#2184 - Sara Imari Walker

24:29And I'm completely fascinated by how animals interact with each other. I mean, I can watch nature documentaries all day long. Invasive species are weird, right? Because when something happens and someone brings a turtle to an island where it doesn't belong or when someone brings a goat to a place that doesn't belong or Australia, which is a fantastic example, there's like so many animals that are non -native invasive species, asiatic buffaloes, there's millions of them, they have to fly overhead and shoot them down with helicopters because there's so many of them. Humans are kind of like that.

25:05Aren't we kind of like that? I mean, if there's an animal that doesn't live in sync with its environment in nature and overwhelms the boundaries and seems to exist in some different sort of space than everything else, everything else, there's sort of a balance between predator and prey, resources and birth rates. There's all this sort of symbiotic interaction with nature, with a natural world, but we're wild. Like we're just dumping shit into the ocean and killing all the fish, polluting the sky, driving in our cars, and flying in our planes, and still talking about climate change, and injecting people with chemicals and trying to make more babies.

25:47Yeah, we're also doing a lot of good for the planet, again, optimists, but I... Sure, sort of, but there's so many of us. We are on every damn rock that you could find, it's habitable. We are essentially rats. We go everywhere we can go, which is like an invasive species thing. Yeah, I think you could talk about it that way, and I think people do. I don't really think that's a useful narrative. I love us. Don't get me wrong. I'm not an anti -person, but I'm just objectively analyzing our behavior in our impact or environment. And it's very similar to wild pigs getting introduced into an area where they don't have natural predators.

26:26Yeah, I think part of the challenge is actually thinking about the levels of organization that biology has. So what I mean is like individuals are not actually the problem in what you're describing. It would be like human societies or the problem. And humans have, because we have societies and organization that enable us to do these things, like we're able to take over all these environments and things. But the way I think about life is much more at the planetary scale. So for me, going all the way back to the original life, life doesn't happen just in one environment. It happens in all environments.

27:02And it's really like a planetary scale transition. Like something happened on our planet with enough geochemical environments mixing to mediate this global transition. And when you look at the evolution of life, you get these kind of hierarchies where like cells evolved and then multi -cellular organisms like cephalopods and plants and fungi and us. And then we get things that build societies like ant colonies or human societies. And it just seems to me it's like it's a natural progression of the evolutionary process to build more complex systems at larger collective scales that are doing having more impact on the planet and restructuring more of it.

27:38And if life wants to get off this planet, it has to go through something like us. So I don't think, I think we can look at it from the couple hundred year timescale and say these things are terribly negative and predator pray this that and the other thing. But if you look at it over the billions year time scale, there's a really different picture that emerges about what we are and what we're doing. Isn't it a fascinating thought though that you immediately and we all do go to if life gets off this planet? Yes. So that seems to be something that we have baked into us. We have this idea of exploring the universe.

28:11So wouldn't something else have that too? Sure. Something else had that and it was 100 million years more advanced than us and it found us still throwing shit at each other and beat each other to death with sticks. Wouldn't it come in and go, man, what is this? Would you? Yes. You would. Yeah, would you fuck with it? Like what would you do? 100%. Yeah, I would do exactly what they did. I think that's what curious things do. Oh, like experiment on them? Yes, 100%. Yeah. We do with animals all the time. We make different cars. How you learn? Yeah. We also, we don't seem to have a problem with sort of manipulating things that we consider lower than us on the evolutionary scale.

28:51Yeah. I think that's a problem but I don't know that that's one that can be solved. So this issue of trying to treat every living entity in sort of a quality, I don't actually think it's possible to treat. Well, you can't because they won't do that to you. No, but you can't even eat something. So if you value plants more than animals and you want to eat plants, then you're valuing, you're making value statements. But plants are, they're still alive when you eat them. Not only that, there's evidence as a sentient. Plants exchange resources, they communicate through mycelium. There's a lot more plants.

29:30There's a lot of complicated information processing going on in plants. Yeah. We are very sort of egocentric to think that our version of consciousness is the only version of consciousness. And I always say that when I talk about dolphins and orcas, like to me, it's one of the biggest crimes of modern civilization that we keep those things in fish tanks. Yes, I totally agree with that. I totally agree. I think they're just like us. I just think they can't manipulate their environment. Yes. So we essentially have these slave pools where people celebrate with your children to stare at the slaves.

30:04I think they're an insanely intelligent species that just doesn't manipulate its environment. And we're so egocentric in our concept of like what means what does intelligent mean? Can you control your environment? Do you have a house? Did you make a house? Do you have a car? Like how do you get around? Do you communicate with each other through cell phones? Well, then you must be stupid. You know, like we have this idea. And you have to have the iPhone 16. It can be the 14 because then you're really stupid. Yeah, well, if you're going to make things, you're going to make better things all the time.

30:32And you're going to keep up with the Joneses. But there's this weirdness that we have attached intelligence to ability to manipulate the environment. And we need to ignore language, the fact that they have cerebral cortex, 40 % larger than ours, the fact that they have different dialects that they speak in different areas, different accents, different way they can... And we don't even know what they're saying. We're trying to use AI to recognize the secret. No, I love this stuff about digital bio -custics and decoding languages. It might be our only way. Yeah, it's an amazing field. I think it's going to take a while before we really realize the potential of it.

31:10But it's super exciting what people are trying to do. Well, they've been doing interspecies communication research forever. Yeah. And they've got nowhere. They've got nowhere. Like with the leery stuff. Or not leery. The guy who made the sensory deprivation tank. Goddamn it. I don't know who that is. I think. It's locked in my head. I can't... I always know this guy's name. And... What is it? Oh.

31:39Lily. John Lily, thank you. Oh god. Why does that happen? Like that's a problem with the mind. Yeah, because you can't remember everything. You forget things. So you have more information. I have too much shit in there. Yeah. I need a clean house. It's hard. It's really hard. But Lily, he invented a sensory deprivation tank. And one of the things that he would do with the sensory deprivation tank, he was trying to create an environment where your body in the physical senses of the body don't influence the mind at all. So there's more resources for the mind. Yeah. And he was setting up these tanks next to dolphin tanks and taking LSD and trying to communicate with dolphins.

32:15I have heard about these things. He did a lot of really wild things with dolphins. But none of it really... He has a whole generation that had a lot of wild things with dolphins. But yeah, I think there's a lot of progress in animal communication. But I think we're very far from understanding whether animals are communicating at all like us and in what ways. It might be very limited in thinking that this is the only way. Well, it's your point about anthropocentrising. We just... We have our bubble. We think about the world this way. And the human way is the only way in the right way. And we put our notions of intelligence on other species.

32:50And if they don't match, we think they're not intelligent. And that's just not right. Also, we're thinking about this animal like an orca or a dolphin with a 40 % larger cerebral cortex. And why are we discounting the possibility of some sort of telepathic communication? Like it sounds and frequencies are attached to feelings. And that there's something going on that's not like, I love you. Like in words. But some sort of expression that's different than our concept of language. Yeah, I would say it's certainly possible that they're communicating things that are emotional or much more intelligent than we give them credit for.

33:29They were just like with their patterns of speech because they're pretty complex. Yeah, yeah. And then if you think about alien life, you always think about alien life like us. You think about an alien life that, well, we kind of physically needed to do that in order to conquer the surrounding predators. If we wanted to evolve and we wanted to stay alive and gather resources, we had to figure out a way to keep the animals from eating us. Yeah, and then just like survive in our environment. Yeah, right. Animals are one danger, but there's plenty of other ones. Like you don't want to eat the wrong berries.

34:05You want to like make sure that you have warm clothes and winter. Right. I mean, it's hell out there. Yeah, it's a lot. Survival's hard. Whereas dolphins are in warm water. Yeah. Before we came along, there was a debundance of fish. Seems like you don't have to do too much more. You guys got it nailed. Yeah, they probably live in paradise until we came along. Yeah. Stop consuming pools. Now they live in these noisy oceans. Are they in a pool? Yeah, both things, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think this is one of the things that really motivated me to really, like, I mean, obviously I love theoretical physics and thinking deeply about the nature of reality.

34:37But why pick the problem of life? And I think life is so complicated. Like all the examples you're giving, we don't really understand what it's like to be another species or even to be another human, quite honestly. And I think without, like, if we had a deep understanding of the nature of life, these kind of questions would be much easier. I mean, when you want to talk about a psychedelic experience, imagine if VR could put you, I mean, if there was some sort of an integrated VR that gets to, like, a real, like, matrix sort of state where it allows you to have the thought processes of a being for a short amount of time, like if they could record, yeah, to push thought process and put it in your brain.

35:18Yes. And give you the feeling of what it means. You would be human for a little while. Yeah. But you imagine the feeling of what it is to be an octopus, not just like, wow, I can see the ocean in my language. But instead, think like an octopus for a brief period of time. Yeah. I think that would be amazing. Amazing. I've thought about, like, what must it be like to be a plant? I mean, like, you know, most places have like a plant in every room, and it's like the plants experiencing the room right now. Like, what is it doing? It's like, just weird. If you actually try to think about it, like, what does it feel like to be a plant?

35:49And it grows better if you play classical music? Yeah. I mean, their way of expressing their personality, so to speak, or like, their morphology is like, you know, like, their shape is like their expression of their behavior. Like animals can move around in an environment, but a plant just grows. So its shape is its behavior, which is kind of crazy. It is kind of crazy. Just the whole interaction that they have with each other, the fact that we've only figured that out over the last few decades. Yeah. And if you ever seen like, time -lapse photos of plants, they interact with each other. Yeah, that's been amazing.

36:24Yeah. Wrap around each other and hug each other. Yeah. It's crazy. But we have a hard time even with plants, not anthropocenturizing with the kind of experiments we want to do to learn how they're intelligent. Because they're using a lot of animal -based experimental programs to try to test plant intelligence, and they probably don't fit plant intelligence. Because their intelligence is so different. Right. So it's really hard to say like, what kinds of properties they actually have. And so if we think about the wide potential for variability in terms of planets out there in the known universe, you would imagine that there'd probably be a lot of intelligent animals that would find some sort of Goldilocks thing like dolphins had, where they don't really need to manipulate their environment.

37:09They're kind of dominant over sharks. You know, they're not really worried about getting eaten by other things. These are the aliens will never meet because they had no reason to go out and explore in conquer. So they're like the Navi and Avatar. Yeah. They're aliens with they're kind of like, you know, synced up, which is really fascinating too, because like that movie caused people to get depressed that they don't live like the Navi. Do you know that that was like a real, like, die ghost thing? I know that was a real thing. That's crazy. Yeah, it's called the Avatar Depression. Really? Yeah, and people would go to see that movie, and those people lived in such spiritual harmony with their mother planet.

37:43And they just, they wrote around on these flying dragons, and they were honest and noble. And like, we were like, God, I want to be them. And so people would like go back to their, you know, apartment, people beeping their horns, and pollution and garbage on the street, and crazy, almost people. And be like, fuck, I want to live in Navi and land. I want to live in Pandora. I want to live like them. So people got depressed. Weird. Yeah, Avatar Depression was like a real thing. That's so crazy. So I call just, we're dealing with it. They had to see people in the couch. But the idea of utopia is like so oversold.

38:17I mean, I think there's some like, like, it's, I don't know, like, I don't think such things exist. I don't think utopia exists, but I think harmony exists. Harmony for sure. And I think that, but you have to work hard for it. Yes. And that's the, I think that's the thing. Like, I think there's some conception that there's some easy path to harmony, and harmony requires work, and it requires constant work. Constant work. Yeah, there's no days off. No. I also think that we are, we are, we have created a world in which harmony is very difficult to acquire. Because our world and the structure of doing a thing that you probably do not want to do for most of your day to pay off debt, or something that you really didn't need to, you know, education that you turn up, you don't use.

39:00And all this different stuff that keeps, it's very difficult for people in this environment, this, especially urban environments that we've fastened to create harmony. Whereas people that live like in hunter gatherer tribes, and people that live subsistence lifestyles, in particular, they report much higher levels of satisfaction, happiness, less depression. I think debts really hard, because you're constantly aspiring to things, and you're right. Like, it's just totally baked in. Like, you know, you know, you can still have student loan debt from like, you know, it's just like, it's like, you want to do, you want to be, yeah, you just, you take on debt, you try to do something with, yeah, it's pretty bad.

39:38There was a vice series a long time ago back when vice like was really first starting out, and it was a vice guy to travel, and they went to visit this guy who lives in the Arctic Circle, and he's been there since like the 1970s. I think you went out there initially as a logger. He's one of the last few people to have a, he has a permit for a cabin out there. So he lives in this small cabin with no windows, sort of, like while they were filming, he had a shoot at Grizzly Bear that was trying to kill his dog. Oh, dear God. And steal his food. He's had dogs. It's nice for like six hours. It is very hard.

40:12I can't imagine. The point is that this guy does live in harmony though, and he's very healthy and very happy. And you know, the way he talks about, like he's a very intelligent person. Yeah. You know, he's not like some weird caveman who's out there in the woods trying to care about it. No, I think most of the people that do, like, it's a choice, right, to actually decide to live that way. Well, for him, it certainly is, but it's also, he has an ability to communicate that's unique for a guy who does that, because it's not like he's talking to a lot of intelligent people all the time. I mean, he's essentially out there by himself.

40:45Yeah, that's super hard. Does he read a lot? I don't know. It's a good question. But he seems to have, like, he's synced up with nature. He's catching fish and he's hunting animals and that's all he's eating. Yeah. He lives off of that. And this guy wakes up every morning and says, what do I need to do to stay alive another day? And he just goes out and does that. Which seems like for us we're like, oh my God, that sounds terrible. But does it really sound more terrible than going to a job at some corporation that doesn't give a shit about you? That will cut you if the stock is down and you've dedicated 25 years of your life to this company and also you're gone.

41:22And now you don't know what to do and you're on unemployment. And like, what did I do with my life? I'm 46. What the fuck happened? That's a lot of people. Whereas this guy, he knows what he's going to do tomorrow. He knows what he's going to do the next day. And everyone. And also he knows his life matters every day. Yeah. Like I think this is a thing we forget is like, you know, our life is a choice. And you know, like, and you're fighting for like whatever way you want to live your life. But we're kind of just in the daily grind. We lose our connection to that existential reality that like our lives are finite.

