00:39:03.680 I'm interested in why you're so fascinated by the relationship of a geometric shape that can be arrayed in a variety of different manners to this underlying problem of mapping.

00:39:16.320 So you're reducing or establishing a relationship between the problem of mapping a large terrain to the utilization of very stringently defined, what would you call them, representational systems?

00:39:34.800 That's a geometric form.

00:39:36.540 What is the geometric form conceptually in relationship to the problem of mapping?

00:39:44.660 Well, you had a shape, and then you have certain rules about which pieces will fit next to it.

00:39:52.020 But there's certain freedom in that rule.

00:39:53.780 You could put this one that way or another way, you see.

00:39:55.680 And, you know, if it's a shape which very clearly has to fit that way next to it, then it just repeats, you see.

00:40:05.380 But if there's some freedom as to what the next one will do, then you might have to make that choice.

00:40:10.720 And certain choices will run you into difficulties later, and other choices maybe will allow you to continue.

00:40:16.960 Is there a relationship between that and what composers do with music?

00:40:20.720 Because, I mean, there's a certain repeating determinacy in music, but obviously a composer just doesn't take a pattern and repeat it indefinitely.

00:40:30.880 They take a pattern, and the pattern seems to allow for some choice in movement from that pattern forward.

00:40:38.080 Well, maybe. I don't know.

00:40:39.220 I mean, what makes a piece of music into a good piece of music?

00:40:44.600 I mean, I have no idea.

00:40:46.180 That's a much deeper issue.

00:40:47.940 Well, we do know a bit about it.

00:40:49.880 But we know that if it's too simple and repetitive, your interest gets exhausted.

00:40:55.300 Yes, exactly.

00:40:56.060 It gets stale very rapidly.

00:40:57.480 And then as it moves towards purely unpredictable, it becomes indistinguishable from noise.

00:41:03.340 So there's some place in between there, and you could probably move on that place,

00:41:07.600 where you get some ultimately harmonious relationship of predictable form.

00:41:13.420 And, well, something like the play of novelty that seems to me to be analogous to that possibility of shifting the shapes in this tiling problem.

00:41:21.480 I mean, I think music is tiling something.

00:41:23.800 It's a representational form.

00:41:25.680 No, there's probably some connection.

00:41:27.600 It's just that music, I mean, there's so much more freedom as to what you do.

00:41:31.820 You see, with these tiling shapes, it's forced on you, either it fits or it doesn't, you see.

00:41:37.240 With music, it's much more subtle.

00:41:39.980 Right.

00:41:40.180 I would hate to make too much of a comparison.

00:41:42.960 A leap, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough.

00:41:45.200 One more question along that line.

00:41:47.600 Now, that triangle you made.

00:41:50.360 Yes.

00:41:50.640 Now, what's the relationship between those paradoxical forms and the tiling problem?

00:41:57.980 Not much.

00:41:59.840 Because they seem to be, I mean, there's a play of representation and image there.

00:42:05.820 One of the things I've been wondering, I looked at all your diverse contributions,

00:42:08.980 and I thought, wow, there's a lot of things happening in a lot of different places,

00:42:12.940 but there must be some, there's something that's not random.

00:42:16.500 There's something at work that's kind of a uniting principle that might be, I don't know,

00:42:22.560 it might be the problem that you're trying to solve in some deepest way

00:42:27.880 that's uniting all these elements of exploration and interest.

00:42:32.900 I don't know, you're asking too hard a question.

00:42:35.060 I don't know.

00:42:35.700 I mean, sometimes I don't see any overriding principle.

00:42:42.120 I mean, there's a sort of thing, you know, something feels right.

00:42:45.200 Now, why does it feel right?

00:42:46.980 I mean, that could be something very subtle.

00:42:51.700 Yeah.

00:42:52.000 It may be wrong, too.

00:42:53.720 Well, maybe, maybe that.

00:42:54.320 Quite often they are wrong.

00:42:55.700 Yes, yes.

00:42:56.560 But it seems to me that that also is related in some important sense psychologically

00:43:00.760 to that notion of understanding.

00:43:03.700 You know, the feeling that it's right.

00:43:05.420 It's like, it's interesting that it can be wrong,

00:43:08.160 but it's also interesting that it can be a predictor of,

00:43:11.800 like I had a student, a student, she was very creative.

00:43:15.420 And she would come up with hypotheses that were damn good.

00:43:19.660 But she was more creative than the typical psychologist.

00:43:22.900 And I don't say that in a denigrating way.

00:43:24.480 I mean, she was more like an artist than a researcher.

00:43:26.980 And then what she would do is spend like six months

00:43:29.580 writing out the algorithmic pathway to that conclusion,

00:43:33.220 even though that is not how she derived it.

00:43:35.340 But she had a pretty unerring ability to jump forward to the right place

00:43:39.760 with her intuition.

00:43:40.640 And it's something like, I think it's something like a deep form of pattern recognition.

00:43:45.400 You know, you don't need the full pattern to infer what the pattern might be.

00:43:49.700 You can have a sparse representation of it,

00:43:52.740 leap to what might be analogous to a tiling solution, I suppose.

00:43:57.000 And that seems to be something related to the accuracy of intuition.

00:44:02.140 I know when people become schizotypal, for example,

00:44:06.340 and paranoid, that also happens in paranoia,

00:44:10.740 they have a lot of intuitions about patterns that might be there.

00:44:14.340 But most of them are wrong.

00:44:17.060 And so it's like their pattern recognition system has become,

00:44:21.880 well, it's exceeded the limits of its capacity for accuracy

00:44:25.440 and is starting to see pattern in what's truly random.

00:44:29.440 You know, prediction error.

00:44:30.500 Yeah, well.

00:44:31.580 May I ask, there's a, I think one important distinction here

00:44:34.920 from what I can understand, Sir Roger,

00:44:37.840 is what the nature of understanding is here

00:44:41.360 is not to be simply reduced to belief or intuition,

00:44:47.880 though it may be related to them.

00:44:49.520 When one understands something, let's say,

00:44:52.320 that's the simple equation that two plus two equals four,

00:44:54.540 it's not a belief that that is true.

00:44:57.800 Understanding is operating at a level that is beyond belief.

00:45:02.120 It has a certainty, an inner certainty

00:45:03.840 that is not subject to doubt fundamentally.

00:45:08.300 And what I was wondering if it might be helpful,

00:45:11.380 just for the sake also of the people

00:45:13.060 who may subsequently watch this conversation,

00:45:15.040 if you would be willing, Sir Roger,

00:45:17.300 to give us a sense of your,

00:45:23.380 the way you describe the three spheres of matter

00:45:28.100 and mind and mathematics,

00:45:31.300 as that might give us a basis

00:45:32.780 for some quite rich conversation subsequently.

00:45:36.340 Well, maybe.

00:45:37.840 You wanted me to describe the picture.

00:45:40.260 I mean...

00:45:41.100 Well, this was just a way of thinking about

00:45:45.180 the relationship between mathematics

00:45:48.260 and the physical world

00:45:51.440 and the world of conscious perception.

00:45:55.120 And I was regarding each of these

00:46:00.080 as a sort of world.

00:46:01.540 I mean, whether that's a useful way or not,

00:46:03.260 it was just helpful to me.

00:46:06.180 And there is the mathematical world.

00:46:07.780 And I take a very platonic view here

00:46:09.500 that the mathematical world

00:46:10.740 exists independently of us.

00:46:13.340 And so when we find a mathematical result,

00:46:16.000 it's more like a discovery than an invention.

00:46:19.960 So it's there already and you find it.

00:46:22.300 So this is certainly a feeling that,

00:46:25.260 as far as I'm aware,

00:46:25.920 most mathematicians have.

00:46:28.140 And the truths are there

00:46:29.880 and they're there independently of us.

00:46:33.040 And if we're lucky,

00:46:34.580 we can find one of these truths

00:46:37.120 and see why it is a truth.

00:46:40.100 Now, that's one thing.

00:46:42.800 Now, then there's the physical world.

00:46:44.500 And the physical world,

00:46:46.060 the more we learn about it,

00:46:47.940 the more we find that it operates

00:46:50.300 according to very precise mathematical laws.

00:46:54.420 But yet it's very small.

00:46:56.160 You see, if you look at a mathematical journal,

00:46:57.660 you find it's almost entirely full of things

00:47:00.460 which have nothing whatsoever to do

00:47:01.860 with the physical world.

00:47:03.900 They're playing around with mathematics

00:47:05.600 for its own sake.

00:47:07.860 That part of the mathematical world,

00:47:10.520 which actually does have direct relevance

00:47:12.800 to the way that the physical world operates,

00:47:15.260 is a small part of it.

00:47:17.040 So I have a picture of this mathematical world

00:47:19.140 and a tiny bit of that

00:47:20.300 comes and imposes itself

00:47:24.180 or whatever you like to explain

00:47:25.520 or whatever you like to say,

00:47:27.580 the physical world.

00:47:28.680 So the more we learn about the physical world,

00:47:30.280 the more we see it is driven

00:47:31.600 or acts according to these

00:47:34.820 very specific tiny parts

00:47:37.400 of the mathematical world.

00:47:38.440 And the second thing is,

00:47:41.680 in that physical world,

00:47:43.020 which seems to be operating

00:47:44.920 according to mathematics,

00:47:46.620 there are entities

00:47:48.120 which seem to be able to perceive

00:47:51.000 and understand and have consciousness.

00:47:54.180 So the acquisition of consciousness

00:47:58.000 in whatever way is a small part.

00:48:00.700 You see, the world consists of rocks

00:48:02.860 and things like that,

00:48:04.160 which don't seem to have any of this quality.

00:48:05.960 But there are certain creatures,

00:48:08.320 things such as people in this room

00:48:11.580 and elsewhere

00:48:13.180 and probably other animals,

00:48:16.020 which may have less of it than humans.

00:48:17.760 But on the other hand,

00:48:18.660 I'd certainly think they have consciousness,

00:48:21.440 some of them.

00:48:23.780 So, but still,

00:48:24.700 it's a tiny part of the physical world

00:48:26.540 which seems to have access

00:48:28.440 or whatever the right thing is,

00:48:30.300 seems to be able to be,

00:48:33.140 in a certain sense,

00:48:33.980 this world of consciousness.

00:48:34.980 So it's, again,

00:48:36.480 a small part of that.

00:48:38.220 But there's only a tiny part

00:48:40.000 of the conscious activity

00:48:42.340 which is concerned with mathematics.

00:48:45.600 So I have this picture

00:48:46.460 which is sort of meant to be

00:48:48.040 slightly paradoxical,

00:48:49.780 that each world,

00:48:51.600 in a certain sense,

00:48:52.980 comes from a little bit

00:48:54.140 of the world preceding it.

00:48:56.620 And so it's drawn in a way

00:48:57.960 which is like this impossible triangle,

00:49:00.160 which is a,

00:49:01.160 looks like a paradox.

00:49:02.860 That's only a little joke,

00:49:04.460 in a way.

00:49:05.040 I don't know how much depth

00:49:07.460 there is to that.

00:49:10.140 But I'd rather like to depict it

00:49:12.300 in that way.

00:49:12.860 So this,

00:49:14.940 this,

00:49:15.420 this,

00:49:16.180 so stop me when I'm wrong,

00:49:19.260 okay?

00:49:20.220 All right.

00:49:21.080 So,

00:49:22.000 it seems to me that

00:49:23.480 the mathematical reality

00:49:26.240 is something like

00:49:27.300 the observation

00:49:28.300 of the pattern regularity

00:49:30.460 between things.

00:49:31.420 It's not the things themselves.

00:49:33.620 Oh, the physical,

00:49:34.440 which, which, which...

00:49:35.360 Well,

00:49:35.480 I'm thinking about

00:49:36.640 the mathematical representation

00:49:38.380 of the physical world.

00:49:40.660 So,

00:49:40.960 because things,

00:49:42.900 there are things,

00:49:43.700 obviously,

00:49:44.280 but there are things

00:49:44.860 in relationship

00:49:45.480 to one another.

00:49:46.440 Yeah.

00:49:46.800 And the relationships

00:49:47.600 between the things,

00:49:49.160 like the pattern

00:49:49.880 that your tiles

00:49:50.940 Yeah.

00:49:51.840 compose,

00:49:52.340 is just as real

00:49:53.160 as the tiles.

00:49:55.940 Right?

00:49:56.540 But it consists

00:49:57.320 of the relationship

00:49:58.160 between the tiles.

00:49:59.880 And is it the representation

00:50:01.460 of the relationship

00:50:02.640 between things

00:50:03.540 that's part of

00:50:04.140 that mathematical world?

00:50:05.480 Rather than...

00:50:06.780 I know it could be

00:50:07.520 patterns of the world

00:50:08.380 in some sense.

00:50:09.300 You see,

00:50:09.640 it's a physical thing.

00:50:10.800 It's just sitting

00:50:11.580 in front of a mass building.

00:50:13.320 So,

00:50:13.660 that's a physical thing.

00:50:16.320 But it is...

00:50:17.740 It represents

00:50:18.740 a mathematical idea,

00:50:21.180 which only gives you

00:50:23.360 the idea.

00:50:23.920 You could see,

00:50:24.220 oh,

00:50:24.400 these tiles fit together

00:50:25.340 in such and such a way.

00:50:26.820 And these are parts

00:50:28.200 of a Euclidean plane.

00:50:29.280 And a Euclidean plane

00:50:30.040 is a concept.

00:50:31.280 We don't actually

00:50:32.060 have it physically.

00:50:34.480 But you can see

00:50:35.440 by looking at the tiles

00:50:37.240 carefully enough

00:50:38.020 and see how they fit together

00:50:39.080 that this is

00:50:40.620 a mathematical thing

00:50:42.380 you're looking at

00:50:43.080 in a way.

00:50:43.900 And that this mathematical thing

00:50:45.400 would allow you

00:50:46.820 to continue

00:50:48.460 if you understand

00:50:49.580 what's going on

00:50:50.440 indefinitely.

00:50:51.780 So the entire Euclidean plane

00:50:53.140 could be covered

00:50:54.340 according to the rules

00:50:55.480 of those shapes you see.

00:50:56.780 Okay,

00:50:57.520 so let me ask you

00:50:58.960 another question

00:50:59.560 about that then.

00:51:00.940 So,

00:51:02.020 is the physical world

00:51:04.840 one tiling solution

00:51:08.080 to the plane

00:51:10.080 of mathematical possibility?

00:51:13.060 I guess,

00:51:13.940 in a sense.

00:51:15.520 I mean,

00:51:15.880 it's slightly...

00:51:18.200 You see,

00:51:18.660 it's not really

00:51:19.380 talking about

00:51:19.940 the laws of physics there.

00:51:21.200 It's only in the sense

00:51:22.300 that Euclidean geometry

00:51:23.320 is a pretty good approximation.

00:51:24.920 That's all it's saying.

00:51:26.820 I mean,

00:51:27.120 there's not much physics

00:51:28.220 going on there.

