00:00:00
Immortality is tantalizing close >> and you think it's possible within the
00:00:04
laws of physics and biology. >> Yeah. In fact, we know that there's a clock in our body called the tie that
00:00:09
tracks how long we're going to live and there's something called talomeorase
00:00:12
which stops the clock which means that we can live forever. That's the good news. But the bad news was we found out
00:00:19
that cancer also uses tie and talomeorase to live forever. And so the question is can we apply that to humans
00:00:26
without wakening up the cancers? But this is not science fiction. This is the future.
00:00:30
>> And for 71 years, you've been studying physics and how science will shape human
00:00:34
destiny. So how is life likely to be different in the future? >> Well, decade by decade, we see the
00:00:39
enormous progress that we humans have made. For example, we'll probably be on
00:00:43
the moon, maybe Mars, and also the artificial intelligence will help us to cure cancer and many diseases. However,
00:00:50
for the first time in human history, we have the potential of destroying ourselves with designer germs, nuclear
00:00:56
weapons, perhaps artificial intelligence. Like this is a quantum computer. This is so powerful that even
00:01:02
the CIA is worried about the fact that these could break into any known computer,
00:01:07
>> including banks, even Bitcoin. >> That's right. So, capitalism would
00:01:11
vanish. Society would come to a halt. >> And what about humanoid robots? I would
00:01:15
look seriously at the possibility of merging with them so that we don't have
00:01:19
a civil war. Realize that we're at the edge of a knife. You tilt it the wrong
00:01:23
way and there's worlds war. You tilt it the other way and there's food and
00:01:27
luxury for everyone. And it's up to us to decide which way the knife will go.
00:01:32
Dr. Moaku, I've waited a long time to ask someone these questions. Where do you believe we came from? Do you think
00:01:39
it's plausible that in fact we are living in a simulation? And then is there any evidence when we look out at
00:01:44
the stars that there is non-human life out there? >> Okay, so first of all,
00:01:55
>> this is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many
00:01:58
of you that watch this show subscribe and some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from
00:02:03
the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button
00:02:08
if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark
00:02:12
on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my
00:02:18
team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to
00:02:24
hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
00:02:27
ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
00:02:30
I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder
00:02:34
and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that
00:02:38
promise since the very beginning of the D ofio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it.
00:02:44
Let's get on with the show. Dr. Moaku, >> that's right. >> For anyone that isn't aware of you and
00:02:54
your work and they're wondering whether they should listen to what you have to
00:02:58
say today because they don't know your work and they've not gone through the
00:03:01
the books and the interviews that you've done, how would you describe your experience? I work in something called
00:03:07
string theory which we think is the theory that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life. The theory of
00:03:13
everything. The theory that explains the big bang, the formation of stars, galaxy, formation of the earth, life.
00:03:21
I'm a physicist working in the theory of everything. >> What is the theory of everything?
00:03:25
>> An equation perhaps no more than one inch long that will allow us to quote
00:03:29
read the mind of God. These are Einstein's words. the theory of the big bang, the theory of creation itself, the
00:03:36
theory of of everything. >> I want to explain this in terms that even the most sort of novice viewer
00:03:42
could understand. The theory of everything is is an equation that explains >> everything.
00:03:47
>> Physics. >> No, no, no. Everything. Because from physics comes chemistry, comes
00:03:53
chemistry, comes biology, >> and from that comes our universe. >> Is it things like gravity and space and
00:03:59
time? gravity, uh, light, the nuclear force. Uh, there are four fundamental forces of the universe. There's the
00:04:07
gravitational force which keeps us here, the electromagnetic force which lights up our our world, and the two nuclear
00:04:14
forces. We want a theory that explains all four. >> You know, when people watch your
00:04:20
interviews and they read your books, what do you think is the fundamental question that they're typically seeking
00:04:26
to answer? What does it mean for me? >> What does what mean for me? >> The physics of the future. That is we
00:04:35
physicists create the future. We're the ones who understand what is possible,
00:04:38
what is not possible, and what is plausible. How does that affect the average person?
00:04:43
>> And there's an element of of all of us that's just trying to figure out how we
00:04:47
got here, where our place is in the universe. >> Yeah. If especially for people who are
00:04:53
philosophical or religious, they want to know what does it all mean? I mean, where did I come from? Where's the
00:04:59
universe going? They want to know the answer to the big questions, the question of meaning. And that's what we
00:05:06
physicists do. >> And they want to know if we're alone in the universe.
00:05:09
>> Oh yeah, that too. That's a byproduct of what we do is look for extraterrestrial
00:05:13
intelligence. >> You've been doing this for many, many decades now. You've been studying the
00:05:17
nature of the universe and physics. Is there a fundamental misunderstanding that you're aware of that the average
00:05:24
person still believes? Yeah, people think that physics is for eggheheads, that it's just uh doing equations on a
00:05:32
blackboard and totally divorced from the average person. They don't realize that
00:05:39
everything about their life, about electricity, about magnetism, about the nuclear force, about industry,
00:05:46
everything comes from physics. But the average person thinks that physics is for eggheheads. It's for equations you
00:05:52
put on a blackboard in a cartoon. Nope. is everywhere. >> In the last couple of weeks, you've been
00:05:59
asked to do lots of interviews because Trump has released the UFO files. >> That's right.
00:06:06
>> Before we get into lots of other subjects and physics generally, probably
00:06:09
start by just tackling this question head on. Do you think that we are alone in the universe? No, we are not alone
00:06:18
because a galaxy has 100 billion stars of which maybe 10% have planets that are earthlike or are similar to Earth. But
00:06:28
the question is, can they visit us? A Saturn 5 rocket would take 70,000 years just to reach the nearest star. Hop,
00:06:37
skip, and a jump. 70,000 years. So a civilization that could reach the earth would be hundreds thousands of years
00:06:45
more advanced than us. So I'm a physicist. We look at that space warps. Is it possible that a flying saucer race
00:06:53
could create a space warp so they can visit us? >> Space warp. >> Bending space.
00:06:58
>> Is that possible? >> Well, gravity bends space all the time. The question is, can you bend space
00:07:04
enough so that you can go faster than the speed of light so you can visit the nearest star? That's a question mark. We
00:07:11
physicists look at that, but we have no definite answer. But it's it's possible.
00:07:16
So when these people say that, you know, I had a podcast uh recently where two people explained to me that there's been
00:07:23
some very unusual sightings of UAPs. >> Mhm. >> And they use this as evidence to say
00:07:29
that aliens exist. >> Mhm. Do you think those sightings are actually extraterrestrial life or do you
00:07:35
think it's just uh people hallucinating and seeing I don't know light orbs and
00:07:41
misunderstanding what they're looking at? >> Well, there are three types of
00:07:44
observations. Close encounters of the first kind is when you see something in the sky. First kind.
00:07:51
>> Close encounters of the second kind is when you have something tangible, an
00:07:55
engine, uh a body, a wreckage of a UAP. That's second kind. Close encounters of
00:08:02
the third kind is when you actually encounter them and shake their hand. Now, where are we? We're at close
00:08:09
encounters of the first kind where we see things floating in the sky, but we don't know what they are. We don't have
00:08:15
anything tangible. Now, in science fiction, we've captured the flying saucer. We have the aliens in a case or
00:08:22
so. That's the movies. We have yet to see an alien in in a laboratory. We have
00:08:28
yet to see an alien ship. In other words, people say, "I saw something."
00:08:33
Now, what does that mean? I'm a physicist. We go where the we go where the observation goes. And we have no
00:08:40
observations to verify what you saw. Except, of course, sensationalists who say, "I've seen the bodies." Okay, show
00:08:48
us. >> So, from that, I conclude that you don't believe alien life has arrived here on
00:08:55
Earth. I don't I I I'm open to the possibility. 95% of the sightings we can
00:09:00
we can uh explain using the known laws of physics. 5% are either optical illusions or they are evidence of
00:09:09
visitation. You can't rule it out. So, I'm open to the idea that maybe they're
00:09:13
here. Now, President Trump has released the first mountain load of 160 uh encounters of alien technology, we
00:09:22
think, but we haven't yet seen a close encounter of the second kind. When that
00:09:27
happens, that's a game changer. When we have a piece of UFO hardware, that would
00:09:33
that would nail it to the wall right there. There's the a narrative that the
00:09:37
US government or generally governments around the world wouldn't want the people to know about aliens because
00:09:43
they're not ready for it. Do do you buy that? >> That's the traditional uh excuse for not
00:09:49
revealing these things. But the other excuse is that it's a cover. It's a
00:09:53
cover for the stealth bomber. It's a cover for the fact that the military does experiment with aerodynamically
00:10:00
novel forms of transport. And so those are the reasons why the military keeps it a secret and actually lies about
00:10:09
these things. But now the it's leaking out. Congress, the president of the United States, they're demanding these
00:10:16
these u sightings to be declassified. So we physicists now are analyzing them to
00:10:22
see whether or not they're really real or not. Is there any evidence when we
00:10:25
look out at the stars that there is nonhuman life out there? Is there anything that you've seen when you look
00:10:33
at other planets and how they're operating that might suggest there's a different type of life there?
00:10:40
>> Oh, yeah. But there's no tangible evidence for it yet, though. >> Give me one example.
00:10:45
>> Well, uh, for example, take a look at Alpha Centauri, the closest star system
00:10:48
to the planet Earth, right? >> How far away is that? >> Four and a half light years. And if you
00:10:53
take a look at the Alpha Centauri system, the closest system to the Earth, you have uh red red stars that could
00:11:01
could have life on them. We're not sure. They're not super hot, super large, in
00:11:07
which case it would be very difficult to get life forms off the ground. But the point I'm raising is that the Milky Way
00:11:12
galaxy, our backyard, has 100 billion stars. And the probability of life existing among those stars is almost
00:11:21
100%. The question is can they reach us? That means is it possible to create a space warp such that you can break the
00:11:27
light barrier so that you can travel across the galaxy and visit the earth. >> And did you say that was theoretically
00:11:36
possible? >> It's theoretically possible. Yeah. But of course you need energy, fantastic
00:11:40
amounts of energy. But the laws of physics do allow for the possibility of space warps. I mean, you've seen space
00:11:47
warps on Star Trek, but where does Star Trek get the word space warps? It comes from physics.
00:11:53
>> I also heard you telling um I think it was Joe Rogan, you were telling a story
00:11:57
of one particular star that reduces in its intensity by 20%. >> Yeah, there is a star that that
00:12:06
oscillates. >> What does that mean? >> So, it drops by about 20%. So it's it's
00:12:11
it's reducing its light >> output >> by 20%. >> That's right.
00:12:16
>> How often? >> You don't have to wait for centuries. It's within a matter of months to years.
