WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:02.700 The following is a conversation with Sean Carroll. 00:02.700 --> 00:04.900 He's a theoretical physicist at Caltech 00:04.900 --> 00:08.780 specializing in quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology. 00:08.780 --> 00:11.620 He's the author of several popular books, 00:11.620 --> 00:15.340 one on the arrow of time called From Eternity to Here, 00:15.340 --> 00:17.820 one on the Higgs boson called Particle 00:17.820 --> 00:19.140 at the End of the Universe, 00:19.140 --> 00:22.540 and one on science and philosophy called The Big Picture 00:22.540 --> 00:26.340 on the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. 00:26.340 --> 00:28.700 He has an upcoming book on quantum mechanics 00:28.700 --> 00:32.660 that you can preorder now called Something Deeply Hidden. 00:32.660 --> 00:36.060 He writes one of my favorite blogs on his website, 00:36.060 --> 00:37.980 preposterousuniverse.com. 00:37.980 --> 00:40.460 I recommend clicking on the Greatest Hits link 00:40.460 --> 00:43.340 that lists accessible, interesting posts 00:43.340 --> 00:45.660 on the arrow of time, dark matter, dark energy, 00:45.660 --> 00:47.620 the Big Bang, general relativity, 00:47.620 --> 00:49.580 string theory, quantum mechanics, 00:49.580 --> 00:53.180 and the big meta questions about the philosophy of science, 00:53.180 --> 00:57.620 God, ethics, politics, academia, and much, much more. 00:57.620 --> 01:00.300 Finally, and perhaps most famously, 01:00.300 --> 01:03.660 he's the host of a podcast called Mindscape 01:03.660 --> 01:06.940 that you should subscribe to and support on Patreon. 01:06.940 --> 01:08.820 Along with the Joe Rogan experience, 01:08.820 --> 01:10.500 Sam Harris's Making Sense, 01:10.500 --> 01:13.100 and Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, 01:13.100 --> 01:15.860 Sean's Mindscape podcast is one of my favorite ways 01:15.860 --> 01:18.820 to learn new ideas or explore different perspectives 01:18.820 --> 01:22.140 and ideas that I thought I understood. 01:22.140 --> 01:24.660 It was truly an honor to meet 01:24.660 --> 01:27.240 and spend a couple hours with Sean. 01:27.240 --> 01:28.980 It's a bit heartbreaking to say 01:28.980 --> 01:30.540 that for the first time ever, 01:30.540 --> 01:32.500 the audio recorder for this podcast 01:32.500 --> 01:34.940 died in the middle of our conversation. 01:34.940 --> 01:36.320 There's technical reasons for this, 01:36.320 --> 01:38.380 having to do with phantom power 01:38.380 --> 01:41.060 that I now understand and will avoid. 01:41.060 --> 01:44.220 It took me one hour to notice and fix the problem. 01:44.220 --> 01:48.340 So, much like the universe is 68% dark energy, 01:48.340 --> 01:51.340 roughly the same amount from this conversation was lost, 01:51.340 --> 01:54.220 except in the memories of the two people involved 01:54.220 --> 01:56.320 and in my notes. 01:56.320 --> 01:59.940 I'm sure we'll talk again and continue this conversation 01:59.940 --> 02:02.420 on this podcast or on Sean's. 02:02.420 --> 02:05.300 And of course, I look forward to it. 02:05.300 --> 02:07.820 This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. 02:07.820 --> 02:11.060 If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, iTunes, 02:11.060 --> 02:12.520 support it on Patreon, 02:12.520 --> 02:16.660 or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman. 02:16.660 --> 02:21.380 And now, here's my conversation with Sean Carroll. 02:21.380 --> 02:23.540 What do you think is more interesting and impactful, 02:23.540 --> 02:26.860 understanding how the universe works at a fundamental level 02:26.860 --> 02:29.180 or understanding how the human mind works? 02:29.180 --> 02:31.960 You know, of course this is a crazy, 02:31.960 --> 02:33.940 meaningless, unanswerable question in some sense, 02:33.940 --> 02:35.140 because they're both very interesting 02:35.140 --> 02:37.500 and there's no absolute scale of interestingness 02:37.500 --> 02:39.180 that we can rate them on. 02:39.180 --> 02:41.140 There's a glib answer that says the human brain 02:41.140 --> 02:43.060 is part of the universe, right? 02:43.060 --> 02:44.420 And therefore, understanding the universe 02:44.420 --> 02:47.020 is more fundamental than understanding the human brain. 02:47.020 --> 02:49.580 But do you really believe that once we understand 02:49.580 --> 02:51.500 the fundamental way the universe works 02:51.500 --> 02:53.740 at the particle level, the forces, 02:53.740 --> 02:55.820 we would be able to understand how the mind works? 02:55.820 --> 02:56.660 No, certainly not. 02:56.660 --> 02:58.740 We cannot understand how ice cream works 02:58.740 --> 03:01.060 just from understanding how particles work, right? 03:01.060 --> 03:02.740 So I'm a big believer in emergence. 03:02.740 --> 03:05.300 I'm a big believer that there are different ways 03:05.300 --> 03:06.660 of talking about the world 03:07.900 --> 03:11.180 beyond just the most fundamental microscopic one. 03:11.180 --> 03:13.860 You know, when we talk about tables and chairs 03:13.860 --> 03:15.120 and planets and people, 03:15.120 --> 03:17.300 we're not talking the language of particle physics 03:17.300 --> 03:18.380 and cosmology. 03:18.380 --> 03:20.860 So, but understanding the universe, 03:20.860 --> 03:24.060 you didn't say just at the most fundamental level, right? 03:24.060 --> 03:26.740 So understanding the universe at all levels 03:26.740 --> 03:28.200 is part of that. 03:28.200 --> 03:29.940 I do think, you know, to be a little bit more fair 03:29.940 --> 03:33.980 to the question, there probably are general principles 03:33.980 --> 03:38.500 of complexity, biology, information processing, 03:38.500 --> 03:41.820 memory, knowledge, creativity 03:41.820 --> 03:45.620 that go beyond just the human brain, right? 03:45.620 --> 03:47.800 And maybe one could count understanding those 03:47.800 --> 03:49.140 as part of understanding the universe. 03:49.140 --> 03:50.480 The human brain, as far as we know, 03:50.480 --> 03:54.300 is the most complex thing in the universe. 03:54.300 --> 03:57.420 So there's, it's certainly absurd to think 03:57.420 --> 03:58.860 that by understanding the fundamental laws 03:58.860 --> 04:00.340 of particle physics, 04:00.340 --> 04:02.860 you get any direct insight on how the brain works. 04:02.860 --> 04:05.940 But then there's this step from the fundamentals 04:05.940 --> 04:08.700 of particle physics to information processing, 04:08.700 --> 04:10.820 which a lot of physicists and philosophers 04:10.820 --> 04:12.460 may be a little bit carelessly take 04:12.460 --> 04:14.620 when they talk about artificial intelligence. 