1
00:00:06,240 --> 00:00:08,560
Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

2
00:00:08,680 --> 00:00:11,200
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have

3
00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:13,560
Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This one is going to

4
00:00:13,600 --> 00:00:17,079
Speaker 1: be an interview that Joe conducted with a friend of

5
00:00:17,120 --> 00:00:21,720
Speaker 1: the show, Daniel Whitson, titled Do Alien Speak Physics? And

6
00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:26,239
Speaker 1: of course this concern is Whitson's new book, Do Alien

7
00:00:26,320 --> 00:00:29,240
Speaker 1: Speak Physics out now wherever you get your books. So

8
00:00:29,280 --> 00:00:35,360
Speaker 1: without further ado, let's jump right into this interview episode.

9
00:00:35,760 --> 00:00:39,519
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

10
00:00:45,440 --> 00:00:48,440
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

11
00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:52,239
Speaker 3: name is Joe McCormick. Today on the podcast, we're going

12
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:54,840
Speaker 3: to be featuring an interview in which I talked to

13
00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:00,360
Speaker 3: returning show guest physicist Daniel Whitson about his upcoming book book,

14
00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:05,600
Speaker 3: Do Aliens Speak Physics. Daniel shared an advance copy of

15
00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:08,080
Speaker 3: this book with me, and I think it's great. It

16
00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:12,600
Speaker 3: is a fascinating book length thought experiment that is full

17
00:01:12,640 --> 00:01:16,400
Speaker 3: of insights about what could be universal and what could

18
00:01:16,440 --> 00:01:22,600
Speaker 3: be unique in surprising ways about human intelligence, science, language, mathematics,

19
00:01:22,600 --> 00:01:26,360
Speaker 3: and culture. A bit of bio about Daniel. Daniel Whitson

20
00:01:26,520 --> 00:01:30,119
Speaker 3: is a particle physicist and physics professor. He's the co

21
00:01:30,200 --> 00:01:34,280
Speaker 3: host of the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe and

22
00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:38,759
Speaker 3: co author of We Have No Idea, also co creator

23
00:01:38,880 --> 00:01:42,920
Speaker 3: of the PBS kids show Eleanor Wonders Why. His book

24
00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:46,800
Speaker 3: Do Aliens Speak Physics? Is co written and illustrated by

25
00:01:46,920 --> 00:01:54,520
Speaker 3: Andy Warner. And now onto my conversation with Daniel Daniel Whitson,

26
00:01:54,720 --> 00:01:55,760
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show.

27
00:01:56,280 --> 00:01:58,400
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me on. Excited to talk

28
00:01:58,440 --> 00:01:58,920
Speaker 4: to you again.

29
00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:04,040
Speaker 3: So the book is Do Aliens Speak Physics? And I

30
00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:07,880
Speaker 3: have really really been enjoying this book. I plan to

31
00:02:08,200 --> 00:02:11,079
Speaker 3: finish it with a full read for today. But my

32
00:02:11,360 --> 00:02:14,320
Speaker 3: last night, my toddler was having some sleep disturbances. That

33
00:02:14,400 --> 00:02:16,080
Speaker 3: was an all night thing, so I was rushing to

34
00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:19,000
Speaker 3: get through the last couple chapters. Maybe you can fill

35
00:02:19,080 --> 00:02:21,760
Speaker 3: me in with the greater detail that I missed in

36
00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:23,639
Speaker 3: the skimming of the last two or three.

37
00:02:23,800 --> 00:02:25,680
Speaker 4: Maybe you should have read the book to you toddler

38
00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:26,640
Speaker 4: to help put them to sleep.

39
00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:30,560
Speaker 3: Maybe I think she would really like the illustrations. Actually,

40
00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:33,080
Speaker 3: but the problem is I had digital versions, so that

41
00:02:33,080 --> 00:02:35,399
Speaker 3: would involve showing it to her on a screen, which

42
00:02:35,440 --> 00:02:37,320
Speaker 3: is a whole other thing. You know, that just turns

43
00:02:37,360 --> 00:02:40,040
Speaker 3: into want to see other things on the screen. So

44
00:02:40,120 --> 00:02:43,320
Speaker 3: can't wait for my print copy. That'll be exciting. But

45
00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:45,919
Speaker 3: I guess we should start with the elevator pitch. What

46
00:02:46,120 --> 00:02:49,120
Speaker 3: is the central question you're exploring in this book?

47
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:53,799
Speaker 4: Yeah, the question the book asks is whether aliens do

48
00:02:53,919 --> 00:02:57,520
Speaker 4: science and specifically physics, the same way we do. You know,

49
00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:01,639
Speaker 4: when aliens arrive, can they just tell us the secrets

50
00:03:01,639 --> 00:03:04,600
Speaker 4: of the universe? Can they leap us forward a thousand,

51
00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:08,880
Speaker 4: a million, a billion years into the scientific future? Is

52
00:03:08,960 --> 00:03:12,400
Speaker 4: science really just one track that way, one line and

53
00:03:12,440 --> 00:03:14,960
Speaker 4: we could just sort of like skip forward, you know,

54
00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:17,960
Speaker 4: with the benefits of all their time and energy. Or

55
00:03:18,080 --> 00:03:21,760
Speaker 4: is science more complicated? Is it multiple paths? Are there

56
00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:26,320
Speaker 4: multiple solutions? Do aliens even do science? So this book

57
00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:31,000
Speaker 4: is an exploration essentially of like how universal is our

58
00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 4: theory of physics? Is what we're learning something about the

59
00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:37,000
Speaker 4: universe or is it something about the way we think?

60
00:03:37,160 --> 00:03:40,000
Speaker 4: Or both? And can we try to figure that out

61
00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:41,800
Speaker 4: before the aliens arrive.

62
00:03:42,600 --> 00:03:45,480
Speaker 3: One of the metaphors or kind of shorthand that you

63
00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:48,080
Speaker 3: use in the book is the idea of an interplanetary

64
00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:52,920
Speaker 3: physics conference. You're asking the question, if we ever make,

65
00:03:53,400 --> 00:03:56,760
Speaker 3: you know, undeniable contact with an alien species, can we

66
00:03:56,920 --> 00:04:00,480
Speaker 3: get our heads together and communicate meaningfully about the laws

67
00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:05,000
Speaker 3: of physics? And so to illustrate those kinds of meetings,

68
00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:07,080
Speaker 3: one thing I really liked about your book is that

69
00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:10,760
Speaker 3: each chapter comes with what you call a contact hypothetical,

70
00:04:11,160 --> 00:04:13,040
Speaker 3: where you kind of tell a little story. There's some

71
00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:16,240
Speaker 3: fiction writing in this book. It's mostly, you know, nonfiction,

72
00:04:16,360 --> 00:04:19,880
Speaker 3: scientific writing and philosophical writing. But I like these little

73
00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:22,520
Speaker 3: fictional scenarios, and I think we might want to get

74
00:04:22,520 --> 00:04:24,440
Speaker 3: into a couple of these as we go along. But

75
00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:29,400
Speaker 3: before we do that, to sort of frame how you

76
00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:32,520
Speaker 3: explore the question of do aliens speak physics? And could

77
00:04:32,560 --> 00:04:36,839
Speaker 3: we communicate about physics with them? You extend the classic

78
00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:40,919
Speaker 3: Drake equation, So could you explain that, maybe first explain

79
00:04:41,560 --> 00:04:44,920
Speaker 3: what the original Drake equation is and how it works,

80
00:04:45,320 --> 00:04:48,039
Speaker 3: and then also explain the way you extend it and

81
00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:50,000
Speaker 3: the terms you added to it to get at this

82
00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:51,719
Speaker 3: alien physics conference question.

83
00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:56,920
Speaker 4: Yes, so the Alien Physics Conference is in there because

84
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:00,280
Speaker 4: it's a literal fantasy of mine, you know, I mean,

85
00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:03,040
Speaker 4: I got into physics to understand the universe, and I

86
00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:05,800
Speaker 4: want to figure it out, but sometimes I feel like, gosh,

87
00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:10,160
Speaker 4: progress is frustratingly slow, and you know what if there

88
00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:12,360
Speaker 4: are aliens out there that just have the answers, it's

89
00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:15,640
Speaker 4: so tantalizing and frustrating to think that, like somebody out

90
00:05:15,640 --> 00:05:18,640
Speaker 4: there has figured out what is quantum gravity? How do

91
00:05:18,680 --> 00:05:21,679
Speaker 4: you build wormholes? How did the universe begin? Like somebody

92
00:05:21,800 --> 00:05:23,920
Speaker 4: maybe knows these answers and they could just tell us,

93
00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:27,160
Speaker 4: beam them to us, email us your textbooks. You know,

94
00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:32,400
Speaker 4: imagine you know, Newton getting to read Einstein's a relativity theory,

95
00:05:32,800 --> 00:05:36,200
Speaker 4: or you know, Aristotle getting to read modern physics, like

96
00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:38,920
Speaker 4: that could be us. Wow, so that's in there because

97
00:05:39,320 --> 00:05:43,159
Speaker 4: that's my literal, like I can taste it, but you know,

98
00:05:43,240 --> 00:05:45,839
Speaker 4: I also wonder if it's really true, and so I

99
00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:49,080
Speaker 4: sort of The book is a meditation on like all right, Daniel,

100
00:05:49,120 --> 00:05:53,279
Speaker 4: calm down. Maybe those answers aren't actually out there. And

101
00:05:53,279 --> 00:05:57,520
Speaker 4: we wrote those little fictional interludes to try to give

102
00:05:57,640 --> 00:06:01,760
Speaker 4: like more concrete examples rather than just thinking theoretically about

103
00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:04,120
Speaker 4: the nature of physics and the structure of and the

104
00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:07,200
Speaker 4: philosophical underpinnings, like let's walk through what it might be

105
00:06:07,320 --> 00:06:10,680
Speaker 4: like to give people a concrete example. And also we

106
00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:13,000
Speaker 4: didn't want to tackle the whole question at once, like

107
00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:15,560
Speaker 4: it's a lot of pieces, and so we were inspired

108
00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:18,600
Speaker 4: by the way Drake took apart the question of are

109
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:22,080
Speaker 4: there aliens out there? And why haven't we heard from them?

110
00:06:22,560 --> 00:06:25,080
Speaker 4: He broke that into pieces, and he starts by calculating

111
00:06:25,880 --> 00:06:28,440
Speaker 4: how many stars are in the universe, what fraction of

112
00:06:28,480 --> 00:06:32,279
Speaker 4: those stars might have life, what fraction of stars with

113
00:06:32,360 --> 00:06:35,960
Speaker 4: life might develop civilization, how long do those civilizations last.

114
00:06:36,320 --> 00:06:38,080
Speaker 4: It's a classic approach in science. You have a problem

115
00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:40,160
Speaker 4: that's too big to solve, so you break it into

116
00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:42,880
Speaker 4: a bunch of pieces, none of which you maybe can solve,

117
00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:44,400
Speaker 4: but some of which you can make a little bit

118
00:06:44,400 --> 00:06:47,200
Speaker 4: of progress on. So you're not completely stymied by your

119
00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:49,360
Speaker 4: inability to make progress one area, because you can move

120
00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:52,159
Speaker 4: in another area. And for example, we now know that

121
00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:54,720
Speaker 4: there are lots and lots of stars in the universe.

