Joe Rogan Experience #2184 - Sara Imari Walker

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe. Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan. podcast by night all. day so uh your subject matter is so. fascinating to me um so first please. explain what this idea of assembly. Theory yeah um assembly theory is born. out of an interest in solving the origin. of life and aliens so that's sort of the.

motivation I think is really important. to be clear about that to start because. it introduces some kind of radical. reconception of the way we think about. fundamental physics at least I think so. um but the key idea of the theory is. that the Universe cannot generate. complexity outside of living processes. and so we have a way of formalizing what. seems kind of intuitively obvious that. the universe doesn't generate complex. objects for free um and we do this with. this idea of assembly theory of thinking. about the assembly space which is like.

the space of all constructible objects. and you can talk about the complexity in. that space as a minimal number of steps. for making an object and if you see uh. objects that require a lot of steps to. make them and they're in high abundance. life is the only thing that can make. them. wow um so this includes plant life this. includes everything techn everything on. your. table you know requires uh billions of. years of evolution evolution of.

intelligence and uh technology to. generate So when you say life to. generate what about like crystals and. what about have you ever seen that. enormous cave in Mexico where they have. these insane Crystal structures is that. the one that's like hot inside and like. yes yes I have seen that it's gorgeous. I've never been there amazing totally. but it kind of looks like somebody made. it but it's just natural processes yes. um so I'm actually really interested in. understanding to what degree we can. consider um minerals on our planet alive.

or artifacts of life um but we haven't. formalized the theory entirely for. minerals yet so I think that one of the. the sort of key results we have so far. is um actually quantifying in molecules. a complexity boundary above which if a. molecule is so complex that we can say. it's definitively of life and we've. experimentally verified measuring this. property of assembly of molecules to say. these are derived from life These are um. you know and that there's a clear. boundary uh for minerals we haven't done.

that yet because we're still formalizing. the theory and the kind of measurements. we need to take but I expect there to be. a boundary that planets can make some. kinds of Crystal complexity but not all. of it that we see on this planet so what. is what's the conventional definition of. Life yeah so there's a lot of debate. about what definitions of life should. hold but the one that is usually cited. by astrobiologists is life is a. self-sustaining chemical system system.

capable of darwinian evolution and I've. memorized it cuz I find it so. annoying so I'm like I got it down I got. to know what I'm annoyed with what. annoys you about it everything it's like. actually it was it was very funny. writing the book cuz I wanted to get. into the new ideas and um my um my. editor was like you got to explain how. people think about life now and I was. like okay well this definition is the. most annoying one I'll just pick it. apart um and it's actually like all the. words in it are annoying in some sense. so the first one is that life is.

chemical I've never really thought about. chemistry being the defining feature of. life I think you have to separate out. that life emerges at least as we. understand it from a chemical soup on a. planet right so it emerges in chemistry. but it doesn't mean it's a chemical. phenomena and the sort of analogy from. the physicist conception of nature I. could draw there is we don't think that. gravity is a phenomena of rocks gravity. represents some Universal physics in our. universe um and so uh when we're. thinking about um you know planets and. things we don't think that they obey the.

laws of gravity because they're made of. rocks we understand that there's some. property called Mass that's much more. abstract and applies to everything um I. think life's kind of the same it emerges. in chemistry but there are some. informational properties these things. about how life generates complex. structures and how it does that so. uniquely um that is universal physics. that happens to emerge in chemistry so. chemistry has to go out um it's not just. a chemical phenomena and I think you. need to recognize that if you're going. to talk about like technology and. artificial intelligence and like are. they alive or or not because they're.

very different than you know like what's. happening inside a cell right. non-biological but still seemingly alive. yes maybe maybe maybe perhaps yeah open. to debate open to debate I've said that. about technology that technology does. seem to be a life form that requires us. to give birth to it yes didn't uh. Marshall MCL I like that way of thinking. about it yeah yeah Marshall mclan had a. great quote and I believe this was in. the 1960s he said that we are the sex. organs of the machine world oh isn't.

that incredible yeah I like that a lot. actually I don't disagree with that um. yeah especially if it does become some. sort of Digital Life That's essentially. what we are we're just by-proxy moms we. are so the way that I think about it is. to think about life not in terms of. individuals but lineages so you know. there's a lineage of how information has. been structuring the material world what. we we talk about in assembly theory in. terms of all of the configurations of. objects created on our planet over 4.

billion years and that's a process of. that's continuous um with objects making. other objects and there's no reason that. that should stop with biological forms. of life and it just moves into. technology so um I I like this idea that. we the reproductive organs though. because I always think about like. societies and like Global Integrated. Systems as being living things and we're. just like component parts of them well. they certainly look like it when you. look at traffic uh from overhead and you.

compare it to blood moving through. arteries it's really kind of. extraordinary because if you see the E. and flow of the white lights and the red. tail lights back and forth and then you. see blood cells moving through a. person's body it's kind of similar yeah. in a very weird way and if you think. that these cars are all carrying people. that are assembling this Society both. from the inside in terms of like. paperwork and research and all the. different things that people are doing. then the outside in terms of. constructing new buildings and putting.

glass structures and all these different. things like we really are yes like some. sort of weird you know we're like a form. of like the city itself is like a living. thing that we're making yeah and I think. it's really important for us to. recognize that actually it's interesting. that you you use cars as your analogy. because Carl Sean actually had like the. same analogy he would have liked that a. lot um you know thinking about aliens. coming to life would have thought cars. were the dominant life form but which I. think is a great great right cuz like. exactly like you're describing it looks. like the the lifeblood of our planet and.

I always think about cities at night is. kind of you know the key signature of. Life on this planet if you look at it. remotely sure you can see you know all. this structure on the planet but it is. hard for us because we're so you know. like so much wanting to think about. ourselves as individuals and like the. Apex of all of The evolutionary. processes not to think about ourselves. as part of systems that are much larger. than us and I think it's critically. important that we kind of change our. reference frame on that because we're. also seeing right now with like social. networks and the influence of like. having all these societal level.

dialogues like brought to every. individual and like like we don't know. how to process that information yes um. but we are part of these Collective. systems that are much larger than us and. they are constructing a lot of the world. around us um without individuals having. you know as much agency in that process. as we think we do yet that process is. also what gives us our agency so it's. kind of paradoxical right right I've. I've often said that if an alien race. that was completely.

outside of our understanding of life and. our understanding of biology if they. observed us and they'd say well what is. this dominant species doing well it. makes better things that's all it does. yes the the we do a lot of things but. ultimately those things even War which. is essentially about acquiring money and. resources we use those resources and. that money to make better things and in. engaging in war you're constantly. advancing technology to have an. advantage over the en so you're making.

better things like everything is making. better things which when you scale it up. ultimately will lead to another life. form it will leave to it will lead to. some new thing I think well if we don't. kill ourselves or if we don't get super. volcano asteroid lot pessimist I think. we'll be around for a while think so. yeah but I have a pathology that I'm. like really optimistic as a person so I. have a hard time good that's not a. pathology why you think that's a. pathology um I think because I think. being overly optimistic can leave blind.

spots but part of the reason that I. imuse so much optimism in my work is. like I think we need more optimistic. narratives about the future cuz so many. people are really Bleak I agree I don't. think that helps anybody and I think. ultimately most of the things that. you're really terrified about do not. come to pass yes I think us being. terrified of them is like an immune. response so usually I'm not afraid of. the things that people are really scared. of and talking about because it means. society's dealing with it right which I. you know maybe that's just sort of a. scapegoat I don't have to worry about. those things cuz someone else is but I. think actually there's something rather.

deep there that like the things that. we're trying to work through at this. moment in history are being worked. through my fear about those kind of. thoughts is when I worry about things. and I say well I don't have to worry. because society's working through it I. also say yeah but someone's probably not. and they're it they're enhancing the. actual threat so they could profit off. of it which is that's another I mean. that's the military-industrial complex. that's a lot of different things I think. that there's a lot of that unfortunately. that's attached to Green energy I think. you know the idea of having green energy.

is wonderful everybody should agree to. that but the idea that you're going to. give massive corporations this. completely philanthropic view of the. world all of a sudden that's not that's. not real that's not real they make money. they trying to make more money they're. going to everyone's trying to make money. and get power and I think once you. realize that like it's a lot easier to. see. motives yeah it's freaky but that also. leads to the AC acquisition of resources. which leads to making better things I. mean I am I'm all goooo I was reading In. Articles all day today on the iPhone 16.

why why do I care about the iPhone 16 my. iPhone 15's perfect it works great. what's wrong with me I don't know but I. think that's also built into materialism. I think materialism sort of facilitates. the creation of newer and better things. consistently and constantly because. everybody's like what do you got an. iPhone 14 what are you poor Sarah you. know like people get crazy I'm sluming. it but you know what I'm saying you know. how people get weird like where is your. car at you have a 2018 car don't you.

want a new one look they got the new one. the new one has this and that better gas. M faster 0 to 60 and it never ends and. it never ends until we create sensient. life I think yeah so you so part of your. argument is the sort of our materal. materialistic culture is about building. newer and better things and eventually. this is like sort of just more. fundamental to the process of life I. think this pathology of materialism this. thing that has possessed so many people. where they live their entire lives to. acquire things to impress other people.

which is a huge number of people that. are involved specifically in finance. like all all the amphetamine people all. the people that like to do Coke and. [ __ ] look at my boat that's what. they're doing they're just constantly. getting better and better things it it. does sound boring to you because you're. a brilliant woman but it's not. necessarily more boring than their. normal life right there's some sort of. reward to showing up with a half a. million dollar watch on with a you know. yeah diamonds and this some crazy thing.

where people go oh he's got that thing. oh look at those shoes she's got oh look. at that purse oh look at his car look at. the house they live in it's weird it's. weird well I know I sympathize I am. seduced by good fashion. Aesthetics I mean who isn't yeah well a. lot of men aren't but a lot of women are. I love it I think it's great fting yeah. sure it's beautiful it's an expression. of art that's what it is exact it makes. things look cooler and you know uh like.

the way my wife looks at dresses and. stuff it's like she's looking at the way. I look at other forms of art things that. I like that's right you know it's just a. different aesthetic a different mindset. but it's art it is Art yes and we are. attracted to that too we're attracted to. Creation we we we love when people make. things yeah and I I I think you're right. to point that this is like maybe hinting. at something deeper so you know with. this assembly Theory stuff my original. motivation was really to get at you know. what fundamentally explains life in the.