00:51:29.680 You might say,

00:51:30.460 well,

00:51:30.560 what makes these tiles?

00:51:32.740 Some of them shine

00:51:33.620 and some not shine

00:51:34.640 or something like that.

00:51:35.400 I mean,

00:51:35.620 it's more like physics.

00:51:37.160 But the actual design

00:51:38.960 that's being used there,

00:51:40.740 it's been put there

00:51:41.920 by human beings

00:51:42.880 according to

00:51:43.620 what another human being

00:51:44.580 said they should

00:51:45.200 lay them down.

00:51:47.360 And that was driven

00:51:48.240 by a certain

00:51:49.000 mathematical concept.

00:51:51.260 But it's different

00:51:52.040 from the way

00:51:53.600 that mathematics

00:51:54.960 underlies

00:51:55.920 the laws of physics.

00:51:58.560 And that's quite different.

00:52:00.580 It might be

00:52:01.180 if you took one

00:52:01.700 of those tiles

00:52:02.180 and threw it across,

00:52:03.780 it would be pretty hard

00:52:04.940 to do

00:52:05.180 because they're quite heavy.

00:52:06.660 But the way

00:52:07.160 that would move

00:52:08.840 in the air

00:52:09.300 before it came down

00:52:10.160 and crashed,

00:52:11.820 that would be

00:52:12.920 a clear indication

00:52:14.400 of a physical law,

00:52:16.460 the way in which

00:52:16.920 gravitation behaves.

00:52:19.800 And then the way

00:52:20.560 the thing holds together,

00:52:21.700 the law that holds

00:52:23.400 the,

00:52:24.280 makes these tiles solid,

00:52:26.640 be something to do

00:52:27.740 with the,

00:52:29.820 well,

00:52:30.100 quantum mechanics,

00:52:31.060 to do with the ways

00:52:32.000 that the atoms

00:52:33.440 are constructed

00:52:34.680 and how they

00:52:35.500 connect with other atoms

00:52:36.960 and what makes them solid

00:52:38.060 rather than a fluid

00:52:39.000 or something like that.

00:52:40.960 So that would be

00:52:41.540 the way that mathematics

00:52:42.600 drives the physics.

00:52:46.120 It's general laws

00:52:47.620 rather than

00:52:48.060 a specific thing.

00:52:48.960 I think that's

00:52:49.920 what I'm trying to say.

00:52:50.200 Well, I'm curious

00:52:51.200 to go to it

00:52:52.140 because in some sense,

00:52:54.420 and I could obviously

00:52:56.040 be wrong about this,

00:52:57.100 but the physical reality

00:52:59.760 seems to constrain

00:53:01.260 the mathematical possibility

00:53:02.880 because there's only

00:53:04.380 some mathematical rules

00:53:07.160 that govern the behavior

00:53:08.460 of actual objects

00:53:09.380 even though there's

00:53:10.020 all sorts of

00:53:10.600 possible mathematics

00:53:11.780 that could govern

00:53:12.700 the action of

00:53:13.900 all sorts of

00:53:14.620 hypothetical objects.

00:53:15.700 So imagine

00:53:19.460 if there's

00:53:19.940 an underlying,

00:53:21.380 I can't help

00:53:22.460 but think

00:53:22.780 this is associated

00:53:23.640 with this many worlds idea,

00:53:25.180 but if there's

00:53:25.960 an underlying

00:53:26.760 metaverse

00:53:27.780 of mathematical possibility,

00:53:30.500 you get

00:53:30.740 the emergence

00:53:31.580 of something like,

00:53:32.780 voila,

00:53:33.760 what would you say,

00:53:35.420 one concretized

00:53:36.780 exploration

00:53:37.280 of that possibility space,

00:53:39.120 and that now

00:53:41.040 establishes a relationship

00:53:42.280 between one element

00:53:44.220 of that mathematical

00:53:45.260 possibility space

00:53:46.500 and, well,

00:53:49.780 in reality itself.

00:53:51.160 It doesn't exhaust

00:53:51.920 the search space,

00:53:52.920 but it's,

00:53:53.820 and it seems to me

00:53:54.720 that that's analogous

00:53:55.600 to this tiling problem

00:53:56.640 in some sense.

00:53:58.480 I think it's,

00:53:59.380 I don't know,

00:54:00.080 I can't help saying

00:54:00.760 I think it's

00:54:01.660 really very different

00:54:03.160 from what one is trying

00:54:04.160 to do in mathematical physics.

00:54:06.080 See, in mathematical physics,

00:54:07.060 you're looking for

00:54:07.520 general laws

00:54:08.500 which seem

00:54:11.160 individual

00:54:12.440 in instance of it

00:54:13.640 agree with those laws

00:54:17.000 so that

00:54:17.540 an object like

00:54:19.160 one of the tiles

00:54:19.960 that are being used

00:54:20.720 outside the mass building,

00:54:24.060 and the trouble is

00:54:25.600 that it depends

00:54:26.260 on detailed laws

00:54:28.060 about the atoms

00:54:28.780 which construct the tiles

00:54:29.960 and so,

00:54:30.220 which has nothing to do

00:54:30.960 with what we're talking

00:54:31.520 about here.

00:54:32.340 I don't think it is.

00:54:34.100 Well, I guess

00:54:34.880 I was wondering partly

00:54:36.020 because there's

00:54:36.900 these fine-tuning arguments,

00:54:38.540 you know,

00:54:38.880 and the question arises,

00:54:40.260 well,

00:54:40.760 there's lots of ways

00:54:41.800 these phenomena

00:54:43.840 could be interrelated,

00:54:47.760 but in reality

00:54:48.880 it turns out

00:54:49.640 that there is

00:54:50.160 a very finite

00:54:51.120 and constrained

00:54:51.900 number of ways

00:54:52.680 that they are

00:54:53.160 actually related,

00:54:54.260 and those are

00:54:54.900 the fundamental laws.

00:54:56.140 And then the question arises,

00:54:57.240 well, why that set

00:54:58.400 of constraints

00:54:59.500 and not,

00:55:00.560 you know,

00:55:01.000 some other set

00:55:01.800 of constraints

00:55:02.340 that seems equally

00:55:03.240 probable statistically?

00:55:05.180 You know,

00:55:06.020 if it was a sample

00:55:06.880 of the mathematical domain.

00:55:09.200 Yeah,

00:55:09.460 I guess I have

00:55:10.480 to understand

00:55:11.380 what you're saying

00:55:12.280 a bit better.

00:55:14.960 I mean,

00:55:15.260 you could say,

00:55:15.940 okay,

00:55:16.240 there's this building,

00:55:17.320 well,

00:55:17.440 the one we're in now,

00:55:18.600 which has in front of it

00:55:19.980 a certain tiling.

00:55:20.920 I mean,

00:55:21.140 that's,

00:55:23.420 if you're going

00:55:24.040 to explain that,

00:55:24.760 I mean,

00:55:24.920 that's very different

00:55:25.960 from what mathematical

00:55:26.820 physicists do.

00:55:27.800 I mean,

00:55:27.960 they're just looking

00:55:28.400 for general principles.

00:55:29.080 Right, right.

00:55:29.660 And B,

00:55:30.780 as far as we're aware,

00:55:32.780 those general principles

00:55:34.620 are not violated

00:55:35.820 in what's been going on

00:55:38.380 in this building.

00:55:39.940 However,

00:55:40.600 that's not entirely

00:55:41.640 what I would think

00:55:43.340 because what's going on

00:55:45.500 in this building

00:55:46.200 and so on

00:55:46.780 is an implication

00:55:48.660 of what's going on

00:55:49.920 in people's heads.

00:55:51.660 And this does have to do

00:55:53.080 with consciousness

00:55:53.700 and what's going on

00:55:55.860 in consciousness,

00:55:57.000 in my view,

00:55:58.040 is not yet

00:55:59.620 part of current physics.

00:56:03.880 So I'm trying to say

00:56:05.380 that although

00:56:06.580 we have very good theories

00:56:08.020 about how things behave,

00:56:10.000 bodies behave,

00:56:11.080 they're not good enough yet

00:56:13.700 to tell us

00:56:15.020 how the conscious

00:56:16.800 human brain operates.

00:56:18.900 So do you allow

00:56:20.440 your imagination

00:56:21.200 to wander into the domain

00:56:22.980 of metaphysical speculation

00:56:24.520 about that?

00:56:25.320 I mean,

00:56:25.940 because you're making a case

00:56:27.920 I was talking

00:56:29.720 to some divinity scholars

00:56:31.500 the other day

00:56:32.080 and they were laughing,

00:56:33.640 I suppose,

00:56:34.140 about physicists

00:56:34.940 who say

00:56:35.720 with regard to

00:56:37.380 the Big Bang

00:56:38.080 and the hypothetical

00:56:39.180 emergence of everything

00:56:40.240 out of nothing

00:56:40.840 that give us

00:56:41.940 one free miracle

00:56:42.960 and we'll proceed

00:56:43.800 from there.

00:56:44.980 And so,

00:56:45.920 I mean,

00:56:46.260 there is speculation

00:56:47.160 among physicists

00:56:48.040 that the laws of physics

00:56:49.460 don't apply to

00:56:50.800 whatever the state

00:56:51.800 of existence was

00:56:52.640 before the universe

00:56:54.200 emerged into being.

00:56:55.180 and you're making

00:56:56.320 a case now

00:56:57.040 as well

00:56:57.480 that consciousness

00:56:58.660 itself

00:56:59.400 may not be able

00:57:01.180 to be encapsulated

00:57:02.100 within the realm

00:57:02.860 of our current

00:57:03.380 physical theories.

00:57:04.740 So what do you think

00:57:05.820 the metaphysical

00:57:06.500 or do you?

00:57:07.960 Well,

00:57:08.020 let me try and get this.

00:57:09.020 I'd have to unpack something

00:57:10.080 because we're venturing

00:57:11.920 on a different topic here.

00:57:13.060 Yes,

00:57:13.200 I know.

00:57:13.660 Which is the question

00:57:14.420 of the Big Bang

00:57:15.120 which I have

00:57:16.580 a different view

00:57:17.180 on that

00:57:17.560 from what you normally

00:57:18.500 hear.

00:57:19.180 Okay.

00:57:19.500 So,

00:57:19.780 but that's...

00:57:20.120 That'd be fun to start with.

00:57:21.220 We can talk about that

00:57:21.740 if you want to.

00:57:22.360 Yeah.

00:57:22.960 That's an interesting

00:57:23.840 topic to talk about.

00:57:25.160 But that's really different

00:57:26.420 and as far as I don't

00:57:28.560 even see a connection

00:57:29.440 as things stand

00:57:30.260 from what I'm worrying

00:57:31.780 about in consciousness.

00:57:33.920 But what I'm worrying about...

00:57:34.880 I was just thinking

00:57:34.900 they both stand outside

00:57:35.840 the laws of known physics

00:57:37.440 in some sense.

00:57:38.180 But let me say something else

00:57:39.200 which is outside

00:57:39.780 the laws of known physics.

00:57:41.460 This is not something

00:57:42.580 that people normally

00:57:44.000 even recognize

00:57:45.080 as a problem.

00:57:46.520 I mean,

00:57:46.800 they do

00:57:47.160 but they shove it

00:57:47.780 under the carpet

00:57:48.360 which is what's known

00:57:50.200 as the collapse

00:57:51.120 of the wave function.

00:57:53.520 Now,

00:57:53.680 you see,

00:57:54.160 current quantum mechanics

00:57:55.600 strictly speaking

00:57:57.780 is an inconsistent theory.

00:57:59.900 That's a rather

00:58:00.660 brutal way of saying

00:58:01.860 what Einstein

00:58:02.540 and Schrodinger

00:58:03.480 and even Dirac

00:58:04.920 said

00:58:05.440 quantum mechanics

00:58:06.780 is incomplete.

00:58:09.320 And the way

00:58:10.100 to explain this is

00:58:11.120 okay,

00:58:12.080 there's a wonderful equation

00:58:13.160 which tells you

00:58:13.940 how a state evolves

00:58:15.740 in quantum mechanics

00:58:16.280 called the Schrodinger equation.

00:58:18.120 Now,

00:58:18.340 the Schrodinger equation

00:58:19.260 tells you

00:58:19.760 if you know

00:58:20.840 what the state

00:58:21.560 of a system is now,

00:58:23.700 the Schrodinger equation

00:58:24.760 tells you

00:58:25.620 what it will be tomorrow

00:58:26.960 if you like.

00:58:28.280 The evolution

00:58:29.100 of that state

00:58:29.940 is governed

00:58:30.700 by this wonderful equation

00:58:32.020 due to Erwin Schrodinger.

00:58:34.260 The trouble is

00:58:35.320 that it doesn't.

00:58:36.620 That's to say

00:58:37.360 the way physicists

00:58:39.940 usually use

00:58:40.980 the Schrodinger equation

00:58:41.900 is to work out

00:58:43.020 certain probabilities

00:58:44.240 of what

00:58:45.360 an observation

00:58:46.500 on the system

00:58:47.380 would tell you.

00:58:48.600 So what you have to do

00:58:49.500 is you

00:58:49.880 wheel out of the cupboard

00:58:51.360 a measuring device.

00:58:54.320 In this measuring device,

00:58:56.340 you set it on

00:58:57.080 the system

00:58:58.740 which is evolving

00:58:59.500 according to the

00:59:00.040 Schrodinger equation

00:59:00.620 and it measures it.

00:59:02.680 And the process

00:59:03.480 of measurement

00:59:04.120 does not follow

00:59:05.300 the Schrodinger equation.

00:59:06.480 Right.

00:59:06.600 It gives you

00:59:07.620 a probabilistic answer

00:59:08.820 this or this

00:59:09.640 or this.

00:59:10.700 That's another

00:59:11.360 outside the system

00:59:12.380 problem.

00:59:12.880 It's certainly

00:59:13.360 outside the Schrodinger equation.

00:59:14.840 Right, right, right.

00:59:15.920 And Schrodinger

00:59:16.520 was terribly worried

00:59:17.420 about this.

00:59:18.340 I mean,

00:59:18.560 he produced his

00:59:19.400 cat in the box

00:59:20.220 and all sorts

00:59:20.700 of things.

00:59:21.140 You see,

00:59:21.620 he clearly realized

00:59:23.220 there was a problem

00:59:24.160 as did Einstein.

00:59:26.240 There's no question

00:59:26.900 about that.

00:59:28.000 Some others didn't.

00:59:29.160 Well,

00:59:29.280 they took a different view.

00:59:30.260 They said,

00:59:30.560 look,

00:59:30.760 we don't understand

00:59:31.620 the theory well enough.

00:59:33.280 And that's more

00:59:33.800 that we're saying

00:59:34.320 where Schrodinger

00:59:34.780 was not saying that.

00:59:35.520 He was saying

00:59:35.720 we understand

00:59:36.700 it well enough

00:59:37.700 to see that

00:59:38.300 that's not the way

00:59:39.180 the world operates.

