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Speaker 1: What's going to happen if we eventually meet space aliens,

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Speaker 1: and specifically alien scientists. If these aliens could see electrons

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Speaker 1: or smell photons, would their science look anything like ours?

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Speaker 1: Is physics a universal language or just a local dialect

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Speaker 1: of the human brain? Would alien scientists even use math

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Speaker 1: and equations? Or might their truths be organized in a

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Speaker 1: way that we just don't recognize. Are the laws of

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Speaker 1: nature really laws or simply the stories that our species

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Speaker 1: tells about its slice of reality? Could alien technology emerge

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Speaker 1: from entirely different questions, things that we find boring or

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Speaker 1: irrelevant or literally invisible. What would it mean if science

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Speaker 1: itself is not universal but just another product of evolution.

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Speaker 1: Today we'll speak with physicist Daniel Whitson, who's just written

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Speaker 1: a new book called Do Aliens Speak Physics? So get

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Speaker 1: ready for a terrific brain stretch. Welcome to Intercosmos with

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Speaker 1: me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford

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Speaker 1: and in these episodes we sail deeply into our three

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Speaker 1: pound universe.

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Speaker 2: To understand how we see the world.

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Speaker 1: And sometimes how different creatures might see the world very differently.

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Speaker 1: So let's start here when we imagine extraterrestrial life, we

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Speaker 1: usually picture aliens through the only template that we know,

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Speaker 1: which is a mashup of Earth creatures, including aliens we've

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Speaker 1: seen in movies and television. We see animals stretched and

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Speaker 1: tinted into something just foreign enough to qualify as aliens.

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Speaker 1: They might have big eyes and green skin, and maybe

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Speaker 1: tentacles or extra limbs. But quite possibly, when we do

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Speaker 1: find alien life, we're going to find that it looks

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Speaker 1: much much different than what we have pictured so far. Now,

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Speaker 1: I just want to bring that up as a table

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Speaker 1: setting for today's much deeper question. Not about what aliens

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Speaker 1: might look like, it's about how they might think.

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Speaker 2: Here's why this matters.

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Speaker 1: Every creature on our planet already lives within its own

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Speaker 1: private universe, a unique umvelt or sensory world. My dog,

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Speaker 1: for example, navigates our neighborhood through a riot of smells.

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Speaker 1: So to me, the fire hydrant is just a short

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Speaker 1: metal post, but to him, it's a tapestry of stories

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Speaker 1: that are woven from the animals that passed. And when

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Speaker 1: I'm away from home and I pop in on a

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Speaker 1: video call, my family is happy to see me, but

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Speaker 1: my dog quickly loses interest. Here's my voice, but it

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Speaker 1: doesn't smell like I'm there, and so to his brain,

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Speaker 1: I'm not really there, and our human umvelt is shockingly limited.

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Speaker 1: If you're interested in this, check out a talk I

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Speaker 1: gave it ted some years ago. We humans are tuned

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Speaker 1: into a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, like one

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Speaker 1: ten trillionth of it, So we are blind to most

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Speaker 1: of the light that makes up the world, and for

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Speaker 1: that matter, we are deaf to most sound frequencies out there,

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Speaker 1: and we have absolutely zero perception of lots of things

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Speaker 1: around us, like neutrinos or dark matter. We stitch together

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Speaker 1: our reality from a surprisingly thin trickle of signals, and

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Speaker 1: then we build our sciences on top of that's gaffolding,

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Speaker 1: which raises the question if our physics is built on

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Speaker 1: our senses in some way, then what would science look

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Speaker 1: like to a creature with utterly different senses.

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Speaker 2: Imagine aliens who can see electrons, or smell photons, or

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Speaker 2: feel dark matter the way that we see and smell

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Speaker 2: and taste in apple. Would they arrive at the same

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Speaker 2: equations we do? Would they describe the universe with particles

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Speaker 2: and forces, or would those concepts feel to them something

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Speaker 2: like Roman numerals, which we'll talk about in a bit now.

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Speaker 1: The reason this is worth asking is because many physicists

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Speaker 1: assume that uncovering the rules of nature is a universal project,

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Speaker 1: one that any intelligent species anywhere in the galaxy would

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Speaker 1: naturally embark on. But what if that's not true, and

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Speaker 1: that the physics we uncover is going to be very specific,

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Speaker 1: not only to our culture, but also to our cognition

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Speaker 1: and our biology. What if physics is less like a

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Speaker 1: mirror of the universe and more like a lens, like

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Speaker 1: a little narrow straw we're looking through. These questions cut

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Speaker 1: to the heart of what science is.

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Speaker 2: Is it a singular, convergent.

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Speaker 1: Path towards truth or is it a story where different observers,

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Speaker 1: bound by their unique sensory limits, tell very different tales

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Speaker 1: about reality. That's the territory we get to explore today

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Speaker 1: with my guest physicist and author Daniel Whitson. These are

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Speaker 1: exactly the questions that he has been asking. If and

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Speaker 1: when we meet aliens, will their breakthroughs unlock mysteries that

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Speaker 1: we still fumble with, or will their science maybe be

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Speaker 1: something we wouldn't even recognize as science. Daniel Whitson is

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Speaker 1: a particle physicist that you see Irvine and he's the

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Speaker 1: co host of the podcast Daniel N. Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 1: He's also the co author of SI several books exploring

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Speaker 1: the big questions at the edge of physics. His latest book,

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Speaker 1: which comes out this week, is called Do Aliens Speak Physics?

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Speaker 1: And it dives straight into this puzzle what aliens might

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Speaker 1: know that we don't know, and how their science might

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Speaker 1: diverge from ours in ways we haven't considered.

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Speaker 2: So let's dive in.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So, Daniel, when sociologists look across cultures, they find

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Speaker 1: various things where they say, look, this is culturally arbitrary.

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Speaker 1: This just happens to come from the history of this

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Speaker 1: particular culture. Now, the question you're asking is when we

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Speaker 1: discover alien life, will we realize that something about our

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Speaker 1: math in physics islet's say, culturally arbitrary or is there

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Speaker 1: something fundamental about that?

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Speaker 2: So let's dive into that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I think it's a really important question we haven't spent

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Speaker 4: enough time thinking about. But like lots of questions about aliens,

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Speaker 4: either answer is amazing, like, either the aliens are doing

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Speaker 4: physics the way that we are, which means that we're

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Speaker 4: luck uncovering the truth. We're like revealing the nature of

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Speaker 4: the universe itself, which makes our physics incredibly powerful and relevant.

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Speaker 3: Across the galaxy.

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Speaker 4: Or aliens are doing physics in a very different way

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Speaker 4: than we are. Maybe they're perceiving a different slice of

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Speaker 4: the universe, or they're asking different questions, or they have

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Speaker 4: found different answers, or they just take a different approach

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Speaker 4: because of their path through exploring the universe. In that case,

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Speaker 4: we have an opportunity to learn something really fascinating about

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Speaker 4: the lens of the human experience, how our humanity has

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Speaker 4: colored the physics the explanations that we've developed about our experience. So,

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Speaker 4: either way, when we discover aliens, you can get to

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Speaker 4: try to talk physics with them.

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Speaker 3: We're going to learn something fantastic.

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Speaker 1: And so the way that you go about this in

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Speaker 1: your fantastic new book is you say, look, this is

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Speaker 1: the Drake equation, and I'm going to propose sort of

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Speaker 1: an extension of it. So let's remind our listeners what

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Speaker 1: the Drake equation is first, and then tell us by

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Speaker 1: your extension.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so the Drake equation is a way to try

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Speaker 4: to estimate how many aliens are out there that we

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Speaker 4: could communicate with, and this seems like a really overwhelming question.

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Speaker 4: And so the beauty of the Drake equation, though it's

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Speaker 4: so simple it's just a bunch of numbers multiplied together,

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Speaker 4: is that it expresses it in parts. It says, well,

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Speaker 4: let's just start by asking how many stars are there

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Speaker 4: out there in the galaxy, and that turns out to

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Speaker 4: be a huge number. We now know hundreds of billions,

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Speaker 4: which is a great start. But then it asks, well,

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Speaker 4: what fraction of those stars have planets where life might evolve,

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Speaker 4: And then what fraction of those planets might have life,

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Speaker 4: and what fraction of that life might be intelligent, what

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Speaker 4: fraction of those intelligent civilizations might develop technology that could

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Speaker 4: communicate with us, and what fraction of those exist in

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Speaker 4: the right time period to talk to us. So the

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Speaker 4: structure of the Drake equation, multiplying all these terms together

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Speaker 4: emphasizes something really important, which is for this to work,

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Speaker 4: for there to be aliens out there in the universe

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Speaker 4: that are similar enough for us to talk to them,

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Speaker 4: everything has to fall into place. You need a star,

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Speaker 4: you need a planet, you need life, you need intelligence,

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Speaker 4: you need civilization, you need technology, and you need the time.

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Speaker 4: If any of those numbers are zero, then you got

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Speaker 4: to know aliens. Like people often say, look, of course

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Speaker 4: they're aliens out there. Look at the number of planets.

