Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Karl Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Next guest has spent more than four thousand hours in space.
Speaker 3: She's been a part of three NASA missions, including a
Speaker 3: six month mission to the International Space Station that launched
Speaker 3: a day after her fiftieth birthday. She's got a new
Speaker 3: book out. It's called Sharing Space. It breaks down the
Speaker 3: insights that she found essential to her success, including knowing
Speaker 3: how to adapt when a roll down to the size
Speaker 3: of a space suit does not have women in mind.
Speaker 3: Sharing Space, an Astronaut's Guide to Mission Wonder and Making Change,
Speaker 3: is out today. We've got with us Katherine Coleman joining
Speaker 3: us this afternoon. Catherine, Katie, how are you?
Speaker 2: I am great, Thank you and thanks for the music.
Speaker 2: That was awesome.
Speaker 3: Hey all. Credit to Paul Brannan, our producer. He is
Speaker 3: the music whiz here. Congratulations on the book. I'm wondering
Speaker 3: when you write a book like this, if you're thinking
Speaker 3: your entire career as it's happening, that one day you're
Speaker 3: going to put it in a book. Is that how
Speaker 3: it went for you?
Speaker 2: No, and if it did, I would have definitely taken
Speaker 2: better notes, right, it would have been like written diaries
Speaker 2: and journals. And actually it's something I really encouraged the
Speaker 2: other folks affect to an author, Andy Chakin, he begged me,
Speaker 2: he goes, Katie, you know we're on that station. Just
Speaker 2: talk into your iPhone, Okay, don't have one of those.
Speaker 2: Talk into something, you know, just little notes, anything that'll
Speaker 2: remind you of everything you've been doing, because I think,
Speaker 2: you know, we all noticed so much, but I didn't.
Speaker 2: Actually I didn't expect to be writing a book. But
Speaker 2: in a way, as I retired a few years ago
Speaker 2: and you kind of look back and things haven't changed
Speaker 2: enough that I decided a book was necessary.
Speaker 4: And so I mean, walk us through your process then,
Speaker 4: given that you didn't take notes at the time, you
Speaker 4: were probably busy doing space things, as I would imagine,
Speaker 4: I mean, what did this process look like? I would imagine,
Speaker 4: you know, you went back to your former astronauts people
Speaker 4: you shared the air with. I mean, walk us through
Speaker 4: that a little bit, the TikTok of how you actually
Speaker 4: did it.
Speaker 2: Well. I really didn't want their side of the story. No,
Speaker 2: I did in some ways you know, by being a
Speaker 2: retired astronaut, I get to go out and talk a lot,
Speaker 2: I mean and talk about my experiences and I am
Speaker 2: somebody that actually kind of processes their life through talking,
Speaker 2: you know, with others and makes decisions that way. And
Speaker 2: it's I think what needed to be in the book got,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of got brought together by going out
Speaker 2: and doing these talks and looking out into audiences in
Speaker 2: realizing what was essential. Like I remember one one group
Speaker 2: of women, they were all like seniors in college being
Speaker 2: courted at the oh, the very big computer conference. I'm
Speaker 2: just so embarrassed of it's run out of my head,
Speaker 2: but mostly for women, and so anyways, basically being their
Speaker 2: speaker and realizing this was an audience about one hundred
Speaker 2: young women, all in computer science and engineering and realizing
Speaker 2: that the I mean, this is them, they are the future,
Speaker 2: and I have only like twenty minutes to impart to
Speaker 2: them things I think they really need to know. So
Speaker 2: the little moments like that, I think really led to
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to talk a little bit about your
Speaker 3: career because it's been it's been so interesting. I mean,
Speaker 3: a PhD from UMass Amherst. You went to mit Ratzi
Speaker 3: was sort of your introduction into service. It sounds like,
Speaker 3: can you start at like, give us the abridged version
Speaker 3: of how you found yourself, how you were able to
Speaker 3: become an astronaut. I mean, this is like every kid's dream,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of adults dreams too, and not.
Speaker 2: As many, I say, young girls as one might think.
Speaker 2: Even these days in our small town are a person
Speaker 2: that cuts hair Hanna on the door of her salon.
