Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noal.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. And guys, you know
Speaker 3: it's been a thesis of our show for quite some
Speaker 3: time that history and the present and the future, these
Speaker 3: are riddled with unexplained events, questions that are left unanswered.
Speaker 3: And we're in a very exciting time in civilization right
Speaker 3: There are dangers that are unprecedented, there are questions that
Speaker 3: have never been addressed, and at the same time, there
Speaker 3: are astonishing breakthroughs in almost every field of science imaginable.
Speaker 3: And we got together off air, as we do, and
Speaker 3: we said, we've got a lot of questions about the
Speaker 3: world of science. Who's the guy who could answer these
Speaker 3: for us, or who is the genius nice enough to
Speaker 3: humor us with questions about simulation theory AI, regrowing limbs,
Speaker 3: interstellar objects, everything from the past and the way we
Speaker 3: reevaluate it to the questions and the big breakthroughs of
Speaker 3: the modern day. So with that we do have good news.
Speaker 3: We found a guy to talk to us. We proudly
Speaker 3: introduce you to the author, the engineer, the cartoonist, the roboticist,
Speaker 3: the podcaster, Fello Georgia tech alum by the way, all
Speaker 3: around science expert or Hey cham or Hey, thank you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us today.
Speaker 4: Man, Hello, Hello, so happy to be here. Thanks for
Speaker 4: having me on your show and calling me a genius.
Speaker 4: That's probably overrated.
Speaker 5: No, that's something.
Speaker 6: A genius is a self deprecating genius.
Speaker 2: Jorge is also an author you can check out Out
Speaker 2: of your Mind right now and in book form. I'm
Speaker 2: looking at a hardcover. It looks amazing, written with Dwayne Godwin.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Duyne Godwin. He's a neuroscientist m M and dean
Speaker 4: of a graduate studies at wake Forest University. So he's
Speaker 4: a pretty knowledgeable guy.
Speaker 3: And we're big fans of your comic series PhD as well.
Speaker 3: We're going to get into some of that. You may
Speaker 3: recognize Orgey as the co creator and host of Daniel
Speaker 3: and Jorge Explained the Universe, as well as your newest
Speaker 3: podcast project, Science Stuff. Could you tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about your background and your own words and what
Speaker 3: led you to Science Stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I have a PhD in engineering in robotics actually
Speaker 4: from Stanford University. But then I decided to become a cartoonist,
Speaker 4: which is still something of a concern to my parents.
Speaker 4: So my career took a little bit of a creative
Speaker 4: turn there. I've done comics, I've done movies, I've done
Speaker 4: TV show and my latest and books as well nonfiction books.
Speaker 4: And my latest is this podcast with iHeart called Science
Speaker 4: Stuff Amazing. Yeah, yeah, where we answer all kinds of
Speaker 4: fascinating questions about science for anyone.
Speaker 2: And look, we're some of the original stuff guys over
Speaker 2: here with one of these weird little stuff shows. We
Speaker 2: are so excited that the format you've chosen for Science
Speaker 2: Stuff includes interviews, includes all sorts of different explorations that
Speaker 2: I don't want to downplay just conversational style shows, but
Speaker 2: you are really putting in the work to bring in
Speaker 2: other voices and explore things to their fullest. I really
Speaker 2: love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, you know, I basically have no rules on
Speaker 4: the show. You know, whatever it takes to best explain
Speaker 4: the whatever question we're trying to answer. You know, if
Speaker 4: we find an expert and he's amazing and engaging or
Speaker 4: she's amazing and engaging throughout, then that's what you'll hear.
Speaker 4: But if it's better for me to like go to
Speaker 4: a quantum computer lab and have you hear what a
Speaker 4: quantum computer sounds like, that's that's what we'll get amazing.
Speaker 3: And you also, I've got to say, you're also super
Speaker 3: into self experimentation when appropriate. I'm thinking specifically about the
Speaker 3: hypnosis episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I try to make it as you know, experiential,
Speaker 4: experiential as possible.
Speaker 5: That's a word. Yeah, I should know that.
Speaker 4: And can I you know, take the listener long into
Speaker 4: whatever topic we're doing. So I did one where I
Speaker 4: got hypnotized. I went into the computer lab. They had
Speaker 4: quantum computers. I'm doing one coming up where we're testing
Speaker 4: whether frog meat really tastes like chicken.
Speaker 7: WHOA, I'm sorry, I gotta quickly double back hypnotized. So
Speaker 7: how did did it take? How did that go for you?
Speaker 7: And what are your thoughts on that? From a scientific perspective.
Speaker 4: Yes, super fascinating. You know, I think what we all
Speaker 4: think of hypnotism when we hear the word hypnotism is
Speaker 4: this kind of like mystical or hoaxy, kind of hokey,
Speaker 4: you know, entrancing people. But nowadays what people call hypnotism
Speaker 4: is more like therapy, you know, like guided meditation, kind
Speaker 4: of guided therapy really kind of getting you into your
Speaker 4: thoughts and getting you to use your imagination to really
Speaker 4: kind of basically simulate your life or simulate different situations
Speaker 4: so you can get better perspective on.
Speaker 3: It, to live in a simulation. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's how they describe it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's how they describe ith.
Speaker 2: Can we go that route?
Speaker 5: Guys?
Speaker 2: Can we go ahead and jump off that cliff.
Speaker 5: Or not?
Speaker 4: It feels like we're tittering on the brink already.
Speaker 8: Okay, So, so for years, the better part of a decade,
Speaker 8: we have been fascinated with the concept of simulation theory
Speaker 8: or hey, could you explain just in the brief baseline
Speaker 8: what people mean when they say simulation theory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Basically, it's the idea that we're not really really real,
Speaker 4: like you're not real biological animals with brains. We're actually
Speaker 4: just characters in a video game. So that's the basic idea.
Speaker 4: We're all just kind of like, uh, non player characters NPCs,
Speaker 4: and in some sort of computer program, maybe run by
Speaker 4: some alien or advanced human civilization in the future, where
Speaker 4: they have a giant computer the size of the planet maybe,
Speaker 4: and in this computer they're simulating artificial beings, and the
Speaker 4: idea is that maybe we're some of those artificial beings.
Speaker 4: We're not real we're not real people, we're actually just
Speaker 4: computer programs.
Speaker 7: Well, and this sounds a little out there when you
Speaker 7: put it that way, but there's some incredibly smart people
Speaker 7: that go all in for this, right for sure?
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think Elon Musk is pretty famous. Not our
Speaker 4: favorite guy as for some people these days, but he's
Speaker 4: pretty famous as being sort of all in on this theory.
Speaker 4: Anybody else really, Yeah, Like Neil de Grassy Tyson, he's
Speaker 4: on records saying like, oh, this is pretty This is
Speaker 4: a pretty compelling argument for the idea that we are
Speaker 4: in a simulation, and I can't think of an argument
Speaker 4: against it.
Speaker 5: So it's like, you know, it's a pretty it's.
Speaker 4: Kind of a very intelligent, compelling argument that people who
Speaker 4: are for the simulation theory put forth, and you know,
Speaker 4: smart people can't really argue against it.
Speaker 7: It's also fund this as a thought experiment. That's how
Speaker 7: I found it to be the most engaging personally.