00:59:40.300 When you make

00:59:40.940 a measurement

00:59:41.540 on the system,

00:59:42.460 it does not follow

00:59:44.020 the Schrodinger equation.

00:59:45.640 And that's

00:59:46.080 what people understand

00:59:47.440 about quantum mechanics.

00:59:49.140 But it's a sort of

00:59:50.740 vague set of rules

00:59:53.700 about

00:59:54.100 it doesn't tell you

00:59:56.440 what constitutes

00:59:57.400 a measurement.

00:59:58.280 Right.

00:59:58.700 That's the trouble.

00:59:59.100 Right.

00:59:59.480 Yeah,

00:59:59.800 that's a big trouble.

01:00:01.080 That's the big trouble.

01:00:01.660 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:02.260 They say,

01:00:02.760 if you do a measurement,

01:00:03.800 then it just becomes

01:00:04.580 a probability

01:00:05.040 for what this

01:00:06.040 or that or the other.

01:00:07.260 But it doesn't say

01:00:07.980 what kind of a device

01:00:09.480 makes a measurement.

01:00:11.500 Now,

01:00:11.680 there's one school

01:00:12.280 of thought

01:00:12.940 which has been going on

01:00:14.780 from way back

01:00:15.760 to the early days

01:00:16.520 of quantum mechanics.

01:00:18.800 Wigner,

01:00:19.200 in particular,

01:00:20.040 promoted this point of view

01:00:21.140 that it's a conscious being

01:00:23.300 observing the system.

01:00:25.680 And that makes the

01:00:26.380 That's what Wheeler

01:00:26.580 believed,

01:00:27.100 I believe.

01:00:27.720 Wheeler might have believed.

01:00:28.680 Quite a lot of people

01:00:29.540 believe that.

01:00:30.140 I think von Neumann

01:00:30.900 had a similar sort of view.

01:00:31.880 I'm not quite so sure

01:00:32.660 about his view,

01:00:33.240 but certainly Wigner.

01:00:34.680 And I talked to Wigner

01:00:35.400 about this.

01:00:36.400 Yeah.

01:00:37.700 I got the feeling

01:00:38.620 from Wigner

01:00:38.980 he wasn't quite as dogmatic.

01:00:40.400 He was made out

01:00:41.060 to be on this issue.

01:00:42.360 He just thought

01:00:43.040 this was a possibility,

01:00:44.100 I think.

01:00:45.200 But anyway,

01:00:45.860 people often refer to it

01:00:47.460 as the Wigner view

01:00:48.340 that it's a conscious being

01:00:50.760 that it's a conscious being

01:00:50.780 who makes a measurement.

01:00:52.000 That's not my view.

01:00:54.500 My view is that

01:00:55.800 it's almost the opposite

01:00:56.900 of that view.

01:00:58.040 That there is

01:00:58.780 an objective physical process

01:01:01.660 which deviates

01:01:04.980 from the Schrodinger equation

01:01:06.320 in which

01:01:07.780 the state does collapse

01:01:10.060 so that it becomes

01:01:11.300 one or the other

01:01:12.300 or the other

01:01:12.800 with certain probabilities.

01:01:13.820 and that this has to do

01:01:16.100 with when gravity

01:01:16.900 is brought into the picture.

01:01:18.660 And there's reasons

01:01:19.200 for believing this.

01:01:20.160 I don't want to go into that.

01:01:21.680 But there is reason.

01:01:22.820 I'd like you to go into it

01:01:24.160 if you would be willing to

01:01:25.240 because I mean,

01:01:26.900 I'm very...

01:01:27.520 Well, it's a very clear

01:01:28.940 mathematical calculation.

01:01:31.120 There's not a question about it.

01:01:33.000 It's a question

01:01:33.240 of what you do with it,

01:01:34.160 you see.

01:01:34.900 And what you do with it,

01:01:35.900 according to me,

01:01:37.020 is to say,

01:01:37.880 okay,

01:01:38.200 it tells you that this system

01:01:39.340 has a lifetime

01:01:39.940 and it will,

01:01:41.540 in that lifetime,

01:01:42.500 become one or the other.

01:01:44.160 Without a measurement?

01:01:46.100 It's sort of...

01:01:47.380 That's right.

01:01:48.140 Yes.

01:01:48.440 Without a...

01:01:49.020 Well, it's so interesting to me

01:01:50.200 that you're interested

01:01:51.880 in consciousness

01:01:52.660 and you see

01:01:54.000 that consciousness

01:01:55.540 in this

01:01:56.300 Goodell theorem

01:01:58.140 sort of manner

01:01:59.280 and I would think

01:02:01.040 the most predictable thing

01:02:02.580 for you to believe

01:02:03.440 as a consequence of that

01:02:04.720 would be that

01:02:05.360 it is conscious measurement

01:02:06.600 that collapses

01:02:07.260 the quantum indeterminacy,

01:02:11.660 the waveform.

01:02:13.120 And yet you don't.

01:02:14.160 You think that

01:02:14.980 that statistical

01:02:17.320 vagueness will collapse

01:02:19.760 into something

01:02:20.440 that's essentially...

01:02:21.720 Is it either or?

01:02:22.480 Or is it binary?

01:02:23.920 Is it zero, one?

01:02:25.600 The collapse?

01:02:26.440 No.

01:02:26.880 You mean probably...

01:02:27.700 No, there's a probability

01:02:28.660 it'll do one.

01:02:29.200 Right.

01:02:29.620 Right.

01:02:30.100 But when the probability

01:02:31.200 collapses...

01:02:32.980 Well, if it's a two-state system,

01:02:34.440 you see,

01:02:34.740 you might have an object

01:02:35.520 which is in a superposition

01:02:36.700 of here and here.

01:02:37.420 Yeah.

01:02:38.900 That was de Braque's

01:02:39.800 first lecture,

01:02:40.460 I remember hearing that,

01:02:42.020 and he took out

01:02:42.660 this piece of chalk

01:02:43.460 and said,

01:02:43.920 well...

01:02:45.360 And he was talking

01:02:46.320 about atoms,

01:02:46.920 you see.

01:02:47.760 According to quantum mechanics

01:02:49.000 or particles,

01:02:51.040 a quantum particle

01:02:51.600 is going to be here,

01:02:52.760 or it can be here,

01:02:54.320 or it can be in a state

01:02:56.180 which is partly here

01:02:57.160 and partly here

01:02:57.780 at the same time.

01:02:58.420 Right, right, right.

01:02:59.280 And then he took out

01:03:00.320 a piece of chalk

01:03:00.980 and people tell me

01:03:01.700 he used to break it in two.

01:03:02.920 I can't quite remember

01:03:03.640 because my mind

01:03:04.920 was drifting away

01:03:06.360 from what he was saying

01:03:07.220 and I was looking

01:03:07.800 out of the window

01:03:08.260 and thinking about

01:03:08.800 something completely different.

01:03:10.820 And unfortunately,

01:03:12.220 it only came back

01:03:13.180 after he'd gone

01:03:14.120 on to the next topic.

01:03:15.220 So I missed the explanation,

01:03:17.120 which was probably

01:03:18.220 a good thing

01:03:19.040 as I think back on it,

01:03:21.640 because probably

01:03:23.940 the explanation

01:03:24.680 was something

01:03:25.220 sort of to calm you down

01:03:26.300 and stop worrying

01:03:26.920 about the problem.

01:03:28.200 I suspect it was

01:03:29.220 something like that.

01:03:29.940 So you don't think

01:03:30.940 that a conscious observer

01:03:32.920 per se is necessary

01:03:34.280 to collapse the wave form?

01:03:35.440 Absolutely.

01:03:36.420 That is what I don't,

01:03:38.500 I mean, I'm agreeing with you.

01:03:39.460 I don't believe that, yes.

01:03:40.840 But you do think that,

01:03:41.920 if I'm not mistaken,

01:03:43.580 that the presence

01:03:45.300 of an observer

01:03:46.380 in the universe,

01:03:48.500 that is to say,

01:03:49.200 or the observation

01:03:50.240 of the universe by us,

01:03:53.140 is that true to say

01:03:54.020 is fundamental

01:03:54.680 to the universe?

01:03:57.020 Not really.

01:04:00.200 That's an interesting question,

01:04:02.040 but it's not part of my view.

01:04:03.520 A world would be there

01:04:06.280 quite independently

01:04:07.760 of whether they were

01:04:08.820 creatures

01:04:09.540 of consciousness

01:04:11.020 walking around on them.

01:04:13.260 Yes.

01:04:13.540 So can I ask you

01:04:14.820 a question about that?

01:04:16.800 So it's related to this.

01:04:18.940 So it's my understanding,

01:04:21.200 and I could be wrong

01:04:22.420 about this too,

01:04:23.100 because I'm way afield here,

01:04:24.480 you know,

01:04:24.740 I'm out of my depth

01:04:25.960 and area of specialization,

01:04:27.440 but my understanding

01:04:29.020 is that

01:04:29.580 in some sense,

01:04:31.600 as far as a photon

01:04:32.580 is concerned,

01:04:33.600 that the universe

01:04:35.420 is two-dimensional,

01:04:36.820 perpendicular

01:04:37.200 to its direction

01:04:38.160 of travel.

01:04:40.660 I don't see that now,

01:04:42.000 but go on.

01:04:43.380 Well,

01:04:43.800 I thought,

01:04:44.600 and I thought that this,

01:04:47.080 it's a consequence

01:04:48.480 of the contraction

01:04:49.640 of things

01:04:51.020 as the speed of light

01:04:52.080 is approached.

01:04:53.580 Oh, I see.

01:04:54.480 No, no, no, no.

01:04:56.080 You're talking about

01:04:57.040 the Lorentz contraction,

01:04:59.440 or whatever.

01:04:59.640 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:00.940 Well,

01:05:01.260 I thought,

01:05:03.100 as part of that,

01:05:04.020 that part of the reason

01:05:05.640 that no amount

01:05:07.200 of energy

01:05:07.680 can propel

01:05:08.600 something

01:05:10.060 past the speed

01:05:11.260 of light

01:05:11.700 is because,

01:05:12.380 in some sense,

01:05:13.700 the light beam

01:05:15.000 is already

01:05:15.600 where it is

01:05:16.460 and at its destination

01:05:17.620 at the same time,

01:05:19.060 and you can't get

01:05:20.140 flatter than flat.

01:05:21.620 Now,

01:05:22.380 the reason I asked you

01:05:24.080 that, though,

01:05:24.520 was because

01:05:25.020 it pertained

01:05:26.360 to this other question,

01:05:27.440 which was,

01:05:29.080 if you could imagine

01:05:30.520 what the universe

01:05:32.640 might be like

01:05:33.200 phenomenally

01:05:33.760 from the perspective

01:05:34.580 of a light photon,

01:05:36.000 that's very unlike

01:05:37.300 the universe

01:05:37.880 that we perceive.

01:05:39.980 Well, I see.

01:05:40.460 I mean,

01:05:40.620 if you were

01:05:41.480 riding on a,

01:05:42.840 well, I mean,

01:05:43.200 Einstein used to talk about it.

01:05:43.820 Yes, I know.

01:05:44.660 Riding on a light.

01:05:46.480 The trouble is that

01:05:47.560 you can't sit on a light.

01:05:50.060 Yes,

01:05:50.380 that is a problem.

01:05:51.460 But if you were

01:05:52.580 nearly going,

01:05:53.440 you know,

01:05:53.660 very, very fast

01:05:54.900 like that,

01:05:55.500 the passage of time,

01:05:57.420 you would think

01:05:58.780 it hadn't taken

01:05:59.460 any time at all.

01:06:00.520 Right, except,

01:06:00.880 well, and that's

01:06:02.140 the same as being

01:06:03.180 at the starting point

01:06:04.620 and the destination.

01:06:05.420 If you like, yes.

01:06:06.120 Yes, okay, okay.

01:06:07.180 Okay, so,

01:06:08.940 that is,

01:06:09.540 now, for us,

01:06:10.440 we perceive things

01:06:11.300 with duration

01:06:11.940 and distance.

01:06:13.660 And so,

01:06:14.100 but the photon

01:06:15.020 is in the universe

01:06:16.160 and we're in the universe,

01:06:17.160 but the universe

01:06:17.700 looks very unlike

01:06:18.720 each of those

01:06:20.880 situational positions.

01:06:22.360 and so,

01:06:23.640 you said that

01:06:24.440 there would be

01:06:24.900 a reality

01:06:25.440 independent of consciousness,

01:06:27.180 but I'm curious,

01:06:28.760 when you think

01:06:29.600 of a reality

01:06:30.180 independent of consciousness,

01:06:32.640 what,

01:06:33.020 what are the attributes

01:06:34.460 of that reality?

01:06:35.900 Like,

01:06:36.120 is it,

01:06:36.520 is it a field

01:06:37.200 of quantum potential?

01:06:38.480 Is it,

01:06:39.440 what?

01:06:41.480 I'm not quite sure

01:06:42.720 I understand the question,

01:06:43.600 but,

01:06:43.760 but,

01:06:44.400 I mean,

01:06:47.480 classically,

01:06:48.980 there's no problem.

01:06:50.120 I mean,

01:06:50.680 this thing about

01:06:51.400 the contraction

01:06:52.560 and all that stuff

01:06:53.400 with us going

01:06:54.280 close to the speed

01:06:55.240 of light and so on,

01:06:55.880 this is classical physics,

01:06:57.760 so we're not worrying

01:06:58.400 really about the problems

01:06:59.420 of quantum mechanics there.

01:07:01.080 But they're already there

01:07:02.360 in classical physics.

01:07:03.640 But if you had a particle

01:07:04.720 traveling at the speed

01:07:06.480 of light,

01:07:07.920 let's say just less

01:07:09.220 than the speed of light,

01:07:10.240 and if you could sit

01:07:11.040 on that particle,

01:07:12.240 it would seem as though

01:07:13.140 you got to your destination

01:07:14.620 almost instantaneously.

01:07:15.820 that's correct.

01:07:17.220 But that is nothing

01:07:18.200 to do with quantum,

01:07:18.780 well,

01:07:19.380 not directly to do

01:07:20.400 with quantum mechanics.

01:07:20.700 Right, right, right.

01:07:21.900 That's just,

01:07:22.500 that's relativity.

01:07:23.540 Right.

01:07:24.360 Yes, sure.

01:07:25.260 But the,

01:07:26.040 the phenomenal universe

01:07:27.940 at that speed

01:07:28.920 is radically different

01:07:30.020 than the phenomenal universe

01:07:31.220 at our speed.

01:07:33.080 Yeah,

01:07:33.180 but the universe is there,

01:07:34.500 it's just a question of,

01:07:36.140 I'm not quite sure

01:07:38.160 I understand this.

01:07:38.820 You see,

01:07:39.460 the universe...

