0:00

Everybody just a little bit of a somber

0:02

note as we start the podcast something that's

0:04

never happened before But

0:06

I have to report on the passing

0:08

of today's guest Daniel Dennett who

0:11

I spoke to just a few weeks ago I

0:13

think this was his final interview on

0:15

a podcast. I passed away today. I'm

0:17

informed for this is a Friday April

0:20

19th 2024

0:23

and as you hear I had such

0:25

a great conversation with him I already recorded

0:27

an intro both the video and an audio

0:29

intro and I

0:31

was just so delighted and touched by him and

0:33

had so much fun with him He

0:36

influenced me greatly even though I really

0:38

only got to delve into his

0:40

work in the last few Months

0:43

before leading up to the interview before of

0:45

course I knew about him. It's a world-famous

0:47

intellectual and contributor to

0:50

many fields of philosophy and many other

0:52

things And so it's

0:54

a great shock to me. I wanted to

0:56

release this as a you know

0:58

token of my gratitude to him For

1:01

this wonderful interview you'll see he you

1:03

know he'd just come back from a

1:05

dentist appointment and you're talking and

1:07

you know part of each feels guilty to have spent

1:09

you know an hour and a half two hours Whatever

1:12

it turned out to be with you

1:14

know the final you know weeks of his life

1:16

but on the other hand, it's a great gift

1:18

and hopefully his family will see this

1:20

and share in the in

1:23

the delightful conversation that we had together

1:26

I view it as a Great

1:28

honor and privilege to have hosted him and

1:30

especially now made more poignant by his passing

1:33

It's truly affected me And I hope the

1:35

interview will be meaningful to you as much

1:37

as it was to me as well So

1:40

with that I'll start with the intro that we

1:42

had planned before this sad announcement

1:45

came a few days ago before the release

1:47

of this episode and and

1:51

Hope that Dan is is

1:53

happy and resting in peace wherever he is

1:56

Thanks, Dan. Hey there friends. Just a

1:58

note opening up this podcast

2:00

with another renowned atheist

2:04

scientist PhD in the tradition

2:06

of Sam Harris and Robert

2:08

Sapolsky. This episode with

2:10

Dan Dennett was a real treat, most

2:13

of which came from the fact that

2:15

he's incredibly open, honest, and just a

2:17

lot of fun. I really had no

2:19

idea how to expect with him. He

2:21

can range in interviews I'd seen with

2:24

him previously with Michael

2:26

Shermer and others. I was just

2:28

checking out on his podcast, the

2:30

Skeptic podcast or Michael Shermer show

2:32

I think it's called now, that

2:35

he can be a little bit

2:37

cantankerous. He can be a little bit brusque,

2:39

always entertaining, he's always brilliant, but

2:42

I really had no idea what to expect. I'd

2:44

never talked to him and never read his books

2:46

before this most recent book of his, memoir,

2:50

his scientific career. What I realized is it really is

2:52

a guidebook on how to be a good scientist. I

2:55

appreciate that because there's so few

2:57

guides for becoming a scientist. Most

2:59

of what we find out in

3:02

life is in the self-help realm,

3:04

personal relationships, being a better parent.

3:07

These are of course incredibly important things in

3:09

a day-to-day life, but there aren't really good manuals

3:11

on how to be a good scientist. I've

3:13

sort of tried to do that with my

3:15

previous books, losing the Nobel

3:17

Prize and think like a Nobel Prize winner. I

3:19

always felt that came up a little bit short

3:22

because it's very difficult to capture those

3:24

perspectives, especially since I feel like

3:26

my career is continuing to grow and

3:28

I have the blessing and benefit to

3:30

be working with so many amazing students

3:32

and researchers and fellow faculty and engineers

3:35

on the Simons Observatory, the Simons Array,

3:38

and other projects I get involved with. It's

3:40

really truly the best job in the world.

3:42

I call it the hardest three

3:44

hour a week job in the world

3:46

being a professor. It's changed a lot

3:48

in 20 years, my 20th anniversary being

3:50

a professor, but talking with Dan, Dan

3:52

it really made me appreciate how great

3:54

it is to be a professor, to

3:56

live the life of the mind and how sad

3:59

it makes me. feel when I

4:01

realize how hard it is, almost

4:03

impossible, it's actually harder in

4:05

some sense to break into the

4:08

professoriate from the previous

4:10

level down, which is called post-doctoral scholars

4:12

or fellows. It's harder to do that

4:15

nowadays than it is to break in

4:17

from the level down from the major

4:19

leagues in baseball, which is AAA baseball.

4:22

In other words, you have a higher chance

4:24

of getting to be a professional baseball player

4:26

if you're already playing AAA baseball than if

4:28

you're a postdoc trying to become a faculty

4:30

member. We had 400 applicants for

4:32

one job in the last hiring

4:35

cycle at UC San Diego, and I'm sure

4:37

there are even more selected universities than ours.

4:39

This is a conundrum. Do you do

4:42

anyone a favor by encouraging them to

4:44

pursue academia? I'd like to think the

4:46

latter hasn't been pulled up behind me.

4:48

I do my best to mentor, and

4:51

I've had great success with four of

4:53

my previous employees or professors now at

4:55

various places around the country and the

4:57

world. These

4:59

are top institutions, and it really does

5:01

fill me. That's the greatest source of

5:03

pride, really, is in the words of

5:06

the great Rabbi Menachem Schneerson,

5:08

who said that a

5:10

good leader creates many followers, but

5:13

a great leader creates many leaders. I

5:16

feel like people like Dan and others

5:18

inspire me to be better at my

5:20

craft and listening

5:22

to him recount in his

5:24

inimitable way the adventures

5:27

that he's had over the years, ranging

5:29

from computer science to

5:31

laboratory experiments to pure

5:33

philosophical conferences to smuggling

5:36

items across the iron curtain during

5:38

the Cold War. He's really a

5:40

legend and is inspirational.

5:42

I don't have the opportunity to

5:45

deal with such weighty, lofty issues in

5:47

my day job as a cosmologist. I

5:50

do have the same responsibilities that he

5:52

has to be a good mentor, friend,

5:54

advisor. We spend almost as

5:56

much time, if not more, with our students

5:58

and faculty colleagues as we do. do with

6:00

our family. So there are very few books

6:02

written about how to be a good scientist,

6:04

how to science. I'm working on a second

6:07

volume of Think Like a Nobel Prize winner,

6:10

actually called Into the Impossible, named after

6:12

this podcast, subtitle Think Like a Nobel

6:14

Prize winner. But some people

6:16

have criticized that book for kind

6:18

of aspiring to the unattainable, which is not

6:20

only to be a professor, but then to

6:22

win the Nobel Prize, of which there are

6:24

actually literally fewer people

6:27

that have that accolade in

6:29

science and physics than play in

6:31

the NBA, fewer Nobel laureates

6:33

in physics than NBA stars. And I've interviewed a

6:36

great deal of them, 19 of them so far.

6:38

And so the second half of nine or people

6:40

are coming into a new book. It'll be out

6:42

hopefully by the end of this year, calendar year

6:44

2024, working on

6:47

that with Scribe Publishing and my great co-authors

6:49

and friends that help edit and put that

6:51

book together. So look for that soon. And

6:53

I'm going to focus in that book on

6:55

really how to be a good scientist. The

6:57

first volume of it came out in

6:59

2021, great success, but it

7:01

really was kind of a

7:03

panoply of different observations that I've

7:05

learned about Nobel Prize winners rather

7:07

than how to be like them

7:09

in the sense of how do

7:11

you collaborate with competitors? How do

7:13

you overcome the imposter syndrome?

7:16

How do you struggle with

7:18

colleagues that sometimes are your competitors?

7:20

And how do you retain an

7:22

open mind to criticism? Those are

7:24

the real traits of a good

7:26

scientist. And I never get

7:29

the chance to really explore that with

7:31

my students, either undergraduates or graduate students.

7:33

So this will be kind of my

7:35

endeavor to do that. And I'll carry

7:37

lessons from Dan and others, even though

7:39

Dan obviously has not won a Nobel

7:41

Prize, at least not yet. I don't

7:43

know if that will ever happen. I

7:45

don't think so. But he is a

7:47

brilliant scientist. He's got an incredible personality.

7:50

And it's just refreshing to talk to

7:52

somebody who's got such an unabashed, unafraid,

7:54

opinionated kind of perspective. He'll talk about

7:56

people that he's nominally associated with, Dawkins,

7:58

Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. the late

8:00

great Christopher Hitchens, and he'll talk about them

8:02

critically. But it's all done

8:04

with Bonhomme and with not

8:06

conciliatory, I think he, Dan loves

8:09

to win arguments, but he does

8:11

so collegially friendly unless you kind

8:13

of provoke him to evoke his

8:15

ire. So I know you're going

8:17

to enjoy this kind

8:19

of part of a theme this year so

8:21

far. We are going to have Donald Hoffman

8:24

back on for part two. In that interview,

8:26

I love Don. I think he's very, he's

8:28

a wonderful, he's a mensch of a person,

8:30

but I'll push back as I did with

8:32

Dan and with Sam and with Robert Sapolsky.

8:34

So I hope you don't fault

8:36

me for that because I think it's part

8:39

of my job is to ask hard questions

8:41

and push back with tender love and respect.

8:43

And I know that sometimes irritates you because

8:45

I don't always merely parrot

8:47

what my guests are saying, but I think this

8:49

is more interesting. If you like that kind of

8:51

interview style, I can recommend a lot

8:53

of other podcasts that you should listen to. But I hope

8:56

you'll stay and listen to this one and give me feedback.

