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Language: en
if we don't ask how long do they last
but instead ask what's the probability
that there have been any civilizations
at all no matter how long they lasted
I'm not asking whether they exist now or
not I'm just asking in general um about
probabilities to make a technological
civilization anywhere and at any time in
the history of the universe and that we
were able to constrain and so what we
found was basically uh that the there
have been 10 billion trillion habitable
zone planets in the universe and what
that means is that are those are 10
billion trillion experiments that have
been run um and the only way that we're
the only time that this is you know this
whole process from you know a biogenesis
to a civilization has occurred is if
every one of those experiments failed
right so therefore you could put a a
probability you could we called it the
pessimism line right we don't really
know what nature sets for the
probability of making intelligent
civilizations right but we could set a
limit using this we could say look as if
the probability per habitable zone
planet is less than 10 Theus 22 one in
10 billion trillion then yeah we're
alone if it's anywhere larger than that
then they're we're not the first it's
happened somewhere else and to me that
was an an that was mindblowing doesn't
tell me there's anybody nearby the
Galaxy could be sterile it just told me
that like you know unless Nature's
really against has some bias against
civilizations we're not the first time
this has happened this has happened
elsewhere over the course of cosmic
history the following is a conversation
with Adam Frank an astrophysicist
interested in the evolution of star
systems and the search for alien
civilizations in our
universe this is Alex Freedman podcast
to support it please check out our
sponsors in the description and now dear
friends here's Adam
Frank you wrote a book about aliens so
the big question how many alien
civilizations are out there yeah that's
the question right the amazing thing is
that after two and a half Millennia of
you know people yelling at each other or
setting each other on fire occasionally
over the answer we now actually have the
capacity to answer that question so in
the next 10 20 30 years we're going to
have data relevant to the answer to that
question we're going to have hard data
finally that will one way or the other
you know even if we don't find it
anything immediately we will have gone
through a number of planets we'll be
able to start putting limits on how
common life is uh the one answer I can
tell you uh which is was an important
part of the problem is how many planets
are there right and just like people
have been arguing about the uh existence
of life elsewhere for 2,500 years people
have been arguing about planets for the
exact same amount of time right you can
see Aristotle yelling at democratus
about this you know you can see they had
very wildly different opinions about how
common planets were going to be and how
unique Earth was and that question got
answered right which is pretty
remarkable that in a lifetime you can
have a 2,500 year old question the
answer is they're everywhere there are
planets everywhere and it was possible
that uh planets were really rare we
didn't really understand how planets
formed and so if you go back to say the
turn of the 20th century uh there was a
theory that said planets formed when two
stars passed by each other closely and
then mat was gravitationally squeezed
out in which case those kinds of uh
collisions are so rare that you would
expect one in a trillion stars to have
planets instead every star in the night
sky has planets so one of the things
you've done is uh simulated the
formation of stars how difficult do you
think it is to simulate the formation of
planets like simulator solar system the
through the entire evolution of the
solar system this is kind of a a
numerical simulation sneaking up to the
question of how many planets are there
that actually we're able to do now there
is you can run simulations of the
formation of planetary system so if you
run the simulation really where you want
to start is a cloud of gas these giant
interstellar clouds of gas that may have
you know a million times the mass of the
Sun in them and so you run a simulation
of that it's turbulent the gas is
roiling and tumbling and every now and
then you get a place where the uh the
gas is dense enough that gravity gets
hold of it and it can pull pull it
downward so you'll start to form a
protostar and a protostar is basically
the young star of you know this ball of
gas where uh nuclear reactions are
getting started but it's also a dis so
you as material falls inward because
it's everything's rotating as it falls
inward it'll spin up and then it'll form
a disc material will collect in what's
called an accretion disc or a
protoplanetary disc and you can simulate
all of that once you get into the disc
itself and you want to do planets things
get a little bit more complicated
because the physics gets more
complicated now you got to start
worrying about dust because actually
dust which is just dust is the wrong
word it's smoke really these are the
tiniest bits of solids they will
coagulate in the dis to form Pebbles
right and then the Pebbles will collide
to form rocks and then the rocks will
form Boulders etc etc that process is
super complicated but we've been able to
simulate enough of it to begin to get a
handle on how planets form how you creat
enough material to get the first Proto
planets or planetary embryos as we call
them and then then some the next step is
those things start slamming into each
other to form you know planetary siiz
bodies and then the planetary bodies
slam into each other Earth the moon came
about because there was a mars-sized
body that slammed into the Earth and
basically blew off all the material then
then eventually formed the moon and all
of them have uh different chemical
compositions different temperatures
yeah so the the the temperature of the
material in the disc depends on how far
away you are from the Star so it
decreases right and so there's a really
interesting point so like you know close
to the star temperatures are really high
and the only thing that can condense
that can kind of freeze out is going to
be stuff like Metals so that's why you
find Mercury is this giant ball of iron
basically and then as you go further out
stuff you know the gas gets cooler and
now you can start getting things like
water to freeze right so there's
something we call the snow line which is
somewhere in our solar system out around
between Mars and Jupiter and that's the
reason why the giant planets in our
solar system Jupiter Saturn um Uranus
and Neptune all have huge amounts of ice
in them or water and ice um actually
Jupiter and Saturn don't have so much
but the moons do the moons have so much
water in them that there's there's
oceans right that we've got a number of
those moons have got more water on them
than there's water on Earth do you think
it's possible to do that of simulation
to have a stronger and stronger estimate
of uh How likely an earthlike planet is
can we get the physics simulation done
well enough to where we can start
estimating like what are the possible
earthlike things that could be generated
yeah I think we can and I think we're
learning how to do that now um so you
know one part is like trying to just
figure out how to how planets form
themselves and doing the simulations
like that that Cascade from uh dust
grains up to planetary embryos that's
hard to simulate because it's both you
got to do both the gas and you got to do
the dust and the dust colliding and all
that physics um once you get up to a
plane sized body then you know you kind
of have to switch over to almost like a
different kind of simulation there often
what you're doing is you're doing you
know sort of you're assuming the planet
is this sort of spherical ball and then
you're doing you know like a 1D a radial
calculation and you're just asking like
all right how is this thing going to
what is the structure of it going to be
like am I going have a solid iron core
or am I going to get a solid iron core
with that liquid iron core out around it
like we have on on Earth and then you
get you know a silicate kind of a rocky
mantle and then a crust all those
details those are kind of Beyond being
able to do full 3d simulations from aono
from scratch we're not there yet uh how
important are those details like the
crust and the atmosphere do you think
hugely important so I'm part of a
collaboration at the University of
Rochester where we're using uh the giant
laser it's literally this is called the
laboratory for laser energetics we got a
huge Grant from the NSF to use that
laser to like slam tiny pieces of silica
to understand what the conditions are
like at you know the center of the Earth
or even more importantly the center of
super Earths like the most this is
what's Wild the most common kind of
planet in the universe we don't have in
our solar system which is amazing right
so the uh we've been able to study
enough or observe enough planets now to
get a census you know we pretty you know
we kind of have an idea of what who's
average who's weird um and our solar
system is weird because the average
planet has a mass between somewhere
between a few times the mass of the
Earth to maybe you know 10 times the
mass of the Earth and that's exactly
where there are no planets in our solar
system so um the smaller ones of those
we call Super Earths the larger ones we
call sub Neptunes and they're anybody's
guess like we don't really know what
happens to material when squeezed to
those pressures which is like Millions
tens of millions of times the the
pressure on the surface of the Earth so
those details really will matter of
what's going on in there because that
will determine whether or not you have
say for example PL tectonics we think PL
tectonics may have been really important
for life on Earth for the evolution of
complex life on Earth so it turns out
and this is sort of the Next Generation
where we're going with the the
understanding the evolution of planets
and life it turns out that you actually
have to think hard about the planetary
context for life you can't just be like
oh there's a warm Pond you know and then
some interesting you know chemistry
happens in the warm Pond you actually
have to think about the planet as a
whole and what it's gone through in
order to really understand whether a
planet is a good place for life or not
why do you think PL tectonics might be
uh useful for the formation of complex
life there's a bunch of different things
one is that you know the Earth went
through a couple of phases of being a
snowball Planet like we you know we went
went into a period of glaciation where
the pretty much the entire planet was
under ice the the oceans were Frozen um
you know early on in Earth's history
there was no there was barely any land
we were actually a water world you know
with just a couple of um australas sized
cratons they called them protoc
continents so those uh we went through
these snowball Earth phases and if it
wasn't for the fact that we had kind of
an active plate tectonics which had a
lot of vulcanism on it um we could have
been locked in that forever like once
you get into a snowball State a planet
can be trapped there forever which is
you know maybe you already had life form
but then because it's so cold you may
never get anything more than just
microbes right so what PL tectonics does
is it because it Fosters more um
vulcanism is that you're going to get
carbon dioxide pumped into the
atmosphere which warms the planet up and
gets you out of the uh the uh snowball
Earth phase but even more there's even
more really important things I just
finished a paper where we were looking
at something called hard steps model
which is this model that's been out
there for a long time that purports to
say intelligent life of the universe
will be really rare and it made all
these assumptions about the Earth's
history particularly that the history of
life and the history of the planet or
have nothing to do with each other and
it turns out as I was doing the reading
for this that uh Earth probably early on
had a had a more mild form of plate
tectonics and then somewhere about a
billion years ago it ramped up and that
ramping up changed everything on the
planet cuz here's a funny thing the
Earth used to be flat what I mean by
that right so all the flat earthers out
there can get excited for one second
clip
it but at what I mean by that is that
there really weren't many mountain
ranges right the beginning of I think
the term is orogenesis mountain building
the true Himalayan style giant mountains
didn't happen until this more robust
form of plate tectonics where the plates
are really being driven around the
planet and that is when you get the
crusts hitting each other and they start
pushing you know into these Himalayan
style mountains the weathering of that
the erosion of that puts huge amounts of
nutrients you know things that microbes
want to use uh into the oceans and then
the what we call the net primary
productivity the you know the photo the
the the bottom of the food chain how
much sugars they are producing how much
photosynthesis they're doing shot up by
a factor of almost a thousand right so
the the fact that you had play tectonics
supercharged evolution in some sense you
know like we're not exactly sure how how
it happened but it's clear that the
amount of Life the amount of living
activity that was happening really got a
boost from the fact that suddenly there
was plate this new vigorous form of
plate tectonics so it's nice to have
turmoil in terms of temperature in terms
of uh surface geometries in terms of the
chemistry of the planet turmoil yeah
that's actually really true because what
happens is if you look at the history of
life that's a really you know it's an
excellent point you're bringing up if
you look at the history of life on Earth
we get uh you know a biogenesis
somewhere around at least 3.8 billion
years ago and that's the first microbes
they kind of take over enough that they
really do you get a biosphere you get a
biosphere that is actively changing the
planet but then you go through this
period they call the boring billion
where like it's a billion years and it's
just microbes nothing's happening it's
just microbes I mean they're do the
microbes are doing amazing things
they're inventing uh um fermentation
thank you very much for we appreciate
that um but it's not until sort of you
get probably this these continents
slamming into each other you really get
the beginning of continents forming and
driving changes that Evolution has to
respond to that on a planetary scale
this turmoil this chaos is creating new
niches as well as closing other ones and
biology Evolution has to respond to that
and somewhere around there is when you
get the Cambrian explosion is when
suddenly every body plan um you know
Evolution goes on an orgy essentially uh
so yeah it does look like the that chaos
or that turmoil was actually very
helpful to Evolution I wonder if there
is some uh extremely elevated levels of
chaos almost like catastrophes behind
every Leap of evolution like you're not
going to have
Leaps um like in in in human societies
we have like an Einstein that comes up
with a good idea but it feels like on an
evolutionary time scale you
need some real big drama going on for
for The evolutionary system to have to
come up to a solution to that drama like
extra ra complex solution to that drama
well I think what's I'm not sure if
that's true I don't know if it needs to
be like an an almost Extinction event
right because it's certainly true that
we have gone through almost Extinction
events right we had you know five ma
mass extinctions but you don't
necessarily see that like there was this
giant evolutionary leap happening after
those so you know with the uh comet
impact um the KT boundary certainly you
know lots of niches opened up and that's
why we're here right because you know
our ancestors were just little basically
rodents rats living under the footsteps
of the dinosaurs and it was that comet
impact that opened the um the route for
us but it wasn't I mean that still took
another you know 65 million years it
wasn't like this thing immediately
happened but what we found with this
hard steps paper because the whole idea
of the hard steps paper was it was one
of these uh anthropic reasoning kinds of
things where Brandon Carter said Oh look
The intelligence doesn't show up on
Earth until about um you know almost
close to when the end of the sun's
lifetime uh and so he's like well there
should be no reason why the sun's
Lifetime and the time for evolution to
produced intelligence should be the same
uh and so therefore and he goes through
all this reasoning anthropic reasoning
and and and he ends up with the idea
that like oh it must be that the odds of
getting intelligence are super low and
so that's the hard steps right so there
was a series of steps in evolution that
were you know very very hard and because
that you can calculate some probability
distributions um and everybody loves a
good probability distribution and they
went a long way with this but it turns
out that the whole thing is flawed
because on one you know when you look at
it of course the time scale for the
sun's Evolution and the time scale for
evolution on life are coupled because
life and the the time scale for
evolution of the earth is coupled is
about the same time scale as the
evolution as the sun it's billions of
years the earth evolves over billions of
years and life and the Earth co-evolve
that's what Brandon Carter didn't see is
that actually the fate of the earth and
the fate of Life are inextricably
combined uh and this is really important
for astrobiology too um life doesn't
happen on on a planet it happens to a
planet so this is something that David
grinspoon and Sarah Walker both say and
you know uh I agree with this it's a
really nice way of putting it um so uh
you know PL tectonics um the evolution
of oxygen of an oxygen atmosphere which
only happened because of life um these
things you know these are are things
that are happening where life and the
planet are sort of slashing back and
forth and so rather than to your your
point about do you need giant
catastrophes maybe not giant
catastrophes but what happens is as the
Earth and life are evolving together
windows are opening up evolutionary
Windows like for example life put oxygen
into the atmosphere when when life
invented this new form of photosynthesis
about two and a half billion years ago
that broke water apart to you know work
to do its its shenan chemical
Shenanigans um it broke water apart and
pushed oxygen into the atmosphere that's
why there's oxygen in the atmosphere
it's only because of life um that opened
up huge possibilities new spaces for
evolution to happen but it also changed
the chemistry of the planet forever so
the Evol the introduction of of a of
oxygen photosynthesis changed the planet
forever and it opened up a bunch of
Windows for evolution that wouldn't have
happened otherwise like for example you
and I we need that amount of o oxygen
big brained creatures need an oxygen
rich atmosphere because oxygen is so
potent um for metabolism so you couldn't
get intelligent creatures 100 million
years after the planet formed so really
on a scale of a planet when there's a
billions trillions of organisms on a
planet they can actually have planetary
scale
impact yeah so the chemical Shenanigans
of an individual organism once scaled
out to trillions can actually change a
plan
yeah and we know this for a fact now
like this is so there was this thing
Gaia theory that you know was James
Lovelock introduced in the 70s um and
then Lin margalis the biologist Lin
margalis together so this Gaia theory
was the idea that planets pretty much
take or sorry life takes over a planet
life hijacks a planet in a way that um
the sum total of Life creates these
feedbacks between the planet and the
life such that it keeps the planet
habitable it's kind of a homeostasis
right I can go out like right now
outside it's 100° right and I go outside
but my internal temperature is going to
the same and I can go back to you know
Rochester New York in the winter and
it's going to be you know zero degrees
but my internal temperature is going to
be the same that's homeostasis the idea
of Gia theory was that life the
biosphere exerts this pressure on the
planet or these feedbacks on the planet
that even as other things are changing
the planet will always stay in the right
kinds of conditions for life now when
this Theory came out it was very
controversial people like oh my God you
know what are you smoking weed you know
and like there were all these guyan
festivals with guyan uh dances and so
you know became very popular in the New
Age Community but love loock actually
they were able to show that no this has
nothing to do with like the planet being
conscious or anything it was about these
feedbacks that that bi the biology the
biosphere can exert these feedbacks and
now that's become whether or not it's
still we're still unclear whether there
are true guyan feedbacks in the sense
that the planet can really exert
complete control but it is absolutely
true that um the biosphere is a major
player in Earth's history so the
biosphere fights for homostasis on Earth
the bio so okay what I would say right
now is I don't know if I can say that
scientifically I can certainly say that
the biosphere does a huge amount of the
regulation of the planetary State and
over billions of years has strongly
modified the evolution of the planet so
whether or not a guy a true guy in
feedback would be exactly what you said
right the guy the biosphere is is
somehow and Sarah Walker and David
grinspoon and I actually did a paper on
this about the idea of planetary
intelligence or cognition across a
planetary scale and I think that
actually is possible it's not conscious
but there is a kind of cognitive
activity going on the biosphere in some
sense knows what is happening because of
these feedbacks um so but so it's still
unclear whether we have these full guyan
feedbacks but we certainly have semian
feedbacks if there's a pertubation on
the planetary scale temperature you know
insulation how much sunlight's coming in
the biosphere will start to have
feedbacks that will damp that
pertubation temperature goes up the
biosphere starts doing something
temperature comes down now I wonder if
the technosphere also has a guyan
feedback or elements of a guyan feedback
such that the technosphere will also
fight to some degree for homeostasis
open question I guess well that's I'm
glad you asked that question because
that that that paper that David and uh
Sarah and I wrote what we were arguing
was is that over the history of a planet
right when life first forms you know 3.8
billion years ago it's kind of thin on
the ground right you've got the first
species you know um these are all
microbes and they have not yet uh been
they're not going to enough of them to
exert any kind of these guyan feedback
so we call that an immature biosphere
but then as time goes on his life
becomes more robust and it begins to
exert these feedbacks keeping the planet
in the place where it needs to be for
life we call that a mature biosphere
spere right and the important thing and
we're going to I'm sure later on we're
going to talk about definitions of life
and such there's this great term called
autop poesis uh that Francisco uh verel
the neurobiologist Francisco verela came
up with and he said you know one of the
defining things about life is this
property of autop poesis which means
self-creating and
self-maintaining life does not create
the conditions which will destroy itself
right it's always trying to keep itself
in a place where it can stay alive so
the biosphere from this perspective has
been autoptic for you know billions of
years now we just invented this
technosphere in the last you know couple
of hundred years and what we were
arguing in that paper is that it's an
immature technosphere right because
right now with climate change and all
the other things we're doing you know
we're destroy the technosphere right now
is sort of destroying the conditions
under which it needs to maintain itself
so the real job for us if we're going to
last over you know geologic time scales
if we want a technosphere that's going
to last
tens of thousands hundreds of thousands
millions of years then we've got to
become mature which means to not uh
undermine the conditions to not subvert
the conditions that you need to stay
alive so as of right now I'd say we're
not autopoetic well I wonder if we look
across thousands tens of thousands
hundreds of thousands of years that
perturbations the technosphere should
create
perturbations a as a way for developing
greater and greater defenses against
perturbations which sounds like a
ridiculous statement but basically uh go
out and play in the yard and hurt
yourself to to strengthen the or like
drink water from the from the pond from
the pond yeah right get sick a few times
to strengthen the immune system yeah
well you know it's interesting with the
technosphere we could talk about this
more but like you know the te we're just
emerging as a technosphere in terms of
as a interplanetary technosphere right
that's really the next step for us is to
um David grinspoon talks about I love
this idea of anti- accretion like this
amazing thing that for the first time
you know over the entire history of the
planet stuff is coming off the planet
right used to be everything just fell
down all the meteorites fell down but
now we're starting to push stuff out um
and you know like the idea of planetary
defense or such you know we are actually
going to start exerting pertubations on
the solar system as a whole we're going
to start engineering if we make it right
I always like to say that if we can get
through climate change the prize that
the end is the solar system right uh so
we will um we'll be change literally
engineering the solar system but what
you can think of right now with what's
happening with the anthropos scine the
great acceleration that that uh the is
the technosphere you know is the
creation of that is a giant pertubation
on the biosphere right and what you
can't do is you know the technosphere
sits on top of the biosphere and the
tech if the technosphere undermines the
biosphere for its own conditions of
habitability then you're in trouble
right I mean the biosphere is not going
away there's nothing we could do like
the idea that we have to save the Earth
is a little ridiculous like the Earth is
not a furry little bunny that we need to
protect but it's the conditions for us
right we Humanity emerged out of this
out of the holos scene the last 10,000
years interglacial period we can't
tolerate very different kinds of earths
um so that's what I mean about a
puration before we forget I got to ask
you about this paper pretty interesting
uh it's an interesting table here about
hard steps abiogenesis glucose
fermentation to perovic acid all kinds
of steps all the way to homo sapians
animal intelligence land ecosystems
endoskeletons eye precursor so formation
of the eye yeah complex
multicellularity that's definitely one
of the big ones yeah so interesting I
mean what can you say about this chart
there are all kinds of papers talking
about what the difficulty of these steps