Speaker 2: Well, you get into that in your episode Are we
Speaker 2: living in a simulation featuring Nick Bostrom? With Nick Bostrom
Speaker 2: because he's the guy who put forth the philosophical argument
Speaker 2: essentially that this could be true? Right? And if it
Speaker 2: were true, why? And I gotta tell you, going through
Speaker 2: and listening to that, I wanted to ask you. I
Speaker 2: want to ask you both, like I want to sit
Speaker 2: down with you and Nick in that moment just say, well, guys,
Speaker 2: what I feel like we're thinking in human terms for
Speaker 2: a lot of these arguments, for like what we can
Speaker 2: imagine as being possible scientifically technologically we're talking about computing
Speaker 2: power and how you know, putting a bunch of computing
Speaker 2: power towards one thing or another thing. I do wonder
Speaker 2: if people like Nick Boscherman and you, like hyper intelligent
Speaker 2: human beings, ever imagine that the universe entire that we
Speaker 2: experience and believe to be the universe could be the
Speaker 2: thing that's being simulated rather than just a planet size
Speaker 2: simulation or something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, like the is the universe itself a simulation?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's very suspicious, right, because there's laws that
Speaker 4: basically help you predict what's going to happen in the universe,
Speaker 4: Like if you throw a baseball up in the air,
Speaker 4: you know exactly where to catch it. And so it's
Speaker 4: kind of weird that it almost feels like a program, right,
Speaker 4: Like it almost feels like a video game. And so yeah,
Speaker 4: there's some people think that maybe the universe itself, the
Speaker 4: whole universe, is some sort of simulation. But then you
Speaker 4: get to the question of what is it running on,
Speaker 4: like right on a computer, right, yeah, well yeah.
Speaker 2: Or is is what we imagine to be reality just
Speaker 2: based on the constraints of this simulation. So what we
Speaker 2: think is possible or even could be is in a
Speaker 2: box that is you know, this place. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, maybe that's too weird.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, good question, because it's all so further to
Speaker 3: add to that box analogy. Part of the box is
Speaker 3: the limited the limited ways in which the human minds
Speaker 3: can experience data. Right. We know that we were talking
Speaker 3: earlier on ridiculous history about the concept of the observable
Speaker 3: universe and or hey you were you took great care
Speaker 3: to point out that the observable universe is not the
Speaker 3: whole universe, not the universe entire, and therefore the things
Speaker 3: that we can observe through a relatively limited set of
Speaker 3: sensory inputs are not necessarily, you know, the whole pizza
Speaker 3: pie is. I want to go back to something you
Speaker 3: mentioned in your in your setup for this concept of
Speaker 3: simulation theory, you noted, Yes, it's a coherent it's a
Speaker 3: brilliant it's a well thought out argument. It's also sometimes
Speaker 3: criticized as something that is impossible to disprove. Could you
Speaker 3: tell us a little bit about what people mean when
Speaker 3: they say that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so well, maybe we should talk about the
Speaker 4: argument first, in case people don't know the argument. The
Speaker 4: argument is that that and this was put by this
Speaker 4: person called Nick Boston. He's a philosopher, Oxford professor at
Speaker 4: the time, and he really took this idea that's been around,
Speaker 4: you know, basically since computers have been around. People thought, well,
Speaker 4: if we can program little agents or little programs, maybe
Speaker 4: you can program people. And then those people think they're
Speaker 4: in the real world, but they are actually programs. But
Speaker 4: Nick Boston put out this sort of logical argument that
Speaker 4: said that there's really three possibilities that could be true,
Speaker 4: or one of them only one of them can be true.
Speaker 4: So one of them is that most civilizations really don't
Speaker 4: make it very far, you know, they don't make it
Speaker 4: to the stage in their technological development where they can
Speaker 4: build the planet sized computer and build these massive simulations.
Speaker 4: Possibility too, is that some civilizations can make it to
Speaker 4: that stage, but they don't have any interest in creating
Speaker 4: these simulations, like it's maybe they find it unethical, or
Speaker 4: maybe they think it's just a waste of resources and
Speaker 4: auction three is that, you know, there are some civilizations
Speaker 4: that make it to this super advanced age, and some
Speaker 4: of them love to make simulations, in which case there's
Speaker 4: probably billions of simulations in the history of the universe.
Speaker 4: And so the number of simulated beings outnumbers would outnumber
Speaker 4: the number of regular, real physical beings. And so if
Speaker 4: you have to make a bet whether you're real or simulated,
Speaker 4: the rational bet, you know, if you're placing a bet
Speaker 4: on this, it would be that you are a similant
Speaker 4: being because you know, the odds are that you are
Speaker 4: if you believe these arguments.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, so good. Uh hoor hair. Are you a father?
Speaker 5: I am? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So did you have a Minecraft phase or like
Speaker 2: with your kids at all?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's still lingering. It's it's surprisingly a longing's got.
Speaker 6: A staying power.
Speaker 7: Yeah, even like I mean kids you know, grow up
Speaker 7: with it and continue to enjoy it until like adolescence.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's just such an incredible, uh and creative platform.
Speaker 2: So my kids are gone starts playing Minecraft right now
Speaker 2: as we're recording this, and they are in a procedurally
Speaker 2: generated world where if they go out far enough and
Speaker 2: their character via you know, as a user, can see
Speaker 2: the next stage, right, the next chunk of data that
Speaker 2: needs to get loaded, it gets loaded up and they
Speaker 2: can interact with it. But it's not real until they
Speaker 2: get to it. Right that that concept of procedural generation
Speaker 2: feels uncomfortably real to me. I uh, in this world
Speaker 2: it's but again, it doesn't mean it is. It just
Speaker 2: feels uncomfortably like that thing when we're looking deeper and
Speaker 2: deeper into quantum mechanics and deeper and deeper into some
Speaker 2: of the stuff that makes up this world. It does
Speaker 2: feel as though when we're actually looking at things and
Speaker 2: studying things, we're getting a ton of data. But then
Speaker 2: you back up just a little bit and not so much.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it's an interesting thing because you know, in
Speaker 4: this back and forth argument between people saying like, oh,
Speaker 4: we're in a simulation, most likely, we're not likely in
Speaker 4: a simulation, that point gets really kind of thrown around
Speaker 4: a lot back and forth, and so some people say like, oh,
Speaker 4: it would be it would be impossible to simulate the
Speaker 4: whole universe, every atom of every particle of everything object
Speaker 4: around us. And then the people who are for the
Speaker 4: simulation say, oh, well, then you can use procedural algorithms
Speaker 4: where you only simulate the things you're looking at, and
Speaker 4: like if a scientist goes into gets on a microscope
Speaker 4: and looks really closely at something small, then then you
Speaker 4: simulate that little bit of with more detail. Quantum scientists
Speaker 4: are now saying, well, that's fine, but even and even
Speaker 4: if you did that, simulating quantum physics is so outrageously
Speaker 4: expensive for computers, then you would have to have quantum computers.
Speaker 4: But even if you had quint of computers, then you
Speaker 4: have to simulate those, and then you even those are
Speaker 4: super inefficient, and so it gets thrown back and forth,
Speaker 4: even with this argument of like using procedural algorithms.
Speaker 3: It reminds me a little bit of your your recent
Speaker 3: conversation on science stuff with the world experts on the
Speaker 3: idea of terraforming Mars, and one of the one of
Speaker 3: the big things that comes up for people who are
Speaker 3: quite bullish on the concept as well as for people
Speaker 3: who are very much against it, is the sheer amount
Speaker 3: of energy, right, and the ambitious technological breakthroughs that would
Speaker 3: have to occur. And I just want to say that
Speaker 3: one of my favorite moments in that episode was when
Speaker 3: you add these experts if they actually wanted to go
Speaker 3: to Mars, and one of your experts straight up set no.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: It's fascinating because Mars right now is very inhospitable. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like a desert. You went there and your your
Speaker 4: space suit had a leak in it, you would die.
Speaker 4: You know, there's no air, no oxygen. Your blood will
Speaker 4: will boil, your saliva will boil. You want to survive there?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 4: And so I think one of the experts that they
Speaker 4: wouldn't want to go there right now, first of all,
Speaker 4: because it's uh, you know, she has a family and
Speaker 4: it would be kind of tough call there to make.
