1 00:00:08,800 --> 00:00:11,879 Speaker 1: Have you ever had trouble getting your message across to someone? 2 00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:14,520 Speaker 1: Maybe you've had an argument with a friend or a 3 00:00:14,560 --> 00:00:18,520 Speaker 1: disagreement with a coworker, and try to talk it through. Sometimes, 4 00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:20,880 Speaker 1: if you can get to a point of common understanding, 5 00:00:20,920 --> 00:00:24,119 Speaker 1: you can find a way out the other side. Other times, well, 6 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:26,799 Speaker 1: it can feel like you're seeing the same facts in 7 00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:29,280 Speaker 1: a different light. Maybe where you grew up, it's not 8 00:00:29,440 --> 00:00:32,120 Speaker 1: rude to belch at the table, or maybe it's rude 9 00:00:32,120 --> 00:00:35,320 Speaker 1: do not belch at the table. When misunderstandings come from 10 00:00:35,400 --> 00:00:38,680 Speaker 1: deep cultural differences, it can be very hard to bridge 11 00:00:38,680 --> 00:00:42,000 Speaker 1: the divide and understand each other. Now consider this, what 12 00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:44,680 Speaker 1: are the chances we'll be able to make that kind 13 00:00:44,720 --> 00:00:49,320 Speaker 1: of connection with alien intelligence? Are we likely to accidentally 14 00:00:49,440 --> 00:01:09,600 Speaker 1: belch or not belch our way into planet wide extermination? Hi? 15 00:01:09,959 --> 00:01:12,800 Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I have so 16 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:16,680 Speaker 1: many questions about how the universe works, from basic questions 17 00:01:16,720 --> 00:01:20,080 Speaker 1: like what's inside the electrons and quarks that make us up? 18 00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:23,679 Speaker 1: To deeper questions such as why these particles and not 19 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:27,759 Speaker 1: other particles? To cosmic questions like is what we are 20 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:32,120 Speaker 1: learning about the cosmos something that's true and universal? Or 21 00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:36,240 Speaker 1: hopelessly human centric and Welcome to the podcast. Daniel and 22 00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:39,160 Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, where we ask all of these 23 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:42,720 Speaker 1: questions and much more and dive into what science does 24 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:45,720 Speaker 1: and does not know about the answer. We don't shy 25 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:49,480 Speaker 1: away from exploring the biggest and deepest of cosmic mysteries 26 00:01:49,520 --> 00:01:52,360 Speaker 1: because we think that everyone out there wants to know 27 00:01:52,640 --> 00:01:55,800 Speaker 1: the meaning and the context of our lives. How did 28 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:58,080 Speaker 1: it all start, how does it all work? How will 29 00:01:58,080 --> 00:02:01,320 Speaker 1: it all end? And every one deserves to share in 30 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:05,280 Speaker 1: our understanding, limited as it may be, and in our confusion, 31 00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:09,040 Speaker 1: extensive as it is. Because science is just people being 32 00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:12,640 Speaker 1: curious and methodically building knowledge about the universe, and we 33 00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:15,640 Speaker 1: are all curious creatures. You might be curious why we 34 00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:18,200 Speaker 1: call it. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe When today 35 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:20,919 Speaker 1: is just Daniel, My friend and co host Jorge is 36 00:02:20,960 --> 00:02:23,000 Speaker 1: away today, so it's just me. But you are in 37 00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:25,920 Speaker 1: for a very special treat today. We have an interview 38 00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:28,320 Speaker 1: today with a guest who I am super excited to 39 00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:32,520 Speaker 1: talk to, Professor Noam Chomsky, world famous linguists and world 40 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:35,720 Speaker 1: class intellectual. I invited Professor Chomsky on the show today 41 00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:38,519 Speaker 1: to talk about a question that I suspect nobody has 42 00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:41,640 Speaker 1: ever asked him before. As regular listeners of the show 43 00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:44,840 Speaker 1: are no doubt awhere. I am very keen to believe 44 00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:48,200 Speaker 1: in aliens, not that I'm hoping to be abducted and probed, 45 00:02:48,440 --> 00:02:52,520 Speaker 1: but that I am desperate to meet extraterrestrial intelligence. Desperate 46 00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:55,680 Speaker 1: because just meeting them would answer one of the biggest 47 00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:59,399 Speaker 1: and most important questions in modern science. Are we alone 48 00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:02,680 Speaker 1: in the universe? I suspect the answer is no, and 49 00:03:02,680 --> 00:03:05,800 Speaker 1: that the galaxy is teeming with intelligent beings, but we 50 00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:09,079 Speaker 1: can't know until we actually know, so I'd like to believe, 51 00:03:09,160 --> 00:03:11,640 Speaker 1: but as a scientist, I'm also a skeptic. We did 52 00:03:11,639 --> 00:03:14,760 Speaker 1: a fun program recently on those Navy UFO videos where 53 00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:18,520 Speaker 1: Mick West gave us some pretty convincing non alien interpretations 54 00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:20,560 Speaker 1: of those videos. I know that some of you out 55 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:23,240 Speaker 1: there are not fans of his and his relentless debunking, 56 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:25,520 Speaker 1: but I have respect for the skeptical approach as long 57 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:29,000 Speaker 1: as you stay open minded enough to be persuadable given 58 00:03:29,160 --> 00:03:33,040 Speaker 1: enough evidence. But today's episode is not about whether there 59 00:03:33,080 --> 00:03:36,200 Speaker 1: are aliens or whether they have visited Earth. That's very 60 00:03:36,200 --> 00:03:40,800 Speaker 1: well trodden territory today's episode is about what happens next. 61 00:03:41,240 --> 00:03:44,720 Speaker 1: Say that aliens do exist and do visit the Earth, 62 00:03:44,800 --> 00:03:47,760 Speaker 1: and don't fry us from space with the planet wide 63 00:03:47,760 --> 00:03:51,840 Speaker 1: death ray. Here's what really excites me about that alien visit. 64 00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:55,640 Speaker 1: Beyond knowing that we're not alone, what excites me is 65 00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:58,480 Speaker 1: that we might be able to ask them science questions. 66 00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:02,000 Speaker 1: If they have traveled tween stars to get here, assuming 67 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,880 Speaker 1: they are octopied from seas under Europa, then they must 68 00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:07,680 Speaker 1: know more about the universe than we do. At the 69 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:11,119 Speaker 1: very least, they probably know different things about the universe, 70 00:04:11,160 --> 00:04:14,000 Speaker 1: and so we could compare notes and learn rather than 71 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:17,719 Speaker 1: just struggling for decades or centuries to unravel the puzzles 72 00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:20,960 Speaker 1: of the universe ourselves. We could get the answers straight 73 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:25,159 Speaker 1: away from our new alien friends, or could we could 74 00:04:25,160 --> 00:04:27,880 Speaker 1: we manage to set up a communication system that would 75 00:04:27,880 --> 00:04:30,919 Speaker 1: allow us to talk to the aliens, to communicate with 76 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:33,720 Speaker 1: them deeply enough that we can get past the welcome 77 00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:35,960 Speaker 1: to Earth, please don't kill us all the way to 78 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:39,880 Speaker 1: what's inside an electron? Or what happened before the Big Bang? 79 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:43,000 Speaker 1: Or even just how does your warp drive work? Is 80 00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:46,240 Speaker 1: that actually possible? So on today's episode, we'll be asking 81 00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:54,760 Speaker 1: the question will we be able to learn science from aliens? 82 00:04:55,040 --> 00:04:57,360 Speaker 1: To help me explore this topic, I'm very pleased to 83 00:04:57,360 --> 00:05:00,640 Speaker 1: introduce Professor G. Noam Chomsky, pleased to be with. Well, 84 00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:02,400 Speaker 1: let me get it started with something of a less 85 00:05:02,520 --> 00:05:06,000 Speaker 1: serious question. One thing you're famous for is answering all 86 00:05:06,040 --> 00:05:08,760 Speaker 1: of your emails, and that's something that I try to 87 00:05:08,839 --> 00:05:11,200 Speaker 1: do as well, though I'm sure I don't receive nearly 88 00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:13,760 Speaker 1: as many as you do, and I'll admit to having 89 00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:17,240 Speaker 1: been inspired by your approach here, but it's very much 90 00:05:17,360 --> 00:05:20,400 Speaker 1: counter to what most of our colleagues in academia do, 91 00:05:20,520 --> 00:05:23,120 Speaker 1: who treat email from the public as a nuisance. So 92 00:05:23,279 --> 00:05:27,600 Speaker 1: what motivates you to be so accessible and so responsive? Well, 93 00:05:27,640 --> 00:05:29,800 Speaker 1: first of all, I I don't answer all of it. 94 00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:37,200 Speaker 1: Anything that's within the realm of sanity, moderate seriousness witches 95 00:05:37,240 --> 00:05:41,240 Speaker 1: a lot I try to answer. I just assume that 96 00:05:41,560 --> 00:05:45,360 Speaker 1: people ought to be taken seriously, well wonderful. I hope 97 00:05:45,400 --> 00:05:47,800 Speaker 1: that when aliens arrive and start talking to us, that 98 00:05:47,839 --> 00:05:51,080 Speaker 1: they also take us seriously. So the question we're diving 99 00:05:51,080 --> 00:05:53,839 Speaker 1: into today is first, how do we begin to talk 100 00:05:53,880 --> 00:05:55,800 Speaker 1: to aliens? And then I want to get deeper into 101 00:05:55,800 --> 00:05:58,560 Speaker 1: the question of whether we could actually learn things from them, 102 00:05:58,680 --> 00:06:02,040 Speaker 1: understand their mental model, also the universe. But let's start 103 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:05,000 Speaker 1: with imagining what it might be like as a linguist 104 00:06:05,240 --> 00:06:08,280 Speaker 1: to work on this problem. How do you begin? Say 105 00:06:08,320 --> 00:06:11,159 Speaker 1: you receive a recording from CT and they ask you 106 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:14,760 Speaker 1: if you think a series of pulses from spaces language, 107 00:06:14,760 --> 00:06:18,200 Speaker 1: if it has information? Is it possible to know whether 108 00:06:18,240 --> 00:06:20,880 Speaker 1: there's information in there without being able to decode it 109 00:06:20,960 --> 00:06:25,440 Speaker 1: first and actually translated. If there are any intelligent aliens, 110 00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:30,000 Speaker 1: which is an open question, and if they exist, we 111 00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:32,880 Speaker 1: could ever get in contact with them, which is an 112 00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:37,920 Speaker 1: even more open question, then the question would arise. It's 113 00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:42,680 Speaker 1: a pretty remote question, and the only way to proceed, 114 00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:46,279 Speaker 1: as usual would be to try to find some common ground. 