1
00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:12,040
Speaker 1: When I say the phrase aliens have arrived, what comes

2
00:00:12,039 --> 00:00:15,160
Speaker 1: to your mind? Do you think about humans getting sliced

3
00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:18,280
Speaker 1: to pieces and served for dinner, or alien ships blasting

4
00:00:18,280 --> 00:00:21,720
Speaker 1: our cities from space. Well, here in our happy corner

5
00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:24,920
Speaker 1: of the podcast Universe, we like to be optimistic. There

6
00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:28,240
Speaker 1: are potentially huge upsides to an alien arrival for the

7
00:00:28,400 --> 00:00:31,040
Speaker 1: curious among us, and among those I count not just

8
00:00:31,200 --> 00:00:33,760
Speaker 1: the host of this podcast, of course, but you, the

9
00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:37,120
Speaker 1: listeners in our community of wonderers. For those of us

10
00:00:37,159 --> 00:00:40,080
Speaker 1: who are curious about the universe, meeting aliens who are

11
00:00:40,120 --> 00:00:43,280
Speaker 1: technologically advanced enough to arrive on Earth seems like a

12
00:00:43,400 --> 00:01:02,320
Speaker 1: great opportunity. Pie. I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist and

13
00:01:02,360 --> 00:01:05,560
Speaker 1: a professor at UC Irvine, and I want to know

14
00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:09,080
Speaker 1: the secrets that aliens have learned about the universe. And

15
00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:12,600
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

16
00:01:12,640 --> 00:01:15,440
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. My co host Jorge

17
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:17,840
Speaker 1: Champ can't be with us today, so it's just me

18
00:01:17,920 --> 00:01:21,319
Speaker 1: and a guest to talk about the secrets of aliens science.

19
00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:26,160
Speaker 1: Imagine for a moment the best case scenario, aliens arrive

20
00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:29,319
Speaker 1: on Earth and they are friendly, and we can figure

21
00:01:29,360 --> 00:01:31,880
Speaker 1: out how to talk to them, and our scientists can

22
00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:36,040
Speaker 1: talk to their scientists. Maybe these aliens know things about

23
00:01:36,200 --> 00:01:39,559
Speaker 1: space and time or quantum mechanics that we haven't figured

24
00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:42,679
Speaker 1: out yet. Maybe we could fast forward human science a

25
00:01:42,720 --> 00:01:46,640
Speaker 1: thousand years or a million years. In this picture, you

26
00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:50,160
Speaker 1: can imagine human and alien scientists are like together, engaged

27
00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:53,600
Speaker 1: in some grand project to unravel the secrets of the universe.

28
00:01:54,280 --> 00:01:56,560
Speaker 1: If we can talk to them, and if they do

29
00:01:56,640 --> 00:01:59,279
Speaker 1: science like we do, and if we can make sense

30
00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:02,480
Speaker 1: of what they've learned, it could be an incredible moment,

31
00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:05,760
Speaker 1: really a pivot in human history. But is that possible?

32
00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:08,640
Speaker 1: As one listener asked a few weeks ago, could we

33
00:02:08,720 --> 00:02:12,919
Speaker 1: even rocket or would they be too advanced? So today

34
00:02:12,919 --> 00:02:20,840
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question, could aliens

35
00:02:21,040 --> 00:02:25,120
Speaker 1: teach us science? Could we establish a common enough understanding

36
00:02:25,160 --> 00:02:29,640
Speaker 1: to communicating about complex intellectual questions like particle physics? Would

37
00:02:29,639 --> 00:02:32,560
Speaker 1: they be interested in the same questions we are, Would

38
00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:35,160
Speaker 1: we be able to understand their science? Could it be

39
00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:38,640
Speaker 1: incompatible with ours? Are we certain they would even have

40
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:42,240
Speaker 1: developed science in order to be technological To help me

41
00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:45,600
Speaker 1: explore these questions, it's my pleasure to introduce today's guest

42
00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:49,080
Speaker 1: Samuel Kimpton I. Samuel is a research associate at the

43
00:02:49,160 --> 00:02:51,799
Speaker 1: University of Bristol. He works on issues at the intersection

44
00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:54,880
Speaker 1: of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Currently, he's working

45
00:02:54,919 --> 00:02:57,680
Speaker 1: on the Meta Science Project, which seeks to unify the

46
00:02:57,760 --> 00:02:59,880
Speaker 1: natural sciences, but he agreed to join me on the

47
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:03,120
Speaker 1: podcast to talk about aliens and how they think about science.

48
00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:05,919
Speaker 1: Sam Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Daniel,

49
00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:08,840
Speaker 1: So tell me first, how often does the topic of

50
00:03:08,880 --> 00:03:12,360
Speaker 1: aliens and their scientific minds come up in metaphysics and

51
00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:15,440
Speaker 1: philosophy of science. Is it totally fringe or is there

52
00:03:15,480 --> 00:03:19,160
Speaker 1: like a whole journal devoted to this topic. Good question.

53
00:03:19,440 --> 00:03:21,560
Speaker 1: Far from a whole journal, now that that would be

54
00:03:21,639 --> 00:03:26,280
Speaker 1: a stretch. I mean, philosophers are very interested in thinking

55
00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:30,840
Speaker 1: about wacky, far out possibilities and scenarios, so aliens do

56
00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:34,600
Speaker 1: come up occasionally. There are also other monsters in there,

57
00:03:34,639 --> 00:03:38,480
Speaker 1: sometimes zombies, vampires and the like. So I wasn't completely

58
00:03:38,480 --> 00:03:40,680
Speaker 1: surprised that you choose to ask a philosopher to talk

59
00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:42,840
Speaker 1: about this sort of thing. It seems to me exactly

60
00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:45,000
Speaker 1: the kind of things philosophers might love to talk about

61
00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:48,680
Speaker 1: because it's a great way to ask one specific question,

62
00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:52,560
Speaker 1: you know, asking the question, how do aliens think about science?

63
00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:55,440
Speaker 1: Could we understand their science? Seems to me a great

64
00:03:55,480 --> 00:03:59,360
Speaker 1: way to reflect on whether or not our science is

65
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:02,520
Speaker 1: universe all or just human, you know, whether it's something

66
00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:05,480
Speaker 1: we've discovered or something we've invented. So I would be

67
00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:09,320
Speaker 1: a little surprised if it's not something philosophers already thinking about. Yeah,

68
00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:11,920
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, it's something that I've been thinking

69
00:04:11,960 --> 00:04:15,440
Speaker 1: about recently actually in the context of the philosophy of

70
00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:18,080
Speaker 1: the laws of nature and to what extent we should

71
00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:21,040
Speaker 1: be kind of realist or pragmatists about these things. And

72
00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:22,760
Speaker 1: maybe we can get into that in some more detail.

73
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:25,839
Speaker 1: But there's definitely some value, certainly in thinking about how

74
00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:29,120
Speaker 1: just beings with very different kind of modes of cognition

75
00:04:29,600 --> 00:04:32,760
Speaker 1: might explore the world and kind of systematize their experiences

76
00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:35,760
Speaker 1: as well. Right, So, you know, we've got our five senses,

77
00:04:35,839 --> 00:04:38,640
Speaker 1: and that seems to be completely integralt up to how

78
00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:40,280
Speaker 1: we're going to explore the world, and so we're going

79
00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:42,400
Speaker 1: to be systematizing the world on the basis of our

80
00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:46,480
Speaker 1: sense experience. But it seems certainly imaginable that some other

81
00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:48,800
Speaker 1: creatures would have very different senses, and so the way

82
00:04:48,839 --> 00:04:51,600
Speaker 1: they systematize the world and do science would be would

83
00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:54,760
Speaker 1: be quite different. Indeed, in senses are something that philosophers

84
00:04:54,760 --> 00:04:56,760
Speaker 1: I know, to talk about a lot. Is a person

85
00:04:56,880 --> 00:04:58,800
Speaker 1: isolated in a room who has never seen the color

86
00:04:58,880 --> 00:05:01,960
Speaker 1: red and notion of quality. But it seems to me

87
00:05:02,040 --> 00:05:04,839
Speaker 1: to be sort of a difficult topic to explore because

88
00:05:04,880 --> 00:05:08,920
Speaker 1: we are limited to our senses, and so we're sort

89
00:05:08,920 --> 00:05:10,800
Speaker 1: of in a box, and it's hard to imagine, like

90
00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:12,760
Speaker 1: what it's like to be in a different box where

91
00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:16,120
Speaker 1: you experience the universe with totally different senses. It's the

92
00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:18,159
Speaker 1: goal there to think about, like what it would be

93
00:05:18,240 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 1: like to experience the universe if you could like taste electrons,

94
00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:25,920
Speaker 1: or if you had some sense for dark matter or neutrinos.