right and so this was the idea so what
said was you know using anthropic
reasoning he said there must be a few
very hard steps for evolution to get
through to make it to intelligence right
so there's some steps are going to be
easy so every generation you know you
roll the dice and yeah it won't take
long for you to get that step but there
must be a few of them and he said you
could even calculate what how many there
were five six in order to get to
intelligence and so this paper here this
plot is all these different people
who've written all these papers and this
is the point actually you can see all
these papers that were written on the
hard steps each one proposing a
different set of what those steps should
be and there's this other idea from
biology of the major transitions in
evolution mte that those were the hard
steps but what we actually found was
that none of those are actually hard the
whole idea of hard steps that there are
hard steps is actually suspect so you
know this what's amazing about this
model is it shows how important it is to
actually work with people who are in the
field right so you know Brandon Carter
was a you know brilliant physicist the
guy who came up with this um and then
lots of physicists and astrophysicists
like me have used this but the people
who actually study Evolution and the
planet were never involved right and if
you went and talk to an evolutionary
biologist or a biog geophysicist they'd
look at you when you explain this to
them and they'd be like what like what
are you guys doing turns out none of the
uh details or none of the conceptual
structure of this matches with what the
people actually study the planet and its
evolution is it mostly about the the
fact that there's not really discret big
steps is it's a gradual continual kind
of process well there's two things the
first most important one was that the
planet and the biosphere have evolved
together that's something that every you
know most biog geophysicists completely
accept and it was the first thing that
Carter kind of rejected he said like no
that's probably not possible and yet you
know like if he'd only sort of had more
discussions with this other community
would have seemed like no there you
there are actually windows that open up
and then the next thing is this idea of
whether a step is hard or not because
for hard what what you mean by a hard
step is that like I said every time
there's a generation every time there's
the Next Generation born you're rolling
the dice on whether this mutation will
happen and the idea of something being a
hard steps there's two ways in which
something might even appear as a hard
step and not be or actually not be a
hard Step at all one is that you see
something that is a heard an evolution
has only happened once right so let's
take the opposite uh you see something
that's happened multiple times like
wings lots of examples of Wings Over
lots of different evolutionary lineages
so that's clearly not a making wings is
not a hard step there are certain other
things that people say no that's a hard
step uh oxygen you know the oxygen
photosynth synthesis but they are so
they tend to be so long ago that we've
lost all the information there could be
other things in the fossil record that
uh you know went made this Innovation
but they're just gone now so you can't
tell so there's information loss the
other thing is the idea of pulling up
the ladder that somebody you know some
species makes the Innovation but then it
fills the niche and nobody else can do
it again so yeah it only happened once
but it happened once because basically
the the the the creature was so
successful it took over and there was no
space for anybody else to evolve it so
yeah so the interesting thing about this
was seeing how how much once you look at
the details of life's history on Earth
how it really shifts you away from this
hard steps model and it shows you that
those details as we were talking about
like with do you have to know about the
planet do you have to know about PL
tectonics yeah you're going to have
to I mean to be fair to Carter on the
first point it makes it much more
complicated uh if life and the planet
are coold evolving because it's not it
would be nice to consider the planet as
a static thing that sets the initial
conditions yeah and then we can sort of
from a outside perspective analyze
planets based on the initial conditions
they create and then then there's a
binary yes or no will it create life but
if they cool it's just like a it's a
really complex dynamical system where
everything is uh becomes much more
difficult from the perspective of SEI of
looking out there and trying to figure
out which ones yeah are actually
producing life but I think we're at the
point now so now there may be other
kinds of principles that actually
because you know coevolution actually
has its own not determin IC you're done
with determinism right but but you but
complex systems have patterns complex
systems have constraints and that's
actually what we're going to be looking
for our constraints on them and so you
know and again nothing against Carter
was a brilliant idea but it just goes to
show you know there's this great XT you
I'm a theoretical physicist right uh and
so I love simplified give me a
simplified model with you know it's a
dynamical equation some initial
conditions I'm very happy but there's
this great xdc comic where like you know
somebody's working something out on the
board and this physicist is looking over
and saying oh oh I just I just wrote
down an equation for that I I solved
your problem do you guys even have a
journal for this and you know subtitle
is why everybody hates physicists yeah
so sometimes that approach totally works
sometimes physicists you know we can be
very good at like zooming in on what is
important and casting the details aside
so you can get to the heart of an issue
and that's very useful sometimes other
times it obfuscates right other times it
clouds over actually what you needed to
focus on especially when it comes to
complexity uh speaking of simplifying
everything down to an equation uh let's
return back to the question of how many
alien civilizations are out there and uh
talk about the Drake equation yeah can
you uh explain the Drake equation you
know people have various uh feelings
about the Drake equation uh you know it
can be abused but basically it was the
the story actually is really interesting
so Frank Drake in uh 1960 does the first
ever astrobiological IC experiment he
gets a radio telescope points it at a
couple of stars and listens for signals
that was the first time anybody done any
experiment about any kind of life in the
history of humanity um and he does it
and he's kind of waiting for everybody
to make fun of him in still he gets a
phone call from the government says hey
we want you to have do a um a meeting on
Interstellar Communications right he's
like okay so they organize a meeting
with like just eight people a young Carl
Sean is going to be there as well uh and
like the night before Drake has to come
up with a uh an agenda how do you come
up for an with an agenda for a meeting
on a topic that no one's ever talked
about before right and so he actually
write he breaks what he does what's so
brilliant about the Drake equation is he
breaks the problem of how many
civilizations are there out there into a
bunch of sub problems right and he
breaks it into seven sub problems each
one of them is a factor in an equation
that when you multiply them all together
you get the number of civilizations out
there that we could communicate with so
the first term is the rate at which
stars form the second term is the
fraction of those stars that have
planets F ofp the next term is the
number of planets in the habitable zone
the place where we think life could form
uh the next term after that is the
fraction of those planets where actually
an abiogenesis event life forms occurs
the next one is the fraction of planets
on which you start to get intelligence
after that it's the fraction of planets
where that intelligence goes on to
create a civilization and then finally
the last term which is the one that we
really care about is the lifetime how
long you have a civilization now how
long does it last what you say we we
humans we humans right because we're
standing we're staring at the you know
multiple guns pointing out you know
nuclear war climate change AI um so you
know how long on in general does
civilizations last now each one of these
terms was brilliant about what he did
was what he was doing was he was
quantifying our ignorance right by
breaking the problem up into these seven
sub problems he gave astronomers
something to do right and so you know
this is always with a new research field
you need a research program or else you
just have a bunch of vague questions you
don't even know really what you're
trying to do um so you know the star
people could figure out how many stars
were forming per year the the people who
were interested in planets could go out
and find techniques to discover planets
uh etc etc I mean these are their own
Fields essentially by creating this
equation he's launching new Fields yeah
that's exactly gave astrobiology which
wasn't even a term then a road map like
okay you guys go do this you go do that
you go do that and it had such
far-reaching effect on astrobiology
because it did break the problem up in a
way that gave useful uh uh you know sort
of marching orders for all these
different groups like for example it's
because of the Drake equation in some
sense that um people who were involved
in seti pushed NASA to develop the
Technologies for Planet hunting there
this amazing meeting in 1978 192
meetings 1978 and 1979 that were driven
in some part by the people who were
involved in seti getting NASA together
to say look okay look how you know
what's what's the road map for us to
develop Technologies to find find
planets so um yeah so you know the Drake
equation is absolutely uh uh
foundational for astrobiology but we
should remember that it's not a law of
nature right it's not something that's
it's not equals MC squ and so you can
see it being abused in some sense people
you know it's generated a trillion
papers some of those papers are good
I've written some of those and some of
those papers are bad um you know I'm not
sure where my paper fits in on those I'm
saying you know one should be careful
about what you're using it for but in
terms of understanding the problem that
that astrobiology faces this really
broke it up in a useful way we could
talk about each one of these but let
let's just look at EXO planets yeah so
that's a really interesting one I think
when you look back you know hundreds of
years from now what it in the 90s when
they first detected the' 92 and '95 '95
to me was really that was the discovery
of the first planet orbiting a sunlike
star to me that was the water the damn
being broken I I think that's like one
of the greatest discoveries in the in
the history of science I agree I agree
right now I guess nobody's celebrating
it too much because you don't know what
it really means but I think once we
almost certainly will find life out
there
obviously allow us to generalize across
the entire galaxy the entire universe so
if you can find life on a planet even in
the solar system you can now start
generalizing across the entire universe
you can all you need is one like right
now it's an any you know our
understanding of life we have one
example we have n equals one example of
life so that means we could be an
accident right it could be that we're
the only place in the entire universe
where this weird thing called life has
occurred get one more example and now
you're done because if you have one more
example now you're you know even you
know you don't have to find all the
other examples you just know that it's
happened more than once and now you are
you know in from a basian perspective
you can start thinking like yeah yeah
this life is not something that's hard
to make well let me get your sense of uh
estimates for the Drake equation you
also written a paper expanding on the
Drake equation but what what do you what
do you think is the answer so the paper
there was this paper we wrote uh Woody
Sullivan and I in 2016 where we said
look we have all this exoplanet data now
right the so the thing that exoplanet
science and the exoplanet census I was
talking about before have nailed is f
subp the fraction of stars that have
planets it's one every freaking star
that you see in the sky hosts a family
of Worlds I mean it's mindboggling
because every one of those those are all
places right they're either you know gas
giants probably with moons so there the
moons are places you can stand and look
out or they're like terrestrial world
where even if there's not life there's
still snow falling and there's oceans
washing up on you know on shorelines
it's incredible to think how many places
and stories there are out there so right
the first term was FS subp which is how
many stars have planets the next term is
how many planets are in the habitable
zone right on average and it turns out
to be one over five right so you know
you know around point two so that means
you just count five of them go out at
night and go 1 two 3 four five one of
them has an an earthlike planet
you know in the habitable zone like whoa
so what what defines a habitable zone
habitable zone is an idea um that was
developed in the um uh 1958 by the
Chinese American astronomer xuang and it
was it was a brilliant idea it said look
this is there you know I can do the
simple calculation if I take a planet
and just stick it at some distance from
a star of what's the temperature of the
planet what's the temperature of the
surface so now you're all you're going
to ask you give it a standard kind of
you know earthlike atmosphere and ask
could there be liquid water on the
surface right we believe that liquid
water is really important for Life there
could be other things that's happening
fine but you know if you were to start
off trying to make life you'd probably
choose water as your solvent for it so
basically the habitable zone is the band
of orbits around a star where you can
have liquid water on the surface you
could take a you know glass of water
pour it on the surface and it would just
pull up it wouldn't freeze immediately
which would happen if your planet is too
far out and it wouldn't just boil away
if your planet too close in so that's
the formal definition of the habitable
zone so it's a nice strict definition
there's probably way more going on than
that but this is a place to start right
well we should say it's a place to start
I I do think it's too strict of a
constraint I would agree we're talking
about temperature where water can be on
the surface there there's so many other
ways to get uh the aforementioned
turmoil yeah where the temperature
varies whether it's volcanic so interact
fraction of volcanoes and ice and all of
this on the moons of plants that are
much farther away all this kind of stuff
yeah well for example we know in our own
solar system we have say Europa the moon
of Jupiter which has got a 100 mile deep
ocean under 10 miles of ice right that's
not in the habitable zone that is
outside the habitable zone and that may
be the best place it's got more water
than Earth does all of its oceans or you
know it's twice as much water on Europa
than there is on Earth so you know that
may be a really great place for life to
form and it's outside the habitable zone
so you know the habitable zone is a good
place to start and it helps us and
there's reason there's reasons why you
do want to focus on the habitable zone
because like Europa I couldn't I won't
be able to see from across telescopic
distances across Lighty years I I
wouldn't be able to see life on Europa
because it's under 10 miles of ice right
so with the important thing about um
planets in the habitable zone is that
we're thinking they have atmospheres um
atmospheres are the things we can
characterize for across 10 50 light
years and we can see bio signatures as
we're going to talk about so there is a
reason why the habitable zone becomes
important for the detection of extra
solar life but for me when I look up at
the stars it's very likely that there's
a habitable planet or Moon and each of
the Stars habitable defined broadly yeah
I think that's that's not unreasonable
to say I mean especially since the the
formal definition you get one and five
right one and five is a lot there's a
lot of stars in the sky so yes saying
that in general when I look at a star
there's a pretty good chance that
there's something habitable orbiting it
is not a unreasonable scientific claim
to me it seems like there should be
alien civilizations
everywhere why the fmy Paradox why
haven't we seen them okay the fmy
Paradox let's talk about the I love
talking about the fmy Paradox because
there is no fmy
Paradox yeah so the fmy par let's talk a
little about the fmy Paradox and the
history of it um so uh enrio fery it's
1950 he's walking with his friends at
Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab to The
Cantina and there had been this um
cartoon in the New Yorker they all read
the New Yorker uh and the cartoon was
trying to explain why there there had
been this rash of uh uh garbage cans
being disappearing in New York and this
cartoon said oh it's UFOs because this
is already you know it's 1950 the first
big UFO craze happened in 47 so they'd
all they were laughing about this as
they're walking and they started being
physicist started talking about
Interstellar travel Interstellar
propulsion blah blah blah you know
conversation goes on for a while
conversation turns to something else you
know they gone on other things about 40
minutes later over lunch fmy blurts out
well where is everybody right typical
fmy sort of thing he done the
calculation in his head and he suddenly
realized that look if one if there you
know if intelligence is common that even
traveling at sublight speeds a uh a
civilization could cross you know kind
of hop from one star system to the other
and spread out across the entire galaxy
in a few hundred thousand years and he
realized this and so he was like why
aren't they here now um and that was the
beginning of the fmy Paradox it actually
got picked up as a formal thing in 1975
in a paper by Hart where he actually
kind of went through this calculation
and showed and said well there's nobody
here now therefore there's nobody
anywhere that you know okay so that is
what we will call the direct firmy
Paradox why aren't they here now but
something happened where people after
seti began where people started to there
there's this idea of the great silence
people got this idea in their head that
like oh we've been looking for decades
now for signals of extraterrestrial
intelligence and we haven't found any
therefore there's nothing out there but
that so we'll call that the indirect fmy
Paradox and there absolutely is no
indirect fmy Paradox for the most
mundane of reasons which is money
there's never been any money to look
there really SEI was always done by
researchers who were kind of like scabin
time you know some extra time from their
other projects to you know look a little
bit uh you know at the sky with a
telescope telescopes are expensive so um
Jason Wright my one of my collaborators
he and his students did a study where
they looked at the entire search space
for se you know and imagine that's an
ocean all the different Stars you have
to look at the radio frequencies you
have to look at how when you look how
often you look and they they looked then
they summed up all the sety searches
that had ever been done they went
through the literature and what they
found was if the if the if that search
space if the SC is an ocean and you're
looking for fish how much of the ocean
have we looked at and it turns out to be
a hot tub that's how much of the ocean
that we've looked up we've dragged an a
hot tub's worth of ocean water up and
there was no fish in it and so now are
we going to say up well there's no fish
in the ocean right so there is
absolutely positively no indirect firmy
pars we just haven't looked um but we're
starting to look so that's what's you
know finally we're starting to look
that's what's exciting the direct fmy
Paradox there are so many ways out of
that right there's a book called 77
solutions to the fmy Paradox that it
just you know you can pick your favorite
one it just doesn't carry a lot of
weight because there's so many ways
around it we did an actual simulation my
group uh Jonathan Carol um one of my
collaborators we actually simulated the
Galaxy and we simulated probes moving at
sublight speed from one uh uh star to
the other Gathering resources heading to
the next one um and so we could actually
track the expansion wave across the
Galaxy have one IA biogenesis event and
then watch the whole galaxy get
colonized or settled and it is
absolutely true that that wave crosses
you know Hart was right fmy was right
that wave crosses very quickly but
civilizations don't last forever right
so one question is when did they visit
when did they come to earth right so if
you give civilizations a finite lifetime
you know let them last 10,000 100
thousand years what you find is you now
have a steady state civilizations are
dying they're you know they're they're
coming back they're traveling between
the Stars what you find then is you can
have big holes opened up you can have
regions of space where there is nobody
for you know millions of years and so if
that if we're living in one of those
bubbles right now then maybe we were
visited but we were visited a 100
million years ago and there was a paper
that Gavin Schmidt and I did that showed
that if there was a civilization whether
it was like dinosaurs or aliens that was
here a 100 million years ago there's no
way to tell there's just there's no
record left over the fossil record is
too sparse the only way maybe you could
tell is by looking at the isotopic uh uh
Str
uh to see if there was anything
reminiscent of an industrial
civilization but the idea that you know
you'd be able to find you know iPhones
or or toppled buildings after a 100
million years is there's no way so if
there was an alien Camp here yeah an
alien Village a small civilization maybe
even a large civilization even a large
civilization even if it was million
years ago and it lasted 10,000 years
fossil record's not going to have it
yeah yeah the fossil record is too
sparse right most things don't fossilize
um and 10,000 years is a you know blink
in the eye of geological time so we call
or Gavin called this the sorian
hypothesis after the Doctor Who episode
with the lizard creatures the sorians um
and so that but that paper got a lot of
press but it was a you know it was it
was it was an important idea it was
really Gavin's I was just helping with
the astrobiology that to recognize that
like yeah you know we we could have been
visited a long time ago there just would
be no
record yeah it's kind of mind-blowing
it's really mindblowing and it's also a
good reminder that we've been
intelligent uh species have been here
for a very short amount of time very
short amount of time yeah this is not to
say that there was like so oh whenever I
gave you know I like when I was on Joe
Rogan for exactly this paper and I had
to always emphasize we're not saying
there was a soran you know um but we're
just saying that if there was that's why
I love Gavin's question Gavin's question
was just like how could you tell right
it was a very beautifully scientific
question um that what we were really
showing is that you really you know
unless you did a very specific kind of
search which nobody's done so far that
you know there would there's not an
obvious way to tell that there that
there could have been civilizations here
earlier
on I've actually been reading a lot
about ancient
civilizations and it just makes me sad
how much of the wisdom of that time is
lost yeah and uh how much guessing is
going on whether it's in uh South
America like what happened in the jungle
yeah like the Amazon like the Amazon
prob that was you know the coners came
and wiped everybody out and especially
just even the like the plague may have
decimated um so yeah how much of that
Civilization and there's a lot of
theories and uh you know because of
archaeology only looks at cities they
don't really know the origins of humans
and there's a there's a lot of really
interesting theories and they're of
course controversial there's a lot of
controversial people in every discipline
but Archaeology is like uh a fascinating
one because we know so little basically
storytellers you're assembling the
picture from just very few puzzle pieces
it's fascinating it it makes me it's
it's it's humbling and it's sad that
there could be entire
civilizations ancient civilizations that
are either almost entirely or entirely
lost yeah well like the uh the the
indigenous peoples of North America
there could have been like millions and
millions you we get this idea that like
oh you know this the the Europeans came
and it was empty you know but it was may
have only been empty because the plague
had swept up from the you know from the
what happened uh in meso America so and
you know and they didn't really build
cities but they had they I mean they
they didn't build wooden or stone cities
they built wooden cities you know
everybody seems to be building pyramids
and they're really damn good at it I
don't know what with do with a p like
what is why why does that apply like
what archetype in our brain is that uh
and it is also really interesting
speaking of archetypes is that
independent civilizations formed and
they had a lot of similar kind of
Dynamics like human nature when uh it uh
it builds up hierarchies in a certain
way it builds up myths and religions in
a certain way it builds pyramids in a
certain way yeah it goes to war all this
kind of stuff independently ores
fascinating Santa Fe Institute the stuff
the Santa Fe Institute does on this as
complex systems you know the origin of
hierarchies and such very cool yeah Sant
folks complexity in general is really
cool cool uh what phenomena emerge when
a bunch of small things get together and
interact uh go going back to this uh
this paper a new empirical constraint on
the prevalence of technological species
in the universe this paper that uh
expands on the Drake equation what are
some interesting things in this paper
well so the main thing we were trying to
do with this paper is say look we have
all of this exoplanet data right it's
got to be good for something especially
since two of the terms that have been
nailed down empirically
are two terms in the Drake equation so F
subp that's the second term fraction of
stars that have planets and then N Sub
the average number of planets in the
habitable zone those are the second and
third term in the Drake equation so what
that means is all the astronomical terms
have been nailed and so we said like
okay how do we use this to do something
with the Drake equation and so we
realized is well okay we got to get rid
of time the lifetime thing we can't say
anything about that um but if we let
that if we don't ask how long do they
last but in that ask what's the
probability that there have been any
civilizations at all no matter how long
they lasted I'm not asking whether they
exist now or not I'm just asking in
general um about probabilities to make a
technological civilization anywhere and
at any time in the history of the