115 00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:50,640 Speaker 1: Begin with that. So what's the likely common ground? Well, 116 00:06:50,680 --> 00:06:57,760 Speaker 1: there's some closable openings. There's an interesting article by Marvin Minsky, 117 00:06:57,839 --> 00:07:01,159 Speaker 1: you want, of the founders of artificial and diligence, maybe 118 00:07:01,320 --> 00:07:06,000 Speaker 1: thirty years ago, when he addressed this problem in an 119 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:09,359 Speaker 1: interesting way. He pointed out that he and one of 120 00:07:09,440 --> 00:07:13,679 Speaker 1: his students had done a thought experiment with the touring 121 00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:20,560 Speaker 1: machines abstract computers and had it's known that you can 122 00:07:20,600 --> 00:07:23,920 Speaker 1: have a universal touring machine, one in which you can 123 00:07:24,080 --> 00:07:28,840 Speaker 1: put a program for any possible algorithm and it will 124 00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:33,200 Speaker 1: implement it, and it can be reduced to a small size. 125 00:07:33,600 --> 00:07:38,320 Speaker 1: I think the smallest is maybe two states and three 126 00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:41,480 Speaker 1: symbols or something like that. So they what they did 127 00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:46,200 Speaker 1: was pick the simplest possible touring machines, the ones with 128 00:07:46,320 --> 00:07:51,600 Speaker 1: the smallest intrinsic characteristic states and symbols, and just let 129 00:07:51,640 --> 00:07:54,560 Speaker 1: them run freely and see what they did. Most of 130 00:07:54,600 --> 00:07:58,960 Speaker 1: them either got into endless loops or crashed, but some 131 00:07:59,120 --> 00:08:04,320 Speaker 1: of them lived and what they produced basically was the 132 00:08:04,400 --> 00:08:13,440 Speaker 1: successor function. So Minski suggested that maybe if an intelligence 133 00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:18,000 Speaker 1: existed somewhere, they would at least have the successor function, 134 00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:23,160 Speaker 1: and that might be a way to establish contact with them, 135 00:08:23,280 --> 00:08:27,720 Speaker 1: says some linguistic interests, because you can show that if 136 00:08:27,800 --> 00:08:33,640 Speaker 1: you take the simplest possible human language, one which has 137 00:08:33,679 --> 00:08:40,160 Speaker 1: only one word in its vocabulary and uses the simplest 138 00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:45,720 Speaker 1: version of the computational principles that are used in human language, 139 00:08:45,920 --> 00:08:48,760 Speaker 1: if you do that, you basically get the successor function. 140 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:54,160 Speaker 1: So maybe there's a point of contact these systems. Also 141 00:08:54,280 --> 00:08:58,240 Speaker 1: with a little bit of tweaking give you arithmetic. So 142 00:08:58,280 --> 00:09:02,240 Speaker 1: maybe that's a broader point of contact. You could established 143 00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:06,080 Speaker 1: that for you could try to spread the range of 144 00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:09,600 Speaker 1: intercommunication beyond. There's a lot of things you can do 145 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:14,800 Speaker 1: with just a arithmetic, coding thoughts and expressions. For example, 146 00:09:15,760 --> 00:09:19,079 Speaker 1: she really get sophisticated about it. You can do girdle number, 147 00:09:19,160 --> 00:09:22,559 Speaker 1: and you get to the assumption there is that they 148 00:09:22,600 --> 00:09:27,640 Speaker 1: may have discovered similar mathematical principles which they would recognize 149 00:09:27,679 --> 00:09:30,160 Speaker 1: if we sort of expressed our version of them, they 150 00:09:30,200 --> 00:09:33,560 Speaker 1: might identify them and then recognize us as intelligent creatures 151 00:09:33,559 --> 00:09:36,480 Speaker 1: worthy of discussion. Well, there's a good chance that at 152 00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:41,040 Speaker 1: least a arithmetic maybe not mathematics, but at least the 153 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:46,120 Speaker 1: arithmetic is universal and absolutely To really get fancy, there 154 00:09:46,120 --> 00:09:50,920 Speaker 1: are models of non standard models of arithmetic that don't 155 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:55,040 Speaker 1: satisfy on those axioms, but we can put that aside. 156 00:09:55,720 --> 00:10:00,040 Speaker 1: Basic arithmetic is very possibly an absolute system, as the 157 00:10:00,120 --> 00:10:03,960 Speaker 1: rest of mathematics is. Import at least the human construction 158 00:10:04,120 --> 00:10:07,520 Speaker 1: can be done in different ways and still be consistent. 159 00:10:08,520 --> 00:10:12,480 Speaker 1: Some of the major results of modern mathematics have been 160 00:10:12,559 --> 00:10:15,199 Speaker 1: to demonstrate then, so it could be that if you 161 00:10:15,280 --> 00:10:19,280 Speaker 1: go off into broader demands, Like said theory, you might 162 00:10:19,360 --> 00:10:22,559 Speaker 1: find other ways of looking at things. Fair gus that 163 00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:26,160 Speaker 1: at least the arithmetic would be close enough to be absolute, 164 00:10:26,240 --> 00:10:29,480 Speaker 1: so that anything we might call intelligence, that we would 165 00:10:29,559 --> 00:10:32,800 Speaker 1: recognize as intelligence would at least hit on that. How 166 00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:36,160 Speaker 1: do we know the difference between what's absolute and what's 167 00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:39,320 Speaker 1: just human thinking? I mean, is it a question of 168 00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:42,679 Speaker 1: definition that these is the class of intelligence that we 169 00:10:42,800 --> 00:10:46,280 Speaker 1: can communicate with, and therefore we define intelligence to be 170 00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:49,960 Speaker 1: people who think with a mathematical basis, Or can we 171 00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:54,000 Speaker 1: actually make some argument that basic mathematics is inherent to 172 00:10:54,080 --> 00:10:57,600 Speaker 1: the universe rather than just a property of our thinking. Well, 173 00:10:57,720 --> 00:11:05,920 Speaker 1: you're reaching into a my debated and rather obscure area 174 00:11:06,360 --> 00:11:12,960 Speaker 1: of foundations of mathematics. That there are viewpoints like Kurt Kirtle, 175 00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:17,160 Speaker 1: for example, who argued, these are just the truths of mathematics, 176 00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:20,440 Speaker 1: or like the truths of physics, they're just part of 177 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:23,000 Speaker 1: the world. You know, nothing to do with us. We 178 00:11:23,080 --> 00:11:27,520 Speaker 1: can grasp them the way we can grasp other phenomena. 179 00:11:27,960 --> 00:11:33,440 Speaker 1: The numbers are there in some ideal platonic world, and 180 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:36,520 Speaker 1: we grasp them the with same way I can see 181 00:11:37,040 --> 00:11:42,319 Speaker 1: the sun in the sky. Just perception. There are others 182 00:11:42,360 --> 00:11:48,080 Speaker 1: who try to argue that these are human creations, the 183 00:11:48,280 --> 00:11:53,160 Speaker 1: characteristic of the mind that we construct these things. I 184 00:11:53,200 --> 00:11:57,800 Speaker 1: don't know of a really solid way of resolving this question. 185 00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:01,440 Speaker 1: There are many sophisticated debate about it. It strikes me 186 00:12:01,480 --> 00:12:04,520 Speaker 1: that in some sense we ask similar questions about the 187 00:12:04,679 --> 00:12:08,920 Speaker 1: nature of biological life, even putting aside aliens and intelligence, 188 00:12:09,040 --> 00:12:11,280 Speaker 1: we wonder what life might look like on other planets. 189 00:12:11,280 --> 00:12:15,440 Speaker 1: To make educated but ignorant guesses based on the diversity 190 00:12:15,559 --> 00:12:17,840 Speaker 1: or the lack of diversity here on Earth, So we 191 00:12:17,920 --> 00:12:21,120 Speaker 1: imagine common structures that are everywhere on Earth might be 192 00:12:21,240 --> 00:12:24,640 Speaker 1: universal to all life. Can we play the same game 193 00:12:25,080 --> 00:12:29,000 Speaker 1: and think about how alien languages might work based on 194 00:12:29,200 --> 00:12:33,040 Speaker 1: the diversity or the universality of elements of language here 195 00:12:33,040 --> 00:12:37,719 Speaker 1: on Earth. Are there common structures to human languages or 196 00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:41,400 Speaker 1: Earth languages that might be universal. You can make some 197 00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:45,840 Speaker 1: speculations based on what we know. What we know is 198 00:12:46,040 --> 00:12:51,600 Speaker 1: not enormous, but there's speaking of human language, there's fairly 199 00:12:51,720 --> 00:12:58,640 Speaker 1: solid evidence that it's an essential species property common to 200 00:12:58,840 --> 00:13:08,240 Speaker 1: human support severe pathology, and without any analog in other 201 00:13:08,600 --> 00:13:13,360 Speaker 1: organic systems. So it seems to be something unique to 202 00:13:13,679 --> 00:13:18,280 Speaker 1: humans and common to humans. No archaeological evidence is not 203 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:25,439 Speaker 1: definitive by any means, but there is substantial archaeological evidence 204 00:13:25,640 --> 00:13:31,880 Speaker 1: that indicates fairly strongly that before Homo sapiens appeared, roughly 205 00:13:32,160 --> 00:13:36,640 Speaker 1: two to