95
00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:28,360
Speaker 1: Is it possible for us to really take that jump

96
00:05:28,360 --> 00:05:31,200
Speaker 1: into sort of logic our way into what it's like

97
00:05:31,320 --> 00:05:32,640
Speaker 1: to be a bat and you know, what it's like

98
00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:35,520
Speaker 1: to be an alien? Or is that really impossible? Exactly right?

99
00:05:35,560 --> 00:05:37,720
Speaker 1: I think that's the exact sort sorts of issues that

100
00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:40,599
Speaker 1: people might like to wrestle within this area, right, And yeah,

101
00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:42,480
Speaker 1: you've got the reference in there to what it's like

102
00:05:42,640 --> 00:05:46,000
Speaker 1: to be a bat, and famously, philosopher Thomas Nagil argued

103
00:05:46,040 --> 00:05:47,880
Speaker 1: that we can't possibly know what it's like to be

104
00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:50,240
Speaker 1: about but while that might be the case, at least

105
00:05:50,279 --> 00:05:52,839
Speaker 1: we can sort of start to think about why that's so. Right,

106
00:05:52,880 --> 00:05:56,039
Speaker 1: So the bat navigates by by sonar as opposed to

107
00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:59,039
Speaker 1: kind of visual experiences, and while we can kind of

108
00:05:59,279 --> 00:06:02,760
Speaker 1: do some side of sonar, it seems a long step

109
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:05,680
Speaker 1: from that to actually being able to know what it's

110
00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:08,599
Speaker 1: like to be that bat. And so it certainly seems

111
00:06:08,760 --> 00:06:12,400
Speaker 1: imaginable that there are just other actual creatures out there,

112
00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:15,440
Speaker 1: or possible alien creatures that would just experienced the world

113
00:06:15,480 --> 00:06:18,800
Speaker 1: so dramatically differently to us that it would be impossible

114
00:06:18,880 --> 00:06:21,520
Speaker 1: to kind of get into their perspectives and their minds.

115
00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:23,719
Speaker 1: And so this is quite mind boggling to think that

116
00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:27,440
Speaker 1: the way that we're experiencing the universe is potentially quite

117
00:06:27,640 --> 00:06:29,760
Speaker 1: limited in a way. And we know that it's limited.

118
00:06:29,760 --> 00:06:32,200
Speaker 1: I mean, physics at least has told us that most

119
00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:34,880
Speaker 1: of the universe is invisible to us. You know, most

120
00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:37,000
Speaker 1: of the universe is dark matter, which we don't even

121
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,279
Speaker 1: know what it is, and even of the matter that

122
00:06:39,320 --> 00:06:42,280
Speaker 1: we are familiar with, like neutrinos are streaming in front

123
00:06:42,279 --> 00:06:44,680
Speaker 1: of us all of the time, but we can't see them,

124
00:06:44,720 --> 00:06:46,839
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot. We know for a fact

125
00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:48,680
Speaker 1: that there's a lot going on in the universe that

126
00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:52,080
Speaker 1: we do not sense, and that therefore our mental picture

127
00:06:52,080 --> 00:06:54,599
Speaker 1: of the universe is a very particular one. And it

128
00:06:54,600 --> 00:06:57,320
Speaker 1: seems frustrating but enticing to me at the same time. Like,

129
00:06:57,600 --> 00:07:00,880
Speaker 1: if aliens are so alien that they might be impossible

130
00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:04,680
Speaker 1: for us to really digest, that also suggest that they

131
00:07:04,680 --> 00:07:08,039
Speaker 1: have some very valuable insight, Like the more alien they are,

132
00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:11,240
Speaker 1: the more valuable it is to try to understand their minds.

133
00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:15,960
Speaker 1: But then periodoxically, the more impossible it might be. Yeah, interesting, right, So,

134
00:07:16,080 --> 00:07:18,360
Speaker 1: like you said, it's tantalizing because even if we were

135
00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:20,640
Speaker 1: to encounter these creatures, maybe we just have no way

136
00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:23,760
Speaker 1: of communicating with them, so we have no into their insights.

137
00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:25,600
Speaker 1: But then I guess there there might be kind of

138
00:07:25,760 --> 00:07:28,240
Speaker 1: two dimensions to this issue. So what you said, they're

139
00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:31,640
Speaker 1: suggested the possibility of creatures that might be able to

140
00:07:31,760 --> 00:07:34,160
Speaker 1: perceive things that maybe we have some sort of knowledge

141
00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:36,800
Speaker 1: of but no direct perception of, things like neutrinos and that.

142
00:07:37,160 --> 00:07:39,480
Speaker 1: But I suppose another thing that we might think is

143
00:07:39,520 --> 00:07:41,880
Speaker 1: just that, going back to the bad example, they kind

144
00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:44,640
Speaker 1: of the mode of perceiving one's environment might just be

145
00:07:44,760 --> 00:07:47,160
Speaker 1: very different for the aliens. So if they perceived by

146
00:07:47,600 --> 00:07:50,440
Speaker 1: reflecting sound waves of surfaces, that would just give them

147
00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:53,400
Speaker 1: a very different kind of experience. I also often think

148
00:07:53,440 --> 00:07:56,160
Speaker 1: about the example of the aliens in that the Ted

149
00:07:56,240 --> 00:07:59,080
Speaker 1: Chang story Stories of Your Life or the film Rival,

150
00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:01,520
Speaker 1: and they have this very differently if I remember correctly

151
00:08:01,520 --> 00:08:03,080
Speaker 1: as well, I guess, and so since I read the

152
00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:07,400
Speaker 1: short story, but they have this very different perception of time, right,

153
00:08:07,440 --> 00:08:09,640
Speaker 1: And it seems plausible to me that there could be

154
00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:12,240
Speaker 1: a creature with a very different perception of time, and

155
00:08:12,280 --> 00:08:14,560
Speaker 1: then that would just make the way they systematized and

156
00:08:14,600 --> 00:08:17,600
Speaker 1: think about their worlds so different from us. Absolutely. I

157
00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:19,440
Speaker 1: think one of the really fun things about that story

158
00:08:19,880 --> 00:08:23,560
Speaker 1: and the movie is understanding and appreciating how difficult it

159
00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:26,480
Speaker 1: might be to communicate with aliens, not to mention, like

160
00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:29,320
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, their notions of quantum mechanics, but

161
00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:32,400
Speaker 1: just like get the basics down, you know, and that's

162
00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:34,880
Speaker 1: a whole other question, you know, And maybe for today

163
00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:36,880
Speaker 1: we should put that aside with the question of whether

164
00:08:36,920 --> 00:08:40,240
Speaker 1: we could discover alien messages, whether we could develop a

165
00:08:40,240 --> 00:08:43,200
Speaker 1: common language with them. We recently had No M. Chomsky

166
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:46,360
Speaker 1: and Kareem Jabari on the podcast to talk about, you know,

167
00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:49,840
Speaker 1: the universality of language, And something that comes up often

168
00:08:49,920 --> 00:08:54,240
Speaker 1: in these conversations is not necessarily like could we understand

169
00:08:54,280 --> 00:08:57,680
Speaker 1: their lingo and their slaying and how they communicate, but

170
00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:00,319
Speaker 1: that there might be a deeper way to communicate something

171
00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:03,360
Speaker 1: that's common, something that's universal. This is this I think

172
00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:06,199
Speaker 1: widely held belief that we can avoid this whole question

173
00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:09,200
Speaker 1: of language by focusing on the mathematics and the physics,

174
00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:12,680
Speaker 1: which might be more universal. And Carl Sagan famously argued

175
00:09:12,720 --> 00:09:16,199
Speaker 1: that we could use mathematics to find a common intellectual context.