Speaker 2: Kids are always drawing astronauts and they're always girls, which
Speaker 2: is I think very great. Cool.
Speaker 3: We're going to work on We're going to work on
Speaker 3: Katie's connection, which is ironic because I think she at
Speaker 3: one point in her career played an instrument from space
Speaker 3: in National Public Radio. Yeah, it's unfortunately imagine there was
Speaker 3: a connection.
Speaker 4: We don't have that technology on when that happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we're going to get back to Katie Coleman.
Speaker 3: Her new book is an Astronaut's Guide to Mission Wonder
Speaker 3: and Making Change. It's called Sharing Space. The book is
Speaker 3: out today. Katie, Yeah, did you want to be an
Speaker 3: astronaut when you were growing up?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Never. I fear the ocean, I fear big wide spaces
Speaker 4: and that includes space. But I do have a bunch
Speaker 4: of questions about just being an astronaut. We hear so
Speaker 4: much about I feel like the training and it's just
Speaker 4: one of the things that I would love more insight,
Speaker 4: and how do you physically prepare to be in space?
Speaker 4: And then once you're in space. I don't know about you, Tim,
Speaker 4: I think you were kind of self referencing that you're
Speaker 4: one of those adults that would like to be an astronaut.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, once you're actually space is so cool.
Speaker 4: Well, once you're actually in space, I mean I feel
Speaker 4: like I watched those videos on YouTube all the time
Speaker 4: of what it's just like in the actual show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think what's so amazing about where
Speaker 3: we are when it comes to space exploration is the
Speaker 3: NASA that Katie Coleman was a part of is so
Speaker 3: different than the NASA that exists today. And the rise
Speaker 3: of private enterprise, yeah, has emerged over the last well
Speaker 3: twenty years or so that has replaced big parts of
Speaker 3: what NASA does. Look NASA always relied on private companies
Speaker 3: to help innovate, but the way that it's relying on
Speaker 3: SpaceX now and potentially on boeing for future missions is
Speaker 3: certainly something to speak of. The Also, the idea I
Speaker 3: think too, Katie Greifeld, is that more and more people
Speaker 3: who are not trained as astronauts by governments are getting
Speaker 3: an opportunity to go to space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, private civilians without ulry ones, very very wealthy ones.
Speaker 4: We could name check a few billionaires there. But I mean,
Speaker 4: when it comes to that, just do you think about
Speaker 4: the space race and the urgency and sort of the
Speaker 4: just the importance of it, It feels like this handover
Speaker 4: to those private companies like you were mentioning about, I mean,
Speaker 4: is that the path forward? How do we continue to
Speaker 4: push out into space if you have agencies such as
Speaker 4: NASA running into these funding concerns and other things.
Speaker 3: I think there's also an element to you here of
Speaker 3: a global cooperation that exists in space that I think
Speaker 3: is not necessarily going to be there if we for example,
Speaker 3: the space race between the US and the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: obviously a big deal when the US put a man
Speaker 3: on the Moon first, but then you have cooperation with
Speaker 3: the building of the ISS and the development of the ISS,
Speaker 3: and then also when we were no longer using the
Speaker 3: Space Shuttle to bring or bring people to the ISS.
Speaker 3: We as a country relied on NASA on Russia and
Speaker 3: they're soy use capsules to bring astronauts home. And that
Speaker 3: was recent correct, very recent? Yeah, yeah, which is.
Speaker 5: I mean kind of.
Speaker 4: I mean it's maybe a good sign for humanity that
Speaker 4: when it comes to matters such as that, there is
Speaker 4: a degree of cooperation and working together. So there you go.
Speaker 3: But there's also the rise of military branches as a
Speaker 3: result of space, Like Space Force is a new branch
Speaker 3: of the military.
Speaker 4: That's still around.
Speaker 3: It's still around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like we haven't talked about it in
Speaker 4: a while.