three hundred thousand years ago, there's no significant 206 00:13:36,800 --> 00:13:41,000 Speaker 1: sign of symbolic activity, maybe a scratch on a piece 207 00:13:41,040 --> 00:13:45,000 Speaker 1: of wood or something like that. Not long after modern 208 00:13:45,080 --> 00:13:50,400 Speaker 1: humans appear, means in evolutionary time, like maybe tens of 209 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:54,040 Speaker 1: thousands of years, and not long after that you do 210 00:13:54,280 --> 00:13:59,839 Speaker 1: start to get rich symbolical evidence of extensive symbolic act 211 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,560 Speaker 1: of it. Pretty soon you get really remarkable examples like 212 00:14:04,679 --> 00:14:09,680 Speaker 1: the cave drawings and so on. There's genomic evidence now 213 00:14:10,920 --> 00:14:14,800 Speaker 1: that humans began to separate at least a hundred and 214 00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:18,920 Speaker 1: fifty thousand years ago now, and evolutionary time that's not 215 00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:22,920 Speaker 1: long after humans appeared. So putting all this together to 216 00:14:23,120 --> 00:14:30,360 Speaker 1: plausible speculation that along with anatomically modern humans came some 217 00:14:31,440 --> 00:14:37,080 Speaker 1: rewiring of the brain which led to the basis for 218 00:14:37,480 --> 00:14:42,840 Speaker 1: human language, human symbolic activity, human thought, which doesn't exist 219 00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:47,440 Speaker 1: elsewhere and hasn't changed since it emerged, which is a 220 00:14:47,480 --> 00:14:50,480 Speaker 1: short period of time. If that's true, we can then 221 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:55,080 Speaker 1: ask is there something about human language that makes it 222 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:59,560 Speaker 1: possibly maybe as universal as arithmetic might be. So if 223 00:14:59,600 --> 00:15:02,760 Speaker 1: you think about the nature of evolution, what kind of 224 00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:07,120 Speaker 1: a process is evolution? Well, what happens is, first some 225 00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:12,479 Speaker 1: accident takes place. You have a functioning system, maybe bacteria, 226 00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:17,200 Speaker 1: around for millions of years. Then some accident takes place. 227 00:15:17,520 --> 00:15:23,000 Speaker 1: In this case, the accident apparently was one bacterium swallowing 228 00:15:23,080 --> 00:15:30,240 Speaker 1: another microorganism. By accident, Well, that broke structural barriers. Could 229 00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:33,800 Speaker 1: be a mutation, could be gene transposition. There are lots 230 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:37,440 Speaker 1: of possible kinds of accidents that can happen. Could be 231 00:15:37,480 --> 00:15:43,720 Speaker 1: a shower of cosmic race, you know, volcanic eruption. But 232 00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:47,720 Speaker 1: some diseruption took takes place in this case back a 233 00:15:47,720 --> 00:15:51,239 Speaker 1: couple of billion years ago, it was apparently a bacterium 234 00:15:51,280 --> 00:15:55,920 Speaker 1: swallowing another microorganism. Well, then the second stage of evolution 235 00:15:56,120 --> 00:16:00,160 Speaker 1: is nature comes along and it tries to construct the 236 00:16:00,280 --> 00:16:05,600 Speaker 1: simplest way of handling the system that was disrupted. There's 237 00:16:05,640 --> 00:16:10,000 Speaker 1: a standard principle, sometimes called the Galilean principle, that nature 238 00:16:10,160 --> 00:16:14,760 Speaker 1: is simple and it's the responsibility of scientists to prove it. 239 00:16:14,960 --> 00:16:17,960 Speaker 1: Then it is an assumption, but it has been so 240 00:16:18,080 --> 00:16:21,600 Speaker 1: successful that it's not challenged really, so I think we 241 00:16:21,640 --> 00:16:25,200 Speaker 1: can take it to be a plausible assumption. So nature 242 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:29,000 Speaker 1: steps in constructs the simplest answer to how to deal 243 00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:32,840 Speaker 1: with this disruption. Then comes the third stage of evolution, 244 00:16:33,040 --> 00:16:38,000 Speaker 1: which is winnowing basically, of the organisms that survived the 245 00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:43,600 Speaker 1: second stage, which ones are more reproductively successful, and then 246 00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:48,000 Speaker 1: it will turn out those proliferate. That's natural selection. Going 247 00:16:48,040 --> 00:16:51,080 Speaker 1: back to the case of language, what may very well 248 00:16:51,160 --> 00:16:56,360 Speaker 1: have happened is that some disruption took place which lead 249 00:16:56,440 --> 00:17:01,040 Speaker 1: to modern humans. They're different obviously and anyways, and we 250 00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:04,359 Speaker 1: can roughly time it on the order of two to 251 00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:09,680 Speaker 1: three thousand years ago. Then nature came along found the 252 00:17:09,720 --> 00:17:14,520 Speaker 1: simplest way of dealing with it. That's the basis for 253 00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:18,399 Speaker 1: human language and human thought. It was fixed. We have 254 00:17:18,600 --> 00:17:21,879 Speaker 1: some idea of what it might be. We're getting to 255 00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:26,720 Speaker 1: the point where you can begin to explain complex phenomenal 256 00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:31,480 Speaker 1: language on the basis of the assumption that nature picked 257 00:17:31,520 --> 00:17:36,120 Speaker 1: the simplest possible computational system. Then it never changed because 258 00:17:36,760 --> 00:17:41,000 Speaker 1: there everybody's gone it. So that's a possibility if you 259 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:46,399 Speaker 1: count heads among linguists and people who study evolution almost 260 00:17:46,520 --> 00:17:50,520 Speaker 1: nobody accepted. But I think it's very likely correct, and 261 00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:53,719 Speaker 1: I think we're moving towards showing it well. I suppose 262 00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:57,440 Speaker 1: you could. Then we would have reason to believe that 263 00:17:58,160 --> 00:18:03,160 Speaker 1: if the kind of disruption that led to intelligence, life 264 00:18:03,800 --> 00:18:08,480 Speaker 1: ever occurred elsewhere in the universe could very well follow 265 00:18:08,560 --> 00:18:12,160 Speaker 1: the same course. It's essentially you're arguing that our language 266 00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:15,240 Speaker 1: might be some optimal solution to this problem and therefore 267 00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:18,679 Speaker 1: a common point in evolution even on other planets. Um 268 00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:21,840 Speaker 1: there is a thesis as a names called the strong 269 00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:26,639 Speaker 1: minimalist thesis, which sets as an ideal to see if 270 00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:30,840 Speaker 1: you can show the language is the simplest form of 271 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:35,800 Speaker 1: a computational system that will meet an external criterion, And 272 00:18:35,880 --> 00:18:41,440 Speaker 1: the external criterion is that it constitutes thought. Means it 273 00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:47,440 Speaker 1: has to have semantically significant atoms which can combine. Has 274 00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:51,880 Speaker 1: to meet that condition. So the simplest way of conforming 275 00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:57,280 Speaker 1: to pro properties of computational efficiency could be language. Now, 276 00:18:57,320 --> 00:19:01,080 Speaker 1: we're very far from having demonstrated that their steps towards 277 00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:03,639 Speaker 1: Does that mean therefore, that we should be able to 278 00:19:03,720 --> 00:19:07,359 Speaker 1: decode every human language? And is that the case? Aren't 279 00:19:07,359 --> 00:19:10,880 Speaker 1: there examples of human languages that we've had a great 280 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:15,520 Speaker 1: difficulty decoding, for example, Egyptian hieroglyphics. Would we have unraveled 281 00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:19,000 Speaker 1: their mysteries without the Rosetta stone. In the past several 282 00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:26,480 Speaker 1: decades serve been thousands of human languages of every typological 283 00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:32,200 Speaker 1: variety that have been studied in some depth, and when 284 00:19:32,200 --> 00:19:35,720 Speaker 1: you first look at them, they seem very diverse. The 285 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:38,480 Speaker 1: same is true if you look at anything you don't understand, 286 00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:43,800 Speaker 1: it looks wildly diverse. Or if you go back in biology, 287 00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:49,320 Speaker 1: well for their fifty years, it was assumed that organisms 288 00:19:49,359 --> 00:19:53,879 Speaker 1: are so radically diverse that each one has to be 289 00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,560 Speaker 1: studied on its own terms, can't throw any conclusions from 290 00:19:57,600 --> 00:20:01,440 Speaker 1: one to others. But now that's them to be radically false. 291 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:06,399 Speaker 1: It turns out that organisms are sharply restricted in the 292 00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:10,240 Speaker 1: forms that they can too, and the nature of the 293 00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:14,040 Speaker 1: way they're can constituted. It's so extreme that it's even 294 00:20:14,080 --> 00:20:20,160 Speaker 1: been suggested tentatively that there might be a universal genome, 295 00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:26,760 Speaker 1: just basically one organism and then minor variations on it. 296 00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:32,600 Speaker 1: It's not considered an impossible assumption, applausible, though not demonstrated. 297 00:20:32,800 --> 00:20:35,920 Speaker 1: Some well, the same has happened in the case of language. 298 00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:38,199 Speaker 1: You go back to the days when I was a 299 00:20:38,280 --> 00:20:46,200 Speaker 1: student nineteen forties, the virtually universal assumption was languages can 300 00:20:46,320 --> 00:20:50,040 Speaker 1: vary in every possible way, and each one has to 301 00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:52,400 Speaker 1: be studied on its own, and you can't draw any 302 00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:56,520 Speaker 1: conclusions from one about other. Kind of a foundation of 303 00:20:57,880 --> 00:21:04,440 Speaker 1: philosophy of language liquids sticks and and still pretty widely held. 304 00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:08,240 Speaker 1: I think we're moving in the same direction as biology. 