176
00:09:16,360 --> 00:09:19,520
Speaker 1: But how much can we say about like the universality

177
00:09:19,679 --> 00:09:23,000
Speaker 1: of mathematics itself, What do we know about whether it's

178
00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:26,360
Speaker 1: likely to be just the way humans think, like an abstract,

179
00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:29,880
Speaker 1: sort of succinct way to describe the thought processes that

180
00:09:29,920 --> 00:09:33,240
Speaker 1: we have, or something that actually reflects the objective structure

181
00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:36,520
Speaker 1: of the universe. How do we probe that kind of question? Yeah,

182
00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:38,680
Speaker 1: that's that's a great question. Daniel, And this is a

183
00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:41,679
Speaker 1: whole area of really fruitful research and philosophy and the

184
00:09:41,679 --> 00:09:44,640
Speaker 1: philosophy of of mathematics, which I certainly can't claim to

185
00:09:44,640 --> 00:09:46,719
Speaker 1: be any kind of expert on, but it's it's it's

186
00:09:46,760 --> 00:09:50,320
Speaker 1: tantalizing for sure. I mean, there's this problem, right that

187
00:09:50,360 --> 00:09:53,480
Speaker 1: you might have encountered, a problem of the unreasonable effectiveness

188
00:09:53,520 --> 00:09:57,319
Speaker 1: of mathematics. And it seems kind of surprising and really

189
00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:00,240
Speaker 1: cool that mathematics turns out to be so good at

190
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:03,640
Speaker 1: describing the physical universe that we find around us, right,

191
00:10:03,679 --> 00:10:07,720
Speaker 1: this abstract formal system that we've perhaps invented. You know,

192
00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:10,280
Speaker 1: a lot of branches of mathematics come about just by

193
00:10:10,320 --> 00:10:13,160
Speaker 1: mathematicians thinking in the abstract kind of having fun and

194
00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:15,560
Speaker 1: doing puzzles, if you like, and then turn out to

195
00:10:15,640 --> 00:10:19,360
Speaker 1: be applicable to real physical systems. And this this is

196
00:10:19,440 --> 00:10:23,120
Speaker 1: kind of remarkable and maybe something like a hint at

197
00:10:23,160 --> 00:10:25,640
Speaker 1: the fact that the universe is in a way kind

198
00:10:25,640 --> 00:10:28,920
Speaker 1: of made in these mathematical terms and there's something objective

199
00:10:28,960 --> 00:10:31,560
Speaker 1: going on here. So that's an interesting thought. Yeah, maybe

200
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:33,880
Speaker 1: there's some hope that that could be something of a

201
00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:37,800
Speaker 1: universal that even crazy arrival type aliens might be able

202
00:10:37,800 --> 00:10:40,400
Speaker 1: to communicate with us in terms of I'd love to

203
00:10:40,400 --> 00:10:43,200
Speaker 1: believe that, and I'd love to think that mathematics is

204
00:10:43,240 --> 00:10:46,360
Speaker 1: somehow the language of the universe itself, you know that,

205
00:10:46,520 --> 00:10:49,120
Speaker 1: like if we're in a simulation and mathematics is the

206
00:10:49,120 --> 00:10:51,280
Speaker 1: way that the source code has been written in some way.

207
00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:54,400
Speaker 1: But it seems to me a little bit presumptuous, And

208
00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:57,240
Speaker 1: let me take the devil's advocate position there and argue

209
00:10:57,280 --> 00:10:59,559
Speaker 1: against it. The thing that makes me wonder about whether

210
00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:03,320
Speaker 1: mathemat x really is fundamental is not that mathematics is

211
00:11:03,360 --> 00:11:06,520
Speaker 1: not effective, because you're right, it absolutely is. It's incredible

212
00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:09,680
Speaker 1: how well our physical theories work. And I'm a particle physicist,

213
00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:12,800
Speaker 1: and we make mathematical predictions to like ten decimal places,

214
00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:14,120
Speaker 1: and we go out in the universe and we do

215
00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:16,760
Speaker 1: experiments and while they're banging on right, and that gives

216
00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:18,920
Speaker 1: you this feeling like, wow, maybe this isn't just a

217
00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:21,520
Speaker 1: description of the universe. Maybe it is the way the

218
00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:25,480
Speaker 1: universe does these calculations. But the problem with that argument

219
00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:29,559
Speaker 1: is that every theory that we have, every mathematical description

220
00:11:29,600 --> 00:11:32,400
Speaker 1: we have of the universe, we know is an effective theory,

221
00:11:32,520 --> 00:11:36,719
Speaker 1: not a fundamental theory. We know that it has domains validity.

222
00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:40,440
Speaker 1: You know. For example, Newton's theory works really really well

223
00:11:40,920 --> 00:11:43,840
Speaker 1: until we measured very precisely the orbit of mercury. We

224
00:11:43,840 --> 00:11:46,440
Speaker 1: were like, wow, this might be the way the universe works.

225
00:11:46,440 --> 00:11:49,080
Speaker 1: Maybe Newton had revealed the truth of the universe. And

226
00:11:49,120 --> 00:11:52,000
Speaker 1: so there are many theories out there that only work

227
00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:54,800
Speaker 1: in sort of a region, in under certain conditions or

228
00:11:55,040 --> 00:11:58,480
Speaker 1: in certain systems, And can you say that they are

229
00:11:58,559 --> 00:12:01,160
Speaker 1: a fundamental description of the never is a true description

230
00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:03,640
Speaker 1: of the way the universe works? Definitely not right. Newton

231
00:12:03,800 --> 00:12:06,720
Speaker 1: was not correct about the real nature of space and

232
00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:09,840
Speaker 1: time and gravity, and yet his theory worked really well.

233
00:12:09,880 --> 00:12:12,040
Speaker 1: And today we have theories that work really well, but

234
00:12:12,120 --> 00:12:15,520
Speaker 1: we suspect or we are fairly confident that they aren't

235
00:12:15,640 --> 00:12:18,199
Speaker 1: the devast theories of the universe. The current standard model,

236
00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:20,640
Speaker 1: for example, will break down at the plank scale, where

237
00:12:20,640 --> 00:12:23,200
Speaker 1: it needs a description of gravity. So how do we

238
00:12:23,240 --> 00:12:27,000
Speaker 1: know that there are mathematical descriptions that are really fundamental,

239
00:12:27,120 --> 00:12:30,280
Speaker 1: not just effective in some regime. Are we just looking

240
00:12:30,280 --> 00:12:33,480
Speaker 1: at sort of like a patchwork of mathematical ideas, not

241
00:12:33,679 --> 00:12:36,640
Speaker 1: like a true revealing of the nature of the universe. Yeah,

242
00:12:36,679 --> 00:12:39,360
Speaker 1: an interesting. Dannally a very good point that it reminds

243
00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:42,400
Speaker 1: me of a debate in the philosophy of science, realism

244
00:12:42,480 --> 00:12:45,840
Speaker 1: versus anti realism, roughly the debate over whether or not

245
00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:48,120
Speaker 1: science kind of gets that the truth of how things are.

246
00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:50,000
Speaker 1: And the anti realists say that who say that it

247
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:52,520
Speaker 1: doesn't get the truth have an argument along those lines, right,

248
00:12:52,520 --> 00:12:55,160
Speaker 1: They say, Look, all of these past scientific theories have

249
00:12:55,240 --> 00:12:57,520
Speaker 1: proven to be false, so why could we hold out

250
00:12:57,520 --> 00:13:00,000
Speaker 1: any any hope that our current theories are anywhere near

251
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:02,000
Speaker 1: the truth? But then the flip side of that is,

252
00:13:02,040 --> 00:13:04,400
Speaker 1: like you say, the or perhaps you alluded to that

253
00:13:04,559 --> 00:13:08,120
Speaker 1: these kind of false theories that are are mathematized as

254
00:13:08,160 --> 00:13:10,920
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned before as well, nonetheless seemed to be

255
00:13:11,120 --> 00:13:13,640
Speaker 1: kind of doing doing quite well, and we can we

256
00:13:13,679 --> 00:13:15,760
Speaker 1: can do some good work with things like Newton's theory.

257
00:13:15,760 --> 00:13:19,319
Speaker 1: We can send people into space and stuff like that. Right, Um,

258
00:13:19,400 --> 00:13:21,600
Speaker 1: So although they might be strictly speaking false, they might

259
00:13:21,600 --> 00:13:24,560
Speaker 1: be kind of getting at something that's kind of almost right.

260
00:13:24,920 --> 00:13:28,400
Speaker 1: And we might think that the better theories nonetheless preserve

261
00:13:28,559 --> 00:13:31,760
Speaker 1: something of the structure of Newton's theory. So then something

262
00:13:31,800 --> 00:13:34,520
Speaker 1: that some metaphysicians and philosophers of science have said, in

263
00:13:34,559 --> 00:13:38,040
Speaker 1: response to this kind of pessimistic argument for anti realism

264
00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:40,719
Speaker 1: and a slightly more skeptical stances, that maybe what we're

265
00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:43,720
Speaker 1: doing when we're describing the universe kind of imperfectly but

266
00:13:43,760 --> 00:13:45,319
Speaker 1: in a way that kind of works and is then

267
00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:49,280
Speaker 1: built on, is we're getting at some underlying deep structure. Right,

268
00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:52,040
Speaker 1: So then maybe maybe our mass, maybe even something like

269
00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:55,800
Speaker 1: Newton's theory is nonetheless latching onto some sort of objective

270
00:13:56,120 --> 00:13:59,720
Speaker 1: structure in a much kind of broader or deeper sense

271
00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:02,839
Speaker 1: than whether it's it's directly true, and so there might

272
00:14:02,840 --> 00:14:05,360
Speaker 1: be some some hope there that that the maths is

273
00:14:05,880 --> 00:14:09,400
Speaker 1: describing something that is fundamentally correct that's then sustained through

