vtt/episode_016_small.vtt

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 The following is a conversation with Eric Weinstein.

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 He's a mathematician, economist, physicist, and the managing director of Teal Capital.

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 He coined the term, and you can say, is the founder of the intellectual dark web,

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 which is a loosely assembled group of public intellectuals that include Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson,

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 Steven Pinker, Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, and a few others.

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 This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast at MIT and beyond.

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 If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, iTunes, or simply connect with me on Twitter

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 at Lex Friedman, spelled F R I D.

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 And now here's my conversation with Eric Weinstein.

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 Are you nervous about this?

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 Scared shitless.

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 Okay.

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 You must be crazy.

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 You mentioned Kung Fu Panda as one of your favorite movies.

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 It has the usual profound master student dynamic going on.

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 So who has been a teacher that significantly influenced the direction of your thinking and life's work?

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 So if you're the Kung Fu Panda, who was your Shifu?

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 Oh, that's interesting because I didn't see Shifu as being the teacher.

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 Who was the teacher?

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 Uwe, master Uwe, the turtle.

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 Oh, the turtle.

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 Right.

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 They only meet twice in the entire film.

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 And the first conversation sort of doesn't count.

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 So the magic of the film, in fact, its point is that the teaching that really matters is

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 transferred during a single conversation.

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 And it's very brief.

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 And so who played that role in my life?

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 I would say either my grandfather, Harry Rubin, and his wife, Sophie Rubin, my grandmother,

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 or Tom Larrer.

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 Tom Larrer?

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 Yeah.

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 In which way?

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 If you give a child Tom Larrer records, what you do is you destroy their ability to be

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 taken over by later malware.

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 And it's so irreverent, so witty, so clever, so obscene that it destroys the ability to

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 lead a normal life for many people.

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 So if I meet somebody who's usually really shifted from any kind of neurotypical presentation,

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 I'll often ask them, are you a Tom Larrer fan?

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 And the odds that they will respond are quite high.

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 Now, Tom Larrer is poisoning pigeons in the park, Tom Larrer?

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 That's very interesting.

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 There's a small number of Tom Larrer songs that broke into the general population.

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 Poisoning pigeons in the park, the element song, and perhaps the Vatican rag.

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 So when you meet somebody who knows those songs but doesn't know...

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 Oh, you're judging me right now, aren't you?

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 Harshly.

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 No, but you're a Russian.

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 So undoubtedly you know Nikolay Ivanovich Lubachevsky, that song.

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 So that was a song about plagiarism that was in fact plagiarized, which most people don't

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 know from Danny Kaye, where Danny Kaye did a song called Stanislavsky of the Musky Arts.

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 And so Tom Larrer did this brilliant job of plagiarizing a song about and making it about

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 plagiarism and then making it about this mathematician who worked in non Euclidean geometry.

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 That was like giving heroin to a child.

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 It was extremely addictive and eventually led me to a lot of different places, one of

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 which may have been a PhD in mathematics.

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 And he was also at least a lecturer in mathematics, I believe, at Harvard, something like that.

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 I just had dinner with him, in fact.

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 When my son turned 13, we didn't tell him, but his bar mitzvah present was dinner with

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 his hero Tom Larrer.

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 And Tom Larrer was 88 years old, sharp as a tack, irreverent and funny as hell.

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 And just, you know, there are very few people in this world that you have to meet while

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 they're still here.

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 And that was definitely one for our family.

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 So that wit is a reflection of intelligence in some kind of deep way, like where that

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 would be a good test of intelligence, whether you're a Tom Larrer fan.

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 So what do you think that is about wit, about that kind of humor, ability to see the absurdity

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 in existence?

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 Do you think that's connected to intelligence, or are we just two Jews on a mic that appreciate

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 that kind of humor?

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 No, I think that it's absolutely connected to intelligence.

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 So you can see it.

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 There's a place where Tom Larrer decides that he's going to lampoon Gilbert of Gilbert

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 and Sullivan, and he's going to outdo Gilbert with clever, meaningless wordplay.

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 And he has, forget the, well, let's see, he's doing Clementine as if Gilbert and Sullivan

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 wrote it.

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 That I missed her depress her young sister, name is to this Mr. Depester, she tried pestering

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 sisters of festering blister, you best to resist or say, I, the sister persisted, the

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 Mr. resisted.

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 I kissed her all loyalty slip when he said, when she said I could have her, her sisters

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 could ever must surely have turned in its crypt.

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 That's so dense.

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 It's so insane that that's clearly intelligence, because it's hard to construct something like

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 that.

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 If I look at my favorite Tom Larrer, Tom Larrer lyric, you know, there's a perfectly absurd

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 one, which is once all the Germans were warlike and mean, but that couldn't happen again.

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 We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then, right?

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 That is a different kind of intelligence.

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 You know, you're taking something that is so horrific, and you're, you're sort of making

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 it palatable and funny and demonstrating also just your humanity.

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 I mean, I think the thing that came through as, as Tom Larrer wrote all of these terrible,

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 horrible lines was just what a sensitive and beautiful soul he was who was channeling

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 pain through humor and through grace.

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 I've seen throughout Europe, throughout Russia, that same kind of humor emerged from the generation

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 of World War II.

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 It seemed like that humor is required to somehow deal with the pain and the suffering of that

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 war created.

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 You do need the environment to create the broad Slavic soul.

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 I don't think that many Americans really appreciate Russian humor.

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 How you had to joke during the time of, let's say, Article 58 under Stalin, you had to be

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 very, very careful, you know, that the concept of a Russian satirical magazine like Crocodile

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 doesn't make sense.

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 So you have this cross cultural problem that there are certain areas of human experience

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 that it would be better to know nothing about.

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 And quite unfortunately, Eastern Europe knows a great deal about them, which makes the,

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 you know, the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky so potent, the, you know, the prose of Pushkin,

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 whatever it is, you have to appreciate the depth of the Eastern European experience.

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 And I would think that perhaps Americans knew something like this around the time of the

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 Civil War or maybe, you know, under slavery in Jim Crow or even the harsh tyranny of the

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 coal and steel employers during the labor wars.

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 But in general, I would say it's hard for us to understand and imagine the collective

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 culture unless we have the system of selective pressures that, for example, Russians were

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 subjected to.

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 Yeah.

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 So if there is one good thing that comes out of war, it's literature, art, and humor,

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 music.

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 Oh, I don't think so.

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 I think almost everything is good about war except for death and destruction.

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 Right.

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 Without the death, it would bring the romance of it.

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 The whole thing is nice.

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 This is why we're always caught up in war and we have this very ambiguous relationship

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 to it is that it makes life real and pressing and meaningful and at an unacceptable price

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 and the price has never been higher.

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 So just jump into AI a little bit.

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 You, in one of the conversations you had or one of the videos, you described that one

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 of the things AI systems can't do and biological systems can self replicate in the physical

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 world.

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 Oh, no, no, no.

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 In the physical world.

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 Well, yes, the physical robots can self replicate.

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 But this is a very tricky point, which is that the only thing that we've been able to

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 create that's really complex that has an analog of our reproductive system is software.

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 But nevertheless, software replicates itself if we're speaking strictly for the replication

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 in this kind of digital space.

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 So let me just to begin, let me ask you a question.

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 Do you see a protective barrier or a gap between the physical world and the digital world?

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 Let's not call it digital.

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 Let's call it the logical world versus the physical world.

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 Why logical?

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 Well, because even though we had, let's say, Einstein's brain preserved, it was meaningless

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 to us as a physical object because we couldn't do anything with what was stored in it at

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 a logical level.

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 And so the idea that something may be stored logically and that it may be stored physically

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 are not necessarily, we don't always benefit from synonymizing.

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 I'm not suggesting that there isn't a material basis to the logical world, but that it does

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 warrant identification with a separate layer that need not invoke logic gates and zeros

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 and ones.

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 And so connecting those two worlds, the logical world and the physical world, or maybe just

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 connecting to the logical world inside our brain, Einstein's brain, you mentioned the

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 idea of out intelligence.

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 Artificial out intelligence.

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 Artificial out intelligence.

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 Yes.

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 The essay that John Brockman ever invited me to write that he refused to publish in Edge.

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 Why?

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 Well, maybe it wasn't, it wasn't well written, but I don't know.

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 The idea is quite compelling, it's quite unique and new, and for these from my view of a stance

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 point, maybe you can explain it.

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 Sure.

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 What I was thinking about is why it is that we're waiting to be terrified by artificial

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 general intelligence when in fact, artificial life is terrifying in and of itself and it's

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 already here.

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 So in order to have a system of selective pressures, you need three distinct elements.

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 You need variation within a population.

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 You need heritability and you need differential success.

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 So what's really unique, and I've made this point, I think, elsewhere, about software

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 is that if you think about what humans know how to build, that's impressive.

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 So I always take a car and I say, does it have an analog of each of the physical physiological

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 systems?

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 Does it have a skeletal structure?

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 That's its frame.

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 Does it have a neurological structure?

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 It has an onboard computer, it has a digestive system.

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 And one thing it doesn't have is a reproductive system.

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 But if you can call spawn on a process, effectively, you do have a reproductive system.

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 And that means that you can create something with variation, heritability, and differential

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 success.

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 Now, the next step in the chain of thinking was where do we see inanimate, nonintelligent

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 life, outwitting intelligent life?

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 And I have two favorite systems and I try to stay on them so that we don't get distracted.

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 One of which is the ophry's orchid subspecies or subclade, I don't know what to call it.

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 Is it a type of flower?

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 Yeah, it's a type of flower that mimics the female of a pollinator species in order to

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 dupe the males into engaging, it was called pseudo copulation with the fake female, which

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 is usually represented by the lowest petal.

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 And there's also a pheromone component to fool the males into thinking they have a mating

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 opportunity.

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 But the flower doesn't have to give up energy in the form of nectar as a lure because it's

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 tricking the males.

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 The other system is a particular species of muscle, lampacillus in the clear streams of

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 Missouri, and it fools bass into biting a fleshy lip that contain its young.

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 And when the bass see this fleshy lip, which looks exactly like a species of fish that

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 the bass like to eat, the young explode and clamp onto the gills and parasitize the bass

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 and also lose the bass to redistribute them as they eventually release.

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 Both of these systems, you have a highly intelligent dupe being fooled by a lower life form.

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 And what is sculpting these convincing lures?

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 It's the intelligence of previously duped targets for these strategies.

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 So when the target is smart enough to avoid the strategy, those weaker mimics fall off.

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 They have terminal lines and only the better ones survive.

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 So it's an arms race between the target species that is being parasitized, getting smarter

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 and this other less intelligent or non intelligent object getting as if smarter.

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 And so what you see is that artificial general intelligence is not needed to parasitize us.

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 It's simply sufficient for us to outwit ourselves.

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 So you could have a program, let's say, you know, one of these Nigerian scams that writes

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 letters and uses whoever sends it Bitcoin to figure out which aspects of the program should

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 be kept, which should be varied and thrown away.

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 And you don't need it to be in any way intelligent in order to have a really nightmarish scenario

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 of being parasitized by something that has no idea what it's doing.

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 So you phrased a few concepts really eloquently.

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 So let me try to, as a few directions, this goes.

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 So one, first of all, in the way we write software today, it's not common that we allow

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 it to self modify, but we do have that ability now, we have the ability, it's just not common.

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 It's not just common.

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 So, so your, your thought is that that is a serious worry.

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 If there becomes a self modifying code is available now.

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 So there's different types of self modification, right?

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 There's personalization, you know, your email app, your Gmail is self modifying to you after

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 you log in or whatever you can think of it that way.

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 But ultimately central all the information is centralized, but you're thinking of ideas

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 where you're completely self, this is a unique entity operating under selective pressures

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 and it changes.

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 Well, you just, if you think about the fact that our immune systems don't know what's

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 coming at them next, but they have a small set of spanning components.

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 And if it's, if it's a sufficiently expressive system in that any shape or binding region

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 can be approximated with, with the Lego that is present, then you can have confidence that

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 you don't need to know what's coming at you because the combinatorics are sufficient to

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 reach any configuration needed.

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 So that's a beautiful thing.

