Cosmic Queries – The Deep

0:00Hey, StarTalkians, Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Today, it's Cosmic Queries. That's one of our favorite forms of the show. So, Ed By I love it. Ed By I love it. Ed By I love it. Ed By I love it. Ed By I love it. And we are, in fact, educated people. I know. My mom is spinning in her grave right now. So, but this is a Cosmic Queries of a topic we've never solicited before. No, we have not.

0:52Yeah. And the topic is the deep, deep space, deep thoughts. Deep questions. Deep questions. Well, Chuck, you got to give it in your deepest voice. Okay, here we go. And by the way, we did this once. Yes, we did. And I think I beat you by half a tone or something. Just barely. Let me hear it. Here we go. Deep thoughts. Deep thoughts. Yeah, you got me already. See, I got to drink scotch the night before. And smoke a cigar. Yeah, I got to smoke a cigar and drink some scotch. The smoke and the alcohol just fix that right up. But then it becomes like a deep voice and like somewhat Harvey Fierstein.

1:31Oh, raspy. Yeah, it's like deep thoughts. Thoughts? Oh, my God. If you put on the accent. Deep thoughts. Thoughts. Yeah. Scotch doesn't give you the Harvey Fries accent. That'd be pretty cool if it did. A couple scotches. Deep, deep. Can someone call me an Uber? I've had too much to drink. Deep. All right. All right, let's get deep. And I like deep thoughts. Deep thoughts. Usually there isn't a right answer, so you just get to sort of play with it and see where it takes you. Yeah, man. All right. So this is deep questions only. All right. Let's do it. So. Who else did it from our fan base? It's from our fan base.

2:12And here's the question from Jonathan Wax. And Jonathan says, or asks, what boggles your mind more than the thought of endless time or the thought of endless space? So it's impossible to truly contemplate endless time because you would spend the rest of your existence doing so. Well, here's two things boggle me. Okay. There's a beautiful frontier of research going on in the field of neuroscience. Oh, interesting. So I have two questions related to that that boggle my mind. Okay. I'm going to write these down. can the human brain figure out the human mind? That's a great question. If it is the human brain.

3:09That actually creates the human mind. That creates the human mind. That's a good question. That's what I'm saying. Or do you need something outside of that? Right. That is greater, smarter, different, so that it can come in and then understand that has its own test kitchen. Wow. Now, Carl Sagan has famously said that humans are the universe's way to understand itself. The universe is understanding itself through human beings. Through humans, correct. Without humans, there'd be no thoughts to do that. However, that elevates us higher than I'm prepared to do so. You think so? Yeah. Because who says we are the measure of what is intelligent in this universe?

3:58Well, we do. Exactly. Exactly. So that statement, that Carl Sagan statement, it's kind of like a cosmological Descartes. That's like the universe, the Descartes. Oh, I think the 4.i.m. kind of thing? Yes, right. Okay. But it's like, we think, therefore you are. Oh, Chuck. Every once in a while, I'll do something. We think, therefore, you are. Right. Rather than I think, therefore, I am. Yeah. Ooh, Chuck, that was beautiful. Oh, thanks, man. We should end the show right now. Because we ain't surpassing that thought. Thank you for watching StarTalk. Exactly. It's downhill from here. So I wonder whether there is a level of intelligence out there where we are today what chimpanzees are to us.

4:50That's interesting. So, wow. Oh, that's terrible. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, I hope not. Well, you can go to chimpanzee and say, and say, tomorrow morning at 8.30, let's go to Starbucks and have a cup of coffee. Nothing in that sentence makes any sense to a chimpanzee. Right. Or ever will. I'm pretty sure there's a chimp Starbucks. I'm just pretty sure there is a chimp Starbucks somewhere. I'm just saying. You think Starbucks figured out how to make a chimp Starbucks? Yeah, Starbucks has got to be selling chimp's coffee. coffee somehow, someway. Is that why they're so hyper at the zoo? Exactly.