274
00:14:09,480 --> 00:14:12,800
Speaker 1: the theory change. The idea there, I guess is maybe

275
00:14:12,840 --> 00:14:16,600
Speaker 1: alien physicists also hit on Newton's approach before they hit

276
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:20,600
Speaker 1: on Einstone's approach that is not just a human description

277
00:14:20,760 --> 00:14:24,360
Speaker 1: of the universe, but it really is an effective approximation

278
00:14:24,440 --> 00:14:26,320
Speaker 1: of the way the universe really works. I guess that

279
00:14:26,440 --> 00:14:28,200
Speaker 1: is that the argument. I think that I think that

280
00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:30,280
Speaker 1: might be the idea. Yeah, right, I mean, we can

281
00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:33,040
Speaker 1: also think we know that Newton's theory is false, but

282
00:14:33,040 --> 00:14:35,080
Speaker 1: what we can still wonder why it's so kind of

283
00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:38,440
Speaker 1: effective and useful for us, And perhaps an answer to

284
00:14:38,480 --> 00:14:40,240
Speaker 1: that is that it is getting at some sort of

285
00:14:40,360 --> 00:14:42,840
Speaker 1: underlying structure. In some sense, it might be kind of

286
00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:45,040
Speaker 1: slightly grappling and growing in the dark at this thing,

287
00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:46,760
Speaker 1: but it might be kind of getting close, you know.

288
00:14:47,040 --> 00:14:48,760
Speaker 1: And so that's why we might be able to nonetheless

289
00:14:48,880 --> 00:14:51,680
Speaker 1: use Newton's theory for all sorts of interests and purposes

290
00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:53,320
Speaker 1: that we have. Yeah, all right, well, I have a

291
00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:55,880
Speaker 1: lot more questions about how we might probe the universe

292
00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:58,600
Speaker 1: and how alien scientists do as well. But first let's

293
00:14:58,600 --> 00:15:13,280
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, we're back and we're

294
00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:16,520
Speaker 1: talking to my guests, Samuel kim Deny, a philosopher of

295
00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:20,600
Speaker 1: science and metaphysics, about how aliens might think about science.

296
00:15:20,720 --> 00:15:22,960
Speaker 1: And when we took a break there, we were examining

297
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:26,760
Speaker 1: the question of whether our approximate theories like Newton series,

298
00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:29,880
Speaker 1: whether they're just sort of like human versions of the truth,

299
00:15:29,960 --> 00:15:33,200
Speaker 1: or whether they might be universal, you know, our alien

300
00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:36,720
Speaker 1: physicists likely to stumble into sort of the same ideas

301
00:15:36,800 --> 00:15:39,520
Speaker 1: as we are, or are these just sort of the

302
00:15:39,520 --> 00:15:42,120
Speaker 1: way the humans think about the universe. And I think

303
00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:44,320
Speaker 1: One way to maybe probe that is to think about

304
00:15:44,680 --> 00:15:47,800
Speaker 1: why it's even possible to do what Newton did. I mean,

305
00:15:47,840 --> 00:15:50,720
Speaker 1: if the universe has some fundamental theory down at the

306
00:15:50,800 --> 00:15:53,840
Speaker 1: string scale, quantum gravity, whatever is going on down there,

307
00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:58,240
Speaker 1: why isn't everything at the human scale totally chaotic? You know,

308
00:15:58,240 --> 00:16:00,800
Speaker 1: if you try to describe a hurricane in terms of

309
00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:04,240
Speaker 1: its fundamental bits, the rain drops, it's a huge difficult problem.

310
00:16:04,520 --> 00:16:07,200
Speaker 1: We don't have like a simple equation that tells you

311
00:16:07,240 --> 00:16:10,800
Speaker 1: where a hurricane is gonna land. It's a massively chaotic problem,

312
00:16:10,800 --> 00:16:13,240
Speaker 1: and you have to model every tiny little rain drop,

313
00:16:13,360 --> 00:16:15,520
Speaker 1: and rain drop moves over a meter, it could change

314
00:16:15,560 --> 00:16:17,760
Speaker 1: the entire path of the hurricane. But in our world,

315
00:16:17,760 --> 00:16:20,280
Speaker 1: it's possible to do what Newton did and describe the

316
00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:22,960
Speaker 1: path of a ball through the air without knowing anything

317
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:25,840
Speaker 1: about quantum and gravity. Right, you can make chicken soup

318
00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:28,200
Speaker 1: without knowing what the soup is really made out of.

319
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:31,120
Speaker 1: And to me that seems like the key there. If

320
00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:36,080
Speaker 1: these things are emerging, these descriptions, these simplified mathematical stories

321
00:16:36,160 --> 00:16:39,480
Speaker 1: the universe are universal. Everybody else should find them as well.

322
00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:42,840
Speaker 1: But do we even know why they exist? Why is

323
00:16:42,880 --> 00:16:47,480
Speaker 1: it possible to find these simplified mathematical stories of the universe.

324
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:50,160
Speaker 1: It seems to me key to understanding whether aliens are

325
00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:52,560
Speaker 1: also going to find them. Right, Yeah, I mean again,

326
00:16:52,600 --> 00:16:55,640
Speaker 1: this is a thing that trusted the science metaphysicians really

327
00:16:55,680 --> 00:16:58,200
Speaker 1: puzzle over its Um, why do we need to have

328
00:16:58,240 --> 00:17:00,200
Speaker 1: all of the different science is? Why can't we just

329
00:17:00,280 --> 00:17:03,120
Speaker 1: have fundamental physics and maybe chemistry? Why do we need

330
00:17:03,160 --> 00:17:06,399
Speaker 1: biology and psychology and economics as well? Right, that's a

331
00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:09,240
Speaker 1: little bit aggressive. Why don't we need anything but physics? Really,

332
00:17:09,240 --> 00:17:13,879
Speaker 1: physics is the only side It could be taken like that,

333
00:17:13,920 --> 00:17:17,320
Speaker 1: but it could more be um, yeah, a puzzlement once

334
00:17:17,359 --> 00:17:19,560
Speaker 1: once we kind of realize or think that, hey, it

335
00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:21,960
Speaker 1: looks like everything is kind of composed out of fundamental

336
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:24,320
Speaker 1: particles or fields or something like that, Why can't we

337
00:17:24,359 --> 00:17:27,560
Speaker 1: just do it all in fundamental terms? And yeah, I think,

338
00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:30,160
Speaker 1: like you say, it's something of a mystery. I don't

339
00:17:30,160 --> 00:17:31,680
Speaker 1: know if this is really an answer, but this is

340
00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:34,160
Speaker 1: just kind of rephrasing the issue. But what what sort

341
00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:37,400
Speaker 1: seems to happen is that we can effectively abstract away

342
00:17:37,440 --> 00:17:39,760
Speaker 1: from from certain details. Right because when we look at

343
00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:42,040
Speaker 1: the level of the weather, systems, or or the ball

344
00:17:42,119 --> 00:17:45,280
Speaker 1: flying through through space. We don't need to think about

345
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:47,600
Speaker 1: certain details at the fundamental level. We can kind of

346
00:17:47,600 --> 00:17:50,520
Speaker 1: coarse grain the information and then that presents a picture

347
00:17:50,560 --> 00:17:54,520
Speaker 1: that's far more useful and tractable for us given our interests. Right,

348
00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:56,160
Speaker 1: And this is what we do, and this is how

349
00:17:56,160 --> 00:17:57,840
Speaker 1: we how we navigate the world. Like you say, we

350
00:17:57,840 --> 00:18:00,440
Speaker 1: can we can make our chicken soup without worry about

351
00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:03,520
Speaker 1: what the what the electrons all the fields are doing. Right,

352
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:06,080
Speaker 1: but you said something really interesting there, you said, based

353
00:18:06,119 --> 00:18:09,160
Speaker 1: on what our interests are. It makes me wonder if

354
00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:12,119
Speaker 1: the universe is sort of like Russiman. You know what

355
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:14,439
Speaker 1: if we look at one system and we say, oh,

356
00:18:14,480 --> 00:18:16,840
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here is a ball flying through the air,

357
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:19,399
Speaker 1: and look, I can tell a simple mathematical story about it,

358
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:22,160
Speaker 1: and an alien physicists would be like ball, what even

359
00:18:22,280 --> 00:18:24,400
Speaker 1: is that? I'm more interested in the flow of these

360
00:18:24,400 --> 00:18:26,400
Speaker 1: particles over here, and I call that a blah blah

361
00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:28,720
Speaker 1: blah And here's my equation for the blah blah blah

362
00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:31,199
Speaker 1: and it's beautiful. And you know, is there there a

363
00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:34,840
Speaker 1: patchwork of mathematical stories that are only interesting to us?