04:14.620 --> 04:18.020 Do you think of the universe 04:18.020 --> 04:21.300 as a kind of a computational device? 04:21.300 --> 04:24.140 No, to be like, the honest answer there is no. 04:24.140 --> 04:26.300 There's a sense in which the universe 04:26.300 --> 04:29.140 processes information, clearly. 04:29.140 --> 04:30.700 There's a sense in which the universe 04:30.700 --> 04:33.880 is like a computer, clearly. 04:33.880 --> 04:36.500 But in some sense, I think, 04:36.500 --> 04:38.540 I tried to say this once on my blog 04:38.540 --> 04:39.360 and no one agreed with me, 04:39.360 --> 04:42.360 but the universe is more like a computation 04:42.360 --> 04:45.060 than a computer because the universe happens once. 04:45.060 --> 04:46.900 A computer is a general purpose machine, right? 04:46.900 --> 04:48.700 That you can ask it different questions, 04:48.700 --> 04:50.140 even a pocket calculator, right? 04:50.140 --> 04:52.980 And it's set up to answer certain kinds of questions. 04:52.980 --> 04:54.340 The universe isn't that. 04:54.340 --> 04:57.360 So information processing happens in the universe, 04:57.360 --> 04:59.220 but it's not what the universe is. 04:59.220 --> 05:01.580 And I know your MIT colleague, Seth Lloyd, 05:01.580 --> 05:03.820 feels very differently about this, right? 05:03.820 --> 05:07.220 Well, you're thinking of the universe as a closed system. 05:07.220 --> 05:08.060 I am. 05:08.060 --> 05:11.780 So what makes a computer more like a PC, 05:12.980 --> 05:15.500 like a computing machine is that there's a human 05:15.500 --> 05:19.100 that every once comes up to it and moves the mouse around. 05:19.100 --> 05:19.940 So input. 05:19.940 --> 05:20.760 Gives it input. 05:20.760 --> 05:21.600 Gives it input. 05:23.500 --> 05:26.300 And that's why you're saying it's just a computation, 05:26.300 --> 05:29.260 a deterministic thing that's just unrolling. 05:29.260 --> 05:32.220 But the immense complexity of it 05:32.220 --> 05:34.420 is nevertheless like processing. 05:34.420 --> 05:39.420 There's a state and then it changes with good rules. 05:40.140 --> 05:41.660 And there's a sense for a lot of people 05:41.660 --> 05:44.420 that if the brain operates, 05:44.420 --> 05:46.460 the human brain operates within that world, 05:46.460 --> 05:49.340 then it's simply just a small subset of that. 05:49.340 --> 05:52.500 And so there's no reason we can't build 05:52.500 --> 05:55.560 arbitrarily great intelligences. 05:55.560 --> 05:56.400 Yeah. 05:56.400 --> 05:58.660 Do you think of intelligence in this way? 05:58.660 --> 05:59.580 Intelligence is tricky. 05:59.580 --> 06:01.660 I don't have a definition of it offhand. 06:01.660 --> 06:05.460 So I remember this panel discussion that I saw on YouTube. 06:05.460 --> 06:07.620 I wasn't there, but Seth Lloyd was on the panel. 06:07.620 --> 06:10.540 And so was Martin Rees, the famous astrophysicist. 06:10.540 --> 06:13.780 And Seth gave his shtick for why the universe is a computer 06:13.780 --> 06:14.820 and explained this. 06:14.820 --> 06:19.140 And Martin Rees said, so what is not a computer? 06:19.140 --> 06:22.000 And Seth was like, oh, that's a good question. 06:22.000 --> 06:22.840 I'm not sure. 06:22.840 --> 06:24.960 Because if you have a sufficiently broad definition 06:24.960 --> 06:28.360 of what a computer is, then everything is, right? 06:28.360 --> 06:32.140 And the simile or the analogy gains force 06:32.140 --> 06:34.380 when it excludes some things. 06:34.380 --> 06:36.260 You know, is the moon going around the earth 06:36.260 --> 06:38.620 performing a computation? 06:38.620 --> 06:41.320 I can come up with definitions in which the answer is yes, 06:41.320 --> 06:43.820 but it's not a very useful computation. 06:43.820 --> 06:46.140 I think that it's absolutely helpful 06:46.140 --> 06:49.620 to think about the universe in certain situations, 06:49.620 --> 06:53.020 certain contexts, as an information processing device. 06:53.020 --> 06:54.860 I'm even guilty of writing a paper 06:54.860 --> 06:56.820 called Quantum Circuit Cosmology, 06:56.820 --> 06:59.260 where we modeled the whole universe as a quantum circuit. 06:59.260 --> 07:00.100 As a circuit. 07:00.100 --> 07:01.340 As a circuit, yeah. 07:01.340 --> 07:02.860 With qubits kind of thing? 07:02.860 --> 07:05.040 With qubits basically, right, yeah. 07:05.040 --> 07:07.440 So, and qubits becoming more and more entangled. 07:07.440 --> 07:09.660 So do we wanna digress a little bit? 07:09.660 --> 07:10.500 Let's do it. 07:10.500 --> 07:11.340 It's kind of fun. 07:11.340 --> 07:13.700 So here's a mystery about the universe 07:13.700 --> 07:16.880 that is so deep and profound that nobody talks about it. 07:16.880 --> 07:19.080 Space expands, right? 07:19.080 --> 07:21.940 And we talk about, in a certain region of space, 07:21.940 --> 07:23.620 a certain number of degrees of freedom, 07:23.620 --> 07:25.540 a certain number of ways that the quantum fields 07:25.540 --> 07:28.800 and the particles in that region can arrange themselves. 07:28.800 --> 07:32.220 That number of degrees of freedom in a region of space 07:32.220 --> 07:33.820 is arguably finite. 07:33.820 --> 07:36.660 We actually don't know how many there are, 07:36.660 --> 07:37.820 but there's a very good argument 07:37.820 --> 07:39.420 that says it's a finite number. 07:39.420 --> 07:43.540 So as the universe expands and space gets bigger, 07:44.900 --> 07:46.780 are there more degrees of freedom? 07:46.780 --> 07:48.540 If it's an infinite number, it doesn't really matter. 07:48.540 --> 07:49.980 Infinity times two is still infinity. 07:49.980 --> 07:53.480 But if it's a finite number, then there's more space, 07:53.480 --> 07:54.420 so there's more degrees of freedom. 07:54.420 --> 07:55.740 So where did they come from? 07:55.740 --> 07:58.020 That would mean the universe is not a closed system. 07:58.020 --> 08:01.500 There's more degrees of freedom popping into existence. 08:01.500 --> 08:03.460 So what we suggested was 08:03.460 --> 08:05.340 that there are more degrees of freedom, 08:05.340 --> 08:07.980 and it's not that they're not there to start, 08:07.980 --> 08:10.860 but they're not entangled to start. 08:10.860 --> 08:12.820 So the universe that you and I know of, 08:12.820 --> 08:15.440 the three dimensions around us that we see, 08:15.440 --> 08:18.100 we said those are the entangled degrees of freedom 08:18.100 --> 08:19.620 making up space time. 08:19.620 --> 08:20.920 And as the universe expands, 08:20.920 --> 08:25.180 there are a whole bunch of qubits in their zero state 08:25.180 --> 08:28.140 that become entangled with the rest of space time 08:28.140 --> 08:31.180 through the action of these quantum circuits. 