Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I hear that you went to New
Speaker 1: York and came back with some audio goodies for us.
Speaker 1: That's right. I went up to the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eighteen World Science Festival in New York City. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a festival that I go to a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't get to go every year, but I've been,
Speaker 1: uh several times since I believe two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: and this time, I yeah, I brought back three many
Speaker 1: interviews that I wanted to share with everybody. Uh, these
Speaker 1: are gonna definitely state that these are essentially field recordings.
Speaker 1: These are these are green room interviews, so they're not
Speaker 1: gonna have the fidelity of an in studio interview or
Speaker 1: even one of our phone interviews. Necessarily, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a slightly new beast for long time listeners to
Speaker 1: the show. So maybe girds your ears. But you think
Speaker 1: we got some good stuff in there that will make
Speaker 1: it worth the audio? Yes, I believe so, because we're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna hear me chatting with physicist Brian Green, uh,
Speaker 1: as well as physicist Max Tegmark, as well as anthropologist
Speaker 1: Barbara ja King. Now, each one of these people you
Speaker 1: talked to, h. Of course, Brian Green is one of
Speaker 1: the founders of the festival, right, but each of these
Speaker 1: people you talked to were involved with panels that took
Speaker 1: place at the festival this year, right, correct, Yes, Green,
Speaker 1: of course, being with the founder, he moderated uh, different
Speaker 1: panels as well. All right, we'll give us a little
Speaker 1: background on the World Science Festival and then maybe we
Speaker 1: can set up one of these interviews here. Alright. So,
Speaker 1: founded in two thousand and eight, World Science Festival has
Speaker 1: a stated mission to cultivate a general public informed by science,
Speaker 1: inspired by its wonder and uh, convinced of its value
Speaker 1: and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.
Speaker 1: And it was indeed co founded by Clem be a
Speaker 1: University physics and mathematics professor, string theorist, author and just
Speaker 1: overall science communicator, Brian Green, along with his wife Tracy Day.
Speaker 1: The World Science Festival is a it's a production technically
Speaker 1: of the World Science Foundation, which is a five oh
Speaker 1: one nonprofit organization headquartered in New York City, and so
Speaker 1: each year, uh they host a week long slate of
Speaker 1: science panels, salons, performances, and even a street fair. So
Speaker 1: it's it's the kind of thing that that really reaches
Speaker 1: out to all levels of of science enthusiasts. You see
Speaker 1: academics there, you see graduate students, you see younger students,
Speaker 1: you see science communicators, children, old people. Um, the whole
Speaker 1: nine yards. What's the street fair? Do they have funnel cake?
Speaker 1: It's a lot of stuff for for kids, uh, as
Speaker 1: well as adults. So just a lot of tents set up,
Speaker 1: a lot of like cool science activities, robots, science experiments,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Did you take your son? I
Speaker 1: haven't brought him yet. So my on is just now
Speaker 1: six years old, and I think we're at the level
Speaker 1: now where he is he is perhaps ready to travel
Speaker 1: to New York City and do all of the walking
Speaker 1: that that entails. But I am looking forward to bringing
Speaker 1: bringing him at some point because uh, my again, I've
Speaker 1: been several times, and I've been there with my wife,
Speaker 1: but I haven't been able to really engage in all
Speaker 1: of the kids stuff. That is also an important part
Speaker 1: of the festival. All right, Well, to get to your
Speaker 1: first interview, this was with festival founder and physicist Brian Green, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, I got to sit down with Brian Green.
Speaker 1: This was after he had moderated one of the opening
Speaker 1: discussions of the festival, Darkness Visible, shedding new light on
Speaker 1: black holes. Black Holes are fascinating and there's something that
Speaker 1: I've wanted to go into more depth on on the
Speaker 1: podcast before, because not only are they one of the
Speaker 1: most strange and interesting things in the physical universe, I
Speaker 1: think the story of how we came to know about
Speaker 1: them and how we arrived at the modern consciousness of
Speaker 1: black holes not just sort of as some thought experiment,
Speaker 1: but as like a real physical reality is really interesting too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I really enjoyed this particular talk, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the talks that that was filmed and is
Speaker 1: actually already available for everyone else to view on YouTube
Speaker 1: for free. I'll include a link to that on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. But yeah, I I greatly enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: It really Uh, it opened opened my mind up to
Speaker 1: some of the certainly some of the details about about
Speaker 1: black holes and our our sort of journey towards our
Speaker 1: understanding black black holes, as well as just an update
Speaker 1: on just where we are, you know, at the bleeding
Speaker 1: edge of understanding them. Well, what's the scoop? I mean,
Speaker 1: the basic scoop is that we have we have gone
Speaker 1: on this journey from a black hole is just this
Speaker 1: mathematical possibility, this thought experiment in math, and we are
Speaker 1: at the point where they are. They are a reality.
Speaker 1: Like experts tend to agree that, yes, there's without a
Speaker 1: doubt there are black holes. We have black holes as
Speaker 1: the result of of dead stars. We have massive, super
Speaker 1: massive black holes at the center of galaxies, including our
Speaker 1: own Milky Way galaxy, and we're on the cusp of
Speaker 1: being able to uh to to to really learn a
Speaker 1: great deal more about them, and in doing so, uh
Speaker 1: we really find out what we truly know about the
Speaker 1: fabric of the universe. So on that note, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and dip into the interview here, and then afterwards
Speaker 1: Joe and I will discuss some of the concepts that
Speaker 1: are discussed. Which world science best will offering. Are you
Speaker 1: most excited about this year? Well, I'm biased because I'm
Speaker 1: in a few of them, so that's probably uh, not
Speaker 1: the completely objective answer that I might give. But we
Speaker 1: have a program on a conversation between religion and science,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes that conversation out there in the world is
Speaker 1: a contentious one, with each side basically trying to say
Speaker 1: that the other is wrong or that their approach is
Speaker 1: the only way forward. And we're not going anywhere near
Speaker 1: that because that's just not a productive way to have
Speaker 1: a melding between these two ways of looking at the world. Instead,
Speaker 1: we're looking at whether science can give us insight into
Speaker 1: whether the behavior that we have evidence for tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of years, which is looking for some larger stores,
Speaker 1: some larger narratives, some bigger picture into which we could
Speaker 1: fit Could that have had adaptive value? Could the brain
Speaker 1: have evolved in such a way that we have a
Speaker 1: predilection for that way of thinking about the world in
Speaker 1: some sense? Could that perspective in the world be imprinted
Speaker 1: in our d n A And if signs can illuminate
Speaker 1: some key aspect of human behavior, how exciting is that?
Speaker 1: And that's really what the focus of this conversation is
Speaker 1: going to be. It's called the believing brain. Excellent. I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to that great one and I tend to
Speaker 1: be a black hole. Oh you did great. What do
Speaker 1: you think when you have a topic like that? You
Speaker 1: I really admired the legwork that you kind of had
Speaker 1: to do to bring everyone in the audience up to
Speaker 1: speed on it, because obviously you have uh you have
Speaker 1: academics and students and graduate students in the audience, but
Speaker 1: then also just regular people children, even uh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean, the goal really is to be
Speaker 1: broadly accessible but still take people up to the cutting
Speaker 1: edge all, you know, in that case, in the space
Speaker 1: of two hours. Usually our programs are ninety minutes, but
Speaker 1: I decided that one deserve the full two hours. And yeah,
Speaker 1: talking about the observational side of black holes, talking about
Speaker 1: the new ways of examining them with gravitational ways, gravitational radiation,
Speaker 1: and then if you're theoretical frontiers, were really describing the
Speaker 1: quantum nature space and time and how information could be
Speaker 1: encoded on the surface of a black hole. It's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing time to be thinking about these objects that now
Speaker 1: we know with a high degree of certainty are really
Speaker 1: out there in the universe. Now. In in the past
Speaker 1: of various talks of incorporating some level of performance or
Speaker 1: performance art. Do you have anything like that lined up
Speaker 1: for this year's after Well, we do have works that
Speaker 1: our performance oriented's. We kicked off the festival with the
Speaker 1: Celebration of Women in Science. You may be familiar with
Speaker 1: that program where we had Broadway stars and wonderful performers
Speaker 1: who were telling the audience through narrative and song about
Speaker 1: some of the greatest women scientists of the last two
Speaker 1: hundred years. So that certainly was a melding of the two.
Speaker 1: We also have some theater pieces that are part of
Speaker 1: the festival this year, some film as well, and that's
Speaker 1: the majority of the footprint that's in the art space.