01:07:40.340 I'm trying to understand

01:07:41.100 how it can be

01:07:41.780 all of those things

01:07:43.060 simultaneously,

01:07:44.260 like...

01:07:45.360 No, it's just...

01:07:46.220 And what that means.

01:07:47.000 That's not a problem.

01:07:48.100 It's just,

01:07:48.660 yeah,

01:07:49.080 when I say it's not a problem,

01:07:50.580 what I mean is

01:07:51.440 that there is a way

01:07:52.620 of looking at relativity,

01:07:54.600 which means special

01:07:55.380 and general relativity,

01:07:56.800 which is completely coherent

01:07:58.600 and doesn't really worry

01:08:00.320 about who measures what.

01:08:02.200 It's just there.

01:08:03.320 You have a space-time,

01:08:04.900 which is this

01:08:05.800 four-dimensional structure,

01:08:07.020 maybe hard to understand

01:08:08.420 and visualize

01:08:09.000 and so on,

01:08:09.700 sure,

01:08:10.360 but it's the thing

01:08:11.000 which is there.

01:08:12.500 People call it

01:08:13.060 a block universe view.

01:08:14.240 Well, I think about it

01:08:15.040 as a whole symphony

01:08:15.880 at once in some sense.

01:08:17.240 Well, if you like,

01:08:17.880 but it's all there

01:08:18.900 and what something measures

01:08:20.420 in that system,

01:08:21.300 you have to go

01:08:21.760 and ask the question.

01:08:22.920 If you had a body

01:08:23.860 traveling with a great speed

01:08:25.000 and there was a clock

01:08:25.780 on that body,

01:08:26.740 you'd ask for

01:08:27.500 how many ticks

01:08:28.080 does it happen

01:08:28.660 before one end

01:08:29.420 and the other.

01:08:30.320 That's perfectly well defined.

01:08:31.540 If it was sitting stationary,

01:08:33.900 you would have so many ticks

01:08:34.840 between starting and thinking.

01:08:36.120 You could have one

01:08:36.560 which goes out

01:08:37.060 and comes back.

01:08:38.020 You might say

01:08:38.420 there are only about four ticks,

01:08:40.100 whereas this one

01:08:40.560 had a thousand ticks.

01:08:42.540 Well, that's the answer.

01:08:43.300 So it's susceptible

01:08:46.240 to all those interpretations

01:08:47.440 simultaneously.

01:08:48.600 Yeah, because each one

01:08:49.500 is just,

01:08:49.940 it's only measuring it

01:08:50.760 with,

01:08:51.020 it carries the clock with it

01:08:52.420 and that clock ticks

01:08:53.280 at a certain rate

01:08:54.080 and that's fine.

01:08:55.360 There's no problem.

01:08:57.120 When I say there's no problem,

01:08:58.260 I mean,

01:08:58.540 it's not a philosophical problem.

01:09:00.040 There's a little bit

01:09:00.600 of a problem

01:09:01.040 of getting used to the ideas.

01:09:02.280 Sure.

01:09:02.960 No, I agree with that.

01:09:04.100 Yeah, yeah.

01:09:04.640 But that's not the issue.

01:09:06.020 You can,

01:09:06.520 once you've got used

01:09:07.460 to the ideas

01:09:08.120 and you,

01:09:08.440 oh, yes,

01:09:08.900 you can see time

01:09:09.600 is something

01:09:10.060 which depends

01:09:10.680 on how you're moving.

01:09:12.820 Right.

01:09:13.280 And the clock

01:09:13.800 which is moving fast.

01:09:14.780 Is there any difference

01:09:15.720 between that statement

01:09:16.860 and rate of change

01:09:20.180 depends on how fast

01:09:21.500 you're moving?

01:09:22.940 Like,

01:09:23.100 is there any difference

01:09:23.880 between time

01:09:24.600 and rate of change?

01:09:26.220 The rate of change

01:09:27.120 is because I think

01:09:28.940 of time

01:09:29.440 as the averaged

01:09:30.720 rate of change

01:09:31.720 and so when you say

01:09:33.480 that time slows down

01:09:35.440 as you move faster,

01:09:36.860 you're not saying

01:09:37.660 much more than

01:09:38.340 as you move faster,

01:09:40.760 you're the...

01:09:42.060 That's just a question.

01:09:42.780 You see,

01:09:43.180 I think the mistake here

01:09:44.420 is to think of time

01:09:45.420 as an objective thing.

01:09:49.140 Yes.

01:09:49.620 Which is attached

01:09:50.340 to this model

01:09:51.060 and it's not.

01:09:52.000 Right, right.

01:09:52.440 There is no concept

01:09:53.560 of when such an event happens.

01:09:56.600 You say,

01:09:57.320 you might say,

01:09:57.960 well,

01:09:58.200 is this event

01:09:58.980 later than that event?

01:10:01.320 Well,

01:10:02.120 if they're

01:10:02.800 what's called

01:10:03.240 space-like separated,

01:10:04.480 that is to say

01:10:05.060 you'd have to go

01:10:06.480 faster than light

01:10:07.360 to get from one

01:10:08.000 to the other,

01:10:09.000 it's a meaningless statement

01:10:10.240 because there is

01:10:11.640 no universal concept

01:10:12.980 of time

01:10:14.260 in this model.

01:10:16.460 Right.

01:10:16.580 It's just not there.

01:10:18.220 I think,

01:10:18.820 you see,

01:10:19.100 that goes against

01:10:19.980 what we normally feel

01:10:20.900 about time.

01:10:21.420 Yes.

01:10:21.620 We think about time

01:10:22.340 as progressing

01:10:22.920 and somebody

01:10:23.900 on the Andromeda galaxy

01:10:25.260 We experience duration,

01:10:27.220 so.

01:10:27.660 Yes.

01:10:28.180 But you see,

01:10:28.640 what about

01:10:29.020 when is now?

01:10:31.200 I often use this,

01:10:32.340 I think I use this example

01:10:33.360 of two people

01:10:33.860 crossing the street

01:10:34.720 and they're walking,

01:10:36.760 just walking speed,

01:10:37.720 crossing the street.

01:10:39.040 And the question is,

01:10:39.840 according to one

01:10:40.440 of these people,

01:10:42.240 there is a,

01:10:45.540 at the same time

01:10:47.660 as they cross each other,

01:10:49.140 there is an event

01:10:50.140 on the Andromeda galaxy

01:10:52.460 where a space fleet

01:10:54.540 has been launched

01:10:55.800 and they're going

01:10:56.300 to invade the Earth.

01:10:58.000 According to the other one,

01:10:59.720 the decision has not

01:11:00.900 even been made yet

01:11:01.840 as to whether they're

01:11:02.760 going to invade the Earth

01:11:03.620 or not.

01:11:04.400 Now,

01:11:04.620 this is only because

01:11:05.340 you're trying to

01:11:06.280 transfer your local notion

01:11:08.540 of what you mean by time

01:11:10.100 to the Andromeda galaxy.

01:11:11.920 And this depends

01:11:12.920 on what frame

01:11:13.820 you're using.

01:11:14.480 So if you're using

01:11:15.160 a one moving frame,

01:11:16.340 it hasn't happened yet

01:11:17.120 and the other one,

01:11:17.900 it has.

01:11:19.220 You just have to get

01:11:20.080 used to that idea

01:11:21.000 that there is no

01:11:22.140 universal notion

01:11:23.200 of time

01:11:23.920 ticking away.

01:11:25.940 Independently.

01:11:26.500 Independently.

01:11:26.900 A frame of reference.

01:11:28.040 Yeah,

01:11:28.600 that's right.

01:11:29.660 Yeah,

01:11:29.860 okay,

01:11:30.200 okay.

01:11:30.820 Can I go sideways

01:11:32.640 one more time?

01:11:33.320 Because I'd like

01:11:33.960 to ask you,

01:11:34.580 like I said,

01:11:35.040 I've been wanting

01:11:35.460 to talk to a theoretical

01:11:36.400 physicist forever.

01:11:38.760 I'm really curious

01:11:39.820 about black holes.

01:11:42.000 And so I have

01:11:42.840 this idea.

01:11:44.520 So tell me

01:11:45.360 what you think

01:11:45.800 about this.

01:11:46.340 So,

01:11:47.500 when a star

01:11:50.060 collapses past

01:11:51.080 the neutron stage

01:11:52.560 into a singularity,

01:11:55.460 is,

01:11:56.560 and let's say

01:11:57.140 there's multiple

01:11:57.700 black holes,

01:11:58.740 are they all

01:12:00.960 the same singularity?

01:12:02.780 Oh, no.

01:12:04.080 Okay, okay.

01:12:05.100 Well, I mean,

01:12:05.900 you can link up

01:12:06.800 them somewhere,

01:12:07.360 but no,

01:12:07.820 we don't,

01:12:09.340 far from saying

01:12:10.060 we don't know,

01:12:10.740 I would say no,

01:12:11.380 there are different

01:12:11.760 singularities.

01:12:12.880 Well, I was,

01:12:13.600 I was trying to

01:12:14.500 close that statement

01:12:15.560 and we won't really

01:12:16.380 know what we're

01:12:16.820 talking about here,

01:12:17.560 but go on.

01:12:18.060 Okay, well,

01:12:18.640 I was,

01:12:19.220 I thought about this

01:12:20.400 partly,

01:12:21.980 God,

01:12:22.220 it was so long ago

01:12:22.920 that I thought about this

01:12:23.820 that I can hardly

01:12:24.400 even remember

01:12:25.000 what I thought,

01:12:25.980 but I was trying

01:12:26.620 to wrestle with the fact

01:12:27.660 that you get this

01:12:29.140 unbelievably intense

01:12:31.220 not even single-point

01:12:33.420 gravitational field

01:12:34.640 and there,

01:12:35.540 there are strange

01:12:36.360 effects of,

01:12:38.560 there are strange

01:12:39.800 effects of time

01:12:40.920 inside the event

01:12:42.940 horizon of a black hole

01:12:44.160 from the perspective

01:12:45.440 of an observer.

01:12:46.340 Now,

01:12:46.520 if I remember correctly,

01:12:47.940 if you were watching

01:12:48.820 someone descend

01:12:49.680 into a black hole

01:12:50.540 from outside,

01:12:51.460 don't they go slower

01:12:52.360 and slower?

01:12:53.360 Yeah,

01:12:53.540 you would,

01:12:54.020 you would see them

01:12:54.800 hovering on the horizon

01:12:56.000 and then fading away

01:12:57.060 very quickly,

01:12:57.780 actually.

01:12:58.660 Okay.

01:12:59.080 They would just fade,

01:12:59.960 yeah.

01:13:00.320 They would fade.

01:13:01.220 What,

01:13:01.440 what happens,

01:13:02.980 what happens to their

01:13:04.020 sense of time

01:13:04.840 once they pass the

01:13:06.020 event horizon

01:13:06.560 compared to the

01:13:07.280 sense of time,

01:13:07.980 the framework?

01:13:08.640 Well,

01:13:08.840 they would go right

01:13:09.460 through and they

01:13:10.000 wouldn't notice

01:13:10.520 anything at the horizon.

01:13:12.000 Right,

01:13:12.340 and what would that

01:13:13.000 look,

01:13:13.780 and you wouldn't

01:13:14.180 be able to see them

01:13:14.700 anymore?

01:13:14.840 That's a very big

01:13:15.000 black hole.

01:13:15.640 Yeah.

01:13:15.780 There's a little one

01:13:16.420 that they would have

01:13:17.180 been wrecked by the

01:13:18.660 tidal forces,

01:13:20.680 but yeah,

01:13:21.340 if it's a big enough

01:13:22.060 black hole,

01:13:22.960 you could imagine

01:13:23.920 going through it,

01:13:24.460 you wouldn't even know

01:13:25.100 you'd gone through

01:13:25.540 the horizon.

01:13:26.320 If you could see

01:13:27.280 someone descending

01:13:28.120 into it,

01:13:28.760 how long would it

01:13:29.400 take them to arrive

01:13:30.500 at the surface?

01:13:31.900 Is that forever?

01:13:33.600 Not for them,

01:13:34.380 no.

01:13:34.700 No,

01:13:34.980 but for you

01:13:35.520 watching them.

01:13:37.280 Well,

01:13:37.500 you just see them,

01:13:38.840 you don't ever see

01:13:40.700 inside the horizon,

01:13:42.040 the light can't get

01:13:42.720 out from inside the

01:13:43.540 horizon.

01:13:43.740 Right,

01:13:43.760 right,

01:13:43.820 right.

01:13:44.280 So you never see

01:13:45.260 that,

01:13:45.860 that's right.

01:13:46.800 So they could be

01:13:47.760 watching their watches

01:13:49.360 and thinking,

01:13:50.580 whoops,

01:13:50.740 we've gone through

01:13:51.220 now,

01:13:51.980 and they would do

01:13:52.740 that,

01:13:53.000 but if you could

01:13:54.100 see their watch

01:13:54.780 from outside,

01:13:55.460 you'd see the hand

01:13:57.040 slowing down

01:13:57.960 and getting closer

01:13:58.680 and closer to the

01:13:59.440 moment when they

01:14:00.080 cross the horizon,

01:14:01.480 but fading out

01:14:02.160 at the same time.

01:14:02.780 But it would be

01:14:02.920 slowing down?

01:14:04.400 Yes,

01:14:05.160 you'd see it

01:14:05.700 slowing down,

01:14:06.300 yes.

01:14:06.500 Okay,

01:14:07.060 then if you

01:14:08.620 could see inside,

01:14:10.320 would you see

01:14:11.300 that continuing

01:14:12.000 to slow?

01:14:12.980 No,

01:14:13.780 no,

01:14:14.260 sorry,

01:14:14.540 I'm not sure

01:14:14.800 what you mean

01:14:15.080 by seeing inside.

01:14:16.760 once they pass

01:14:17.560 the event horizon,

01:14:18.260 you can't see

01:14:18.740 them anymore.

01:14:19.440 That's right.

01:14:19.540 But as they

01:14:19.960 approach the event

01:14:20.660 horizon,

01:14:20.980 if you were

01:14:21.320 watching them,

01:14:21.880 you'd see

01:14:22.500 their clock

01:14:23.240 slowing.

01:14:24.240 Yes,

01:14:24.720 if you were

01:14:25.460 outside.

01:14:26.020 If you were

01:14:26.240 outside.

01:14:26.800 So then I'm

01:14:27.540 wondering,

01:14:28.780 you can't

01:14:31.100 tell this,

01:14:31.740 but their

01:14:32.440 clock is going

01:14:33.120 to slow

01:14:33.640 the same way

01:14:34.220 as they

01:14:34.540 continue moving

01:14:35.240 towards the

01:14:36.280 black hole.

01:14:38.040 That's the

01:14:38.580 trouble,

01:14:39.020 you see,

01:14:39.420 it's the wrong

01:14:40.000 way to think

01:14:40.520 of it,

01:14:40.960 is that their

01:14:41.560 clock is,

01:14:43.320 is there a

01:14:43.940 time which

01:14:44.560 their clock

01:14:45.160 registers?