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Speaker 4: There's a huge number of planets out there. Yeah, but

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Speaker 4: if the fraction of those that have life is one

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Speaker 4: over ten to the fifty, then we're alone in the

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Speaker 4: galaxy despite the huge number of stars and planets. So

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Speaker 4: that's the concept behind the Drake equation, but the structure

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Speaker 4: of it really emphasizes how you need all these pieces

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Speaker 4: to come together in order to have that contact with aliens.

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Speaker 1: Now, what you've proposed is an extension to that. Tell

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Speaker 1: us about that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm not just satisfied with there being aliens

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Speaker 4: out there. I want to talk to aliens about physics.

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Speaker 4: I want to know are they on the same path

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Speaker 4: as we are, but maybe like a thousand, a million,

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Speaker 4: a billion years ahead, Like we have been banging our

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Speaker 4: heads on, you know, the question of quantum gravity for

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Speaker 4: one hundred years. How do we reconcile Einstein's theory of

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Speaker 4: relativity with our knowledge that the universe is fundamentally uncertain.

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Speaker 4: These two things just don't fit together, and we've been

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Speaker 4: trying and struggling, and there's many deep questions in physics

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Speaker 4: that we could answer. But what are the aliens just

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Speaker 4: know the answers? You know, what have they have this

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Speaker 4: figured out? They've have answers to questions we haven't even

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Speaker 4: imagined yet. That would be so fantastic. So in this book,

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Speaker 4: I imagine or try to estimate what fraction of the aliens

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Speaker 4: out there could talk to us about physics. And in

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Speaker 4: order for that to happen, a lot of things have

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Speaker 4: to fall into place, and that's sort of the structure.

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Speaker 3: Of the book. Number one.

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Speaker 4: They have to be interested in these questions, have to

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Speaker 4: be doing science in the first place, Like how do

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Speaker 4: we know that aliens wonder why? And like lots of

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Speaker 4: the questions in the book, your initial reaction is, well,

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Speaker 4: of course they do, or you know they have to.

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Speaker 4: But that's exactly the intuition I want to dig into

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Speaker 4: because often we're biased as humans. We tend to think

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Speaker 4: that our example, the way we do things, the place

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Speaker 4: we live, our location in the universe is important or

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Speaker 4: central or fundamental, and the history of science has taught us,

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Speaker 4: or a history of philosophy has taught us that unpacking

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Speaker 4: those skepticism is very valuable.

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Speaker 1: So for example, you know, kangaroos don't particularly care about

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Speaker 1: any questions that we have here.

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Speaker 2: Or you can.

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Speaker 1: Imagine space aliens that care about a very different set

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Speaker 1: of questions than we do.

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Speaker 2: We'll be an example of that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So the kind of things that we're excited about

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Speaker 4: are like, hey, how do planets form? You know, what

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Speaker 4: are the conditions under which planets form? And how long

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Speaker 4: do they survive?

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Speaker 3: Etc.

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Speaker 4: Why Because we have all done a planet and so

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Speaker 4: we tend to think planets are really important, but planets

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Speaker 4: are sort of an arbitrary, made up thing. And the

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Speaker 4: whole like argument in the last ten years about what

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Speaker 4: is a planet is plue to a planet?

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Speaker 3: How do you define a planet? Really reveals that.

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Speaker 4: I mean, planets are tiny little dots around stars. Think

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Speaker 4: about the way that we depict the Solar System. You know,

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Speaker 4: typically we have the Sun, we have all the planets,

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Speaker 4: and they're roughly the same size, which means that we've

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Speaker 4: like taken the planets and blown them up right way

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Speaker 4: beyond their real size because they're important to us.

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Speaker 2: Whereas the Sun is actually one million times larger than

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Speaker 2: the areth.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, the Solar System is basically the Sun plus a

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Speaker 4: couple little details, right, the.

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Speaker 3: Sun, Jupiter, dot dot dot.

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Speaker 4: But in our depictions we blow up the planets, and

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Speaker 4: you know, the definition of a planet isn't even something

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Speaker 4: that people agree on. Art astroomers are still arguing about it.

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Speaker 4: And the reason is that it's important to us. It's

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Speaker 4: not fundamentally important to the universe. The Solar System turns

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Speaker 4: out to be, you know, mostly the Sun plus a

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Speaker 4: bunch of rocks of different sizes and shapes. And we

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Speaker 4: have drawn arbitrary dotted lines around this concept of a

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Speaker 4: planet because we grew up on one, so we think

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Speaker 4: it's important. What if aliens evolved in the atmospheres of

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Speaker 4: stars and they're like planets, who cares, or you know,

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Speaker 4: around in an ocean on a moon and they're like, yeah, planets,

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Speaker 4: you know, are not the most important thing. I think

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Speaker 4: the experience of our humanity that leads us to things

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Speaker 4: that certain things are fundamental and important, and aliens might

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Speaker 4: come out of from a different way and ask different questions,

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Speaker 4: and so that's another element of this extended ray equation. First,

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Speaker 4: I ask do aliens do science at all? Because if not,

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Speaker 4: what can we talk to them about if they don't

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Speaker 4: even care? And then I ask, could we actually make

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Speaker 4: a mental contact with them? Could we establish communication? Could

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Speaker 4: we learn to translate these concepts in our minds into

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Speaker 4: alien brains? And back and forth? And then as you say,

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Speaker 4: do they ask the same questions? Are they interested in

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Speaker 4: the same things? Do they perceive the same parts of

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Speaker 4: the universe even? And then finally the answer is the

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Speaker 4: juicy thing I ask in the book, could we understand

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Speaker 4: alien answers? Or is it possible aliens have an alternative

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Speaker 4: theory of physics that works just as well as ours

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Speaker 4: but tells a very, very different story about what's happening

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Speaker 4: in the universe. So, because this question of like do

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Speaker 4: aliens do physics like we do? Is too big and overwhelming,

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Speaker 4: I extended the Drake equation use the same structure to

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Speaker 4: ask in turn, like do they do science? Can we

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Speaker 4: communicate with them? Do they have the same questions? And

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Speaker 4: do they have the same answers? Those are other terms

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Speaker 4: and the extended Drake equation.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with this issue about would aliens use

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Speaker 1: math and physics the kind of tools that we use,

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Speaker 1: or might they use something else?

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Speaker 3: Entirely.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, this is something that's often cited as a great

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Speaker 4: way to start talking to aliens is to begin with mathematics,

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Speaker 4: because mathematics is so basic to our science, and some

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Speaker 4: people think it must be fundamental to the universe. And

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Speaker 4: there's lots of good arguments that math is part of

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Speaker 4: the universe. We as human physicists, have found many times

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Speaker 4: that math leads us to the truth, the pure mathematics

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Speaker 4: of it. You know, there's an example of group theory.

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Speaker 4: This is a concept and abstract algebra that math nerds

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Speaker 4: have played around with, you know, hundreds of years ago,

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Speaker 4: just because they thought it was cool. They're like, look

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Speaker 4: at these patterns. You can play these games. This is

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Speaker 4: super awesome. They didn't care who it was relevant. One

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Speaker 4: hundred years after they figured it out, the physicists were like, ooh, actually,

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Speaker 4: it turns out this perfectly describes the interactions to fundamental

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Speaker 4: particles and shows us patterns we hadn't imagined and it

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Speaker 4: just clicked into place beautifully. So the math was there

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Speaker 4: before the physics, right, and it suggests that the math

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Speaker 4: reflects the nature of reality itself. Right, that's not our

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Speaker 4: description of reality, but it's somehow revealing the source code itself,

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Speaker 4: and of course that's what we want it to be true.

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Speaker 4: We want as physicists, we're hoping to unravel the nature

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Speaker 4: of reality, not just tell a story about it. We

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Speaker 4: want to be describing the territory, not just a random

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Speaker 4: map of the territory. So great arguments that math could

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Speaker 4: be fundamental, that a math might.

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Speaker 3: Be part of the universe.

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Speaker 4: But because it's philosophy, of course, there are great arguments

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Speaker 4: on the other side also, and there are strong hints

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Speaker 4: that suggests that maybe math is a human way of thinking,

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Speaker 4: in a way to express human ideas compactly, that maybe

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Speaker 4: it's very very useful for doing physics, but maybe it's

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Speaker 4: not absolutely necessary in aliens could have a different approach.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, if they see the world very differently,

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Speaker 1: not picking up on our little tiny window of electromagnetic radiation,

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Speaker 1: maybe not picking up on air compression waves the way

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Speaker 1: that we do, but living in a really different sort

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Speaker 1: of umvelt this notion of what signals you pick up

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Speaker 1: from the environment. The question is would they have an

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Speaker 1: extraordinarily different way of picking up on information and expressing

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Speaker 1: it other than math and physics.

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Speaker 4: Exactly, And this is something you must know a lot

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Speaker 4: about as a neuroscientist, But our experience of the world

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Speaker 4: doesn't perfectly mirror the actual reality out there. Right, we

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Speaker 4: have these narrow little conduits from which we get information

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Speaker 4: about the world site, sense, touch, et cetera, and they

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Speaker 4: create in our minds this sense of what the world is.