Speaker 1: We are next year going to have some original new
Speaker 1: works that put art and science together in some pretty
Speaker 1: compelling ways. But I'll just dangle that out there so
Speaker 1: you'll be compelled to join us again next year. Now,
Speaker 1: on the topic of black holes and I guess other
Speaker 1: scientific topics that are kind of in that that same realm,
Speaker 1: do you think mainstream media, mainstream science fiction in particular,
Speaker 1: could be doing more to sort of prepare general audiences
Speaker 1: for these concepts, for instance, with black holes. Uh, even
Speaker 1: even though I come back to the topic time and
Speaker 1: time again as a podcaster and writer, I still can't
Speaker 1: shake the old Disney movie vision of it and all
Speaker 1: its absurdities out of my head. What was that the
Speaker 1: black hole or vent arizing? What was it called something
Speaker 1: like that? Or there wasn't there was a rising, but
Speaker 1: the Disney black hole where it was just um it
Speaker 1: was it was? It was certainly not two thousand and
Speaker 1: one right right, or even Interstellar. I mean, now, if
Speaker 1: you want to see what a real black hole looks like,
Speaker 1: just go to Interstellar. I mean the visuals they were
Speaker 1: driven by the mathematical equations, so this is actually a
Speaker 1: very precise rendition of what it would look like to
Speaker 1: be in the vicinity of a black hole. But yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm My view, which I think is widely shared,
Speaker 1: is the culture needs to integrate with science in an
Speaker 1: organic way. So that's not as a scientist some separate
Speaker 1: subject that's out there that you take in school. Rather,
Speaker 1: you really need to be the case that we use
Speaker 1: all the tools and all the things that matter to
Speaker 1: people from film and theater and science and science fiction
Speaker 1: in order that the ideas are in the air and
Speaker 1: the imagery is front and center when relevant and to
Speaker 1: do it correctly. Sometimes it's more work, maybe even a
Speaker 1: little more expensive. But if you get the real picture
Speaker 1: of a black hole into people's minds through some wonderful story,
Speaker 1: how great is that so that we as a culture
Speaker 1: really being to embrace these ideas far more fully and
Speaker 1: far more accurately. In your opinion, what's the single most
Speaker 1: exciting research frontier in physics right now and wine, Well,
Speaker 1: it's a tough question. Certainly one is gravitational waves, because
Speaker 1: whenever you open up a whole new way of engaging
Speaker 1: and observing and interacting with the universe, you're bound to
Speaker 1: find surprises. You know, so far there have been some surprises,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, we've been seeing the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that we anticipated, seeing the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that computer simulations had already given us some insight into.
Speaker 1: And now the observations are agreeing with the computer simulations,
Speaker 1: which is wonderful. Yeah, there are still some surprises there
Speaker 1: as well with neutrust our collisions, But the real wondrous
Speaker 1: moments gonna be when we get some data from the
Speaker 1: gravitation way of observatory that fits no template, that's no
Speaker 1: previous computer simulation and forces us to go back and
Speaker 1: figure out what kind of exotic new structure out there
Speaker 1: in the universe is giving rise to these very peculiar
Speaker 1: ripples in the fabric of space and time. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be an astounding moments. That's certainly one area. The other
Speaker 1: area in physics, at least if I focus on that,
Speaker 1: is trying to really understand quantum mechanics as it relates
Speaker 1: to space and time. And there are hints that we
Speaker 1: may be finally putting our finger on the fundamental entities,
Speaker 1: the ingredients that may stitch together the very fabric of
Speaker 1: space and time itself. And if that work bears fruit
Speaker 1: and turns out to be correct, that's going to be
Speaker 1: a real watershed moment in human kinds understanding of the universe.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a follow up here. If you
Speaker 1: had limitless resources to dedicate to one future experimental physics
Speaker 1: or cosmology project, what would it be and what would
Speaker 1: be we'd be seeking to learn from it? Limitless resources? Wow, Well,
Speaker 1: I think certainly one one major undertaking would be to
Speaker 1: build a fantastically powerful accelerator. So we have been examining
Speaker 1: the universe on scales roughly a thousand to ten thousand
Speaker 1: times the massive a proteon. Those are the energy scales involved.
Speaker 1: But we know that there's got to be something wondrous
Speaker 1: happening between there and the plank scale, which is ten
Speaker 1: to the nineteen times the mass of a proteon. So
Speaker 1: there's fifteen orders of magnitude in there to examine. And
Speaker 1: it's an expensive thing to build ever bigger machines to
Speaker 1: floor ever higher energies, ever smaller distances. But I've had
Speaker 1: unlimited resources, truly unlimited resources. Let's try to build a
Speaker 1: plank scale accelerator and really see whether we can see
Speaker 1: the effects of quantum gravity in this futuristic laboratory. That
Speaker 1: would be a spectacor the thing to do excellent. So
Speaker 1: one last question, and I apoloticiste little wenk think. But so,
Speaker 1: as as discussed last night, black holes started out as
Speaker 1: more more in the real thought experiment and math curiosity,
Speaker 1: but but now we largely accept in the physical reality.
Speaker 1: Do you think there are ideas like that out there
Speaker 1: in physics today, Things that we are current that are
Speaker 1: currently only a cetical math entities, etcetera, but that will
Speaker 1: want will someday will accept a real physical objects in
Speaker 1: the universe. Well, I certainly hope so, because otherwise I've
Speaker 1: been barking up the wrong tree for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So the work that I've been focused on in my
Speaker 1: colleagues as well, coming Bathroom from last Night program to
Speaker 1: is string theory, and it's ring theory does posit the
Speaker 1: existence of new physical entities, really small entities down at
Speaker 1: the playing scale tents of the mind is thirty three
Speaker 1: centimeters and that's fantastic smallest hard to even think about
Speaker 1: how tiny that is. And right now it is just mathematics.
Speaker 1: It is just in the exact same template as black
Speaker 1: Holes where it say, back in the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: So the hope is that we will follow the same
Speaker 1: trajectory and that one day we'll be sitting here having
Speaker 1: a conversation and you'll say to me, now that strings
Speaker 1: are accepted as real physical entities. It wasn't it, And
Speaker 1: and that's that's where we hope that things will go
Speaker 1: all right. So that was that was my mini interview
Speaker 1: with Brian Green, and I appreciate him taking time out
Speaker 1: of his state chat with me. Uh, We're definitely going
Speaker 1: to come back to black holes on stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. It's the kind of topic that it's probably
Speaker 1: gonna take it at least two episodes to really give
Speaker 1: it full coverage. But I do want to touch on
Speaker 1: some of the things that the Green is talking about here.
Speaker 1: So the key thing that Green is describing is how
Speaker 1: black holes began again as a mere thought experiment on
Speaker 1: the for on the on you know, first the nature
Speaker 1: of gravity. So we have this idea of dark stars
Speaker 1: and the Newtonian concept of a of a star that
Speaker 1: becomes too massive for light to escape from it, but
Speaker 1: mostly as a byproduct of crunching spacetime in Einstein's general
Speaker 1: theory of relativity and the calculations of German astronomer Karl
Speaker 1: Schwartschild who died in War One. Yeah, and it's amazing
Speaker 1: to think back that there was a time where you
Speaker 1: could have explored black holes as a sort of thought experiment,
Speaker 1: playing around with gravity. But a lot of people might
Speaker 1: have laughed at you if you proposed that there were
Speaker 1: actually black holes out there in the universe. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were not things that we observed. Rather, there are the
Speaker 1: things that we expected to be there based on the math.
Speaker 1: So for decades they were pure, purely theoretical, but now
Speaker 1: we've reached the point where experts are pretty certain. We
Speaker 1: know for certain that stars collapse into black holes when
Speaker 1: they die, and the supermassive black holes lurk at the
Speaker 1: center of the gut of our galaxies, again, including our own.