364
00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:37,919
Speaker 1: Or are these stories likely to be universal. And I

365
00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:41,040
Speaker 1: know that the real answer waits until we meet the

366
00:18:41,040 --> 00:18:43,200
Speaker 1: aliens and we've talked science with them and we figure

367
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:46,080
Speaker 1: out if they've developed completely independent branches of science. But

368
00:18:46,119 --> 00:18:49,520
Speaker 1: I wonder you think it's possible to approach that question,

369
00:18:49,560 --> 00:18:53,200
Speaker 1: to address that question today before we've met the aliens,

370
00:18:53,240 --> 00:18:55,760
Speaker 1: just by looking at the structure of our theories and

371
00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:58,440
Speaker 1: looking for a hints that these things might be arbitrary

372
00:18:58,560 --> 00:19:01,480
Speaker 1: or might be universal. How we possibly pull those things

373
00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:05,080
Speaker 1: apart today before we get to talk to the aliens? Nice?

374
00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:09,760
Speaker 1: I mean, I happened to be somewhat skeptical about the

375
00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:13,160
Speaker 1: idea that there really is an objective way of kind

376
00:19:13,200 --> 00:19:16,040
Speaker 1: of I guess, so if we think about the ball

377
00:19:16,119 --> 00:19:17,760
Speaker 1: or the chicken, to talk of that as like a

378
00:19:17,760 --> 00:19:20,360
Speaker 1: way of course graining the low the low level information

379
00:19:20,400 --> 00:19:22,959
Speaker 1: to suit our interests, I'm kind of skeptical that there

380
00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:25,840
Speaker 1: is an objectively right or best way to do that.

381
00:19:26,040 --> 00:19:27,880
Speaker 1: And it seems kind of plausible to me that, yeah,

382
00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:31,080
Speaker 1: the aliens might be interested in some very different course grainings. Right,

383
00:19:31,119 --> 00:19:33,640
Speaker 1: So we're interested in the lump of matter that kind

384
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:35,840
Speaker 1: of corresponds to what we call the ball, But why

385
00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:38,040
Speaker 1: not be interested in the lump of matter that we

386
00:19:38,119 --> 00:19:42,040
Speaker 1: call the ball and also my nose every Tuesday. Right,

387
00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:45,040
Speaker 1: this would be a very strange kind of thing to

388
00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:47,760
Speaker 1: be interested in because it kind of jumps over time

389
00:19:47,800 --> 00:19:50,199
Speaker 1: and space in strange sorts of ways. But look, I

390
00:19:50,240 --> 00:19:53,000
Speaker 1: can I can define that object, right, this lump of

391
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,520
Speaker 1: matter that we call the ball and my nose on Tuesdays?

392
00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:58,640
Speaker 1: And why not try and describe the behavior of that thing.

393
00:19:58,800 --> 00:20:00,800
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a bit too silly, but I think that

394
00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:03,440
Speaker 1: the point is, Um, it turns out to be very

395
00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:09,119
Speaker 1: difficult to say why objectively we should be interested in

396
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:11,479
Speaker 1: the things that we are interested in. And and do

397
00:20:11,520 --> 00:20:14,159
Speaker 1: we think that an alien species would be wrong for

398
00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:17,160
Speaker 1: having some very interested in very different kind of course

399
00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:19,879
Speaker 1: grainings or would it be impossible for aliens to have

400
00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:23,960
Speaker 1: interests in very different kinds of course grainings? Um, I'm

401
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:26,560
Speaker 1: not sure. I don't see why it would be wrong

402
00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:29,280
Speaker 1: if they had these different interests. It doesn't strike me

403
00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:31,639
Speaker 1: as impossibly that if they're again, like going back to

404
00:20:31,640 --> 00:20:34,040
Speaker 1: what we're saying at the beginning, if their modes of

405
00:20:34,119 --> 00:20:37,760
Speaker 1: perceiving that their central sense experiences were very different to ours,

406
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:40,280
Speaker 1: or maybe if they perceived time very differently than we did.

407
00:20:40,680 --> 00:20:42,720
Speaker 1: Why not? You know, right? And to me it goes

408
00:20:42,800 --> 00:20:45,080
Speaker 1: to really the heart of the question of the human

409
00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:47,880
Speaker 1: experience and the context of it. In the same way

410
00:20:47,920 --> 00:20:50,840
Speaker 1: that we want to know are we alone? Because we

411
00:20:50,880 --> 00:20:54,200
Speaker 1: want to understand, like is life rare? And we also

412
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:56,600
Speaker 1: like to know are there other kinds of life? And

413
00:20:56,680 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 1: the biology have a lots of different options and we

414
00:20:58,840 --> 00:21:01,040
Speaker 1: just got one? Or is this basically the only way

415
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:03,719
Speaker 1: it can work? Meeting aliens can answer that question, and

416
00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 1: in the same way meeting alien physicists could tell us like, oh, look,

417
00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:09,720
Speaker 1: it turns out they got their own Newton and they

418
00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:11,879
Speaker 1: got their own Einstein, and this is the path you

419
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:14,760
Speaker 1: take to understanding the universe and it basically everybody follows

420
00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:17,520
Speaker 1: the same path, or you know, did they take a

421
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:20,600
Speaker 1: completely separate path? And I thought, experiment I'd love to

422
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:24,000
Speaker 1: do in reality is to take like a thousand earths

423
00:21:24,080 --> 00:21:28,280
Speaker 1: and have humans evolve intelligently and then let science progress independently.

424
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 1: You know, Newton almost didn't even become a scientist. What

425
00:21:31,560 --> 00:21:34,639
Speaker 1: would have happened if he hadn't, if we hadn't had Einstein,

426
00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:37,000
Speaker 1: or if somebody else had been even smarter? You know,

427
00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:39,199
Speaker 1: it feels to me like the path of human science

428
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:43,240
Speaker 1: rests so much on these tiny moments, these tiny accidents,

429
00:21:43,560 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 1: these tiny choices that people make, that it could have

430
00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:48,040
Speaker 1: very well gone a different way, and we have really

431
00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:50,280
Speaker 1: no way to probe, you know, the different paths that

432
00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:53,160
Speaker 1: might have taken, because we haven't met those aliens yet.

433
00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:55,159
Speaker 1: One way I thought about to probe that is to

434
00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:58,239
Speaker 1: look at this sort of history of the development of

435
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:01,960
Speaker 1: intellectual scientific thought here on Earth. Do you know anything

436
00:22:01,960 --> 00:22:05,159
Speaker 1: about like the history of you know, Mayan science and

437
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 1: Chinese science and Egyptian astronomy, and whether they can tell

438
00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 1: us whether independent groups of humans tend to come to

439
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:15,280
Speaker 1: the same ways of thinking about the universe, or whether

440
00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:18,399
Speaker 1: there really are divergent ways to attack this problem. I

441
00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:20,600
Speaker 1: think that's the exactly the right way to kind of

442
00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:22,960
Speaker 1: go about investigating this thing a bit more empirically. Yeah,

443
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:25,760
Speaker 1: that sounds like a great idea to me. Unfortunately, I

444
00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:28,520
Speaker 1: don't know about any investigations along those lines, although I'm

445
00:22:28,560 --> 00:22:31,560
Speaker 1: sure there are some. Something kind of similar that I

446
00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:35,800
Speaker 1: have heard about in philosophy is there's a recent movement

447
00:22:35,880 --> 00:22:40,960
Speaker 1: in experimental called experimental philosophy, which basically surveys the kind

448
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:45,280
Speaker 1: of philosophical intuitions of the folks on various um philosophical

449
00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:48,080
Speaker 1: puzzles and things like that. So philosophy has kind of

450
00:22:48,280 --> 00:22:51,760
Speaker 1: um philosophical intuition has been kind of put in the

451
00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 1: spotlight recently because it's like, hang on a minute, these

452
00:22:54,320 --> 00:22:57,439
Speaker 1: are the intuitions generally seemed to the interesting intuitions of

453
00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:01,119
Speaker 1: Western philosophers, and maybe they wouldn't be shared across the board,

454
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:03,680
Speaker 1: or or they wouldn't be shared even just by people

455
00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:06,520
Speaker 1: who aren't kind of indoctrinated into the academy as it were.

456
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:09,359
Speaker 1: And the experimental philosophers have done some work in this area,

457
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:12,879
Speaker 1: and I think they've uncovered more divergence in kind of

458
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:16,480
Speaker 1: philosophical intuitions than the kind of Western cannon would have

459
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:18,520
Speaker 1: us believe. So I think there is some good reason

460
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:21,040
Speaker 1: to think that something similar might be the case with

461
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: science as well, right, And I mean, I suppose another thing.

462
00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:27,440
Speaker 1: I guess why I think this is relevant is because

463
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: I think, really at the fundamental level, you can't draw

464
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:35,000
Speaker 1: sharp dividing lines between a kind of philosophical blue sky

465
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:38,359
Speaker 1: approach to thinking about the world and the scientific approach.

