WEBVTT - Could We Speak Alien? 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:04.480 Hey guys. Before I start a quick programming note, you'll 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:07.680 probably notice my audio quality is not as good as 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:11.840 it normally is. That is not because I decided to 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:15.840 record inside of a tin can. I don't exactly know 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.200 what happened. Some sort of computer grimlin I think switched 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.840 my audio inputs. So sorry about that, but I hope 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:33.840 you enjoy. Welcome to Creature, future production of iHeartRadio. I'm 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.680 your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:40.919 and evolutionary biology, and today on the show How to 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.960 Speak to Aliens, we talk about the way that biological 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:51.560 senses differ so vastly between humans, animals, and possibly aliens. 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.520 We use real life biology to talk about how an 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:59.080 alien encounter might actually go down and the infinitesimally small 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.640 chance that we ever I've been to intelligent life. Joining 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.240 me today is Prout of the show, particle physicist, host 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.959 of the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, and author 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:13.679 of the new book Do Aliens Speak Physics? Daniel Whitson, Welcome, 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:15.520 Thank you very much. 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:18.440 I am a particle physicist and I believe in science, 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.600 but I also irrationally believe we have more than an 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.839 infinitesimal chance to be visited by aliens? 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:29.479 How big of the chance out of out of like 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:31.000 one in five. 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.920 One in ten, I would say seventeen infinitesimals, not just 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:35.959 one infinitesimals. 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.800 Okay, all right, yeah, I mean that's a pretty decent chance. 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:43.520 I think. Yeah. I mean so in your new book, 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.720 you kind of talk about how you explore a lot 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:51.320 of philosophical questions about aliens, and then you involved both 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:56.920 like physics and also biology to talk about this how 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:03.080 it would be to try to essentially communicate with aliens essentially, 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.720 like you know, the whole thing and what was that 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.160 a rival when it turned out the aliens communicate with 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.760 coffee stains or something. But I find it a really 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:18.359 interesting topic because I think it makes us kind of 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.519 we get I think when we start to think about 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:25.799 like biology and human communication, we're so primed to think 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:29.520 about it in a very egocentric way because we're humans. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.040 We have a human brain, we have human thoughts. It's 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:34.359 very hard to step outside of that. But when we're 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.120 forced to try to think about how it would go 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:43.080 down if we were actually talking to aliens, we have 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.680 to kind of step outside of that, and consider the 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:49.840 ways in which our experience is not objective reality but 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.200 filtered through all of our human meat. 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:57.480 Yeah. Absolutely, And nobody's more egotistical than physicists. Let me 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.400 tell you the personal experience. Because physicists tend to believe 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.440 that physics is sort of special among human sciences, like 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:09.359 biology that's awesome, but probably only of interest to things 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.960 on the Earth, and biology and alien planets probably vastly different. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.520 But physics is supposed to be universal. Physics, Newton told us, 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:19.680 it doesn't just apply to apples. It also applies to 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.600 the heavens, which means it determines what happens on distant galaxies. 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:27.160 And they then take the next leap. And physicists mostly 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.880 assume that not only do our laws of physics apply 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:34.960 to denizens of distant galaxies, but those denizens would also 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:37.480 come up with the same laws, so that when the 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.760 aliens arrive, we can be like at the chalkboard, writing 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:43.800 e F equals MA within about ten minutes and use 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:46.560 physics to make a mental connection with the aliens. And 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.040 that would be wonderful if it were true. But I 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.760 feel like it's making the same mistake that physicists and 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.520 cosmologists have been making for centuries, which is putting us 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.160 at the center of the action, assuming that human physics 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.800 is the physics the way we assume that, like the 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.200 Earth is at the center of the universe because it 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.200 kind of looks like it and it's also quite flattering. 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.000 So while I'd love to sit down across the table 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.080 and exchange coffee scenes with aliens to understand quantum gravity, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:17.920 I think it might be much more difficult. And so, Yeah, 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:19.920 in this book, I try to pick apart some of 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:24.160 the assumptions that underlie the feeling that physics could be 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.560 used to communicate with aliens and we might be part 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.440 of a galactic intellectual community all solving the same problems, 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.039 and wonder if aliens might be much more alien than 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.040 we expect, right. 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:38.559 And I think part of that is that the way, 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:44.080 like the way we think is influenced by our biology. 