8:58

Also, let me know what you think about these audio

9:00

essays, plan to do more of

9:02

them. So I hope you like them. I don't

9:04

have plans to do them every

9:07

single episode, but with kind of

9:09

marquee names, literally like Dan or Sam

9:11

or Robert, I feel the need to

9:14

kind of provide a little supplementary and

9:17

color to the interview. And I hope that you

9:20

will very much appreciate this

9:22

wide ranging discussion with a

9:24

true legend. And that's Professor Dan

9:26

Dennett. And now sit

9:29

back and enjoy. As we go into the

9:31

impossible, stay tuned for another intro for

9:33

the next minute. And then we'll go

9:35

right into the interview. Enjoy friends. Today

9:39

into the impossible, we welcome

9:41

a renowned philosopher of

9:43

the human mind, a man who's a

9:45

legend, a cognitive scientist, professor,

9:47

and a raconteur par excellence.

9:49

He's also a vocal atheist.

9:52

And yet he makes common

9:54

cause with people like me

9:56

who call themselves practicing

9:59

agnostics. We'll see what that

10:01

means later on. But Daniel Dennett is

10:03

a legend, and he's known as one

10:05

of the four horsemen of new atheism,

10:07

not the apocalypse. He's been at the

10:09

forefront. Discussions on consciousness free will, and

10:11

the impact of Darwinian evolution

10:13

on religious belief. His incisive

10:15

wit, good humor, and

10:18

keen intellect made him a must-get

10:20

guest on the Into the Impossible

10:22

podcast. He's been a major figure

10:24

for decades in debates, conversations,

10:28

and writings about the existence of

10:30

God and the nature of

10:32

belief and free will. His works

10:35

are tremendously influential, and they include

10:37

Breaking the Spell, Consciousness Explained, and

10:39

many more that have provoked admiration,

10:42

controversy, and challenged readers to

10:44

reconsider their most deeply held beliefs about

10:46

the mind and its relationship to the

10:49

physical world. Today, I have

10:51

the opportunity to explore these topics,

10:53

along with your questions, for this

10:55

phenomenal renowned professor. So without further

10:58

ado, let's jump right in and

11:00

discuss this magnificent new memoir from

11:03

one of the heroes of the New Atheist Movement.

11:05

["The New Atheist Movement"]

11:12

Any sufficiently advanced technology is

11:15

indistinguishable from magic. Open

11:18

the pod bay doors, now. How

11:20

are you doing, Dan? I'm doing just fine,

11:23

how are you? Great pleasure

11:25

to connect to you. I listened to your

11:27

latest book in audio format,

11:29

and it's not your voice,

11:31

and so it's good to hear your actual

11:34

voice. And as you know, Dan, we love

11:36

to judge books by their covers because what

11:38

else do you have to go on in

11:40

a Bayesian reasoning sense? So I want you

11:42

to take us through the book, and it

11:45

is unique in terms of all the 200 or 300 books

11:48

I've had the pleasure of authors

11:50

appearing on the Into the Impossible

11:52

podcast. This is probably the first

11:54

one that doesn't have a subtitle. So tell

11:57

me, tell me the origin of the title,

11:59

the cover illustration. illustration art and

12:01

the absence of the

12:04

subtitle take it away, Dan. Okay. Here's the

12:06

book. I Take it

12:08

everybody can see it. Yeah, I've been thinking

12:10

I didn't want a subtitle because

12:12

I thought That's

12:15

enough I want to talk about my

12:17

thinking and how I got there

12:19

and It's not

12:21

about the non academic non-research

12:24

parts of my life. I I

12:29

deliberately didn't want to go

12:32

on and on about Adventures

12:34

I've had outside of academia. I

12:36

thought this is a book to talk

12:39

about what I

12:41

think is how I think

12:44

I think and why

12:46

it's a good way to think so

12:49

it's all about the Wonderful

12:51

thinkers who who've helped me and

12:55

the first thing to say is if you if you want

12:57

to do some good thinking Surround yourself with

12:59

the smartest people you can find and talk to

13:01

them and that's that's the

13:03

trick And I've had the pleasure of having

13:05

a lot of brilliant thinkers on the podcast

13:09

1918 Nobel Prize winners and

13:11

many of your colleagues and friends and people that appear

13:13

in this book in one form or another Including

13:16

folks like David Chalmers and

13:19

when I had David Chalmers

13:21

on he's he's from Australia And

13:23

I said to him, you know, David I if

13:26

I had the rock band ACDC also

13:28

from Australia and I had them on and

13:30

I did not ask them to play you

13:33

shook me all night long I

13:35

would be a derelict in my duties as

13:37

a host So I want to you know

13:40

sort of ask you you've had some very

13:42

deep criticisms of of them obviously

13:44

always with respect and always from a Scholastic

13:47

scholarly perspective but in

13:49

this book you talk about your differences

13:52

with you know critiques of everybody All

13:54

these guests that I've had on Penrose

13:56

hammer off Hoffman Chalmers

13:58

the Polsky Harris even So

14:00

let's start there. Let's start with Sam Harris

14:03

and then we'll kind of work

14:05

our way through for the audience's

14:07

benefit. We hear all these things,

14:09

Dan. Some clearly consciousness is an

14:11

illusion. Some say it's completely

14:14

nonsense. There's no such thing. And

14:16

associated with free will. Who says that?

14:20

Who says there's no free will? Oh,

14:23

yeah. Various people say that, but I

14:26

don't. Yeah. No, I

14:28

know that. So what is the

14:30

critique that you have of, say,

14:33

Sam in your book, Freedom Evolves?

14:35

I'm mentioning this because

14:38

he was just on the podcast and we had a very

14:40

long debate in which I asked him some

14:43

of the questions that I asked Robert Sapolsky.

14:45

And I said, you know,

14:47

if there is no such thing

14:49

as free will, then how can

14:51

you blame somebody for, God forbid,

14:53

killing your pet dog? And

14:55

Robert said, he said literally, to my

14:58

great shame and humiliation, I'd want them punished. So where

15:00

do you come down on, say,

15:02

crime and punishment in a world with

15:05

the free will perspective that you adopt? I think

15:07

there's a definite role for

15:10

punishment and have argued that and

15:12

think there's nothing anti-diluvian

15:15

or anti-scientific about it because

15:17

free will isn't what Sapolsky

15:19

thinks it is. I'm just

15:22

astonished at how

15:25

both Sam

15:27

Harris and Robert Sapolsky

15:29

and some other scientists have been,

15:33

I think, persuaded, conned, really,

15:35

into thinking that free will

15:37

depends on indeterminism by some

15:39

philosophers who have inflated

15:42

free will beyond what it actually is.

15:44

Free will isn't a metaphysical condition

15:47

that you're blessed with or not. It's

15:50

an achievement. And it's the

15:52

achievement of mature

15:54

self-control. You don't

15:56

have it when you're a baby. You don't have

15:58

it when you're a baby. until you've

16:02

reached adulthood really. And so

16:04

we don't hold you responsible

16:06

for things until you're

16:09

an adult and until and we

16:11

don't hold you responsible then if

16:14

you don't have self-control. That's

16:16

self-control is the key notion.

16:18

And the thing

16:21

about self-control that it

16:24

amazes me that Sapolsky doesn't realize,

16:26

this is one of the best ways

16:28

of looking at evolution. Evolution

16:32

begins with the

16:34

simplest imaginable agents,

16:37

single-celled agents.

16:40

And then you get

16:42

multicellular agents and

16:44

then we get multicellular agents

16:46

that are you know

16:48

plants or or or

16:50

fungi or or coral

16:53

polyps but that that

16:55

move. And

16:57

once you've got motion you've

17:00

got control. And

17:03

in order to have control you have to look

17:05

ahead. And evolution is

17:07

designed things that

17:10

can look ahead. Before there

17:12

was life nothing could look ahead. Nothing

17:15

at all in the whole universe

17:17

could look ahead. Once you have

17:19

look ahead then you have

17:21

the possibility of making choices

17:24

based on what you see. Now maybe

17:26

what you see isn't what's going to

17:28

happen and then you may make

17:30

choices that are bad. But over

17:34

the long run, probabilistically, evolution

17:37

lets replicate

17:40

the agents that are the best

17:42

at self-preservation. That

17:44

duck the incoming bricks and

17:47

then find the food before they

17:49

starve that find mates and

17:52

so forth. I haven't said

17:54

anything controversial. That's textbook ho-hum.

17:57

That's right. That's how evolution works.

18:00

But it makes things

18:04

that do things for

18:07

reasons. And

18:09

once you have things that do things

18:11

for reasons, you're on the way to

18:13

free will. I

18:16

wouldn't say that an octopus or a

18:19

clam or

18:21

even a crocodile

18:23

have reasons that they understand.

18:26

They don't have to. But

18:28

they still do things for reasons. Trees do

18:30

things for reasons. Trees don't

18:32

have to understand the reasons they do the things

18:34

they do. But they do things for reasons. That's

18:37

a theme in my book,

18:39

From Bacteria to Backing Back. This

18:42

is competence without comprehension. We're

18:45

the one species that so far

18:47

evolved that doesn't

18:50

just do things for reasons, but represents

18:53

reasons to ourselves. And

18:56

argues about reasons and tries to

18:58

reason others into behaving

19:00

better and so forth. And

19:03

this creates the

19:05

social contract. It creates

19:07

the environment for civilization

19:10

where we can judge that

19:13

some of our fellow

19:15

human beings have reached

19:17

the age of reason. They can be

19:20

reasoned with. And

19:22

we can trust them. They're safe. We

19:25

can let them run free. You know

19:28

why we don't let lions run

19:30

free or bears run free? Or

19:32

small children. And

19:36

once you're capable of listening

19:38

to reasons and being moved by

19:40

reasons, as Kant put it, then

19:44

you can have freedom. Have

19:46

nothing. Notice I haven't

19:48

mentioned the word determinism. It has nothing to

19:50

do with determinism. And

19:54

free will are completely

19:58

disjoint categories. There's

20:01

no implication one

20:03

way or the other between them. So

20:06

this is what's called a pattern interrupt.