universe and uh you know to me the thing. that life does that no other physical. system does is creativity and uh life is. a mechanism for the universe generating. things it couldn't generate otherwise um. and so you know one way to think about. that is like like there's like this huge. possibility space of things that could. exist and there's just not enough. resource or time for all of them to. exist so by a planet constructing things. like us over time it actually sort of. maximizes the number of weird things. that can be.

um and I really like this I like I like. this idea uh that we're actually really. literally the universe's mechanism of. expressing creativity and making things. possible that would not be possible. without things like us do you know who. Terence Howard is the actor um I am. familiar with him fascinating person yes. a brilliant guy who has some crazy ideas. well one of the craziest ideas he has is. that whenever a planet gets far enough. away from the Sun it will generate life.

and then that life will give birth to. people people will eventually emerge and. he calls it like peopling like a a. planet is peopling interesting and that. as these as these civilizations become. more advanced they're going to have to. deal with the fact that the planet is. further and further away from the Sun. like over the course of hundreds of. millions of years the climate will. change things will become cooler they're. going to have to figure out a way to. develop some sort of an artificial. atmosphere or some way of sustaining.

along with of course biological things. that will change with the animal as it. adapts yeah um I have I I don't really. think that humans are like ourselves as. currently constructed are a universal. phenomena I think we're pretty special. to this planet but I think there are. certain attributes of humans like you. know the theory of computation and its. universality that like we invented in. the last Cy that might be Universal to.

any intelligent species that emerges on. any Planet so I think it's really hard. to say like what here is universal to. other places versus yeah it's certainly. a big leap right we have no evidence. there's no evidence of people anywhere. else or any other life form yeah no real. evidence there's a lot of shenanigans. there's a lot of weirdness but there's. no real evidence yeah there's no. evidence for life on any other planet. and so the me and the mechanism of how. life even got on this planet is not. known I spent my entire career working. on this [ __ ] hard problem but like I. think it's like the appropriate.

descriptor of it is really hard so I. think it's easy to speculate on like. what we think life on other worlds will. be like and we tend to do it from a very. anthropocentric lens where we'll say it. will be like us and you know even. professional astrobiologists will do the. same kind of thought experiments and. they'll say oh well the geochemistry on. a planet should give rise to things like. DNA and proteins and so we should look. for those in the universe and I think. that's really. underestimating how large the space of. possibilities actually is so when you're.

thinking about the emergence of life is. the only way to do it I mean it can't be. the only way it has to emerge with. certain temperatures the way ours has in. water it seems like there could be a. wide variety of possibilities that. things could adapt to whatever. particularly unique environment that. this planet provides given a sustainable. temperature and given enough resources. that it can survive that we could have. look like we have jellyfish right yes we.

have lots of weird stuff on this planet. they've been around as long as us right. like octopi octopi are really weird. crazy crazy crazy totally bat [ __ ] crazy. what a when my friend my friend Remy. Warren he used to host a show called. apex predator and when essentially the. show was about was like examining apex. predators and their particular. adaptation they have for their. environment and seeing like what a human. can imitate like what are these things. that they do and he said Octopus by far. was the most bizarre thing to dive into.

as you said they're aliens they are I. mean not literally but like but no no I. totally agree I I mean they. independently evolved a nervous system. so and like and you know like they're. crazy I I think they're the most alien. thing on this planet from us as far as. like trying to look at comparable. intelligence and really understanding a. different evolutionary trajectory also. like what how they can take their body. and completely morph it to look like. Coral.

changes are shocking incredible and the. texture it's everything they just how. does it even know what it's doing how. does it know what it looks like on the. outside it doesn't have a mirror what. how did it adapt to that I don't know. they're making a lot of progress there. was like the first sephon neuro. conference this year which I sent one of. my students to I didn't go to but I know. right like a great term I know the. Neuroscience of seop PODS um but yeah I. don't I don't think we know a lot about. how they work or how they think and. their life be is incredibly short it's. only like a year or two it's just crazy.

yeah I have a friend who is uh building. this office building and I talked him. out of putting a jellyfish tank in it. he's like cuz he wanted to have this big. cylindrical jellyfish tank in the center. like when you walk on I go dude trust me. that is a you that's going to be such a. headache they die all the time they. don't live oh sure oh it's like a con. beautiful oh gorgeous but there's one of. those tanks in the Mandalay Bay shark. exhibit have you ever been in that no I. haven't incredible Mandalay Bay has this.

enormous aquarium so I always wanted to. go I want to take my kids but yeah I. haven't been I've been taking my kids. since they were really little it's it's. one of the dopest places cuz you go in. there and there's sharks swimming around. and all these incredible fish and people. are diving in there with them and it's. enormous um so we we went on a tour of. it and one of the things that they. showed us was their jellyfish habitat. that's it right there so that thing is a. damn Nightmare and they have all these. pipes filtration systems and do they.

just fish the dead jellyfish out that's. a good question I'm not sure I'm not. sure if they get sucked into the vents. yeah I wonder they have like a thing. that they just like filter them every. day to make sure there's no dead ones. hanging out I don't know how they do. that but the interior of it look how. beautiful yeah they're amazing God. they're so incredible I mean just. imagine if we found that on another. planet how excited we would be we would. be trying to talk to it we'd be blown. away we be sending it sound and and. various codes to try to S see if we can. communicate with it we try to understand.

its nervous system where's its brain it. doesn't have a brain like where is it. where's the brain where's where's the. blood does it have blood like what is. that we would be freaking out we would. be but it's in the ocean we're like oh. don't get stung yeah but I mean there's. a certain level of excitement seeing it. here I think oh yeah yeah I think how. diverse life on Earth is is rather. shocking I guess probably we're decent. we're like you know used to it as you're. saying so we don't find it shocking as. we should do you think.

that this is that human life I mean I'm. sure you've thought about this do you. think that this is a very unusual. circumstance that it creates this or do. you think there's versions of this is. just rare I you know I I don't know um. will be my honest scientific. professional answer I think um how could. you yeah no of course how could you but. I think it's really important to be like. honest about the fact that we don't know. and just like put it out there because. it's very tempting to speculate but I.

think you know the more I think about. how um large the universe really is and. I don't even mean physically large like. you know like you can look at the Hubble. Deep Field and you can see you know. 10,000 galaxies at like the size of your. like pen tip on the night sky and you're. like oh my God the universe is a huge. place but if you you know like if you go. into a chemistry lab and you ask a chem. informatician how many molecules there. are they can't even estimate how many. molecules there are like chemical space. is so big wow it's it's really crazy.

like there's uh one molecule I usually. use an example it's called taxol which. is an anti-cancer drug and if you wanted. to make every permutation of that. molecular structure and every like sort. of three-dimensional shape you could. with those atoms it would fill. 1.5 universes in volume 1.5 universes. one molecular formula this is how big. chem chemistry is and then if you want. to get to technological artifacts or. biological forms like the space that we. live in is so exponentially large it's. unimaginable and to think that other.

life out there would Traverse the same. path through the space of things that. could exist that we have is to me like a. major sort of a major leap I'm not ready. to take because I just I think the. universe is far larger in the kind of. living things that could exist than we. can even imagine wow the the molecule. thing hard to absorb yeah it's totally. crazy like I I mean if you if you want. to think about like you know you've got. this like crazy stuff on your desk and.

you took the atoms and those things and. you thought about all the ways that you. could arrange them it would fill. universes of interesting artifacts right. universes and like why is this one. sitting on your desk like why is this. the aesthetic humans CH I mean it's kind. of cool but you know like it's it's. crazy to think about how much stuff. could exist but doesn't exist because it. wasn't selected and evolution didn't. build it over time wow that's such a. fascinating way to think about it the. the overwhelming possibilities the.

overwhelming number of different. variations yes and so on your question. about like humans and like our. specialness I think what is special. about us is we're actually capable of. imagining some of that space and not. just imagining it but constructing it. with our technology that was your point. about societies and things so there is. something special about quote unquote. human level intelligence or whatever is. going on in the human brain I don't know. if it whatever that thing is I think is. pretty Universal and pretty deep about. the structure of reality I don't know if. it would be in something that's like a.

human on another planet but I think our. ability to abstract imagine and create. is probably Universal yeah there's. another thing about us that I think is. bizarre and it it speaks to this concept. there there's a theory about the. creation of human beings right that. human beings the the wackiest one of all. is that human beings are the product of. accelerated Evolution something has. manipulated our genome something has. ated the lower primates that's why the.

human brain size doubled over a period. of 2 million years and that this thing. well but when I think about it one of. the things that one of the things that. intrigues me is uh I'm a lover of Nature. and I'm I'm completely fascinated by how. animals interact with each other I mean. I can watch Nature Documentaries all day. long yeah 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 it doesn't. belong or Australia which is a fantastic. example there's like so many animals. that are non-native invasive species. these Asiatic Buffalo there 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 aren'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 this sort of. symbiotic interaction with nature with a. natural world but we're wild like we're. just dumping [ __ ] into the ocean and. killing all the fish and polluting the. sky and driving in our cars and flying. in our planes and still talking about. climate change and you know injecting. people with chemicals and trying to make.

more more babies and let's a lot good. for the planet again Optimist but sure. sort of but there's so many of us we we. are on every damn rock that you could. find it's habitable we are essentially. like rats we we go everywhere we can go. which is like an invasive species thing. yeah I I think you could talk about it. that way um and I think people do I I. don't really think that's a useful. narrative I love us don't get me wrong. I'm not I'm not anti- person but I'm.

just objectively analyzing our behavior. and our impact on our environment and. it's very similar to like wild pigs. getting introduced into an area where. they don't have natural Predators yeah I. think part of the challenge is actually. thinking about like this the levels of. organization that biology has so what I. mean is like you know individuals are. not actually the problem what you're. describing it would be like human. societies are the problem and humans. have because we have societies and you. know organization that enable us to do.

these things like we're able to you know. take over all these environments and. things but I like the way I think about. life is much more at the planetary scale. so for me you know going all the way. back to the origin of Life uh you know. life doesn't happen just in one. environment it happens in all. environments and 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.