01:14:46.200 That's going

01:14:47.100 to saying

01:14:47.640 there is a

01:14:48.120 universal time,

01:14:49.140 which everybody

01:14:49.520 is supposed to

01:14:50.160 respect in some

01:14:50.920 sense.

01:14:51.880 relativity says

01:14:53.120 no.

01:14:54.160 There is no

01:14:54.820 notion.

01:14:55.220 But I'm

01:14:55.620 assuming their

01:14:56.340 clock would

01:14:57.100 continue to

01:14:57.620 slow relative

01:14:58.260 to you.

01:14:58.820 I'm not

01:14:59.220 trying to

01:14:59.580 assume an

01:15:00.260 absolute time

01:15:00.980 in the

01:15:01.440 question.

01:15:03.140 I'm just,

01:15:03.740 I'm wondering,

01:15:04.500 is that as

01:15:05.080 they approach,

01:15:06.100 I know,

01:15:06.660 I know,

01:15:07.100 the problem

01:15:07.480 that you

01:15:07.740 can't detect

01:15:08.320 it is the

01:15:08.740 problem here,

01:15:09.360 but as

01:15:10.440 they're moving

01:15:10.980 towards the

01:15:12.120 star relative

01:15:13.020 to someone

01:15:13.980 who's watching

01:15:14.420 them,

01:15:14.660 their clocks

01:15:15.160 are slowing.

01:15:16.260 According to

01:15:17.160 this frame

01:15:18.060 of reference.

01:15:18.900 Signals that

01:15:19.660 you would

01:15:20.040 receive,

01:15:20.560 maybe that

01:15:21.040 clock,

01:15:22.180 it emits a

01:15:23.380 little flash

01:15:23.800 of light.

01:15:24.120 Yeah,

01:15:24.460 yes,

01:15:24.760 that,

01:15:25.220 exactly.

01:15:25.780 And you

01:15:26.020 see,

01:15:26.300 look,

01:15:26.460 those flashes

01:15:26.900 are slowing

01:15:27.760 down.

01:15:28.900 Getting farther

01:15:29.420 apart.

01:15:29.900 Yes,

01:15:30.200 that's right.

01:15:30.900 Okay,

01:15:31.180 so then,

01:15:32.560 from the

01:15:33.060 external

01:15:33.540 perspective,

01:15:35.240 I was thinking

01:15:35.980 that it would

01:15:36.440 take them

01:15:36.880 forever to

01:15:37.780 reach the

01:15:38.520 singularity.

01:15:39.940 And if it

01:15:40.580 takes forever,

01:15:41.480 then that would

01:15:42.000 be the same

01:15:42.840 amount of time

01:15:43.720 that it would

01:15:44.120 take everything

01:15:44.880 in the

01:15:45.320 universe to

01:15:45.780 collapse back

01:15:46.480 into the

01:15:47.160 initial singularity

01:15:48.180 if the

01:15:49.140 collapsing

01:15:49.800 universe theory

01:15:50.760 is correct.

01:15:52.140 And so the

01:15:52.540 reason there's

01:15:53.020 infinite gravitation

01:15:54.040 in some sense

01:15:54.800 at the point

01:15:55.260 of the singularity

01:15:56.100 is because

01:15:56.600 that's a point

01:15:57.840 at which

01:15:58.740 the end of

01:15:59.760 the universe

01:16:00.220 is already

01:16:00.700 manifest in

01:16:01.740 the current

01:16:02.100 universe.

01:16:03.320 And that seems

01:16:03.920 to me that

01:16:04.320 that would

01:16:04.660 be,

01:16:06.260 what would

01:16:06.640 you say,

01:16:07.040 in keeping

01:16:07.600 with the idea

01:16:08.300 in some sense

01:16:08.920 of a block

01:16:09.440 universe.

01:16:11.480 I'm not quite

01:16:12.560 sure I see

01:16:13.100 the problem.

01:16:13.660 You're thinking

01:16:14.000 about the

01:16:14.380 whole universe

01:16:15.100 a collapsing

01:16:15.840 model.

01:16:16.360 Yes.

01:16:16.620 Which you

01:16:16.780 could certainly

01:16:17.220 have.

01:16:17.640 I'm also

01:16:18.780 wondering if

01:16:19.300 that's a

01:16:19.640 model that

01:16:20.040 you think

01:16:20.780 is...

01:16:20.920 No, it's

01:16:21.200 not my

01:16:21.540 model.

01:16:22.020 It's not.

01:16:22.320 It's certainly

01:16:22.760 a model that

01:16:23.340 people can

01:16:23.840 consider, sure.

01:16:25.600 And you

01:16:25.900 might have

01:16:26.320 an entire

01:16:27.500 universe which

01:16:28.540 is collapsing

01:16:29.380 inwards, yes.

01:16:30.720 And then you

01:16:31.600 would hit the

01:16:32.500 singularity before

01:16:33.480 you see

01:16:34.460 somebody else

01:16:35.060 hitting it.

01:16:36.160 In those

01:16:36.560 models, you

01:16:37.220 would find

01:16:39.100 you're in

01:16:40.180 trouble and

01:16:40.660 that your

01:16:40.980 curvature is

01:16:41.640 getting too

01:16:42.080 big and

01:16:43.060 you'd be

01:16:43.540 killed by

01:16:44.080 that as

01:16:45.920 you were

01:16:46.300 watching

01:16:46.580 somebody else

01:16:47.360 and you

01:16:47.760 see, no,

01:16:48.580 no, they're

01:16:48.940 happily not

01:16:49.540 nearly there

01:16:50.020 yet.

01:16:50.480 Right, not

01:16:50.920 nearly there

01:16:51.400 yet.

01:16:51.680 That's what

01:16:52.120 you would say.

01:16:53.860 Okay, okay.

01:16:54.600 That's okay.

01:16:55.300 Okay.

01:16:56.140 All right.

01:16:56.900 Then your

01:16:58.740 model isn't,

01:17:00.440 is it a

01:17:00.940 big bang

01:17:01.460 model with

01:17:02.500 an initial

01:17:03.100 emergence out

01:17:04.640 of nothing and

01:17:05.240 then eventually

01:17:06.200 a collapse

01:17:06.780 back to

01:17:07.220 that?

01:17:07.800 No.

01:17:08.120 No.

01:17:08.600 Okay, so how

01:17:09.380 do you

01:17:09.640 conceptualize

01:17:10.380 that?

01:17:11.640 Well, first

01:17:12.080 of all, it

01:17:12.540 is a big

01:17:12.940 bang model.

01:17:13.640 In other

01:17:14.020 words, there

01:17:14.360 is a big

01:17:14.820 bang, but

01:17:16.100 the big

01:17:16.420 bang was

01:17:16.860 not the

01:17:17.240 beginning.

01:17:19.640 The

01:17:19.760 model, the

01:17:20.760 reason people

01:17:21.360 have trouble

01:17:21.840 with this

01:17:22.200 model, I

01:17:22.580 think, is

01:17:22.900 you're

01:17:23.380 probably going

01:17:23.800 to have

01:17:24.060 trouble with

01:17:24.500 it and

01:17:24.940 you're not

01:17:25.280 unique in

01:17:26.100 this.

01:17:29.320 You see,

01:17:29.680 people tend

01:17:30.080 to think that

01:17:30.600 if you have a

01:17:31.100 model in

01:17:31.660 which it

01:17:32.640 keeps on

01:17:33.040 going in

01:17:33.520 some sense

01:17:34.000 and your

01:17:34.380 big bang

01:17:34.780 is not the

01:17:35.180 beginning,

01:17:35.760 that you've

01:17:36.100 got to

01:17:36.320 collapse back.

01:17:37.040 So it

01:17:37.500 expands and

01:17:38.240 it comes

01:17:38.540 back and

01:17:39.020 then you're

01:17:39.280 back.

01:17:40.460 It seems

01:17:41.080 simpler that

01:17:41.820 way.

01:17:42.180 Yes, but

01:17:42.700 this model is

01:17:43.380 not like

01:17:43.980 that.

01:17:44.860 That's where

01:17:45.280 you've got to

01:17:45.560 get your

01:17:45.840 mind around.

01:17:48.300 People have

01:17:49.460 trouble and

01:17:50.020 I agree with

01:17:50.480 it.

01:17:50.880 It is a

01:17:51.340 crazy idea.

01:17:52.100 I admit it's

01:17:52.600 a crazy idea.

01:17:53.500 The trouble is

01:17:53.880 it seems it's

01:17:54.720 quite likely

01:17:55.200 it's true from

01:17:56.940 certain observational

01:17:58.400 things, but

01:17:59.920 it's crazy too.

01:18:00.740 It could be

01:18:00.960 crazy and true

01:18:01.540 at the same

01:18:01.920 time.

01:18:02.640 Yeah, that's

01:18:04.520 like a

01:18:04.760 definition of

01:18:05.340 life.

01:18:06.000 Yes, but

01:18:07.000 you see, in

01:18:08.160 this model, the

01:18:10.500 universe expands

01:18:12.040 and it expands

01:18:13.040 and this

01:18:13.680 exponential

01:18:14.160 expansion we

01:18:15.300 seem to see,

01:18:15.980 the stars seem

01:18:16.640 to be starting

01:18:18.120 to go away

01:18:18.640 from us,

01:18:19.720 these very

01:18:20.140 distant stars

01:18:21.080 that people

01:18:21.380 look at,

01:18:22.540 with an

01:18:23.000 increasing

01:18:23.480 speed.

01:18:23.940 Right, right.

01:18:24.460 It seems to

01:18:24.900 be this

01:18:25.160 exponential

01:18:25.640 expansion.

01:18:27.320 That's what's

01:18:27.980 driven the

01:18:28.340 dark energy

01:18:28.960 hypothesis, I

01:18:29.880 presume.

01:18:30.100 That's what

01:18:30.260 they call it.

01:18:31.740 Well, I

01:18:32.420 claim it is

01:18:33.080 absolutely

01:18:33.740 nothing

01:18:34.340 inconsistent

01:18:34.940 with

01:18:35.260 Einstein's

01:18:35.960 1917, was

01:18:38.540 it, in

01:18:39.740 modification,

01:18:41.480 that he

01:18:41.960 regarded his

01:18:42.540 biggest mistake

01:18:43.260 but is probably

01:18:43.900 actually right.

01:18:44.920 That's to say

01:18:45.640 the introduction

01:18:46.220 of a cosmological

01:18:47.160 constant.

01:18:48.020 Right, right.

01:18:49.120 He introduced

01:18:49.900 it for the

01:18:50.240 wrong reason,

01:18:50.900 that's true,

01:18:51.740 but he was

01:18:54.020 right to

01:18:54.500 introduce it,

01:18:55.460 even though he

01:18:56.080 regarded his

01:18:56.680 biggest mistake.

01:18:58.080 Well, he

01:18:59.060 needed it to

01:18:59.620 make things

01:19:00.080 work, but he

01:19:00.880 didn't have any

01:19:01.360 real practical

01:19:02.000 reason for

01:19:02.560 assuming that it

01:19:03.140 was true,

01:19:03.540 apart from...

01:19:04.260 He wanted

01:19:04.700 an ecstatic

01:19:05.200 universe.

01:19:06.220 He didn't

01:19:06.520 like the

01:19:06.880 expansion.

01:19:07.660 No, this

01:19:08.880 was a time

01:19:09.500 before, I

01:19:10.640 think Hubble

01:19:11.080 had already

01:19:11.580 seen the

01:19:12.060 expansion, but

01:19:12.600 it hadn't

01:19:12.920 quite got

01:19:13.640 through to

01:19:14.000 Einstein, how

01:19:14.600 convincing

01:19:15.060 these results

01:19:16.160 were.

01:19:17.020 So he

01:19:17.340 wanted the

01:19:17.680 universe which

01:19:18.280 was just

01:19:18.500 static and

01:19:19.220 stayed there

01:19:19.700 forever.

01:19:20.340 Right, right.

01:19:21.180 And then he

01:19:21.640 needed the

01:19:22.140 cosmological

01:19:22.640 constant to

01:19:23.300 do that.

01:19:24.300 That's correct,

01:19:25.000 he would need

01:19:25.460 that.

01:19:26.380 However, he

01:19:28.520 was wrong.

01:19:29.320 When he got

01:19:30.060 convinced, oh,

01:19:30.600 no, the

01:19:30.800 universe is

01:19:31.300 expanding, sorry,

01:19:32.060 he said, oh,

01:19:33.180 that was a

01:19:33.520 mistake, my

01:19:34.040 biggest blunder,

01:19:34.720 he said.

01:19:35.600 The trouble is,

01:19:36.700 his biggest

01:19:37.100 blunder turned

01:19:37.640 out to be

01:19:38.040 true.

01:19:39.480 Apparently, I

01:19:40.400 mean, this is

01:19:41.660 an argument people

01:19:42.360 don't necessarily

01:19:42.960 think it was.

01:19:44.240 People might not

01:19:45.080 think it's the

01:19:45.540 cosmological

01:19:46.000 constant.

01:19:46.580 I think it

01:19:46.980 was, I think

01:19:47.560 it's right.

01:19:48.640 I have

01:19:48.900 internal reasons

01:19:50.680 for that.

01:19:51.560 But let's

01:19:51.980 say that this

01:19:54.640 is right, it's

01:19:55.300 a cosmological

01:19:55.880 constant.

01:19:56.820 The universe

01:19:57.220 expands and

01:19:57.900 expands,

01:19:58.940 exponential

01:19:59.460 expansion.

01:19:59.940 Now, you

01:20:01.420 might ask,

01:20:02.620 who's in

01:20:03.380 this universe

01:20:04.060 eventually?

01:20:04.900 Not us.

01:20:05.920 The black

01:20:06.280 holes will

01:20:06.760 all have

01:20:07.100 evaporated

01:20:07.700 away by

01:20:08.480 hawking

01:20:10.280 evaporation.

01:20:11.060 They'll

01:20:11.220 swallow

01:20:11.560 galactic

01:20:12.080 clusters.

01:20:13.080 What's

01:20:13.440 left in

01:20:13.840 the universe?

01:20:15.360 Pretty

01:20:15.600 well,

01:20:15.960 photons.

01:20:17.540 Now, I'm

01:20:17.820 giving you

01:20:18.160 the simplified

01:20:18.620 version of

01:20:19.320 the theory

01:20:19.720 because there's

01:20:20.960 some questions

01:20:21.500 about it

01:20:21.920 still.

01:20:22.900 But let's

01:20:23.420 say it's

01:20:24.080 dominated by

01:20:24.900 photons,

01:20:26.420 which is

01:20:27.120 pretty well

01:20:28.000 true, but

01:20:28.480 not, let's

01:20:29.540 take that.

01:20:30.080 Okay.

01:20:31.580 Now, the

01:20:32.260 trouble with

01:20:32.660 photons is

01:20:33.780 that they

01:20:34.340 don't feel

01:20:35.980 the passage

01:20:36.460 of time.

