How To Create Meaning In Your Life & Achieve Your Full Potential w/ Sara Walker EP 1429

26:45But somebody did imagine it. That's why it exists. Sure. So in some ways, when I look around and, you know, people don't like Starlink, you know, moving across their sky because you're like, it's blocking the stars. And I'm like, oh, my God, human minds just put stars in the night sky. Like, how can you not appreciate the fact that everything in our environment is basically built by human minds? Human minds put stars in the sky? Well, Starlink. Starlink. I thought you said stars in the sky. Well, I did because they look like stars in the night. They look, you know, I mean, have you seen it? Starlink?

27:18No. Oh, it's so cool. It's just like a trail of little satellites. So it looks like a little, you know, like a comet or something. Well, not a comet. Comets have long tails, but meteorites coming into the atmosphere. So it's like these little tiny twinkling stars moving in unison across the night sky. You know, if ancients saw it, it's like the airplanes. Like people would have thought they were gods. God only knows what they would think it was. But it's intriguing to me that for all of human history, and actually indeed the entire history of our planet, we've looked at the night sky and just seen the stars that physics put out there.

27:48And now we're seeing things in our night sky that humans put there. and um and i and i think that can feel kind of alien in some sense because intrinsically we have a deep knowledge of our planet this is why people feel comforted by the mountains and things right so it's like we come from this very ancient lineage on this planet all of that knowledge has been acquired over you know billions of years not even just millennia if you go to your like your cellular level right it's like billions of years of knowledge in your body and then thousands of years as a human. And so nature feels comforting in some ways because of that.

28:26And for some people, the built environment can feel very alien. But I think it's because it's new and because of this feature of being constructed by us basically building stuff in the world around us. It's like the externalization of the human mind. AI is sort of a similar thing. It's like people feel like AI is very alien. But if you look at the progression of our technology, we built microscopes that allowed us to even know that we were surrounded by life. So this whole table is covered with microbes. If I had brought a microscope in, we could just be inspecting what's growing on your table.

29:06And then we have seismometers that allow us to feel earthquakes, obviously important in California. And we built telescopes that allow us to see the deepest parts of the universe. And we have quantum devices that allow us to probe these properties that we never knew existed. And now we're building technology that works off of principles we think our own mind works on. We're growing a lot right now. Yeah, we're growing a lot. Tell me about the quantum field. What is that for people to understand? Oh, so quantum physics, it's interesting because it's a theory that predicts features of the universe that seem quite odd for us because there are features of the universe that become apparent at really small scales.

29:53So some of the features that seem kind of weird are like these kind of uncertainty relations. So if you know the exact position of something, you can't know its exact momentum. Momentum is just kind of like a feature of its motion. So, you know, like if I try to put you in a little box, I couldn't tell how fast you were moving. Right. And that's kind of a weird feature. And then there's, you know, like quantum entanglement, which is if you separate two particles that were interacting and you make it so that they can't communicate, they still will act like they're communicating. Really? Being separated.

30:25So these kind of features seem very odd when quantum mechanics was founded. And, of course, a lot of people that have, you know, originally proposed quantum physics and people that study it now say that, you know, this is a theory no one really understands. There's not a standard interpretation of it. You know, a big problem with quantum mechanics is we don't actually really know how to define a measurement in the sense that there's something called the wave function, which I assume is what you're talking about. So the idea is particles have this sort of wave-particle duality, and you can describe that it's kind of an abstract thing that exists in this mathematical space, which is the wave function.

31:04And when you take a measurement, you might collapse it to an exact measurement, but it might be in a superposition of states before that. The superposition, there's an example of like Schrodinger's cat. Schrodinger was a very famous quantum physicist, which is like the cat could be alive and dead in the box until you take a measurement of it. This is what quantum physics would say. Of course, quantum physics is implied to large objects, it applies to small objects. But an electron, if it could be alive and dead, it would be both properties at the same time. It could be over here and over here until you take a measurement, then you can say where it is.

31:36And so this property is weird because now you have to say, well, what is a measurement? And measurements are actually kind of hard to talk about from this. everything is actually really hard when you try to construct a theory for it. Sure, sure, sure. And I think people don't appreciate how hard it is, like how to get to quantum physics and general relativity in these things is really, really, really hard. It's an incredibly creative and painful process. And coming up with new theories is emotional. It's like, and you have to like rely on this deep intuition. So quantum physics has these weird properties, you know, and there's like the many worlds hypothesis, which is like the interpretation of quantum mechanics that all possible realities exist simultaneously.

