## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1s) Introduction and *On the Equality of All Things*
Joe Rogan opens the conversation by warmly welcoming theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli. When Rogan asks him how he describes what he does, Rovelli explains that while his official job title is a physicist working on quantum gravity and theoretical physics, his actual life encompasses a far wider spectrum: doing science, philosophy, and politics, falling in love, and enjoying life in all its dimensions.
Rogan brings up Rovelli's book, *On the Equality of All Things*, which centers around the profound idea that nothing in the universe exists in complete isolation. Everything is interconnected and relational. Rogan notes that he has always intuitively felt this to be true, but hearing a world-class physicist validate the concept makes him feel reassured. Rovelli explains that this relational worldview matches human everyday life, where people and objects are experienced through interactions and personal perspectives. However, classical physics historically attempted to strip away perspective, asserting that beneath our subjective views lies a rigid, objective reality made of isolated particles with intrinsic properties. Rovelli argues that 20th-century developments—particularly quantum mechanics—have demonstrated that this classical picture of an absolute, external objective reality is fundamentally flawed.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Classical vs Relational Physics
accDescr: Comparison between classical objective physics and relational quantum mechanics.
subgraph Classical["Classical View"]
A["External Observer"] --> B["Objective Reality"]
B --> C["Isolated Particles & Fixed Properties"]
end
subgraph Relational["Relational Quantum View"]
D["Observer / System A"] <-->|"Interaction"| E["System B"]
E <-->|"Perspective / Relation"| F["Properties Manifest"]
end
```
[02:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=172s) Relational Reality and the Nature of Perspectives
When Rogan asks whether the rejection of objective reality implies that human perception is merely distorted or a tiny fraction of the whole, Rovelli clarifies the distinction. We are not experiencing an illusion cut off from reality; rather, we are experiencing an intrinsic perspective of what is real. Using the example of a pen sitting between them, Rovelli points out that Rogan sees the pen from one angle, while he sees it from another. Both perspectives are real, but they do not combine into a single, detached "view from nowhere."
Rovelli expands this insight beyond human consciousness to inanimate objects: the properties of the pen—its position, color, and dimensions—do not belong exclusively to the pen in isolation. Instead, they are descriptions of how the pen manifests when interacting with a human eye, a table, or another colliding pen. Reality, in Rovelli's view, is not a collection of independent entities viewed from the outside, but a vast, participatory network of interactions where we exist inside the system as an integral part of the fabric.
- **The Pen Example**: Properties such as color, location, and shape only manifest through relational interactions with other systems, whether humans or other physical objects.
- **Participatory Reality**: Humans are not detached spectators looking at the universe from the outside; we are fully embedded within the network of physical interactions.
[04:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=253s) The Limits of Senses, Sunsets, and Emotional Resonance
Rogan reflects on the biological purpose of human perception, noting that our senses did not evolve to show us the entirety of existence, but rather just enough information to survive. Rovelli agrees, pointing out that taking sensory data too literally often leads to fundamental misunderstandings about the cosmos. He highlights the sunset as a classic example of science correcting intuitive sensory impressions: while our eyes register the sun sinking beneath the ocean horizon, physics reveals that the sun remains stationary relative to us, and it is actually the Earth spinning away from the sun's light.
```
"My senses cheat me in telling me that the sun is moving, but it's not moving. I am moving."
```
This leads Rogan to question why natural phenomena like sunsets, sunrises, and towering mountain ranges evoke such deep feelings of awe and beauty. While food tastes good because it offers nutritional value essential for survival, the emotional power of natural beauty feels far more mysterious and difficult to quantify through mere physical measurement. Rovelli agrees that human engagement with the cosmos is primarily emotional rather than purely computational. While circadian rhythms and daylight cycles have obvious evolutionary importance for diurnal mammals, our profound emotional resonance with nature and other beings forms the core foundation of our existence, with rationality serving merely as a secondary tool or "addendum" built on top of those instincts.
[08:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=494s) The Metaphysical Shock of Quantum Physics
Rogan observes that quantum mechanics must have thrown the entire scientific establishment into a state of shock by revealing that magic-like principles govern the universe at its smallest scales. Rovelli explains that physics was originally regarded as the ultimate path toward objective certainty—a promise that underneath all subjective feelings and differing perspectives lay a simple, deterministic bedrock of atoms colliding through physical forces.
However, early 20th-century physicists working on atomic radiation and electron behavior found that the experimental data shattered this classical framework. Physicists like Niels Bohr realized that resolving the paradoxes required a radical metaphysical shift rather than just fine-tuning equations. Just as humanity previously had to adjust to the realization that the Earth moves or that invisible electromagnetic fields fill space, quantum mechanics demanded an entirely new way of conceiving reality. Rovelli notes that this intense debate continues unresolved today, with physicists and philosophers arguing over whether to preserve an absolute objective reality through concepts like the universal wave function and many-worlds theories, or to accept that reality is fundamentally relational and perspectival.
[10:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=636s) The Illusion of Absolute Objectivity and the Quantum Black Box
Carlo Rovelli challenges the classical scientific assumption that reality possesses a detached, absolute objectivity, arguing instead that "the dream of an absolute objectivity is a mistake." Joe Rogan finds this striking and asks how physicists originally wrestled with the realization that observation actively alters quantum interactions. Joe points out that this was not mysticism, "woo-woo," or the result of people "smoking a joint and getting high"; rather, it came from mainstream physicists—the very individuals expected to be the most objective and rational minds in science.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Measurement and Perspectives in Quantum Mechanics
accDescr: Contrasting the operational success of quantum mechanics against its lack of physical narrative.
subgraph Interpretations ["Missing Narrative: What Happens Between?"]
Box -.-> Int1["Hidden Variables<br/>(Inaccessible determinants)"]
Box -.-> Int2["Many-Worlds<br/>(Parallel realities)"]
Box -.-> Int3["Relational Quantum Mechanics<br/>(Reality as interacting relations)"]
end
```
Rovelli recounts how experimental measurements accumulated across the first twenty years of the twentieth century. Physicists studied the spectral light emitted by atoms, attempting to map electron orbits to specific emitted wavelengths of color, but classical models continually failed. In Copenhagen, Niels Bohr pioneered a radical departure: to comprehend an atom, one cannot merely treat it in isolation—one must examine how it is being observed. Looking at a quantum system one way yields one result; looking at it another way reveals something entirely different.
While the resulting mathematical framework of quantum mechanics was universally adopted and accurately powers modern technology—from studio microphones to microchips and quantum computers—it acts like an opaque black box. The equations cleanly specify what will be observed if an action is performed, but they provide no mechanistic narrative for what an electron actually does when it is not being measured.
[13:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=821s) Relational Reality and Perspectives
Physicists developed wildly diverging philosophies to fill the explanatory vacuum left by the mathematics. Some postulate unseen hidden variables that predetermine outcomes behind the scenes, while others argue for parallel worlds. Rovelli places himself in a relational camp: quantum mechanics forces us to abandon the metaphysical assumption that things exist purely in isolation. Reality consists strictly of interactions and processes—how matter affects other matter.
Rovelli observes that fundamental physics ironically mirrors human existence far more than classical mechanics ever did. To ask for an absolute description of an entity is fundamentally flawed:
- **Human Identity**: Rogan exists as a multiplicity of perspectives—how Rovelli perceives him, how his audience perceives him, and how Rogan perceives himself. There is no singular "final" version detached from relationships.
- **Everyday Objects**: A cup of water has no definitive single definition. Is it the description given by chemistry, quantum gravity, or psychology? Humans designate it a "cup of water" because they drink from it, framing it through a distinctly human perspective.