01:20:37.280 Right.

01:20:38.160 And more

01:20:39.540 importantly,

01:20:40.920 the equations

01:20:42.440 governing

01:20:43.020 light are

01:20:45.360 the wonderful

01:20:45.860 equations due

01:20:46.780 to James

01:20:47.600 Clark

01:20:47.880 Maxwell, the

01:20:49.280 Maxwell

01:20:49.560 equations.

01:20:50.760 And the

01:20:51.080 Maxwell

01:20:51.360 equations have

01:20:52.220 a very

01:20:52.520 interesting

01:20:52.900 property,

01:20:54.000 that they

01:20:54.440 can't tell

01:20:55.000 big from

01:20:55.460 small.

01:20:56.420 They're what's

01:20:56.760 called conformally

01:20:57.560 invariant.

01:20:58.480 But if you

01:20:59.200 have a

01:20:59.480 system in

01:21:00.980 which you've

01:21:01.380 got some

01:21:01.720 electromagnetic

01:21:02.200 field, and

01:21:04.040 you could

01:21:04.380 stretch this

01:21:05.180 system to

01:21:05.920 bigger or

01:21:06.380 smaller, it

01:21:07.840 doesn't notice

01:21:08.340 the difference.

01:21:09.520 The equations

01:21:10.000 work just as

01:21:10.780 well.

01:21:11.240 And you can

01:21:11.720 squash them

01:21:12.240 here and

01:21:12.580 stretch them

01:21:13.040 here.

01:21:13.920 Well, is

01:21:14.540 that in part

01:21:15.160 because space

01:21:15.920 really doesn't

01:21:16.480 mean anything

01:21:16.960 to a photon?

01:21:18.020 In a sense.

01:21:18.880 Well, it's

01:21:19.180 the scale.

01:21:20.180 You see, it's

01:21:20.620 what we call,

01:21:21.980 there's a term

01:21:22.660 which I'll use

01:21:23.240 here, it's

01:21:23.480 called conformal.

01:21:25.160 Conformal means

01:21:26.040 big and

01:21:26.600 small.

01:21:27.020 I very

01:21:28.620 much like, we

01:21:30.000 talked about

01:21:30.440 Escher a

01:21:30.780 minute ago,

01:21:31.560 there are

01:21:31.760 these Escher

01:21:32.280 pictures called

01:21:32.940 circle limits,

01:21:34.300 where he

01:21:34.600 describes what's

01:21:36.260 called hyperbolic

01:21:36.940 geometry, but

01:21:37.520 don't worry

01:21:37.840 about that.

01:21:38.360 The most

01:21:38.700 famous one is

01:21:39.320 these angels

01:21:39.800 and devils.

01:21:41.080 And you see

01:21:41.360 there's a

01:21:42.180 circular boundary,

01:21:43.420 and they look

01:21:44.000 as though they

01:21:44.320 get smaller and

01:21:45.000 smaller and

01:21:45.440 smaller as they

01:21:45.960 get to the

01:21:46.340 edge.

01:21:46.480 Yes.

01:21:47.380 Now, as far as

01:21:48.060 those angels and

01:21:48.880 devils are

01:21:49.300 concerned, the

01:21:50.420 little ones are

01:21:51.160 just the same as

01:21:51.860 the big ones.

01:21:52.820 Right.

01:21:53.240 They don't know

01:21:54.140 that they're

01:21:54.620 smaller towards

01:21:56.060 the edge, and

01:21:56.680 that to them is

01:21:57.420 an infinite

01:21:57.860 universe.

01:21:59.240 But to us, we

01:21:59.920 can see, no,

01:22:00.660 there's this

01:22:01.100 infinity, which

01:22:02.900 is just sitting

01:22:03.420 there.

01:22:04.800 And these

01:22:06.260 angels and

01:22:06.980 devils, if they

01:22:07.780 don't know big

01:22:09.300 from small, I'm

01:22:11.000 not sure, I

01:22:12.060 have a bit of

01:22:12.780 trouble using this

01:22:13.520 to explain things

01:22:14.180 because the

01:22:15.800 angels and

01:22:16.280 devils do have

01:22:16.840 a size in

01:22:17.480 the picture.

01:22:18.400 But you see, if

01:22:19.120 they were made

01:22:19.700 of massless

01:22:20.340 material, that

01:22:22.100 wouldn't know

01:22:23.320 big from small.

01:22:24.800 So if they were

01:22:25.360 made of just

01:22:25.900 electromagnetism, then

01:22:28.000 big and small are

01:22:28.840 equivalent.

01:22:29.940 And so you

01:22:30.300 wouldn't know

01:22:30.640 when you got to

01:22:31.060 the edge of

01:22:31.520 this universe.

01:22:33.080 So that infinity

01:22:33.860 is just like

01:22:34.600 anywhere else.

01:22:37.360 That's the

01:22:37.900 difficult concept

01:22:39.300 in this thing,

01:22:40.460 that the photons

01:22:41.340 reach infinity

01:22:43.220 without realizing

01:22:45.400 anything funny

01:22:46.040 has happened,

01:22:46.720 if you put it

01:22:47.200 like that.

01:22:48.560 Infinity in

01:22:50.340 this conformal

01:22:51.060 picture is just

01:22:53.060 like anywhere

01:22:53.520 else.

01:22:54.420 It's only mass

01:22:55.320 that knows the

01:22:55.940 difference.

01:22:57.200 If you want to

01:22:57.880 build a clock,

01:22:59.440 you need mass.

01:23:01.800 And this comes

01:23:02.960 from the two

01:23:03.940 most famous

01:23:04.580 equations of

01:23:06.800 20th century

01:23:07.820 physics.

01:23:09.500 And the two

01:23:10.020 most famous

01:23:10.560 equations, one

01:23:11.220 of them is

01:23:11.620 Einstein's E

01:23:12.500 equals mc

01:23:13.060 squared, of

01:23:13.560 course, which

01:23:14.580 tells us that

01:23:15.300 energy and

01:23:16.040 mass are

01:23:16.700 equivalent.

01:23:18.660 And the

01:23:19.160 earlier one

01:23:19.960 was Max

01:23:21.620 Planck's E

01:23:23.080 equals h

01:23:23.660 nu or E

01:23:24.300 equals hf,

01:23:25.140 whatever you

01:23:25.580 call the

01:23:26.020 frequency, which

01:23:27.040 tells you the

01:23:27.500 energy and

01:23:28.100 frequency are

01:23:28.800 equivalent.

01:23:30.180 Put the two

01:23:30.660 together, that

01:23:31.240 tells you mass

01:23:31.920 and frequency

01:23:32.500 are equivalent.

01:23:34.220 So that means

01:23:34.800 that if you

01:23:35.200 have a mass,

01:23:36.460 it is a

01:23:37.280 clock.

01:23:38.000 It has a

01:23:38.520 frequency simply

01:23:40.180 determined by

01:23:40.880 its mass.

01:23:42.720 And this

01:23:43.160 fact is

01:23:43.940 really the

01:23:44.700 basis of

01:23:45.440 modern clocks,

01:23:46.940 which are

01:23:47.240 extraordinarily

01:23:47.740 precise.

01:23:48.940 They don't

01:23:49.380 directly give

01:23:50.140 this because

01:23:50.500 the frequency

01:23:50.980 is much

01:23:51.320 too high.

01:23:51.780 You have

01:23:51.960 to scale

01:23:52.300 it down.

01:23:53.200 But roughly

01:23:53.660 it's the

01:23:53.920 same idea.

01:23:55.040 So a

01:23:55.300 clock, a

01:23:55.960 mass is

01:23:56.600 a clock.

01:23:57.820 But the

01:23:58.360 other side

01:23:59.380 of that

01:23:59.740 coin is if

01:24:00.920 you don't

01:24:01.360 have any

01:24:01.840 mass, you

01:24:02.740 don't have

01:24:03.220 any clocks.

01:24:04.300 So you

01:24:04.540 don't have any

01:24:04.880 time?

01:24:05.160 You don't

01:24:05.720 have any

01:24:06.120 time scale.

01:24:07.720 You don't

01:24:08.100 have any

01:24:08.440 distance measure.

01:24:09.720 So if the

01:24:10.280 world is

01:24:10.720 inhabited only

01:24:11.640 by massless

01:24:12.440 things, say

01:24:13.680 photons, then

01:24:15.540 it doesn't

01:24:16.100 know big

01:24:16.560 from small.

01:24:17.320 It doesn't

01:24:17.700 know hot

01:24:18.180 from cold.

01:24:19.840 And so the

01:24:20.200 idea is, and

01:24:21.020 this is where

01:24:21.400 you have to

01:24:21.840 take a deep

01:24:22.400 breath.

01:24:23.580 Yeah, as

01:24:24.240 opposed to all

01:24:24.740 the other

01:24:25.040 parts of this

01:24:25.580 conversation.

01:24:26.540 The idea is

01:24:27.360 that the

01:24:28.440 remote future

01:24:29.680 is indistinguishable

01:24:31.620 from a Big

01:24:32.300 Bang.

01:24:33.440 So long as

01:24:34.220 there is no

01:24:34.700 mass around.

01:24:36.540 Now in the

01:24:37.040 remote future,

01:24:37.720 the reason you

01:24:38.140 have no mass

01:24:38.620 around is

01:24:39.000 basically, well,

01:24:40.420 listen, there's

01:24:41.100 a complicated

01:24:41.660 part of the

01:24:42.220 argument.

01:24:42.660 Let's say it's

01:24:43.140 because there's

01:24:43.520 mainly photons.

01:24:44.540 That's good

01:24:44.900 enough.

01:24:45.820 What about the

01:24:46.300 other way?

01:24:46.580 What about the

01:24:46.940 Big Bang?

01:24:47.500 Well, there's

01:24:47.780 lots of mass

01:24:48.320 there, surely.

01:24:50.380 But the thing

01:24:51.000 is that at the

01:24:51.740 Big Bang, things

01:24:52.860 get so hot,

01:24:55.120 things are

01:24:55.480 moving around so

01:24:56.220 fast, if you

01:24:57.020 like, that the

01:24:58.440 energy, or the

01:25:00.840 mass energy,

01:25:02.260 mass

01:25:02.480 hyphen energy,

01:25:03.300 the concept of

01:25:04.680 mass, according

01:25:05.640 to Einstein, is

01:25:07.620 almost entirely in

01:25:08.740 their motion.

01:25:10.120 And then the

01:25:10.520 mass becomes more

01:25:11.700 and more irrelevant

01:25:12.700 the closer you get

01:25:14.680 to the Big Bang.

01:25:16.080 So again, you have

01:25:17.100 a situation where

01:25:17.880 mass is effectively

01:25:18.960 zero.

01:25:20.620 So are you,

01:25:22.040 are you, is it

01:25:23.900 your claim,

01:25:25.520 belief, theory,

01:25:26.720 that when things

01:25:28.760 ground out in a

01:25:29.600 universe that only

01:25:30.560 consists of

01:25:31.560 electromagnetic

01:25:32.140 radiation, that

01:25:33.760 that is now a

01:25:35.120 precondition for an

01:25:36.020 event like the

01:25:36.720 Big Bang?

01:25:37.700 In a sense, yes.

01:25:39.000 I'm saying that the

01:25:40.100 physics which is

01:25:40.900 going on at the

01:25:42.680 very remote future

01:25:43.680 is extraordinarily

01:25:45.620 like the physics

01:25:46.760 going on at the

01:25:47.960 very beginning.

01:25:49.760 I'm going to end

01:25:51.060 there.

01:25:51.080 And when I say

01:25:51.940 beginning, I only

01:25:52.640 mean the Big Bang

01:25:53.340 because it's not

01:25:53.900 really the beginning.

01:25:54.500 Yes, yes.

01:25:57.200 Well, it's such a

01:25:58.180 lovely place to end

01:25:59.040 and we have been

01:25:59.980 going for an hour

01:26:01.380 and a half and I

01:26:02.200 don't want to wear

01:26:02.940 you to a frazzle.

01:26:04.080 I'm not frazzled.

01:26:05.200 Well, I think I

01:26:06.620 might be.

01:26:07.700 Do you mind if I

01:26:08.540 just asked a couple

01:26:09.160 of questions?

01:26:09.420 Sure, go ahead,

01:26:10.200 Stephen, please.

01:26:10.920 One of the things

01:26:12.280 that I'm very struck

01:26:15.560 by in your account

01:26:16.680 of the three realms

01:26:18.540 of matter, mind,

01:26:21.720 and mathematics,

01:26:22.940 roughly speaking,

01:26:24.340 is that the realm

01:26:27.440 of mind or

01:26:29.260 consciousness is,

01:26:30.940 the realms are not

01:26:31.760 reducible one to

01:26:32.600 another.

01:26:33.040 So the realm of mind

01:26:34.280 cannot be reduced

01:26:35.100 simply to the realm

01:26:36.740 of matter, nor can

01:26:38.820 the realm of

01:26:39.380 mathematics be

01:26:40.180 reduced simply

01:26:40.840 to the realm

01:26:42.540 of matter.

01:26:43.240 They each have

01:26:43.840 their own existence.

01:26:45.040 Well, you see,

01:26:45.520 it's a picture

01:26:46.540 which I've used.

01:26:47.260 I'm not sure

01:26:47.700 whether it completely

01:26:49.380 concurs with my

01:26:50.420 current views,

01:26:50.960 but go on with

01:26:51.520 what you're saying.

01:26:51.660 Well, what I wanted

01:26:53.320 to ask you about

01:26:54.360 is, and it's a

01:26:55.360 two-part question,

01:26:56.040 but I'll start

01:26:56.500 with the first here,

01:26:57.620 and that is that

01:26:58.200 what is the

01:26:59.320 relationship?

01:27:00.600 It appears as though

01:27:01.360 there's a fundamental

01:27:02.100 intrinsic relationship

01:27:03.400 between the realm

01:27:05.580 of our consciousness,

01:27:06.780 our thinking,

01:27:07.540 on the one hand,

01:27:08.740 and the realm

01:27:10.160 of mathematics

01:27:11.180 or, let's say,

01:27:12.400 intelligible reality

01:27:14.520 that I'd like

01:27:18.040 to hear you

01:27:19.140 comment on.

01:27:20.360 I mean, just to

01:27:20.860 maybe see this

01:27:21.780 a little bit,

01:27:22.600 you know, the

01:27:22.840 philosopher Plato,

01:27:23.500 as you well know,

01:27:24.380 and you often describe

01:27:25.360 this realm of

01:27:25.940 mathematics as a

01:27:26.740 platonic realm,

01:27:28.120 had a theory

01:27:29.820 of recollection,

01:27:31.180 and we can regard

01:27:32.440 that as a myth

01:27:33.000 or whatever,

01:27:33.580 but it does appear

01:27:34.560 at some very profound

01:27:35.640 level that it's true

01:27:36.600 that we couldn't

01:27:39.780 come to understand

01:27:40.660 things that have

01:27:42.020 an intelligible reality

01:27:43.160 like mathematics

01:27:44.040 if they were not

01:27:44.840 already somehow

01:27:46.580 in us or potentially

01:27:48.400 in us in the patterns

01:27:49.860 or structures

01:27:50.380 of our own

01:27:51.140 consciousness.