41:51And I think it really changes your perception of things when you really think about the fact that you have a finite amount of time. Yes. And food's not guaranteed. Yes. That's another thing. Well, survival's not guaranteed, right? So we take for granted survival. And therefore we take for granted that we're alive at all in some sense. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So when you start studying all these things and thinking about life and thinking about the various possibilities of life, what is the lowest single -celled organism? How long ago do we think that that emerged? I think current estimates are that life, like the oldest fossils that we can identify and like tracing back genomically about 3 .8 billion years ago.

42:36So essentially somewhere around a billion or so years that we can find from the time Earth is formed? Yes. Yeah. So Earth, we think, you know, formed between 4 .5 and 4 billion years ago. So like four billion years ago we kind of had Earth as we understand it. Mostly now we don't know if there were oceans. But the moon forming impact had happened. That's Earth 1 and Earth 2. The impact with some other plants? Yeah. Yeah. I think it was called. It was just smacked in Earth and then made our moon must have been really traumatic. I think most people think life didn't happen before that because if it did it would have been obliterated.

43:09But we really don't know. So yeah, current estimates are around, you know, like four to 3 .7 and 3 .8 billion years ago. So somewhere a billion or less than a billion years later something emerges? Yes. And how do we think that happened? There is no consensus. None. Yeah, I know. Isn't that fun? It's fun. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It's totally crazy. That's why I like this problem because nobody knows what happened. Wow. And there's a lot of... So what are the primary theories? There's a lot of speculation. You know, those sort of canonical ones that you'll hear about are usually like the RNA world that life started with an RNA molecule, which like RNA is still in our bodies today.

43:51So like DNA, most people are probably familiar with, gets translated, like, transcribed into RNA. And then the RNA is what's used to make proteins. So RNA kind of does a dual role. So people think, oh, maybe it happened early on and it was the first life. And then there's like other hypotheses, like hydrothermal vents, and sort of energy first approaches to origins of life that like we had some metabolism that was organizing. But all of these are really speculative. And I think the issue is that we're trying to take molecules that are in the DNA. In modern living systems, and trying to understand how they can emerge in a pre -bathic environment on the early Earth, and not really thinking about how the Earth and the geochemistry on the Earth had to evolve into a living system.

44:38So it had like selection had to happen, evolution had to happen before life. And this is sort of the critical gap that we're really missing is like, what is that mechanism? And that's where assembly theory is supposed to be coming in, is trying to give us a mechanism for how chemical systems can evolve before we even have a living cell. For example, and like in trying to iterate what those missing stages are, because we just don't know what they look like right now. Well, I was like, what would the evolutionary advantage of becoming a cell be? I think, well, so that's a great question. But one of the problems at this area is like we don't know what question's to ask.

45:13So I actually don't know that that's the right question. I think when you think about it much more deeply about like the physics of life and the way that we've been describing it already, if you think physics, like what life is doing as a mechanism in the universe, is maximizing the amount of stuff that gets to exist, for example. Like there's this whole world of complex objects that cannot exist, unless there's a living architecture that can select and constrain the space to make, you know, something like this instead of like the universes of other things those atoms could be arranged in. So if you think that there's something that deep and that fundamental about the nature of life, the original life transition has something to do with the emergence of systems that basically can persist.

45:52They can survive against this sort of random chemical noise, like the chemical soup is just a mess of things being created in the short, created in the short. And you get something that basically can reinforce its own existence enough to keep existing and then building more complex stuff. And that's really the original life transition is pretty simple to say like that, but trying to build an experiment and understand the sort of chemical architecture that mediates that transition is quite hard. And that's where we're at right now. And so experiments are being done to try and create? How do they conduct these?

46:21So that's my collaborator Lee Kronin is a chemist and he's totally brilliant. And actually him and I are probably, you know, I don't know, like what we're trying to do is a little bit crazy to solve the original life. But you know, like I had an, like he's doing the experimental stuff, but like the sort of idea we had in mind is like, all right, a book, try to get the ideas out there, get people excited about thinking about this space. And he'll start a company that will digitize chemistry and try to raise the funds to actually do the experiments. So he's trying to build the technology and experiments.

46:52It's built on this platform he has for building robots that basically do the chemistry for you. And the idea being if we could build a large enough experiment, we could search that huge space of chemistry, a little bit like a search algorithm for chemistry. And then be able to look in chemical space and try to discover aliens. Whoa. And an origin of life experiment on Earth. And so that's what we're trying to do. Whoa. I'm really excited. I hope it happens. Imagine if you guys, if someone does something like this, maybe to you, maybe someone else, someone does something like this and creates an artificial life form, and then starts manipulating that life form and evolving that life form.

47:35Yes. Through some of the aliens processes. Yeah. So I mean, there are benefits to that, right? So, so least company chemifies a digital chemistry company. And their stated aim is to be able to 3D print any molecule on demand, right? So this has huge impact for the pharmaceutical industry. But like the real goal is to make an artificial life form in the lab. But that also has huge impact for humanity. Because you imagine that now you have the ability to study in this other system, all of these other kinds of chemistries, like what can you do for like antibiotic discovery or pharmaceutical drug discovery or even psychedelic drug discovery if people like that?

48:11But you know, like there's a crazy amount of new technology and new insights fundamentally to come out of that. But I also don't think that we're really going to understand these other kind of technologies that we're building. Like when we're thinking about artificial intelligence and like is that alive or not, unless we solve this chemical problem of what life is, because I think the chemical problem is much harder, but much more direct as far as like understanding the fundamental nature of life when you solve it in an experimental program. Biological life. Biological life. Chemical life. Because it won't be biology as we know it, right?

48:43That's the whole point. Right, that's the whole point. It'll be alien biology that we evolve in the lab. Right. And I actually think this is how we're going to make first contact with the alien life, because I think we won't recognize it unless we understand what it is. Wow. What ethical concerns would arise when you take a thing, like let's say, what's advanced this whole process a few hundred years from now? And you've created artificial life, you've created this thing that doesn't exist anywhere else. And then instead of it being subject to natural selection as a vehicle for its advancement, instead we just start fucking with it.

49:19Yeah. And then it gets to a point where there's an ethical concern. Like, hey, this thing is about to get smarter than us. What do we do? I think there's ethical concerns right along the way. And I don't know that I know immediate answers to those. So, you know, it's kind of like this is the part where it's a little existential traumatic to work on these kind of problems. So I have a friend that's a philosopher Ben Bratt and he says the best kind of like ideas are the ones that are like equally like really exciting and horrifying. And like you want to work on those ideas because you don't know what it's like future is going to be.

49:48And I tend to be on the optimistic side. I think we need to solve this problem because I think we have this sort of existential crisis in some sense that humanity is facing because we don't understand what we are. We don't understand what our technologies are doing. We don't understand what our long term future holds. We don't even understand all the life around us on this planet. So we solve that problem. I think that the lens through which we will look at the kind of ethical things that you're talking about will be radically different because the knowledge itself will have turned us. So I can't even anticipate what those kind of dialogues are going to be like.

50:17Imagine if like instead of just wondering about cephalopods and plants and stuff on this conversation, we actually had a fundamental understanding of what it is to be other life forms and life as a, you know, as part of the fundamental structure of reality and like participatory in actually like what the universe builds. And you have that kind of understanding. I think it radically changes the way that we conceptualize who we are and what we're doing and I don't, you know, I don't know what that looks like. And we would assume that if we continue, especially down the path of AI and quantum computing, they're probably going to solve a lot of these problems.

50:55Yeah, I think we're flying blind in those areas though really, especially AI. I mean, I think that that's pretty obvious that, you know, there's a huge amount of debate about the nature of intelligence in these artificial algorithms. I certainly think that they're life, but I think they're life in the sense that the lineage of information necessary to train a large language model, for example, you know, requires a planet to evolve something like us and evolve language and then enough data about that language to train the model. So it's a direct descendant like you were saying, like, you know, or technology is our babies.

51:26But so there's that part of it. But I think, I don't know, I totally lost my train of thought. This is very funny. It went two ways and I don't know which way I want to go. That's very funny. Yeah, what was your question again? I'm so sorry. That's a good question. I remember what my question was. So we're both in the same boat. The idea was that artificial intelligence would enhance our understanding of what it means to be biological. Oh, I see. Yeah. And you were asking about quantum information. Yes. And that with when computing power is massively increased and you have a sentient artificial intelligence that essentially has all the information that we have of every human being, all of the database, everything all over the world, but yet far more capable processing this and advanced that maybe it'll have a more complex understanding of what life is.

52:18Yeah. So there, yeah. So I think I think there's like a sort of subtlety here when you're talking about artificial intelligence and whether it could compete with natural intelligence. So this is sort of the canonical debate about the nature of artificial intelligence. But I think we really underestimate what chemistry can do. And I think some of the most powerful computers on this planet are still chemical. And if we actually understand chemistry better, you know, with these kind of new digital chemistry technologies, the kind of compute we can get out of chemistry might actually outcompete silicon in the long run.

52:49And then there's also the concept of hybrids, right? Yes. When we comes high. I like, I like that concept. But this gets into the blurry area of like, are you human anymore? Like if you have a chip in your brain and you're, you're like being a cephalopod and then you morph into like, you know, being, you know, on your own desktop. Like, are you still human? Well, that's what I always say about like if you go back to Australia, Pithicus and explain him airplanes and cell phones. But you can't be Australia, Pithicus anymore. I'd be like, whoa, I don't want to stop being me. Yeah. You know, wouldn't that be the same reaction that they have?

53:25I think probably probably terrified. I don't want to become a person. I don't want to become an alien. Yeah. I think that's what we've become. Yeah. I think also intergenerational we're already doing that. So like the sort of, you know, people will always talk about how kids are more comfortable with technology than their parents or grandparents. And why are they more comfortable because they grew up in a totally different environment? Right. Like the world has literally changed in the last few decades. So like the world that kids are growing up today is not the world that it was when kids are growing up like 50 years ago.

53:56Right. And so they are quote, quote, alien, not really alien, but like they're they're really fundamentally different in in a lot of ways. And I think it's okay to recognize that. Like that's, you know, part of the progression of understanding and the fact that the world is changing. And if we're looking at it from generation to generation, let's scale that up a thousand years or a hundred thousand years or a million years. Those are fun thought experiments. Yeah. It's really is Cepicus. The amount of change that's happened in terms of technology and our ability to access it over the past hundred years is enormous.

54:28Yeah. But yet we're still the same biological creature. Like how long does that stay? Like when is that? When do we start integrating when even if we didn't integrate how much of it would change us? Yeah. I mean, I think we're already seeing signs of that, right? Like people's like fear of leaving their cell phone behind. You know, it's like extensible brains. We're all pretty much attached to our cell phone already. So when you just, you know, you can imagine in a generation or two, it's more comfortable just to have that inside your body. So then you don't lose it. Yes. Right. And so. Some people choosing to have it on their wrist.

54:59Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like we're in the very bizarre doorway period where we're sort of like about to go through this doorway of transhumanism. We're like, we're thinking like the phone thing. Like we don't want to let it go. We do the car that you have to have a, I don't know how to get anywhere without my navigation system. You know, all that stuff. Look, we're completely connected in some new strange way that we've just sort of accepted as normal now. And accepted, I mean, for you and I, it's over the course of our lifetime. I mean, when I was a child, there was no internet. I remember very distinctly when it emerged.

55:33Yeah. It was, I was like 27 years old. It was the first time I got a computer and I got online. I'm like, this is crazy. And that was the, you've got mail. Yeah. I owe, I was like mind blowing to me. Mind blowing. I know instant messaged. Mind blowing. You get chat with people back and forth about the computer. This is crazy. I think you could, this research things that find out things. And then when bandwidth started increasing and then you started to be able to watch videos and YouTube comes along. How many people have, there's obviously a lot of nonsense on things like YouTube. But how many people have become educated on so many different things?

56:09Oh, it's brilliant. Yeah. I think it's incredible. There's so much to know. And you can like on any subject. Right. Quantum physics on carpentry, whatever it is. There's millions of videos. It is, I know all of a sudden, you're instantaneously. You're obviously watching some professor discuss what it means to be alive. Yeah. That's crazy. I love the time we're living in. I think a lot of people want to complain about it, but I think it's fabulous. It's the best. You wouldn't want to live in the 80s. All the music sucked. People were on Coke. The hair was great. The hair was interesting. But it was like, that was a dumb time.

56:46This is a better time. It's a better time to be alive. Now is perfect. For us. But the people in the future are going to be like, imagine living in California. I know. Imagine that presidential election they had to go through. Imagine this and that and Israel and Gaza and whoa, whoa, whoa. They're going to look back at us. How did we do it the way we look back at cave people? Right. But I think the things that they're going to ask about are not the things that we think that they're going to ask about. What do you think they're going to ask about? I don't know. I set myself up for that. No, it's not an easy answer.

57:17That's so bad. I totally did that. Well, I think I don't know. You don't know what historical moments are right now. We cite things that we think are historical and I don't think that they are. And often times it's really interesting because people imagine the future being radically different than the present. But Ken Liu is a science fiction author. He's got this great take that like if you want to actually predict the future, look at the things that haven't changed in centuries or haven't changed in decades. And those things are likely still to persist and be the same. And so like when he was talking about this, he had a picture of like, you know, some futuristic thing from like the 1930s.

57:56And there was like a maid in like the black outfit with the white thing. And they're like, which of these things is still around? Like she's vacuuming. And it's like just, you know, on the side of the photo. And there's all these like robots and things, you know, like outside. And like nothing looks the same except for like we still have the same made outfits and vacuums and we recognize those. And that was like predicted a hundred years ago, right? So it's like it's weird our conception of things and like how much change there is. And of course we, you know, we're our brains are tuned to look out for the things that are dangerous and changing in our environment.

58:24And so we're always hyper sensitive to things that are changing are changing without like recognizing how much is still the same. Interesting. And I also think we were we were aware of how much of an impact technology in particular the Internet has had on us. But probably not as much as someone who's studying history will be aware of it. Yeah. To them, it'll almost be like a ball went off. Yeah. Yeah. And I love talking with historians, especially like the ideas I work on right. So like one of those sort of fundamental ideas and assembly theory, which is really radical in some sense from a perspective of physics, but just generally is that history is actually embedded in objects.

59:03So I actually think like any evolved structure has a physical size like it might be sitting on the desk, but also has a size and time. And this is actually like a fundamental feature of the physics of life that that living objects the things that life creates are large in time. And this kind of idea has been sitting around humanity for millennia that like contingency history might still be alive in the present, but we don't really think about that in a fundamental way. So you know, like I was talking with Thomas Moynihan who's a historian was just saying that there's so many threads through history that kind of point to this idea being like, you know, super interesting and very relevant.