Speaker 3: We haven't Space Force.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, But I don't know. I think about Elon
Speaker 4: Musk all the time. Obviously we're at Bloomberg News and
Speaker 4: I still spend a lot of time on Twitter, and
Speaker 4: I just I think about Elon Musk a lot, and
Speaker 4: I think about his big ambitions. I mean, he wants
Speaker 4: to go to Mars. He wants to die on Mars,
Speaker 4: pretty much like he wants to live on Mars. And
Speaker 4: you think about just I don't know, he's kind of
Speaker 4: made that his life's mission. He has incredible funds, and
Speaker 4: you think, I mean, is that what is going to
Speaker 4: take when you think about again, sort of keeping the
Speaker 4: momentum and the ambition and vision of space exploration, if
Speaker 4: it's not the governments, and if I mean, maybe it's
Speaker 4: the governments if they can, you know, put their military
Speaker 4: apparatuses up there. But beyond that, when you think about
Speaker 4: just wanting to develop space, I do think it's an
Speaker 4: interesting question should that be the arena of billionaires?
Speaker 3: Well, let's actually pose that question to Katie Coleman. We
Speaker 3: only have about a minute with you, Katie. Then we're
Speaker 3: going to do some news and we're going to come back.
Speaker 3: Katie and I just covered a lot there. I know
Speaker 3: you were working on your connection, But what do you
Speaker 3: make of the rise of private enterprise companies like SpaceX
Speaker 3: and certainly Boeing to a lesser extent us supplanning a
Speaker 3: lot of what NASA has historically done.
Speaker 2: The more the merrier, not to trivialize it, but more
Speaker 2: people in the game bringing their ideas. There are new
Speaker 2: ways to do things and doing them in concert. We
Speaker 2: talk about these companies as if they're alone, but they're
Speaker 2: often doing things with NASA for NASA, and I think
Speaker 2: you know each of these we talk about the billionaires.
Speaker 2: But each of them has a vision and they have resources,
Speaker 2: and they have, you know, a vision of how to
Speaker 2: pave the way to space for more people. And each
Speaker 2: of those visions I find to be valuable. And I
Speaker 2: like to look more at the substance than at the
Speaker 2: people there and just to see what they're accomplishing. And
Speaker 2: I like what each of them are doing. The more
Speaker 2: people you bring up on orbit, the more people get
Speaker 2: that view and understand actually the magnitude of what we
Speaker 2: can do up there, that.
Speaker 3: View just seems incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, I like that that thought that it's almost
Speaker 4: like this gateway into igniting more people's ambition. The more
Speaker 4: people that can see that, the more people that will
Speaker 4: probably want to go up.
Speaker 3: Hey, we're speaking right now with astronaut. Yeah, we know,
Speaker 3: we have to let's do some news Katie, and then
Speaker 3: we're going to come back and do more with you.
Speaker 3: That's Katie Coleman. She's got a new book out. It's
Speaker 3: called Sharing Space, An Astronauts Guide to Mission Wonder and
Speaker 3: Making Change More with Katie Coleman in just a few minutes.
Speaker 3: I want to get right back to Catherine Coleman. Her
Speaker 3: new book is out. It's called Sharing Space. An astronaut's
Speaker 3: guide to Mission wonder and Making Change if you're just
Speaker 3: now joining us. Katie Coleman spent more than four thousand
Speaker 3: hours in space three NASA missions, a six month mission
Speaker 3: to the ISS, launching a day after her fiftieth birthday. Katie,
Speaker 3: I want to get right back to just the experience
Speaker 3: of being in space, because not that many people have
Speaker 3: actually gotten to do it. I mean, we're talking fewer
Speaker 3: than a thousand people. What was it like?
Speaker 2: Thing? And it's one of the two main reasons that
Speaker 2: I wrote the book was that you're up there, and
Speaker 2: it's not just about the floating. You know, you see
Speaker 2: my hair be big and we're floating around. It's about
Speaker 2: the fact that you fly from place to place. It's
Speaker 2: the only way to get around, and it kind of
Speaker 2: reminds you that you're in a place that almost nobody
Speaker 2: else is in. All the rules are different, which is
Speaker 2: extremely important for science and all the stuff we can
Speaker 2: learn up there. And at the same time, it's also
Speaker 2: a human thing to realize that you are one of
Speaker 2: In this case, right now, there's thirteen let's see twelve
Speaker 2: people up in space on different space stations. As we speak,
Speaker 2: and they're at the very edge.