466
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: We've all got to kind of start somewhere. And so

467
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,000
Speaker 1: if there's some evidence to suggest that these kind of

468
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 1: broad philosophical intuitions on big questions are quite divergent between

469
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:51,920
Speaker 1: different people and different cultures, then I don't see why

470
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:55,200
Speaker 1: that that wouldn't maybe lead us to think that plausibly

471
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,199
Speaker 1: different different ways of doing science and different kind of

472
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:02,880
Speaker 1: foundational thoughts and intuitions on scientific issues might vary quite

473
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:06,400
Speaker 1: radically across people in different cultures as well. Yeah, that's

474
00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:09,879
Speaker 1: the thing. Well, we'll have a scientific anthropologist on to

475
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:13,120
Speaker 1: talk about how indigenous cultures do science and the histort

476
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 1: of history of the development there. But I think that'd

477
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:16,680
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun. I want to turn us

478
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: back to the question we were discussing a moment ago,

479
00:24:19,320 --> 00:24:23,920
Speaker 1: which is, you know, whether these emergent theories, these mathematical

480
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:26,719
Speaker 1: descriptions of the world that we see it our universal

481
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: or whether they're just sort of culturally dependent and could

482
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:33,120
Speaker 1: be different for aliens. But let's zoom down and talk

483
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:36,240
Speaker 1: about maybe like the fundamental theory of the universe. Some

484
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:38,840
Speaker 1: listeners out there might think, well, perhaps we have different

485
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: descriptions of balls versus noses, but at its heart, the

486
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: universe is a certain way there are fundamental vibrating strings,

487
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:48,719
Speaker 1: or there are space pixels or something at the quantum

488
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: gravity level. And what if we all zoom down there,

489
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: what would we inevitably find the same description of the

490
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:58,239
Speaker 1: universe because it is one way. So Kareem Jabari from

491
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 1: the Institute of Future Studies was on the part cast

492
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,119
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. He made a claim that

493
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: I found a bit shocking. He said that you could

494
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: have two fundamental theories of the universe that both work

495
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 1: in the sense that they succeed in describing what we see,

496
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:16,359
Speaker 1: but internally are fundamentally different pictures of the universe, or

497
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:21,400
Speaker 1: like completely different mental descriptions and mental structures telling us

498
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: a story about what's happening at the deepest scale. Do

499
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: you agree with that? Do you think it's possible to

500
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: have multiple accurate theories of the fundamental nature of the universe? Yeah,

501
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,680
Speaker 1: very interesting, I think nice. I like the approach there

502
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:35,719
Speaker 1: to think, Okay, maybe maybe if we zoom down then

503
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 1: we can then we can hope for some more objectivity.

504
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: I suppose one thing that comes to my mind is

505
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 1: that kind of approach hopes or assumes that there is

506
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 1: such a thing as a fundamental level. For all we know,

507
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 1: it could be infinitely infinitely divisible all the way all

508
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:51,719
Speaker 1: the way down right, And then I don't know, if

509
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 1: we'd be in trouble. Then that might kind of scupperro

510
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,359
Speaker 1: our aspirations for objectivity. It might mean a lot of

511
00:25:57,359 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: work for particle physicists for a long time, though we

512
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 1: just keep building bigger and bigger Adams measures potentially good news. Then, Yeah,

513
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,200
Speaker 1: so that's something that I would worry a bit about.

514
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:11,960
Speaker 1: I mean, so I suppose the worry, the kind of

515
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:17,120
Speaker 1: anti objectivist or pragmatist approach or kind of worry, would

516
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: be that maybe all there is to the universe is

517
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: just some kind of homogeneous blob of matter, and we

518
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:25,120
Speaker 1: just kind of cut it up in ways that serve

519
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: our interests. And so then you're perhaps counterproposal here is,

520
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:29,720
Speaker 1: But but what if we could just get to the

521
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:33,399
Speaker 1: very nature of the homogeneous blob matter stuff itself. Yeah,

522
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,439
Speaker 1: I don't know. Perhaps it depends. It depends what we

523
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 1: mean by homogeneous exactly, I suppose, and how homogeneous this

524
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 1: this blob stuff could be, and what they really would

525
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: be to say about it, independently of how we carve

526
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,879
Speaker 1: it up. So I think it's it's it's the right

527
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:49,879
Speaker 1: way to go. But I think it depends on on

528
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 1: a fair amount of kind of hope that there is

529
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: going to be some fundamental structure beyond which we can't

530
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:57,159
Speaker 1: make any further subdivisions, and that it's going to be

531
00:26:57,240 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: some way that we're going to be able to latch onto.

532
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 1: And may be I think that's more likely, but I'm

533
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 1: a little bit skeptical, as perhaps you can you can sense, well,

534
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,880
Speaker 1: you know, my fantasy is that aliens come and they've

535
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 1: been thinking about physics the way we have. They're just

536
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 1: like a million years advanced, and they can like guide

537
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 1: us through what would have taken us a million years

538
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 1: to figure out in just a hundred years and we

539
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 1: zoom forwards, you know, But that relies on us having

540
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 1: sort of the same principles. And the flip side of that,

541
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 1: my nightmare scenario is that there is no fundamental true

542
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,159
Speaker 1: description of the universe, and that everything we have learned

543
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: is just this like patchwork of effective theories or like

544
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: a ladder of effective theories, where we have like a

545
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 1: description at the galaxy scale, and they have a description

546
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 1: at the solar system scale and at the human scale,

547
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 1: and at the atom scale and at the quark scale.

548
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: None of these things are like deeply true. They're just

549
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:49,879
Speaker 1: like our mathematical stories about the noses we find interesting.

550
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: And aliens might have their own ladder, they might pick

551
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 1: different scales to explore, they might tell totally different stories.

552
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: And so when we go to that first interstellar physics

553
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: conference to show your notes that we basically have nothing

554
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: in common with these folks, and I wonder what we

555
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 1: could learn at that point. You know, you work on

556
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 1: this project of unifying the sciences of your metascience project.

557
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 1: If we thought about, like what it might be possible

558
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 1: to try to incorporate a new emergent theory that sort

559
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:21,199
Speaker 1: of straddles are various sciences into our structure, Like, how

560
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: do we absorb that into our sort of mental canon

561
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 1: and make use of it? If the aliens are fascinated

562
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: in this thing that we've never even thought about, Yeah,

563
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: very interesting. I mean, I certainly don't share your your

564
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,000
Speaker 1: concern with with the so called nightmare scenario. That doesn't

565
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: necessarily seem worrying to me. I mean, for sure, it

566
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: seems threatening to a certain sort of hypothesis, something along

567
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: the lines of, yeah, that the sciences are all unified,

568
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: and they're all kind of ultimately getting at one fundamental

569
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: objective truth, and so one could think that that situation

570
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 1: would be evidence for a kind of radical disunity of

571
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 1: the sciences. And I take it that that that's the

572
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you're you're finding night Marrish, But

573
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: why right like that that would be an interesting empirical

574
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 1: discovery and its own right, And so why not just

575
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 1: kind of wonder at that, right that that sounds that

576
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: seems pretty interesting to me. That would be a nice

577
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: meal for the philosophers if it would be disappointing for

578
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: the physicists, right, Yeah, Well, look, I mean I'm not

579
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: particularly confident about this, but I think there are a

580
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: great many philosophers, maybe the majority, who probably do hold

581
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: out for something like the unity that you That you

582
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,239
Speaker 1: sounded like you were keen on there. So then your

583
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: other question was, like, Okay, if if we did find

584
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:31,240
Speaker 1: these these aliens who had this very radically way, a

585
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: different way of thinking about the universe and carving things

586
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: up and doing the science, what could we learn from that? Well, again,

587
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 1: that that would strike me as a very interesting empirical

588
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: discovery in its own right, and it looks like it

589
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: would tell us something along the lines of, you know,

590
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 1: what's kind of important when we're doing science is doing

591
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: something and kind of carving up the world and thinking

592
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: about the world in a way that that suits us.

593
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: So then when we're doing science, we're kind of learning

594
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 1: as much about ourselves as we are about the universe.

595
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: And again that that seems kind of okay, so me,

596
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: maybe it's not what most scientists have directly in mind

597
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: when they're doing science, but that seems again like an

598
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: interesting discovery on a very very worthwhile pursuit to find

599
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: out about what we like as beings and how we

600
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: carve up the universe just to suit our needs and interests. Absolutely,

601
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 1: it's like if we meet the Aliens and we discover

602
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: they don't like hamburgers or pizza. They've invented this other

603
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: weird kind of food, and that tells us something about

604
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: the aliens, and you know, that's why you go traveling

605
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: to eat weird kinds of food. That tells you about

606
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: what those people are like. And but their music is

607
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: like it does. It's an insight into that culture. And

608
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: that's only possible if we have enough in common to

609
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 1: even really understand it, you know, to understand, Oh, this

610
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: is a science question, and he raise your answer. I

611
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: want to turn a little bit to that sort of question.

