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Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Hey, Robert, what are we talking about today? Oh? Well,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about thought experiments, the things that make some

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Speaker 1: people really mad and make other people talk for way

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Speaker 1: too long into time. Well, the thought experiments can have

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Speaker 1: both effects on an individual at the same time. That's

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Speaker 1: the beauty of a thought experiment. I think. So now,

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Speaker 1: we've discussed individual thought experiments on the show many times before,

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Speaker 1: but I think today we're gonna try to look at

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Speaker 1: the idea of a thought experiment on the show. In

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Speaker 1: the past, we've talked about specific thought experiments. We've talked

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Speaker 1: about Stranger's Cat, We've talked about the Infinity Hotel, the

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Speaker 1: Ship of Theseus. Other times it comes up kind of informally.

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Speaker 1: We might say that a particular paper we're talking about

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Speaker 1: is more kin to a thought experiment. And I know

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Speaker 1: that I've I've talked before about how I think of

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Speaker 1: certain short stories as being more thought experiments than you know,

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Speaker 1: true narratives. I think of Library of Babbel, Library of

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Speaker 1: Babble other works of a lot of the short stories

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Speaker 1: of Jor Haluis Borges, as well as a number of

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Speaker 1: the short stories of Philip K. Dick. They're a number

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Speaker 1: of those where you know, it's not really important who's

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Speaker 1: doing what exactly. You know you're not you're not really

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Speaker 1: invested in a story per se, but the story is

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Speaker 1: there to make you think, to turn some sort of

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Speaker 1: weird idea on its head, the concept driven more than

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Speaker 1: character driven exactly. Now, I have to say that one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite comical treatments of thought experiments is the

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Speaker 1: humorous essay Shreddnger's Cat by Steve Martin, collected in his

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Speaker 1: book Pure Drivel. And there's a wonderful audio book of

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Speaker 1: this as well, because Steve Martin himself is reading it.

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Speaker 1: Always great when you can get one read by the author. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: Martin begins this particular essay by presenting the Streusenger's Cat

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Speaker 1: thought experiment just pretty much as it is, and from

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Speaker 1: there he proceeds through an increasingly ridiculous mix of thought

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Speaker 1: experiments that he's made up in self, such as uh

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Speaker 1: vitkin Stein's banana, Elvis's charcoal briquette, Chef boy r ds

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Speaker 1: bungee cord, soakagaway is rain bonnet, Apollo's non apple, non strutal,

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Speaker 1: Jim Dandy's bucket of goo, and the Finnman dilemma. Since

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Speaker 1: it's one of the shorter ones, I'd like to read

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Speaker 1: Steve Martin's description of the thought experiment. Elvis's charcoal briquette.

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Speaker 1: A barbecue is cooking wieners in an air tight space.

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Speaker 1: As the charcoal consumes the oxygen, the integrity of the

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Speaker 1: briquette is weakened. An observer riding a roller coaster will

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Speaker 1: become hungry for wieners, but will be thrown from the

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Speaker 1: car when he stands up and cries, Elvis, get me

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Speaker 1: a hot dog. Yeah, that's got the right mouth field.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's absurd, it's ridiculous and uh, but

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Speaker 1: it's effective as comedy because it does have that feel

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Speaker 1: of a thought of experiment. And and many of them

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Speaker 1: are exactly this sort of absurd little logic problem a

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Speaker 1: more physical scenario, but it's utilized not for laughs but

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Speaker 1: to explore some sort of generally a complex topic. I

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Speaker 1: thought this was going to be the seven thought experiments

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Speaker 1: You can't say on TV that it does make me

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Speaker 1: wonder what the most risk a thought experiments are. Oh,

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Speaker 1: there are actually quite a few. Yeah all right, well

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Speaker 1: let's we'll save that for the midnight show. So let's

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Speaker 1: let's talk about thought experiments just definition wise, Like, what

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Speaker 1: is the thought experiment? Well, guess, first, you could consult

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Speaker 1: the idea of an experiment. An experiment is basically a test,

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Speaker 1: like you have a condition and you you instantiate the

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Speaker 1: condition and you see what happens. Yeah. But on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, it's worth pointing out that to merely think

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Speaker 1: about an experiment is not a thought experiment. So if

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Speaker 1: you if you say, for instance, think about the nine

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Speaker 1: social psychology Stanford prison experiment, that's not a thought experiment.

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Speaker 1: Um why not? Well, because you are You're thinking about

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Speaker 1: an actual experiment that has been carried out. I mean

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Speaker 1: this is kind of obvious, right, but but still it

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Speaker 1: it it's worth going through. Now if you if you

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Speaker 1: think about an experiment you might conduct, say to see

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Speaker 1: if movie goers who eat twizzlers are more likely to

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Speaker 1: do to enjoy sci fi films and those who eat

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Speaker 1: red vines. Well, that's not a thought experiment either. That's

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Speaker 1: something you could conceivably do. That's like imagining an experiment

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Speaker 1: you could carry out, but thinking about the experiment doesn't

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Speaker 1: really reveal anything right now. Very often the experiment in

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Speaker 1: a thought experiment is exactly not the sort of thing

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Speaker 1: that could be carried out in real life for a

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Speaker 1: number of reasons. Maybe it's catastrophically dangerous or in or involves,

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Speaker 1: you know, in encountering some feature of the universe that

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Speaker 1: is not readily it's accessible, that sort of thing. Very

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Speaker 1: often thought experiments, as they apply to science, involved the

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Speaker 1: the removal of things that you couldn't actually remove as variables,

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Speaker 1: so like imagine a frictionless plane, or involve something that

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Speaker 1: just simply does not exist, like a train go near

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Speaker 1: the speed of light. We do not do not have

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Speaker 1: such a thing. We're probably not gonna have such a

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Speaker 1: thing anytime soon, but it's useful in the thought experiment.

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Speaker 1: And then on top of that, they frequently are narrative

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Speaker 1: in nature. There's a sequence to things. In a way,

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Speaker 1: they're they're almost like a joke in many senses. You know,

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Speaker 1: it feels like the set up for a joke. It

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Speaker 1: feels like there's going to be a punch line. Um

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Speaker 1: and I also I wondered to what extent like really

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Speaker 1: successful and quote unquote successful thought experiments, like ones that

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Speaker 1: really resonate culturally if if there is a sense of

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Speaker 1: counterintuitive elements to the narrative, I wonder if there's something

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Speaker 1: about that as well. Well. Yeah, thought experiments are an

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Speaker 1: interesting thing. So like a good thought experiment, what it

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Speaker 1: should do is reveal something that is true simply by

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Speaker 1: making up a story in your mind and working through

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Speaker 1: the conclusions that would result from it. Now, often there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of coincidental details of this story that

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Speaker 1: do not matter. Uh, they don't have any effect on

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Speaker 1: what this thought experiment reveals, if it reveals anything, and

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Speaker 1: yet they can be enormously predictive of whether or not

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Speaker 1: this is like a popular meme or not how well

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Speaker 1: it spreads. Like cats, an example, like if it were

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Speaker 1: a dog, it would probably still resonate, but in a

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Speaker 1: slightly different way. But if it were just a lizard

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Speaker 1: or a slug, yes, people would be far less compelled

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Speaker 1: by the idea of Shreddinger's bug, but they would be

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Speaker 1: far more upset by the idea of Shreddinger's child or something.

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Speaker 1: So like if it's a cat, that's the bull's eye,

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Speaker 1: that's right in the red zone. It's like interesting enough

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Speaker 1: to be killing a cat that people are on board

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Speaker 1: to to remember to pay attention, but it's not so

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Speaker 1: troubling that you're turned off and you don't want to listen, right,

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Speaker 1: And and then also the cat kind of makes it

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Speaker 1: more palpable. Like if it was Shreddinger's um, let's say, basilisk,

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Speaker 1: that would it would instantly sound a little more threatening somehow,

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Speaker 1: How about Shreddinger's apparently conscious AI Yes, or uh, that's

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Speaker 1: the that's next level. Yeah, that's that's pretty good. Now.

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Speaker 1: Another important aspect of thought experiments is that it's something

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Speaker 1: that should generally be visualized in the mind as this,

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Speaker 1: as the thought experiment has rolled out, you you're picturing it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's in doing this it makes a concept more digestible,

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Speaker 1: or it explains a you know, fundamental paradox, etcetera. And uh,

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Speaker 1: and and and this again. It has a lot in

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Speaker 1: common with jokes, It has a lot in common with riddles,

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Speaker 1: and they just sort of the basic structure. But it's

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Speaker 1: not necessarily bringing you to uh, it's not bringing you

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Speaker 1: a punch line. It's not necessarily a correct answer at

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Speaker 1: the end, but there is hopefully a deeper understanding of

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Speaker 1: a concept via the thought experiment. Now that being said,

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Speaker 1: a thought experiment is also not a pristine, blameless thing

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Speaker 1: or something set in stone. So others may take issue

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Speaker 1: with the thought experiment or just completely knock it down.

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Speaker 1: They may roll out their own thought experiment that attempts

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Speaker 1: to put your thought experiment to shame and uh. And

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Speaker 1: there may be you know, additional interations off and we've

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Speaker 1: certainly explored that on the show before with things such

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Speaker 1: as the ship of Theseus. And then finally, one of

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Speaker 1: the really cool things about thought experiments is that it's

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Speaker 1: ideally this this chance to learn about reality, learn more

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Speaker 1: about reality by simply thinking about it. And that would,

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Speaker 1: on the surface of things, seem rather odd, right, because

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Speaker 1: it would be an exception to the empirical nature of

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Speaker 1: how we learn about the world by seeing it, by

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Speaker 1: touching it, by feeling it, by poking it, by dissecting

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Speaker 1: it and running, um, you know, more or less physical

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Speaker 1: experiments upon it. But to simply think about something and

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Speaker 1: the idea that that will reveal something that we had

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Speaker 1: not seen before or it was not clear to us beforehand. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That that's rather curious, isn't it. Well, yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: a thought experiment is a type of logic, which means

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Speaker 1: it it lacks the empirical data gathering part of learning

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Speaker 1: about the world, so all it can do is draw

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Speaker 1: conclusions from what is already known or assumed, though there

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Speaker 1: have been plenty of cases where in fact, in the

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Speaker 1: history of science, interesting stuff has come to be known

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Speaker 1: without anybody going out and measuring anything new, but just

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Speaker 1: by applying what was already known in a logical way

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Speaker 1: to arrive at a new conclusion. We'll talk about examples

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Speaker 1: of that in a minute, all right, So I want

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Speaker 1: to mention one quick example. Uh, it's not so quick

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Speaker 1: in the original text, but Lucretius, who lived nine BC

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Speaker 1: to b C, wrote on the Nature of Things suntura. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh, and he has a fun little thought experiment

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Speaker 1: he rolls out. So, um, Lucretius argues that space is

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Speaker 1: is infinite and what you say it isn't? Well, fine,

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Speaker 1: then let's march a soldier to the edge of the

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Speaker 1: finite universe and have him throw a spear at the edge. Wait,

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Speaker 1: what is the soldier's name? This is crucial? Oh, I

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Speaker 1: see I skipped that part. What is the soldier's name? No,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. It's not. We don't need to know

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Speaker 1: his name. It's just a soldier. Yeah we could, we

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Speaker 1: could call him hat I guess. But um, his original

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Speaker 1: write up of it is a bit longer. This boiled down. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: march the soldier up to the edge of the universe,

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Speaker 1: having throw a spear at the edge. Well, one of

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Speaker 1: two things is going to happen, he says. Well, if

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Speaker 1: it flies through, then there is something beyond and your

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Speaker 1: barrier is nonsense. So the universe is not actually bounded there, right,

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Speaker 1: because you just threw a spear beyond the edge. Now,

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Speaker 1: if the spear bounces off the barrier, well then the

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Speaker 1: wall itself is proof of something beyond your your your

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Speaker 1: spear just bounced off of something. What is that something?