Speaker 4: I literally cannot imagine it. And I always wonder how
Speaker 4: people prepare themselves for things. How do you even prepare
Speaker 4: for an experience that you know you've never had before.
Speaker 3: I mean, what does the physical.
Speaker 4: Reality of training look like to get ready to be
Speaker 4: in space?
Speaker 2: I think there's that all that practicing. It's the reality
Speaker 2: of needing to be as safe as you can be.
Speaker 2: Spaceflight will never be safe, but we need to be
Speaker 2: as safe as we can, and that means you, as
Speaker 2: a crew member, being able to do your part. You know,
Speaker 2: if this happens, we need to do this. If there's
Speaker 2: a fire alarm, you need to you know, don your
Speaker 2: mask and get to the main computer and you know,
Speaker 2: and take the certain steps. So we practice those things,
Speaker 2: we drill them, and we're also of course graded and
Speaker 2: watched and observed, and that adds that extra tension that
Speaker 2: helps you make the mistakes that you might make on
Speaker 2: the real day when that stress comes from seeing actual
Speaker 2: smoke or realizing you might need to lose leave the
Speaker 2: space station really quickly. So we do practice all those things.
Speaker 2: They've got great smart instructors. But then it is really
Speaker 2: just amazing to then be up there and be able
Speaker 2: to operate, and I think also to be able to
Speaker 2: be sort of mentally present as a human. That's really
Speaker 2: another big important part to think about before you go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm again so many things that I can't
Speaker 4: imagine about what you just said. Seeing smoke in space
Speaker 4: and being able to control oneself is pretty remarkable. And
Speaker 4: I'm curious what it's like coming back because you see
Speaker 4: clips on YouTube sometimes of astronauts coming back from space
Speaker 4: and they forget that they're in zero there. Now there's
Speaker 4: gravity on Earth, and they know they drop whatever they're
Speaker 4: holding because they expect it to just you know, float
Speaker 4: by them. I mean, have you had any experiences like that?
Speaker 4: What does the return trip actually look like?
Speaker 2: Well, it's I would say the words sad, wild, and
Speaker 2: then just nice to be home. I really didn't want
Speaker 2: to leave, you know, it was it takes a couple
Speaker 2: of months to get good at the work up there
Speaker 2: about not just understanding how to keep everything in its
Speaker 2: place and do all the experiments and get more done.
Speaker 2: It really has about a month long learning curse. You
Speaker 2: just want to stay and get more done. And I
Speaker 2: felt like my family would be there when I got home,
Speaker 2: and so I wanted to stay. So it's a little sad.
Speaker 2: It is as Scott Kelly, who was I was on
Speaker 2: a crew with Scott, and he talked to us before
Speaker 2: we came home and talked to us about what landing
Speaker 2: was like. You said, it's the best e ticket ride
Speaker 2: you will ever go on. Where I mean you're coming
Speaker 2: down and and I mean spacecraft are built this way
Speaker 2: where we haven't a blate of shield under the spacecraft.
Speaker 2: That means it's supposed to actually burn up, and pieces
Speaker 2: of burning spacecraft are supposed to go buy the windows.
Speaker 2: And so knowing that is very comforting, I mean actually
Speaker 2: having it narrated and understanding what's happening. And he's like,
Speaker 2: and then parachute opening. He looks at me. He goes Coleman,
Speaker 2: set a timer. Parachute opening, because you need to make
Speaker 2: sure that you are not talking because it is so abrupt,
Speaker 2: And then that capsule is spinning and swinging and it
Speaker 2: is really wild, and then it settles down and then
Speaker 2: you're just watching the watching the sort of the feet
Speaker 2: clock down and realizing you're just going to hit the
Speaker 2: ground with a really big, solid funk, and you just
Speaker 2: hope you're not going to get dragged around by that parachute.
Speaker 3: Hey Katie, I'm wondering if you can talk to us
Speaker 3: a little bit about the way that borders kind of
Speaker 3: melt in space. And the reason I'm bringing this up
Speaker 3: is because you know the ISS, for example, US Space Agency,
Speaker 3: ros Cosmos, Russian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan, Canada.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes you're with people from all over the world as
Speaker 3: an astro or not, and although countries might not get
Speaker 3: along on the ground, sometimes you're getting along in space.