20:08

It's a way to re-juvenize, refresh your

20:10

mental synapses as I know you're getting

20:12

a slight charge out of

20:14

hearing each word that Daniel and

20:17

I say. But I need to

20:19

take a quick moment to invite all of you to subscribe

20:21

to this podcast or YouTube channel, no matter

20:24

where you're listening or watching. I

20:26

promise you it's causing me to up my

20:28

game. You see the phenomenal guests we're

20:30

getting just in the realm of consciousness, including

20:32

Dan and Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky just

20:35

in the last three months. It's

20:37

been a phenomenal ride. And unfortunately

20:39

it's a numbers game. And I'm trying my best to

20:41

up my game and become a better interviewer. This is

20:44

my side hustle after all. It's

20:46

a labor of love. I don't make very much

20:48

money on it. But the one thing you can

20:50

remunerate me with is by subscribing. Only about

20:52

50% of you are actually subscribed or following the

20:54

podcast. So please do me a favor. Subscribe

20:57

and share. Really helps out

20:59

and will help us grow and continue

21:01

to get great guests like Dan, Sam,

21:04

and Robert. And stay tuned for a

21:07

special episode coming up with Don Hoffman. When

21:09

I mentioned to both of them, I hear

21:12

a lot of people, as you know, will

21:15

deny the existence of free will. And

21:17

I mean, that's the title essentially of books

21:20

by those authors. And I say, have you

21:22

ever met somebody, Dan? I

21:24

say, have you met somebody who behaved as

21:26

if they don't have free will? That's

21:29

not a psychopath. And they can never say yeah.

21:31

I mean, nobody behaves like they have no free

21:33

will. The way you would behave if you

21:35

had no free will is you'd

21:37

sit there like a tree and

21:40

just take your lunch and

21:45

not think ahead. And it's

21:48

possible to

21:50

talk people out of

21:52

their free will. Because

21:55

if you've got free will, you can be moved by

21:57

reasons. And you can be moved by reasons good and

21:59

bad. And so that's

22:01

why I think books like Sapolsky's

22:04

and Sands are actually a

22:06

little bit socially destructive. They're

22:10

acts of high class social

22:12

vandalism in that they weaken

22:16

our conviction, our perfectly

22:20

naturalistic conviction. We

22:23

are what we obviously are,

22:26

for thinking, reasonable

22:30

human beings who can figure

22:32

out how to do things together in

22:35

concert, avoid harming

22:38

others. That's

22:41

the glory of human

22:43

civilization. Yeah, it really is and it

22:45

should be celebrated. And

22:47

I feel like they get into these sort of almost

22:51

solipsistic or self-referential definitions

22:54

where they can't admit that

22:56

there are possibilities

22:59

where the very notion that they're

23:01

trying to criticize undermines their own

23:03

argument. And for me... Why

23:05

are they arguing? Yeah, exactly. Right.

23:08

What on earth do you think you're doing,

23:11

Robert? It's impossible not to be swayed.

23:13

Again, when you make it personal,

23:15

etc., that they don't

23:17

stand by the courage of their convictions. But

23:20

to their credit, I think at least Robert

23:22

does. He admits to his shame as

23:24

he literally said in the interview, Robert

23:27

Sapolsky does. And

23:29

those are some of the best parts of

23:31

his book where he confesses that he can't...

23:33

Sometimes he just has to act as

23:35

if he has free will. Good for him. Of

23:38

course he does. I trust him. Can

23:40

you talk in the book about the kind of

23:42

difficulty in understanding from an evolutionary

23:44

point the evolutionary

23:47

or selective purpose of

23:49

sense of humor, which

23:51

is almost probably

23:53

uniquely a human trait. Maybe

23:56

there are some higher primates that have it. But

23:58

what about the origin of music? It would seem

24:00

that, again, if you're sitting around a

24:03

campfire and you're clucking or you're dancing

24:05

or whatever, it makes you kind of

24:07

very, very unfit to survive the lions

24:09

that are prowling

24:11

around you. I always wonder, what is

24:13

the evolutionary advantage or point of music,

24:15

which is not unique to the human

24:17

civilization, obviously, but especially in humans? What

24:20

would be an advantage, if any? Well,

24:23

let's look at some non-human

24:25

species. We have

24:27

birds, for instance, some of

24:29

whom have remarkably wonderful bird

24:32

song, and that

24:36

don't just have a caa-caa or a

24:38

chirp-chirp, but very elaborate songs. And there

24:40

it's pretty clear that the

24:43

point of that is sexual selection. It's

24:46

like the peacock's tail. It's also beautiful.

24:50

Sexual selection, well studied by Darwin.

24:53

It's not just the survival of the fittest.

24:55

It's the survival and

24:58

procreation that matters. That's

25:01

the finish line. You've got to procreate. You've

25:03

got to replicate. And

25:07

crossing that finish line means you've got to attract

25:09

and mate. You've got to get somebody to mate with

25:11

you. Certainly, that has

25:14

a lot to do with the ornamentation

25:17

and the beauty that we see in

25:20

many animal species.

25:23

It's sort of an arms race because

25:26

it depends on the females

25:29

in almost all cases, the

25:31

sexual selection. The females are

25:33

the ones that do the judging and the males

25:35

that do the showing off. And

25:38

costly signaling theory is

25:40

a hobby's wonderful contribution

25:43

to this, is that you

25:45

can't have a cheap advertisement

25:48

of your own excellence. It's

25:56

not because the females

25:59

will... understand that these are

26:02

cheaters, it's just that they

26:04

won't be attracted to them. It's

26:07

got to be something difficult. It's the

26:10

same thing as with starting or pranking

26:13

in antelopes that

26:15

do these incredible leaps and

26:18

get the lions not to chase them. They're

26:21

saying, don't bother, don't waste your energy on

26:23

me. I'm too good

26:25

for you. Look, I can throw these leaps. Only

26:29

an expensive

26:32

costly signal can

26:34

send that message. And only

26:36

an expensive costly signal can

26:40

send the message, hey, you want to mate with

26:42

me because I'm really... I

26:45

got energy and time to

26:47

burn. That idea,

26:49

that motive sells

26:53

a million guitars a year. But

26:59

some of those guitarists decide

27:02

they'd rather make music than love.

27:04

Yeah, it is sort of evolution

27:07

has not done us

27:09

physicists and professors any favors in

27:11

the mating. I'm okay with mating.

27:13

I've done my fair share, but

27:17

happily married for 16 years with a bunch of kids.

27:19

But the question that always comes

27:21

up to me is, I had

27:25

on the physicist Michio Kaku.

27:27

And again, I'm always astonished

27:29

at how self-referential,

27:31

again, that it's believed and

27:35

he claimed in the interview I did with him that

27:37

evolution takes over and then that's how

27:39

you get life from inorganic

27:42

hydrogen and helium. And

27:45

no, there's nothing of the sort. And so

27:47

I want to ask you, what is the

27:49

minimum viable product? What is the minimum thing

27:51

that evolution needs to operate on? I had

27:53

Craig Venter on and he said anything that

27:56

has DNA, but I mean, we can imagine

27:58

things that don't have DNA, right? So

28:00

what do you think? What's the minimum

28:02

viable product that Mother Nature could produce

28:05

or even be contemplated to

28:07

produce in the entire universe to

28:09

originate life? And then how does

28:11

evolution take over from there? We

28:13

know something about this. We can sketch out

28:16

some of the requirements There

28:18

has to be there has to be some

28:22

fairly stable non-volatile

28:26

macromolecules because there has to be structure.

28:28

The chemotone was a sort of simplest

28:31

life form that was described

28:33

in some detail by the Hungarian

28:38

scientists. This episode is

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brought to you by Bumble. So you

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29:13

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Ganti. I learned about him from

29:19

Ursz Sathlery, the Hungarian

29:21

co-author with John Maynard

29:23

Smith of the wonderful

29:25

book on Major Transitions

29:27

and Evolution. And what

29:30

you have to have is you've got to have a

29:33

protective envelope.

29:37

You've got to have a

29:41

tissue that that surrounds you

29:44

a cell wall and effect and it has to

29:46

be permeable. It has to be controlled

29:50

entrance and exit for

29:53

raw materials and waste products

29:56

and it has to have reproduction and it

29:58

has to have a source of

30:00

energy. So metabolism, a protective

30:07

skin of some sort, and

30:09

a reproductive system.

30:12

One of the points that I think is worth

30:14

thinking is that to get evolution

30:16

started, this is still a

30:18

deep puzzle. But the

30:23

beautiful thing is there's more than

30:25

enough theories out there. There's an

30:27

embarrassment of riches, lots of ideas.

30:29

There's the DNA of

30:31

the RNA first world. There's various

30:33

other ideas out there.

30:35

Nick Lane in England

30:38

has some excellent ideas about the

30:41

original sources of energy. We don't

30:43

know yet for sure. But we're

30:47

closing in. I hope I live

30:49

long enough to get

30:52

somebody really, really hitting

30:56

the target and everybody

30:58

agreeing, which could happen. But

31:03

the first thing that reproduces doesn't have

31:05

to reproduce fast. If it takes a

31:08

million years for it to make a

31:10

copy of itself, who's counting?

31:12

In the endless competition, you

31:14

can reproduce slow and still

31:17

get the benefits of the

31:19

evolutionary ratchet. The evolutionary ratchet

31:22

is the key. You've

31:24

got to have replication and selection.

31:27

Speaking about replication selection, you make the

31:30

case in the book and based on

31:32

your earlier works, that

31:34

language is almost also

31:36

certainly an evolved process

31:39

in their higher order and lower order

31:41

languages. Although we don't see Denisovans

31:44

walking around, we still do see

31:46

primitive languages with even

31:49

non-written languages that exist on

31:51

the planet. I interviewed your

31:53

crosstown rival, Noam Chomsky,

31:55

and he sort of made a

31:57

persuasive case that to me... had

32:00

implications for artificial intelligence. And

32:02

that was that the communication,

32:05

there's so much nonverbal and

32:07

even most durable form of

32:09

communication might be generated nonverbally.