universe and that we were able to
constrain and so what we found was
basically uh that the there have been 10
billion trillion habitable zone planets
in the universe and what that means is
that are those are 10 billion trillion
experiments that have been run um and
the only way that we the only time that
this is you know this whole process from
you know a biogenesis to a civilization
has occurred is if every one of those
experiments failed right so therefore
you could put a a probability you could
we called it the pessimism line right we
don't really know what nature sets for
the probability of making intelligent
civilizations right but we could set a
limit using this we could say look as if
the probability per habitable zone
planet is less than 10-22 one in 10
billion trillion then yeah we're alone
if it's anywhere larger than that then
they're we're not the first it's
happened somewhere else and to me that
was an En that was mindblowing doesn't
tell me there's anybody nearby the
Galaxy could be sterile it just told me
that like you
know unless Nature's really against has
some bias against civilizations we're
not the first time this has happened
this is has happened elsewhere over the
course of cosmic history 10 billion
trillion experiments yeah that's a lot
of experiments that's a lot right a
thousand is a lot yeah 100 is a lot
yeah if uh we normal humans saw 100
experiments and uh we knew that at least
one time uh there was a successful human
civilization built I mean we would say
for sure in in a 100 you'll get another
one yeah yeah so that's why I mean
that's why so this you know these kinds
of arguments you have to be careful of
what they can do but what it really I
felt like what this paper showed was
that you know the burden of proof is now
on the pessimists right so that's why we
called it the pessimism line there's
been you know throughout history there's
been uh uh you know alien pessimists and
alien Optimist and they've been yelling
at each other that's all they had to go
with right you know and like with girano
Bruno and 1600 they burned the guy at
the stake for being an alien Optimist
but nobody really knew what pessimism or
optimism meant this you know we sort of
thought this was like the plank link
this was sort of the length of
astrobiology gave you an actual number
that you know if you could somehow
calculate what the probability you know
of forming a technological civilization
was this thing sort of shows you where
the limit is if as long as you're above
10 Theus 22 then you actually absolutely
it has occurred in the in the in the
history other civilizations have
occurred in the history of the universe
so to me at least the big question is Fe
which is basically a biogenesis how hard
is it for life to originate in a planet
cuz all the other ones seem
very likely everything seems very likely
the only open question to me is like how
hard is it for life to originate there's
lots of ways to again you know we don't
know unless we look and then you know
you had Sarah Walker on not too long ago
you know she's very interested in
origins of life um uh so you know lots
of people are working on this but I
think it's it's hard looking at the
history of the earth you know and again
this is you can do basian arguments on
this um but yeah it forming life I don't
think is hard getting getting like B
basic biology started I don't think is
hard it's still wild it's an amazing
process that actually I think requires
some deep rethinking about how we
conceptualize what life is and what life
isn't that's one of the things I like
about Sarah's work um we're pursuing on
a different level uh about the life as
that the only process the only system
that uses information um but still
regardless of all those kinds of details
uh life is probably easy to make that's
that's my that's my gut feeling you know
yeah I mean day by day this changes for
me but I I just see once you create
bacteria it's it's it's Off to the Races
you're going to get complex life yeah as
long as you have enough time I mean that
boring billion and but I just can't
imagine a habitable planet not having a
couple of billion to spare yeah a couple
billion years to spare you know there is
a mystery there about why did it take so
long like with the Cambrian explosion
but that may have be again about these
windows that like it couldn't happen
until until the window the planet and
the the uh life had evolved together
enough that they together kind of opened
the window for the The Next Step um you
know intelligent life and how long
intelligent civil technological
civilizations I think there's a big
question about how long those last and
how you know I'm hopeful you know um but
uh but in terms of just like I think
life is absolutely going to be common in
the you know pretty common in the
univers yeah I think it's Absolut like I
I think again if I were to bet
everything
uh even Advanced civilizations are
common so the to me then the the only
explanation is the L our galaxy is a
graveyard of civilizations yeah because
you know you think about it we've only
been around I mean as a techn lot truly
you know when we think about in in
Drake's uh definition you had to have
radio telescopes that's been 100 years
you know and if we got another 10,000
100,000 years of history that would be
for us it' be pretty amazing right um
but that still that wouldn't be long
enough to really pop up the number of
civilizations in the in the Galaxy so
you really need it to be like hundreds
of millions of years and that raises a
question which I am very interested in
which is how do you even talk about I
call it the billion year civilization
right how do we even begin to
hypothesize or think about in any kind
of systematic way what happens to a
technological civilization across
hundreds of millions to a billion years
yeah like how how do you even simulate
the trajectories that civilizations take
across that kind of time scale yeah uh
when we all the data we have is just for
the 10,000 Years or or so 20,000 years
that humans have been building
civilizations yeah and then just I don't
I don't know what you put it at but
maybe 100 years that we've been
technological yeah and we're ready to
blow ourselves to bits or you know Drive
ourselves off the planet yeah no it's
really interesting but there's got to be
a way I think that's really a frontier
so you had David Kipping on not too long
ago um and David and I did a paper uh
and Caleb sharf David really drove this
where we you know it was a basian
calculation to sort of ask the question
if you f if you were to find a detection
if you were to find a signal or you know
a techno signature would that come from
a civilization that was younger your age
or older and you could see I mean this
is not hard to do but it was great the
formalism the formalism was hard you
know it's kind of intuitive but the
formalism was hard to show that yeah
they're older you know probably much
older so that means you really do need
to think about like okay how do
billion-year civilizations manifest
themselves what signatur will they leave
and yeah can you even I mean what's so
cool about it it's so much fun because
you got to like you have to you have to
imagine the unimaginable like you know
would you still I me obviously
biological evolution can happen on you
know on those kinds of time scales so
you wouldn't even really be the same
thing you started out as but social
forms what kind of social forms can you
imagine that would be continuous over
that or maybe they wouldn't be
continuous You' get they'd drop out you
know they destroy themselves and then
they'd come back so maybe it's you know
it's a a trunk or a punctuated uh
Evolution I mean but we gotta sort of
this is the fun part we have to sort of
work this out you know well I mean one
way to approach that question is like
how what are the different ways to
achieve homeostasis as you get greater
and greater technological innovation so
like if you expand out into the universe
and you have uh op the cage have scale
what what are the ways you can avoid
destroying yourself just achieve
stability while still growing yeah and
I mean that's an interesting question I
think it's probably
simulatable could be I mean you know
agent based modeling you could do it
with that so you know our group has used
agent based modeling to do something
like the firmy Paradox that was that was
agent-based modeling but you can also do
this people at Santa Fe have done this
other groups have done this to use
agent-based modeling to track the the or
formation of hierarchies the formation
of stable hierarchies the so I think
that I think it's actually very doable
but um understanding the kind of
assumption and principles that are going
into it and what you can extract from
those that is what is sort of the
frontier do you think if humans colonize
Mars the dynamic between the
civilization on Earth and Mars will be
fundamentally different than dynamic
between individual Nations on Earth
right now like that that's a thing to
load into the simul the agan based
simulation we're talking about if we
settle it Mars will very quickly want to
become its own Nation well no there's
already going to be Nations
on Mars that's guaranteed the moment you
two million people one the moment you
have one million people there's going to
be two tribes right and then they're
going to start fighting right and the
question is interplanetary fighting how
quickly does that happen and does it
have a different nature to it because of
the distances you know are you a fan of
the expanse do have you watch the
expanse great show because it's all
about the I highly recommend to
everybody it's based on a series of
books that are excellent It's on Prime
six seasons and it's basically about the
settled solar system it takes place
about 300 years from now and the entire
solar system is settled and it is the
best show about interplanetary politics
the first season actually um the journal
what was it uh foreign foreign affairs
said the best show on TV about politics
it takes place is interplanetary um so
yeah I think you know human beings being
human beings yes there will be Warfare
and there will be conflict um and I
don't think it'll be necessarily all
that different you know because really I
think within a few hundred years we will
have lots of people in the solar system
and it doesn't even have to be on Mars
we did a paper where we uh look based on
CU I was wanted to know about whether an
idea in the expanse was really possible
in the expanse the the asteroid belt
what they've done is they have colonized
the asteroid belt by hollowing out the
asteroids and spinning them up and
living on on the inside right because
they have the Coriolis force and I
thought like wow what a cool idea and
when I ran the blog for NPR actually
talk to the guys and said did you guys
calculate this see whether it's possible
sadly it's not possible the rock is just
not strong enough that if you tried to
spin it up to the speeds you need to get
uh oneir gravity which is what I think
the minimum you need for human beings uh
the rock would just fall apart it would
break but we came up with another idea
which was that if you take small
asteroids put a giant bag around them a
nanofiber bag and spin those up it would
inflate the bag and then even a small
couple of kilometer wide asteroid would
expand out to um you could get like a
Manhattan's worth of material inside so
forget about even colonizing Mars space
stations right or space habitats with
millions of people in them so anyway the
point is that I think you know within a
few hundred years it is not unimaginable
that there will be Millions if not
billions of people living in the solar
system is you think most of them will be
in space habitats versus on Mars and on
the planetary surface I you know it's a
lot easier on some on some level right
it depends on how like with Nano
fabrication and such but you know
getting down a gravity well is hard
right um so you know there's a certain
way in which there's a lot of you know
it's a lot easier to build real estate
out of the asteroids um but we'll
probably do both I mean I think what'll
happen is you know the next should we
make it through climate change and
nuclear war and all the other and AI um
the the next thousand years of human
history is the solar system right and so
you know I think we'll settle every nook
and cranny we possibly can and it's you
know it's a beautiful what I love about
what's hopeful about it is this idea
you're going to have all of these
pockets and you know I'm sure there's
going to be a Mormon space habitat like
you know there's going to be whatever
you want a Libertarian space habitat
everybody's going to be able to kind of
create their there'll be lots of
experiments in human flourishing and
those kinds of experiments will be
really useful for us to sort of figure
out better ways for us to interact and
have maximum flourishing maximum
Wellness maximum democracy maximum
Freedom uh do you think that's a good
backup solution to go out into space So
to avoid the possibility of humans
destroying themselves completely here on
Earth well I think you know I want to be
always careful with that because you
like I said it's centuries that we're
talking about right um so you know the
the problem with climate change you know
and same with nuclear war it's breathing
down our necks now so it's not a you
know trying to establish a a a base on
Mars is going to be so hard that it is
not even going to be close to being
self-sufficient for a couple of you know
a century at least so it's not like a
backup plan now um you know we have to
solve the problem of climate change we
have to deal with that there's still
enough nuclear weapons to really do hard
you know horrific things to the planet
for human beings um so I don't think
it's like a backup plan in that way but
I do think like I said it's the prize
it's you know if we get through this
then we get the entire solar system to
sort of play around in and and
experiment with and do really cool
things with well I think it could be a
lot less than a couple of centuries if
there's a urgency like a real urgency
like a catastrophe like a maybe a small
nuclear war breaks out where it's like
holy this is for sure for sure a
bigger one is looming maybe maybe if
geopolitically the war between China and
the United States escalates where
there's this tension that builds and
builds and builds and it becomes more
obvious that we need to really really
exate I think my my only dilemma with
that is that I just think that a a
self-sufficient base is a so far away
that like say you start doing that and
then there is a fullscale nuclear
exchange that Bas is you know it's not
going to last because it's just you know
the self-sufficiency required is a kind
of an economy like literally a material
economy that we are so far from with
Mars that we are centuries from like I
said you know three centuries which is
not that long two to three centuries you
know look at 1820 nobody had traveled
faster than 60 mes an hour unless they
were falling off a cliff right and now
we routinely travel at 500 miles an hour
but it is sort of centuries long so
that's why I think I think we'd be
better off trying to solve these
problems than you know I just think the
odds that we're be able to create a
self-sufficient uh Colony on Mars
before that threat comes to head is
small so we'd have to deal with the
threat yeah it's an interesting
scientific and Engineering question of
how to create a self-sufficient Colony
on mars or out in space as a space
habitat like where Earth entirely could
be destroyed you could still survive
yeah yeah because it's really what about
you know thinking about complex systems
right um a space habitat you know would
have to be as robust as an ecosystem as
the kind of thing you know you go out
and you see a pond with all the
different webs of interactions you know
that's why I I always think that uh you
know if this process of going out into
space is actually will help us with
climate change and with thinking about
making a long-term sustainable version
of human civilization because you really
have to think about these webs the the
the complexity of these webs and
recognize the biosphere has been doing
this forever the biosphere knows how to
do this right and so a how do we support
how do we build a vibr powerful
technosphere that also doesn't you know
mess with the biospheres mess with the
biospheres capacity to support our
technosphere so you know by doing this
by trying to build space habitats in
some sense you're thinking about
building a small scale version of this
so I think I think the two problems are
going to kind of feed back on each other
well there's also the other possibility
of uh like the movie uh Darren aronowski
uh postcard from Earth where we can
create this kind of Life gun that just
shoots so is opposed to uh engineering
everything yeah basically seeding life
on a bunch of places and letting life do
its thing which is really good at doing
it seems like so as opposed to like with
a space habitat you basically have to
build the entire biosphere and
technosphere the whole the whole thing
by yourself uh you know if you just hey
the aforementioned cockroach with some
bacteria place it in
Europa uh I think you'd be surprised
what happens yeah right like honestly if
you put a huge amount of bacteria like a
giant number of organisms from Earth
into uh on Mars on uh some of these
moons of the other planets in the solar
system you think like I feel like some
of them would actually find a way to
survive you know the Moon is hard
because the Moon is just like there's no
you know the moon may be really hard but
you know that'd be I mean I wonder
somebody must have done these
experiments right like how because we
know they're extremophiles right we know
that they're you can go down you know 10
miles below the Earth's surface and
there are things where there's no
sunlight there's you know the conditions
are so extreme and there's lots of
microbes having a great time living off
the radioactivity you know in the Rocks
but you know they had lots of time to
evolve to those conditions so I'm not
sure if you dumped a bunch of bacteria
you know so somebody like somebody must
have done these experiments like you
know how fast could microbial Evolution
occur in under harsh conditions that you
maybe get somebody who figures out okay
I can deal with this I think the moon's
too much cuz it's so sterile but you
know Mars I don't know maybe I don't
know we'd have to that but it's an
interesting idea I wonder if somebody
has done those experiment yeah you think
somebody would like let's take a bunch
of microbes the harsh the take the
harshest possible condition of all
different kinds temperature all this
kind of stuff right pressure salinity
and then just like dump a bunch of
things that are not used to it and then
just see does everybody just die you
know that's it there's you know the
thing life it it flourishes in a
non-sterile environment where there's a
bunch of options for resources even if
the condition is super harsh in the lab
I don't know if you can reconstruct
harsh conditions plus options for
survival you know what I mean like a
yeah like you have to have the the the
uh the huge variety of resources that
are always available on a planet somehow
even when it's in super harsh condition
so that so that's actually not a trivial
experiment and I wouldn't even if
somebody did that experiment in the lab
but I'd be a little bit skeptical cuz
like if cuz I could see bacteria doesn't
survive in this kinds of temperature but
then I'll be like I don't know I don't
know you is there enough right is it you
know is there are there other options
like you know the is the condition Rich
enough Rich enough yeah you know there's
a there's an alternative view though
which is there's this great book um by
Kim Stanley Robinson called Aurora you
know so there's been a million um
Century ship stories like where you know
Earth sends out a you know Generation
ship or Century ship and It Go go to
another planet and they land and they
colonize and on this one they get all
the way there and they think it's the
plant's going to be habitable and it
turns out that it's not habitable for
Earth life like that you know there's
there's like you know bacteria or prons
actually you know super that just like
you know kill people in the simplest way
um and his the important thing about
this book was the idea that like you
know life is actually very tied to its
Planet it may not be so easy I just
thought this was a really interesting
idea I'm not necessarily supporting it
but that actually life reflects the
planetary conditions that not the
planetary the planet itself the whole
lineage the whole history of the
biosphere and it may not be so easy to
to to just sort of be like oh just drop
it over here and it all you know because
the bacteria even though they're
individual examples of life and I kind
of believe this the true unit of life
it's not DNA it's not a Cell It's the
biosphere it's the whole Community yeah
that's actually an interesting field of
study is how when you arrive from one
planet to another so we humans arrive to
a planet planet that has a biosphere
maybe a
technosphere what is the uh way
to um integrate yeah without killing
yourself or or the other one or the
other one that's let's just stick to
biology like that that's an interesting
question I don't know if we uh have a
rigorous way of investigating that
because everybody everything on life is
you know has the same lineage we all
come from Luca you know the last
Universal common ancestor and what you
see is often science fiction people will
do things like oh well it's okay because
like that bio uh that metabolism that
biochemistry is so different from ours
that we can coexist because they don't
even know each other you know right that
the you know and then the other version
is you get there you land and instantly
you know the nose bleeds and you're dead
so it's unfortunately I think it's the
latter yeah it sort of feels like alien
kind of thing so as we look out there
according to the Drake equations we just
discussed seems impossible to me that
there's not civilizations everywhere so
how do we look at them this process of
SE I have to put on my scientist hat and
just say my gut feeling is that dumb
life so to speak is common I am a little
agnostic about I I can see ways in which
intelligent civilizations may be sparse
yeah but but until you know we got to go
look it's all it's all armchair armchair
astronomy that's that's from a sort of
rigorous scientific perspective from My
Bro Science perspective it seems again
smoking this the forementioned weed
uh after the bong head I mean honestly
just it's it's really just seems
impossible to me that there's
not uh potentially dead but Advanced
civilizations everywhere in our galaxy
yeah yeah the potentially Dead part I
think right it could be that like making
civilizations is easy they just don't
last long so we when we went out there
we'd find a lot of extinct civilizations
extinct civilizations uh yeah apex
predators don't survive like they they
get get better better better and they
right die kill themselves all somehow
anyway so
just how do we find them yeah so SEI
search for extraterrestrial technology
is a term that I am not fond of using
anymore I mean some people in my field
are so I'm sorry folks um but I'm really
what I really like is the idea of techno
signatures because I think you know to
me seti is the first of all intelligence
we're not really looking for
intelligence we're looking for
technology I mean you know um and CTI
the classic idea of C is the radio
telescopes you know contact Jody Foster
with the headphones that whole thing
thing is still part it's still active
there's still great things going on with
it but suddenly this whole new window
opened up when we discovered exoplanets
we now found a new way to look for
intelligent civilizations or life in
general in a way that doesn't have any
the assumptions that had to go into the
classic Radio study and specifically
what I mean is we're not looking for
somebody sending us a beacon you really
needed that with the classic Model um
for a bunch of different reasons you had
to assume they wanted to be found and
they were sending you a super powerful
Beacon now because we know exactly where
to look and we know exactly how to look
we can just go about looking for Passive
signatures of the civilization going
about its civilizing business you know
without asking whether they want to be
contacted or not so this is what we call
a bio signature or a techno signature it
is an imprint in the light from the
planet of the activity of a biosphere or
a technosphere and that's really
important you know that that that why
kind of the whole Gaia idea ends up
being astrobiological that biospheres
and
technospheric oxygen and methane that
pair they would disappear you know very
quickly they'd react away they'd all be
gone so if you find a planet with oxygen
and methane that's a good bet that
there's a biosphere there okay what
about
technospheric signatures NASA was kind
of for reasons we can talk about NASA
had gotten pretty gun-shy about funding
anything about intelligent life but okay
what's an example of a technos signature
well one could be atmospheric pollution
I'm going to put pollution in quotes
here because it doesn't have to be
pollution but gases like
chlorofluorocarbons so we've dumped you
know we dumped a huge amount of
chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere
by mistake um it was affecting the ozone
but we put so much in there that
actually this is one of the things we
did we did a paper where we showed you
could detect it across Interstellar
distances you could look at the
atmosphere look at the light coming from
a distant planet pass the light through
a spectrograph and see the the lines the
fingerprint the spectral fingerprint of
chlorofluorocarbons in an atmosphere and
that would for sure tell you that that
were there was a technological
civilization there because there's no
other way to make chlorofluorocarbons
except through some kind of industrial
process so you're looking for in the
case of the biosphere you're looking for
anomalies in the spectrograph I wouldn't
necessarily call these anomalies I'm
looking for things that for bios
signature I'm looking for things that a
geosphere right you know that just rock
and air wouldn't produce on its own what
kind of chemicals would life produce
right and that's that's part of the
that's the interesting thing right so
that's what you know so we can use Earth
as an example right we can say look
oxygen we know there would be no oxygen
in the atmosphere for wasn't for
dimethyl sulfide which is a compound
that phop Plankton dump into the
atmosphere a lot of it that's sometimes
mentioned and there was even there was a
paper that somebody wrote where uh it
was like well we're not saying we see it
but you know there's a bunch of noise in
the Spectra right there um so so you
know there's a whole list of things that
Earth has done that are in the
atmosphere that might be bios signatures
but now we're reaching an interesting
point the field has matured to the point
where we can start asking about agnostic
bios signatures things that have nothing
to do with Earth's history but we think
that that would still be indications of
this weirdness we call life right what
what is it in general that life does
that leaves an imprint so one of these