Speaker 3: And I'm wondering what your experience was seeing the world
Speaker 3: kind of come together in.
Speaker 2: Space being part of you know, not just the mission
Speaker 2: up there, but the getting ready. It's been my experience that,
Speaker 2: you know, the governments say this is what we're going
Speaker 2: to do together, and there's formal agreements, but it is
Speaker 2: the people that really bring the mission together and make
Speaker 2: it happen, because it happens by having dinner with each other,
Speaker 2: by going for walks, by saying, what's your family like,
Speaker 2: can I meet your family? And that's really what brought
Speaker 2: our crew together. And so being up there, especially in
Speaker 2: times like these, all I can say is from what
Speaker 2: I understand everyone is doing their job and not and
Speaker 2: that means on the ground, that means the crew up
Speaker 2: in space and not even thinking about not doing their job,
Speaker 2: because the mission itself is really really clear. Up there,
Speaker 2: you are together as a crew, keeping each other safe.
Speaker 2: And you know, down here on the ground, we don't
Speaker 2: always agree with each other. Hear all about it on
Speaker 2: your show, you know. I mean, it's and it's not easy,
Speaker 2: and sometimes you just have to like put the things
Speaker 2: you can't agree about there they're not part of the
Speaker 2: mission right now, which is in our case down here
Speaker 2: figuring out how are we going to make sure everybody
Speaker 2: can live safely down here on Earth?
Speaker 3: All right, we don't have too much time left. But
Speaker 3: one thing we wanted to talk about is Mars, and
Speaker 3: we mentioned Elon Musk's lifelong dream is to colonize Mars.
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts on colonizing Mars or actually putting
Speaker 3: humans on that planet?
Speaker 2: Eventually, absolutely, we will be doing that, and I think
Speaker 2: it's a good time for everybody to be thinking about
Speaker 2: it and how to do it, and even thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: I like to think about settling Mars, which to me
Speaker 2: and Pop implies more like having a plan and going
Speaker 2: there to get there, and you know, for one country
Speaker 2: to be the only country there doesn't seem like the
Speaker 2: right thing to me. And I think that comes from
Speaker 2: that view from the space station of looking back at
Speaker 2: the Earth, and you talked about dissolving borders. When I
Speaker 2: look back there, I see, first of all, I feel
Speaker 2: very close to home. But second, I see that everyone
Speaker 2: could be and actually is so connected if only they
Speaker 2: knew how much we could accomplish more together. And that
Speaker 2: includes doing the most important thing I think we'll do,
Speaker 2: which is colonizing and going off and settling on Mars.
Speaker 3: Very very cool. Thank you so much for sharing some
Speaker 3: of your journey with us. You can read more about
Speaker 3: Katie Coleman's journey in her new book out today. It's
Speaker 3: called Sharing Space, An Astronaut's Guide to Mission Wonder and
Speaker 3: Making Change. This is business week. Think about it for
Speaker 3: a second, Katie. Games everywhere we look.
Speaker 4: They are. Yeah, they're on your phone, okay, and that's
Speaker 4: really the only place I look.
Speaker 3: Actually, I'm not just talking about good old fashion competition
Speaker 3: when you play monopoly or something, or sports or video games.
Speaker 3: I think we can call video games old fashion now,
Speaker 3: I think rightly, Okay, restaurants and apps offer us deals
Speaker 3: or allow us to level up by using a service.
Speaker 3: Maybe you wear a sleep tracker and you look at
Speaker 3: that sleep score trying to get it higher, to get
Speaker 3: more sleep. Cyclists and maybe runners. Do you do this
Speaker 3: as a runner? Are you obsessed with comparing your times
Speaker 3: on certain Strava segments?
Speaker 4: Not as much. I will say, I do wear a garment,
Speaker 4: as we've discussed, And yeah, I mean, if you're not
Speaker 4: quantifying your life, what's the point.
Speaker 3: Well, every week you're at Bloomberg, we fight for ephemeral
Speaker 3: glory against our colleagues in the Bloomberg News quiz on
Speaker 3: the Bloomberg terminal. Needless to say, there are games everywhere.