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Speaker 4: But we also know obviously that is incomplete. Right, Like

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Speaker 4: we see certain wavelengths of light, but this light everywhere

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Speaker 4: that's invisible to us. We know that there are particles

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Speaker 4: flowing through us all the time. Neutrinos are everywhere, and

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Speaker 4: they're not and they're not rare. There's like billions of

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Speaker 4: neutrinos passing through your fingernails every second. If you could

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Speaker 4: see neutrinos, it'd be all you could see. Right, There's

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Speaker 4: dark matter out there. There's all sorts of crazy stuff

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Speaker 4: that we cannot sensor interact with. So our slice of

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Speaker 4: the universe that we perceive is desperately incomplete, which means

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Speaker 4: that our sensorium, the idea we have about where we

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Speaker 4: are in the universe is something sort of concocted to

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Speaker 4: allow us to survive. And you know, evolutionary biology, you said,

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Speaker 4: neuroscientist knew much more about that than I do. But

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Speaker 4: what we know is that it's incomplete, and that suggests

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Speaker 4: that aliens who might evolve in different circumstances and have

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Speaker 4: different needs, could develop a different set of senses. And

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Speaker 4: even here on Earth we see a vast diversity of

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Speaker 4: senses among the animals.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and in fact, in nineteen eleven this

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Speaker 1: Baltic physiologists suggested this idea of the umveldt, which is,

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Speaker 1: as I mentioned, this idea of what are the signals

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Speaker 1: that you're picking up on from around you. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: in the world of the tick, it's just picking up

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Speaker 1: on temperature and uteric acid.

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Speaker 2: That's all it picks up on. For the black.

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Speaker 1: Ghost knife fish as it's called, it's just picking up

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Speaker 1: on perturbations and electrical fields. For the blind echo locating bat,

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Speaker 1: it's picking up on air compression waves returning to it.

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Speaker 2: And so the.

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Speaker 1: Question is would you develop parallel physics if you had

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Speaker 1: a very different umvelt And obviously we can point at

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Speaker 1: the creatures on Earth, but let's imagine there are dark

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Speaker 1: matter civilizations that are living in dark matter and living

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Speaker 1: right next to us, but we can't see them, and

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Speaker 1: they can't see us. That's your question is would they

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Speaker 1: be asking the same kind of questions are entirely different ones.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question, you know, sort of an

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Speaker 4: extension of the famous philosophical question like what is it

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Speaker 4: like to be about? Now we're asking what would it

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Speaker 4: like to be like to be an alien physicist? And

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Speaker 4: it matters because we can extend our sensations technologically, like

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Speaker 4: we develop infrared sensors and we develop sensors that can

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Speaker 4: detect neutrinos.

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Speaker 3: Et cetera.

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Speaker 4: But in the end, we're always translating it back into

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Speaker 4: the language we find intuitive. The job of physics, of

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Speaker 4: human physics, at least, is to take the unfamiliar and

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Speaker 4: make it familiar. Think about how we describe photons. Photons

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Speaker 4: are something new and weird and quantum will never fully grasp,

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Speaker 4: but we describe them in terms of intuitive concepts that

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Speaker 4: make sense to us. We say, oh, it's a particle,

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Speaker 4: it's a wave, it's somehow a weird combination of both.

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Speaker 4: The reality is it's either it's something new and bizarre

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Speaker 4: and we're struggling to understand it because we insist on

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Speaker 4: doing this translation back into something that's intuitive. For us,

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Speaker 4: and I think that our sensations are sensorium, the senses

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Speaker 4: we used to interact with the universe determine what's intuitive

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Speaker 4: to us. You know, when I think about answering the

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Speaker 4: question like how is the orbit of Saturn affecting this

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Speaker 4: or that, I'm thinking geometrically, I'm thinking visually. I'm thinking

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Speaker 4: spatially because that's the way my brain works. So now

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Speaker 4: imagine an alien and maybe these aliens are microscopic, and

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Speaker 4: so they have some sort of quantum senses that are

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Speaker 4: natural and intuitive to them. Maybe they can see photons

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Speaker 4: in superposition without collapsing them, And so to them, what's intuitive,

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Speaker 4: what makes sense? The language they want to translate the

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Speaker 4: universe into could be vastly different, and their explanations might

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Speaker 4: make no sense to us, and ours might be very

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Speaker 4: confusing to them. And so I think the question and

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Speaker 4: perception not just determines what you initially see, but ultimately

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Speaker 4: it's the language you used to express yourself what it's

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Speaker 4: like to be a human or an alien physicist in

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Speaker 4: the universe.

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Speaker 1: So I love that, And what it reminds me of

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Speaker 1: is an idea that I've been writing about lately, which

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Speaker 1: is umvelt hacking, which is a term I first searched

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Speaker 1: from my friend Eric Weinstein. But the idea of umbelt

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Speaker 1: hacking is just that we take things that, for example,

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Speaker 1: are very small, and we expand them so that we

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Speaker 1: can see them. Or we take let's say, light that

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Speaker 1: we cannot see, like ultraviolet and infrared, and we translated

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Speaker 1: into what we can see.

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Speaker 2: So we're constantly taking.

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Speaker 1: Everything that we're discovering in the universe and translating it

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Speaker 1: to the little window that we can perceive directly. But

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Speaker 1: what you're suggesting is is even the step just beyond that,

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Speaker 1: which is what is intuitive to us, like what can

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Speaker 1: we even understand? So we take photons and translate them

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Speaker 1: into a little story that makes sense to us.

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Speaker 4: Or think about like gravitational waves. When they were discovered,

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Speaker 4: they were described as sound waves, like we know they're

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Speaker 4: not sound waves, there's no compression waves, but they're called chirps,

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Speaker 4: and they were translated into literal little sounds.

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Speaker 3: That you could play.

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Speaker 4: You press a button in it and hear the gravitational wave, right,

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Speaker 4: And people talk about it as if the universe is

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Speaker 4: speaking to us now, and like that's not what gravitational

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Speaker 4: waves are. But of course it makes sense to translate

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Speaker 4: them into sound waves so that we can sort of

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Speaker 4: digest them.

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Speaker 3: We do this all the time.

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Speaker 4: We take the pictures from the James Webspace telescope and

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Speaker 4: then don't put them on your computer screen in the

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Speaker 4: IR because they would just look black. They shift them

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Speaker 4: into the visual and a lot of people might not

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Speaker 4: be aware that they're seeing, you know, color altered versions

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Speaker 4: of those pictures. So we do this oomwel attacking all

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Speaker 4: the time, but we're always translating it, right, And so

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Speaker 4: imagine we meet aliens and they have a different umwalt,

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Speaker 4: and so you know, for them, these explanations could be

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Speaker 4: very different. Or it would be incredible to be able

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Speaker 4: to be released from that, to just be able to

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Speaker 4: experience the universe in its natural form and not have

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Speaker 4: to always translate it back into things that like, you know,

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Speaker 4: these hairy apes find intuitive, I.

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Speaker 1: Think, and I think that might actually be impossible. And

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Speaker 1: in chapter six of your book you suggest that maybe

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Speaker 1: instead of revealing a fundamental truth, physics will turn out

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Speaker 1: to be like the film rachiam On. So for any

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Speaker 1: listeners who don't know that film, tell us about the

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Speaker 1: film Russiamon and then tell us why physics might turn

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Speaker 1: out that way.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Russia Moon is a great film, a classic one

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Speaker 4: where you know, some sequence of events happens, but several

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Speaker 4: people tell a different story about it, and so they

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Speaker 4: don't have to disagree on the facts, but they can

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Speaker 4: disagree about why things happened and what it means. And

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Speaker 4: that's important to remember when we're doing physics, because in physics,

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Speaker 4: what we're doing is filling in the gaps between observations.

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Speaker 4: You know, you have your data, you measure this, you

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Speaker 4: measure that, you measured the other thing, and now you're

439
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 4: telling a story about why that happened. For example, you

440
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:51,680
Speaker 4: have an electron and you have it between two plates

441
00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:53,960
Speaker 4: and it accelerates. Now you tell a story about why

442
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:57,239
Speaker 4: did the accel electron accelerate. And the typical story is, oh,

443
00:23:57,280 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 4: there's an electric field created by the plates and that

444
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 4: pushes on the cool But is the field really there

445
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 4: or is it just part of the story. Nobody's ever

446
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 4: observed a field itself. They only observe the effects of

447
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,880
Speaker 4: the fields. The fields are the invisible story we tell

448
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:15,680
Speaker 4: to explain the data. And we do this all the

449
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 4: time in physics, it's unavoidable, and it might be that

450
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:21,919
Speaker 4: aliens come and they have Oh no, they have a

451
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 4: different story, like it's not fields, it's Schmields or something

452
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 4: totally different. And there's a huge philosophical debate about whether

453
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 4: this is possible. Does the universe have to have a single,

454
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 4: unique explanation for what's going on, or is it possible

455
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 4: to have two different theories of physics, fundamentally conceptually different,

456
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 4: that tell different stories about what's happening invisibly behind the curtain,

457
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:49,119
Speaker 4: that both work just as well. And what would that

458
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 4: mean about the nature of the universe. Like, if you

459
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 4: have just started to think about this, your initial reaction is, no,

460
00:24:55,560 --> 00:25:00,399
Speaker 4: that bonkers the universe. There's a reality out there. Happened

461
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,640
Speaker 4: for a reason, right, there are laws that must be followed.