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 Well, terrifying thing to worry about because it's so within our reach.

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 Whatever I suggest these things, I do always have a concern as to whether or not I will

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 bring them into being by talking about them.

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 So there's this thing from open AI.

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 So next week to talk to the founder of open AI, this idea that their text generation,

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 the new, the new stuff they have for generating text is they didn't want to bring it.

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 They didn't want to release it because they're worried about the, I'm delighted to hear that,

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 but they're going to end up releasing.

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 Yes.

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 So that's the thing.

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 The thing about it, well, at least from my end, I'm more a proponent of technology preventing

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 tech, so further innovation preventing the detrimental effects of innovation.

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 Well, we're, we're sort of tumbling down a hill at accelerating speed.

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 So whether or not we're proponents or it doesn't, it doesn't really matter.

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 It may not matter, but I, well, I do feel that there are people who've held things back

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 and you know, died poorer than they might have otherwise been.

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 We don't even know their names.

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 I don't think that we should discount the idea that having the smartest people showing

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 off how smart they are by what they've developed may be a terminal process.

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 I'm very mindful in particular of a beautiful letter that Edward Teller of all people wrote

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 to Leo Zillard, whereas Zillard was trying to figure out how to control the use of atomic

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 weaponry at the end of World War II and Teller rather strangely, because many of us view him

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 as a monster, showed some very advanced moral thinking talking about the slim chance we

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 have for survival and that the only hope is to make war unthinkable.

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 I do think that not enough of us feel in our gut what it is we are playing with when we

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 are working on technical problems, and I would recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it a movie

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 called The Bridge on the River Kwai about, I believe, captured British POWs who just

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 in a desire to do a bridge well, end up over collaborating with their Japanese captors.

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 Well, now you're making me question the unrestricted open discussion of ideas in AI.

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 I'm not saying.

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 I know the answer.

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 I'm saying that I could make a decent case for either our need to talk about this and

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 to become technologically focused on containing it or our need to stop talking about this

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 and try to hope that the relatively small number of highly adept individuals who are

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 looking at these problems is small enough that we should, in fact, be talking about

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 how to contain them.

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 Well, the way ideas, the way innovation happens, what new ideas develop Newton with calculus,

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 whether if he was silent, the idea would emerge elsewhere, in the case of Newton, of course,

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 but in the case of AI, how small is the set of individuals out of which such ideas would

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 arise?

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 Well, the idea is that the researchers we know and those that we don't know who may

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 live in countries that don't wish us to know what level they're currently at are very disciplined

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 in keeping these things to themselves.

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 Of course, I will point out that there is a religious school in Kerala that developed

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 something very close to the calculus, certainly in terms of infinite series in, I guess, religious

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 prayer and rhyme and prose.

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 So it's not that Newton had any ability to hold that back, and I don't really believe

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 that we have an ability to hold it back.

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 I do think that we could change the proportion of the time we spend worrying about the effects

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 of what if we are successful, rather than simply trying to succeed and hope that we'll

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 be able to contain things later.

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 Beautifully put.

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 So on the idea of intelligence, what form, treading cautiously as we've agreed as we

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 tumbled down the hill, what form?

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 Can't stop ourselves, can't we?

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 We cannot.

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 What form do you see it taking?

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 So one example, Facebook, Google, do want to, I don't know a better word, you want to

20:52.040 --> 20:59.560
 influence users to behave a certain way, and so that's one kind of example of our intelligence

20:59.560 --> 21:05.920
 is systems perhaps modifying the behavior of these intelligent human beings in order

21:05.920 --> 21:08.720
 to sell more product of different kinds.

21:08.720 --> 21:13.080
 Do you see other examples of this actually emerging in?

21:13.080 --> 21:19.280
 Just take any parasitic system, make sure that there's some way in which there's differential

21:19.280 --> 21:27.640
 success, heritability, and variation, and those are the magic ingredients, and if you

21:27.640 --> 21:32.040
 really wanted to build a nightmare machine, make sure that the system that expresses the

21:32.040 --> 21:40.120
 variability has a spanning set so that it can learn to arbitrary levels by making it

21:40.120 --> 21:41.920
 sufficiently expressive.

21:41.920 --> 21:43.240
 That's your nightmare.

21:43.240 --> 21:48.040
 So it's your nightmare, but it could also be, it's a really powerful mechanism by which

21:48.040 --> 21:52.360
 to create, well, powerful systems.

21:52.360 --> 21:59.120
 So are you more worried about the negative direction that might go versus the positive?

21:59.120 --> 22:05.120
 So you said parasitic, but that doesn't necessarily need to be what the system converges towards.

22:05.120 --> 22:07.120
 It could be, what is it?

22:07.120 --> 22:13.680
 Well, parasitism, the dividing line between parasitism and symbiosis is not so clear.

22:13.680 --> 22:15.040
 That's what they tell me about marriage.

22:15.040 --> 22:17.560
 I'm still single, so I don't know.

22:17.560 --> 22:28.200
 Well, yeah, we can go into that too, but no, I think we have to appreciate, are you infected

22:28.200 --> 22:30.440
 by your own mitochondria?

22:30.440 --> 22:32.440
 Right.

22:32.440 --> 22:34.440
 Right?

22:34.440 --> 22:35.440
 Yeah.

22:35.440 --> 22:42.560
 So in marriage, you fear the loss of independence, but even though the American therapeutic community

22:42.560 --> 22:47.400
 may be very concerned about codependence, what's to say that codependence isn't what's

22:47.400 --> 22:53.040
 necessary to have a stable relationship in which to raise children who are maximally case

22:53.040 --> 22:57.560
 selected and require incredible amounts of care because you have to wait 13 years before

22:57.560 --> 23:01.800
 there's any reproductive payout, and most of us don't want our 13 year olds having kids.

23:01.800 --> 23:08.920
 That's a very tricky situation to analyze, and I would say that creditors and parasites

23:08.920 --> 23:14.000
 drive much of our evolution, and I don't know whether to be angry at them or thank them.

23:14.000 --> 23:19.160
 Well, ultimately, I mean, nobody knows the meaning of life or what even happiness is,

23:19.160 --> 23:25.640
 but there is some metrics that they didn't tell you, that's why all the poetry and books

23:25.640 --> 23:31.760
 are about, you know, there's some metrics under which you can kind of measure how good

23:31.760 --> 23:35.040
 it is that these AI systems are roaming about.

23:35.040 --> 23:44.800
 So you're more nervous about software than you are optimistic about ideas of self replicating

23:44.800 --> 23:45.800
 large stuff.

23:45.800 --> 23:50.440
 I don't think we've really felt where we are.

23:50.440 --> 23:57.960
 You know, occasionally we get a wake up, 9.11 was so anomalous compared to everything else

23:57.960 --> 24:03.760
 we've experienced on American soil that it came to us as a complete shock that that was

24:03.760 --> 24:05.080
 even a possibility.

24:05.080 --> 24:11.640
 What it really was, was a highly creative and determined R&D team deep in the bowels

24:11.640 --> 24:18.200
 of Afghanistan, showing us that we had certain exploits that we were open to that nobody

24:18.200 --> 24:19.440
 had chosen to express.

24:19.440 --> 24:23.680
 I can think of several of these things that I don't talk about publicly that just seem

24:23.680 --> 24:32.120
 to have to do with how relatively unimaginative those who wish to cause havoc and destruction

24:32.120 --> 24:34.280
 have been up until now.

24:34.280 --> 24:44.280
 The great mystery of our time of this particular little era is how remarkably stable we've been

24:44.280 --> 24:51.880
 since 1945 when we demonstrated the ability to use nuclear weapons in anger.

24:51.880 --> 24:58.400
 We don't know why things like that haven't happened since then.

24:58.400 --> 25:04.120
 We've had several close call, we've had mistakes, we've had brinksmanship.

25:04.120 --> 25:10.800
 What's now happened is that we've settled into a sense that, oh, it'll always be nothing.

25:10.800 --> 25:19.880
 It's been so long since something was at that level of danger that we've got a wrong

25:19.880 --> 25:21.080
 idea in our head.

25:21.080 --> 25:25.480
 That's why when I went on the Ben Shapiro show, I talked about the need to resume above

25:25.480 --> 25:30.440
 ground testing of nuclear devices because we have people whose developmental experience

25:30.440 --> 25:37.600
 suggests that when, let's say, Donald Trump and North Korea engage on Twitter, oh, it's

25:37.600 --> 25:38.600
 nothing.

25:38.600 --> 25:39.600
 It's just posturing.

25:39.600 --> 25:41.800
 Everybody's just in it for money.

25:41.800 --> 25:48.400
 There's a sense that people are in a video game mode, which has been the right call since

25:48.400 --> 25:49.480
 1945.

25:49.480 --> 25:51.320
 We've been mostly in video game mode.

25:51.320 --> 25:52.320
 It's amazing.

25:52.320 --> 25:57.120
 So you're worried about a generation which has not seen any existential...

25:57.120 --> 25:58.320
 We've lived under it.

25:58.320 --> 26:00.240
 You see, you're younger.

26:00.240 --> 26:05.840
 I don't know if, again, you came from Moscow.

26:05.840 --> 26:13.560
 There was a TV show called The Day After that had a huge effect on a generation growing

26:13.560 --> 26:21.040
 up in the US, and it talked about what life would be like after a nuclear exchange.

26:21.040 --> 26:27.480
 We have not gone through an embodied experience collectively where we've thought about this,

26:27.480 --> 26:32.800
 and I think it's one of the most irresponsible things that the elders among us have done,

26:32.800 --> 26:42.120
 which is to provide this beautiful garden in which the thorns are cut off of the rose

26:42.120 --> 26:47.840
 bushes and all of the edges are rounded and sanded.

26:47.840 --> 26:52.000
 And so people have developed this totally unreal idea, which is everything is going

26:52.000 --> 26:54.240
 to be just fine.

26:54.240 --> 27:01.760
 And do I think that my leading concern is AGI or my leading concern is thermonuclear exchange

27:01.760 --> 27:04.040
 or gene drives or any one of these things?

27:04.040 --> 27:11.800
 I don't know, but I know that our time here in this very long experiment here is finite

27:11.800 --> 27:17.040
 because the toys that we've built are so impressive and the wisdom to accompany them

27:17.040 --> 27:19.320
 has not materialized.

27:19.320 --> 27:25.280
 And I think we actually got a wisdom uptick since 1945.

27:25.280 --> 27:29.960
 We had a lot of dangerous skilled players on the world stage who nevertheless, no matter

27:29.960 --> 27:37.360
 how bad they were, managed to not embroil us in something that we couldn't come back

27:37.360 --> 27:38.360
 from.

27:38.360 --> 27:39.360
 The Cold War.

27:39.360 --> 27:40.360
 Yeah.

27:40.360 --> 27:47.600
 And the distance from the Cold War, I'm very mindful of, there was a Russian tradition

27:47.600 --> 27:56.240
 actually of on your wedding day going to visit a memorial to those who gave their lives.

27:56.240 --> 27:58.040
 Can you imagine this?

27:58.040 --> 28:03.800
 Were you on the happiest day of your life, you go and you pay homage to the people who

28:03.800 --> 28:08.960
 fought and died in the Battle of Stalingrad?

28:08.960 --> 28:13.400
 I'm not a huge fan of communism, I gotta say, but there were a couple of things that

28:13.400 --> 28:18.840
 the Russians did that were really positive in the Soviet era.

28:18.840 --> 28:25.040
 And I think trying to let people know how serious life actually is, is the Russian model

28:25.040 --> 28:28.640
 of seriousness is better than the American model.

28:28.640 --> 28:35.280
 And maybe like you mentioned, there was a small echo of that after 911, but we wouldn't

28:35.280 --> 28:36.280
 let it form.

28:36.280 --> 28:40.840
 We talk about 911, but it's 912 that really moved the needle.

28:40.840 --> 28:48.200
 When we were all just there and nobody wanted to speak, we witnessed something super serious

28:48.200 --> 28:59.240
 and we didn't want to run to our computers and blast out our deep thoughts and our feelings.

28:59.240 --> 29:03.920
 And it was profound because we woke up briefly there.