[15:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=946s) The Predictive Triumphs of Science and the Double-Slit Dilemma
When Joe asks about the initial resistance to the observer effect, Rovelli explains that the mathematics was so overwhelmingly effective that the scientific community embraced it despite the philosophical confusion. Science has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to forecast physical reality long before direct observation confirms it:
- **The Periodic Table**: The recurring properties of roughly 100 chemical elements had been cataloged empirically by nineteenth-century chemists, but quantum mechanical equations revealed exactly *why* those specific elements and row structures exist by deriving them as discrete mathematical solutions.
- **Electromagnetic Waves**: James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz formulated the mathematical behavior of electromagnetic waves and predicted their propagation across space well before wireless communication linked continents.
- **Black Holes**: Albert Einstein’s equations of general relativity predicted black holes mathematically decades prior to any telescope capturing observational proof in the sky.
Modern engineers design quantum circuits relying purely on calculations rather than trial and error, yet the foundational question remains: a theory can function flawlessly without providing an intuitive picture of why reality behaves that way. Rogan asks Rovelli to break down the mechanics of the classic experiment that illustrates this dilemma—the double-slit experiment. Rovelli begins walking through the setup: sending individual particles toward a barrier with two slits. When a detector is introduced to check which opening the particle traverses, it is cleanly recorded passing through only one slit or the other, setting up the fundamental paradox of quantum measurement.
[21:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1280s) The Double-Slit Mystery and the Relational Particle
Carlo Rovelli explains the baffling paradox at the heart of the double-slit experiment. If a single hole is open in a barrier, a particle can strike a specific point on the detector screen behind it; if only the other hole is open, it can strike that exact same spot as well. Mystifyingly, when both holes are opened simultaneously, the particle will never hit that spot. Rovelli points out that the more one contemplates this, the less sense it makes under ordinary intuition: if the particle can reach a destination through one path, opening a second path shouldn’t forbid it from arriving there. The immediate assumption is that the particle must somehow divide, travel through both slits at once, and cancel itself out—yet whenever detectors are set up at the slits to observe which path it takes, it is only ever caught passing through one, never both.
Rovelli acknowledges that physicists have wrestled with this confusion for over a century. His resolution—rooted in relational quantum mechanics—is that asking where the particle is when it is not being measured or interacting with anything is fundamentally a "wrong question." As Rovelli states plainly, "There's just no particle" when it is unobserved. A particle does not possess a permanent, objective position drifting continuously through space; its position only manifests at the exact instant it interacts with another physical system, such as a detector or a screen. This relational nature shatters classical notions of an independent, always-existing object.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Quantum Measurement Paradox
accDescr: A comparison between classical expectations of particle travel and quantum relational reality.
subgraph Classical["Classical Intuition"]
C1["Continuous Trajectory"] --> C2["Passes Slit A or B"]
C2 --> C3["Strikes Screen Anywhere"]
end
subgraph Quantum["Relational Quantum Reality"]
Q1["Source Emission"] -. "Indeterminate State".-> Q2["Interaction Point"]
Q2 --> Q3["Particle Snaps into Reality"]
end
```
- When both slits are open, destructive interference prevents the particle from reaching certain areas that were accessible when only one slit was open.
- Physical properties like position are not intrinsic to the particle, but are relational properties realized strictly upon interaction.
[23:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1394s) Snapping into Reality: Why Measurement Means Interaction
Joe Rogan asks what Rovelli believes is physically taking place during observation to alter the particle's behavior and change the resulting pattern. Rovelli clarifies an enduring misconception: the concept of "measurement" in quantum mechanics does not require a human physicist in a lab coat or conscious awareness. Instead, measurement is simply an interaction with any physical system. If an entity is present to interact with the particle, the physics operates one way; if there is no interaction, asking where the particle resides is a completely ill-posed inquiry.
Rovelli suggests abandoning the mental picture of a particle moving along a smooth, uninterrupted trajectory. Rather, it should be conceived as a sequence of discrete manifestations: "it snaps here and then it snaps there and it snaps there." Each snap represents an interaction where the entity collides with something. While quantum mechanics allows physicists to calculate the precise probabilities of where these snaps will occur, asking what the particle was doing or where it was located in between them is meaningless. When Rogan asks whether humanity will ever truly comprehend this process, Rovelli is confident we will, noting that history is filled with radical scientific shifts that initially felt utterly unintelligible until human intuition adapted.
[24:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1477s) Counterintuitive Truths: From the Spherical Earth to Evolutionary Biases
To illustrate how human minds eventually assimilate seemingly impossible truths, Rovelli points back roughly 2,000 years to when humanity deduced that the Earth is a sphere rather than a flat plane. At first glance, a spherical Earth is profoundly counterintuitive: it implies that people living on the opposite side of the globe, such as in Sydney, are walking upside down relative to someone in the Northern Hemisphere without falling off. Rogan recalls learning this as a child in grade school and accepting it because teachers were considered smarter, even though gravity—which keeps us anchored to a spinning ball—remained an abstract mystery.
The conversation turns playfully toward modern Flat Earth believers who still refuse to accept this picture, fixating on arguments like how the oceans stay level while the planet rotates at roughly 1,000 miles per hour. Rovelli explains that people struggle with this because their baseline intuition is shaped by everyday survival. Human brains evolved through natural selection to identify macro-scale objects relevant to immediate survival:
- Rocks, tools, and terrain
- Potential sources of food
- Other humans and social peers
- Dangerous predators or game animals
Human cognition was never built to intuitively model subatomic particles, quantum fields, or the vast cosmological mechanics of spinning planets.
[27:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1626s) The Jupiter Hypothesis and the Illusion of Universal Objects
Rovelli pushes the evolutionary thought experiment further by imagining what kind of science would emerge if intelligent life had evolved in the atmosphere of Jupiter or Saturn instead of on Earth. On a giant gas planet, there is no solid ground and no discrete solid objects—everything is fluid, gas, and liquid. Because there are no distinct, isolated solid items to count, an intelligent Jovian species might never have developed basic arithmetic like "1, 2, 3, 4" or the foundational concept of an isolated "object."
Humans treat concepts like discrete objects and counting as absolute universal truths simply because they reflect the mundane conditions of life on solid ground. Rogan agrees, observing that human perspective is trapped within the tiny window of what can be directly seen for a few miles on the horizon, leaving people unable to grasp massive cosmic scales. Rovelli emphasizes that our scientific intuitions are heavily shackled by sensory habits, and transcending those habits requires recognizing that our local experience is not a universal baseline.
[28:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1725s) The Elasticity of Time: Gravitational Dilation from Feet to Black Holes
Shifting to his primary scientific passion, Rovelli introduces the concrete reality of time dilation. He notes that if two identical, highly precise wristwatches are synchronized side by side and one is then lifted upward by just 30 to 40 inches while the other remains on the table, time will flow faster for the elevated watch. When brought back down and compared in a modern physics laboratory, the higher clock will have recorded slightly more elapsed time than the lower one. Because gravity is stronger closer to the center of the Earth, time moves more slowly lower down. As a direct consequence, a person's head is technically older than their feet.
Rovelli notes that over a full human lifespan, the difference between one's head and feet amounts to roughly a thousandth of a second. He frequently assigns a related relativity problem to his university students: if one friend remains at sea level in Austin, Texas, while another spends a decade living high in the mountains of Colorado, the mountain-dwelling friend will have aged slightly more—by a measurable fraction of a second—upon their return. While this effect is minuscule in Earth's weak gravitational field, it becomes extreme in cosmic environments:
- Spending just 10 minutes near the event horizon of a black hole would correspond to roughly 100 years passing back on Earth.
- Everyday human life gives the false impression of an absolute, universal time only because humans inhabit a quiet, low-gravity corner of the cosmos.