01:27:52.180 consciousness.

01:27:54.420 So I'm wondering

01:27:55.300 if you could say

01:27:57.560 a few words

01:27:58.200 about the relationship

01:28:00.540 between our thinking

01:28:01.620 or the realization

01:28:02.440 of our thinking,

01:28:03.920 its development,

01:28:05.340 and the realm

01:28:07.620 of the mathematical,

01:28:09.080 or more broadly speaking,

01:28:10.740 you might call it

01:28:11.220 intelligible reality

01:28:12.300 or however you might

01:28:13.520 want to construe

01:28:14.180 that realm.

01:28:14.960 Are we talking about

01:28:16.600 the perception

01:28:17.140 of mathematics?

01:28:19.060 Let's start with that,

01:28:20.180 yes.

01:28:20.340 The possibility

01:28:20.860 of understanding

01:28:21.760 mathematics?

01:28:21.900 Yes, the possibility

01:28:22.700 of understanding

01:28:23.340 mathematics.

01:28:24.280 Gosh.

01:28:26.100 So what,

01:28:26.700 actually I lost

01:28:27.600 the thread of the question.

01:28:28.480 Oh, really the question

01:28:29.380 is, do you believe

01:28:30.860 there is,

01:28:31.440 is there an intrinsic

01:28:32.240 relationship that

01:28:32.880 appears to be

01:28:33.440 between our thinking

01:28:35.120 or the realm

01:28:36.120 of consciousness

01:28:37.580 and the realm

01:28:39.320 of mathematics

01:28:41.560 or intelligible reality

01:28:43.240 independent of us?

01:28:44.960 But intrinsically related,

01:28:46.080 are those realms

01:28:46.720 intrinsically related?

01:28:49.020 Well, I think I'm trying

01:28:49.800 to say that we can access

01:28:51.700 the truths of mathematics

01:28:54.180 with our consciousness.

01:28:56.420 How we do that,

01:28:57.480 I don't know.

01:28:58.840 But somehow we can access

01:29:00.920 that world.

01:29:03.440 And of course,

01:29:04.940 some people find it

01:29:05.780 easier than others

01:29:06.500 and this is a difficulty

01:29:08.180 in trying to talk

01:29:08.920 about these things.

01:29:10.040 It's a question

01:29:10.580 for Richard Dawkins

01:29:11.780 lately.

01:29:12.740 Yes, and the risk

01:29:14.740 of going out too far,

01:29:17.020 I want to just make

01:29:18.440 an effort

01:29:19.160 at relating this question

01:29:21.780 to the work

01:29:23.740 of Dr. Peterson.

01:29:25.760 One of the things

01:29:26.440 that Dr. Peterson

01:29:29.120 has clearly shown

01:29:31.540 is that there are

01:29:32.140 many, many people

01:29:32.920 who are not,

01:29:35.120 it's called,

01:29:35.820 some people are

01:29:36.340 as a shorthand

01:29:36.840 who call this

01:29:37.180 the meaning crisis.

01:29:37.960 Many, many people

01:29:38.460 who are finding

01:29:38.860 they simply don't have

01:29:39.840 the resources

01:29:41.120 to make sense

01:29:41.820 of their lives

01:29:42.340 in a way

01:29:42.680 that seems

01:29:43.000 to be adequate

01:29:43.520 to the demands

01:29:44.040 of their own

01:29:44.460 self-consciousness.

01:29:46.160 And so, you know,

01:29:47.640 at the heart

01:29:48.160 of human life

01:29:48.740 as creatures

01:29:50.460 that are evolved

01:29:51.020 as self-conscious

01:29:51.720 is clearly

01:29:53.100 finding a way

01:29:56.260 of understanding

01:29:56.820 ourselves in the world

01:29:57.660 that is adequate

01:29:58.220 to the demands

01:29:58.860 of that very

01:29:59.660 self-consciousness.

01:30:00.760 And life has no,

01:30:02.880 what life is

01:30:03.780 as meaningful

01:30:04.320 is precisely

01:30:04.960 to answer that demand

01:30:06.780 of ourselves

01:30:07.400 as a self-conscious creature.

01:30:09.360 And one of the things

01:30:11.560 that it seems to me

01:30:12.260 that very much

01:30:12.800 is at work

01:30:14.320 at this,

01:30:15.220 at least some

01:30:15.700 profound level,

01:30:17.120 is the idea

01:30:18.020 that everything

01:30:19.100 is reducible

01:30:19.840 simply to materiality.

01:30:21.760 That, as it were,

01:30:22.440 eliminates any

01:30:23.460 substantial reality

01:30:24.840 to our own consciousness.

01:30:26.320 If that were true,

01:30:27.220 it would just be

01:30:27.840 an epiphenomenum.

01:30:29.660 But it also denies

01:30:31.460 the existence

01:30:32.200 of an independent realm

01:30:34.060 of spirit,

01:30:35.880 as some philosophers

01:30:36.680 would say,

01:30:37.160 of intelligible reality

01:30:39.020 or simply put it

01:30:39.900 in terms of

01:30:40.500 the mathematical.

01:30:41.740 And so what I'm

01:30:42.660 wondering about,

01:30:44.260 and it's maybe

01:30:45.000 an outrageous question

01:30:45.800 to ask a physicist,

01:30:46.580 but you have written

01:30:47.680 many and many

01:30:49.020 beautiful books

01:30:50.000 that are clearly

01:30:50.900 related very much

01:30:51.920 to this very question

01:30:53.320 that has to do

01:30:55.060 with the nature

01:30:55.520 of human realization.

01:30:58.620 That is, say,

01:30:59.040 how we come

01:30:59.580 to understand ourselves

01:31:01.060 in the world.

01:31:05.220 And what I'm

01:31:06.960 trying to drive

01:31:08.160 to here

01:31:08.620 is whether

01:31:09.540 you have thoughts

01:31:10.800 on the nature

01:31:13.140 of the realization

01:31:14.460 of our consciousness.

01:31:16.200 We could call that

01:31:16.740 simply human realization

01:31:17.920 as a shorthand.

01:31:19.960 And about the...

01:31:20.820 It's a question like

01:31:21.820 what might constitute

01:31:23.360 the fact

01:31:24.160 of intelligibility.

01:31:25.980 Right?

01:31:26.200 There's a capacity

01:31:27.460 for us

01:31:27.900 to reflect

01:31:29.060 this structure

01:31:30.500 that the mathematical

01:31:31.740 structure,

01:31:32.340 the physical structure,

01:31:33.180 and that seems

01:31:35.100 to be part

01:31:35.560 of what you

01:31:36.160 described as

01:31:36.740 understanding.

01:31:38.180 It's like

01:31:38.440 perhaps you're

01:31:40.820 formulating a question

01:31:42.340 about the metaphysics

01:31:43.280 of that intelligibility.

01:31:45.180 Yes, or we could

01:31:46.200 simply say,

01:31:47.440 Sir Roger,

01:31:48.140 in your observation

01:31:50.160 and reflection,

01:31:52.580 what are the forms

01:31:53.900 of life and culture

01:31:57.200 that appear

01:31:58.660 to facilitate

01:31:59.580 that deep

01:32:00.640 human realization

01:32:01.180 realization

01:32:01.780 that appears

01:32:02.760 to have

01:32:03.600 an intrinsic

01:32:04.560 relationship

01:32:05.200 between ourselves

01:32:06.940 as self-conscious

01:32:07.740 creatures

01:32:08.140 and the nature

01:32:09.460 of what is

01:32:10.600 independent of us.

01:32:11.700 And that does seem

01:32:12.220 to be at the heart

01:32:13.120 of the question

01:32:13.640 of meaning

01:32:14.140 that Dr. Peterson

01:32:15.300 has been working on

01:32:17.540 and perhaps helped

01:32:18.380 others to think about.

01:32:20.400 I mean,

01:32:20.720 I'm not quite sure

01:32:23.040 I've grasped

01:32:23.440 the question here,

01:32:23.980 but it has to do

01:32:24.580 with people's...

01:32:27.920 I mean,

01:32:28.260 this relationship

01:32:29.320 between conscious

01:32:31.300 beings

01:32:31.840 and this world

01:32:34.540 of mathematical,

01:32:36.080 platonic world,

01:32:36.780 if you like.

01:32:36.980 Yes.

01:32:37.580 And it's certainly

01:32:38.500 something which people

01:32:40.500 differ very much

01:32:41.400 in how easily

01:32:42.280 they make that contact,

01:32:44.220 if you like.

01:32:45.060 And I certainly

01:32:46.140 have made attempts

01:32:47.380 to try and explain

01:32:49.060 to people who are not

01:32:50.040 used to thinking

01:32:50.660 about mathematics,

01:32:52.920 if you like,

01:32:53.400 to gain a little bit

01:32:56.560 in that understanding

01:32:57.460 of what's going on

01:32:58.400 in mathematics.

01:32:59.940 So that's how successful

01:33:02.320 or not,

01:33:02.760 I don't know,

01:33:03.320 but it's at least

01:33:03.820 an attempt to help out.

01:33:04.460 Well, thank you.

01:33:05.680 And as a follow-up

01:33:06.720 to that question,

01:33:08.040 do you intuit

01:33:09.020 or think

01:33:10.160 or believe

01:33:11.620 that in that realm

01:33:14.680 of mathematics,

01:33:17.080 as you might say,

01:33:17.520 intelligible reality,

01:33:19.240 do you think other things

01:33:21.000 might also be included

01:33:22.180 in that, let's say,

01:33:24.100 truth generally

01:33:26.080 or love

01:33:27.080 or beauty

01:33:28.260 are,

01:33:30.300 because of course

01:33:30.800 the dominant view

01:33:31.480 right now

01:33:31.880 is that these are

01:33:32.280 simply constructs

01:33:33.100 of the human mind

01:33:33.860 or culture,

01:33:34.900 it's another way

01:33:35.440 of saying the human mind

01:33:36.300 or material forces

01:33:38.320 that are at work

01:33:38.980 that have given rise

01:33:39.820 to these constructs

01:33:40.980 but don't actually

01:33:41.520 have any independent

01:33:43.000 reality themselves.

01:33:45.200 Do you think

01:33:46.240 that there is a kinship

01:33:47.740 or perhaps

01:33:48.400 that mathematical reality

01:33:50.340 or truth

01:33:50.920 is part of

01:33:52.480 a realm

01:33:53.140 that exists

01:33:54.820 as independently

01:33:55.620 as mathematics do?

01:33:57.220 I think there's an,

01:33:58.900 I believe I have

01:34:00.200 in some places,

01:34:01.060 I'd have to think

01:34:01.560 where it is,

01:34:03.040 adorned this picture

01:34:04.160 with the platonic world

01:34:05.900 being part of

01:34:06.620 a bigger picture

01:34:07.340 which has to do

01:34:09.080 with other things than,

01:34:10.820 you see,

01:34:11.080 that's to do with truth

01:34:12.140 if you like,

01:34:12.960 but there's a question

01:34:13.940 of beauty

01:34:14.500 or other qualities

01:34:15.760 and I think

01:34:16.900 that may be relating

01:34:18.160 to the question

01:34:18.880 you're raising here.

01:34:20.160 I don't have much

01:34:21.240 to say about it

01:34:22.180 but I do,

01:34:23.120 I do remember

01:34:24.120 drawing a picture

01:34:25.000 somewhere,

01:34:25.500 I can't even remember

01:34:26.180 where now,

01:34:26.980 in which this platonic world

01:34:28.220 was part of

01:34:28.960 a larger body

01:34:31.520 of things like

01:34:33.680 beauty,

01:34:34.680 for example,

01:34:35.160 and qualities,

01:34:37.180 virtue in fact also,

01:34:39.660 qualities which are

01:34:41.000 things that our

01:34:42.540 consciousness is concerned

01:34:44.020 with and very important

01:34:45.880 but not quite

01:34:47.420 what I've been talking about

01:34:48.560 which is a very specific thing

01:34:50.100 which is understanding

01:34:50.920 mathematical truth.

01:34:52.160 So I certainly would agree

01:34:53.380 that there's more

01:34:54.900 to it than that

01:34:55.680 and I think that's

01:34:56.200 what you're telling me

01:34:56.920 and I'm going along

01:34:59.180 with that,

01:34:59.640 it's just that I didn't

01:35:00.400 know what to do with it,

01:35:01.360 I think that's the trouble.

01:35:03.900 Well,

01:35:04.080 the reason I ask

01:35:05.420 is because

01:35:05.780 it does seem to me

01:35:07.480 that if these

01:35:08.000 two things are connected

01:35:09.780 that is say

01:35:10.220 that the nature

01:35:11.200 of what we are

01:35:12.300 and think that we are

01:35:13.240 is somehow intrinsically

01:35:14.920 according to its own

01:35:15.900 let's say structure

01:35:17.140 or nature

01:35:17.800 connected,

01:35:19.840 I mean we might even say

01:35:20.600 I mean

01:35:20.860 if human beings

01:35:22.620 don't have no nature

01:35:23.700 there's some sense

01:35:24.200 in which mathematics itself

01:35:25.160 is not even possible.

01:35:26.500 I mean certainly not for us.

01:35:27.780 I mean it seems to be

01:35:28.360 we have an innate capacity

01:35:30.640 to varying degrees

01:35:32.200 as you say

01:35:32.760 to think these thoughts

01:35:35.040 or perceive these realities

01:35:36.780 but if that realm

01:35:38.540 is say the realm

01:35:40.140 of mathematics

01:35:40.540 is part of a larger realm

01:35:41.740 in the way

01:35:42.040 that you've just

01:35:42.840 just said

01:35:44.180 and it is related

01:35:46.280 intrinsically

01:35:46.980 to

01:35:47.420 to what we are

01:35:49.000 that our

01:35:49.560 self-perception

01:35:51.220 and self-consciousness

01:35:52.140 has a structure

01:35:52.740 such that it

01:35:53.520 it calls out for

01:35:55.180 in some sense

01:35:55.960 an understanding

01:35:57.280 of these things

01:35:57.940 or an understanding

01:35:58.500 of ourselves

01:35:58.980 in relation

01:35:59.560 to those realities

01:36:02.320 it does seem to me

01:36:03.860 that human realization

01:36:04.700 has to be thought

01:36:05.480 very fundamentally

01:36:06.280 through from

01:36:07.840 that starting point.