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Speaker 1: A wall is a thing? Yeah, so it In looking

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Speaker 1: at this, you can see that it illustrates a conceived

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Speaker 1: version of reality and lays out an experiment. And of

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Speaker 1: course it also illustrates one of the other features of thought.

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Speaker 1: Experiments you can pick at them. So Lucretius may have

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Speaker 1: presented this, as you know, as a real sentence stopping

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Speaker 1: comment on the nature of the universe at the time.

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Speaker 1: But certainly if you if you think back of even

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Speaker 1: discussions that we've had on the show about infinities and

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Speaker 1: different type to the infinities, and and some of the

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Speaker 1: arguments for you know, for exactly how I finite universe

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Speaker 1: would work, then you can see that his argument doesn't

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Speaker 1: quite hold up to modern cosmology well as you've presented

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Speaker 1: it here. This is actually a great example of how

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Speaker 1: thought experiments can seem brilliant but actually produce flawed conclusions

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Speaker 1: because they contain drum roll hidden assumptions. Here, I would

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Speaker 1: say one fatal hidden assumption is that Lucretius takes on

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Speaker 1: board without considering the geometry of a finite universe. Now again,

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Speaker 1: I'm certainly not going to go and argue that space

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Speaker 1: is finite. That's not my goal here, But my I

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Speaker 1: would say there are ways in which space could be

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Speaker 1: finite that Lucretius is overlooking with this example, because there

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Speaker 1: are different ways you could imagine a finite universe. One

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Speaker 1: is a sort of closed three D space with exterior

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Speaker 1: walls like the inside of a box. And this is

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Speaker 1: sort of what Lucretius seems to have in mind here,

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Speaker 1: and of course it does seem somewhat absurd. How could

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Speaker 1: the universe be like that? It seems like it probably

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Speaker 1: couldn't be. But what if the universe is simultaneously finite

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Speaker 1: and without boundaries, like the length dimension of a mobius strip? Robert,

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Speaker 1: have you ever made a mobius strip, like in geometry

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Speaker 1: and school? Yeah, so you just take like one length

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Speaker 1: of a piece of paper and then give it a

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Speaker 1: half turn and then tape its ends together, and what

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Speaker 1: you have created is a piece of paper that has

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Speaker 1: one continuous side. You can start drawing a line and

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Speaker 1: it goes on the entire thing. So for instance, and

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Speaker 1: this this version, the soldier throws the spear and impales

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Speaker 1: himself in the back exactly as long as the spear

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Speaker 1: goes long enough. Yeah. So the idea, or it could

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Speaker 1: be another analogy here, could be that the geometry of

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Speaker 1: the three D universe is sort of like the two

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Speaker 1: D geometry of the surface of a sphere. It's not infinite.

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Speaker 1: The surface area of a sphere is finite. There is

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Speaker 1: a limit to it, but it has no boundaries. You

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Speaker 1: never reached the edge. So yeah, that's soldier. Let's let's

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Speaker 1: call him Tim tim throws the spear and it hits

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Speaker 1: him in the butt. Yeah. Yeah. This also reminds, you know,

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Speaker 1: the idea of saying, well, hey, my soldier throws a

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Speaker 1: spear at the edge of the universe and it keeps going,

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Speaker 1: then your your argument is nonsense. It also kind of

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Speaker 1: sounds like, oh, we had a really cold weather today.

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Speaker 1: I guess there's no global warming. I guess there's no

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Speaker 1: climate change. Using a far simpler model than the than

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Speaker 1: the complexities of reality, try and make your argument. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it does also. I mean, I would say that

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Speaker 1: this is a good argument against a certain type of

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Speaker 1: idea of the bounded universe, because if if the universe

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Speaker 1: were actually finite in that it had walls on the

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Speaker 1: outside of it, at any place you approached the wall,

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Speaker 1: you could test that condition, right. So I would say

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Speaker 1: that highlighting absurdity is in a single test case of

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Speaker 1: the idea of a universe with walls on the outside

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Speaker 1: of it, that I think that's a valid way to

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Speaker 1: criticize the concept. Now, I do have to say at

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Speaker 1: the same time, Lucretius is a little thought experiment here,

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Speaker 1: even to modern readers it it still does something when

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Speaker 1: you think about it like it does force you to

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Speaker 1: think about the uh these ideas of the finite and

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Speaker 1: the infinite. Uh So, just as like a simple thought

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Speaker 1: experiment is kind of a logic puzzle, it still carries

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Speaker 1: its own weight. Now, they're absolutely have been thought experiments

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Speaker 1: that have been extremely useful and powerful in the history

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Speaker 1: of the advancement of science, that have not just like

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Speaker 1: made a clever seeming point, but have actually pushed science forward.

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Speaker 1: And these happen a lot of time in the history

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Speaker 1: of physics because physics experiments work best when you can

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Speaker 1: tightly limit the variables. But in reality, it is very

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Speaker 1: hard to tightly limit the variables on pure physics experiments. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There there's often just a lot of like more more friction,

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Speaker 1: more resistance, more whatever than you actually want. But here's

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Speaker 1: an example. Let's say you go up on top of

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Speaker 1: the Washington Monument and you drop to objects side by side.

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Speaker 1: They're the same shape, but one is heavier than the other.

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Speaker 1: Let's say one is a plastic DVD of Flubber and

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Speaker 1: the other is the new Criterion edition of RoboCop two,

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Speaker 1: which has a jewel case made out of lead. So

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Speaker 1: which one hits the ground first? Well, ideally they're both

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Speaker 1: going to hit the ground at the same time, right,

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Speaker 1: And you know that because we live in a post

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Speaker 1: Galileo age, the post Copernican post Galileo age. But this

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Speaker 1: might have been kind of a shock to you if

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Speaker 1: you lived in say, ancient Rome, or in medieval Europe,

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Speaker 1: where it might well have been assumed that the heavier

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Speaker 1: object would hit the ground first because heavier objects fall faster.

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Speaker 1: For hundreds of years, the conventional wisdom was along these lines.

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Speaker 1: It followed our intuitions, like, it makes intuitive sense that

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Speaker 1: a heavier object falls faster because let's say it's harder

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Speaker 1: to push a heavier object up a hill, right, So

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Speaker 1: it would seem that a heavier object should fall to

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Speaker 1: the ground through the air faster than a lighter object.

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Speaker 1: This was the dominant strain of thinking also in in

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Speaker 1: the sphere of scholars who revered the physics of Aristotle.

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Speaker 1: Aristotle wrote in in his work on Physics, that objects

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Speaker 1: have a natural motion, They have a nature, and they

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Speaker 1: have motions specific to their nature, and that part of

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Speaker 1: that nature is mass. And so heavier objects fall to

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Speaker 1: the ground faster than lighter objects. Now, Galileo GALILEI was

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Speaker 1: reported by some biographers to have actually performed an experiment

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Speaker 1: of this kind by like dropping cannonballs of different weights

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Speaker 1: from a tower. But whether or not this story is

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Speaker 1: true about the physical experiment, Galileo definitely showed that you

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Speaker 1: don't even need an experiment to prove that there is

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Speaker 1: something wrong with the Aristotelian view of falling bodies. He

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Speaker 1: could show it was wrong just by dreaming up a

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Speaker 1: scenario in his head. As and as with many of

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Speaker 1: the great intellectual smackdowns in history, Galileo didn't just explain

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Speaker 1: his position. He wrote a fictional Socratic style dialogue, complete

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Speaker 1: with a act jawed fool to represent the opinion he

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Speaker 1: was attacking. And that fool is named Simplicio. That's pretty good.

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Speaker 1: Then he's also he's got a smart guy named Salviati

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Speaker 1: to represent his own point of view. And this was

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Speaker 1: in dialogues concerning two new sciences in sight. So first

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Speaker 1: Salviati and Simplicio argue about experiments concerning cannonballs and bird

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Speaker 1: shot and stuff. And Simplicio is not moved from the

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Speaker 1: Aristotelian position that objects fall through a medium with a

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Speaker 1: speed proportional to their mass. And so I've tried to

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Speaker 1: reconstruct the next moment in the dialogue, but sort of

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Speaker 1: rewritten in more modern English and simplified to the main points. Robert,

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Speaker 1: would you like to do a reading with me? Sure?

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Speaker 1: What kind of accents are we going for here? Robert,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna be the smart guy. How about you give

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Speaker 1: me a combination of like Gandalf wizard Saruman pronouncing from

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Speaker 1: from the top of the Tower of Knowledge, combined with

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Speaker 1: like Sam Elliott Wisel cowboy. All right, I'll give that

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Speaker 1: a goin Now, look here, we don't even need to

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Speaker 1: do any experiments to prove that Aristotle is wrong and

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Speaker 1: a heavier body does not fall faster than a lighter one.

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Speaker 1: Let's take Aristotle's principles as granted for a minute. What

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Speaker 1: are those principles. Well, body falling in a fixed medium

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Speaker 1: like air has a fixed velocity, and that's determined by

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Speaker 1: its nature. And you can increase this speed unless you

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Speaker 1: add momentum. And you can't decrease this speed unless you

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Speaker 1: offer some resistance to slow it down. It's all there

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Speaker 1: and its nature. It's a fixed velocity. Great, So imagine

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Speaker 1: two objects with different natural speeds, maybe a pebble which

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Speaker 1: falls very slowly, and a great millstone which falls very fast.