305 00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:12,720 Speaker 1: It's as you study would appear to be radically diverse languages, 306 00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:18,000 Speaker 1: seems that it's a deeper level you do find uniformities, 307 00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:23,960 Speaker 1: and it's even becoming increasingly possible to see component of 308 00:21:24,119 --> 00:21:31,720 Speaker 1: language which basically creates thoughts, is close to uniform or 309 00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:35,679 Speaker 1: maybe even uniform on humans. And that the very the 310 00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:41,120 Speaker 1: locus of variation is in the superficial aspect of how 311 00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:44,600 Speaker 1: you externalize it. Like as if you had to take 312 00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:49,040 Speaker 1: an analogy, it's take your laptop computer which as a 313 00:21:49,080 --> 00:21:53,040 Speaker 1: program and another program doesn't care what printer you link 314 00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:56,320 Speaker 1: it up to. Language maybe something like that, there's an 315 00:21:56,320 --> 00:22:01,400 Speaker 1: internal program you can link it to one or another computer. 316 00:22:01,960 --> 00:22:04,200 Speaker 1: In fact, it doesn't even have to be sound, could 317 00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:08,600 Speaker 1: be signed, could even be touched any sufficiently rich sensory 318 00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:12,560 Speaker 1: motor system seems to be available as a means of 319 00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:19,560 Speaker 1: externalizing the internal thought system. This incidentally, is taking up 320 00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:25,560 Speaker 1: on a tradition of about several millennium which lasted into 321 00:22:25,600 --> 00:22:28,800 Speaker 1: the twenty century. There was a sharp break in the 322 00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:35,800 Speaker 1: twentieth century with the rise of behaviorism and the structuralism 323 00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:40,280 Speaker 1: and linguistics, both of which were kind of like operationalism 324 00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:44,320 Speaker 1: and physics. You should just look at the phenomenon the data, 325 00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:51,000 Speaker 1: no complicated theories, that was it. And the conception of 326 00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:55,800 Speaker 1: language changed in the twentieth century. Became viewed as basically 327 00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:59,560 Speaker 1: an instrument of communication, because that's what you can observe. 328 00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:04,240 Speaker 1: I think we're no learning lest the tradition was correct. 329 00:23:05,119 --> 00:23:10,399 Speaker 1: It's basically a form of constituting thought with communication and 330 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:17,240 Speaker 1: ancillary property. Okay, very little of our use of languages communications. 331 00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:21,440 Speaker 1: It's almost all internal what we call thinking. Well, this 332 00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,160 Speaker 1: is super fascinating and I have a lot more questions, 333 00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:39,680 Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back, 334 00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:42,679 Speaker 1: and we're talking to Professor Noam Chomsky about the possibility 335 00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:46,920 Speaker 1: of communicating with aliens, whether we could understand what's going 336 00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,920 Speaker 1: on inside an alien mind and whether we might actually 337 00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:54,320 Speaker 1: eventually be able to steal their physics ideas. So the 338 00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:57,920 Speaker 1: picture you're painting is of language is just a way 339 00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:00,200 Speaker 1: to get a thought from one brain to an other, 340 00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:03,920 Speaker 1: and that there is some sort of internal concept which 341 00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:07,040 Speaker 1: might be much more universal. And the details of whether 342 00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:10,680 Speaker 1: you're sending an email or using social media or using 343 00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:14,359 Speaker 1: semaphore flags don't matter as much as the information that's 344 00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:17,240 Speaker 1: being communicated. But how do we know that that information 345 00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:20,359 Speaker 1: could be universal? And doesn't there have to be some 346 00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,320 Speaker 1: sort of internal representation inside the brain of that information. 347 00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,960 Speaker 1: Doesn't that require some assumption of, you know, a basis 348 00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,639 Speaker 1: set of vectors to define the space of that information. 349 00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:35,159 Speaker 1: How could we ever know whether the aliens or or 350 00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:38,119 Speaker 1: any other species for that matter, I really do share 351 00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:41,639 Speaker 1: that universal sort of internal thought, or whether the differences 352 00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:45,199 Speaker 1: are just in the communication patterns. How could we unravel that? 353 00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,040 Speaker 1: Imagine you met the aliens, how would you go about 354 00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:53,000 Speaker 1: figuring that out? Experimentation start by trying to find common grounds, 355 00:24:53,880 --> 00:25:00,960 Speaker 1: maybe arithmetic, maybe even some aspect of what called universal 356 00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:05,320 Speaker 1: grammar core six properties of language. If you can really 357 00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:09,960 Speaker 1: show that these are the optimal solution to the problem 358 00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:17,240 Speaker 1: of restructuring and organizing a computable function, the cursor function 359 00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,640 Speaker 1: that generates intinto the many things. That's the basis of language. 360 00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:25,280 Speaker 1: So if language is a kind of an optimal solution 361 00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:29,000 Speaker 1: to that, you can explore whether that's shared. At some 362 00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:32,280 Speaker 1: point you may get the points that are not shared, okay, 363 00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:34,639 Speaker 1: and you try to discover what they are. It's not 364 00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:38,479 Speaker 1: fundamentally any different than trying to find out what are 365 00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:45,199 Speaker 1: the elementary particles, what's the chemical composition of water? We 366 00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:49,720 Speaker 1: don't perceive it, you know, it's a foreign universe or us. 367 00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:55,679 Speaker 1: We have found very extensive and successful ways to understand 368 00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,520 Speaker 1: a great deal about these totally alien systems, namely all science. 369 00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:06,359 Speaker 1: I mean, there's a very interesting history of this. I 370 00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:07,919 Speaker 1: don't know if you want to go into it, but 371 00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:13,920 Speaker 1: to go back to the early modern science, Galileo and Newton, Leibnantz, 372 00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:18,400 Speaker 1: you know, Wigan's the great figures who founded modern science. 373 00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:22,160 Speaker 1: Because they had a conception of what the world must be. 374 00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:27,080 Speaker 1: It must be what they called the mechanical universe, the 375 00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,560 Speaker 1: kind of thing that an artisan could construct out of 376 00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:35,119 Speaker 1: years and levers and so on. That was what the 377 00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:39,960 Speaker 1: world must be. That's the basis of modern science. Newton's 378 00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:44,160 Speaker 1: great discovery was to show that there are no machines. 379 00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:50,040 Speaker 1: There's nothing mechanical. Everything has what we're considered to be 380 00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:56,359 Speaker 1: ghostly property's interaction without contact, and repulsion without contact, and 381 00:26:56,440 --> 00:27:01,840 Speaker 1: so on. Newton thought this was completely observed. He wrote 382 00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:06,960 Speaker 1: that no one who has the slightest scientific understanding could 383 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,000 Speaker 1: believe any of this, and in fact, if you look 384 00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:17,040 Speaker 1: at his great work Principia, it's mathematical principles, not physical principles. Course, 385 00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:21,639 Speaker 1: Newton felt along with his contemporaries, that he had not 386 00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:29,119 Speaker 1: found a physical basis for motion interaction, and so he 387 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,119 Speaker 1: only had a mathematical theory of it. For the rest 388 00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:36,680 Speaker 1: of his life he tried to find some mechanical formulation 389 00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:41,000 Speaker 1: of this, of course, in vain. In later years, a 390 00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:45,960 Speaker 1: major change took place in the pursuit of science. Scientists 391 00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:51,080 Speaker 1: gave up the hope of finding an intelligible universe. All 392 00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:55,920 Speaker 1: they wanted was intelligible theories of the universe. Newton's theories 393 00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:02,480 Speaker 1: where intelligible. Leibniz could understand Newton's theories like Newton live, 394 00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:07,320 Speaker 1: that's considered them observed. Basically, the goals of science were lowered. 