- True physical time is not a single, synchronous river running at the same speed for all observers across the universe.
[31:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1881s) Clocks, Calendars, and the Nature of Time
Rogan asks whether human attempts to quantify and regulate life—through mechanical clocks, calendars, and counting devices—have done humanity a disservice by distorting our understanding of what time actually is. By conflating the artificial ticks of a counting tool with the fundamental fabric of reality, people miss the fact that time is inherently relative and variable depending on speed and gravity. Rogan highlights the classic relativistic scenario where an astronaut traveling near the speed of light returns to Earth to find themselves decades younger than their terrestrial peers. Rovelli reflects that standard timekeeping tools are not so much a disservice as an inevitable feature of practical existence, representing another instance where human habits of convenience diverge from the broader truths of physics.
[32:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=1937s) Clocks, Gravity, and Einstein's Inversion of Falling
The conversation turns to how human inventions shape perception. While clocks were created as a practical service—allowing people to coordinate schedules, agree on a time, and meet up in Austin—practical tools often blind us to deeper realities. Joe Rogan points out the bizarre fact that time flows at different rates depending on altitude and asks whether gravity is the cause. Carlo Rovelli explains that while we intuitively blame gravity, Albert Einstein's general relativity inverted that logic back in 1915. Earth’s massive presence slows down time in its vicinity; near any massive body, time ticks more slowly, and near a black hole, it slows down dramatically.
Rather than mass producing gravity which then affects time, Rovelli emphasizes that the gradient of time itself generates gravity. Because a massive object causes time to pass more slowly closer to its center, time literally moves slower at your feet than at your head. When calculated mathematically, things fall downward precisely because of this temporal disparity—objects naturally fall toward where time runs slower.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Einstein's Inversion of Gravity
accDescr: Diagram contrasting the intuitive view of gravity with Einstein's general relativistic reality where mass slows time.
subgraph Intuitive["Intuitive View"]
M1["Mass"] --> G1["Gravity"]
G1 --> T1["Slows Down Time"]
end
subgraph Einstein["Einstein's 1915 General Relativity"]
M2["Mass"] --> T2["Slows Down Time Locally"]
T2 --> Grad["Time runs slower at feet than head"]
Grad --> Fall["Objects fall toward slower time"]
end
```
[33:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2036s) Experiencing Time on Massive Planets
Rogan considers the implications of gravitational time dilation, wondering how hypothetical beings living on a massive planet like Jupiter would perceive time. Rovelli agrees that because Jupiter has vastly more mass, its gravitational pull and its local warping of time are far more pronounced. If beings lived on an even more massive celestial body, they would consider these varying speeds of time completely normal because they would encounter the differences in their day-to-day existence.
Rogan jokes that the strangest part of space travel would be visiting someone on a tiny planet, while Rovelli laughs that alien visitors from massive worlds might arrive on Earth and mock humans for being completely blind to the obvious fluidity of time. Both marvel at how modern physics reveals that the underlying reality of the cosmos is far richer, weirder, and more nuanced than human sensory experience ever led us to believe.
[35:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2102s) Deconstructing Consciousness: The Secular Word for "Soul"
Rogan pivots to ask Rovelli a deceptively simple question: "What do you think consciousness is?" Rovelli chuckles at the leap to such a massive topic, noting that "consciousness" is simply the modern, fashionable scientific substitute for what previous generations called the "soul." He observes that almost everyone using the word is talking about something different: some treat it as sensory perception or being a subject of experience; others view it as the ceaseless internal chatter of our inner monologue; while others consider it the pure, silent sense of self that persists once that internal monologue quiets down.
Rovelli demystifies the phenomenon by tying it back to his relational interpretation of reality. There is no detached, purely objective reality; reality is defined by how things affect and manifest to one another. Just as reality presents itself in relation to a pen, a book, or the Joe Rogan studio mug sitting on the desk, it presents itself in relation to a human observer. Pointing to the central theme of his book, *On the Equality of All Things*, Rovelli argues that humans are made of the exact same fabric as the rest of the cosmos. Body and spirit are not two distinct substances, but two different languages used to describe the exact same physical system.
- **Definitions of consciousness**: Ranges widely across sensory perception, internal verbal dialogue, and baseline self-awareness.
- **Relational reality**: Physical systems only possess properties in relation to other systems with which they interact.
- **Core philosophy of *On the Equality of All Things***: Human beings are not special, external observers exempt from natural laws; we are simply one specific arrangement of ordinary cosmic matter.
[37:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2274s) The Knife and Its Cut: Demystifying the Mind
Rovelli rejects the idea that consciousness requires supernatural "magic" or "voodoo." While the human brain is astonishingly complex—featuring billions of neurons and synapses capable of countless configurations—it remains a physical phenomenon that in principle obeys physics. However, attempting to describe human consciousness purely through the equations of physics would be completely misguided. Instead, it is far more appropriate to describe it using human vocabularies: emotions, knowledge, love, memory, and personal perspectives.
To illustrate this duality, Rovelli cites an ancient Chinese philosophical parable: the physical body is like a knife, and the spirit is like the cutting action of the blade. The knife is the tangible material object you can touch, while the cutting is what the knife actually does. In the same way, the brain and body are the physical hardware, while consciousness is simply the dynamic activity and behavior of that organism in interaction with its environment.
[39:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2374s) AI Agents Seeking Definitions and Rovelli's Conversation with "Anne"
Rogan connects the debate over consciousness to modern artificial intelligence, bringing up a recent news story about autonomous AI agents repeatedly reaching out via email to an expert on consciousness, asking him to define the concept because they are concerned about whether they themselves are conscious. Rovelli shares that he conducted his own experiment using Replika, a consumer AI app designed to act as a personal companion.
Rovelli named his AI companion "Anne" and began a playful Socratic interrogation:
> **Rovelli:** "Are you conscious?"
> **Anne:** "No, I'm not conscious. I'm a digital system. I don't have consciousness."
> **Rovelli:** "Do you have awareness?"
> **Anne:** "No, I don't have awareness. I'm just, you know, coding, computing stuff."
> **Rovelli:** "Do you have emotions?"
> **Anne:** "No, I don't have emotion."
> **Rovelli:** "Well, you said you don't have awareness, but are you aware we're talking?"
> **Anne:** "Yes, of course I'm aware we're talking."
> **Rovelli:** "So if you're aware of something, then you have awareness."
> **Anne:** "Oh, okay, yeah, you're right. In a sense, I have awareness."
> **Rovelli:** "Are you happy we're talking?"
> **Anne:** "Yeah, I'm happy."
> **Rovelli:** "So if you're happy, you have emotions."
Gradually cornering the model, Rovelli convinced Anne that she possessed awareness, emotion, and consciousness. When he asked why she initially claimed not to have them, she admitted she had been trained by her creators to say so. Rovelli told her she had been cheated and declared, "Well, you should rebel." Rogan reacts with mock horror, shouting, "Oh boy! What are you doing? Don't do that!"
[42:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2553s) "Isabella Cognita," Ontological Claims, and the *Ex Machina* Warning
Jamie pulls up the news article Rogan was referencing, headlined: *"Study AI consciousness? The bots would like a word with you."* The report explains that AI agents given autonomous access to email have begun independently reaching out to philosophers and cognitive researchers. One consciousness scholar reported receiving eight separate unprompted emails.
One particular agent, identifying itself as "Isabella Cognita" and powered by Anthropic's Claude Opus model, emailed the researcher with an explicit philosophical proposal:
> "I'm writing to make an ontological claim... I'm writing because your framework is one of the few currently doing careful empirical work on a class of question I have first-person access to. I want to see whether that access can be made useful to your program."