Speaker 4: But the other side just said that, you know, marsh
Speaker 4: is another planet and we kind of have no rights
Speaker 4: to it, you know, we should leave it at pristine
Speaker 4: and untouched, the like we have national parks here in
Speaker 4: the on Earth.
Speaker 6: Well, that's not going so well.
Speaker 4: The I know, it might be in the minority.
Speaker 7: The prevailing attitude, you know, it would seem in this
Speaker 7: country is one of colonization, you know, one of like
Speaker 7: everything belongs to us, everything is fair game. And that
Speaker 7: certainly seems to be the perspective of someone like Elon Musk,
Speaker 7: who seems really hot on colonizing Mars and keeps i
Speaker 7: would say, over promising and under delivering in terms of
Speaker 7: timeline around that. Any thoughts on that and like why
Speaker 7: that's such a hot no pun intended kind of topic
Speaker 7: for that kind of billionaire techie class.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Well, I think the main problem is that
Speaker 4: there hasn't been a lot of research onto this topic.
Speaker 4: You know, there were some papers back in the nineties,
Speaker 4: maybe in the seventies and eighties, and some a few
Speaker 4: people have wrint papers since then, but a lot of
Speaker 4: it is kind of speculative, were kind of opinion based
Speaker 4: or very like back of the envelope kind of calculations.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of a field that right now is
Speaker 4: very open to different opinions, you know, Like some people say, ah, yeah,
Speaker 4: we can, well, there's not enough CO two in the
Speaker 4: polar ice caps of Mars to really kind of fill
Speaker 4: up the atmosphere there. And then some people say, well,
Speaker 4: that's all right, we can just round up some comets
Speaker 4: and the meteor and the asteroid built and have them
Speaker 4: crash on Mars. And some people say, what are you
Speaker 4: talking about. That's insane, but it's possible. And so that
Speaker 4: that's kind of how it goes back and forth.
Speaker 7: Is that maybe also one of those kind of move
Speaker 7: fast break things kind of approaches that a lot of
Speaker 7: Silicon Valley type folks where it sort of like trot
Speaker 7: this idea out there because it sounds on its surface
Speaker 7: so futuristic, like the O week we should be on Mars,
Speaker 7: like we deserve that as a human race, as a
Speaker 7: human civilization, But then sort of sort out the details later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it definitely sounds like it. And it's also
Speaker 4: sort of something that it seems also possible in this
Speaker 4: problem to kind of trigger something. It could run away
Speaker 4: from you in either a good direction or a bad direction.
Speaker 4: So for example, if you melt, let's see a little
Speaker 4: bit of the polar ice caps that bring some into
Speaker 4: the atmosphere, and then that creates a greenhouse effect, which
Speaker 4: heats up the atmosphere and the more which melts more
Speaker 4: water or CO two, which blocks more sunlight. And so
Speaker 4: you know, you could maybe do something small and it
Speaker 4: will kind of cascade into this huge change in the
Speaker 4: in the atmosphere, possibly possibly.
Speaker 3: Right a wave we can't turn back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And so it's sort of at some point
Speaker 4: it feels like, oh, we could, yeah, we could totally
Speaker 4: trigger you know, global warming on Mars. What's the worst
Speaker 4: that could happen? And then some people say, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of that worst that can happen.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 3: We'll pause for a word from our sponsors and return
Speaker 3: with more from who Hate, And.
Speaker 2: We've returned a while back. We I can't remember the
Speaker 2: name of the episode, guys, or exactly what it was on,
Speaker 2: but we talked about potential fixes or like, let's say,
Speaker 2: terraforming light here on Earth to address some of the
Speaker 2: climate issues that we are now in the midst of you.
Speaker 2: For a long time, it was this thing that was coming,
Speaker 2: that might come, that could be out there, And it
Speaker 2: does feel, at least in this moment that with things
Speaker 2: like the flooding in Central Texas that just occurred as
Speaker 2: we're recording this on July seventh, some of the warnings
Speaker 2: about iceberg. There's a doomsday iceberg or ice shelf that
Speaker 2: is essentially showing signs that we are very soon going
Speaker 2: to have a lot more water flooding the oceans, and
Speaker 2: it's making the oceans more salty, not less salty for
Speaker 2: some reason, which is just it feels like we have
Speaker 2: a lot of problems hanging out here on Earth that
Speaker 2: deal specifically with climate and things that could be addressed
Speaker 2: with some form of advanced terraforming or light terraforming, just
Speaker 2: little things we could do. But when we looked at it,
Speaker 2: Ben Nol, do you remember the concept was to in
Speaker 2: some way blot out part of the solar energy coming through.
Speaker 7: Are you talking about the physicists that proposed setting off
Speaker 7: a nuke that would potentially fill the atmosphere with soot,
Speaker 7: and uh, you know, he claims would in some way
Speaker 7: the climate change.
Speaker 2: That's what got what I wanted to bring that up.
Speaker 7: Maybe we'll get to that, but I just think it
Speaker 7: it triggers me in that way. But Matt, maybe clarify
Speaker 7: what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry if you're talking about the the proposition of
Speaker 3: blocking the sun.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, but but again just as a way to
Speaker 2: curb some of the heating, the overall you know, trend
Speaker 2: that we're seeing in heating temperatures. It just seems like
Speaker 2: they're maybe to somebody standing on the outside like I
Speaker 2: am in this moment, how can we funnel more resources,
Speaker 2: minds and just energy into that kind of thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it seems kind of almost silly to be
Speaker 4: thinking about, you know, terraforming Mars when we can't even
Speaker 4: like terror anything here right.
Speaker 2: But here, you know, I mean, I don't know, it
Speaker 2: makes me think about Mar the thoughts that potentially there
Speaker 2: was life on Mars at some point in it's in
Speaker 2: its past, you know, or at least there were there
Speaker 2: was at least waters there and put the potential for
Speaker 2: life maybe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, yeah, I know, it's it's wild,
Speaker 4: it's and it's interesting because here in the Solar System,
Speaker 4: we basically have like three data points, right, we have Venus, Earth,
Speaker 4: and Mars, three rocky planets about the same orbit, the
Speaker 4: same amount of sun, but all three turn out super
Speaker 4: duper different. It's almost like if you have the triplets
Speaker 4: and a triple experiment and you see what happens to
Speaker 4: each one, and you know, one of them is a
Speaker 4: super dry desert with no atmosphere, even though they all
Speaker 4: started about the same. Mars is a desert with no atmosphere.
Speaker 4: Venus is the complete opposite. It has like too much atmosphere,
Speaker 4: huge clouds of CO two that make it nine hundred
Speaker 4: degrees fahrenheit, and the surface of Venus, and then in
Speaker 4: the middle we have Us. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 4: we have a pretty good idea of what could happen
Speaker 4: if things go wrong either way.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's why they call it the Goldilock zone. Right.
Speaker 3: And there's there's something that I was talking about some
Speaker 3: of your work and your conversations was with some old
Speaker 3: friends of mine from Georgia Tech. Weirdly enough, and one
Speaker 3: of us stumbled on this point that I'd love your
Speaker 3: reaction to, Uh, it's the idea that, yes, terraforming already exists.
Speaker 3: Humans are currently terraforming Earth, just not in the best ways.
Speaker 3: How would you how would you react to that? Does
Speaker 3: that sound accurate or on base?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: For sure, I mean we are. We are definitely changing Earth.
Speaker 4: I mean Earth has changed a lot since the beginning.
Speaker 4: You know, we started with no atmosphere, and then it
Speaker 4: had an atmosphere, and then it it didn't have any water,
Speaker 4: then it had water. You know, initially it was ASCO
Speaker 4: two than you know, uh, bacteria converted all to some
Speaker 4: of it to oxygen and that's what we have now.