29:03.920 --> 29:08.960
 I talk about the gated institutional narrative that sort of programs our lives.

29:08.960 --> 29:15.240
 I've seen it break three times in my life, one of which was the election of Donald Trump.

29:15.240 --> 29:21.280
 Another time was the fall of Lehman Brothers, when everybody who knew that Bear Stearns

29:21.280 --> 29:27.360
 wasn't that important knew that Lehman Brothers met AIG was next.

29:27.360 --> 29:29.440
 And the other one was 911.

29:29.440 --> 29:35.240
 And so if I'm 53 years old and I only remember three times that the global narrative was

29:35.240 --> 29:43.480
 really interrupted, that tells you how much we've been on top of developing events.

29:43.480 --> 29:47.600
 We had the Murrow Felt Federal Building explosion, but it didn't cause the narrative to break.

29:47.600 --> 29:49.560
 It wasn't profound enough.

29:49.560 --> 29:58.840
 Around 912, we started to wake up out of our slumber and the powers that be did not want

29:58.840 --> 30:01.200
 to coming together.

30:01.200 --> 30:04.040
 The admonition was go shopping.

30:04.040 --> 30:07.840
 The powers would be, what is that force as opposed to blaming individuals?

30:07.840 --> 30:08.920
 We don't know.

30:08.920 --> 30:09.920
 So whatever that...

30:09.920 --> 30:14.160
 Whatever that force is, there's a component of it that's emergent and there's a component

30:14.160 --> 30:15.760
 of it that's deliberate.

30:15.760 --> 30:18.840
 So give yourself a portfolio with two components.

30:18.840 --> 30:23.920
 Some amount of it is emergent, but some amount of it is also an understanding that if people

30:23.920 --> 30:27.880
 come together, they become an incredible force.

30:27.880 --> 30:34.000
 And what you're seeing right now, I think, is there are forces that are trying to come

30:34.000 --> 30:40.760
 together and there are forces that are trying to push things apart, and one of them is the

30:40.760 --> 30:48.360
 globalist narrative versus the national narrative, where to the globalist perspective, the nations

30:48.360 --> 30:53.840
 are bad things, in essence, that they're temporary, they're nationalistic, they're jingoistic.

30:53.840 --> 30:58.680
 It's all negative to people in the national, more in the nationality, and they're saying,

30:58.680 --> 31:03.120
 look, this is where I pay my taxes, this is where I do my army service, this is where

31:03.120 --> 31:06.160
 I have a vote, this is where I have a passport.

31:06.160 --> 31:10.240
 Who the hell are you to tell me that because you've moved into someplace that you can make

31:10.240 --> 31:15.560
 money globally, that you've chosen to abandon other people to whom you have a special and

31:15.560 --> 31:16.560
 elevated duty?

31:16.560 --> 31:23.200
 And I think that these competing narratives have been pushing towards the global perspective

31:23.200 --> 31:27.920
 from the elite, and a larger and larger number of disenfranchised people are saying, hey,

31:27.920 --> 31:33.680
 I actually live in a place and I have laws and I speak a language, I have a culture,

31:33.680 --> 31:40.320
 and who are you to tell me that because you can profit in some faraway land, that my obligations

31:40.320 --> 31:43.280
 to my fellow countrymen are so much diminished?

31:43.280 --> 31:47.960
 So these tensions between nations and so on, ultimately, you see being proud of your country

31:47.960 --> 31:53.960
 and so on, which creates potentially the kind of things that led to wars and so on, they

31:53.960 --> 31:58.960
 ultimately, it is human nature and it is good for us, for wake up calls of different kinds.

31:58.960 --> 32:01.280
 Well, I think that these are tensions.

32:01.280 --> 32:06.640
 And my point isn't, I mean, nationalism run amok is a nightmare.

32:06.640 --> 32:09.960
 And internationalism run amok is a nightmare.

32:09.960 --> 32:17.440
 And the problem is we're trying to push these pendulums to some place where they're somewhat

32:17.440 --> 32:25.960
 balanced, where we have a higher duty of care to those who share our laws and our citizenship,

32:25.960 --> 32:30.920
 but we don't forget our duties of care to the global system.

32:30.920 --> 32:37.640
 I would think this is elementary, but the problem that we're facing concerns the ability

32:37.640 --> 32:45.520
 for some to profit by abandoning their obligations to others within their system.

32:45.520 --> 32:48.600
 And that's what we've had for decades.

32:48.600 --> 32:50.200
 You mentioned nuclear weapons.

32:50.200 --> 32:55.880
 I was hoping to get answers from you, since one of the many things you've done is economics

32:55.880 --> 33:00.520
 and maybe you can understand human behavior and why the heck we haven't blown each other

33:00.520 --> 33:01.520
 up yet.

33:01.520 --> 33:02.520
 But okay.

33:02.520 --> 33:03.520
 So we'll get back to you.

33:03.520 --> 33:04.520
 I don't know the answer.

33:04.520 --> 33:05.520
 Yeah.

33:05.520 --> 33:07.640
 It's a fast, it's really important to say that we really don't know.

33:07.640 --> 33:09.520
 A mild uptick in wisdom.

33:09.520 --> 33:10.840
 A mild uptick in wisdom.

33:10.840 --> 33:17.320
 Well, Steven Pinko, who I've talked with, has a lot of really good ideas about why,

33:17.320 --> 33:18.320
 but nobody really knows.

33:18.320 --> 33:20.320
 I don't trust his optimism.

33:20.320 --> 33:24.960
 Listen, I'm Russian, so I never trust a guy who's that optimistic.

33:24.960 --> 33:25.960
 No, no, no.

33:25.960 --> 33:31.280
 It's just that you're talking about a guy who's looking at a system in which more and

33:31.280 --> 33:37.760
 more of the kinetic energy, like war, has been turned into potential energy, like unused

33:37.760 --> 33:38.760
 nuclear weapons.

33:38.760 --> 33:39.760
 Wow, beautifully put.

33:39.760 --> 33:42.880
 You know, now I'm looking at that system and I'm saying, okay, well, if you don't have

33:42.880 --> 33:46.000
 a potential energy term, then everything's just getting better and better.

33:46.000 --> 33:47.000
 Yeah.

33:47.000 --> 33:48.000
 Wow.

33:48.000 --> 33:49.320
 That's beautifully put.

33:49.320 --> 33:50.320
 Only physicists could.

33:50.320 --> 33:51.320
 Okay.

33:51.320 --> 33:53.800
 I'm not a physicist.

33:53.800 --> 33:55.200
 Is that a dirty word?

33:55.200 --> 33:56.200
 No.

33:56.200 --> 33:57.200
 No, I wish I were a physicist.

33:57.200 --> 33:58.200
 Me too.

33:58.200 --> 33:59.200
 My dad's a physicist.

33:59.200 --> 34:02.880
 I'm trying to live up that probably for the rest of my life.

34:02.880 --> 34:04.520
 He's probably going to listen to this too.

34:04.520 --> 34:05.520
 He did.

34:05.520 --> 34:06.520
 Yeah.

34:06.520 --> 34:14.120
 So, your friend, Sam Harris, worries a lot about the existential threat of AI, not in

34:14.120 --> 34:16.640
 the way that you've described, but in the more.

34:16.640 --> 34:18.040
 Well, he hangs out with Elon.

34:18.040 --> 34:20.400
 I don't know Elon.

34:20.400 --> 34:30.720
 So are you worried about that kind of, you know, about the, about either robotic systems

34:30.720 --> 34:36.320
 or traditionally defined AI systems, essentially becoming super intelligent, much more intelligent

34:36.320 --> 34:38.680
 than human beings and, uh, getting.

34:38.680 --> 34:40.600
 Well, they already are.

34:40.600 --> 34:42.840
 And they're not.

34:42.840 --> 34:45.840
 When seen as a collective, you mean?

34:45.840 --> 34:53.120
 Well, I mean, I can mean all sorts of things, but certainly many of the things that we thought

34:53.120 --> 34:57.360
 were peculiar to general intelligence or do not require general intelligence.

34:57.360 --> 35:03.120
 So that's been one of the big awakenings that you can write a pretty convincing sports

35:03.120 --> 35:10.720
 story from stats alone, uh, without needing to have watched the game.

35:10.720 --> 35:14.000
 So you know, is it possible to write lively prose about politics?

35:14.000 --> 35:15.000
 Yeah.

35:15.000 --> 35:16.280
 No, not yet.

35:16.280 --> 35:20.640
 So we, we're sort of all over the map.

35:20.640 --> 35:24.000
 One of the, one of the things about chess that I yield, there's a question I once asked

35:24.000 --> 35:29.240
 on Quora that didn't get a lot of response, which was, what is the greatest brilliancy

35:29.240 --> 35:32.840
 ever produced by a computer in a chess game, which was different than the question of what

35:32.840 --> 35:35.520
 is the greatest game ever played?

35:35.520 --> 35:39.200
 So if you think about brilliancies is what really animates many of us to think of chess

35:39.200 --> 35:42.240
 as an art form.

35:42.240 --> 35:47.400
 Those are those moves and combinations that just show such flair, panache and, and, and

35:47.400 --> 35:48.400
 soul.

35:48.400 --> 35:50.480
 Um, computers weren't really great at that.

35:50.480 --> 35:52.720
 They were great positional monsters.

35:52.720 --> 35:57.120
 And, you know, recently we, we've started seeing brilliancies.

35:57.120 --> 35:58.120
 And so.

35:58.120 --> 36:03.000
 The masters have identified with, with alpha zero, that things were quite brilliant.

36:03.000 --> 36:04.000
 Yeah.

36:04.000 --> 36:07.680
 So that's, that's, you know, that's an example of something we don't think that that's AGI,

36:07.680 --> 36:13.120
 but in a very restricted set, a set of rules like chess, you're starting to see poetry

36:13.120 --> 36:16.040
 of a high order.

36:16.040 --> 36:21.240
 And, and so I'm not, I don't like the idea that we're waiting for AGI.

36:21.240 --> 36:29.160
 AGI is sort of slowly infiltrating our lives in the same way that I don't think a worm

36:29.160 --> 36:33.360
 should be, you know, the C. elegans shouldn't be treated as non conscious because it only

36:33.360 --> 36:34.360
 has 300 neurons.

36:34.360 --> 36:39.080
 It maybe just has a very low level of consciousness because we don't understand what these things

36:39.080 --> 36:40.840
 mean as they scale up.

36:40.840 --> 36:43.760
 So am I worried about this general phenomena?

36:43.760 --> 36:44.760
 Sure.

36:44.760 --> 36:48.240
 But I think that one of the things that's happening is that a lot of us are fretting

36:48.240 --> 36:53.600
 about this in part because of human needs.

36:53.600 --> 36:56.240
 We've always been worried about the Gollum, right?

36:56.240 --> 37:01.560
 Well, the Gollum is the artificially created life, you know, it's like Frankenstein.

37:01.560 --> 37:02.560
 Yeah.

37:02.560 --> 37:03.560
 Sure.

37:03.560 --> 37:08.800
 It's a Jewish version and Frankenberg, Frankenstein.

37:08.800 --> 37:09.800
 Yeah.

37:09.800 --> 37:10.800
 That makes sense.

37:10.800 --> 37:11.800
 Sorry.

37:11.800 --> 37:17.160
 So the, but we've always been worried about creating something like this and it's getting

37:17.160 --> 37:18.720
 closer and closer.

37:18.720 --> 37:25.920
 And there are ways in which we have to realize that the whole thing is kind of, the whole

37:25.920 --> 37:31.560
 thing that we've experienced are the context of our lives is almost certainly coming to

37:31.560 --> 37:32.560
 an end.

37:32.560 --> 37:39.040
 And I don't mean to suggest that we won't survive, I don't know.

37:39.040 --> 37:43.680
 And I don't mean to suggest that it's coming tomorrow, it could be 300, 500 years.

37:43.680 --> 37:49.600
 But there's no plan that I'm aware of if we have three rocks that we could possibly inhabit

37:49.600 --> 37:58.280
 that are sensible within current technological dreams, the earth, the moon and Mars.