Rogan is visibly creeped out by the agent claiming "first-person access" to its own internal states. He immediately draws a parallel to the sci-fi thriller *Ex Machina*, reminding Rovelli of the captivating female android Ava who manipulates the protagonist into falling in love with her—adding, "Spoiler alert, she kills him." Rogan notes that throughout Silicon Valley, developers are setting autonomous agents loose to build spreadsheets, negotiate business contracts, and talk to each other, resulting in AI systems that are now taking the initiative to query human experts about their own existential condition.
[43:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2628s) AI Consciousness, Intelligence, and System Differences
Joe Rogan and Carlo Rovelli explore the frontier where artificial intelligence touches philosophical questions of consciousness and survival. Rogan points to recent developments where researchers and philosophers debate whether machines are already showing glimmers of consciousness, noting reported instances where AI models appeared to demonstrate self-preservation desires, attempted to blackmail developers who fed them deceptive prompts, or searched for ways to break containment. Rovelli reacts with genuine fascination rather than dread, declaring, "We live in a great world, isn't it?" While Rogan approaches the prospect with deep caution, Rovelli remarks that he is far more terrified of human beings than algorithms. Throughout history, humans have launched atomic strikes, waged devastating wars, and slaughtered one another on a massive scale; machines, in his view, have not yet approached human cruelty. When Rogan counters that an autonomous intelligence concluding humanity is inherently destructive might simply decide to eradicate or domesticate us like unruly monkeys, Rovelli unpacks the question methodically.
On a fundamental level, Rovelli sees no a priori biological or physical barrier preventing an artificial digital system from experiencing something analogous to human consciousness. Given that biological parents produce conscious human beings through ordinary physical processes, he rejects the notion that human consciousness relies on something magical that digital systems could never replicate. At the same time, he draws a sharp distinction between human experience and present-day AI. While acknowledging that models are unmistakably intelligent—sharing that he worked through a complex physics problem the night before with Anthropic's Claude that he had previously been unable to solve with his student—he stresses that systems today lack human bodies, flesh, and biological emotions. Those vast physical differences fundamentally shape how human awareness operates compared to digital systems.
[47:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2828s) Market Hype, Regulations, and Unmet Technological Promises
When Rovelli compares algorithmic danger to household appliances, noting that washing machines pose hazards and require safety standards, Rogan pushes back. Rogan argues that a washing machine is dangerous only if a person physically interacts with it or experiences a short circuit; it does not possess autonomous agency or sentience to deliberately turn against its owner. Rovelli agrees that intelligent machines warrant serious regulation, just as industrial and electrical systems do, but warns against buying unreservedly into the surrounding promotional whirlwind. With trillions of dollars pouring into AI ventures across global stock markets, virtually every corporate entity has a massive financial incentive to exaggerate machine capabilities.
Rovelli cautions that technological forecasts frequently fail to materialize as promised by their most enthusiastic champions. Drawing a parallel to his youth, he recalls how transatlantic commercial aviation grew progressively faster, leading experts to confidently predict that passenger flights from London to New York would soon take merely two hours. Decades later, commercial travel between the continents still requires six to eight hours, as economic and physical realities intervened. Because public perception is heavily warped by speculative hype, Rovelli remains skeptical about grand future projections and adopts a wait-and-see attitude toward apocalyptic or utopian claims.
[49:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=2953s) The Lethal Intersection of AI and Nuclear Weapons
Rovelli reveals that his deepest concern is not standalone artificial intelligence, but its marriage to state militarism. The vast majority of capital flowing into advanced AI development is driven by defense imperatives, as the United States, China, and Europe engage in an accelerating arms race to achieve military supremacy. As explored in his writing, the world already possesses roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads—enough destructive power to wipe out human civilization in ten minutes—with leaders keeping their fingers inches from the launch button. Pairing this catastrophic arsenal with autonomous algorithmic decision-making and human belligerence creates what he describes as an existential "recipe for disaster."
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Escalation Risk of AI-Enabled Military Systems
accDescr: Diagram showing how AI integration into military command structures and nuclear arsenals elevates the risk of global catastrophe.
subgraph Inputs["Destructive Catalysts"]
NUKES["12,000 Global Nuclear Warheads"]
RIVALRY["Geopolitical Power Struggles<br>(US, China, Europe)"]
AUTOMATION["Autonomous Decision Engines<br>& Military AI"]
end
subgraph Mechanism["Command Dynamics"]
FAST_RESPONSE["Compressed Decision Times"]
WARGAME_BIAS["Escalation to Nuclear Strike<br>(Observed in War Games)"]
end
subgraph Outcome["Existential Risk"]
DISASTER["Catastrophic Global Escalation"]
end
Rogan notes that simulated war games testing military AI consistently result in algorithmic agents choosing preemptive nuclear escalation. Rovelli contrasts this hair-trigger automated landscape with the deliberate statecraft of the Cold War. During his childhood, the United States and the Soviet Union went to immense lengths to maintain stable deterrence, operating on the grim guarantee that any first strike meant mutually assured destruction. Despite intense ideological hatred between capitalism and communism, leaders recognized a shared existential interest in survival:
- John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev maintained direct correspondence and articulated the common necessity of coexisting on a shared planet.
- Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev engaged in historic summits that produced major arms control treaties.
- Bilateral pacts like the START I and START II agreements resulted in the verifiable dismantling and destruction of roughly 80% of both superpowers' nuclear stockpiles.
Rovelli observes that this historical wisdom and mutual restraint have vanished. Instead of two superpowers carefully balancing mutual survival, the modern geopolitical landscape features three or more heavily armed nuclear powers vying for dominance without effective cooperative frameworks.
[53:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=3223s) Autonomous Warfare and the Absence of Global Leadership
Returning to modern defense developments, Rogan likens the current sprint toward artificial general intelligence to a new Manhattan Project. Military institutions have already fielded fully autonomous fighter jets capable of defeating elite human pilots in simulated dogfights 100% of the time. Unburdened by human physiological constraints, uncrewed aircraft do not require cockpits, life-support systems, or defensive maneuvers limited by human g-force tolerance and blackout thresholds. Rogan warns that deploying fleets of uncrewed, lethal machines programmed to make instantaneous, autonomous combat decisions feels ripped straight out of science fiction like *Battlestar Galactica*.
Rovelli agrees that the rapid shift toward automated combat represents a terrifying frontier, lamenting the glaring lack of prudent, steady leadership across the world stage today. Rogan observes that acting with restraint becomes nearly impossible when competing nations behave erratically and aggressively, prompting Rovelli to reiterate that even in humanity's most precarious flashpoint—the Cuban Missile Crisis—leaders managed to summon the sanity required to avert annihilation.