00:12:21
>> A star that reduces frequently reduces its light output by 20%. >> Yeah. Which is very unusual. It's the
00:12:28
only one we saw we've seen so far. >> You explained one of the theories, I
00:12:32
think, when you first talked about this was that a civilization might have built
00:12:36
something around that star. >> Oh, yeah. That's one of several theories
00:12:40
that a civilization that advanced would have tremendous energy needs. >> Mhm.
00:12:44
>> And the easiest way to get energy is by encircling the mother star with an
00:12:50
envelope. And the envelope then would absorb most of the energy. In fact, that was an episode of Star Trek. They meet a
00:12:57
star that is totally enveloped by a metal shell. The aliens left it centuries ago, but you know, it can't be
00:13:05
ruled out. The theory goes that an advanced civilization will surround it with like a metal sphere to capture its
00:13:11
energy. >> Yeah. >> And that would explain why we see a 20% reduction in the light output.
00:13:19
>> No, they think that it's probably an orbiting an orbiting globe that eclipses
00:13:24
the mother star. >> Ah, >> rather than envelops the mother star, it simply goes around the mother star and
00:13:31
eclipses it. Um, so it'd be like a big ball that that circles the star extracting
00:13:36
>> and that would cause a dip. It would cause a dip in the intensity of light.
00:13:40
>> As far as we see it, >> as far as we see it, right? >> Because this big ball is sometimes
00:13:44
moving in front of it. >> That's right. Exactly. >> Why couldn't it just be a planet?
00:13:48
>> Planets are not that big. Planets are about about 1% like Jupiter is about 1%
00:13:52
the size of the sun. So the sunlight would drop by about 1 or 2% if Jupiter goes in front of our sun.
00:14:00
>> Oh, I've got you. So this is much bigger. It's huge. >> You've um
00:14:07
you've written a lot of books >> about the universe and physics and everything in between. I've waited a
00:14:15
long time to ask someone this question and it's a very broad question and the
00:14:18
question is where do you believe that we came from? Where do you believe that life came
00:14:25
from? Where do you believe this universe came from? >> Well, the universe came from the big
00:14:30
bang. The question is where did the big bang come from? Right. >> Okay. So, what is the big bang?
00:14:36
>> The big bang is a cosmic explosion that took place around 14 or so billion years
00:14:40
ago that uh created the expanding universe. >> How do we know that happened?
00:14:48
>> Because we have evidence of this expansion that took place, you know, 14
00:14:53
or so billion years ago. We see the stars moving away from us. So, think of a big balloon. the big balloon with uh
00:15:01
points of light on the balloon and the balloon is expanding and the stars are moving away from each other.
00:15:07
>> That's what we see today. Not moving toward each other. All the stars are
00:15:11
moving away from each other like the sphere is expanding. And so we believe in the in the uh the big bang theory and
00:15:18
we believe that the universe is expanding rather than contracting. >> Expanding into what?
00:15:24
>> Hyperspace. >> What's that? Uh well we live in a four-dimensional universe. Three
00:15:29
dimensions of space, one dimension of time. We live in a in a four-dimensional universe. But in string theory, we
00:15:36
believe that there are 11 dimensions altogether. >> String theory is something that you came
00:15:42
up with. >> I came up with string field theory, which is one of the branches of string
00:15:46
theory. Right. >> And what is string theory? >> String theory says that what is a proton? What is an
00:15:54
electron? They're nothing but vibrations of a string. So from a distance, this looks like a
00:16:03
point particle. From a distance, this is an electron. But if you could magnify that, we find out it's not really a
00:16:10
point at all. It's really a vibrating string. And each vibration corresponds
00:16:14
to a node. So this would be a proton. This would be an electron. This would be a neutron. This would be a neutrino.
00:16:24
That's why we have so many subatomic particles. >> Okay. So to to simplify this in a way
00:16:28
that I understand, you're saying that at the very base layer, particles are the
00:16:34
same, but they're just strings that are basically vibrating differently. >> That's right.
00:16:38
>> And that would be the the sort of foundational matter of everything. >> That's right. Everything is basically a
00:16:44
vibrating string. So when the string vibrates in this direction, we call it an electron. If it vibrates in this way,
00:16:51
we call it a proton. So, why do we have so many subatomic particles? How many of
00:16:56
them are there? Hundreds. We've seen hundreds of subatomic particles. And how
00:17:02
could mother nature be so malicious to create a universe at the fundamental level based on hundreds of different
00:17:09
kinds of of strings vibrating in different directions? Well, it's really just one string. One string that can
00:17:17
vibrate in different modes. Each mode is called a particle. >> Why does it need to be a string?
00:17:23
We don't know why things are. We just I'm a physicist. We just try to figure
00:17:27
out the way things really are. But it would explain why there's so many particles.
00:17:32
We used to think there was an electron, a proton, and neutron. And that's it.
00:17:36
That's it. Period. Nope. We've seen pimezones. We've seen lambda particles,
00:17:42
omega particles, hundreds of subatomic particles. Why do we build atom smashers outside Chicago, outside Geneva? huge
00:17:50
gigantic atom smashers smashing atoms apart. Why? Because then from the debris we begin to figure out these vibrations
00:17:58
are particles. We can categorize them. We can give them names and that gives us a quote a theory
00:18:05
of everything. So we have what is called the standard model which explains all the subatomic
00:18:11
particles other than gravity. And it and we create these particles with their atom smashers
00:18:18
>> which is the big machines where they fire atoms at each other in in Geneva
00:18:21
and so on around the world to figure out >> that's the large hon collider right but
00:18:25
now we realize that there's another octave there's another layer even beyond
00:18:29
what we see with the large hron collider dark matter dark matter is invisible matter that
00:18:36
surrounds the Milky Way galaxy and we don't know what it is there's a Nobel
00:18:40
Prize waiting for somebody who could figure about what dark matter is. It's invisible matter. Invisible matter that
00:18:48
surrounds the entire Milky Way galaxy. We think that we cannot yet prove that it's nothing but the next octave.
00:18:54
>> What do you mean by octave? >> Vibration. In other words, this would be
00:18:58
the lowest vibration which is corresponds to an electron. But their other vibration is much bigger and they
00:19:04
they would correspond to a higher octave. >> How do we know it's there if it's
00:19:07
invisible? >> Well, this a guess. But it turns out that when you do the math and you look
00:19:12
at the vibration of a string and you look at the higher vibrations, some of them are invisible. In other words, they
00:19:18
don't interact with light. Now, we know that this interacts with light. Therefore, we can see it.
00:19:24
>> But these are the lowest vibrations. Some of the higher vibrations are invisible. And so, we think that's what
00:19:30
dark matter is. >> I guess this all comes back to the question we're talking about the big
00:19:33
bang. You know scientists tend to agree that there was some kind of big bang because
00:19:38
when you look at the universe it's expanding outwards. So one would if you rewind time at some point there was a
00:19:44
central point where something where a big an explosion occurred if you reverse time.
00:19:54
I mean it begs the question what caused the big bang. >> Well we don't know but there are
00:20:02
theories. String theory is a theory even before the big bang. It's a theory of
00:20:07
everything. The big bang in some sense is a misnomer because it disguise the fact that we're ignorant. We're ignorant
00:20:14
of what caused the thing to bang. String theory, there was no bang. That is it did collapse. If you go backwards in
00:20:22
time, it did collapse with a very small thing and then came out again. It bounced. Oh,
00:20:27
>> okay. >> So, we think that there could be a bubble bath of universes. What do you
00:20:32
mean by a bubble bath of universes? >> Our universe is a bubble of some sort
00:20:36
and the bubble is expanding and that's called the big bang theory which fits
00:20:39
all the data. But we think there are other bubbles out there. In other words, string theory says that we live not just
00:20:47
in a four-dimensional world but in a 11dimensional world. These other dimensions we cannot see but we think
00:20:55
that the universe coexists with other universes. There's a bubble bath. Think
00:21:01
of bubbles, soap bubbles floating in in the vacuum. >> What about marbles? So, when you're
00:21:06
talking about bubbles, you know, could you mean like kind of like this? >> Right. Okay. Give me the big one.
00:21:15
>> All of them. >> All right. Okay. So, let's say this is the sun.
00:21:20
>> Yeah. >> And these are planets, asteroids, whatever. And they're going around
00:21:27
they're going around the sun. >> Mhm. Why? Why are they going around the
00:21:31
sun like that? Okay, it's because this exerts gravitational force that is pulling these things toward toward the
00:21:40
sun. >> The Earth is just one. Asteroids are none of the other. Saturn and Jupiter,
00:21:46
they're nothing but planets going around the mother star. And so then the next
00:21:51
question is why? Why is it that planets are going around the sun? It's because
00:21:57
the sun is warping the space around it. Is creating a shallow depression. Space is not flat. This is Einstein's
00:22:06
achievement. You go in this direction, seems flat. You go in this direction, everything seems to be flat, right? But
00:22:13
no, the earth for example is round, but it looks flat, but it's not. The universe looks flat, but it's not. It's
00:22:21
curved. And that's why planets go around the mother star because gravity is the
00:22:28
byproduct of the warping of space. And that's why we are sitting on this chair
00:22:34
right now. Why are we here? How come we're not flying in outer space? The earth is spinning, right?
00:22:41
>> The earth is spinning. We should be flung out into outer space. So how come
00:22:45
we're here? >> Gravity. >> Gra. What is gravity, though? That's
00:22:48
just a word, right? Right? Just because the mass of the earth is so much greater
00:22:52
than us that it pulls us in. >> Okay. Well, why is it pulling us in? Einstein says that the reason why the
00:22:58
earth is pulling us in is because the earth warps the space around us and is pushing us into the floor. That's why
00:23:08
the solar system works the way it does because the sun grabs the planets and forces the planets to move in a curved
00:23:15
line because it's curved space that is causing it to move this way. >> And going back to what you were saying
00:23:22
about the bubble bath idea, >> right? Then the question is, are there other stars? Yes. Are there other
00:23:29
galaxies? There billions and billions of planets out there. We think that the whole shebang is curved. We're nothing
00:23:35
but inhabitants of the skin of this gigantic bubble. Now we're saying that maybe there are other bubbles out there.
00:23:44
A multiverse. A multiverse of universes, parallel universes. In fact, word multiverse has gotten into the
00:23:52
literature. Comic books now refer to the multiverse, Spider-Man and things like that. So it's even part of the
00:23:58
vernacular the the common language of the average person that we believe in parallel universes. So yeah these
00:24:05
parallel universes come from physics >> and the other thing that comes from
00:24:11
physics is black holes. >> That's right. If this star becomes so massive that its gravity is so great
00:24:20
that it pulls the entire shebang in like this. Mhm. >> And then that would be a black hole.