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Speaker 1: Now time together, the fallen millstone will be slowed down

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Speaker 1: by being tied to the pebble, which is forced by

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Speaker 1: its nature to fall slower. Right right, You are, according

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Speaker 1: to Aristotle, that pebble is going to slow down the

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Speaker 1: bigger rock because it falls slower. Go okay, So by

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Speaker 1: by tying the two stones together, the slower fall on

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Speaker 1: pebble should reduce the speed at which the millstone falls,

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Speaker 1: making its speed less than it would have been alone.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, when you tie them together,

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Speaker 1: their combined masses greater than the millstone alone. So shouldn't

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Speaker 1: they together fall even faster than either one individually? From

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Speaker 1: your principles of motion, we are forced to conclude that

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Speaker 1: by tying the two stones together, the falling speed of

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Speaker 1: the millstone is both increased and decreased. Well, dang it,

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Speaker 1: I am stumped, all right, So that that's that's pretty

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Speaker 1: fun because it basically illustrates how he's created kind of

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Speaker 1: like a little political cartoon right here, right right. And

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Speaker 1: I also absolutely love that he makes the representative of Aristotle,

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Speaker 1: who was during the seventeenth century widely considered like the

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Speaker 1: smartest guy of all time. He names him Simplicito, which

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Speaker 1: is like if somebody today wrote a dialogue trying to

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Speaker 1: refute Einstein's relati civity and had the character representing Einstein's

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Speaker 1: point of view named like cletaus t dip Wad. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: Karl Popper apparently wrote of this thought experiment quote one

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Speaker 1: of the most important imaginary experiments in the history of

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Speaker 1: natural philosophy and one of the simplest and most ingenious

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Speaker 1: arguments in the history of rational thought about our universe.

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Speaker 1: And as far as like imagining physical scenarios goes, I

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Speaker 1: think this is the equivalent of a reductio ad absurd

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Speaker 1: um argument. So reduction reductio ad absurd um is one

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Speaker 1: of the most powerful logical tools we have. It's when

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Speaker 1: you combine premises that somebody holds to be true and

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Speaker 1: you demonstrate that when they're taken together, they force you

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Speaker 1: to conclude something absurd that cannot possibly be true, which

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Speaker 1: means at least one of the premises, even though you

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Speaker 1: believe them, actually cannot be right. And so here Galileo

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Speaker 1: is basically using two premises. One is that the the

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Speaker 1: idea that objects of different mass have different natural speeds

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Speaker 1: at which they fall. And the other is that you

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Speaker 1: can add the mass of two objects together to create

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Speaker 1: a greater combined mass. And so he constructs a scenario

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Speaker 1: when it's actually not implausible at all to show that,

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Speaker 1: when taken together, these two premises implied something absurd and

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Speaker 1: self contradictory. So one of the premises has got to

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Speaker 1: be wrong. And since we accept the basic arithmetic of

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Speaker 1: mass that you can add the mass of two objects

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Speaker 1: together to create a greater combined mass, it showed that

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Speaker 1: the idea of a fixed falling speed determined by an

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Speaker 1: object's mass had to be wrong. So I would say

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Speaker 1: this is absolutely a case where a thought experiment actually

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Speaker 1: did reveal something useful about reality. Though of course it's

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Speaker 1: it's helpful as well that you could go out and

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Speaker 1: test this with physical objects later. You you know, you

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Speaker 1: do so, even if there's some hidden assumption that's guming

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Speaker 1: up the conclusions you're drawing from this thought experiment, you

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Speaker 1: could do physical experiments that would sort you out later.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, let's take a break,

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Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll explore some more examples

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Speaker 1: of thought experiments before we discuss a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a bit more about what exactly that they are and

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Speaker 1: how we might categorize them. Thank alright, we're back. So

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Speaker 1: Joe is a time for Jim Dandy's bucket of goose. No,

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Speaker 1: let's do Newton's bag of cheese. Sounds good? Okay? So

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Speaker 1: Galileo's rocks obviously are not the only famous imaginary falling

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Speaker 1: objects to provoke advances in physics. Uh The seventeenth and

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Speaker 1: eighteenth century English poly math Isaac Newton was also responsible

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Speaker 1: for many famous thought experiments that illustrated his revolutionary ideas.

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Speaker 1: Probably the most famous and enduring is what I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: call ballistic mountain. So back in Newton's day and there

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Speaker 1: was a lot of confusion about different types of motion

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Speaker 1: and what explained the motion of objects in the heavens.

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Speaker 1: A good example would be, let's say you drop a

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Speaker 1: wool sack full of goat cheese from a tower. Which

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Speaker 1: direction does it travel? Goes straight down right? You wouldn't

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Speaker 1: want to be standing under that goat cheese. And at

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Speaker 1: the same time, scholars recognize that the Earth was spherical

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Speaker 1: or roughly spherical, as had been proved for many hundreds

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Speaker 1: of years, and it almost seemed as if objects were

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Speaker 1: being pulled straight down towards the center of the Earth,

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Speaker 1: and the Earth seemed to pull all objects toward it

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Speaker 1: at a constant rate, as Galileo had showed, regardless of

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Speaker 1: the mass of that object. And you see this all

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Speaker 1: the time, even if you throw an object horizontally. Let's

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Speaker 1: say you are hurling a wool sack full of goat

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Speaker 1: cheese at your enemy, the Royal astronomer John Flamsteed. If

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Speaker 1: Flamsteed is too far away when you throw the sack,

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Speaker 1: obviously the gravity is going to pull the sack down

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Speaker 1: to the Earth before it hits him. Gravity always pulls down.

428
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:47,239
Speaker 1: But then contrast that with if you look up at

429
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,160
Speaker 1: the heavens at night, you will observe that the motion

430
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:53,480
Speaker 1: of the planet seems to be governed by another force entirely.

431
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: Instead of falling straight into the Sun or into the Earth,

432
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:00,840
Speaker 1: the planet seemed to travel through the heaven in smooth,

433
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: roughly circular elliptical orbits, just as the Moon seems to

434
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 1: travel in a smooth elliptical track around the Earth. So

435
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 1: how could the motion seen in the heavens be so

436
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: different from the motion scene on Earth? Like was there

437
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 1: a divine hand guiding how the planets traveled through the void.

438
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 1: So Newton proposed a thought experiment in his Principia, and

439
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:25,879
Speaker 1: it went roughly like this, Robert, imagine, we're gonna get

440
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: up on top of the tallest mountain on Earth, the

441
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:31,639
Speaker 1: Gigantic Monster Mountain. Maybe it's on the North Pole, all right.

442
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 1: I guess it wouldn't because there's no land there. But

443
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 1: maybe it could be the Mountain of Purgatory from from

444
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 1: Dante's Divine Comedy. For all of Isaac newton sins, of

445
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 1: which there were many, because he was a jerk, so

446
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:46,960
Speaker 1: work off those piece. So he climbs up to the

447
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 1: top of the Mountain of Purgatory, oh, which I guess

448
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: is earthly paradise, right. But but he gets up there

449
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: and he brings a cannon with him. Oh that's that's.

450
00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: That's already. I feel like it's probably breaking some rules,

451
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: but okay, yes, and it's in a salt on the

452
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 1: heavens already. But it's an assault on the heavens in

453
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: more ways than one, more way than one, more ways

454
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:10,159
Speaker 1: than one. I never know how to pluralize that correctly anyway,

455
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 1: So let's say you got the cannon up at the

456
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: top of the mountain. You shoot a cannon ball out

457
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: parallel to the ground at a hundred kilometers per hour.

458
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 1: What happens, Well, it travels in the familiar arc that

459
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:23,960
Speaker 1: any anybody who has used a firearm like that will recognize.

460
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: So it goes horizontally at a hundred kilometers per hour

461
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 1: while simultaneously falling towards the ground at the normal acceleration,

462
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:33,879
Speaker 1: and eventually it hits the ground with a thud. But

463
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 1: let's say you pack more gunpowder into the cannon and

464
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: shoot the ball out of the barrel faster, say two

465
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers per hour. What happens, Well, it makes an

466
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,479
Speaker 1: arc again, but the arc is a slightly different shape.

467
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: It falls to the ground at the same rate as before,

468
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: but this time it travels a lot farther horizontally before

469
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: it hits the ground. Now, imagine you just keep packing

470
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,359
Speaker 1: more and more power into the cannon, so that the

471
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 1: ball goes farther every time before it hits the ground.

472
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: The rate at which the cannonball falls is going to

473
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:08,159
Speaker 1: always stay the same, but the horizontal speed and the

474
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 1: horizontal distance covered keeps increasing. And then combine this with

475
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: the idea that the Earth is a sphere, which they

476
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: knew at the time of of Newton. This means that

477
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,760
Speaker 1: eventually you will shoot the cannonball at a speed where

478
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: it travels so fast that it's falling arc is greater

479
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: than the curve of the Earth. So it flies and

480
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: it falls, but it never hits the ground. It travels

481
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:36,040
Speaker 1: around the Earth in a continuous circle. So the cannonball

482
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,160
Speaker 1: is still governed by the same two forces, gravity which

483
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 1: wants to pull the cannonball towards the center of the

484
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: Earth in inertia, which wants to keep the cannonball traveling

485
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 1: in a straight line. But they these forces combine to

486
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:51,160
Speaker 1: cause the ball to just keep flying around the Earth

487
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 1: in a circle in space. And Newton had a very

488
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:57,239
Speaker 1: famous illustration of this that that sort of helped make

489
00:26:57,320 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: his point, where he showed arcs of of cannon balls

490
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 1: falling off and becoming longer and longer until they just

491
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 1: became a circle. And now the crucial extrapolation is this

492
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: is what planets due to the Sun and what the

493
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: Moon does to the Earth. So Newton had used nothing

494
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:17,600
Speaker 1: more than an imaginary scenario to demonstrate good reason for

495
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: believing something shocking that the forces that govern the heavens

496
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:24,920
Speaker 1: and the forces that govern the movement of objects on

497
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 1: the Earth like cannonballs or wool sacks full of cheese

498
00:27:28,720 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 1: are exactly the same. This is the unification of terrestrial

499
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 1: and celestial forces. And this this is a key principle

500
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: in establishing the modern age of physics. And it's rather

501
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: brilliant too. And then he took something that was there

502
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: was so so much more relatable in order to explain,

503
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 1: you know, the movement of the spheres. Yeah, exactly. And

504
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: of course this is a case where a thought experiment,

505
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 1: while revolutionary, was not enough to prove the case. Fortunately

506
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:59,680
Speaker 1: Newton had conducted ingenious real world experiments also, so in

507
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 1: this case it was the use of a pendulum combined

508
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:06,639
Speaker 1: with astronomical observations to show that the Moon falls towards

509
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:09,639
Speaker 1: the Earth at about the same speed as objects dropped

510
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: on Earth fall toward the ground, which is a funny

511
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 1: thing to consider whether you're dropping a bag of cheese

512
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:17,640
Speaker 1: out of an airplane or watching the Moon fall toward

513
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 1: the Earth. They followed about the same rate, but the

514
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,440
Speaker 1: Moon's competing inertia and position of course keep it in orbit,

515
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: and there are of course powerful implications that followed from Newton.