462
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:07,320
Speaker 4: But that's a philosophical assumption. We don't know that's true.

463
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 4: And the beauty of this question about aliens is that

464
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 4: it might uncover some basic assumptions about the universe we've

465
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 4: been making forever.

466
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:17,200
Speaker 3: We didn't even realize.

467
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: So do you think that there are universal problems that

468
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:23,800
Speaker 1: every technological species would have to confront?

469
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 2: What's your intuition on.

470
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 4: That Wow, I don't know if we can make any

471
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 4: universal statements about any intelligent species.

472
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 3: I mean, they might have.

473
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 4: Such different evolutionary experiences and face different challenges. You might

474
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 4: be tempted to say, like, well, everybody's got to get

475
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:40,159
Speaker 4: off planet, right, and so everybody's got to develop some

476
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 4: sort of.

477
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 3: Like technology to get lift.

478
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 4: But you know, that's a challenge that exists on our

479
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:47,399
Speaker 4: planet because we've kind of a massive planet.

480
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 3: And you can.

481
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 4: Imagine aliens evolving on much smaller moons where it's easier

482
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 4: to get off planet, for example.

483
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 1: But they still think of gravity, right, They would still

484
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,200
Speaker 1: have to conceptualize that in some way.

485
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:04,639
Speaker 4: I think probably, But you know, and it might be

486
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:07,239
Speaker 4: even more important. Imagine that dark matter aliens you were

487
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,119
Speaker 4: talking about, Like, we don't know what kind of interactions

488
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 4: dark matter might have with itself. Currently, we imagine it

489
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:17,159
Speaker 4: only has gravitational interactions. You can imagine some sort of

490
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 4: dark matter alien that's incredibly vast, that only has very

491
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:25,360
Speaker 4: weak gravitational interactions with itself and so evolves very slowly.

492
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 4: That's time scales could be like you know, millennia, that

493
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 4: millions of years, So it's I think it's impossible to

494
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 4: say that there's anything that aliens have to have in

495
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:39,640
Speaker 4: common if you take the broadest possible view of aliens.

496
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 4: And that's my preference because the aliens I want to

497
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 4: meet are not the star trek aliens, you know, humans

498
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 4: with little fuzz on their forehead or point to ears

499
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 4: or whatever. I want to meet the aliens that blow

500
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 4: our minds, that make us think what I didn't even

501
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:57,240
Speaker 4: imagine that was possible, or that's not something we ever considered,

502
00:26:57,240 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 4: because that's someone when we learn the most about the

503
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 4: nature of life in the universe and intelligent life and

504
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 4: the experience of being human exactly.

505
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: And by the way, this is what happens in biology

506
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: all the time, is we find creatures, we think, wait, what, how.

507
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 2: Does that thing exist?

508
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: And that expands our internal model of what we think

509
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:16,400
Speaker 1: is possible. So I agree with you that when people

510
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: think about space aliens, we typically think about creature like

511
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: you know, the star trek, some woman in a tight

512
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: jumpsuit or something living on a different planet.

513
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 2: But of course they don't have to be from planets

514
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 2: at all.

515
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 1: They could be really giant things that span galaxies and

516
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 1: live in the dark matter part, and they have a

517
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 1: totally different set of issues.

518
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 4: But in order for us to connect with them, right,

519
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:43,879
Speaker 4: we have to have something in common. And that's why,

520
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 4: you know, the book is structured in this way, Like,

521
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 4: it's possible that there's lots of aliens out there that

522
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:49,879
Speaker 4: we have nothing in common with that you know, we

523
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:51,679
Speaker 4: have coffee with them and we're like, yeah, let's just

524
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 4: that was fun, but we're not interested in chatting again.

525
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 4: And the aliens I really want to meet are the

526
00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,199
Speaker 4: ones that ask similar questions to us, that are curious

527
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 4: about the universe the way.

528
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 3: That we are. But there's no guarantee.

529
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 4: Right, It's possible the universe is teeming with aliens but

530
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:07,160
Speaker 4: we're the only curious ones.

531
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: Or that the territory of our curiosity is so different

532
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,719
Speaker 1: that they don't overlap much. For example, let's imagine that

533
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 1: we could do animal uplifts so that we could talk

534
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 1: to squirrels and chat with him about it. It's not

535
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,879
Speaker 1: totally clear how much we'd have in common with them,

536
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 1: or if we could do that with bacteria, we would

537
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: really have very different worlds.

538
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 4: I think, even with whales or with chimps, you know,

539
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:35,399
Speaker 4: And the challenge of like making those mental connections is

540
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 4: underscored by the fact that we haven't like we've been

541
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 4: on the planet with whales and dolphins and shimps for

542
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 4: a long long time and we haven't figured out how

543
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 4: to cross that brain to brain connection to make that

544
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 4: interaction work.

545
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 3: Which you know, a lot of people.

546
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 4: Imagine that aliens show up and we're like dot the linguist,

547
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 4: figure it out in ten minutes, and then we're at

548
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 4: the chalkboard.

549
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 3: But like, I think that really.

550
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 4: Under sells the challenge of making that brain to brain connect.

551
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: And by the way, one of the things that I've

552
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 1: always been interested in some of podcast involved this issue

553
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: is what if there are alien species that live on

554
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: a totally different timescale than we do, where we are

555
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: like the tree people to them or vice versa.

556
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on that?

557
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's absolutely possible. They are all these

558
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 4: things that we find intuitive and natural, right, and one

559
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 4: of them is a sense of time. But the universe

560
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:46,160
Speaker 4: operates on incredibly vast time scales, Like there are things

561
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 4: that happened over millions and billions of years that we

562
00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 4: have a hard time processing. Like think about, you know,

563
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 4: understanding glaciers. People thought it was ridiculous to imagine that

564
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 4: like ice moves slowly over the surface of the Earth

565
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 4: Earth and scrapes out valleys. Because it was such a

566
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 4: long timescale process, it was just hard for us to

567
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 4: grow or to think about plate tectonics in the same way.

568
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 4: But the universe has deep time, and if you look

569
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 4: at like the formation of our Solar system, we tend

570
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 4: to think of the Solar System as this like steady

571
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 4: thing that rolls around the Sun in a natural way.

572
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 4: But if you look back into history, like it's quite chaotic.

573
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 4: We think maybe there was another planet that got kicked

574
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 4: out when Jupiter, you know, entered the inner Solar System

575
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 4: and then got pulled back out by Saturn. It's crazy

576
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 4: chaotic if you think about it on a much faster timescale.

577
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 4: And on the other end, there's lots of things that

578
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 4: are important in the universe that happened much much faster

579
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:41,960
Speaker 4: time scales than we exist.

580
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 3: You know.

581
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:46,240
Speaker 4: Quantum mechanics is like blindingly fast. I do experiments with

582
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 4: a large hadron collider. We study particles that exist for

583
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 4: like ten to negative twenty three seconds, So this is

584
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 4: incredible range of time for physical processes. And what we

585
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 4: find intuitive are things that like take one second, ten seconds,

586
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 4: may maybe one hundred years. So absolutely, I think that

587
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 4: a lot of our physics is deeply influenced by the

588
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 4: timescale of our lives.

589
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a question when when we look back at

590
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:16,040
Speaker 1: the ancient Romans and think about them doing math, they

591
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 1: were using Roman numerals, and that just makes it really hard.

592
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 2: It's sort of parochial and stupid for that.

593
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: Anyway, when you think about where our own physics is going,

594
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: let's call it a thousand years from now, when we

595
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 1: look back at the laws and particles and forces that

596
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: we talk about now, well, that seemed parochial and outdated,

597
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: like Roman numerals.

598
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 3: Almost certainly.

599
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 4: I mean the progress in science, despite what a lot

600
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 4: of people say online, it is exponential. We are learning

601
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 4: so much about the universe, so much more every ten

602
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 4: years than we knew in the last hundred years, despite

603
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 4: some you know, long standing open questions, and so I

604
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,479
Speaker 4: think it's hard to imagine what our science will be

605
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 4: like in a thousand years. It's hard to imagine, you know,

606
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:02,880
Speaker 4: think about like taking Newton and bringing him to today

607
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 4: and talking to him about the university would be his

608
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:07,040
Speaker 4: mind would be blown, right, The kind of things that

609
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 4: we're imagining.

610
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: He wouldn't even know how to think about like smartphones.

611
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 2: Wait, you melt it down beach.

612
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: Sand and you have you know, one hundred billion e

613
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 1: caculations in a second, and so exactly.

614
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:20,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's so many things that would be hard for

615
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 4: him to grow. But you know, the human brain is

616
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:26,479
Speaker 4: capable of that. It's incredible how if you evolve in

617
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 4: that time period, you find those things natural and then

618
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 4: you build upon them. And so that's the incredible thing

619
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 4: about human science is that the next generation begins where

620
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 4: we left off, finds it natural, and develops a fluency

621
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 4: in it, and then is able to leap frog forward.