Speaker 1: We have twenty five years of supermassive black hole studies
Speaker 1: under our belt, and they've revealed quite a lot. So
Speaker 1: one of the issues here is that, you know, we
Speaker 1: create these templates for what we observe based on the map,
Speaker 1: and then we see how the template matches up to
Speaker 1: our observation. That's kind of how a lot of things
Speaker 1: work in science. You know, you're you're creating expectations based
Speaker 1: on the data you have, and then you see what
Speaker 1: occurs when you bring that template to nature. It's a
Speaker 1: model testing. You make a model and see is the
Speaker 1: model right to match the data. And this is all
Speaker 1: actually going down as we speak, as we record this,
Speaker 1: even because we have the Event Horizon Telescope project, which
Speaker 1: is a global network of radio telescopes that essentially turns
Speaker 1: the Earth into a telescope large enough to observe and
Speaker 1: measure the environment surrounding the Milky Way. Supermassive black hole
Speaker 1: uh Sagittarius A. And in doing it, we're not only
Speaker 1: verifying the existence of black holes, but as Green astrophysicist
Speaker 1: Andrea Guez and astronomer Sheep Doleman pointed out, we're actually
Speaker 1: putting Einstein's general theory of relativity to the test, and
Speaker 1: we may be forced to move beyond it in our
Speaker 1: understanding of the universe. That's weird because we generally think
Speaker 1: no pun intended. We generally think of general relativity as
Speaker 1: something that's sort of beyond dispute at this point, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: but as they point out in this talk, it's you
Speaker 1: have kind of a trust but verify situation with it,
Speaker 1: Like we have to trust it because we've built so
Speaker 1: much of how we view the universe is built upon it.
Speaker 1: But as we learn more, we're inevitably reaching the point
Speaker 1: where that too is a template that must be put
Speaker 1: to tests, that we must hold up to nature as
Speaker 1: we develop better and better ways of observing it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are some ways in which we know
Speaker 1: that it is at least partially right. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the question of like, at the margins of our understanding,
Speaker 1: are are there ways we need to sort of updated,
Speaker 1: I guess right now. Another topic that Green touched on
Speaker 1: here is quantum mechanics, and of course we recently did
Speaker 1: a fairly deep dive into some of the properties of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics and our quantum immortality episode, so I don't
Speaker 1: know that we really need to refresh a lot there.
Speaker 1: We just say if you if you have questions about
Speaker 1: what this whole quantum mechanics thing is about, do check
Speaker 1: out our recent episode on quantum immortality, or again check
Speaker 1: out this talk in full from the World Science Festival.
Speaker 1: But I know one of the things in that arena
Speaker 1: that Green is interested in is the idea of discovering
Speaker 1: quantum gravity, right, like, what is what? How does gravity
Speaker 1: apply at the quantum scale? Yeah, and a Green touches
Speaker 1: on towards the very end of this interview. Uh, there
Speaker 1: is of course the realm of superstring theory, and this
Speaker 1: is certainly one of Green's core areas of studies and
Speaker 1: core area of contribution. This is the idea that miniscule
Speaker 1: strands of energy vibrating across multiple dimensions create every particle
Speaker 1: enforce in the universe. So particle physicists define elementary particles
Speaker 1: or fundamental particles as the smallest building block in the universe.
Speaker 1: In other words, particles such as leptons and courts have
Speaker 1: no substructure there as small as it gets. Ultimately, string
Speaker 1: theorists are aiming to fulfill Einstein's unrealized goal of unifying
Speaker 1: general relativity with quantum theory. And one of the interesting
Speaker 1: points brought up in the in the talk and black
Speaker 1: holes is that string theory actually helps us make sense
Speaker 1: of the entropy problem with black holes. Now, what is
Speaker 1: that problem? Okay, so the basic idea here and ultimately
Speaker 1: Green presents us a lot better in in in the
Speaker 1: actual world Science Festival talk, but they give us the
Speaker 1: bad version. That the bad version, if you will, or
Speaker 1: the rough version, is how can a black hole be
Speaker 1: in a high entropy state if everything inside is super
Speaker 1: crunched down to a state of less entropy than normal matter?
Speaker 1: Where is the missing entropy? So, according to string theory,
Speaker 1: you find that missing entropy and the six microscopic spatial
Speaker 1: dimensions that exist in addition to the three spatial dimensions
Speaker 1: that we can observe earve And the example Green often
Speaker 1: uses to explain like low versus high entropy, is that
Speaker 1: it's essentially you're talking about a high ordered state and
Speaker 1: a low ordered state. In his frequent example is if
Speaker 1: you do you have a book of pages without a
Speaker 1: binding and they're in order, high order, right, throw that
Speaker 1: in the air and then all the pages, uh fall
Speaker 1: to the ground and now they're in disorder. Loss of
Speaker 1: information organization. So speaking of black holes, when you talked
Speaker 1: to Brian Green, was we're all trying to talk about
Speaker 1: Event Horizon. The Event Horizon. Was that like sort of
Speaker 1: coming to the surface? It did kind of, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I brought up Disney's The black Hole, and I'm not
Speaker 1: not sure he was familiar with or had a you
Speaker 1: know that's necessarily remembered that film, which of course gives
Speaker 1: us a very ridiculous notion of what a black hole
Speaker 1: would be. It's basically just a big, you know, glowing
Speaker 1: vortex in in in the least realistic space you could
Speaker 1: possibly imagine. And he thought you were talking about what's
Speaker 1: name Sam Neil, And oh, yeah, an Event Horizon, which
Speaker 1: is a film that I really enjoyed, and now we
Speaker 1: know Brian Green's seen it. I I can't even imagine
Speaker 1: Brian Brian Green responding to the science of event Horizon,
Speaker 1: which of course is a is a horror movie, a
Speaker 1: haunted house movie set in space, with some black holy
Speaker 1: science thrown in there, but basically the idea being that
Speaker 1: a black hole takes you to Hell and and does
Speaker 1: Hell raise your things to you. I want to hear
Speaker 1: Brian Green's thoughts on the the scientific accuracy of Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat Annihilation. Well, you know, but I do love that
Speaker 1: he brought up Interstellar though it's a film in which
Speaker 1: the mathematics is is very sound. Uh. That definitely makes
Speaker 1: me want to sit down and watch Interstellar again, which
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the first time. But but but I do
Speaker 1: feel like I need to give it a review. Well,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things about an Interstellar was the
Speaker 1: way it took seriously the time dilation of texts of
Speaker 1: the Unian that came a crucial plot point is is
Speaker 1: how the passage of time changes in relation to say,
Speaker 1: your proximity to a supermassive object or you know, travel
Speaker 1: through space and all that. I thought that was one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things about the story, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad they did that. Yeah, you don't. You really don't
Speaker 1: see enough of it in science fiction films anyway. And
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly what Green is talking about when
Speaker 1: he said, you know, he says in his discussion with
Speaker 1: you that the culture needs to integrate with science in
Speaker 1: an organic way, right. You know, He's like, essentially, we
Speaker 1: should work to make our current best understanding of science
Speaker 1: not a thing separate from popular culture, but a fundamental
Speaker 1: part of popular culture. The same way that you might
Speaker 1: get a mostly accurate picture of what, say, well, actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate this is, but you might
Speaker 1: get a somewhat accurate picture of what the streets of
Speaker 1: New York look like in two thousand and sixteen by
Speaker 1: watching a movie shot that year. Uh. You know that
Speaker 1: that's like cultural information is being embedded in that popular
Speaker 1: culture media. Shouldn't we also get a sense of what
Speaker 1: the science looks like in sixteen embedded in popular culture
Speaker 1: and media. Yeah, which, of course brings me back to
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park in Jurassic World, like you wouldn't You wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a movie set in New York and and go
Speaker 1: out of your way to represent two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: New York or or or you know, nineteen eighty New York.