395 00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,760 Speaker 1: Let's just try to find theories that are intelligible and 396 00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:16,199 Speaker 1: explain things, even if the universe that it provides is 397 00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:20,760 Speaker 1: unintelligible to us, because it doesn't matter what's intelligible though. 398 00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:25,399 Speaker 1: That's a fact about our cognitive systems. So any child 399 00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:30,000 Speaker 1: will assume that the world is mechanical, Like when you 400 00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:34,359 Speaker 1: do experiments with young children and you have see two 401 00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:39,320 Speaker 1: lines that move in common, a child will automatically assume 402 00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,760 Speaker 1: there's an invisible bar connecting them. Let's just have to 403 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:48,320 Speaker 1: have a mechanical universe. Well you don't. Unfortunately, it's not 404 00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:53,760 Speaker 1: a mechanical universe. So that's a case where cognitive capacities 405 00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:56,920 Speaker 1: just don't happen to inform to the nature of the universe. 406 00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:01,479 Speaker 1: So we have to proceed in other ways, like trying 407 00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:06,520 Speaker 1: to find intelligible theories that will explain things. And I 408 00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:08,560 Speaker 1: think it's the same growth as we deal with an 409 00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:12,160 Speaker 1: alien might be that they have a form of intelligence 410 00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:17,040 Speaker 1: that is inaccessible to us. It's fine. If so, we'll 411 00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:21,520 Speaker 1: try to discover explanatory theories which account for their form 412 00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:25,760 Speaker 1: of intelligence, maybe account for theirs and theirs A super 413 00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:29,760 Speaker 1: theory will show what kinds of intelligence there might be. 414 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:32,959 Speaker 1: It's such a far off dream that you can barely 415 00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,240 Speaker 1: speculate about it. But I think that's the way, were 416 00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,720 Speaker 1: the only way I can imagine. We just to proceed, 417 00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:42,880 Speaker 1: in fact, using our own experience, with our own history 418 00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,280 Speaker 1: of science. It strikes me that you draw such a 419 00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:49,840 Speaker 1: sharp line between humans and every other species on the planet. 420 00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:52,200 Speaker 1: If I've understood correctly, you arguing that humans are the 421 00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:54,880 Speaker 1: only intelligent species on the planet and the only ones 422 00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:58,400 Speaker 1: with its capacity for symbolic thought and expression. What about 423 00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:01,600 Speaker 1: other species like dolphins, or whales or pigs, which are 424 00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:05,680 Speaker 1: known to be intelligent and have some examples of communication. 425 00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:11,120 Speaker 1: Can we exercise these principles on dolphins? Every organism ass communication, 426 00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:16,200 Speaker 1: Trees communicate, so communication is kind of the universal and 427 00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,640 Speaker 1: if you think that language is just an instrument of communication. 428 00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:30,600 Speaker 1: The modern behavior structuralist approach, which essentially rejects the conception 429 00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:35,840 Speaker 1: of inner structure, which is radically anti scientific. In my view, 430 00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:39,760 Speaker 1: all of science is talking about inner structures, not just 431 00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:46,320 Speaker 1: arrangement and organization of data. But structuralism and behaviorism as 432 00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:50,920 Speaker 1: chewed the search for inner structures not allowed to do that. 433 00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:53,920 Speaker 1: You can only look at the data and the organization 434 00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,960 Speaker 1: of the well that's a sure way of guaranteeing you'll 435 00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:01,840 Speaker 1: never find anything, And exactly pretty much that's what's happened. Well, 436 00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:07,600 Speaker 1: I think we've extricated ourselves from that period of human thought, 437 00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:09,920 Speaker 1: at least we should have, and we're now back to 438 00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:16,320 Speaker 1: what great physicists Jean Baptiste and his Nobel laure ed 439 00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:23,400 Speaker 1: address described the essential nature of science as finding the 440 00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:29,680 Speaker 1: hidden invisibles that makes sense of the complex visibles. I 441 00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:33,800 Speaker 1: think every scientist knows that behaviorism was a sharp departure 442 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,960 Speaker 1: from it, but it's a pathology which I think has 443 00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:43,520 Speaker 1: to be overcome. When we overcome it, we see the communication. Though. 444 00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:48,640 Speaker 1: It's what we observe is the complex visibles. It's not 445 00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:53,160 Speaker 1: the hidden invisibles. The hidden invisibles turn out to be. 446 00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:58,320 Speaker 1: I think pretty much what the tradition assumed the construction 447 00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:02,560 Speaker 1: of thought. Now, what about in religience? That's too loose 448 00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:06,880 Speaker 1: a concept. So I happen to live in Arizona, not 449 00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:10,680 Speaker 1: far from the desert out in my backyard. There are 450 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:16,240 Speaker 1: desert ants that have cognitive capacities that humans can't begin 451 00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:21,560 Speaker 1: to approach. I mean, they can navigate in ways which 452 00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:25,280 Speaker 1: are impossible for humans, knowing figuring out from where the 453 00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:29,320 Speaker 1: sun is, whether they're in the northern or southern hemisphere. 454 00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:35,040 Speaker 1: Using solar evidence solar asimus to carry out what's called 455 00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:39,320 Speaker 1: dead breckoning, you can wander around the desert and finally 456 00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:42,480 Speaker 1: something to eat when you go on a straight line 457 00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:45,240 Speaker 1: back to the Humans can't do that. We can do it. 458 00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:49,800 Speaker 1: We need complex technical instruments to be able to duplicate that. 459 00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:55,560 Speaker 1: Sailors on the ocean have to have complex instrumentation to 460 00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:58,320 Speaker 1: head back to port. They can't just do it the 461 00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:01,600 Speaker 1: way in AUNT. So are they more intelligent than we are? 462 00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:06,120 Speaker 1: Open some dimensions? Point is intelligence at least if it 463 00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:10,680 Speaker 1: means things like ability to solve problems as many dimensions. 464 00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:14,440 Speaker 1: Humans are very good at some of them, awful at others. 465 00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:16,840 Speaker 1: Other organs and them is different when you get the 466 00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:22,600 Speaker 1: whales and dolphins. They have big brains, big even relative 467 00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:28,160 Speaker 1: to bodies. It's complex pains. They do communicate over long 468 00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:33,720 Speaker 1: distances in the ocean for them, and they have complex behavior. 469 00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:39,080 Speaker 1: They cooperate, they've worked together as I've watched dolphins. I 470 00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:41,920 Speaker 1: used to sail when I was younger. You could sail 471 00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:45,960 Speaker 1: through areas where they were dolphins and you could see them. 472 00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:49,960 Speaker 1: If they caught a bunch of fish, they'd start circling 473 00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,000 Speaker 1: around the area the fish, driving them into a smaller 474 00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,280 Speaker 1: area and finally eating them all up. All right, that's 475 00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:02,360 Speaker 1: complex cooperative behavior. You woman's couldn't do it that easily. 476 00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:06,640 Speaker 1: We'd have to have a more complicated way of doing it. Well, 477 00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:12,080 Speaker 1: do they have anything like human language? The kind of 478 00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:15,000 Speaker 1: stranger if they did, but there's no evidence for it. 479 00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:23,040 Speaker 1: They have their capacities accommodating to their ecosystem. We have ers. 480 00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:29,840 Speaker 1: Something peculiar happened in the history of life on Earth. 