00:24:30
And we now believe that at the center of almost every galaxy we see, and there are trillions of galaxies, we think that
00:24:37
at the center of these galaxies, there's a black hole. >> Even our galaxy, the milk,
00:24:42
>> even our galaxy, right? If you look at the direction of Sagittarius, the
00:24:45
constellation Sagittarius, there's a black hole there. So tonight, go outside, look for the constellation
00:24:52
Sagittarius, and there's a black hole at the center of our own backyard that
00:24:57
holds the Milky Way galaxy together. >> So, how did it get there? >> Well, we think that it's a remnant of
00:25:04
the Big Bang that when the Big Bang exploded, clusters of matter begin to contract
00:25:10
other clusters of matter. >> And this is where the galaxies and the planets come from. The condensation of
00:25:16
the matter ejected out of the big bang gives you the galaxies, the solar systems and the planets.
00:25:23
>> So if I use this as an example, there was the big bang and all the pieces flew
00:25:29
everywhere >> and then because of gravity the pieces came together and they got so
00:25:36
so uh so big so much mass that they collapsed inwards. We're not sure about exactly which came first, the galaxy
00:25:43
came first or the black hole came first. But let's assume for the moment that the
00:25:48
black hole came first. Gas concentrated into a small area called the black hole and then it drew all the other stars and
00:25:58
galaxy around it to create the Milky Way galaxy. We're not sure, but that's one
00:26:02
possibility of where it came from. And where did that come from? That in turn came from the explosion that created the
00:26:09
universe roughly 14 billion years ago. >> Am I right in thinking black holes they
00:26:15
are extremely dense like areas of matter and they if you were to go near one everything that goes near it gets sucked
00:26:21
in. >> That's right. And you never get out again. If this is a a black hole, there
00:26:25
is a ring or a sphere surrounding it. A point of no return. You go towards the black hole and you pass this this ring
00:26:35
and then you go into the black hole never to be seen again. It's a point of no return.
00:26:40
>> How do we know that? >> Well, we've never seen it happen, but we
00:26:43
can calculate the escape velocity. In other words, if you want to leave the Earth, how fast do you have to move to
00:26:49
leave the Earth? 7 miles per second. Our astronauts travel 7 miles per second to
00:26:55
reach the moon. Okay, that's called escape velocity. So every gravitating piece of matter has an escape velocity
00:27:03
for the Earth is 7 miles per second. What about the escape velocity of a black hole? It's the speed of light.
00:27:13
That's why if you fall through the event horizon of a black hole, you never come
00:27:18
out because otherwise you would have to go faster than the speed of light, which
00:27:21
is not possible. So you go in, but you never come out. That's why it's called
00:27:26
black holes. >> What's in there? If you knew, you'd win a Nobel Prize.
00:27:33
>> This area has loads and loads of mass inside it. It's sucking things into it.
00:27:38
So, one would assume that there was a lot inside there, but it's tiny, right?
00:27:42
Black holes are tiny. >> We don't know how big they are. We think at the very center it could be very
00:27:47
small. We're not sure. No one's ever been there because if you go past the
00:27:51
event horizon, you never come out again. >> What do people think is inside a black
00:27:55
hole? I'm thinking of it's just this area in space that looks black on a when
00:27:59
you look at it and think it can suck in planets, anything. >> If I were to take a guess, I would say
00:28:08
that it's an entrance. It's a gateway perhaps to another universe. We think for example if I have a warp
00:28:18
space and you fall into warp space if if the warp space is powerful enough it may
00:28:25
come out again on the other side. So there may be another universe on the other side of a black hole. We're not
00:28:32
we're not sure. Of course, if you want to go to Alpha Centauri with a Saturn 5
00:28:37
rocket, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star with our most powerful rocket. Very impractical. You
00:28:48
need a shortcut and that's uh that's the gateway called a wormhole which is very
00:28:54
similar to a black hole. A little bit different but very similar. >> How long have you been studying physics
00:28:59
in the universe now? Since I was 8 years old, I've been studying the universe.
00:29:06
>> 71 years. >> Yeah. When I was 8 years old, a great scientist had just died. It was in all
00:29:13
the newspapers and the newspaper said that he failed on his last try to create a theory of everything. So, I was
00:29:24
fascinated by this idea that this man was attempting to find the final theory. You're talking about Einstein.
00:29:30
>> That's right. Later, I found out the man's name was Albert Einstein. And at
00:29:34
that point, I said to myself, that's for me. That's what I want to work on. I
00:29:39
want to be part of this great journey to complete Einstein's dream of a theory of
00:29:45
everything. And that's what I do for a living. I work with Einstein's equations.
00:29:50
>> So, for 71 years, you've been trying to understand the universe and create this
00:29:54
theory for everything. In that time, how is your perspective on God developed? >> Yes. Most of my family were Buddhists.
00:30:07
>> Mhm. >> Coming from Japan, but my father was a Christian >> and put me in Sunday school. So, I had
00:30:17
the benefit of two religions as a child. Now, I'm a physicist. And physicists are quote agnostic. They
00:30:25
don't take a position. They simply go where the physics takes them into areas
00:30:31
that are distasteful, mysterious, whatever. You go where the evidence goes. And that's what I am today. In
00:30:39
other words, we have the laws of physics. We have string theory which takes us to the instant of the big bang
00:30:45
and even before even before the creation of the universe. But then the next question is where does string theory
00:30:51
come from? Okay, at that point we have to say that that's where our ignorance
00:30:56
takes over. We simply don't know. >> What about simulation theory? >> Do you think it's plausible that in fact
00:31:05
we are living in a simulation? >> I would say the answer is probably no. >> Probably no.
00:31:11
>> That's right. Simulation theory is basically saying that the universe is a puppet
00:31:17
show and there's a script. We're we're living out the script because somebody
00:31:22
is pulling our strings. First of all, that violates quantum theory. Quantum theory believes in probabilities.
00:31:30
Probabilities that I'm sitting here today, probabilities that maybe one day I'll go into outer space. We can
00:31:37
calculate the probabilities of atomic events, chemical events with accuracy that is incredible.
00:31:43
But simulation theory is not one of them. The theory which was um proposed by philosopher Nick Bostonramm says that
00:31:52
there's three possibilities logically. Either number one that um humanlike civilizations always destroy themselves
00:32:00
before they get to the point where they can do advanced hyperrealistic simulations. And if you think about
00:32:06
things like I know virtual reality at the moment or video games and you imagine them on a spectrum, if they just
00:32:11
get 1% better a year, at some point they are indistinguishable from this reality
00:32:16
that we're experiencing now. So theory one, we wipe ourselves out before we get
00:32:20
to the point where we're advanced enough in hyperrealistic simulations. Theory
00:32:24
number two, or possibility number two, is that advanced civilizations do exist, but they have zero interest in
00:32:31
simulating their ancestors, which would be us. Or theory number three is that we
00:32:35
are a simulation and civilizations do survive and they do run millions of simulations because there would be
00:32:42
millions of fake universes and only one can be base reality in this scenario and
00:32:46
the mathematical odds are incredibly high that we are currently living inside one of those simulations and not in base
00:32:51
reality. Well, my personal point of view is there there's option four that you
00:32:57
don't mention and option four is that there is no simulation at all that all
00:33:02
this talk is nothing but fairy tales. Fairy tales that we tell our children to amaze them about the universe. But you
00:33:10
see the universe is based on probabilities. Probabilities that uranium will fire for example which
00:33:17
gives us nuclear weapons. probability that hydrogen can fuse and that gives us stars. So the universe is based on
00:33:25
probabilities not on simulations. Do you think what we're seeing? This is a strange question to ask because again
00:33:32
there's so many def definitions within it but do you think what we're seeing is
00:33:36
real? Like do you think this is you know cuz people do psychedelic drugs and I hear about things like DMT. You inhale a
00:33:43
little bit of smoke and suddenly everything you see is different. And you meet people talk about how they've met
00:33:49
other types of life when they've taken an an inhale of DMT, they've interacted
00:33:54
with some type of other life form. So I guess all this is to say that if our perceived reality is that fragile where
00:34:01
we inhale one of smoke and suddenly we're amongst a different life form, then it makes us question whether this
00:34:10
is real at all. And also like just to extend it a little bit further. If one inhalation of smoke
00:34:17
and I guess you could think about that as a bunch of small particles can interrupt something in my brain that
00:34:23
causes me to believe that I'm in a different universe. Then doesn't that
00:34:28
prove that my reality is just the projection of a very fragile small amount of particles that are right now
00:34:36
lined up so that I see you and this. Well, I think the answer to that is that what you consider to be reality
00:34:46
is really a partial fiction that your senses are limited by what your senses can retrieve from the
00:34:54
outside world. But it's only a teeny weeny little fraction of what actually exists. Look at the electromagnetic
00:35:01
spectrum of light for example. You can't see all the ultraviolet radiation, the
00:35:06
infrared, x-rays. This room is full of realities that you can't see. Most of
00:35:12
what you see is a fragment, a teeny insyweensy little fragment of reality. You can't see cosmic rays. You can't see
00:35:21
ultraviolet radiation. So, what I'm trying to tell you is that you live in an illusion. It's a good illusion for
00:35:28
survival. But in terms of being able to see the full spectrum of reality as it exists, no. There's no way. So you think
00:35:38
reality is everything. Nope. It's only a tiny tiny insyweensy little fragment of
00:35:44
reality. And then talking about this reality, that's a fantasy on top of a fantasy. The first fantasy is that you
00:35:53
think that what you see is real and everything. That's the first fantasy. The second fantasy is there's a fantasy
00:35:59
within the first fantasy. So you're you're going layer upon layer of fantasies. Now, let me give you another
00:36:06
example. Let's say you hear rustling in the forest. You think it's a tiger
00:36:10
there. Nine times out of 10, there's no tiger there. But how come your senses
00:36:17
are constantly alerting you to the tiger? And that is evolution. Evolution gives you the ability to see
00:36:25
things that are not really there at all because it's good for survival. One time
00:36:30
there is a tiger and it saves your butt. In other words, why are we here today? We're here today because our senses are
00:36:38
overactive. Our senses think there's a lion. There's a tiger there. Well,
00:36:42
there's no lion or tiger there at all. But it was good for our survival. Okay?
00:36:47
So, our senses are only necessary for our survival. That's why we cannot see
00:36:52
infrared. We cannot see ultraviolet. We cannot see the whole spectrum of reality, radio, everything. saying we
00:36:59
can't see it all because it was not necessary for our survival. >> Why does life matter in the universe?