Speaker 1: So why would you do that with your depiction of
Speaker 1: these dinosaurs, Why wouldn't you give them feathers of coloration
Speaker 1: or even you know, some symbolance of behavior that matches
Speaker 1: up with our best understanding, our best current understanding of
Speaker 1: what they were. Well, because you're making Jurassic World and
Speaker 1: you don't care about life. Uh, But I totally agree
Speaker 1: with with Green's perspective there. I think it is a
Speaker 1: noble thing to try to do two more deeply integrate
Speaker 1: our best picture of science with popular culture. And in fact, uh,
Speaker 1: I'd say that's something we tried to do a lot
Speaker 1: on the show. Right, We're constantly trying to lay a
Speaker 1: real science and other aspects of culture like movies and
Speaker 1: books and religion and mythology side by side so they
Speaker 1: can sort of get wrapped up together into one world
Speaker 1: of thought and one conversation. At least I hope that's
Speaker 1: what we do. Yeah, that that's certainly the aim. So
Speaker 1: what do you think about doing a science fiction film
Speaker 1: about a plank scale accelerator. I love that idea. I
Speaker 1: love I love him talking about the you know, the
Speaker 1: future of particle colliders. What energy level could we get
Speaker 1: up to? And I think that's something we could also
Speaker 1: do an episode on someday. What what would a plank
Speaker 1: scale accelerator look like? Uh? Is such a thing even
Speaker 1: possible to build on Earth? Given you know we we
Speaker 1: were asking him a hypothetical question about limitless resources, given
Speaker 1: real resources, could you do such a thing? Alright? Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back we will dive into another
Speaker 1: interview and discuss what Max Tegmark had to say. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. All Right, we're back. So, Robert, you talked
Speaker 1: to mad Max. Yes. Us. This was definitely one of
Speaker 1: the highlights of World Science Festival two thousand and eighteen
Speaker 1: for me getting to set down with Max tag Mark,
Speaker 1: president of the Future of Life Institute, UH physicist advocate
Speaker 1: for positive use of technology. He's also a professor doing
Speaker 1: physics and AI research at m i T, author of
Speaker 1: Our Mathematical Universe, as well as his most recent book
Speaker 1: Life three point oh Being Human in the Age of
Speaker 1: Artificial Intelligence. Now, I do want to warn everybody this
Speaker 1: one is probably this one probably has the roughest audio
Speaker 1: quality of the three that we're airing here. This was
Speaker 1: recorded in a fairly noisy green room, but the content
Speaker 1: is so good. I just just really, we just really
Speaker 1: have to share it with you. You're not going to
Speaker 1: be confused about which voices. Max's right, Max is Swedish Americans.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll detect a slight accent here. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a fabulous little talk. Max's super chill and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate him taking time out of his day right
Speaker 1: before he went in and participated in a panel discussion
Speaker 1: to talk about these topics. And here we go. So
Speaker 1: what is your most optimistic model for a post technological
Speaker 1: singularity world? Well, everything I love about civilizations is the
Speaker 1: product of intelligence. So if we can amplify our intelligence
Speaker 1: with machine intelligence, you know, we have the potential to
Speaker 1: really solve the toughest problems that are stumping us today
Speaker 1: and tomorrow. I came. I was in the hospital recently
Speaker 1: visiting a friend had been diagnosed with an uncurable cancer,
Speaker 1: for example. But it's obviously not uncurable. Humans just weren't
Speaker 1: smart enough to figure out how to cure it. This
Speaker 1: is an example I think AI can completely transform healthcare
Speaker 1: and medicine together with the rest of science. Similarly, the
Speaker 1: fact that we struggle with a lot of people in
Speaker 1: poverty is not because there really aren't enough atoms on Earth.
Speaker 1: With more intelligence, we can have it do enough great
Speaker 1: stuff with our resources to help life flourish like eleven
Speaker 1: before here on Earth and throughout the cosmos too, if
Speaker 1: you want, you know. Okay, now on the pessimistic end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, what are some of the negative possibilities
Speaker 1: that we were least prepared for anticipating a well. Some
Speaker 1: people seem to take it in an article of blind
Speaker 1: faith that all new technology is automatically good, and then
Speaker 1: disrepeat this over and over and again as a mantra.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, of course, the technology isn't good,
Speaker 1: nor is it evil. It's neutral. It's just an amplifier
Speaker 1: of our ability to do stuff. It's fire good or
Speaker 1: bad one it's good to heat your home within the
Speaker 1: winter and bad to use for arson, and AI is
Speaker 1: really no different except much more powerful. So to me,
Speaker 1: the really interesting question is how can you win the
Speaker 1: wisdom race between the growing power of technology and the
Speaker 1: growing wisdom with which we manage it. I think my
Speaker 1: concern comes from the fact that we're we haven't realized
Speaker 1: we have to change strategies to win this race. We
Speaker 1: used to staying ahead of the game by learning from mistakes.
Speaker 1: You know, we invented fire and screwed up a bunch
Speaker 1: of times and invented the fire extinguisher, but with more
Speaker 1: powerful tech like nuclear weapons and super human AI, we
Speaker 1: don't want to learn from mistakes. We want to plan
Speaker 1: ahead instead and get things right the first time, which
Speaker 1: might be the only time we have some I'm optimistic
Speaker 1: that if we do plan ahead, we can create a
Speaker 1: really inspiring future. But it's going to take planning and
Speaker 1: hard work. We can't just bumble into this. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of the culture at large, science fiction of I
Speaker 1: didn't need to particular science fictions you potentially partially particularly helpful.
Speaker 1: I just rewatched Kubrick's two thousand and one the other
Speaker 1: night with my family, and I think it's not only
Speaker 1: the one of the oldest, but also one of the best, actually,
Speaker 1: because when Hal says I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that,
Speaker 1: it illustrates the point that we shouldn't worry about AI
Speaker 1: turning evil, because how isn't evil. We should just worry
Speaker 1: about AI turning very competent and having goals that aren't
Speaker 1: aligned with ours, because that's exactly what we're wrong. On
Speaker 1: that Jupiter mission. It doesn't matter so much if the
Speaker 1: machines goals disagree with yours, if the machine is much
Speaker 1: dumber and less powerful than you, because you just switch
Speaker 1: it off, right. But if you have a he's taking
Speaker 1: missile chasing after you and you feel that you don't
Speaker 1: like its goal, it's not so easy to just switch
Speaker 1: it off. And if we create a computer system that's
Speaker 1: literally smarter than than humans in the future, then we
Speaker 1: better make sure that we shared our goals, because what's
Speaker 1: given us more power on this planet than any other species,
Speaker 1: isn't there we have bigger biceps that were smarter. How
Speaker 1: will digitize consciousness of play a role in humanity future?
Speaker 1: I think we need to distinguish between digital consciousness artificial
Speaker 1: consciousness on one hand, and artificial intelligence on the other hand,
Speaker 1: because there are two very very different things. Artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: if we make it really powerful, well well beyond that,
Speaker 1: the best thing ever, the worst thing ever, depending on
Speaker 1: how it's used and who or what you know controls it.
Speaker 1: Consciousness this subjective experience that you and I have when
Speaker 1: we drive down the street. We experienced colors and sounds
Speaker 1: someone We don't know whether self driving car experiences anything
Speaker 1: at all, whether it feels like anything to be it,
Speaker 1: and the world leaning experts actually argue passionately about this.
Speaker 1: Some think, uh, the stupid question. Of course machines can't
Speaker 1: be conscious. Others say that's a stupid questions because, of
Speaker 1: course consciousness is the same thing as intelligence, so a
Speaker 1: robot that talks like a human will feel like a human.
Speaker 1: I think the answer is neither of those two. I
Speaker 1: think it's somewhere in between. Because we know that most
Speaker 1: of the information processing happening in your brain right now
Speaker 1: you're actually not aware of, like your heartbeat regulation and
Speaker 1: a gazillion other things. But consciousness, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the CEO of your brain, a small part of the information.
Speaker 1: So I think it's gonna be really important to figure
Speaker 1: out actually what information processing is conscious and what isn't.
Speaker 1: You might want to have a home helper robot that
Speaker 1: isn't conscious like the zombades you just so you only
Speaker 1: need to feel guilty when switching off or giving it
Speaker 1: boring chores. Or maybe you would want it to be
Speaker 1: conscious so you don't feel creeped out when it acts
Speaker 1: as if it were conscious. And either way, there's a
Speaker 1: really tough science question here. What is consciousness, and I
Speaker 1: think we should have been humble and realize that it's
Speaker 1: actually not just philosophy, it's actually an unsolid science question,
Speaker 1: and we should tackle it. We believe we will find
Speaker 1: an answer in their future because we will have a
Speaker 1: definite model of human conscious I'm in a small minority
Speaker 1: actually thinks yeah, and that we are going to make
Speaker 1: real progress. We've wondered about this for thousands of years
Speaker 1: with very little progress because we had almost no data.
Speaker 1: But now we're getting incredibly good data from our brains.
Speaker 1: I can put you in our many Magneto and Pholography
Speaker 1: machine at m I T and read out from six
Speaker 1: three and four Superconducting Center a bunch of stuff and
Speaker 1: tell you in real time which of a bunch of
Speaker 1: objects you're thinking about, for instance, and and that and
Speaker 1: opens up the possibility of doing some really cool experiments
Speaker 1: that it mast have been done, Like if someone has
Speaker 1: a consciousness theory that predicts which information in your brain
Speaker 1: is conscious and which isn't, you can sit in the
Speaker 1: machine and just test that on yourself. If it predicts
Speaker 1: that you are conscious of things that you aren't and
Speaker 1: rice versa, theory goes in the garbage can, right, And
Speaker 1: once someone comes along with a theory that passes those
Speaker 1: sorts of tests will start taking it seriously, and hospitals
Speaker 1: will start to have consciousness detectors in the emergency room,
Speaker 1: so when an unresponsientation comes in, the doctor knows whether
Speaker 1: they are actually in a coma or have locked in syndrome.