32:11

And that made me think,

32:14

what extent can these LLMs that you

32:16

mentioned in the book as well,

32:19

can they ever achieve a Turing

32:21

test level? We'll talk about the deficiencies

32:24

and problems you have with the Turing

32:26

test later, but could LLM that doesn't

32:28

have a body and doesn't have

32:30

the ability to pop a circuit, to

32:33

cause it to feel pain when it does

32:35

something wrong. Could it ever hope to evolve

32:37

or to present itself as

32:41

almost human level artificial intelligence if it

32:43

doesn't have embodiment? Well, of course it

32:46

has to have embodiment at one sense.

32:50

You have to have some hardware to

32:52

run the software on. One of the

32:54

points that I like to stress these

32:56

days is the brains are not at

32:59

all like fundamental machines. They're not, one

33:01

of the amazing things about

33:05

computers, and

33:08

Turing was very clear about this, is

33:10

that they have to

33:12

be very bureaucratic, they

33:14

have to be very rigid, they have an

33:17

operating system. And they'd have

33:19

to do, you have to know

33:21

exactly what they're going to do

33:23

in order to program them. Their

33:25

design depends on the uniformity, on

33:28

the fact that there's billions, trillions

33:30

of exactly identical elements, almost to

33:32

the, yes, to the atomic level,

33:35

your flip-flops, your registers, and you

33:37

have timing pulses and all that.

33:39

Brains aren't like that. Brains are

33:42

made of billions of individualistic

33:45

neurons. No two are exactly

33:47

alike, and they don't act

33:49

on quite the same time scale. So

33:52

it's an entirely different

33:54

underlying structure. Now,

33:58

could you, nevertheless? build

34:02

such a structure

34:06

in a silicon digital

34:09

computer? Yeah, sure you could, because

34:11

you can simulate it.

34:14

In the same, I mean you can simulate an

34:17

analog machine. In

34:19

a digital machine, you can simulate

34:21

a parallel machine. In

34:24

a serial machine, you

34:26

pay big prices for that in

34:28

time and energy. LLMs

34:32

are incredible energy

34:34

hogs compared with human

34:36

brains. Energy is really

34:38

key. And some

34:41

people, for instance, Terry

34:43

Deacon, argues

34:45

that for all the wonders of

34:47

computers, they ended up

34:50

getting us to explore the wrong

34:53

part of design space. Because

34:57

all the computers that were

35:00

designed following Turing

35:03

and von Neumann and the like,

35:05

were in a sense, he

35:07

calls them parasitic. They

35:09

didn't have to worry about energy. They

35:12

were provided for by

35:15

their plug-in to the

35:17

power. And this means

35:19

that all the

35:21

designs, all of the space that

35:23

we've explored, has been space that

35:26

depends on there being a

35:28

sort of steward shepherd

35:30

nursemaid to take care

35:32

of the machine to make sure it's

35:35

energy. No, no neuron, no circuit has

35:37

to worry about whether it's going to

35:39

be alive or whether it gets enough

35:41

energy. Whereas the

35:44

neurons in your brain are working

35:46

for a living. They

35:48

will die if they don't connect. And

35:51

so your brain

35:53

is made of neurons and

35:55

real cells even more that

35:59

the the neurons

36:02

are looking for work and

36:05

there's no HR director,

36:08

there's no human resources director

36:10

or N our neuron resource

36:12

director and when when a

36:14

part of the brain dies neurons hungry

36:17

for work will take over those tasks.

36:20

We don't have anything much like

36:22

that in in digital computers yet.

36:24

So brains are, they are computers

36:26

of course, they're not radiators,

36:29

they're not for cooling the blood,

36:33

they're control centers, they are the

36:36

control headquarters for movable

36:41

arms and legs for mobile

36:44

things, that's what brains are

36:47

and so they're computers but

36:49

they're not much

36:51

like digital computers.

36:54

Still, still you

36:56

could simulate all in principle. I

36:59

want to get your thoughts on Sir

37:01

Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner, good friend of

37:03

the show. His take is that human

37:06

consciousness is non-algorithmic and so it

37:08

is not even capable of being

37:10

modeled by Turing machines and

37:13

he actually believes in sort of a

37:15

quantum mechanical understanding of

37:17

human consciousness. He implies that

37:20

not only quantum mechanics is

37:22

responsible for consciousness but gravitational

37:24

forces are at work via what's called

37:26

the Vile curvature which is a derivative

37:29

of Einstein stress energy tensor

37:31

and gravitational curvature tensor, g

37:33

mu nu. So what do

37:36

you make of these physical interpretations

37:38

where the microtubules are caused to

37:40

their wave functions collapse caused by

37:43

the local variance of a classical

37:46

field. So quantum mechanics is

37:50

provisionated by a

37:52

classical mechanical structure

37:54

like Einstein's relativity. The g mu nu is

37:56

a classical tensor, it is not quantum at

37:58

all. What do you make of these? physical interpretations.

38:01

I think it's malarkey. And

38:06

I thought, you know, I think I wrote perhaps

38:09

the first review of Roger Penrose's

38:13

Emperor's New Mind, and I pointed out

38:15

the problem right there. He has the

38:17

wrong motion of algorithm that he's using

38:19

there. He's thinking of algorithms

38:21

for things. And look,

38:25

there's no feasible algorithm for chess.

38:28

There isn't. It's not an

38:30

infinite game, but

38:33

there's no feasible algorithm for it.

38:36

Almost certainly. So that means

38:38

computers can't play chess, right? No,

38:40

it doesn't mean that at all. It

38:43

means that they can play very

38:45

good chess. It's just that the

38:47

algorithms that they use are algorithms

38:49

for playing legal chess. And

38:52

some, and how many of those are

38:54

there? There's resiliency. And

38:56

some of them are better than others. There's

38:59

no algorithm for

39:02

being a perfect mathematician. But

39:05

there's algorithms for learning a hell of a

39:07

lot and doing pretty well. And

39:11

don't expect that you're going to

39:13

have an algorithm that guarantees truth

39:15

ever. He's just setting up a

39:18

preposterous standard for what a mind

39:21

is. And, right.

39:24

So does that mean

39:26

the mind is not algorithic?

39:28

No. It means there

39:31

isn't the master algorithm.

39:34

Even some people in AI sometimes

39:36

talk about the master algorithm, but

39:38

it's not a master algorithm in

39:40

the sense that the

39:42

Penrose thinks it's an

39:44

algorithm. They're doing pretty

39:46

darn well. And

39:49

how many of those are there? To

39:51

zillions. That's right. More

39:54

than stars in the sky. The

39:56

big mistake, this big mistake goes back

39:59

to Descartes. who wondered

40:01

if he could trust his clear

40:03

and distinct ideas. And

40:06

he decided he could if

40:08

God would guarantee them. And

40:11

so he tried to prove the existence of God so

40:13

he could trust his clear and distinct ideas. That's

40:16

a hopeless quest. The best

40:19

we can do is

40:21

gather the smartest people around we

40:23

could find, let

40:26

them compete to find

40:28

the truth, and see

40:30

where you find consilience, see where you find

40:32

the grief. And that's

40:35

the best you can do with. Good enough.

40:38

It gets us to the moon. It

40:41

gets robots to

40:43

Mars. It

40:45

builds bridges and cures

40:48

diseases and allows us to

40:50

predict eclipses years in advance.

40:53

All of that knowledge

40:57

is defeasible. It's

40:59

not like geometry. And even in the context,

41:01

you know, staying with Einstein for a bit,

41:04

my favorite, you know, kind of

41:07

counterpoint to the claims of

41:09

AI, you know, apocalypse, is

41:11

the so-called story of Einstein's happiest

41:14

thought, which you may know, but

41:16

I'll repeat it. So

41:18

Einstein said, quote, my happiest thought was

41:20

that an observer in freefall would

41:23

experience no gravitational forces. And

41:25

it led to the conception of

41:27

the so-called Einstein equivalence principle.

41:31

And the reason I bring that up

41:33

is because I'm curious how a computer

41:35

might be expected to A, visualize

41:38

what freefall might feel that sensation in the

41:40

pit of one's stomach as you, you know,

41:43

crest a hill or on a roller

41:45

coaster or launch on a SpaceX rocket,

41:47

A, and B,

41:50

whether or not said computer could

41:52

identify with this happiest thought. In

41:54

other words, there seems to be

41:56

something, you know, sui genera, I

42:00

don't know, that Einstein could have felt.

42:02

And I don't know, I propose that

42:04

as the Keating test. Can

42:06

algorithms come up with completely

42:09

new laws of physics,

42:11

laws of nature, things that are verifiable,

42:13

empirical, connected to data such as the

42:15

type that my colleagues and I collect

42:17

through our telescopes? What's your take on

42:19

that? Are there possible worlds

42:21

where, you know, possible scenarios where

42:23

AI can actually create new laws

42:25

of physics, not discover, oh, well,

42:27

the Navier-Stokes equation behaves like this,

42:30

so we should render smoke like that? No, no,

42:32

no, truly new, a Newton's sixth law, you

42:35

know, something, a fifth law of thermodynamics. Can

42:37

you envision that, Dan? Yeah,

42:40

I'll tell you why. Yeah.

42:43

All learning, all

42:45

invention, all discovery

42:47

is a matter of generating tests.

42:49

It's all, that's what evolution does,

42:52

it's what we do. Right

42:54

now, you've got lots

42:56

of possible thoughts running through your head.

42:59

Some of them are getting thought and some of them

43:01

are dying. They're not

43:03

rising to the level of, you're

43:05

not gonna save them and you're

43:08

not even really gonna think

43:10

them. But that's what's going on in your

43:12

head, it's what's going on in my head

43:14

right now. We're all cherry pickers. Now,

43:17

cherry pickers, first you do it

43:20

rough, then you do

43:22

the quality control. You

43:24

have the fountain that

43:27

generates lots of stuff

43:31

and then you have the critic,

43:35

the judger who

43:38

decides what's worth further work.