08:31.180 --> 08:35.580 So what does it mean that there's now more 08:35.580 --> 08:39.300 degrees of freedom as they become more entangled? 08:39.300 --> 08:40.300 Yeah, so. 08:40.300 --> 08:41.660 As the universe expands. 08:41.660 --> 08:43.300 That's right, so there's more and more degrees of freedom 08:43.300 --> 08:46.420 that are entangled, that are playing part, 08:46.420 --> 08:47.360 playing the role of part 08:47.360 --> 08:49.600 of the entangled space time structure. 08:49.600 --> 08:51.980 So the basic, the underlying philosophy is 08:51.980 --> 08:54.620 that space time itself arises from the entanglement 08:54.620 --> 08:57.560 of some fundamental quantum degrees of freedom. 08:57.560 --> 09:00.820 Wow, okay, so at which point 09:00.820 --> 09:05.260 is most of the entanglement happening? 09:05.260 --> 09:07.460 Are we talking about close to the Big Bang? 09:07.460 --> 09:11.820 Are we talking about throughout the time of the life? 09:11.820 --> 09:12.660 Throughout history, yeah. 09:12.660 --> 09:15.140 So the idea is that at the Big Bang, 09:15.140 --> 09:16.780 almost all the degrees of freedom 09:16.780 --> 09:19.700 that the universe could have were there, 09:19.700 --> 09:22.420 but they were unentangled with anything else. 09:22.420 --> 09:23.900 And that's a reflection of the fact 09:23.900 --> 09:25.620 that the Big Bang had a low entropy. 09:25.620 --> 09:28.020 It was a very simple, very small place. 09:28.020 --> 09:31.420 And as space expands, more and more degrees of freedom 09:31.420 --> 09:34.300 become entangled with the rest of the world. 09:34.300 --> 09:35.940 Well, I have to ask John Carroll, 09:35.940 --> 09:37.880 what do you think of the thought experiment 09:37.880 --> 09:41.580 from Nick Bostrom that we're living in a simulation? 09:41.580 --> 09:44.980 So I think, let me contextualize that a little bit more. 09:44.980 --> 09:48.340 I think people don't actually take this thought experiments. 09:48.340 --> 09:50.460 I think it's quite interesting. 09:50.460 --> 09:52.900 It's not very useful, but it's quite interesting. 09:52.900 --> 09:54.500 From the perspective of AI, 09:54.500 --> 09:58.020 a lot of the learning that can be done usually happens 09:58.020 --> 10:00.580 in simulation from artificial examples. 10:00.580 --> 10:03.840 And so it's a constructive question to ask, 10:04.900 --> 10:08.240 how difficult is our real world to simulate? 10:08.240 --> 10:09.360 Right. 10:09.360 --> 10:12.180 Which is kind of a dual part of, 10:12.180 --> 10:14.100 if we're living in a simulation 10:14.100 --> 10:16.420 and somebody built that simulation, 10:16.420 --> 10:18.860 if you were to try to do it yourself, how hard would it be? 10:18.860 --> 10:21.100 So obviously we could be living in a simulation. 10:21.100 --> 10:23.000 If you just want the physical possibility, 10:23.000 --> 10:25.420 then I completely agree that it's physically possible. 10:25.420 --> 10:27.380 I don't think that we actually are. 10:27.380 --> 10:30.300 So take this one piece of data into consideration. 10:30.300 --> 10:33.960 You know, we live in a big universe, okay? 10:35.140 --> 10:38.500 There's two trillion galaxies in our observable universe 10:38.500 --> 10:41.660 with 200 billion stars in each galaxy, et cetera. 10:41.660 --> 10:44.940 It would seem to be a waste of resources 10:44.940 --> 10:46.540 to have a universe that big going on 10:46.540 --> 10:47.540 just to do a simulation. 10:47.540 --> 10:50.140 So in other words, I want to be a good Bayesian. 10:50.140 --> 10:52.940 I want to ask under this hypothesis, 10:52.940 --> 10:54.960 what do I expect to see? 10:54.960 --> 10:56.780 So the first thing I would say is I wouldn't expect 10:56.780 --> 11:00.340 to see a universe that was that big, okay? 11:00.340 --> 11:02.540 The second thing is I wouldn't expect the resolution 11:02.540 --> 11:05.020 of the universe to be as good as it is. 11:05.020 --> 11:08.740 So it's always possible that if our superhuman simulators 11:08.740 --> 11:09.900 only have finite resources, 11:09.900 --> 11:12.420 that they don't render the entire universe, right? 11:12.420 --> 11:14.340 That the part that is out there, 11:14.340 --> 11:16.300 the two trillion galaxies, 11:16.300 --> 11:19.640 isn't actually being simulated fully, okay? 11:19.640 --> 11:22.740 But then the obvious extrapolation of that 11:22.740 --> 11:25.500 is that only I am being simulated fully. 11:25.500 --> 11:29.220 Like the rest of you are just non player characters, right? 11:29.220 --> 11:30.520 I'm the only thing that is real. 11:30.520 --> 11:32.780 The rest of you are just chat bots. 11:32.780 --> 11:34.320 Beyond this wall, I see the wall, 11:34.320 --> 11:36.020 but there is literally nothing 11:36.020 --> 11:37.360 on the other side of the wall. 11:37.360 --> 11:39.300 That is sort of the Bayesian prediction. 11:39.300 --> 11:40.180 That's what it would be like 11:40.180 --> 11:42.240 to do an efficient simulation of me. 11:42.240 --> 11:45.700 So like none of that seems quite realistic. 11:45.700 --> 11:50.700 I don't see, I hear the argument that it's just possible 11:50.900 --> 11:53.300 and easy to simulate lots of things. 11:53.300 --> 11:55.780 I don't see any evidence from what we know 11:55.780 --> 11:59.340 about our universe that we look like a simulated universe. 11:59.340 --> 12:00.180 Now, maybe you can say, 12:00.180 --> 12:01.980 well, we don't know what it would look like, 12:01.980 --> 12:04.520 but that's just abandoning your Bayesian responsibilities. 12:04.520 --> 12:07.660 Like your job is to say under this theory, 12:07.660 --> 12:09.500 here's what you would expect to see. 12:09.500 --> 12:11.660 Yeah, so certainly if you think about simulation 12:11.660 --> 12:14.340 as a thing that's like a video game 12:14.340 --> 12:17.740 where only a small subset is being rendered. 12:17.740 --> 12:22.740 But say the entire, all the laws of physics, 12:22.740 --> 12:26.540 the entire closed system of the quote unquote universe, 12:26.540 --> 12:27.780 it had a creator. 12:27.780 --> 12:29.320 Yeah, it's always possible. 12:29.320 --> 12:32.280 Right, so that's not useful to think about 12:32.280 --> 12:34.020 when you're thinking about physics. 12:34.020 --> 12:36.220 The way Nick Bostrom phrases it, 12:36.220 --> 12:39.100 if it's possible to simulate a universe, 12:39.100 --> 12:40.500 eventually we'll do it. 12:40.500 --> 12:41.340 Right. 12:42.700 --> 12:44.860 You can use that by the way for a lot of things. 12:44.860 --> 12:45.700 Well, yeah. 12:45.700 --> 12:48.540 But I guess the question is, 12:48.540 --> 12:52.340 how hard is it to create a universe? 