59:43And so when you think about like the future history, are they going to be like, oh, they finally realize these kinds of things were true. And I think about this with the history of physics, it's kind of crazy at what generation we started realizing certain things. Like when did humanity first start abstracting and building mathematics or when do we build mechanical clocks and start recognizing that we could track things at the level of seconds? Like we had to invent seconds and now we take them for granted. Right. When did China invent the mechanical clock? What year was that? I don't know. See if Jamie can find that out.

1:00:12That's a fastening thought. Right. Just before that they required sundials. Right. You know, and I don't know how much of an effect. How much effect is like the clock before that were 25 AD? I mean, that's just incredible. Look at that. The world's first mechanical clock water driven spherical birds was invented by Yeezing, a Buddhist monk is 725 AD. It looks like it's a question. Whoa. Let's see what it looks like. Whoa. I want to see like a real one. Imagine you would go visit that thing. I need to find out what time it is. Well, imagine it. But I mean, this is a good thought experiment. Right.

1:00:50Imagine being one of the first people to see a mechanical clock. How big was the first mechanical clock? It looks small. It looks fucking huge. Yeah. Now we have them whenever. Is that the first one? Just imagine the calculations involved in figuring out how to make all these gears sort of click, click, click and sync. Or even having a concept that you could keep time with that kind of regularity. Yeah. Because like you're saying our clocks before were based on like sand or shadows or water. Like they were very elemental, right? And they were not incredibly precise. Right. And then the sort of subsequent human knowledge that comes out of like time keeping precision is things like the laws of gravitation, which we wouldn't understand like, you know, Newton and Galileo couldn't have done what they did in their generation unless mechanical clocks existed before they did.

1:01:39Right. And the tolerance is are so tight that they've created things like terbian movements so that they're not, they're not affected by gravity. Yeah. Like these constant force gears of ever seen terbian watches. No. I feel like it's a build a watch now. This is kind of like I'm going to get like this weird hobby where I'm going to become like a watchmaker. Oh, watches are amazing. I know they're cool. Mechanical watches are so damn cool. Yeah. They're so fascinating. There's a company called Grandsaco and Grandsaco is like the advanced version of Saco. Saco makes like a bunch of different kinds of levels of watches in terms of price points.

1:02:14But then Grandsaco's the, their luxury line. And Grandsaco has created watches that are mechanical, but also have quartz involved in the movement. So their accuracy is insane to within a half a second a day. Oh, that's cool. And it's all just these gears spinning around in springs. Amazing. And half a second a day. And they have a 72 hour power reserve. Wow. Some of them even more than that. It's bananas. Yeah, no it is. It really is bananas that they figured out a way to do this with these tiny, and it, and this is one right here. So look how thin it is. It's awesome. Is it heavy? Not that heavy.

1:02:52But I have some of them. That's, that's a Grandsaco right there. It's called the spring drive. It's not that heavy. But that's all, there's, I mean, that is also a Grandsaco. Wow. But there's all, there's mechanical gears and stuff. So much cooler knowing what's going on inside. This one is different too because this one actually has a battery as well. And so this one is super duper accurate. Oh, very cool. They just tried to figure out a way to make these things over time, more and more accurate, more and more precise. And what they've gotten down to now is extraordinary. But show it the Turbion movement because it's bananas.

1:03:26When you see what those look like and some of these Turbion watches, they go for hundreds of thousands of dollars for a watch, just because the complexity of the gears, and then they also have clear windows over the movement. So you could stare at it while it's like doing its thing. Like this is a Turbion watch. Like look at all that jazz. That's amazing. Banana -annas. I know. I'm trying to like figure out how many gears are actually in it, but it's pretty insane. These sync up, I mean, I don't know what the accuracy of this is Grandsaco. This is another Grandsaco. This is their constant forced Turbion movement.

1:04:02But look at the watch. That's a, that watch is several hundred thousand dollars. Wow. Because it's just so insanely complex. It's gorgeous. It's just so much fun to create. Yeah, I love the C -tru, that you can actually see the... So see? Find out how accurate that thing is today. Because the dive watch, the spring drive, is accurate within a half a second a day. So how accurate is that damn thing? Yeah. But nutty. But you could do physics with it. So the fact that you're doing this with seconds, I mean, the precision involved in making sure that every gear and every spring represents a second, and so perfectly with no deviation, that it's a half a second over 24 hours.

1:04:42That's bananas. Okay, plus or minus 12 seconds a day. Is that a different turbine? That's a different turbine. That's a seagull turbine. Trying to find an answer for one of them. Yeah, that's a different one. This was saying that the turbine doesn't. It doesn't improve accuracy. Okay, so the idea is that it's not affected by gravity, but it doesn't improve accuracy. The same gravity fighting effect is turbine mechanism effects, been proven that turbines offer no more accuracy than a traditional escape man on a wristwatch. In some cases, even less. But it's kind of a nerd thing. Yeah, no, I can see that.

1:05:14Yeah, that's good. It's so fast. I can nerd out on that. Is there something? Oh, for sure. You can go deep and deep and deep. And there are also some of them are like wafer thin. Wafer thin, and they have this automatic movement inside of them. So the movement of your hand, like every time you move your arm, it's winding the watch. Yeah. So as you move the watch. Oh, really? Yes, yes. Like a Rolex. Wow. Yes, if you have like an automatic watch, like a Rolex Submariner, you don't wind it. You move it around. And as you move it around, that's what causes it to have the power to keep going. So as you're wearing it throughout the day, it's, and then there's something you do wind, something you wind.

1:05:54But I just had a morbid thought that you could tell how long someone was dead for by like how many seconds off the watches because it wasn't wound up anymore. Sort of, but you'd only tell within, you know, 12 hours. Yeah, yeah. I know. That's funny though. It is funny. Yeah, because you, well, you'd have to find out. Yeah, yeah. Like what kind of a movement it is? Is this a 48 hour movement or 72 hour movement? Yeah. How long does it last for? Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Like I would say. Yeah. Time Rolex watch helps solve a murder mystery. Whoa. Okay, there you go. See, I wasn't totally off.

1:06:25Oh, look at that. Wow. Is that how it solved it? Maybe it goes to your old foot, yeah. I don't know. I just made that up. Interesting. What makes sense? So that's the oyster perpetual, right? That's one of those watches that also has an automatic movement. I just love the idea of recovering information and like figuring out puzzles. All right, the Rolex is known to be 48 hours the power reserve. Police were able to determine the date of death with a reasonable margin of error by subtracting the watch's power reserve from the date that was displayed on the watch when it was found. Yep. According to his Rolex watch, Ronald Platte was murdered on July 20th, 1996.

1:07:01But the problem with that is, a lot of people don't set their date. Yeah. So that wouldn't hold up in court. It seems like, like, how do you know the guy was accurate with his date? Oh. How do you know? How do you know he had, if he had shitty vision, like, he can't even see, I can't read that. I'm gonna say I'm good lighting. Yeah. I can't read that. You know, so I had it. You're set to the right date or no. Mine probably isn't. Hold on a second. Let me tell you right now. We'll be funny if it's not. Oh, this one doesn't even have a date. Oh, there you go. That's not gonna hold up in court. Duh.

1:07:28This one doesn't have a date. But some, wow, I think it does. That's funny. But some of them do. And that's a different, there's a different mechanism inside of there. It's called complications. But these different ones, like they'll have one, I have one that I gave to Lex. That's in Omega. And it has a moon on it. And so it has a moon -faced thing where there's a high -resolution photograph of the moon. And as the moon rises and moves through the sky, becomes a full moon and a half moon. It shows it on the watch. And so it's accurate. So you have to go to a website. You find out what the moon phase is.

1:08:10You set the moon phase for where the watch is. And then you set the time and the date and the watch. And then it stays in sync. Love it. It's crazy. That's so amazing. The Omega is really cool because it's a little image, but it's a high -resolution image of the moon. Can you see if you can find one of those? It's Omega Speedmaster moon watch. And so this little moon sort of moves through this little night sky window at the bottom of the watch. I love the faces of the moon. Yeah, that's not it. You find the one with the moon on it, Jamie. Say, no, no, that's the, no, no, no. Moon watch is the watch they wore during the moon landings.

1:08:51Moon phase is what you're looking for. Yeah, so that one's different. That's it right there. Click on the one where you just had your cursor. So that's the image of the moon in the bottom. And that dope. So it even has like a bunch of little stars. And that's all run by Gears 2. Yeah. So cool. It's so cool. And then the one on the above it, that's the calendar. The window to the upper left of it. That's its calendar. It's amazing that they can sync all those different sort of scales of time within one device with just a bunch of gears. And incredibly accurate, too. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. That's my favorite watch.

1:09:26I love that thing. That's great. So cool. It's a great gift. Yeah, but it's just an amazing piece of human ingenuity. Someone's figured out how to do that. Yeah. And again, that's fully mechanical. That's just you move your hand around. And it does all the winding. Yeah. And it keeps it accurate. Yeah. It is not. That's our simple little semi -brains. The human greens, I know. It's amazing. And when you think about what could possibly become of advanced life, if we could exist in, you know, just stay alive in advance. Yeah. Another million years, which doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.

1:10:00I think it'll happen. You think so? I think so. What do you think we look like in the future? I mean, I think, as we've been talking about there, it's some kind of hybrid existence. I think we are becoming more integrated with our technology. I don't feel like existentially traumatized by that. No. And I also don't think, like, you know, there's like all these tropes about like machines completely replacing biological life. And I just don't think that's a realistic possibility either. And again, it goes back to like looking at the history of life on Earth. Like, there's no technology that life invented that, you know, like was completely replaced if it, you know, like if other subsequent architecture was built on it.

1:10:39So I always think about like the ribosome, which mediates the translation and the size of a cell is one of the most important and oldest technologies on our planet. We don't think about molecules as technologies. But, you know, life had to invent that thing. And it's still here. And there's billions of ribosomes on this planet. And like, they're like kind of the engines of existence and some sounds because cells require them to function. And so I think a lot of the stuff that we're building now, like it's an interesting question, what's going to be around billions of years from now? I don't think that we, as humans, have invented any technology that will last that long.

1:11:09But I do think the idea that we're not going to be replaced because we are like sort of a key part of the infrastructure of what comes next is compelling to me based on looking at the history of life on Earth. Yeah, we may not be replaced, but we probably won't remain the same. No, we won't. What do we, when we do integrate, if we do have some sort of a technological cyborg existence, what does that look like? Well, the question of like, what does it mean to integrate though? So like, already in this discussion we've been talking about like being in a society and the lifestyle of a human and what a human is is fundamentally different.

1:11:46If you're an individual living a hunter -gatherer lifestyle on your own, versus if you're living in a modern society and you have all this technological aid and this like social constraints imposed on you that you have to hold a nine to five job and you have to have an income and all these other things. Like, you're a fundamentally different kind of entity than you would be as, you know, someone living in the wild on their own. And so we're already part of a technological infrastructure. We just don't really recognize societies as that. But it's being built more and more into us that we're kind of, you know, we're kind of stuck in that.

1:12:19Like most of us couldn't survive on our own. And then we're going to become more integrated with that system. So it's sort of, you know, I think of analogies with other kinds of life. Like, you know, molecules inside a cell can't exist on their own either, but their alive is part of a cell or, you know, ants in a society can't exist on their own. Like, they need to be in the colony. And I think humans are already the same. I think so too. And I think the way we make distinctions with animals, like feral pigs versus domesticated pigs and things like those ones, we think of them as different things.

1:12:48Yeah. And I think that's... I think they are different. And you could say there's like superficial physical resemblances, but I think those are kind of superficial. I think like it's fundamentally different to be a wild species versus a domesticated one. Right. Or a wild human, so to speak, versus a domesticated human. Right. Right. Right. And I think when you look at that guy who lives in Antarctica, and the artist's circle rather, and you compare him to like the saddest overweight gamer who's drinking Mountain Dew all day. Oh, Mountain Dew, that sounds painful. But if someone's just like pale, no sunlight at all, just eating garbage and playing Call of Duty all day long, I mean, that is like, they're two completely different animals.

1:13:33One of them is like walking through the mountains of the rifle for care boo, and the other one is just like calling Uber Eats. And I suspect that like even the way they feel about the world is totally different. So it's not just like the physical... Like obviously the physiological differences manifest and like mental differences about like the beauty of their mental architecture, how they feel about their environment and like what's happening to them. It's just totally different. How much, if any, do you pay attention to the UFO UAP world? I have a very... I don't pay too much attention to it to be quite honest.

1:14:07I think for me, it's not very exciting to be honest. I'm much more interested in understanding fundamentally what life is, and I think the UFO discussion really hasn't afforded me a deeper understanding of the problems I'm interested in solving. So I don't pay too much attention to it. I think it's much more interesting as a cultural discussion and like some of these things that we've also been talking about about like augmented humans and all these other things. It's like there's a lot of discussions happening culturally that I think are preparing us for the next phase. And so I kind of see the UFO discussion as being one like, you know, we culturally need to understand how we want to think about alien life, what it is, how we intersect with it.

1:14:50And so there needs to be a lot of discussions about the nature of that problem and people interested in believing in that problem. But I don't really see a lot intellectually for me personally coming out of that. There's no meat. No. It's just a lot of talk and a lot of stories that some of them from very respected people that I believe them and their encounters are fascinating. But you could waste your whole life thinking about what that means and what it's true, there's not an update. There's very, very, very little data. There's a problem. So I find it interesting. It's certainly intriguing and to think about the possibilities.

1:15:32But it's sort of like mythology versus... Yes. ...and individual knowledge versus shared knowledge. And I think what science, you can question the sort of academic establishment and the way that we do science and it's very dogmatic and all those things. And I can agree with a lot of those criticisms. But science fundamentally is about shared knowledge and the ability to have a joint conversation about something we both understand and to be able to use that to do things. Like, you know, the laws of gravitation are things that we can easily state. And we can build satellites and new technologies out of that knowledge.

1:16:03And I think, you know, the discussion on alien life is fundamentally about new knowledge that we need to have about how the universe works. And that's going to come from a lot of different places. But for me, I don't see the UFO discussion fundamentally advancing that question. It's just raising some of the mystery about, you know, certain experiences people have had but not in a way that allows us to really answer the question of what is an alien. There's also a fundamental problem of accuracy of information and how much of this whistleblower stuff is nonsense. How much of it is true when you're relying on person A to discuss classified documents.