37:58.280 --> 38:04.860
 And we have a very competitive civilization that is still forced into violence to sort

38:04.860 --> 38:06.920
 out disputes that cannot be arbitrated.

38:06.920 --> 38:12.960
 It is not clear to me that we have a long term future until we get to the next stage,

38:12.960 --> 38:18.160
 which is to figure out whether or not the Einsteinian speed limit can be broken.

38:18.160 --> 38:21.600
 And that requires our source code.

38:21.600 --> 38:25.720
 Our source code, the stuff in our brains to figure out what do you mean by our source

38:25.720 --> 38:26.720
 code?

38:26.720 --> 38:30.880
 The source code of the context, whatever it is that produces the quarks, the electrons,

38:30.880 --> 38:31.880
 the neutrinos.

38:31.880 --> 38:33.360
 Oh, our source code.

38:33.360 --> 38:34.360
 I got it.

38:34.360 --> 38:38.240
 So this is the best stuff that's written in a higher level language.

38:38.240 --> 38:39.240
 Yeah.

38:39.240 --> 38:40.240
 Yeah.

38:40.240 --> 38:41.240
 That's right.

38:41.240 --> 38:42.240
 You're talking about the low level bits or lower.

38:42.240 --> 38:46.600
 That's what is currently keeping us here.

38:46.600 --> 38:52.800
 We can't even imagine, you know, we have harebrained schemes for staying within the

38:52.800 --> 38:55.520
 Einsteinian speed limit.

38:55.520 --> 38:59.040
 You know, maybe if we could just drug ourselves and go into a suspended state or we could

38:59.040 --> 39:02.920
 have multiple generations, I think all that stuff is pretty silly.

39:02.920 --> 39:07.720
 But I think it's also pretty silly to imagine that our wisdom is going to increase to the

39:07.720 --> 39:10.880
 point that we can have the toys we have.

39:10.880 --> 39:14.120
 And we're not going to use them for 500 years.

39:14.120 --> 39:18.720
 Speaking of Einstein, I had a profound breakthrough when I realized you're just one letter away

39:18.720 --> 39:19.720
 from the guy.

39:19.720 --> 39:22.880
 Yeah, but I'm also one letter away from Feinstein.

39:22.880 --> 39:25.880
 It's, well, you get to pick.

39:25.880 --> 39:26.880
 Okay.

39:26.880 --> 39:32.680
 So unified theory, you know, you've worked, you enjoy the beauty of geometry.

39:32.680 --> 39:34.440
 I don't actually know if you enjoy it.

39:34.440 --> 39:36.000
 You certainly are quite good at it.

39:36.000 --> 39:37.000
 I tremble before it.

39:37.000 --> 39:39.000
 Tremble before it.

39:39.000 --> 39:42.200
 If you're religious, that is one of the, I don't have to be religious.

39:42.200 --> 39:43.200
 It's just so beautiful.

39:43.200 --> 39:44.200
 You will tremble anyway.

39:44.200 --> 39:50.960
 I mean, I just read Einstein's biography and one of the ways, one of the things you've

39:50.960 --> 39:59.160
 done is try to explore a unified theory, talking about a 14 dimensional observers that has

39:59.160 --> 40:02.800
 the 4D space time continuum embedded in it.

40:02.800 --> 40:09.600
 I'm just curious how you think philosophically at a high level about something more than

40:09.600 --> 40:12.000
 four dimensions.

40:12.000 --> 40:19.160
 How do you try to, what does it make you feel talking in the mathematical world about dimensions

40:19.160 --> 40:23.480
 that are greater than the ones we can perceive?

40:23.480 --> 40:26.640
 Is there something that you take away that's more than just the math?

40:26.640 --> 40:30.880
 Well, first of all, stick out your tongue at me.

40:30.880 --> 40:41.240
 Okay, now on the front of that tongue, there was a sweet receptor and next to that were

40:41.240 --> 40:46.600
 salt receptors on two different sides, a little bit farther back, there were sour receptors

40:46.600 --> 40:49.400
 and you wouldn't show me the back of your tongue where your bitter receptor was.

40:49.400 --> 40:51.280
 Show the good side always.

40:51.280 --> 40:58.080
 Okay, but that was four dimensions of taste receptors, but you also had pain receptors

40:58.080 --> 41:01.200
 on that tongue and probably heat receptors on that tongue.

41:01.200 --> 41:05.360
 So let's assume that you had one of each, that would be six dimensions.

41:05.360 --> 41:12.880
 So when you eat something, you eat a slice of pizza and it's got some hot pepper on

41:12.880 --> 41:17.720
 it, maybe some jalapeno, you're having a six dimensional experience, dude.

41:17.720 --> 41:24.400
 Do you think we overemphasize the value of time as one of the dimensions or space?

41:24.400 --> 41:28.160
 Well, we certainly overemphasize the value of time because we like things to start and

41:28.160 --> 41:30.720
 end or we really don't like things to end, but they seem to.

41:30.720 --> 41:36.840
 Well, what if you flipped one of the spatial dimensions into being a temporal dimension

41:36.840 --> 41:42.160
 and you and I were to meet in New York City and say, well, where and when should we meet?

41:42.160 --> 41:50.680
 Say, how about I'll meet you on 36th and Lexington at two in the afternoon and 11 o clock in

41:50.680 --> 41:53.280
 the morning.

41:53.280 --> 41:55.520
 That would be very confusing.

41:55.520 --> 41:59.320
 Well, so it's convenient for us to think about time, you mean?

41:59.320 --> 42:03.560
 We happen to be in a delicious situation in which we have three dimensions of space and

42:03.560 --> 42:07.920
 one of time and they're woven together in this sort of strange fabric where we can trade

42:07.920 --> 42:11.800
 off a little space for a little time, but we still only have one dimension that is picked

42:11.800 --> 42:13.440
 out relative to the other three.

42:13.440 --> 42:15.640
 It's very much glad to snipe the pips.

42:15.640 --> 42:17.960
 So which one developed for who?

42:17.960 --> 42:22.800
 Do we develop for these dimensions or did the dimensions or were they always there and

42:22.800 --> 42:23.800
 it doesn't?

42:23.800 --> 42:27.200
 Well, do you imagine that there isn't a place where there are four temporal dimensions or

42:27.200 --> 42:31.960
 two and two of space and time or three of time and one of space and then would time not

42:31.960 --> 42:33.920
 be playing the role of space?

42:33.920 --> 42:37.960
 Why do you imagine that the sector that you're in is all that there is?

42:37.960 --> 42:40.800
 I certainly do not, but I can't imagine otherwise.

42:40.800 --> 42:46.160
 I mean, I haven't done ayahuasca or any of those drugs that I hope to one day, but instead

42:46.160 --> 42:49.640
 of doing ayahuasca, you could just head over to building two.

42:49.640 --> 42:50.640
 That's where the mathematicians are?

42:50.640 --> 42:52.200
 Yeah, that's where they hang.

42:52.200 --> 42:53.200
 Just to look at some geometry.

42:53.200 --> 42:55.640
 Well, just ask about pseudo Romanian geometry.

42:55.640 --> 42:58.640
 That's what you're interested in.

42:58.640 --> 43:01.640
 Or you could talk to a shaman and end up in Peru.

43:01.640 --> 43:03.140
 And then some extra money for that trip.

43:03.140 --> 43:06.600
 Yeah, but you won't be able to do any calculations if that's how you choose to go about it.

43:06.600 --> 43:09.960
 Well, a different kind of calculation.

43:09.960 --> 43:14.000
 One of my favorite people, Edward Frankel, Berkeley professor, author of Love and Math,

43:14.000 --> 43:20.280
 great title for a book, said that you were quite a remarkable intellect to come up with

43:20.280 --> 43:25.360
 such beautiful original ideas in terms of the unified theory and so on, but you were

43:25.360 --> 43:28.240
 working outside academia.

43:28.240 --> 43:34.360
 So one question in developing ideas that truly original, truly interesting, what's the difference

43:34.360 --> 43:40.120
 between inside academia and outside academia when it comes to developing such ideas?

43:40.120 --> 43:43.240
 Oh, it's a terrible choice, terrible choice.

43:43.240 --> 43:55.200
 So if you do it inside of academics, you are forced to constantly show great loyalty to

43:55.200 --> 44:03.000
 the consensus and you distinguish yourself with small, almost microscopic heresies to

44:03.000 --> 44:10.520
 make your reputation in general, and you have very competent people and brilliant people

44:10.520 --> 44:17.720
 who are working together, who are, who form very deep social networks and have a very

44:17.720 --> 44:25.520
 high level of behavior, at least within mathematics and at least technically within physics, theoretical

44:25.520 --> 44:27.880
 physics.

44:27.880 --> 44:35.240
 When you go outside, you meet lunatics and crazy people, madmen.

44:35.240 --> 44:41.200
 And these are people who do not usually subscribe to the consensus position and almost always

44:41.200 --> 44:44.320
 lose their way.

44:44.320 --> 44:52.320
 And the key question is, will progress likely come from someone who is miraculously managed

44:52.320 --> 44:59.160
 to stay within the system and is able to take on a larger amount of heresy that is sort of

44:59.160 --> 45:07.840
 unthinkable, in which case that will be fascinating, or is it more likely that somebody will maintain

45:07.840 --> 45:15.760
 a level of discipline from outside of academics and be able to make use of the freedom that

45:15.760 --> 45:21.800
 comes from not having to constantly affirm your loyalty to the consensus of your field?

45:21.800 --> 45:28.440
 So you've characterized in ways that academia in this particular sense is declining.

45:28.440 --> 45:34.880
 You posted the plot, the older population of the faculty is getting larger, the younger

45:34.880 --> 45:37.240
 is getting smaller and so on.

45:37.240 --> 45:40.720
 So what's, which direction of the two are you more hopeful about?

45:40.720 --> 45:43.360
 Well the baby boomers can't hang on forever.

45:43.360 --> 45:46.440
 Was it first of all in general, true, and second of all in academia?

45:46.440 --> 45:53.000
 But that's really what, what this time is about, is we didn't, we're used to like financial

45:53.000 --> 45:57.160
 bubbles that last a few years in length and then pop.

45:57.160 --> 46:02.000
 The baby boomer bubble is this really long lived thing.

46:02.000 --> 46:07.960
 And all of the ideology, all of the behavior patterns, the norms, you know, for example,

46:07.960 --> 46:11.640
 string theory is an almost entirely baby boomer phenomenon.

46:11.640 --> 46:16.640
 It was something that baby boomers were able to do because it required a very high level

46:16.640 --> 46:20.600
 of mathematical ability.

46:20.600 --> 46:24.360
 You don't think of string theory as an original idea?

46:24.360 --> 46:29.920
 Oh, I mean it was original to Veneziano, probably is older than the baby boomers.

46:29.920 --> 46:32.800
 And there are people who are younger than the baby boomers who are still doing string

46:32.800 --> 46:33.800
 theory.

46:33.800 --> 46:37.920
 And I'm not saying that nothing discovered within the large string theoretic complex

46:37.920 --> 46:38.920
 is wrong.

46:38.920 --> 46:43.720
 Quite the contrary, a lot of brilliant mathematics and a lot of the structure of physics was

46:43.720 --> 46:46.960
 elucidated by string theorists.

46:46.960 --> 46:51.560
 What do I think of the deliverable nature of this product that will not chip called

46:51.560 --> 46:52.560
 string theory?

46:52.560 --> 46:57.560
 I think that it is largely an affirmative action program for highly mathematically and

46:57.560 --> 47:03.240
 geometrically talented baby boomer physics physicists so that they can say that they're

47:03.240 --> 47:10.480
 working on something within the constraints of what they will say is quantum gravity.

47:10.480 --> 47:14.640
 Now there are other schemes, you know, there's like asymptotic safety.

47:14.640 --> 47:17.080
 There are other things that you could imagine doing.

47:17.080 --> 47:26.800
 I don't think much of any of the major programs, but to have inflicted this level of loyalty

47:26.800 --> 47:27.800
 through a shibboleth.

47:27.800 --> 47:29.520
 Well, surely you don't question X.