122
00:06:55,200 --> 00:06:58,480
Speaker 4: Every galaxy that's out there has like hundreds of billions

123
00:06:58,480 --> 00:07:01,240
Speaker 4: of stars, and there's hung's of billions of galaxies. So

124
00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:04,360
Speaker 4: the number of stars out there just in the observable

125
00:07:04,440 --> 00:07:08,839
Speaker 4: universe is very, very vast, and shockingly, We've made progress

126
00:07:08,839 --> 00:07:12,160
Speaker 4: on other aspects, like how many planets does an average

127
00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:15,680
Speaker 4: star have? And the answer again is surprisingly big. You know,

128
00:07:16,080 --> 00:07:18,440
Speaker 4: there's a lot of uncertainty there and depends on how

129
00:07:18,480 --> 00:07:21,120
Speaker 4: you define earth like planet, But like something like twenty

130
00:07:21,160 --> 00:07:25,360
Speaker 4: five percent of stars out there have rocky planets that are,

131
00:07:25,480 --> 00:07:28,400
Speaker 4: you know, earth like according to some definition. So we're

132
00:07:28,440 --> 00:07:32,000
Speaker 4: talking a huge number of earth like planets in the universe.

133
00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:36,640
Speaker 4: But you know, the Drake equation is multiplicative. The number

134
00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:39,200
Speaker 4: of aliens that contact us is the number of stars

135
00:07:39,480 --> 00:07:42,840
Speaker 4: times the fraction that have life, times the fraction that

136
00:07:42,880 --> 00:07:45,640
Speaker 4: are technological, et cetera. So if any of those numbers

137
00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:49,160
Speaker 4: are zero, we're screwed. And we don't know what fraction

138
00:07:49,240 --> 00:07:51,720
Speaker 4: of those planets have life, and what fraction of that

139
00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:55,160
Speaker 4: life becomes technological, and how long that life lasts. So

140
00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:58,000
Speaker 4: that's the structure of the Drake equation, and we thought

141
00:07:58,000 --> 00:07:59,440
Speaker 4: it was a natural thing to do to extend that

142
00:07:59,480 --> 00:08:02,520
Speaker 4: to answer the qu question how many alien civilizations are

143
00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:05,920
Speaker 4: there out there that we can talk science with? And

144
00:08:06,040 --> 00:08:08,160
Speaker 4: so to do that we broke it into several questions.

145
00:08:08,240 --> 00:08:11,520
Speaker 4: We said, well, what fraction of them do science? You know,

146
00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:15,000
Speaker 4: is that even a thing aside of Earth, is science

147
00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:17,680
Speaker 4: like a human endeavor? Maybe everybody else is bored by

148
00:08:17,680 --> 00:08:21,480
Speaker 4: the question, or you know, maybe they're technological but not scientific.

149
00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,680
Speaker 4: And then we asked, well, can we communicate with them?

150
00:08:24,920 --> 00:08:26,800
Speaker 4: You know, can we figure out a way to have

151
00:08:26,880 --> 00:08:31,120
Speaker 4: a mental mind meld about these things? Do they ask

152
00:08:31,200 --> 00:08:33,080
Speaker 4: the same kind of questions that we ask?

153
00:08:33,160 --> 00:08:33,319
Speaker 1: Are?

154
00:08:33,679 --> 00:08:37,160
Speaker 4: Are we curious about the same things? Do they find

155
00:08:37,280 --> 00:08:40,719
Speaker 4: and accept intuitively the same kind of answers? Would they

156
00:08:40,760 --> 00:08:44,079
Speaker 4: even take the same path as we would? So rather

157
00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:46,080
Speaker 4: than tackling this whole big question all at once, and

158
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:50,360
Speaker 4: the whole question and even its parts are essentially unanswerable,

159
00:08:50,600 --> 00:08:52,360
Speaker 4: but to even make some progress, we thought it was

160
00:08:52,440 --> 00:08:54,000
Speaker 4: useful to break it into some pieces.

161
00:08:54,400 --> 00:08:56,800
Speaker 3: So let's look at a few of these pieces one

162
00:08:56,840 --> 00:09:00,240
Speaker 3: by one. One of the earliest questions you look at

163
00:09:00,240 --> 00:09:04,760
Speaker 3: in the book is the question do aliens wonder? Why

164
00:09:05,280 --> 00:09:09,559
Speaker 3: do they even have the motivation to pursue scientific questions?

165
00:09:10,600 --> 00:09:13,920
Speaker 3: It's hard for me to imagine that aliens would ever

166
00:09:13,960 --> 00:09:19,120
Speaker 3: develop the ability to travel or communicate between stars without

167
00:09:19,320 --> 00:09:22,679
Speaker 3: having something like science. Obviously, you can imagine us traveling

168
00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:25,520
Speaker 3: out and going to other star systems and finding bacteria

169
00:09:25,559 --> 00:09:28,319
Speaker 3: and other things that we wouldn't think of as technological

170
00:09:28,320 --> 00:09:32,120
Speaker 3: intelligences but are live on other planets. But assuming that

171
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:34,840
Speaker 3: they are able to somehow get in contact with us,

172
00:09:35,880 --> 00:09:39,240
Speaker 3: a desire to understand and model the principles of how

173
00:09:39,280 --> 00:09:43,000
Speaker 3: reality works just seems like it would almost be a

174
00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:45,920
Speaker 3: must have. But you came up with a hypothetical contact

175
00:09:45,960 --> 00:09:49,679
Speaker 3: scenario to imagine this. Could you briefly describe kind of

176
00:09:49,720 --> 00:09:53,439
Speaker 3: sketch the contact scenario and then talk about some reasons

177
00:09:53,480 --> 00:09:58,280
Speaker 3: for thinking a species maybe could actually communicate between stars

178
00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:00,800
Speaker 3: or travel between stars with out science.

179
00:10:01,480 --> 00:10:04,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really counterintuitive. And when I first started

180
00:10:04,200 --> 00:10:07,600
Speaker 4: digging into this, I also thought like, of course, you know,

181
00:10:07,679 --> 00:10:09,400
Speaker 4: everybody out there is going to be doing science because

182
00:10:09,400 --> 00:10:11,480
Speaker 4: they're gonna be curious about the universe, and science is

183
00:10:11,480 --> 00:10:14,120
Speaker 4: the way to figure it out. But the more I

184
00:10:14,160 --> 00:10:17,640
Speaker 4: talk to historians and philosophers, the more I understood that,

185
00:10:17,679 --> 00:10:20,280
Speaker 4: you know, science has a lot of humanity in it,

186
00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:24,959
Speaker 4: the structure, the institutions, the process, and it's fairly recent.

187
00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,720
Speaker 4: It's something we've been doing, you know, in the way

188
00:10:27,720 --> 00:10:30,000
Speaker 4: we call science for only a few centuries, which is

189
00:10:30,040 --> 00:10:32,160
Speaker 4: a blip of time. And so it could be like

190
00:10:32,200 --> 00:10:35,480
Speaker 4: an intermediate step towards something greater, a better way to

191
00:10:35,760 --> 00:10:38,640
Speaker 4: learn about the universe. And so you know, it's not

192
00:10:38,720 --> 00:10:42,240
Speaker 4: that I don't think that aliens are doing science. It's

193
00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:44,720
Speaker 4: just that I wanted to make the strongest argument I

194
00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:48,839
Speaker 4: could that maybe they aren't, because you know, deeply, because

195
00:10:48,840 --> 00:10:52,360
Speaker 4: deep down, I feel like we're biased towards thinking aliens

196
00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:53,840
Speaker 4: are going to be like us, the sort of star

197
00:10:53,880 --> 00:10:56,640
Speaker 4: trek fallacy, like they're us with wrinkles on their forehead

198
00:10:56,720 --> 00:10:59,839
Speaker 4: or with pointy ears, right, but fundamentally they're human, and

199
00:11:00,200 --> 00:11:01,520
Speaker 4: I think that that's narrow minded.

200
00:11:01,559 --> 00:11:03,280
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to break out of it.

201
00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:05,840
Speaker 4: And you know, the book is an exercise essentially and

202
00:11:05,880 --> 00:11:10,600
Speaker 4: convincing myself that aliens might be more alien than we imagine.

203
00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:14,120
Speaker 4: And so your question is, like, is it possible to

204
00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:17,640
Speaker 4: explore the stars to come visit Earth and not be scientific,

205
00:11:17,679 --> 00:11:21,000
Speaker 4: to be deeply technological? And you only have to look

206
00:11:21,040 --> 00:11:23,200
Speaker 4: back at a history on Earth to see that, like,

207
00:11:23,280 --> 00:11:26,160
Speaker 4: we have technology, well before we have science, you know,

208
00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:30,560
Speaker 4: people have been like fermenting yeast into bread and beer,

209
00:11:30,679 --> 00:11:34,480
Speaker 4: which is you know, fairly technological without understanding anything about

210
00:11:34,480 --> 00:11:36,280
Speaker 4: what was going on in it or people have been

211
00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:39,720
Speaker 4: making swords, you know, which requires if you want to

212
00:11:39,800 --> 00:11:43,320
Speaker 4: understand it, like pretty deep level knowledge of like solid

213
00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:46,840
Speaker 4: state physics and metallurgy. But there were masters making incredible

214
00:11:46,880 --> 00:11:51,640
Speaker 4: devices well before they understood why, and even people exploring

215
00:11:51,640 --> 00:11:53,880
Speaker 4: the earth. Right if you say science began a few

216
00:11:53,960 --> 00:11:57,320
Speaker 4: hundred years ago, well, humanity has been like venturing from

217
00:11:57,360 --> 00:12:00,640
Speaker 4: shore to shore for thousands of years. And so I

218
00:12:00,679 --> 00:12:03,160
Speaker 4: took that as an inspiration and try to come up

219
00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:06,840
Speaker 4: with an example of how aliens might get here without

220
00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:10,800
Speaker 4: being scientific. And I was thinking about a planet where

221
00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:14,439
Speaker 4: you have some critters and they're floating through their oceans,

222
00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:18,520
Speaker 4: and on their planet, the atmosphere is thicker than it

223
00:12:18,559 --> 00:12:21,280
Speaker 4: is on ours, and so the boundary between the ocean

224
00:12:21,400 --> 00:12:24,920
Speaker 4: and the atmosphere is a little fuzzier, and so it's

225
00:12:24,960 --> 00:12:28,280
Speaker 4: not so crazy to imagine that they might stumble across

226
00:12:28,320 --> 00:12:31,080
Speaker 4: some way to not just navigate their oceans, but also

227
00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:34,280
Speaker 4: navigate their atmospheres, you know, just like we did. And

228
00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:37,720
Speaker 4: in this case, these folks are like little bladders that

229
00:12:37,920 --> 00:12:41,199
Speaker 4: can absorb, can emit air into order to go up,

230
00:12:41,320 --> 00:12:44,480
Speaker 4: or accept ballasts to go down. They're like little submarines essentially,

231
00:12:44,760 --> 00:12:47,839
Speaker 4: but they learned to navigate their atmosphere, and then it's

232
00:12:47,880 --> 00:12:50,199
Speaker 4: not too big a leap to imagine that maybe they

233
00:12:50,280 --> 00:12:52,920
Speaker 4: also figure out how to coat themselves in something so

234
00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,560
Speaker 4: they can navigate above the atmosphere through their solar system.

235
00:12:56,720 --> 00:12:59,000
Speaker 4: And in their solar system, they don't just have a star.