multicellular organisms like spilop pods. 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 and you know if. life wants to get off this planet it has. to go through something like us so so I. don't think you know I think we can look.

at it from the you know couple hundred. year time scale and say these things are. terribly negative and Predator prey this. that and the other thing but if you look. at it over the billions years 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 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 so wouldn't. something else have that too. and if something else had that and it.

was 100 million years more advanced than. us and it found us still throwing [ __ ]. at each other and beating each other to. death with sticks wouldn't it come in. and go may just would you yes you would. yeah would would you [ __ ] with it like. what would you do 100% yeah I would do. exactly what they did I think I think. that's what curious things experiment on. them 100% look we we do we do with. animals all the time we make different. kinds yeah also we we don't seem to have.

a problem with sort of manipulating. things that we consider lower than us on. the evolutionary scale yeah I think. that's a problem but I don't know that. that's one that can be solved so this. issue of you know trying to treat every. living entity you know in sort of. a equality like I don't actually think. it's possible to well you can't because. they won't do that to you no you but you. can't even like you have to eat. something right so like if you value. plants more than animals and you want. you want to eat plants then you're. you're valuing uh you know like you're.

you're making value statements but like. you know plants are you know like. they're still alive when you eat them so. it's like not only that there there's. evidences are sentient plants exchange. resources they communicate through. mycelium there's there's all kinds of. very complicated information processing. going on in Plants yeah yeah it's we are. very sort of egocentric to think that. our version of Consciousness is the only. version of Consciousness and I always. say when I when I talk about dolphins. and and orcas like it to me it it's one.

of the biggest crimes of modern. civilization that we keep those things. in fish tanks yes I totally agree with 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 I think they're of 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.

can 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't be the 14 CU then. you're really stupid yeah well if you're. going to make things you got to make. better things all the time and you got. to keep up with the Joneses yeah but. there's this weirdness that we have. attached intelligence to ability to. manipulate the environment and we have. ignored language the fact that they have. a cerebral cortex 40% larger than ours.

the fact that they have different. dialects that they speak in different. areas different accents different way. they ways they we don't even know what. they're saying we're we're trying to use. AI to recognize the spe stuff about. digital bioacoustics and like decoding. languages animals it's like it might be. our only way yeah it's it's amaz it's an. amazing field I think it's going to take. a while before we really you know. realize the potential of it but it's. super exciting what people are trying to. do well they've been doing species. communication research forever and.

they've gotten nowhere they gotten. nowhere like the lery stuff or um not ly. the guy who made the sensory deprivation. tank God damn it I don't know who that. is either it's locked in my head I can't. I always know this guy's name. and what is. it. oh ly John Lily thank you 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 [ __ ] in. there there's a lot of I need a clean. house it's hard it's really hard but. Lily uh 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 and he was. setting up these tanks next to Dolphin. tanks and taking late with dophins he.

did a lot of really wild things with. dophins but none of it really there was. a whole generation that had a lot of. wild things with dolphins but yeah I I. think I I think there's a lot of. progress in animal communication and but. I I think we're very far from. understanding whether animals are. communicating at all like us and in what. ways right it's might be might be very. limited in thinking that this is the. only way well your point about anthrop. centz like we we just you know like we. have our bubble we think about the world. this way and like the human way is the.

only way and the right way and we put. our Notions of Intelligence on other. species and if they don't match we think. they're not intelligent and that's just. 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 that 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 some sort of expression. that's different than our concept of. language yeah I would I would say it's. certainly possible that they're. communicating things that are emotional. or much more intelligent than we give. them credit through just like with with. their patterns of speech because they're. pretty complex yeah yeah so 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 we had to. figure out a way to keep the animals. from eating us right yeah that and and. then just like survive in our. environment right right animals are one. danger but there's plenty other ones. like you don't want to eat the wrong. berries you want to like make sure that. you have warm clothes in Winter right I. mean it's hell out there yeah it's a lot. survival's hard dolphins are in warm. water before we came along there was an.

abundance of fish seems like you don't. have to do too much more you guys got it. nailed you know they probably living in. Paradise till we came along stuck in. these noisy oceans or they're in a pool. yep yeah both things right yeah that's. yeah for sure I think I think this is. one of the things that really motivated. me to really like I I mean obviously I. love theoretical physics and thinking. deeply about the nature reality but like. why pick the problem of life and I think. life is. so complicated 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 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.

octopus thought process and put it in. your brain yes and give you the feeling. human for a little while for a little. while yeah but 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 it like what 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. plant's 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 and it grows better if you play. classical music like what what I mean. their way of expressing their. personality so to speak or like their. their um morphology is like you know. like their shape is like their. expression of their behavior right like. animals can move around in an. environment but a plant just Grows Right. so its shape is Its Behavior which is. kind of crazy it is kind of crazy the. just the the whole interaction that they. have with each other the fact that we've. only figured that out over the last few.

decades it's uh and if you ever seen. like time-elapsed photos of plants when. they interact with each other and it's. amazing wrap around each other and hug. each other it's crazy but we have a hard. time even with plants not anthropos. senzing 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 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 yeah where they don't. really need to manipulate their. environment they're kind of dominant. over sharks you know they're they're not. really worried about getting eaten by. other things these are the aliens will.

never meet cuz they had they had no. reason to go out and explore and Conquer. so like the Nai and Avatar they just. they're aliens but 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 na'vi do you know. that that was like a real like di was a. real thing yeah it's called Avatar. depression really yeah and people would. go to see that movie and those people. lived in such spiritual harmony with. their mother. and and you just they they rode around.

on these flying dragons and they 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 beep you. know apartment people beeping their. horns and pollution and garbage on the. street and crazy homeless people he be. like [ __ ] I want to live in na'vi land I. want to live in Pandora I want to I want. to live like them so people got. depressed weird yeah Avatar Depression. was like a real thing that's so crazy. psychologist were dealing with it they. had to sit people on the couch but the. idea of Utopia is like so oversold I.

mean I think there's somebody like like. it's I 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 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 and I also think that uh we. are we 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 for something that you really. didn't need to you know education that. you turned out to don't use and all this. different stuff that keeps it's very. difficult for people in this environment. this especially Urban environments we've. FAS to create Harmony whereas people. that live like in hunter gatherer Tri es. and people that live subsistence.

lifestyles in particular they report. much higher levels of satisfaction. happiness less depression I think debts. really hard cuz you're constantly. aspiring to things and you're right like. it's just totally baked in like you know. even I 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. there was a vice series a long time ago. back when Vice like was really first. stared starting out and it was a vice. guide 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 he went out there initially as a. logger he's one of the last few people. to have a uh a 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 to shoot. a grizzly bear that was trying to kill. his dog oh dear God and and steal his. food he's had. dogss it is very hard I can't even. imagine it's 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 he's a very. intelligent person you know he's not. like some weird caveman who's out there. in the woods hting most people that do. like it's a choice right to actually. decide to live that way so 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. he's essentially out there by.

himself his I don't know it's a good. question but he he seems to have like. he's synced up with nature he's catching. fish and he's hunting animals and he's. that's all he's eating 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 that really sound more. terrible than going to a job at some. corporation that doesn't give a [ __ ].

about you that will cut you if the stock. is down and you've dedicated 25 years of. your life to this company and all a. sudden you're gone and now you don't. know what to do and you're on. unemployment you're like what did I do. with my life I'm 46 what the [ __ ]. 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 every and also he knows. his life matters every day right 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 figh for like. whatever way you want to live your life. but we're kind of just in the daily.

Grime we lose our connection to that. existential reality that like our lives. are finite and 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 is 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 and and thinking about.

the the various possibilities of Life. what is the what's the the lowest single. celled organism how long ago do we think. that that emerged um 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 so essentially. somewhere around a billion or so years. that we can find from the time formed. yeah so Earth we think uh you know.

formed between 4.5 and 4 billion years. ago so like four four billion years ago. we kind of had Earth as we understand it. mostly now we don't know if there were. oceans um but the moon forming impact. had happened that's Earth one and Earth. two the impact with some other plan yeah. Thea I think it was called just smacked. in the earth and then made our moon must. have been really traumatic imagine so I. think most people think like life didn't. happen before that cuz if it did it. would have been oblit obliterated but we. really don't know so yeah current. estimates are around you know like four. to 3.7 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 um. there is no consensus oo none yeah I. know it's not is that fun it's fun yeah. it's kind of crazy it's totally crazy I. that's why I like this problem because. nobody knows what happened wow and you. know there's what are the primary. theories there's a lot of speculation. you know the 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 um so like DNA most people. are probably familiar with um gets. translated uh like TR transcribed into. RNA and then the RNA is what's used to. make proteins so um so RNA you know kind. of does a dual role so people think oh. maybe it it happened early on and it was. the first life and then there's like. other hypotheses like hydrothermal vents. and you know sort of energy first. approaches to origins of life that like. we had some metabolism that was.

organizing but all these are really. speculative and I think um I think the. issue is that we're trying to take. molecules that are in modern living. systems and trying to understand how. they could emerge in a Prebiotic. environment on early Earth and not. really thinking about how the Earth and. the geochemistry on the Earth had to. evolve into a living system so it had. like selection had to happen Evolution. had to happen before life. um 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 and trying to iterate what. those missing stages are because we just. don't know what they look like right now. well also like what would the. evolutionary advantage of becoming a. cell be I think well so that's so that's. a great question but the one of the. problems with this area is like we don't. what questions to ask so 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. physic the 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 if you. think think that 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 they can survive against this. sort of random chemical noise like the. chemical soup is just a mess of things. being created and destroyed created and. destroyed 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 origin 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 to how. do they conduct these um so that's my my. collaborator Lee Cronin uh is a chemist. uh and he's totally brilliant and. actually him and I are probably uh you. know I don't know like what we're trying. to do is is a little bit crazy to solve. the original life but you know like I. hadn't uh like he he's doing the. experimental stuff but like the the sort. of idea we had in mind is like I'll. write 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 the experiments it'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 c search. alge algorithm for chemistry and then be. able to look in chemical space and try. to discover alien. W in An Origin life experiment on Earth.