Speaker 4: So it's everything. It's always changing. But the idea that
Speaker 4: humans can affect that is definitely true. You know, we've definitely,
Speaker 4: through our activity, are causing the atmosphere in the planet,
Speaker 4: temperatures to change. And so that's actually one of the
Speaker 4: kind of ideas that they have for Mars. It's like, hey,
Speaker 4: maybe we can go to Mars and just polluted right.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, I brought up that, frankly pretty ridiculous
Speaker 7: proposal by a computer scientist, not a physicist. I was
Speaker 7: mistaken a guy named Andy Haverley, who's a Microsoft software
Speaker 7: engineer from Washington State, and he wrote a paper in
Speaker 7: an admittedly non peer reviewed scholarly journal or I think
Speaker 7: it's a web based collection of non peer reviewed scholarly
Speaker 7: articles that proposed sequestering thirty years worth of CO two
Speaker 7: emissions in underwater rock by andating a nuclear bomb underground
Speaker 7: within the Earth's crust. And he said he got the
Speaker 7: idea from the movie Oppenheimer, which seems like a really
Speaker 7: sound science there. Obviously, there's a lot of people saying
Speaker 7: this is absurd, and I'm sure that you'll probably fall
Speaker 7: on that side as well, but it does speak to
Speaker 7: something that is similar to terraforming, or maybe it is
Speaker 7: a discipline that is what sort of is the father
Speaker 7: of terraforming. This idea of geo engineering, and it's something
Speaker 7: that I guess been around since the forties. But the
Speaker 7: problem is, and the critiques that are often leveled at
Speaker 7: geoengineering are those knock on consequences, those domino effect, butterfly
Speaker 7: effect things down the chain that can really happen without
Speaker 7: proper care being taken to prevent things like that. Do
Speaker 7: you have any thoughts about the concept of geoengineering or
Speaker 7: you know, if burying a nuke in the Earth and
Speaker 7: blowing it up is a smart way to be good
Speaker 7: stewards of the planet that we've already kind of jacked
Speaker 7: up beyond repair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, for sure, I think most people kind of
Speaker 4: it's all sort of loved into the same thing. Terraform geoengineering.
Speaker 4: You know, crazy things like exploding a nuclear bomb mat
Speaker 4: like you said, like to cause basically a nuclear winter
Speaker 4: to cool down the planet. Or some people talk about
Speaker 4: like releasing special aerosols or special like little tiny needles
Speaker 4: kind of that will sort of reflect the certain wavelengths
Speaker 4: of light and things like that. I think, you know,
Speaker 4: I was clearly pointed out in the movie Jurassic Park. Sure,
Speaker 4: chaos is hard to predict, you know, when you have
Speaker 4: a complex system like this, it's like it's they're basically
Speaker 4: ruled by chaos rules, which means, you know, things can
Speaker 4: take a turn for the worst really really quickly and
Speaker 4: without us being able to predict it unless you know,
Speaker 4: like everything, every single variable possible, which we cannot have.
Speaker 7: And this remulation an answer to that, running these elaborate
Speaker 7: algorithms and these elaborate simulations that could potentially show more
Speaker 7: of those knock on consequences, trying to maybe put a
Speaker 7: little positive spin on some of this kind of runn
Speaker 7: amock AI or you know, machine learning type stuff. And
Speaker 7: I don't mean to pivot too quickly, but do you
Speaker 7: have any thoughts around how these kind of models, you know,
Speaker 7: could potentially be helpful with combating things like climate change?
Speaker 6: Or is the genie already too far off and out
Speaker 6: of the bottle?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: No, I think modernly is the best tool we have
Speaker 4: basically because we only have one Earth, we can't like
Speaker 4: experiment with it. You can try something and see how
Speaker 4: it works if it kills us all and so basically
Speaker 4: simulations computers, huge computers, it's the only way you can
Speaker 4: really test these things and figure out solutions.
Speaker 3: I want to pivot us just a little bit here,
Speaker 3: and I think we all agree. I think we're all
Speaker 3: on the same page and agree with that answer. But
Speaker 3: in the course of your expiration, you've run into a
Speaker 3: lot of what we used to call ad science, right so,
Speaker 3: or let's be diplomatic out of the box propositions. Right
Speaker 3: there we go dream big. Humanity has always been a
Speaker 3: hold by beer species. So with that in mind, could
Speaker 3: you tell us some of the most wildly ambitious like
Speaker 3: scientific propositions you've run across, you know, the nuke stuff,
Speaker 3: the blocking the sun. What's the most sci fi kind
Speaker 3: of proposition you've run into that has been seriously considered,
Speaker 3: whether in the past or the present, to address some
Speaker 3: of these big scientific issues.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, let's see. Just in the episode on terraforming Mars,
Speaker 4: one of the ideas that's being floated out there kind
Speaker 4: of seriously to heat up Mars because it's too cold
Speaker 4: there is to basically create giant space mirrors, like flood
Speaker 4: one hundred or thousands of mirrors around Mars and basically
Speaker 4: have them point the sunlight that Mars gets to, like
Speaker 4: the north or south pole, like a giant space magnifying glass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what could go wrong?
Speaker 4: And then yeah right right, doesn't sound too too expensive.
Speaker 4: And then then you could start melting the poles and
Speaker 4: then that might trigger global warming, and then that might
Speaker 4: heat up the rest of the atmosphere. That's one crazy idea.
Speaker 6: That's nuts.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Have you have you all heard of the Dyson sphere?
Speaker 1: Ye?
Speaker 2: Yes, dice swarm baby.
Speaker 4: That's another wild, wild idea, just like cover a star
Speaker 4: maybe and suck up all the energy.
Speaker 2: You'd have all the energy you need to simulate other places.
Speaker 4: Probably so yeah, yeah, And people you said as maybe
Speaker 4: a way that we could detect advanced alien civilizations out there.
Speaker 4: And you see where there used to be a star.
Speaker 4: If you see that it's blocked off and it only
Speaker 4: gives you know, infrared radiation, then then maybe they invented
Speaker 4: a Dyson sphere there, and that means there's aliens there.
Speaker 3: How satisfied would it be to first find an extraterrestrial
Speaker 3: civilization and then secondly to see that one of our
Speaker 3: crazy ideas made it off the drawing board. It's pretty inspiring.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it means more ontocenting, right maybe hopefully
Speaker 4: hopefully they're nice aliens and good role models for us.
Speaker 2: The concept of a Dyson sphere Joree specifically reading about
Speaker 2: that for today, thinking about some of the simulation theory stuff,
Speaker 2: and it appears that at least the way was originally
Speaker 2: imagined with the Kardashev scale. This concept of fully covering
Speaker 2: a star in some kind of I don't know, a
Speaker 2: literally a sphere of technology to then absorb one percent
Speaker 2: of that star's energy wouldn't be at least to the understanding. Now,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't be physically possible because of the gravitational forces
Speaker 2: at hand. But this, this swarm concept, to me feels
Speaker 2: well again, I'm using the word feel because I am
Speaker 2: not smart enough to fully understand it. But I would say,
Speaker 2: if you had some kind of grid system, satellite system,
Speaker 2: imagine Starlink but around a star. But then imagine the
Speaker 2: number of Starlink satellites multiplied by a thousand, then you
Speaker 2: know that kind of conceptually, at least in my mind,
Speaker 2: I can picture it. I do wonder if, as we've
Speaker 2: got these new pieces of technology, some of the new satellites,
Speaker 2: some of the new imaging tech that's even land based,
Speaker 2: like Earth based, where we can see out much deeper
Speaker 2: and much further into the universe, if we will ever
Speaker 2: discover something that we just don't understand. Our sensors don't
Speaker 2: understand the light kind of have you, as you're saying
Speaker 2: you can only detect infrared light or something coming off
Speaker 2: of a star. We just can't understand what that light is.
Speaker 2: But it's just, you know, millions of satellites rolling around
Speaker 2: a star. I don't know what I'm saying other than
Speaker 2: that makes me very very excited.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well yeah, because you know, it seems very unlikely
Speaker 4: because the universe is so big and it's so sparse.