Speaker 3: And Kelly Clancy has just written an entire book about games,
Speaker 3: but not necessarily the way that I'm talking about. She's
Speaker 3: a neuroscientist, physicist, and author. She's held research positions at
Speaker 3: mit U see Berkeley, the AI research company deep Mind,
Speaker 3: and more. Her new book is called Playing with Reality,
Speaker 3: How Games Have Shaped Our World? Kelly, how are you?
Speaker 5: Thanks? Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, congratulations on the book. How do you define game?
Speaker 5: So I think of a game as a system that's
Speaker 5: endowed with a goal, and players involved in the game
Speaker 5: have to abide by certain rules to get to the goal. So,
Speaker 5: for example, with golf, the goal is to get a.
Speaker 6: Hole in a ball in the hole, but you can't
Speaker 6: just pick the ball up and walk it over to
Speaker 6: the hole. You have to hit it with funny sticks
Speaker 6: and abide by certain rules.
Speaker 4: And so, Kelly, I mean, you make the point the
Speaker 4: argument that games have been really important to human progress,
Speaker 4: and that's a big statement. So maybe just unpack what
Speaker 4: you mean by that, like, what have been some of
Speaker 4: the pivotal games out there that have advanced humanity to
Speaker 4: where we're sitting today.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so if you look at the history of games
Speaker 6: in humanity, we actually have evidence of games going back
Speaker 6: further than written language. And actually it's not just a
Speaker 6: human endeavor, of course, like almost all animals play. Mammals play.
Speaker 6: It's very hard to find animals that don't play in
Speaker 6: some form, So it's this kind of evolutionarily ancient behavior
Speaker 6: and something really important. I was working at deep Mind,
Speaker 6: and you know that this company is famous for having
Speaker 6: created AI programs that play really complex games like Go
Speaker 6: or StarCraft at human like expert human levels, and I
Speaker 6: was wondering why it was that a company would be
Speaker 6: spending hundreds of millions of dollars on training programs to
Speaker 6: play games, Like, what is so compelling that animals across
Speaker 6: different evolutionary genuses And you know, humans throughout history have
Speaker 6: been so drawn to games. And you can think of
Speaker 6: games as basically something that the brain created to fascinate itself.
Speaker 6: It's it's it's a kind of self stimulation for the brain.
Speaker 6: And so you know, we can ask the question what
Speaker 6: can we learn about people by studying something that fascinates them?
Speaker 6: And of course games are completely fascinated to people. We
Speaker 6: have people with gambling addictions, we have you know, histories
Speaker 6: of games being outlawed by kings before being so popular.
Speaker 6: So the general question was, how do we what can
Speaker 6: we learn about the brain and people and human behavior
Speaker 6: by studying games?
Speaker 3: Well, what can we learn because you also argue in
Speaker 3: the book that games can be dangerous and so I'm
Speaker 3: curious how games become dangerous?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So games are in part compelling because the whole
Speaker 6: mo of the brain is to create models of the world.
Speaker 6: It's trying to predict what's happening in the world. It
Speaker 6: wants to be able to anticipate, you know, events coming up,
Speaker 6: and so the brain is trying to make models of
Speaker 6: the world and anything that's kind of it's uncertain Like
Speaker 6: anything random that it hasn't modeled is like a big
Speaker 6: red flag to the brain, Like that's something I don't
Speaker 6: understand and I want to learn more about it. And
Speaker 6: games are all about uncertainty, you know. If you think
Speaker 6: about Tic Tac toe, little kids will play Tiktac tooe
Speaker 6: until they realize that it always ends in a draw.
Speaker 3: Hold on, wait, I'm actually going through this experience with
Speaker 3: my five year old.
Speaker 4: Right now, the one who wanted to go to the library,
Speaker 4: which is a.
Speaker 3: True story, Katie, I will always tell a true story.
Speaker 3: I thought people can win Tiktak tooe? Is it always ending.
Speaker 4: Just beating him?
Speaker 3: No, it is. It's always ending in a draw right now,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, when is one of us sure?
Speaker 4: Which is more embarrassing potentially, but Kelly, please go on.