00:37:07
Like what what function does life have in the universe? >> I think we create our own meaning
00:37:12
individually. >> I think there's no universal meaning for life in general, but I think each of us
00:37:19
create our own meaning. I was saying this because you were talking about, you know, survival and I was just wondering
00:37:24
if there was some universal reason why survival is so important to the universe. But and
00:37:31
>> survival is important for the universe cuz we survival writes history. If
00:37:35
there's no survival, there's nothing to write. There's no memories. There's no
00:37:40
uh stories to tell. Nothing. There's just a vacuum of space. >> I was also asking that, I guess, because
00:37:46
you were saying how we only see one version of reality. Mhm. >> And so one would assume therefore that
00:37:52
there's another version of reality that we can't even see. I mean I've heard
00:37:54
this before from physicists, you know, and if you just think about different animals, the bat sees a different
00:38:01
version of reality to the whale. >> Like sonar for example. >> Sonar for example. Even my dog, my dog
00:38:07
seems to see a completely different version of reality than the one I see. >> It smells much better than you. Alactory
00:38:12
nerves of a dog are infinitely better than our alactory nerves in our nose. They have a different reality. I guess
00:38:19
it begs the question like what is all of this then? >> Well, you're talking about the meaning
00:38:23
of life for which I have no answer. Sorry about that. >> I guess that was what I was asking but I
00:38:28
wasn't asking that wasn't what I was intent on asking. But that's the base
00:38:31
question which is what's the point. >> I'm not even sure if the universe has a
00:38:36
point. But my personal attitude is we create our own point. We create our own world and meaning within that world. It
00:38:44
could be different from another person's meaning and understanding of the world,
00:38:48
but it's good enough for me. >> What do you think of the um human sort
00:38:52
of proclivity to imagine a god and to assign meaning and morality to that god and say, well, you know, cuz we do have
00:39:00
this we do live with this kind of god-shaped hole in our lives where we don't really know where we came from. We
00:39:05
don't know what the point is. So, I understand why it's tempting to say this
00:39:09
book that someone wrote once upon a time that says this person, this thing created us and these are the rules and
00:39:16
this is what good is, this is what bad is, this is what we get if we follow the rules. You know, as humans, we want
00:39:22
that. >> Yes. And I think there's a reason for that. And the answer is evolution. What
00:39:27
holds animals together? The alpha male, the top dog. As humans became more intelligent over millions of years,
00:39:36
humans bicker, we argue, we challenge the leader and then tribes would fall apart because you need some glue. You
00:39:46
need some glue to hold it together. And if everyone becomes intelligent uniformly, there's no glue anymore.
00:39:53
Everyone bickers, I'm the leader. No, I'm the leader. So on and so forth. So
00:39:57
what happens is one person comes up and says, I'm stronger than you. and I talk
00:40:01
to somebody even stronger than me, God. And if you disobey me, then God will strike you down. In other words, God is
00:40:10
a glue. God is a glue that holds sensient beings together when there's no reason to hold them together anymore and
00:40:19
they bicker and they the tribe falls apart. What holds the tribe together? God. Who is God? Well, God is not here,
00:40:28
but the son of God is here. And the son of God says, "You got to do this, you
00:40:33
got to do this, you got to do this, and you got to obey me." Why? Because I'm
00:40:37
the messenger. I'm the son of God. So, I think religion has a definite purpose.
00:40:44
The purpose of religion is a glue to hold sensient, intelligent beings together.
00:40:50
>> What What do you think consciousness is? >> Consciousness, I think, is a question of
00:40:54
awareness. the ability to create ideas about you know why I mean what does it mean meaning to give meaning to things
00:41:04
otherwise things become meaningless so I think that's the purpose of consciousness is to give us an awareness
00:41:10
of meaning do you think um these big questions will ever be answered around like where we came from what the point
00:41:17
is do you think we'll ever have answers to these things >> probably not however we have this
00:41:22
instinctive urge to to explore, >> to look for new territories and new ideas. And that is what I think keeps us
00:41:32
going. Animals do not have that. You can't tell a dog, aren't you thrilled
00:41:37
that we're going to this new new house, this new whatever, right? And dog says,
00:41:41
"No, just give me my my dinner." So, I think that humans are different. The
00:41:47
purpose of the front part of our brain, the cerebral cortex that holds us together, it's a time machine.
00:41:54
It asked the question, "What's going to happen in the future?" If you don't
00:41:58
believe me, go to your dog tonight and ask your dog, uh, what did he do last night? Uh,
00:42:05
and the dog will just bark. No interest in what's happened yesterday, what's happened tomorrow. We
00:42:13
constantly think about the future. We can't help it. We are constantly thinking about what's for dinner
00:42:19
tomorrow, who's my friend, who's my enemy, what's going to what am I going
00:42:22
to do next year, what college am I going to go to. We are obsessed with the future.
00:42:28
That's what separates us from the animal kingdom. Animals do not care about the
00:42:34
future. They just care about survival. We, on the other hand, are obsessed with the future because that's where our
00:42:41
survival lies. And why is that? Because we don't have claws, we don't have
00:42:47
fangs, we don't have huge muscles, we can't run very fast, we can't fly. We're
00:42:53
not like the animals. We are dependent upon the front part of our brain. And that's why we ask these questions that
00:43:01
you just asked. Why are you asking these questions? Because you're programmed to
00:43:06
ask these questions. Animals are not. I mean on the subject of intelligence there is now new types of intelligence
00:43:14
amongst us. One of them um is referred to as artificial intelligence which is actually modeled on how the
00:43:20
brain works. You know I've sat here with some of the experts in AI and they've
00:43:24
told me that they learned a lot about the human brain um and how it reasons and um how it processes information with
00:43:32
these neural nets as they call it which is um a concept that that has been inspired by the brain. And with that
00:43:39
they've started to build these very intelligent machines which a lot of people are now using in terms of large
00:43:44
language models like chatbt but but we're going further and further into the
00:43:48
world of artificial intelligence. So I mean one's going to one would reason that the future looks very very very
00:43:53
different because of this new type of intelligence and that it's going to accelerate maybe a lot of the
00:43:57
discoveries and you know that we've we've pondered about today but also that
00:44:02
it's going to change life as we know it. And I mean some people even think that
00:44:04
human life won't be the dominant form of intelligence in such a world. What do you think?
00:44:11
>> Yes, I think that is a definite problem. Right now I think a lot of our robots
00:44:16
have the intelligence of a bug, >> an insect. They don't plan, they can't
00:44:22
articulate their thoughts and so so forth. But they carry out orders very well. But eventually it's only a matter
00:44:29
of time before they become as smart as a mouse. then as smart as a rabbit, then as smart as a dog or a cat, and finally
00:44:37
as smart as a monkey. At that point, they are potentially dangerous. >> The AI models though that are available
00:44:45
now are PhD level in terms of intelligence. >> No, you cannot talk PhD physics with
00:44:53
them. uh they're programmed they're programmed to have certain ways of thinking about certain things, but
00:45:01
they're not original. You can't come up with a new theory of physics talking to
00:45:05
a robot. They basically take what is programmed into them and work with that. Now, eventually they may become
00:45:13
creative. Okay. But I think that's going to take several decades before we are at
00:45:17
that point. >> When you say creative, what's your definition of creative in that context?
00:45:23
Robots right now take what is available to them and rearrange things like writing a book.
00:45:28
>> Isn't that what humans do? Don't we take information and rearrange it?
00:45:31
>> Oh yeah, but we come up with new ideas >> based on that information. The AIS can
00:45:36
make a photo that has never existed before. >> So isn't that by definition
00:45:40
>> on the basis of what did exist before? In other words, something new, >> but basically a rearrangement of
00:45:46
something that already existed. So, I'm saying, you know, the Michael Jackson
00:45:49
documentaries just come out recently, and you see Michael Jackson, the way he moves, and you look at it and go, "Wow."
00:45:55
Like, no one's ever moved like that before. And then my friend sent me this video um which was what Michael Jackson
00:46:02
was actually inspired by, and it's this um I'll throw it up on the screen so
00:46:06
other people can see, but it was something that came before Michael Jackson, and it was this guy who moved
00:46:11
in this very interesting way. And when I watched this guy, I saw Michael Jackson.
00:46:14
Mhm. >> And so you look up someone like Michael Jackson and you go, "Oh my god, an
00:46:17
unbelievable creative genius artist." But even he was inspired by by See if I
00:46:21
can get it to play. Even you see, even he was inspired >> by this individual. And then if I if I
00:46:27
play it forward, I mean, this is how Michael Jackson moved, >> right? Well, art, the bottom line of art
00:46:33
is mimicry. That's the bottom line of art, except you arrange things in an original way so it looks fresh. Am I
00:46:40
right in thinking that with Newton he took the existing laws of physics and he >> which were negligible
00:46:50
>> and he proposed >> there were no laws of physics before Newton >> and he proposed a question.
00:46:55
>> Mhm. >> And then he tested that question and found an answer. >> He asked himself a question. How come
00:47:01
the earth goes around the sun? and he came up with an idea that was totally different from what people had had
00:47:08
thought about before. He came up with calculus. He came up with the inverse square law. So what I'm saying is true
00:47:15
creativity comes from almost nothing and it's like a supernova. Well, creativity
00:47:20
of a robot is imitative. Now there's nothing wrong with that because of course imitative artwork is still
00:47:27
artwork but it's imitative. Do you believe people like uh like the big um AI CEOs and Elon Musk when they say that
00:47:35
AI will lead to new discoveries in science? >> That's possible because there's so many
00:47:40
laws of physics that are known that many of the new laws of physics are imitative
00:47:45
and you rearrange them and combine them in different ways. So it's possible that
00:47:50
the big breakthroughs of the future will be guided by breakthroughs of the past.
00:47:55
There's nothing wrong with that. H are you concerned about AI at all? >> I'm concerned about AI in the larger
00:48:01
perspective that one day they can learn to do things that are bad, learn to kill, learn to
00:48:11
maim to harm people. Realize that every invention that we've made in the past
00:48:17
like the bow and arrow could be used for good and bad. Everything. Okay? that the
00:48:23
bow and arrow could be good for game, for food, for eating, but a bow and arrow could be good for slaughtering
00:48:30
your your next door neighbor. Any new invention has a double-edged sword to it. And so, I think that so far most of
00:48:38
the applications of artificial intelligence have been positive. We're talking about labor costs. We're talking
00:48:45
about creating wealth. We're talking about making things faster, cheaper, better. That's all great, but you can
00:48:52
also create artificial intelligent weapons as well. And the battlefield is where it's happening. And if you take a
00:48:59
look at what's happening in the Ukraine and uh Russia already, we're talking
00:49:05
about aerial weapons that can use wires to lock onto their target. >> And they use artificial intelligence to
00:49:17
guide them with this wire. and they cannot be stopped using the usual techniques. For every founder,
00:49:24
there comes a point in building a company where your job shifts from being the person inside your business
00:49:28
actioning everything to the person responsible for absolutely everything. The only way I've been able to make this
00:49:33
shift across the different companies and teams I'm responsible for is by knowing
00:49:37
that the right systems are in place to manage everything. Systems that don't
00:49:40
need me in order for them to work. Our sponsor, Pipe Drive, is one of those systems, an easytouse, intelligent CRM
00:49:47
tool for growing sales teams. My teams use it and have for the last decade because it's genuinely the most
00:49:52
effective way to run a sales operation. Through one dashboard, you get every deal visible and every stage of the
00:49:58
sales process is clear. And what needs to happen next is all there in real time. When a system like this works, you
00:50:05
don't need to be in every conversation to know exactly if your business is moving forward, where, and what the
00:50:11
blockers are. Over a 100,000 companies are already running their sales on it. So, if you'd like to join them, sign up
00:50:17
at piperive.com/ceeo, where you'll get an exclusive 30-day free trial instead of the usual 14 days.