Speaker 1: And that should just add in the longer term. This is,
Speaker 1: of course incredibly important because imagine one day if someone
Speaker 1: like great Hurts File, who wants to upload himself into
Speaker 1: a robot, managed to do that and it talks like
Speaker 1: Ray and actually like Ray, and he's like, yes, awesome,
Speaker 1: now it's okay if my biological body gives up the ghost.
Speaker 1: If it turns out that this robot is actually just
Speaker 1: a zombie, isn't conscious at all, he will be pretty bummed. Right.
Speaker 1: And imagine if humanity one day has these robot descendants
Speaker 1: were very proud of and they go on and do
Speaker 1: all this cool stuff but they aren't conscious. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be the ultimate zombie apocalypse where the whole universe just
Speaker 1: goes back to being a play for empty benches. Well,
Speaker 1: because I guess you're potentially creating all these zombies because
Speaker 1: then it's also potentially we're nothing zombies as well. Well.
Speaker 1: I think you know subjectively that you are not because
Speaker 1: you are conscious, You are aware of these things. But
Speaker 1: I think we have to be humble. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that every system that does clever stuff is actually experiencing anything.
Speaker 1: It's not at all clear that a self driving car
Speaker 1: has any subject of experience it at all, and that
Speaker 1: it feels like anything to be it. And for some devices,
Speaker 1: again that's probably the way we wanted. But if we
Speaker 1: create really sophisticated machines that we want to people want
Speaker 1: to upload themselves to, or that we want to be
Speaker 1: able to have view as beings with ethical with moral
Speaker 1: rights and that maybe feel proud of the sentence, we
Speaker 1: better know whether there as someone home, whether it feels
Speaker 1: like something to be them, or whether they're just zombies.
Speaker 1: The aims we could discuss. Then you talk about the
Speaker 1: problems of the kind of propagation and they spreading and
Speaker 1: it's truly every interest. It's like you can't do your
Speaker 1: process managing an I development where the AIS do not
Speaker 1: quote unquote want to oppligate. If they don't want to
Speaker 1: change and evolved it, maybe they want to terminate. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to remember that the mind space
Speaker 1: m kind of AI motivations you can build is vastly
Speaker 1: larger than the mind space of evolved organisms, because all
Speaker 1: of us, of all the organisms, have this very strong
Speaker 1: urge to eat, to drink, to not get destroyed, to reproduce,
Speaker 1: because that's what evolution and you know andvowed us to do, right.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you build something, if you build a laptop,
Speaker 1: there's no reason why you should build it, so it's
Speaker 1: afraid of being turned off or any of those things.
Speaker 1: So we should rather than ask what will these machines
Speaker 1: ultimately want, we should ask what do we want them
Speaker 1: to want? And try to understand how can we actually
Speaker 1: put goals into machines. Anyone like me who's a parent
Speaker 1: knows how hard it is to make children and understand
Speaker 1: my goals and adopt my goals and then retain them right.
Speaker 1: And we also know his parents that there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between our kids understanding where you want to actually
Speaker 1: doing what we want right. Yet that's exactly what the
Speaker 1: problem we have to solve if we ever build machines
Speaker 1: that are as smart as us or smarter, and also
Speaker 1: if these machines keep getting ever more smart, we'd like
Speaker 1: them to keep the goal of being nice to humans.
Speaker 1: My sons were very excited about Legos when they were little,
Speaker 1: and now and when they're teenagers, you know, not so much.
Speaker 1: And we don't want arm machines to become his board
Speaker 1: with this goal of taking be nice to humans. My
Speaker 1: kids are with Legos either. So there are many nerdy
Speaker 1: technical problems and AI safety research of this kind how
Speaker 1: to make machines understand our goals, adopt them, retain them
Speaker 1: that we really need to solve before anyone the scientists
Speaker 1: which in a super intelligence, and those problems are so
Speaker 1: hard it might take that case to solve them, which
Speaker 1: is why it's so important that we actually research them now,
Speaker 1: not the night before someone hits the on switch. I
Speaker 1: think I probably have templed one more question here. Um.
Speaker 1: So it seems to be the case that certainly we
Speaker 1: can have a human level or higher intelligence that is
Speaker 1: not conscious through computing. You would you agree or when
Speaker 1: I think this is an open question, we don't know.
Speaker 1: I have college to think the answer is obviously yes.
Speaker 1: I have college to think the answer is obviously no. Um. Right,
Speaker 1: My guess is that it could be either yes or no.
Speaker 1: Like we have pocket calculators today. They are vastly better
Speaker 1: than any human that multiplying numbers fast, but they're probably
Speaker 1: not conscious at all. So there's no guarantee that just
Speaker 1: because you're better than humans and some things, you're going
Speaker 1: to be conscious. Okay, but how about biological intelligence do
Speaker 1: you think? What do you think it would be possible
Speaker 1: for a biological intelligence of human level or above to
Speaker 1: be not to be non conscious or at least not
Speaker 1: conscious in the same way that we think of I
Speaker 1: think biology is a bit of a red herring here. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have many colleagues. We think of intelligence and consciousness
Speaker 1: is something mysterious that can only exist in biological organisms. Um,
Speaker 1: but I feel that this is carbon chauvinism. You know,
Speaker 1: this attitude that you can only be smart or conscious
Speaker 1: if you're made of meat. I'm basically food rearranged, and
Speaker 1: I'm made of exactly the same kind of electrons and
Speaker 1: quirks as my food and as my laptop. It's all.
Speaker 1: The only difference is the pattern and with the arrange
Speaker 1: the information processing that happens. So I certainly don't think
Speaker 1: it's impossible to have machines that are as intell isn't
Speaker 1: at us as us that aren't made of meat, or
Speaker 1: as conscious as us that aren't made of meat. But
Speaker 1: we have to practice sized problem of what isn't specifically
Speaker 1: about the information processing that makes it intelligent and it
Speaker 1: makes it conscious? All right, So there you go. Max
Speaker 1: has interesting thoughts about artificial intelligence. One of the things
Speaker 1: is that he he says something that a lot of
Speaker 1: the people I read on the subject would probably disagree with,
Speaker 1: but then ends up I think in the same places them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Max makes the technology is a neutral argument, and there
Speaker 1: are some people who I think to really would really
Speaker 1: disagree with that to some extent. For example, I think
Speaker 1: about many of the critics of social media, like jarn
Speaker 1: Lanier and Tristan Harris, who we've talked about, who I
Speaker 1: definitely don't want to put words in their mouth, but
Speaker 1: I think they would say something like, you know, there
Speaker 1: are some kinds of technology that possess something like a
Speaker 1: will of their own, not any not in any spooky
Speaker 1: or conscious sense, but just in the sense that there
Speaker 1: are certain applications for which they will be most easily
Speaker 1: and eagerly deployed by humans, and that sort of technological
Speaker 1: will often favors evil or negative applications. So there are
Speaker 1: technologies that, you know, you can say, well, technology isn't
Speaker 1: inherently moral or immoral, but they're definitely technologies that lend
Speaker 1: themselves very easily to immoral or evil or destructive applications.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you agree, Robert? Yeah. I mean, for instance, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about like some of the big ones we've
Speaker 1: talked about, of course, uh, atomic energy, Um, certainly chemistry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the emergence of both chemical weapons and many favost lifesaving
Speaker 1: chemicals that emerged during the twentieth century. But then other
Speaker 1: things like I don't know, fabric science, uh, some meta materials.
Speaker 1: You could probably make an argument that these maybe lend
Speaker 1: themselves more for more towards non violent, non destructive uses
Speaker 1: than others. Yeah, I mean, I definitely think about social
Speaker 1: media algorithms being a thing that you could easily make
Speaker 1: the argument that, oh, that's just a neutral technology. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be used for good, could be used for evil,
Speaker 1: and I guess that's technically true. But which way is
Speaker 1: it most likely to be used given what it's capable
Speaker 1: of doing. Yeah, And of course, of a lot of it,
Speaker 1: as as Max touches on, here, is is going to
Speaker 1: come down to human will and the humans involved in
Speaker 1: shaping it and and sense raising it so that the
Speaker 1: title of this particular panel discussion that Max was about
Speaker 1: to participate in was Teacher Robots Well, and it was
Speaker 1: about the idea of essentially, how do we prepare AI
Speaker 1: for the potential technological singularity when they will be the
Speaker 1: entities with the power. Yeah, and whether you think the
Speaker 1: say the Kurt Swiley and sense of the singularity is
Speaker 1: realistic or makes any sense at all, there is at
Speaker 1: least another version of it you can entertain that might
Speaker 1: be more plausible, which is just the idea that at
Speaker 1: some point AI will surpass human intelligence in many important ways. Right.