32:17And the measurement is just, you know, like branching the wave function. So you're just saying you're on the one where the Schrodinger's cat was dead, but there's another one where it's alive, and it just split into two realities instead of being one. Like a multiverse. Yeah, sort of. Sort of. Different realities, gotcha. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, so it's interesting. The theory says a lot of interesting things. There's a lot still to be solved and understood about it. And a lot of people want to take sort of insights from quantum physics and apply them to sort of general principles of reality.

32:49And I think that's a bit of a stretch because quantum physics actually doesn't explain what life is. And we haven't solved the physics of life and we don't know the physics of mind. And I think that physics might be even more interesting and even weirder than quantum physics. The physics of mind. Yeah. Where is the mind? Presumably in your head, but not really. It depends on your concept of self, I guess. I don't know. My mind feels like it's inside my head, but I also feel like I'm not an individual sometimes. Is the mind the same thing as consciousness and awareness? Yeah. So, well, it depends on what kind of question you're asking and what you want to know.

33:31I'm just curious. Yeah. I'm just curious. Where does the mind come from? What do you want to know universe is it everywhere and yet here at the same time yeah is my consciousness in my mind is my soul connected to my mind is it in a different place right are they talking to each other in a different way yeah how are they connected are they connected like the body or is it surrounding the body is it a sphere of energy yeah rather than inside the body right yeah you know i see what you mean i don't think anyone has good answers to those questions and if they claim they do you should ask them a few more questions um uh because i i think the most interesting thing with these kind of things is when you start talking to different people who have thought very deeply like i i mean i meet all sorts of people all the time from different walks of life and different um uh different scientific training like some of the best thinkers in the world and you get to these sorts of questions and there's a lot of deep mystery there um and i think that's good like we should embrace the mystery and we should embrace the unknown because if we recognize the things we don't understand, then we have the capacity to understand them.

34:41I love this Marie Curie quote. It's like, now is the time to understand more so that we can fear less. It's not exactly, she has a much more eloquent way of saying it. But so I don't think that we have a good answer to your question. But I do think, you know, the ways, the sorts of ways I know people talk about it. So some people want to think, so you're asking a question about consciousness. Consciousness, you know, the problem people are interested in there is not like your thought process but the fact you actually experience anything so like sitting in this room right now you know we're experiencing colors we have feelings about them we have like a mental image inside our head and some people find that to be very mysterious feature of consciousness and where does that intrinsic experience come from and it seems very difficult to explain that particular feature based on current what are called materialist narratives so physics is based on the sort of principles of materialism, which is that matter exists, whatever you want to define as matter.

35:40So that's a whole nother hard problem. Matter exists, like particles exist, atoms exist. And if you want to describe the properties of those things, it seems like there's no place for mind to actually exist in that kind of description of reality. And so some people want to take sort of a dualist perspective that mind exists in this other plane and then interacts somehow with the physics. But that actually has a lot of problems because it doesn't explain much about why those things interact, how they interact. Why would it be the case that I have thoughts that do anything in the world? And so I tend to think that we really do exist.

36:17We are physical beings, but we might not understand the physics entirely yet. And I think that's much more productive because there you can then construct concrete questions about what would a physics look like if I built it based on these kind of properties I see. and not the ones that maybe were developed for studying other areas of physics. Is there anything you know for fact, for true, like about the world, about the universe? Is there actual truth that we can, as human beings, agree on? Or are they just theories that we agree on? I think there are theories in their descriptions. But I would say I think we can, it's actually one of the hardest questions is to like what would be the thing that we can agree on or what's the ground truth?

36:57Like universal truth. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. We don't know. I know. Is that exhausting? It is, but it's fun. Do you feel like you're running around in circles? No, I feel like I'm moving in a direction. That's good. I think the direction is nominally what we might call human progress. We move in a direction of hopefully building better lives and building more creative things and possibilities. and I think a large part of that is trying to understand the reality we live in and coming up with concrete explanations for it. And they're not permanent. There won't be an ultimate explanation, but there will be a better explanation that allows us to get to the next phase.

37:40So from a physicist's point of view, have we figured out what the meaning of life is or is that just for each individual to figure out? It's both. So I would say each individual should figure out the meaning of their life, But I would say what I think, like when I think about what life is, what life does uniquely in the universe that no other kind of system can do is the creativity. And so I often will describe the physics of life as the physics of how the universe generates novelty and how it explores the space of what's possible. So there's a lot of things that could exist. Not everything gets to exist.