Speaker 6: Well, if you play it perfectly, it always ends in
Speaker 6: a draw. So if you play it like the most
Speaker 6: optimally you can, it can win. It can end in
Speaker 6: a win if one player is very naive and they
Speaker 6: don't really know the right strategy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you shall correct, but it's it's sorry, no, please
Speaker 4: go ahead.
Speaker 5: Oh it's just so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, games are interesting and as far as they're you know, uncertain, unsure,
Speaker 6: there's something, you know, there's a sense that we're learning
Speaker 6: something from them, and this can be kind of hijacked
Speaker 6: by by things like gambling or dice, where there's a
Speaker 6: sense of learning, there's a random signal that the brain
Speaker 6: is really compelled to drawn to, but you never really
Speaker 6: learned anything from it because gambling is, you know, a
Speaker 6: random event, and so you know, this is true of
Speaker 6: animals as well. They can become addicted literally to random processes,
Speaker 6: to dice. So this is the danger of games is
Speaker 6: that they can sort of draw us in and keep
Speaker 6: us enthralled.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean you think about a border collie.
Speaker 4: If you teach a border collie how to play fetch,
Speaker 4: it will never stop wanting to play fetch. So it's
Speaker 4: definitely dangerous from that perspective as well, Kelly. But talk
Speaker 4: to us a little bit about game theory, for example,
Speaker 4: And when I think game theory, I think of the military. Honestly,
Speaker 4: I think of war. And when you talk about how
Speaker 4: games could be dangerous, I mean, is that one of
Speaker 4: the avenues potentially or is that too far of a stretch.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. So game theory is a field
Speaker 6: of mathematics that was founded by John von Neumann, who
Speaker 6: is a mathematician living in the last century who fled
Speaker 6: Europe as Hitler was coming to power and became really
Speaker 6: obsessed with the question of how do we kind of
Speaker 6: mathematically analyze human behavior? Are there ways that we can
Speaker 6: work out what truly rational behavior would look like? And
Speaker 6: he used games as his sort of field of study
Speaker 6: because you can think of life as a game where
Speaker 6: we're making decisions, trying to achieve some goal and working
Speaker 6: towards it and maybe playing against other people in the
Speaker 6: game of life. So game theory is a beautiful realm
Speaker 6: of mathematics that has become the foundation for a lot
Speaker 6: of modern economics. Also has become foundational for a lot
Speaker 6: of sort of military policies. When John von Neuman was
Speaker 6: working he was also working on the nuclear bomb, and
Speaker 6: with the advent of nuclear weapons, we suddenly had war
Speaker 6: that was happening at a much faster timescale. It could,
Speaker 6: you know, the course of history could change in a
Speaker 6: matter of minutes or hours, and so game theory was
Speaker 6: promised to be this new kind of technology or science
Speaker 6: of decision making where it could aid military officers in
Speaker 6: making these sort of history changing decisions in a matter
Speaker 6: of minutes. So it was promised to be the synthetic rationality.
Speaker 3: Kelly, would you consider endless scroll on social media platforms
Speaker 3: and like, you know, the way that TikTok's algorithm works.
Speaker 3: Would you define that or categorize that as a part
Speaker 3: of gaming.
Speaker 6: I think it takes certain aspects from gamification, where you're
Speaker 6: trying to kind of grab the attention of users or
Speaker 6: players as much as possible, And the novelty of a
Speaker 6: social media feed is exactly the same thing as like
Speaker 6: rolling a dice, So I think it is in many
Speaker 6: ways gamified.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wonder about the idea of like likes yea,
Speaker 3: and sort of checking back to see if I see
Speaker 3: you nodding, Kelly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, I think likes. You know, on Reddit you
Speaker 6: can actually literally like get coins and all kinds of gold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, we'll find out one of these days. Hey, Kelly,
Speaker 3: really appreciate you joining us on on Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The
Speaker 3: book it's out now, it's called Playing With Reality, How
Speaker 3: Games have shaped Our world. Kelly Clancy is a neuroscientist,
Speaker 3: a physicist, an author. She's held research positions at mit
Speaker 3: UC Berkeley in the AI research company deep Mind. Once
Speaker 3: Again the book Playing with Reality, How Games Have Shaped
Speaker 3: Our World