236
00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:01,120
Speaker 4: They have a binary star system, one of which is

237
00:13:01,160 --> 00:13:04,600
Speaker 4: a black hole. And so they spend millions of years

238
00:13:04,640 --> 00:13:07,640
Speaker 4: like whizzing around this black hole, and they develop an

239
00:13:07,679 --> 00:13:11,400
Speaker 4: intuitive understanding of space and curvature. So they don't have

240
00:13:11,400 --> 00:13:13,880
Speaker 4: an Einstein who's given them an equation. They just have

241
00:13:13,920 --> 00:13:17,160
Speaker 4: a feeling for curvature. You know, the way that curvature

242
00:13:17,200 --> 00:13:20,160
Speaker 4: is very counterintuitive to us. It's like, weird to think

243
00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:23,160
Speaker 4: about space being bent between here and there and distances

244
00:13:23,160 --> 00:13:26,280
Speaker 4: are oscillating, and what It's very hard for people to

245
00:13:26,360 --> 00:13:30,199
Speaker 4: really grock general relativity because we grew up in a

246
00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:32,240
Speaker 4: place where we imagine space is always flat. It's always

247
00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:34,560
Speaker 4: our experience. But what if you didn't, and what if

248
00:13:34,559 --> 00:13:37,079
Speaker 4: you spent millions of years whizzing around a black hole

249
00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:40,960
Speaker 4: and really experiencing curvature and somehow intuited your way into

250
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:45,560
Speaker 4: manipulating spatial curvature and traveling the stars, and so that

251
00:13:45,720 --> 00:13:48,800
Speaker 4: was like hypothetical scenario to try to make a concrete

252
00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:51,280
Speaker 4: to give an example of how aliens could arrive here

253
00:13:51,679 --> 00:13:54,960
Speaker 4: with warped technology effectively and not be able to explain

254
00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,280
Speaker 4: it to us because they're like, what do you mean? Like,

255
00:13:57,320 --> 00:13:59,320
Speaker 4: here's how you do it? What do you mean why?

256
00:13:59,440 --> 00:14:05,000
Speaker 3: How? That kind of thing does seem hard to imagine,

257
00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:07,240
Speaker 3: But I like the way you really like put the

258
00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:09,520
Speaker 3: work in to sketch it out and compare it to

259
00:14:09,640 --> 00:14:12,280
Speaker 3: I mean, as you're saying, it seems like it would

260
00:14:12,280 --> 00:14:14,079
Speaker 3: depend on a lot of trial and error, so it

261
00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:16,920
Speaker 3: might be a much slower process than the progress of

262
00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:22,000
Speaker 3: human science human technology. But a sort of branching question

263
00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:26,840
Speaker 3: off of that is, do you think the desire to

264
00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:31,120
Speaker 3: understand why, to ask the question why is a core

265
00:14:31,360 --> 00:14:36,280
Speaker 3: feature of intelligence or could that be a specific feature

266
00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:41,240
Speaker 3: of just human minds? You know, I was trying to

267
00:14:41,240 --> 00:14:44,320
Speaker 3: think about this, and I had a suspicion that I

268
00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:48,200
Speaker 3: don't know. I suspect that the question why has got

269
00:14:48,280 --> 00:14:52,359
Speaker 3: to be pretty fundamental to intelligence because we define intelligence

270
00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:57,240
Speaker 3: largely by the ability to solve problems or learn, which

271
00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:02,200
Speaker 3: is almost always going to be accelerated by understanding underlying principles.

272
00:15:03,120 --> 00:15:06,400
Speaker 3: But I don't know. I could definitely be missing things there.

273
00:15:06,440 --> 00:15:08,440
Speaker 3: They are contingencies I'm not seeing.

274
00:15:09,160 --> 00:15:11,400
Speaker 4: I think you put your finger on the deepest part

275
00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:14,520
Speaker 4: of this question, and that's really what we're going to

276
00:15:14,520 --> 00:15:16,720
Speaker 4: get an answer to when the aliens come, is how

277
00:15:16,800 --> 00:15:20,040
Speaker 4: much overlap do we have with them? If they do

278
00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:22,440
Speaker 4: wonder why the same way we do, then we're gonna

279
00:15:22,440 --> 00:15:23,760
Speaker 4: have a lot in common and we're gonna be able

280
00:15:23,760 --> 00:15:26,080
Speaker 4: to learn a lot from them. But if they don't,

281
00:15:26,160 --> 00:15:28,720
Speaker 4: then it's going to tell us something. It's going to

282
00:15:28,800 --> 00:15:33,000
Speaker 4: tell us that we are unusual in some way. And

283
00:15:33,040 --> 00:15:36,800
Speaker 4: that's really my fantasy. I mean, I got into this thinking, Wow,

284
00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:39,320
Speaker 4: it would be wonderful if aliens show up and they're

285
00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:41,480
Speaker 4: basically just like us, but further ahead, because then we

286
00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:43,920
Speaker 4: can zoom forward in science. But actually, I think that

287
00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:46,560
Speaker 4: might be the most boring outcome. It might be the

288
00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:49,800
Speaker 4: most amazing. We might learn the most, not necessarily about

289
00:15:49,840 --> 00:15:52,720
Speaker 4: quantum field theory, but about the nature of humanity and

290
00:15:52,800 --> 00:15:56,040
Speaker 4: intelligence and the experience of being alive in this universe.

291
00:15:56,280 --> 00:15:59,400
Speaker 4: If they're so fundamentally weird and different that they're like,

292
00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:02,440
Speaker 4: don't that these questions don't make sense to them, or

293
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:04,920
Speaker 4: they don't even ask these questions that they have another

294
00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:07,480
Speaker 4: way of having a relationship with the universe. Because I

295
00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:11,080
Speaker 4: agree with you, it feels like it's essential. It's part

296
00:16:11,120 --> 00:16:13,920
Speaker 4: of being intelligent, building a model in your mind and

297
00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:16,560
Speaker 4: probing that model and using it to solve your problem,

298
00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:18,560
Speaker 4: even if that problem is like, hey, how do we

299
00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:21,360
Speaker 4: take down this mammoth for dinner? Or you know, how

300
00:16:21,360 --> 00:16:24,000
Speaker 4: do I solve this social problem with my neighbor, you know,

301
00:16:24,080 --> 00:16:26,280
Speaker 4: which I think humans have been doing for hundreds of

302
00:16:26,320 --> 00:16:29,440
Speaker 4: thousands of years. But it could be not. You know,

303
00:16:29,600 --> 00:16:32,520
Speaker 4: it could be that that's as fundamental as like eating

304
00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:35,040
Speaker 4: sweet things for breakfast. You know, the first time I

305
00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:38,880
Speaker 4: went traveling and I was like, hmm, wow, people have

306
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:41,960
Speaker 4: like weird spicy fish soup for breakfast. I didn't even

307
00:16:42,320 --> 00:16:45,320
Speaker 4: imagine that you could have other kinds of things for breakfast.

308
00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:47,360
Speaker 4: Or the first time I saw like a toilet in

309
00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:49,320
Speaker 4: a country where like you don't just sit, you know,

310
00:16:49,400 --> 00:16:52,600
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, WHOA, mind blowing. There's so many

311
00:16:52,640 --> 00:16:57,840
Speaker 4: areas where we can't imagine beyond our experience. And I'm

312
00:16:57,840 --> 00:17:01,040
Speaker 4: hopeful when the aliens come that they're gonna blow our

313
00:17:01,080 --> 00:17:04,199
Speaker 4: minds with their different way of having a relationship with

314
00:17:04,240 --> 00:17:07,479
Speaker 4: the universe. One of my favorite hypotheticals is maybe they

315
00:17:07,560 --> 00:17:10,840
Speaker 4: used to do science. Maybe science is some sort of

316
00:17:10,840 --> 00:17:13,199
Speaker 4: primitive way of understanding the universe, and what they have

317
00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:16,800
Speaker 4: is like, you know, science plus the way we think

318
00:17:16,800 --> 00:17:20,640
Speaker 4: about natural philosophy, Like we look at Aristotle and we're like, cool, bro,

319
00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:23,160
Speaker 4: you made a lot of progress just thinking about stuff.

320
00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:27,080
Speaker 4: Why didn't you think about doing experiments? You know, empiricism

321
00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:29,680
Speaker 4: is obvious, like, come on, just go outside and try

322
00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,320
Speaker 4: it for ten minutes. Why argue for hours and hours

323
00:17:32,320 --> 00:17:35,560
Speaker 4: and hours? It seems obvious to us. And in that way,

324
00:17:35,680 --> 00:17:38,840
Speaker 4: maybe the aliens have upgraded their science. They're like, yeah,

325
00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:39,960
Speaker 4: we used to do it that way, but then we

326
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:42,719
Speaker 4: came up with this other trick that's so much better.

327
00:17:43,119 --> 00:17:45,800
Speaker 4: I can't believe you guys are still doing experiments or whatever.

328
00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:48,800
Speaker 4: And so it could be that they don't do science

329
00:17:48,840 --> 00:17:52,320
Speaker 4: because they've left it behind for something even more powerful.

330
00:18:02,720 --> 00:18:07,199
Speaker 3: So another one of the questions you look at is

331
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:12,600
Speaker 3: assuming that aliens do ask the question why they do

332
00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:16,119
Speaker 3: have some kind of scientific understanding, would we be able

333
00:18:16,200 --> 00:18:19,639
Speaker 3: to communicate with them about it and you asked this

334
00:18:19,680 --> 00:18:21,600
Speaker 3: in a number of different ways. I definitely want to

335
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:24,080
Speaker 3: get into the question of math in just a second.

336
00:18:24,080 --> 00:18:26,000
Speaker 3: But before we look at math, I want to look

337
00:18:26,040 --> 00:18:31,160
Speaker 3: at difficulties in basic just language communication. And you draw

338
00:18:31,240 --> 00:18:37,320
Speaker 3: the analogy with difficulties in deciphering lost human languages. Could

339
00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:39,840
Speaker 3: you talk a bit about that, and how illuminating that

340
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:42,640
Speaker 3: those kind of troubles we've faced in the past are.

341
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:45,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is fun because you know, we haven't met

342
00:18:45,840 --> 00:18:48,639
Speaker 4: aliens if we don't know what amiling language is like,

343
00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:52,040
Speaker 4: so you can speculate endlessly. But I wanted to try

344
00:18:52,040 --> 00:18:55,159
Speaker 4: to dig into something more concrete, and the best example

345
00:18:55,240 --> 00:19:00,679
Speaker 4: we have of intelligent civilizations who are little alien to

346
00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:04,240
Speaker 4: us are ancient human civilizations. So I thought, let's dig

347
00:19:04,280 --> 00:19:07,199
Speaker 4: into what was it like to try to translate the

348
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:11,520
Speaker 4: writings of ancient intelligent human civilizations who are not around

349
00:19:11,560 --> 00:19:13,800
Speaker 4: to explain it to us, because I thought that would

350
00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:18,320
Speaker 4: be helpful to teach us, like what's important. How challenging

351
00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:20,800
Speaker 4: is this? When do we succeed? When do we fail?

352
00:19:21,560 --> 00:19:24,840
Speaker 4: And I'm kind of shocked to learn the answer, which

353
00:19:24,920 --> 00:19:26,600
Speaker 4: was that this is a lot harder than I thought.

354
00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:28,840
Speaker 4: I mean, these are humans, right, they have the same

355
00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:31,080
Speaker 4: brain as we do, they live in the same world

356
00:19:31,119 --> 00:19:34,920
Speaker 4: as we do, they have the same senses, the same environment.