516
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 1: These could be put to use in rocketry, like ultimately

517
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 1: we had to figure out the delta V required to

518
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: achieve lower thorbit and to escape Earth's orbit entirely if

519
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 1: we wanted to say, send probes to other planets. Uh

520
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: And and by the way, I didn't make up the

521
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: part about the sack of cheese. But Newton did actually

522
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: have enemies. And just to tell one quick story, there

523
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 1: was this astronomer named John Flamsteed. I mentioned him earlier,

524
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: and Newton was pretty much a total jerk. Flamsteed was

525
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: this English astronomer. He was the English Astronomer Royal during

526
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 1: Newton's time, and he was working on catalog of objects

527
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: in the heavens. And Newton wanted access to Flamsteed's catalog. Basically,

528
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: he wanted data so he could use it to prove

529
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: his theories. But Flamesteed wasn't done putting it together yet,

530
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: believing it wasn't ready for publication. So Newton constantly harassed

531
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: and bullied him to get this information. Eventually threw his

532
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: weight around with the English Royalty to get Flamsteed's catalog

533
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: published early before it was ready, which Flamsteed did not

534
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: like at all. There's also a story that Newton, as

535
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: the president of the Royal Society, went to the Royal

536
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: Observatory to inspect Flamsteed's equipment and they got into a fight,

537
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: and Flamesteed wrote that quote Newton ran himself into a

538
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:44,760
Speaker 1: great heat and very indecent passion, and he used knavish

539
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 1: talk and called me all the ill names puppy, etcetera

540
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: that he could think of. So like Newton's out there

541
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: like screaming and other scientists calling them puppies, just thinking

542
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: a real real ass of himself. Yeah, anyway, shows that

543
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 1: even some of the smartest people ever can are not

544
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: above you know, puppy calling. Well, I mean it makes sense.

545
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: Wasn't new In a a more of a cat person?

546
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: Didn't he uh oh for cats to move in and

547
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: out of the chambers of his house. I didn't look

548
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: up the usage history of that word, so I don't

549
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: know exactly what it meant to call somebody a puppy

550
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: and whatever year this was, but profanity scholars right in

551
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: might a smart Yeah what does that mean? Did he

552
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: just literally mean like a young dog? I hope. So

553
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: that's the that's that's a funny interpretation. Well it sounds

554
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: like Navish talk either way totally. So what are the

555
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: examples do you have for us? Well, just a few

556
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: quicker ones in in physics, and of course one of

557
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: my favorites is that people dreamed up the concept of

558
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,680
Speaker 1: a black hole as a mathematical thought experiment, long before

559
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 1: any evidence of such a thing had ever been detected,

560
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: Like we talked about this in our black Holes episode.

561
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: But around seventeen eighty three and seventeen eighty four, the

562
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: English natural philosophers John Michelle and Henry Cavendish dared to

563
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,040
Speaker 1: ask a bizarre question. So they knew that light itself

564
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: had a speed, and they were armed with Newton's insights

565
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: about gravity, inertia, orbits, and escape velocity, So they asked,

566
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: what if there were a star so massive with with

567
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: such a great gravitational attraction that escape velocity for this

568
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: star was greater than the speed of light. In other words,

569
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: a star so massive that even light could not escape it.

570
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: And this was perhaps the earliest formulation of the concept

571
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: of a black hole, which would later be developed by

572
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: so many other important astrophysicist Karl Schwartz, Shield, Chander, Shaker,

573
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer and others. And and if you want more on that,

574
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: we have a whole episode about it from earlier this year.

575
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we did a three parter on black holes. Uh. Then,

576
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: of course, the thought experiments are huge in illustrating the

577
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 1: concepts of relativity in the speed of light, Like Einstein

578
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: is famous for influential thought experiments, But we shouldn't just

579
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: focus on the ones that have been very influential in physics, because,

580
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: of course, thought experiments are probably even more common in

581
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: philosophy than they are in physics, even more common. And

582
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: I don't want to be insulting to philosophy because I

583
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: value philosophy, but I would say even more common and

584
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: less often useful. Uh, they can still be illuminating, but

585
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: I think we need to realize that, especially in scenarios

586
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: where we can't actually test the conclusions of a thought

587
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 1: experiment in any kind of way, we should be careful

588
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 1: that thought experiments don't cloud are thinking more than they reveal. Well,

589
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: don't encounter thought experiments to deal with things like morality, right,

590
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: and ultimately, how do you measure those things? Yes? And

591
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:39,959
Speaker 1: the I feel like those kinds of thought experiments are

592
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: especially prone to be confusing because they deal with the

593
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: lucretious problem. We talked about bringing in unexamined assumptions that

594
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 1: are influencing our thinking without us realizing it. So I

595
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: think we should mention just one example of a prominent,

596
00:32:55,600 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: extremely controversial thought experiment in philosophy. There's been a mountain

597
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 1: of debate on this one, so I know we're not

598
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: going to be able to do it justice in the

599
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: time we have, we'll try to give it the best

600
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: quickest version we can. So this is John Searle's Chinese

601
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 1: Room thought experiment. Robert, I know you must have encountered

602
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: this one before. Yeah, So the question is, we know

603
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: we can program computers to mimic the intelligent behavior of humans,

604
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: but would it ever be possible for a computer to

605
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: truly understand something? Or can it only simulate understanding? And

606
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: this has often taken as sort of an analog of

607
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 1: the question of can machines be conscious? Right, And no,

608
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: we've we've discussed this quite a bit on the show before.

609
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 1: Maybe not specifically this thought experiment I don't recall off hand,

610
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: but just the idea that, yeah, if a robot may

611
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: know what it is to stub one's toe, but does

612
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: a robot really know what it's like to stub your toe? Like?

613
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: Does it? It doesn't, doesn't? Does it have that experience?

614
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 1: Does it have that knowledge? Can it? Can it sort

615
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: of whole the information in its hands and squish it around.

616
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: We know it can act like it understands what it

617
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: means to feel pain, But does it really understand what

618
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: it means to feel pain? Uh? So? The American philosopher

619
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:16,240
Speaker 1: John Searle proposed a thought experiment to answer this question

620
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties. I think it was first

621
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: in the year nineteen eighty, and his work asked us

622
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 1: to imagine the following scenario. You already to go there

623
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 1: with me, okay, So imagine you are an English speaker

624
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: that does not understand a single word of written Chinese,

625
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. Then you are locked in a room with

626
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 1: a slot in the wall, a pencil and paper, and

627
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 1: a giant book of instructions written in English. Every now

628
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,920
Speaker 1: and then someone from the outside slips a piece of

629
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: paper through the slot in the wall, and it has

630
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:50,239
Speaker 1: a string of Chinese characters written on it. And then

631
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,840
Speaker 1: you look at this piece of paper and you consult

632
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: your giant instruction manual, and the manual tells you, given

633
00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: certain Chinese character inputs coming through the wall, which Chinese

634
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: characters to write on a piece of paper and put

635
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: back out through the slot in the wall. So you

636
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:09,280
Speaker 1: write down what the instructions tell you to write based

637
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: on what has come in, and then you slip the

638
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: output through the slot. Now, Carl says that in this scenario,

639
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: with a sufficiently powerful instruction manual, the person in the

640
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: room would be able to simulate being able to understand

641
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:26,600
Speaker 1: the Chinese language despite not actually understanding a single word

642
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 1: of it. The person is just an operator. They're just

643
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: blindly copying symbols from a rule book. They don't understand

644
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 1: what any of the symbols mean. So in the same way,

645
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,760
Speaker 1: Carl says that this gets extrapolated to any computer program

646
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: that would supposedly pass quote pass the Turing tests, which

647
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 1: we've discussed the turning test on the show before. But

648
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: basically it means to be able to have a text

649
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 1: based conversation with the human such that the human would

650
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:57,320
Speaker 1: believe that the machine they were chatting with was actually

651
00:35:57,440 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: human as well. Can you can you fool a human

652
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: into thing king you're a human by talking to them

653
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:06,439
Speaker 1: through text, and Searle says, it doesn't matter how convincingly

654
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: the computer simulates being able to have a conversation in

655
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: any language. It's still like the non Chinese speaker in

656
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: the Chinese room. It can't really understand what it's doing.

657
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 1: It's only blindly following instructions that create an illusion of

658
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: understanding where true understanding is impossible. Now, there have been

659
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: tons of responses to this scenario over the years, and

660
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: I think we'll come back to this towards the end

661
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: of the episode. But the idea is the thought experiment

662
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 1: of imagining the person in the Chinese room leads you

663
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:42,280
Speaker 1: to new knowledge. It should lead you to the correct

664
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 1: conclusion that it's impossible for a machine to understand something,

665
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:51,759
Speaker 1: or at least a machine interpreting formal instructions. Robert, I,

666
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 1: I could almost detect by the way you're furrowing your

667
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:57,319
Speaker 1: brow that this this one's filling you with venom. Well,

668
00:36:57,400 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 1: the Chinese room, Yeah, um no, I mean I love it.

669
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: I keep I keep wanting to say something kind of

670
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 1: snarky about like just the human experience itself being you know,

671
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: like the Chinese room where there's so much that we're

672
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 1: doing that that we're we're not really understanding. We're just

673
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: responding to stimuli and giving back what the instruction manual

674
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: says we should give back. But then I do have

675
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 1: in a way articulated one of the main types of

676
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: responses to it. Yeah, but that it said yeah, but that,

677
00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:28,799
Speaker 1: in my opinion, like, this is the great thing about

678
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:31,719
Speaker 1: a solid thought experiment and is in that it it

679
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: provokes conversation and subsequent sort of answers and critiques of

680
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: the thought experiments. Right, So I guess in a minute

681
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 1: we are going to end up talking about sort of

682
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 1: formal classification systems for types of thought experiments and considering

683
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:49,239
Speaker 1: how thought experiments might or might not be useful. But uh, there,

684
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: I can see that there are multiple ways that one

685
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 1: could be useful. Immediately, one could be useful in the

686
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,799
Speaker 1: way it's intended, meaning it can prove what it sets

687
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: out to prove, or it could also be inadvertently is

688
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: full in that even if it fails to prove what

689
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: it sets out to prove, it could make common misunderstandings clear, right,

690
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: does that make sense? YEA like reveal ways in which

691
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: people's thinking is going wrong on a particular subject. Like

692
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: it's like saying, here is a scenario that illustrates a

693
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:20,879
Speaker 1: way of thinking about this. And then even if if

694
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,080
Speaker 1: what it is presenting you with is incorrect, or has

695
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:28,760
Speaker 1: some problems, or doesn't fully match up to um scientific reality,

696
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: or or just preconceived notions, then at least you have

697
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: you've created the model. You have you have the model

698
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,400
Speaker 1: on the table, and other people can come along and say, well,

699
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 1: you know, this is interesting, but what happens when we

700
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: put a hat on this guy? What happens when there

701
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: are two instruction manuals, what happens when you know the