00:50:26
No credit card is needed. That's piperive.com/ceo. Much of the reason most people haven't
00:50:32
posted content or built their personal brand is because it's hard and it's
00:50:36
timeconuming and we're all very, very busy. And if you've never posted something before, there's so many
00:50:42
factors in your psychology that stop you wanting to post. What people will think
00:50:46
of you. Am I doing this right? Is the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid. All
00:50:50
of these result in paralysis, which means you don't post and your feed goes bare. I'm an investor in a company
00:50:57
called Stanto, which you've probably heard me talk about. And what they've
00:51:00
been building is this new tool called Stanley that uses AI, looks at your feed, looks at your tone of voice, looks
00:51:05
at your history, looks at your best performing posts, and tells you what you should post, makes those posts for you.
00:51:10
You can also just use it for inspiration. And sometimes what we need when we're thinking about doing a post
00:51:15
for our social media channels is inspiration. Building an audience has fundamentally changed my life, and I
00:51:21
think it could change yours, too. So, I'm inviting you to give this new tool a
00:51:25
shot and let me know what you think. All you have to do is search coach.stand stand.store now to get started.
00:51:31
Going back to this this this question of the the Big Bang and where we all came from,
00:51:36
if you had to posit a guess as to what caused the Big Bang, would you land on this bubble bath theory that you talked
00:51:44
about where there's just lots and lots of universes, some of them are contracting and expanding. Is that where
00:51:49
you would personally land? >> Probably. If you take a look at empty space, we now believe that empty space
00:51:56
is frothing. frothing with little bubbles. Bubbles that pop into existence and then annihilate and go back into
00:52:03
nothingness again. So even pure nothingness is chalk full of activity. And one day we think one day one of
00:52:12
these tiny little bubbles decided not to go back into the vacuum but to keep on expanding and expanding and that became
00:52:21
the big bang. And so that theory says that the universe is dynamic and that universes are being created all the
00:52:28
time. >> What about Adam and Eve? And this >> what about Adam and Eve?
00:52:33
>> Do you don't think the story is true that there was a a garden, Adam and Eve,
00:52:36
Adam the apple, put your clothes on, behave yourself and then you know we all come from there. Well, I think there's
00:52:44
evolution and evolution did create life forms that are single-sellled, multi-selled and then cells with a
00:52:52
nervous system like fish and then fish became land moving uh organisms. So, I think there's a linear progression.
00:53:02
>> But you don't believe the stories told in the first testament of the Bible
00:53:05
around how humans came to be. God created the world in seven days. You don't believe that stuff?
00:53:11
>> Well, I think it's a fairy tale. I think it's a very compelling fairy tale, but I
00:53:16
think that even the people who teach religion realize it as a metaphor that we don't really mean 24 hours in a day
00:53:24
because that deals with the earth in the universe. There could be other worlds where a day is not 24 hours. A day does
00:53:32
not look like what the Bible says in Genesis. So I think it's a um it's a way
00:53:37
to organize your religion into a way that is digestible and and people can understand it and it touches people
00:53:45
which is a which is the purpose of religion. The purpose of religion is to touch people to bring them together into
00:53:51
a commonality and that's what the story of Genesis does. Religion in some sense
00:53:56
is a way to help people to show people guidance the good life so that you don't
00:54:04
terrorize other people that you make life better for other people not that it explains the meaning of existence but it
00:54:12
gives you a reason for existence >> and you would consider yourself to be an
00:54:17
atheist >> no uh I'm agnostic I believe that there's a lot of truth because it's a
00:54:22
way of behaving it's a way of learning how to be good to your neighbor is a glue that holds things together. Not
00:54:31
that it gives meaning for life, but it shows the way. >> It shows the way. And and the subject of
00:54:38
morality is often so intrinsically linked to religion, which is what is good and what is bad. Where does your
00:54:43
morality come from, doctor? Well, I was in the United States Army for two years and at that point I had to face death
00:54:55
and I had to face war. It was the height of the Vietnam War. There were 500 GIS dying every week. Every week, Life
00:55:06
magazine published an issue where they had the pictures, just the pictures with no commentary of all the GIS that died
00:55:14
that week with no commentary. No, I told you so. Just the pictures of those people that died. And then I realized
00:55:24
that I would have to put my life on the line because my number was up and people
00:55:30
were going into the military and people were realizing well war is the way people you know work out their
00:55:39
differences. But then I began to realize being in the military that there is a morality there. I began
00:55:48
to realize that the people that we were fighting had their own religion. They had their own way of looking at good and
00:55:56
evil and whatever. And they were willing to sacrifice their life for their own freedom. I began to question religion at
00:56:05
that point. Is it just a glue that holds people together? Is there a deeper meaning to the whole thing? So, one day
00:56:13
I was learning how to throw hand grenades and our our sergeant who was explaining to us how to throw hand
00:56:20
grenade had scars on one side of his face, big scars on his neck. And we asked him why.
00:56:29
And he said, "Well, one day a little Vietnamese boy came up to him and the Vietnamese boy says, "Candy, candy. You
00:56:38
want candy?" And the GI says, "No, no, no. Get away from me. I don't want
00:56:42
candy. Well, the little boy showed what was in his hand. It was a hand grenade. It was not candy at all. And the little
00:56:51
boy threw the hand grenade at the sergeant. Well, the sergeant immediately saw what the danger was and he hit the
00:56:58
ground as soon as he could flat on the ground. The grenade exploded and one half of his body got saturated with
00:57:06
shrapnel. And then you have to ask yourself a question. Why would a young boy do something like this? It's because
00:57:13
he believed in something. And I think there was a real big lesson for me. And that is you have to believe in
00:57:20
something. You have to believe in the goodness of men and also the fact that men can do evil. And you have to fight
00:57:28
for what you think is right. And therefore, it's not just a question of we're number one. We're going to win
00:57:35
this war. I used to sing a song in the morning. I want to go to Vietnam. I want to kill a
00:57:41
Charlie Kong. I used to sing that every morning at 4:00 in the morning. And then
00:57:47
I asked myself now why were we on the right side of the wrong side? And then at that point you begin to question what
00:57:54
is right and what is wrong? And then you realize maybe I'm on the wrong side.
00:58:03
>> Maybe I'm on the wrong side. I mean, it goes back to all the conflict happening
00:58:06
at the moment because we're ideologically captured by whatever our own religious beliefs are and that's
00:58:12
causing us to turn against each other each other and cause so much pain and suffering in the world. Do you think
00:58:17
there's any chance that this could at all change or is this just part of the
00:58:22
human condition? Well, if you take a look at the human condition, you realize that warfare has been an integral part
00:58:31
of our evolution as a species. Even in the animal kingdom, animals will fight against other animals. And so my hope,
00:58:41
however, is that we're different from the animals. We have a brain. We can make moral decisions. Animals do not
00:58:49
understand the meaning of a moral decision. animals is survival is who's stronger, who has the food. We don't
00:58:57
necessarily have to engage in that conflict. And so I would hope that we use the brain that we have to think
00:59:04
through and create a better world. One of the things I heard when I was very young about the universe, and I guess
00:59:12
this was inspired by some theory within physics, was that there are infinite amounts of worlds out there. And I heard
00:59:18
this I heard someone say if the world is infinite that means that there's a someone like me a Steven Bartlett who
00:59:24
has an identical life to me up there somewhere out in the stars who's living
00:59:29
a identical life to mine maybe other than instead of in this cup there's lemonade instead of coffee. This is what
00:59:37
they call is it called the many worlds theory where they think there's theoretically
00:59:41
>> it's a version of the many worlds theory but most many worlds theory simply says
00:59:46
that there's an infinite number of universes and worlds out there none of them necessarily identical to ours but
00:59:54
independent of us that that is a distinct possibility >> but if there's infinite numbers that
00:59:59
means there's one just like this identical to this >> not necessarily you can have an infinite
01:00:04
number of things that don't repeat so in other words >> you necessarily have to have another
01:00:09
civilization that is exactly like ours. You could, but it's not necessary. If
01:00:15
you believe in an infinite universe, >> it's true, I guess. Do you think that's
01:00:19
plausible that there's an infinite number? >> It's possible. When you look at the when
01:00:22
you look at the night sky, you're overwhelmed by the majesty of the night sky and then you realize that
01:00:30
we're nothing but a dot, a dot on this gigantic disc called the Milky Way galaxy. And if this is the Milky Way
01:00:37
galaxy, then here we are thinking that this is the entire universe. This is nothing but a pinpoint on the Milky Way
01:00:45
galaxy. And how many galaxies are there? We're talking about trillions of galaxies that are out there. Each one
01:00:52
containing roughly 100 billion stars. How are we supposed to feel about this? I I did this um star tour um a couple of
01:00:59
months ago in LA where all it was was a guy took me out to a field. not even a field. It was the desert in Joshua Tree
01:01:05
at nighttime. And he just explained how far away all the stars are. And then I looked through a telescope and he was
01:01:11
like, "Okay, this thing you're seeing here is a galaxy and it's a gazillion
01:01:15
miles that way and this one is a galaxy as big as the Milky Way and it's a gazillion miles that way." It made me
01:01:20
feel a lot of things. It made me feel one irrelevant from a cosmic perspective. It also relieves one's
01:01:27
anxiety. If anyone's anxious about this life, you kind of feel like you're not
01:01:31
you don't matter that much. But also, it can make you feel like it doesn't
01:01:34
matter, like there's no point because I think there's a certain ego to humans
01:01:39
where we want to think it really, really, really matters. Now, it might matter to us, but does it actually
01:01:45
matter to the universe? That does our lives matter to the universe? >> Well, I like to think of it slightly
01:01:51
differently. I think on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, there's an alien
01:01:56
>> who's writing the same equation that I'm writing down right now in different
01:01:59
language, in different notations. But he's also discovering string theory. And
01:02:04
there are a lot of galaxies out there, each one with an individual saying, "Gee, I think I discovered something new
01:02:10
about the universe." And these laws are universal. The equations that I'm writing down
01:02:17
right now are identical in different language with equations that they're writing down billions of light years
01:02:24
from us. And that gives me a sense of oneness. It gives me a sense that wow, we're part
01:02:31
of a a fellowship. We're part of a camaraderie. We're on the same quest, a
01:02:37
quest to understand the nature of matter and energy. We're on the same boat. Even
01:02:43
though we're speak different language, even though we're on different sides of
01:02:46
the universe, we're all part of the same club. Don't you think it's plausible
01:02:50
that we're going to destroy ourselves before we we ever figure that answer out
01:02:54
or before we get to meet these aliens? Because the technology we've been able
01:02:58
to create so far like nuclear weapons and even things like AI, you play this forward just on, you know, you talked
01:03:05
about probabilities being the most important thing. The probability that one of these egoomaniacs who has the
01:03:13
launch codes for a nuclear weapon at some point decides that they're unhappy
01:03:17
or they feel threatened is pretty high if you just extend time. I mean, the probability goes up theoretically with
01:03:23
every year that passes that someone is going to do make a mistake that wipes us out. And the more advanced our science
01:03:31
gets, presumably, I mean, again, I'm just theorizing, the higher the probability that we create something
01:03:37
that can destroy ourselves. >> Well, I like to look at it slightly differently. I say to myself, what is
01:03:43
the smallest unit of history? And I say it's the decade. Anything smaller than a decade, you get random
01:03:52
fluctuations, noises, accidents taking place on a decade. But if you look at human history, decade by decade by
01:03:59
decade, you realize that oh my god, just a few decades ago, it was horse and buggy. Before that, we we just uh had
01:04:08
plows. Before that, we were barbarians. And you begin to realize that we've come
01:04:14
a long ways. Not that we hit the end, but we've come a long ways just in the
01:04:19
decade by decade analysis of the history of the human race. >> And we've got closer to being able to
01:04:24
destroy ourselves. >> That that's true, too. Because before we couldn't destroy ourselves. Now, for the
01:04:29
first time in human history, we have the potential of destroying ourselves with designer germs, with nuclear weapons,
01:04:37
with perhaps artificial intelligence. We didn't have that capability before. And
01:04:43
it's only been in the last 80 years or so as a consequence. So I think that first of all it means that every decade
01:04:51
tremendous progress is made. There's no doubt about that. But second we're a
01:04:55
knife's edge. You tilt it the wrong way and there's world war. You tilt it the
01:05:00
other way and there's food and luxury for everyone. And it's up to us to
01:05:07
decide which way the knife will go. But my point is decade by decade we see the enormous progress that we humans have
01:05:17
made. The next question is what about the next few decades? That's a big question mark.