Speaker 1: But I do want to come back to what I
Speaker 1: said about tech Mark because I don't want to put
Speaker 1: him to at odds with with the other idea I
Speaker 1: was just explaining, because ultimately I think Techmark ends up
Speaker 1: in the same place saying that we we have to
Speaker 1: be very careful with certain types of technology, specifically AI,
Speaker 1: that can't be allowed to just grow in the wild. Right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes we let technologies just grow in the wild of
Speaker 1: the marketplace and see what happens with them AI. We
Speaker 1: can't treat that way right certainly, And in Max Tegmark,
Speaker 1: he did not specifically mentioned James P. Cars, the author
Speaker 1: of Finite and Infinite Games, which we talked about recently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't bring that up specifically. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that he was was pressing is the
Speaker 1: idea that as we develop AI, we should develop it
Speaker 1: in a way that it benefits humanity as a whole,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than fulfilling political or national or or
Speaker 1: or a particular social function or business function. In other words,
Speaker 1: we need to raise AI, develop AI so that it
Speaker 1: is playing an infinite game rather than any number of
Speaker 1: potentially destructive finite games. Right Because, as Max talks about,
Speaker 1: like the idea, the really scary version of how AI
Speaker 1: could go wrong is not terminators. It's not that AI
Speaker 1: decides I'm evil and I must kill humanity. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course anything is possible, but that doesn't seem very likely.
Speaker 1: What seems far more likely is that there are lots
Speaker 1: of negative side effects that are very destructive and harmful
Speaker 1: to us as a byproduct of it attaining some finite goal.
Speaker 1: It's it's playing a finite game. It's trying to do
Speaker 1: X y Z for some business purpose, and they're just
Speaker 1: happened to be some really negative side effects to it
Speaker 1: achieving that goal. And so anyway, I mean what this
Speaker 1: comes back to is that we have to have a
Speaker 1: guided type of development for AI. It it has to
Speaker 1: be informed by our desire for AI to do good
Speaker 1: and not evil. You could put other types of technology
Speaker 1: in this category. As we were just talking about nuclear
Speaker 1: fission seems like a good candidate for something that could
Speaker 1: be used for good, could be used for evil. If
Speaker 1: you just allow it to develop naturally in the wild,
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be far more destructive than it
Speaker 1: is beneficial, right. I think it's a valid argument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's one of It's another example if you if
Speaker 1: you had definite guidelines that said this must be developed
Speaker 1: in a way that benefits everybody, uh and and does
Speaker 1: not further particular finite game. Uh, then it would be
Speaker 1: we'd all be better off in the long run. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess the big question is, so like, even if
Speaker 1: you can get people to agree to that, say, okay,
Speaker 1: we won't we won't develop AI in the wild. We'll
Speaker 1: do it as some part of some part of a
Speaker 1: global project to develop wholly beneficial AI that will treat
Speaker 1: everyone well and be aimed towards the betterment of humanity
Speaker 1: as a whole. How do you get people to sign
Speaker 1: on to that? That sounds like a whole other Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you need an AI to solve that problem to
Speaker 1: begin with. Yeah, you get into this hilaria than you know,
Speaker 1: who's who's governing the AI? What are they? What are
Speaker 1: the mechanisms in place? There's like a problem of politics
Speaker 1: that sort of proceeds us getting to the stage where
Speaker 1: we're ready or mature enough to develop AI. Yeah. Which
Speaker 1: makes me glad though that we have people like Max
Speaker 1: tech Mark out there that are participating in conversations about this,
Speaker 1: not only with with World Science Festival attendees or with
Speaker 1: podcast host but actively setting down, uh and having these
Speaker 1: discussions with some of the people that are in a
Speaker 1: position to do something about it and to and to
Speaker 1: lay the framework for the future. Yeah. So if you're
Speaker 1: influencing the influencers, you need to be bringing this question up. Uh.
Speaker 1: So here's another thing. Tech Mark mentions machine consciousness as quote,
Speaker 1: not philosophy, but an unsolved science question. And I think
Speaker 1: this is interesting because you will definitely get a lot
Speaker 1: of people who don't agree with that. Right, Let's say,
Speaker 1: how could it be a science question? You can never
Speaker 1: really know, You can never really have fully, you know,
Speaker 1: a fool proof objective test for for detecting consciousness in
Speaker 1: some other creature. I don't know what I think the
Speaker 1: answer to that question is, I'm, you know, of two minds.
Speaker 1: I see the wisdom in both camps there. But tech
Speaker 1: Mark definitely thinks the question of detecting consciousness could be
Speaker 1: a scientific question, and I think that's an interesting perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should also know. You know, we discussed the work
Speaker 1: of Susan Schneider and the AI test for consciousness. You
Speaker 1: can hear it Susan Schneider in the background of my
Speaker 1: conversation with with Max. Because she was on the same panel.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe you were going to get to talk
Speaker 1: to her. It was in the cards, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of moving pieces putting together a panel like that.
Speaker 1: Ultimately ended up having only time to chat with Max.
Speaker 1: But hey, maybe we'll get to have Susan on the
Speaker 1: show sometimes that'd be great. Well, she I mean, she
Speaker 1: has I think, what is a really interesting step toward
Speaker 1: trying to come up with objective frameworks for detecting consciousness.
Speaker 1: It's obviously, Uh, it's it's a very limited kind of step.
Speaker 1: I mean, as we discussed in the AI Consciousness Test episode,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of there are a lot of
Speaker 1: limitations to to what these types of psychological test could do,
Speaker 1: you know, like asking it asking a machine if it
Speaker 1: understands the concept of souls, or trying to see if
Speaker 1: it understands movies like Freaky Friday. Uh. I think that's
Speaker 1: really clever and that's a good step, but obviously that's
Speaker 1: not there yet to like a full understanding of where
Speaker 1: of how we could see consciousness in an objective way
Speaker 1: outside of ourselves. And I don't know if we'll ever
Speaker 1: get there where, but it sounds like Max thinks we could. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that. Max brought up two thousand and one
Speaker 1: a Space Odyssey Yeah in the interview, and it just
Speaker 1: drove home for me that since this is a landmark
Speaker 1: year for two and one Space Odyssey film, it is
Speaker 1: what what's the landmark? Oh, it's a fifty years, half
Speaker 1: a century if two came out. Yeah, So given that
Speaker 1: it is such a pivotal piece of science fiction, with
Speaker 1: so much one a full science in it. Uh, we
Speaker 1: really need to do a whole episode about it this year.
Speaker 1: But where we really discuss uh the movie, perhaps the
Speaker 1: book as well, and just why it has stood the
Speaker 1: test of time as a work of science fiction. Yea
Speaker 1: discussed ancient aliens. Yeah, yeah, well do you know we're
Speaker 1: into that? So wait are we? Well, we're into exploring
Speaker 1: the possibility we are not ancient aliens enthusiasts, not ancient
Speaker 1: aliens advocates. No, no, no, we're at least as into
Speaker 1: discussing the idea as Karl Sagan was into discussing the idea.
Speaker 1: That's the good place to be. Yeah, yeah, the Sagan zone. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take one more break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will feature the interview
Speaker 1: with Barbara J. King. Thank alright, we're back. Okay, So, Robert,
Speaker 1: you the third person you spoke to here was the
Speaker 1: anthropologist and author Barbara J. King. What was the deal here? Okay?