702
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 1: ship of theseus also has a crew, etcetera. You know,

703
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 1: all the various complications are little tweaks that can can

704
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: change the model just a little bit. I think sometimes

705
00:38:56,800 --> 00:38:59,359
Speaker 1: thought experiments, even if they fail at proving what they

706
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: set out to roof, can be useful in the same

707
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 1: way that introducing terminology to a discussion can be useful,

708
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:08,800
Speaker 1: just because, like if you put an image to something

709
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,280
Speaker 1: or put a name to something, that makes it easier

710
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: to understand what it is you're talking about. Alright, Well,

711
00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take one more break and when

712
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna get more into this idea

713
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: of what is the thought experiment and indeed, where does

714
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: the term come from? Thank? Thank alright, we're back. So

715
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: in looking at the history of thought experiments, you know

716
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 1: where you able to find the oldest one on a

717
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:34,759
Speaker 1: like a like a cave wall. Uh No. But I

718
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: mean we kind of end up getting into a similar

719
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 1: situation when we start trying to think about this, because

720
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: certainly we know that thought experiments were employed by a

721
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:47,919
Speaker 1: pre Socratic philosopher, So this has been before the life

722
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: of Socrates, before four seventy BC. And and thought experiments

723
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 1: are things that were essentially thought experience, were popular throughout

724
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, and of course came into their own

725
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century. In the centuries to follow. The

726
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: term itself is often attributed to one Ernst Mock who

727
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: lived at eight thirty eight through nineteen sixteen. He was

728
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 1: an Austrian physicist and philosopher. And they point this out

729
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:16,319
Speaker 1: because he used the term, let's see, if I get

730
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:21,239
Speaker 1: this right, gadoncan experimente uh. But it seems though that

731
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: like it was already in use by the time he

732
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 1: used it, and it may have derived from the Danish

733
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 1: uh Tunka experiment. And then it turns out that GEORGA.

734
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:35,840
Speaker 1: Lichtenberg through seventeen ninety nine he discussed quote experiments with

735
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 1: thoughts and ideas. So funny, like all of these are

736
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 1: coming after the advent, you know, after Galileo, like Galileo

737
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,799
Speaker 1: and Newton, and people had already been using these, As

738
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: we said, they weren't the first to use them, but

739
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:53,239
Speaker 1: they used them in really profoundly influential ways in real science. Yeah,

740
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like we're looking at three phases here.

741
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 1: There's the phase where people are actually calling it a

742
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: thought experiment, there's the phase where people are using them

743
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 1: to great effect, and ultimately, I think if we if

744
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 1: you go back further in time, you know, get lost

745
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,359
Speaker 1: in the mists of of of earlier history. I think

746
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 1: it's fair to say that thought experiments are generally a

747
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 1: more refined idea of something that we just do as humans,

748
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 1: and internal simulation of of observed empirical data and processes.

749
00:41:20,800 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 1: Trying to run an experiment in your mind given what

750
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 1: you know, right, and you know, I can imagine this

751
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: is kind of getting into the territory of our our

752
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: other show Invention, which everyone can can learn about invention

753
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: pod dot com. It's a podcast about inventions and where

754
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:39,280
Speaker 1: they come from. Subscribe now, subscribe now now, Uh, seriously,

755
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: stop and go and subscribe. But but you know, you

756
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: can imagine with any of these inventions. This is even

757
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 1: some of the ancient ones that we've talked about, Like

758
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 1: there is a thought experiment level that is that is

759
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 1: in play. But I don't think it's a great stretch

760
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 1: to imagine some of these ancient inventors and inventive minds

761
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 1: essentially engaging and thought experiments. Oh well, yeah, I mean

762
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 1: that's an interesting way of putting it that you have

763
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 1: to sort of before you create a tool, you have

764
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: to imagine what would happen if you use something of

765
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 1: a certain shape in a certain way without having seen

766
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 1: something like that done before. Right. But then again, of

767
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 1: course we go back to what we said earlier about

768
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: how just envisioning an experiment you could carry out is

769
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:23,839
Speaker 1: not in and of itself a thought experiment, but it's

770
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: still kind of the roots of the thought experiment, right, Um,

771
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: in terms of thinking about like, well, what are some

772
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: taxonomies we can refer to for thought experiments? Uh, they're

773
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 1: basically various ways you could categorize thought experiments, but there's

774
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:42,400
Speaker 1: not really a fully agreed upon standards so much. Obviously

775
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: you can categorize them by the discipline that they stem from.

776
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: So here's a bunch of physics thought experiments. Here's some

777
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: quantum physics thought experiments. Here's some some economic thought experiments,

778
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 1: so psychological thought experiments. You know, we could also break

779
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: them up based on their features, I guess, but I'm

780
00:42:57,640 --> 00:42:59,879
Speaker 1: not surely really sure that does any good, because again,

781
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 1: if it's a cat or a dog or basilisk, it

782
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. That's just some some flavoring that's added to

783
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,720
Speaker 1: the little story of the thought experiment. Well, I'm already

784
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:12,920
Speaker 1: seeing in the examples we've discussed so far, one clear

785
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 1: distinction that emerges, which is the thought experiment that shows

786
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 1: the absurdity or contradictions inherent in some pre existing idea,

787
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:27,000
Speaker 1: versus the thought experiment that demonstrates a new conclusion or

788
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 1: show reveals new knowledge based on premises you already accept. Right,

789
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: And that's that's where we come back to Karl Popper,

790
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: who we talked about briefly earlier. Karl Popper was an

791
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,440
Speaker 1: Austrian British philosopher and professor who lived nineteen o two

792
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:46,239
Speaker 1: through and he this is this is basically how he

793
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: divided up thought experiments. He said, they're basically three types heuristic,

794
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: in other words, to illustrate a theory. Okay, so this

795
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:56,719
Speaker 1: would be the kind that just helps clarify what you're

796
00:43:56,719 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 1: talking about, gives people something to picture. And you would

797
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: argue that maybe I don't know what, I'm not quite

798
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 1: sure how Newton's canon would fit in there. Was that

799
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:10,280
Speaker 1: just to illustrate or did he actually prove something using

800
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: the image of the canon? Well, you could also argue

801
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: that it falls into the next category, right critical against

802
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: the theory, because he's kind of playing with the preconceived

803
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 1: notions about how these things would work. Right Well, I

804
00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 1: guess yeah. It does challenge the idea that they're different

805
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:27,279
Speaker 1: mechanics at operation in the heavens than there are on

806
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:30,839
Speaker 1: the earth. And now the Carl Popper's third category then

807
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: is apologetic in favor of a theory. Okay, so you've

808
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: got the kind that illustrates, the kind that challenges, and

809
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: the kind that argues in favor of Now, on a

810
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: similar note, you have Canadian philosopher of science James Robert

811
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: Brown still still alive and kicking as of this recording,

812
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 1: and he's divided thought experiments into two major categories similar

813
00:44:55,920 --> 00:45:00,160
Speaker 1: along similar lines, constructive and destructive. Okay, there's of the

814
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: broad categories, okay, and then there are some some subtypes

815
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 1: to the destructive category. So there's contradictive, this is a

816
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 1: thought experiment that points out a contradiction to a given idea.

817
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: Then there's paradoxical, so you have a thought experimentment here

818
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: that shows how a given idea is conflicting with a

819
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: commonly held belief. Then you have the undermine, or a

820
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:26,279
Speaker 1: thought experiment that actively undermines an idea. And then there's

821
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,920
Speaker 1: the counter thought experiment, a thought experiment that serves as

822
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: a rebuttal to another thought experiment. You know, I think

823
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 1: I generally would find that thought experiments are more often

824
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 1: sound when deployed as destructive or critical tools than as

825
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: constructive or apologetic tools. And I think this is because,

826
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 1: of course, as we know, thought experiments do not provide

827
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: new data or new evidence of anything. They only illustrate

828
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: logical relationships between things that we already know or already believe,

829
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,440
Speaker 1: So they can take existing knowledge and use that to

830
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:02,279
Speaker 1: extract late to new knowledge, but it's much easier to

831
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: use them in a way that's reasonable to demonstrate a

832
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:09,800
Speaker 1: contradiction between existing pieces of knowledge or principles that the

833
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: extended version of the reductive ad absurdom. These are I

834
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: think some of the most powerful uses of thought experiments

835
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 1: when they when they have the power to clearly show

836
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:22,839
Speaker 1: that things that you already believe or accept or are

837
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 1: you know, bound to accept, are in fact self contradictory.

838
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: All right, so let's let's get down to one of

839
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:34,440
Speaker 1: the questions that has often discussed your regarding thought experiments. Uh,

840
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:37,239
Speaker 1: people say, well, do they really tell us anything? Oh yeah,

841
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: some people hate thought experiments. I think it really just

842
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: just riled up because it's like, oh, you know, it

843
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: seems like this navel gazing kind of thing, Like, if

844
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:47,799
Speaker 1: you're not going to go out and do physical experiments

845
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 1: in the physical world, what are you even talking about?

846
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: Why you know, why are you wasting your time? Armchair

847
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 1: science is is one of the criticisms is often thrown

848
00:46:57,120 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 1: out regarding thought experiments. But of course thought experi erments

849
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 1: have been really useful in the history of science, as

850
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:06,440
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, a lot of important advances in

851
00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:09,400
Speaker 1: the history of science have been before they were confirmed

852
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: in fact by physical experiments, were predicted by thought experiments.

853
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 1: That this is a very common feature, especially in physics.

854
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 1: I mean you could even say in fact that there

855
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:22,400
Speaker 1: there are whole realms of physics today. It's probably what

856
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:25,720
Speaker 1: you would call theoretical physics. You often hear this division

857
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: of theoretical physics, physics and experimental physics. Uh, there, there's

858
00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 1: all this stuff in theoretical physics right now that we

859
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,399
Speaker 1: don't have a way of testing with physical experiments yet.