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:47.960 We can't really escape that. We like to believe that 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.560 we can escape that, right that once we start to 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.800 get to these more and more complex intellectual exercises where 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.320 it's like, but these are like fundamental truths about the universe. Yeah, 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:01.720 so we don't have the sense being filtered through you 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:06.520 know our brains, which are a biological organ that is, 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:11.600 you know, it has its own biases and are also 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.680 just everything that our brains are connected to our sensory 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:19.520 experience so humans, and we don't even have to really 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.440 look to aliens right to see that. Our specific experience 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.359 of humans is very particular to us. Like so we 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:31.359 have extremely developed eyes. We see in color, we see 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.640 a lot of detail, so we focus a lot on 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:40.240 visual cues. Our sense of hearing is good at close range. 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.640 It's not great once you get too far away. But 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.480 our communication style is very like close range in terms 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:49.120 of like communicating with each. 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.360 Other, unless you're trying to talk to a teenager who 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.200 has AirPods, in which case nothing you say, we'll get're 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:56.920 going to get through exactly that. They have the parental 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:58.080 cancelation software. 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.240 Nice, it's like it the it matches the pitch of 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.839 your tone, encounters it exactly, so it cancels out any 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:06.799 parent voice. 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:09.520 There's some AI in there that's learned exactly my voice 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:09.960 that it. 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:12.440 Can cancel it out exactly. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.360 Yeah, but you're exactly right, you put your finger on it. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.479 We look at the universe through a human lens, and 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.000 it's very unlikely that that lens is completely unbiased. You know, 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.520 if you're like looking inside some mystery box and you 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:26.440 only have a few ways to probe it, what are 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.520 the chances that you see the full information of what's 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.600 going on inside that box. And because we can only 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.480 probe the universe through our one lens, because we haven't 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:37.720 talked to aliens, and so far we haven't cracked the 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.239 language of dolphins or whales or anybody else, we don't 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:44.120 know how much of the lens is influenced what we 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.919 see and what we understand. And I think you're absolutely 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:52.640 right that our perceptions shape our sense of reality. Like 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.200 we have a we have a limited set of senses, 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.440 and we can dig into into them in a minute. 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:01.240 But we've also extended those senses, right, we have new 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.039 technological senses. We can see in the infrared and the 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:08.440 ultraviolet and detect gravitational waves due to technology. But that 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.320 doesn't change our experience of the universe, because what we 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.200 tend to do is translate those new signals into the 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:19.360 old into the old basis. You know, we take infrared 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:20.920 and we don't look at them in the infrared. We 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.080 translate them to the visuals. So we can see them. 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:26.720 We convert gravitational waves to sound so we can hear them. 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:29.840 And I think it's not just the senses that we have, 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.320 but like what it's like to be a human, the 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.600 experience of the sensorium, which is where the philosophy comes in, 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.000 that could be very different from humans to octopy to aliens, 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:42.280 and it could really change, like how you interpret what 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.920 you're seeing and the framework you build to explain it. 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.559 One of the examples that I really like is that 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.040 when we look at math, right, because math seems very objective, Like, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:57.560 how can we be biased about math one plus one two? 0:07:57.960 --> 0:07:59.480 That's just true. 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.200 Towered right in his biology one times one equals too. 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:06.240 Maybe you could be. 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:08.760 An alien, but it's like if you look at your hands, 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:13.280 you have ten fingers, and it's generally understood that we 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:16.760 we think in base ten because we've got ten fingers, 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.920 and we can we use our fingers for counting because they, 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.680 I mean, they're called digits, and. 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:28.360 That anybody, anybody's ever had a digital proctal exam knows 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:30.240 what it's called the digital exam. 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.520 There's different kinds of digital. It turns out exactly really 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:44.800 high tech exams exactly yeah, exactly, so so we have 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.679 we we our mouth is in base ten, we think 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.600 in base ten. We think like and I don't. It's 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:55.640 really hard to wrap your head around if we had 0:08:55.800 --> 0:09:00.480 perhaps tentacles, or a different number of fingers, or a 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:04.320 different way of counting, like instead of counting fingers, we 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:10.320 had a certain pattern of like speckles on our bodies 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:13.920 that we can change with chromatophores. Right, if we're an alien, 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:21.079 that our entire mathematical system might be different, not necessarily, 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:27.760 you know, contradictory to a base ten mathematical system. But 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:31.600 if you had, like say base five or base two, 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.480 and you're trying to do sort of like math problems, 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.720 then one plus one does not necessarily equal to anymore, 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:42.440 even though technically it still does. But the way of 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.160 thinking about it and communicating it is different because of 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:48.240 just a simple thing of like, how many of these 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:49.959 little weird flanges do you have? 