357
00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:38,680
Speaker 4: They have lots and they left us lots of examples,

358
00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:42,800
Speaker 4: but in same cases, we still have not decoded their writing. Like, yes,

359
00:19:42,960 --> 00:19:46,399
Speaker 4: we decoded ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, there's an important caveat in

360
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:50,359
Speaker 4: that story, but we have not, for example, decoded Etruscan writing.

361
00:19:50,440 --> 00:19:52,960
Speaker 4: And the Etruscans like lived just a couple thousand years

362
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,439
Speaker 4: ago next to the Romans, and the Romans talk all

363
00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:58,240
Speaker 4: about them, and we have lots of examples, and yet

364
00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:03,119
Speaker 4: it still remains in undecipherable. It's incredible to me. It

365
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:07,640
Speaker 4: tells me that like the barrier to accessing another intelligence,

366
00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:11,760
Speaker 4: even one hosted on the same substrate, is very, very challenging.

367
00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:15,639
Speaker 4: And it hints that in order to make these mental connections,

368
00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:20,240
Speaker 4: you need one essential thing, which is common context. You

369
00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:22,760
Speaker 4: need to be able to like point at something and say,

370
00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:25,119
Speaker 4: this is an apple, right, let's agree on the word apple,

371
00:20:25,640 --> 00:20:29,600
Speaker 4: or you know, this is one, this is two, and

372
00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:32,640
Speaker 4: you know, I read a really interesting set of articles

373
00:20:32,640 --> 00:20:36,840
Speaker 4: by the folks at SETI or actually anthropologists analyzing SETI,

374
00:20:37,240 --> 00:20:40,639
Speaker 4: and you know. Their conclusion essentially was that it's hopeless

375
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:43,560
Speaker 4: if the aliens communicate with us, if they send us

376
00:20:43,560 --> 00:20:47,359
Speaker 4: a message SETI like, but they don't show up, so

377
00:20:47,400 --> 00:20:49,720
Speaker 4: we can't like point to things and say here's an apple,

378
00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:54,560
Speaker 4: here's a doughnut. That it's essentially impossible to decode just

379
00:20:54,680 --> 00:20:57,399
Speaker 4: written language from an alien species because we have no

380
00:20:57,480 --> 00:20:59,800
Speaker 4: idea what it's supposed to look like. How do you

381
00:20:59,880 --> 00:21:02,280
Speaker 4: know when you've decoded it correctly? You have no clues,

382
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:04,960
Speaker 4: no handles. And the best example of that, I think

383
00:21:05,119 --> 00:21:08,159
Speaker 4: is Egyptian hieroglyphics. You know, there is this famous story

384
00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:12,400
Speaker 4: the Rosetta Stone. We had hieroglyphics, nobody could decode them.

385
00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:16,080
Speaker 4: Then we found this cheat sheet, right, it's got Greek

386
00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:19,000
Speaker 4: on it, and it's got the same stuff in hieroglyphics.

387
00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:21,160
Speaker 4: Since you're like, oh, I know how to translate these

388
00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:22,840
Speaker 4: words from one to the other, I can go from there,

389
00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:25,760
Speaker 4: dot dot dot, I've cracked hieroglyphics. But that's not the

390
00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:28,400
Speaker 4: way it happened. The way it happened is they found

391
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:31,560
Speaker 4: the Rosetta Stone and it still took them twenty years.

392
00:21:32,320 --> 00:21:37,080
Speaker 4: Twenty years when they had examples of decoded text in

393
00:21:37,119 --> 00:21:40,439
Speaker 4: both languages. Why did it take so long Because they

394
00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:45,919
Speaker 4: were making a fundamentally mistaken assumption about the structure of hieroglyphics.

395
00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:48,160
Speaker 4: They looked at hieroglyphics and they were like, oh, these

396
00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:51,680
Speaker 4: are pictograms. The ones that are look like birds are

397
00:21:51,920 --> 00:21:54,280
Speaker 4: mean birds someway. The ones that look like water mean

398
00:21:54,359 --> 00:21:58,000
Speaker 4: water some way, but they're not. Egyptian hieroglyphics turn out

399
00:21:58,040 --> 00:22:01,719
Speaker 4: to be phonetic in the same way that our language is,

400
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:05,160
Speaker 4: and so like a hieroglyphic means a sound, not an idea.

401
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:07,640
Speaker 4: They only realized this when they were doing a deep

402
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:10,760
Speaker 4: comparison with the Greek and they found some phrases in

403
00:22:10,800 --> 00:22:13,840
Speaker 4: Greek that translated to sounds, and they noticed that these

404
00:22:13,880 --> 00:22:18,399
Speaker 4: sounds were common across these across the translation. And so

405
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:21,560
Speaker 4: it was only because not only did they have examples

406
00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:24,200
Speaker 4: of the translated Greek, but they understood how this Greek

407
00:22:24,280 --> 00:22:27,159
Speaker 4: was spoken that they could crack this code. So the

408
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:31,040
Speaker 4: key was cultural context, just having something in common to

409
00:22:31,119 --> 00:22:34,560
Speaker 4: sort of nail languages together. And the same is true

410
00:22:34,600 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 4: of like Mayan. Mayan was cracked because there's still people

411
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:41,840
Speaker 4: speaking a variant of Mayan, and so understanding this like

412
00:22:42,040 --> 00:22:45,600
Speaker 4: cultural expression. The way this is spoken and used is

413
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:49,439
Speaker 4: absolutely essential to cracking any sort of alien language. And

414
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:51,399
Speaker 4: so if we get a message from aliens like that

415
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,600
Speaker 4: would be awesome, but it's hard to know, like if

416
00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:56,320
Speaker 4: it even is a message and what does it mean?

417
00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:58,639
Speaker 4: Like the wow signal is a great example, like maybe

418
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:01,159
Speaker 4: we did get a message, don't know how to decode it,

419
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 4: or maybe we're getting messages all the time, we don't

420
00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:07,159
Speaker 4: even recognize them, right, And so unless aliens arrive and

421
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:10,120
Speaker 4: we can sit together and build some sort of cultural

422
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:13,600
Speaker 4: context to establish that real communication mind mild, I think

423
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:14,800
Speaker 4: it's going to be impossible.

424
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:18,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need the feedback, But I think the hieroglyphics

425
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:22,560
Speaker 3: is a great example of example to use because it's

426
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:25,400
Speaker 3: like what you're doing throughout the book is an example

427
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:28,159
Speaker 3: of where an assumption that was holding us back is

428
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,159
Speaker 3: invisible to us, and it's not until we realized we

429
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:34,000
Speaker 3: had the incorrect assumption that we can actually make progress.

430
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, and who knows how many more assumptions there are

431
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 4: built and that we don't even recognize. It's not like

432
00:23:39,760 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 4: we have a list of assumptions we can examine them

433
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 4: and say, yeah, I'm pretty confident in those The problem

434
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 4: is that we don't know where the edge of that

435
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 4: box is because we don't even know how things might

436
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:51,920
Speaker 4: be different. You know what kind of breakfasts they eat

437
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:52,840
Speaker 4: in Alpha Centauri.

438
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 3: So I want to go on to the other big

439
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:57,960
Speaker 3: part of the communication question. Obviously, if we're going to

440
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 3: be sharing information about physic and the laws that govern

441
00:24:01,359 --> 00:24:04,879
Speaker 3: reality with them, our main language for doing that is math.

442
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,440
Speaker 3: And so you have a question a chapter called does

443
00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:12,359
Speaker 3: one plus one equal to everywhere? This starts with a

444
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:17,639
Speaker 3: fun contact scenario or contact hypothesis about contact that is

445
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 3: made with a star that's alive, that's kind of bioplasma,

446
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 3: but doesn't seem to respond to mathematical or numerical information.

447
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 3: And so you asked the question, is it plausible that

448
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:33,760
Speaker 3: there could be an intelligent species that maybe even has

449
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 3: technology in some way we could think about it, or

450
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:40,360
Speaker 3: at least has you know, capabilities of contact with another species,

451
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:44,160
Speaker 3: but it doesn't have a concept of counting and arithmetic,

452
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 3: the most basic numerical thing that we think there is.

453
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 3: Could you explore that a bit?

454
00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:53,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is where it becomes clear if you're reading

455
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 4: the book that the book really is about the philosophical question,

456
00:24:57,359 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 4: you know, is science human or is it universal? And

457
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 4: this really comes into focus because this is an ancient

458
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,199
Speaker 4: question of philosophy of math. Right, is math something that

459
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,440
Speaker 4: we've discovered or invented? Is it part of the universe

460
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 4: or is it a shorthand for the way that we think?

461
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 4: And it's a surprisingly difficult question, you know. On one hand,

462
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 4: it seems like the universe is awfully mathematical, and there

463
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 4: are great moments of discovery in the history of physics

464
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:28,479
Speaker 4: where math has led us to the answer. And you know,

465
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 4: one of my favorites is pretty recent. It's the Higgs boson.

466
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:34,639
Speaker 4: You know. Peter Higgs was looking at the structure of

467
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:39,000
Speaker 4: quantum field theory and he noticed that these particles were

468
00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:41,200
Speaker 4: very similar to the photon and the W and the z,

469
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:43,919
Speaker 4: but they were different. One of them had mass and

470
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:45,680
Speaker 4: one of them had no mass. And why is that?

471
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:48,399
Speaker 4: And anyway, how do you give masses to all the

472
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 4: fundamental particles without breaking this other symmetry? And he came

473
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:54,879
Speaker 4: up with a mechanism, a mathematical mechanism. He said, you

474
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 4: know what, this whole theory is missing a piece and

475
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 4: clicks together only if you add this one more element.

476
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 4: And so this is a purely mathematical observation saying like,

477
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 4: there's a mathematical structure here, and it seems like it's

478
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 4: missing something. Fifty years later, we go out and it's there.

479
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 4: The Higgs boson is there in the universe. It's real.

480
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 3: That's kind of spooky.

481
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 4: It's spooky, right, And there's all these great quotes from physicists,

482
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 4: you know, like Stephen Weinberg saying that physicists often discover

483
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 4: that mathematicians have been there before them, you know, and

484
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 4: it goes back deeper like Maxwell. Maxwell. Maxwell was assembling

485
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 4: the equations of electromagnetism and he noticed lots of beautiful symmetry,

486
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 4: but he also noticed, hmm, hold on a second, this

487
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,959
Speaker 4: would be more symmetrical if we added one piece. But

488
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 4: you can't just like add something to the laws of

489
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 4: physics because it's prettier. And yet when he went out

490
00:26:47,040 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 4: there to find if there is an element of the

491
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 4: universe that corresponds to this missing piece, he found, oh.

492
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:52,159
Speaker 3: Yes, it is.

493
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 4: It just had been overlooked. So again the math guided him.

494
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,480
Speaker 4: And to me, that's really powerfully suggestive to say, like, wow,

495
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 4: the universe isn't described by math. It runs on math,

496
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:05,960
Speaker 4: like it is fundamentally mathematical. And I remember having this

497
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 4: moment where I personally came to believe that as an

498
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 4: undergrad learning like quantum mechanics and hearing about like bells

499
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 4: inequality and all these experiments, and I was like, Wow,

500
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 4: this is too accurate to be approximate, too accurate to

501
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 4: just be a description, right, this is the rules, This

502
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 4: is the source code of the universe. So I used

503
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 4: to deeply, deeply believe that. But you know, the more

504
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:31,199
Speaker 4: you dig into the philosophy of math, the more you

505
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 4: realize this sits on a bunch of assumptions, assumptions which

506
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 4: sound plausible, but when you dig into them, like do

507
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 4: we really have good arguments for them? And as you say,

508
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 4: some of them relate to like arithmetic. In the last

509
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 4: couple of hundreds of years, philosophers of math have asked

510
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 4: questions like, well, what are the basic foundations of math?