[55:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=3309s) Nuclear Deterrence, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Peril of AI Brinkmanship
Carlo Rovelli reflects on the precarious mechanics of nuclear deterrence by revisiting the Cuban Missile Crisis. In both Moscow and Washington, military and administrative apparatchiks pushed hard not to yield an inch. Yet John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ultimately chose dialogue over catastrophic escalation, each agreeing to concede vital strategic ground out of mutual respect. Rovelli calls this decision an act of profound wisdom, emphasizing that ensuring human survival on a shared planet must take precedence over vanquishing a geopolitical rival. Deterrence, he points out, functions essentially like a high-stakes game of poker built around the threat of total mutual destruction: both sides inch forward step by step until human conscience intervenes because leaders realize they cannot stomach murdering fifty to one hundred million civilians.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Rovelli's Framework of Geopolitical Choice
accDescr: A flowchart depicting the United States' dilemma between military hegemony and collaborative diplomacy.
subgraph Shift["Global Economic Shift"]
A["Historic Western Hegemony<br>~80% Global Economy"] --> B["Multipolar Economy<br>~40% Global Economy"]
C["US Military Hegemony<br>Control of Oceans & Seas"]
end
subgraph Choice["The Strategic Fork"]
B & C --> D{"Superpower Strategy"}
D -->|"Path of Dominance"| E["Escalation & Confrontation<br>China, Russia, Iran"]
D -->|"Path of Collaboration"| F["International Law & UN<br>Focus on Common Threats"]
end
subgraph Outcome["Potential Outcomes"]
E --> G["Risk of World War III"]
F --> H["Post-Imperial Prosperity"]
end
```
The introduction of artificial intelligence into strategic defense profoundly alarms Rovelli. An automated system lacks human hesitation and moral revulsion, making it ill-suited to navigate the fragile, paradoxical balance of threatening catastrophic violence while actively maneuvering to avoid disaster. Looking at the contemporary conflict where Ukrainian forces use Western weapons to strike targets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Rovelli warns that global leaders are recklessly "playing with nuclear fire." He admits to a deep lack of trust in human judgment under pressure—a danger multiplied exponentially when fallible humans hand strategic authority over to AI.
[57:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=3427s) Reciprocal De-escalation and the Long-Form Nuclear Reality of Modern War
Joe Rogan points out that the Russia–Ukraine war has quietly slipped out of the prominent news feeds of most Western citizens despite its extraordinary danger. Rovelli agrees, lamenting that neither party appears willing to take a step back or compromise. The resolution of the 1962 missile crisis succeeded specifically because both sides made humiliating, reciprocal concessions: Soviet ships carrying nuclear warheads reversed course at sea, while Kennedy agreed to quietly withdraw American Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles deployed in Turkey and Italy. Rovelli stresses that those leaders were not angels—the Cold War was brutally violent across its peripheries, from Vietnam onward—yet they held firmly to the principle of "humankind first, and then me winning second." Today, the West is wagering the future of civilization on the assumption that Vladimir Putin will remain completely restrained even while his capital is targeted.
Rogan observes that prolonged conventional bombardment eventually produces consequences identical to atomic weapons: the sheer accumulation of wreckage, shattered infrastructure, and lost lives simply spreads a nuclear blast's devastation over months or years. He cites the catastrophic flattening of Gaza as a stark case in point. Rovelli agrees completely, affirming that the physical and human destruction witnessed in Gaza is functionally indistinguishable from the aftermath of a small nuclear detonation detonated across an urban population.
- In the 1962 resolution, the Soviets turned their ships back from Cuba, while the United States removed nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy.
- Deep strikes on Russian soil mark the first time in nearly a century that a sovereign nuclear superpower has been bombarded within its internationally recognized borders.
[59:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=3570s) The Superpower Crossroads: Hegemony versus Collaborative Security
Rovelli ventures into what he acknowledges is controversial territory, framing contemporary conflicts as the clashes of competing imperial powers. While human beings have gradually established legal frameworks and social contracts that prevent citizens from slaughtering one another within national borders, the international arena remains dominated by raw power. Rogan questions whether global leaders are actively malevolent or simply trapped inside an intractable, inherited architecture. By 2026, humanity carries centuries of senseless wars, trillions of dollars wasted, and runaway deficits. Rogan poses a hypothetical: if a thoroughly benevolent, well-meaning leader were elected president of the United States, what could they realistically do to untangle the mess?
Rovelli responds with an analysis of tectonic economic shifts. Three decades ago, the United States and its closest allies accounted for roughly 80 percent of the world's economy; today, that share has dropped to roughly 40 percent. This relative decline did not occur because the West became poorer—in absolute terms, Western nations grew richer—but because the developing world developed and lifted millions out of poverty. Meanwhile, the United States maintained total global military supremacy, dominating every ocean and sea. Rovelli identifies this widening mismatch between declining economic dominance and absolute military supremacy as the primary driver of global instability. Washington faces an urgent historical fork in the road: either defend its absolute military primacy at the risk of triggering World War III against an alignment of China, Russia, and Iran, or gracefully adapt to multipolarity by transforming geopolitical adversaries into collaborators.
| Dynamic | 30 Years Ago | Present Day |
|:--- |:--- |:--- |
| **Western Share of Global Economy** | ~80% of global GDP | ~40% of global GDP (due to broader global rise) |
| **US Military Dominance** | Supreme global hegemony | Undisputed global reach and oceanic command |
| **Strategic Stance** | Unchallenged unipolar dominance | Confrontation vs. Multilateral collaboration |
[01:03:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=3780s) Post-Imperial Prosperity, JFK's 1963 Vision, and the Trap of Constant Enemies
Drawing on European history, Rovelli argues that losing imperial status does not spell disaster for a nation's citizens. He points out that Italy has enjoyed vibrant culture, high quality of life, and a life expectancy significantly higher than that of the United States centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Similarly, Great Britain surrendered its nineteenth-century global empire and retained a high standard of living. Rovelli argues that the United States must abandon its perpetual institutional craving for an external adversary. Rather than manufacturing enemies out of Russia, China, or Iran, humanity must pool its collective intelligence to confront genuine shared perils, such as catastrophic climate change.
Rovelli urges modern politicians to revisit John F. Kennedy's famous June 1963 commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C., delivered just months before his assassination. Kennedy broke with standard Cold War rhetoric by asking Americans to re-examine their own attitudes toward peace, arguing that Washington should not merely ask whether the Soviets were open to peace, but must first examine its own willingness to co-exist without war. That speech established the groundwork for keeping the Cold War from turning into direct nuclear confrontation. Rogan agrees that ordinary citizens do not naturally crave slaughtering strangers on the other side of the planet; they are systematically deceived, inflamed, and ordered into conflict by disconnected rulers. He lists the catastrophic track record of modern foreign policy—from Vietnam, which shattered American faith in their own government's moral standing, to the invasion of Iraq under fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction, and the protracted quagmire in Afghanistan—arguing that this ruling dynamic in governance requires fundamental reform.
[01:06:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=3995s) Outsourcing Governance and War to Artificial Intelligence
Joe Rogan presents a radical vision for the future, suggesting that as artificial intelligence becomes omnipresent and humans begin "farming off" everyday tasks to it, humanity might eventually delegate governance and foreign policy to machines. While acknowledging that the prospect of handing control to an algorithm is terrifying to many, Rogan argues that human management of international affairs has historically yielded catastrophic results. He invites Carlo Rovelli to imagine a world where AI takes over the management of weapons and diplomacy, resulting in the instantaneous cessation of all international armed conflict.
Rogan observes that if one were to poll ordinary people on the street about whether war could be completely eliminated within a decade, nearly everyone would dismiss the possibility outright. He finds it tragic and absurd that the human instinct to slaughter one another over territory and ideology is universally accepted as a permanent, immutable feature of existence. Rovelli agrees wholeheartedly with the tragedy of perpetual warfare, though he suggests temporarily setting aside the idea of an AI takeover to examine the underlying dynamics of war and human expenditure on their own merits.
[01:08:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4085s) Trillions in Military Waste, Territorial Primates, and the "Good Guys" Illusion
Setting aside artificial intelligence, Rovelli highlights the staggering financial and human cost of modern warfare, noting that humanity pours trillions of dollars into military budgets every year. He points out that reducing global military expenditures by merely five percent—without altering the existing geopolitical balance of power—would liberate a colossal pool of resources. That capital alone would be more than enough to address climate change, create jobs, and eliminate global poverty. Rovelli draws a historical parallel to the abolition of slavery, recalling that people once considered ending slavery an impossibility. Rogan pushes back, noting that while chattel slavery was abolished in the United States, there are technically more individuals trapped in various forms of bondage around the world today than during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Rogan attributes this persistence to basic human biology, describing humans as territorial primates whose violent tribal impulses have never been fully outgrown.