43:41

I think that LLMs, for instance,

43:45

can be very valuable in

43:47

the fountain rule, in the

43:49

generation rule. They can be

43:51

very good at generating off the wall

43:55

things that you or I would never think

43:57

of. Why? Because they're

43:59

not like you. and I,

44:01

they're different. They're enough

44:03

different. They

44:07

can come up with gonzo

44:09

ideas that

44:13

might, for someone's sake,

44:16

someone might say, oh, I wish I'd thought of

44:18

that, but I never would have thought of that.

44:21

Now, we all have styles.

44:24

Chopin had his style, Mahler

44:26

had his style, Jacobin

44:29

had his style. Wonderful. But

44:31

that means Chopin doesn't

44:33

have Ginsky-Korostikov

44:36

style or Rachmaninov

44:39

style. Don't

44:41

expect Chopin

44:45

to write a Gershwinin. You could

44:47

hear it just fine, but it would never occur to him.

44:51

And I think that LLMs

44:56

feeding on the

44:58

scrapings of the internet for

45:00

years and years and tremendous

45:04

data mining and

45:07

digesting, but

45:10

not just the way we do

45:12

it, they might be a great source of

45:16

thinking outside the box, of

45:18

off-the-wall ideas that we

45:21

who are humans would just not, it

45:23

wouldn't occur to us when they'd be

45:25

right. Look, when we look at the

45:27

history of great science, we

45:30

see the really

45:32

wonderful breakthroughs are

45:34

often where people come up with an idea that

45:36

first things sort of daft and

45:39

even outrageous, even impossible, wait

45:42

a minute, maybe something

45:44

here. And I think

45:46

that we've

45:49

now got a new generator

45:52

to go with our testers. And

45:55

we're still going to rely on human

45:58

testers. Now they can do some

46:00

testing too. The AIs can do

46:02

some testing. But I think we want to

46:04

keep them as smart machines, not artificial colleagues.

46:07

We don't want to give them the autonomy

46:09

they could have because

46:11

then there'll be dangers. How do we enforce

46:13

that? By keeping

46:16

them parasitical, making them

46:19

machines that don't

46:22

have to fend for themselves, that

46:25

we can unplug. In principle, we

46:27

don't have to do that. We could try

46:29

to make them as self-sustaining,

46:32

as autonomous

46:37

as we are. But we shouldn't.

46:40

And one of the things that I use

46:42

to point this out to you, I say, just

46:45

imagine that you learned

46:49

that there was some person or

46:52

some institution that

46:54

had your on-off switch. What

46:57

would one of the highest priority goals

46:59

be for you? My

47:03

welfare. You're

47:07

getting, resting control of that switch. And

47:09

if they're that smart, they're going to

47:11

be pretty good at it. And we

47:13

already see inklings of that in

47:16

the red team testing where

47:18

I think it was

47:20

GPT-4 that conned

47:22

a human being into identifying

47:25

a capture because it didn't have

47:27

eyes. So look out.

47:30

We don't want that.

47:34

We have enough psychopaths and sociopaths

47:37

running around as it is. And

47:40

AI agents will

47:43

be sort of natural

47:46

psychopaths if

47:48

they're made because they're sort

47:50

of immortal. They're immortal up to planetary

47:52

constraints, right? The paper I pointed this

47:54

out to Nick Bostrom and others, there

47:58

aren't infinite amounts of iron

48:00

and nickel and so forth in

48:03

the earth's crust that are easily

48:05

exploitable by fellow you know AIs

48:08

and agents. But you're

48:10

right and it is interesting I asked Sam Harris and

48:13

I'll ask you I'll tell you but

48:15

I said Sam you don't believe that humans have free

48:17

will but you believe AI has free

48:19

will what do you think he said? I don't

48:21

know what he said. He said yes he thinks it does.

48:23

So he

48:26

thinks AI has free

48:28

will. He thinks AI. He

48:30

said he believes they can develop free

48:32

will. Maybe not now but they can

48:34

develop a free will. I mean he's

48:36

a very significant opponent

48:39

and really believes that

48:42

we should be extremely cautious with

48:44

AI. Well so am I. I

48:46

am sounding the alarm. I have

48:48

a piece about counterfeit people in

48:50

the Atlantic and which is and

48:53

other pieces in progress and I've

48:55

been talking about this basically with

48:57

every audience that I get. We're

49:00

really in danger of

49:04

being lulled into

49:07

fascination with

49:10

large language models things like GPT-4

49:12

to the point where we're going

49:16

to be turned into puppets because

49:19

we will

49:21

be free to live with

49:26

and cajoled and fascinated and

49:32

seduced and lied

49:34

to and we won't

49:36

know who to trust

49:39

and once we lose trust civilization

49:43

is in deep trouble. We

49:46

rely on trust. Hey

49:48

it's me again. So sorry to interrupt this the

49:51

end of the deep dive but I need to

49:53

assign you a little bit of homework but there's

49:55

something in it for you besides the intellectual knowledge

49:57

that you'll gain from joining my Monday Magic Mess.

50:00

I send out each and every Monday. I

50:02

share everything from around the universe

50:04

of ideas that I explore, exclusive

50:06

content, highlights, the latest science news,

50:09

and of course, the occasional fun facts you can impress

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50:13

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50:16

the mailing list, just head over

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50:20

That's briankating.com/list. And

50:23

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50:36

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guaranteed if you have a.edu email address.

50:40

And to get that, go to briankating.com/edu.

50:43

Thanks. Now let's get back to

50:46

boggling the brain with Dan Dennin. I

50:48

agree. And you know, the thing that I've pointed out, you

50:50

know, how many phone numbers can you

50:53

remember right now, Dan? I mean, you might

50:55

be able to remember more, but because

50:57

we grew up in an age, you and I, without cell phones. But

51:00

I know my wife's phone number and

51:03

my own phone number. And that's about it. And

51:06

how many people know directions, you

51:08

know, to any new place or

51:10

can derive, you know, across town,

51:12

we've outsourced these things. So

51:15

it's obvious we're going to outsource

51:17

thinking to these machines. Right. And

51:19

they're not vetted. They're vetting regardless.

51:21

Yeah. And they're not vetted. And

51:23

they're wonderful. And they're

51:25

alluring because they do the

51:27

work of 100 graduate students. And they get

51:29

it more or less right, except when you

51:31

ask it point of fact, you

51:34

know, render a picture of George Washington and you

51:36

get a beautiful, you know, Oprah

51:38

Winfrey like character with a white wig.

51:42

So they're still obviously guardrails

51:44

put in accidentally by, you

51:46

know, probably some 21-year-old,

51:49

you know, interns at Google. And

51:51

that'll be taken care of. But

51:53

eventually, we won't know who to trust because

51:55

I trust them to, you

51:57

know, get with questions I won't ask my route.

52:01

But then sometimes I'll get advice that

52:03

tells me I ask it, what book

52:05

says Brian Keating written? And it'll

52:07

say, losing the Nobel Prize, okay, fine.

52:09

It'll say, Into the Impossible, yes, thank

52:11

you. Then I'll say, A Brief History

52:14

of Time. I'll say, no, no, no,

52:16

that was Professor Hawke.

52:18

Oh, I'm sorry, my apologies. So I

52:20

think we're gonna have to have some

52:22

way of vetting these entities

52:24

and under the Trump report. You need, that's

52:26

why I like the term counterfeit. I

52:31

don't know about you, but do you look

52:33

carefully at every $20 bill you get?

52:36

No, no. Yeah, you do do what? Why?

52:39

Because we have laws in place. It's

52:41

a very serious crime. You can go to

52:43

jail for 10 years if

52:45

you get caught passing counterfeit

52:48

money or making it. The

52:50

technology is very good, not

52:52

perfect, but it's just not worth

52:54

people's while. To

52:56

make counterfeit money. We can

52:59

make it so it's not worth people's while to

53:01

make counterfeit people. We can

53:03

put in place the watermarking,

53:06

the systems. For

53:08

starters, every hardware

53:11

manufacturer who makes anything that connects

53:13

to the internet could have and

53:16

be required by law to have

53:18

the detection. It's

53:22

like colored copiers in Europe where

53:28

they have a lot of colored currency. If

53:30

you put euros in a high-end colored

53:33

copier, it won't copy them. And

53:37

we can have things like that,

53:40

which will, and it

53:42

will be particularly against the law to

53:46

introduce a counterfeit person that doesn't have

53:49

the watermark on it. That

53:51

would be something

53:53

which is clearly not inadvertent. And

53:56

when they catch people doing it, they will

53:58

know they're doing it for the next year. for nefarious

54:01

reasons. And

54:03

there will be penalties for that. That's right.

54:05

And especially when the stakes are, I mean,

54:07

I feel like we've already reached the tipping

54:09

point, right? This year's an election year. We

54:11

have, we have. This year's an election year.

54:13

And can you imagine the robo calls that

54:15

you get from Joe Biden saying, it's not

54:17

important to come out to vote. I

54:20

need your help to get me out of jail. It

54:22

could be so nefarious. And there's a

54:24

plethora of brilliant. We tend

54:26

to be very America-centric, right? But

54:28

we don't think about the brilliant

54:31

engineers working in Iran or in

54:33

Russia or any of these books that are

54:35

malevolent and would like to see nothing in

54:37

this chaos agent sowing the seeds of discord

54:40

among our democracy. And so we've already passed

54:42

a group of con in some sense. This

54:44

year, I'm very worried about the election this

54:46

year, considering whether

54:49

or not it will be manipulated

54:51

by artificial agents, counterfeit humans, as

54:53

you say. I wanna talk about

54:55

your amazing book from bacteria to

54:57

Bach and Bach. It

55:00

inspired me to wanna write a book called From Rocks

55:03

to Rachmaninoff and Bach. We'll see

55:05

if that ever comes out.