Speaker 1: So this was the third interview. These are These are
Speaker 1: featured in order that they occurred. Um And she is
Speaker 1: an anthropologist in Arthur author for twenty eight years. She
Speaker 1: taught biological anthropology Primate Behavior and Human Evolution at the
Speaker 1: College of William and Mary. She's the author of six books,
Speaker 1: including two thousand and thirteens How Animals Grieve, and she's
Speaker 1: the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. She's also the author
Speaker 1: of her latest book two thousand seventeens, Evolving God, a
Speaker 1: Provocative view on the origins of religion, and she participated
Speaker 1: in the Brian Green moderated The Believing Brain, Evolution, Neuroscience
Speaker 1: and the Spiritual Instinct alongside Stephen Pinker, neuroscientists and psychologist
Speaker 1: Lisa Barrett, and neuroscientist Zoron Joseph Avich. So this was
Speaker 1: an interesting interview too. I I guess we should play
Speaker 1: the interview and then we can talk about it all. Right,
Speaker 1: here we go. So I'm gonna start with the pretty
Speaker 1: broad question here, and that is our humans hardwired for belief,
Speaker 1: as the saying sometimes goes. I think we're hardwired for connection,
Speaker 1: for belongings, as I call it, and for mattering to
Speaker 1: each other. In some cases this does take the form
Speaker 1: of religion spirituality, but I don't think we're necessarily hard
Speaker 1: wired for any specific type of religious imagination. So my
Speaker 1: work really looks at the deep evolutionary roots of religion
Speaker 1: and puts that right in the being wired for connection. Okay, um, Now,
Speaker 1: I understand this question might not be going back deep
Speaker 1: enough to really do your area of expertise, But do
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on what are perhaps some common
Speaker 1: mistakes that we make and trying to understand earlier or
Speaker 1: ancient people or even truly prehistoric people's concepts of religion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think many people do focus on belief, and of
Speaker 1: course belief doesn't fossilize, So what I try to do
Speaker 1: is shift a little bit and talk about practice. So
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the material culture that can get us
Speaker 1: a window onto practice and to get your misconception part
Speaker 1: of the question. I think there's a tendency, for example,
Speaker 1: to equate a burial automatically with a belief in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: We can't do that. The material culture cannot reveal to
Speaker 1: us whether there's a belief attached to that or not.
Speaker 1: So it's quite tricky looking at the evolution of belief.
Speaker 1: When I speak about practice, I'm talking about some kind
Speaker 1: of ritual that takes us beyond the here and now.
Speaker 1: But to ascribe a particular belief to that really tough.
Speaker 1: So you've written on how animals grieve? Are there any Now?
Speaker 1: Obviously these are not rights, uh as you say, But
Speaker 1: did you see any anything like the roots of religion
Speaker 1: in the practices that if you want to lit not
Speaker 1: practice behaviors of animals. I do, yes, I've written quite
Speaker 1: a lot about this. I look for rule following and empathy,
Speaker 1: compassion and imagination, all of these things I see in
Speaker 1: our close living relatives, for example, chimpanzees, binobo, some monkeys,
Speaker 1: and some people would like to interpret those things as
Speaker 1: spirituality full stop, and I don't. I do see them
Speaker 1: as the building blocks. The idea of deeply profound emotions
Speaker 1: in other animals is coming back into science. Darwin did it,
Speaker 1: but then it disappeared for a good long time. And
Speaker 1: those profound emotions that are felt around social behavior, love, death,
Speaker 1: I think do play into an understanding of deep religious roots.
Speaker 1: Can I say one more thing? I mean. Part of
Speaker 1: the reason I say that is because for me, religion
Speaker 1: is about emotional meaning making. So when I look at religion,
Speaker 1: I want to look at that sense of transcendence, that
Speaker 1: sense of being suffused with emotion, and that's where I
Speaker 1: start making the connection with other animals and how they
Speaker 1: feel so deeply. Do you see there? Do you see
Speaker 1: there being a distinction between religion and belief? Can one
Speaker 1: have religion without belief? One can have religion without belief
Speaker 1: in a particular type of God. But I think belief
Speaker 1: has to be part of the picture when we're talking
Speaker 1: about contemporary societies. Again, though, I want to disentangle that
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the past. And that's what makes
Speaker 1: it hard to draw a linear line, if you will,
Speaker 1: between the past and the present, because at some point
Speaker 1: we want to pick up with that belief when we
Speaker 1: haven't necessarily been able to trace it all the way
Speaker 1: back into the past. So, in broad strokes, where does
Speaker 1: human religion come from? I think it comes from all
Speaker 1: these pieces that we see in our primate relatives, the empathy,
Speaker 1: the compassion, the need to belong, the need to follow rules,
Speaker 1: the need to kind of cooperate, And then throughout the
Speaker 1: hominid trajectory, our brains began to take on an ability
Speaker 1: to see more and more beyond the here and now,
Speaker 1: to ask questions that are hard to answer without projecting
Speaker 1: into the supernatural. So I really do think just as
Speaker 1: technology evolves, and language evolves and culture evolves. We can
Speaker 1: see a process. So it doesn't come from some particular
Speaker 1: society or some particular moment. It comes from this trajectory
Speaker 1: of constantly exacerbated abilities to bond, to see beyond the
Speaker 1: here and now, and then begin to attach those things
Speaker 1: to other forms of being supernatural beings that I don't
Speaker 1: think other animals care about or imagine at all. You
Speaker 1: mentioned the distinction be made between your burial practices and
Speaker 1: then actual religious rights. Uh do do we do? We
Speaker 1: currently hold that the Neanderthals likely had religion. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a fantastic quest, and I think that there's a very
Speaker 1: good argument to be made that yes, Neanderthals did, But
Speaker 1: it's an argument with a question mark attached. So we know,
Speaker 1: for example, that Neanderthals not only were very smart and
Speaker 1: hunted cooperatively, but that they hunted raptors to take their
Speaker 1: feathers and adorn their bodies with feathers as part of
Speaker 1: their identity. They would bury their toddlers who died with
Speaker 1: bison skulls, rhinos skulls, or x horns elaborate sort of
Speaker 1: funeral ceremonies. It is possible to imagine these in the
Speaker 1: absence of any religion, to simply think about respect for
Speaker 1: the individual who died. But I also think it's compatible
Speaker 1: with their big brains, the way they're beginning to interact
Speaker 1: with the world. So I think we have a very
Speaker 1: good likelihood for yes, without a certainty for yes. UM.
Speaker 1: So one last question, UM, and you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: about where religion is going. Religion is still evolving, um,
Speaker 1: if we are changing the ways we interact with religion,
Speaker 1: I think that certainly increasing secularization is an important trend
Speaker 1: to look at. But there is this strong need, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, for connection and belongingness, and so if those
Speaker 1: needs are not being filled by religion, they need to
Speaker 1: be filled by something else. And so it's a very
Speaker 1: good question. I don't know where we're going, but we
Speaker 1: need something, We need something else to fill in and
Speaker 1: I think that that is the question that I have
Speaker 1: as well. What is going to replace, if you will,
Speaker 1: this community? Because religion is so much about community and practice,
Speaker 1: and I really do think that's under estimated in our
Speaker 1: most of our discussions about religion. I've read a little
Speaker 1: bit about the side of hyper real religion, where individuals
Speaker 1: will will take same a concept and fandom. They might
Speaker 1: be like Jeties or The Big Lebowski, and they will
Speaker 1: it times it's kind of a playful, you know, spaghetti
Speaker 1: monster type of international music religion. But then there's this
Speaker 1: argument it becomes more that it perhaps fulfills that need
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Right, Well, I think about this a
Speaker 1: lot because my particular brand of transcendence happens at a
Speaker 1: Springsteen concert. And you know, I'm not thinking of that
Speaker 1: in a particularly religious sense, but it does. It's a
Speaker 1: community of people who become transformed in the moment in
Speaker 1: concert with another being. So how is that really different
Speaker 1: than what we're talking about? Right? It's not something supernatural,
Speaker 1: So perhaps we are changing to lose part of that
Speaker 1: belief in things that aren't is material, that aren't, is concrete.
Speaker 1: We can turn to the Springsteen and the Jedi model
Speaker 1: in place of some of these other more supernatural beings.
Speaker 1: So I love this interview because this is something I
Speaker 1: wonder about all the time, that the actual or a
Speaker 1: gens of religion. Now a lot of times when religion
Speaker 1: and science come up together, it's like people want to
Speaker 1: have they want to fight out that question, like do
Speaker 1: religion and science conflict. Can they co exist? I'm much
Speaker 1: more interested in the question of the scientific investigation of
Speaker 1: what religion is and where did it come from? Like
Speaker 1: what what what were the first religions? What do they
Speaker 1: look like? How did this instinct arise in our brains?
Speaker 1: And what's happening in our brains when we practice religion?