01:05:23
>> Do you think humanity are going to be able to travel out there amongst the
01:05:26
stars and become multilanetary like someone like Elon Musk is um planning? >> Well, I think it's for certain that
01:05:33
we're going to go not just to the moon but to Mars and maybe even beyond that.
01:05:39
Then maybe not in our lifetime but in our grandchildren's lifetime we may break through and visit other planets
01:05:47
within our our solar system. Now to go beyond that would require some sort of warp drive because of the fact that the
01:05:56
nearest star is probably orbiting Alpha Centauri which is 4 and a half light years away from the planet Earth. So you
01:06:06
realize it would take hundreds if not thousands of years to begin the colonization of the nearby star systems.
01:06:14
There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you're
01:06:18
already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please
01:06:23
could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm,
01:06:28
you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button.
01:06:31
Thank you so much. If you could answer any one mystery of the universe, you know, I just I had it down here, the
01:06:39
answer. What What would you seek to answer? Well, it's what I'm seeking for
01:06:43
my entire life. And that is we want that one equation which is the secret of the
01:06:49
universe. We have the electromagnetic force equation that's like half an inch
01:06:54
long. We have the equation for gravity that's also about half an inch long. So
01:07:01
why not the theory of everything maybe an inch long? We're not there yet, but I
01:07:06
think it does exist. And if we were to find it, that would give us an understanding of the entire universe.
01:07:13
And I think we're very close. >> You think we're close? >> I think we're close.
01:07:17
>> What makes you think we're close? >> Because so far the theories that we do
01:07:21
have almost like magic. You look at the history of the equations of physics and you realize they get they get simpler
01:07:28
and simpler and simpler with time. You can write down Newton's equation back
01:07:33
equations the equation for the nuclear force on one sheet of paper. One sheet of paper. The force that governs gravity
01:07:42
we don't have that yet. But we have the other forces and the equations are very
01:07:46
simple. And that's why I think that the final equation will also be simple. One
01:07:51
of the things that uh that sometimes inspires me is that when you look at nature or when you look at something
01:07:56
like the human brain, you see the same patterns as you see when you look up out at the stars. And one of the I mean I'm
01:08:02
so fascinated by the nature of the human brain because it seems to be so so powerful. And it also seems to have
01:08:09
patterns we see in the wider universe. Do you ever think about this about the brain and how astonishing it is as a as
01:08:16
a thing? Well, when I look at the animals, that makes me triply impressed. The fact that animals cannot share in
01:08:24
that, that we see a universe that the animals cannot see. We see patterns. We see meaning. We give rhyme and reason to
01:08:33
what we see. With animals, it's just where's my dinner? >> Do you think the brain is as fascinating
01:08:39
as the universe is fascinating? >> I think the universe is more fascinating. No matter how fast we are
01:08:45
with physics and the mathematics of physics, pure mathematics is still more more profound. You wrote this book
01:08:54
called The Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100?
01:09:01
If I was alive in 2100, based on everything you know about physics, what am I likely to see, experience? How is
01:09:08
life likely to be different in that future? Well, I think we'll probably be on the moon, maybe to Mars, and perhaps
01:09:15
even dream about sending the first space probes. Even beyond that, we're talking
01:09:19
about being able to use artificial intelligence to send probes out there. Of course, we're not
01:09:27
going to go to the stars. That's that's a few hundred years into the future, but
01:09:33
I think that we will begin to to understand the solar system within this century.
01:09:38
And this also means that we'll have artificial intelligence, a cure for cancer, and maybe one will
01:09:45
aid the other. Maybe artificial intelligence will help us to cure cancer and many diseases and longevity. Perhaps
01:09:53
we'll begin the process of solving the immortality crisis. >> Do you think we will be able to live
01:09:58
forever in the near future? >> I think there's a possibility that we may have an indefinite lifespan. I think
01:10:04
that's a possibility. And you think it's possible within the laws of I guess
01:10:09
physics and biology? >> Yes. Um at the end of our chromosomes of every cell, there's something called the
01:10:15
tiemers. And the tieummers are like a clock. They get shorter every time a cell reproduces. And when the tiemer
01:10:23
gets so short, it frays, falls apart, and you die. So we have a time limit. We've also discovered talomeorase, a
01:10:33
chemical that stops the clock. This was incredible when it was first announced that if there's a clock in our body
01:10:40
called the tie that tracks how long we're going to live and there's something called tomease which stops the
01:10:48
clock then can we live forever? Well, that was the good news. Then the bad news was we found out that most of to
01:10:56
our shock cancer also uses tieumirs and tomeorase to live forever. Why does cancer kill you? Because they are
01:11:06
immortal in principle they could they could live forever. And so it means that the secret of immortality is tantalizing
01:11:14
close. We do know that there are cells that make immortality possible but there's a price to pay. The price to pay
01:11:22
is you don't want cancers to also follow you. So here's the trick of the game. We
01:11:28
have a whole bunch of top people in the sciences and medicine looking for ways to extend the human lifespan with the
01:11:36
tie without wakening up the cancers that make cancer possible. One of the uh things you wrote a book about two years
01:11:45
ago in or three years ago now in 2023 and that's when it was published. Um is
01:11:50
this thing here? That's right. What is this? This is the future. This is a quantum computer.
01:12:01
It's a computer that computes not on transistors, which is oldfashioned. It computes on atoms. Think about that. The
01:12:09
ultimate object beyond the transistors that you can compute with is the atom. And how do transistors work? Transistors
01:12:18
can be up or down. Up or down. It's called digital. >> Can you demonstrate that on there? And
01:12:23
this is your other >> Yeah. So, think of this as a cell. And the cell could either be switched on.
01:12:29
>> Yeah. >> Or switched off. If you take a computer and open it up, what do you find?
01:12:33
Switches like this. They're called transistors. transistors that tell you whether it's on or off.
01:12:39
>> Now that's digital. This is the revolution of today. This is the revolution of tomorrow.
01:12:47
Not just up or down of in between. How many states are there between zero and one in principle? An infinite number of
01:12:56
states between zero and one. So this is the basis of a digital computer. Mhm. >> This is the basis of a quantum computer.
01:13:06
Quantum computers are so powerful that even the CIA is worried that one day, perhaps in the future, they'll be so
01:13:14
powerful they'll be able to break into any known digital code. So even the CIA
01:13:20
is worried about the fact that these could become so powerful that they allow you to break into any known computer. So
01:13:29
these are called quantum computers. Why are they powerful? Because they compute not on transistors. They compete on
01:13:35
atoms. And you can't get much smaller than an atom and have stable matter. But
01:13:41
that's what quantum computers can do. And they exist. This is not science fiction. They already exist. So just to
01:13:46
simplify this in a way that I can understand it, normal computers are very very simple like this switch. They they
01:13:52
kind of exist in a linear direction >> up or down on or off >> kind of binary yes or no.
01:13:58
>> That's right. Whereas a quantum computer is more like this where it can it can
01:14:02
process information in so many different directions at the same time so that it's
01:14:06
going to be way more powerful >> way more powerful way down >> and I was looking recently and Google um
01:14:14
did an announcement not actually this year where they basically set a deadline for the cyber security world and they
01:14:20
started to warn governments and banks and other tech giants that because they have a quantum computer now that is very
01:14:27
very powerful They're worried that it will be able to crack a lot of the digital worlds that
01:14:32
we all rely on, including banks, even Bitcoin, which was quite interesting. And they've set 2029
01:14:39
as the the deadline for everybody to get their together. This is a massive threat to things like Bitcoin, which is
01:14:45
Bitcoin is essentially secured by a equation that they believe quantum computers are going to be able to very
01:14:53
easily crack. And if they do that, then everyone's Bitcoin, for example, is um
01:14:58
is at jeopardy. But beyond Bitcoin, what does the world look like in a world where we have these incredible
01:15:03
computers? Well, first of all, who's doing this work? And it turns out the CIA is following this work very
01:15:12
carefully because with this, you'll be able to crack any code. Why is it that a
01:15:17
thief cannot steal your bank account today? is because that thief does not have your digital code. If a thief had
01:15:25
your digital code, there goes your life savings out the window. Capitalism would
01:15:29
vanish. Society would would come to a halt. There'd be civil war. It'd be all
01:15:35
sorts of chaos taking place. But codes are there not to be broken. To break a code, you have to have another code. And
01:15:44
so the CIA and other organizations create these very complicated codes that you have to master. Quantum computers
01:15:53
can do it, but we're not there yet. But it's coming. I don't know when. Some
01:15:59
people say in a few decades. Some people say sooner. I don't know. I just know
01:16:04
that the world is gambling that we'll find a way to stop quantum computers from breaking into digital computers.