and so that's what we're trying to do um. W I'm really excited I hope it. happens imagine if you guys if someone. does something like this maybe it's you. maybe it's 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 yes through some. extraneous processes yeah so I mean. there are benefits to that right so so. lease company chemy is 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. um pharmaceutical drug Discovery or even. psychedelic drug Discovery if people. like that but you know like there's. 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 cuz it it. won't won't be biology as we know it. 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. alien life because I think we won't. recognize it unless we understand what. it. is wow no what ethical concerns would. arise when you take a thing like let's. say let's Advance this 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. a vehicle for it its advancement instead.

we just start [ __ ] with it 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 I you know it's kind of like this is. the part where it's a little. existentially traumatic to work on these. kind of problems so I have a friend. that's a philosopher Ben Bratton 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 and 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 transformed. us so I can't even anticipate what those.

kind of dialogues are going to be like. imagine if like instead of just. wondering about spilop pods and plants. and stuff in this conversation we. actually had a fundamental understanding. of what it is to be other life forms and. uh life as a uh 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 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. are probably going to solve a lot of. these problems yeah I think we're Flying. Blind in those areas though really. especially AI I mean I think that's. 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 our. technology is our babies um but um 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 um it went. two ways and I don't know which way I. want to go um that's very funny um 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 the idea was that. artificial intelligence would enhance. our understanding of what it means to be. biological yeah and you were asking. about Quantum information yes and that. with when when when computing power is. massively increased and you have a. sensient artificial intelligence that. essentially has all the information that. we have of every human being all every. database everything all over the world. but yet far more capable of processing. this and advancing these things maybe.

it'll have a more of complex. understanding of what life is yeah so. there 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 right. so this is sort of the canonical debate. about the nature of artificial. intelligence but I think 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 out. compete silicon in the long. run well then there's also the concept. of hybrids right yes when becomes hyb I. like I like I like that concept um but. this gets into the blurry area of like. are you human anymore like if you if you. have a chip in your brain and you're. you're you're like being a seph pod 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. Australopithecus and explain to him.

airplanes and cell phones but you can't. be Australia picus anymore be like who I. don't want to stop being me yeah you. know wouldn't that be the same reaction. that they have I think probably probably. terrified I don't want to become a. person I don't want to become an alien I. want to be some gray dude with a giant. head and big black eyes but maybe that's. what we become yeah I think also. intergenerationally 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 were 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. were growing up like 50 years ago right. and so they are quote unquote 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 100 thousand years or. a million years those are fun thought. experiments yeah it's really is because. the amount of change that's happened in. terms of technology and our ability to. access it over the past hundred years is. enormous but yet we're still the same. biological creature like how long does. that stay like when when does that when. do we start integrating when when even. if we didn't integrate how much of it. would change us y I mean I I I 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 brain so like 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 some people are choosing to have. it on their wrist now exactly 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 we're like the phone. thing like we don't want to let it go we. 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 like 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. it was I was like 27 years old was the. first time I got a computer and I got. online I'm like this is crazy and that. was the you got mailed days AOL was like. mind-blowing to me mindblowing I know.

instant messaging it's like mindblowing. you could chat with people back and. forth with a computer this is crazy mind. and then you could research things and. find out things and then when bandwidth. started increasing and then you started. to be able to watch videos and YouTube. comes along and 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 because of YouTube yeah. I think it's great incredible there's so. much to know and you can like on any.

subject quantum physics on carpentry. whatever it is there's millions of. videos it is and all a sudden you're. instantaneously watching some Professor. discuss what it means to be alive yeah. that's crazy I 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 suck. people were on coke the hair was great. the hair was. but it was like that was a dumb time.

this is a better time it's a better time. now it's perfect um for us but the. people in the future going to be like. imagine living in 2024 right yeah. imagine that presidential election they. had to go through imagine this and that. and Israel and Gaza. and yeah I mean that's they're going to. look back at us like 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. ask about what do you think they're. going to ask about. um I don't know I set myself up for that.

and now I don't have an easy answer. that's so bad um totally did that um. well I think uh I don't know like you. don't know you don't know what the. historical moments are right now like we. 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 you know being radically. different than the present but uh kenl. 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 like when he was. talking about this he had a picture of. like you know some futuristic thing from. like the 1930s and 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 inter and that was like. predicted 100 years ago right so it's. like it's it's weird our conception of.

things and like how much change there is. and of course we you know we're we're. our brains are tuned to look out for the. things that are dangerous and changing. in our environment and so we're always. hyper sensitive to the things that are. not changing are are changing without. like recognizing how much is still the. same interesting and I also think we we. we we're we're 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 to.

them it'll almost be like a bomb went. off yeah yeah and I I love talking with. historians especially about like the. ideas I I work on right so like one of. the sort of fundamental ideas in. 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. so I actually think like any evolved. structure has a a physical size like it. might be sitting on the desk but it also. has a size in time M um 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 um uh I. was talking with Thomas moan who's a. historian he 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 and so when you think about.

like the future history are they going. to be like oh they finally realized. these kind of things were true like 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. let's see if Jamie can find that out. that's a fascinating thought right. because before that they required Sund.

dials right you know and I don't know. how much of an effect how much of effect. is like the well all our clocks before. that were B 725 ad I mean that's just. incredible look at that the world's. first mechanical clock water-driven. spherical Birds was invented by yiing a. Buddhist monk in 725 looks like that's a. good question is that what it looks. like let's see what it looks like wa I. want to see like a real one imagine you. would go visit that thing like I need to.

find out what time it is well imagine. but I mean this is a good thought. experiment right like imagine being one. of the first people to see a mechanical. clock how big was the first mechanical. clock doesn't look small it looks. [ __ ] huge yeah now we have them like. is that the first one just imagine the. calculations involved in figuring out. how to make all these gears sort of. click click click in sync or even having. a concept that you could keep time with. that kind of regularity cuz 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 and. then the sort of subsequent human. knowledge that comes out of like. timekeeping 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 right and. the tolerance are so tight that they've. created things like turbon movements so.

that they're not not affected by gravity. yeah like these constant force gears. have you ever seen turbon watches no I. feel like I should 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 watches are. amazing mechanical watches are so damn. cool they're so fascinating there's a. company called Grand SEO and Grand Seiko. is like the advanced uh version of SEO. Seiko makes like ACH bunch of different. kinds of levels of watches in terms of. price points but then Grand seiko's that.

their Luxury Line and Grand Seiko 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 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. some of them even more than that it's. bananas yeah no it is it really is. bananas that they they've figured out a. way to do this with these little tiny.

and it and this is one right here so. look how thin it is it's awesome right. there is it heavy no not that heavy but. I have some of them that's that's a. grand SEO right there it's called the. Spring Drive it's not that heavy but. that's all there's that that is also a. grand SEO 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. 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 it down to now is. extraordinary but show it the turbon. movement cuz it's bananas when you see. what those look like in some of these. turbon 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 it thing like this. is a turbon watch like look at all that.

jazz that's amazing bananas look at all. these gears I know I'm trying to like. figure out how many gears are actually. in it but it's pretty insane these sink. up I mean I don't know what the accuracy. of uh this is Grand SE this is another. grand SEO this is their constant force. turbon uh movement but look at the W. that's a that watch is several. $1,000 wow because this is just so. insanely complex it's gorgeous to create. yeah I love the the see-through that you. can actually see the see I find out how. accurate that thing is to today because.

they the dive watch or the Spring Drive. is accurate within a half a second a day. so how accurate is that damn thing yeah. nutty but you could do physics with it. so the fact that you're doing this with. seconds and I mean the Precision. involved in making sure that every gear. in every spring represents a second so. perfectly with no deviation that it's a. a second over 24 hours that's bananas. okay plus or minus 12 seconds a day is.

that a different turbion that's a. different turbon that's a seagull turbon. trying to find an answer for one of them. yeah that's a different one this was. saying turbon 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 the same gravity. fighting effect as turbon mechanism. effects been proven that turbon offer no. more accuracy than a traditional. escapement on a a wristatch in some. cases even less but it's it's a it's. kind of a nerd thing love the on. movements that's good it's so f i could.

nerd out on those they're amazing oh for. sure and you can go deep and deep and. deep and and they're also some of them. are like wayer thin way for thin and. they have this automatic movement inside. of them so the movement of your your. hand like every time you move your arm. it's winding the watch yeah so as you. move really yes yes like a Rolex yes if. you have like an automatic watch like a. Rolex Mariner 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 and then there's some. that you do wind some that you wind but. 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 by. sort of but you wouldd only tell within. you know 12 hours yeah yeah I know. that's funny though it is funny yeah. because well you'd have to find out like. what kind of a movement it is is this a. 48 hour movement or a 72 hour movement.

how long does it last for yeah that's. incredible broken already yeah yeah time. Rolex watch help solve a murder mystery. okay there you go see I wasn't totally. look at that wow is that how it solved. it go I don't know I just made that up. interesting what makes sense so that's. the Oyster Perpetual right that's 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 Rox.

is known to be 48 Hours the power. Reserve police were able to determine. the date of death within 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 Platt was murdered on July 20th. 1996 the problem with that is a lot of. people don't set their date correctly 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 did had if you. had shitty Vision like you can't even. see I can't read that unless I have good.

lighting yeah I can't read that you know. to the right date or no mine probably. isn't hold on a second let me tell you. right. now it' be funny if it's not oh this one. doesn't even have a date oh there you go. that's not going to hold up in court D. this one doesn't have safe um but some. why did I think it does that's funny um. but some of them do and uh that's a. different um there's like a different. mechanism inside of there it's called. compli they call them complications but. these different ones like they'll have. one I have one that I gave to Lex um.

that's uh an Omega and it 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 a quarter. moon it shows it on the watch so and so. it's accurate so you have to go to a. website you find out what the moon phase. is you set the moon phase for where the. watch is and then you set the time and. the date in the watch and then it stays. in sync love it it's crazy that's so.

amazing it's 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 a Omega. Speedmaster um Moon watch and so this. little Moon sort of moves through this. little night sky window in the bottom of. the. watch I love the faces of the Moon. yeah that's not it find the one with the. moon on it Jamie say uh no no that's the.

no no no moon watch is the watch they. wore during the moon landings moon 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 see the. image of the moon in the bottom in that. dope so it even has like a bunch of. little stars back there and that's all. run by gears too yes so cool it's so. cool and then 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 that's my favorite watch. I love love that's great it's a great. gift yeah but it's just an amazing piece. of human Ingenuity that someone's. figured out how to do that 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's nuts it is nuts. that's our simple little Simi brain.