481 00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:35,960 Speaker 1: Couple hundred thousand years ago, a very strange organism emerged accidentally. 482 00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,680 Speaker 1: You look at the history of the long evolution of humans, 483 00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:43,719 Speaker 1: it's a long series of accidents, and started with them, 484 00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:50,080 Speaker 1: as I said, the formation of complex sells back billions 485 00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:53,920 Speaker 1: of years ago. Then many other accidents, one of them 486 00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:57,520 Speaker 1: sixty five million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth, 487 00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:02,760 Speaker 1: wiped out about eight percententive species and at the age 488 00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:07,040 Speaker 1: of the dinosaurs that we're some small mammals around but 489 00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:12,600 Speaker 1: managed to survive. Okay, that's us pure accident. A million 490 00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:17,200 Speaker 1: other accidents along the way, and this series of accidents 491 00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:22,720 Speaker 1: ended up at a point where one last accident seems 492 00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:28,160 Speaker 1: to have provided a computational procedure or a human language 493 00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:33,759 Speaker 1: which is not found elsewhere in the organic world, and 494 00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:37,480 Speaker 1: then seems that nature just found the simplest way to 495 00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:41,480 Speaker 1: deal with it. Maybe that's what happened, We don't know, 496 00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:43,719 Speaker 1: but that's what it begins to look like. If so, 497 00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,120 Speaker 1: it's very unlikely that we're going to find anything like 498 00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:51,399 Speaker 1: human language in dolphins or whales. In fact, take our 499 00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:57,480 Speaker 1: closest relatives, chimpanzees. There have been extensive efforts, totally pointless 500 00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:01,239 Speaker 1: in my opinion, but very extensive effort to see if 501 00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:06,000 Speaker 1: you could, with massive training from infancy, see if you 502 00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:12,040 Speaker 1: could elicit any language like behavior from a chimpanzee or 503 00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:16,239 Speaker 1: total failures. A lot of my students were involved in this, 504 00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,440 Speaker 1: and very good psychologists. My own feeling is that it's 505 00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:24,319 Speaker 1: about us ridiculous as trying to teach humans to do 506 00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:29,200 Speaker 1: the waggle dance of bees. I mean, you could probably 507 00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,200 Speaker 1: train graduate students to do something that look kind of 508 00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:36,040 Speaker 1: like the waggle dance, but totally pointless endeavor. They're not 509 00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:39,759 Speaker 1: doing it the same way. It's a different organisms functioning 510 00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:43,480 Speaker 1: differently we're not at the peak of intelligence. There's no 511 00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:47,239 Speaker 1: great chain of being, you know, starting with bacteria ending 512 00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:51,200 Speaker 1: up with us. That's a long abandoned idea. There's many 513 00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:55,920 Speaker 1: different branches. Organisms do in many different ways, and they 514 00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:59,280 Speaker 1: have their own forms of what we might call intelligence. 515 00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,480 Speaker 1: We have or desert ants of theirs, dolphins of theirs. 516 00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:07,720 Speaker 1: It would be absolutely a biological miracle if we found 517 00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:12,880 Speaker 1: that chimpanzees could acquire a language. It would be like 518 00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:18,920 Speaker 1: saying that chimpanzees have this amazing ability with enormous survival value, 519 00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:22,760 Speaker 1: but they never thought of human using it until humans 520 00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,280 Speaker 1: came around. This is if someone were to come along 521 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:29,759 Speaker 1: and show humans how you can fly. You can get 522 00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:33,719 Speaker 1: away from that lion that's chasing you, Why don't just fly? 523 00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:36,560 Speaker 1: And humans said, oh, I never thought of that, and 524 00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:38,719 Speaker 1: you go like that and you started flying. That's not 525 00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,520 Speaker 1: going to happen. That's not the way biology works. If 526 00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:45,800 Speaker 1: there's a capacity that's of survival value, you're going to 527 00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:48,719 Speaker 1: use it. So the message I'm getting is that you 528 00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,400 Speaker 1: don't consider there to be sufficient intelligence in other creatures 529 00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:54,680 Speaker 1: on the Earth to develop the kind of symbolic language 530 00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:57,040 Speaker 1: that we could decode. So it's not a fair proxy 531 00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:01,279 Speaker 1: for the question of could we understand and alien intelligence? Okay, well, 532 00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:03,360 Speaker 1: I have a lot more I want to ask you about, 533 00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:18,719 Speaker 1: but first let's take another break. Okay, we're back and 534 00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:22,080 Speaker 1: we're discussing with esteem Professor Chomsky. It's a possibility of 535 00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,400 Speaker 1: communicating with aliens and whether or not anybody in the 536 00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:29,680 Speaker 1: scientific community takes this prospect seriously. You mentioned something earlier, 537 00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,640 Speaker 1: you said that the possibility of trying to decode an 538 00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:36,200 Speaker 1: alien language is a remote possibility, and I'm wondering if 539 00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:40,400 Speaker 1: it's something that linguists as a field are excited about 540 00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,600 Speaker 1: or think about. You know, biologists, If you told a 541 00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,840 Speaker 1: biologist I have a sample of life from another planet, 542 00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,360 Speaker 1: they would be very excited. They would dive in immediately, 543 00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,720 Speaker 1: they would be salivating at the opportunity. Are linguists excited 544 00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:54,600 Speaker 1: about this as well? Or is this something that just 545 00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,560 Speaker 1: is so remote that nobody really takes seriously. Some linguists 546 00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:01,880 Speaker 1: are interested in it. Actually, I'm one of the very few. 547 00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:06,120 Speaker 1: We I'm a co author of a couple of articles 548 00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:10,120 Speaker 1: and what's called xeno linguistics. What could you do if 549 00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:14,960 Speaker 1: you found an alien intelligence? And what we suggested is 550 00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,799 Speaker 1: something along the ones of what it discussed. I don't 551 00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:20,799 Speaker 1: think it's a topic that interests many linguists because there's 552 00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:22,840 Speaker 1: nothing to say about it. First of all, we have 553 00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:28,400 Speaker 1: no idea whether an intelligence of anything we'd call intelligence 554 00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:33,360 Speaker 1: even exists. You're familiar, I'm sure with Fermi's paradox. Where 555 00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:36,600 Speaker 1: are they? You know? I mean, from a point of 556 00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:41,920 Speaker 1: view an astrophysicist, Fermi could show that there's huge numbers 557 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:47,960 Speaker 1: of planets which have conditions for life pretty much like ours. 558 00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,360 Speaker 1: So there ought to be lots of life. It should 559 00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:55,759 Speaker 1: have evolved into higher intelligence. We've made massive efforts to 560 00:39:56,680 --> 00:40:03,399 Speaker 1: investigated searching for any signal of intelligent life. So far 561 00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:09,600 Speaker 1: total zero nothing. So where are they? Well, one possibility 562 00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,080 Speaker 1: is they're just not there, that the series of accidents 563 00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:17,440 Speaker 1: that led to humans was so totally improbable that just 564 00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:22,560 Speaker 1: wasn't duplicated. In fact, is even I'm not confident to 565 00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:28,680 Speaker 1: judge their accuracy, But there are studies published in serious 566 00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:33,600 Speaker 1: pere reviewed biological journals arguing that even the complexity of 567 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:39,120 Speaker 1: RNA is so improbable that it's very unlikely to have 568 00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:43,280 Speaker 1: found in any accessible part of the universe. Of course, 569 00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,440 Speaker 1: lots of the universe just isn't accessible, but the parts 570 00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:52,600 Speaker 1: that we can conceivably have contact with, or maybe that's true. 571 00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:56,840 Speaker 1: If so, there won't be any the answer to Family's paradoxes. 