612
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: Like we talked earlier about whether it's likely that aliens

613
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: even have mathematics, and whether that's universal or not. What

614
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: about the other question of whether aliens are even doing science,

615
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: like a good science itself be a fundamentally human pursuit,

616
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: not in the sense that we might be the only

617
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: curious people about the universe, but you know, science is

618
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: something we've only been doing in this form for a

619
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: few hundred years. Isn't it possible to have a technological

620
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 1: civilization that doesn't use this particular method of building internal

621
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,200
Speaker 1: mathematical models to describe the universe in order to make

622
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: technological achievements? Do philosophers think about this question and the

623
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 1: universality of science itself, Yeah, for sure. I mean now,

624
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: I am tempted to give a very stereotypical philosopher's answer

625
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: to this thing, which is like, come on, we we

626
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: don't really know what science is. We can't demarcate between

627
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 1: science and non science and so and so that would

628
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: be a kind of a deflection of the of the question.

629
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: I suppose. But I think ultimately the kind of the

630
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: history of this topic of trying to kind of define

631
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:50,480
Speaker 1: what constitutes science shows that that that's that's hard, if

632
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 1: not impossible, to do, right, And so given that observation,

633
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:57,520
Speaker 1: I would certainly be reluctant to rule out whatever these

634
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: aliens are doing is as counting as science, because we're

635
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: not really sure where to draw the line anyway, right,

636
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 1: But perhaps more positively, I suppose the point just is, well,

637
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: we should be kind of quite broad and quite permissive

638
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: in what we mean by science. And it seems plausible

639
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 1: that even if these things were radically differently kind of

640
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: cognitively wired than we are, if they're going about trying

641
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 1: to kind of you know, find their way in the universe,

642
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: build machines that suit their interests, inquire into questions they

643
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:30,719
Speaker 1: find interesting and fascinating, then then why not call that science? Right?

644
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: But I mean, maybe that's not quite what you're getting at.

645
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: Maybe what you're getting out was more with the science

646
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: that they're doing be sufficiently similar to our science for

647
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: there to be any interesting points of contact between us

648
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: and them. Was that more what you had in mind? Absolutely,

649
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: And I want to dig into that a lot more

650
00:32:46,760 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: and would first take another as ssured break. All right,

651
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking to philosophers science and metaphysics.

652
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 1: Samuel can deny about the possibility of talking to aliens

653
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: about science, learning from them, or maybe just being puzzled

654
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: at the way they think about the universe. And when

655
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: we broke off, we were talking about whether or not

656
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 1: aliens do something that we recognize as science. And you're right,

657
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: it's not about like whether or not we can officially

658
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: call what they are doing science. It's about whether what

659
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: they're doing is close enough to what we're doing that

660
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 1: we could learn from them. I guess my brain naturally

661
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: goes to these nightmare scenarios where, for example, we meet

662
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: starfaring aliens. They come to Earth in their spaceships that

663
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 1: have crossed the cosmos because they've developed warp drives, and

664
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: our first question is, of course, how does your warp

665
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: drive work? But I imagine maybe there are species that

666
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: have developed technology not through the methodical development of physical models,

667
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: but just sort of by trial and error. I think about,

668
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 1: for example, you know, the swords smiths of ancient Japan

669
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 1: or Spain or whatever. They didn't have an understanding of

670
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:06,479
Speaker 1: why their technique made the metal extra hard. You know,

671
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: they developed this technique mostly through trial and error. You

672
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: dip it in this, you dip it in that, you

673
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: did this temperature, then you cool it. You get a

674
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:15,760
Speaker 1: really hard sword. It's definitely a slower way to make progress,

675
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 1: but it's possible. Isn't it possible that we need, you know,

676
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: a starfaring race of aliens that have been doing this

677
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: for a million years and sort of like stumbled their

678
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: way into a warp drive or you know, lights be

679
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 1: travel or something without having a deep understanding of it

680
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 1: that they could communicate to us. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Nice. So,

681
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: like one way of kind of reading that scenarro is

682
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 1: that these aliens needn't be any more intelligent than us

683
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 1: or any kind of radically different to us. But they

684
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 1: could have just been around a lot longer, right, and

685
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 1: so they had more time to kind of do the

686
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 1: trial and error procedure and come up with some things,

687
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,800
Speaker 1: but then some some great technologies and perhaps innovations that

688
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: kind of get them to other star systems or something

689
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 1: like that. But then they're not able to communicate to

690
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: us how they've done it because of because of how

691
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: they got there. Yeah, that that that's only seems pausible.

692
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: But then I guess it's like like we were saying

693
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,719
Speaker 1: that that's different from this other worry, which is that

694
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: they've got there in kind of more of a theoretical ways,

695
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 1: that they do have something that we might want to

696
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:13,719
Speaker 1: call understanding of the of the underlying physical theory that's

697
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: underpinning their technology, but but that it's just kind of

698
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 1: so so different, and again they're kind of carving up

699
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:21,240
Speaker 1: and thinking about the world in a way so different

700
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: from how we think about it that they're not going

701
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate their technologies and their their

702
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: insights to us. For that kind of reason, something that

703
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: I do wonder in in the kind of this vicinity

704
00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: and more related to the latter scenario, where the worry

705
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: that these creatures might just be so radically different from

706
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: us that we just can't learn anything from them. So

707
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,880
Speaker 1: to one source of optimism might just be that we

708
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 1: might think that the kind of counter as an agent

709
00:35:46,120 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: in the sense right where that's a very broad term,

710
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:49,839
Speaker 1: but it's a kind of a bit of a philosophical

711
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: term of art, But you know, we're agents. We have

712
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: some sort of some sort of aims and goals and consciousness.

713
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: But to counter as an agent and to have these

714
00:35:57,160 --> 00:36:01,359
Speaker 1: sorts of interests in exploration and build technology, there might

715
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: have to be some sort of commonality to what it

716
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: is to be an agent, right, So to be that

717
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 1: highly evolved, to be pursuing those sorts of pursuits and

718
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: building those sorts of technologies, it might just kind of

719
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: be the case that they'd have to have something somewhat

720
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 1: in common with other agents, namely us, that we could

721
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: find at least some sort of common ground. And again

722
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: that's a little bit speculative and hopeful, but it's something

723
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,359
Speaker 1: that I kind of and somewhat persuaded by sometimes, So yeah,

724
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: that that might be a cause for optimism. I think

725
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: that is an attractive argument, you know, to suggest like

726
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 1: in order to develop in the universe, you have to

727
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:37,799
Speaker 1: be curious, and you have to build mental models to

728
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: explain why things happen in your life, and those mental

729
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:45,279
Speaker 1: models naturally develop into you know, scientific thinking. I think

730
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 1: that's an attractive argument, but it also feels to me

731
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: a little bit too easy. You know. It's sort of

732
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: like the kind of argument you make where you say, like, well,

733
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 1: everybody drinks copy in the morning, because you know, everybody

734
00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 1: wakes up and they're tired and copy helps, so therefore

735
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: all humans must drink of be right. It's sort of

736
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 1: like in the argument you make. I don't mean to

737
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: be too negative, but it's an argument from ignorance right

738
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 1: to say I can't imagine something different, therefore this must

739
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,439
Speaker 1: be universal, where the whole reason we want to meet

740
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: aliens is precisely to confront those boxes and understand the

741
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 1: limits of our imagination. And so that's exactly the kind

742
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 1: of argument that I'm very tempted by, but I reject

743
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: for that reason that I want to push my way

744
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:26,400
Speaker 1: out of it and understand if there are other ways

745
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 1: to explore this. But fundamentally, I think it's it's frustrating

746
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:32,359
Speaker 1: because I don't think we can get out of that

747
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 1: box without meeting those aliens, the way people can't really

748
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:39,280
Speaker 1: understand other cultures without doing some traveling or being exposed

749
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: to them, because sitting in your little village at home,

750
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: it's probably impossible to imagine other ways humans can be. Yeah,

751
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: that's right, that that that would be the best thing,

752
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't it, if if we could meet these aliens. I mean,

753
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 1: I'm not like completely pessimistic that there are other ways

754
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:54,719
Speaker 1: of doing it, Like, like we've touched on, I think

755
00:37:55,080 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we could push ourselves really hard to kind

756
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: of think outside the box. I mean, something that comes

757
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:04,879
Speaker 1: to mind. And no, I don't ask too many follow

758
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 1: ups on this, because I'm by far an expert on

759
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: the topic. But there's this new thing in physics constructor theory,

760
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: right which we're told is supposed to be a whole

761
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,399
Speaker 1: new approach to the foundations of physics, which is nothing

762
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 1: like anything anyone has ever done or thought of doing

763
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 1: in terms of thinking about the universe before. And and

764
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 1: if if that's all it's cracked up to be, it

765
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 1: might be something along these lines right away of kind

766
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,879
Speaker 1: of thinking from first principles in a completely different way.