511
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 4: Like what are the starting rules the few things you

512
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,399
Speaker 4: need to assume from which you can build everything else.

513
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,880
Speaker 4: And the goal of that is it's not just like, hey,

514
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 4: let's be nerdy and figure out what the rules are,

515
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 4: but like, let's examine those assumptions and wonder like could

516
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 4: they have been something else? You know, the way we

517
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 4: might like see the fundamental equation of the universe and

518
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 4: ask like is it this way it? Could it have

519
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 4: been the other way? You learned something by seeing the

520
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 4: fundamental nature written down, And in the last couple hundred

521
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 4: years we've learned We've made a lot of progress, Like wow.

522
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,880
Speaker 4: Most of mathematics is based on arithmetic, and arithmetic itself

523
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,720
Speaker 4: is based on a few basic axioms. They're called p

524
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,920
Speaker 4: and O's axioms, and those can be described in terms

525
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 4: of set theory, like you know, this is inside that,

526
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 4: and a barber who shaves themselves can shave other barbers

527
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 4: or whatever. But at the core of it, there's a

528
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 4: question mark, like Godal's theorem tells us that we can't

529
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 4: describe everything in math using those fundamental axioms. And then

530
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 4: even if you have a bunch of fundamental axioms, there

531
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:53,959
Speaker 4: are always going to be things that aren't captured by it.

532
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 4: You know, there are things in arithmetic that are true

533
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 4: that cannot be with our axioms, which tells you like,

534
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 4: maybe we don't really fundamentally understand what's at the core

535
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 4: of mathematics.

536
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 3: Is it possible to do physics without numbers? You explore

537
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 3: at least one scholar who's attempted to, I think, put

538
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 3: together a version of Newton's laws of motion or gravitation

539
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 3: without using numbers. You make it sound like it's kind

540
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 3: of difficult and painful.

541
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 4: I love this book. It's not easy to read. It's

542
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 4: like not written for a popular audience. It's written for

543
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 4: like nerds of philosophy. So I'll be honest, it was

544
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 4: hard for me to get through it and to really

545
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 4: digest it. But it's a great book. It's called Science

546
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 4: Without Numbers. It's by heartree Field, and it's really an

547
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 4: effort to give an example of like do we need

548
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 4: mathematics or is it just really useful? And he puts

549
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 4: together an alternative theory of gravity. You know, he starts

550
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 4: with Newton's theory, which you can write in terms of

551
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 4: like a gravitational potential and gravitational field, which is very handy.

552
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 4: And newton theory famously has an equation in it and

553
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 4: you can like calculate things with numbers, and he's like,

554
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 4: do we need that or is that just really helpful?

555
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 4: So he put together this theory of gravity with no numbers,

556
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 4: there is no gravitational field. He says, you can't observe

557
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 4: that directly anyway. All you see is motion of particles.

558
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 4: So maybe that's just like an intermediate step that's useful

559
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 4: to us. And then he's like, maybe you don't need

560
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,160
Speaker 4: numbers at all. Maybe you don't need to say the

561
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 4: field has a value here, and you know this has

562
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 4: this the son has a mass of this number. Maybe

563
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:36,959
Speaker 4: all you need are relationships. You know, this one has

564
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:38,920
Speaker 4: more mass than the other one, this is a greater

565
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 4: distance than that one. If he structure in terms of relationships,

566
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:47,000
Speaker 4: he was able to recover the not the equationance of

567
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 4: motion right, because it's not like he's not dealing with numbers,

568
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 4: but a description of the behavior gravitationally without using Newton's

569
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 4: theory and without using any numbers. So in the philosophy

570
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 4: of mass, this approach is called nominalism. Essentially says that

571
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 4: numbers are something we made up. You know, one, two, four,

572
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 4: They don't exist anywhere in the world, like where is

573
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 4: the number four? It's a sort of a hilarious philosophy

574
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 4: question that you could just brush off. It's like, well,

575
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 4: it sounds like you've been smoking too many banana peels.

576
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 4: But you know, if four exists outside of human knowledge

577
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 4: and before us, then like where is it? It's sort

578
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 4: of a reasonable question, Like, you know, if it's part

579
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 4: of the universe, it should have a location. Everything else

580
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 4: that's part of the universe has a location. So maybe

581
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 4: it's just something we constructed to help us think about stuff.

582
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 4: And so it's pretty hard to growck like a theory

583
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 4: of physics without math, And that's his point. His point

584
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 4: is like, look, math is very useful, but that doesn't

585
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 4: mean it's necessary the way like, yes, having a car

586
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles is very useful, but you could walk

587
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 4: everywhere it would be a huge pain. Right, It's obviously

588
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 4: an advantage, but it doesn't mean it's fundamental. And that

589
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 4: opens up the door to like, well, maybe aliens found

590
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,560
Speaker 4: some other way to think. Maybe math reflects the way

591
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 4: our minds work instead of the way the universe works,

592
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 4: and if alien minds work differently, they might come up

593
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 4: with something else we wouldn't call math. Or if aliens

594
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 4: evolved in a similar situation where they have bodies that

595
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 4: are easy to distinguish and so counting makes sense, and

596
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 4: they have like you know, interesting economies that are similar

597
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 4: hours they might have evolved the similar concepts. So it

598
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 4: comes down to essentially how much we have in common

599
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 4: with them evolutionarily and conceptually, whether or not we think

600
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 4: they might have math, but it's definitely not necessary. And

601
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 4: even here on Earth. I was surprised when I was

602
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:39,959
Speaker 4: doing my research to learn that different cultures here on

603
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 4: Earth have different relationships with counting. You know, you might

604
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 4: look at a bunch of stuff on a desk and

605
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 4: I can ask you like, oh, how many things are

606
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 4: on the desk, and you say, oh, there's four things.

607
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 4: But somebody who's Japanese, for example, they have different categories

608
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 4: of counting, and they would never group together things that

609
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 4: are like long and thin with things that are like

610
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 4: flat and short, So like pencils CDs on a desk,

611
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 4: they would say, oh, there's two pencils and two CDs.

612
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 4: You can't say that's four things because they're different categories, right,

613
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,440
Speaker 4: And that's a hint where you can dig in and say, like, well,

614
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 4: when do we group things together? Like why do I

615
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 4: say this four things? What is the category of a thing?

616
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 4: Like why do I say these things are similar enough

617
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 4: that I can call them a thing? And in the end,

618
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 4: that's a bit of an arbitrary distinction. Like if you

619
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 4: look at a bunch of apples on a table, I

620
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 4: could say there's ten apples, or I could say, well,

621
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 4: there's this apple, and there's that apple, and there's the

622
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 4: other apple, and they're all unique apples and so on

623
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 4: what basis am I saying they're all the same? That's culture,

624
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 4: that's I'm saying the differences are not important, and that's arbitrary.

625
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 4: And like, I'm probably right there are ten apples, Like

626
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 4: I'm not saying every apple really is fundamentally different. But

627
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 4: when you discover that the lines you're drawing are arbitrary,

628
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 4: then that makes you wonder whether other people are drawing

629
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 4: different arbitrary lines. And again, this isn't like to say

630
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 4: matth is useless or anything. It's just to point out

631
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 4: that there are cracks here, that there are assumptions we're

632
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 4: making that are human that might be made differently elsewhere.

633
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:11,400
Speaker 3: Okay, you ask some other really interesting questions along these

634
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 3: lines about how our thinking versus alien thinking might influence

635
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 3: different ways that we could relate to the universe or

636
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,840
Speaker 3: that science could arise. One is you talk about differences

637
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 3: in perception like native sensory capabilities, and how that could

638
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 3: probably determine what kinds of questions and answers make sense.

639
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 3: Maybe we can come back to that, because I want

640
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 3: to get to your question about your chapter on do

641
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 3: aliens argue about planets? I found this really interesting because

642
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 3: I don't think I ever considered it this way. But

643
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 3: you start here with a contact hypothetical about the inhabitants

644
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 3: of a subsurface ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa, who see

645
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 3: everything in terms of eddy is kind of swirling swarms

646
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 3: of matter in motion, and that that's as fundamental to

647
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 3: their physical view of reality as the idea of particles

648
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:06,319
Speaker 3: and discrete objects is to us. I thought that was

649
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 3: really interesting, the idea that we could meet with another

650
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 3: spec And of course, from here you build up the

651
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 3: idea that we could meet with this other speci we

652
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:18,240
Speaker 3: could both have science and both be able and willing

653
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 3: to communicate with each other, but end up finding each

654
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 3: other's physical metaphors for describing reality uninteresting and not very useful.

655
00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 3: I don't think I don't think i'd ever that had

656
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 3: never entered my mind. So could you elaborate on that?

657
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, the goal here is like identify the

658
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 4: assumptions that underpin our science and wonder if they could

659
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 4: be different. And one of my goals in writing this

660
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,399
Speaker 4: book was to bring to more popular awareness that there's

661
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 4: like a raging philosophical debate about some of these things

662
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 4: that a lot of people aren't even aware of. And

663
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 4: one of them is this principle of emergence. You know,

664
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,839
Speaker 4: essentially asked the question, why can you make chicken soup

665
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:03,320
Speaker 4: with out understanding quantum gravity? Like we don't understand the

666
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 4: fundamental nature of the universe, for sure, we don't, you know,

667
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 4: like we've zoomed down to electrons and quarks and whatever.

668
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 4: We know that's not the final story, and we don't

669
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:13,480
Speaker 4: know how far below that is the final story? Is

670
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:16,879
Speaker 4: there even a final story? And yet people have been

671
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 4: like calculating how to lob cannon balls over castle walls

672
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 4: for a long time. And people live in the world,

673
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 4: and you know, we have very fancy technology that describes

674
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 4: the behavior of transistors and all this sorts of stuff.

675
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:33,800
Speaker 4: Why is it possible to understand the world without understanding

676
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 4: the basic rules of it. There's this sort of magic

677
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:41,000
Speaker 4: trick that all of our science relies on and it's

678
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,840
Speaker 4: called emergence, and it says that the universe seems to

679
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:47,280
Speaker 4: operate at different levels, and you can understand the universe

680
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 4: at sort of our level without knowing the details of

681
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 4: what's going on inside. Right. We've been able to do

682
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 4: biology and chemistry well before we were even doing particle physics, right,

683
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 4: So it's not like everybody was waiting. I know, particle

684
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 4: physicists tell us what is the rules so that we

685
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 4: can then extrapolate upwards to biology. Like you could just

686
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 4: go ahead and do biology, you can go ahead and

687
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 4: do chemistry, you can do lots of classical physics. But

688
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 4: why does that happen? Why is that even possible? You know,

689
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 4: if I told you I'm going to make up a

690
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:20,880
Speaker 4: bunch of random, arbitrary rules for the way the universe

691
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 4: works at it a fundamental level, you might think, okay, well,

692
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 4: what are the consequences then for the macroscopic scale, you know,

693
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 4: And it turns out it's weird that you don't have

694
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 4: to know the microscopic to understand the macroscopic And that's

695
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 4: the thing that makes me wonder if we don't know

696
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 4: why that works. And this is a deep question in

697
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 4: philosophy why does simplicity emerge from you know, complexity and chaos.