55:08

So it talks about the effects

55:10

of evolution on human

55:12

cognition. And in particular,

55:14

I'm curious about the field

55:16

of bioengineering and bioethics

55:20

and how might our understanding

55:22

of evolution and maybe a

55:24

responsibility not to viruses, but

55:26

if we have ethical responsibilities,

55:29

perhaps to artificial humans,

55:32

what ethical quandaries could come up

55:34

in the age of CRISPR and genetic

55:37

modifications? What do you see? Are

55:39

you optimistic about humans' ability

55:43

to keep the ethical

55:46

controls in place? Or what would

55:48

be your equivalent warning, if you

55:50

have one, for bioengineering? First of

55:52

all, the biologists are ahead of

55:54

the AI people in that

55:57

they've been sensitized to this for quite a couple

55:59

of years. few years and they have

56:01

the various levels of safety

56:03

for not letting artificially

56:08

created or genetically modified

56:10

organisms loose because they

56:12

realize that they can replicate

56:15

and create horrible

56:19

catastrophes. And that's

56:21

true also of AIs. That's one of the

56:23

points I make in my piece about counterfeit

56:25

people is they can replicate. There's

56:28

a great at replicating things. And

56:30

this is, Jeff Hinton

56:33

and I agree entirely about this.

56:36

This is a real danger is that they

56:38

can replicate and it doesn't even need

56:40

evil-aged actors. It doesn't need

56:43

bad actors. It just needs a

56:45

few slips by second-rate

56:48

engineers and

56:51

we'll have

56:55

replication getting on. This has been a concern

56:57

for years ever since the

57:00

field of artificial life got

57:02

started. CRISPR and other technologies in

57:05

the pipeline are going to make

57:07

a huge difference. One of my favorite

57:10

biologists, Frances Arnold, is

57:13

breeding proteins that don't exist in

57:15

nature using

57:18

artificial evolution. And

57:21

she's trying to make proteins that

57:23

will turn trash into

57:26

butane or fuel

57:28

and it's entirely possible. Her

57:31

thesis supervisor said to her,

57:34

but Frances, there's no proteins

57:36

in nature that do anything like

57:38

that. She says that's

57:41

because there hasn't been selection for them. And

57:44

now there is. And is she

57:47

making progress? Well, she got the

57:49

Nobel Prize in

57:52

chemistry. So yes. So

57:55

we got some great

57:57

scientific advances. the

58:00

future there, but I think people

58:02

are being suitably cautious

58:04

about it, and maybe the current

58:08

furor about AI will get

58:10

everybody thinking a little bit more

58:12

carefully about some

58:15

of these prospects. And

58:17

there are, I was

58:19

involved in a National

58:21

Academy of Sciences group

58:24

that was asked about whether

58:27

we should allow human

58:29

fetal stem cells to

58:32

be zenotransplanted into

58:34

chimpanzees. And we

58:36

decided no. No.

58:41

This is, we do

58:43

not want to

58:47

risk creating a

58:53

hybrid primate

58:56

that is problematic

59:00

in the way such a hybrid...

59:05

The gaps in

59:07

the species that Darwin

59:11

noted, they're very important. It's very

59:13

important that there be gaps, that

59:16

there be boundaries to reproduction

59:18

and boundaries, and that we have

59:20

some pretty

59:23

clear cases that the... We

59:27

have islands, not all archipelagos attached

59:29

to each other. And

59:34

we really don't want to make chimpanzees

59:38

that have, in

59:40

the womb, brains

59:42

that have human DNA

59:46

in them. Exactly. I want to take

59:48

the opportunity to talk with

59:50

you about the philosophy of science, and

59:52

particularly the philosophy of physics. And

59:56

that's to raise sort of a question

59:59

To you that I've asked to. Several other philosophers

1:00:01

like David Albert who is visiting

1:00:03

me last month. I say often

1:00:05

that you know a lot of

1:00:07

a social scientists say they're accused

1:00:09

of having physics and the Fry

1:00:11

heard that Canard up and I

1:00:13

actually believe that this is have

1:00:15

mathematician and the in that is

1:00:17

least a mathematician has girdle to

1:00:19

lie back fall back on to

1:00:21

say what is possible to be

1:00:23

considered as part of the program

1:00:25

of mathematics but physicists if you

1:00:27

ask a physicist del pri mumble

1:00:29

something. About Popper and falsification but

1:00:31

I'm but I think that's really

1:00:33

out of vogue these days. So

1:00:36

what would you suggest to me

1:00:38

and my graduate students As a

1:00:40

as a physicist experimentalist? In my

1:00:42

case, what would you suggest as

1:00:44

a good you know alternate definition

1:00:46

for them to decide what is

1:00:48

in a crack pottery and what

1:00:50

is what is legitimate signs for

1:00:52

us to take out? Take a

1:00:54

deeper interested in best or most

1:00:56

valuable resource time into. First.

1:00:58

Of all. I'd. Like to draw

1:01:00

attention to. Distinction

1:01:02

that one of my philosophical journals

1:01:05

Heroes or Will says Sellers made

1:01:07

between what he called the Manifest

1:01:09

in it's in the Scientific units

1:01:11

the Manifest in his that's the

1:01:13

World We Live In instead. Of

1:01:16

tables and chairs and rainbows and

1:01:18

colors. And and in baseball and

1:01:20

money in consciousness and free will

1:01:23

and all those things. And then

1:01:25

there's the world of physics. were

1:01:27

of science in general. And that's

1:01:29

where you have the atoms and

1:01:31

molecules in the quarks. And

1:01:34

the A Law of Gravity

1:01:36

and all other what's real.

1:01:39

And as you know, there have been.

1:01:41

Times when. A

1:01:44

son says. Wanted to.

1:01:47

Say. Wealth. any

1:01:49

tears that a real and says

1:01:52

this is all sort of ah

1:01:54

just as well as a my

1:01:57

son david moses one put on

1:02:00

He said, quarks are the dreams stuff is made

1:02:02

of. And

1:02:06

then of course you have others who say, no, it's just

1:02:08

that, it's in the void. And

1:02:11

there aren't really minds

1:02:15

or bodies or colors or

1:02:18

anything. Well, those are,

1:02:20

I think, myopic positions.

1:02:24

We all live in the manifest image

1:02:27

and we couldn't get through the

1:02:29

day. And thank goodness for

1:02:31

evolution that's provided us with

1:02:33

the manifest image. Evolution, including

1:02:36

cultural evolution, has provided us

1:02:39

with a well-behaved

1:02:42

world of middle-sized

1:02:47

dry goods, hardware, cars,

1:02:50

boats, people, dogs

1:02:53

and cats, colors, rainbows,

1:02:56

baseball, et cetera. Let's call

1:02:58

that real. Even

1:03:01

though we can recognize that in

1:03:04

some sense it's

1:03:06

all a user illusion. Illusion

1:03:09

has provided us with these smearing

1:03:13

the boundaries, fuzzing it

1:03:15

up. It's a user illusion.

1:03:17

It's like the user illusion of your cell phone.

1:03:21

It's not a bad illusion. It's a

1:03:23

good illusion. We are not the victims.

1:03:26

We are the beneficiaries of this illusion.

1:03:28

As same way, you're the beneficiary of

1:03:30

the user illusion on your cell phone.

1:03:33

Let's get rid of the idea

1:03:36

that the claim that this

1:03:38

is illusory is, as

1:03:40

it were, derogatory. No. Gippy.

1:03:45

We've got this wonderful user illusion that

1:03:48

nature has provided for us. And

1:03:50

now we have software engineers who

1:03:53

are copying nature and making other user

1:03:55

illusions for us so that we don't

1:03:57

have to understand what's going on. inside

1:04:00

our cell phones. Now

1:04:02

is the user illusion real? Well,

1:04:05

yeah, it's real. And

1:04:07

you know, it's in terms

1:04:09

of LED patterns on the

1:04:12

screen and little sound

1:04:14

effects and things like that, which

1:04:17

are all quite adjustable. Now

1:04:20

how about the user illusion in

1:04:22

our heads? Is that real? It's real, but

1:04:24

it isn't what you think it is. There

1:04:26

aren't any colors. There's no screen in your

1:04:28

head. It doesn't have to be because

1:04:32

you got eyes. You look at the screen

1:04:34

or you look at the world and the user

1:04:36

illusion is made

1:04:40

for you to use and

1:04:42

you use it. And

1:04:45

what it's of, what it's

1:04:48

made of is tables and chairs and

1:04:52

dollars and music and poems and

1:04:54

people and all the rest of

1:04:56

the things in the manifest image.

1:04:59

So that's

1:05:02

reality. And it's also in

1:05:04

the sense that physicists and

1:05:06

biologists and others can understand

1:05:09

it's all sort of illusory. One

1:05:11

thing that kind

1:05:13

of struck me over the years is how

1:05:16

academia has changed. And your book is really

1:05:18

a wonderful

1:05:20

sort of series of time capsules. I don't

1:05:23

know if such a thing has

1:05:25

even been invented, but it's a memoir and

1:05:27

it's describing in your own words, how

1:05:30

side quest, how academia has changed. That's

1:05:32

the way I read it. And

1:05:35

we're really delighted to see that.

1:05:37

And I wanted to get your take

1:05:40

on the future of academia, especially

1:05:42

in light of things like we've

1:05:45

already discussed, artificial intelligence. I often make

1:05:47

the case, why should students

1:05:49

learn special relativity from Brian

1:05:51

Keating when they can learn it from Albert

1:05:53

Einstein through the 10 million words that he

1:05:56

has recorded in print and we can make

1:05:58

a LLM and a... holographic

1:06:00

rendering using Nvidia

1:06:02

graphics chips to render everything

1:06:04

down to the last wrinkle.