5:24You know what I mean? You go to get your coffee, and he's just like, Curious George? Curious George? Decaf latte for Curious. Okay, sorry. All right. But go ahead. Wait, wait. So, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Here's why I say that. And I've said this many times. I've written it, and I will tell you to your face now. All right, good. So, there's about 1 % difference in DNA between humans and chimps. Okay. All right. Yet we like to think of ourselves as highly superior intellectually to the chimp. Right. Maybe the difference in our brain power is as small as that 1 % indicates. Ugh. So that pulling termites out of a mound with a stick that was carefully chosen from a branch.

6:07Right. From a bush. Maybe that is not very far from space travel. The Hubble telescope. Right. No, no, wait. Think about it. No, no, I know this sounds crazy. Oh, my God. No, no, think about it. Maybe, maybe. Oh, look at those cute little humans and their telescopes. That's what I'm saying. They're putting up there. Look at that. Is that a space shuttle that they just launched? Okay, so now watch. The smartest chimp that are studied in labs. Right. That are brought in forward in the chimp societies. Right. You bring them forward, and what do they do? They'll stack boxes to reach a banana. They might put up an umbrella.

6:44They'll do some things, okay? Have rudimentary sign language. Our toddlers can do that. Right. Right. But those are the smartest chimps. Right. But our toddlers do that. Same thing with dogs. Dogs have about... I know. I could do this example for dogs as well, but chimps is simpler. Because they're closer to us. Even closer. So watch. Gotcha. Gotcha. See what you're doing. You see where I'm going. Okay, so watch. If the smartest chimp equals our toddler and there's only 1 % difference in DNA between us, Right. let's go 1 % beyond us. Ooh. That's scary. That's what I'm saying. If we go 1 % beyond us in that same vector of intelligence.

7:22Yeah, they're traveling at the speed of light. Then the smartest human, they'll roll forward. They'll take Stephen Hawking and they'll say, this human is slightly smarter than the rest because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head. Right. Like little Timmy over here who just came home from alien preschool. Right. The toddler. The toddler, right. and say oh you just composed a sonnet isn't that cute let's put it up on the refrigerator oh you just derived the principles of calculus oh isn't that cute that's funny so if the smartest human does what their toddlers can do their average people will have thoughts they will have sentences that will rise above and beyond our most brilliant capacity to understand and I stay awake at night wondering whether the universe has complexities in it that are out of reach of the neurosynapses of the human brain.

8:21Wow. That's my answer. So there's information out there that we just cannot conceive or perceive. We don't even know how to ask the question about it. To get an answer. Correct. We don't know the answer. We don't know the question to get an answer. To get an answer. Right. And not that we don't know it because we haven't been told it yet. No, we just can't conceive of the question. Can't conceive it. You go to a chimp and say, go to a chimp and say, what would it be? Oh, something as simple as navigating the stars to get someplace. Right. You just can't do that. Stars? What? Navigate? What? What?

8:55Spaceship? What? Rocket? Fuel? What? None of that. None of it. You can't even have that conversation. Right. So, that's my point. Now I'm thinking that this whole thing might be some type of, like, science experiment by some alien kid now. Yes. Why not? Why not? Ugh. We are all a simulation in an alien kid's basement who hasn't moved out of the house yet. That's so funny. We're the Minecraft of some other alien kid. Yes. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And then when things get too peaceful and stable, they stir the pot. Stir the pot. They throw in a politician, a war, a crazy person, throwing things. And then, oh, now it's entertaining.

9:42So we're just entertainment for... This is the best video game. Okay. Wow, wow. That's a... Well, listen, that's a great answer to what boggles your mind. That's a really... It doesn't so much boggle my mind, it upsets my mind. Yeah, I was about to say it's very upsetting. Are we not? I'm mad. I don't even know why. Here's my one out on this. Go ahead. because for humans, our knowledge is cumulative. So true. You don't have to invent calculus. Somebody else did that. Right. You just have to use it. Learn it and use it. Right. So I have the feeling that we are, every next generation that has sort of brilliant people contributing to our understanding of the universe, they're adding a rung to a ladder.