38:19We can imagine a lot of things that don't exist. But the unique thing that's happening on our planet that we haven't observed on any other planet yet, but hopefully we will if we find alien life, is that things that we can imagine to happen or can create new knowledge on this planet actually generate new possibilities. Like the example I gave of satellites or your example of the TV screen. Or airplanes. Yeah, I couldn't have imagined those. But somebody did imagine them. That's why they exist. And it creates new possibilities. We can travel the world or we can connect with friends around the world we can gain information or knowledge from a device.

38:54Yes, yes. And it's not all possible things, but it is a large subset of interesting things that can happen on this planet that can't happen elsewhere. And I think that's what life is doing. How do we use your work to discover what each individual's mission is in life? Is there information we can gain from the work you're doing? I think, you know, I always like to think what would be the physics 300 years from now? And I always think morality or purpose might be interesting. So I do think about the implications of it. And I guess the thing that's interesting for me is to think about every living thing that exists as a unique thing and a real causal force in the universe to some extent.

39:35And for me personally, I feel like when I'm aligned with my purpose, I feel like my purpose is really cheesy. But I feel like my purpose is to help humanity understand what life is. That's why I exist. Don't ask me why I think that. I have no idea. But when I think about that question and that is my driving goal, all sorts of things happen that are interesting. And I feel happy. It makes me happy and fulfilled. So I think, but also because I think about the physics of life, I always have this sort of metal level of description of what Sarah is doing. So I do these, and I talk in third person when I think about it from a metal level.

40:08It's okay. Yeah. So I do these like thought experiments about theoretical physics of theoretical physicists. which is you know like when you build theories what do they do to reality you know like you know when you're a physicist and you build a theory you care about making a prediction and doing an experiment but when you're thinking about it from the sort of meta level you're like what are the downstream consequences centuries hence of building the set of ideas in humanity now and and I guess it's that sort of long-term thinking and that ability of purpose and to think that your agency actually matters in the future that then you can you can start to do your life's best work.

40:43And it might be, you know, like that is taking care of my kids, or that is, you know, trying to do a billion dollar initiatives to solve the origin of life so we can understand what we are and deal with existential crises that we're facing now as a civilization. And it can bridge all those things. And it looks different for different people. And I also think that's part of it, because if you think the universe is trying to maximize creativity, then we should be individuals, but we're also collectives because we're part of the same phenomena. So I think thinking about both those things also is important to realize that other people aren't really that different than you.

41:14How do you think we should ask the question about what our purpose is as individuals and finding our purpose? This is such a great question. I always like Joseph Campbell's Follow Your Bliss, like this idea that you should follow the things that make you intrinsically happy. And I also do this with my students at ASU. Like when I get a new PhD student, my first way of like mentoring them is to try to find out what their core passion questions are. And then how do we find problems to work on that are aligned with who you are intrinsically and what you're interested in? Because I think, you know, if you want to unlock human potential, you have to have people working on things they love.

41:54And so I think for me, the first thing before you like try to think about a career or anything else you want to do in your life, You have to think about how it makes you feel and how much purpose it gives you and how much sense of moving in a direction you feel like you want to be moving. Sure. And I find this all the time. Like if you have a student, I mean research is hard, right? And I think for me it's much more, you know, like people think science is this like technical thing that like you're just doing calculations or something. but the way that we do science in the space I work in which is this idea like this generating new explanations and new ideas is much more creative and it and I was saying before it's it's pretty emotional because you're you're basically trying to find out how reality works and think about it and interrogate it and like parse it down to some concepts that you can talk to other people about and then bat those ideas around and try to build you know a theory and an experiment to test it.

42:49It's a really hard thing to do. And so I find like with students, if they don't really care about the problem, it's too hard to do that kind of work. It's too hard. You might be able to talk about it for a little bit, but you're not going to be able to deal with the years of research. But if you love the problem, the rest of it's easy. So the problem you love is how did life originate? I think it's just what is life, but that problem is going to be solved by solving the origin of life. Interesting. They're the same problem, and it's the same problem as making contact with alien life. I think it goes back to this idea of unifying.

43:23People think these questions are different. What is a mind? But I think all these questions are deeply related. So what is life is what you're trying to answer. Yes. What do you think it is? I think it's the universe's mechanism of creativity. But also what I was saying before is it's deeply related to the physics of time. So if I think about myself as a physical object that exists in the universe, I think about myself that's, you know, like it's a very large object in time. I have a lot of causal power, so to speak, and I have a lot of generative potential about what can come next because of that.