622
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 4: And so it's it's so difficult to imagine what human

623
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 4: science would be like in a thousand years, and not

624
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 4: just the things we know, but I think also the

625
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 4: process of science itself, because this is something that has changed,

626
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 4: you know, people think about science. The typical cartoon pop

627
00:32:57,280 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 4: size story is, you know, the Greeks were thinking about

628
00:32:59,880 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 4: the universe but not doing experiments until fifteen hundred's when

629
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 4: Galileo and Francis Bacon came up with the idea of

630
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 4: experiments and boom, modern science took off. And now we

631
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 4: sort of figured out how to figure things out. But

632
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 4: the true story is much more nuanced than that. You know,

633
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 4: the Greeks did experiments. They measured the curvature of the

634
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 4: Earth using shadows and rods. Right, that's an experiment. And

635
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 4: you know, the development of the process of science was

636
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 4: much more gradual than people like to describe, and it's ongoing.

637
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:29,360
Speaker 3: We have new ways of doing.

638
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 4: Science now that Galleo never imagined, you know, like in

639
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 4: biology there's in vivo and vitro and now there's in silico. Right,

640
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 4: we have this computational simulation element to science. So I

641
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 4: think that in a thousand years, probably our science will

642
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 4: be unrecognizable and scientists in a thousand years will look

643
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 4: back and be like, man, they were so basic and

644
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 4: primitive in the way they were asking questions and finding answers.

645
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 4: So that makes me think that probably alien science, the

646
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 4: very process of science itself, could be very different from

647
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 4: what we do. You know, I don't think it's even

648
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 4: inevitable that they have the same process. They could be

649
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 4: down some other paths, some other technique for figuring out

650
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 4: the nature of the universe we can't even imagine.

651
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 3: So even on that level, we could learn a lot.

652
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what that means is that for our descendants

653
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: a thousand years from now, they are essentially aliens to

654
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:18,799
Speaker 1: us as we are to them.

655
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 3: Exactly, we are our own aliens. I love that.

656
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:22,280
Speaker 2: Yeah.

657
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:24,880
Speaker 1: And of course it turns out that science is changing

658
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:28,279
Speaker 1: so rapidly right now just because of AI. I mean,

659
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: all of us have these massive data sets that we've

660
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: always put armies of grad students on and plugged through

661
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,720
Speaker 1: one little thing at like, things are changing so rapidly

662
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: now in terms of the in Silico being able to

663
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: do things for us that the whole process is. It

664
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: makes me wonder a lot whether there's going to end

665
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: up being a massive retirement of scientists just because a

666
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: lot of the things that are worth doing a three

667
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: or five year project on can be done in three

668
00:34:57,080 --> 00:34:58,359
Speaker 1: or five milliseconds now.

669
00:34:58,600 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 3: Yeah.

670
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think that that just expands the kind

671
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 4: of science that we can do. You know, science, in

672
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:07,359
Speaker 4: the end is a human thing. It comes from our curiosity,

673
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,720
Speaker 4: is questions we are asking. The AI is not curious

674
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 4: about the universe. It just does what we're telling it

675
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 4: to do. And you know, I see in biology exactly

676
00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:18,839
Speaker 4: that kind of transformation. My wife is a biochemist, and

677
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 4: you know, things that took people a PhD to do

678
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 4: then in a few years become a thing on the

679
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 4: lab bench. You press a button, it's done. And that

680
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 4: doesn't mean biology is over. It means they have expanded it.

681
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 4: They can now think about bigger questions they couldn't even

682
00:35:32,120 --> 00:35:36,720
Speaker 4: imagine before. And so AI similarly, is helping us develop

683
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 4: science more rapidly and do things more effectively that we

684
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,320
Speaker 4: couldn't do before. And I think it's allowing us to

685
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 4: ask new questions and find new answers. So I'm not

686
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 4: worried about the fate of human scientists. I think that

687
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 4: as long as we're curious and we're wondering about the

688
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,359
Speaker 4: nature of the universe, and we value cultural institutions, that's

689
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 4: the dangerous part. That will still be developing answers, and

690
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:00,280
Speaker 4: we'll still be in charge of asking the questions.

691
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,759
Speaker 1: Excellent, now, Okay, so let's get back to alien scientists.

692
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: So one of the things we see in biology alow

693
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: is what's called convergion to evolution, where for example, birds

694
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: and insects both figured out flight even though totally different pathways.

695
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 1: Do you expect convergences in science with us since alien civilization,

696
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: where we stumble on the.

697
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,200
Speaker 2: Same thing, even if by different pathways.

698
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, possibly.

699
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 4: And the way we can try to answer that question

700
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 4: is to look back into the history of our science

701
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:33,440
Speaker 4: and ask, like, are the developments that were inevitable or not?

702
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:36,239
Speaker 4: And and surprisingly what you find when you look back

703
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 4: in the history of science is so much of it,

704
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 4: so many crucial pieces, the moments when we gained understanding.

705
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 4: We're due to chance, we're due to accidents. You know,

706
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 4: like the discovery of radiation and atomic decay was because

707
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 4: a guy put some uranium on a photography plate and

708
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,959
Speaker 4: the rain spoiled his planned experiments. We just like left

709
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 4: it over the weekend and he came back on Monday.

710
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 4: He developed it and discovered radiation accidentally, right because it.

711
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 3: Was rainy in Paris.

712
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,439
Speaker 4: And the frustrating thing about that is that it could

713
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:12,760
Speaker 4: have happened one hundred years earlier. All the technology was there,

714
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 4: just nobody had that lucky accident, So we could be

715
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:20,239
Speaker 4: one hundred years deeper into our understanding of quantum mechanics.

716
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 4: Imagine if quantum mechanics had been developed one hundred years earlier,

717
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,399
Speaker 4: so that like when Einstein is a kid, he's now

718
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 4: immersed in quantum mechanics. When he's developing his theory of relativity,

719
00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:33,879
Speaker 4: he already has a quantum brain. Does he still come

720
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 4: up with a classical theory of relativity, which is, you know,

721
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 4: strongly in confrontation with quantum mechanics, or does he just

722
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 4: come up with quantum gravity in.

723
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:44,359
Speaker 3: One fell swoop? You know.

724
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 4: So it suggests that there's lots of paths through science,

725
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 4: that it's there's lots of happy accidents that determine the

726
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 4: way that science happens.

727
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 3: You know.

728
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,960
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, on Earth we no longer have parallel cultures developing

729
00:37:58,000 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 4: science the way we did, you know a few thousand

730
00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 4: year years ago before we had globe spanning civilizations. But

731
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 4: at what point, At one point, the Mayans, the Chinese,

732
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 4: the Greeks were all sort of independently investigating.

733
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 3: How the universe works.

734
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 4: And it would be so fascinating if today we could

735
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:16,879
Speaker 4: see where those cultures ended up, if they hadn't been intermingled.

736
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 4: We would know something about the inevitability of math and

737
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 4: astronomy and science and physics. What an amazing experiment that

738
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 4: would have been.

739
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: Oh, is there enough data historically to ask these questions

740
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:30,799
Speaker 1: about which things did they converge on and which went

741
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 1: off fund different.

742
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:32,799
Speaker 3: Paths there is.

743
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:34,400
Speaker 4: We dig into it in the book a little bit

744
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:38,320
Speaker 4: and we see that lots of these cultures started with Okay,

745
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:40,920
Speaker 4: there are patterns in the sky. Let's try to explain

746
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 4: those patterns. They seem to be important. Let's use math

747
00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 4: to explain those patterns. But there is divergence there. Like

748
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 4: the Greeks very geometrical to them. Answers were like, where

749
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 4: are things? Build me a map? In my mind, the

750
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 4: Chinese were more arithmetic or algebraic. They're like wanted patterns

751
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:02,799
Speaker 4: in on the table, you know, the things they could

752
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 4: write down. They weren't building so much a geometric image.

753
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 4: And you can see actually in the ancient literature some

754
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 4: Chinese scholars like trying to take a geometric approach and

755
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 4: finding it wasn't really working, and then just like retreating

756
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 4: and being like, let's go back to our equations. And

757
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 4: so there are divergences there. Of course, later we understood

758
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:24,320
Speaker 4: there's a fundamental connection between geometry and algebra, of course,

759
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 4: but there definitely were a lot of similarities in the

760
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:29,759
Speaker 4: initial path. But we don't know there isn't enough data

761
00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 4: to know like would they have ended up in the

762
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 4: same place or not?

763
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 2: What do you think?

764
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: What's your intuition about physics? Does it have to look

765
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: like equations? Or if you were a dark matter creature,

766
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: would physics be expressed.

767
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:43,879
Speaker 2: Some other way?

768
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a really fun question. And it goes

769
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:49,319
Speaker 4: back to the earlier conversation we were having about the

770
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:53,320
Speaker 4: necessity of math. And I remember feeling when I was

771
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 4: learning about quantum mechanics, like, wow, this is the source

772
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 4: code of the universe. Man, This is not just a description.

773
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,440
Speaker 4: This is how the you verse decides whether an electrong

774
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 4: go is left or right.

775
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 3: When I'm reading about.

776
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 4: How precise those equations are and the experiments that validate them.

777
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 4: But then I read a book by archery Field that

778
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,759
Speaker 4: it's called Science Without Numbers. And in this book he

779
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 4: tries to demonstrate that you don't need number lines.