698
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 4: Then how do we know we're not imposing it on

699
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 4: the universe. How do we know there's not a cultural

700
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 4: bias where we're like, well, there's a seeding mass of

701
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 4: chaos out there in the universe, and we're selecting the

702
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,359
Speaker 4: things that are interesting to us because they're relevant to us,

703
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:01,319
Speaker 4: and they come out of the way we live, and

704
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 4: we're expressing the universe in terms.

705
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 3: Of those things.

706
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:09,160
Speaker 4: And so I chose this question of planets because talking

707
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 4: to a mathematician friend of mine early on in his book,

708
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:13,359
Speaker 4: he was like, yeah, well, but I mean, aliens are

709
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:15,600
Speaker 4: going to agree with us about like there are planets

710
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 4: and stars and galaxies. I'm gonna have some scientific cultural

711
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 4: touch points. And I was like, well, I don't know,

712
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 4: maybe what if they didn't evolve on a planet so

713
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 4: they don't see like rocks through space as fundamental. I mean,

714
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 4: one way to understand this is like, think about how

715
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 4: we describe the Solar System. Is it to scale? It

716
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 4: never is. Whenever you see a description of the Solar System,

717
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,319
Speaker 4: it takes the planets and it zooms them way out

718
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 4: of proportion. Somebody looking at that would be like, whoa dude,

719
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 4: you're kind of biased towards planets here, Like, really, planets

720
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 4: are irrelevant dust compared to the Sun. So if you're

721
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 4: an alien species that evolves like in a solar atmosphere,

722
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 4: you're going to think it's awfully weird that we think

723
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 4: about solar systems the way that we do, where planets

724
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:02,240
Speaker 4: are front and send. And as I make the argument

725
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 4: in the book, we don't even have a good definition

726
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:06,320
Speaker 4: of what a planet is. I mean, we've been arguing

727
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 4: about it for decades and the definition we have is

728
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 4: pretty absurd. And it's the reason, like for all this

729
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 4: kerfuffle about Pluto, it's because we wanted to protect this category.

730
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 4: We wanted to have something special that made us feel important.

731
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 4: And anytime we've done that in the history of science,

732
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 4: you know, like the Earth is the center of the universe,

733
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:27,759
Speaker 4: the Earth is the center of the Solar system, it's

734
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 4: always led us down the wrong path. And so it's

735
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,799
Speaker 4: hard to imagine aliens who don't understand planets and don't

736
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 4: think about the universe in terms of rocks orbiting stars.

737
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 4: But if they evolve in subsurface oceans, maybe they just

738
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 4: think about you know, little chaotic vortices and they build

739
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 4: up their explanation of the universe from that. So that's

740
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 4: what this chapter is about. And I had a lot

741
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,840
Speaker 4: of fun talking to philosophers about emergence and realized that

742
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 4: I had a lot of assumptions about the way emergence works. Like,

743
00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 4: for example, I assumed that the universe has fundamental level,

744
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 4: that there is some firmament where the rules are set

745
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:08,799
Speaker 4: and everything emerges from that, and maybe we don't know

746
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:11,880
Speaker 4: exactly how, and it's complicated the way that like hurricanes

747
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 4: are complicated, but we think they follow rules, but that's

748
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 4: not necessarily true. Like what if there is no firmament.

749
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 4: What if it's just like layers of emergence all the

750
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 4: way down, or what if you know, they don't follow

751
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 4: from below, maybe things don't bubble upwards. Maybe every layer

752
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 4: has its own set of laws that are somehow independent.

753
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:35,000
Speaker 4: There's a lot of basic philosophical assumptions you make when

754
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 4: you take a sort of particle physics point of view.

755
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 3: There that gets into your chapter, also about the idea

756
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 3: that maybe there are no underlying laws of physics, but

757
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 3: also just at the base level of you know, the

758
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 3: objects we deal with when we're talking about planets and particles.

759
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:02,319
Speaker 3: There was a great example in this chapter where you're

760
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 3: trying to illuminate the different zoom settings. I think a

761
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 3: lot of people will be familiar with the idea that, yeah,

762
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 3: chemistry maybe is an approximation and you can get more

763
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:15,399
Speaker 3: exact if you go down into particle physics. And of course,

764
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 3: you know, hire biology is more of an approximation. It's

765
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:19,760
Speaker 3: based on emergence. But I think a lot of people

766
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,319
Speaker 3: would have that in their head, but think, well, when

767
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 3: you get down to you know, particles, that's the base level.

768
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:28,439
Speaker 3: But I love the example you use in the book

769
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:32,239
Speaker 3: of the charge of the electron and how actually, while

770
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,120
Speaker 3: we have a good approximation for how that works, that

771
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 3: still relies on zoom settings. Could you explain that example.

772
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wanted to dig into this because I think

773
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 4: a lot of people think about the way you just

774
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 4: described that they imagine that eventually you can get down

775
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 4: to the fundamental truth, right And like number one, we

776
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 4: don't know if there is and the zoomi ist bit

777
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 4: that we have so far is still kind of a myth.

778
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 4: Like I make fun of astronomers having a silly definition

779
00:41:57,200 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 4: of planet, but like definition of a particle is much

780
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 4: much more of a mess philosophically, you get ten particle

781
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 4: theorists in a room and you ask them what is

782
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 4: a particle, You're gonna get ten answers like it's crazy,

783
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 4: Like this concept is historical, it's intuitive for us. It

784
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:14,840
Speaker 4: comes out of our need to describe the universe in

785
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 4: terms of like little bits of stuff, and in many

786
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 4: ways I think it's holding us back. You know, we

787
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 4: have a glimpse now in quantum field theory that things

788
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 4: work differently, but we're still sort of like clinging to

789
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 4: this idea.

790
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 3: Anyway.

791
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 4: The current idea of a particle is hard to describe

792
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 4: because particles are never by themselves. Like you think of

793
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 4: an electron as a tiny dot with a negative charge

794
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:41,879
Speaker 4: on it. Cool little ball, Yeah, people think a little ball, right,

795
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,800
Speaker 4: and there it is. There's your intuition, your classical intuition.

796
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 4: I live in the universe with rocks and little bits

797
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:49,279
Speaker 4: of stuff, and so everything is made out of little

798
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 4: bits of stuff, right. It's the way you might laugh

799
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:54,800
Speaker 4: at the ancient Greeks, and we're still doing it. But

800
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 4: you think of the electron, even if you like think, well,

801
00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 4: it's not a ball.

802
00:42:58,160 --> 00:42:58,520
Speaker 3: Of stuff.

803
00:42:58,520 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 4: It's a point, right, and it's got negative sign on it.

804
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 4: And where does that negative sign come from? Well, we

805
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 4: measure it in experiments, right, we know the charge of

806
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 4: the electron. We have the famous oil drop experiment that

807
00:43:08,719 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 4: told us the mass to charge ratio, et cetera. But

808
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 4: is that the charge of the electron itself? Because the electron,

809
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 4: because it has a charge, is always interacting with the

810
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 4: electromagnetic field. It makes a field and as it moves,

811
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:25,720
Speaker 4: that field ripples, and so the right way to describe

812
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 4: an electron either as in terms of a field around it,

813
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 4: or equivalently as a cloud of virtual photons. Right, Photons

814
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 4: are ripples and the electromagnetic field. And so from the

815
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 4: particle point of view, you have the electron. It's surrounded

816
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 4: by this cloud of virtual photons, and those virtual photons

817
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,920
Speaker 4: change the charge that you measure. So when you're measuring

818
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 4: the charge of the electron, you're not measuring the charge

819
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:50,719
Speaker 4: of the pure, bare electron. You're measuring the charge of

820
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 4: the electron plus this cloud of photons. Because photons can

821
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:57,800
Speaker 4: fluctuate into like electrons and positrons, you have this cloud

822
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 4: of charged particles, and say electrons charge polarizes that cloud,

823
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 4: And depending on how far into that cloud you go,

824
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 4: you get a different answer for what is the charge

825
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 4: that we measure? So really, far away from the cloud,

826
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 4: you get the charge that we know in loud that

827
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:16,520
Speaker 4: Ben Franklin discovered and that we measured one hundred years ago.

828
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,239
Speaker 4: But if you start to probe into that cloud, then

829
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 4: you're not seeing as much of those photons. You're getting

830
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 4: through it closer to the bare electron, closer to the

831
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 4: real truth of the electrons charge, and you get a

832
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 4: more negative number. And the deeper you probe intowards that cloud,

833
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 4: the more you're not being affected by those particles, the

834
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 4: more negative that number gets. And if you extrapolate, what

835
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 4: would it be like if you went all the way

836
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 4: through the cloud, you went all the way to to

837
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 4: the electron, what number would you measure for the charge

838
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 4: of the electron? The answer is negative infinity?

839
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 3: Like what.

840
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 4: This is another example in physics where you get a

841
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:56,879
Speaker 4: nonsense answer that tells you that, like your theory has

842
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:00,760
Speaker 4: been pushed beyond its region of applicability. Right, it makes sense.

843
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 4: We're not saying the electron really does have a negative charge.

844
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:08,120
Speaker 4: We're saying the concept of the electron on its own

845
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:11,360
Speaker 4: with the charge, that is not an appropriate way to

846
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 4: think about what's happening. Really, electrons are always tied together

847
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 4: with photons. We're making this arbitrary dotted line between the

848
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 4: electrons and the photons because we like to think of

849
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:24,880
Speaker 4: it that way, But fundamentally these two are so deeply

850
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 4: interwoven that it doesn't make sense to imagine the charge

851
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 4: of the electron by itself. So even this concept of

852
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:33,400
Speaker 4: a particle like the fundamental basis of all of our

853
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 4: particle physics, and we think the universe and even if

854
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,879
Speaker 4: the electron isn't, we think that our particles within it. Right,

855
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 4: this basic unit of our imagination is something that's not

856
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 4: really an appropriate description of the universe. And so that

857
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:52,439
Speaker 4: to me smells of humanity, of cultural choices, of being

858
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 4: linked to our intuition, the preference, the way that we

859
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 4: like to hear the answers, and so the language that

860
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 4: we express ourselves in. And I wonder if aliens argue

861
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,880
Speaker 4: about particles and argue about planets, and it would be amazing,

862
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 4: It'd be amazing if they didn't, if they came with

863
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:14,320
Speaker 4: a completely different way of expressing and explaining the universe.

864
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 4: That would be mind blowing. That's my real fantasy.

865
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 3: Well, that actually does tie into a later chapter, the

866
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:24,919
Speaker 3: one where you're talking about alternative alien science. Could there

867
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 3: be completely different theories of everything, complete theories of physics

868
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 3: that both correctly predict the behavior of all matter, energy,

869
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 3: and space time, and yet they're different theories. Is that

870
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 3: actually possible? Are two different theories that always make the

871
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:46,400
Speaker 3: exact same predictions actually equivalent?