43:58Because I'm just a very, you know, humans are very large objects. We don't look large, but we're very large in a space of possibilities if you think about that kind of projection. So physical size, small. In time, we're very big. And in time, in terms of like potential possibilities we can generate in the future, very big. Well, in terms of physics, what's your thoughts on the law of attraction? Or having an idea and seeing something in your imagination and actually manifesting it or creating it, you know, with the speed that it comes quicker. What are your thoughts on that? I think, again, those are sort of similar.

44:37So I find in my own life, again, this is sort of like metal level thinking with Sarah. So this is not very scientific, but this is very intuitive for me based on the kind of science I do. That, you know, I have a very strong sense of purpose about wanting to work on these problems. And I find this kind of interesting alignment with other people that have shared sense of purpose. And the kind of collaborations and creativity that comes out of that. You get excited from that. Yes. And in some ways, if I was going to rationalize that in terms of physics of life, that makes sense to me. because things will come together that have the knowledge to generate the potential space.

45:16I don't know how to describe it exactly the right way, but I think there are some explanations for things that we feel that maybe are very coincident with kind of things that might generally be features of life in terms of how we feel fulfilled in our lives and how we feel a sense of purpose. and ultimately like if you're trying to explain what life is you're trying to explain how the universe acquires purpose and and how it how is the universe a creative place sure and i think the universe is generating itself like the universe is it it you know in standard physics the universe just exists and everything exists all at once there's no time right but in this physics that we're building for life the universe is generating itself at every moment and we are actually part of that generation mechanism so it's expanding yes the universe is expanding It's expanding in the space of possibilities.

46:06Not physically. Well, it is physically expanding in terms of dark energy. Dark matter. Well, dark matter, no. So there's a difference between dark energy and dark matter. So dark matter is matter. So it's like, you know, made of physical stuff like this table. It just happens to not interact with the electromagnetic field. So it doesn't emit photons. And it seems to be in galaxies. And we have some evidence that there's this other kind of matter that's not any of the matter that we know currently. It doesn't behave like any current elementary particles because it doesn't interact with photons in this way, but it's massive, or at least cumulatively it's massive.

46:43Dark energy, on the other hand, is the – we have observational evidence that the universe is expanding its acceleration, like its growth. So we used to think the universe was completely static, and then we realized that the universe was growing as a function of time. and we thought that growth rate should be slowing down because the matter in the universe should slow it down by the gravitational attraction. But what we've realized is actually the universe is accelerating its expansion. And so this force driving the acceleration is called dark energy. What's on the edge of the universe? That may not be a meaningful question because the universe might not have an edge.

47:18So it's infinite. It could be infinite or it could be it has a finite size. So think of a ball, for example. So a ball doesn't actually have an edge. So the universe could just have a topology that's ball-like. It's a closed universe. But it could be larger than our visible universe. So it looks flat locally. So we actually don't know the shape of the whole universe. There are some people that make conjectures about how to experimentally test features of the shape of the universe. Like if someone was to try to get to the edge of the universe or to the sphere of the universe, how long would it take with the technology we have?

47:55I don't know. I couldn't do that calculation off the top of my head, but I can tell you that in our solar system, we have launched, we launched the Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s. I think it was 1977, but I'd have to double check that. And it passed the heliopause, which is the sort of outer range of like where the sun's solar wind actually influences, you know, like outer space. Just a few years ago, I don't remember, I think it was 2015. I don't know the exact years. I remember I was teaching astronomy and none of my students knew anything about Voyager or the fact that this was the first time a technological object left the solar system.

48:37Wow. So that was the first time humans ever left the solar system or a robot that we created. And that was a few years ago and it took 40 something years. Yeah, exactly. So the universe is quite big. But the interesting, so this is where I'm going to push back on sort of like, you know, the traditional physics. Oh my God, the universe is huge. Let's look in awe kind of thing. Because I think people don't appreciate how much can be generated on this planet. Of course. So chemistry, like people underappreciate how big chemical space is. So physical space, the physical size of the universe, we can see out, we can see like Hubble, you know, like you can see the most distant galaxies.

49:10But if you want to look at chemical space and like how many molecules, so small molecules, let's say, you know, you have a dozen or so atoms. I actually don't know the exact numbers, but like amino acid is like the basic building block of a protein. You put two of those together, really tiny molecule, just that size molecule, there's estimated to be 10 to 60 possible molecules. That doesn't sound like that's just a number I can throw out, but there's not enough resources in the entire universe to make every small possible molecule. And on Earth, we have the generative capacity because we have human chemists.