780
00:40:18,520 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 3: All you need.

781
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,720
Speaker 4: Are like comparisons, like things that are bigger and small.

782
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 4: You need relationships. But he argues that this idea of numbers,

783
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 4: this number line that we've created, it's useful, it's a

784
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 4: nice way to hang things, but you don't actually need

785
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 4: it to do science. And he goes through this incredible

786
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:37,959
Speaker 4: exercise of developing alternative theory of gravity with no numbers, right,

787
00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 4: So science without numbers, right. And he argues that this

788
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 4: concept of a gravitational field or any field is an

789
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 4: intermediate calculation that we find useful but doesn't have to

790
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:53,319
Speaker 4: reflect reality. And so his version of gravity has none

791
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:56,240
Speaker 4: of these numbers in it, and so it's not expressed

792
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 4: that way you're saying, like with the same kinds of equations,

793
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:03,080
Speaker 4: And so that's fascinating, and it's it's ugly, like, it's

794
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 4: not pretty, it's not a nice way. Nobody is going

795
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:07,480
Speaker 4: to use it to do science. But it makes the

796
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 4: point that our math, while it's very handy, it's very effective,

797
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 4: it's very useful, might not be necessary.

798
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,919
Speaker 3: It's parts of it could just be convenience.

799
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:21,720
Speaker 4: So it's fascinating to think about how aliens might do science.

800
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 4: And you know, even our way of expressing science in

801
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 4: equations and symbols.

802
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 3: Is fairly new.

803
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 4: You know, when when Newton is writing Principia, he's not

804
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:34,880
Speaker 4: writing equations, he's expressing things linguistically. You know, he writes

805
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 4: the force is related to He is using English, not

806
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 4: the same sort of symbols. So you know the way

807
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 4: that we do science. We imagine it's fundamental, it's universal,

808
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 4: but it's really a snapshot of our current culture and

809
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:48,720
Speaker 4: kind of a narrow window of time.

810
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: So how would we recognize alien science if we saw

811
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: it and what we're doing now, of course, it's pointing

812
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 1: radio telescopes all over and trying to guess what they

813
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: might be communicating if there was someone out there.

814
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question.

815
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 4: And let me preference by saying I love the SETI projects,

816
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 4: and I want us to be listening for messages from space,

817
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:25,280
Speaker 4: and I think we should support it more.

818
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 3: I do think philosophically.

819
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:30,839
Speaker 4: It might be hopeless. I think that if aliens send

820
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 4: us a message, we have almost no chance of recognizing

821
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 4: that it's a message, and even in the fantastically lucky

822
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 4: scenario when we do that of decoding it, because any

823
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,520
Speaker 4: message we get is going to be translated from their

824
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 4: ideas into some kind of code, some kind of symbols,

825
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 4: a pattern, sequences, something even like an engraving on a

826
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 4: pioneer plaque that they send us. Right, there's an arbitrary

827
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 4: step there where you translate ideas into symbols. It happens

828
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:02,319
Speaker 4: in every single language the only way to communicate via

829
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 4: brains right through this symbolic step. And those symbols, as

830
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 4: much as you try to make them universal, will always

831
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 4: reflect your culture. So we get an alien message. We

832
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 4: could try to decode it, but we have no idea

833
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 4: what their symbols mean, or what it reflects about their culture,

834
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 4: or what things they find natural. And the worst part

835
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 4: is how do we know if we got it right?

836
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:25,280
Speaker 4: You know, the Rosetta stone is a great example, because

837
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 4: at least we have a cheat sheet, we know what

838
00:43:27,160 --> 00:43:29,680
Speaker 4: we're supposed to be translating into, though it still took

839
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 4: us twenty years to crack hi hieroglyphics with that cheat sheet. Now, aliens,

840
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 4: like we have no cultural in common. We have no clues,

841
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 4: we have no context, we have no idea what we're

842
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 4: translating it into. I think it's a fantasy to imagine

843
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 4: that we could ever translate an alien message. And you know,

844
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,359
Speaker 4: we have funny messages from space like the Wow signal. Right,

845
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 4: this bizarre never repeated signal from space, very brief.

846
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:57,840
Speaker 3: What does it mean? We have no idea, is it anything?

847
00:43:57,960 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 3: Is it just some.

848
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:01,720
Speaker 4: Weirdlip There are some now theories about how it could

849
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:04,440
Speaker 4: maybe be possible astrophysically.

850
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 2: Tell the listeners more about the Wow signal what it is.

851
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:08,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Wow signal is a signal that came I

852
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 4: think it was in nineteen seventy seven in a radio

853
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 4: array and you know, they just were listening to the

854
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 4: sky and all of a sudden the signal came through,

855
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 4: which is basically exactly what you would expect, you know,

856
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 4: a signal from a civilization. It looks like it has

857
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 4: like a nice smooth shape. It rises and then it falls,

858
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 4: and it's called the Wow signal because the guy who

859
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 4: was monitoring it. This is back in the day when

860
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:33,399
Speaker 4: you don't have like fancy screens. It's like the thing

861
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 4: it prints out on a printer. That's the way this

862
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 4: telescope operates. He saw this thing and he wrote on

863
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 4: it wow, oh my gosh, because it was his like

864
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 4: literal reaction to seeing the signal, and that enthusiasm remains.

865
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:48,720
Speaker 4: But that's basically all we have. We have no idea

866
00:44:49,120 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 4: what it was, who it was from, if it was

867
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 4: from anybody, what it might mean. Is it an intergalactic ping,

868
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 4: you know? Is it an attempt to probear firewall and

869
00:44:58,239 --> 00:44:58,720
Speaker 4: then send.

870
00:44:58,640 --> 00:44:59,240
Speaker 3: Us a virus?

871
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:02,120
Speaker 4: Is it who knows right, or is it just some

872
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 4: weird burp from a quasar somewhere. And so that's the

873
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,000
Speaker 4: challenge of decoding these things is that we have none

874
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,440
Speaker 4: of the cultural clues. And so in the book, that's

875
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:12,319
Speaker 4: why I argue that the only way this could ever

876
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 4: work is that the aliens arrive, because if they're here,

877
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:17,439
Speaker 4: and then we can do stuff like we can point

878
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 4: to an apple and say apple, and we can pose

879
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:21,600
Speaker 4: you two apples and say two apples, and we can

880
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,920
Speaker 4: start because we have a physical context in common when

881
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 4: they're here, we can use that as a way to

882
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 4: attach meanings to symbols and then build on those symbols.

883
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:31,520
Speaker 2: So let me ask you this.

884
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:35,319
Speaker 1: Let's imagine some aliens arrived, and that means that they've

885
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:37,919
Speaker 1: got technology that's better than we do because they've crossed

886
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 1: the galaxy, they've gotten here. What is the first question

887
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: you would ask them after we figured out the language part,

888
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:46,400
Speaker 1: what would you ask about their technology or their worldview?

889
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 4: H Well, first of all, I don't want to be

890
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 4: on that visiting party because I'm a wive and I

891
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 4: don't want to risk being eaten for lunch. But you know,

892
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 4: if the linguists have figured it out and made some

893
00:45:57,160 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 4: contact and we're sitting down with the aliens, and yeah,

894
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 4: I have questions, you know. I want to know how

895
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,759
Speaker 4: did the universe begin? What were its first moments? I

896
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 4: want to know what is the universe made of. These

897
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 4: are the questions that drive my personal scientific careers, and

898
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 4: I desperately want to know the answer to it because

899
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 4: I feel like they're so meaningful philosophically, Like if you

900
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 4: knew the way the universe began and if a factual account,

901
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 4: then that would tell you a lot about the context

902
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 4: of our lives and its meaning and maybe how we

903
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,759
Speaker 4: should live it. Or if you knew what the fundamental

904
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,839
Speaker 4: description of the nature of matter and space and energy were,

905
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:39,000
Speaker 4: that would tell you something about what this is, this crazy, bizarre, beautiful,

906
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 4: bonkers experience that we're all sharing what it really means.

907
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 4: So I want those answers. And if aliens are out

908
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 4: there and they have those answers and they're listening right now,

909
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:50,880
Speaker 4: please come talk to us. Tell us those answers, because

910
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 4: we'll figure it out eventually, but it might take us

911
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 4: a thousand years, a million years, and boy, I'm not

912
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 4: going to be alive that long, so I just kind

913
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:00,800
Speaker 4: of want to cheat sheet. So those are the questions

914
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 4: I would ask the aliens if they show up.

915
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: Oh great, I certainly hope some aliens are listening to

916
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos.

917
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 2: So here's a question.

918
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:11,839
Speaker 1: If aliens explained quantum mechanics to you in a way

919
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 1: that suddenly made it feel trivial, they just had a

920
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: doubly different framework, would you feel relieved or would you

921
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 1: feel disappointed that we just wasted a sentry on it?

922
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Relieved? Absolutely.

923
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 4: I mean that's the best case scenario, right, to have

924
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 4: the aliens explained to us and for it to make sense,

925
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 4: because my nightmare scenario is the opposite. Aliens come, they

926
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 4: understand quantum mechanics, they try to explain it to us,

927
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 4: and we're.