1:16:43There's a lot of control of narratives, which I don't like. So I don't like people telling people how to think. And I think what I see in the UFO discussion a lot that actually makes me stay out of that community is a lot of people that claim authority on knowledge and then they claim they can't share the knowledge. Yeah. And I don't like that. I think if you have knowledge, you should share it, you should discuss it, you should try to figure out what it means for everybody and you should not protect it. That's why you're a scientist. Yes. Yes, that's what I think. Yeah. That's what people should be doing.

1:17:10Yes. I don't trust people when they claim to have absolute knowledge they can't share with people. The only thing that Gisbee Paws is the possibility that they're dealing with top secret programs that could get them in great trouble and would limit their access to this technology. Yeah. That Gisbee Paws. And it's the only thing that gives me pause. But it's such a good story though, right? It's the best story. I know, right. That's the problems. I'm a sucker. I'm a giant sucker for that kind of story. I love those stories. Yeah. I think we all do. Oh my god. I love it. I want to hear all of them.

1:17:43Yeah. But I think that's a sort of also a standard play that if the government needs to keep knowledge of secret suddenly it becomes more valuable. I don't even necessarily think it's the government as much as I think it's the government and military contractors. Yes. So if you have some sort of technology that is literally out of this world and you're trying to figure out how it works, it's within your best interest to keep that as secret as possible. Right. And I was in the case of that in Arizona, it's like, you know, like they're testing, you know, whatever new technology for fighter jets or whatever.

1:18:17It's like a million UFO sightings. And then it's like a little later that it was, you know, the military. Have you ever seen a military jet like a stealth bomber? No. When we were filming Fear Factor way back in the day, we were out near Edwards Air Force Base and one of those stealth bombers flew overhead. And if I didn't know what it was, I would swear that was from another planet. It looks so cool. Yeah. It looks so cool and it does not look like anything else you've ever seen flying in the sky. This is like, this is post 9 -11, 2001. Right. So this is the very beginning of Fear Factor. And right after 9 -11 and we were out there in the desert and you see this thing, it's you know, Palmdale and you see this thing fly overhead and it's like, it looks like something Batman owns.

1:19:04Yeah. You see, you can find one of those. So you can find like a video of a stealth bomber flying overhead. It was flew right past us. It was like, what? I would love to see that. Part of it was terrifying because I was like, I'm going to war. Like, why am I seeing these alien warships? Yeah. I always feel like that when I see military stuff. It's like, it's equal parts like amazing and profound and then like totally existentially traumatizing. Yes. Exactly. It's cool. Yeah. But it's designed to kill people really quick. Yeah. Yeah. It's designed to sneak in and mess people up and then get out of there without anybody knowing you're there.

1:19:36It's literally what it is. It's a stealth bomber. Yeah. But I do find it exciting that so many people want to talk about UFOs and are like really excited about the possibilities for aliens. Find one of those. Yeah. I was not finding a good video. The thing is, like, my point is, I mean, was that Einstein's quote or so the sufficient technologies and distinguishable from magic? Yeah. Was it asthma? Maybe it was asthma. Yeah. Um, so here's one fly overhead. Look at this. Come on. Like if you saw this, you'd be like, oh my god, they're here. Yeah. Like if you saw that fly overhead, you'd go, oh my god, aliens are real.

1:20:13Yeah. Right? That's how it felt. It's kind of an epic that the most alien thing on the planet is the human mind and like what it can create. Oh my god. The most epic. We're responsible for every single thing. Yeah. Every single thing that's an object that didn't grow. Right. We made it. Yeah. Nuts. Blows my mind. Blows my mind. Yeah. And if I think about the possibility of something even more advanced than us coming here and manipulating us the same way, we're willing to take a chance at creating artificial life in a laboratory. Yeah. If we're willing to do that, why would the if there's so much more advanced than us that they think we're just the silly territorial aid?

1:20:47So why is it always a narrative that there's so much more advanced? Like where does this come from? Because they got here. We can't get there. I see. But I don't think that like technological progress is linear. So they might, you know, they might have the technology to come and visit us say, but not have other kinds of technology that we've advanced. Perhaps. But the idea that they have gone so far in one area that is so perplexing, which is deep space travel and vast distances of space and time. And that they've conquered that. So the closest planets that we think we have Goldilocks zones are how far away?

1:21:24How many light years away? I mean, the closest planetary system is probably, you know, about four light years away. That's the way it's about. That's the way it's about. That's the way it's about. There's planets there. It's very debatable about like whether it's a trapeze system, like whether those planets are actually habitable or not. Because we don't know if they have atmospheres and there's all kinds of debate in the community, but like potentially. So let's take the closest planetary system. So four four light years? Yeah. Okay. So imagine something coming here every four years because it takes that long.

1:21:57You know, I mean, literally. Well, that's assuming they can travel at light speed, which is a big if, yeah. Or assuming they can do something. Well, we're also assuming that speed is, you're taking an object and you're moving that object through some method of propulsion to a new place. Instead of moving the space around it, folding that and having it instantaneously travel from one point to point, which is the way the real super eggheads describe the potential future like a long distance space. Based on sort of extensions of current theories of gravity, but yeah. And obviously extrapolating greatly our ability to generate power.

1:22:35But if they did figure out a way to get here, they would probably be so unimpressed with us, especially if they caught us a few hundred years ago. You know, we're basically like making stupid houses and burning coal and riding horses. And making mechanical clocks. That's true. Right. That was quite a while ago. Yeah. That's true. Was that AD or 725 AD? Was that what it was? Yeah. So, I mean, just the idea that we have come so far in such a short period of time, you would have just imagined that if that keeps going, it's going to get to the point where everything expands exponentially and the ability to travel through space will be on the list.

1:23:14Yes. So, and then you're going to go, okay, what are they doing? Oh, they only have rocks. They only have sticks and rocks. They haven't figured out metallurgy yet. They haven't figured out. Right. But the challenge with these kind of like thought experiments is we're always applying today's standard and understanding to long -term futures. And if you imagine that we go through this process of, you know, creating the kind of technologies that you're describing, we will be so fundamentally different in the process. We'll be having a different discussion. And we won't be able to reason about what that looks like based on the way that we think about things now.

1:23:43So, I think this kind of, you know, I've never really been a fan of like these sort of, you know, survival, the fittest, predator prey, like the aliens are just going to be so much more advanced than us and come and take over everything kind of narratives because it just doesn't seem to be, first off, it's not consistent with what we actually observe because we don't observe aliens yet. And second off, it doesn't seem consistent with the trajectory of what we're doing overall. Especially if you think about us not individually, but like much more as just like a biosphere evolving into a technologic, like a technosphere.

1:24:17Yeah. I agree with you there. I think this predator prey thing sort of got sideline the moment we created agriculture in cities. And kind of that kind of stopped and then it became a new thing. And as we advance technologically, it becomes another new thing. Yeah. My thoughts is there's going to be a moment in time. The way we've integrated with each other digitally through cell phones and through social media and interaction online, there will be another level of that that is exponentially more bizarre. Yes. It's probably going to take place with like neural link and similar type technologies.

1:24:54Right. That we're going to integrate with each other and communicate telepathically and communicate with large groups of people telepathically. And I think... Is it amazing that things that were once missed become fact through technology? Yes. I think this is just absolutely amazing like how much our ancestors thought about these things that they called magic and like we're making, you know, like actual physical reality through technology. We had the gentleman who received the first neural implant, the neural link implant here. We talked to him about what it's like. And I look at him like this is you're the future.

1:25:28Like what? We're probably all going to have something similar to that in our bodies. And then eventually when I go, why do we have these fragile feet? When you can have these immense deluxe carbon fiber feet that allow you to run over hot coals and not feel a thing? Like, when you rather have those, they're better. You can control them better. It depends on what you want to do. Right. It depends on what you do. But we are... We're very connected to our biological existence. But my thought is that our biological existence comes with all the baggage of all the human reward systems that have been put in place in order to ensure our survival.

1:26:03And this is what's led us to war. This is what's led us to violence. This is what's led us to all the terrible things. Yes. We have a lot of baggage. Yes. And that baggage I think is a byproduct of survival of the fittest mentality that came out of our biological life. As we integrate digitally, I think that might be one of the primary benefits is that we realize, oh, we can't kill each other. We're all one. Yeah. But we really are all one. Yes. And we are really all connected. And instead of doing that, why don't we figure out a way to solve all this and work together? And if we are all one of the same mindset, this whole idea of stealing resources and covert operations, that's all going to go away.

1:26:43Yeah. It just makes sense that that would be one of the things that would happen. And we would stop doing all the dumb things that we do. And then as we joined together, we would say, well, we need to come up with solutions for our environmental issues. We need to come up solutions for long term strategies for dealing with all these different problems that we've created. And then we could do it together. Yeah. Instead of like having this whole concept of territorial lines in the sand where you're not allowed to cross unless you have a passport or you know, you have to paperwork. And some sort of an integration with all human beings, the way we have with cell phones, but way more sophisticated.

1:27:20Yeah. I mean, something I find really shocking is how difficult it is for humans to think of other humans as human. Right. So we have like our fear of friends or like people that we find socially acceptable. And then like pretty much anybody outside of that space is like beyond our cognitive horizon and we just can't treat them as people anymore. And I find this very perplexing and you know, about a bit of an issue in making the kind of transition that you're talking about that we just like can't even see each other as humans. Sure. I mean, that's the whole concept of the other, right? They're different than us.

1:27:53They're different. Yeah. We're allowed to do this because they're those people. And that permeates so much of modern society right now. It's like hard to look at anybody and see them as a person. And I think that's baked into us. First of all, because we all evolved in tribal groups of very small numbers of people, which is where Dunbar's number comes from, right? We only have a certain amount of people that we can keep intimately connected to in our minds. Yeah. And our social networks are much larger than that now. So most of the people in our network we can't actually humanize. Well, it's even worse if you're famous because you don't remember anybody's name.

1:28:23Yeah. Because I mean, so many people. And then you have all kinds of people that have a pair of social relationship with you and like they think they know you and they don't know you. Especially me because I do this. Right. Yeah. So I'm talking all the time. I'm like, I talked to you earlier. It must be very weird. Fucking strange. But it's also, I feel like that sort of connection with people, this is what anybody who's doing any sort of a podcast or something like that is kind of doing is like a one way version of what I think is going to exist universally on the planet. Yes. I agree with that.

1:28:55I think actually the thing that I find really interesting about the podcasting space is this kind of like a very intimate conversation, but it's technologically mediated and shared. Right. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. So like this transition phase and like why are podcasting becoming so popular I think is because it's part of this kind of transition that we're all undergoing. There's also an unusual authenticity in having access to individual minds without influence of producers and directors and a bunch of different people. So like this conversation in particular.

1:29:28Like there was, I had zero conversations with any person before I got you on. Yeah. I had a text message that I sent to my friend who's the booking guy. I said, Hey, reach out to her. This sounds cool. See if she could do this date and that's it. And then it goes on my phone and that's it. And then so I start watching some of the conversations you had. I watched your thing on Lacks. I start looking into these concepts and assembly theory and all these different things. And so my brain, so it's all it is is something I'm interested in. There's no other reason to have this conversation other than I'm interested in it.

1:30:01And so that I think resonates with other people because I love when someone's interested in something, if they're interested in making baseballs by hand or whatever. I think there should be, I'll be more excited about things. Like these are exciting, especially creative spaces. And like new ideas and people that are thinking about like changing things. But for me it's someone who's passionate about something. Yeah. For sure. I totally get what you mean about the baseball. I mean, this is why I like the watch discussion because it's very clearly like drawn from enthusiasm. And somebody like design that thing.

1:30:33Oh yeah. And I'm by the way, I am a Luddite when it comes to watches. They're watch nerds. Like serious watch nerds that can tell you like all the models and what the this movement has of that movement in it. And listen to that. Like they know all the pieces. Some of them take them apart and put them back together again on their own. They got these giant goggles and sit and they're little tweezers and shit. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, but I love when people are really excited about things. Whether it's about playing the guitar or making a painting. Like something about that to me is infectious. Yeah.

1:31:05And it makes me excited about other things. Yeah. If I see someone who's really excited about making furniture, I start getting excited about what I do. Yeah. It's like there's something about that energy. Passion is infectious. Yes. Yeah. And I think like enabling people to find their own passion is really important. Very much so. Yeah. And when you do what like what we're doing on this podcast and have conversations about things that are just interesting. Yeah. You know, that's all it is. It's just interesting. Right? Interesting is good. It's far better than the opposite. Yes. It's just fascinating.

1:31:35Yeah. And so that stimulates minds. It stimulates people. Like there's people at home that are listening like, I want to have a question. Like what? Yeah. What is how did this happen? How did that happen? Yeah. What would have happened if it was a little bit colder? What would have happened if it was a little bit warmer? What would have happened if there was no this or though that? Imagine a world where no one fixed out the wheel. Yeah. I mean, I think about alternate histories all the time. Well, the bizarre thing is they do not think the Egyptians had the wheel. Yeah. Like what are you talking about?

1:32:07How is that even possible? Yeah. And so no theory there. That's like the massive mystery of human civilization itself just in the structures that were left behind with no explanation. Yeah. That alone makes us go. Well, we have this bizarre idea in our head of how things progress based on our current understanding of the world we live in right now. But that has no bearing on Egypt. Yeah. Like what did they do? How did they do that? We don't know. I know. History is a predictive science, which is like a weird thing. But like people don't like think about this. But like, you know, you have to have theories of the past and then test it against the record.

1:32:39Right. So it's not really any different than any other domain of knowledge where we're trying to make predictions and test them against current data. It's just like history for some reason we think it actually happened. Therefore, like there's one narrative, but it's usually constructed based on what we know and we're learning all the time. Well, also the problem in... And we forget all the time. The collapse of that civilization, the burning of the Library of Alexandria. So all the records lost. So they probably had written down how they did everything. Yeah. And some assholes came along and burnt everything.

1:33:07And now we're like, what did you do? They were definitely assholes. That was such an amazing lesson. I know. I like... When I first heard about the Library of Alexandria and I was like, that was a heartbroken. I was thinking, you can even imagine what was lost. If we knew what they knew the amount of advancement, just Egypt, just that one part of Africa where they figured out how to do some things that to this day, 4 ,500 plus years later we are perplexed. Yeah. Perplexed. Like there's shitty theories. They all suck. Every theory sucks. They've just recently discovered some sort of hydraulic technology that was in one of the pyramids.