49:45And in fact, we now have robot chemists to explore chemical space at speeds that we can't explore it. And so there's this space of possibilities that are accessible on this planet because of our technology and because of biology that are not accessible anywhere else. Or you want to think about the space of all possible technologies. that space is actually exponentially large. That's crazy. And if you could change a combinatorial space to a physical space and there was actually a way of mapping them mathematically that would be quite hard. But I think Earth is bigger in the possibility space than the rest of the universe we've observed.

50:15You mean like in the possibilities of what a human could create in their life? What is possible for every human to create in their own life? I don't know. Maybe it's unlimited. Some people think it's unbounded. It's just it's about the physical stuff. What limits us the most? is it the physical elements is it our mindset is it i think it's our mindset i think we hold ourselves back a lot like collectively as like you know at the planetary scale like what are humans doing and also individually because you know it's easy to emotionally hold ourselves back when rash like if we thought about things rationally we can make a lot of progress but emotions are important too because they can be a guide to like how things subjectively feel and kind of steer trajectory.

51:00So what can we do from your, all your research and discoveries and knowledge, what can we do to improve our mindset so that we are more unlimited than we are limited as humans? I think the thing for me that's most interesting is just, is, is the role of imagination and imagining a positive future. So, and this really struck me actually. So I mentioned I work at ASU, which is a phenomenal university, but I remember a few years ago we were starting a science and imagination initiative. And I thought that was kind of interesting. But the whole idea was to get scientists and science fiction writers together.

51:34But it was with a specific purpose, because most of our, you know, fantasy and science fiction writing was built on apocalyptic narratives. And the idea was, unless we can write about positive futures, positive science fiction futures, how is humanity actually going to build them and envision them? And I thought that was such a powerful idea. And I really think about that in my own work. So a lot of scientists approach science thinking, you know, Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the best explanation. But if you're somebody like me that thinks theories themselves become causal, like they do things in the world, our ideas do things, they physically have consequences.

52:12Kind of like the, have you seen the whole Simpsons thing? Have you seen this? No, I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about. The Simpsons, there's always like these memes, but the Simpsons have, I guess, predicted so many different world events. Oh, right, yeah. right yeah it's like they come up with an idea they write a story about it it comes out then 20 years later yeah on the exact day or that year right like they predict coronavirus and trump winning the president you know all these different things and so is it the prediction that it's causing is it you know is it the thought what is happening yeah i think i think there's uh multiple things going on there but some of it's like you think you have an original thought but it's actually what you didn't realize you were doing is reading a lot of inferences that were already there.

52:55And so I, you know, I, you mentioned about like the power of a human mind. I think people really don't recognize how much information is in front of you all the time. And that, and also people emphasize so much their conscious brain, but I, I'm one of these people that recognizes my subconscious does everything. It's like my conscious experience is just report, like just talking with you. Right. But like almost all my thinking is in my subconscious brain. And so I try to have a, it sounds really cheesy, but I'm like, I have a healthy relationship with my subconscious brain. If I don't know how to think about something, I push it down.

53:22I let it stew down there and ideas pop up when they're ready for me to try to figure out what to do with them. How important is it, do you think, for human beings to learn how to love themselves? I think that's critically important. Yeah. I love us. I think we're the most amazing thing that exists. I mean, love ourself, the individual, not others. No, I know, but I think it makes me sad when people don't love themselves because I think to myself, not every bit of matter in the universe ever gets to be alive. right and and like every human is like this amazing configuration that has like in some sense unlimited potential of what they can do in the universe um and so i think loving ourselves is really important to realizing that potential and yeah so i but i'm also like i'm an extreme optimist yeah but i like that i can't remember like i don't know someone said it's like the odds of being a human are like trillions to one or something right it's like for your parents to have in that one sperm and that at that moment it's like trillions to one yes and so learn how to enjoy it and appreciate it right yeah exactly not not saying it's not going to be difficult times but learn how to appreciate it and love yourself yeah and even the difficult times like uh you know because i i like all of us you know i've been through things in my life but like you know like they they can make you who you are um so and i i can't i i mean i know people experience absolutely horrible things um but um yeah i don't know it's it's tough and the question of like human suffering is super tough like what do you do with that but i think i think we do have a lot of potential and i think people loving themselves is really important and what is your meaning of life what's the meaning of life for you um i think it's it's this idea of creativity but also just like this feeling of purpose um how do we find our purpose then yeah i don't know I think that's a tough one.