928
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 3: Just like, huh, I don't get it.

929
00:47:39,320 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 4: You know, neurologically, how do we know that we're even

930
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:46,280
Speaker 4: capable of representing these ideas in our minds? It boggles

931
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 4: my mind that you know, these brains which developed me

932
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 4: able to like stay warm and dry and fed a

933
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 4: million years ago, can think about like eleven dimensional space

934
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:58,240
Speaker 4: and you know, crazy transformations.

935
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 3: Why are we capable of all of this? I don't

936
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 3: understand it.

937
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 1: It's only because of the umvelt hacking in the sense

938
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: that we're figuring out ways to squeeze that concept into

939
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 1: a concept we can understand. But that probably does have

940
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: its limitations.

941
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:15,480
Speaker 4: They must have limitations, right, It's certainly not true that

942
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 4: we can understand anything in the universe. I mean, my

943
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 4: dog is smart but definitely doesn't understand quantum mechanics as

944
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:23,919
Speaker 4: well as I do. And there must be some limitations.

945
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 4: But you know, we have these developments now, as you

946
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 4: say earlier, we can extend our understanding using AI. And

947
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:32,839
Speaker 4: you know, in my field in particle physics, we're doing

948
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 4: this all the time. There's lots of things that require

949
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,080
Speaker 4: AI in order for them to work. We're not yet

950
00:48:38,080 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 4: at the point where we require AI to understand things.

951
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:43,920
Speaker 4: But you know, one scenarios the aliens come, they try

952
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 4: to explain it to us. We're like, huh, but they

953
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 4: but the AI is like, I got this, and you

954
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 4: know what if the AI can figure it out but

955
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:53,320
Speaker 4: they can't explain it to us, and then the aliens

956
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:55,600
Speaker 4: just like talk to the AI and leave us out.

957
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 3: Of the party.

958
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 4: To me, that's the most frustrating potential scenario that the

959
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 4: answers are out there, the aliens want to share them,

960
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:05,000
Speaker 4: and we just can't get it. We just cannot do

961
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 4: the umbilt hacking enough to like translate it into intuitive

962
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 4: concepts in our mind, get that satisfaction that I'm personally

963
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 4: looking for.

964
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:15,040
Speaker 1: Right, The best THEAI can do is tell us that

965
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: the answer is forty two, but it can't explain it

966
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:17,920
Speaker 1: better than that.

967
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:21,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Douglas Adams is ahead of his time

968
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:22,399
Speaker 3: as all these.

969
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: Okay, couple a few rapid fire questions. What is the

970
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 1: most ridiculous but possible alien invention that you would love

971
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: to see?

972
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:37,920
Speaker 4: Self driving toothbrushes? You know, why don't we have to

973
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:40,719
Speaker 4: hold these things? They should just drive themselves around our mouths?

974
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 2: Excellent?

975
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 1: If you had a guess, what is one thing that

976
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:50,439
Speaker 1: humans might teach aliens that would blow their minds? Oh?

977
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:53,759
Speaker 4: Wow, I would love if some cute little bit of

978
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 4: human mathematics that we developed just for fun turned out

979
00:49:57,239 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 4: to solve one of their physics problems, like maybe they've

980
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:01,720
Speaker 4: been missing it and this is just like the chocolate

981
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 4: that they're peanut butter needed. You know, that would be

982
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 4: fantastic because, as you say, if the aliens show up

983
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 4: they're probably more advanced than we would than we would be,

984
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:10,799
Speaker 4: so it would be wonderful if we could contribute one

985
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:13,160
Speaker 4: little thing. I think maybe that's the most likely.

986
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:14,080
Speaker 2: That's good. Yeah.

987
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: We hand them at Penrose Tile and they're like, my god,

988
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: yes it yeah, okay, good good. If you were invited

989
00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:25,239
Speaker 1: to sit in in an alien classroom physics lecture, what

990
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 1: would you expect to see around you? Probably not whiteboards?

991
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:35,800
Speaker 1: Would they smell their equations? Would they feel dark matter?

992
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 4: I would be most interested in what those kids are asking,

993
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 4: you know, maybe even more than the answers, because what

994
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 4: aliens find intuitive and what their kids find weird, I

995
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 4: think would tell us a lot about how they sense

996
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 4: the universe and whether our questions are meaningful, whether our

997
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:00,200
Speaker 4: questions are just part of our humanity, or where our

998
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 4: questions reflects something deep about the universe.

999
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:09,520
Speaker 1: That was my interview with physicists Daniel Whitson, and I

1000
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: hope you felt your mind get stretched way beyond the

1001
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: boundaries of Earth. Thinking about alien science, of course, goes

1002
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,239
Speaker 1: beyond aliens. It's a way of holding a mirror to

1003
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: our own assumptions and asking whether the universe is stranger

1004
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: than we yet perceive, or even stranger than we can perceive.

1005
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,280
Speaker 1: So I find myself looping back to one central idea.

1006
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,600
Speaker 1: When we ask whether aliens would build the same kind

1007
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:41,320
Speaker 1: of science, we're also asking how human is our science?

1008
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 1: Are our particles and forces, our laws and equations, discoveries

1009
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: of something universal, or inventions that reflect the peculiarities of

1010
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: our senses and the accidents of our history.

1011
00:51:57,480 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 2: I'm given a little.

1012
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:02,480
Speaker 1: Bit of hope by thinking about invergent evolution here on Earth.

1013
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: Wings evolved in insects and birds and bats because flight

1014
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: was simply too useful a trick not to stumble on

1015
00:52:13,280 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 1: again and again. But the details are different in every lineage.

1016
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:21,880
Speaker 1: You've got feathers here, You've got membranes there. Maybe science

1017
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:26,479
Speaker 1: works in the same way. Maybe any technological species will

1018
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:32,200
Speaker 1: discover certain convergences like gravity or energy or chemistry, because

1019
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:35,919
Speaker 1: those are necessary to survive and thrive. But the way

1020
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:41,399
Speaker 1: they conceptualize those discoveries maybe as different as wings are

1021
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:45,279
Speaker 1: between a moth and a falcon. And the other really

1022
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 1: important idea here is that of the umveldt. Just as

1023
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 1: my dog inhabits a fragrant cacophony of odors that I

1024
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: can't access. Alien intelligences might navigate dimensions of reality that

1025
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: are in visible to us. Their science could be sculpted

1026
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 1: by those senses and by questions that would never even

1027
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:08,399
Speaker 1: occur to us.

1028
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:11,560
Speaker 2: Where we wrestle with quantum mechanics.

1029
00:53:11,560 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: Maybe they stroll through that in first grade, and then

1030
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: they had very different questions in the second grade, where

1031
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:22,480
Speaker 1: we ask why does time only move forward? Perhaps their

1032
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: perception of time makes our question seem quaint or meaningless.

1033
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 1: One of the things I loved about the conversation today

1034
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: was the notion of counter factuals or what ifs. Many

1035
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:38,799
Speaker 1: of you know that exploring what ifs is the thing

1036
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:40,759
Speaker 1: I love to do most. And if you've read my

1037
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:44,719
Speaker 1: book of fiction some sum you'll know that I wrote.

1038
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 2: Forty mutually exclusive.

1039
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 1: Versions about what we're doing here, and each was meant

1040
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: to stretch the imagination in a different direction. None of

1041
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: the stories of my book are meant to be true.

1042
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:01,319
Speaker 1: The point is to expand the fence lines of what

1043
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:02,800
Speaker 1: we can think about.

1044
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:04,959
Speaker 2: So I'm going to read a very short story today

1045
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:05,359
Speaker 2: from that.

1046
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:10,800
Speaker 1: Book that pairs so nicely with today's conversation. This story

1047
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: is called Giantess. The Afterlife is all about softness. You

1048
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: find yourself in a great, padded compound. Everything appears designed

1049
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:26,080
Speaker 1: for quietness and comfort. Your feet falls silently on a

1050
00:54:26,120 --> 00:54:31,319
Speaker 1: cushioned floor. The walls are pillowed, echoes are dampened by

1051
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: foam ceiling tiles. A hard surface is impossible to find,

1052
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:41,279
Speaker 1: feathers pad everything. When you enter the Grand Hall, the

1053
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:44,840
Speaker 1: first thing you notice is a sizeable and princely man.

1054
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,320
Speaker 1: He looks just as you might expect a god to appear,

1055
00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:53,040
Speaker 1: except that he is noticeably skittish and strained with worry

1056
00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:57,120
Speaker 1: around the eyes. He will probably be explaining that he's

1057
00:54:57,200 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: greatly disturbed by the nuclear arms on Earth. He says

1058
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:05,719
Speaker 1: that he often awakens in a cold sweat with the

1059
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: sounds of colossal blasts hammering in his ears. To be clear,

1060
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:14,560
Speaker 1: he says to you, I am not your God. Instead,

1061
00:55:14,640 --> 00:55:17,840
Speaker 1: you and I are galactic neighbors. I am from a

1062
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 1: planet associated with the star you call Turzan four. We

1063
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:24,080
Speaker 1: are all in the same mess.

1064
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:26,480
Speaker 3: What mess you ask?