12:52.340 --> 12:53.820 I wrote a little blog post about this 12:53.820 --> 12:55.460 and maybe I'm missing something, 12:55.460 --> 12:57.680 but there's an argument that says not only 12:57.680 --> 13:00.500 that it might be possible to simulate a universe, 13:00.500 --> 13:05.500 but probably if you imagine that you actually attribute 13:05.980 --> 13:08.860 consciousness and agency to the little things 13:08.860 --> 13:12.020 that we're simulating, to our little artificial beings, 13:12.020 --> 13:13.420 there's probably a lot more of them 13:13.420 --> 13:15.500 than there are ordinary organic beings in the universe 13:15.500 --> 13:17.420 or there will be in the future, right? 13:17.420 --> 13:18.500 So there's an argument that not only 13:18.500 --> 13:20.760 is being a simulation possible, 13:20.760 --> 13:23.560 it's probable because in the space 13:23.560 --> 13:24.960 of all living consciousnesses, 13:24.960 --> 13:26.620 most of them are being simulated, right? 13:26.620 --> 13:28.860 Most of them are not at the top level. 13:28.860 --> 13:30.540 I think that argument must be wrong 13:30.540 --> 13:33.100 because it follows from that argument that, 13:33.100 --> 13:36.920 if we're simulated, but we can also simulate other things, 13:36.920 --> 13:38.840 well, but if we can simulate other things, 13:38.840 --> 13:41.840 they can simulate other things, right? 13:41.840 --> 13:44.320 If we give them enough power and resolution 13:44.320 --> 13:45.980 and ultimately we'll reach a bottom 13:45.980 --> 13:49.140 because the laws of physics in our universe have a bottom, 13:49.140 --> 13:51.000 we're made of atoms and so forth, 13:51.000 --> 13:55.100 so there will be the cheapest possible simulations. 13:55.100 --> 13:57.700 And if you believe the original argument, 13:57.700 --> 13:59.340 you should conclude that we should be 13:59.340 --> 14:00.940 in the cheapest possible simulation 14:00.940 --> 14:02.660 because that's where most people are. 14:02.660 --> 14:03.620 But we don't look like that. 14:03.620 --> 14:06.860 It doesn't look at all like we're at the edge of resolution, 14:06.860 --> 14:09.540 that we're 16 bit things. 14:09.540 --> 14:13.020 It seems much easier to make much lower level things 14:13.020 --> 14:13.860 than we are. 14:14.980 --> 14:18.220 And also, I questioned the whole approach 14:18.220 --> 14:19.460 to the anthropic principle 14:19.460 --> 14:22.340 that says we are typical observers in the universe. 14:22.340 --> 14:23.660 I think that that's not actually, 14:23.660 --> 14:27.340 I think that there's a lot of selection that we can do 14:27.340 --> 14:30.180 that we're typical within things we already know, 14:30.180 --> 14:32.280 but not typical within all of the universe. 14:32.280 --> 14:35.800 So do you think there's intelligent life, 14:35.800 --> 14:37.860 however you would like to define intelligent life, 14:37.860 --> 14:39.940 out there in the universe? 14:39.940 --> 14:44.660 My guess is that there is not intelligent life 14:44.660 --> 14:48.820 in the observable universe other than us, simply 14:48.820 --> 14:52.540 on the basis of the fact that the likely number 14:52.540 --> 14:56.340 of other intelligent species in the observable universe, 14:56.340 --> 15:00.320 there's two likely numbers, zero or billions. 15:01.500 --> 15:02.580 And if there had been billions, 15:02.580 --> 15:04.140 you would have noticed already. 15:05.300 --> 15:07.340 For there to be literally like a small number, 15:07.340 --> 15:09.380 like, you know, Star Trek, 15:09.380 --> 15:13.300 there's a dozen intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, 15:13.300 --> 15:17.340 but not a billion, that's weird. 15:17.340 --> 15:18.500 That's sort of bizarre to me. 15:18.500 --> 15:21.020 It's easy for me to imagine that there are zero others 15:21.020 --> 15:22.620 because there's just a big bottleneck 15:22.620 --> 15:24.980 to making multicellular life 15:24.980 --> 15:27.020 or technological life or whatever. 15:27.020 --> 15:28.580 It's very hard for me to imagine 15:28.580 --> 15:30.140 that there's a whole bunch out there 15:30.140 --> 15:32.300 that have somehow remained hidden from us. 15:32.300 --> 15:34.700 The question I'd like to ask 15:34.700 --> 15:36.820 is what would intelligent life look like? 15:38.140 --> 15:40.500 What I mean by that question and where it's going 15:40.500 --> 15:45.500 is what if intelligent life is just in some very big ways 15:47.260 --> 15:51.500 different than the one that has on Earth? 15:51.500 --> 15:53.900 That there's all kinds of intelligent life 15:53.900 --> 15:55.420 that operates at different scales 15:55.420 --> 15:57.300 of both size and temporal. 15:57.300 --> 15:59.300 Right, that's a great possibility 15:59.300 --> 16:00.800 because I think we should be humble 16:00.800 --> 16:02.640 about what intelligence is, what life is. 16:02.640 --> 16:04.020 We don't even agree on what life is, 16:04.020 --> 16:07.020 much less what intelligent life is, right? 16:07.020 --> 16:08.980 So that's an argument for humility, 16:08.980 --> 16:10.860 saying there could be intelligent life 16:10.860 --> 16:13.620 of a very different character, right? 16:13.620 --> 16:18.060 Like you could imagine the dolphins are intelligent 16:18.060 --> 16:20.500 but never invent space travel 16:20.500 --> 16:21.460 because they live in the ocean 16:21.460 --> 16:23.220 and they don't have thumbs, right? 16:24.180 --> 16:27.860 So they never invent technology, they never invent smelting. 16:27.860 --> 16:32.020 Maybe the universe is full of intelligent species 16:32.020 --> 16:34.060 that just don't make technology, right? 16:34.060 --> 16:36.320 That's compatible with the data, I think. 16:36.320 --> 16:39.840 And I think maybe what you're pointing at 16:39.840 --> 16:44.440 is even more out there versions of intelligence, 16:44.440 --> 16:47.560 intelligence in intermolecular clouds 16:47.560 --> 16:49.440 or on the surface of a neutron star 16:49.440 --> 16:51.760 or in between the galaxies in giant things 16:51.760 --> 16:54.560 where the equivalent of a heartbeat is 100 million years. 16:56.440 --> 16:58.080 On the one hand, yes, 16:58.080 --> 16:59.860 we should be very open minded about those things. 16:59.860 --> 17:04.860 On the other hand, all of us share the same laws of physics. 17:04.860 --> 17:08.240 There might be something about the laws of physics, 17:08.240 --> 17:09.400 even though we don't currently know 17:09.400 --> 17:10.920 exactly what that thing would be, 17:10.920 --> 17:15.920 that makes meters and years 17:16.160 --> 17:18.920 the right length and timescales for intelligent life. 17:19.880 --> 17:22.240 Maybe not, but we're made of atoms, 17:22.240 --> 17:23.780 atoms have a certain size, 17:23.780 --> 17:27.280 we orbit stars or stars have a certain lifetime. 