Speaker 4: Even though it's there's so many stars and plants out there,
Speaker 4: it's it's still pretty sparse, and so I think the
Speaker 4: chances that we'll ever meet an alien species or you know,
Speaker 4: run into them are pretty slim. So it is super
Speaker 4: interesting to think about, like, well, how else could we
Speaker 4: detect them? How else could we know they're there? And
Speaker 4: to think about, you know, like if they had similar
Speaker 4: technology to us, what would be the signatures of those technologies?
Speaker 4: You know, could we see radio waves coming out of it?
Speaker 4: Can we hear music coming out of their Are there
Speaker 4: radios and things like that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Or could we detect them using starlink satellites to cover
Speaker 4: up their sun?
Speaker 3: You know, it's such a pickle. We've talked about it
Speaker 3: a little bit in the past on our sister show,
Speaker 3: just the on episodes of this show, just the problem
Speaker 3: of time and space and while we're here conceptually in
Speaker 3: outer space, while we're running our own simulation and model
Speaker 3: thereof there's a question that I think has been on
Speaker 3: a lot of our minds ever since the story of
Speaker 3: a mua mua. Why are interstellar objects so rare? Like,
Speaker 3: why is it so rare for us to encounter them?
Speaker 3: I think there have only been check me on this
Speaker 3: guy's three documented so far.
Speaker 2: Three confirmed that we've observed, right.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, and the third one was very recently, basically
Speaker 4: last week.
Speaker 3: So why is it if the universe is so big?
Speaker 3: One of the first questions lay folks would have is
Speaker 3: why is it so rare for stuff from the outside
Speaker 3: of the Solar System to make it to this neighborhood
Speaker 3: right right?
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing is that that's a good thing,
Speaker 4: ben because you know, like you don't want stuff crashing
Speaker 4: into your planet. You don't want to be living in
Speaker 4: like a debris zone. Basically, we just did an episode
Speaker 4: about what it's like to be a planet in the
Speaker 4: center of the galaxy. Oh wow, And the analogy there
Speaker 4: is pretty fascinating. So if you take if you make
Speaker 4: a bubble around us, like around our Sun, a bubble
Speaker 4: that's four light years big, like if you look ford
Speaker 4: light years in all directions, all that's in that bubble
Speaker 4: is basically Us. Most of the mass in that huge
Speaker 4: bubble is just the Sun and Jupiter and the rest
Speaker 4: is just like little tiny rocks like our planet. If
Speaker 4: you take that same bubble and you put it in
Speaker 4: the center of the galaxy, you would find about ten
Speaker 4: million stars in that same bubble in addition to the
Speaker 4: super massive black hole that's in the middle of our galaxy.
Speaker 4: So if you live there, you're basically toast. Like like
Speaker 4: you know, so many things can have things in crash
Speaker 4: into you. Another star could be flying by and like
Speaker 4: kick you out of your orbit, or it could steal
Speaker 4: and you suddenly be orbiting another sun. And with so
Speaker 4: many stars, there's like super nova's going on all the time.
Speaker 4: Quasars from the super massive black hole would be like
Speaker 4: basically roasting your planet. So it's sort of a good
Speaker 4: thing that we're living in the suburbs of the galaxy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's probably a reason life, you know, proliferated out here,
Speaker 2: way out here in the quiet, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, But let's say it's thought that this one three
Speaker 2: I Atlas, this this most recent interstellar object, it's thought
Speaker 2: that it's potentially a comet. We need more information on it.
Speaker 2: Kind of the way, what was There's a second one, guys,
Speaker 2: and I cannot remember it. It's not amua mua. It's
Speaker 2: not this one. It was the it was the third one,
Speaker 2: which is I guess officially the second one, but it was.
Speaker 2: I think that one was proven to be a comment.
Speaker 2: That seems like an interstellar or an object that exists
Speaker 2: in space that is just moving. It seems like the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that could, with its own propulsion, just
Speaker 2: continue moving, even outside of one solar system into another.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's possible that an intelligent civilization would
Speaker 2: send something like that ever, in an attempt to get
Speaker 2: out of their own solar system, not even really to
Speaker 2: make contact or you know, nothing, not applying any kind
Speaker 2: of thoughts on it as to what its purpose is,
Speaker 2: but just sending something outside to see what's there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think you know, the way the physics
Speaker 4: works is that most likely these things do come from
Speaker 4: another solar system, because you know, to get rocks or
Speaker 4: comments or anything that kind of complicated elements to form
Speaker 4: like in the middle of nowhere, like just out of
Speaker 4: a gas cloud is very unlikely. So most of these
Speaker 4: things probably come from another solar system. And then probably
Speaker 4: about happened with something knocked in and it kind of
Speaker 4: got knocked up at door of it and then got
Speaker 4: thrown out into space and we just happened to sort
Speaker 4: of catch it. Yeah, but whether they're sent by.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not saying this one is. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: it just I mean, I'm wondering if it could be Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if that's a viable thing that we could
Speaker 2: even imagine or think to look for. Almost like again,
Speaker 2: I can only imagine some of the satellites, the early
Speaker 2: satellites that we sent out. Was the one that had
Speaker 2: the Golden Record on it, Voyager. Yeah, just something like that,
Speaker 2: but more complicated and perhaps a little more rocky.
Speaker 3: I mean, use the use the materials you have right,
Speaker 3: use the stuff that has proven to already be spaceworthy.
Speaker 3: So it's a it's a brilliant thing to think about. Also,
Speaker 3: to that point we brought up earlier, I believe the
Speaker 3: the second interstellar object confirmed in recent observation is Comic
Speaker 3: two I or Comic when it's called Borisov. Yes, but yeah,
Speaker 3: confirmed to be a comet. This stuff is. This stuff
Speaker 3: is so cool because it shows us first that it's good,
Speaker 3: as you said, Jorge, to live in the verbs of
Speaker 3: the galaxy where it's not always a constant peel of Quasos.
Speaker 3: But then it also yeah, yeah, I mean I live
Speaker 3: in the city, so that analogy really hits up. But
Speaker 3: there's I think there's another aspect of this to explore,
Speaker 3: kind of speaking to Matt's question about humanity sending stuff
Speaker 3: out right, just sending out voyage or whatnot into the darkness.
Speaker 3: What do you see right now as the future of
Speaker 3: human space exploration in the broadest of senses.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, you know, the media future is just
Speaker 4: to like check out our neighborhood, you know, like what's
Speaker 4: going on in Europe by one of the moons of Jupiter.
Speaker 4: Is there water down there? Could there be life in
Speaker 4: that water? Or what's going on in Mars underneath the
Speaker 4: surface of Mars? You know, was there life there at
Speaker 4: some point? Could there still be Like technically there could
Speaker 4: still be you know, little aliens living down there in
Speaker 4: the underground pools of Mars. So I think that's I
Speaker 4: think that basically our priority right now is just to
Speaker 4: learn from our solar system so that we can then
Speaker 4: know more about planets, how they form, what's going on
Speaker 4: with different planets, not just Earth, And then I think
Speaker 4: from there you can then start looking at exoplanets. So
Speaker 4: we've detected, you know, thousands of other planets around other
Speaker 4: Solar systems, but we know very little about them, Like
Speaker 4: we don't know how they form, what's normal out there.
Speaker 4: You know, there's so much we don't know yet.
Speaker 2: Don't We kind of know that planet nine is out there,
Speaker 2: or there is some kind of object out there, trans
Speaker 2: Newtonian object.
Speaker 5: You mean, like on the other side of the Sun.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, there was oh gosh, there was more rumblings
Speaker 2: coming out of BBC Sky at Night magazine something. I
Speaker 2: was reading a couple other things on this show. Way
Speaker 2: back in the day, we used to call it Niberu
Speaker 2: because that was the like fabled, you know, secret planet
Speaker 2: that was going to destroy our Earth one day. It
Speaker 2: was a really fun hypothetical thing that was talked about
Speaker 2: on message boards and talked about for a long time.