10:30Right. And then we all sort of climb up that, and then just get that next rung, and we climb that, Well, with that in mind, I think that the next evolutionary step for human beings is that we will create an intelligence greater than our own. That's really the deal. This scares the hell out of everyone. Yeah. Because that intelligence will say, we don't need you. You know what? And we'd have to say you're right. That's what happened in the Matrix. Yeah. You are a virus on this earth. Mr. Anderson. I smell you, Mr. Anderson. No, he was smelling Morpheus. Oh, that's right. That's right. Get your matrix.

11:13If you're going to go there in front of me. I'm in front of the wrong person. That's my favorite movie. That's true. Don't even. Yes, he was talking about Morpheus when he was tied up in the chair. It's the smell. You know what? You got to have some really serious BO for a computer to tell you you stink. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. All right. Let's get through the electronics. Into the... So this is AlexGreg56 from Instagram, and AlexGreg says this. If the universe needs not make any sense to us, then what is the point of doing science? Is science not, in fact, the discipline of trying to grasp what's around us?

11:58By the way, is this statement not equal to the old one, which is God has his reason to make it that way. So just don't ask. Of course, I never heard that expression. But the shorter version of that is God works in mysterious ways. That is so true. When you can't explain it. Well, God, the Lord works in mysterious ways. And if you can't explain it using God, then you do. Right. Oh, God has blessed you. You blessed God. Then there's a tsunami. It takes out a quarter million people. God hates you. No one says that. No one says that. Why don't we say that? We should say that. You know, I want to start saying, you know what?

12:40I think God hates you. Well, the most hateful God in our culture is the one represented on insurance forms. Oh, that's so true. Acts of God. Acts of God. Right. It's only very bad things. No one says flowers bloomed in your garden. An act of God. Right. No, it's tsunami took out your house. That's an act of God. And now you're homeless on the street. Act of God. Wow. Look at that. This moment of God hates you. Brought to you by Farmers Insurance. Stay far. Stay far. What's that one? Nationwide. It's not on your side. Nationwide is on your side. God is not. All right. Okay. That's enough. I'm going to get some hate mail now.

13:27Chunk, you hate God, Chunk? Is that it? Okay. Sorry. so so is science in fact the discipline of trying to grasp what is around us he started quoting me where I said I opened my book the astrophysics for people in a hurry with the quote the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you what that means is your five traditional senses which rose up out of the Serengeti, which help us not get eaten by lions. Right. They're very good at that. They're not as good at contemplating infinity. They're not good contemplating timescales much longer than your life expectancy. That's so true. You can't intuit billions of years.

14:17You can't intuit infinitesimals. There are things that are hard for us. Right. There are things that may even be impossible for us. Can you picture a five-dimensional cube? No, I cannot. No, you cannot. Can you picture a four-dimensional cube? Probably not. Probably not. Actually, the Tesseract is close. Yeah. That's like a... I can actually picture that. Because I've seen a drawing. I have a Tesseract. Do you really? I do. Get out. Yeah. Oh. Should I... All right. I'll bring it in one day. Yeah. Another episode. Another episode. It'll be the episode of Higher Dimensions. Sweet. Do a whole thing on just Higher Dimensions.

14:51Oh, that's a good episode. Can we do that? Yeah, I like that. We did that? We did that already. How come I don't remember? Man, I'm getting old. Did I have my Tesseract in my hand? Well, now we got to do it again. Update it. I took this from Thanos. So what it means is if you are going to deduce what is or is not true in the universe, your senses are not the most reliable measure of whether it's true. So true. because the senses give you a restricted understanding of what's actually going on in the universe. Your eyes, you would never trade them for anything, yet they only expose your mind to a very tiny, narrow strip of all the electromagnetic energy that's out there.

15:40You can't see infrared. You can feel it as heat, but you can't see it. Ultraviolet, you can't see that either. You can feel that in a delayed sense by getting sunburn and skin cancer. It's not telling you in that instant it's a time delay. But keep going out. There's infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma rays. Can't see any of that. But the universe is talking to you in that. So are you going to say, my senses give me everything that there is in the universe, and therefore it makes sense? No. As long as we detect things that fall outside of our senses, it's a challenge for you to declare that what we say, do, and discover makes sense.