17:27.280 --> 17:30.300 It's not impossible to me that there's a sweet spot 17:30.300 --> 17:32.200 for intelligent life that we find ourselves in. 17:32.200 --> 17:33.800 So I'm open minded either way, 17:33.800 --> 17:35.280 I'm open minded either being humble 17:35.280 --> 17:37.080 and there's all sorts of different kinds of life 17:37.080 --> 17:39.280 or no, there's a reason we just don't know it yet 17:39.280 --> 17:42.080 why life like ours is the kind of life that's out there. 17:42.080 --> 17:43.320 Yeah, I'm of two minds too, 17:43.320 --> 17:47.200 but I often wonder if our brains is just designed 17:47.200 --> 17:52.200 to quite obviously to operate and see the world 17:52.720 --> 17:56.360 in these timescales and we're almost blind 17:56.360 --> 18:01.200 and the tools we've created for detecting things are blind 18:01.200 --> 18:02.760 to the kind of observation needed 18:02.760 --> 18:04.920 to see intelligent life at other scales. 18:04.920 --> 18:07.040 Well, I'm totally open to that, 18:07.040 --> 18:09.240 but so here's another argument I would make, 18:09.240 --> 18:11.520 we have looked for intelligent life, 18:11.520 --> 18:14.120 but we've looked at for it in the dumbest way we can, 18:14.120 --> 18:16.600 by turning radio telescopes to the sky. 18:16.600 --> 18:21.040 And why in the world would a super advanced civilization 18:21.040 --> 18:24.040 randomly beam out radio signals wastefully 18:24.040 --> 18:25.440 in all directions into the universe? 18:25.440 --> 18:27.280 That just doesn't make any sense, 18:27.280 --> 18:29.100 especially because in order to think 18:29.100 --> 18:32.020 that you would actually contact another civilization, 18:32.020 --> 18:33.840 you would have to do it forever, 18:33.840 --> 18:35.840 you have to keep doing it for millions of years, 18:35.840 --> 18:38.280 that sounds like a waste of resources. 18:38.280 --> 18:43.120 If you thought that there were other solar systems 18:43.120 --> 18:44.520 with planets around them, 18:44.520 --> 18:47.000 where maybe intelligent life didn't yet exist, 18:47.000 --> 18:48.600 but might someday, 18:48.600 --> 18:51.380 you wouldn't try to talk to it with radio waves, 18:51.380 --> 18:53.600 you would send a spacecraft out there 18:53.600 --> 18:55.560 and you would park it around there 18:55.560 --> 18:57.360 and it would be like, from our point of view, 18:57.360 --> 19:00.700 it'd be like 2001, where there was a monolith. 19:00.700 --> 19:01.540 Monolith. 19:01.540 --> 19:02.380 There could be an artifact, 19:02.380 --> 19:04.520 in fact, the other way works also, right? 19:04.520 --> 19:07.360 There could be artifacts in our solar system 19:08.440 --> 19:10.480 that have been put there 19:10.480 --> 19:12.280 by other technologically advanced civilizations 19:12.280 --> 19:14.640 and that's how we will eventually contact them. 19:14.640 --> 19:16.840 We just haven't explored the solar system well enough yet 19:16.840 --> 19:17.680 to find them. 19:18.580 --> 19:20.000 The reason why we don't think about that 19:20.000 --> 19:21.520 is because we're young and impatient, right? 19:21.520 --> 19:24.000 Like, it would take more than my lifetime 19:24.000 --> 19:26.080 to actually send something to another star system 19:26.080 --> 19:27.800 and wait for it and then come back. 19:27.800 --> 19:30.800 So, but if we start thinking on hundreds of thousands 19:30.800 --> 19:32.720 of years or million year time scales, 19:32.720 --> 19:34.600 that's clearly the right thing to do. 19:34.600 --> 19:36.800 Are you excited by the thing 19:36.800 --> 19:39.360 that Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX in general? 19:39.360 --> 19:41.620 Space, but the idea of space exploration, 19:41.620 --> 19:45.360 even though your, or your species is young and impatient? 19:45.360 --> 19:46.200 Yeah. 19:46.200 --> 19:49.200 No, I do think that space travel is crucially important, 19:49.200 --> 19:50.800 long term. 19:50.800 --> 19:52.500 Even to other star systems. 19:52.500 --> 19:57.500 And I think that many people overestimate the difficulty 19:57.500 --> 20:00.940 because they say, look, if you travel 1% the speed of light 20:00.940 --> 20:02.020 to another star system, 20:02.020 --> 20:04.060 we'll be dead before we get there, right? 20:04.060 --> 20:06.180 And I think that it's much easier. 20:06.180 --> 20:08.120 And therefore, when they write their science fiction stories, 20:08.120 --> 20:09.580 they imagine we'd go faster than the speed of light 20:09.580 --> 20:11.700 because otherwise they're too impatient, right? 20:11.700 --> 20:13.600 We're not gonna go faster than the speed of light, 20:13.600 --> 20:16.020 but we could easily imagine that the human lifespan 20:16.020 --> 20:18.100 gets extended to thousands of years. 20:18.100 --> 20:19.140 And once you do that, 20:19.140 --> 20:21.180 then the stars are much closer effectively, right? 20:21.180 --> 20:23.260 And then what's a hundred year trip, right? 20:23.260 --> 20:25.820 So I think that that's gonna be the future, 20:25.820 --> 20:28.700 the far future, not my lifetime once again, 20:28.700 --> 20:30.380 but baby steps. 20:30.380 --> 20:32.420 Unless your lifetime gets extended. 20:32.420 --> 20:34.740 Well, it's in a race against time, right? 20:34.740 --> 20:37.340 A friend of mine who actually thinks about these things 20:37.340 --> 20:40.460 said, you know, you and I are gonna die, 20:40.460 --> 20:43.060 but I don't know about our grandchildren. 20:43.060 --> 20:45.940 That's, I don't know, predicting the future is hard, 20:45.940 --> 20:47.900 but that's at least a plausible scenario. 20:47.900 --> 20:51.820 And so, yeah, no, I think that as we discussed earlier, 20:51.820 --> 20:56.780 there are threats to the earth, known and unknown, right? 20:56.780 --> 21:01.780 Having spread humanity and biology elsewhere 21:02.580 --> 21:04.940 is a really important longterm goal. 21:04.940 --> 21:08.900 What kind of questions can science not currently answer, 21:08.900 --> 21:09.920 but might soon? 21:11.480 --> 21:13.860 When you think about the problems and the mysteries 21:13.860 --> 21:17.840 before us that may be within reach of science. 21:17.840 --> 21:20.300 I think an obvious one is the origin of life. 21:20.300 --> 21:22.780 We don't know how that happened. 21:22.780 --> 21:25.300 There's a difficulty in knowing how it happened historically 21:25.300 --> 21:27.240 actually, you know, literally on earth, 21:27.240 --> 21:30.500 but starting life from non life is something 21:30.500 --> 21:32.420 I kind of think we're close to, right? 21:32.420 --> 21:33.240 We're really. 