1:33:47Oh really? Yes, even you can find that. There's a recent research that was published where it wasn't the Kufu pyramid, it was another pyramid. And in one of these other pyramids they believe they have evidence of some sort of hydraulic technology that was used. Yeah. The published Monday in a journal PLOS, one research that proposed that ancient people may have relied on water to build the step pyramid. The suspect hydraulic system may have helped lift stones from the center of the pyramid. Wow. So like we're still trying to figure out what they did. So long before I got into science, like one of the first places I actually encountered astronomy was like reading about the Orion mystery when I was like in fifth grade.

1:34:32And I was like, got obsessed with it for a little while about like whether the chambers and the pyramids were actually aligned with the stars and stuff. And like, how did they possibly do that? It was kind of crazy. There's a guy named Christopher Dunn who's an engineer and he has the wildest theory. He thinks that the construction of the pyramid, and this is by the way, both maligned by some archaeologists, completely dismissed, but also embraced by younger archaeologists. So this theory is that the way the great pyramid was set up was not set up as a tomb, but was set up as some sort of a way to generate electricity.

1:35:12Oh, wow. And that there was a chamber of subterranean chamber and that this chamber had something in it that was like pounding on the stone and creating a certain vibration. And then they had these shafts that they had access to that had they know these shafts existed and they know the structure of these shafts and these shafts that existed in the marble or whatever the stone granite rather. And they would fill these shafts up with some sort of chemicals and then at the end of the shaft was limestone. And so the limestone is porous and the limestone allows the gases to escape from all these chemicals and contain itself inside this chamber.

1:35:55This chamber is constantly being vibrated and then there's these pathways that lead up to what they're calling the king's chamber, which is this insane structure. It's one of the most perplexing things about the pyramid because these immense stones that are positioned in the phenomenon piece of architecture. And then in those, they have shafts that go straight out into space that he thinks is gathering gamma rays. And so the gamma rays are interacting with this hydrogen that's being created by these chemicals and the vibrations and that all these things are used to generate electricity. And this is why there's a gold capstone on the top of the period and smooth limestone the outside.

1:36:32It's a nutty theory. But this guy is like, he's a brilliant man. Yeah, no, I mean, it's incredibly creative. And if it's testable and there's ways to validate that that could work, that would be. Well, the problem is you don't have to do it at scale. Well, you could look for traces of whatever chemistry he's talking about on the pyramid walls and it would be possible to experimentally verify whether gamma rays could do that. I don't suspect that they could. But there's pieces of it. This is how science works. You have a story of a set of hypotheses and you can test individual parts of it and then try to validate it.

1:37:05So it'd be kind of cool if you wanted to try to do that. Right. And so then the question is, how do they figure that out? I don't know. Imagine if there, imagine it turns out to be correct and this was some sort of a way of generating power from the earth and space itself. How did you figure that out? But also why? Because where would they put the power? They didn't have any electric grids or anywhere to like... Not that we know of, right? The problem is it all gets to this weirdness of like how much evidence would be left from 10 ,000 years ago? How much evidence would be left from 20 ,000 years ago?

1:37:40How long did it take people to figure that out? Was it two or 3 ,000 years? Like how much tinkering? Yeah, and what was it? I mean, there's all kinds of interesting questions you can ask about that kind of stuff even in like deep time. So one of my colleagues, Adam Frank had this paper on the salurian hypothesis, which is like the idea that there was intelligent beings around the time of Zanya Swars, like a dinosaur race, and how would you actually look in the geological record for it? And so people can work out the mathematics of what would be the traces of these... Like if the Egyptians had this capability or if there were intelligent species that emerged on the planet long before humans and had enough technology to like have re -uactive waste or anything, like you can actually like bound, you know, like what would we actually see in the record?

1:38:27So it is possible still to constrain this stuff. Even the most radical hypotheses. So like I've been raised in a tradition scientifically of like entertaining any idea, as long as it's something that we can actually test and measure. And so I guess for me, I think some of the most creative ideas and science are things that people completely didn't expect. Like what? Well, I mean I think Einstein's a great example. You know, like he was one of the few people that took seriously that the speed of light is constant. Like we take that for granted now, but everybody thought that was kind of ridiculous and the experiments must be wrong, because there's no way that the speed of light could be constant.

1:39:10And he was like no, the laws of nature are invariant, and this invariance also implies that the speed of light could be invariant because it's a law of nature. And then he was able to derive relativity from that and that has all kinds of you know radical consequences about the way that we think about space and time. And you know the fact that time is, you know, like it's actually a relative concept. At least Simultin 80 is a relative concept. I think there's many concepts of time and physics. But, but yeah, so I think that's one, but like quantum mechanics is another. Like if you actually look at the observational evidence and you try to build a theory from the observational evidence, you get to like really interesting spaces.

1:39:47And then you get to see the things that are completely different than what you thought. And so it's easy to have theories and creative ideas. It's actually harder to go from the observational constraints and work into a theory that's consistent with all of those. And that's actually where most of our more radical conceptions and foundational shifts come from. And so that's why I'm actually particularly excited about what we're doing with assembly theory as an example, because like what we're trying to do there is say, if life is actually a real property of the physical world, like whatever we call life, it will have to be redefined.

1:40:20Then we should be able to have a measurable consequence. And the way we talk about that is actually to measure this complexity of molecules, assembly of molecules, which you can go in the lab and measure with standard instrumentation, like a mass spec and an NMR and infrared. Like you can measure this property of a molecule, it's a real physical feature. And then you can derive all kinds of weird shit from them. And I think this has been the tradition of physics in general, but science also more broadly that, you know, the reason that we get so convinced about things and they work is because we're working backward from what we observe and measure.

1:40:51And then we test it against what we can observe and measure. And the things that happen with reality are far stranger than things that we can dream up, which is why I love it. It's just crazy. Like the kind of ideas you get out of that process. Well, just the process that allows you and I to be staring each other. First of all, the fact that we could see each other is crazy. Yes. Yes. Right? That's pretty good. Evolution of eyes is amazing. But nuts. Totally nuts. And then also, Octopi have them too. They just evolved on a completely different branch of evolutionary tree. Totally crazy. But they all evolve to eyes.

1:41:21It seems like a property that almost every animal has. Yeah. Seeing is pretty deep. I mean, I think I don't know when the first photon receptors evolved in cells, but you know, even cells have light sensing capability. So I mean, that's how photosynthesis evolved also. But yeah, but it's crazy. So like the idea of, you know, like when life first emerged on the planet, nothing could see, but it evolved later. And it is something that is fairly consistent. And even if you think about our technology. So I always think about the progression of biology and technology. It is fascinating also that a lot of our technologies that allow us to understand the world or technologies of site like telescopes and microscopes.

1:41:57And you know, like we think we knew life on this planet and then we invented the microscope. And it's like, you know, just you don't need that much more resolution. And you can suddenly see that this table is completely covered in cells, for example. Yeah. That we didn't know where they are. Right. Which is just mind blowing. Mind blowing. Mind blowing. It's like we evolved from cells billions of years ago. It took us billions of years to build it, like to evolve into an intelligence. Like to build the technology and then look and be like, oh, biology's made out of cells. And then if you think you understand any of it, the people that understand subatomic particles like hold my beer.

1:42:27Yeah. Because this whole thing is empty space. Yeah. And it's all operating in some bizarre quantum state where it's like both still and moving at the same time. Yeah. Those wave functions. Yeah. What? I know. Like what is everything? Everything's weird. Every single thing. That's what got me into it though. Like that feeling is just like I love that feeling. Yeah. We're not understanding and thinking like we live in a really trippy reality. And the fact that our minds are capable of understanding any of it to me is pretty profound. I feel like we're just emerging from it the same way the ability to see things was this emerging technology, this emerging ability that probably changed everything.

1:43:08Right. The ability to actually like recognize distances. Yeah. And to see objects and recognize them. And that is this emerging phenomenon that we sort of take for granted because we have. But there could be other things like that that have not emerged yet. Yes. And this is so much psychic phenomenon. Right. It's one of the things that I can connect with that. I don't believe in psychics like a person can read in tarot cards. But I do think there's some weirdness involved in human beings that you can't put on a scale. I think some people are really good at reading patterns in their environment.

1:43:45I think there's that too. But there's also like phone rings and it was a person you were talking about you haven't talked to and forever. Yeah. And also they feel you and they call you. There's something trippy to that that may be not every time, not maybe repeatable, but occasionally you catch it. Occasionally there's this connection that seems to emerge. And I always wonder if that's an emergent form of a new ability that human beings will eventually possess. Yeah. I have lots of thoughts. But I think the first one is I think we we forget often that we are all connected by a common history. And so a lot of the features about like why is it that we can be sitting here having this conversation.

1:44:27Obviously we both have to speak the same language, but we also have to emerge from the same evolutionary architecture, have the same kinds of sensory apparatus to be able to communicate with each other, imply shared history. And so I think about life is these structures that are emerging over time and generating novel things. But the whole temporal relation, this idea of objects being in time means that they're connected through time. So if you assume a living object actually has a time and size, it means that every living object in this planet is not really a distinct object. They're all part of that same structure in time.

1:45:08And I think this is really necessary for interpreting some of the things that you're talking about because there's so much in our environment that is a part of that shared history that we're picking up on all the time. That we don't even recognize that is like cues for us to really, and we miss it because we don't even recognize the history in our environment. And so we think things are just happening spontaneously and there's some magic behind it, what really all it is is contingency and causation. But I think the other thing that is interesting about what you're saying, which we already touched on a little bit, is these kind of stories that there's ancient myths.

1:45:49I'm a huge, I just have a camel fan in thinking about the history of mythology. But we've had these myths for most of human history, and there's been a lot of recurring motifs in them about telepathy, psychics, miracles. All of these stories, and it's super interesting to see how some of them are becoming embodied through our technology, like the things that we imagine, we are making real. And that's the part that's interesting to me, and that's much more physical. Yeah. The things we're imagining we're making real. Yeah. So it's not impossible that people that are psychic, at quote unquote, could exist.

1:46:34But I think what will happen is the stories that we're telling become embodied in the observations that we're making, the things that we're actually implementing in the world. But I don't know that historically I would say, I don't believe in magic. I think magic is, or I do believe in mystery. But I think when I say I don't believe in magic, it's not that I don't believe that people have personal knowledge or things. But I think what's more important is when those things become shareable, they actually become things that we can use collectively, and I'm much more interested in that kind of knowledge.

1:47:08So it's not that I don't value mysticism or the kind of personal narratives that people have about experiences. I think those are incredibly valuable, and I think that we need those stories in our culture. It's just for me I'm much more interested in like when do we make those kinds of things regularized in the way that we understand them as like really fundamental properties and we can use them and like we can share that information. That's what I like about science because it's like it's like shareable deep thoughts that are universally usable. Yes, yes, yeah, universally usable is a great way to put it.

1:47:47I've often entertained the idea of, you know, I'm sure you were aware of the concept of the muse, right? Maybe, but it probably explained it anyway just because it's... Well, one of the best representations of this gentleman named Stephen Pressfield is a great author. He wrote a legend of bagger vans and a bunch of other great movies, and he wrote this book called The War of Art. And the book is essentially like a guidebook for creative types to avoid procrastination resistance and to develop a structure that allows you to sit down in your desk at a very specific time every day and summon the muse.

1:48:22And this idea has persisted throughout time that ideas, I mean I'm sure you've had ideas that have come to you like where's that even come from? Yes, I think everyone has. I love creativity for that reason because it's so mysterious even to the person having the creative act. Yes, yes, it's just crazy. Yeah, I almost always think of my best ideas as not even really mine, but like a gift. Yes. And so this is the concept of the muse. That the muse use some of the muse, you treat the muse with respect, you literally communicate with the muse, you put this intention out there, and if you do this every day, she will reward you.

1:48:58Which will consistently bring you ideas. And if you are a person who can develop that kind of discipline to sit there and do that, you'll become productive through the muse. And so is the muse like a placeholder for your unconscious brain? Yeah, certainly. But if you treat it like it's a real thing, it behaves like a real thing. No, no, I mean I think the unconscious is a real thing. The reason I'm bringing up is like so many people are really interested in consciousness. And then like really focused on that, but part of the reason that where creativity comes from and part of this idea of using intuition to guide how you think about the world, I think is like there's so much happening in your brain that you're just not even consciously aware of.

1:49:38Right. And I think a lot of the information processing architecture and like where I've kind of resigned myself to almost all of my thinking is my unconscious brain. And I should just like leave it there. And if I get an idea emerging out of it, it seems like it came from nowhere. But it's just I'm just not consciously aware of all the processing in my brain. I also wonder if the term consciousness is connected far too much to language. Yes. Because right, I think it yes. We think of things that we can describe with language and processes that we examine with language, words that we attribute specific objects and specific tasks and things that we do.

1:50:15And then there's this other thing that's going on. Maybe you feel bad that day. Maybe you feel lonely. Maybe you feel this like these sort of subconscious things are very conscious. They're conscious, but they're just they're not attached to language. Right. And so when we're interacting with people on a conscious level, we're communicating constantly through words. So we have sounds that we make and we these represent things and we all understand them. And so we use this as a way to express this thing that's going on with this thought process, this consciousness. Yeah. That it's we're attaching it to language.

1:50:48Yeah. Now I think most of us do because I think a lot of us, you know, construct words or visuals in our brains. But it's super interesting when you have people that don't do that. Like Lee Kronin that I work with a lot. And you know, he's the person originally assembly theory is chemist. Like he doesn't have any visuals in his brain or like language in his brain. And it's super interesting talking to him because he's like completely not really brilliant. But I think like his mental architecture is really different. And I love working on deep foundational questions because I think when you talk about these deep ideas and you talk.

1:51:18And maybe this is also why people like St. Cadellix because if you're not, if you're not like trained at the sort of frontier of like intellectual debate, you know, like where do you have these kind of experiences. But the kind of I'm talking about is like you have really thought about how reality works. And like you have an architecture in your mind about what you think is fundamental about the nature reality because you're asking this particular scientific question. And I think some of my best discussions with some of my colleagues have been, you know, those kind of discussions. And you really realize how people's brains are so different.

1:51:47Very, very different. So different. Well, what is the estimation? There's some percentage of us that do not have an inner voice. Yeah, I think it's like 4%. But I don't think it's higher than that. I think it's quite a bit harder. I thought it was like 20s. Oh, what's that? I just made up a number. It's up to 60%. But I try to look into this many times. I don't understand. Well, I think it's hard to report though because people don't even know they don't have an inner voice. And like, or people don't know they do have an inner voice because you don't know what it's like to be in someone else's mind.