things could be the structure of the
network of chemical reactions that
biology always produces very different
chemical networks who's reacting with
who than just rock and water right so so
there's been some proposals for
networked uh you know uh um uh uh bio
signatures uh information Theory you can
use you can try and look at the
information that is in the different um
compounds uh that are you find in the
atmosphere and maybe that information
shows you like oh if there's too much
information here there there must have
been biology happening it's not just
rock same thing for Tech we're that's
what we're working on right now that for
techno signatures as well so how do you
detect techno signatures okay so with
techno signatures I gave the example of
chlorofluorocarbon so that would be an
example of and again that one is a non-
agnostic one because we sort of like oh
we produced chlorofluorocarbons maybe
they will right and there's solar panels
right you can actually the glint off of
solar panels um will produce a the way
the light is reflected off of solar
panels whether no matter what it's made
out of actually um there was a paper
that um uh manaz lingam and AI L did in
I think it was 2017 we've just followed
up on it that actually could act as a
techno signature you'd be able to see in
the reflected light this sort of big
jump that would occur because of uh uh
City Lights City artificial illumination
if the if there's really like you know
large scale cities like you know
corusant and Star Wars or tranor in the
foundation those City Lights would be
detectable you know the spectral imprint
of those across 203 years so you know
our job in this grant is to develop the
first ever library of techno signatures
nobody's really ever thought about this
before so we're trying to come up with
all the possible ideas for what a
civilization might produce that could be
visible across uh you know uh
Interstellar distances and are these
good ones or is these ones going to be
hard to detect or such City Lights so if
a planet is all lit up with artificial
light across 20 to 30 light years we can
it yeah if you looked at Earth at night
from a distance where you know looked at
it Spectra and you had sensitive
sensitive enough instruments you'd be
able to see all the sodium lights and
the reflected light off of you know they
they um bounce off the ground right that
the light bounces off the ground so
you'd convolve the the sodium lamps with
the reflected Spectra from the ground
and yeah you'd be able to see that
there's City Lights now increase that by
a factor of a thousand you know if you
had a a tranor and you'd be able to
detect that across Interstellar
distances Thomas Bey did this work who's
now working with us what do you think is
the most detectable thing about Earth uh
wow we just this is fun we just have a
Sophia sheif gu who's part of our
collaboration just did a paper we did
Earth from Earth if you were looking at
Earth with Earth Technology for a bunch
of different techno signatures how close
would you have to be to be able to
detect them and most of them turn out to
be you'd have to be pretty close at
least out to the or Cloud but actually
it's it is our radio signatures still
that is still most detectable by the way
when you said you had to be close and
then you said the or Cloud that's not
very close but you mean like from an
Interstellar Interstellar distance cuz
the real you know we really want to know
is like I'm sitting here on Earth I'm
looking at these exoplanets the nearest
star is four light years away so that's
like the minimum distance um so what can
if I'm looking at exoplanets what kind
of signals could I see what is
detectable about Earth with our current
technology from the our near solar
system oh my God there's all kinds of
stuff well like our our the the the um
chlorofluorocarbons you can you know you
can see Earth's pollution and you know I
think City Lights you had to be within
you know within the solar system if they
do direct Imaging of Earth they're going
to need much more powerful but let me
tell you what let's let's talk about
direct Imaging for a moment because I
just have to go on this is such a cool
idea right so what we really want and
the next generation of space telescopes
and such is we're trying to do direct
Imaging we're trying to get uh you know
an image of a planet separated from its
star to be able to see the reflected
light or the actual emission from the
planet itself yeah by the way just to
clarify direct Imaging means literally
like a picture a picture but the problem
is is that with the even with the the
the pre the thing that's going to come
after jwst it's going to be a pixel
right you're not going to get any kind
of resolution you'll be able to get the
light from it which you'll be able to
pass through a spectrograph but you're
not going to be able to take a picture
but there is this idea called the solar
gravity lens telescope I think that's
what it is and the idea is insane right
so the general relativity says look
massive bodies distort space they
actually curve SpaceTime
so um the sun is a massive body and so
that means that the light passing
through the sun gets focused like a lens
right so the idea is to send a bunch of
telescopes out kind of into the ort
cloud and then look back towards the sun
towards an exoplanet that is behind not
be directly behind the Sun but is you
know in the direction of the Sun and
then let the let the sun act like a lens
and collect Focus the light onto the
telescope and you would be able to get
and they've done it's amazing like
they've already this idea is insane
they'd be able to get if everything
works out 24 kmet resolution you'd be
able to see Manhattan on a Exel planet
and this thing it sounds insane but
actually you know n they've already got
the team has already gotten through like
sort of three levels of NASA you know
there's there's the NASA program for
like give us your wackiest idea right
and then the ones that survive that are
like okay tell us whether that wacky
idea you know is even feasible and then
and they're marching along and the idea
is that like
you know and they even have plans for
how you'd be able to get these probes
out into the ort Cloud on relatively
fast time scales you need to be about
500 times as far from the Sun as Earth
is um but right now everything looks
like the idea seems to hold together so
probably when I'll be dead but when
you're an old man um it's possible that
something like this could you imagine
having like yeah res that kind of
resolution a picture of an exoplanet
down to you know kilometers so I'm very
excited about that I can only imagine
having a picture like that and then
there's
some uh mysterious artifacts that you're
seeing yeah yeah I mean it's both um
inspiring and and almost heartbreaking
that we can see
like I think we would be able to see a
civilization where there's like a lot of
scientists agree that this is very
likely something and then we can't we
can't get there but you know I mean
again this is the thing about being long
lived we've got to get to the point
where we're long lived enough that so
let's say we found like this is what I
always like to Let's imagine that we
find say 10 light years away we find a
planet that looks like it's got techno
signatures right it doesn't end there
like that would be the most important
Discovery in the history of humanity and
it wouldn't be like well okay we're done
the first thing we do is we big bigger
telescopes to try and do those Imaging
right and then the next thing after that
we plan a mission there right there's
there we would figure out like with
breakthrough breakthrough starshot there
was this idea have trying to use you
know giant lasers to propel small
spacecrafts uh light Sals almost to the
speed of light so they would get there
in 10 years and take pictures and so
we'll you know if we actually made this
discovery there would be the impulse
there would be the effort to actually
try and send something to to get there
now you know we probably couldn't land
we couldn't but you know so maybe we
maybe would take 30 years to build 10
years to get there 10 years to get the
picture back okay you're dead but your
kids are I mean so it becomes now this
multigenerational project how long did
it take to build the pyramids how long
did it take to build the giant
Cathedrals right those were
multi-generational projects and I think
we're on the cusp of that kind of
project I think that would probably
unite humans I think it would play a big
role I think it would be helpful I mean
human beings are a mess let's face it
but I think having that Rec that's why I
always say to people discovery of Life
of any kind of life even if it was
microbial life it wouldn't matter that
to know that we're not an accident to
know that there is probably if we found
one example of Life we'd know that we're
not an accident and there's probably
lots of life and that we're a community
we're part of a cosmic kind of community
of life and who knows what life has done
right we don't really all bets are off
with life since we're talking about the
future of telescopes let's talk about
our current super sexy awesome telescope
the James Webb Space Telescope that I
still can't believe actually worked I
can't believe it worked either I was
really skeptical I was like okay guys
all right sure we only got one shot for
this incredibly complicated piece of
Hardware to unfold so what kind of stuff
can we see with it I I've been just
looking through uh different kinds of
anouncements that have been detected
there's been some direct Imaging yes
like a single Pixel the kinds of exop
plants were able to direct image I guess
would have to be hot hot usually far
away from the you know reasonably far
away from the Star I think jwst is
really kind of at the hairy edge of
being able to do much with this what's
more important I think for jwst is the
Spectra and the problem Spectra is that
there's not sexy pictures it's like hey
look at this wiggly line but be able to
find and characterize atmospheres around
terrestrial exoplanets is the critical
next step that's where we are right now
in order to look for life we're going to
be we need to find planets with
atmospheres right and then we need to be
able to do this thing called
characterization where we look at the
spectral fingerprints for what's in the
atmosphere is there carbon is there
carbon dioxide is there oxygen is there
methane um and that's the most exciting
thing
for example there was this planet
k218b which had they did a beautiful job
getting the Spectra and the Spectra
indicated it may be an entirely new kind
of habitable world called A hean World
hean meaning hydrogen ocean world and
that is a kind of planet that it would
be a uh you know kind of in the superar
sub Neptune domain we were talking about
you maybe eight times the mass of the
Earth but it's got a layer of hydrogen
of an atmosphere of hydrogen hydrogen is
an amazing greenhouse gas so hydrogen
will keep the the planet underneath it
warm enough that you could get liquid
water you can get a giant ocean of uh of
liquid water and that's an entirely
different kind of planet that could be
habital Planet you know it could be a 60
degree warm ocean so the data that came
out of jwst for that planet was good
enough to be able to indicate like oh
yeah you know what the models from what
we understand about the models this
looks like it's a could be a high-an
world and it's 120 light years away from
Earth yeah and so isn't that amazing you
can it's 120 light years away but we can
see into the atmosphere we can see to
the atmosphere so well that we can be
like oh look methane methane was a five
Sigma detection like you knew that the
data were so good that it was like the
the gold standard of science what about
detecting uh maybe uh through direct
Imaging or in other ways Mega
structures that this the civilizations
build you know what's great about Mega
structures is first of all it's fun to
say who doesn't want to say mega
structure alien mega structure right
every morning I'm looking for an
opportunity to say that um so the the
the the ER example of this is the Dyson
Sphere right which is amazing because
you know it was literally 1960 that this
idea came up can you explain the Dyson
Sphere yeah the Dyson Sphere so Freeman
Dyson you know one of the greatest
physicists ever um who had was very
broad-minded and thought about a lot of
different things he recognized that you
know when a civilization as
civilizations progress what they're
going to need is ever more energy to do
ever more you know amazing things and
what's the best energy source in a solar
system it's the star right so if you
surrounded the star with solar
collecting machines sunlight collecting
machines um and and the the limit of
this would be actually build a sphere an
actual sphere around your star that had
all solar panels on the inside you could
capture every Photon the star produced
which is you know this insane amount of
light you would have enough power now to
do anything to re-engineer your solar
system um so that was a Dyson Sphere
turns out that a Dyson Sphere doesn't
really work because it's unstable you
know but a Dyson swarm is and that's
really what he meant you know this large
collection of large orbiting structures
that were able to collect light yeah so
he didn't actually mean a rigid right
sphere structure yeah he basically meant
a swarm so yeah that like you said in
the limit basically starts to look
people started to say yeah it was like a
sphere and we actually almost thought we
might have found one of these um uh back
with uh ban star we saw you know the way
we detect planets is through the transit
method where the planet passes in front
of the star and there's a dip in the
Starlight it's a little Eclipse
basically and we know exactly what they
should look like and then with this one
star there were these really weird
transits where like it was like this
little dragon's tooth and then there'd
be another one and another one and
another one and then nothing and then
three more and in the paper that was
written about this they suggested they
you know they went through the list of
could be comets could be chunks of a
broken up planet and it could also be an
alien mega structure and of course the
news picked up on this and like
everybody's you know Newsfeed the next
day alien mega structure is discovered
turns out sadly they were not alien mega
structures they were probably gas or
dust clouds um but it raised the
possibility like oh these are observable
and people have worked out the details
of what they would look like you don't
really need direct Imaging you can do
transits right they're big enough that
when they pass in front of the star
they're going to produce a little blip
of light because that's what they're
supposed to do right they're absorbing
Starlight so people did have worked out
like well square one or a triangular one
but that wouldn't be a d sphere that
would be like one object one object
right which is what if it's a swarm
you'd expect like the light to be like
blinking in and out as these things pass
in front of you know if you've got
thousands of these much of the time
they'll be blotting out the star
sometimes they won't be right and so
you're going to get an irregular sort of
uh signal uh Transit signal yeah one you
wouldn't expect from a star that doesn't
have anything exactly or just a planet
right or a couple of planets there'd be
so many of these that it would be like
beep beep
and that usually doesn't happen in a uh
in a star system because uh there's only
just a handful of planets that's exactly
what it is everything's coagul in a
stable solar system you get a handful of
planets you know 5 10 that that's it
probably and nothing else so if now
suddenly you see all lots of these
little microt transits you're telling
you there's something else that's big
enough to create a Transit but you know
too many of them and also within the
regular shape the transit itself that
these are these could be Mega structures
how many people are looking for Mega
structures now well the main groups
looking for Mega structures are again
Jason Wright at Penn State and
collaborators the way they're looking
for it though is for infrared light
because you know the second law thermod
damic says look if you capture all of
this Starlight you're going to warm up
the you know your thing's going to warm
up and emit an infrared just going to be
waste heat waste heat and waste light
from this that feels like a louder clear
way to detect it right and that's
actually you know Dyson that's actually
why Dyson proposed it he wasn't really
proposing it because like he was saying
this is what civilizations are going to
do he proposed it because he was like oh
we want to start looking for alien
civilizations here's something that
would have a detectable signature um so
uh Jason and Company have done you know
pretty good searches and recently they
made news because you know they were
able to eliminate a lot of places no
these are not dson spars but they did
have a couple that were like anomalous
enough that they're like well this is
kind of what it would look like it's not
a detection and they were saying they
would never say it's a detection but
they were like they were not non-
detections they're potential candidates
potential candidates yeah love it we
have mega structure candidates that's
inspiring what other Mega structures do
you think that could be I mean that so
that's D spere is about capturing the
energy of a star yeah but there could be
other well there's uh something called
The Clark belt right so we have a bunch
of satellites that are in geosynchronous
orbit nothing naturally is going to end
up in geosynchronous orbit right
geosynchronous orbits is one particular
orbit that's really useful if you want
to beam things straight down or if you
want to put a space elevator up right um
so uh there's this idea that if you know
a civilization becomes you know Advanced
enough that it's really using
geosynchronous orbit that you actually
get a belt something that would actually
be detectable from a distance via a
Transit uh there's been a couple Papers
written about the possibility of these
Clark belts densely occupied Clark belts
being a mega structure it's not as Mega
as a Dyson swarm but it's you know kind
of planetary scale you think it's
detectable Clark belt it could be I mean
like in our list of techno signatures it
would be down there but it would be
again if you had an advanced enough
civilization that did enough of this it
would certainly you you'd have a Clark
belt and the question is whether or not
it's detectable yeah probably Dyson
spere is the that's the more exciting
that's the goto one yeah yeah speaking
of the the Dyson spere let's talk to the
Carter shf scales right what is the
Carter shf scale and where are humans on
it right so the cter chef scale was the
same time this is this golden age of
seti like kind of like 6059 to 65 when
it just starts like this is you know um
Frank Drake has done his first
experiment people like oh my God this is
even possible and so people are just
thrown out these ideas and as I you know
said in the book science is conservative
and what I mean by that is it holds on
to its best ideas so CEF comes up with
this idea that look if we're again it's
always about
detectability if we're looking for
civilization we should think about what
are the STA what are the natural stages
natural in quotes that a civilization
goes through and uh he was thinking in
terms of energy use which like a good
physicist so the he said look um the
first hurdle in terms of energy or or
threshold that a civilization will go
through is using all the Starlight that
falls onto a planet he called that a
type one civilization in whatever way
you're doing it some large fraction of
the star light that falls on your planet
you're using for your own end
the next would be to use all the star
light there is from that star right so
that's the Dyson sere so he actually
Dyson had already proposed uh uh his
idea of the Swarm and CF was picking up
so that's a type two civilization type
three is galactic scale a civilization
that could use all the Starlight in a
galaxy right so we are now where are we
now remarkably on a log scale we're at7
of a type one so we're not even type one
no no no we're not even type one but
according to uh there was a paper
written by a group that said you know
can we continue on our path we'll be at
a type one at around uh 2300 2300 yeah
so this is on a log scale yeah so
uh 7 so type one is about 10 to the 16th
Watts type two is 10 orders of magnitude
larger than that 10 to the 26th watts
and I think estimate for the Galaxy is
another 10 orders of magnitude yeah
because there's 100 billion star of
order 100 billion stars yeah so that's a
lot that's a lot energy do do you think
humans ever get to Tye one um I think
you know there's a problem with type one
which is that you know we already know
about climate change right the effects
of our harvesting energy to do the work
of civilization is already changing the
climate state right and that's something
that you know CF couldn't have
recognized when you you know there's
there's uh the first law of ther
thermodynamics right which is just about
energy you know the different form ter
of energy then there's the second law
which is about when you use that energy
and card Chef wasn't thinking about the
second law if you get all that energy
and you use it there's waste heat you
don't get to use it all right you can
only second law tells you that if you
know I have a tank of gasoline I can
only use a certain fraction of the
energy in that tank and the rest is
going to go to heating up the engine
block um so that second law tells you
that you know you can only use so much
energy before the climate state is like
uhoh you know sorry is going to change
on you so there's a way in which we
probably can't get to a type one without
like devastating the earth's climate so
we're probably going to have to figure
out the most important thing actually
here is probably this is why space
becomes so the colonization or
settlement of space if we have an idea
that we've been working on for a while
called service worlds right that at some
point you probably move a lot of your um
industry off world right we've got
Mercury for example there's nothing on
Mercury there's no life on Mercury why
don't you put put your energy harvesting
there right because you know you can't
mess with the biosphere the biosphere is
more powerful than you are right and so
yeah so so there's limits to how much
energy we can Harvest to do work on the
earth Without Really adversely affecting
the biosphere it does seem that the best
response to the climate change is not to
use less technology but to to invent
better technology and
to invent technology that avoids the
destructive effects this is the frontier
we are and that was the topic of my last
book light of the Stars it's like you've
got you have to do the astrobiology of
the anthropos scene you have to see the
transition that we're going through now
of the anthropos scene on a kind of
planetary astrobiological framework and
you know that paper we were talking
about with a 10 billion trillion worlds
that was actually in service of the work
I was doing for this other book where I
wanted to know how often are do you go
through an anthr how of you know does
every civiliz technological civilization
trigger it own planetary crisis its own
climate anthropos crisis and the answer
we actually came up from doing models
was like yeah probably and then the
question is are you smart enough to
figure out how to readjust what you're
doing technologically so that you're not
you know that all boats rise right you
want to figure out how to do this so
that the biosphere becomes even more
productive and healthy and um and
resilient so yeah right it's the kind of
technology I think there's probably
absolutely limits on how much energy you
can use use but how do you use that
energy and then also yeah getting off
Planet eventually if you want to use 10
times more energy than that you're
you're not going to do it on on world so
how do we
detect uh Alien type one two and three
civilizations so we've been kind of
talking about basically type one
civilization detection yeah right maybe
with the Dyson Theory start to get like
a little bit more type two but it feels
like if you have a type two civilization
it won't be just a dce spere right it
feels like that just for the same reason
you mentioned climate change but now at
the uh star system level uh they're
probably expanding right so how how
would you uh detect a type two how about
um propulsion plumes right if you're
expanding no no we we just I literally
just put in a NASA proposal now um
Thomas Bey who's joined us from he's at
the University of Wisconsin uh has an
idea to look for um plumes right if you
have a civil if you have a a a solar
systemwide civilization right and you
got space truckers going back and forth
right you know from Mars to you know
they're doing the Inus run they're
accelerating and decelerating the whole
way there right if you want to get to
Mars in a couple weeks you have your
Fusion drive on the entire way out there
you flip and burn and have it on you
know so you're you're also always have
gravity you have thrust gravity so would
those plumes be detectable cuz now
you've got spaceships going all over the
place and the ODS that like you know the
plume is going to cross your field of
view becomes could become pretty high so
yeah that's I think that's a good way of
looking for that's one idea um of
looking for uh you know large scale
interplanetary which is kind of like
when you're getting to a type type two
um another possibility is looking for
the tailings of asteroid mining this was
an idea it was a group at um Harvard
Smithsonian that you know to be able to
look for if you're really chewing up
asteroids to build space habitat
can you know there' be dust particles
left around and would they look
different from just say the dust you
know from just regular collisions so
pollution of all different kinds
pollution of all different kinds and
trash also okay so trash is an
interesting idea when you come to the
actual solar system right we are
actually there's a whole other field of
techno signatures which are things in
the solar system what if somebody came
by a billion years ago you know and left
some stuff right so the Earth has been
showing bio signatures for billions of
years and you know a species like us
looking at our level looking at Earth
would have been able to know that Earth
had life on it had a bio sign had a
biosphere for billions of years so maybe
somebody sent something by you know a
half a billion years ago so um this idea
of looking say at the moon for artifacts
is that have been there for a long time
is something that people a number of
people are doing we were just working on
a paper where we just calculated this
was super fun we calculated how long
would the lunar lander exist on the moon
before micro meteorites just chewed it
down right how long would you be able to
land on the moon go oh look there's you
know there somebody was here and left
some debris um so there's this process
called gardening which is just the
microm meteorite constant rain of
micrometeorites you know and that's what
where you get the lunar regolith that
fine powder on the moon is because of
this gardening and it turns out it is
literally hundreds of millions to