55:14I think you meet lots of interesting people. I think the thing for me that's been most interesting is, you know, I didn't travel much when I was young, but, like, later in life, like, all of the people I've met, and, you know, in some sense, you become an amalgamation of all the people you meet. And so I think if you're feeling like you don't know what your sense of purpose is, that you maybe haven't talked to enough people. Because, like, people are amazing. You learn so much from them. And there's so much happening in the world right now. that there's so much to be done. Absolutely. Yeah. So I like learning from everyone I meet.

55:51I think that's been really powerful for me. What do you feel like is missing in your life right now? I feel pretty satisfied. Besides the answer to what is life. Yeah. I would like it done tomorrow. What is missing in my life? I think so I'm somebody that really appreciates counter perspective counter perspectives like I think it's really healthy to adopt someone else's point of view for a little while and then just try to understand it and also to constantly challenge yours and sometimes I'm just not sure I'm doing that enough really yeah so and I like and also this sort of optimism like I'm a I'm like an excessive optimist so maybe like maybe I should be more pessimistic and it's not really like I feel like those are missing for my life but I guess it's part of my constant questioning of like am I on the right track is to constantly check myself by doing those things so I think I think it's it's important for me to be aware of my limitations and what I understand and don't understand and to play with those ideas and try to figure out how to right so um so I guess I would be worried about what I'm not thinking about uh and that's probably on a personal and a professional level sure yeah i think of it as not as being pessimistic but being uh prepared yes you know prepared like okay i'm gonna expect and hope for the best but yeah if everything doesn't go as planned how can i prepare and train myself yeah to be ready for these situations yeah not saying they're gonna happen right but like from the sports world we'd always prepare for like okay you're you're exhausted you have a penalty against you you know all these things are against you, how are you going to calm your mind and go into the next play?

57:35How are you going to come back? Not just expecting to be, you know, hoping to be winning, you know, like planning to win, but also preparing for challenges. I think that's, you know, something we saw in the last few years is people weren't prepared for the amount of weight of challenges that were to come in human society. and I talked about this in the show before but in 2008 2009 that time I was not prepared for the economy I didn't have any money I was you know yeah financially bankrupt I was physically injured all these things I felt like I wasn't prepared right whereas a year before I thought like I was on top of the world as a great athlete I was playing professional football but then I wasn't prepared for the challenges to come yeah and when that happened and I went through a couple years of adversity I said I want to make sure I'm prepared for when this happens again yeah make sure that I'm ready for it doesn't mean it's not it may affect me in some ways but it's not going to cripple me and I think a lot of people I don't think are prepared yeah in their lives for that and I don't think you need to say the world's going to be crazy and I'm a pessimist but it's when something happens in life am I physically mentally emotionally financially spiritually training myself yeah to be ready right I I really resonate with that and I think um you know like a lot of us are running in what I would call survival mode where it's like dealing with the instantaneous problem and because we're so overloaded with those short-term problems we don't have enough time to plan ahead it's tough and I've I personally been spending the last few years of trying to get out of survival mode.

59:17Yeah. Yeah. I had a, like, I have two kids or they're six and nine. I went through divorce a couple of years ago, but like their, their dad has bipolar disorder. And that whole process was really hard for me because I didn't realize I was living in survival mode the whole time, the whole time. And you know, he's a wonderful person and we get along great. So it's like, it's nothing to do with like any, you know, but it was just like the circumstances and like what you get yourself into and then how much you don't realize you're doing and that you don't even have any capacity for, like, any long-term visions or any resiliency or anything like that.

59:48It's hard to think about the future when you're living in survival. Yeah. It's very hard. So I have empathy for that because I've experienced that, and I know a lot of people are going through that. How do you think we can get out of survival mode in order to plan for a greater future for our lives? I've been trying to learn how to say no to things. That's huge, right? It's huge. It's really huge. And also set boundaries. So, like, this idea that, like, because I'm a yes person. Like I'm like, you know, and I'm a people pleaser. So like I'm always trying to make everybody, everybody happy and always trying to like do everything for everyone.

1:00:20And I realized that like that was really limiting my potential to actually do what I like what I need to do and to also fulfill my purpose. And to even like even to the detriment of like people in my personal life, you know, because like if you're saying yes to everyone, you're saying no to something. and so. It's interesting because the pandemic really, I had a lot of, I would say yes to meeting and saying hi to everyone. Yeah. Going to events and all these different things and now I'm just kind of like, I've got a few core people I want to spend my time with and I'm, you know, way more selective of events I say yes to.