01:36:11.320 Yeah

01:36:11.440 I think

01:36:13.100 all I can say here

01:36:14.240 is that

01:36:14.620 I have considered

01:36:15.540 that in places

01:36:17.060 I could probably

01:36:19.240 find a transparency

01:36:20.380 that I used to use

01:36:21.360 to talk

01:36:21.700 whether I can find

01:36:22.440 a place

01:36:22.840 in something I've written

01:36:23.740 I'm not so sure

01:36:24.480 but I certainly

01:36:25.200 did consider

01:36:25.860 the platonic

01:36:27.260 you know

01:36:28.380 truth

01:36:28.720 if you like

01:36:29.240 it was really

01:36:29.880 more like

01:36:30.280 truth

01:36:31.000 beauty

01:36:32.020 and morality

01:36:33.200 in that

01:36:34.600 in that order

01:36:35.300 that's a good question

01:36:36.540 I think

01:36:36.820 if I could find

01:36:37.980 whether there was

01:36:39.480 an order

01:36:39.680 I think there was

01:36:40.560 an order

01:36:40.800 yeah

01:36:41.120 what would

01:36:41.920 when you say

01:36:43.580 morality

01:36:44.060 in that sense

01:36:45.020 I mean truth

01:36:45.640 and beauty

01:36:46.060 in some sense

01:36:46.760 that's more

01:36:47.180 apprehensible

01:36:47.780 than morality

01:36:49.060 do you have

01:36:49.920 any idea

01:36:50.460 why your intuition

01:36:51.400 drove you

01:36:52.000 to place

01:36:52.680 morality

01:36:53.500 at the outermost

01:36:55.720 part of that

01:36:56.220 particular diagram

01:36:56.960 I can't remember

01:36:57.060 whether even

01:36:57.580 I did or not

01:36:58.420 so that

01:36:59.280 I'd have to

01:37:00.800 rake through

01:37:02.740 all the things

01:37:03.380 I'd

01:37:03.680 I suspect

01:37:05.640 there must be

01:37:06.160 an article

01:37:06.500 somewhere

01:37:06.820 where I did that

01:37:07.440 but I do remember

01:37:08.160 using it in talks

01:37:09.180 yes

01:37:09.620 so this would be

01:37:12.040 addressing

01:37:12.440 the remark

01:37:13.580 it's more

01:37:14.480 that I don't

01:37:15.060 really

01:37:15.460 have anything

01:37:16.820 that I can say

01:37:17.800 I can say

01:37:18.640 okay I like things

01:37:19.480 I like Bach

01:37:20.140 for instance

01:37:20.680 very fond of that

01:37:22.680 very much

01:37:23.240 and certain

01:37:23.840 I think

01:37:26.660 particularly with music

01:37:27.600 there are things

01:37:28.140 which I can

01:37:29.120 relate to

01:37:30.300 very much

01:37:30.800 but in order

01:37:31.360 to make it

01:37:32.080 anything

01:37:32.580 that I can talk

01:37:34.240 in a rational way

01:37:36.340 about

01:37:37.880 I sort of

01:37:39.060 I give up

01:37:39.720 there

01:37:40.020 because I'm not

01:37:40.600 good enough

01:37:41.360 at arguing

01:37:42.460 about these things

01:37:43.260 right

01:37:43.480 right

01:37:43.620 yeah

01:37:44.460 oh yes

01:37:45.840 we're doing this

01:37:46.420 I'm so happy

01:37:48.640 that you

01:37:49.180 agreed to talk to me

01:37:50.360 well I hope

01:37:51.080 it was of some use

01:37:52.160 to you

01:37:52.500 yes

01:37:52.820 but some of these

01:37:54.600 things

01:37:54.800 are difficult

01:37:55.840 to describe

01:37:56.960 and clearly

01:37:58.760 it's

01:37:59.080 particularly

01:38:01.080 these things

01:38:01.620 with the Big Bang

01:38:02.640 and all that

01:38:03.040 which is

01:38:03.440 an idea

01:38:04.520 which

01:38:04.860 we do

01:38:06.480 seem to

01:38:07.240 see evidence

01:38:08.060 for something

01:38:09.300 signals

01:38:10.060 you see

01:38:11.560 there could be

01:38:11.960 signals coming through

01:38:12.800 from the previous

01:38:13.620 eon

01:38:14.260 as I call it

01:38:14.960 and I think

01:38:16.100 we see them

01:38:16.660 the colleagues

01:38:18.640 of mine

01:38:19.000 you'd have to

01:38:19.520 throw that in

01:38:20.100 at the end

01:38:20.620 wouldn't you

01:38:21.120 what do you mean

01:38:22.640 oh

01:38:23.440 well

01:38:23.760 yeah

01:38:24.120 you see

01:38:26.180 I used to go around

01:38:26.920 giving talks

01:38:27.520 about this stuff

01:38:28.140 very often

01:38:28.480 I thought

01:38:28.680 this is fine

01:38:29.280 I can do this

01:38:29.840 nobody will ever know

01:38:30.720 whether I'm wrong or not

01:38:31.620 unless I can talk about

01:38:32.720 this forever

01:38:33.220 and I thought

01:38:34.780 I wonder if that's right

01:38:36.040 and I thought

01:38:36.900 well

01:38:37.240 first thing I thought about

01:38:38.340 was collisions

01:38:38.880 between supermassive

01:38:39.920 black holes

01:38:40.480 I mean

01:38:42.000 our galaxy

01:38:43.000 is in a collision

01:38:43.760 course

01:38:44.180 with the Andromeda

01:38:44.860 galaxy

01:38:45.300 it has a black hole

01:38:47.160 much bigger than ours

01:38:48.060 after we collide

01:38:49.780 and things settle down

01:38:50.960 a bit

01:38:51.240 our poor little black hole

01:38:53.640 will be gulped down

01:38:54.420 by it

01:38:54.860 and there will be

01:38:56.520 enormous

01:38:57.200 gravitational waves

01:38:59.060 going out

01:38:59.660 carrying away

01:39:01.020 some proportion

01:39:01.980 of the

01:39:02.780 significant proportion

01:39:04.020 of the mass energy

01:39:05.840 in the two

01:39:06.960 objects being

01:39:07.880 concerned here

01:39:09.060 and maybe

01:39:10.960 they could be

01:39:11.400 detected by

01:39:12.060 different people

01:39:12.680 maybe they could

01:39:13.560 be detected

01:39:14.060 in the next

01:39:14.740 eon

01:39:15.280 gravitational waves

01:39:17.340 can get through

01:39:18.140 from one

01:39:18.860 to the next

01:39:19.500 this is clearly

01:39:21.100 according to the

01:39:22.260 model

01:39:22.500 it can

01:39:23.000 so various

01:39:24.680 people

01:39:25.100 tried to search

01:39:26.900 for these things

01:39:27.580 mainly my

01:39:28.300 colleague

01:39:28.820 Vahe Gerzajan

01:39:29.800 who is an

01:39:30.260 Armenian

01:39:31.060 and some other

01:39:32.860 Polish people

01:39:33.620 who later get on

01:39:34.460 it

01:39:34.700 and they had

01:39:35.740 a much clearer

01:39:36.620 calculation

01:39:38.380 of what they

01:39:39.060 regarded as the

01:39:39.840 probability

01:39:40.400 that these signals

01:39:41.140 were really there

01:39:41.860 in 99.4%

01:39:44.780 confidence level

01:39:45.700 I think they got

01:39:46.500 that they are

01:39:47.640 yes

01:39:48.140 that they're there

01:39:48.800 some people

01:39:50.820 didn't believe it

01:39:51.440 because they don't

01:39:51.940 believe the model

01:39:52.500 of course

01:39:52.940 but then more

01:39:54.600 importantly

01:39:55.200 more recently

01:39:56.040 this is a paper

01:39:57.220 mainly one

01:39:58.680 which came out

01:39:59.380 in the

01:39:59.760 monthly notices

01:40:01.860 of the Royal

01:40:02.360 Astronomical Society

01:40:03.580 about a year

01:40:06.040 and a half ago

01:40:06.700 and we claim

01:40:08.000 that we see

01:40:08.820 what we call

01:40:09.940 Hawking points

01:40:10.800 that would be

01:40:12.540 after one of these

01:40:14.160 galactic clusters

01:40:15.140 gets swallowed up

01:40:15.940 by a black hole

01:40:16.620 and there's nothing

01:40:17.120 left but this black hole

01:40:18.240 it evaporates away

01:40:19.660 by Hawking evaporation

01:40:20.700 all that radiation

01:40:22.880 doesn't even begin

01:40:24.020 until so late

01:40:25.120 that by the time

01:40:26.720 it comes into

01:40:27.320 the next eon

01:40:27.980 it's a little tiny point

01:40:29.200 that little tiny point

01:40:30.940 over 380,000 years

01:40:32.720 spreads out

01:40:33.940 there's a little bit

01:40:35.380 of an argument

01:40:35.880 about how far

01:40:36.660 it spreads out

01:40:37.340 but what we seem

01:40:38.660 to see

01:40:39.180 is it spreads out

01:40:40.480 to about

01:40:41.020 4 degrees

01:40:42.600 cross

01:40:43.120 which is about

01:40:43.700 8 times

01:40:44.560 the diameter

01:40:45.380 of the full moon

01:40:46.400 and that's what we see

01:40:48.580 so we see

01:40:49.800 with now

01:40:50.320 a bigger confidence level

01:40:51.600 99.98

01:40:54.140 there is an argument

01:40:55.040 now which

01:40:55.660 is to do with

01:40:57.220 whether the

01:40:57.700 actual size we see

01:40:59.240 is consistent

01:41:00.000 with expectations

01:41:00.980 and there's

01:41:01.980 interesting questions

01:41:02.900 about that

01:41:03.400 but ignoring

01:41:04.960 that point

01:41:05.700 we have

01:41:07.680 a 99.98

01:41:09.100 confidence level

01:41:10.440 that they're there

01:41:11.780 the spots

01:41:13.500 there's little spots

01:41:14.700 of raised temperature

01:41:15.620 and we see them

01:41:17.120 and why

01:41:18.840 are they there

01:41:19.460 what are they doing

01:41:21.040 there

01:41:21.320 according to current

01:41:22.120 theory

01:41:22.320 they shouldn't be there

01:41:23.180 according to the

01:41:24.460 theme I put forward

01:41:25.560 yes they should be there

01:41:27.280 and they're the result

01:41:28.560 of the remote future

01:41:31.420 of a galactic cluster

01:41:32.500 propagating itself

01:41:36.180 into the next eon

01:41:37.100 the radiation

01:41:38.980 yes

01:41:39.400 it's the radiation

01:41:40.500 the Hawking radiation

01:41:41.560 probably

01:41:42.020 which comes from

01:41:43.200 the black hole

01:41:43.760 and all this mass

01:41:44.780 gets concentrated

01:41:45.540 into that ray

01:41:46.120 and that comes

01:41:46.940 through a little tiny point

01:41:47.960 which by the time

01:41:49.360 you see it

01:41:49.940 is spread out

01:41:51.340 to about 8 times

01:41:53.660 the diameter

01:41:54.260 of the moon

01:41:54.820 and we see

01:41:56.800 these spots

01:41:57.480 and they're seen

01:41:58.480 they're seen both

01:42:01.300 in the more

01:42:02.740 sophisticated

01:42:04.100 Planck satellite

01:42:06.260 data

01:42:07.980 and if you look

01:42:09.620 at the

01:42:10.120 what is it now

01:42:12.180 the five strongest

01:42:13.320 points

01:42:13.920 in the Planck data

01:42:15.200 and look

01:42:16.160 in the earlier

01:42:16.900 W map

01:42:17.760 that's a different

01:42:18.440 satellite

01:42:18.840 completely different

01:42:19.680 and you find

01:42:20.760 these spots

01:42:21.260 exactly the same

01:42:21.980 places

01:42:22.340 in the W map

01:42:23.840 data

01:42:24.200 there's a sixth

01:42:25.440 one in the

01:42:25.960 W map data

01:42:26.720 which is just

01:42:27.280 about as strong

01:42:27.960 as those five

01:42:28.640 look back

01:42:29.600 in the Planck data

01:42:30.340 and that's there too

01:42:31.300 so those six points

01:42:33.440 I claim

01:42:35.200 are genuine

01:42:36.760 Hawking points

01:42:37.640 as I'm calling them

01:42:38.460 and there's no

01:42:40.920 other explanation

01:42:41.680 for them

01:42:42.140 that I know of

01:42:42.940 they're seen

01:42:45.120 and they are

01:42:46.120 independently confirmed

01:42:48.520 by another group

01:42:49.440 who were claiming

01:42:50.660 they don't see anything

01:42:51.580 but they do see

01:42:52.480 they see evidence

01:42:53.880 for these spots

01:42:54.540 too

01:42:54.800 you just look

01:42:55.680 at the data

01:42:56.180 okay

01:42:58.980 what's the reason

01:42:59.860 for it

01:43:00.620 any

01:43:00.960 current

01:43:01.780 cosmology

01:43:03.040 I can't see

01:43:04.600 any explanation

01:43:05.300 for them

01:43:05.760 this model

01:43:07.060 predicts them

01:43:07.720 I haven't seen

01:43:11.480 any response

01:43:12.240 from the

01:43:12.760 after a year

01:43:14.420 and a half

01:43:14.840 from the

01:43:15.500 established

01:43:16.560 cosmology

01:43:18.540 community

01:43:19.200 published in

01:43:20.960 a very respectable

01:43:21.680 journal

01:43:22.080 it's probably

01:43:22.480 the leading

01:43:22.980 journal

01:43:23.420 for astrophysical

01:43:25.420 processes

01:43:25.980 there is an

01:43:29.300 error

01:43:29.620 but

01:43:29.960 in this

01:43:31.420 which is rather

01:43:32.000 curious

01:43:32.520 but I don't

01:43:33.500 want to go

01:43:33.800 into that

01:43:34.160 but it doesn't

01:43:35.660 it doesn't

01:43:36.200 much

01:43:37.220 whether the

01:43:39.340 confidence level

01:43:40.100 should be reduced

01:43:41.040 a bit

01:43:41.380 I think that

01:43:42.040 probably a case

01:43:42.980 for that

01:43:43.360 but not much

01:43:44.600 because the

01:43:45.360 signal is pretty

01:43:45.940 strong

01:43:46.360 thank you very

01:43:48.240 much

01:43:48.580 that was

01:43:49.340 that was

01:43:50.320 something man

01:43:50.940 well just to

01:43:52.180 bring us to a

01:43:52.640 close here

01:43:53.200 Sir Roger

01:43:53.780 it's been a

01:43:54.380 great honour

01:43:55.320 to speak with

01:43:56.060 you today

01:43:56.400 I know for

01:43:56.780 both me

01:43:57.220 and Dr.

01:43:57.760 Peterson

01:43:58.020 thank you so

01:43:58.920 very much

01:43:59.300 for your time

01:43:59.820 it's been my

01:44:00.760 pleasure

01:44:01.020 thank you

01:44:01.880 Thank you.

244. Asking A Theoretical Physicist About The Physics Of Consciousness ｜ Roger Penrose

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