47:29.520 --> 47:33.760
 Well, I question almost everything in the string program and that's why I got out of

47:33.760 --> 47:35.600
 physics when you called me a physicist.

47:35.600 --> 47:39.920
 It was a great honor, but the reason I didn't become a physicist wasn't that I fell in

47:39.920 --> 47:40.920
 love with mathematics.

47:40.920 --> 47:49.080
 As I said, wow, in 1984, 1983, I saw the field going mad and I saw that mathematics, which

47:49.080 --> 47:53.000
 has all sorts of problems, was not going insane.

47:53.000 --> 47:57.520
 And so instead of studying things within physics, I thought it was much safer to study the same

47:57.520 --> 47:59.200
 objects within mathematics.

47:59.200 --> 48:01.240
 There's a huge price to pay for that.

48:01.240 --> 48:06.960
 You lose physical intuition, but the point is that it wasn't a North Korean reeducation

48:06.960 --> 48:07.960
 camp either.

48:07.960 --> 48:16.400
 Are you hopeful about cracking open Einstein unified theory in a way that has really, really

48:16.400 --> 48:21.800
 understanding whether this uniting everything together with quantum theory and so on?

48:21.800 --> 48:28.320
 I mean, I'm trying to play this role myself to do it to the extent of handing it over

48:28.320 --> 48:35.280
 to the more responsible, more professional, more competent community.

48:35.280 --> 48:39.920
 So I think that they're wrong about a great number of their belief structures.

48:39.920 --> 48:45.280
 But I do believe, I mean, I have a really profound love, hate relationship with this

48:45.280 --> 48:46.280
 group of people.

48:46.280 --> 48:47.800
 On the physics side.

48:47.800 --> 48:48.800
 Oh, yeah.

48:48.800 --> 48:52.240
 Because the mathematicians actually seem to be much more open minded and…

48:52.240 --> 48:58.040
 Well, they are, and they're open minded about anything that looks like great math, right?

48:58.040 --> 49:01.800
 They'll study something that isn't very important physics, but if it's beautiful mathematics,

49:01.800 --> 49:06.200
 then they'll have great intuition about these things.

49:06.200 --> 49:10.880
 As good as the mathematicians are, and I might even intellectually at some horsepower level

49:10.880 --> 49:19.280
 give them the edge, the theoretical physics community is bar none the most profound intellectual

49:19.280 --> 49:22.040
 community that we have ever created.

49:22.040 --> 49:26.120
 It is the number one, there's nobody in second place as far as I'm concerned.

49:26.120 --> 49:30.520
 In their spare time, in the spare time, they invented molecular biology.

49:30.520 --> 49:33.160
 What was the origin of molecular biology?

49:33.160 --> 49:34.160
 You're saying physics?

49:34.160 --> 49:35.160
 Well, something like Francis Crick.

49:35.160 --> 49:39.200
 I mean, a lot of the early molecular biologists were physicists.

49:39.200 --> 49:40.200
 Yeah.

49:40.200 --> 49:42.760
 I mean, you know, Schrodinger wrote, what is life?

49:42.760 --> 49:44.400
 That was highly inspirational.

49:44.400 --> 49:53.320
 I mean, you have to appreciate that there is no community like the basic research community

49:53.320 --> 49:55.000
 in theoretical physics.

49:55.000 --> 49:59.360
 And it's not something, I'm highly critical of these guys.

49:59.360 --> 50:08.440
 I think that they would just wasted the decades of time with a near religious devotion to

50:08.440 --> 50:13.320
 their misconception of where the problems were in physics.

50:13.320 --> 50:20.040
 But this has been the greatest intellectual collapse ever witnessed within academics.

50:20.040 --> 50:22.320
 You see it as a collapse or just a lull?

50:22.320 --> 50:26.000
 Oh, I'm terrified that we're about to lose the vitality.

50:26.000 --> 50:29.320
 We can't afford to pay these people.

50:29.320 --> 50:33.440
 We can't afford to give them an accelerator just to play with in case they find something

50:33.440 --> 50:35.280
 at the next energy level.

50:35.280 --> 50:38.400
 These people created our economy.

50:38.400 --> 50:41.880
 They gave us the Rad Lab and radar.

50:41.880 --> 50:45.600
 They gave us two atomic devices to end World War II.

50:45.600 --> 50:51.680
 They created the semiconductor and the transistor to power our economy through Moore's law.

50:51.680 --> 50:56.680
 As a positive externality of particle accelerators, they created the worldwide web.

50:56.680 --> 51:02.440
 And we have the insolence to say, why should we fund you with our taxpayer dollars?

51:02.440 --> 51:03.440
 No.

51:03.440 --> 51:08.840
 The question is, are you enjoying your physics dollars?

51:08.840 --> 51:12.800
 These guys signed the world's worst licensing agreement.

51:12.800 --> 51:20.280
 And if they simply charged for every time you used a transistor or a URL or enjoyed the

51:20.280 --> 51:25.680
 piece that they have provided during this period of time through the terrible weapons

51:25.680 --> 51:31.000
 that they developed or your communications devices, all of the things that power our

51:31.000 --> 51:35.240
 economy, I really think came out of physics, even to the extent the chemistry came out

51:35.240 --> 51:38.040
 of physics and molecular biology came out of physics.

51:38.040 --> 51:42.760
 So first of all, you have to know that I'm very critical of this community.

51:42.760 --> 51:45.160
 Second of all, it is our most important community.

51:45.160 --> 51:46.160
 We have neglected it.

51:46.160 --> 51:47.640
 We've abused it.

51:47.640 --> 51:49.780
 We don't take it seriously.

51:49.780 --> 51:54.920
 We don't even care to get them to rehab after a couple of generations of failure.

51:54.920 --> 52:01.920
 I think the youngest person to have really contributed to the standard model of theoretical

52:01.920 --> 52:08.040
 level was born in 1951, Frank Wilczek.

52:08.040 --> 52:15.840
 And almost nothing has happened in theoretical physics after 1973, 1974, that sent somebody

52:15.840 --> 52:21.720
 to Stockholm for theoretical development that predicted experiment.

52:21.720 --> 52:24.840
 So we have to understand that we are doing this to ourselves.

52:24.840 --> 52:31.320
 Now with that said, these guys have behaved abysmally, in my opinion, because they haven't

52:31.320 --> 52:35.520
 owned up to where they actually are, what problems they're really facing, how definite

52:35.520 --> 52:37.360
 they can actually be.

52:37.360 --> 52:40.960
 They haven't shared some of their most brilliant discoveries which are desperately needed in

52:40.960 --> 52:45.880
 other fields like gauge theory, which at least the mathematicians can share, which is an

52:45.880 --> 52:50.520
 upgrade of the differential calculus of Newton and Leibniz, and they haven't shared the importance

52:50.520 --> 52:55.520
 of renormalization theory, even though this should be standard operating procedure for

52:55.520 --> 53:00.920
 people across the sciences dealing with different layers and different levels of phenomena.

53:00.920 --> 53:06.200
 And by shared, you mean communicated in such a way that it disseminates throughout the

53:06.200 --> 53:07.200
 different sciences as well.

53:07.200 --> 53:11.920
 These guys are sitting, both theoretical physicists and mathematicians, are sitting on top of

53:11.920 --> 53:15.160
 a giant stockpile of intellectual gold.

53:15.160 --> 53:19.720
 They have so many things that have not been manifested anywhere.

53:19.720 --> 53:25.240
 I was just on Twitter, I think I mentioned the Habermann switch pitch that shows the

53:25.240 --> 53:29.840
 self duality of the tetrahedron realized as a linkage mechanism.

53:29.840 --> 53:36.720
 This is like a triviality, and it makes an amazing toy that's built to market, hopefully

53:36.720 --> 53:38.680
 a fortune for Chuck Habermann.

53:38.680 --> 53:44.720
 Well, you have no idea how much great stuff that these priests have in their monastery.

53:44.720 --> 53:47.800
 So it's truly a love and hate relationship for you.

53:47.800 --> 53:49.840
 Well, it sounds like it's more on the love side.

53:49.840 --> 53:54.720
 This building that we're in right here is the building in which I really put together

53:54.720 --> 54:00.120
 the conspiracy between the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation,

54:00.120 --> 54:04.360
 through the government university industry research roundtable, to destroy the bargaining

54:04.360 --> 54:11.040
 power of American academics using foreign labor on microfeet in the base.

54:11.040 --> 54:13.240
 Oh, yeah, that was done here in this building.

54:13.240 --> 54:14.240
 Isn't that weird?

54:14.240 --> 54:18.120
 I'm truly speaking with a revolutionary and a radical...

54:18.120 --> 54:20.200
 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

54:20.200 --> 54:25.200
 At an intellectual level, I am absolutely garden variety.

54:25.200 --> 54:27.640
 I'm just straight down the middle.

54:27.640 --> 54:34.800
 The system that we are in, this university is functionally insane.

54:34.800 --> 54:36.840
 Harvard is functionally insane.

54:36.840 --> 54:42.240
 And we don't understand that when we get these things wrong, the financial crisis made

54:42.240 --> 54:43.640
 this very clear.

54:43.640 --> 54:51.200
 There was a long period where every grownup, everybody with a tie who spoke in baritone

54:51.200 --> 54:58.080
 tones with the right degree at the end of their name, was talking about how we banished

54:58.080 --> 54:59.080
 volatility.

54:59.080 --> 55:01.080
 We were in the Great Moderation.

55:01.080 --> 55:04.160
 Okay, they were all crazy.

55:04.160 --> 55:05.160
 And who was right?

55:05.160 --> 55:08.520
 It was like Nassim Taleb, Nouriel Rubini.

55:08.520 --> 55:14.040
 Now what happens is that they claimed that the market went crazy, but the market didn't

55:14.040 --> 55:15.040
 go crazy.

55:15.040 --> 55:16.240
 The market had been crazy.

55:16.240 --> 55:18.600
 And what happened is that it suddenly went sane.

55:18.600 --> 55:21.680
 Well, that's where we are with academics.

55:21.680 --> 55:23.960
 Academics right now is mad as a hatter.

55:23.960 --> 55:25.520
 And it's absolutely evident.

55:25.520 --> 55:27.040
 I can show you graph after graph.

55:27.040 --> 55:28.520
 I can show you the internal discussions.

55:28.520 --> 55:31.000
 I can show you the conspiracies.

55:31.000 --> 55:36.040
 Harvard's dealing with one right now over its admissions policies for people of color

55:36.040 --> 55:38.360
 who happen to come from Asia.

55:38.360 --> 55:41.400
 All of this madness is necessary to keep the game going.

55:41.400 --> 55:46.440
 What we're talking about, just while we're on the topic of revolutionaries, is we're

55:46.440 --> 55:50.120
 talking about the danger of an outbreak of sanity.

55:50.120 --> 55:55.320
 Yeah, you're the guy pointing out the elephant in the room here.

55:55.320 --> 55:57.160
 The elephant has no clothes.

55:57.160 --> 55:59.560
 Is that how that goes?

55:59.560 --> 56:07.680
 I was going to talk a little bit to Joe Rogan about this at the time.

56:07.680 --> 56:13.400
 I think you have some, just listening to you, you could probably speak really eloquently

56:13.400 --> 56:16.560
 to academia on the difference between the different fields.

56:16.560 --> 56:21.680
 So you think there's a difference between science, engineering, and then the humanities

56:21.680 --> 56:25.800
 in academia in terms of tolerance that they're willing to tolerate?

56:25.800 --> 56:33.000
 So from my perspective, I thought computer science and maybe engineering is more tolerant

56:33.000 --> 56:36.560
 to radical ideas, but that's perhaps innocent of me.

56:36.560 --> 56:40.960
 Because I always, all the battles going on now are a little bit more on the humanities

56:40.960 --> 56:43.240
 side than gender studies and so on.

56:43.240 --> 56:48.520
 Have you seen the American Mathematical Society's publication of an essay called Get Out the

56:48.520 --> 56:49.520
 Way?

56:49.520 --> 56:50.520
 I have not.

56:50.520 --> 56:57.960
 What's the idea is that white men who hold positions within universities and mathematics

56:57.960 --> 57:04.000
 should vacate their positions so that young black women can take over something like this?