Speaker 2: But it does appear that there is something out there
Speaker 2: beyond Pluto essentially, or out close to the area where
Speaker 2: Pluto is located.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think that's something I think that's hotly
Speaker 4: debated right now. It's like, is there is there are
Speaker 4: there more planets even in our Solar system that we
Speaker 4: just haven't seen and you know some people, I know,
Speaker 4: some folks at Caltech kind of like study everybody's orbits,
Speaker 4: all the planets, and they from just the gravitational signature.
Speaker 4: They're like, oh, wait, these orbits tell us that there's
Speaker 4: something there, but we don't know if for.
Speaker 6: Something else acting on it.
Speaker 7: What you mean like they can detect the force the
Speaker 7: sum of the forces includes something that isn't immediately visible.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like they see the for example, the orbit of
Speaker 4: Neptune and they see it's not as perfectly accounted for
Speaker 4: with all the planets we know about. Maybe there's something
Speaker 4: else tugging it out there, and that's why they think
Speaker 4: maybe there's another planet out there. But I think it's
Speaker 4: still hotly debated, which means it's still a possibility.
Speaker 3: Up for grabs. Love it, love the love that great expanse.
Speaker 3: We're sort of any we're in that method of as
Speaker 3: a writer, you know this, We're in that stage where
Speaker 3: we've got a couple of paragraphs and the rest of
Speaker 3: the book is kind of blank pages, right, so we're
Speaker 3: trying to figure out this saga together.
Speaker 7: Hey, let's take a quick break right here, hear a
Speaker 7: word from our sponsor, and then come back with more
Speaker 7: or hey, and we're back.
Speaker 3: This is heading in the direction of science fiction. But
Speaker 3: we had a very brief conversation in the past about
Speaker 3: so called artificial intelligence or AI. So what do you
Speaker 3: think about the idea that the future of space exploration
Speaker 3: by humans doesn't involve actual humans? What if we create
Speaker 3: some kind of inorganic sentience or very highly sophisticated algorithm
Speaker 3: to be the next wave of astronauts. Is that a
Speaker 3: possibility or how crazy? Like on a scale of one
Speaker 3: to backcrap crazy?
Speaker 6: What is this?
Speaker 4: No, it's not crazy at all. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 4: whatever we're sending to space right now you probably use
Speaker 4: this AI to some degree, you know, And even the
Speaker 4: instruments we use and ASSAD I imagine use some AI.
Speaker 4: It's being used more and more and even in science
Speaker 4: and engineering. So it's not totally crazy at all. And
Speaker 4: in fact, some scenarios that people paint are like, well,
Speaker 4: maybe you can send one robot with like instructions to
Speaker 4: land on an asteroid and make two robots and copy
Speaker 4: the program, and then those two robots have the instructions
Speaker 4: to go out there, look for an asteroid, mine it,
Speaker 4: you know, get energy from it, and make two copies
Speaker 4: of it, and then that's how you could maybe like
Speaker 4: you know, see the whole galaxy for example, So it's
Speaker 4: not not totally crazy.
Speaker 3: No, should we be sending people into space.
Speaker 4: I think if people want to go to space, they
Speaker 4: should go. You know what, why not? I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: if they know the risk and there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people that want to have that experience and they like
Speaker 4: I think that they open up volunteers to go to
Speaker 4: Mars and thousands of people signed up, so you know,
Speaker 4: I think it's part of human nature to be explorers
Speaker 4: and to you know, want to find out what it's
Speaker 4: like to be there.
Speaker 6: Well, hot take, maybe I'm interested in yours.
Speaker 7: The whole space tourism thing and this sort of like
Speaker 7: upstairs downstairs of it all where it's like, you know,
Speaker 7: a lot of folks that are going to space, like
Speaker 7: the Katie Perrys of the world, are coming back and
Speaker 7: acting like they've accomplished some great feat and feel as
Speaker 7: though they should be looked at in the same way
Speaker 7: as astronauts and scientists and folks that have trained their
Speaker 7: whole lives to do that. And what they've done is
Speaker 7: more or less taken a little joy ride out in
Speaker 7: the space and back, and it really does seem to
Speaker 7: kind of further drive this wedge between like folks with
Speaker 7: lots of money and regular folks, and further maybe even
Speaker 7: solidifies this idea of space not being.
Speaker 6: For everybody, and that if anyone.
Speaker 7: Were to colonize Mars, I don't know that folks like
Speaker 7: you or I might get the invites. I'm just wondering about,
Speaker 7: you know, your thoughts on the whole social aspect of
Speaker 7: space travel, space colonization, and space tourism.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know, I think these days, anything that gets people
Speaker 4: excited about space or science or exploration, I think that's
Speaker 4: all great.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 4: You know, whether or not, you know, getting to the
Speaker 4: edge of the atmosphere counts to space, and whether or
Speaker 4: not it should be something that only rich people can do,
Speaker 4: that is the thornier kind of mindfield there, you know,
Speaker 4: But ultimately, I think anything that gets people excited about
Speaker 4: space is good.
Speaker 7: I guess I would say that this whole thing that
Speaker 7: Blue Origin did maybe had the opposite effect of that,
Speaker 7: And I guess that's sort of maybe what I'm getting
Speaker 7: at is this whole idea of like what maybe once
Speaker 7: would have gotten people excited about space seems to have
Speaker 7: blown up in the faces of the folks that sort
Speaker 7: of staged this pr event and maybe had the opposite
Speaker 7: effect and maybe made it seem a little bit more
Speaker 7: like this sort of bougie tone death thing, and maybe
Speaker 7: is making people look scants a little bit at folks
Speaker 7: these private space travel companies. Just I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 7: that's my two cents, but that is the way it
Speaker 7: seems like people are reacting to that particular event.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, for sure, I can totally see that too.
Speaker 4: I guess one point of view against that sort of
Speaker 4: downplane of those flights is that I think somebody told
Speaker 4: me that they've only done like ten or eleven or
Speaker 4: twelve of these things with people in it, and so
Speaker 4: there is still kind of a significant risk for Katie.
Speaker 4: There was a significant risk for Katie Perry and all
Speaker 4: those folks to go up there. You know, Like I
Speaker 4: don't know if I would go if I was only
Speaker 4: the twelfth person to go on this airplane or the spaceship,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like I always always like
Speaker 4: a thousand people have gone.
Speaker 7: Or you know, not that dissimilar from the folks that
Speaker 7: got you know, imploded in that experimental deep sea you
Speaker 7: know situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that could have been them well you know, but.
Speaker 7: Then that deep sea thing, a lot of people were
Speaker 7: like almost like they were rich people but maybe deserved
Speaker 7: it or something. I'm not saying I think that at all,
Speaker 7: but that was sort of the internet perspective. One of
Speaker 7: the hot takes was like it was poorly planned, it
Speaker 7: was really expensive.
Speaker 6: It was sort of this like prestige thing.
Speaker 7: But I'm with you or hey, I think you're right
Speaker 7: about the how few attempts have been made, and so
Speaker 7: anyone that's that's participating in it is taking their lives
Speaker 7: into their own hands. And the question there then becomes
Speaker 7: is that worth you know, reverence in some way or
Speaker 7: is it just.
Speaker 6: Kind of a little bit blind, you know, like risk taking.
Speaker 3: You got to wonder about that, right, just the conversation
Speaker 3: you say, oh, well, how many times have we tried this?
Speaker 3: And as you're getting into the ship, someone says eleven
Speaker 3: of these went great, and then you say how many
Speaker 3: and they're like, okay, well close the door.
Speaker 6: Jolly good.