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:52.760 Yeah, I don't know if you watched the show Alien Earth, 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:54.720 but there's a scene where they tap out a few 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:56.920 digits a pie and then the alien taps out the 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.840 next few digits and they're like, whoa mind blow? But 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.280 of course you know that's in base head, and so 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.040 it's it's a little silly, but I'd love the show anyway. 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.400 But you're exactly right. The bases are are a very 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.000 simple way that we could be doing math differently from aliens, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:14.719 and even in human cultures. We don't all use base ten, 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.600 like the Mayans use base sixty. Right, our computers use 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:23.760 base two. But even beyond mine, you're the biologist, I 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.040 don't know about that. I can't sign on to that. 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.080 But even beyond that, like the question does one plus 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.600 one equals two? Does it have to equal to everywhere 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.040 in the universe? Sounds insane, right, But once you start 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.280 digging into it, you discover that these things you assume 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.200 have to be true everywhere. I actually rest on kind 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:45.200 of fuzzy philosophical principles, like let's think about what it 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.640 means for one plus one equals to make a concrete Like, 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:49.800 say you have two apples on the table, right, you know, 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:53.600 one apple plus one apple. That's two apples, obviously, but 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.200 those two apples are not the same. One is bigger, 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.520 one is smaller, one is darker, one is lighter. Why 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:01.600 have you decided to group them together into this thing 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:03.520 you call apples? Right? 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:03.880 Right? 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:05.400 An alien might be like, I don't know what you're 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.520 talking about. That's this apple plus of that apple? What 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:12.040 is this tube business? The concept of two assumes some groups, 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.760 some set where you've decided what goes in it and 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:17.120 what goes out of it. Or even if you don't 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:19.640 have apples, what about you know, I'm one person, you're 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.280 another person. I can argue I'm different from you. There's 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:24.480 like a boundary between me and you, or a boundary 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:29.400 between me and the universe. Where is that boundary exactly? Biologically? 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:31.680 You know? If I cut off my arm, is my 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.559 arm still part of me? These are fuzzy philosophical questions, 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:38.080 not hard and fast, and it's not hard to imagine 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.880 aliens that like exist in the atmosphere of stars and 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.800 their plasma tendrils merge all the time, and for them, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.120 they might be like, why are you guys drawing these 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.800 weird dotted lines between yourselves? We're all just part of 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.160 the same flow, dude. 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:53.360 Right, And so you could have like saying like one 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.679 plus one equals two to an alien would be like 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.120 maybe to us saying like, you know, one plus red 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:04.080 equal Tuesday Tuesday exactly, like where it's like, what are 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.760 you what are you talking about? But yeah, there's a 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.559 lot of like things, like especially when it comes to physics, 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:16.040 where when we look into how we view just fundamental 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:22.440 concepts like time, it comes down to weird physiological quirks. 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:27.559 So our sense of time is often related to distance. 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:31.319 So when we when we look at a timeline, for instance, right, 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.439 we have a sense of going forwards in times or 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:39.200 backwards in time. Right, it's this very a lot of 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:44.439 words that we use to describe time are shared with distance, right, 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:48.040 Like we have kind of this time is viewed as 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.080 a linear progression but also kind of almost like like 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.520 a line that you're walking on. Right. Uh, you look 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.520 at illustrations of the evolution of man. He's like lined 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.640 up in a line from from little fish thing to 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:08.160 like upright, businessman. Here's the progress through time represented in 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:12.880 this line, measured by distance. And we've actually found that 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:19.800 when we do experiments where you have people in a 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:26.199 study setting where they are measuring lengths both geometrically and temporally, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.320 they easily get confused. So like if you have a 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:32.320 line on a screen, it's like either a short line 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.040 or a long line, and then you have people say 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:39.640 short or long. But you also have another condition, which 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:41.840 is the length of time that it's on the screen, 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:44.600 either a shorter amount of time or a longer amount 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.600 of time. Interesting, and then when you start to mix 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.760 the signals, like you're trying to do both tasks at once, 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:53.600 and you get contradictory things like a long line that's 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.559 on screen for a short period of time or vice versa, 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.079 people make more mistakes. And the fun thing is pigeons 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:02.359 make the same mistakes. 