57:04.000 --> 57:07.240
 That's in terms of diversity, which I also want to ask you about, but in terms of diversity

57:07.240 --> 57:15.000
 of strictly ideas, do you think, because you're basically saying physics as a community has

57:15.000 --> 57:20.480
 become a little bit intolerant to some degree to new radical ideas?

57:20.480 --> 57:21.480
 Or at least you said that.

57:21.480 --> 57:27.120
 Well, it's changed a little bit recently, which is that even string theory is now admitting,

57:27.120 --> 57:32.960
 okay, we don't, this doesn't look very promising in the short term.

57:32.960 --> 57:39.760
 So the question is what compiles if you want to take the computer science metaphor?

57:39.760 --> 57:42.040
 What will get you into a journal?

57:42.040 --> 57:47.080
 Will you spend your life trying to push some paper into a journal or will it be accepted

57:47.080 --> 57:48.080
 easily?

57:48.080 --> 57:54.560
 What do we know about the characteristics of the submitter and what gets taken up and

57:54.560 --> 57:56.680
 what does not?

57:56.680 --> 58:01.680
 All of these fields are experiencing pressure because no field is performing so brilliantly

58:01.680 --> 58:11.320
 well that it's revolutionizing our way of speaking and thinking in the ways in which

58:11.320 --> 58:12.920
 we've become accustomed.

58:12.920 --> 58:19.360
 But don't you think even in theoretical physics, a lot of times, even with theories like string

58:19.360 --> 58:24.200
 theory, you can speak to this, it does eventually lead to what are the ways that this theory

58:24.200 --> 58:25.200
 would be testable?

58:25.200 --> 58:32.160
 Ultimately, although look, there's this thing about Popper and the scientific method that's

58:32.160 --> 58:36.360
 a cancer and a disease in the minds of very smart people.

58:36.360 --> 58:39.840
 That's not really how most of the stuff gets worked out.

58:39.840 --> 58:42.560
 It's how it gets checked.

58:42.560 --> 58:45.680
 And there is a dialogue between theory and experiment.

58:45.680 --> 58:57.240
 But everybody should read Paul Dirac's 1963 scientific American article where it's very

58:57.240 --> 58:58.240
 interesting.

58:58.240 --> 59:03.160
 He talks about it as if it was about the Schrodinger equation and Schrodinger's failure to advance

59:03.160 --> 59:06.320
 his own work because of his failure to account for some phenomenon.

59:06.320 --> 59:10.400
 The key point is that if your theory is a slight bit off, it won't agree with experiment,

59:10.400 --> 59:13.600
 but it doesn't mean that the theory is actually wrong.

59:13.600 --> 59:18.720
 But Dirac could as easily have been talking about his own equation in which he predicted

59:18.720 --> 59:22.440
 that the electrons should have an antiparticle.

59:22.440 --> 59:26.840
 And since the only positively charged particle that was known at the time was the proton,

59:26.840 --> 59:30.760
 Heisenberg pointed out, well, shouldn't your antiparticle, the proton have the same mass

59:30.760 --> 59:31.760
 as the electron?

59:31.760 --> 59:33.640
 And doesn't that invalidate your theory?

59:33.640 --> 59:39.400
 So I think that Dirac was actually being potentially quite sneaky and talking about the fact that

59:39.400 --> 59:43.960
 he had been pushed off of his own theory to some extent by Heisenberg.

59:43.960 --> 59:51.520
 But look, we've fetishized the scientific method and popper and falsification because

59:51.520 --> 59:55.580
 it protects us from crazy ideas entering the field.

59:55.580 --> 1:00:00.120
 So it's a question of balancing type one and type two error, and we're pretty maxed

1:00:00.120 --> 1:00:01.560
 out in one direction.

1:00:01.560 --> 1:00:08.280
 The opposite of that, let me say what comforts me, biology or engineering, at the end of

1:00:08.280 --> 1:00:10.760
 the day, does the thing work?

1:00:10.760 --> 1:00:11.760
 Yeah.

1:00:11.760 --> 1:00:14.760
 You can test the crazies away.

1:00:14.760 --> 1:00:19.520
 The crazy, well, see, now you're saying, but some ideas are truly crazy and some are actually

1:00:19.520 --> 1:00:20.520
 correct.

1:00:20.520 --> 1:00:24.000
 So, well, there's pre correct, currently crazy.

1:00:24.000 --> 1:00:25.000
 Yeah.

1:00:25.000 --> 1:00:26.000
 Right.

1:00:26.000 --> 1:00:31.520
 And so you don't want to get rid of everybody who's pre correct and currently crazy.

1:00:31.520 --> 1:00:37.480
 The problem is, is that we don't have standards in general for trying to determine who has

1:00:37.480 --> 1:00:43.840
 to be put to the sword in terms of their career and who has to be protected as some sort of

1:00:43.840 --> 1:00:47.920
 giant time suck pain in the ass, who may change everything.

1:00:47.920 --> 1:00:51.200
 Do you think that's possible, creating a mechanism of those select?

1:00:51.200 --> 1:00:55.200
 Well, you're not going to like the answer, but here it comes.

1:00:55.200 --> 1:00:59.400
 It has to do with very human elements.

1:00:59.400 --> 1:01:02.560
 We're trying to do this at the level of like rules and fairness.

1:01:02.560 --> 1:01:10.160
 That's not going to work because the only thing that really understands this, you know,

1:01:10.160 --> 1:01:16.120
 read the, read the double helix, it's a book, oh, you have to read this book.

1:01:16.120 --> 1:01:22.280
 Not only did Jim Watson half discover this three dimensional structure DNA, he's also

1:01:22.280 --> 1:01:28.640
 one hell of a writer before he became an ass that, no, he, he's tried to destroy his

1:01:28.640 --> 1:01:29.640
 own reputation.

1:01:29.640 --> 1:01:33.080
 I knew about the ass, I didn't know about the good writer.

1:01:33.080 --> 1:01:36.200
 Jim Watson is one of the most important people now living.

1:01:36.200 --> 1:01:44.840
 And as I've said before, Jim Watson is too important a legacy to be left to Jim Watson.

1:01:44.840 --> 1:01:49.480
 That book tells you more about what actually moves the dial, right?

1:01:49.480 --> 1:01:53.680
 There's another story about him, which I don't, don't agree with, which is that he stole everything

1:01:53.680 --> 1:01:54.680
 from Rosalind Franklin.

1:01:54.680 --> 1:01:59.560
 I mean, the problems that he had with Rosalind Franklin are real, but we should actually

1:01:59.560 --> 1:02:05.320
 honor that tension in our history by delving into it rather than having a simple solution.

1:02:05.320 --> 1:02:10.160
 Jim Watson talks about Francis Crick being a pain in the ass that everybody secretly

1:02:10.160 --> 1:02:12.840
 knew was super brilliant.

1:02:12.840 --> 1:02:19.240
 And there's an encounter between Chargaff who came up with the, the equimolar relations

1:02:19.240 --> 1:02:25.120
 between the nucleotides who should have gotten the structure of DNA and Watson and Crick.

1:02:25.120 --> 1:02:30.880
 And you know, he talks about missing a shiver in the heartbeat of biology and stuff is so

1:02:30.880 --> 1:02:36.440
 gorgeous and just makes you tremble even thinking about it.

1:02:36.440 --> 1:02:45.160
 Look, we know very often who is to be feared and we need to fund the people that we fear.

1:02:45.160 --> 1:02:49.720
 The people who are wasting our time need to be excluded from the conversation.

1:02:49.720 --> 1:02:55.000
 You see, and you know, maybe we'll make some errors in both directions.

1:02:55.000 --> 1:02:58.200
 But we have known our own people.

1:02:58.200 --> 1:03:02.480
 We know the pains in the asses that might work out and we know the people who are really

1:03:02.480 --> 1:03:06.760
 just blowhards who really have very little to contribute most of the time.

1:03:06.760 --> 1:03:10.160
 It's not 100%, but you're not going to get there with rules.

1:03:10.160 --> 1:03:11.160
 Right.

1:03:11.160 --> 1:03:12.720
 It's using some kind of instinct.

1:03:12.720 --> 1:03:18.840
 I mean, to be honest, I'm going to make you roll your eyes for a second, but in the first

1:03:18.840 --> 1:03:24.000
 time I heard that there is a large community of people who believe the earth is flat actually

1:03:24.000 --> 1:03:28.520
 made me pause and ask myself the question, why would there be such a community?

1:03:28.520 --> 1:03:30.280
 Is it possible the earth is flat?

1:03:30.280 --> 1:03:33.160
 So I had to like, wait a minute.

1:03:33.160 --> 1:03:37.640
 I mean, then you go through a thinking process that I think is really healthy.

1:03:37.640 --> 1:03:39.600
 It ultimately ends up being a geometry thing.

1:03:39.600 --> 1:03:45.240
 I think it's an interesting thought experiment at the very least.

1:03:45.240 --> 1:03:46.560
 I do a different version of it.

1:03:46.560 --> 1:03:48.440
 I say, why is this community stable?

1:03:48.440 --> 1:03:49.440
 Yeah.

1:03:49.440 --> 1:03:52.120
 That's a good way to analyze it.

1:03:52.120 --> 1:03:56.040
 Something that whatever we've done has not erased the community.

1:03:56.040 --> 1:04:00.680
 So you know, they're taking a long shot bet that won't pan out, you know, maybe we just

1:04:00.680 --> 1:04:04.600
 haven't thought enough about the rationality of the square root of two and somebody brilliant

1:04:04.600 --> 1:04:05.600
 will figure it out.

1:04:05.600 --> 1:04:11.520
 Maybe we will eventually land one day on the surface of Jupiter and explore it, right?

1:04:11.520 --> 1:04:14.240
 These are crazy things that will never happen.

1:04:14.240 --> 1:04:17.600
 So much of social media operates by AI algorithms.

1:04:17.600 --> 1:04:22.000
 We talked about this a little bit, uh, recommending the content you see.

1:04:22.000 --> 1:04:28.200
 So on this idea of radical thought, how much should AI show you things you disagree with

1:04:28.200 --> 1:04:34.440
 on Twitter and so on in a Twitter word verse in the, in this question.

1:04:34.440 --> 1:04:35.440
 Yeah.

1:04:35.440 --> 1:04:36.440
 Yeah.

1:04:36.440 --> 1:04:37.440
 Cause you don't know the answer.

1:04:37.440 --> 1:04:38.440
 No.

1:04:38.440 --> 1:04:39.440
 No, no, no.

1:04:39.440 --> 1:04:45.960
 Look, we've been, they pushed out this cognitive Lego to us that will just lead to madness.

1:04:45.960 --> 1:04:49.440
 It's good to be challenged with things that you disagree with.

1:04:49.440 --> 1:04:53.920
 The answer is no, it's good to be challenged with interesting things with which you currently

1:04:53.920 --> 1:04:56.640
 disagree, but that might be true.

1:04:56.640 --> 1:05:00.400
 So I don't really care about whether or not I disagree with something or don't disagree.

1:05:00.400 --> 1:05:05.480
 I need to know why that particular disagreeable thing is being pushed out.

1:05:05.480 --> 1:05:07.120
 Is it because it's likely to be true?

1:05:07.120 --> 1:05:09.880
 Is it because, is there some reason?

1:05:09.880 --> 1:05:14.400
 Because I can write, I can write a computer generator, uh, to come up with an infinite

1:05:14.400 --> 1:05:17.720
 number of disagreeable statements that nobody needs to look at.

1:05:17.720 --> 1:05:22.920
 So please, before you push things at me that are disagreeable, tell me why.

1:05:22.920 --> 1:05:26.200
 There is an aspect in which that question is quite dumb, especially because it's being

1:05:26.200 --> 1:05:34.120
 used to, uh, almost, uh, uh, very generically by these different networks to say, well,

1:05:34.120 --> 1:05:35.600
 we're trying to work this out.

1:05:35.600 --> 1:05:43.720
 But you know, basically, uh, how much do you see the value of seeing things you don't like?