1:52:19So everybody just thinks their mind is normal. Right. Right. So if you talk to a schizophrenic, you're like, what's going on in there? What is that? Like, what's that? Missed firing. Well, this is one of the things I'm really excited about, like these neural enhancement technologies, because I think we really underestimate the diversity of human minds. Like, it might be the most diverse things on this planet or actually just like what's going on in our heads. Most certainly. I mean, I know so many different unique people. I'm so lucky that I've met so many unique people from talking on this podcast.

1:52:49And then just through walks of life, all the, I know so many people who think so differently. And I know great athletes and great scientists and great comedians and great musicians. And they're all different. Yeah. They think different. They just have a different, like some people will look at a problem and go, why is that? What about this thing? Why doesn't that, and then I'm like, how the fuck did you even see that? Like, why did you look at it that way? Everyone has, I mean, it's based on your life experiences, your genetics. But there's also, I think everyone's interface is different. I don't know even what you see.

1:53:26I assume that it looks. I know this looks my mind. I think about this all the time. I'm like, I have no idea what it looks like to anybody else in the world. Well, it makes sense to me that it has to be different. Yeah. Because if it wasn't different, why would you like things I don't like? Everybody would like the same thing. Yeah. The way that things look. That's true. Yeah. I have two children that have totally different ability to absorb hot, spicy food. My kids are like that too. So my youngest is like me. My youngest, I mean, she might have a better version of it than me. Like, that kid can eat anything.

1:53:59Yeah. Ghost peppers, like she likes it hot. And she loves like really, and she's like, really hot. From time to time when she's a little kid, like reapers, like, I get this, this is hot sauce called senior lechuga. It's really good stuff. It's organic and like really strong hot, like if you like it really spicy. And I told her, I'm like, this is pretty spicy. The kid dips her finger in it, sucks on it. She's like, it's not that spicy. I'm like, it's pretty damn spicy. Like you freak. What the hell's wrong with you? Wow. Wow. Kind of incredible. And then the other one, like a little bit of a jalapeno.

1:54:34She's, he's coughing and coughing. Like she can't take it at all. It's bizarre. Yeah. Because they both came from the same parents. Right. But, but so obviously things taste different to them. Yeah, totally different. So whatever that is, where like some people love the taste of hot dogs. Some people think they're disgusting. Yeah. And you know, and they like whatever brought to it. Whatever it is. Like why? Yeah. What is it? What are you experiencing when you're eating this? I don't know. What are you experiencing when you're seeing it? I'm just guessing that you're seeing what I see. Yeah. It's a total guess.

1:55:06Yeah. And it's probably a bad guess as you're pointing out, right? Probably. Yeah. I mean, it has to have some, there has to be a bunch of other factors that we're not taking into consideration that are going on internally. Yeah. They're allowing this person to process this in a pleasing or an unpleasing manner. Yeah. Like what is going on? Like, and then the actual structure of the eye, right? We know some people's eyes aren't that good. Like why is that? Yeah. Like what's going on in there? Like it stops working so good. And so you see things blurry and like. Or color blind is also interesting.

1:55:36Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the world could all be color blind. Yeah. We'd be lost. The idea that we're in this spectrum of how light interacts with objects. Right. And it's incredible variety of different shades of things. And like people that have a major shift in that, like I read this all of our sacks story once about this person got hit in the head and then they could only see the world in black and white. What? And like how existential that experience was transitioning. Because like, yeah. And that's really depressing. Like you see a world of color than everything's black and white. It's like you're living in a movie or something.

1:56:06But like the story was about how they were an artist and like they came to understand the world quite differently. And you can see a lot more shadow and light. And like you start paying attention to different detail. But I mean, it's just mind blowing that that can happen. It's like the same brain. Yeah. Same brain. And let me have to completely readjust your experience or reality because now you see the world differently. I have a friend who got a concussion and he lost a sense of smell. Oh really? Yeah. For years. That's probably pretty traumatic. Well, a lot of people got it during COVID as well, right?

1:56:31Yeah. That's right. But he got it through a concussion way back, like at least 15 years ago and lost a sense of smell. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I like to, you know, when I started thinking about how people think differently, I was like, I think I was listening to a podcast running one day and it's like, you know, like imagine an apple and now taste the apple. And I was like, I can imagine an apple. I can see an apple in my brain and I can bite in the apple but I cannot taste it. I cannot imagine tasting food. And this was really perplexing to me because like I never thought about the fact that like inside my head, I don't have taste.

1:57:06I only have taste when I'm eating food. I can definitely taste things. But it's just, it's like, you know, like it's like a weird thing about my brain. But like I don't know how common that is. But I think like everybody has things like that. And if they, if like we just do, you know, experiments with their own minds is kind of interesting to probe the boundary of like things you take for granted that you think you can do or you can visualize and you just can't. It's just not in your head. Well, the sense of smell we take for granted because everybody has it. And obviously there's an evolution and advantage in terms of food being rotten.

1:57:34Right. There's much different factors, gases that are poisonous. But it's invisible. Yeah. And we know if your friend could still imagine smell or did they lose the ability to even like recall what smells like? I haven't talked to him in years. I have to reach out. I don't even know if he got a smell back. Yeah. He's a guy used to fighting the UFC. Oh, I see. And he got knocked out once and lost his sense of smell. Wow. Crazy. Not good. Not good. But the idea is that sense of smell we all just take for granted. We have it. Oh, my God, you smell that apple pie. Oh, it's coming. It's coming. Who is this so exciting?

1:58:09You know, you smell it. You walk in the house. Someone's cooking bacon. Yeah. That we take that for granted. But that is an invisible thing. And who knows how many other things there are like that that we don't have like we. We don't have the ability to detect neutrinos. You know, imagine if we could feel all the neutrinos passing through us at any given moment. Like, you visualize it as you're saying that. I'm like there's like 1 ,000 ,000 of them. I mean, they're literally going through the entire earth. They're flying through the earth right now. Right. But we don't have the ability to detect that.

1:58:42But why not? Right. I mean, that's a thing that's real that we don't have the tools for. Yeah. But we do have the tools for smells. So we have the tools to detect gases. But we don't have the tools to detect other things that we know are real. Right. Well, our sensory perception only like that evolved biologically only took us so far. But like obviously like we're sitting here talking about neutrinos because we have built technologies that can detect their existence and validate that they're there. And then we have theories that would be consistent with what you're just saying. Yeah. So the ways that we see the world, I guess my point is, is are not just the biological ones, but they're becoming enhanced by technology and all sorts of ways and theories and explanations are part of that technological infrastructure, which is why we can talk about that.

1:59:23Our gravitational waves for example is another one. Yes. Going through us right now. Right. We can't detect them. Yeah. We can feel the effects of gravity itself. Yeah. You know, but we also know that that's entirely based on mass. Right. So we also know that gravity, like the more weight you have on you, the harder it is for you to get around because you're being pulled. That's right. Which is bizarre. Yeah. And you can use that to your advantage by rucking. You know, you can get in better shape by putting a heavy backpack on it going up a hill. But it's large. So you change your physical structure by adding weight.

1:59:55Yeah. Yeah. And that's what weightlifting is, right? You're changing your physical structure and your ability to move through space and time by resisting constantly. So developing these biological tools to get past gravity. Well, I think it's amazing how much of like the physical world you can get a sense of by simple things like that. Yeah. Like we really do live in a physical reality. Like I know some people want to think we live in a simulation, but like there's a real physical world. And I think we only kind of misconceive of it as a simulation because like so much of our environment now is architected by human minds that it seems not real, but it is real.

2:00:32So you don't subscribe to the possibility of simulation theory? No, I find it inadequate. For a number of reasons, it doesn't seem like it's a better explanation than any other current explanation for how the universe works. So, you know, I put the simulation argument, intelligence design, and even sort of the current laws of physics and kind of equal footing as far as their ability to explain why the universe exists the way it does. Because what all three theories do is they basically push explanation to the boundary. And in physics, we do that by saying there was an initial state of the universe that was low entropy and the laws of physics have described what it's done ever since, but you can't explain where the universe came from.

2:01:11And in this, you know, in intelligence design, it's like you can actually, you know, the universe is, you know, designed by some being, but like where did that thing come from? Right. And in the simulation argument, it's just the great programmer in the sky made us. And I think, you know, the nuance there is like, if any entities like us could evolve that could build simulations, then it's far more likely that we live in a simulation. But I think you still have to assume a physical reality that evolves the capability of building simulations. Yes. So it seems all very circular to me. Yes. And not explainatory.

2:01:46Yeah, I just, I don't understand why people are so confident in stating that like Elon said the chances of it not being a simulation are in the billions. Yeah. So one in billions that we are not in a simulation, but he's also crazy. Well, I think it's easy to throw numbers out there though, like and not have them be founded in anything. There has to have been a thing before the simulation existed. Yeah. And for that thing to create the simulation, for the simulation to emerge. It's super interesting also to me that a lot of the people that are proponents of simulation argument tend to be in like the tech world.

2:02:18And so like, I think it's in their favor to think that like, you know, like, it's great to think that computers are like gods and like, you know, like, and to build this kind of mysticism around these technologies. But like, if you really want an explanation for what simulations are, there has to be a continuity between the physical world and the simulation. And they like, you have to be able to explain how it is that computation emerged on a planet. And simulations became possible on our planet. And like, they, they emerged out of something. Right. So I think I'm much more interested in like, what is the, what is the unification of the virtual and the physical?

2:02:52And like, how can you think about them as similar kinds of systems than to just say the universe is a simulation, therefore I'll tell why the universe exists? Right. Doesn't get you anywhere. It doesn't. And also, well, I always think about the universe itself. We always want to look at a birth of a universe in the end of the universe. And I would say, I wonder if we do that because of our own biological limitations. If we think that a thing had to emerge because we emerged. But why does it have to have emerged? It exists. Right. Why didn't it always exist? But then that's a huge problem. Like, you can't have everything exist forever as part of the problem.

2:03:32So, but what could possibly exist to make everything exist, which is the other one? Yeah, the prime mover. Well, not only that, but the craziest theory of all is the primary theory of the creation of the universe itself, which is the bank theory. Yeah. Which is the absolute nuttiest theory that's ever existed. Everything that exists came out of something so small, was smaller than the head of a pin. Yeah. And then in one massive moment, it creates the universe itself. And with that's one that universally screwed upon. Yeah, I know. And it seems to be a signature of it. So, you can study it. Yeah, there's no problem with crazy ideas.

2:04:04By the way, I love crazy ideas. They're the craziest. Yeah. But that's the craziest, right? Yeah, yeah. But even going back to the simulation, I would like, but yeah, the big bang is, is, I mean, but I think, you know, when you're trying to understand how reality works, it should surprise you. And it should have counterintuitive properties. I mean, I think that's how we really know we're learning things. And I don't, and I'm also of the perspective that I think any theory can be replaced by a better one. Any explanation is not an ultimate explanation. Right. So we're constantly learning more and we're constantly refining our ideas.

2:04:35Is that a problem in science in that, building people with spoust, a very particular idea of how the world works? They have a hard time backing off of that. I think they've talked to us. I think scientists have a hard time doing that. And so, you know, I confront this a lot in my work because the kind of ideas we're proposing are new and they say very different things. Then, you know, sort of the standard canon would say or like we make, you know, like we're seeing structure that isn't part of the way that people talk scientifically about the nature of life or like it's fundamental properties.

2:05:10And what I see is a lot of resistance to new ideas because people think things are already explained. And so this is really funny for me at the original life. It's like, it's like we already have an evolutionary theory. Like the original life is solved and it's like have you been to a meeting on the original life? It's like that problem is not solved. I'm sorry. But so many people think it is. They just think like it's easy. It's been done. You'll get like really prominent, you know, physicists tubing. Like, oh, you get the first replicator on the planet and then you get life. And the real hard problems are like, you know, the long term future of the universe and things.

2:05:44And I think we're just, we're reasoning based on assuming absolute knowledge sometimes when we don't have absolute knowledge. Do you think that some of that, some of that sort of trying to define things in a definite way that we do know it, we understand it, is in response to some religious ideas about the creation of life and that they propose that these scientific rules have been solved? Because if you leave them open, that kind of opens the doors to the possibility of a creator or of intelligent design. And they want, they want to kind of rush to say no, we figured it out. That's what I've been told by, I mean, because we have a lot of, you know, there have been a lot of reactions to the work that we've been doing, both positive and like, you know, interacting with people's dogmas in certain ways.

2:06:31So they're like very reactionary and then some people that are much more thoughtful and critical. And then some people that are very not thoughtful but very critical. And so you get like the whole spectrum and I guess if you do any kind of high profile science, you're going to get everything thrown at you. And part of the reason that I want the ideas out there is because I want that critical feedback. So that's fine. If it's, you know, intelligent feedback, that's amazing. But I think the thing that I've noticed is that the way that different communities interact with the ideas are totally different.

2:07:00So it's like, you know, the evolutionary biologists, you know, we're, some of them, not all of them. You can't make blatant statements about any group, you know, really don't understand what we're trying to do. And then but the creationists don't either and they don't want it either. So it's like you're in this weird space and they're dueling with each other because they think they have totally different explanations for things. So, but yeah, I, I, I, what I have been told that that field is particularly protective of its ideas because it's had to battle with intelligent design for so many decades and really stand its ground.

2:07:31And original life is like a really separate community from biology writ large. I mean, I was even told early in my career when I was a postdoc by a very prominent biologist that I shouldn't work on origins of life. And I want to understand what life is. I should just pick a standard biology problem. And I thought to myself like the one problem you want to pick is the one everyone can't answer because that's where you're the most progress. Yeah, so it's just very funny to me that it's often it's swept under the rug as solved or too hard to solve both simultaneously at the same time. It sounds insane to me that someone would tell you not to look into the origin of life.

2:08:08Yeah, because the idea that we have figured everything out about even if we understand the processes involved, right? How often does this take place in the universe? What is this? Is there other ways to do it? It's fascinating. I mean, we don't have an idea what an alien is, right? Like that. I mean, just that, just slap you in the face. Like the multitude of ways we talk about alien, we don't even, like, we don't know what we mean when we say that. It brings me back to this concept of the muse. So my thought, I have this bizarre thought once that ideas are life forms. Oh, sure. I told you I agree with that.