1:00:53Yes. You just got to learn to let go of the fear of missing out. Yes, exactly. You know, and realize that you've got to take care of your own stuff first. That's exactly right. Before you can expand. And the quality of your time becomes so much better because you know you're choosing it too. Right. And I think that's really important. As an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist, when we say yes to ourselves as opposed to saying yes to everything else in the universe, how does that apply to your studies? It's like you're selecting yourself. So I think one way of thinking about what, this is interesting, I never thought about it this way, but one way we think about life, like physics of life, is what gets selected to exist, right?

1:01:33And so in some sense, like your yeses are you selecting all the things that you want to allocate your time to? So if you're selecting yourself to exist and you want to have like a certain kind of life, you're saying yes to yourself. What happens when you say yes to everyone else? You're diffusing. You're diffusing yourself. And you're like deselecting yourself in favor of other people. What happens when you deselect yourself? I don't know. Your intellectual lineage dies. Wow. Interesting. I don't know. So, I mean, because you think about biological lineage, you have children. Like, every interaction you have in the world is in some sense like your children.

1:02:08Like, that's part of you propagating into the universe, right? Your message, your interactions. Yeah, your interactions, everything you do. It's creating a ripple. Yes, yeah. So, like, I think, you know, we have a limited time where we actually exist as an individual human. And a lot of your immortality, so to speak, is your impact that you create in the world, the legacy of like what bits of you remain and start to act and like actually continue to influence things so like you know einstein's a good example he lived for a certain period at the beginning of the last century but his impact you know has you know he still exists on the planet um in a lot of really interesting intellectual ways and he exists more now intellectually than he does biologically because he didn't have that many kids but intellectually he had a lot of a lot of impact right so i think i think when you're thinking about this idea of saying yes to yourself you're just you're trying to focus like what is what is what is me and how do I define me and how do I define what kinds of influences I want to have and you actually have control over it instead of just you know blanket just sending your bits out into the universe and not really focusing your efforts on what you think actually matters to you and what impact you want to have interesting what's the thing if uh for people listening or watching maybe all this went over their head it went over my head too that's okay what is one thing you hope people think about today after this conversation whether you've already said it or you want to say something new what's one thing that you hope people take away from this in terms of their life their own personal life and improving their life um well I think one thing I think is an important observation is that we're really young like collectively as a species as as things happening on this planet we're really young and we have a lot of potential and it's hard living.

1:03:55I mean, there's a lot of things happening on the planet, but I think the future can be bright. You know, there's millions of years ahead of us, potentially billions of people get off the planet and we're at the early stages of that and we can do a lot to affect what that looks like. That's cool. By what's happening on the planet now. What's one thing we should do every day to improve the quality of our life, to be able to make a positive impact for millions of years. I think self-love is really, I actually really liked your emphasis on that. I think that's really important. And yeah, saying yes to yourself and also not being hard on yourself.

1:04:35I think this is something that we do way too much is like we're so self-critical. So it's like if you don't hit that marker, it's like a horrible person, whatever. And I think just having forgiveness for yourself, I personally think it's good to set goals and I like to set big goals, but, you know, that puts a certain amount of pressure on you. So then the flip side of it is not to be hard on yourself. You know, just keep on trying, keep on trucking, as they say. Keep on trucking. I love this. How can we be of support to you, Sarah? I don't know. I mean, I always say this when I'm like, I want to solve the origin life before I die.

1:05:14But I want us to solve it. But I just think it's such an important problem to understand what we are and where we come from. So I'm just hoping more people get enthusiastic about thinking about it and wanting to help solve that existential. People talk about these existential threats to humanity right now and all the things happening. And I think to myself, it's like we don't even know what we are. How can we answer all these things? So I think I just, I would like more people to kind of focus on the first questions, the first order questions and not the ones that are downstream consequences. Sure, sure.

1:05:47So it's like, you know, like people in AI are like worried to have we built an intelligent AI and we don't even know what intelligence is. It's like, can we answer the fundamental question before we ask all these other questions? So we need to know what life is, I think, to know what's going on. So I would like more people to be enthusiastic about that problem. I think it's solvable. I think we have the technology to do it and I think we have the right kind of theories in place. and the people that work in this area are just phenomenal thinkers. I mean, they're the Einsteins of today, I think, are focusing on these kind of problems.