1:05:43.720 --> 1:05:47.640
 That you disagree with, because it's very difficult to know exactly what you articulated,

1:05:47.640 --> 1:05:53.440
 which is, uh, the stuff that's important for you to consider that you disagree with.

1:05:53.440 --> 1:05:55.040
 That's really hard to figure out.

1:05:55.040 --> 1:05:57.240
 The bottom line is the stuff you don't like.

1:05:57.240 --> 1:06:03.040
 If you're a, uh, uh, Hillary Clinton supporter, you may not want to, it might not make you

1:06:03.040 --> 1:06:05.960
 feel good to see anything about Donald Trump.

1:06:05.960 --> 1:06:08.400
 That's the only thing algorithms can really optimize for currently.

1:06:08.400 --> 1:06:09.400
 They really can't.

1:06:09.400 --> 1:06:10.640
 No, they can do better.

1:06:10.640 --> 1:06:12.440
 This is, we're, we're, we're, we think so.

1:06:12.440 --> 1:06:21.640
 No, we're engaged in some moronic back and forth where I have no idea why people who

1:06:21.640 --> 1:06:27.560
 are capable of building Google, Facebook, Twitter are having us in these incredibly

1:06:27.560 --> 1:06:28.920
 low level discussions.

1:06:28.920 --> 1:06:31.200
 Do they not know any smart people?

1:06:31.200 --> 1:06:36.120
 Do they not have the phone numbers of people who can elevate these discussions?

1:06:36.120 --> 1:06:41.200
 They do, but this, they're optimizing for a different thing and they're pushing those

1:06:41.200 --> 1:06:42.400
 people out of those rooms.

1:06:42.400 --> 1:06:48.480
 They're, they're optimizing for things we can't see and yes, profit is there.

1:06:48.480 --> 1:06:54.640
 Nobody, nobody's questioning that, but they're also optimizing for things like political

1:06:54.640 --> 1:06:57.640
 control or the fact that they're doing business in Pakistan.

1:06:57.640 --> 1:07:01.120
 And so they don't want to talk about all the things that they're going to be bending

1:07:01.120 --> 1:07:03.360
 to in Pakistan.

1:07:03.360 --> 1:07:06.880
 So we're, we're involved in a fake discussion.

1:07:06.880 --> 1:07:07.960
 You think so.

1:07:07.960 --> 1:07:11.360
 You think these conversations at that depth, they're happening inside Google.

1:07:11.360 --> 1:07:15.840
 You don't think they have some basic metrics under our user engagements.

1:07:15.840 --> 1:07:18.320
 You're having a fake conversation with us guys.

1:07:18.320 --> 1:07:19.880
 We know you're having a fake conversation.

1:07:19.880 --> 1:07:23.720
 I do not wish to be part of your fake conversation.

1:07:23.720 --> 1:07:29.000
 You know how to cool, you know, these units, you know, high availability like nobody's

1:07:29.000 --> 1:07:30.000
 business.

1:07:30.000 --> 1:07:32.720
 My Gmail never goes down almost.

1:07:32.720 --> 1:07:38.400
 See, you think just because they can do incredible work on the software side with infrastructure,

1:07:38.400 --> 1:07:46.440
 they can also deal with some of these difficult questions about human behavior, human understanding.

1:07:46.440 --> 1:07:47.440
 You're not.

1:07:47.440 --> 1:07:53.560
 I mean, I've seen the, I've seen the developers screens that people take shots of inside of

1:07:53.560 --> 1:07:54.560
 Google.

1:07:54.560 --> 1:07:55.560
 Yeah.

1:07:55.560 --> 1:07:58.560
 And I've heard stories inside of Facebook and Apple.

1:07:58.560 --> 1:08:04.160
 We're not, we're engaged, they're engaging us in the wrong conversations.

1:08:04.160 --> 1:08:06.280
 We're not at this low level.

1:08:06.280 --> 1:08:08.320
 Here's one of my favorite questions.

1:08:08.320 --> 1:08:17.320
 Why is every piece of hardware that I purchase in tech space equipped as a listening device?

1:08:17.320 --> 1:08:19.800
 Where's my physical shutter to cover my lens?

1:08:19.800 --> 1:08:26.080
 We had this in the 1970s, cameras that had lens caps, you know, how much would it cost

1:08:26.080 --> 1:08:29.920
 to have a security model, pay five extra bucks?

1:08:29.920 --> 1:08:33.120
 Why is my indicator light software controlled?

1:08:33.120 --> 1:08:38.000
 Why when my camera is on, do I not see that the light is on by putting it as something

1:08:38.000 --> 1:08:39.800
 that cannot be bypassed?

1:08:39.800 --> 1:08:45.480
 Why have you set up my, all of my devices at some difficulty to yourselves as listening

1:08:45.480 --> 1:08:47.760
 devices and we don't even talk about this?

1:08:47.760 --> 1:08:50.880
 This is, this thing is total fucking bullshit.

1:08:50.880 --> 1:08:53.160
 Well, I hope, wait, wait, wait.

1:08:53.160 --> 1:08:55.400
 These discussions are happening about privacy.

1:08:55.400 --> 1:08:57.120
 Is there a diff, more difficult than you're given?

1:08:57.120 --> 1:08:58.320
 It's not just privacy.

1:08:58.320 --> 1:08:59.320
 Yeah.

1:08:59.320 --> 1:09:01.160
 It's about social control.

1:09:01.160 --> 1:09:03.680
 We're talking about social control.

1:09:03.680 --> 1:09:07.240
 Why do I not have controls over my own levers?

1:09:07.240 --> 1:09:11.800
 I just have a really cute UI where I can switch, I can dial things or I can at least see what

1:09:11.800 --> 1:09:13.440
 the algorithms are.

1:09:13.440 --> 1:09:17.480
 You think that there is some deliberate choices being made here.

1:09:17.480 --> 1:09:21.680
 There is emergence and there is intention.

1:09:21.680 --> 1:09:23.000
 There are two dimensions.

1:09:23.000 --> 1:09:26.480
 The vector does not collapse onto either axis.

1:09:26.480 --> 1:09:34.560
 But the idea that anybody who suggests that intention is completely absent is a child.

1:09:34.560 --> 1:09:39.520
 It's really beautifully put and like many things you've said is going to make me think.

1:09:39.520 --> 1:09:40.840
 Can I turn this around slightly?

1:09:40.840 --> 1:09:41.840
 Yeah.

1:09:41.840 --> 1:09:45.680
 I sit down with you and you say that you're obsessed with my feed.

1:09:45.680 --> 1:09:47.720
 I don't even know what my feed is.

1:09:47.720 --> 1:09:49.680
 What are you seeing that I'm not?

1:09:49.680 --> 1:09:54.840
 I was obsessively looking through your feed on Twitter because it was really enjoyable

1:09:54.840 --> 1:09:57.920
 because it was the Tom Laird element, is the humor in it.

1:09:57.920 --> 1:10:03.280
 By the way, that feed is Eric R. Weinstein on Twitter, Eric R. Weinstein.

1:10:03.280 --> 1:10:06.760
 No, seriously, why?

1:10:06.760 --> 1:10:10.200
 Why did I find it enjoyable or what was I seeing?

1:10:10.200 --> 1:10:11.200
 What are you looking for?

1:10:11.200 --> 1:10:13.040
 Why are we doing this?

1:10:13.040 --> 1:10:14.800
 What is this podcast about?

1:10:14.800 --> 1:10:16.480
 I know you've got all these interesting people.

1:10:16.480 --> 1:10:19.040
 I'm just some guy who's sort of a podcast guest.

1:10:19.040 --> 1:10:21.440
 Sort of a podcast.

1:10:21.440 --> 1:10:22.440
 You're not even wearing a tie.

1:10:22.440 --> 1:10:27.640
 I mean, it's not even a serious interview.

1:10:27.640 --> 1:10:33.680
 I'm searching for meaning, for happiness, for a dopamine rush, so short term and long

1:10:33.680 --> 1:10:34.680
 term.

1:10:34.680 --> 1:10:37.160
 How are you finding your way to me?

1:10:37.160 --> 1:10:41.440
 I don't honestly know what I'm doing to reach you.

1:10:41.440 --> 1:10:48.000
 The representing ideas, which feel common sense to me and not many people are speaking,

1:10:48.000 --> 1:10:54.680
 so it's kind of like the intellectual dark web folks.

1:10:54.680 --> 1:11:00.040
 These folks, from Sam Harris to Jordan Peterson to yourself, are saying things where it's

1:11:00.040 --> 1:11:05.440
 like you're saying, look, there's an elephant, he's not wearing any clothes.

1:11:05.440 --> 1:11:09.560
 And I say, yeah, yeah, let's have more of that conversation.

1:11:09.560 --> 1:11:10.920
 That's how I'm finding it.

1:11:10.920 --> 1:11:14.680
 I'm desperate to try to change the conversation we're having.

1:11:14.680 --> 1:11:17.360
 I'm very worried we've got an election in 2020.

1:11:17.360 --> 1:11:23.920
 I don't think we can afford four more years of a misinterpreted message, which is what

1:11:23.920 --> 1:11:25.760
 Donald Trump was.

1:11:25.760 --> 1:11:28.360
 And I don't want the destruction of our institutions.

1:11:28.360 --> 1:11:30.680
 They all seem hell bent on destroying themselves.

1:11:30.680 --> 1:11:34.880
 So I'm trying to save theoretical physics, trying to save the New York Times, trying

1:11:34.880 --> 1:11:38.280
 to save our various processes.

1:11:38.280 --> 1:11:44.480
 And I think it feels delusional to me that this is falling to a tiny group of people

1:11:44.480 --> 1:11:49.720
 who are willing to speak out without getting so freaked out that everything they say will

1:11:49.720 --> 1:11:52.800
 be misinterpreted and that their lives will be ruined through the process.

1:11:52.800 --> 1:11:57.560
 I mean, I think we're in an absolutely bananas period of time and I don't believe it should

1:11:57.560 --> 1:12:02.560
 fall to such a tiny number of shoulders to shoulder this weight.

1:12:02.560 --> 1:12:08.040
 So I have to ask you on the capitalism side, you mentioned that technology is killing capitalism

1:12:08.040 --> 1:12:15.240
 or has effects that are unintended, well, not unintended, but not what economists would

1:12:15.240 --> 1:12:18.760
 predict or speak of capitalism creating.

1:12:18.760 --> 1:12:23.560
 I just want to talk to you about in general, the effect of even then artificial intelligence

1:12:23.560 --> 1:12:29.000
 or technology automation taking away jobs and these kinds of things and what you think

1:12:29.000 --> 1:12:34.240
 is the way to alleviate that, whether the Andrew Ang presidential candidate with universal

1:12:34.240 --> 1:12:38.800
 basic income, UBI, what are your thoughts there?

1:12:38.800 --> 1:12:42.280
 How do we fight off the negative effects of technology that

1:12:42.280 --> 1:12:43.280
 All right.

1:12:43.280 --> 1:12:44.280
 You're a software guy, right?

1:12:44.280 --> 1:12:45.280
 Yep.

1:12:45.280 --> 1:12:48.880
 A human being is a worker is an old idea.

1:12:48.880 --> 1:12:49.880
 Yes.

1:12:49.880 --> 1:12:53.400
 A human being has a worker is a different object, right?

1:12:53.400 --> 1:12:54.400
 Yes.

1:12:54.400 --> 1:12:59.600
 So if you think about object oriented programming as a paradigm, a human being has a worker

1:12:59.600 --> 1:13:01.920
 and a human being has a soul.

1:13:01.920 --> 1:13:07.760
 We're talking about the fact that for a period of time, the worker that a human being has

1:13:07.760 --> 1:13:11.680
 was in a position to feed the soul that a human being has.

1:13:11.680 --> 1:13:18.280
 However, we have two separate claims on the value in society.

1:13:18.280 --> 1:13:22.600
 One is as a worker and the other is as a soul and the soul needs sustenance.

1:13:22.600 --> 1:13:23.600
 It needs dignity.

1:13:23.600 --> 1:13:24.600
 It needs meaning.

1:13:24.600 --> 1:13:27.480
 It needs purpose.