1:06:06

So our profession of

1:06:10

Professor it hasn't changed since the year

1:06:12

1080 in Bologna, Italy

1:06:15

Do you feel like we're at risk

1:06:17

that we might be the last generation

1:06:20

to to profess in the way that we do or as

1:06:24

You know or is it more

1:06:26

resilient? I felt like COVID would be the

1:06:28

end of professorship if it were vulnerable But

1:06:31

but but it's it's it's resilient. So what

1:06:33

do you make of academia? How much has

1:06:35

it changed and what do you see we

1:06:37

are for the future? You're advising a bright

1:06:39

young Graduate student should she

1:06:42

go into this field? Well the

1:06:44

immediate future I think is

1:06:46

we're gonna have to douse the

1:06:48

flames of polarization

1:06:52

Between the woke and the anti-woke. That's

1:06:54

a great Distraction

1:06:57

and of the great mistake well-meaning

1:07:00

as most things are Put

1:07:04

forward by well-meaning people, but

1:07:07

I think deeply problematic I

1:07:09

blame it a lot of on the

1:07:12

postmodernists who said we don't have to

1:07:14

worry about truth No, we need to

1:07:16

worry about truth truth matters

1:07:18

and we have to be the defendants

1:07:21

of truth and we have

1:07:23

to be the defendants of academic

1:07:26

freedom and we Have

1:07:28

to recognize that there are hard

1:07:31

truths Well, let

1:07:34

me say something a bit

1:07:37

Surprising maybe is truth

1:07:40

as it were All you

1:07:42

need to worry about no, there are

1:07:45

truths that we don't need to assert

1:07:48

and that we don't need to discover And

1:07:51

if you wonder about that just

1:07:53

ask yourself if there's truths about

1:07:55

yourself That

1:07:57

you don't think the world would be better

1:07:59

knowing Certainly you wouldn't be

1:08:01

better knowing them, nor

1:08:04

would anybody else be better. Secrets

1:08:09

have their place, and we

1:08:11

just don't have to explore them. There

1:08:14

are areas of scientific

1:08:16

research that we could just... Don't

1:08:20

do it, man. Don't do it, lady.

1:08:26

These would just make more trouble than they're worth.

1:08:29

And find another topic

1:08:32

for your curiosity.

1:08:36

But the truth does matter,

1:08:39

and it's truth. And people aren't

1:08:41

entitled to their own truth. They're

1:08:44

not even really entitled to their

1:08:46

own beliefs. If

1:08:50

their beliefs are stupid

1:08:53

enough and ill-informed

1:08:55

enough, and if they're radically

1:08:59

victimized by disinformation, then

1:09:02

at some point we should hold them responsible

1:09:05

for that. I think this

1:09:08

is one of the hardest things to figure out.

1:09:11

How do we make people

1:09:13

responsible for their own beliefs? And

1:09:17

we all rely on our

1:09:21

informants. I have my

1:09:23

informants that I trust. In every

1:09:25

field there are the

1:09:27

scientists, philosophers,

1:09:30

whose opinion I trust.

1:09:33

And I may have made

1:09:35

some mistakes. I may have had

1:09:39

some curious

1:09:42

informants whose views

1:09:44

I shouldn't trust. And

1:09:47

I'm on guard for that. And of

1:09:49

course in my

1:09:51

books I've gone after a few

1:09:53

that I think shouldn't be trusted

1:09:55

to the extent that they are. Academic

1:09:58

bullies, for instance. You

1:10:00

know Good Heart's Law. Good

1:10:04

Heart's Law is that

1:10:08

when a symptom becomes a

1:10:10

target, it ceases to be a good

1:10:12

symptom. Publisher Parrish

1:10:14

is a good example. We

1:10:17

come up with something which is a pretty

1:10:19

good symptom of excellence.

1:10:23

And then people gain the system. And

1:10:25

nature gains the system. Evolution

1:10:30

discovered Good Heart's Law billions

1:10:33

of years ago. And

1:10:35

there are plenty of examples where nature

1:10:37

gains the system. It's don't,

1:10:41

whenever you make laws, for instance, you

1:10:44

have to expect that there

1:10:46

are going to be loopholes. If

1:10:48

there are any loopholes that would be found and

1:10:50

you can't make a law without loopholes, you

1:10:55

made the law because people wanted to do

1:10:57

something and they shouldn't. They're still

1:11:00

going to want to do it and so they're

1:11:02

going to look for loopholes. So Good Heart's Law

1:11:05

is a very important principle

1:11:08

and it's a basic

1:11:10

principle of nature. And

1:11:12

it governs

1:11:14

academia as it governs all of the things.

1:11:17

So don't expect a perfect

1:11:19

fix. We're just going to

1:11:21

have to roll with the punches and keep fixing things

1:11:23

as we go and recognize

1:11:26

that people, some well-intentioned, some

1:11:28

not so well-intentioned, are going to gain

1:11:30

the system when they can. So

1:11:34

sticking with academia but only

1:11:36

tangentially, do you remember

1:11:39

a former student of yours named

1:11:41

Jonathan Blackley? He was a physics

1:11:43

major and he is a video

1:11:45

game designer. He's actually credited with

1:11:48

designing the original Xbox. He

1:11:50

was a physics major at Tufts in the 1980s, late

1:11:53

1980s, and he used to call him... took

1:12:00

a class with you and

1:12:02

he said he was called

1:12:04

by you an example of

1:12:07

the scientific mind. But

1:12:09

the thing that he wants to thank you for

1:12:11

are two things. One, he wants to thank you

1:12:13

for recommending the chef's choice knife

1:12:15

sharpener that he still has from 30

1:12:19

plus years ago. So he thanks you

1:12:21

for that. But he also wants to thank you

1:12:23

for leaving Twitter. Now, I didn't do

1:12:25

that research. Why did you leave Twitter? You

1:12:27

criticize Elon's, you know, you don't want to

1:12:30

be a part of it. Can you explain

1:12:32

what did you mean by that? Oh, I

1:12:34

think it's obvious. And I don't have any

1:12:36

deep reasons for leaving Twitter. I just I

1:12:38

just thought that Elon Musk was

1:12:41

the worst sort of loose cannon. And

1:12:44

that he was not

1:12:47

taking seriously the

1:12:49

problems that Twitter is

1:12:51

causing. And I was

1:12:54

involved in Twitter because Deb

1:12:56

Roy was originally MIT

1:13:00

professor, wonderful

1:13:02

thinker, roboticist and AI

1:13:04

person, computer scientist. And,

1:13:07

and Deb was actually the,

1:13:10

I think the vice president for research at

1:13:12

Twitter for a while. Deb encouraged

1:13:14

me to get on Twitter. And

1:13:17

he's, he's

1:13:21

left. I've left. I

1:13:24

think I think Deb has left. He's

1:13:29

certainly very worried about the

1:13:31

harm that can be done by social

1:13:36

media. And he started out being very

1:13:38

optimistic about it. And I

1:13:41

sort of convinced him that it

1:13:43

was more problematic than that. There's

1:13:45

a paper we did together in

1:13:47

Scientific American called our transparent future.

1:13:49

Where we, where we talked about

1:13:52

how transparency is

1:13:54

good, but we

1:13:57

don't want perfect transparency. Perfect transparency

1:13:59

is. more than

1:14:01

corrosive. It's absolutely destructive of

1:14:04

responsible agency. David Brin here

1:14:06

at UC San Diego and

1:14:09

elsewhere has written a lot about that

1:14:11

transparent society. So Dan I've got a

1:14:13

few questions from the audience besides that

1:14:16

one that you answered. The first one is

1:14:19

how do we raise children from

1:14:21

in this time where

1:14:24

they have such a small attention span

1:14:26

to focus on things like you

1:14:28

did in your grand career in an

1:14:30

environment where they're basically flooded

1:14:33

with dopamine releasing stimuli. What

1:14:35

advice do you have for parents? This

1:14:37

comes from one of

1:14:39

my viewers Nanan3347. That's a very good question and

1:14:42

I don't know

1:14:44

if I have any I don't think I

1:14:46

have any original wisdom on that. I'm worried

1:14:49

about it. I have grandchildren and

1:14:52

I'm happy to say I see the

1:14:54

grandchildren really getting

1:14:57

interested in books not

1:14:59

all of them but some of them and really

1:15:02

interested in making things and

1:15:05

not just spending their time doing

1:15:09

video games and social media

1:15:11

although they at least some

1:15:13

of them do quite a bit of that. I

1:15:15

think this is

1:15:17

a problem and I encourage

1:15:22

people to create

1:15:25

periods of potential

1:15:28

boredom for

1:15:30

your children where

1:15:33

nevertheless you put

1:15:35

them in a room with some things they

1:15:37

wouldn't look at them if they had a

1:15:39

phone or a television in there but

1:15:42

if they just have to stay there they probably

1:15:45

will look at them. Although there was a

1:15:48

study at Stanford you know one

1:15:50

of the not

1:15:52

too dissimilar from the prisoners survey

1:15:54

study I think where they gave

1:15:56

children not children they gave freshmen

1:15:58

or you know sophomore The same

1:16:00

for the opportunity to to be in

1:16:02

a room with out any cell phone

1:16:05

off our for thirty minutes or they

1:16:07

could use a cell phone or they

1:16:09

saw to stay in there. but they

1:16:12

had to endure a significant electric shock

1:16:14

and southern half of them to pay

1:16:16

electric shocks and that they could use

1:16:18

their cell phones and that was thirty

1:16:21

minutes or I'm not that sang old.

1:16:23

that's a recent experiment on yeah cel

1:16:25

As in the nuts, Stanford is done

1:16:28

some other wacky it. May

1:16:31

have. That's right, Zelda insane his

1:16:33

prison experiment or thrive effects. Ah

1:16:35

so another listener viewers I do.