billions of years oh nice that the yeah
that the lunar lander will be visible oh
so we should be able to find artifacts
yeah if there's if there artifacts on
the and people have proposed doing this
with um artificial intelligence we have
you know the moon has been mapped down
to like a couple of meters with various
probes and all that data is sitting
there so have why not use machine
learning to like look through all those
things and look for anything that looks
not like the lunar surface and they did
a test program where they gave it they
gave the computer you know sort of like
I don't know 50 miles around the Apollo
11 or Apollo Maybe was Apollo 17 site
and it instantly was able to pull out
the Lander I mean the whole task of
looking for anomaly something that looks
not like the lunar surface you make it
sound obvious but it's not exactly
obvious like an
anomalies is really
not I mean detect something that doesn't
look right about this room yeah it's
it's actually really difficult really
difficult it's really difficult and it's
you know what's cool it's a really
information theoretic kind of proposal
you really have to use information
Theory to say like what's the background
what what's you know how do I Define
something that I can say that looks
weird so yeah maybe when you're looking
at a spectrograph or something like it's
still it's still
like it's going to look really weird
potentially like we're kind of we're
kind of hypothesizing all the things
that humans would build and how do we
detect that right but there could be
really weird stuff that's why there's
this emphasis now on these
agnostic signatures right so um actually
disequilibrium is a nice one one way to
define is it is a system that is far
from equilibrium right it's alive right
because as soon as it dies turns into
goes back to equilibrium and so you can
look at all chemicals in an atmosphere
even if you don't know whether these
could be chemicals that you have no idea
whether or not they have anything to do
with life but the degree of
disequilibrium the degree to which they
show that that atmosphere has not you
know the chemicals have not all kind of
like just gone down to you know they've
all reacted away to an equilibrium State
you can actually tell that in very
general ways using what's called a GI
that gies free energy and that that's
kind of a signature like if you see an
atmosphere that is wildly out of
equilibrium you know that indicates that
there's some there's something happening
on that planet biosphere or technosphere
that is pumping gases you know into the
um into the atmosphere that is keeping
the whole system from relaxing so is it
possible we can detect anomalies in in
space time well you could detect and
there's there's been some work on this
like with the acbra drive you know these
proposals for warp drives and we can
talk about that later I'm skeptical of
those but um because it may really be
possible you just can't go faster than
the speed of light but people have done
work on like you know what would be the
signature of uh an acub Drive what would
be the signature like you know could you
detect if you're using a drive like that
then you certainly are distorting
SpaceTime which means any light that's
passing by has gotten you know it's it's
its trajectory has gotten altered
because it had to pass through the
distorted SpaceTime so yeah there are
possib abilities along with that you
know one of the funny things I don't
know if they've gotten past this but
somebody calculated the problem with the
acub drive or this warp drive was that
if if you dropped out of warp there
would be this spray of gamma rays that
would like sterilize any planet in front
of you so it's like well yeah you
probably don't want to do that but that
would be a great bio or techno signature
another planet obliterated so you think
it's not possible to travel fast than
speak I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say
that but what I think you know if you
look at the physics we understand right
yeah um
the you know every possibility for
faster than light travel really relies
on something that doesn't exist right so
so you know the cool thing is Einstein's
field equations you can actually play
with them the equations are right there
you can add things to the you know right
or left-and side that allow you to get
something like the acub drive that was a
metric that you know showed you like oh
it's a warped bubble it's a warping of
SpaceTime that moves through SpaceTime
faster than the speed of light right
because nothing can move across
SpaceTime faster than the speed of light
but SpaceTime itself can move faster
than the speed of light but here's the
problem with all of those proposals is
they all need something the thing you
added the little fictional term you
added on the into the equations is
something called um exotic matter and it
doesn't exist it's really just something
we dreamed up to make the equations do
what we wanted them to do so you know
it's a nice fiction but really right now
you know you know we live in this weird
moment in history of the great
acceleration where like the technology
we use now is you know is completely
different from the technology we used 10
years ago is remarkably different from
the technology from 100 years ago um but
you know I remember playing um uh
Assassin's Creed where everybody's like
you know what is it 12200 and
everybody's like stab stab stab I was
like yeah it's a great game and then I
got Assassin's Creed 2 and uh it was 300
years later and everybody's like stab
stab stab and it was like 300 years and
the technology hadn't changed and that
was actually true for most of human
history right you used your
great-grandfather's tools because there
was no need to have any other new tools
and you probably did his job uh so you
know we could be fooled into thinking
like oh you know technolog is going to
go on forever we're always going to find
new advances as opposed to sometimes
things just flatten out for a long time
so you have to be careful about that
bias that we have living in this time of
great acceleration
yeah but also it is a great acceleration
and we also are not good at predicting
what that entails if it does keep
accelerating so for example somebody
like um Eric Weinstein often talks about
we
underinvested chemical propulsion on
Rockets versus like trying to hack
physics sort of War D and so because
it's really hard to do space travel and
it seems like in the long Arc of human
history if we survive the way to really
travel across long distances is going to
be some new totally new thing right
right so it's not going to be an
engineering problem it's going to be a
physics a fundamental physics
fundamental physics problem yeah I mean
I agree with that in princible but I
think there's been you know I mean
there's a lot of ideas out there people
you know String Theory people have been
playing with strength Theory now for 40
years it's not like people haven't been
not like there hasn't been a lot of
effort and you know again I'm not going
to predict I I think it's entirely
possible that we have you know there's
incredible boundaries of physics that
have yet to be uh poked through in which
case then all bets are off right once
you get sort of you know Interstellar
fast Interstellar travel whoa you know
who knows what can happen um but I I I
tend to be drawn to like science fiction
stories that take the speed of light
seriously like what kind of civilization
can you build where like it takes you
know 50 years to get to where you're
going and 50 years back like so I don't
know I mean yeah there's no way I'm
going to say that that we won't get warp
drives but as of right now there's it's
all fictional it's you know it's barely
even a coherent concept well it's also a
really exciting possibility of hacking
this whole thing by extending human
lifespan or extending our notion of uh
of time and maybe as dark as to say but
the value of an individual human life
versus the value of life from the
perspective of generations yeah so you
can have something like a generational
ship that travels for hundreds of
thousands of years yeah and it you're
not
sad uh that you'll never see the
destination because you kind of have the
value for the uh prolonged survival of
humanity versus your own individual life
yeah it's a wild ethical question isn't
it one of that book I told you about
Aurora it was S I love the book because
it was such a sort of inversion of the
usual cuz you know I've read I love
science fiction I've read so many
Generation ship stories and they get to
that planet the planet turns out to be
uninhabitable it's inhabited but it's
uninhabitable for Earth because again he
has this idea of like you know life is
particular to their planets so they turn
around and they come back and then when
they land the main character goes for
there's still people who are you know
arguing for more generation ships and
she goes and she punches the guy out
because she spent her whole life in a
tube you know with this I thought I
thought that was a really interesting
inversion you know the interesting thing
about about we were talking about the
space habitats but if you really had a
space habit not some super cramped you
know crappy the usual version of a
century ship but if you had these like
space habitats that were really you know
like the O'Neal cylinders they're
actually pretty nice places to live put
a Thruster on those you know like why
why keep them in the solar system maybe
that's maybe space is full of like these
sort of traveling space habitats that
are in some sense a you know their
worlds in them in and of themselves
there's the show Silo which raises the
question of basically if you're putting
on a generational ship uh what do you
tell the inhabitants of that ship you
might want to lie to them yeah you might
want to tell them a story right that
they believe right because there is a
society there's human nature there's
like how do you maintain homeostasis of
that little
Society um I mean that that's a
fascinating techical question the social
question of psychology question you know
the Generation ship too you know which I
talked about in the book The idea of the
also the you know you talked about
extending human lifetimes or um you know
the stasis the cryostasis which is a
main state of Science Fiction you know
that you know right you can be put to
you can basically put in suspended
animation and such none of these things
we know are possible but you know it's
so interesting this is why I love
science fiction the way it seeds ideas
right all these ideas we're going to
talk about because they've been Staples
of Science Fiction for 50 years I mean
the whole field of crow genics yeah
where are we at with that yeah I wonder
what the state-ofthe-art is for a
complex organism can you freeze how long
can you freeze and then unfreeze right
may maybe like with bacteria you could
do freeze bacteria can last this is the
thing about panspermia right P how long
can uh you know how long can a bacteria
survive in a rock that's been blasted
you know if there's a common impact
across uh you know Interstellar
distances that does seem to actually be
possible people have done those kind of
calculations it's not out of the realm
of possibility but a complex organism
multicellular multi- systemic or multi-
systems right with organs and such also
what makes an organ I mean it could you
know which part do you want to preserve
cuz maybe the for humans it seems
like uh like what makes a
personality it feels like you want to
preserve a set of
memories like if I woke up in a
different body with the same memories I
pretty much I would feel like I would be
the same person altered carbon have you
that's a that's a great series I think
it's on Netflix just to it's you know
that's a really great Series where
that's exactly the idea of sleeves
everybody's able to like you know you
can re leave in another body um and it
raises exactly sort of this question
it's not the greatest cyberpunk but it's
pretty good it's got It's got some great
great action sequences too as we get
better and better advancements in large
language models that are able to be
fine-tuned on
you it's it raises a question because I
to me they've already passed the toring
test as we traditionally have defined it
so if there's going to be an llm that's
able to copy you in terms of language
extremely well it's gonna raise ethical
and I don't know philosophical questions
about what makes you
you like what if if there's a thing that
can talk exactly like you like what is
the thing that makes you you is it is it
it's it's going to speak about your
memories very effectively this leads us
to if we're going to get to the the
blind spot I I you know I of the opinion
heretical but in some camps that you
know the brain is not the
minimal the minimal stru for
Consciousness you know it's the whole
body it's embodied in may actually in
some sense it's communities actually um
so yeah so I don't I mean you know I
could be wrong but this is you know this
is what this whole work that I did with
Marcelo gazer and Evan Thompson the um
philosophy of science which is
interesting because it leads to this
question about you know oh maybe we
should just download ourselves into
computers right that's another story
that that one tells I'm super skeptical
about those but is that's one of the
narratives about Interstellar travel is
just like and that anybody we meet is it
going to be a machine anyway whether
it's like whether it's downloaded bodies
or it's just going to be artificial
intelligence like there's the whole idea
of how long does biological evolution
last maybe it's a very short period
before everybody you know goes to or the
machines take over and you know kill you
or you know it's some hybrid what do you
think aliens look like so we talked
about all the different kinds of Bio
signatures they might leave or techos
signatures but what would they look like
when we show up are they going to have
arms and legs are they uh going to be
recognizable at all are they going to be
carbon based yeah so great question and
this question gets to the heart of
thinking about life right about what
life is and this is the physical part of
that there's also sort of the
informational part of it um but let's
just talk about the physical part of it
which is you know life B anything that
we're going to call life is probably
going to work on darwinian Evolution
that's the nice thing about darwinian
Evolution just like we know the laws of
physics are General the laws of
darwinian evolution are kind of this
logic this basic logic um that you know
anything we'd reasonably call Life
probably has to operate under these
kinds of principles and so you know
evolution is about solving problems that
you know to survive um that the
environment presents and the environment
is always going to present these
problems in physical and chemical terms
so that you'd
expect um you expect a kind of balance
between what we call Convergence
evolutionary convergence
and evolutionary contingency MH so you
know if you got to move along a surface
you know a surface between you know hard
surface and air then the idea of some
kind of jointed stick right legs makes
sense that you're probably going to
trigger that you know if you look at
Earth's history multiple times multiple
lineages that had nothing to do with
each other are going to solve the
problem of getting towards energy
sources using some kind of you know a
stick-like apparatus so that's about
movement yeah so that's one problem that
has to be solved one problem has to be
solved I got to get to food right
another problem is I got to get away
from predators right um you've seen
Wings we've seen Wings the line that
went through dinosaurs to birds involved
Wings insects evolved Wings mammals
evolved Wings if the gas is dense enough
that a curved surface if you move
through the curved surface it's going to
produce lift yeah there you go
evolutional trip on that so I think you
you can expect certain classes of
solutions to the basic problems that
life is going to is going to uh be
presented with stay alive reproduce um
but one of the weird things about like
with the UFO things is that you always
see like oh they all look like humans
they're just like basically humans with
you know triangular heads and that's
where we get to con um contingency right
so what we've been talking about is
Convergence you expect that EV Evolution
will Converge on wings multiple times
when presented with the problems that
Wings can solve um but con contingency
is accidents right that you know you've
got something that's evolving a certain
kind of Wing a leathery Wing right uh
and then you the climate changes and
they all die out end of story or you
know an asteroid at total accident
asteroid hits and so uh contingency
accidents play also a huge role in
evolution and one of the things that you
know lots of evolutionary biologists
have talked about is the idea that if
you ran the tape of Earth's history over
again would you get the same creatures
now um Stephen J Gould was of the
opinion that no way that you wouldn't
find anything on Earth that resembled
any species today they've done
experiments actually on this with uh
ecoli you you know you take a bunch of
ecoli you let them evolve for a while
you take a bunch of them out Freez them
let one you let that population continue
to evolve the other one's Frozen now
start it over again with the Frozen MH
and it seems to be that contingency
tends to win right the contingency at
least from what we can tell I mean
that's not a that's not a hard result
but in those experiments what you find
is that accidents really do matter so
the idea and this is important so yes
you should expect legs or jointed sticks
how many joints there going to be
anybody's guess um you know do you
expect humanoids you know things with a
you know a sensing apparatus on top of a
shoulder with two arms and two legs
that's probably a pretty random set of
occurrences that led to that I guess
what is a brain versus the nervous
system like where is most of the
cognition competition going on yeah yeah
you could see that in organisms like
actually I I don't know
how the brain evolve like why does it
have to be in one place doesn't have to
be so my favorite word word of the day
is liquid brains right this idea of
distributed cognition which um
fascinating idea and we've come to
understand how
much uh distributed cognition there is
obviously usocial animals like termites
Etc and ants that's an example of
distributed cognition the organism is
the whole Colony this is one thing
that's been really interesting in the
state of the study when we come to for
aliens is that we've come to recognize
that human intelligence it's not
actually it's been distri the kinds of
things that go into intelligence are
distributed all across the biosphere
lots of different examples of things
show various pieces of what we have
Jason Wright will describe it as like a
deck of cards the cards are all there we
got the hand that actually led to the
kind of technological progress that we
we see but the kinds of you know the
basic idea of using tools the basic idea
of recognizing each other eye to eye all
the things that we Define as
intelligence you can find many places in
many other um uh places across many
other line lineages across the Earth so
it could be they could be very very
different with something like yeah maybe
it's you know the hive mind idea or you
know bacterial colonies that actually
manag to you know come to their own
version of high cognition well I wonder
if there's if we stretch out time across
10 20 20 billion years whether there's
an darwinian evolution stops working at
some point in terms of the biology or
the chemistry of the organisms and it
switches to ideas for example it's much
more rapidly you're operating maybe I
guess it's a kind of darwinian evolution
on this space of memes or whatever is
technology seems to operate on in and
and you know but certainly markets can
operate in ways that look very darwinian
so basically a planet is working hard to
get to the first kind of organism that's
able to be a nice platform for ideas to
compete yeah and then it kind of stops
evolving there and then then it's ideas
that take off right right because yeah
cultural it's true it's amazing that
cultural Evolution totally disconnects
from from the Darwin process but I'd be
careful to say that like a planet is
working hard to do this because you know
it's really impos looking at us like
what we think of is ideas and culture
and you know it's quite possible we're
going to make it another 200 years and
this is gone right because it actually
wasn't a very good idea long term I we
just don't know oh so maybe the idea
generation organism is actually the
thing that destroys not the biosphere
because again but it destroys itself it
may not be very long term it may be very
potent for a short period of time but
that it's not sustainable it doesn't
become like we were talking about before
mature it's very hard to make it into
integrated into a mature biosash
technosphere and of course you know
evolution is not working for anything
well here's the actually interesting
thing right so people are very much you
know evolutionary biologist will get
very their hair will stand on and if you
start talking about evolution having a
purpose or anything but the very
interesting thing about purpose is that
once you do get to a idea generating
species or Collective organism um yeah
then uh you know kind of all bets are
off and there is goals there is teolog
there is a you know there now suddenly
you know absolutely there's a direction
implied so that's kind of the cool
interesting thing that once you get to
that Evolution stops being goalless and
directionless and suddenly yeah we're
the ones who Supply or any kind of
creature like us has an absolute
direction that way they decide on
although you could argue that from a
perspective of the entire human
civilization we're also directionless we
have a sense that there's a direction in
this cluster of humans yeah and then
there's another cluster as a different
set of direction there's all kinds of
religions that are competing there's
different ideologies that are competing
yeah and when you just zoom out across
if we survive across thousands of years
it will seem directional it will seem
like a
pinball it's an Unholy mess but you know
but at some point like the expansion
into the solar system say like that
would be both Direction I mean depending
on how you look at it it was directional
there was a there was a decision that
the collective of human beings made to
like anti- accrete to start spreading
out into the solar system so that was
definitely a goal there that may have
been reached in some crazy sort of you
know nonlinear way but it was still
right there was still it still a goal
was set and it was achieved if there's
Advanced civilizations out
there what do you think is the proper
protocol for interacting with them do
you think they would be peaceful do you
think they would be
warlike like what do we do next we
detect we detect a civilization through
all the technal signatures we've been
talking about maybe direct Imaging maybe
there's really strong signal we come up
with a strategy of how to actually get
there yeah but what's the uh then the
generals as they always do the military
industrial complex we watch that movie
where what kind of rockets what kind of
and do we bring Rockets right uh well I
think you know so this also this general
question also leads to medy messaging
extraterrestrial intelligence and I am
definitely of the opinion of like you
should be very careful you know like I
don't think it's necessarily a bad idea
to have your head below the grass um you
know the people who Advocate like oh
yeah we should be sending you know power
messages that are easily detectable into
Interstellar space I'm like why would
you because we just don't know like I'm
not going to say they are warlike I'm
not going to say they're not warlike I
have no idea you know but we sure as
hell well first of all who gets to
decide that the idea that a bunch of
astronomers who happen to have a radio
telescope I don't you know who who
speaks for earth I think which I think
was a great book somebody wrote um so
you know I definitely we should we
should be cautious I would say because
we just have zero information and the
idea you used to have this idea of well
if they're Advanced they've managed to
survive so of course they're going to be
wearing toas you know and be uh singing
Kumbaya but I just wouldn't I just
wouldn't assume that it's also possible
though that like their cognitive
structure is so different that we're not
even in living in the same universe in a
certain way I think we have to be
prepared for that we may not even be
able to recognize each other in some way
as as cognizing beings one of my
favorite movies is arrival I don't know
if you ever seen that one I really love
that one because you know they literally
they have a different language they have
a different cognitive structure in terms
of language and they're literally kind
of living in a different physics
different physics different language
different different everything yeah but
in the case of arrival it can at least
like recognize that they're there right
and they managed to cross the language
barrier yeah so but that's both sides
have an interest in communicating which
you you kind of suppose that uh an
advanc civilization would have a
curiosity because like how do you become
Advanced without a kind of yeah
curiosity about the mysterious about the
other but also you know if they're long
lived they may just be like we're not
even interested like we've done this
we're like we you know uh you know 10 10
billion year or sorry say 10 million
years ago we were really interested in
that in this in communicating with you
you know young youngans but now we're
not at all and that's just you know one
of the beauties of this again is how to
think about this systematically because
you're so far past the hairy Edge right
of our experience of what we know that
you want to think about it right you
don't want to be like don't know can't
say anything cuz that's not fun but you
also have to sort of systematically go
after your own biases right so the one
of the things I loved about arrival too
was You Know Carl Sean always had this
idea like we'll teach him math we'll
teach him our math then they'll teach us
their math and then you know we'll be
telling each other knock knock jokes you
know and swapping cures for cancer and
you know in the movie like they send a
Carl Sean guy in and a linguist and the
Carl San guy fails immediately right and
it's the linguist who understands that
language is actually embodied language
is not just something that happens in
your head it's actually the whole
experience and she's the one who breaks
through and it just points to the idea
that um how utterly different the
cognitive structures that you know of of
a of a different species should be so
somehow we have to figure out how to
think about it but be so careful of our
biases or figure out like a systematic
way to break through our biases and not
just tell make science fiction movies
you know what I mean yeah yeah speaking
of biases do you think aliens have
visited Earth you've mentioned that they
could have visited and started
civilizations and would we wouldn't even
know about it if it was 100 million
years ago how can we even begin to