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:05.840 So we've done this both the human beings into pigeons, 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:11.440 and we've found pigeons also mess this up. So other 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:14.920 animals also, like primates, will make similar mistakes. So a 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:20.960 lot of animals will have this connection between distance and time. 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:27.240 And is that because objectively speaking, somehow pigeons understand the 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.920 physics of the universe and that time is something like distance, 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:36.360 or is it because being able to use time and 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:41.720 distance together helps them triangulate food sources that they use 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:47.480 by that they're able to find using an internal biological clock, 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:51.040 as well as signals from the sun that they triangulate 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:55.200 with an understanding of distance to be able to understand that, hey, 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:57.640 I can go to this place. 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.480 At this time and get food, which is another thing 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.240 that has been confirmed by research. I had to list 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:05.560 it right in with a question once about like how 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:08.480 does this pigeon know always how to find me? Because 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:11.200 I come at a very specific time to give out 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.360 some peanuts and this pigeon always knows how to find 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:18.000 me and when to come. And it's because of this, 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:23.720 this sort of ability to triangulate this internal clock as 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:27.400 well as distance, position of the sun, and then it 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.120 is a huge motivator to be able to triangulate food. 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:35.520 So did you interview that pigeon. We couldn't get our 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:38.240 schedules to the line up for some reason, wouldn't sign 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:39.000 the release for him. 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:45.040 But it's a really interesting idea that this are the 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.760 whole way we view time right like generally speaking, where 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.360 we kind of view it almost like this like track 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.920 that you're running along, you're going forward in time. We 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.920 fantasize about being able to travel backwards in time again 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:03.400 like a distance related thing. And this could be an 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.440 artifact of the just simple need to be able to 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:12.240 use time in order to locate food sources, because we're 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:14.040 animals and we need to eat and we need to 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.560 find things, and we know that sometimes like in order 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.880 to locate a certain food or do a certain survival thing, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.400 we need to be able to triangulate both distance and 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:26.880 time to be in a certain location at a certain time. 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.800 And we link those concepts very closely. So then when 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.520 it comes to physics and we start to you know, 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:39.320 get into some really weird things, that is really hard. 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:44.160 I mean even understanding this about like you know, being 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.560 human and maybe viewing time in this biased way, I 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.440 still can't wrap my head around a lot of physics 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:54.680 concepts because when you start talking about weird things with time, 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:57.200 it's really hard for me to kind of get off 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.120 of this like mental track of like I'm like walking 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.480 down this road called time and that is where I am, 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:05.760 and that's how I travel through time, and that's what 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:09.600 it is. And then when physics starts introducing these other 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.520 concepts relating to times, it's like very hard to get 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.959 out of that sort of like rigid way of viewing it. 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:22.120 Yeah, and we experienced time over a certain set of scales, right, 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:24.360 Like we can think about time in terms of a second, 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:28.880 a year, maybe a decade. Really long time scales are 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.679 hard for us to grock. You know, theories like the 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:37.440 tectonic plates and glaciers initially were dismissed because they require 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:41.080 things to happen over such long time periods. They seemed absurd, 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.280 and we know that there's lots of physics that happens 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.399 over millions or billions of years, Like the Solar system, 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:49.840 if you look at it over a few years, seems 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.480 pretty steady. If you look at it over billions of years, 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.360 it's a chaotic mess, with planets moving in and out 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.280 and being tossed out. And probably there were other planets 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.040 in our Solar system which we've now a banded or 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.160 the universe looks very, very different on short time scales. 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:06.639 You know, you zoom in and you try to understand 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.040 the universe and like the microphysics and the interactions of particles, 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.720 and it looks vastly different from the way we do. 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.600 So if aliens, for example, live on really long time scales, 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.720 dark matter beings that take like a thousand years to 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:23.479 think a thought, or quantum mechanical beings that you know, 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:25.959 buzz here and there and pop in and out of 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:29.400 existence on microscopic time scales, it could be very hard 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.120 to communicate with them about these concepts of the universe, 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.399 because our notion of time really does determine how we 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.480 think about the universe and the kinds of physics that 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.760 we're just sort of capable of digesting, even though we 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.520 have you know, Einstein, who helped us understand the connection 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.440 between space and time that apparently pigeons intuitively know, right, 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:50.440 I mean I heard of pigeon English, but maybe this 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:51.480 pigeon Einstein. 