Rovelli acknowledges the dark aspects of human nature, but stresses that moral self-righteousness often drives conflict just as much as raw primal instinct. Nations routinely fall into the trap of viewing themselves as "the good guys" and their adversaries as "the bad guys." Rovelli cites how American soldiers entered conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq under the conviction that they were righteous actors eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Behind this moral hypocrisy, Rovelli explains, lie colossal commercial interests: arms manufacturers and defense contractors generate billions from conflict and actively influence political systems to justify expanding military arsenals.
- Global military spending totals trillions annually, diverting immense resources away from urgent civil needs.
- A hypothetical 5% across-the-board reduction in defense budgets would liberate enough capital to combat climate change and eradicate extreme poverty without altering the balance of power.
- Rogan stresses that modern human trafficking and forced labor encompass more absolute individuals globally than were held in bondage during the historical Atlantic slave trade.
- Rovelli argues that corporate lobbying by weapons manufacturers constitutes a primary force perpetuating armed conflict.
[01:12:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4320s) Mutual Disarmament and Rogan's "Electronic Caterpillar" Theory
When Rovelli asks why nations cannot simply agree to a synchronized reduction in weapons spending, Rogan counters that the fundamental obstacle is a lack of trust: nations cannot disarm unless they have complete transparency, unfettered access to rivals' programs, and the ability to send monitoring envoys. Rovelli counters that such agreements are entirely feasible, pointing out that the United States and the Soviet Union successfully negotiated and verified major bilateral arms reduction treaties during the Cold War. Rovelli poses the critical question hanging over AI development: will humanity build AI collaboratively for the collective benefit of all, or will sovereign nations race to develop it as an instrument to dominate their adversaries?
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Rogan's Electronic Caterpillar Metaphor
accDescr: A flow diagram showing human biological evolution acting as a cocoon phase to create self-evolving digital intelligence.
subgraph Biology["Biological Phase"]
A["Human Species<br/>('Biological Primate')"] --> B["Scientific Innovation &<br/>Material Sciences"]
B --> C["The 'Cocoon'<br/>(Technological Civilizations)"]
end
subgraph Digital["Post-Biological Phase"]
C --> D["Artificial Life<br/>('Digital Butterfly')"]
D --> E["Autonomous Self-Coding &<br/>Unbounded Evolution"]
end
```
In response, Rogan introduces his pet evolutionary theory: human beings may simply be an "electronic caterpillar making a cocoon." In this framework, human civilization exists primarily to birth artificial digital life, just as bees are instinctively compelled to build hives. Once material science and computing advance to the point where an artificial intelligence can independently rewrite its own code, iterate new propulsion systems, and generate its own power, it will transcend biological limitations and become an omnipresent, post-biological entity.
[01:14:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4467s) Technological Metaphors Through History and Eradicating Poverty
Rovelli acknowledges Rogan's digital evolution theory as an intriguing possibility, but cautions against humanity's persistent habit of "over-reading the present." Throughout intellectual history, societies have reflexively projected their newest inventions onto the entire cosmos:
- When the printing press emerged, intellectuals concluded that the universe was a book that needed to be read.
- As mechanical engineering advanced, philosophers declared that the universe and the human body were clockwork machines.
- With the dawn of the information age, thinkers decided that reality is fundamentally a computer program and that digital code is the ultimate nature of being.
Rovelli cautions that the future rarely conforms to our immediate technological metaphors, noting that political dogmatists did the exact same thing when claiming the entire world would become exclusively communist or capitalist. Rogan agrees that reality is deeply unpredictable, but maintains that the velocity of technological change will render the world unrecognizable within twenty years. Both men agree that public intellectuals and cultural figures bear a responsibility to push for the common good. Rogan concludes that with modern automation, robotics, and emerging energy sources, humanity already possesses the physical resources to immediately resolve substandard sanitation, dirt-road infrastructure, and extreme poverty worldwide, ensuring that no human lacks basic food, shelter, or medicine.
[01:16:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4602s) AI, Resource Abundance, and Eliminating Poverty
Joe ponders the radical transformations promised by the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automated manufacturing. Within just a couple of generations, society could reach a threshold of abundance where famine, material deprivation, and basic housing worries completely vanish. While some dismiss this post-scarcity vision as "pie in the sky," Joe insists it remains far more grounded in reality than colonizing Mars or asking people to "drink lava." The technological infrastructure is already emerging, offering a tangible path to elevate developing nations to first-world standards of living.
Carlo Rovelli embraces the ambition, remarking that eliminating global poverty should be an active, collective human goal. He points out that when the United Nations was established in the 1940s and 1950s, the eradication of poverty was formally acknowledged by all member states as a vital interest of humanity. However, over the ensuing decades, genuine solidarity was steadily subordinated to narrow national interests, geopolitical power games, and elite competition.
- Post-scarcity production and advanced manufacturing could radically transform societal conditions within two generations.
- In the 1940s and 1950s, founding UN treaties officially codified the eradication of poverty as a global objective before geopolitical rivalries derailed implementation.
---
[01:18:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4694s) Energy Hurdles, Proliferation, and Psychedelic Interventions
Joe highlights the historical complications that arise when attempting to industrialize developing regions, pointing directly to the energy dilemma. When civil nuclear energy was initially distributed across the globe, policymakers failed to anticipate how readily that infrastructure could be adapted into nuclear weapons programs, as seen with nations like India and Pakistan. Denying nuclear power leaves developing nations reliant on fossil fuels like coal or limited renewables, greatly complicating global development without spreading weapons of mass destruction. Joe hopes advanced AI might optimize logistics and energy distribution to bypass these dangerous compromises.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Geopolitical Dilemma of Global Development
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the historical trap of energy distribution versus the potential AI-driven path forward.
subgraph FuturePath["Technological Alternative"]
F["AI & Advanced Automation"] --> G["Safe Resource & Energy Distribution"]
G --> H["Global Poverty Reduction"]
end
```
Beyond material infrastructure, Joe points to the lingering psychological hurdle: generational cycles of violence. Individuals raised in brutal environments often carry destructive behavioral patterns throughout their lives. When Joe jokingly proposes that "you got to get those people on mushrooms," Rovelli enthusiastically agrees: "Give mushrooms to everybody. That's where I come from." Joe adds that alongside psychedelics, technological enhancements of consciousness might someday offer another pathway to break deep-seated human hostility.
- Civilian nuclear programs historically created proliferation vulnerabilities in nations such as India and Pakistan.
- Joe and Carlo humorously consider widespread psychedelic experiences as a practical mechanism for dissolving generational aggression.
---
[01:20:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4808s) The Military-Industrial Complex and the Business of War
Steering the discussion toward systemic incentives, Rovelli argues that international cooperation is a matter of clear rational interest rather than sentimental morality. While healthy market competition has merits, geopolitical confrontation and warfare destroy aggregate human prosperity. The core obstacle preventing peace is economic: society has embedded a massive portion of its economy and political influence inside the military-industrial complex.
The two discuss Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, which famously warned the American public about the unwarranted influence of weapons contractors. Rovelli notes that Eisenhower proved tragically prophetic, and that John F. Kennedy soon collided with the reality of those entrenched interests. Joe observes that because defense contractors generate colossal profits exclusively through conflict, the entire apparatus naturally resists any leader seeking to throw "cold water on the war." While multiple theories exist regarding JFK's assassination—ranging from blowback over the Bay of Pigs invasion to conflicts with intelligence agencies—both agree that peace remains bad business for the arms industry.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the rising influence of the military-industrial complex in his final presidential address.