1:06:15It's just we don't know it yet because these are the theories that are, you know, people are going to be talking about, like quantum physics, 100 years later, right? So what are those theories happening now? Who are those people? And can we give them support so that they can do the work that they're supposed to be doing? Sure. Yeah. Wow. Where can we go to learn more about you and your work? I do experiments a lot on Twitter. I like Twitter. It's really fun. But I'm a theorist, but I like playing with words. So I do a lot of thought experiments on Twitter, which I think are fun. I read a lot of the comments.

1:06:47I don't respond to a lot of them because I don't like to – like I just – I learn a lot from the ecosystem there, which is really fun. And I have an Instagram account, which is like more – I think of science as art. I like fashion a lot, so I kind of experiment more with that stuff there. And then my lab has a website, emergence at asu.edu, which talks about some of our research. And I have a book coming out at some point. The book's going to be answering what? What life is. It's about the problem, yeah. So I deconstruct sort of the way people have thought definitionally about life and then try to rebuild this vision of what life is from a perspective of fundamental physics, bringing concepts of time and complexity and things.

1:07:28Changing the world, helping solve some problems, yeah. Working on it. Yeah, it's amazing. It's a collective effort. That's amazing, Sarah. I want to ask you a couple final questions. This is a question called the three truths. So it's a hypothetical scenario. Imagine your last day on earth many years away. You live as long as you want to live. You answer the question of where does life start from? What's the meaning of life? All these things. You discover the answers. You create the life you want to have. You see your kids grow up in a certain way that they envision and you envision. all positive things.

1:08:04But for whatever reason, all of your research, all of your content is gone. So no one has access to your information anymore. Yeah. Hypothetical. Okay. But you get to leave behind three lessons for the world. And this is all we would have to kind of remember your information by. I call it three truths. What would be those three truths for you? It's interesting, this idea of the information erasure. Sorry. Like information doesn't actually leave the universe. We didn't have access to it anymore. your your imprint your content your imprint is still there the content's not maybe the video the written word the audio is for whatever reason we don't have access to listen to it anymore yeah no no no it's fine but i i'm i'm yes i i think i understand the analogy but it's just interesting to me because i guess one of my my three lessons would all immediately be playing off of that that you leave an imprint in the universe like your existence actually matters um so the universe is fundamentally different even if nobody remembers that you did that um and and all of us basically fundamentally change it um uh you know i i think the the intrinsic feelings we have of like purpose and um uh joy or you know like the self-love like those things are guides for for what we should be doing in some sense i think like you're you maximize your potential you know in the way people would usually say it, but I also think in terms of this causal power and creativity.

1:09:30I think the other one I find a lot of value in is to think about yourself as a lineage instead of an individual. And what I mean by that is we're so focused on the I, right, and not the fact that even I is a collection of the histories of our life, and then we're a collection of the histories of the things that. So, and also, it gives you a sense of continuity about the things you create in the world. Because, like we were saying, you know, all these little bits of you go out in the world. So you're basically, you know, a packet of information that's locally aggregated for a short amount of time.

1:10:04But it's part of this larger structure that goes all the way back 3.8 billion years and who knows how far into the future. And I think thinking on those time scales for what we are is really very empowering. Wow. It's historically rooted, but also future looking. That's beautiful. Those are great. Thanks. I want to acknowledge you, Sarah, for doing work that I have. You have a lot more wisdom than I do in this stuff. And it's so much unknown that you're tackling that is so confusing for so many people. And I'm just grateful that you're dedicating your life so passionately to trying to understand and find the answers to these questions that I think a lot of people are curious about.

1:10:42So I really acknowledge you for studying, for, you know, gaining the expertise in these different areas, for collaborating with the brilliant minds of the world to find these solutions and making this part of your mission. It's really inspiring. Final question for you. What is your definition of greatness? Oh, it's going to go back to purpose, but I just I just think greatness is like fulfilling your purpose. Like, I don't know why I'm using that word so much today, but I just, I think the universe, you know, in some sense you could think of it as like aspiring to greatness. Like it wants more things to be possible.

1:11:21And it's kind of this generative mechanism of creativity and drive and directionality of creativity that I think is just great. So maybe that's greatness. I don't know. Yeah. So it's kind of, yeah, that sense of purpose and place in the universe. And also that, like, you know, I think we have the tendency to put ourselves outside of reality. Like, I think we're describing it from the outside. But when you put yourself in the center of the reality, it's like, you know, I do exist and I do matter. Yeah, yeah. There you go. And I'm a real thing the universe generated. You are. Yeah. So are you. Thank you.

1:11:57Isn't that great? I love it. Perfect. Sarah, thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, sure. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most.

1:12:28And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.