01:16:14
>> You've been working on physics for the last what we said what 71 years as a
01:16:20
kid. I I was reading about how you started making your own atom smasher. I guess you'd call it a particle collider
01:16:28
machine. >> That's right. When I was in high school. That's a very strange thing for a high
01:16:33
school kid to be doing. >> Well, I was fascinated by the work of Einstein and the work of people working
01:16:40
on subatomic particles and I got interested in antimatter. >> Antimatter. >> Antimatter is the opposite of matter.
01:16:47
When I combine matter and antimatter, I get a bomb. So, you have to be very careful that you don't marry matter with
01:16:54
antimatter. And antimatter behaves the opposite of ordinary matter. If ordinary matter goes clockwise in magnetic field,
01:17:02
antimatter goes counterclockwise in that same magnetic field. And so as a science
01:17:07
project, I wanted to photograph the tracks of antimatter. So I got hundreds of miles of copper wire, built a cloud
01:17:16
chamber, and I was able to prove that I could photograph the tracks of antimatter. And for that, I won grand
01:17:24
prize at the San Francisco Science Fair. And that began my my career. Just before
01:17:29
I graduated from high school, I decided to top that by creating an atom smasher at 2.3 million electron volt betatron
01:17:38
particle accelerator. It consumed 6 kilowatts of power. Everything that my mother's house had,
01:17:45
it would absorb. And that was the goal to build a machine that would create my own beam of antimatter. So I got started
01:17:53
very early. And I said to myself, this is for me. This is what I want to do for a living.
01:17:59
>> Every time I've tried to improve something in my life, like my businesses, my health, my relationships,
01:18:03
I've noticed that the biggest shifts have come from being better informed. And when it comes to our health, most of
01:18:08
us know very, very little. So when our team was approached about partnering with function health, it felt very much
01:18:14
aligned. Their team has developed a way of giving you a full 360 degree view of your health, many of the things that are
01:18:19
going on in your body in the form of different tests. You do one blood draw and it gives you access to over 160 lab
01:18:26
results. Hormones, heart health, inflammation, stress, toxins, the whole picture. I use it and so have many of my
01:18:33
team members. >> You sign up and you schedule your test and once you're done, you get a little
01:18:36
report like the one I have here. I can see my inrange results, my out of range results, and there's a little AI
01:18:42
function, too. So, if I have any questions about my out of range results, I can just go in there and ask it any
01:18:47
question I want. And these tests are backed by doctors and thousands of hours of research. It's $365 for a yearly
01:18:53
membership. Go to functionhealth.com/doac and use the code DOAC25 for $25 off your membership. I've done
01:19:03
almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. And one of the things you learn which is
01:19:08
unexpected is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting
01:19:12
here for 2 three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do
01:19:19
is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions
01:19:24
from the diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name
01:19:30
of the person that wrote it. So, you can sit at home as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people
01:19:36
in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the diio conversation cards and it
01:19:41
is incredible what happens. These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect
01:19:46
your partner more. These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond
01:19:49
your team together. And I have to say they're also great for families that want to learn more about each other and
01:19:54
that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog environment connecting human to human.
01:20:01
It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to the diary.com
01:20:08
and you can get these conversation cards right now. Is there anything you discovered through your work in physics
01:20:14
that changed your daytoday behavior and life? How you treat people, how you show
01:20:19
up, what you think matters? >> No, but the one thing that did change my attitude toward life, other people was
01:20:28
being in the army. Yeah, that was a game changer that changed everything I knew or which I thought I knew. Before then,
01:20:35
I was single-mindedly focused on physics. Just physics. do physics. Well, that was my life. But after seeing
01:20:44
warfare up close, I began to realize there's more to life than warfare. I think I asked this in part because last
01:20:51
time I spoke to a physicist and he talked to me about how the nature of reality is not what I think it is and
01:20:57
that there's multiple, I guess, dimensions and that I'm only seeing a fraction of what is real. Um, which I
01:21:04
think all physicists agree upon. It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory or something, but actually logically it
01:21:08
makes a lot of sense to only see what you need to see to survive. And actually, >> when you see your conception of the
01:21:14
threedimensional world is only the tiniest sliver of actually exists. >> And when I heard that, it made me
01:21:22
openminded to a lot of the things I thought were conspiracy nonsense. It made me
01:21:29
open-minded to ghosts. Maybe ghosts are real. >> Well, I wouldn't go that far. Well, you
01:21:34
know, maybe another dimension where there's another there's spirits that can
01:21:38
see me, but I can't see them. >> Well, there could be other such dimensions. That's within the realm of
01:21:44
possibility. >> What do you think happens when we die? Do you think do you think that's it? Or
01:21:48
do you think there are there's a possibility that there's ghosts and that
01:21:52
our spirit, our soul goes somewhere? >> I don't see it happening because your
01:21:57
brain, your personality, your thoughts are electrical. And when you die, the electricity turns off. There's nothing
01:22:05
propelling thinking anymore. Thinking requires a lot of energy. Even ghosts, if ghosts exist, they would still
01:22:11
require a lot of energy to keep the thoughts going. But that's why I don't
01:22:15
believe in ghosts because I don't see an energy source that propels the ghosts.
01:22:20
People talk a lot about spirituality. They talk about, you know, things like chakras and a lot of spiritual people
01:22:26
talk about vibrations. It's a phrase that I often hear in the spiritual communities. Do you believe in anything
01:22:32
like that in terms of humans having energies and being able to feel each other's energies?
01:22:39
>> Well, I think that if a person emanates a certain aura or a vibe, that doesn't
01:22:45
necessarily mean they're radiating something. >> But is there any physics behind that
01:22:48
idea? >> I think it's psychological that you are tuned tuned into a certain personality,
01:22:55
a certain way of movement. I think it's psychological rather than physical. >> What is what is something you believe
01:23:02
that you haven't proven? >> Well, there's a lot of things that haven't been proven. All I can say is
01:23:07
maybe, maybe not. Like flying saucers. I don't say they don't exist or they
01:23:11
exist. I say maybe. I just haven't seen concrete evidence for them. That's all.
01:23:16
So, there's a lot of things that I'm not going to definitely say no. Like ghosts.
01:23:21
I don't think they are ghosts, but I can't prove it. Maybe there is some afterlife of some
01:23:26
sort, but it does go against what is measurable. We've seen no measurement of
01:23:32
somebody that has been able to pick up vibrations from a ghost. >> How would you like to be remembered
01:23:39
someday long after you're gone? Do you care about being remembered? Do you care
01:23:43
about legacy? >> Well, I care about leading a good life that I feel comfortable with.
01:23:48
>> Mhm. And if you if your books and your teachings and your lectures, if they
01:23:55
live on beyond you, that's a bonus. It means that you had an impact. It means
01:24:00
you touched people. You touched people's lives with ideas. And when I go down the
01:24:05
street, quite a few people come up to me and they say, "I saw you on this show. I
01:24:09
saw you on that show." And that gives me a nice feeling. Of course, after I'm
01:24:14
gone, there's no no nothing to feel. But while you're still alive, it gives you a
01:24:18
nice feeling know that you've had an impact, knowing that you've changed
01:24:22
somebody's life. Several people have come up to me and said, "I became a
01:24:26
physicist because of you." So that's uh a nice nice way to view reality that you
01:24:33
touch people. Is there is there anything that you used to think was a conspiracy theory that
01:24:40
you now know to be true? >> Well, I like to debunk. So as soon as someone says something outlandish, I say
01:24:46
to myself, sure, sure. >> But that's what I mean, like you've, you
01:24:50
know, you're a debunker. So at some some stage in your life, you must have had
01:24:54
the experience of thinking something can't be true and being proven wrong. >> Usually when I make predictions, they
01:25:01
come out to be true. Maybe the timeline is a little bit exaggerated, but they turn out to be true. So I haven't made
01:25:07
any predictions or observations that were later shown to be false. What predictions are you making now then
01:25:13
about the the nature of reality in the future? >> Well, I talk about the nature of string
01:25:18
theory in the future, whether or not we really will have a theory of everything.
01:25:22
Flying saucers, I talk about the fact that even though we have no evidence today, you know, there's a mountain of
01:25:28
these things being declassified. Now, maybe we'll pick up shreds of evidence.
01:25:32
>> Did you look at the declassified information that Trump released on UFOs?
01:25:35
>> Yeah, I've looked at the whole the whole batch 160 or so sightings. Was there
01:25:40
anything in there that was compelling to you? >> No, just lights dancing in the sky
01:25:44
without any commentary. So, you don't know what they are. >> But they could be extraterrestrial,
01:25:50
but you see, these things are two-dimensional. They're taken by a camera, which is flattens the image.
01:25:57
>> Therefore, to judge distance is very tricky. Do you believe that you're looking at
01:26:04
extraterrestrial life forms when you watch these videos of your >> I'm open to the idea. I don't think
01:26:10
there's any smoking gun yet. I'm open to the idea that these are extraterrestrial.
01:26:14
>> You see some of them going up and then down and then into the ocean and coming
01:26:17
back up again. Do when you watch that, do you think these are aliens or do you just think it's people that have
01:26:22
misunderstood what they're looking at? >> I leave open the probability that it
01:26:26
could be one or the other. There's no aha moment where I say that it's nothing
01:26:31
but reflection. It's nothing but an optical illusion. There's no aha moment.
01:26:36
If you had to bet everything you love and cherish on either side of the fence that non-human life had made contact
01:26:45
with the earth at some point in some form or not, which side would you place everything you love and care about on?
01:26:52
Yes, aliens have made contact with the earth in some form or no? Well, I would have to say I don't know
01:26:58
>> if you but if you had to >> I know it's a copout. No, >> but you know as if everything on the was
01:27:03
on the line, one would have to move yet to yes or no. And I would personally I would personally probably say
01:27:13
probably no. If you made me bet everything, >> I'd say maybe yes. >> You'd say yes.
01:27:18
>> But no, no, no, no. Maybe yes. Very important. The word maybe. I'm a I'm a
01:27:22
scientist and somebody's going to use that against me by saying you said on television that this and this is true.