572 00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:01,160 Speaker 1: There aren't any. There are other possible answers. Actually we're 573 00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:05,839 Speaker 1: in the process of giving an answer. There's several aspects 574 00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:11,680 Speaker 1: to intelligence. One is the capacity to destroy. Human intelligence 575 00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:16,960 Speaker 1: has discovered the capacity developed the capacity to destroy everything. 576 00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:21,960 Speaker 1: The domesday clock of the atomic scientists measures that every 577 00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:27,360 Speaker 1: year now has the human species developed the moral capacity 578 00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:32,440 Speaker 1: to constrain its ability to do everything? Well, so far 579 00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,720 Speaker 1: the evidence on that is not very strong. Maybe it doesn't, 580 00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:40,480 Speaker 1: and it may turn out that one aspect of intelligence 581 00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:45,560 Speaker 1: is that the capacity to destroy simply exceeds the capacity 582 00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,759 Speaker 1: to constrain it. If so, there might have been any 583 00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:52,920 Speaker 1: number of human civilizations and they all destroyed themselves because 584 00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:56,319 Speaker 1: just natural law, that's the way it works. Could be 585 00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,920 Speaker 1: another answer to Fermi's parados. But the fact of them 586 00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,279 Speaker 1: utter is they're just not there, or at least we 587 00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:06,480 Speaker 1: can't find them. So given that it's doesn't attract a 588 00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:08,759 Speaker 1: great deal of interest to look into how to deal 589 00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:12,080 Speaker 1: with it, except just kind of thing we're talking about 590 00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,640 Speaker 1: amusing puzzle to think about, how could you proceed to say, 591 00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:18,680 Speaker 1: in my own opinion, and we proceed very much in 592 00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:22,360 Speaker 1: the way that humans proceeded with human science, which is 593 00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:27,400 Speaker 1: an alien world. The universe is an alien world, totally alien. 594 00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:30,279 Speaker 1: We have no grasp with it, but nevertheless we've been 595 00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,200 Speaker 1: able to learn a lot about it. Well. I think 596 00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:34,239 Speaker 1: it's a very intriguing question because it goes to the 597 00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:38,000 Speaker 1: heart of lots of fascinating topics about whether what we've 598 00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,040 Speaker 1: learned is universal. And of course we won't know anything 599 00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,680 Speaker 1: until we actually meet aliens, if that ever happened. But 600 00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:46,520 Speaker 1: you know, as a scientist, I see the depiction of 601 00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:49,359 Speaker 1: my field of science in popular literature all the time, 602 00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:52,680 Speaker 1: and sometimes it's very accurate and sometimes it's cringe inducing. 603 00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:56,640 Speaker 1: There are lots of fictional descriptions of how linguists might 604 00:42:56,760 --> 00:43:01,080 Speaker 1: communicate with alien intelligence. I wonder what your thoughts are 605 00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:06,000 Speaker 1: on various fictional depictions. Are there a particular fictional depiction 606 00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:09,880 Speaker 1: of linguist decoding alien language that you find plausible or 607 00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,640 Speaker 1: at least amusing. The only thing that I think is 608 00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:18,560 Speaker 1: clausible is what I just destroyed. It's like the problem 609 00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:24,840 Speaker 1: of finding out the inner nature of organic compound. We 610 00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,680 Speaker 1: don't have any intuition about that. It is what it is. 611 00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:34,600 Speaker 1: There was a period of human science, a flourishing, active, 612 00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:41,440 Speaker 1: vigorous period created modern science basically got Leo to Newton 613 00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:45,759 Speaker 1: in which there was such a picture. Turned out there 614 00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,240 Speaker 1: isn't any such picture, so we give up on that hope. 615 00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:54,680 Speaker 1: We now study everything from the outside, including our own 616 00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:58,920 Speaker 1: intelligence or intuitive belief of what it all will be. 617 00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:03,040 Speaker 1: Is an interesting comment about our cognitive nature, but it 618 00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:05,759 Speaker 1: tells us nothing about what we're studying. That was a 619 00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:09,120 Speaker 1: lesson of new Tony in physics, and I think, well, 620 00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:11,480 Speaker 1: I think the deep question that I'm curious about here 621 00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:16,480 Speaker 1: is whether the invisible truths that we're revealing, as you say, 622 00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:19,160 Speaker 1: we use the visible evidence to try to decode with 623 00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:22,200 Speaker 1: the invisible truths about the universe, are whether those really 624 00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:24,920 Speaker 1: are universal? And the way you're describing and it sounds 625 00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:29,000 Speaker 1: to me like you use the universe as fundamentally ununderstandable. 626 00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:33,160 Speaker 1: We are putting together sort of mathematical stories that we 627 00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:36,279 Speaker 1: tell ourselves as humans to make sense of it. But 628 00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:39,520 Speaker 1: doesn't that mean that it's very likely that, for example, 629 00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,960 Speaker 1: alien scientists are coming up with completely different stories that 630 00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,840 Speaker 1: makes sense to them, you know, even the human stories 631 00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:49,279 Speaker 1: have varied over the last few hundred years, or our 632 00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:52,080 Speaker 1: understanding for what might be going on inside. So is 633 00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,680 Speaker 1: there a chance if we ever met aliens that we 634 00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:57,520 Speaker 1: could talk science with them, that we shared some sort 635 00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:02,279 Speaker 1: of fundamental mental constructs about what's going on inside the universe? Well, 636 00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:05,640 Speaker 1: I can only repeat the only way we could find 637 00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:10,879 Speaker 1: out is by starting with common ground. No other way. 638 00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:16,840 Speaker 1: Common grounds might be arithmetic. Maybe it could be something 639 00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:24,319 Speaker 1: like the universals of human cognition, human language. Maybe if 640 00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:29,400 Speaker 1: it's a fact that that's the optimal way for nature 641 00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:34,279 Speaker 1: to construct any system of infinite generative capacity, then it's 642 00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:38,520 Speaker 1: likely that it will be universal in all forms of intelligence. 643 00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:41,359 Speaker 1: It's about as far as we can go after that. 644 00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:48,720 Speaker 1: It's just asking forgetting aliens. What might we discover about 645 00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:54,160 Speaker 1: the nature of elementary particles? Who knows? You know, discover 646 00:45:54,239 --> 00:45:59,280 Speaker 1: it when you discover it. Well, episode of sociological questioning 647 00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:03,319 Speaker 1: for you, which is, if aliens made themselves known and 648 00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:07,400 Speaker 1: arrived on Earth and were curious and peaceful and wanted 649 00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:11,520 Speaker 1: to communicate with death, you think that linguists and scientists 650 00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,239 Speaker 1: would be allowed contact. You think that the society and 651 00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:18,600 Speaker 1: politicians would allow sort of unfettered scientific communication with extra 652 00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:21,680 Speaker 1: refuels forward to know what humans will do. Take a 653 00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:24,640 Speaker 1: look at the United States, with the country we know best. 654 00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:30,560 Speaker 1: There's a couple of dozen states where the state legislatures 655 00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:37,400 Speaker 1: are passing laws. Let's say that parents can sue teachers 656 00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:41,959 Speaker 1: if they teach things that parents don't like. Okay, that's 657 00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:45,360 Speaker 1: the kind of creature we are installing. As Russia, you 658 00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:48,480 Speaker 1: could be sent to the gulag for it in states. 