860
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: And you can, you can kind of try to make

861
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: your arguments one way or another stronger about string theory

862
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:44,799
Speaker 1: or something like that, but it just we we don't

863
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:47,719
Speaker 1: have a test for it yet. So you could say

864
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 1: that all of that is in a way a type

865
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:54,120
Speaker 1: of mathematically elegant thought experiment. But but if you go

866
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: back and look at you know, Newton and Galileo and

867
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 1: all this, and certainly Einstein, there's no denying that thought

868
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: ex periments have been extremely useful and productive in the

869
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: history of physics. But thought experiments can sometimes also, as

870
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 1: we've acknowledged, be confusing and misleading, even though there are

871
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 1: other times illuminating. A favorite of ours on here is,

872
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:16,280
Speaker 1: of course Daniel Dennett. You know, he likes to highlight

873
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 1: that the different kinds of thought experiments that try to

874
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:23,560
Speaker 1: leverage our intuitions into new discoveries simply by tightly controlling

875
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: the variables of an imagined scenario. And some of the

876
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 1: most famous thought experiments in history, actually, I think maybe

877
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: confuse more than they illuminate. I don't want to put

878
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:35,799
Speaker 1: words in his mouth, but I think Dinnett would say

879
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:39,239
Speaker 1: this about Donald Davidson's swamp Man, which we discussed in

880
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:43,399
Speaker 1: our ship Thesist episode, or Searle's Chinese Room, which maybe

881
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: we should come back to now. So we explain searles

882
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 1: Chinese Room earlier, with the person exchanging the symbols in

883
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 1: the room, and the question of does the person in

884
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: the room who doesn't speak Chinese but can simulate perfect

885
00:48:55,320 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 1: conversational output in Chinese by following this instruction manual, does

886
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:04,120
Speaker 1: that person really understand Chinese? And a lot of people

887
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 1: have thought, yeah, this is a powerful disproof of the

888
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: notion that computers could ever think, understand, or be conscious,

889
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: and a lot of other thinkers have been incredibly critical

890
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 1: of this. An example of a reply to the Chinese

891
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 1: room that makes sense to me is what if what's

892
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:22,320
Speaker 1: true of the part might not be true of the

893
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:26,360
Speaker 1: system as a whole. So imagine again this person in

894
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:29,240
Speaker 1: the room. The person in the room doesn't understand Chinese,

895
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: and thus the responses they produce are not meaningful to them.

896
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:35,799
Speaker 1: But you could argue that the room itself, the set

897
00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 1: of instructions, combined with the memories and sensory experiences and

898
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:44,400
Speaker 1: logic that went into the creation of the instructions, and

899
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:48,440
Speaker 1: the human operator and the pencil and paper taken together

900
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 1: perhaps do understand Chinese. And Crle rejects this line of thinking.

901
00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:55,840
Speaker 1: One of the reasons is he says, you know, this

902
00:49:55,960 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 1: is a kind of illicit externalizing of thoughts, saying like

903
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,359
Speaker 1: paper could think, or a book of instructions could think,

904
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 1: but but like I think, like he's the person who

905
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 1: put this system together. You know, you are the one

906
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:12,280
Speaker 1: who put a human inside a room as the metaphor

907
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,760
Speaker 1: for a computer. Computers do not actually have a tiny

908
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:20,800
Speaker 1: human inside them that's performing operations with opportunities to understand

909
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 1: or not understand. Likewise, there is not actually a little

910
00:50:24,239 --> 00:50:27,759
Speaker 1: human sitting inside your brain with the job of understanding

911
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:31,320
Speaker 1: or not understanding inputs and outputs. Your brain is a

912
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 1: system in many ways. You might say that system of

913
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 1: your brain that produces your mind is more comparable to

914
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 1: the entire system of the person in the room, the room,

915
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 1: the instructions and all that, than it is just the

916
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 1: person inside. I think the evidence is pretty clear that

917
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:51,719
Speaker 1: the mind is not one thing, and there's no evidence

918
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: of an observer within the observer. The mind is that,

919
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 1: at the very least a system of information processing but

920
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,840
Speaker 1: also story inputs and outputs all working together. There's not

921
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:06,359
Speaker 1: there's no evidence of a pilot inside who does all

922
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 1: of the final understanding. Right. That's rights as simple as

923
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: it would be to imagine that, you know, because it

924
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: would reduce whatever we're trying to figure out, would reduce

925
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:16,920
Speaker 1: it to a person would get back into that that

926
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 1: that kind of you know, neolithic mindset. And so I

927
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:22,719
Speaker 1: think this now, I certainly don't want to say that

928
00:51:23,560 --> 00:51:27,480
Speaker 1: that I'm not like casting expersions on John Searle. I'm

929
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: sure he is a very brilliant man, much smarter than me.

930
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:33,399
Speaker 1: And there's been a lot more you know, complex back

931
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:35,799
Speaker 1: and forth on this. But just to somebody who's right

932
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 1: about this a good bit, it seems to me like

933
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:41,280
Speaker 1: this is one of those thought experiments that needlessly turns

934
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:45,239
Speaker 1: up confusion just by bringing in a lot of unnecessary

935
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:49,360
Speaker 1: assumptions and the connotations of the imagery you use in

936
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:51,919
Speaker 1: the thing, like we've got a person inside a room

937
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: that that's making you think of analogies to a person

938
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:59,000
Speaker 1: sitting inside the computer or an observer inside the observer

939
00:51:59,160 --> 00:52:01,759
Speaker 1: in the brain right now. I I do take the

940
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:04,279
Speaker 1: problem of consciousness seriously. I'm not one of those people

941
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:06,399
Speaker 1: who you know, would hand awave and say, oh, yeah,

942
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 1: consciousness is easy to explain, it's just a you know,

943
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:13,240
Speaker 1: systems theory or whatever. But I don't think the Chinese

944
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:17,960
Speaker 1: room proves machines can't think or understand, or have intentional

945
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: or meaningful internal representations or be conscious. I think that's

946
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: still an open question into my mind. The Chinese room

947
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 1: experiment is one of these thought experiments that creates a

948
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: lot of confusion by the hidden assumptions it imports with

949
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: its central imagery. I don't know, am I being unfair? No?

950
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 1: I think you're being being very fair. I mean again,

951
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 1: I come back to um to certainly like political cartoons

952
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 1: as as a reference, you know, not that not to

953
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 1: reduce the Chinese Room to something so you know, ultimately

954
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:49,840
Speaker 1: kind of base. But there is a boiling down of

955
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:52,680
Speaker 1: of a process. There's a boiling down of a of

956
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: a problem that takes place in a thought experiment like this,

957
00:52:56,160 --> 00:52:58,240
Speaker 1: and then you do have to ask, well, in reducing

958
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: it to this model, what of the necessary complexity is

959
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:06,439
Speaker 1: lost that is necessary to understanding what's going on. Yeah,

960
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right, and I would say for me,

961
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:12,359
Speaker 1: crucially it's the image of the person in the room

962
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: that's the especially confusing thing in this thing here, Like

963
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 1: what if there wasn't a person there. What if you

964
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,720
Speaker 1: just instead said the room is a machine that takes

965
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 1: in that takes in symbols and puts out symbols, then

966
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: you're basically not really changing much. You're just saying, well,

967
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:31,080
Speaker 1: it's a computer, and then that's what we're talking about originally.

968
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: But anyway, so we mentioned Daniel Dennet. He's written extensive

969
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,719
Speaker 1: criticism of the Chinese Room. I think this was even

970
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: the context of his coinage of the term intuition pump,

971
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 1: which is the title of one of his books, Intuition Pumps, Uh,

972
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:49,320
Speaker 1: dinn It writes, quote, Intuition pumps are cunningly designed to

973
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:53,759
Speaker 1: focus the reader's attention on the important features and to

974
00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:57,400
Speaker 1: deflect the reader from bogging down in hard to follow details.

975
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with this in principle. Indeed, one of

976
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:04,520
Speaker 1: philosophy's highest callings is finding ways of helping people see

977
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: the forest and not just the trees. But intuition pumps

978
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: are often abused, though seldom deliberately. Of course, dann It

979
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:15,279
Speaker 1: himself has has played with thought experiments before. Absolutely, I'm

980
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 1: instantly reminded of the it was almost kind of a

981
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 1: little short story he wrote about those A robot with

982
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: a human brain. Wonderful. Yes, the where am I? I

983
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:26,799
Speaker 1: think it was called? So dan It is as he says,

984
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:30,799
Speaker 1: they're certainly not opposed to thought experiments, but he uh,

985
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 1: he points out, I think quite correctly that sometimes they

986
00:54:35,239 --> 00:54:38,480
Speaker 1: actually confuse more than they illuminate. Whether that's true of

987
00:54:38,520 --> 00:54:40,839
Speaker 1: the ones he himself is put together, it's it's hard

988
00:54:40,920 --> 00:54:44,520
Speaker 1: to say. I mean a lot of times. The benefits

989
00:54:44,600 --> 00:54:47,160
Speaker 1: of these physics thought experiments, as we've been saying, is

990
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 1: you can eventually go out and test and see whether

991
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:51,719
Speaker 1: they were on the right track or whether they were

992
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:55,080
Speaker 1: confused by some you know, hidden assumption taken on board.

993
00:54:55,120 --> 00:54:56,839
Speaker 1: It's harder to do with a lot of these thought

994
00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:01,200
Speaker 1: experiments about say the physical location of consciousness or something

995
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 1: like that. Uh So, one example from Dennett's book Intuition

996
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:08,320
Speaker 1: Pumps that we talked about in our Ship of Theseus episode.

997
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:12,520
Speaker 1: You remember the Swampman because it's essentially swamp thing from

998
00:55:12,520 --> 00:55:15,080
Speaker 1: the comic book, right, Yeah, So this was an example

999
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:18,640
Speaker 1: of you know, Dinnett explaining how intuition pumps can go wrong.

1000
00:55:18,920 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 1: And again, intuition pumps are just thought experiments that that

1001
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:25,959
Speaker 1: rely on our intuitions that don't like take specific data

1002
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: on board. Really, I'll try to do very very quick.

1003
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:31,680
Speaker 1: The example was this guy named Donald Davidson. He was

1004
00:55:31,719 --> 00:55:35,440
Speaker 1: a philosopher. So he said, assume lightning strikes me while

1005
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 1: I'm out walking in the swamp, and it evaporates my

1006
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:40,600
Speaker 1: body and I'm just gone. And then meanwhile, it also

1007
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:43,919
Speaker 1: strikes a tree next door, and it rearranges that tree

1008
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: into an exact adom for Adam copy of me with

1009
00:55:47,239 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: all my memories, and he calls this creature swamp Man.

1010
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:54,720
Speaker 1: And so he asks, is that copy really me? Davidson says,

1011
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: you know, is it really friends with my friends even

1012
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 1: though it has never met them before? Does it really

1013
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:03,319
Speaker 1: know what a banana tastes like even though it has

1014
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: never tasted or even touched one? This was offered, I think,

1015
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:10,319
Speaker 1: to interrogate the question of how the history of an

1016
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 1: object is related to the identity of that object. Is

1017
00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:17,040
Speaker 1: a thing that is an exact copy of you, that

1018
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:20,239
Speaker 1: behaves exactly like you, but hasn't been where you've been

1019
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 1: and done what you've done in what ways? Is that

1020
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,359
Speaker 1: actually different from you? But didn't responds to this story

1021
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 1: by saying, you know, this thought experiment might not actually

1022
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: reveal all that much. And as a point of analogy,

1023
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:37,200
Speaker 1: he asks us to consider the cow shark. So the

1024
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: cow shark again, is it's created when a normal cow

1025
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:43,680
Speaker 1: gives birth to an animal that is adam, For Adam

1026
00:56:43,880 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 1: exactly like a shark that you would find swimming in

1027
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:50,320
Speaker 1: the ocean. And he asks, now, is this newborn animal

1028
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:53,840
Speaker 1: a cow or a shark? Oh, but also take on

1029
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 1: board that it has cow DNA in all of its cells.