2:08:40Really? Yeah. So my thought is every physical object that human beings have ever created came out of an idea. Yes. So idea gets into primate brain. Primate brain goes, I think I can make it canoe. And then primate brain figures out a way to hollow out a tree and turn it into a canoe. And then primate brain says, you know what? When I let go of this stick, if I pull it back, it goes forward, right? If I let go of it and it springs, what if I could tie a string? And what if I could pull it further? And what if I get a stick? I think I can get that stick to fly. And then it becomes a bone arrow. And so the human mind interacts with these ideas, the ideas manifest themselves in physical objects.

2:09:25Yes. And every physical object, including airplanes, spaceships, space stations, satellites, all of them come from ideas. Where wise ideas I know. And then these ideas, much like human beings interact with other human beings, these ideas interact with other ideas. And they create more and more complex versions. Then you get quantum computing. It's not like one person's idea. No, these are things that happen over centuries. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree with this. I actually make similar arguments in my book about rockets as a good example of this. They were imagined long before they became actual physical objects.

2:09:58Another Chinese invention, by the way. Yeah. Chinese were on to lots of stuff. Everything. Paper, alcohol, everything. The mechanical clock, everything. Yeah. Yeah. So I think this gets to the idea of living objects being deep in time. And I also think a lot about the nature of abstract things versus physical things. So I think everything is physical. And when we think of ideas as being abstract, it's just because, you know, like they're not physical objects yet in the same way that we see these kind of physical objects. But they come to our mind in some weird way that doesn't seem like you look, if I dig a hole, I know I dug that hole.

2:10:36Yeah. I know I stuck that shovel, I exerted effort, I put forth, I lifted the dirt out. I made the hole. So if someone says where that hole come from, I'm like, I dug the hole. Yeah. Simple. But if someone says where did you get the idea for a joke? I'll go, oh, I don't know. It came to me one day. I was just laughing with my friends. And a thought popped in. It wasn't a calculated thing where I worked on it forever and ever. It's just it got entered into my mind out of nowhere. And then it came out my mouth and everybody laughed. And I'm not sure where it came from. Yeah. It is totally weird.

2:11:11It's weird. Now imagine that someone figured out an airplane, like some little bit of an orbital rider. Well, people did, but you're right. It's also distributed over many human minds. So it's not like a single mind architectored. It's like the interaction of many minds and the physical world that generates these things. But I think that force whatever the idea is. I think it's time. It's time. Literally. So in assembly theory, we think time is fundamental, but you might think of time as in terms of causation. And things like you that are, you know, take billions of years for the universe to generate have a lot of time embedded in you.

2:11:45And time is actually the creative mechanism that's expanding the space of possibilities and maybe the universe itself. But that's how I think about it. So you actually have an incredible amount of time and a small volume of space. That's what you are as an evolved object. At least that's sort of the current my current thinking with this theory that we're developing and how we're trying to test the transition to life. And so where are those things coming from? They're coming from the fact that you are an architecture that's deep in time and you have all of this internal space in you. That's temporal and size, not spatial and size that you can draw from to create.

2:12:18And if you are reading people's work and interacting with people's research and you're learning things that people have discovered, you're essentially interacting with their time. Yes, you're looking at all their traces of time and you're doing it over time. And that's becoming part of your architecture in time and all of that structure is still in you. And the more time you spend on it, the more you'll absorb that. You'll absorb more and more and more of it. And the more people's thoughts and more people's work you take in, you're taking all of their time. Yes. And you're putting it all into your head.

2:12:52We're just like bundles. I think about time and information kind of being the same thing, but we're just all of that causation bundled up in like these small. We look small, but we're not small. So sometimes I have this visualization of earth as like the largest thing in the universe that we know of, which is in terms of possibility space or how much time is embedded in the current structure of the earth. So if you could do a zoom out of the entire universe and you could look at space, assuming there's no aliens out there and you look at earth, earth is giant as far as the amount of stuff that can be made here and how much history is embodied in every object.

2:13:30It's like it's just this huge causal structure and this like, and I think I think we're representations of that physics. And that's one of the reasons that we have this kind of perplexing feature of like these things seem abstract. Well, they're not they're not abstract. Like they don't they don't look like they're in physical space like knock on one on the table, but the table is like an object that has like four billion years of history in it. So it's like the physicality of the table is mostly in time, not space. And that's true. I think for us is living things. It makes sense. And it also if you could go to the original collision of like earth one, when earth one creates the moon and just imagine being able to.

2:14:10It's so fabulous. We have a giant moon. It's so crazy. It's the only thing that keeps our atmosphere stable. That's the only reason why we're here. In this form. Yeah, exactly. Such a chance event. And it's so big. It's one quarter the size of us. I know. And it looks nice and watches. It's beautiful. Yeah. And it's floating in this guy and it makes a you know a summer night. Look at the moon. I know. And we get eclipses. Yeah. So much of human history is dictated by the moon. It's amazing. Anyway, sorry. It is. No, it's incredible. But that this this whole thing. If you could watch it take place.

2:14:42I wonder if I've often thought like there's so many mysteries of history. But I'm almost wondered that if calculations get to a point. If computers get to a point where they could examine all of the objects in all the places that they are currently in the world and all the force that would cause them to exist and all the history that caused them to exist. You could accurately go back and see exactly what happened every step of the way. Yeah. I think it might be possible. It's it's an interesting kind of thought experiment about like whether the universe is deterministic and fully predictable. And I think in the past like one of the reasons that we think the laws of physics or deterministic is because in the past you can determine things.

2:15:33But I think the future is on determined till it happens. Probably. Yeah. So it might be possible. But I don't know how much you can reconstruct because things die out like extinction of entire lines of life or like things disappear. Like they don't exist anymore. And so I think that you can reconstruct the past. But I don't believe personally in an exact history for the universe. Well, if we can reconstruct the past based on our current understanding, which is fairly limited and much greater than it used to be three or four hundred years ago. If we could expand that knowledge for the next thousand five hundred thousand years ago, whatever it is from now into the future to develop some sort of a computation system.

2:16:10Some sort of an ability to have an accurate assessment of everything that took place and then be able to lay it out how it took place because of all the objects and all the places and all the species that died off and all the records when they do core samples and understand the radium content, which meant asteroids impacted here and carbon, which is some sort of a fire here and it just calculated out when you get some. It's principle. It's like in principle, it makes sense. But I think in practice, I'm not even sure that's physically possible because as you're like trying to compute everything that the universe has done, you also have to like make sure that that physical thing actually can calculate itself and continue to exist in the future.

2:16:51So if you're like, it's not it's it's it's it's an interesting thought experiment about like how much of the universe can be computed, but you have to deal with resource bounds. And so like you have to deal with an actual physical implementation of that computer and that computer has to be able to persist long enough to do the calculations and have enough energy to do it, which means there has to be things external to the computer. So you can't use all the resources available just for the computer like the compute you actually have to keep the whole thing running. So, right. So I don't think that you actually can know the past with with exact right.

2:17:29I was going to say infinite resolution, but I don't believe in infinities anyway, but like really precise resolution that you could you could reconstruct everything that has happened in the history universe. I think our universe forgets things and I think it does so on purpose because that's part of them not purpose, but like not in an anthropocentric way, but it does so because the the act of forgetting things is actually in part how the universe generates novelty. If it remembered everything in the past and only those things persisted like we live in an incredibly boring universe, we live in a universe that's constantly creating things and sometimes it, you know, like some of those things can't be generated anymore, but it makes more space for other things to be created.

2:18:03You don't believe in infinity. I don't. Interesting. I mean, as a mathematical construct, sure, but as a real physical thing, no. But I have a really different view of mathematics than most people. Like I think mathematics is a physical system that exists on our planet, and I don't believe in like a Euclidean world that's like a perfect mathematical forms. I think there are a thing that our biosphere has invented and one of the reasons that we think mathematics is universal is because it's a language that we understand that actually, you know, like is information that's embedded in pretty much every object in our environment, but it doesn't mean that it's like it has universal reach.

2:18:40Yeah, there's some problems with mathematics too, right? Eric Weinstein who's a mathematician, who's kind of explaining the number two, there's a bunch of different things that are bizarre with math. So it almost hints to an incomplete understanding of mathematics, even as we currently know it. Right. Well, there's always that. I mean, you know, it always perplexes me that, you know, people accepted Euclidean geometry as the only form of geometry for like 2000 years. I mean, it's like like literally like that was it. And then we were like, oh, well, there could be not Euclidean geometries, and we just never imagine them because like they don't reflect our physical environment.

2:19:13I mean, that's crazy. So that's like that's saying that there's mathematics. We don't understand. But then there's a question about whether there's a deeper structure that's not even mathematical. That math might be derived from like, is there a language deeper than math? What could that be? Don't know. I mean, I think I have. I have. I think about a lot. I'm sure you tell. Well, I mean, I'm kind of rhetorical question. Yeah, no, it's okay. Well, I worry about this a lot with like the nature of the relationship between the theory of computation and assembly theory, for example. So computation is, you know, a way that we kind of understand the formalization of mathematical things that we actually can, you know, algorithmically do.

2:19:53Right. So anything that you can calculate, you can compute. And so there are obviously like, uncomputable numbers and things like that, but they live in some abstract, you know, like. But anyway, so assembly theory has some features that look like theories of complexity and computation in that, you know, like people talk about a minimal complexity for a computer program as being the way that you talk about complexity and we talk about a minimal causal history to construct an object. But I think what assembly theory is that is a bit different and super interesting is it's NP like it's it's actually hard to compute the assembly index.

2:20:29It's harder than classes of computational algorithms that are kind of similar to it. But the universe generates these molecules that are computationally incredibly complex, but causally the universe can generate them. And so like you couldn't compute necessarily like on a super computer like, you know, the complexity of a cell, like you're saying, like, could I reconstruct the whole history yet the universe can generate that structure. Right. So it suggests to me that there's something else going on in the space is actually a lot larger than what you can computationally compress. So what else could be going on?

2:21:04I think that I the best language I have for it right now and I really don't know like I'm really struggling with this in my work right now. And Lee and I are going back and forth about these things all the time, but is causation. And also that the other part about like why the universe is maybe not computable is this mechanism of novelty generation. Like there are some the universe if the universe genuinely creates novelty that can't be predicted on prior history and like the future really is not determined. That's just suggesting something fundamentally different than the way that we understand the way the world works right now.

2:21:38And I don't know what it is, but I think I think it has to do with something with causation and something about the physicality of objects like objects really do exist. They really do encode their histories and those histories are interacting all the time, which is making everything much more complicated like that that idea of these time threads interacting that you were talking about. And then there's a fundamental question of why yes. I think I mean when I think about like what life is like why does life exist. I think the universe is trying to maximize the number of things that exist. Because if you think like things exist or they don't.

2:22:12And you know like the universe is the constructor for things to get to exist. Like it's building all of existence is you know like what physically exists in our universe. You know wouldn't it be great if like there was a principle of nature or was just trying to pack as much existence in as possible. What makes sense also if physical things these human beings create in life creates physical things. That would be the best way to maximize it because this being. Which is also why I think we have free will because if we act independently we're actually more creative than if we we didn't. Do you ever bought it but heads with determinism people?

2:22:48I bought heads with everyone. Nothing wrong with that. No, that's what it's all about right. Yeah, no, I fundamentally love disagreeing with smart people. And so I think and I try to surround myself with colleagues that share that mentality. So I think to the best mentality. Yeah, and I think being around people that challenge you is so critical. And like you disagree with them on fundamental things like that's okay. Like I you know I have but like some of my closest friends boil my blood on some things but like. But like you have to respect that they're thinking smart people and like. Yeah, so I always put myself in their head.

2:23:24Yeah, I think we have a huge problem as human beings is we attach ideas to ourselves. And so we defend these ideas as if we're defending our very. Yes, yes, I know. I think I think I think we do have a tendency to do that. I've developed that through having so many conversations with people that I don't see eye to eye with on the podcast. Of instead of arguing with them. I try to ask them how they think. Why they think the way they think. What is it? Challenge a little bit just to try to get a response out of them trying to figure out like. What is your process and why is it so different than mine?

2:23:57Well, it's good for you too because you grow more and you understand more by doing that. I'm doing this thing over the last 15 years. It's been like the most radical unexpected education that I could have ever had. That's amazing. I'm a different human. Yeah, like completely different human than I was. Right. 15 years ago. Yeah, I think I think that is something that's really hard is like if you close yourself to ideas that you don't agree with. You're closing off like yourself to potential to grow. Yes. And understand the world better. And I think unquestionably. Yeah. Unquestionably. And these ideas, the problem when we start defending them is like, then we stop looking at them.

2:24:31Yeah. We start like to, like we put them as like a protective thing that we're trying to argue against. And we're trying to instead of invite criticism and some sort of an analysis of our thought process, we're trying to defend them. Yeah. No, so I'm happy like professionally also to change my mind all the time. So I was a determinist. I'm not a determinist anymore right now. When did that change? I think that probably changed in the last few years. And it's mostly because of the structure of what I understand of like what we're doing with assembly theory. So like assembly theory is like still very much in development.

2:25:07And we're still really trying to work on the ideas. But I always had these ideas about the original life having something to do with information playing a causal role in the structure of reality. And information is like an abstract thing. Like how can you think mathematical structures can influence physical world. But like you just gave great examples of things that were once ideas that became physical. And I think about like Newton's law of gravitation is a law of nature. It describes something about the objective world. But the law itself is also an object that exists in our biosphere that's generating structure, like allowing us to launch satellites into space.

2:25:39That wouldn't be possible without that mathematical form existing on our planet as a description of reality. So that's an object. And so these kind of things are always really perplexing to me. And so I started working with Leon assembly theory and like Lee's very radical and very thought provoking and always pushing. And you know he was really on this idea of the universe not being deterministic and getting larger in time. And like part of that was not like it was he's like he's like I'm a chemist I burn shit. I see this in the lab. The second law is not like the right description of like what's going on here.

2:26:17But there is some underlying under term and and novelty mechanism in chemistry that life seems to be you know like really manifesting. And so what is free will them for me. So what happened was when I started working on assembly theory I started to like see that there was a really different structure, especially associated with the way information gets embodied in physical objects and the history being physical in the objects. And free will becomes this idea that like you know you can't you actually can't you know in standard physics you would say like an emergent thing like us can be reduced to our atoms and all of the fundamental description is down there.