659 00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:51,760 Speaker 1: In the United States, you can be suited by parents 660 00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:58,200 Speaker 1: for it. Will going back to your question, will politicians 661 00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:04,280 Speaker 1: allow scientific communication? Many of them don't evelow human communication. 662 00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:07,440 Speaker 1: We speaking of communications, there is some history. We have 663 00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,759 Speaker 1: sent some messages out into space. There's you know, encodings 664 00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:14,080 Speaker 1: on the voyager. There's a message we've sent from aris Ebo. 665 00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:18,000 Speaker 1: Looking back on those messages, which we're designed with some 666 00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,319 Speaker 1: attempt to be founded in mathematics, do you think that 667 00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:25,160 Speaker 1: it's possible for alien intelligence to decode those you look, 668 00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:27,960 Speaker 1: you find those to be well constructed in general, or 669 00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:30,160 Speaker 1: do you think that they're sort just reflective of the 670 00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,000 Speaker 1: thinking at the moment. Well, we have to begin with 671 00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:39,120 Speaker 1: things like simple arithmetical truth. If you have two things 672 00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:43,640 Speaker 1: over here, three things over there, do you have five 673 00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,440 Speaker 1: things altogether? If you can get that for we can 674 00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,279 Speaker 1: go on from there. So it seems to me that 675 00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,399 Speaker 1: to summarize what I think is your view is that 676 00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,840 Speaker 1: it's likely that mathematics is at the core of all 677 00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:58,360 Speaker 1: intelligence and language. From that we might be able to 678 00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:01,920 Speaker 1: build up some grammar based on the most basic operations. 679 00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:07,480 Speaker 1: That fair summary. It's a fair summary tempted by platonism, 680 00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:11,600 Speaker 1: the idea that numbers are real, they're just there. We 681 00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:16,239 Speaker 1: discover them, we don't create them, contentious idea. It's not 682 00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:19,720 Speaker 1: very clear what it means, but something on that order 683 00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:23,360 Speaker 1: seems at least plausible. If so, they're going to be 684 00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,960 Speaker 1: there for every form of intelligence as far as language 685 00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:30,880 Speaker 1: and thought are concerned. That depends on the answer to 686 00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:39,880 Speaker 1: an open and significant scientific question. Is human language the 687 00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:49,040 Speaker 1: optimal solution for meeting the minimal external condition of expressing food, 688 00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:55,840 Speaker 1: having ways to express thought, agents, actions, events, and so on. 689 00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:59,919 Speaker 1: I think there's this work pointing in that direction. They're 690 00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:05,840 Speaker 1: steps towards the conclusion. It's a minority opinion. Most languists 691 00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:08,080 Speaker 1: don't pay any attention to this, but and those who 692 00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:11,480 Speaker 1: don't doesn't make any sense. But I think there is 693 00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:16,400 Speaker 1: a work tending strongly in that direction. If it turns 694 00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:21,240 Speaker 1: out to be true, well then we have another way 695 00:49:21,360 --> 00:49:25,960 Speaker 1: to deal with an intelligence if it is really optimal, 696 00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:30,439 Speaker 1: basically as a natural law should show up everywhere where 697 00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:37,319 Speaker 1: nature operates. Okay, that's a possible, whige possible based on 698 00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:39,960 Speaker 1: a lot of empirical assumptions. Well, let me ask you 699 00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:42,560 Speaker 1: a silly question then to end, which is all human 700 00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:45,719 Speaker 1: culture and all human languages seem to have a uniform 701 00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:48,160 Speaker 1: concept of what is a joke? You think that it's 702 00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,360 Speaker 1: likely the hact aliens. If they're intelligent and communicate in 703 00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:53,400 Speaker 1: some way that's intelligible to us, we'll be able to 704 00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:56,280 Speaker 1: make jokes. We'll get our jokes that we could understand 705 00:49:56,440 --> 00:50:00,760 Speaker 1: alien humor. Actually, I just read an interesting book about 706 00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:06,840 Speaker 1: that about humans. It's social history to study of early 707 00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:12,279 Speaker 1: modern conceptions, behavior, and so on, including what we're jokes. 708 00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,040 Speaker 1: So it turns out that one of the great jokes 709 00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:19,920 Speaker 1: in uh, I guess the eighteenth century was massacreing cats. 710 00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:23,320 Speaker 1: The book is called The Great Cat Massacre. It's a 711 00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:27,120 Speaker 1: very interesting book. That's a study of the ways in 712 00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:31,680 Speaker 1: which people looked at things. It's not mostly about cuts, 713 00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:34,560 Speaker 1: just one example, the way they looked at things, and 714 00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:39,880 Speaker 1: the early modern period not that far from us eighteenth century, 715 00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,920 Speaker 1: and a lot of things that look like jokes. Jokes 716 00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:49,240 Speaker 1: does all right? Well, I'm I hope when the aliens 717 00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:52,200 Speaker 1: arrived they leave our cats alone. Thanks very much, Really 718 00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:55,040 Speaker 1: appreciate your humoring me for these silly but I think 719 00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:58,200 Speaker 1: are fascinating questions that probe not just the needs of 720 00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:00,080 Speaker 1: our language, but the nature of our thoughts and to 721 00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:02,560 Speaker 1: be the nature of our understanding of the universe. So 722 00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:05,640 Speaker 1: thanks again very much for coming on the podcast. Well, 723 00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:08,160 Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us for this conversation 724 00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:11,440 Speaker 1: with Professor Chomsky. His reactions gave me a lot to 725 00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:14,480 Speaker 1: think about, especially on the topic of whether or not 726 00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:17,560 Speaker 1: some of the ideas the stories we tell about elementary 727 00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:23,040 Speaker 1: particles are fundamentally true, universal to alien physicists as well, 728 00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:26,719 Speaker 1: or just sort of mathematical stories that we tell ourselves 729 00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:31,280 Speaker 1: in our ongoing effort to understand is crazy bonkers universe 730 00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:34,040 Speaker 1: that's out there. To me, one of the deepest ways 731 00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:36,040 Speaker 1: to get a handle on this mystery will be to 732 00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:39,360 Speaker 1: talk to aliens physicists about it if it ever happens, 733 00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:41,719 Speaker 1: because they might reveal that the way we are looking 734 00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:44,640 Speaker 1: at the universe is very human centric, that we have 735 00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:47,120 Speaker 1: missed something obvious because we don't have one of the 736 00:51:47,160 --> 00:51:49,480 Speaker 1: senses that they have, where we have not developed a 737 00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:53,479 Speaker 1: branch of mathematics, or maybe even mathematics is holding us back, 738 00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:55,520 Speaker 1: but we won't know until we have a chance to 739 00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:58,440 Speaker 1: interview one of them on the podcast. So thanks very 740 00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:08,400 Speaker 1: much for joining us to an in next time. Thanks 741 00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:11,000 Speaker 1: for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The 742 00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:14,200 Speaker 1: Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. Or more 743 00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:17,640 Speaker 1: podcast from my heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, 744 00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:21,400 Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.