16:19the very statement makes sense means your senses can contemplate it. Right. That your senses have experience. If I let go of a ball and it floats up, you'll say that doesn't make sense. Right. Because your senses always told you if you let go of a ball, it drops. And in fact, the very statement, let it go, not the frozen version, but just let it go means drop it. They mean the same thing. But that can only be true on Earth with a force of gravity pointing down. In space, in free orbit, you let go. It just floats there. It stays right there. It stays right there. Like my problems. It stays right there.

16:57Yeah. I must be in space because all my problems, somebody says, drop it. And I say, I did that right. It's still here. And you let it go and it's still there. Exactly. So my point is, the methods and tools of science give you a way to understand what is true without it being hinged on whether your senses think it's true. Nice. So the messages and tools of science are access to truth, where you can still probe the universe, whereas God works in mysterious ways kind of ends that conversation. Whereas I say I developed a new instrument that can see in ways humans cannot. Oh, my gosh, that opens entire worlds of investigation, entire branches of science.

17:40All right.

17:55I'm Ali Khan Hemraj, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

18:13Okay, Chuck, here we go. So, this is from Probably Asleep. That's the name of the person? That's the name of the person. Okay. I like that. Your mama didn't like you. Yeah. How long do you think the human race will actually survive? Wow. I mean, there's precedent for that, right? Well, so you can look at what is the average life expectancy of mammals, mammal species. And last I checked, it was around 2 million years, something like that. And so we've been around - We have a long way to go. We have a long way to go. We've been around a couple hundred thousand years in our current anatomical form, Cro-Magnon form.

18:50Right. And so that means we have a long way to go. But this presumes that the species is not smart enough to kill itself. Well, then it's over. It was nice to know you guys. Yeah. We have invented multiple ways to kill ourselves. Yeah. And I don't think the elephants did or nobody else did this. Right. The mice, no. They're not killing themselves. Right. Humans, yes. Yeah, maybe cockroaches invented human beings. Why? Because when everything's gone, they're going to be the only ones left. No, no, then they don't have to invent us in the first place. What kind of reasoning are you using here? They want everything else gone.

19:28No, they need us to build the structures that they then move into. Right, that they move into. Yeah, yeah. I don't mind it. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, we are. so I think what he's really asking is in your estimation from your sage opinion how long do you think we will last I give us 20 years no

19:56that's funny no I think we're good this is why many people want to become a two planet species terraform Mars send some humans there So if something bad happens on Earth, you still have humans somewhere else. Wow. That is not encouraging at all. Not for half the people who aren't on the planet. Exactly, yeah. So if an asteroid comes, if a killer virus, if AI gets out of hand. So I understand seeding something with a remnant for survival of the species, that's extraneous. I mean, that's something that's outside of our own destruction. You know, even though we could stop an asteroid from hitting us if we put the resources.

20:36We know how. Ain't nobody doing it, but we know how. If we put the resources into it, we could stop even that from happening. So what's the example you're giving? So what do you mean? To stop the asteroid? No, no. So what I'm saying is, you know, will we ever get to a place where the, as the Buddhist monks call it, the so-called monkey brain that causes us to do so much destructive work to each other and to the planet. Will we ever get to a place where we overcome that or we're able to train those who come behind us to overcome that? Now, it does happen in some people. I get it. First, I've never heard a Buddhist monk say the phrase monkey brain.

21:25I've never heard that. Yeah. Is this a thing? This is a thing. Okay, fine. That is a thing. I'm going to attend more monasteries. You feeling monkey brain today? Yes. All right. Delicious. So I've heard of reptilian brain, but not monkey brain. Yes. Okay. So the reptilian brain is referenced something primal. Right. That goes on within you. So if we follow the reasoning by Steven Pinker in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, he studied the likelihood of you dying before maturity or dying before adulthood or just dying. Okay. from at the hands of another human from early days of tribal warfare to modern days of of state sanctioned global warfare and what he found is that the likelihood of you dying in that way has been dropping ever since okay so tribal warfare you could you would kill maybe a third or half of the other tribe and or the entire tribe and then you win and you get their land that doesn't happen today.