brains 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 and Advance. another million years which doesn't seem. outside the realm of possibility I think. it'll happen you think so I think so. what do you think we look like in in the. future um I mean I I think as we've been. talking about there like it's some kind. of hybrid existence like I can't I think. we are becoming more integrated with our. technology I don't I don't feel like.

existentially traumatized by that 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 um and 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 so I always think about like. ribosome which mediates the translation. in a size 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 they're. like kind of the engines of existence in. some sense 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 but I do think 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 uh 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 so the question. what do we when when we do integrate if. we do have some sort of a technological. cyborg existence what does that look. like well the the question of like what. do it mean to integrate though so like. already in this discussion we've been. talking about like being in a society or. not in a society and the lifestyle of a. human and what a human is is.

fundamentally different if 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 9 to-5 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 um and so we're. already part of a technological. infrastructure. we just don't really recognize societies. as that um but it's being built more and.

more into us that we're kind of you know. we're kind of stuck in that like 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 I I think of analogies with other. kinds of life like you know molecules. inside a cell can't exist on their own. either but they're alive as 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 along those.

lines it's like we think of them as. different things yeah and we I think. that's I think they are different and. and and you could say there's like. superficial physical resemblances but I. I think those are kind of superficial I. think like it's fundamentally different. to be a wild species versus a. domesticated one or a wild human so to. speak versus a domesticated human right. right and I think when you look at that. guy who lives in Antarctica or in the. Artic Circle rather and you compare him. to like the saddest overweight gamer.

who's drinking Mountain Dew all day oh. the Mountain Dew that sounds painful. oh someone's just like pale no no. sunlight at all just is eating garbage. and playing Call of Duty all day long I. mean that is like they're completely. different animals they are one one of. them is like walking through the. mountains with a rifle for looking for. Caribou 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 right so it's. not just like the phys like the.

obviously the physiological differences. manifest in like mental differences. about like the Acuity of their mental. architecture how they feel about their. environment 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 um I don't. pay too much attention to it to be quite. honest um I think for me it's not very. exciting to be honest uh I 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 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 um uh 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 and so. there's there needs to be a lot of. discussions about the nature of that. problem and people uh interested and. believing in in that problem but I don't. really see a lot um intellectually for. me personally coming out of that. discussion 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 I believe them and their. encounters are fascinating but you could.

waste your whole life thinking about. what that means and what's true what's. not there's not enough data there's very. very very little data problem so I I. find it interesting like it's certainly. intriguing and like uh you know to think. about the possibilities but it's sort of. like like mythology versus yes and and. like individual knowledge versus shared. knowledge and I think what science like. you know you can 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.

I can agree with a lot of those. criticisms but science fundamentally is. about shared knowledge and the ability. to like 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 and 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 how when you're relying on. person a to discuss classified documents. there'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 in the UFO. discussion a lot that 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 that's yeah that's. yeah I don't I don't I don't trust. people when they claim to have absolute.

knowledge they can't share with people. the only thing that gives me pause 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 that. gives me pause 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 problem is I'm a. sucker I'm a giant sucker for that kind. of story I love those stories. oh my God it I want toar all of. them yeah but I think that's like a sort.

of also standard play that like you know. if the government needs to keep. knowledge a secret suddenly it becomes. more valuable right so 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 we see a. case of that in Arizona it's like you. know like they're testing you know. whatever new technology for fighter jets.

or whatever and it's like a million UFO. sightings and then it's like later that. it was you know the military have you. ever seen um a military jet like like a. stealth bomber or some of those um when. we were filming Fear Factor way back in. the day we were um 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 plan. it looks and it look like you ever seen.

fing the this is like this is post 911. 2001 right so this is the very beginning. of Fear Factor and uh right after Co 911. and we were out there in the desert and. you see this thing fly it's near. Palmdale and you see this thing fly. overhead and it's like it looks like. something Batman owns yeah see if you. can find one of those so you can find. like a video of a stealth bomber flying. overhead but it was flew right past us. was like wow I would love to see that. part of it was terrifying cuz like oh my. God are we going to war like why am I.

seeing these alien warships I yeah I. always feel like that when I see. military stuff it's like it's it's equal. parts like amazing and profound and then. like totally existentially traumatizing. this yes exactly that's it's cool but. it's designed to kill people really. quick yeah it's designed to sneak in and. mess people up and then get out of there. without anybody knowing you're there. that's literally what it is a stealth. bomber yeah yeah 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.

one video the thing is like my point is. I. mean was that Einstein's quote or. sufficient technology is. indistinguishable from Magic yeah I that. might was it azimov maybe might azov. yeah um so here's one flying 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 right that's how I felt it's kind.

of 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. 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 in. creating artificial life in elabor. if we're willing to do that why would. they if they're so much more advanced. than us that they think we're just these.

silly territorial Apes so why is it the. always a narrative that they're so much. more advanced like where does this come. from cuz they got here we can't get. there I see but I but I I don't think. that like technological Pro progress is. linear so they might you know they might. have the technology to come and visit us. say um 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 and vast.

distances of space in time and that. they've conquered that so the closest. planets that we think we have goldilock. zones are how far away how many Lighty. years away um I mean the closest. planetary system is probably you know. about four light years. away recognized goldilock Zone like. there's planets there it's very. debatable about like whether it's a. trapis system like whether those planets. are actually habitable or not cuz we. don't know if they have atmospheres and. there there's all kinds of debate in the. community but like potentially yeah so.

let's take the closest plary system so. four four light years yeah okay is that. yeah so imagine something coming here. every four years because it takes that. long you know I mean that's assuming. they can travel at light speed which is. a big if yeah or assuming they can do. something well we're we're also assuming. that speed is uh 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. egg heads describe the potential future. like yeah based on sort of extensions of. current theories of gravity but yeah and. you know obviously extrapolating greatly. our ability to generate power right but. 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 and we're.

basically like making stupid houses and. burning coal and riding horses. mechanical clocks that's true right that. was quite a while ago yeah that's true. that 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 just imagine. that if that keeps going it's going to. get to the point where everything. expands exponentially EV and the ability. to travel through space will be on the. list yes 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 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 right and we. won't be able to reason about what that. looks like based on the way that we. think about things now so I think this. this kind of you know I've never really.

been a fan of like these sort of uh 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 it. 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. um especially if you think about us not. individually but like much more as just. like a biosphere evolving into a. Technologic like a technosphere yeah um.

I I agree with you there I think this. Predator prey thing sort of got. sidelined the moment we created. agriculture in cities it 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. concept my thought 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 it's probably. going to take place with like neuralink. and similar type Technologies right that. we're going to integrate with each other. and communicate telepathically and. communicate with large groups of people. telepathically and I think isn't it. amazing that things that were once myth. become fact through technology 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 neuralink implant. here we we talked to him about it what. it's like and he I I look at him I'm. like this is you're the future like what. we're probably all going to have. something similar to that in our bodies. and then eventually going to go why do. we have these fragile feet when you can. have these imense Del carb fiber feet. allow you to run over hot Co not feel. thing like wouldn't you rather have. those they're better you can contr them.

better depends on what you want to do. right depends on what you do but we are. we're very um 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 yes and. 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 the Terrible Things. the 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 like we really are all one. and we are really are 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 it just. makes sense that that would be one of.

the things that would happen we we would. stop doing all the dumb things that we. do yeah and then as we join together we. would say well we need to come up with. solutions for our environmental issues. we need to come up with Solutions. long-term strategies for dealing with. all these different problems that we've. created and then we could do it together. instead of like having this whole. concept of territorial lines in the sand. where you're not allowed to cross unless. 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 I mean something I. find really shocking is how difficult it. is for humans to think of other humans. as human uh right like so we have like. our s 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 I find this very. perplexing and uh you know 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 the whole concept. of the other right they're different. than us they're different like 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. um 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 cuz you don't remember anybody's. name cuz I meet so and then you have all. kinds of people that have a parasocial. relationship with you and like they. think they know you and they don't know. you especially me because I do this. right so I'm talking all the time like I. talk to you every day yeah it must be. very weird [ __ ] strange but it's also. I feel like that sort of connection with. people this is what I'm what anybody. who's doing any sort of a podcast or.

something like that is kind of doing is. like a oneway version of what I think is. going to exist universally on the planet. yes I agree with that I think actually. the thing that I find really interesting. about the podcasting space is this kind. of um like very intimate conversation. but it's technologically mediated and. shared right and I think that's exactly. what you're talking about so like this. transition phase and like why are. podcasting becoming so popular I think. is because it's 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 like there was I had zero. conversations with any person before I. got you on I had a text message that I. sent to my friend who's the the booking. guy I said hey reach out to her this. sounds cool see if she can do this dat. 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've had I watched your thing on Lex I. start looking into this 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 and 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 we should. all be more excited about things like. things 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 there. for sure I totally get what you mean. about the baseballs yeah I mean this is. why I like the watch discussion cuz it's. very clearly like drawn from enthusiasm. and somebody like designed that thing. yeah and I by the way I am a lite when. it comes to watches there are watch. nerds like serious watch nerds that can. tell you like all the models and what. the this movement has a that movement in.

it and this and 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 [ __ ] and little tweezers and [ __ ]. 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 and it makes me. excited about other things 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 pass 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. and so that stimulates Minds it. stimulates people like there's people at. home that are listening like I want I. have a question like what yeah what is. how did this happen how did that happen.

what 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 or like imagine a. world where no one figures 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 how is that even possible. yeah yeah and so no Theory there that's. like the massive mystery of human. civilization itself just in the.

structures that we 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 like what did they do. how' 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. right 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. and some [ __ ] came along and burnt. everything and now we're like what what. did you do they were definitely [ __ ]. that was such an amazing I know I like. at when I first heard about the library.

at Alexandria and I was like that was a. heartbroken can you 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 you know they've just recently. discovered some sort of hydraulic.