2:26:53But what you've done is stripped that physical system of all the time inside of it right so elementary particles they don't require memory for the universe to generate them. They just they they're spontaneous you the universe has them for free but things like us require memory and things that know how to build things like us in order for us to exist. And then once we exist we're encoding all of that history and information in us as objects all of that causation is in us which means that all of the selection over all the histories to generate us is still part of us and allows us to actually work in this commonatorial space that we can actually generate new structures and that that that is actually like where free will comes from it's not that like it's basically if you if you assume you can't reduce things to elementary particles.

2:27:40All the time and you actually have time and objects things become causal agents actually have some navigability over the commonatorial space of the possibilities they live in that they have some control over. And that's what I think free will is you don't have control over everything so it's not like free will is not all free or all determinism and I think Dan Dennett was really brilliant on this point like he talked about free will inflation which I thought was a historic historical concept it's like really funny. But it's like either people think the universe is random and you actually have free will and control over everything I think it's fully deterministic and you have no freedom.

2:28:12But actually what it is is determinism is built over lineages because things get selected to exist and they become part of the regular structure of our universe so determinism itself is an emergent property and things that are very deterministic like us actually have more causal control over the kind of things that can happen to them but they can't control everything. So we have limited free will like I couldn't be home in Arizona this exact second but I can be there later today because I planned ahead for it like that's where your free will executes over time. So this concept of determinism is just too it's too simplistic.

2:28:44Yeah. I mean to think that the universe is all like one human concept anyways too simplistic is like it's deterministic or it's not deterministic actually. You know there are cases where you can model it as being deterministic because you're looking at the past and the replaces you cannot model it as being deterministic because you're looking at the future. Right. Right. And I think that's a pretty simple concept and very evident when you're looking at living things like no one can predict the future technologies like are the future of the biosphere. Right. Some of the information's there like we were talking about before like maids will probably still be present 50 years from now so like I might be able to predict some things about the future but the novelty is really hard.

2:29:21The problem I've always had with determinism is that people seem too sure of it. Yes. And the people that espouse it they seem very sure of it and I think how can you be sure when you know for a fact in your own mind you make decisions. Yeah. And you think that these decisions are made entirely based on your life experiences your education your biology, yada yada yada but maybe not maybe not because there's things going on that are weird. There's moments there's inspiration there's a lot of stuff happening. And intuition is a big problem. I mean I always find that very missing. Yes. Like I live my whole life on instincts.

2:29:54Yeah. Like I do things that a lot of people go why are you doing that I'm like that's what I should do. Yeah. And I feel like that's what I should do. Like it feels like a thing to do and that seems to be for lack of a better term free will you know discipline itself for lack of a term better term is free will. Yeah. Like what is it about the idea of being rewarded by doing something difficult you don't want to do but you force yourself to do it if that is not free will what is. Yeah. It seems like nothing can make you get up and go for a run if you don't want to go for a run. But you decide to do it which is the embodiment of free will.

2:30:33Right. That is free will manifested in a physical action. Yeah. I think the issue about why people you know like really want to say free will doesn't exist is because it's not compatible with standard like theories and physics and therefore you know we know how our universe works you can't have free will. But our standard theories and physics can't explain life they can't explain mind and free will lives in the space of whatever physics describes life in mind it doesn't live in the physics of gravitation or the physics of quantum particles like those are those are totally different areas of physical reality that have nothing to do with the physical reality.

2:31:06And the thing to do with you as an evolved structure over four billion years that now has agency in the universe like you're a different component of physical reality than those theories are describing and and I think you know we have a tendency to think physics is complete we have done this throughout. Like the history of physics it's like every century they think the last century did it like we understand reality now it's like every century has a new description. I like I will never forget like I like bouncing between my classes as an undergrad physics student and how many times I was told like I she you know it's like it's really comical at the end of the 1800s they thought physics was complete and like then there was general activity in quantum mechanics this is so funny.

2:31:44But it's like I go in a physics department and like talking about this and I like we don't need new physics for life like physics is already done like we have the standard model and I'm just like are you not like understanding the dichotomy here between what we teach like students and like how we talk about where we are now in here. It's like crazy. Yeah totally crazy. It is crazy that we repeat is repeat these problems repeat repeat these issues over and over and over again and we were all back then they were stupid like don't you think in the future if you can just look at the history of human beings what they believed and don't you think there's got to be some stuff like that right now yeah has to be there has to be I mean no way we figured it out no no I definitely I definitely think fundamental physics has a very bright future of like having a really fundamentally like earth shattering like ways of thinking about things that I don't even think like our current theories are like that like they're they're going to be replaced by things even more awesome.

2:32:41And I'm really excited about that I mean that's like why you want to do like physics right like you don't want to work on the theories of like you know the guys that were around a hundred years ago like why don't you work on the new ideas that describe the reality is like you're coming to understand it now in history and yeah so it's it's funny that people want to just accept what previous generations taught them is like apps like that. Absolutely fact and then not be confronted with like the changing times the changing understanding of the world around us the changing sets of observations. Because I can imagine you know many thousands of years ago when humans were you know still like you know being hunter gatherers not really thinking we have a lot of causal agency in the world like you see the seasons you have no control over them and like you know and so obviously like we're born out of this idea that the you know the universe is objective and existing outside of us because of a deep history of not having a control but like now in a modern technological society we see how much of reality we've shaped and changed like I don't know how you could hold that view anymore.

2:33:38And like it's it's very deep in our history that like we think these things but like the evidence around us right now is completely to the contrary. And this also seems like an emergent property of human beings. Yes humans in particular I think animals do it to an extent but I think our ability to abstract and our ability to build technologies based on our abstractions and like what we're doing now is fundamentally different than any thing that our biosphere has done over the last four billion years. I think we're pretty special and I have no problem saying that like I think we're the most interesting thing in the universe.

2:34:07Yeah I think so well the known universe known universe yeah I think it's quite possible this is a little bit more interesting than us. Yeah I'm sure there is but I don't think that we're ever going to recognize what that thing is until we actually really appreciate what we are. Hmm interesting. You glossed over this but I want to get back to it. Why don't you believe in infinity? Oh so I just I think it's not possible for like I guess people want to say the universe is infinite in size and I don't know what that means I think it's just as a placeholder of like we don't understand. So infinity helps in like certain in certain theories of physics like to actually make your mathematics tractable but to say it's actually like a physical thing to me is it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make any sense because I think if you assume you know like there's an infinity of things that could exist and that exists somewhere and obviously there's like an infinite number of them.

2:35:13It doesn't actually explain anything about here or like why do we have the things that we have in this universe and I think it's I think what infinity is is it's a feature of humans imagination to define the space of what's possible and it physically exists as the boundary of that space but it doesn't physically exist out there as a real physical thing. Like there is no infinite space. There is no infinite possibilities of a multiverse those are abstractions that exist in human minds that allow us to think about how the world works and reason in what we can actually construct here as far as theories we understand or things we can build.

2:35:51But the concept of infinity if there is no if the universe is not infinite then the universe has a defined boundary so what's beyond that boundary. I don't know. That's weird right? Yes. That seems like maybe that's what infinity is. Yeah, so I think we could be saying the same like I think I think about it sort of like there's a boundary that is like the physical size of the universe and the physical stuff in the universe and then there's another boundary which is part of that physical boundary but it's like the things that we can imagine and the things we can imagine at least can possibly be physically real and then there's another boundary we can't even imagine.

2:36:29I don't even know if there's stuff out there that's like beyond that and like you can't even talk about it because you can't even imagine what it is. Right. One of the most perplexing theories that I've ever heard was the concept of the in the center of every galaxy there's a supermass black hole and that going through that supermassive black hole you will go into another universe. Yeah. Yeah, these are kind of interesting and fun and kind of yeah. But like what are you saying? Yeah, no, I mean, well, there's a lot of theories about like the multiverse and I think they're intellectually interesting and they bring interesting philosophy into physics but I don't know that I can assign physical realism to anything that we can't observe directly.

2:37:13And I would rather take the mathematics and like and the theories of physics themselves like I do these thought experiments about like the theoretical physics of theoretical physicists. It's like if I were outside of myself and I was watching what I was as a theoretical physicist writing down equations and like trying to describe the world, what would those mathematical objects look like as physical things. And so this to me is the perspective that I find much more productive because I don't think people have looked at that through that lens at what mathematics is like we tend to take the Euclidean, you know, and like the you know, play those cave type paradigm from the ancient Greeks that like there's a perfect world of forms and like, you know, we're just seeing the shadows of like this perfect reality.

2:37:52And I think I think the universe is constructing itself and mathematics is a particular thing our universe has constructed that enables things to be possible that wouldn't be possible without mathematics existing. The people that are proponents of this concept of infinity and that do believe in it when you steal man that what's the best argument for it? Well, I think the idea it's kind of like what you're saying like if you take the limit like they're you know they it actually is consistent with our equations to assume that you know like the universe could be infinite or the time in the future could be infinite and it to them I think it seems like it has some physicality to it.

2:38:30But I don't but I always it always seems to me to be a placeholder of like the boundary. And so but also like you know it depends on what you think is satisfactory so if you want to believe a multiverse hypothesis and there's sort of an infinite number of realities because you find that more explain it like explanatory to assume that everything exists. And therefore like we're just one thing in that space you know some people find that satisfactory I don't find that satisfactory because it doesn't explain why we exist. And I and I just I want to explain us I want to know what we are. Yeah, but it's it's our sort of questions around infinity and mathematics just generally.

2:39:12And I find it really fun to think about. The multiverse to me is the most bizarre mind experiment because there's no evidence that exists but it's a concept that's universally sort of it's shared a lot and it's debated a lot. And it's you know some people you know a little pontificate on it but you might be thinking about nonsense. Right so I think you know another reason I don't I don't really think infinity is like a real construct is I really am a big fan of Nick Jisen he's a physicist that's kind of arguing that real numbers aren't real. And what he means by that is like if you want to compute a real number and like you know we use real numbers like you know like they require infinite precision to to compute all the digits.

2:39:56And you know you're assuming a lot of resource for a universe built on real numbers because basically it means anything that you look at you can look at with infinite resolution. And it's probably the case especially if you think the universe is constructed or even if you believe in a simulation argument that there has to be a granularity there because the universe has to do these things in finite time with finite resource. There is an evidence that there's infinite time or infinite resource in our universe. And therefore like if you want something to actually be physically real the universe has to be able to implement it the universe cannot implement infinity in finite time.

2:40:33It just can't do it. Right finite time. Yeah and I think time is finite I think time is a resource and I think time is is you know part of the mechanism that the universe is actually constructing itself the universe is constructing itself for a moment to moment. And you know and we persist over certain set of moments but but yeah this is the way I said I'm a presentess and I don't even know if I agree with myself on this like I disagree with myself on a lot of things and I might change my mind tomorrow. But it's like the idea only the present exists so the past is rolled up in the present like I think that there are there it like the past structure exists in the present and the present is now constructing the next moment right and so but that the space like the future is expanding it's getting larger and larger and larger.

2:41:15Because there's so much commonatorial structure like all these past histories now entwined in the modern structure that they can now enter trying to make the future bigger and bigger. And this is from our current observable position. Yes. And then you go. Which is the only one we can talk about. Right and then you expand down to the other. Unibossus like what is going on out there. Yeah so it's interesting to say that because you know most theories of physics are actually constructed with the observer living outside the universe. Right so like Newton had this conception of you know like you could take a God's I view literal guides I view of the universe and describe it objectively from the outside.

2:41:51And all of our theories of physics have this problem. This is why quantum mechanics is so existentially hard because it confronts us with the fact that like if you have a physics where the observer is not part of the physics it leads to really trim like really big problems with how we structure. Theory of physics and this is why there's no one quantum theory there's a whole bunch of interpretations of quantum experiments and people call those different theories of quantum mechanics. But there's no like accepted standard interpretation that like people would point to and say this is the theory of quantum mechanics there's interpretations and I think that's.

2:42:22They're great you know there's there's great theories it's great like amazing insightful stuff but it's not quite on the same footing is like general activity which is like a widely accepted theory that it describes a set of observations. So but it's because quantum mechanics has observers and people don't know how to interpret the observer and we don't have a physics that was built from starting from observers like us things like us that are constructing theories of physics. How do we think about the world and put us inside the world and I think a theory of life has to have that property has to account for the fact that we live inside the universe we cannot escape the universe like we're always going to be physically stuck here.

2:42:58This is it this is all we got yeah and like describe why like what is the observational horizon we interact with and how did we get structured out of that space. Like why do we exist the way we do within that space. Why do we. I don't know but I mean I like the why questions I was also told by like a really prominent senior physicist not to ask why and I was like why should we not ask why. Like you should really you should ask the why questions are good question isn't it interesting that some people that are at the top of their field still have these bizarre ideas that you just completely disagree with.

2:43:34Yeah do I find that bizarre no I've had that since I you know it's very funny because I think sometimes people are like oh Sarah you're really successful in your career now you can see these things and I'm like I think I think I've been saying these things since I was like I don't know forever like I haven't changed my personality isn't changed I just like I'm deeply curious and I want to understand things and I think you know you you have to be able to follow what you rationally thinking with the out like the evidence is telling you in the questions you think are interesting to answer. And I think the thing that I guess I've done is like the questions I want to answer are not ones that people have really taken as seriously as I've taken them because of the reasons that they think they're not answerable or they're already answered and I just see this gaping hole in our understanding reality that needs to be filled.

2:44:18Well listen Sarah I'm glad you're out there. I really am this is a really fun conversation I really appreciate it tell everybody how they can see some of your work. I have a book out actually is out today called life is no one knows it the physics of life's emergence where I talk about assembly theory and you know like what's needed to solve the physics of life. And also really trying to motivate this experimental program that Lee is spearheading because I am such a fan of it to try to find aliens in the lab. So basically like the idea here is we just want to get people excited about these problems and thinking about them more deeply agreeing or better yet like having lots of debate and discussion about like the nature of life and how we think about it and whether we can start an experimental program to really validate the idea.

2:45:06So that's that and I narrated the audiobook fantastic which is fun that makes me happy. Yeah it was kind of funny I was really like shy about doing it because some people like criticize my voice and like all the YouTube channels and stuff and I was like you know what I'm going to do it. Listen stop reading the comments. You know you should know the great voice. Thank you but anyways really fun and it was deeply personal so that was cool and I'm on Twitter X thing and Instagram. Who you want how do someone find you Sarah Amari there you can find me that way Instagram as well. Alien Matter. Alien Matter.

2:45:41Okay. I don't use that one as much but it's fun. Yeah anyway. Thank you very much I really appreciate it was a lot of fun. It was fun. Thank you. Bye everybody.