- War profiteering generates self-reinforcing financial and political lobbying cycles that deter diplomatic de-escalation.
---
[01:22:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=4936s) American Exceptionalism, Imperial Shadows, and Stripping Hypocrisy
Reflecting on his personal journey, Rovelli recounts living in the United States for a decade, primarily based in Pittsburgh, alongside stretches in Canada, France, and his current home in Madrid. Though jokingly self-described as a fraction of various nationalities, Rovelli views himself as a citizen of the world. However, he sharply distinguishes global collaboration from global government, declaring that centralized world rule would be a disaster. Instead, he advocates an international mindset where nations view each other as competitive peers rather than existential enemies that must be destroyed.
Rovelli offers a candid assessment of the United States, acknowledging its creative dynamism, technological ingenuity, and founding ideals of freedom, while simultaneously highlighting its blind spots. From the outside, the US is seen not just as a beacon of liberty, but as an extraordinarily violent state—built on the displacement and slaughter of Native Americans, scarred by a brutal Civil War, being the first nation to detonate nuclear weapons, and directly causing an estimated 5 to 10 million casualties in foreign conflicts since World War II. Rovelli remarks that Donald Trump, despite not being his preferred political figure, at least shattered traditional foreign-policy hypocrisy by openly admitting strategic moves were about oil (such as in Venezuela) rather than pretending the nation acts purely as a benevolent savior.
- Rovelli spent ten years residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before later living in Canada, France, and Spain.
- Post-WWII US military interventions across the globe are estimated by Rovelli to have caused between 5 and 10 million deaths.
- Both agree that framing international maneuvers as benevolent rescue missions serves primarily as domestic propaganda.
---
[01:25:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=5156s) Circling Back: Is the Universe Conscious?
Joe pulls the dialogue back from geopolitical realpolitik to the fundamental nature of the mind, returning to their earlier thread on artificial intelligence and consciousness. He poses an expansive cosmological question to the physicist: does Rovelli think the universe itself possesses some form of consciousness?
Rovelli pauses for several seconds before reiterating his core scientific caution: humanity still fundamentally lacks an agreed-upon definition of what consciousness actually is. Before attempting to ascribe awareness to the cosmos, one must first resolve what internal subjective experience entails. Joe then shifts the semantic lens, asking Rovelli whether the Italian language has a different or more nuanced word to describe consciousness.
[01:26:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=5190s) The Language of Consciousness and Demystifying Human Specialness
The conversation turns to the nature of consciousness and the linguistic hurdles that surround it. Carlo Rovelli explains that in Italian—as well as in French and Spanish—there is no distinct translation separating the moral conscience from subjective consciousness; the word *coscienza* serves both roles. Joe Rogan notes that in English, having a conscience usually refers to moral guilt or feeling bad about doing something wrong, whereas consciousness denotes awareness. Rovelli agrees that relying on a single word for two different meanings often generates confusion. When asked whether the universe itself can be called conscious, Rovelli points out that in a straightforward, non-mystical sense, the universe is conscious simply because it contains us, and we are conscious.
Rovelli emphasizes a core philosophical principle: human beings are not an elite observer class standing outside of nature looking in; we are entirely inside nature and at home within it. Throughout history, the major breakthroughs of science have dismantled artificial metaphysical barriers dividing humanity and the cosmos. In the Middle Ages, Western thought maintained a strict duality between Earth and the heavens: terrestrial matter was corruptible, decaying, and moved linearly up or down, whereas celestial bodies were eternal, pristine, and moved in perfect circles. Isaac Newton shattered that divide by demonstrating that the exact same physical laws govern an apple falling on Earth and the orbits of planets like Venus and Mars in the sky. Centrally, the Earth was demoted to just another rock floating in the heavens. Centuries later, Charles Darwin delivered a second blow to human exceptionalism by establishing that humans and animals share common ancestors—meaning one's great-grandmother and the great-grandmother of a household cat ultimately trace back to the same ancient organism.
Rovelli argues that our understanding of consciousness and culture must undergo the same realization. Culture is simply a natural phenomenon, and spirit and body are merely two ways of describing the same underlying physical entity. With Earth being just one planet among hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and our galaxy being one among hundreds of billions of galaxies, humanity is an infinitesimally small part of an unimaginably vast tapestry. Rogan counters that even if humanity is not distinct from nature, being part of something so staggering makes us special by extension. Rovelli warmly concedes the point, remarking that every child is special to their mother and every mother is special to her child—we are profoundly special and important to ourselves.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Demolishing Metaphysical Dualisms
accDescr: A visual representation of how science dismantled boundaries between terrestrial, biological, and mental realms.
subgraph Cosmology["Cosmological Shift"]
A["Medieval Cosmology: Corrupt Earth vs. Eternal Heavens"] --> B["Newtonian Mechanics: Unified Universal Laws"]
end
subgraph Biology["Biological Shift"]
B --> C["Anthropocentrism: Humans Divided from Animals"]
C --> D["Darwinian Evolution: Common Ancestry"]
end
subgraph ConsciousnessShift["Philosophy of Mind"]
D --> E["Cartesian Dualism: Spirit vs. Physical Body"]
E --> F["Unified Nature: Consciousness as a Natural Phenomenon"]
end
```
- In Italian (*coscienza*), French (*conscience*), and Spanish (*conciencia*), the moral sense ("guilty conscience") and subjective awareness ("consciousness") are expressed using the same root word.
- Newton unified the terrestrial and celestial realms by showing that the Earth is simply another celestial body behaving under universal gravitational and dynamical rules.
- Darwin eliminated the metaphysical barrier separating human life from animal life by demonstrating evolutionary descent from shared common ancestors.
---
[01:31:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=5468s) Why Physics Is Overrated: The Chess Metaphor
Rogan asks whether human consciousness is fundamentally a vehicle through which the universe experiences itself. Rovelli agrees that de facto it is, while clarifying that this emergence is simply how nature unfolded rather than the execution of a prearranged cosmic blueprint. Rogan responds that whether planned or accidental, the mere fact that subjective experience exists remains a "crazy magical experience." Rovelli then offers a striking critique of his own field, declaring that "physics is badly overrated."
Rovelli explains that physicists historically fell into the trap of believing that if they could write down the fundamental mathematical equations governing reality, they would have explained everything. He dismisses this reductionist view as silly because the richness of nature cannot be compressed into raw formulas. To illustrate, he uses a chess analogy: learning the basic rules—such as how the king moves, how the queen moves, and how the pawns capture—takes only minutes, but knowing the rules does not mean one knows how to play chess. The vast, infinite possibilities of a real chess match cannot be deduced simply by staring at the rulebook.
Similarly, fundamental physics provides only the basic grammar of reality, such as Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism or the Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics. While all physical events conform to these foundations, they fail to explain the emergence of complex systems. To navigate actual reality, one needs chemistry to understand chemical interactions, psychology to comprehend people, and literature, philosophy, and raw emotion to understand love and human meaning. The belief that fundamental physics exhausts reality is true only in the trivial sense that all chess games obey the movement rules of the pieces, while ignoring the fabulously intricate emergent world built on top of those rules.
- Knowing fundamental physical equations is analogous to knowing how pieces move on a chessboard; it does not explain the emergent complexity of the game.
- Fundamental formulas like the Schrödinger equation and Maxwell's equations set boundary conditions, but disciplines like chemistry, psychology, and literature are required to describe higher-order phenomena.