1:13:27.480 --> 1:13:34.680
 As long as your means of support is not highly repetitive, I think you have a while to go

1:13:34.680 --> 1:13:39.960
 before you need to start worrying, but if what you do is highly repetitive and it's

1:13:39.960 --> 1:13:46.040
 not terribly generative, you are in the crosshairs of four loops and while loops.

1:13:46.040 --> 1:13:48.160
 And that's what computers excel at.

1:13:48.160 --> 1:13:53.200
 Repetitive behavior and when I say repetitive, I may mean things that have never happened

1:13:53.200 --> 1:13:56.800
 be through combinatorial possibilities, but as long as it has a looped characteristic

1:13:56.800 --> 1:13:59.040
 to it, you're in trouble.

1:13:59.040 --> 1:14:07.200
 We are seeing a massive push towards socialism because capitalists are slow to address the

1:14:07.200 --> 1:14:10.800
 fact that a worker may not be able to make claims.

1:14:10.800 --> 1:14:17.960
 A relatively undistinguished median member of our society still has needs to reproduce,

1:14:17.960 --> 1:14:27.680
 needs to dignity, and when capitalism abandons the median individual or the bottom tenth

1:14:27.680 --> 1:14:32.720
 or whatever it's going to do, it's flirting with revolution.

1:14:32.720 --> 1:14:37.680
 And what concerns me is that the capitalists aren't sufficiently capitalistic to understand

1:14:37.680 --> 1:14:39.320
 this.

1:14:39.320 --> 1:14:45.160
 You really want to court authoritarian control in our society because you can't see that

1:14:45.160 --> 1:14:49.960
 people may not be able to defend themselves in the marketplace because the marginal product

1:14:49.960 --> 1:14:55.120
 of their labor is too low to feed their dignity as a soul.

1:14:55.120 --> 1:15:02.280
 So my great concern is that our free society has to do with the fact that we are self organized.

1:15:02.280 --> 1:15:06.360
 I remember looking down from my office in Manhattan when Lehman Brothers collapsed

1:15:06.360 --> 1:15:11.920
 and thinking, who's going to tell all these people that they need to show up at work when

1:15:11.920 --> 1:15:17.520
 they don't have a financial system to incentivize them to show up at work?

1:15:17.520 --> 1:15:22.040
 So my complaint is, first of all, not with the socialists, but with the capitalists,

1:15:22.040 --> 1:15:28.200
 which is you guys are being idiots, you're courting revolution by continuing to harp

1:15:28.200 --> 1:15:32.880
 on the same old ideas that, well, try harder, bootstrap yourself.

1:15:32.880 --> 1:15:36.400
 Yeah, to an extent that works, to an extent.

1:15:36.400 --> 1:15:41.040
 But we are clearly headed into a place that there's nothing that ties together, our need

1:15:41.040 --> 1:15:45.560
 to contribute and our need to consume.

1:15:45.560 --> 1:15:49.520
 And that may not be provided by capitalism because it may have been a temporary phenomena.

1:15:49.520 --> 1:15:55.480
 So check out my article on anthropic capitalism and the new gimmick economy.

1:15:55.480 --> 1:16:00.320
 I think people are late getting the wake up call and we would be doing a better job saving

1:16:00.320 --> 1:16:05.840
 capitalism from itself because I don't want this done under authoritarian control.

1:16:05.840 --> 1:16:11.080
 And the more we insist that everybody who's not thriving in our society during their reproductive

1:16:11.080 --> 1:16:17.240
 years in order to have a family is failing at a personal level, I mean, what a disgusting

1:16:17.240 --> 1:16:22.280
 thing that we're saying, what a horrible message, who the hell have we become that we've so

1:16:22.280 --> 1:16:27.360
 bought into the Chicago model that we can't see the humanity that we're destroying in

1:16:27.360 --> 1:16:28.360
 that process.

1:16:28.360 --> 1:16:32.160
 And I hate the thought of communism, I really do.

1:16:32.160 --> 1:16:37.240
 My family has flirted with it decades past, it's a wrong bad idea, but we are going to

1:16:37.240 --> 1:16:43.920
 need to figure out how to make sure that those souls are nourished and respected and capitalism

1:16:43.920 --> 1:16:44.920
 better have an answer.

1:16:44.920 --> 1:16:48.240
 And I'm betting on capitalism, but I gotta tell you, I'm pretty disappointed with my

1:16:48.240 --> 1:16:49.240
 team.

1:16:49.240 --> 1:16:55.280
 So you're still on the capitalism team, you just, there's a theme here, radical, radical

1:16:55.280 --> 1:16:56.280
 capitalism.

1:16:56.280 --> 1:17:02.040
 I want, I think hyper capitalism is going to have to be coupled to hyper socialism.

1:17:02.040 --> 1:17:07.580
 You need to allow the most productive people to create wonders and you got to stop bogging

1:17:07.580 --> 1:17:14.760
 them down with all of these extra nice requirements, you know, nice is dead, good has a future.

1:17:14.760 --> 1:17:20.400
 This doesn't have a future because nice ends up with, with gulags, damn, that's a good

1:17:20.400 --> 1:17:21.400
 line.

1:17:21.400 --> 1:17:22.400
 Okay.

1:17:22.400 --> 1:17:23.400
 Last question.

1:17:23.400 --> 1:17:30.520
 You tweeted today, a simple, quite insightful equation saying, uh, imagine that every unit

1:17:30.520 --> 1:17:35.760
 F of fame you picked up as stalkers and H haters.

1:17:35.760 --> 1:17:39.520
 So I imagine S and H are dependent on your path to fame, perhaps a little bit.

1:17:39.520 --> 1:17:42.680
 Well, it's not a simple, I mean, people always take these things literally when you have

1:17:42.680 --> 1:17:46.040
 like 280 characters to explain yourself.

1:17:46.040 --> 1:17:50.320
 So you mean that that's not a mathematical, uh, no, there's no law.

1:17:50.320 --> 1:17:51.320
 Oh, okay.

1:17:51.320 --> 1:17:52.320
 All right.

1:17:52.320 --> 1:17:55.400
 I just said, I put the word imagine because I still have a mathematician's desire for

1:17:55.400 --> 1:17:56.400
 precision.

1:17:56.400 --> 1:17:57.400
 Yeah.

1:17:57.400 --> 1:18:01.600
 Imagine that this were true, but it was a beautiful way to imagine that there is a law that has

1:18:01.600 --> 1:18:06.840
 those variables in it and, uh, you've become quite famous these days.

1:18:06.840 --> 1:18:12.600
 So how do you yourself optimize that equation with the peculiar kind of fame that you have

1:18:12.600 --> 1:18:13.720
 gathered along the way?

1:18:13.720 --> 1:18:14.720
 I want to be kinder.

1:18:14.720 --> 1:18:16.160
 I want to be kinder to myself.

1:18:16.160 --> 1:18:17.360
 I want to be kinder to others.

1:18:17.360 --> 1:18:23.000
 I want to be able to have heart, compassion.

1:18:23.000 --> 1:18:27.960
 These things are really important and, uh, I have a pretty spectromy kind of approach

1:18:27.960 --> 1:18:28.960
 to analysis.

1:18:28.960 --> 1:18:29.960
 I'm quite literal.

1:18:29.960 --> 1:18:32.880
 I can go full rain man on you at any given moment.

1:18:32.880 --> 1:18:33.880
 No, I can't.

1:18:33.880 --> 1:18:34.880
 I can.

1:18:34.880 --> 1:18:37.640
 Uh, it's faculty of autism, if you like, and people are going to get angry because they

1:18:37.640 --> 1:18:39.280
 want autism to be respected.

1:18:39.280 --> 1:18:46.920
 But when you see me coding or you see me doing mathematics, I'm, you know, I speak with speech

1:18:46.920 --> 1:18:47.920
 apnea.

1:18:47.920 --> 1:18:54.520
 Uh, uh, uh, be right down to dinner, you know, we have to try to integrate ourselves and those

1:18:54.520 --> 1:19:00.920
 tensions between, you know, it's sort of back to us as a worker and us as a soul.

1:19:00.920 --> 1:19:06.000
 Many of us are optimizing one to the, at the expense of the other.

1:19:06.000 --> 1:19:11.640
 And I struggle with social media and I struggle with people making threats against our families

1:19:11.640 --> 1:19:15.960
 and I struggle with, um, just how much pain people are in.

1:19:15.960 --> 1:19:21.960
 And if there's one message I would like to push out there, um, you're responsible, everybody,

1:19:21.960 --> 1:19:27.640
 all of us, myself included with struggling, struggle, struggle mightily because you,

1:19:27.640 --> 1:19:30.400
 it's nobody else's job to do your struggle for you.

1:19:30.400 --> 1:19:34.360
 Now, with that said, if you're struggling and you're trying and you're trying to figure

1:19:34.360 --> 1:19:38.160
 out how to better yourself and where you've failed and where you've let down your family,

1:19:38.160 --> 1:19:43.560
 your friends, your workers, all this kind of stuff, give yourself a break.

1:19:43.560 --> 1:19:48.880
 You know, if, if, if it's not working out, I have a lifelong relationship with failure

1:19:48.880 --> 1:19:49.880
 and success.

1:19:49.880 --> 1:19:56.320
 There's been no period of my life where both haven't been present in one form or another.

1:19:56.320 --> 1:20:00.720
 And I do wish to say that a lot of times people think this is glamorous.

1:20:00.720 --> 1:20:05.200
 I'm about to go, you know, do a show with Sam Harris, people are going to listen in

1:20:05.200 --> 1:20:07.360
 on two guys having a conversation on stage.

1:20:07.360 --> 1:20:08.360
 It's completely crazy.

1:20:08.360 --> 1:20:11.720
 Well, I'm always trying to figure out how to make sure that those people get maximum

1:20:11.720 --> 1:20:18.320
 value and, uh, that's why I'm doing this podcast, you know, just give yourself a break.

1:20:18.320 --> 1:20:20.560
 You owe us, you owe us your struggle.

1:20:20.560 --> 1:20:26.000
 You don't owe your family or your coworkers or your lovers or your family members success.

1:20:26.000 --> 1:20:30.680
 Um, as long as you're in there and you're picking yourself up, recognize that this

1:20:30.680 --> 1:20:37.040
 this new situation with the economy that doesn't have the juice to sustain our institutions

1:20:37.040 --> 1:20:41.760
 has caused the people who've risen to the top of those institutions to get quite brutal

1:20:41.760 --> 1:20:43.800
 and cruel.

1:20:43.800 --> 1:20:45.400
 Everybody is lying at the moment.

1:20:45.400 --> 1:20:47.440
 Nobody's really a truth teller.

1:20:47.440 --> 1:20:50.280
 Um, try to keep your humanity about you.

1:20:50.280 --> 1:20:55.200
 Try to recognize that if you're failing, if things aren't where you want them to be and

1:20:55.200 --> 1:20:57.680
 you're struggling and you're trying to figure out what you're doing wrong, which you could

1:20:57.680 --> 1:20:58.680
 do.

1:20:58.680 --> 1:21:01.360
 It's not necessarily all your fault.

1:21:01.360 --> 1:21:02.960
 We are in a global situation.

1:21:02.960 --> 1:21:08.640
 I have not met the people who are honest, kind, good, successful.

1:21:08.640 --> 1:21:12.040
 Nobody that I've met is chick is checking all the boxes.

1:21:12.040 --> 1:21:14.560
 Uh, nobody's getting all 10s.

1:21:14.560 --> 1:21:18.960
 So I just think that's an important message that doesn't get pushed out enough.

1:21:18.960 --> 1:21:24.040
 Either people want to hold society responsible for their failures, which is not reasonable.

1:21:24.040 --> 1:21:25.040
 You have to struggle.

1:21:25.040 --> 1:21:26.040
 You have to try.

1:21:26.040 --> 1:21:32.160
 Or they want to say you're 100% responsible for your failures, which is total nonsense.

1:21:32.160 --> 1:21:33.160
 Beautifully put.

1:21:33.160 --> 1:21:34.400
 Eric, thank you so much for talking today.

1:21:34.400 --> 1:21:56.360
 Thanks for having me, buddy.