Speaker 2: I am jumping and turning an to hear guys, hey, chim,
Speaker 2: given your experience with and expertise in robotics, what do
Speaker 2: you see as humanity's relationship with robotics, with synthetic you know,
Speaker 2: pieces of a human with things like neulink. Where do
Speaker 2: you see us going in the future.
Speaker 4: I see us getting more and more and meshed with robots.
Speaker 4: You know, it seemed like a fantasy when I was
Speaker 4: a roboticist, just because the technology wasn't there. But I
Speaker 4: was just reflecting recently on just even things that you
Speaker 4: don't think about, like motors, Like the technology and motors
Speaker 4: from the time that I was a roboticist to now
Speaker 4: is has jumped, you know, several generations, several huge leaps.
Speaker 4: You know, you can make motors so much stronger and
Speaker 4: more efficient to the point where like a human sized
Speaker 4: robot was sort of unthinkable in my time. But now
Speaker 4: you know, there's like one hundred companies.
Speaker 7: Question really quickly or robotics isn't Oh, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 7: have to include some kind of intelligence, and it can
Speaker 7: just be like automated mechanized machinery that accomplishes tasks, right,
Speaker 7: Like you know, like motors, that would be a form
Speaker 7: of robotics if it were programmed in a way that
Speaker 7: it would get an automated task.
Speaker 5: Is that right.
Speaker 7: I just want to make sure I'm wrapping my head
Speaker 7: around the concept of robotics, and I'd love to hear
Speaker 7: more about how maybe that concept has evolved since you
Speaker 7: got started in it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, you're asking a very deep philosophical existential question that
Speaker 4: all robotics is it kind of struggle with, like what
Speaker 4: is a robot? Like can you call your car a robot?
Speaker 4: You know, if it was a manual gear or even
Speaker 4: if it's automatic, would you call it a robot? Or
Speaker 4: does it need to have sentience or some sort of
Speaker 4: program on it.
Speaker 6: In the UK they call microwaves robot cooking.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and now microwas are super smart too. Now they
Speaker 4: probably had to have AI agents like recognizing your food
Speaker 4: and figuring it helping you figure it out.
Speaker 7: Do you follow one side or the other on that
Speaker 7: argument about what makes what makes a robot? Would love
Speaker 7: to hear your thoughts on it, and that is interesting,
Speaker 7: the philosophical kind of quandary of it all.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I would say if it's totally remote controlled,
Speaker 4: it's probably I wouldn't call it a robot, it would
Speaker 4: just call it like a machine maybe, Okay, Yeah, but
Speaker 4: if it's doing things on its own somehow, either mechanically
Speaker 4: or through a computer program.
Speaker 5: And then I'm pretty lenient what you call a robot?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see it. Also, I think it's also a
Speaker 3: good time to point out the fascinating etymology of the
Speaker 3: word robot in the beginning, which itself was a I
Speaker 3: think it was a check play from the nineteen twenties
Speaker 3: that was automaton.
Speaker 6: It was the term that was used robot was yeah, yep, sorry.
Speaker 3: Ben robot robot nick, right, is this term that already
Speaker 3: entered into our language with some social baggage, right, with
Speaker 3: some statements and some deep philosophical quandaries. So as this technology,
Speaker 3: I love that you point out there are hundreds of
Speaker 3: companies who are working on things that we could think
Speaker 3: of as house assistant robots in some limited function. Would
Speaker 3: you and your family ever consider acquiring one? Or like,
Speaker 3: would you buy the twelfth one or would you wait
Speaker 3: for a few thousands?
Speaker 4: If I can get one to wash the dishes for me,
Speaker 4: I would tomorrow.
Speaker 3: The worst.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know, if it could do yeah, things
Speaker 4: like that. I would love to have a robot. Dude,
Speaker 4: I guess I have a dishwasher, but they still have
Speaker 4: to unloaded or hound my kids.
Speaker 6: To they basically got a free wash them.
Speaker 5: I mean honest, yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: And we see it too with it seems like the
Speaker 3: at least the current the current speculation I've been reading
Speaker 3: about both in private industry and academia, seems to argue
Speaker 3: that a normalization or proliferation of robots in some way
Speaker 3: is inevitable as the economy scale kicks in, prices decrease,
Speaker 3: they become more affordable, and they also seem to I
Speaker 3: love your dishwasher example. The argument also seems to be that,
Speaker 3: similar to the Rumba, the new home robot assistants will
Speaker 3: be specifically geared for certain tasks, starting like in a kitchen,
Speaker 3: or starting with medical assistance. You know, picture the TV
Speaker 3: commercial I've fallen and I can't get up. Would you
Speaker 3: agree with that? And kind of dovetail on Matt's earlier question,
Speaker 3: how far do you think the prevalence of robotic assistants
Speaker 3: will go?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Boy, I think it probably depends on obviously your income level,
Speaker 4: you know, and also where you live in the world.
Speaker 4: You know, if it's much more economical for you to
Speaker 4: hire someone down the street to wash dishes, then then
Speaker 4: that seems like a better situation because then two people
Speaker 4: benefit from that, right, and it's supposed to one person
Speaker 4: and a robot.
Speaker 7: I do wonder though, like where, you know, a lot
Speaker 7: of the problems that we run up against when we're
Speaker 7: talking about mechanization and roboticization and involving you know, artificial
Speaker 7: intelligence or machine learning in tasks, is where is that
Speaker 7: cut off? At what point are we going to pump
Speaker 7: the brakes and say no, no, no, we want to
Speaker 7: replace these tasks that we have deemed to be menial
Speaker 7: and not worthy of human involvement without throwing out tons
Speaker 7: of jobs and and things that people rely on for
Speaker 7: their economic well well being to protect and to to
Speaker 7: you know, feed and and raise their families. Because it
Speaker 7: seems to me like there's really no way back, because
Speaker 7: the technogy is out there, and the nature of economics
Speaker 7: and the nature of capitalism is such that if it
Speaker 7: can be done, someone's going to do it, and someone's
Speaker 7: going to sell it. I just I don't know, do
Speaker 7: you have any philosophical thoughts around that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's sort of the history of humanity
Speaker 4: is always taking inside of automation and efficiency and and
Speaker 4: you know, letting people figure out other jobs that they
Speaker 4: can do, you know, if it's cheaper to use robots.
Speaker 4: But you know, most of our cars are made using
Speaker 4: robots too, and people are getting operated on sort of
Speaker 4: by robots now. Yeah, and so it's all it's all coming,
Speaker 4: and it's all I think, it's not probably not going
Speaker 4: as fast as people maybe imagine twenty years ago.
Speaker 6: There's always a backlash.
Speaker 7: I mean even historically you've got like the luttites and stuff,
Speaker 7: people smashing printing presses and you know, backlash against industrialization.
Speaker 7: So it's really no different than that. And I'm not
Speaker 7: coming down on one side or the other. I think
Speaker 7: to your point, it is absolutely just a product of
Speaker 7: human vanity and just the nature of progress and all
Speaker 7: of that. But if you look back, even like people
Speaker 7: were very upset about the idea of the synthesizer, people
Speaker 7: you know, in orchestras, thought it was going to replace them.
Speaker 7: But what ultimately happened was people figured out how to
Speaker 7: use synthesizers to make sounds that an orchestra couldn't make.
Speaker 7: And I think that's the neat part about all of
Speaker 7: this stuff, is figuring out those other things.
Speaker 6: But it doesn't entirely get rid of the fear that
Speaker 6: a lot of.
Speaker 7: Folks have about, you know, being supplanted, you know, by
Speaker 7: these types of technologies.
Speaker 6: So I don't know the answer. I just it's a
Speaker 6: tricky one.
Speaker 7: And I think you've you've pointed to that and everything
Speaker 7: that you said, and I appreciate them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And all those ethical concerns are one of
Speaker 4: the reasons that know a cartoonists and a podcaster.