technology that was in one of the. pyramids oh really yes see you can find. that there's a recent some recent. research that was published where one of. it wasn't the 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 study published. Monday in a journal posos one researcher. proposed that ancient people may have. relied on water to build the step. pyramid um uh the suspect hyd 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 in astronomy was. like reading about the Orion mystery. when I was like in fifth grade and I. like 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 like how did they possibly do that. it was 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 uh. maligned by some archaeologists. completely dismissed but also embraced. by younger archaeologists who aren AR 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 and and that. there was there was a an 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. this these shafts that they had access. to that had they 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. this chamber is constantly being. vibrated and then there 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 CU. he's immense stones that are position. phenomenal 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 it's a Nutty. Theory but this guy he's a brilliant man. no I I mean it's incredibly creative and. if it's testable and like there's ways. to validate that that could work that. that would be well the problem is you'd. have to do it at scale and like what you.

going you could look for traces of like. whatever chem chemistry is talking about. in The Pyramid walls and like it would. be possible to experimentally verify. whether gamma rays could do that I don't. suspect that they could but but like. there's pieces of it like this is how. science works you have like a story of a. set of hypotheses and you can test. individual parts of it and then try to. validate it so it' be kind of cool if. you know like he wanted to try to do. that right and so then the question. is how'd they figure that out I don't. know imagine if there imagine if it.

turns out to be correct and this was. some sort of a way of generating power. from from the Earth and space itself how. how you how you 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 how much evidence would be left from. 10,000 years ago how much evidence would. be left from 20,000 years ago how long. did it take people to figure that out. was it 2 or 3,000 years like what 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 times so um you. know my one of my colleagues um Adam. Frank had this paper on like the saluran. hypothesis which is like the idea that. there was like intelligent beings around. the time of xaur is like a dinosaur race. and like how would you actually look in. the geological record for it and so like. people can work out the mathematic of. like you know what would be the traces. of these you know like if if the. Egyptians had this capability or if you.

know there were intelligent species that. emerged on the planet long before humans. and had enough technology say to like. have radioactive waste or anything like. you can you can actually like bound you. know like what would we actually see in. the record so it is possible still to. constrain this stuff uh even even the. most radical hypotheses so like I I've. been raised in a tradition. scientifically of like entertaining any. idea. um as long as it's something that we can. actually test and measure and so I guess.

for me I think I think you know some of. the the most creative ideas in science. are things that people completely didn't. expect uh and um well I I mean I think I. think Einstein's a great example um you. know like he was one of the few people. that took seriously that the speed of. light you know 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 and 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 um you know the. fact that time is you know like it's. actually relative concept at least. simultaneity is a relative concept I I. think there's many concepts of time in. physics but but yeah so I 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 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 this. assembly Theory um 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'll have to be redefined. then 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 um which you can go in the lab. and measure with standard. instrumentation like a mass back and an. NMR and infed like you can measure this. property of a molecule it's a real. physical feature and then you can derive. all kinds of weird [ __ ] from that M um. 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 right and then we test it. against what we can observe and measure. and the the things that happen with. reality are far Stranger Than the things. that we could dream up which is why I. love it it's it's just crazy like that. kind of ideas you get out of that. process well just the process that. allows you and I to be staring at each. other first of all the fact that we. could see each other is crazy yes right. that's evolution of eyes is amazing nuts. nuts totally nuts nut and then also.

octopi have them too they just evolved. on a completely different branch of the. evolutionary tree like totally but they. all evolved eyes like it 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 I always think about the. progression of biology into technology. it is fascinating also that a lot of our. technologies that allow us to understand. the world are Technologies of site like. telescopes and microscopes and 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 that we didn't know there right. which is just mind-blowing it's mind. mind-blowing it's like we evolved from. cells billions of years ago it took us. billions of years to build like to.

evolve into an intelligence that could. build a technology and then look and be. like Oh biolog is made out of cells and. then if you think you understand any of. it the people that understand subatomic. particles are like hold my beer because. this whole thing is empty space and it's. all operating in some bizarre Quantum. state where it's like both still and. moving at the same time like those wave. function. yeah what I know like what what is. everything everything's weird this is. what got me into it though like that.

that feeling is just like I love that. feeling I love 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. the ability to to see things was this. emerging technology this emerging. ability that probably changed everything. right the ability to actually like. recognize distances and and to see. objects and recognize them and that is.

this emergent phenomenon that we sort of. take for granted because we have but. there could be other things like that. that have not emerged yet that and this. so much psychic phenomenon is one of the. things that I connect with that I don't. believe in psychics like a person could. read your 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 I.

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. in forever and all a sudden they feel. you and they call you there's something. trippy to that that maybe 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 a new ability that human beings. will eventually possess yeah I I have uh. 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 um you know. obviously 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. like to be able to communicate with each. other imply shared history um and so you. know like I think about life as these. kind of um you know like these. structures that are emerging over time.

and generating novel uh you know things. but like the the whole temporal relation. this idea of like objects being in time. means that they're connected through. time so you know like if you assume a. living object actually has a time in. size it means that like every living. object in this planet is not really a. distinct object they're all part of that. same structure in time. and 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 like we. don't even recognize that is like cues. for like us to to Really you like and we. and we miss it because we we don't even. recognize the history in our environment. um and uh and so we think things are. just happening you know spontaneously. and like there's some magic behind it. where really all it is is contingency. and. causation um but I think the other thing. that is interesting about what you're. saying which we already touched on a. little bit is you know these these kind.

of stories that you know like there's. ancient myths like I you know I'm a huge. uh Joseph Campbell uh fan and like. thinking about like the history of. Mythology but like you know we've had. these myths for like you know most of. human history and there's been a lot of. recurring motifs in them about you know. telepathy psychics Miracles you know all. of these stories um and it's super. interesting to see how some of them are. becoming you know like embodied through. our technology like like the things that. we imagine like are we're 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 but. I think what will happen is the stories. that we're telling become embodied in in. the observations that we're making and. the things that we're actually like. implementing in the world but like I. don't know that historically I would say.

like like I don't believe in magic I. think magic is um or I do believe in. mystery but I I think when I yeah so. 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 like when. those things become sharable they. actually become things that we can use. collectively and I'm much more. interested in that kind of knowledge M. so I it's not that I I I don't value um. mysticism or um 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 become make those kinds of things. regular like reg regularized in the way. that like we understand them as like. really fundamental properties and we can. use them and like we can share that. information that's what I I like about. science because it's like it's like. sharable deep thoughts that are. universally usable yes yes yeah.

universally usable is a great way to put. it I've often entertained the idea of. you know I'm sure you aware of the. concept of the Muse right um maybe but. it probably explain it anyway just. because it's one of the best. representations of it there a gentleman. named Steph pressfield is's a great. author he wrote a legend of bager Vance. and a bunch of other great movies and he. um wrote this book called The War of Art. and the the book is essentially like a. guide book 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 and. this idea has persisted throughout time. that ideas I mean I'm sure you've had. ideas that have come to you like where. do that even come from like what is that. I think everyone has I love creativity. for that reason because it's so. mysterious even to the person having the. creative. yes yes it's which is just crazy yeah I. all almost always think of my best ideas. as not even really mine but like a gift.

yes and so this is this is the concept. of the Muse that the Muse you summon the. Muse you treat the Muse with respect you. you literally communicate with The Muse. you put this intention out there and if. you do this every day she will reward. you and she 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 you'll become. prod Ive through the Muse and so is the. muse like a placeholder for your like. unconscious could be brain yeah. certainly but if you treat it like it's.

a real thing it behaves like a real. thing no no no I mean I think the. unconscious is a real thing I the reason. I'm bringing up is like so many people. are really interested in Consciousness. and then um you know like really F. focused on that but part of the reason. that you know like where creativity. comes from and like 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 and I think a lot of the information. processing architecture and like where. like I I I've kind of resigned myself to. like 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 seems like it came. from nowhere but it's just it's 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. we yes we think of things that we can. describe with language and process. processes that we uh examine with. language words that we attributed to. specific objects and specific tasks and. things that we do and 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 these. sort of subconscious things are very. conscious they're they're conscious but. they just they're not attached to. language right you know 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 a way to. express this thing that's going on with. this thought process this the. Consciousness yeah that it's we're.

attaching it to language yeah no 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 like Lee Cronin that I work with a. lot and you know he's the the person. originated 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. cuz he's like completely utterly. brilliant but I think like his mental. architecture is really different um and. I love working on deep foundational. questions because I think when you talk.

about these deep ideas and you talk and. maybe this is also why people like. psychedelics 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 cuz 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 very. very different so different what is the. estimation there there's some percentage. of us that do not have an inner voice. yeah I think it's like 4% but I don't. know I think it's higher than that I. think it's quite a bit higher I thought. it was like I think it's in the 20s. higher than what's that it's higher than. that I just made up a number it's up to. 60% but I I I've tried to look into this. many times I don't understand any well I. think it's hard to report though because. people don't even know they don't have. an inner voice and like and 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 so everybody. just thinks their mind is normal right. right so if you talk to a schizophrenic. you're like what what's going on in. there like what is that like what's that. misfiring well this is one of the things. I'm really excited about like these. these neural enhancement Technologies. cuz I think I think we really. underestimate the diversity of human. Minds like it might 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 and then just. through walks of life all the I know so. many people who think so differently. yeah you know 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 isn't. that and then I'm like how the [ __ ] 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 it's there's also I think. everyone's interface is different I I I. don't know even what you see I assume I. this blows my mind I think about this. all the time I'm like I have no idea. what it looks like to anybody else when. look out of the world well it makes. sense to me that it has to be different. because wasn't different why would you. like things I don't like everybody would. like the same thing like the way the. things look or food tastes like I have. ch I have uh two children that have.

totally different ability to absorb hot. spicy food oh yeah 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 she ghost peppers like she. likes it hot and she loves like really. those are really hot from time when she. was a little kid like Reapers I get this. um this is hot sauce called Senor luga. it's really good stuff it's uh or. organic and like really strong hot like.

if you like it really spicy and I told. her I'm like this is pretty spicy 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 wowow it's. kind of incredible and then the other. one like a little bit of a jalapeno and. she's hipping and coughing like she. can't take it at all yeah it's bizarre. cuz they both came from the same parents. but but so obviously things taste. different to them yeah totally different.