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:58.399 Also pigeon Einstein knows where to get all the best breadcrumbs. 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:05.720 Relatively yeah, yeah, relatively speaking, But it is really interesting. 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.960 I mean, there's even on Earth, like you don't even 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.840 necessarily have to find an alien. Like the flicker frame rate, 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:17.160 which is like our brain's processing ability of basically our 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.840 eye sort of refresh rate, to put it in very 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:26.200 simple terms, is different depending on what animal you are. 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.199 So if you've ever wondered, like I want to, like 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.520 like when you have an annoying fly and you're trying 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:33.840 to swat it and it seems to live in bullet 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.960 time like Neo and be able to like sense when 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.520 your hand is coming down no matter how fast you are, 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:44.880 it's because it is it has the ability to actually 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:51.600 experience things very slowly, and so it is like it's 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:55.040 these The ability for it to escape you is because 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:57.520 like to it like your hand is coming down just 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:00.480 sort of gradually and it's like easy, peasy, I can 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:02.399 get away from that real fast. 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:08.640 And because we have selected four flies that survive our swaters, right, 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.800 every time you swatter fly, you're making the average fly faster. 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:16.560 Every time you kill a mosquito, you're selecting for more deadly, 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.080 more evasive mosquito. So thanks everybody. 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:23.159 Yeah, yeah, exactly, fly swater resistant bugs. They're going to 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:28.200 start to develop little helmets all because of us. But yeah, 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:30.879 before we move on to kind of talking more about 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:35.560 animals instead of well, people are animals, but you know, 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:40.760 cooler animals. One of the interesting things is that I 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:46.440 think when we look at like how we communicate, right, 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.280 and one of the ideas is that, well, like with 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:55.560 our human language, that basically shapes entirely how we think. 0:20:55.760 --> 0:21:00.960 So we would never we could never pass think like 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:03.760 an alien because we have human language, which is a 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:08.960 specific thing, specific style of communication that completely shapes how 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:11.320 we think. Like we wouldn't think the way we do, 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:14.480 maybe we wouldn't even think at all if we didn't 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:19.240 have language. And there's actually been some research into that. 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.520 And it's not to say that language does not influence thought, 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:29.520 because it certainly does, but thinking and language right are 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:33.800 actually not completely dependent on each other, which is weird. 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:38.520 So ah, there were researchers at MIT and UC Berkeley 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:43.960 who used fMRIs to look at parts of the brain 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.360 that were active when people were doing tasks like anything 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:52.600 from reading to doing a saduco puzzle. I mean, for me, 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:55.160 they would find no brain activity because I'm really bad 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:59.239 at those. But in general, what they found is that 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:03.640 the language areas of the brain were not going off 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:06.760 all the time as they were thinking through these processes, 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:11.280 So it wasn't as we may have this experience of 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:13.920 like when you're sitting and you're kind of like thinking, 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:18.040 sometimes you have an internal narration where you hear you're 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.600 almost having a conversation with yourself in your head, where 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:23.080 you hear your own voice, you hear your own thoughts. 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:28.080 Not everyone actually has that, Like, not everyone experiences that. 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:32.359 There's variation in human thought, which we take for granted 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:34.240 we're all thinking the same, but there are people who 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.480 have a fantasia where they don't think in images, and 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.440 people who think almost entirely in images and don't have 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:42.879 a lot of that internal narration. So there's a lot 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:46.879 of variability even among people, even within the same language. 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:54.119 But generally speaking, we can think without language. People who 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:58.919 suffer a stroke, who actually have brain damage in the 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:04.280 region's responsible for producing an understanding language, and who can't 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:08.119 do either, can still sometimes do things like math problems, 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:12.880 play music so or even make future plans. So our 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:17.639 ability to think is not that it's completely independent from language. 0:23:18.080 --> 0:23:23.240 These are parallel processes that influence each other but are 0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:28.199 not completely integrated with one another. So we can think 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:33.520 without necessarily using our language center and as you probably 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:36.600 know listening to other people and politicians, you can also 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:40.760 use your language without thinking very much. People can talk 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:44.280 without necessarily being conscious or thinking about what they're saying. 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:47.640 That's not even just a joke like people can use. 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:51.920 There can be like sort of weird situations in which 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:57.159 someone is not actually conscious but is like talking and 0:23:57.240 --> 0:24:02.639 not necessarily thinking, but is using language. So in this sense, 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:06.600