1030
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: Now a question like this, it might do something useful,

1031
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:05,279
Speaker 1: like it might help us identify what features we think

1032
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:08,800
Speaker 1: are important when we use words like cow and shark,

1033
00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:12,240
Speaker 1: But it really doesn't reveal anything about biology or about

1034
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:14,120
Speaker 1: the world. You know, you're not going to get new

1035
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: information about reality from it. I think the best it

1036
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:20,120
Speaker 1: could hope to do is help us figure out what

1037
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:22,960
Speaker 1: we mean by words, and not to say there isn't

1038
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 1: value in that. But yeah, that seems to be about

1039
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 1: all that it does. Yes, so then it actually arrives

1040
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,840
Speaker 1: at a claim. He says, quote, the utility of a

1041
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: thought experiment is inversely proportional to the size of its

1042
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: departures from reality. That's why he's saying. You know, Swampman

1043
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:41,160
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem to be all that useful and understanding

1044
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 1: what it what it means to be a physical object

1045
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: like a person, because something like that is never going

1046
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:50,080
Speaker 1: to happen in reality. I also, and I felt this

1047
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: way before too. I also feel like swamp Man is

1048
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:57,360
Speaker 1: just a little too complicated, Like just use Star Trek.

1049
00:57:57,480 --> 00:58:01,360
Speaker 1: Just say Cat to Picard teleports down to Planet X

1050
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:04,440
Speaker 1: and then back up to the Enterprise, Like is then

1051
00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: what happens when he hangs out with his friends, what

1052
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: happens when he plays the flute, etcetera. Well, I guess

1053
00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 1: it's the same problem either way. But to answer that question,

1054
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:16,960
Speaker 1: you're using your intuitions, which are trained on a world

1055
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:21,439
Speaker 1: where that never happens. So your intuitions just don't do much.

1056
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:25,120
Speaker 1: They're there, They are not honed to solving this kind

1057
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,840
Speaker 1: of problem. Your intuitions are much more useful in say,

1058
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:33,720
Speaker 1: like combining premises about how things fall and stuff like that, right,

1059
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:36,920
Speaker 1: because actually you're quite experienced with falling, and you can

1060
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,960
Speaker 1: combine that with observations about gravity and stuff. Now, I

1061
00:58:40,040 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: don't I don't think uh. Dennett's little proclamation there about

1062
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:46,480
Speaker 1: the size of its departures from reality is then again

1063
00:58:47,160 --> 00:58:50,440
Speaker 1: like a solvent that will that will fix all the problems,

1064
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: because it can be very hard to measure the size

1065
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 1: of a departure from reality in the consistent way, Like

1066
00:58:56,480 --> 00:59:00,160
Speaker 1: does the Chinese room experiment depart more or less from

1067
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: reality than Einstein imagining a train traveling near the speed

1068
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 1: of light? Right? Because the Chinese room you could do that,

1069
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe somebody has done that. I mean, all

1070
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:12,360
Speaker 1: you need is just a person in a room and

1071
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:16,720
Speaker 1: an individual on the outside writing Chinese characters down right,

1072
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:19,800
Speaker 1: I mean you know, and also speaking and being able

1073
00:59:19,840 --> 00:59:21,800
Speaker 1: to being able to speak and write Chinese. Obviously you

1074
00:59:21,840 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 1: can't have just nonsense going in, but that are the

1075
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:27,120
Speaker 1: only two components, and we could we could pull this

1076
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: off today if we needed to. Though, I would say

1077
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:32,720
Speaker 1: that the problem with the Chinese room actually is not

1078
00:59:32,960 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: its departures from reality, as in, like, it's not plausible

1079
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 1: that you could make a room like this and put

1080
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:40,440
Speaker 1: somebody in it because you have a determined if it's

1081
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:45,160
Speaker 1: illustrating anything about how a proposed machine is thinking or

1082
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:47,400
Speaker 1: not thinking, right, the lack of its use, I think

1083
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,840
Speaker 1: is it's in its departures from the thing it's supposed

1084
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: to represent. It's supposed to be an analogy for a computer,

1085
00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 1: but it's actually not a good analogy for a computer,

1086
00:59:57,800 --> 01:00:00,360
Speaker 1: because it's a room and a person and some pencil

1087
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:02,480
Speaker 1: and paper that just like they're not the same thing.

1088
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 1: But with Swampman, Yeah, they're all these fantastic ideas in

1089
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 1: it that don't match up with reality. Whereas the ship

1090
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 1: of theseus is a is A is so brilliant and

1091
01:00:11,560 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: and as and as to the test of time, because

1092
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:17,200
Speaker 1: everybody can can associate with that, like the upkeep of

1093
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 1: physical structures and devices, the constant replacement of those things,

1094
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:28,600
Speaker 1: the constant change to things that we think have autonomy,

1095
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:33,720
Speaker 1: like like ourselves or or sports teams, clubs, buildings, etcetera. Well,

1096
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:36,800
Speaker 1: a kind of chilling takeaway from from that distinction you

1097
01:00:36,880 --> 01:00:39,200
Speaker 1: make between the ship of theseus and the ship of

1098
01:00:39,280 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 1: theseus version as instantiated in Swampman, is that maybe it

1099
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:47,000
Speaker 1: makes more sense to have to answer questions about the

1100
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:50,080
Speaker 1: meaning of identity as it refers to things than as

1101
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:52,480
Speaker 1: it does refer to people. Yeah, in many ways, it

1102
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: is easier to think of people as things if you're

1103
01:00:54,560 --> 01:00:58,640
Speaker 1: just doing these kind of computations. I also want to

1104
01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:01,960
Speaker 1: clarify that if you're more interested in the Chinese Room,

1105
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:05,040
Speaker 1: they're like a billion other classes of responses to it

1106
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:07,960
Speaker 1: you can go look up. Like one is that you know,

1107
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:11,320
Speaker 1: you should really maybe think about putting that computer inside

1108
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 1: a robot and then that would be more consistent with

1109
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: the type of experience that a human has. And so

1110
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:19,560
Speaker 1: like what if you put the Chinese room in a

1111
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:22,320
Speaker 1: thing that could go around and look with cameras outside

1112
01:01:22,440 --> 01:01:24,440
Speaker 1: and you know all that kind of So there are

1113
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:27,480
Speaker 1: just tons of different responses. While I don't find it

1114
01:01:27,600 --> 01:01:30,680
Speaker 1: convincing on on what it tries to prove. I do

1115
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:33,280
Speaker 1: think it's one of these things that is at least

1116
01:01:33,360 --> 01:01:37,360
Speaker 1: inadvertently useful for clarifying what people mean when they're talking

1117
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 1: about this subject, because usually if you start asking something

1118
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 1: like can a machine be conscious? You just don't even

1119
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:46,120
Speaker 1: have a foothold to start reasoning. Just where do you go?

1120
01:01:46,240 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, yeah, because on one hand,

1121
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:51,040
Speaker 1: it's hard enough to know what consciousness is for us

1122
01:01:51,080 --> 01:01:53,160
Speaker 1: and then to extrapolate what that would mean to a machine.

1123
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:55,720
Speaker 1: You there's just no like, how do you feel in

1124
01:01:55,720 --> 01:01:58,000
Speaker 1: the values on that equation? So I give it credit

1125
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:00,160
Speaker 1: for that. It it I don't think it's all us

1126
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:02,800
Speaker 1: the question, but it does give you a first place

1127
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:05,560
Speaker 1: to start climbing where you can even contemplate what it

1128
01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:08,160
Speaker 1: would mean to solve this question. Now, to return back

1129
01:02:08,200 --> 01:02:09,920
Speaker 1: just the idea of what is the thought experiment? What

1130
01:02:10,040 --> 01:02:11,959
Speaker 1: is an a thought experiment? I do want to refer

1131
01:02:12,040 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: to just a few ideas that have been pointed out

1132
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:18,160
Speaker 1: by Dan Falk and his Ian article Armchair science. Thought

1133
01:02:18,200 --> 01:02:21,120
Speaker 1: experiment played a crucial role in the history of science,

1134
01:02:21,160 --> 01:02:22,880
Speaker 1: But do they tell us anything about the real world?

1135
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 1: He points out that John Norton, a philosopher at the

1136
01:02:26,360 --> 01:02:28,919
Speaker 1: University of Pittsburgh, has argued that we shouldn't elevate thought

1137
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:34,000
Speaker 1: experiments too highly. They are essentially quote elegantly crafted arguments

1138
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:38,640
Speaker 1: that bring vivid pictures to the mind's eye. So the

1139
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 1: argument here is that the thought experiments, as we've been discussing,

1140
01:02:42,040 --> 01:02:45,720
Speaker 1: don't produce any new knowledge themselves, but rather constituted deduction

1141
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: of existing knowledge. And he maintains that all thought experiments

1142
01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:53,680
Speaker 1: are are simply restate, can simply be restated. His arguments,

1143
01:02:53,880 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: like his challenge, his sort of rough challenges, you can

1144
01:02:56,480 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: bring me a thought experiment, I'll just restate it as argument,

1145
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:02,160
Speaker 1: and that's all there is to it. Well, I think

1146
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,400
Speaker 1: he's essentially correct that any good thought experiment can be

1147
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:08,560
Speaker 1: restated as a deductive argument, you know, with the kind

1148
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:12,960
Speaker 1: of the boring you know, logic class style logical premises. Right,

1149
01:03:13,160 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 1: But thought experiments are useful because they're easier to remember,

1150
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 1: they're easier to understand, and they give you pictures that

1151
01:03:20,400 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 1: you can wrap your mind around, right exactly. They change

1152
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 1: the way you think about something, and and that's ultimately

1153
01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:27,920
Speaker 1: I believe the point. The counterpoint that is made by

1154
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:30,720
Speaker 1: James Robert Brown, a philoso for the University of Toronto,

1155
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:33,960
Speaker 1: who points out that like, Okay, yeah, Norton, you may

1156
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:36,160
Speaker 1: be right, and he even says, I think Norton probably

1157
01:03:36,240 --> 01:03:39,880
Speaker 1: could restate all thought experiments as arguments, but we don't

1158
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:42,280
Speaker 1: really work them out in our heads as arguments. We

1159
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:45,000
Speaker 1: work them out in the form of these thought experiments.