872
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:49,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this is a great example, Like, this is

873
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 4: a question philosophers have been debating for decades and decades

874
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 4: that's basically unknown in physics. Like I think most physicists

875
00:46:57,719 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 4: and most people out there imagine if if you find

876
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:04,800
Speaker 4: a theory that works and is simple and it's basic,

877
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:06,880
Speaker 4: like say string theory figures it out and they have

878
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 4: one equation and it describes everything and it predicts every

879
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 4: experiment and it all works, then people are like, okay,

880
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 4: well you're done right, Like that's it. But there's an

881
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 4: assumption there that there is a unique description, that there's

882
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:22,839
Speaker 4: only one description, one way to answer this question, and

883
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 4: it actually makes a lot more sense to imagine that

884
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 4: there might be multiple descriptions. I mean, like consider anytime

885
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:32,879
Speaker 4: you have data. You measure something, you have a few

886
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 4: data points, and then you try to describe it, describe

887
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 4: it by like drawing a line through it. Maybe it's

888
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 4: a straight line, maybe it's a wiggly line. Maybe you

889
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 4: have all some model you're fitting to your data. That

890
00:47:43,239 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 4: model is describing things between your data points that you

891
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:49,240
Speaker 4: have not observed. And even if you take infinite amounts

892
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 4: of data, there will always be multiple models that fit

893
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 4: the data. So it actually kind of makes sense to imagine, hm,

894
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 4: you could have multiple ways to describe the same universe,

895
00:47:57,719 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 4: and I think this conflicts with your natural intuition. They're like, yeah,

896
00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 4: but there's a true answer. You know, the universe runs

897
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 4: some way and we just have to figure it out.

898
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 4: And maybe we're right, or maybe the aliens are right,

899
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 4: and maybe our theory of quantum fields is wrong and

900
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:15,720
Speaker 4: maybe their theory of quantum fields is right or whatever.

901
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 4: But there is a truth. And that's a philosophical assumption

902
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 4: saying that there's a single objective truth that we could

903
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 4: discover and it's unique. How do you know? You know,

904
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:29,800
Speaker 4: you don't know. That's exactly the kind of philosophical assumption

905
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 4: I want to sort of reveal in this book, And

906
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that we don't. I'm not saying that

907
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,240
Speaker 4: there isn't, but I'm saying that we can't be sure.

908
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 4: And you know, there's lots of arguments in philosophy that

909
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 4: say that there very well could be. And there's lots

910
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 4: of great historical examples. You know, the history of our

911
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:52,279
Speaker 4: physics is the history of overthrowing one way of thinking

912
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 4: about the universe for another one. You know, when Einstein

913
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:59,879
Speaker 4: upgraded on understanding of gravity, didn't just give us better

914
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:03,880
Speaker 4: equations that were more accurate, he completely revised the story

915
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 4: of what's happening. You know, it's not masses pulling on

916
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 4: each other. It's space itself is bending and curving, and

917
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:13,279
Speaker 4: gravity is not even a force. So there is this

918
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 4: history of overthrowing our ideas which suggests that there are

919
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 4: other ideas out there which could better or at least

920
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,799
Speaker 4: equivalently describe the universe that we see, that we could

921
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:27,360
Speaker 4: conceive of right now. If you are a super genius,

922
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:30,280
Speaker 4: you could sit down and come up with another way

923
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 4: to describe gravity or quantum fields or whatever that's equivalent

924
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 4: or superior. And so it's certainly possible to have multiple

925
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 4: theories and so in the literature they argue about this,

926
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,319
Speaker 4: and there's a whole group of people like this is

927
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 4: skuy Norton who says that any alternative theory is quote

928
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,160
Speaker 4: merely the same theory dressed in different clothes.

929
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 3: Right that as you.

930
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 4: Say, look, okay, maybe you have fields and we have shmields,

931
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 4: but they must be equivalent, because if they're doing the

932
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:04,279
Speaker 4: same thing, right, if they're making the same predictions, how

933
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:07,799
Speaker 4: can they really be different? And you know, we don't

934
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 4: know the answer to that because nobody has an alternative

935
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 4: like this is theoretical philosophers say it should be possible,

936
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 4: and other philosophers say, like, all right, show us you

937
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:20,399
Speaker 4: know what are you talking about. Where is this alternative?

938
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 3: Right?

939
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:24,319
Speaker 4: And we don't have that. So all we can do

940
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 4: is look at our history, and we have some fascinating

941
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:32,399
Speaker 4: examples there, like you know, Newtonian mechanics was supplanted by

942
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 4: Lagrangeen mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics, which is a different way

943
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:38,719
Speaker 4: to think about like how things move. If you want

944
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:40,960
Speaker 4: to calculate, you know, how does the ball move with

945
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 4: the parabola, you can use Newtonian mechanics, and we do that.

946
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 4: You know, f equals MA, and that works. But as

947
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 4: soon as it gets complicated, you have your ball and

948
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 4: a string, and a string is being held by a

949
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:53,359
Speaker 4: squirrel and the squirrels on a roller coaster. It's way

950
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 4: too hard to use Newton's laws like it just becomes unsolvable.

951
00:50:56,680 --> 00:51:00,040
Speaker 4: So these clever guys, Lagrange and Hamilton came up with

952
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:04,839
Speaker 4: with more effective mechanics that rely essentially on energy as

953
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:08,000
Speaker 4: the fundamental principle, and you can derive Newton's laws from them.

954
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 4: And lagrange And mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics are very similar,

955
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 4: but they're all so different, and you can use both

956
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 4: of them to describe these things. And for like more

957
00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:19,839
Speaker 4: than one hundred years, people have been arguing about are

958
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:23,800
Speaker 4: these two theories just the same dressed in different clothes

959
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:27,800
Speaker 4: or are they fundamentally different? And the last ten years

960
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 4: or twenty years or so they've been digging into, like, well,

961
00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:32,279
Speaker 4: what does it mean to be different? You know, this

962
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:35,239
Speaker 4: is the way philosophy makes progress. They're like, well, what

963
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 4: is the meaning of the word is mean?

964
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 3: Anyway?

965
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 4: So it gets pretty nerdy and abstract, but fundamentally we

966
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 4: don't know. We don't know if it's possible to have

967
00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:48,920
Speaker 4: multiple theories that describe the universe equivalently and are fundamentally

968
00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:53,560
Speaker 4: categorically different, that they tell different conceptual stories, or if

969
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 4: both being effective means that they fundamentally have to be

970
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 4: telling the same story. We just don't know. And we

971
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:02,759
Speaker 4: have examples on the other side, you know, like quantum mechanics,

972
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 4: we had matrix equations and we had wave equations. You know,

973
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 4: Schrodinger and Heisenberg and von Neumann showed Okay, guys, these

974
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:12,319
Speaker 4: are actually the same thing, you know, just you have

975
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 4: different operators and different kinds of math, and they seem

976
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 4: pretty different, but actually they are the same, which is

977
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:21,400
Speaker 4: kind of hilarious because Schortinger and Heisenberg famously sort of

978
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 4: hated each other and really didn't like the other's approached, Like, oh,

979
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:26,840
Speaker 4: I find it gross.

980
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:26,920
Speaker 2: But.

981
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's some German dissing the in the

982
00:52:32,640 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 4: academic literature which is pretty fun to read. But they

983
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 4: are fundamentally the same. So you can show that's not

984
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 4: two theories, right, that is just one theory expressed in

985
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 4: different clothing. So that would be fascinating, right. When the

986
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 4: aliens show up with their theory, it might be very different,

987
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:49,360
Speaker 4: and we might be able to show that it's essentially

988
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:52,560
Speaker 4: the same, or we might discover, wow, this is a

989
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 4: very different story about what's happening in the universe. It

990
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 4: really is a different way to explain things that that

991
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 4: can't be mapped to ours. And what would that mean?

992
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 4: You know, what would that mean If the universe has

993
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 4: multiple correct descriptions, it means something about the nature of truth, right,

994
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:15,480
Speaker 4: But what is really happening? If there is anything you

995
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 4: can say is really happening.

996
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 3: So I think one reason people are tempted to think

997
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:35,240
Speaker 3: that aliens would have science and it would be similar

998
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 3: to us, similar to our science, is because when we,

999
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:40,879
Speaker 3: at least I have this experience, I think a lot

1000
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:45,719
Speaker 3: of people do. When you look back on scientific history,

1001
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 3: you somehow get this feeling that it's kind of faded,

1002
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 3: that it's like on track, maybe because it's not because

1003
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 3: it feels like different than like artistic you know, creations

1004
00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:01,560
Speaker 3: where it's like they're they are the scientific discoveries and

1005
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 3: history are bound by nature, and so because they're discovering

1006
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 3: things about nature just kind of feels inevitable that it

1007
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:11,879
Speaker 3: would have developed in the way that it did. Could

1008
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:15,960
Speaker 3: you talk about some reasons for thinking that actually the

1009
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 3: history of human science is somewhat contingent, and how that

1010
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:23,319
Speaker 3: could undermine our belief that aliens would develop science along

1011
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:24,120
Speaker 3: the same tracks.

1012
00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:26,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really fun. I got to dig into

1013
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 4: a lot of the history here, and I agree with you.

1014
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 4: I used to think of the history of science as inevitable.

1015
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:34,759
Speaker 4: I played civilization, for example, and you know, you have

1016
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 4: to develop this, and then gunpowdern then you can build this,

1017
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 4: and it feels sort of like a natural progression. But

1018
00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of moments in the history

1019
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:46,239
Speaker 4: of science that were random, that were accidental, where we

1020
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 4: discovered something that we could have discovered much earlier, and

1021
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:52,800
Speaker 4: it could have totally changed the path of our science.

1022
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 4: And this is one of the reasons I wrote the

1023
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:56,200
Speaker 4: book in the structure I did with this Drake equation

1024
00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 4: structure because it let me make some assumptions, like at

1025
00:54:59,239 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 4: this point in the book and say, all right, let's

1026
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:03,880
Speaker 4: push aside all of the philosophical questions. Let's assume aliens

1027
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:06,320
Speaker 4: do science, they use math, they ask the same questions,

1028
00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 4: they're interested in the same stuff as us. Even then,

1029
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:12,960
Speaker 4: how similar or different might their science be? Or like,

1030
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:16,360
Speaker 4: take aliens out of the equation. Imagine running the earth

1031
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:20,319
Speaker 4: a million times, you know, and even start from like

1032
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 4: humans have formed one hundred thousand years ago, When do

1033
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 4: they become technological? How long does that take? What does

1034
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:28,680
Speaker 4: that civilization look like? What science do they develop? Are

1035
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:32,359
Speaker 4: we typically late or early compared to that population? Boy,

1036
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 4: I would love to know the answer to that question.

1037
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:37,920
Speaker 4: You know, what is the path of science in all

1038
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 4: of those different earths? And so we can't know that,

1039
00:55:41,160 --> 00:55:43,360
Speaker 4: but we do have some glimmers. You know. I was

1040
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 4: able to like dig into ancient human civilizations Mayans and

1041
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 4: Chinese and the Greeks before they really talk to each other.

1042
00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 4: It's sort of like a little mini experiment to compare

1043
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 4: proto scientific development to see how similar it was.

1044
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:00,439
Speaker 3: But actually where we together?

1045
00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:02,880
Speaker 4: You asked about like more recent developments. One of my

1046
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 4: favorites is the discovery of X rays, which was, you know,

1047
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:09,319
Speaker 4: essentially just accidental. Guy left a source on top of

1048
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:13,000
Speaker 4: a photographic sheet, came back over the weekend, found this thing,

1049
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 4: He wrote it up, published it the next day. Beat

1050
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,680
Speaker 4: some English guy by I.