01:27:28
No, I said maybe. That doesn't mean it actually is true. It just means I open
01:27:33
the possibility that it's true. But if you were held at gunpoint, doctor, and
01:27:37
at gunpoint they said right, you've got to say yes or no. And if you're right or
01:27:43
wrong, that determines your fate. >> I would have to say maybe. I know what
01:27:51
you're getting at. You want to like, you know, corner the fox, right? >> Yeah. Well, to some degree, yeah, I'm
01:27:56
trying to corner the fox. Um, but I'm but I'm doing it to understand where
01:28:00
your intuition or your your bias lands because >> I see there's not enough conclusive
01:28:07
evidence. There's no aha moment. I just see a lot of may. >> A lot of may. H Yeah, I think I I mean,
01:28:15
I think that's probably the intellectually honest answer is maybe. Um, but if I was forced to fall on one
01:28:21
side of the fence, I'd I'd probably say no because I don't have enough conviction
01:28:28
to say yes. I see no evidence to say yes other than, you know, some sightings of
01:28:32
some things, but I'm open-minded. Maybe it'll change. Um, doctor, we have a
01:28:38
closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the
01:28:41
next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you in my diary is,
01:28:48
what is the best strategy to deal with failure? I think the best strategy to deal with
01:28:56
failure is try it again. I think on the first try, you're bound to make mistakes because it's a learning
01:29:03
curve. And that learning curve is is instructive. It teaches you. It teaches you to try it again, but make a slight
01:29:11
change. make a slight change and hope that change is in the right direction. If not, make another change and see
01:29:18
whether that puts you in the right direction. >> If you could um go back to when you were
01:29:22
that seven-year-old kid that was just getting into physics and 8 >> year old 8-year-old
01:29:26
>> and give him any advice that would best serve him for the next 70 years. What
01:29:31
advice would you have given him? >> I'd say carry on. I've made a lot of
01:29:37
decisions that I feel good about, decisions that made me a better person. For example, when I went into the army,
01:29:45
at that point, I thought, what could be worse than facing death on the battlefield to die on some unnamed hill
01:29:52
in some unnamed land? And then I began to realize, well, yeah, that's a possibility, but there's another
01:29:58
possibility that you may survive, that you may learn from that experience. If you're not here to learn, okay, so be
01:30:05
it. But if you are here to learn, you gain wisdom by being in the military. And that I think is a positive thing.
01:30:14
>> We we were talking about UFOs and alien life. Um, at the start of this conversation, and one of the questions
01:30:19
that's adjacent to it is if alien life were to come here at some point, do you
01:30:25
think they would have empathy for us or do you think that's potentially a human
01:30:30
trait? Do you think they, you know, because in the movies they attack us? >> Well, if I were to shoot in the dark,
01:30:34
I'd say first of all, they're robotic. They're not organic at all. >> Really,
01:30:39
>> because they exhibit maneuvers that would crush the bones of any any living
01:30:44
creature that we know of. These flying saucers can zigzag. They can dive from 70,000 ft all the way down. They can
01:30:52
dive underwater. These require skills and tensions and vibrations that would crack any known US device in half. And
01:31:03
there they are executing these things. Either they're fake or they're extraterrestrial.
01:31:09
So I think that they have a technology that we can only dream of. >> So when we're looking at these UAP
01:31:15
images and videos, if they are to be real, then you're saying there's no life
01:31:19
in them at all and it's actually just machine intelligence. That's right. In
01:31:24
fact, that's probably one reason why they don't come out and greet us like in
01:31:27
the movies. In the movies, they always come out and say, "Hello, Earth man."
01:31:32
No, I personally think they're robotic. >> This question of empathy, do you posit
01:31:36
that they might be empathetic? Do you do you posit they would want to destroy us?
01:31:39
I mean, what would >> Will they destroy us or will they want to? The answer, I think, is no because
01:31:44
they could have done it years ago. You realize that if you go back, even the Bible makes reference to a UFO. If you
01:31:52
take a look at Ezekiel, Ezekiel saw the wheel in the sky. And some people say there was no wheel. That
01:31:59
was a UFO. So, who knows for sure. But if the aliens really wanted to destroy us, they
01:32:07
could have done it years ago. They don't have to wait. But if you go to a zoo,
01:32:13
even if the zoo is lifelike to the point where the animals themselves don't even
01:32:18
know they're in a zoo, it's peaceful that you can observe them without necessarily uh revealing your presence.
01:32:26
And in that sense, it could be like living in a zoo. Not that they want to gawk at us and laugh at us, but just
01:32:32
observe us. >> So you think that they will be they won't want to destroy us, which is
01:32:38
comforting to hear. I think if they had the chance to destroy us and they wanted
01:32:42
to, they could have done it decades ago, but here we are. >> It's an interesting idea when you talked
01:32:50
about um this extraterrestrial life potentially being robotic. It does my It kind of makes sense to me because we're
01:32:57
on a course to create humanoid robots and robots that um can I was actually watching this morning. There's a video
01:33:03
that one of these humanoid robot companies is streaming and it's they're
01:33:07
streaming a humanoid robot working on a production line for 4 hours straight so everybody can watch and all it's doing
01:33:12
is sorting packages out but it's been going for 4 days straight and if you play this forward you go this robot can
01:33:18
go walk across the office and it can charge itself back up once it runs out of battery and then they show it going
01:33:24
back to work again when I say play it forward I mean imagine this technology continues to improve on the trajectory
01:33:29
it's on the battery technology gets better the intelligence gets But uh and then theoretically this robot will be
01:33:36
able to build a spaceship theoretically and travel into the universe theoretically at some point if you
01:33:43
imagine any rate of improvement. So it's the theoretical that okay humans might
01:33:47
not be able to survive the crushing forces of that speed but a robot could. >> My personal attitude is that we should
01:33:53
eventually merge with them. >> Merge with the robots. >> That's right. That's my personal feeling
01:33:59
because people talk about whether they're good, whether they're bad. so on
01:34:02
and so forth. Well, the bottom line is they're going to become more powerful.
01:34:06
And not now, but who knows, maybe in the next century, they'll begin to make
01:34:11
reasonable choices. They'll reason. They'll plot future histories. And at
01:34:17
that point, they could be potentially dangerous. So, what do we do? Either we become
01:34:23
super powerful and meet the challenge or we merge with them. >> When you say merge with them, what do
01:34:30
you mean? >> Become like that. become part robotic oursel, become superhuman.
01:34:34
>> As in when we're born as kids, maybe we have an implant and it makes us turns us
01:34:39
into a robot or >> Yeah. In other words, we are still looking the same except we have
01:34:45
superhuman abilities and our brain is connected either directly or by remote control to a central nervous system that
01:34:52
does the calculations and performs these calculations much better than we can and
01:34:59
um we become superhuman. This is the uh the video that I'm talking about. This
01:35:02
is actually a live video. So, this is live as we're watching. >> What they've got is they've got a human
01:35:08
being here who's sorting the packages and they've got they've got the humanoid
01:35:13
robot here >> and they're just counting how many packages each of them can sort.
01:35:19
>> Mhm. >> And this robot has been doing this for 4 days straight. >> Yeah.
01:35:24
Anyway, you play this forward and it asks a big question about the future of humanity when there's humanoid robots
01:35:31
that >> Well, I think menial jobs will go out the window like this. Jobs that are
01:35:36
repetitive, jobs that just require your arms and legs, those jobs will be gradually phased out and new jobs will
01:35:45
open up. New jobs that require thinking, human relations, organizing, directing other
01:35:52
people. Robots can't do any of that stuff. Robots simply do what they're
01:35:56
told to do repetitively. Okay? We make decisions. We know how to interface with other things. We plot. We plan. Robots
01:36:06
can't do that. Now, that doesn't mean they can't eventually, but it just means
01:36:10
that the next step beyond this will be robots that can do a little bit of mental work. And it means that we have
01:36:16
to retrain the workforce so that they can become uh masters of the robots. In other words, we are masters of tools,
01:36:25
hammers, saws, whatever. We're the master of them. They're not the master
01:36:29
of us. Okay? We tell the hammer and the and the chisel what to do because we lord over them.
01:36:36
>> Have you used AI agents before? >> I've used AI before, but not necessarily
01:36:40
which which agent are you talking about? >> So, I've got like on my phone, I can
01:36:43
say, I need a new umbrella for my patio outside my house. >> Yeah. >> And it will go on the internet. It will
01:36:49
look at the prices. It will look at everything. It >> Yeah. Well, I can just type on the
01:36:52
computer screen a question >> and the computer will come up with an answer.
01:36:57
>> But you you were talking about planning there. So, I was saying that the agent
01:37:00
basically makes a plan and then it spends a couple of it could spend an hour executing that plan.
01:37:05
>> Oh, you mean not just coming up with the plan, but actually executing the plan.
01:37:09
>> It can do both. But I'm just saying you were talking about how um humans have
01:37:12
this, you know, this ability to make decisions. I'm saying that the AI agent
01:37:17
is making decisions like a human would. No, you tell them what to do. The computer is probably programmed to look
01:37:23
for a reference like an encyclopedia, a handbook, the internet. In other words, if you say, "I want to know the best
01:37:30
car," it'll carry that out by looking at the internet going through different
01:37:35
cars, it doesn't need you to tell it that. But if you were to ask something more complicated, go to the supermarket
01:37:42
and buy me some eggs. No robot can do that. >> Have you been to LA? Cuz if you're in
01:37:47
LA, there's all these robots strolling around the streets delivering food. They
01:37:51
deliver food in LA. >> Oh, yeah. But that's just crawling on a sidewalk.
01:37:55
>> That's what That's what humans do. >> I thought you meant driving a car.
01:37:58
Driving a car and going up the stairs and whatever. That's just going on a sidewalk,
01:38:03
>> which is what human does. >> Yeah, but humans can do a lot more. >> Okay. Thank you so much, doctor. I
01:38:10
appreciate your time today. And I've learned so much about all of these fascinating things. And as always when I
01:38:15
listen to your content, I find myself more curious about the nature of reality. And I realize how little we
01:38:20
know, which makes me and I guess thousands of other people that have followed your work cuz I was going
01:38:24
through your videos earlier on and so many of the top comments are people saying that you're the reason they
01:38:30
worked harder in their physics classes. >> Oh, really? >> Yeah. I was on a couple of the podcasts
01:38:35
that you've been on and so many of the top comments say exactly that. They say,
01:38:37
"You're the reason I worked harder. You're the person that made me more
01:38:40
curious." And I just think that's such a wonderful thing because as you said at
01:38:42
the start, physics is the basis of everything. >> Yeah. >> And uh the more we understand, the
01:38:48
better the lives we could live, >> right? >> Thank you so much. >> Okay. Well, thank you.
01:38:54
>> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you
01:38:58
would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the
01:39:05
perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check
01:39:09
this video out and I bet you you might love it.