21:33.240 --> 21:34.080 You really think so? 21:34.080 --> 21:36.740 Like how difficult is it to start life? 21:36.740 --> 21:39.260 Well, I've talked to people, 21:39.260 --> 21:41.780 including on the podcast about this. 21:41.780 --> 21:43.340 You know, life requires three things. 21:43.340 --> 21:44.220 Life as we know it. 21:44.220 --> 21:45.500 So there's a difference with life, 21:45.500 --> 21:47.060 which who knows what it is, 21:47.060 --> 21:48.140 and life as we know it, 21:48.140 --> 21:50.780 which we can talk about with some intelligence. 21:50.780 --> 21:53.840 So life as we know it requires compartmentalization. 21:53.840 --> 21:56.660 You need like a little membrane around your cell. 21:56.660 --> 21:58.980 Metabolism, you need to take in food and eat it 21:58.980 --> 22:01.020 and let that make you do things. 22:01.020 --> 22:02.620 And then replication, okay? 22:02.620 --> 22:04.620 So you need to have some information about who you are 22:04.620 --> 22:07.880 that you pass down to future generations. 22:07.880 --> 22:11.780 In the lab, compartmentalization seems pretty easy. 22:11.780 --> 22:13.780 Not hard to make lipid bilayers 22:13.780 --> 22:16.760 that come into little cellular walls pretty easily. 22:16.760 --> 22:19.260 Metabolism and replication are hard, 22:20.160 --> 22:21.900 but replication we're close to. 22:21.900 --> 22:24.960 People have made RNA like molecules in the lab 22:24.960 --> 22:28.840 that I think the state of the art is, 22:28.840 --> 22:30.660 they're not able to make one molecule 22:30.660 --> 22:32.060 that reproduces itself, 22:32.060 --> 22:33.600 but they're able to make two molecules 22:33.600 --> 22:35.260 that reproduce each other. 22:35.260 --> 22:36.100 So that's okay. 22:36.100 --> 22:37.100 That's pretty close. 22:38.060 --> 22:41.060 Metabolism is harder, believe it or not, 22:41.060 --> 22:42.900 even though it's sort of the most obvious thing, 22:42.900 --> 22:44.940 but you want some sort of controlled metabolism 22:44.940 --> 22:47.500 and the actual cellular machinery in our bodies 22:47.500 --> 22:48.660 is quite complicated. 22:48.660 --> 22:50.940 It's hard to see it just popping into existence 22:50.940 --> 22:51.780 all by itself. 22:51.780 --> 22:52.860 It probably took a while, 22:53.740 --> 22:56.100 but we're making progress. 22:56.100 --> 22:57.240 And in fact, I don't think we're spending 22:57.240 --> 22:58.580 nearly enough money on it. 22:58.580 --> 23:01.780 If I were the NSF, I would flood this area with money 23:01.780 --> 23:05.220 because it would change our view of the world 23:05.220 --> 23:06.780 if we could actually make life in the lab 23:06.780 --> 23:09.420 and understand how it was made originally here on earth. 23:09.420 --> 23:11.160 And I'm sure it'd have some ripple effects 23:11.160 --> 23:12.940 that help cure disease and so on. 23:12.940 --> 23:14.380 I mean, just that understanding. 23:14.380 --> 23:16.700 So synthetic biology is a wonderful big frontier 23:16.700 --> 23:17.980 where we're making cells. 23:18.940 --> 23:21.100 Right now, the best way to do that 23:21.100 --> 23:23.620 is to borrow heavily from existing biology, right? 23:23.620 --> 23:25.380 Well, Craig Venter several years ago 23:25.380 --> 23:28.220 created an artificial cell, but all he did was, 23:28.220 --> 23:29.860 not all he did, it was a tremendous accomplishment, 23:29.860 --> 23:33.180 but all he did was take out the DNA from a cell 23:33.180 --> 23:37.200 and put in entirely new DNA and let it boot up and go. 23:37.200 --> 23:42.200 What about the leap to creating intelligent life on earth? 23:43.420 --> 23:44.260 Yeah. 23:44.260 --> 23:45.860 Again, we define intelligence, of course, 23:45.860 --> 23:49.860 but let's just even say Homo sapiens, 23:49.860 --> 23:54.480 the modern intelligence in our human brain. 23:55.340 --> 23:58.660 Do you have a sense of what's involved in that leap 23:58.660 --> 24:00.420 and how big of a leap that is? 24:00.420 --> 24:03.300 So AI would count in this, or do you really want life? 24:03.300 --> 24:06.420 Do you want really an organism in some sense? 24:06.420 --> 24:07.540 AI would count, I think. 24:07.540 --> 24:08.980 Okay. 24:08.980 --> 24:11.020 Yeah, of course, of course AI would count. 24:11.020 --> 24:13.460 Well, let's say artificial consciousness, right? 24:13.460 --> 24:15.500 So I do not think we are on the threshold 24:15.500 --> 24:16.760 of creating artificial consciousness. 24:16.760 --> 24:18.180 I think it's possible. 24:18.180 --> 24:20.300 I'm not, again, very educated about how close we are, 24:20.300 --> 24:22.100 but my impression is not that we're really close 24:22.100 --> 24:24.820 because we understand how little we understand 24:24.820 --> 24:26.460 of consciousness and what it is. 24:26.460 --> 24:28.440 So if we don't have any idea what it is, 24:28.440 --> 24:29.780 it's hard to imagine we're on the threshold 24:29.780 --> 24:31.620 of making it ourselves. 24:32.500 --> 24:34.500 But it's doable, it's possible. 24:34.500 --> 24:35.960 I don't see any obstacles in principle. 24:35.960 --> 24:38.160 So yeah, I would hold out some interest 24:38.160 --> 24:40.220 in that happening eventually. 24:40.220 --> 24:42.700 I think in general, consciousness, 24:42.700 --> 24:44.420 I think we would be just surprised 24:44.420 --> 24:49.060 how easy consciousness is once we create intelligence. 24:49.060 --> 24:50.540 I think consciousness is a thing 24:50.540 --> 24:54.000 that's just something we all fake. 24:55.540 --> 24:56.380 Well, good. 24:56.380 --> 24:57.680 No, actually, I like this idea that in fact, 24:57.680 --> 25:00.500 consciousness is way less mysterious than we think 25:00.500 --> 25:02.620 because we're all at every time, at every moment, 25:02.620 --> 25:04.500 less conscious than we think we are, right? 25:04.500 --> 25:05.460 We can fool things. 25:05.460 --> 25:07.780 And I think that plus the idea 25:07.780 --> 25:11.180 that you not only have artificial intelligent systems, 25:11.180 --> 25:12.980 but you put them in a body, right, 25:12.980 --> 25:14.280 give them a robot body, 25:15.620 --> 25:18.460 that will help the faking a lot. 25:18.460 --> 25:20.980 Yeah, I think creating consciousness 25:20.980 --> 25:25.140 in artificial consciousness is as simple 25:25.140 --> 25:30.020 as asking a Roomba to say, I'm conscious, 25:30.020 --> 25:32.780 and refusing to be talked out of it. 25:32.780 --> 25:33.820 Could be, it could be. 25:33.820 --> 25:36.740 And I mean, I'm almost being silly, 25:36.740 --> 25:38.280 but that's what we do. 25:39.660 --> 25:40.940 That's what we do with each other. 25:40.940 --> 25:42.020 This is the kind of, 25:42.020 --> 25:44.500 that consciousness is also a social construct. 25:44.500 --> 25:47.860 And a lot of our ideas of intelligence is a social construct. 