answer this question whe got to look got
to look got to figure out ways to look
so I you know I mean I I don't put it
it's not high on my list of you know
things that I'm I think are probable but
it certainly it needs to be explored you
know and unless you look you never know
so looking on the moon look at where
would we find if if aliens had passed
through the solar system anytime in the
last three billion years where might we
find artifacts where might artifacts
still be around Earth probably not
because of weathering and resurfacing um
the moon's a good place uh certain kinds
of orbits you know maybe they parked a
probe in an orbit that was stable so you
got to figure out which orbits actually
you could put something there and it'll
last for a billion years so those are
the kind of questions I I don't like I
said I don't it's not high on my list of
thinking this could happen but it it
could happen I certainly can't unless
you look you don't know what about
speaking of bias
what about if aliens visiting Earth as
the elephant in the room meaning like
the potential of aliens say seeding life
on Earth uh you mean like in that
directed panspermia directed panspermia
or seeding some aspect of the evolution
like 2001 yeah yeah uh you know it's
great story but you know always with
aam's razor or whatever with science if
I can if I can answer that question
without that extra very detailed uh
hypothesis then I should and you know
the idea that evolution is a natural
process that's what I would go for first
right there there's that just seems it's
so much easier to do it that way than
adding you know sort of because it's
kind of du duox moina thing of like oh
then the aliens came down and they
solved that problem that you're trying
to solve by just coming down and putting
their finger on the scales so to you the
origin of
life is a is a pretty simple thing that
doesn't require an alien I wouldn't say
that it's not a simple thing but it
doesn't you know putting I I think
because you know all you're doing is
kicking the can down the road right the
aliens some the aliens formed right so
you're just saying like all right I'm
just kicking the can down the road to
the aliens how did they how did what was
their abiogenesis event well so from a
different perspective I'm just saying it
seems to me that there's obviously
Advanced civilizations everywhere
throughout the Galaxy and Through the
Universe from the Drake equation
perspective and then if I was an alien
what would I
do you know I've got a chance to learn
about the UNC conted tribes in the
Amazon I recently went to the Amazon you
get to understand how they function and
how the humans in the Amazon
that're in contact with the Civilized
world how they interact with the onc
contacted tribes first of all the oncon
tribes are very violent towards the
outside world but everybody else try to
stay away from them they try to kind of
protect them don't talk about them don't
don't talk about their location all this
kind of stuff and I've begun to
internalize and understand that
perspective of why you're doing that and
if I was an alien civilization if I
probably would be doing a similar kind
of thing and of course there's always
the teenager or the troll who's going to
start messing with the stuff or the
scientists you know right and so it's
not from our perspective yes and if
you're in The Truman Show like aam's
Razer but like also the aam's Razer from
the perspective of the alien
civilization we have to have the humil
to understand that that interaction will
be extremely difficult to detect that
will not be obvious right I understand
the logic of what you're saying but the
problem for me with that is that right
there that first you have to assume that
alien civilizations are common which I'm
not sure about it that might most of
them may be dead or they're not still
you know like I while I think that life
is common and again this is just my
biases right so now the problem is how
do we sort out sort of you know the the
the biases we're bringing or the
assumptions we're bringing in from
you know from the the the sort of causal
chain that comes out of that I would
first want to try and do this without it
like you know if we're looking about the
origin of life or the evolution of life
on Earth I'd want to do it just on its
own without asking for this other layer
um because I there requires a bunch of
these other assumptions which also have
their own sort of breaking of causal
chains because I don't really like the
idea that when you ask what would you do
if you were an alien but again like
alien Minds could be so unbelievably
different right that they wouldn't even
recognize the question you just posed
right right cuz it's just like you know
we're very much we have a very
particular kind of cognitive structure
or cogni you know and and we're very
governed by you even if you went and
talked to this is an interesting thing
to think about you know if I could
suddenly magically appear uh 100,000
years ago and talk to a hunter gatherer
about their worldview and their
motivations you know I might find
something that like B no resemblance to
things that I think are sort of oh
that's what naturally humans do well let
me let me ask ask you this question
let's let's together do the thought
experience yeah if we either create a
time machine that allows us to travel
back and talk to them yeah or we
discover maybe a primitive alien
civilization on a nearby star system
what what would we do yeah I think uh
that's a great question I mean so you
know it's interesting how that even
brings up the ethical questions right
let's say that you know would we we'd
have to first sort of sort out what are
the consequences for them and what do we
feel our ethical responsibilities are to
them and also sorry from a capitalist
perspective what are we to gain this
interaction right right right look at
the way the missionaries you know
missionaries had these interactions
because they thought converting them to
whatever religion they were you know was
the most important that's what the gain
was so from our perspective I mean we'd
have to sort that out I think given you
know if we're doing this uh um thought
experiment we are curious and I think
eventually we'd want to reach out to
them now I think when you say we
let's start with the people in this room
right but there's I wonder who the
dominant forces are in the world because
I think there's a lot of people the
military yeah they they will probably
move first so they can steal whatever
Advantage they can from this new
discovery so they can hurt China or
China hurt America that's one
perspective then there's the the
capitalis who will see like how the
benefit the cost here and how can I make
money off for this there's opportunity
here there's gold right in them Hills
and I wonder and I think the scientist
is just not going to unlike the movies
We're Not Gonna Get Much say they're G
put hey guys we uh wait a minute they
would engage probably I mean it's just
as as a human society as we are now we
would engage and we would be detectable
I think in our engagement in our
engagement yeah yeah probably so using
that trivial bias logic I just it just
feels like aliens would need to be
engaged in in a very obvious way yeah
yeah yeah which brings up that old
direct for me Paradox for me uh what do
you make of all the UFO sightings I am
all in favor of an open agnostic you
know transparent scientific
investigation of UFOs and uaps but the
idea that that there's any data that we
have that links UFOs and uaps to
non-human technology I just think they
the standards they just none of what is
claimed to be the the data lives up to
the standards of evidence so let's just
take a moment on that idea of standards
of evidence because I've made a big deal
about this both you know in the book and
elsewhere whenever I talk about this so
what people have to understand about
science is we are really scientists we
are really mean to each other we are
brutal to each other because we have
this thing that we call standards of
evidence and it's the idea of like you
have a a piece of evidence that you want
to link to a claim and you know under
what conditions can you say oh look I've
got evidence of you know this claim X Y
and Z and in science we are so mean to
each other about whether or not that
piece of evidence lives up to the
standards that we have and we spent 400
years determining what those standards
are um and that is why cell phones work
right if you didn't have super rigorous
standards about you know what you think
that's oh this little antenna I've
invented a new kind of antenna that I
can slip into the cell phone and I you
know I can show you that it works you
know if you didn't have the these
standards you know you did every cell
phone would be a brick right and when it
comes to UFOs and ufs the evidence you
have and the claim that though this
shows that you know we are being visited
by
non-human uh uh Advanced civilization
just doesn't even come close to the same
standards I'm going to have to obey or
whatever live under if my team you know
the group I work with is one of them
says look we've discovered wants to
announce that oh we've discovered a
techno signature on an alien planet
we're going to get shredded as we expect
to be we expect to be beaten up and you
know the UAP UFO Community should expect
the same thing that you don't get you
know you don't get a pass because it's a
really cool topic so that's where I am
right now I just don't think any of the
evidence is even close to anything that
could support that claim well I
generally assign a lot of value to
anecdotal evidence from Pilots not
scientific value but just like it's
always nice to get anecdotal evidence as
a first step I was like H I wonder if
there's something there but
unfortunately with this topic there's so
much excitement around it there's a lot
of people that are uh basically trying
to make money off of it there's hoaxes
all this kind of stuff so right even
even if there's some signal there's just
so much noise it's very difficult to
operate with so how do we get better
signal so you you've talked about sort
of if we wanted to really
search for UFOs on earth right and uh
maybe detect things like weird physics
what kind of instruments will we be
using yeah so you know in the book I
talked about the idea this is really
stupid but you know you you want to look
up you want to look down and you want to
look all around I think that's brilliant
I mean that's it's simple not stupid
it's like literally right so you want to
do groundbased detectors that you know
upward looking groundbased Detectors of
the kind we're already building for
meteors right for tracking meteors you
want to have space-based detectors put
them on satellites this is what the NASA
UAP panel was thinking about and then
probably on you know we have lots of
people in the sky there should be
detectors uh on the planes or at least
you know some kind of alert system that
if some a pilot says oh look I'm seeing
something I don't understand Boop
presses the red button and that triggers
the groundbased and uh space-based um uh
uh data collectors and then the data
collectors themselves this is something
that people really don't understand and
it's so important in order to actually
do science with anything the data you
have you have to understand where it
came from like down to the the nth
degree you have to know how that camera
behaves in a bunch of different
wavelengths you have to have
characterized that you have to know what
the software does what the limits of the
software are possible you have to know
what happened to the camera was was it
refurbished recently um in you know in
every spectral wavelength in all of its
data um collection and and and
processing you have to know all of those
steps and have them all characterized
because especially if you want to claim
like oh my God I saw something take a
right-hand turn at Mock 500
right you better have all of that nailed
down before you make that kind of claim
so we have to have characterized
detectors looking up down and maybe on
on planes themselves we need a rational
search strategy so let's say you want to
lay out these uh groundbased detectors
where do you put them right there's only
so much money in the world so you know
do you want to put them near places
where you've seen a lot of things
beforehand or do you want to you know
have them try and do a a sparse coverage
of the entire country um and then you
need the uh the data analyst analysis
right you're going to have so much data
so many false positives or you know
false triggering that you need a way of
sorting through enormous amounts of data
and figuring out what you're going to
throw out and what you're going to keep
and all these things we're used to doing
in other scientific Enterprises and
without that if we don't do that we're
going to be having the same damn
argument about these things for you know
the next hundred years but if I asked
you I give you a trillion dollars and
ask you to allocated to one place
looking
out said
or looking at Earth which would you
allgate oh God looking out looking out
because that's the B you know as I
always like to say here's my my
codification of this if you said hey
Adam I'd like to find some Nebraskans
and I said oh good let's go to the
Himalayas you know you'd be like why am
I going there I'm like well you know
maybe there's some Himalaya you know
some Nebraska in Himalayas say no no
let's go to Nebraska if we're looking
for aliens why don't we look on alien
planets where they live cuz that's we
have that technology now as opposed to
the you know the the bucket of
assumptions that you have to come up
with in order to say like oh they're
here right now you know they just happen
to be here right now and also the very
important thing I called this the
highbeam argument you know to deal with
the UFO stuff you have to deal with all
of you have to answer these weird
irrational things that are happening
like okay there's an advanced
civilization that is visiting Earth
regularly they don't want to be detected
they've got superp powerful technology
but they really suck at using it because
they we keep seeing them we keep seeing
them but then they dis here right I mean
explain to me what rational world that
works under like you know so there's
that whole sort of argument you've got
to explain like why if they want to stay
hidden are they so bad at it so you know
that's why I take that level of
difficulty and then I put it on top of
where should I look I should look at the
the you know I should look at where they
where they're from that makes me want to
look at do the telescopic stuff yeah I
think the more likely explanation is is
uh either the sensors are not working
correctly or it's secret military
technology being tested absolutely I
mean if you had listen that's what again
I think UAP you know the absolutely UAP
should be studied scientifically um uh
but if I had to make a bet and it's just
a bet I would say this is you know this
is peer State adversary stuff when I did
I did a a New York Times oped for this
in 2021 which you know blew up and um
and so you know I had a lot of you know
people talking to me while I was doing
that I sort of looked at the signals
intelligence people the sigint and and
eent electronic intelligence communities
and what they were saying about you know
the New York Times articles and the the
various videos and really none of them
were talking about UFOs they were all
talking about you know peer State that's
where I learned the word peer State
adversaries how like even simple drone
Technologies you can you know and you
want to you purposely want to do this
you want to um fake you know signals
into the electronics uh of their
adversary so they Crank It Up So then
can just soak up all the electromagnetic
radiation and know exactly what those
Advanced Radars can do that said I'm not
saying that that what this is if I was
the head of an alien civilization and I
chose to
not to minimize the amount of contact
I'm doing MH I would try to figure out
what would these humans what would these
aliens like to
see that's why like the big heads in the
humanoid form yeah yeah like I mean
that's kind of like how I would approach
communication if I if I was much more
intelligent I would observe them enough
it's like all right if I wanted to
communicate with a nail Colony right I
would observe it long enough to see what
are the basic elements of communication
yeah yeah and maybe I would do a trivial
thing like do like a fake ant a robot
ant robot ant but then it's not enough
to just do a robot ant you have to do a
robot ant that like moves in the way
they do and maybe aliens are just shitty
at doing the robot ants but no I I do s
I just wanted to make the case for that
this is the plot actually of a great
science fiction book called Eon by Greg
bear and the idea was like these sort of
you know this this is actually where my
first I got I I I became sort of uh more
than agnostic an medy because the idea
is that yes our aliens come they you
know they sort of make their arrival and
really their point is to get rid of us
it's the it's the Dark Forest hypothesis
and what they do is they sort of
literally the way they present
themselves is in this sort of classic
UFO thing and they do it and they you
know they arrive at the U this was
during the Soviet Union they arrive at
the USR they arrive in China and they're
kind of Faking us out to so that we
never can organize ourselves against so
it was really they did exactly kind of
what you're talking about but for
nefarious purposes okay let me ask the
pad question another yet another podast
another the whole conversation I'm sorry
bongs before breakfast it's it's science
and Pad questions back and forth okay uh
what if aliens take a form that's unlike
what we kind of tradition
Envision in analyzing um physical
objects what if they take the form of
say ideas what if um real pothead if
it's Consciousness itself like the
subjective experience is an alien being
maybe ideas is an easy one to visualize
because we can think of ideas as
entities traveling from Human to human
when you know I made the claim that the
most important that finding life any
kind of life would be the most important
discovery in human history and one of
the reasons is again as I said that you
know life if we're not an accident and
there's other life then there's probably
lots of other life and because the most
significant thing about life is it can
innovate right if I give you a star and
uh you know give tell you the mass and
the composition you can basically pretty
much using the laws of physics tell
exactly what's going to happen to that
star over its entire lifetime maybe not
the little tiny details but overall it's
going to be a white dwarf it's going to
be a black hole end the story if I gave
you a single cell and said what's going
to happen in a few billion years you'd
never be able to predict a giant rabbit
that can punch you in the face right a
kangaroo so life has this possibility of
innovating of being creative so here's
so what it means is and that's a part of
a kind of a fundamental definition of
what it means to be alive it goes past
itself so give life enough
time you know and what are the what are
the end result like you know there's
there's you know like that's why I love
science fiction so much does at some
point does life reach a point where
climbs into the laws of physics itself
it becomes the laws of physics or you
know these these sort of lie at the the
the extreme limits of thinking about
what what we mean by reality what we
mean by you know uh uh uh experience um
but I'm not sure there was much we can
do with them scientifically but it you
know they their open-ended question
about the open-ended nature of what it
means to be alive and what life can do
since you said it's the biggest question
which is an interesting thought
experiment what is the biggest
scientific question we can possibly
answer you know some people might say
about like what happened before the Big
Bang like some big physics questions
about the
Universe I can see the argument for you
know how many alien civilizations or if
there's other life out there you want to
speak to that a little bit like why why
is the why is it the biggest question in
your why is it number one in your top
five or I've evolved in this right you
know I started off as a theoretical
physicist I went into um computational
astrophysics and Magneto hydrodynamics
star formation but I always you I was a
philosophy minor I always had these sort
of bigger question sort of floating
around the back of my mind and what I've
come to now is the most important
question in the for physics is what is
life what the hell is the difference
between a rock and a cell fundamentally
and what I really mean by this and this
is where I'm going to go non-traditional
um is that really the fundamental
question that is the is agency what does
it mean to be an autonomous agent how
the hell does that happen you know it's
so I'm not a reductionist I'm not
somebody who's just like well you just
put together enough chemicals and Bing
Bang Boom and you know it suddenly
appears there something really is going
to demand a reconception of what nature
itself is and so yeah black holes are
super cool cosmology is super cool but
really this question of of what is life
especially from by viewing it from the
inside uh because it's really about the
verb to be right really what is the most
what is the most impressing
philosophical question Beyond science is
the verb to be what is what what is
being right uh this is what Stephen
Hawkings said when he talked about what
what puts the fire in the equations the
fire right the fire is this this
presence and this is where it touches
things like you know whatever you want
to say the sacred spirituality whatever
you want to talk about my first book was
about science and and human spirituality
um so it's like you know so this
question of life what makes life as a
physical system you know so different is
is to me much because it's you know
that's where being appears being doesn't
appear out there right the only place
that ever appears to any of us is us so
you know I can do this kind of
projection into this third person thing
but nobody ever has that that God's eye
view that's a story we tell this is
where you know this between us is where
the verb to be appears so this is
something that you uh write about in the
blind spot why science cannot ignore
Human Experience sort of trying to pull
the
fire into the the process of uh
uh science uh and it's a kind of
critique of uh materialism can you
explain the main thesis of this book
yeah so the idea of the blind spot is
that there is this
thing uh that is Central to science so
the blind we're using the blind spot as
a metaphor right so the eye has an optic
nerve and the optic nerve is what allows
Vision to happen um so you can't have
Vision without the optic nerve but
actually you're blind to the optic nerve
there's a little hole in your vision
where the optic nerve is and what we're
saying is that science has something
like this there is something that
without which science would not be
possible but that science the way it's
been configured and actually when we
mean the blind spot I'll get into
exactly what I mean what it is but it's
not really science it is a it is a set
of ideas that got glued onto science
it's a metaphysics that got glued on to
science and so um what is that thing
that is what is the blind spot it's
experience it is presence and by
experience people have to be very
careful because I'm not talking about
being an observer it's the you know
there's lots of words for it there's
direct experience there is um presence
being um the life world within the
philosophy called phenomenology there's
the life world it's this sort of raw
presence that you can't get away from
until you die and then who the hell
knows you know that like you know as
long as you're around it's there and
what we're saying is that that is the
the way to say this that is the the
precondition for the possibility of
Science and the whole nature of science
the way has evolved is that it it
purposely pushed that out it pushed that
out so it could make progress um and
that's fine for certain class of
problems uh but when we try to answer
when we try and go deeper there's a
whole other class of problems the nature
of Consciousness the nature of time
quantum mechanics that comes back to
bite us and that if we don't learn how
to take understand that that is always
the background that experience is always
the background then we just end up with
these paradoxes and and prop these yoga
that that require this intellectual yoga
to get out of I think you give a bunch
of examples of that like looking at
temperature as a number there a very
sort of objective scientific way of
looking at that and then there's the
experience of the temperature and how
you build the parable of temperature
that we we call it so what is the blind
spot we use the term it's a
constellation it's not just materialism
it's a constellation of ideas that are
all really sort of philosophical views
they're not what science says but
because of the evolution of the history
of Science and culture they got like pin
the tail on the donkey they were sort of
pinned on and to tell us that this is
what science say so what is it one is
reductionism that you are nothing but
your nerve cells which are nothing but
the chemistry which is nothing but you
know all the way down to quirks that's
it so that's reductionism the objective
frame that science gives us this God's
eye view this third person view of the
world to view the world from the outside
that that's what science you know
bequeaths to us that view physicalism
that everything in the world is
basically made of stuff there's nothing
else to talk about right that that's all
there is and everything can be reduced
to that and then also the reification of
mathematics that mathematics is somehow
more real than this and there's a bunch
of other things but all these together
what they all do is they end up pushing
experience out and saying experience is
an epip phenomena Consciousness I I
don't I tend not to use the word
Consciousness because it's I think it
get you know it leads us in the wrong
direction we should focus on experience
because it's a verb kind of in a way
it's verb it's verb verb like so yeah
and that this by being blind to that we
end up with these paradoxes and problems
that really not only block science but
also have been detrimental to society as
a whole especially where we're at right
now so you you actually say that that
from a perspective of detrimental
society that there's a crisis of meaning
and that we respond to that in a way
that's counterproductive to these bigger
questions scientific questions so the
three ways the three responses you
mentioned scient ific uh
triumphalism and then on the other side
is rejecting science completely both on
the left and the right I think the post
modernist on the left and
antiestablishment people on the right
and then just pseudo science that kind
of does this in between thing um can you
just speak to those responses and to the
crisis of meaning right right so the
crisis of meaning is that you know on
the one hand science wants to tell us
that we're insignificant we're not
important we're just you know biological
machines um and uh you know so we're
basically an insignificant part of the
Universe on the other hand we also find