so whatever that is yeah where like some. people love the taste of hot dogs some. people think they're disgusting and you. know and they like whatever broccoli. whatever it is like why 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 yeah and. it's proba 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 that are allowing this. person to process this in a pleasing or. an unpleasing manner yeah like what is. going like and then the actual structure. of the eye right we know some people's. eyes aren't that good like why is that. like what's going on in there like it's. stops working so good and so you see. things blurry and like our color blind. is also interesting crazy yeah really. crazy the world could all be color blind. we'd be lost the idea that we're in this. spectrum of how light interacts with.

objects and this incredible variety of. different shades of things yeah and like. people that have a major shift in that. like I read this Oliver sax Story Once. about this person got hit in the head. and then they could only see the world. in black and white and like how. existential that experience was. transitioning cuz like that's really. depressing like you see a World of Color. then everything's black and white it's. like you're living in a movie or. something but like this 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 mindblowing that that. can happen it's like the same brain yeah. same brain and then you have to. completely readjust your experience of. reality because now you see the world. differently I have a friend who got a. concussion he lost a sense of smell oh. really yeah for years that's probably. pretty traumatic well a lot of people. got it during CO as well right yeah. that's right but he yeah he got it. through a concussion like way back like. at least 15 years ago and lost a sense. of smell yeah that's crazy I 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 I can. imagine an apple I can see an apple my. brain and I can bite in the Apple but I. cannot taste it I cannot imagine tasting. food and 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 I only have taste when. I'm eating food I can definitely taste. things but it but it just it's like you. know like it's a 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 um you know. experiments with our own minds it's 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. evolutionary advantage in terms of food. being rotten there's a bunch of. different factors gases that are pois. poisonous but it's invisible yeah and do. you know if your friend could still. imagine smell or did they lose the. ability to even like recall what smells.

I haven't talked to him in years I'd. have to reach out I don't even know if. he got a smell back yeah I just he's a. guy used to fighting the UFC oh I see. and uh he got uh knocked out once and. lost his sense of smell wow crazy crazy. not crazy yeah no that's not good not. good uh but but the idea is that sense. of smell we all just take for granted we. have it we oh my God you smell that. apple pie oh it's coming it's coming o. is is so exciting you know you smell it. you walk in the house someone's cooking. bacon 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 uh neutrinos. you know imagine if we could feel all. the neutrinos passing through us at any. given moment I'm like trying to. visualize it as you're saying that I'm. like there's just like thousands of. literally going through the entire Earth. they're flying through the Earth right. now but we don't have the ability to. detect that but why not right I mean. that's a thing that's real that we don't.

have the the tools for but we do have. the tools for smell 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 validate that they're there. and then we have theories that would be. consistent with what you're just saying. so the 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 in all sorts of. ways and theories and explanations are. part of that technological. infrastructure which is why we can talk. about that our gravitational waves for. example is another one yes going through. us right now too right we can't detect. them 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 cuz you're. being pulled 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 it's bizarre yeah so you. change your physical structure by adding. weight yeah you know and that's what. weightlifting is too 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 I think 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 um 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 so you don't subscribe to the. possibility of simulation theater no I I. find it inadequate um for a number of re. like it it doesn't seem like it's a. better explanation than any other. current explanation for how the universe.

works so um you know I put the. simulation argument intelligent design. and even sort of the current laws of. physics on kind of equal footing as far. as their ability to explain uh why the. universe exists the way it does because. what all three theories do is they. basically push explanation to the. boundary um 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 and in this. you know in intelligent design it's like. you can't you the universe is you know.

designed by some being but like where. did that thing come from and in the. simulation argument it's just the great. programmer in the sky made us and 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 um but I think you still have. to assume a physical reality that. evolves the capability of building. simulations so it seems all very. circular to me yes yeah not.

explanatory yeah I just I don't. understand why people are so confident. in stating that like Elon said the. chances of it not being simulation or in. the billions yeah it's like 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 have. been a thing before the simulation. existed in order 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 the simulation argument. tend to be in like the tech world and 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 explain how it. is that computation emerged on a planet. um and simulations became possible on. our planet and like they they emerged.

out of something right um so I think I'm. much more interested in like what is the. what is the unification of the virtual. and the physical and like how can you. think about them as as similar kinds of. systems than to just say the universe is. a simulation therefore I all tell why. the universe exists right doesn't get. you anywhere it doesn't and ALS well I I. always think about the universe itself. we always want to look at a birth of a. universe and the end of the universe and. I always say I wonder if we do that. because of our own biological. limitations if we is think that a thing.

had to emerge because we emerged but but. why does it have to have emerged yeah it. exists right Why didn't it always exist. and but then it that's a huge problem. like you can't have everything exists. forever is part of the problem so 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 Big Bang. Theory 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. and then in one massive moment it. creates the universe itself and with. that's one that universally agreed upon. yeah I know I agree and it seems to be a. signature of it so you can study it yeah. there's no problem with crazy ideas by. the way I love crazy ideas they're the. craziest yeah but that's the craziest. right yeah yeah but but even going back. to the simulation I 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 so 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 so we're. constantly learning more and we're. constantly refining our ideas so um is. that a problem in science in that when. people have espoused a very particular. idea of how the world Works they have a. hard time backing off of that and they.

collectively yes 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 they say very different. things than you know sort of the. standard Canon would say or like we 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 is. fundamental properties and 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 the original life it's like 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 um. you know physic too being like Oh you. get the First replicator on on a planet. and then you get life and the real hard. problems are like you know the long-term. future of the universe and things and I. think 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 propos that these. scientif riddles have been solved. because if you leave them open that kind. of opens the door to the possibility of. a Creator or of intelligent design and.

they want they they want to kind of rush. to say no we figured it out that's what. I've been told by like I mean because we. have a lot of uh you know there have. been a lot of reactions to uh the work. that we've been doing both positive and. like you know interacting with people's. dogmas in certain ways so 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 um. and so you get like the whole spectrum. and I guess if you do any kind of hyper. 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. um is that the way that different. communities interact with the ideas are. totally different so it's like you know. the evolutionary biologists you know. were 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 um 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 um. intelligent design for so many decades. and really stand its ground and original. life is like a really separate Community. from biology r large I mean I was even. early in my career uh when I was a. postto by a very prominent biologist. that I shouldn't work on origins of life. 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 have the most progress know. like yeah yeah so 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 yeah 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 like how. what what is this what is there are. there other ways to do it like it's. fascin we don't have an idea what an. alien is right like that I mean just. that should 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 I it. brings me back to this concept of the. Muse so my thought I have this biz are. thought once that ideas are life forms. oh sure I totally agree with that really. 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 oh I think I can make a 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 the.

fly and then it becomes a bow and arrow. and so the human mind interacts with. these ideas the ideas manifest. themselves in physical objects and every. physical object including airplane. spaceship space station satellites all. of them come from ideas 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. no I totally agree with this I actually. uh make similar arguments uh in my book. about Rockets as a good example of this. right like they were imagined long. before they became actual physical. chines invention by the way yeah Chinese. were on to lots of stuff everything. paper alcohol everything mechanical. clock everything yeah. um yeah so I think uh yeah I think this. gets to the idea of like living objects. being deep in time because you like and. this and I also think a lot about the.

nature of like 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. I know I stuck that shovel I exerted. effort I put Force IED the dirt out I. made the hole so if someone says where'. that hole come from I dug the hole Yeah.

simple but if someone says where'd 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 that's weird. it is totally weird it's weird now. imagine that someone figuring out an. airplane like some Wilbur Norville writ.

people did but but you're right it's. also distributed over many human Minds. so it's not like a single mind. architecture it's like the interaction. of many minds and the physical world. that generates these things but I think. but that force of whatever the idea is. time it's time time literally yeah so in. assembly Theory we think time is. fundamental but you might think of time. is in terms of causation and things like. you that are you know take billions of. years to for the universe to generate. have a lot of time embedded in you and.

time is actually the creative mechanism. that's expanding the space of. possibilities and maybe the universe. itself but um but that that's how I. think about it so you you actually have. an incredible amount of time in a small. volume of space um that's what you are. as an evolved object um 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 in size not spatial in.

size that you can draw from to create. things and 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 yeah you'll absorb more and. more and more more of it and 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 we're just like bundles I. you know I think about time and. information kind of being the same thing. but we're just all of that that. causation bundled up in like these small. we we look small but we're not small. yeah so sometimes I you know I have this. visualization of Earth is 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 like if you could do a zoom. out of like the entire universe uh you.

know and you could look at like space. you know assuming there's no aliens out. there you look at Earth you know like. Earth is giant as far as like the amount. of stuff that can be made here and how. much history is embodied in every object. it's like it's just this huge causal. structure in this like um 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 wood 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 as. living things it makes sense and it also. if you could go to the original. Collision of like Earth One yeah when. Earth One creates the moon and just. imagine being able so fabulous we have a. giant Moon so crazy so crazy it's the. only thing that keeps our atmosphere.

stable that's the only reason why we're. here like in this form with stable. temperature such a chance event and it's. so big it's one quarter the size of us I. know and it looks nice on watches it's. beautiful yeah and it's floating in the. sky and it makes a you know a summer. night looking CRA 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 is no it's. incredible but that this this whole. thing if you could watch it take place I. wonder if I often thought like there's.

so many mysteries of history but I've. 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 for. that would cause them to exist and all. the history that caus them to exist you. could accurately go back and see exactly.

what happened every step of the way. yeah I 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 are deterministic is. because in the past you can determine. things but I think the future is. undetermined 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 3 or 400 years ago if we. could expand that knowledge for the. next, 500,000 years ago whatever. whatever it is from now into the future. to develop some sort of a computation. system some 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. the records when they do core samples. they understand the aridium content. which meant asteroids impacted here and. carbon which is some sort of a fire here. and just calculate it out where you can. get some accurate principle it 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 so if. you're like there 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 um available just for the. computer like the compute you actually. have to keep the the whole thing running. so right um so I don't think that you. actually can know the past with um with. exact I was going to say infinite. resolution but I don't believe in. Infinities anyway but like really. precise resolution that you could you. could re reconstruct everything that. Hasen in the history of the 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 it you know like. some of those things can't be generated. anymore but it makes more space for. other things to be created you don't. believe in Infinity I don't. interesting I mean as a as a. mathematical construct sure but as a. real physical thing no but I 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 ukian world that's like a. perfect mathematical forms I think. they're 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 um 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 yeah that there's some problems. with mathematics too right Eric winstein. who's a mathematician he's kind of.