25:47.860 --> 25:52.820 And so reaching that bar involves something that's beyond, 25:52.820 --> 25:54.940 that doesn't necessarily involve 25:54.940 --> 25:57.720 the fundamental understanding of how you go 25:57.720 --> 26:02.500 from electrons to neurons to cognition. 26:02.500 --> 26:05.060 No, actually, I think that is an extremely good point. 26:05.060 --> 26:08.660 And in fact, what it suggests is, 26:08.660 --> 26:10.540 so yeah, you referred to Kate Darling, 26:10.540 --> 26:11.940 who I had on the podcast, 26:11.940 --> 26:16.440 and who does these experiments with very simple robots, 26:16.440 --> 26:18.060 but they look like animals, 26:18.060 --> 26:20.740 and they can look like they're experiencing pain, 26:20.740 --> 26:23.380 and we human beings react very negatively 26:23.380 --> 26:24.400 to these little robots 26:24.400 --> 26:26.300 looking like they're experiencing pain. 26:26.300 --> 26:29.980 And what you wanna say is, yeah, but they're just robots. 26:29.980 --> 26:31.700 It's not really pain, right? 26:31.700 --> 26:33.080 It's just some electrons going around. 26:33.080 --> 26:36.300 But then you realize, you and I are just electrons 26:36.300 --> 26:38.380 going around, and that's what pain is also. 26:38.380 --> 26:43.060 And so what I would have an easy time imagining 26:43.060 --> 26:44.740 is that there is a spectrum 26:44.740 --> 26:47.420 between these simple little robots that Kate works with 26:47.420 --> 26:49.420 and a human being, 26:49.420 --> 26:50.940 where there are things that sort of 26:50.940 --> 26:52.840 by some strict definition, 26:52.840 --> 26:55.460 Turing test level thing are not conscious, 26:55.460 --> 26:58.580 but nevertheless walk and talk like they're conscious. 26:58.580 --> 27:00.220 And it could be that the future is, 27:00.220 --> 27:02.460 I mean, Siri is close, right? 27:02.460 --> 27:04.540 And so it might be the future 27:04.540 --> 27:07.100 has a lot more agents like that. 27:07.100 --> 27:08.860 And in fact, rather than someday going, 27:08.860 --> 27:10.700 aha, we have consciousness, 27:10.700 --> 27:13.180 we'll just creep up on it with more and more 27:13.180 --> 27:15.220 accurate reflections of what we expect. 27:15.220 --> 27:18.320 And in the future, maybe the present, 27:18.320 --> 27:20.800 for example, we haven't met before, 27:20.800 --> 27:25.300 and you're basically assuming that I'm human as it's a high 27:25.300 --> 27:28.560 probability at this time because the yeah, 27:28.560 --> 27:30.200 but in the future, 27:30.200 --> 27:32.000 there might be question marks around that, right? 27:32.000 --> 27:33.340 Yeah, no, absolutely. 27:33.340 --> 27:35.740 Certainly videos are almost to the point 27:35.740 --> 27:36.740 where you shouldn't trust them already. 27:36.740 --> 27:39.060 Photos you can't trust, right? 27:39.060 --> 27:41.700 Videos is easier to trust, 27:41.700 --> 27:44.020 but we're getting worse that, 27:44.020 --> 27:46.540 we're getting better at faking them, right? 27:46.540 --> 27:48.780 Yeah, so physical embodied people, 27:48.780 --> 27:51.020 what's so hard about faking that? 27:51.020 --> 27:51.980 So this is very depressing, 27:51.980 --> 27:53.420 this conversation we're having right now. 27:53.420 --> 27:54.340 So I mean, 27:54.340 --> 27:55.180 To me, it's exciting. 27:55.180 --> 27:56.300 To me, you're doing it. 27:56.300 --> 27:57.780 So it's exciting to you, 27:57.780 --> 27:59.060 but it's a sobering thought. 27:59.060 --> 28:00.420 We're very bad, right? 28:00.420 --> 28:02.820 At imagining what the next 50 years are gonna be like 28:02.820 --> 28:04.220 when we're in the middle of a phase transition 28:04.220 --> 28:05.260 as we are right now. 28:05.260 --> 28:06.740 Yeah, and I, in general, 28:06.740 --> 28:09.220 I'm not blind to all the threats. 28:09.220 --> 28:14.220 I am excited by the power of technology to solve, 28:14.540 --> 28:18.060 to protect us against the threats as they evolve. 28:18.060 --> 28:22.340 I'm not as much as Steven Pinker optimistic about the world, 28:22.340 --> 28:23.740 but in everything I've seen, 28:23.740 --> 28:27.300 all of the brilliant people in the world that I've met 28:27.300 --> 28:29.160 are good people. 28:29.160 --> 28:30.800 So the army of the good 28:30.800 --> 28:33.400 in terms of the development of technology is large. 28:33.400 --> 28:36.860 Okay, you're way more optimistic than I am. 28:37.820 --> 28:39.060 I think that goodness and badness 28:39.060 --> 28:40.900 are equally distributed among intelligent 28:40.900 --> 28:42.700 and unintelligent people. 28:42.700 --> 28:44.660 I don't see much of a correlation there. 28:44.660 --> 28:46.060 Interesting. 28:46.060 --> 28:47.300 Neither of us have proof. 28:47.300 --> 28:48.420 Yeah, exactly. 28:48.420 --> 28:50.660 Again, opinions are free, right? 28:50.660 --> 28:52.540 Nor definitions of good and evil. 28:52.540 --> 28:57.460 We come without definitions or without data opinions. 28:57.460 --> 29:01.980 So what kind of questions can science not currently answer 29:01.980 --> 29:04.380 and may never be able to answer in your view? 29:04.380 --> 29:06.940 Well, the obvious one is what is good and bad? 29:06.940 --> 29:07.860 What is right and wrong? 29:07.860 --> 29:09.460 I think that there are questions that, 29:09.460 --> 29:11.300 science tells us what happens, 29:11.300 --> 29:13.260 what the world is and what it does. 29:13.260 --> 29:14.740 It doesn't say what the world should do 29:14.740 --> 29:15.580 or what we should do, 29:15.580 --> 29:17.800 because we're part of the world. 29:17.800 --> 29:19.200 But we are part of the world 29:19.200 --> 29:21.460 and we have the ability to feel like something's right, 29:21.460 --> 29:22.740 something's wrong. 29:22.740 --> 29:25.660 And to make a very long story very short, 29:25.660 --> 29:28.000 I think that the idea of moral philosophy 29:28.000 --> 29:30.100 is systematizing our intuitions 29:30.100 --> 29:31.700 of what is right and what is wrong. 29:31.700 --> 29:34.580 And science might be able to predict ahead of time 29:34.580 --> 29:36.180 what we will do, 29:36.180 --> 29:38.000 but it won't ever be able to judge 29:38.000 --> 29:39.600 whether we should have done it or not. 29:39.600 --> 29:43.620 So, you're kind of unique in terms of scientists. 29:43.620 --> 29:45.520 Listen, it doesn't have to do with podcasts, 29:45.520 --> 29:47.660 but even just reaching out, 29:47.660 --> 29:49.080 I think you referred to as sort of 29:49.080 --> 29:51.300 doing interdisciplinary science. 29:51.300 --> 29:54.100 So you reach out and talk to people 29:54.100 --> 29:55.980 that are outside of your discipline, 29:55.980 --> 30:00.140 which I always hope that's what science was for. 30:00.140 --> 30:02.300 In fact, I was a little disillusioned 30:02.300 --> 30:06.420 when I realized that academia is very siloed. 