1065
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 1: Please don't talk so loudly, he softly admonishes, for a

1066
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:34,320
Speaker 1: long time, we have been studying our neighbors, you Earthlings,

1067
00:55:34,360 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 1: and thirty seven other planets. Besides we have developed highly

1068
00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: accurate systems of equations to predict the future growth and

1069
00:55:42,120 --> 00:55:44,080
Speaker 1: social directions of your planets.

1070
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 2: Here he fixes your eyes.

1071
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: It turns out that you Earthlings are among the least

1072
00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: tranquil and content. Our predictions indicate that your weapons of

1073
00:55:55,120 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 1: war will grow increasingly loud. Your space exploration probe will

1074
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 1: produce thousands of noisy vessels that will thunder throughout the

1075
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: heavens with their deafening rocket propulsion. You Earthlings are like

1076
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:14,680
Speaker 1: your explorer Cortes, standing atop a mountain peak and preparing

1077
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: to perturb every beach at all, the lapping fringes of

1078
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:23,759
Speaker 1: the Pacific, where in a mess of expansionism you manage.

1079
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:27,400
Speaker 1: That's not the mess, he hisses. Allow me to illustrate

1080
00:56:27,440 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 1: the larger picture. You and I, our planets, our galaxy.

1081
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: We're part of what you should think of as an

1082
00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:40,759
Speaker 1: immeasurable living mass. You might call it a giantess, but

1083
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: summarizing the concept in a word might give you the

1084
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:46,800
Speaker 1: illusion that you can have a hint of a notion

1085
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:50,560
Speaker 1: of her enormity. To give you a sense of scale,

1086
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 1: You are the size of an atom for her, your Earth,

1087
00:56:55,280 --> 00:57:00,319
Speaker 1: sprouting with its untold layers of furiously fecund species. Your

1088
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: Earth is tantamount to a single protein in the shadowy

1089
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:08,680
Speaker 1: depths of a single one of her cells. Our milky

1090
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:13,360
Speaker 1: way constitutes a single cell, but a small one. She

1091
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 1: consists of hundreds of billions of such cells.

1092
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:21,080
Speaker 2: For millions of years, my people had no notion of her.

1093
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 1: Just as a flatworm is unlikely to discover that the

1094
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:29,000
Speaker 1: planet is round, a colony of bacteria will never know

1095
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:32,400
Speaker 1: the walls of the flask. A single cell in your

1096
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 1: hand will not know it is contributing to a concerto

1097
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 1: on the piano. But with advancing philosophy and technology, we

1098
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: came to appreciate our situation. Then a few millennia ago,

1099
00:57:46,040 --> 00:57:49,640
Speaker 1: it was theorized that we might be able to communicate

1100
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:53,440
Speaker 1: with her. It was proposed we might decipher her structure,

1101
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 1: deploy signals, influence her behavior in a manner that infintestimal

1102
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 1: mall molecules, hormones, alcohol, narcotics influenced a creature like you.

1103
00:58:06,680 --> 00:58:11,320
Speaker 1: So we organized and educated ourselves. Instead of fretting through

1104
00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:15,720
Speaker 1: the doomed, ignoble cycles of local politics, we dedicated our

1105
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:21,320
Speaker 1: economy and sciences toward understanding the biochemistry.

1106
00:58:20,640 --> 00:58:22,400
Speaker 2: Of universal scales.

1107
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: We methodically mapped out the signaling cascades and stellar anatomy

1108
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:31,800
Speaker 1: of her nervous system, and at last discovered how to

1109
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: transmit a signal to her consciousness. We sent a sharply

1110
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: defined sequence of electromagnetic pulses which interacted with local magnetospheres,

1111
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:48,520
Speaker 1: which influenced asteroid orbits, which nudged planets closer and farther

1112
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:52,360
Speaker 1: from stars, which dictated the fate of life forms, which

1113
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:56,160
Speaker 1: changed the gases in the atmospheres, which bent the path

1114
00:58:56,240 --> 00:59:00,520
Speaker 1: of light signals, all in complex interacting caste gads we

1115
00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: had worked out our calculations told us that it took

1116
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 1: a few hundred years for the transmission to arrive at

1117
00:59:08,120 --> 00:59:13,160
Speaker 1: her consciousness. At the time of the arrival, I was

1118
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:15,960
Speaker 1: sad to be traveling away from the planet while everyone

1119
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:19,960
Speaker 1: was so excited to see what would happen. His face

1120
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:24,240
Speaker 1: twitches with painful trickles of reminiscence, But no one would

1121
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:27,920
Speaker 1: have guessed what happened next. A great sheet of meteors

1122
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:33,120
Speaker 1: rained down, incendiary hydrogen clouds crushed in, and those were

1123
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:37,960
Speaker 1: followed by a multitude of black holes that mercilessly swallowed

1124
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:41,240
Speaker 1: up the flying chunks and dust, and the last light

1125
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:47,200
Speaker 1: of remembrance, no one survived. In all probability this was.

1126
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 3: Neutral to her.

1127
00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:52,480
Speaker 1: It might have been an immune system response, or she

1128
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: might have been scratching an itch, or sneezing or getting

1129
00:59:56,680 --> 01:00:01,680
Speaker 1: a biopsy. So we discovered that we can communicate with her,

1130
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: but we cannot communicate meaningfully. We are of insufficient size.

1131
01:00:09,560 --> 01:00:12,720
Speaker 1: What can we say to her? What question could we ask?

1132
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:17,520
Speaker 1: How could she communicate an answer back to us? Perhaps

1133
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:20,680
Speaker 1: that was her attempt to answer, What could you ask

1134
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,760
Speaker 1: her to do that would have relevance to your life?

1135
01:00:24,120 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 2: And if she told you what was of importance to her?

1136
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 2: Could you understand her answer? Do you think it would

1137
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:33,800
Speaker 2: have any meaning at all if you.

1138
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: Displayed one of your Shakespearean plays to a bacterium? Of course,

1139
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:45,320
Speaker 1: not meaning varies with spatial scale. So we have concluded

1140
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:50,160
Speaker 1: that communicating with her is not impossible, but it is pointless.

1141
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 1: And that is why we are now hunkered down silently

1142
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: on the surface of this noiseless planet, whispering through a

1143
01:00:59,120 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 1: slow orbit, trying not to draw attention to ourselves. Again,

1144
01:01:04,720 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: the point of my book Some was to expand the

1145
01:01:07,520 --> 01:01:12,160
Speaker 1: territory of our thinking and Daniel's interest in alien science

1146
01:01:12,360 --> 01:01:16,480
Speaker 1: serves the same purpose. It challenges us to wonder what

1147
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 1: else is possible, and in doing so, it makes us

1148
01:01:20,280 --> 01:01:24,520
Speaker 1: more aware of the narrowness of our own windows onto reality.

1149
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:28,840
Speaker 1: So what we see is that speculating about aliens reveals

1150
01:01:29,120 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: something about ourselves. We live inside these internal models of

1151
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:37,040
Speaker 1: the world constructed by our brains, and those models are

1152
01:01:37,200 --> 01:01:43,920
Speaker 1: necessarily limited. By imagining alien sciences, we stretch those models

1153
01:01:43,920 --> 01:01:47,640
Speaker 1: and remind ourselves that what we take to be universal

1154
01:01:48,160 --> 01:01:52,200
Speaker 1: might be something much smaller, a reflection of our own history,

1155
01:01:52,240 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: of our own sensory mechanisms, of our own imagination. So

1156
01:01:57,480 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: Daniel's journey is an excellent way loosen the grip of

1157
01:02:01,200 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: our assumptions, to stand outside our own thought patterns, and

1158
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: to ask how else might reality be described? So, as

1159
01:02:10,560 --> 01:02:12,800
Speaker 1: we finished this episode, I'll leave you with this. The

1160
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:16,000
Speaker 1: next time you look into the night sky and wonder

1161
01:02:16,160 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 1: who else might be out there, try shifting the question.

1162
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:23,840
Speaker 1: Don't just imagine what aliens look like or what gadgets

1163
01:02:23,840 --> 01:02:28,920
Speaker 1: they've invented. Ask yourself instead, what questions are they asking?

1164
01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:33,919
Speaker 1: What mysteries are obvious to them but invisible to us?

1165
01:02:34,480 --> 01:02:38,160
Speaker 1: And vice versa and what might our science look like

1166
01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:42,240
Speaker 1: if we hit of all their senses, their histories, they're

1167
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:46,120
Speaker 1: ways of being in the world, because in the end,

1168
01:02:46,200 --> 01:02:49,800
Speaker 1: thinking about aliens is one of the most powerful ways

1169
01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:58,440
Speaker 1: to understand ourselves. Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast

1170
01:02:58,440 --> 01:03:01,800
Speaker 1: for more information and to find further reading. Join the

1171
01:03:01,800 --> 01:03:05,520
Speaker 1: weekly discussions on my substack, and check out and subscribe

1172
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:08,680
Speaker 1: to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos of each episode

1173
01:03:08,680 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: and to leave comments Until next time, I'm David Eaglemanton

1174
01:03:12,600 --> 01:03:14,360
Speaker 1: and this is Inner Cosmos.