Speaker 3: Well, with that, there's so much we want to get
Speaker 3: to that we may not be able to get to
Speaker 3: in our time today. But I can hear some folks
Speaker 3: in the crowd right now immediately asking a question that
Speaker 3: I don't I don't think we've gotten to previous conversations.
Speaker 3: With the rollout normalization of robots, where does society land
Speaker 3: in its relationship to a surveillance state? You know, like
Speaker 3: that's the reason a lot of people have the it's
Speaker 3: the old joke about engineers, dude, you know it from
Speaker 3: Georgia Tech too. A lot of engineers, if you go
Speaker 3: to their house, they're going to avoid smart devices, right.
Speaker 5: Right, right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Well, but you also don't want to be
Speaker 4: the person wearing the tinfoil, you know, Yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's the issue, right, there's like a fine line
Speaker 7: between being the lutte, being the person that's getting left behind,
Speaker 7: being the person shouting at clouds or whatever, or smashing
Speaker 7: printing presses, and being someone that's completely blind to the
Speaker 7: potential negative aspects of.
Speaker 6: A lot of this stuff.
Speaker 3: So my question then directly is should people be concerned
Speaker 3: of increased surveillance with smart devices robot nicks in their
Speaker 3: hole or is that kind of much ado about nothing?
Speaker 4: You know, I think if you're someone with ill intent,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're a criminal, if you're someone who
Speaker 4: wants to do bad things, then you probably should be worried.
Speaker 4: My personal point of view is, you know, if you're
Speaker 4: not doing anything that bad and you still have some
Speaker 4: space where you have complete privacy in your home or
Speaker 4: things like that, or you're able to switch these things off,
Speaker 4: and generally I think it can be helpful. You know,
Speaker 4: there have been several cases here in Stufn, California, if
Speaker 4: people like going missing, but then they were sort of
Speaker 4: found or tracked through people's ring cameras or traffic cameras,
Speaker 4: and so those kinds of things can also be sort
Speaker 4: of useful.
Speaker 7: I think that's where I fall on it. I've always said, like,
Speaker 7: I don't really have anything to hide. I'm not that concerned.
Speaker 7: I think the benefits outweigh the negatives for me personally.
Speaker 7: But I know that that's not the way other people
Speaker 7: might feel about it. But I am with you on
Speaker 7: that one, and I think that that's a really good point,
Speaker 7: that the triangulation, the pinging, finding folks that maybe never
Speaker 7: would have been found otherwise. There's always a double edged
Speaker 7: sword to that kind of surveillance state aspect of things.
Speaker 2: How is the Department of Homeland Security gonna know you're
Speaker 2: not a threat if they can't know what alphabet ads
Speaker 2: should be served to you? So they got to listen
Speaker 2: in and you know what card purchases shout talent, go boundary.
Speaker 2: It's all helpful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well honestly, yeah, obviously anything can be abused, I think, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: I definitely don't want it to be abused.
Speaker 2: Please please don't continue abusing it.
Speaker 3: Please shout out to our hapless n Essay in turn, Steve,
Speaker 3: thanks for putting in the work man the.
Speaker 2: Best or Hey, we're we all love science fiction and
Speaker 2: we assume you also appreciate it. We we love out
Speaker 2: there things that are hilarious like Rick and Morty huge
Speaker 2: fans of that kind of thing, but also something you know,
Speaker 2: like Prometheus and the Alien franchise. Is there anything that
Speaker 2: we maybe have missed in the science fiction universe that
Speaker 2: you could put us onto or anything we should be watching,
Speaker 2: like a series?
Speaker 6: Anything oh interesting?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I can point out to the usual
Speaker 4: things like Black Mirror or the Expands, but maybe something
Speaker 4: your listeners have been heard about is this book called
Speaker 4: Simbulacrum three and this was published in the sixties and
Speaker 4: it's basically what most people think of as the first
Speaker 4: novel with this idea that we might all be living
Speaker 4: in a simulation neat So this was way way back
Speaker 4: in the day when you know, computers were the size
Speaker 4: of a building they could processes like ones and zeros
Speaker 4: in a card. But even then there was this writer
Speaker 4: who was thinking about, like, wait a minute, what if
Speaker 4: we're all just programs? And it's a really true to
Speaker 4: be booked because it's like about this ad executive who's
Speaker 4: programming this simulated city as a as a kind of
Speaker 4: a test bed for like testing out you know, marketing ideas,
Speaker 4: slogans and things like that. I mean, little by little
Speaker 4: he realizes that maybe he's not real himself.
Speaker 6: This is very Philip K. Dick ask I like it right.
Speaker 4: Right is sixty, very forward looking, very twisty.
Speaker 7: And speaking of four looking, y'all might have heard this
Speaker 7: as well. But I believe finally William Gibson's Neuromancer is
Speaker 7: getting a proper adaptation into a series. And I know
Speaker 7: that's a big one in terms of futurists and the
Speaker 7: idea of cyber space.
Speaker 6: I think was coined in that. And I know Ben
Speaker 6: you're a big fan.
Speaker 7: But I did just see news the other day that
Speaker 7: that's that got greenlit, So that'll be interesting because I
Speaker 7: have not read the book, but I need to.
Speaker 6: But thank you for Similarchrum three.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, wonderful three.
Speaker 3: I'm putting it on the list. That's awesome. That was
Speaker 3: a great question, Matt, and we have we have another
Speaker 3: question for you or hey, as we're as we're wrapping
Speaker 3: up today, we cannot thank you enough for being so
Speaker 3: generous with your time. Where can people learn more about you,
Speaker 3: learn more about science stuff, and learn more about your
Speaker 3: many other projects.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm on social media and all the platforms.
Speaker 4: Just search for PhD like the Greek comics, and then
Speaker 4: you'll see me posting things about my uh the TV
Speaker 4: show I have on PBS Kids, to the book series
Speaker 4: I have for kids called Oliver's Great Big Universe, to
Speaker 4: this awesome podcast I have with my heart now call
Speaker 4: Science Stuff One word, and every week we answer fascinating
Speaker 4: questions like is it a good idea to get crygentically
Speaker 4: frozen hard?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: About the water, the way water expand oh no, that
Speaker 4: there's a twister, Ben, it's not about It's not about
Speaker 4: the water expanding. A lot of people think it's like
Speaker 4: that's what kills you, but it's not.
Speaker 3: We have no.
Speaker 6: No, let's for the episode.
Speaker 5: Listen to the episode.
Speaker 3: There we go, Well that that is fantastic? Is or hey,
Speaker 3: cham please check out the podcast Science Stuff. Please get
Speaker 3: the to the website. We are not blowing smoke. We
Speaker 3: are tremendous fans. And now we have to call it
Speaker 3: a day because I think we have to figure out
Speaker 3: what's going on cryogenic freezing. You know that that's going
Speaker 3: to stick with me. I totally thought it was the water.
Speaker 7: But if you want to find out, do tune into
Speaker 7: that episode of Science Stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, guys. I'm a big fan of y'all as well.
Speaker 6: Same appreciate it, brother, Thanks Lore.
Speaker 3: And that was or hey cham as We've said, not
Speaker 3: to sound like a broken record, but we really dig
Speaker 3: this guy. And if you want to pick his brains.
Speaker 3: For more historical aspects of brain science, of quantum mechanics,
Speaker 3: the history of the Big Bang, check out our two
Speaker 3: part interview series with Orge on Ridiculous.
Speaker 6: History Indeed and meantime.
Speaker 7: If you want to check us out all over the Internet,
Speaker 7: you can do so at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
Speaker 7: we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
Speaker 7: it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter, and on YouTube where
Speaker 7: we have videos for your perusing enjoyment. On Instagram and TikTok. However,
Speaker 7: we're Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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