ourselves being completely significant
in cosmology we have to figure out how
to look from the inside at cosmology
we're always The Observers we're at the
center of this you know uh collapsing
wavefront of light um you know quantum
mechanics it really comes in it comes in
you know the measurement problem just
puts us front and center we spent 100
some people have spent 100 years trying
to ignore the measurement part of the
measurement problem so on the one hand
we're insignificant and on the other
other hand we're Central so which one is
it right uh and so this all comes from
not understanding actually the
foundational role of experience this
inability we can't it's we can't do
science without already being present in
the world we can't reduce uh what
happens in science to some sort of
formal it's a lot of it is about we love
our formal systems you know our
mathematics and and we're substituting
that's one of the things that we uh
there's two philosophers we really like
our heroes one is um uh heral who is a
ma matician who invented phenomenology
and the other is um Whitehead who was
one of the greatest mathematicians of
the 20th century and herro came up with
this idea of the surreptitious
substitution part of the blind spot is
substituting a formal system a calculus
of you know data for actual experience
that that's more important than and so
let me just do before I go to those
three responses let's just do the
parable of temperature because I think
it'll people can it it'll help them
understand what we
mean so think about uh degrees Celsius
right we kind of have in the modern
scientific culture we live in we think
like oh yeah degrees Celsius they're out
there Universe it's you know the the a
molecular cloud in space is 10 degrees
you know Kelvin um the way we got there
is we forgotten how that idea is rooted
in experience right we started off with
science by we had the exper the
subjective experience of hot and cold I
feel hot I you I feel cold you feel hot
you feel cold science was this process
of trying to ex distract from those
experiences what uh Michelle bitbol
philosopher calls the structural
invariance the things that like we could
both kind of do agree on so you know we
figured out like oh we could make a
gradiated little cylinder that's got
mercury in it and that you know uh hot
things will be higher in that you know
on that gradiated cylinder Co things
will be lower and we can both kind of
figure out what we're going to agree on
our standards for that um and then we
have thermometry yay we have a way of
sort of like having a structural
invariant of this sort of very personal
U experience of hot or cold and then
from that we can come up with
thermodynamics Etc and then we end up as
at the bottom of you know at the end of
that with this idea of like every day I
wake up and I check my phone and I'm
like oh it's going to be you know 60
degrees out great and we start thinking
that 60° is more real than hot and cold
that thermodynamics the whole formal
structure of thermodynamics is more real
than the basic experience of hot and
cold that it came from you know it
required
that bodily experience that also not
just me you I have to tell you know it's
part of my communication with you cold
today isn't it right that from that
basic irreducible experience of being in
the world you know with everything that
involves I developed degrees Celsius but
then I forgot about I forgot the
experience so that's called the Amnesia
of experience so that's what we mean by
the you know how the blind spot emerges
how we end up how science purposely
pushes experience out of the way so it
can make progress but then it forgets
that experience was important so where
does this show up why is this uh you
know what are the responses to trying to
get this back in and where where where
this crisis of meaning emerg so
scientific triumphalism is the idea that
only the only thing that's true for us
are scientific truths right unless it
can be codified in a formal system and
represented as data you know captured in
some kind of scientific causal uh uh
Network it doesn't even exist right and
any anything else that's not part of it
part that can be formalized in that way
is an epip phenomenon it's not real so
you know scientific triumphalism is this
response to to the m you know the
weirdness of you know I could call it
the mystery the weirdness of experience
by kind of just ignoring it in
completely so there's no other truth you
know art music you know human
spirituality it's all actually reducible
just to neuro you know neural correlates
uh so that's one way that it's been
dealt with the other way is this sort of
right you've got on the on the uh
postmodern you know the left academic
left you get this thing like science is
just a game you know it's just a game by
from from the powerful come up with um
which is also not true science is
totally potent and requires an account
for what is happening uh so that's
another way to push sort of science away
um or respond to it the denial science
denial that happens that's also another
way of of sort of you know not
understanding the balance that science
is trying that we need to establish with
experience and then there's just pseudo
science which wants to sort of say like
oh you know the New Age movement or
whatever which wants to have you know
wants to deal with experience by kind of
elevating it in this weird pseudo
spiritual way or you know so that
doesn't have the rigor of science um so
you know all of these ways all of these
responses we have this difficulty about
experience we need to understand how
experience fits into the web of meaning
um and we don't really have an accurate
we don't have a good way of doing it yet
and the point of the book was to
identify very clearly how the problem
manifests what the problem is and what
its effects are in the various sciences
and by the way we should mention that uh
at least the the first two responses
they kind of feed each other there's a
just to observe the scientific Community
those who sort of gravitate a little bit
towards
the scientific triumphalism they there's
an arrogance that builds in the human
soul if I mean it has to do with PhD is
he has to do with sitting on an academic
Throne all all those things and the
natur the human nature with the Egos and
so on it builds and of course that
nobody likes arrogance and so the those
that reject science that the arrogance
is fuel for the people that reject
science I absolutely agree it just goes
back and and it's just is this divide
that builds yeah no that was a problem
like when you saw so like I said you
know my first book was about science and
human spirituality so I was trying to
say that like you know science is
actually if we look at what happens in
human spirituality not religion religion
is about politic itics right but about
you know for the entire history of the
species we've we've had this experience
of For Better lack of a better word the
sacredness I'm not connecting this God
or anything I'm just saying this
experience of like the more and then you
know with the new atheist movement you
got people saying that like anybody who
feels that is an idiot you know they
just can't handle the hardcore science
when in fact their views of the world
are so denuded of they can't even see
the role that experience plays and how
they came up with their formal system
you know and experience fundamentally is
weird you know mysterious it's like it's
it's you know kind of goes down forever
in some sense there is always more so
yeah that arrogance then just if you're
telling everybody who's not hardcore
enough to do the you know standard model
of cosmology that they're idiots that's
not kind of bode well for your you know
the advance of your project so you're
proposing at least to consider the idea
that experience is a is fundamental
experience is Not Just an Illusion that
emerges from the set of quirks that
there could be something about the
conscious experience of the world that
is like at the core of reality yeah but
I wouldn't do it I wouldn't because you
know there's pan psychism right which
wants to that's all the way there pan
psychism is like that's literally one of
the laws of physics is but see what all
those do is like just the idea of say
like physicalism versus idealism which
are kind of the two philosophical
schools you can go with physicalism says
all that exists is physical idealism
says all that exists is mind we're
actually saying look both of these to
take either of those positions is
already to project out into that third
person view right and that third person
view we want to really emphasize is a
fiction it's a useful fiction when
you're doing science right if I want to
do like you know the the Newtonian
physics of billiard balls on a pool
table great I don't want to have to
think about experience at all right but
you know if I'm asking deeper questions
I can't ignore the fact that there
really is no third person view and that
any story I tell about the world is
coming from it's not just first person
but it's literally because I I'm going
to argue that experience always involves
all of us experience always originates
out of a community that you know you're
always telling those stories from the
the perspective of already existing of
already being inexperienced so whatever
account we want to give is of the world
is going to have to take that as IR
experience as being irreducible and the
irreducible starting point so ultimately
like we don't have an answer like that's
when people are like well what are you
suggesting as the alternative it's like
look that's the good work of the next
science to come well our job was to
point out the problem with this but what
we would argue with is and we're
thinking about the next book is this is
really going to require a new conception
of nature right that doesn't sort of
jump right to that third person that
fictional third person view and somehow
figures out how to do science
recognizing that it always starts from
experience it always starts from this
field of experience or or in
phenomenology the word is the life world
that you're embedded in you can't uned
yourself from it so how do you do so so
one of the the things that Whitehead
said was you you know you we have to
avoid the bifurcation of Nature and what
he meant by that is the bifurcation into
like sort of scientific Concepts
wavelength you know think about like the
seeing a sunset you can say like oh look
it's just wavelengths you know and
scattering particles and your experience
of the redness the actual experience of
the redness and the all the other things
it's not just red there's no qualia
there's no pure redness everything
that's happening in the experience part
is just an epip phenomena it's just you
know brain States whatever he said you
can't do that they're just they're both
real they're both accounts or both they
both need to be integrated and so that
required I think a really a different
conception of what we mean by nature is
it something like incorporating in the
physics in the study of nature The
Observer the experiencing Observer or is
that still also looking from a third
person I think that that's what we have
to figure out right and so actually you
know a great place to think about this
is mechanics right cuz one of the things
we're arguing is like look in the in the
chapter that I wrote on because it was I
wrote this with Evan Thompson who's a
wonderful philosopher and Marcelo giser
who's a theoretical physicist um when I
was writing the chapter on the origin of
the blind spot like you know sort of
what how this emerged out of History my
the subheader was like well it made
sense at the time because it did you
know it really there was a reason why
people adopted this third person God's
eye deterministic view this view of sort
of like yeah the perfect Clockwork of
the universe yeah totally made sense but
by the time you got to the beginning of
the 20th century science itself was
telling you like eh and no place does
this appear more than in quantum
mechanics right quantum mechanics slams
you with the idea that the of the
measurement problem you know uh the most
important thing about quantum mechanics
is you have a dynamical equation the
schroer equation which you know you put
in like we talked about before you have
initial conditions and now you got a
differential equation and you crank out
the differential equation and it makes
predictions for the future right exactly
like Newtonian physics or its higher
versions of the lrange or hamiltonians
but then this other thing happens where
it's like oh by the way as soon as you
look at it as soon as a measurement is
made I have a whole another set of rules
for you you know that's the born what we
call the born
Rule and that was telling you right from
the beginning that measurement matters
right so when you're asking like how
will we do this quantum mechanics is
actually pointing to how to do it so you
know there's been all these different
interpret ations of the quantum
mechanics many of them try to pretend
the measurement problem isn't there go
to enormous lengths like the uh the many
worlds interpretation literally
inventing an infinite number of
unobservable parallel universes to avoid
the thing that quantum mechanics is
telling them which is that measurements
matter and then you get something like
cubism which is I'm going to advocate
for is a new interpretation of quantum
mechanics which puts the born rule at
the center right instead of like
focusing on the Schrodinger equation and
the weird things that come out of it
like Schrodinger's Cat and all that
other stuff it says no no actually the
real mystery is the born rule let's
think about the born Rule and like you
said that puts the agent the agent and
information at the center of the whole
thing so that's not a thing you're
trying to get rid of that's that's a
thing you're trying to integrated at the
center of the thing in quantum mechanics
it becomes super obvious but maybe the
same kind of uh thing should be
incorporated in in
every uh layer of of study of nature
absolutely that's exactly it so you know
one of the things that's really
interesting to me so I'm I'm you know I
have a project I'm part of a big project
uh that Chris fuks and jacqu spaner on
cubism so I've been part of that and
what I've been Amazed by is the language
they use so what's cool about cubism is
it comes from Quantum information Theory
it's a pretty modern version of thinking
about quantum mechanics and it's always
about um do you have an agent who makes
a an action on the world and then the
information they get from that action
through the the experiment that's the
action of the world updates their priors
updates their their you know their
basian that's why it's called cubism
Quantum
basanis updates how the information
they've gotten from the world now this
turns out to be it's kind of the same
language that we're using in a project
that's about the physics of life where
um we have a grant from the uh Templeton
Foundation to look at semantic
information and the role of semantic
information in living systems like cells
so you know we have Shannon information
which is is a probability distribution
that tells you you know basically how
much surprise there is in a in a message
semantic information focuses on meaning
right focuses on and in a very simple
way just like what is how much of the
information that I'm that the agent you
know the Critter is getting from the
world actually has uh helps it survive
right that's the most basic idea of
meaning right we can get all
philosophical about meaning but this is
it does it help me stay alive or not and
the whole question of agency and
autonomy that occurs in this setting of
just asking about how do cells move up a
a chemical gradient to get more food
kind of has the same feel the same you
know sort of architecture as what's
going on in quantum mechanics so I think
what you said is exactly it how do we
bring this sort of recognition that
there's always us the agent or life the
agent interacting with the world uh and
drawing in both giving information and
passing information back as a way of
doing science doing hardcore science
with experiments but never forgetting
that agency which also means experience
in some sense is at the center of the
whole thing so you think that could be
something like cubism Quantum
beanis that creates a theory like a
Nobel prizewinning Theory sort of
like hardcore real theories that put the
agent at the center yes that's what
we're looking for I think that is really
that's the exciting part and it's a move
you know the scientific triumphalist
thing says you know and you understand
why people love this like I have these
equations and these equations represent
you know there's this platonic idea that
they are you know they exist eternally
on their own it's kind of Quasi
religious right it's sort of like
somehow look these equations are the
you're reading the mind of God but this
other approach to me is just as exciting
because what you're saying is there's us
and the world they're Inseparable right
it's always us and the world and what
we're now finding about is this kind of
Co creation this this interaction you
know between the agent and the world
such that these powerful laws of physics
that need an account like in no way am I
saying these laws aren't important these
laws are amazing but they need an
account but not an account that strips
you know that turns the experience turns
the agent into just a you know an epip
phenomena that it pushes the agent out
and makes it seem as if the agent's not
the most important part of the story so
if you pull on this
thread and say there's a whole
discipline born of this putting the
agent as the primary thing in a theory
in a physics theory like how is it
possible it just like breaks the whole
thing open so there's this whole effort
of uh you know um unifying general
relativity and quantum mechanics of like
coming up with The Theory of Everything
what if these are
like the the tip of the iceberg what
what if the the agent thing is like
really important so you know listen that
that would be like kind of my dream uh
I'm not going to be the one to do it
because I'm not smart enough to do it uh
but you know Marcelo and I have for a
while have been sort of critical of
where foundational physics has been for
a while with string the I've spent my
whole life listening to talks about
String Theory real soon you know um and
it's gotten ever more disconnected from
you know data observations there were
people talking for a while that it's
post empirical
uh and you know I want always wanted to
write a paper or an article that was
like physicists have been smoking their
own stash right there's this way we've
gotten used to like you know you have to
out weird the other person like my
theory has 38 dimensions and my theory
has 22 Dimensions but it's got you know
uh you know psychedelic squirrels in it
and so there's been a problem there's a
problem I'm I don't need to tell you
there's a crisis in physics or there's a
crisis in cosmology other people have
used that that's been the the headline
on Scientific American stories so there
clearly another Direction has to be
found and maybe it has nothing to do
with this but I I suspect
that because so many times the agent or
the the the having to deal with the the
view from the inside or the the the role
of agency like when it comes to time
thinking that you can replace the block
Universe with the actual experience of
time you know clocks don't tell time we
use clocks to tell time so maybe that
even like the fundamental nature of time
can't be viewed from the outside that
there's a a new physics theory that is
going to come from that comes from this
agential informational computational
view um I don't know but that's kind of
what I I I think it would be fertile
ground to explore yeah like time is a
really interesting one this time is
really important to us humans what is
time yeah that's a right what is time so
the way we have tended to view it is
we've taken this is what when herel
talks about the ctitious substitution
we've taken Einstein's beautiful
powerful formal system for viewing time
and we substituted that for the actual
experience of time right so the block
Universe where like next Tuesday is
already written down you know it's in
the block un the four dimensional
Universe all events are already there uh
which is very potent for making certain
kinds of predictions within the sort of
you know the scientific framework but
you know it is not lived time and uh you
know this was pointed out to Einstein
and he eventually recognized it very
famous meeting between hre burkson who
was a the most famous philosopher of
like the you know 20 early 20th century
and Einstein where Einstein was giving a
talk on relativity and burkson whose
whole thing was about time and was about
duration he wanted to separate the
scientific image of time the map of time
from the actual terrain which he used
the word duration like we humans
where where duration for us is full it's
it's sort of um it's stretched out it's
got a little bit of the past a little
bit of the future a little bit of the
present music is the best example right
you're hearing music you're both already
anticipating what's going to happen and
you're you know remembering what's going
on there's a kind of phenomenal
structure there which is is different
from the representation of time that you
have with the formal mathematics and
what uh you know the way we would look
at this is that the problem with the
cupti substitution the problem with the
blind spot is it says oh no no the
formal system is time but really the
only place time appears is with us right
where we're time you know so having a
theory that actually could start with us
you know and then stretch out into the
universe rather than imposing this
imaginary third person view back on us
you know could that's a route towards a
different way of approaching the whole
problem I just wonder who's the Observer
I mean defying what the agent is right
in any kind of frame is difficult is
difficult right and so that but that's
the good work of the science ahead of us
right what so what happened with this
idea of the structural invariance I was
talking about so you know we start with
experience which is irreducible there's
no atoms of experience right it's a
whole um and we go through the whole
process which is a communal process by
the way there's a philosopher Robert
Cree who talks about the workshop that
starting in like the 1700s 1600s we
developed this
communal uh uh space to work in
sometimes it was literally a physical
space a laboratory where these ideas
would be pulled apart refined argued
over and then validated and we went to
the next step so this idea of pulling
out from experience these thinner
abstract structural invariance the
things that we could actually do science
with and it's kind of like we call it an
ascending spiral of abstraction right so
the problem with the way we do things
now is we take that those abstractions
which came from experience and then with
something like you know a computational
model of Consciousness or experience we
think we can put it back in like you
literally pulled out these super thin
things these abstractions you know
neglecting experience because that's the
only way to do science and then you
think somehow oh I'm going to put I'm
going to jam experience back in and an
you know have a an explanation for
experience so do you think it's possible
to show that something like Free Will is
quote unquote real if you integrate
experience back into this physics into
the physics model of the world what I
would say is that free will is is a
given and that's the thing about
experience right so one of the things
that Whitehead said I really love this
quote it says it's not the job of either
science or philosophy to account for the
concrete it's the job to account for the
abstract the the
concrete what's happening between us
right now is just given you know it's
just it's presented to us every day it's
presented to if you want an explanation
fine but the explanation actually
doesn't add anything to it right so that
Free Will in some sense is the nature of
being an agent right to be an agent
agency and autonomy are sort of the two
things that are you know they're they're
they're equivalent and so in some sense
to be an agent is to be autonomous and
so then the question really to ask is
can you have an account for agency and
autonomy that captures aspects of its
it's arising in the world or the way it
and the world sort of co- arise um but
the idea you know the reason why we
argue about free will often is because
we already have this blind spot view
that the world is deterministic because
our equations which themselves we treat
the equations as if they're more real
than experience you know and the
equations are a paler you know they
don't Corral experience they are a
thinner you know representation as we
like to say don't confuse the map for
the terrain what's happening between us
right now in this you know all the
weirdness of it that's the terrain the
map is what I can write down on
equations and then in the workshop do
experiments on super powerful needs an
account but experience overflows that
what if the experience is an illusion
like how how do we know what if the
agency that we experience is an illusion
an illusion looking from where like
right because that already requires to
to take that stance is you've already
pushed yourself into that third person
view right and so what we're saying is
that's a that third person view which
now you're going to say like oh I've got
a whole other set of entities of
ontological entities meaning you know
things that I think exist in God's
living room in spite you know that are
independ dependent of me and the
community of living things I'm part of
so you're pushing it elsewhere this just
like there's a stack of turtles is
probably if if this experience The Human
Experience is an illusion maybe there's
an
observer for whom it's not an illusion
so you always have to find an observer
somewhere yeah right and that's where
that's why you know fundamentally the
the blind spot the especially the
scientific triumphalist part is is
following a religious impulse you know
it's wanting the God's eye view and you
know what's really interesting and when
we think about this and the way this
gets talked about especially publicly
you know there's a line of philosophical
inquiry that this language gets couched
in and it is actually a pretty it's only
one version of philosophy right so it is
pretty much what we call the analytic
tradition right um but there's even in
Europe in the or or in the western
tradition in the you know for Western
what we'll call Western philosophy
there's phenomenology these herel and
Ider and merlu panti which took an
entirely different track they were
really interested in the structure of
experience they spent all their time
trying to understand trying to develop a
language that could kind of climb into
the circle that is experience right you
experience you're not going to be able
to start with axioms and work your way
to it it's it's given so you have to
kind of jump in and then try and find a
language to account for its structure
but then so that that has not been part
of this discussion about you'll never
good luck finding a YouTube video where
someone you know a famous scientist is
talking about science from a
phenomenological point point of view
even though it's a huge branch of