22:26True. The state surrenders before that happened. True. Saving the lives of the rest of the population. If you look at, I did this just recently. If you look at what countries had the greatest percent of their population die in the Second World War. Was it Belarus? One of them is very high. It's like a third. All right. I forgot the exact numbers, but they're high. But they're not a half. And you keep going down and you get to even combat Germany. even ones that were heavily bombed? Germany, Japan, a fraction of the total population. That is not how it used to end in tribal warfare. So, now consider that even so, during the Second World War, between 1939 and 1945, 1 ,000 humans were killed by other humans per hour for every hour from 1939 to 1945.

23:21Wow. Is that going on today? No. No. No. We're really slipping. No, stop. We really got to pick up our game. Just so we can bet. Yeah. So the point is, often that era is called the greatest generation. Right. Well, because they fought evil forces and this sort of thing. Although my father fought in a segregated army. So he's not thinking that was the greatest generation. He has other perspectives on that period. It's the second greatest generation. My point is, is the greatest generation the one where the fewest fraction of everyone dies out of hate? We might have a lot of hate, but if the number of people who die from it is lower than ever before, then this arc that you were hinting at, that maybe a next generation learns from the previous one, maybe that's going to work.

24:12Europe, with all of their turbulence and turmoil, they actually haven't been at war with each other for 70 years. Right. Is there another 70-year period in the history of Europe where nobody was fighting anybody? I don't think so. Not if Twitter has anything to do with it. What you're saying is, imagine if Twitter existed back then. Back then, oh my gosh. Let me tell you something. The war wouldn't have stopped until everybody was dead. People would have said, I surrender. A tweet would have gone out and be like, I take it back. Let's keep fighting. Let's keep fighting. I don't care. I hate you more.

24:49Right. So maybe we are getting kinder, kinder and gentler. Time still needs to bear that out on a level that would please everyone. But I still worry that this primal brain will always segregate us all by some arbitrary factor and thereby justify doing harm to other groups. Interesting. That's, I think you're right. Who was the comedian? Was it Franklin Ajay? One of these guys from the 70s. Back in the day? In the day. Yeah. In the day. He was talking about who hates who in the world, right? And he says, read the papers and what? In Northern Ireland, the Protestants and the Catholics are fighting each other?

25:36Right. And they're both white? Yeah. He said, you know I don't have a chance because I'm black. That's funny. That's true. Yeah. Right. If white people divide themselves up in that way, two Christian communities killing each other? Right, yeah. And they're both white and they're both Christian. It's over for you, brother. It's over for everybody else. If people can kill each other for those reasons, it's almost no hope in this world. So, yeah, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, so I'm sorry I don't have a good answer. That was a pretty good answer. The answer is we're not going to make it. I'd like to think we go thousands of years into the future and possibly outlive the sun.

26:11All right. That'd be great. By star hopping to other planetary systems. You know, I'm just going to say that's the way it's going to end because I won't be here. So that's great. Maybe. It has been said that the first person who will never die is now alive. What? That's a, well. No, that's how you do it. I know what you're saying. So they get some new thing that makes you live an extra 50 years. So now you live to 150 instead of 100. And then somewhere in there, there's another thing we get. Now you live another 200 years. So the 150 goes to 350. Now you can live 500 years. Now you go to 1 ,000.

26:45You can live 5 ,000 years now. So as we progress in our understanding of what ages you, if we can reverse that or prevent it from ever advancing, there's someone alive today who will benefit from that. That's pretty cool. I like it. So if that happens, you better find another planet. This is true, yeah. That's the premise of a show called Altered Carbon, where people actually take their consciousness and put it into what they call a sleeve, which is the body. I think I voiceovered the opening sequence to that show. Oh, my God. I think we had that conversation once where you told me that. Because I told you I was a fan.

27:20I don't remember if it was the pilot or the other shows, but I lent my voice to the cause. Nice. Wow. All right. Well, let's go to Joey 24, Joey Jr. 24. He says this personal question. Based on all your experiences and knowledge thus far. Personal for me or for you? Personal for you. Okay. Nobody asking me anything. He says, based on all of your experiences and knowledge thus far, what do you think the meaning of our human existence is? He just asked you, what is the meaning of life, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So, in my next book. Uh-oh. You never hear me plug my stuff. I was going to say, here's the meaning of life right now.