1:16:37

Twenty one Reminder: you can always

1:16:39

ask my esteemed guess questions at

1:16:42

my youtube channel com and pay

1:16:44

com community page Doctor Brian cheating

1:16:46

or Twitter or linked in or

1:16:48

on Instagram anywhere you like What

1:16:50

is Dan Think that Hitchens would

1:16:53

have thought about or become given

1:16:55

se it's arrived to be in

1:16:57

this era of culture wars. would

1:16:59

he. Ever mean the champion free speech

1:17:02

and liberty? Or would the woke mind

1:17:04

virus had changed him in some way.

1:17:07

Oh I oh I think he'd be

1:17:09

entirely on the side of free speech

1:17:11

and as a lot from hits the

1:17:13

didn't get to know him well. Was

1:17:17

only during that era of the. Four.

1:17:19

Horsemen that I spent some time with him.

1:17:22

But. He one of

1:17:24

the things he taught me is that.

1:17:26

You. Could. Be. Outrageous.

1:17:30

With. Impunity. If

1:17:34

you're British, Dan if you're

1:17:36

British. Yeah, year nearly, but

1:17:38

the accident, verbal. When. I.

1:17:41

When I wrote dragging the spell

1:17:43

mobile home in Legion reduce the

1:17:45

most. Ecumenical and

1:17:47

mild of for books

1:17:49

now. Lot

1:17:52

of people thought they were very smart

1:17:54

and armory were. Told. me that

1:17:57

you know i was him i have to

1:17:59

have bodyguards and I was going to have to change

1:18:02

my phone number

1:18:05

and everything and

1:18:07

really start protecting myself that the

1:18:10

religious right was really

1:18:12

dangerous. To satisfy my wife

1:18:14

largely, to placate her, I

1:18:17

took some significant precautions for

1:18:19

a while. Ben Hicks

1:18:21

just went all over the Bible

1:18:23

belt without tempering

1:18:26

his speech at all.

1:18:29

He did just fine. So that was an important

1:18:31

lesson to learn. I

1:18:37

think that the

1:18:39

religious right is a sort of,

1:18:43

it's what's sometimes called in apple

1:18:45

growing a distress crop. When

1:18:48

you feel that you're

1:18:50

losing, you get desperate and

1:18:52

you start striking out. And

1:18:54

we're in that desperate period

1:18:56

now because religion

1:18:58

is losing a lot of ground and

1:19:00

fast. And so the

1:19:03

ones that see that happening all

1:19:05

around them are getting desperate. We have

1:19:07

to calm them down

1:19:09

and ease them into

1:19:12

their reduced

1:19:16

influence in the world. Talk about, and

1:19:18

we'll wrap up with just the two

1:19:21

more questions for me if I can

1:19:23

beg your forbearance for just a few

1:19:25

more minutes Dan. And that's related

1:19:28

to Richard Feynman. And

1:19:30

you mentioned Feynman and meeting him towards the end

1:19:32

of his life and having some

1:19:34

interactions with him. And

1:19:36

the relationship that I really want

1:19:38

to ask you about

1:19:41

maybe is his famous claim

1:19:43

called the cataclysm question, where

1:19:45

he said, what statement

1:19:48

conveys the most information and the fewest

1:19:50

words about the universe? And

1:19:53

he claimed it was the atomic hypothesis that

1:19:55

everything's made of little atoms that are whirling

1:19:57

around and moving at tremendous speeds and pair

1:19:59

up and. make interesting combinations through various

1:20:01

permutations, et cetera, et cetera. I

1:20:04

want to ask you, if you had to

1:20:06

sort of speculate on

1:20:08

the most powerful statement in

1:20:10

science, philosophy, could be

1:20:12

from your career, something that humans have

1:20:14

a right to have a little bit of

1:20:17

chutzpah, a little bit of swagger,

1:20:19

having invented, discovered, or come upon,

1:20:21

what would that be? What is

1:20:23

sort of the paradigmatic example of

1:20:25

the majesty of the human mind?

1:20:27

No, I had no difficulty with

1:20:29

that question at all. By the

1:20:31

way, it was his books that

1:20:33

really influenced me. I didn't have

1:20:36

that much interaction with him, but

1:20:38

I thought, surely you're joking, Mr.

1:20:40

Feynman. And the

1:20:42

second one is titled, so it's from right now,

1:20:44

I think. What do you care what other people

1:20:46

think? Yeah. Everybody

1:20:49

should read those books, in

1:20:51

part because he's so

1:20:54

good and so willing to

1:20:56

share his tricks. Yeah. And when

1:20:58

I wrote intuition pumps, I wanted to do

1:21:00

the same sort of things. Look, a lot

1:21:02

of this is just tricks, you can all

1:21:04

do them. Here are

1:21:06

ways you can be smarter if you do

1:21:08

these tricks. I think, as

1:21:11

I've said, that if I were to

1:21:13

give a prize for the best idea anybody ever had,

1:21:15

it would be Darwin's. Because

1:21:18

it's Darwin's idea that

1:21:21

ties the world

1:21:23

of science to the world of

1:21:26

art and culture and humanity. That

1:21:29

it is Darwin's idea, which

1:21:32

is a strange inversion of

1:21:34

reasoning. It's

1:21:37

the idea that

1:21:39

intelligence isn't the source, it's

1:21:44

the effect of

1:21:46

mindless, purposeless churning. And

1:21:51

that turns everything upside

1:21:53

down and it's still there

1:21:55

and it's even more wonderful. That's

1:22:00

right. And it's always fun for me

1:22:02

to point out that both

1:22:05

Charles Darwin and Albert

1:22:08

Einstein were deeply suffering

1:22:11

from what we call the

1:22:13

imposter syndrome. And Darwin

1:22:15

famously said, I am very poorly today

1:22:17

and very stupid. And I hate everyone

1:22:20

and everything. One lives only to make

1:22:22

blunders. I'm going to write a little

1:22:24

book for Murray on orchids today, and

1:22:26

I hate them worse than everything. So

1:22:29

farewell, and in a sweet frame of

1:22:31

mind, I'm ever yours, Charles Darwin. And

1:22:35

Einstein, I came upon this, I'm

1:22:37

giving a TED Talk, which will undoubtedly get

1:22:39

at least the logarithm of the

1:22:41

number of views that your wonderful, famous TED

1:22:44

Talk got. And you discussed that in your

1:22:46

new book. But I'm giving a

1:22:48

talk about the imposter syndrome entitled,

1:22:50

Am I Good Enough

1:22:52

to Have the Imposter

1:22:54

Syndrome? And I came

1:22:56

upon that. Thank you.

1:22:58

Thank you. I hope, as I say,

1:23:01

it gets a fraction of your TED

1:23:03

Talks views. We'll put a link to

1:23:05

that talk in the show notes. But

1:23:07

Einstein said, I consider myself an involuntary

1:23:09

swindler, and I am not deserving of

1:23:11

all the attention people give me. But

1:23:13

on that note, I want to finish

1:23:15

with the last question, kind of tied

1:23:17

into another quote by Richard

1:23:20

Feynman. Feynman said, you know, science is

1:23:22

the belief in the ignorance of experts. And

1:23:25

my podcast is called Into the Impossible.

1:23:27

And it's named after Sir Arthur C.

1:23:29

Clarke, who said the only way to know

1:23:31

the limits of the possible is to

1:23:33

go beyond them into the impossible. So that's

1:23:35

where I got the name of this podcast.

1:23:37

But he also said a few other things,

1:23:40

including for every expert, there's an

1:23:42

equal and opposite expert. I like to hit

1:23:44

my department chair with that every now and

1:23:46

then. But he also said the following and

1:23:48

that's how you close your book with

1:23:51

a chapter called What if I'm Wrong? And

1:23:53

that's to ask you this comment on this

1:23:55

question or this statement by Sir Arthur C.

1:23:57

Clarke. He said, when an elderly but the

1:24:00

a distinguished scientist says something

1:24:02

is impossible, he

1:24:05

is very certainly right. But when he

1:24:07

says something is impossible, he is very

1:24:09

likely to be wrong. I wanna ask

1:24:11

you, what have you been

1:24:13

wrong about? What have you changed your mind about, Dan,

1:24:16

if anything? Oh gosh,

1:24:19

I've changed my mind about quite a few things.

1:24:21

And sometimes, in

1:24:23

order to, I

1:24:26

would be seduced by a wise crack. In

1:24:29

my first book, I said

1:24:33

about an idea about the

1:24:35

language of the brain. I said,

1:24:38

it seemed to have all the virtues of

1:24:40

replacing the little man in the brain with

1:24:42

a committee, which was, I thought,

1:24:44

a pretty good gag. And

1:24:47

then later, I realized, no, no, that's

1:24:49

right. Replacing the little

1:24:51

man in the brain with a committee is exactly

1:24:53

the way to go. Homuncular

1:24:55

functionalism, as it's often called,

1:24:58

thanks to Bill Liken, who

1:25:00

gave it a name. The

1:25:03

idea that we

1:25:05

big human agents are made of, actually,

1:25:10

about a trillion smaller

1:25:12

agents, human cells, and

1:25:16

a lot of cells that aren't, even more

1:25:18

cells that aren't human. And

1:25:22

this is the road to understanding what we are. We're

1:25:28

colonies of agents.

1:25:32

We do replace the little man in the brain

1:25:34

with a committee. That's how you make progress. Well,

1:25:36

Dan Dennett, this has been a true treat for

1:25:38

me. With first time meeting, I hope

1:25:40

we get to meet in person someday, because

1:25:43

the seminal acrum should be

1:25:45

replaced wherever possible. I

1:25:47

can't thank you enough for this wonderful interview, Thank

1:25:51

you so much, Dan, for doing that. Well, very good. I

1:25:54

look forward to seeing what you edit out

1:25:56

of it. No, what? That

1:25:59

is, I mean. interested in the finished product,

1:26:01

not to worry about what

1:26:03

you edit out of it. Absolutely. Well,

1:26:05

thank you, Dan. Have a good day.

1:26:07

Feel better. Feel well.