Speaker 1: How do we get this way? Yeah? I think a
Speaker 1: lot of what she presents is uh. It really squares
Speaker 1: with some of our recent explorations of consciousness. For instance,
Speaker 1: the idea presented by Susan Schneider's test for consciousness in AI,
Speaker 1: the notion that anything with consciousness must be able to
Speaker 1: grasp concepts of the soul mind transference or or transmigration
Speaker 1: of the soul. Uh. And one can easily imagine the
Speaker 1: roots of this in animal contemplations of loss. Perhaps it's
Speaker 1: even unnecessary, you know, precursor for consciousness. This is something
Speaker 1: Susan Schneider's writing really made me think about. I guess
Speaker 1: I just never considered before how important the link is
Speaker 1: between ideas about souls and the presence of consciousness. For example,
Speaker 1: the whole basis of the AI consciousness test is that
Speaker 1: a machine that wasn't conscious, say, it knows how to
Speaker 1: use language, it knows how to have a conversation, But
Speaker 1: if it's never heard anything about disembodied souls, how would
Speaker 1: it even make sense of religions ideas about disembodied souls
Speaker 1: if it did not have something that it could imagine
Speaker 1: being separated from its physical substrate. You know, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean the idea is that the Barbara J. King
Speaker 1: presents here, They do make me sort of rethink all that,
Speaker 1: and and wonder, well, if you have any species for
Speaker 1: which death is a reality, then to what extent is
Speaker 1: it inevitable that they would reach this, this point in
Speaker 1: their cognitive evolution, that they would develop these ideas of
Speaker 1: based on the question where did they go? Where is
Speaker 1: the where is the force that animal ated this being?
Speaker 1: The force that made it a thing that was of
Speaker 1: value to my life? Yeah, she's got a point of
Speaker 1: view on religion that resonates very strongly with me that
Speaker 1: I think it's it's got that truthiness feel. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't judge if it's true, but it
Speaker 1: seems true at least that in religion, the emotional and
Speaker 1: social aspects of religion precede and pre date the literal
Speaker 1: dogmatic beliefs of religions, and that the literal dogmatic reliefs
Speaker 1: of beliefs of religions are outgrowths of those social and
Speaker 1: emotional functions. Yeah. And and to her point, if you
Speaker 1: can find that at a Bruce Springsteen concert, yeah, or
Speaker 1: in you know, jeddi is m or Judaism, Uh, then
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily need these older models of religion. But
Speaker 1: on the same note, like that I think is one
Speaker 1: of the key things that people prize in their religious
Speaker 1: organizations that they're still a part of, or the religious
Speaker 1: movements that they're still a part of. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: a lot about what will, if anything, what will replace
Speaker 1: religion in secularizing societies. So if you've got a society
Speaker 1: where people are losing their their literal beliefs in the
Speaker 1: dogmas of religion, like they stop believing, Okay, there is
Speaker 1: literally a God that literally created the world and all that.
Speaker 1: But if king is right and that the basis of
Speaker 1: religion is still all these instinctual drives we have for
Speaker 1: things like belonging, this connection, mattering to each other, rule following, cooperation,
Speaker 1: that they blend together into this kind of emotional stew
Speaker 1: that makes us want something like a religion. What do
Speaker 1: we fill that void with? Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a number of different directions you can go with that.
Speaker 1: I think some corporations kind of fulfill that purpose, either
Speaker 1: as an outsider to it perhaps you just really like
Speaker 1: apple products, or as an insider. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us know somebody maybe who works at
Speaker 1: a at a particular business or corporation, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's managed well enough where it has the right atmosphere
Speaker 1: or mix of benefits to where it is like a
Speaker 1: truly inspiring place to work and it and it perhaps
Speaker 1: fulfill some of the roles. You know, it's like people
Speaker 1: looking out for each other and an organizational structure looking
Speaker 1: out for them and forming informing some aspect of their identity.
Speaker 1: But then also I think, uh, I think that maybe
Speaker 1: it's sports. It's not a god that I necessarily follow,
Speaker 1: but perhaps it's organized sports and the fandom for particular
Speaker 1: organized sports teams. Can I tell you my nightmare scenario
Speaker 1: is that in secularizing society, is that the literal beliefs
Speaker 1: of religion are going to be replaced by social media religions.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't know what to think about that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to sleep on that one and have a
Speaker 1: few nightmares. The social media app is where you get
Speaker 1: your use, where you fulfill your need for connection, for belongingness,
Speaker 1: for mattering to each other, for rule following, for cooperation.
Speaker 1: It all happens on there, and you can you can
Speaker 1: come up with with sort of like ritualistic, systematic ways
Speaker 1: for it to happen. Right, The programmers of the apps
Speaker 1: can can sort of like almost design the liturgy of
Speaker 1: your social media religion. Can can you see it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I just wonder if they'll be able to skip ahead
Speaker 1: on the religion or we have to go through like
Speaker 1: all the dark days of a particular faith evolution through
Speaker 1: the social media app. Like maybe one version one point
Speaker 1: oh is very optimistic and individual based, and then version
Speaker 1: two point oh is very chaotic, Version three point oh
Speaker 1: and entales of crusade. Then again, I guess we all
Speaker 1: we also have to question our assumption. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: not true that something has to replace it, you know,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's true that you can have the literal beliefs
Speaker 1: of religion vanish, and so all the trappings of religion
Speaker 1: go along with it, and people don't necessarily need a
Speaker 1: thing to fill that whole. Maybe they're maybe they're just
Speaker 1: other ways for them to feel empathy, compassion, belonging, rule, following, cooperation,
Speaker 1: and all the things came to talks about. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean one thing that I you know, I've talked about
Speaker 1: religion on the show a lot, and I have various
Speaker 1: ideas about how I process it. I kind of think
Speaker 1: of it in terms of lenses. There are certain lenses
Speaker 1: I can choose to lay over my perception of reality,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's helpful to use one that is the
Speaker 1: religious inform and other times I'm just gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: fall back to the base sort of scientific and skeptical
Speaker 1: view of the world. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: have to realize that like not you know, and everybody
Speaker 1: else isn't necessarily like me. We all have different minds,
Speaker 1: different brains, that different different backgrounds, So I can't I
Speaker 1: don't feel comfortable just going around saying, hey, everybody, you
Speaker 1: should think about religion exactly the way I think about it,
Speaker 1: because that's that's probably not um that's not a realistic expectation,
Speaker 1: either culturally or just cognitively. I think also just the
Speaker 1: experimental problem that King talks about is really interesting, you know, like,
Speaker 1: how do how do you infer from the physical remains
Speaker 1: of the ancient world? Old? What what kind of lens
Speaker 1: is they were using? Where you're talking about how minds
Speaker 1: can be different in process religion differently, how can you
Speaker 1: infer just from artifacts and paintings and burials and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. What the what their picture looked like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just how similar it was to yours? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but specifically her answer in the Neanderthals found very interesting. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, to what extent can we just look at
Speaker 1: these very basic remains and and and and see something
Speaker 1: like belief like religion in their in their activities, in
Speaker 1: the remains of their activities. Yeah, and all the while
Speaker 1: being very conscious of the fact that we could easily
Speaker 1: be misinterpreting things. That's what we're good at, it is,
Speaker 1: all right. So there you have it again. I want
Speaker 1: to give my thanks to to Brian Green, Max teg Mark,
Speaker 1: Barbara J. King, and just the World Science Festival as
Speaker 1: a whole. They were very accommodating of me and uh
Speaker 1: and uh and and allowing me to to attend these
Speaker 1: talks and to actually score a little interview time with
Speaker 1: these three individuals. And I want to remind everybody that, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in attending the World Science Festival, this
Speaker 1: is something that is very open to the public. If
Speaker 1: you live in the New York area, you should definitely
Speaker 1: check out of whichever panels or activities appeal to you
Speaker 1: the most. Um And if you live outside of New York,
Speaker 1: make a trip of it. New York City is a
Speaker 1: place with a million things to offer, and during the
Speaker 1: World Science Festival, uh, science is an excellent reason to
Speaker 1: visit the Big Apple, New York's Great science City. Anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you give the Museum of Natural History right there waiting
Speaker 1: for you. That is an American treasure. It is. If
Speaker 1: you've never been, you should go sometime, right And if
Speaker 1: you are just not going to New York City anytime soon,
Speaker 1: you can still check out World Science Festival dot com.
Speaker 1: You can. You can. You can find just years worth
Speaker 1: of various panels. Not everything that that goes on there
Speaker 1: is necessarily filmed, but a lot of it is. And
Speaker 1: you can go back and view these different scientific discussions.
Speaker 1: And as for us, well, our website Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find every episode
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