767
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: If we think that there is the potential to really

768
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: shake up our foundation or thinking in these sorts of ways,

769
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: then then yeah, again, maybe we could have some optimism

770
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 1: that if there were this radically different species of aliens

771
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: that we came into contact with, that at first it

772
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:44,719
Speaker 1: looked like we had no hope of interacting with them,

773
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: maybe after some work and some some reconceptualizing of our

774
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 1: foundations we could get there, right, And so I think

775
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 1: I think there might be some some reasons to be optimistic.

776
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 1: But but yeah, well, if the aliens do arrive and

777
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 1: they don't just like fry us from space, think we

778
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: should send the philosophers first or the physicists. I think

779
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 1: maybe the philosophers and the physicists should probably be working

780
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 1: in tandem on this one. I think they've probably got

781
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:12,879
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses in this kind of situation that could

782
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 1: complement each other, So send a team of both. I

783
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 1: asked no Him Chamski if he thought that scientists would

784
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: be allowed to talk to the aliens, and he was

785
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,400
Speaker 1: pretty cynical about whether military and political structures would allow

786
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 1: scientists and philosophers to speak on behalf of Earth, which

787
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: is a whole other reason to be pessimistic and not

788
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:34,839
Speaker 1: a road I want to go down today. I think

789
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 1: another question people think about when they imagine speaking to

790
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: aliens is putting aside all these philosophical questions and say

791
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 1: they have similar structures, and they've thought about physics in

792
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:46,320
Speaker 1: similar ways. They're just really far advanced from us. A

793
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: basic question is how could they teach us what they know?

794
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 1: How could we possibly understand the science of a super

795
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: advanced race. It's sort of like if you gave Galileo

796
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 1: a laptop, where would you even go to explain to

797
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 1: him how it works and what you would do with it.

798
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: People think about, like, you know, how to bootstrap humanity

799
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:09,840
Speaker 1: up to the level of potential galactic aliens. Well, I

800
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,400
Speaker 1: think they're be inclined to be a bit more optimistic,

801
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:15,800
Speaker 1: maybe just from the kind of observation that we teach

802
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: children all sorts of complicated things, and I've seen many

803
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:22,879
Speaker 1: child I mean, this is not necessarily a good thing,

804
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 1: but you see kids these days just taking to laptops

805
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:28,400
Speaker 1: and iPads as if it was kind of innate in

806
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:30,960
Speaker 1: them to use these objects, which strikes me as kind

807
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: of crazy, but then also makes me think, look, if

808
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 1: we can teach kids to use these strange new bits

809
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 1: of technology, and we can educate our children to do

810
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: all sorts of funky things like maths and logic and

811
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: art and poetry, then yeah, why couldn't the eight Why

812
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: couldn't we be the children of the aliens? Why couldn't

813
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: they take us under their wings and teach us their ways.

814
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of optimism there, I think, Yeah,

815
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: let me take your optimism and turn it back into

816
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: a nightmare scenario, which seems to be my role in

817
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,719
Speaker 1: this conversation, which is the aliens come and they have

818
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,880
Speaker 1: super advanced science, and us this is this who have

819
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 1: grown up. We're thinking one way, can't rock it. But

820
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: we send our children to the alien schools and you're

821
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 1: write to them. It probably feels totally natural. Then there's

822
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,279
Speaker 1: this generational divide where one set of humanity is like

823
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 1: super charged and thousands of years ahead of the old

824
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: ancient of gray haired folks like me who just never

825
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: really understand the modern world, right, and we've got something

826
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:27,359
Speaker 1: of a toned down version of that. It feels like

827
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:31,400
Speaker 1: today like the Internet natives, and that the technology native

828
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:35,120
Speaker 1: people growing up do seem to be somewhat separated from

829
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:37,920
Speaker 1: from the older generation. So yeah, it's it's conceivable that

830
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: that that sort of divide that we actually observe could

831
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:44,319
Speaker 1: just be a lot more dramatic, right, Yes, that would

832
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:46,439
Speaker 1: be That would be nightmarish for sure. So I guess

833
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,799
Speaker 1: the answer is, don't give Galileo the laptop. Give Galileo's

834
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 1: kids the laptop, and they'll be playing a word all

835
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:58,800
Speaker 1: within ten minutes. That's exactly alright, So then to wrap

836
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 1: it up, what do you think think is something we

837
00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 1: can do to prepare? I mean, I don't know if

838
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: aliens are going to come. I don't know if aliens

839
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:07,279
Speaker 1: even exist. I don't know if we will hear a

840
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: message from aliens. But these are deep and important questions

841
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: and we haven't really resolved any of them today. What

842
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:15,400
Speaker 1: do you think are the most sort of important directions

843
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 1: for humanity or philosophy to sort of prepare for that

844
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 1: moment so that when it does happen, we have a

845
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: plan or a thoughtful structure in which to explore these questions. Yeah,

846
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: good question. I mean I think actually one thing we

847
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: could do to prepare for that scenario is to look

848
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 1: hard at the sorts of things we take for granted. Right, So, um,

849
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: I think scientists do this, but non scientists do this

850
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 1: as well. Of course, we go about the world and

851
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: we take all sorts of things for granted about the

852
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: nature of our reality. And really what this is is

853
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 1: it kind of a philosophical commitment that we have to

854
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 1: various assumptions and premises and background kind of structures ways

855
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 1: of thinking, but that we're not particularly aware of because

856
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 1: we don't scrutinize them. So perhaps we could do something

857
00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: like that. We could think about what some of these

858
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 1: most based stick assumptions that we take for granted in

859
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: in science but also in everyday life, and see if

860
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 1: they could possibly be questioned, because look, these aliens might

861
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: have very different foundational assumptions to us, and so I

862
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 1: think engaging in this sort of exercise could maybe come

863
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: close to preparing us for this kind of encounter. Yeah,

864
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 1: I totally agree. It's like preparing your travel. You should

865
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 1: be asking yourself. I wonder if they do drink coffee

866
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: where I'm going, or you know, if they have a

867
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: totally different kind of toilet where you don't squat, or

868
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 1: you don't sit there, you don't stand, or who knows what.

869
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 1: Preparing your mind for the breath of possibilities. And for

870
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 1: me at least, I totally look forward to that day

871
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:37,879
Speaker 1: when aliens blow our little minds and tell us how

872
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:40,000
Speaker 1: there are other ways to think about the universe, to

873
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: explore the universe, even to ask questions. What questions are

874
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:46,279
Speaker 1: they asking? You know, not just what answers do they have,

875
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,800
Speaker 1: but what do they find strange and fascinating about the universe.

876
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: It seems to me like a lot of what we

877
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:55,839
Speaker 1: think about as objective in science is driven by aesthetics.

878
00:43:56,080 --> 00:43:58,720
Speaker 1: A lot of the questions we're asking in theoretical particle

879
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: physics are driven by I like this looks weird, or

880
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: I think it would be prettier that other way. Even

881
00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: the discovery of the Higgs boson came about because people

882
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:10,360
Speaker 1: were thinking, this theory seems kind of ugly, and it

883
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 1: would be much prettier if we added this one other piece.

884
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of you know, aesthetics and

885
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:19,920
Speaker 1: subjectivity and um, you know, personality in how we explore

886
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: the universe. And so I think you're right that we

887
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:24,400
Speaker 1: need to look at that and put that under a

888
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: microscope and wonder whether there are other choices that could

889
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: have been made great. Yeah, So we could even spend

890
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 1: some time in some art calories thinking about why we

891
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: like what we like and dislike what we just like.

892
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,319
Speaker 1: I'd very much agree with that. Yeah, that sounds very

893
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:37,879
Speaker 1: sensible today. Yeah, And you know, as much as I'd

894
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: like to send artists on that first contingent also to

895
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 1: meet the aliens, I think it's almost impossible we will

896
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: ever understand alien art and I don't know if that

897
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,240
Speaker 1: bodes well or not for alien philosophy and alien physics,

898
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: but I look forward to one day finding out all right.

899
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: Thanks very much Sam for joining us for this crazy

900
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:58,640
Speaker 1: and wide ranging conversation on how aliens think about science

901
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: and whether we might ever be able to understand it.

902
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: Thank you, Daniel, that was really fascinating. Thanks thanks for listening,

903
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is

904
00:45:14,719 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast For

905
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

906
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.