30:06.420 --> 30:07.260 Yeah. 30:07.260 --> 30:09.560 And so the question is, 30:10.700 --> 30:13.020 how, at your own level, 30:13.020 --> 30:15.380 how do you prepare for these conversations? 30:15.380 --> 30:16.900 How do you think about these conversations? 30:16.900 --> 30:18.300 How do you open your mind enough 30:18.300 --> 30:20.220 to have these conversations? 30:20.220 --> 30:21.940 And it may be a little bit broader, 30:21.940 --> 30:24.380 how can you advise other scientists 30:24.380 --> 30:26.260 to have these kinds of conversations? 30:26.260 --> 30:28.180 Not at the podcast, 30:28.180 --> 30:29.860 the fact that you're doing a podcast is awesome, 30:29.860 --> 30:31.380 other people get to hear them, 30:31.380 --> 30:34.700 but it's also good to have it without mics in general. 30:34.700 --> 30:37.460 It's a good question, but a tough one to answer. 30:37.460 --> 30:40.980 I think about a guy I know who's a personal trainer, 30:40.980 --> 30:43.240 and he was asked on a podcast, 30:43.240 --> 30:45.700 how do we psych ourselves up to do a workout? 30:45.700 --> 30:48.340 How do we make that discipline to go and work out? 30:48.340 --> 30:50.300 And he's like, why are you asking me? 30:50.300 --> 30:52.340 I can't stop working out. 30:52.340 --> 30:54.380 I don't need to psych myself up. 30:54.380 --> 30:57.340 So, and likewise, he asked me, 30:57.340 --> 30:59.740 how do you get to have interdisciplinary conversations 30:59.740 --> 31:00.700 on all sorts of different things, 31:00.700 --> 31:01.660 all sorts of different people? 31:01.660 --> 31:04.860 I'm like, that's what makes me go, right? 31:04.860 --> 31:07.380 Like that's, I couldn't stop doing that. 31:07.380 --> 31:09.660 I did that long before any of them were recorded. 31:09.660 --> 31:12.380 In fact, a lot of the motivation for starting recording it 31:12.380 --> 31:14.420 was making sure I would read all these books 31:14.420 --> 31:15.460 that I had purchased, right? 31:15.460 --> 31:17.700 Like all these books I wanted to read, 31:17.700 --> 31:18.900 not enough time to read them. 31:18.900 --> 31:20.700 And now if I have the motivation, 31:20.700 --> 31:23.220 cause I'm gonna interview Pat Churchland, 31:23.220 --> 31:25.180 I'm gonna finally read her book. 31:25.180 --> 31:29.460 You know, and it's absolutely true 31:29.460 --> 31:31.700 that academia is extraordinarily siloed, right? 31:31.700 --> 31:32.780 We don't talk to people. 31:32.780 --> 31:34.260 We rarely do. 31:34.260 --> 31:36.460 And in fact, when we do, it's punished. 31:36.460 --> 31:38.820 You know, like the people who do it successfully 31:38.820 --> 31:41.420 generally first became very successful 31:41.420 --> 31:43.100 within their little siloed discipline. 31:43.100 --> 31:46.380 And only then did they start expanding out. 31:46.380 --> 31:47.660 If you're a young person, you know, 31:47.660 --> 31:48.940 I have graduate students. 31:48.940 --> 31:52.980 I try to be very, very candid with them about this, 31:52.980 --> 31:55.580 that it's, you know, most graduate students 31:55.580 --> 31:57.420 are to not become faculty members, right? 31:57.420 --> 31:59.020 It's a tough road. 31:59.020 --> 32:03.140 And so live the life you wanna live, 32:03.140 --> 32:04.620 but do it with your eyes open 32:04.620 --> 32:06.900 about what it does to your job chances. 32:06.900 --> 32:09.580 And the more broad you are 32:09.580 --> 32:12.900 and the less time you spend hyper specializing 32:12.900 --> 32:15.780 in your field, the lower your job chances are. 32:15.780 --> 32:17.060 That's just an academic reality. 32:17.060 --> 32:20.060 It's terrible, I don't like it, but it's a reality. 32:20.060 --> 32:22.540 And for some people, that's fine. 32:22.540 --> 32:24.660 Like there's plenty of people who are wonderful scientists 32:24.660 --> 32:27.140 who have zero interest in branching out 32:27.140 --> 32:30.740 and talking to things, to anyone outside their field. 32:30.740 --> 32:33.740 But it is disillusioning to me. 32:33.740 --> 32:36.180 Some of the, you know, romantic notion I had 32:36.180 --> 32:38.220 of the intellectual academic life 32:38.220 --> 32:39.940 is belied by the reality of it. 32:39.940 --> 32:43.500 The idea that we should reach out beyond our discipline 32:43.500 --> 32:48.500 and that is a positive good is just so rare 32:48.500 --> 32:53.500 in universities that it may as well not exist at all. 32:53.900 --> 32:57.660 But that said, even though you're saying you're doing it 32:57.660 --> 33:00.300 like the personal trainer, because you just can't help it, 33:00.300 --> 33:02.940 you're also an inspiration to others. 33:02.940 --> 33:04.980 Like I could speak for myself. 33:05.780 --> 33:09.540 You know, I also have a career I'm thinking about, right? 33:09.540 --> 33:12.060 And without your podcast, 33:12.060 --> 33:15.060 I may have not have been doing this at all, right? 33:15.060 --> 33:19.540 So it makes me realize that these kinds of conversations 33:19.540 --> 33:23.340 is kind of what science is about in many ways. 33:23.340 --> 33:26.500 The reason we write papers, this exchange of ideas, 33:27.460 --> 33:30.540 is it's much harder to do interdisciplinary papers, 33:30.540 --> 33:31.380 I would say. 33:31.380 --> 33:35.140 And conversations are easier. 33:35.140 --> 33:36.820 So conversations is the beginning. 33:36.820 --> 33:41.180 And in the field of AI, it's obvious 33:41.180 --> 33:45.580 that we should think outside of pure computer vision 33:45.580 --> 33:47.540 competitions on a particular data sets. 33:47.540 --> 33:49.660 We should think about the broader impact 33:49.660 --> 33:53.740 of how this can be, you know, reaching out to physics, 33:53.740 --> 33:57.220 to psychology, to neuroscience and having these 33:57.220 --> 34:00.580 conversations so that you're an inspiration. 34:00.580 --> 34:05.220 And so never know how the world changes. 34:05.220 --> 34:08.540 I mean, the fact that this stuff is out there 34:08.540 --> 34:12.300 and I've a huge number of people come up to me, 34:12.300 --> 34:16.100 grad students, really loving the podcast, inspired by it. 34:16.100 --> 34:18.660 And they will probably have that, 34:18.660 --> 34:20.740 they'll be ripple effects when they become faculty 34:20.740 --> 34:21.580 and so on and so on. 34:21.580 --> 34:25.300 We can end on a balance between pessimism and optimism. 34:25.300 --> 34:27.780 And Sean, thank you so much for talking to me, it was awesome. 34:27.780 --> 34:29.460 No, Lex, thank you very much for this conversation. 34:29.460 --> 34:49.460 It was great.