1051
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:21,759
Speaker 3: Got his wife to stick her hand in front of it.

1052
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 4: Exactly, and you know, made this discovery and all the

1053
00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:29,279
Speaker 4: tools were there, Like people have been using uranium for

1054
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:32,360
Speaker 4: a long time, and we had photography for a while,

1055
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 4: so you could have discovered that much much earlier. It

1056
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:38,560
Speaker 4: was really just an accident. And so I like to imagine, well,

1057
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:40,400
Speaker 4: what if we had what if we had made that

1058
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 4: discovery decades or centuries earlier, because that discovery is what

1059
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:47,880
Speaker 4: kicked off like the Cures and their analysis of radiation,

1060
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 4: and then you know Rutherford and his analysis of the

1061
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 4: nucleus and like basically quantum mechanics. Right, that was the

1062
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 4: moment that kicked off everything that led to quantum mechanics.

1063
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 4: What if that had happened one hundred years earlier? What

1064
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 4: if little Einstein was taught quantum mechanics in the crib,

1065
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 4: then when he was developing his theory of general relativity,

1066
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:13,279
Speaker 4: would he have come up with some quantum version. I mean,

1067
00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 4: it's just one example, but it shows you how randomness

1068
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:20,520
Speaker 4: affects the development of our science and it could have

1069
00:57:20,560 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 4: taken us on different paths. And so the fact that

1070
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 4: we're stuck right now unifying quantum mechanics and gravity and

1071
00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 4: that even Einstein wasn't able to do it, maybe it's

1072
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:33,480
Speaker 4: because we started too late with quantum mechanics, and if

1073
00:57:33,560 --> 00:57:37,720
Speaker 4: quantum mechanics was more intuitive to the smarty pants in

1074
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 4: the last one hundred years, maybe we would have made

1075
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 4: more progress. Or maybe there's some other crazy and kind

1076
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 4: of obvious discovery we haven't made yet, and on all

1077
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 4: the other earths they have and so they're like way

1078
00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 4: far ahead of us because we just haven't like stumbled

1079
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 4: across XYZ, you know. Or maybe we're very far ahead

1080
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:59,960
Speaker 4: and most earths they're still using stone tools. Who knows,

1081
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 4: but it would certainly affect what it's like to talk

1082
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:06,520
Speaker 4: to aliens, you know. Are they on the same single

1083
00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 4: path that we are on? Are there multiple paths up

1084
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:11,760
Speaker 4: this sort of mountain to figure out the nature of

1085
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 4: the universe? And where did their path diverge? You know,

1086
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:18,800
Speaker 4: did they start totally differently from us or did they

1087
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 4: just like randomly discover things in a different order. Really

1088
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:24,880
Speaker 4: really fascinating to learn that, And so that's why I

1089
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:27,959
Speaker 4: dug into the sort of ancient history. You know, were

1090
00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:32,080
Speaker 4: the Mayans being mathematical? If the Mayans, for example, had

1091
00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:36,560
Speaker 4: not been devastated by the Spanish, what would their mathematics

1092
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:39,240
Speaker 4: and science be like right now? That would be fascinating

1093
00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:41,720
Speaker 4: to know it's such a tragedy. You know, they might

1094
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 4: have a very different way to think about the universe

1095
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:47,720
Speaker 4: and to express it. They certainly were on the road

1096
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:51,040
Speaker 4: to doing that. When the Europeans got there. Their predictions

1097
00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:54,280
Speaker 4: for like motions of stars and moons were more accurate

1098
00:58:54,360 --> 00:58:58,680
Speaker 4: than the European predictions. So you know, we certainly lost

1099
00:58:58,720 --> 00:58:59,600
Speaker 4: a whole thread there.

1100
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:03,240
Speaker 3: Okay, if your game for this, here's the part where

1101
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:06,320
Speaker 3: I would like you to speculate. I want you to

1102
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 3: voice your hunches. If you have a guess or a

1103
00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:14,320
Speaker 3: suspicion about what is most likely the limiting factor in

1104
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 3: the original Drake equation, Like which of those variables you know,

1105
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,960
Speaker 3: maybe multiple, but which of them is most likely to

1106
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:24,600
Speaker 3: be near zero and is the reason we're not hearing

1107
00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:29,000
Speaker 3: from anybody? And then secondly, what do you think is

1108
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:33,920
Speaker 3: most likely to be the filter preventing the alien physics conference.

1109
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, my hunch, again not scientifically, is that there's life

1110
00:59:39,160 --> 00:59:42,000
Speaker 4: everywhere in the universe, that it's all over. You know

1111
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:47,120
Speaker 4: that maybe the fraction of planets that have life is small,

1112
00:59:47,400 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 4: but it can't be that small, you know, it doesn't

1113
00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 4: seem like we're that special. So I think there's probably

1114
00:59:53,520 --> 00:59:57,439
Speaker 4: at least microbial life everywhere. How often do you get

1115
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 4: like complex multicellular life, know, But I still my hunch

1116
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 4: is that the denominator is big enough to tolerate a

1117
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:07,040
Speaker 4: small fraction, and that the final result is still going

1118
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 4: to be large. So I'm going to imagine that the

1119
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 4: universe is filled with technological aliens, and you know, we

1120
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:16,600
Speaker 4: haven't heard from them because we don't understand their signals,

1121
01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 4: or because you know, time and space have prevented them

1122
01:00:20,200 --> 01:00:23,240
Speaker 4: from coming here or communicating with us. So I think that,

1123
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 4: you know, we're starting from a good number. I think

1124
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:30,040
Speaker 4: that when they do arrive, that we are going to

1125
01:00:30,080 --> 01:00:34,160
Speaker 4: be shocked by how human are science is. I mean,

1126
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:36,360
Speaker 4: I think I persuaded myself when I was writing this

1127
01:00:36,400 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 4: book that there's a lot of assumptions we're making that

1128
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:41,960
Speaker 4: you know, they're not going to have coffee and croissants

1129
01:00:41,960 --> 01:00:44,680
Speaker 4: for breakfast. They're going to be so much weirder than

1130
01:00:44,680 --> 01:00:48,760
Speaker 4: we imagine. Because even on Earth, life is always weirder

1131
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:52,240
Speaker 4: than we imagine. We're always discovering super weird, gunky stuff,

1132
01:00:53,520 --> 01:00:57,600
Speaker 4: and so it's sort of it's really just hubris to

1133
01:00:57,680 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 4: imagine that our way way of thinking and our way

1134
01:01:01,520 --> 01:01:03,520
Speaker 4: of doing things is the only way, is the best

1135
01:01:03,560 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 4: way to me. It's equivalent to like geocentrism, you know,

1136
01:01:08,040 --> 01:01:10,520
Speaker 4: to put ourselves at the center of the intellectual universe

1137
01:01:10,560 --> 01:01:12,680
Speaker 4: and say this is the only way. And I'm looking

1138
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:15,720
Speaker 4: forward to that. I want my mind blown. I want

1139
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 4: it to be bizarre and difficult. I want it to

1140
01:01:17,720 --> 01:01:22,160
Speaker 4: take decades to understand what they're even talking about and

1141
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:25,280
Speaker 4: how they think about things, because then we're going to

1142
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:27,720
Speaker 4: learn something about ourselves, not just the aliens. We're gonna

1143
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 4: learn about what's unusual about us. Where do we stand,

1144
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 4: what is weird about being human? And it's going to

1145
01:01:34,680 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 4: help define what it means to be human and to

1146
01:01:36,680 --> 01:01:39,400
Speaker 4: be a human scientist. This is how we think about things,

1147
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:41,360
Speaker 4: This is how we ask about things. These are kind

1148
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:44,800
Speaker 4: of answers that we find satisfying and that we accept

1149
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 4: and don't ask more questions about. And these are the

1150
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:50,320
Speaker 4: things that drive us and make us curious. You know,

1151
01:01:50,800 --> 01:01:54,800
Speaker 4: So I think, I hope, I guess I have a hunch,

1152
01:01:54,880 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 4: and I hope that aliens do science in a much

1153
01:01:57,440 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 4: weirder way than anybody imagines that even is imagined in

1154
01:02:01,240 --> 01:02:03,360
Speaker 4: this book, right, I don't claim that what we've described

1155
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:05,560
Speaker 4: in this book spans the whole space of ideas. I

1156
01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:07,840
Speaker 4: just want to give people a flavor that there are

1157
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 4: many ideas out there that we haven't even imagined because

1158
01:02:11,200 --> 01:02:14,080
Speaker 4: we might not have the capacity to think outside of

1159
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:14,880
Speaker 4: our little box.

1160
01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:19,600
Speaker 3: The book is called Do Aliens Speak Physics? Daniel Whitson,

1161
01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us today.

1162
01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:25,240
Speaker 4: Thank you very much, super funing conversation. Thank you.

1163
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 1: All right.

1164
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:31,680
Speaker 3: So much appreciation to Daniel Whitson for joining us today.

1165
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 3: The book Do Aliens Speak Physics is slated for release

1166
01:02:35,640 --> 01:02:38,680
Speaker 3: on November fourth, twenty twenty five, but you can pre

1167
01:02:38,840 --> 01:02:41,360
Speaker 3: order your copy now. And if you want to check

1168
01:02:41,360 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 3: out Daniel's podcast, it is called Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

1169
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:49,360
Speaker 3: If you're new to the show, Stuff to Blow Your

1170
01:02:49,400 --> 01:02:52,840
Speaker 3: Mind is a science and culture podcast with core episodes

1171
01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:55,920
Speaker 3: publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week. Usually I'm

1172
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 3: joined by my regular co host Robert Lamb for those,

1173
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:02,560
Speaker 3: and then also on Fridays we do a different kind

1174
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:06,000
Speaker 3: of show called Weird House Cinema, which is just about

1175
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:10,680
Speaker 3: weird movies. They can be old, new, good, bad, well known,

1176
01:03:10,800 --> 01:03:13,200
Speaker 3: or obscure. The only real criterion is they've got to

1177
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:16,640
Speaker 3: be weird, so we do that on Fridays. On Wednesdays

1178
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:20,040
Speaker 3: we usually have a short form episode. On Saturdays and

1179
01:03:20,120 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 3: Mondays we feature older episodes of the shows. You'll get

1180
01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:25,840
Speaker 3: a rerun of a core episode from the Vault on

1181
01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:31,840
Speaker 3: Saturdays and a Weird House cinema rewind on Mondays. Let's see.

1182
01:03:32,200 --> 01:03:34,440
Speaker 3: If you would like to follow us on social media,

1183
01:03:34,560 --> 01:03:37,520
Speaker 3: you can find us there. We're on I think most

1184
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 3: of the major places. Some we're called something like blow

1185
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:44,280
Speaker 3: the Mind or Stuff to Blow your Mind, and I

1186
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:47,200
Speaker 3: guess that does it. So huge thanks as always to

1187
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:52,040
Speaker 3: our excellent audio producer JJ Posway, and today big thanks

1188
01:03:52,080 --> 01:03:55,640
Speaker 3: again to Daniel Whitson for joining us. If you would

1189
01:03:55,720 --> 01:03:57,640
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

1190
01:03:57,720 --> 01:04:00,200
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for

1191
01:04:00,240 --> 01:04:03,080
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email

1192
01:04:03,160 --> 01:04:14,720
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1193
01:04:14,720 --> 01:04:17,680
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1194
01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:20,520
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1195
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:37,680
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.