explaining the number two and 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 there's always that I. mean you know it it always perplexes me. that you know people accepted ukan. geometry as the only form of geometry. for like 2,000 years I mean it's like. like literally like that was it and then. we were like oh well there could be non-. ukian geometries and we just never. imagined them because like they don't. reflect our physical environment I 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 um like is there a. language deeper than math um what could. that be don't know I mean I about I have. uh I think about a lot I'm sure you do. well I mean kind of rhetorical yeah no. it's okay um 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 right so anything. that you can calculate you can compute. um 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 some features that look like. theories of complexity and computation. in that um you know like people will. 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 it'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 um and so like you. couldn't compute necessarily like on a.

super Compu like you know the the. complexity of a cell um 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 and the space is actually. a lot larger than what you can. computationally compress so what else. could be going on um I think that I the. the best language I have for it right. now and I I really don't know like I I'm. really struggling with this in my work. right now um and Lee and I are going. back and forth about these things all.

the time but is causation um and also. that the the other part about like why. the universe is maybe not computable is. this mechanism of novelty generation. like there are there are some the UN 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 fundamental different than the. way that we understand the way the world. works right now and 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 um and then there's a. fundamental question of why yes I think. I 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 cuz if you. think like things exist or they don't um. and 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 uh 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 well it. makes sense also if physical things. these human beings create and and and. life creates physical things. that would be the best way to maximize. it because this yes 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 yeah do.

you ever but butt heads with determinism. people I butt heads with. everyone nothing wrong with that no. that's what it's all about right yeah no. I I I fundamentally love disagreeing. with smart people um and so I think um. and I try to surround myself with. colleagues that share that mentality so. I think um 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 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 right yeah so um I. always put myself in their head you know. I think we have a huge problem as human. beings is uh we attach ideas to ourself. that and so we defend these ideas as if. we are defending our very existence 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 try to figure out. like what is your process and why is it. so different than mine that's good for. you too because you grow more and you. understand more by doing that doing this. thing over the last 15 years has been. like the most radical unexpected. education that I could have ever had. that's amazing I'm a different human. like completely different human than I. was 15 years ago yeah 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 um and understand the world. better and I think unquestionably yeah. unquestionably and these ideas that the. problem when we start defending them is. like then we stop looking at them we we. start like like we put them as like a. protected thing that we're trying to. argue against and we're we're trying to. instead of invite criticism and some. sort of an analysis of our thought. process we're trying to defend it no so. I'm I'm happy like professionally also.

to change my mind all the time so like I. was a determinist I'm not a determinist. anymore right now I'm presst when did. that change um I think that probably. changed in the last few years um 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 and we're still really. trying to work on the ideas but I always. had these ideas about the origin of 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 that. wouldn't be possible without that. mathematical form existing on our planet. as a description of reality right so.

that's an object and so these kind of. things were always really perplexing to. me and so you know I started working. with Lee on assembly Theory and like. Lee's very radical and very. thought-provoking and always pushing um. and you know he was really on um this. idea of the universe not being. deterministic and getting larger in time. and like part of that was not um like it. was he's like he's like I'm a chemist I. burn [ __ ] I see this in the lab the. second law is not like the right.

description of like what's going on here. but there is some underlying. undetermined and um so what is free will. then for me so so what happened was when. I started working on assembly Theory I. started to like see that there was a. 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 but 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 combinatorial space that we can. actually generate new structures and. that's that that is actually like where. Free Will comes from it's not that like. it it's basically if you if you assume. you can't reduce things to Elementary. particles all the time and you actually. have time and objects Things become. clausal agents actually have some nag.

navigability over the combinatorial. 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. dennet was really brilliant on this. point like he talked about Free Will. inflation which I thought was a historic. a hysterical concept it's like really. funny but it's like either people think. the universe is random and you. absolutely have free will and control. over everything or they think it's fully. deterministic and you have no freedom. but 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 CU 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.

yeah I mean to think that the universe. is all like one human concept anyway is. too simplistic it's like 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 there are places. 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. evid when you're looking at living. things like no one can predict the. future Technologies like or 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 the problem I've always. had with determinism is that people seem. too sure of it and the people that. espouse it they seem very sure of it and. I I think how can you be sure when you. know for a fact in your own mind you. make decisions so and you think that. these decisions are made entirely based. on your life experiences your education. your biology yada yada y 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 intuition is a big one. for me I always find that very. mysterious yes like I live my whole life. on instincts yeah like I do things that. a lot of people go why are you doing. that I'm like like that's what I should. I feel like that's what I should do like. it feels like a thing to do and that is. that seems to be uh 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 it what is it. about the idea of being rewarded by.

doing something difficult that you don't. want to do but you force yourself to do. it if that is not free will what is yeah. like 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 right that is free will manifested. in a physical I 100% agree 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. in physics can't explain life they can't. explain mind and Free Will lives in the. space of whatever physics describes life. and 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 you. as an evolved structure over 4 billion. years that now has agency in the. universe like you're a different. component of physical reality than those. theories are describing and um 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 and 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 how many times. I was told like I 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. relativity and quantum mechanics this is. so funny but it's like I go in a physics.

department and I'm like talking about. this and they're 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. history it's like crazy yeah totally. crazy it is crazy that we repeat repeat. these problems. repeat these issues. and back then they were don't you think. in the future if you 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 it has to be there has to be. there's no way we figured it out no no I. I definitely I definitely think. fundamental physics has a very bright. future of like having some really. fundamentally like Earth shattering like. ways of thinking about things that I I. don't even think like current theories. are like that like they're they're going. to be replaced by things even more. awesome uh and 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 100. 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 not yeah so it's it's funny. that people want to just accept what. previous generations taught them as like. absolute fact and then not be confronted. with like The Changing Times the. changing understanding of the world. around us to changing sets of. observations um cuz 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 control but like now in a. modern technological society and we see. how much of reality we've shaped and. changed like I don't know how you could. hold that view. anymore like it's 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 emerging. property of human beings yes humans imp. 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 anything. 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 yeah I. think so well the known universe known. universe yeah I think it's quite. possible there's something else out. there that's 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 interesting um you glossed over. this but I want to get back to it why. don't you believe in Infinity oh so um I. just I think it's not possible for like. like I guess people want to say the. universe is infinite in size and I don't. know what that means I think it just is. 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 uh to me. is it it it doesn't make any sense and. it doesn't make any sense because I. think if you assume um you know like. there's an Infinity of things that could. exist and that Infinity of things exists. somewhere right like so you have like uh. you know Max tag marks mathematical. Universe hypothesis all mathematical. objects exist somewhere and obviously. there's like an infinite number of them. it doesn't actually explain anything. about here um 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 hum's 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 but 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 like it seems like maybe that's what. Infinity is yeah yeah so I think we. could be saying the same like I think um. I think about it sort of like uh 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 I don't even know if there's. stuff out there that's like beyond that. and like you can't even talk about it. cuz you can't even imagine what it is. right there 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 super massive black.

hole and that going through that super. massive 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 I think. they're intellectually interesting um. 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 and I would. rather take the mathematics and and like.

and the theories of physics themselves. like I I do these thought experiments. about like the theoretical physics of. theoretical physicist 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. 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 ukian you know and like the the you. know Plato's 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 and 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 proponent of this. concept of infinity and that do believe. in it when you steal man that what's the. best argument for it um well I think the. idea it's kind of like what you're.

saying like if you take the limit like. there you know they it actually is. consistent with our equations to assume. that you know like the 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 um but I I don't but I. I always it always seems to me to be. placeholder of like the boundary um and. so um 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 expl 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 um and I I right and I I I. just I I want to explain us I want to. know what we. are um yeah but it's it's a hard set of. questions around infinity and. Mathematics just. generally and I I find it really fun to. think about the Multiverse to me is the.

most bizarre mind experiment because. there's no evidence that it exists but. it's a concept that's universally sort. it's shared a lot and it's debated a lot. and it's you know some people you know. they'll pontificate on it but you might. be thinking about nonsense right so I I. think you know another reason I don't I. don't really think Infinity is like a. real construct is I I really I'm a big. fan of Nick jisen he's a physicist. that's kind of arguing that real numbers. aren't real um 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 they. require infinite Precision to to compute. all the digits and 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 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 isn't 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. it 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 from. moment to moment um and you know and we. persist over a certain set of moments. but but yeah this is why I said I'm a. presentist 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 there. 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 because there's so much. combinatorial structure like all these. past histories now entwined in the. modern structure that they can now. intertwine 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. whole universe like what is going on out. there yeah so it's it's interesting you. 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.

eye view literal God's eye view of the. universe and describe it objectively. from the outside and 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 TR like. really big problems with how we. structure theories 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 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. they're great you know there there's. great theories it's great like amazing. insightful stuff but it's not quite on. the same footing as like general. relativity which is like a widely. accepted theory that 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 it 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. right this is it this is all we got yeah. um and like describe why like what is. the observational horiz we interact with. and how did we get structured out of. that space like why why do we exist the. way we do within that space why do we. um I I I don't know but I 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 they're. good questions 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. yeah uh 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. say these things and I'm like I think I. like I've been saying these things since.

I was like I don't know forever like I. haven't change my personality hasn'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 think and. what the like the evidence is telling. you and the questions you think are. interesting to answer and I think the. thing I guess i' 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 well listen Sarah I'm glad you're. out there I really am this is a really. fun conversation I really appreciate it. um tell everybody how they can see some. of your work read about it sure yeah I. have a book out it actually is out today. um 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 a physics of life. and also really trying to motivate this. experimental program uh that Lee is.

spearheading uh because I am such a fan. of it um 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 uh agreeing or better yet. like having lots of debate and. discussion about like the nature life. and how we think about it and whether we. can start an exp ental program to really. validate the ideas so that's that and I. narrated the audio book. fantastic 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 on 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 I know. you a great voice thank you but anyway. it's really fun um and it was deeply. personal so that was cool um and I'm on. uh Twitter X thing and uh Instagram who. are you on how how does someone find you. on S Amari there you can find me that. way Instagram as well alien matter alien. matter MH okay I don't use that one as. much but it's fun okay yeah anyway thank.

you very much I really appreciate it it. was a lot of fun it was fun thank you. all right bye everybody. [Applause]. [Music].