philosophy and then you get the
philosophies that occurred from other
cores of civilization right so there's
the there's the Western core out of
which comes the Greeks and the you know
the judeo Christian Islamic tradition
but then you get India and you get Asia
and they developed their own they were
highly complex societies that developed
their own responses to these questions
and they for reasons because they had
contemplative practice they were very
focused on like direct trying to like
directly probe atten and experence they
asked questions in ways that the West
never really did phenomenology kind of
started it but you know there's there's
philosophers like um narina and vasu
bondu and they're like the Plato and the
you know Aristotle of you know sort of
those philosophies and they were really
focused on experience in the west I
think maybe because we had uh the
judeo-christian tradition where we
already had this kind of God who was
going to be the frame on which you could
always point to that frame the in the uh
the that came from the classical
philosophies of India and Asia they
started always with they wanted to know
about experience their whole
philosophies and their logic and their
their argumentation was based on I've
got this experience I can't get out of
this experience how do I reason from it
so I think there's like a lot of other
philosophical traditions that we could
draw from you know not like slavishly we
don't all have to become Buddhists to do
it but there are Traditions that really
tried to work this out in a way that the
Western Traditions just didn't but
there's also the practical fact that uh
it's difficult to build a logical system
on top of experience it's difficult to
have the rigor of science on top of
experience and so
it's as science advances we might get
better and better like the same is it's
very difficult to have any kind of
mathematical or kind of scientific rigor
to uh uh why complexity emerges from
simple rules and simple objects sort of
the Santa Fe questions yeah I think but
I think we can do it I think there's
aspects of it I mean as long as you're
never trying to like this is what
experience is like I think that's kind
of the where we're you know you're never
going to have a causal account of
experience because it's just given but
you can do lots about and that's what
the good work is is to how do I approach
this how do I approach this in a way
that's rigorous that I can do
experiments with also um but so for
example I was just reading this
beautiful paper that was talking about
in the you know this is what we're
countering with our semantic information
too causal
closure love this idea right the idea
that so we talked about autop poesis a
while back right the idea that living
systems are um they are self-creating
and self-maintaining so the the membrane
cell membrane is a great example of this
right the cell membrane you can't have a
cell without a cell membrane the cell
membrane lets stuff through keeps other
stuff out right but the cell membrane is
part of the processes and it's a product
of the processes that the cell membrane
needs right in some sense the cell me
self membrane creates itself so there's
this strange it's always with life
there's always this strange Loop and so
somehow figuring out how to jump into
that strange Loop is you know the
science that's ahead of us and so this
idea of causal closure accounting for
how the you know we talk about like um
uh downward causation right so
reductionism says everything only
depends on the micro State everything
just depends on the atoms right that's
it you don't really if you know if you
know the lran for the standard model
you're done you know of course in
principle you need God's computer but
fine you know in you know in principle
it could be done clal closure and
there's I was just reading this great
paper that sort of argues for this
there's ways in which using Epsilon
machines and all this Machinery from
information theory that you can see ways
in which the system can organize itself
so that it decouples from the micro
States now the macro State fundamentally
no longer needs the micro state for its
own description its own account of the
laws whether that paper is true or not
it's an example of heading down that
road there's also Robert rosen's work he
was a theoretical biologist who he was
you know he talked about closure to
efficient cause that that living systems
you know are organizationally closed are
are causally closed so that they don't
depend anymore on the micro State and he
made that he had a proof which is very
contentious nobody knows if it's you
know some argue it's true some argue
it's not but he said that because of
this living systems are not Church
Turing complete they cannot be
represented as formal systems so you
know in that way they're not axioms
they're not living systems will not be
axioms they can only be partially
captured by algorithms now again people
fight back and forth about whether or
not his proof was you know is is valid
or not but I'm saying I'm giving you
examples of like you know when you when
you see the blind spot when you
acknowledge the blind spot it opens up a
whole other class of kinds of scientific
investigations you know the book we
thought was going to be really heretical
right you know obviously you know most
most public facing scientists are very
sort of in that especially scientific
Triumph so we were just like waiting you
know waiting for the fight and then the
review from science came out and it was
like totally Pro yeah they was very
positive we're like oh my God you know
and then a review came out in nature
physics and it was totally positive and
then a review came out in the Wall
Street Journal because we kind of
criticized not capitalism but we
criticized sort of all industrial
economies for that they were sort of had
been touched by the blind spot socialism
communism doesn't matter these
extractive you know sort of had that
sort of view that the world is just
reducible to you know uh
resources The Wall Street Journal gave
us a great review so it feels like
there's actually out there there is some
among working scientists in particular
there is some dissatisfaction with this
triumphalist View and a recognition that
we need to shift something in order to
like jump past these hurdles that we've
been arguing about forever and we're not
you know we're sort of stuck in a Vortex
well it is I mean I think there is a
hunger to acknowledge that there's an
elephant in the room like that we're
just
removing the agent like it's everyone is
doing it and it's like yeah yeah we
there's uh the the the experience and
then there's the third
person perspective on the world right
and so to man science from a applying
scientific rigor from a first-person
perspective is very difficult I mean
it's fascinating I think we can do it
because it's also the thing you know
what's really interesting is it's think
it's not just first person it's first
and second right because science because
when so like one idea is that we you
know the idea that oh science gives us
this objective third person view that's
one way of talking about objectivity
there's a whole other way is that I do
the experiment you do the experiment we
talk to each other we agree on methods
and we both get the same result that is
a very different way of thinking about
objectivity and it acknowledges that you
know when we talk about agents agency
and individuality are Flex
right so there's a great paper speaking
of Santa Fe by David Kau where they
looked at sort of information theoretic
measures of individuality and what you
find is it's actually pretty fluid like
my liver cell is an individual but
really it's part of the liver and my
liver is you know a separate system but
really it's part of me but I'm so I'm an
individual yay but actually I'm part of
a society like and I I couldn't be me
without the entire community of say
language users right I wouldn't even be
able to frame any questions and the my
community of language users is part of
ecosystems right that are alive that I
am a part of a lineage of this is like
Sarah Walker stuff and then that those
ecosystems are part of the biosphere
right we're never separable as opposed
to this very atomizing the triumphalist
science view is want like Bulman brains
you're just a brain floating in the
space you know yeah there there's a
fascinating degree to which uh agency is
fluid like you are an individual but you
and I talking is the kind of individual
yeah and
then uh the person listening to this
right now is also an individual I mean
that's a weird thing too that's a weird
thing right because there's like there's
a broadcast nature too this is why
information theoretic so so the idea
that we're pursuing now which I get
really excited about is this idea of
information architecture right or
organization informational organization
because you know right physicalism is
like everything's atoms but you know
Kant recogn Kant is apparently the one
who came up with the word organism
because he recognized that life has a
weird organization that would see
specifically different from machines and
so this idea that how do we engage with
the idea that organization which is
often I can be cast in information
theoretic terms uh or computational
terms even is sort of it's not really
quite physical right it's it's embodied
in physical you know in the physical has
to instantiated in the physical but it
also has this other realm of of design
you know and some not design like in
intelligent design but there's a you
know organization itself is is a
relationship of constraints and
information flow and I think again
that's an entirely new interesting way
that we might get a very different kind
of science that would flow out of that
so going back to content
organism versus
machine so I showed you uh a couple of
uh legged robots very cool is it
possible for machines to to have agency
I would not discount that possibility
um I think it you know there's no reason
I would say that it's impossible that
machines could whatever it manifests
that strange Loop that we're talking
about that autop poesis um I don't think
there's a reason to say it can't happen
in uh in a in Silicon I think whatever
it would it would be very different from
us like the idea that it would be like
oh it would be just like us but now it's
instantiated and I think it might have
very different kind of experiential
nature um I don't think I don't think
what we have now like the llms are
really there um but uh but I yeah I I I
I'm not going to say that it's not
possible I wonder how far you can get
with imitation which is essentially what
llms are doing so imitating humans and I
I wouldn't discount either the
possibility that through imitation you
can
achieve uh what you would call
Consciousness or uh agency or the
ability to have experience I think for
most us humans they think oh that's just
fake that's cop cing but there's some
degree to which us we humans are just
copying each other we just are really
good imitation machines come from babies
we were born in this world and we're
just learning to imitate each other and
through the imitation and the tension in
the disagreements in the imitations we
uh gain personality perspective all that
kind of stuff yeah I think so I I you
know it's possible right it's possible
but I think probably the view I'm
advocating would say that one of the
most important parts of agency is
there's something called E4 E4 the E4
theory of Co cognition embodiment
inaction embedding and there's another
one extension but so the idea is that
you actually have to be in a body which
is itself part of an environment that is
the physical nature of it and of the of
the extension in with other living
systems as well is essential so that's
why I think the LS are not going to the
it's not just imitation it's going to
require this goes to the brain in the
vat thing I did a an article about the
brain in the vat which was really
evidence I was reporting on Evans where
they did the brain in the vat argument
but they said look in the end actually
the only way to actually get a real
brain in the vat is actually to have a
brain in a body and if it could be a
robot body you know but you still
needing a brain in the body so I don't
think llms will get there because they
can't you know you really need to be
embedded in a world at least that's the
E4 idea the E4 the 4E approach to
cognition argues that cognition does not
occur solely in the head but is also
embodied embedded enacted and extended
by way of extra cranial processes and
structures they very much
invogue 4E cognition has received
relatively few critical evaluations this
is a paper by reflecting on two uh
recent collections this article reviews
the 4E Paradigm with a view to uh
assessing the strengths and weaknesses
that's fascinating I mean yeah they're
the branches of what is cognition
extends
and it could go real far right there's a
great um story about an interaction
between Jonas sulk who was very much a
reductionist you know the great
biologist and um Gregory Bateson who was
a cyberneticist and uh Bateson always
loved to poke people and he said to su
he said you know where's your mind and
you know Sul went up here and Bon said
no no no out here and what he really
meant was this extended idea it's not
just within your cranium to be to be to
have experience you know experience in
some sense is not a thing you have it is
a thing you do right it's a you almost
perform it in a way which is why both
actually having a body but having the
body itself be in a world with other
bodies is from this perspective is
really important and it's very attracted
to me you know seeing again if we're
really going to do science with them
we're going to have to like have these
ideas crash up against data you know
crash up against we can't just armchair
it you know or or you know or or quarter
you know couch quarterbacking it um but
I think there's a lot of possib ility
here it's a very radically different way
of looking at uh at at what we mean by
Nature what do you make of the fact that
this individual Observer you as an
individual Observer only get a finite
amount of time to exist in this world
does it make you sad no actually it
doesn't make me sad so okay so so uh uh
you know full reveal I have been doing
contemplative practice in the Zen
tradition for 30 years I've been staring
at a wall for 30 years and it's taught
me a lot right you know I'm really I I
really value what that practice has
given me about the nature of experience
um and one of the things that taught me
is like you know I don't really matter
that very much you this thing I call
Adam Frank is really you know it's kind
of a construct you know there's this
process going on of which I am actually
fundamentally and that's super cool but
you know it's G to go I don't you know I
don't know where it came from it's going
to go I don't really need it to you know
and then and then who the hell knows you
know I'm not I'm not an advocate for
afterlife but just that like you know
what what I love Zen has this idea of
Beyond birth and death and they don't
mean reincarnation what they mean is
dude you don't even really understand
what life is you know what I mean on
like this you know this core level of
your own experience so you know your
ideas about what death is are equally
ill-formed you know and it's it's so you
know the contemplative practice really
tries to focus on experience itself like
spend five days at a Zen session doing
contemplative practice from you know 7:
a.m. until 9:00 p.m. obviously with
breaks uh and you'll really get a much
deeper understanding of like what my own
experience is what is it really like you
you it forces you to learn how to
stabilize your attention because you
know attention is kind of like this
thing like it's usually just like oh
over there oh my foot hurts oh I got to
do my taxes oh that you know what's that
guy over there why is he wearing those
stupid shoes um and with contemplate
practice you learn how to stabilize it
and once you stabilize it you can now
begin to sort of explore the phenomenal
nature of it so what I think I've
learned from that is like kind of
whatever you know I'm not I'm not really
kind of real to begin with the Adam
Frank part the identity the thing and
the the part of me that is real is you
know everything's coming and going it's
all coming and going well how how could
I ever not come and go when the entire
world is just you know uh Buddhism has
this idea of codependent arising nothing
exists nothing has self nature nothing
exists by itself it's an endless
infinitely connected
web but still there's a delicious to the
individual experience you get attached
to it and and it ends and it's it's good
while it lasts and it sucks that it ends
like you can be like ah well everything
comes and goes but like I was eating uh
ice cream yesterday found this awesome
low carbo ice cream called Delights here
in Austin and uh you know it ends yeah
and I was like and I was staring at the
empty container and it was that's
beautiful man I love that you could say
like yeah well that's how it all is but
can I say that that's so this is what
I've learned from from because I Al I
love your idea of the deliciousness of
it yeah you know um but what I think
happens with contemplative practice when
it deepens is that it's not just you're
not just saying right this is why you
know so I do Coan practice so this is a
tradition in Zen that it was established
it was a teaching method that was
established like a thousand years ago
these book of coons and every Coan you
know if you've ever read Goodell eer
Bach he's got a whole chapter on Coons
they're kind of non-logical problems
that you have to work on uh one of my
favorite one was stop the sound of the
distant Temple Bell you know you're like
what every time my teacher gives it to
I'm like what are you talking about you
know this is whole Zen thing of like Up
Is Down but down is up you must
understand this so you know your job
with these colons is to is to sit with
them is to sit with them until you sort
of kind of you know you realize what the
thing is trying to teach you what aspect
of experience it's trying to teach you
so there's no answer there's no and in
fact actually you don't give an answer
you actually usually have to demonstrate
the first time when I sat when I did a
call and the guy was like don't tell me
the answer show me the answer I was like
what are you talking about but after
doing these for years now you know I've
kind of learn un learned the language of
them so I could never tell you if I told
you the answer I could give you a con
and tell you the answer you'd be like
what you know it's never it's not the
words it's the you know so like your
experience of like yeah the cup is empty
with it contemplative practice as it
deepens over years and it really does
Take Years just like anything in math
take me took me years to understand the
lran you kind of come to a deeper
understanding with like yeah the words
of like it's not just like oh everything
changes you actually feel that movement
like you feel it with like breath to
breath you know and it really becomes
sometimes I have this feeling this is
messed up but of just joy and it's not
connected to anything that's what I've
kind of gotten from practice it's just
like yeah you know that passage that
that infinite passage of moment to
moment that is truly the way things are
and it's okay like not it's not okay
because I have a feeling about it okay I
want it to be okay it just is okay it's
a really it's a pretty awesome thing
yeah that's beautiful I mean I I maybe
it's the genetics maybe it's the
biochemistry in my brain but I generally
have that Joy about experience just
amorphous Joy but it seems like again
maybe it's my Eastern European Roots but
there's always like a Melancholy that's
also sitting next to the joy and I think
it always feels um like they're
intricately linked so The Melancholy is
about maybe about the final Ness of
experience and the joy is just about the
beauty of experience and they're just
kind of sitting there yeah which is cool
actually because that you know I'm also
you know I come from Eastern my my roots
are Eastern European as well going back
and I get it right I mean you know the
but that's also the cool thing I think
one of the things is is like yeah well
that that is what it is that is what it
is right you don't have to do anything
you don't have to like manipulate it or
move it around or like yeah this is the
experience you know can you speak to the
just the Practical nature of sitting
there from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. I'm
like what the hell are you doing bro
what's what's powerful what's
fascinating to you what have you learned
from just the experience of staring at a
wall yeah yeah so um you know you're not
really I mean you're staring you're
facing a wall and what you're doing is
you're you know you're just sitting with
you know you can there's different
meditative practices right there's
counting breaths so that's usually what
I do I sit down I start counting breaths
and for the first half hour it's just
like blah blah blah I'm thinking like I
said I'm thinking about my taxes I'm
thinking about what I got to do later on
yada yada yada first time I ever did a
full session a two-day session I swear
to God I had Bruce Springsteen's to run
album track through from the beginning
to the end with the pauses this was back
in when they were LPS with the freaking
paes you know cuz my mind was just like
I need to do something so it literally
played the whole album in order that's
pretty cool actually it was pretty
amazing to see you know because you
really do you see the Dynamics of your
mind but what happens is and this took
me a while I used to I used to hate
sitting you know I do it but
I after a while the mind gets exhausted
like that part of the Mind the upper
level the the roof brain ch it's just
like there's nothing else to do and then
you get bored and I now I realize that's
the that's when something interesting is
going to happen because you kind of like
drop down and now it's a very physical
practice people think you're just
sitting there not thinking or thinking
about not thinking actually becomes a
very physical process where you're
really um just following the breath
you're kind of riding the breath and it
gets very quiet you know and within that
quietness it's you know there's there's
a path you know because obviously
there's been Buddhism is always like you
know uh you know not about thinking but
there a huge literature so these guys
are always about don't think I've
written all this stuff but they're guid
poost they're like the finger pointing
at the moon and you know there's the
idea first you know your mind is usually
scattered right like right you know
right now when I walk out I'm going to
go get the Uber and everything my mind's
going to be all over the place but with
sitting first you concentrate the mind
so that there's no more scatter anymore
the thoughts are still happening but
you're just not there're happening up
there you're not even paying attention
to them and then as time goes on you
unify the mind which is this very
powerful thing we're kind of the self
drops away you know and there's just
this presence it's kind of like a raw
presence and that's often where the the
the joy up up Wells from but you sit
with whatever maybe you're going to sit
and you're going to have like you know
maybe you're going to go through like an
hour of being bummed out about your mom
who died or something you know you're
just going to sit with whatever comes up
you're going to make the that's why the
sitting part you're making the
commitment I'm going to sit here with
whatever comes up I will not be moved
and then what you come away with it
actually over time it actually changes
kind of who you are like I'm still the
I was from New Jersey growing up
but I used have more space now for
things you
know uh yeah once Jersey always Jersey
always Jersey but I love they had boo
Springsteen just blasting in your head
yeah that was amazing why are we here
what do you think is the is the is the
purpose the meaning of human existence
it's good that we just had the last
conversation because I'm going to give
this answer which is so corny um it's
love and I'm not messing around because
really actually what happens you know so
within Buddhism there's the idea of the
bodh SAA principle you're here to help
you're just here to help right
compassion like that's a really
essential part of this path of the
Dharma paath and when I first started I
was like I'm I don't care about
compassion I'm here for knowledge right
I'm here I know I I I started
contemplative practice because of the
usual thing I was suffering I had you
know the reason everybody comes to
things like this you know life was hard
I going through stuff but I also wanted
knowledge I wanted to understand the
foundational nature of reality so it's
was like compassion whatever but then I
found out that you can't get that you
can't get though you can't go to this L
without compassion somehow in this
process you realize that it really is
about helping all sentient beings that's
the way they you know just just being
here to to help so I know that sounds
cornball but especially for a guy from
Jersey which is like you know the main
thing is to get over like your job is to
get over um uh but that's really what I
found it's to it is actually kind and
that's what that joy that Joy some of
that Joy is just it's like this one of
the things I have exper when I have like
really you know there's a kind of
experience I'll have in contemplative
practice which will carry out into the
world which is just this gratitude for
the fact that the world is just the
world gives you everything there's a
certain way right just the blue sky and
the the breath the world is just giving
you itself completely unhindered it
holds nothing back and uh yeah that's
kind of the experience and then you kind
of like oh I need to be helpful because
who's not having this experience you
know so just love for the world is it is
love for the and all the beings who are
suffering everybody's suffering
everybody's suffering you know your
worst political opponent opponent
they're suffering you know and our job
is just to try and drop our biases and
our stories and see this fundamental
level at which life is occurring and uh
hopefully there's many alien
civilizations out there going through
the same Journey out of suffering
towards love Yeah that would I you know
that may be a universal thing about what
it means to be alive I hope so I hope so
too either that or they're coming to eat
us especially if they're a type three
civilization that's right and they got
really big
guns uh well this was truly mindblowing
fascinating just awesome conversation
Adam thank you for everything you do and
thank you for talking today oh thank you
this was a lot of fun thanks for
listening to this conversation with Adam
Frank to support this podcast please
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description and now let me leave you
with some words from Carl Sean the
cosmos is all that is or ever was orever
will be our feeblest contemplations of
the cosmos ster us there's a tingling in
the spine a catch in The Voice a faint
sensation as if a distant memory or
falling from a height we know we are
approaching the greatest of
mysteries thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time