1160
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:47,840
Speaker 1: The cognitive process here because is much is much more

1161
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: intuitive and less analytical thought experiments. Therefore, they transformed the

1162
01:03:53,240 --> 01:03:56,880
Speaker 1: ad the analytical into the intuitive. What did we evolve

1163
01:03:57,040 --> 01:04:01,520
Speaker 1: thinking for? What was it use full four? I mean,

1164
01:04:02,080 --> 01:04:04,760
Speaker 1: can't be sure, but it really seems like what's likely

1165
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:08,360
Speaker 1: is not that, say, our boreal primates were trying to

1166
01:04:08,480 --> 01:04:12,240
Speaker 1: work out analytical premises of an argument and say, you know,

1167
01:04:12,400 --> 01:04:16,600
Speaker 1: premise one is no. I mean, they were imagining scenarios,

1168
01:04:16,760 --> 01:04:20,320
Speaker 1: like thinking is useful for saying, Okay, if I went

1169
01:04:20,520 --> 01:04:23,959
Speaker 1: down on the ground right now, what would happen? Oh, yeah,

1170
01:04:24,080 --> 01:04:26,680
Speaker 1: that's right. There was a leopard down there. So if

1171
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:30,040
Speaker 1: leopard and me on the ground, that that's not good.

1172
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:34,440
Speaker 1: Imagining scenarios is so much more natural and intuitive to

1173
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:38,160
Speaker 1: us than than formal syllogistic arguments. Now, Falk also points

1174
01:04:38,160 --> 01:04:40,640
Speaker 1: out that there's a third possibility here. The third argument

1175
01:04:40,680 --> 01:04:44,960
Speaker 1: presented by cognitive scientists Nancy Nurcessian of the Georgian Institute

1176
01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:48,040
Speaker 1: of Technology, as she argues that thought experiments are simply

1177
01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: middle mental modeling. If Falk provides a quote for her

1178
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:55,720
Speaker 1: from her in his article, quote, a mental model is

1179
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:59,280
Speaker 1: basically a representation of the structure, function, or behavior of

1180
01:04:59,400 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 1: some system. You're interested in, some real world system that

1181
01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:06,200
Speaker 1: retains its sensory and motor properties that you get from perception.

1182
01:05:06,720 --> 01:05:09,800
Speaker 1: When we manipulate a mental model, she argues, we use

1183
01:05:09,920 --> 01:05:12,400
Speaker 1: quote some of the same kind of processing that you

1184
01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:16,000
Speaker 1: would use to manipulate things in the real world. So, yeah,

1185
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:19,000
Speaker 1: the idea here, it's it's the example that has often

1186
01:05:19,040 --> 01:05:22,160
Speaker 1: put forth is if someone says, hey, how many windows

1187
01:05:22,200 --> 01:05:24,640
Speaker 1: are there in your house? And then how unless you

1188
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:27,680
Speaker 1: just carry around that raw data in your head, the

1189
01:05:27,840 --> 01:05:30,720
Speaker 1: way you solve that is probably to form a mental

1190
01:05:30,800 --> 01:05:33,720
Speaker 1: image of your house or room by room, form the

1191
01:05:33,800 --> 01:05:36,240
Speaker 1: mental images and then count the windows. But you had

1192
01:05:36,320 --> 01:05:38,920
Speaker 1: to have looked at your house already, right, Yeah, you

1193
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:42,800
Speaker 1: can't just have just you know, uh, you know, experimental

1194
01:05:42,880 --> 01:05:44,680
Speaker 1: knowledge like you have to have some real knowledge you

1195
01:05:44,760 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 1: have walked through your house, you've seen your house, and

1196
01:05:47,440 --> 01:05:50,520
Speaker 1: then and that's what you're using to reconstruct this this model.

1197
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:53,840
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that just

1198
01:05:54,000 --> 01:05:57,800
Speaker 1: counting the windows in your house is probably a quicker

1199
01:05:57,880 --> 01:06:00,040
Speaker 1: way essentially falling back on the sign on sign of

1200
01:06:00,120 --> 01:06:03,640
Speaker 1: an invest investigation is going to be the clearcut method

1201
01:06:03,720 --> 01:06:07,640
Speaker 1: of solving that particular question. Yes, especially if you care

1202
01:06:07,640 --> 01:06:12,000
Speaker 1: about getting the right answer right. Yes, Uh, those sometimes,

1203
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:15,440
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought experiments can be very useful, especially

1204
01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:19,240
Speaker 1: in scenarios where you're not super concerned with precision, but

1205
01:06:19,360 --> 01:06:22,640
Speaker 1: you're more concerned with like the directionality of an answer.

1206
01:06:23,200 --> 01:06:26,520
Speaker 1: Like a thought experiment can be quite useful in uh,

1207
01:06:26,800 --> 01:06:30,720
Speaker 1: just getting a guess about whether a quantity in reality

1208
01:06:30,840 --> 01:06:34,640
Speaker 1: is going to increase or decrease without knowing exactly how

1209
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:36,600
Speaker 1: much it's going to increase or decrease, you know what

1210
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:38,600
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, And then of course it to go

1211
01:06:38,680 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 1: back to black holes for instance. Like that's an example

1212
01:06:40,880 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 1: of counting windows in a house you haven't been to yet,

1213
01:06:44,280 --> 01:06:48,280
Speaker 1: by by your by your understanding of everything surrounding whatever

1214
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:51,320
Speaker 1: that house should be, so that there there are cases

1215
01:06:51,400 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 1: where that is the best method for trying to count

1216
01:06:54,640 --> 01:06:56,800
Speaker 1: the windows in a given house. Well, it's almost like knowing,

1217
01:06:56,920 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 1: like what is the what is the tension and support

1218
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:02,520
Speaker 1: strength of glass? Now trying to imagine how big of

1219
01:07:02,600 --> 01:07:06,080
Speaker 1: a glass house could exist before it falls over. You know,

1220
01:07:06,240 --> 01:07:09,280
Speaker 1: you don't have to build that house. If you already

1221
01:07:09,360 --> 01:07:12,000
Speaker 1: know some things about glass, you can run that experiment

1222
01:07:12,120 --> 01:07:14,760
Speaker 1: on paper or in your head. But anyway, what I

1223
01:07:14,800 --> 01:07:17,040
Speaker 1: think this all means is that we should build two

1224
01:07:17,280 --> 01:07:20,480
Speaker 1: glass towers, one bigger than the other, and drop them

1225
01:07:20,600 --> 01:07:23,840
Speaker 1: both but tie them together, and then shoot a cannon

1226
01:07:23,960 --> 01:07:26,280
Speaker 1: off of them, and then drop a bag of cheese

1227
01:07:26,440 --> 01:07:31,760
Speaker 1: from them. And basically you're you're arguing for a shared

1228
01:07:31,800 --> 01:07:35,600
Speaker 1: cinematic universe of thought experiments. I mean, I think most

1229
01:07:35,680 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 1: of them are in the public domain, So this would

1230
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:40,400
Speaker 1: be a great This would be a great franchise for

1231
01:07:40,480 --> 01:07:42,560
Speaker 1: somebody to to pick up and run with. You know,

1232
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:44,200
Speaker 1: at this point, I think a good number of the

1233
01:07:44,240 --> 01:07:47,080
Speaker 1: most famous thought experiments have at some point had like

1234
01:07:47,200 --> 01:07:50,120
Speaker 1: an indie movie made out of them. You know, there's

1235
01:07:50,160 --> 01:07:51,920
Speaker 1: got to be I would be shocked if there is

1236
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:55,960
Speaker 1: not a Chinese room movie. Well, I'm sure we'll we'll

1237
01:07:55,960 --> 01:07:58,760
Speaker 1: hear about it from listeners if there is one. Uh.

1238
01:07:58,880 --> 01:08:02,080
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Thought experiments. Uh, hopefully a

1239
01:08:02,160 --> 01:08:04,480
Speaker 1: nice overview of what they are, what they are not,

1240
01:08:05,520 --> 01:08:08,680
Speaker 1: some different ways of classifying them, some different examples both

1241
01:08:08,720 --> 01:08:11,959
Speaker 1: from past episodes and some that we haven't really picked

1242
01:08:12,040 --> 01:08:15,320
Speaker 1: up and looked at here on the show. But hopefully

1243
01:08:15,360 --> 01:08:17,320
Speaker 1: this will this will be useful moving forward as we

1244
01:08:17,439 --> 01:08:23,280
Speaker 1: inevitably encounter other thought experiments in our consideration of various topics.

1245
01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:25,280
Speaker 1: What I hope this allows us to do is to

1246
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:29,680
Speaker 1: be more confident in dismissing the ones they're not useful. Yes,

1247
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:32,519
Speaker 1: you have to realize that they are not. You know,

1248
01:08:32,560 --> 01:08:35,120
Speaker 1: they're not holy scripture set in stone, that that that

1249
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:38,320
Speaker 1: they can be flawed. There in many cases they are flawed.

1250
01:08:38,840 --> 01:08:41,600
Speaker 1: And uh, but then that's also part of their usefulness

1251
01:08:41,680 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 1: is that the flawed model can be presented and someone

1252
01:08:44,280 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 1: can say, well, let's look at this, look at let's

1253
01:08:46,560 --> 01:08:50,479
Speaker 1: change something in this model and see what happens. All right. Well, hey,

1254
01:08:50,560 --> 01:08:52,240
Speaker 1: if you you want to check out more episodes of

1255
01:08:52,240 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, you want to check out, say,

1256
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:56,280
Speaker 1: for instance, the episodes we did on black Holes, the

1257
01:08:56,320 --> 01:08:59,519
Speaker 1: Ship of THESEUS uh any of these These various topics

1258
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:01,680
Speaker 1: were heard too in this episode, Well, you can find

1259
01:09:01,720 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 1: them all. It's stuff to blow your Mind dot com.

1260
01:09:03,840 --> 01:09:06,040
Speaker 1: That's the mothership. That's where you'll find them all. That's

1261
01:09:06,040 --> 01:09:07,800
Speaker 1: where you'll find links out to our very social media

1262
01:09:07,800 --> 01:09:10,080
Speaker 1: accounts to find a tab for our store, place where

1263
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:14,400
Speaker 1: you can buy merchandise with cool shirt designs, stickers, et cetera.

1264
01:09:14,520 --> 01:09:16,679
Speaker 1: It's a cool way to support the show, and another

1265
01:09:16,720 --> 01:09:18,680
Speaker 1: way to support the show is to simply rate and

1266
01:09:18,800 --> 01:09:21,080
Speaker 1: review the show wherever you have the power to do so.

1267
01:09:21,280 --> 01:09:24,679
Speaker 1: Big thanks, as always to our excellent audio producers Alex

1268
01:09:24,720 --> 01:09:27,479
Speaker 1: Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like to get

1269
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:30,000
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly with feedback on this episode

1270
01:09:30,120 --> 01:09:32,439
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or

1271
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:35,080
Speaker 1: just to say hi, you can email us at blow

1272
01:09:35,200 --> 01:09:46,880
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more

1273
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how

1274
01:09:49,280 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. B The Press point four part

1275
01:10:06,400 --> 01:10:09,439
Speaker 1: Part par