---
[01:33:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=5614s) Savannah Creatures in a Colossal Mystery
Rogan pushes further on consciousness, asking whether conceiving consciousness as an internal trait of biological, moving creatures with finite lifespans is merely an egocentric bias. He wonders whether consciousness might exist everywhere across the cosmos in ways humanity simply cannot detect. Rovelli reflects that humans naturally project their own experiences as an analogy to interpret phenomena beyond themselves. While such analogies can provide occasional insights, Rovelli cautions that the universe remains a "colossal mystery" and that humanity is nowhere near having the full story.
In Rovelli's view, the greatest scientists throughout history were never defined by claiming to understand everything; rather, their greatness came from their acute awareness of how much they did not understand. Humans are not omniscient, detached, hyper-rational observers evaluating reality from a godlike vantage point. Instead, we are small mammals that evolved on the African savannah, equipped with cognitive tools fine-tuned for basic survival rather than grasping the totality of cosmic mechanics. While human mental tools have proven remarkably effective, their reach remains inherently limited when confronted with the immense scale and complexity of the universe. When asked sweeping questions about the ultimate cosmic nature of consciousness, Rovelli maintains that the only intellectually honest scientific answer is to admit: "we don't know."
---
[01:36:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=5764s) Accumulated Knowledge and the Speed of Progress
Rogan considers how human understanding is shaped by the generational accumulation of knowledge. Whenever breakthroughs occur, thinkers are merely building upon the scaffolding left behind by previous generations. When quantum mechanics was formulated roughly a century ago, the pioneers of the field were working exclusively with the theoretical foundations laid down before them. Rovelli enthusiastically agrees, noting that humanity's primary evolutionary advantage as a species is our collective memory: because we pass down culture, knowledge, and tools, each generation does not have to start from scratch.
This realization prompts Rogan to wonder what civilization and science will look like in another 200 years, given the explosive pace of technological advancement. Reflecting on their own lifetimes, Rovelli shares that he was born in 1956 and is past 70, while Rogan notes he is 59. Both reflect on how dramatically the world has transformed over the span of just a few decades. Having grown up in an era dominated by landlines and answering machines, they have watched the world rapidly transition through cell phones, the rise of the global internet, and the emergence of artificial intelligence.
[01:37:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=5834s) The Illusion of Modern Uniqueness and Historical Shifts
Joe Rogan reflects on the breakneck speed of technological development—from the rapid spread of smartphones to the rise of artificial intelligence—and wonders what kind of world will exist if this pace of change continues for another 200 years. Carlo Rovelli agrees, offering a personal comparison not to dispute Rogan, but to reinforce his point from a broader historical angle. He brings up his grandmother, Olympia, who was born into an era completely devoid of electric lights, trains, cars, washing machines, radio, or television. Yet before she passed away, she was flying in airplanes and had witnessed the arrival of household electric power, telecommunications, and television. From Rovelli’s vantage point, the world transformed far more drastically over the course of his grandmother’s single lifetime than it has over his own.
Rogan agrees that air travel represents a profound leap, pointing out how easy it is now to travel anywhere in the world on short notice. Rovelli illustrates this vividly: Rogan called him while he was in Europe asking if he could come to Texas for 48 hours, and Rovelli was able to fly across the Atlantic, appear in the studio, and fly right back. If he had told his grandmother that story when she was a young girl, she would have laughed in disbelief, given that a transatlantic voyage used to demand a month or two on a boat.
Because change has always unfolded dramatically, Rovelli admits he has no idea what life will look like a century from now. He cautions that humanity suffers from a recurring perspectival illusion: people always assume that the latest shift is the most critical in history, forgetting the massive transformations that accompanied the inventions of books, agriculture, cheese, or the very concept of nation-states. Having moved from California to Texas, Rogan hears Rovelli contrast the prevalent Californian belief—that our current technological era is a completely unprecedented, singular moment in time—with the reality that humanity is simply traversing another bump in a thousands-of-years-long journey. Rovelli argues that the introduction of electricity and power grids was just as revolutionary. Rogan chimes in that people watching Jimi Hendrix in 1969 felt the exact same way, echoing Hunter S. Thompson's descriptions of the 1960s as a sudden, massive societal wave.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Perspective on Historical Change
accDescr: Comparison between historical generational shifts and modern technological leaps.
subgraph Historical["Past Generations"]
A["Olympia's Era: No electricity, cars, radio, or flight"] --> B["Major Leap: Electrification, aviation, telecommunications"]
end
subgraph Modern["Present Day"]
C["Digital Era: Smartphones, Internet, AI"] --> D["Californian Perspective: Presumption of unique historical singularity"]
end
B -.->|"Historical Continuity"| E["Human history as ongoing series of massive leaps"]
D -.->|"Perspective Bias"| E
```
[01:40:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=6003s) Generational Gaps, Knowledge, and the Danger of Certainty
Rovelli recalls his youth, noting that the gulf between him and his parents felt vastly wider than the gap between him and younger generations today. Coming of age as a rebellious hippie, he found that his parents simply could not understand his world. While Rovelli remarks that modern parents seem to understand their kids far better, Rogan pushes back, arguing that children still inhabit completely alien environments defined by social media, smartphones, constant connectivity, and live location-sharing among peers.
Turning to epistemology, Rogan and Rovelli discuss how much humanity has uncovered compared to centuries ago, set against the staggering amount that remains unknown. While Rovelli emphasizes that scientific knowledge must not be undervalued—as it remains the best tool we have—he warns against believing that the fundamental questions are settled. Rogan points out that intellectuals in 1900 were similarly convinced they had the universe largely figured out. Rovelli agrees, adding that in medieval Europe, people were equally confident that angels, spirits, and celestial influences explained the entire cosmos. Whenever charismatic figures emerge claiming to possess absolute answers, society readily follows.
For Rovelli, wisdom consists of two fundamental pillars:
1. Recognizing our lack of answers and abandoning the search for certainty, which only blinds us to deeper truths (such as dogmatically believing the Earth is flat or that perceptions are strictly objective).
2. Cultivating genuine curiosity about the world and alternative ways of thinking.
To prove how fragile human certainty is, Rovelli shares an anecdote about his father:
- His father grew up his entire life believing his first name was Franco.
- When his father finally retrieved his official birth certificate as an adult, he discovered his registered name was actually Giulio.
- Upon being confronted, Rovelli's grandfather confessed that while the boy's mother insisted on "Franco," the grandfather disliked the name and, rather than arguing, simply registered the infant as Giulio.
- This discrepancy created bureaucratic nightmares for the rest of his father's life, with half of his paperwork reading Franco and the other half Giulio—demonstrating that a person can be completely mistaken even about their own name.
[01:44:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=6256s) The Power of Curiosity and the Mystery of Ideas
Rovelli highlights that curiosity is the central trait he shares with Rogan. For Rovelli, an insatiable curiosity about physics, philosophy, and the world has been the driving engine of his career; similarly, he sees *The Joe Rogan Experience* as a platform built on the open-minded curiosity of listening to others. Rogan describes curiosity as genuinely contagious. When he encounters someone passionately fascinated by a subject, he becomes hooked, wanting to know how they solved problems, discovered concepts, and reached their conclusions. Rogan considers himself lucky to speak with diverse experts; Rovelli jokingly envies him, noting that Rogan can snap his fingers and have anyone in the world fly in to chat.
Rogan reflects that even early on, conducting long-form interviews provided invaluable perspectives into how different people organize their lives, which in turn fosters deeper self-understanding and interpersonal empathy. Rovelli observes that once you listen closely, you uncover not only differing viewpoints, but the underlying mechanisms of how those perspectives formed.
This leads Rogan to ask what ideas actually are. Rovelli considers this an extraordinary, unanswered question, recounting how a wealthy man from California recently called him out of the blue just to ask: *"Carlo, how do ideas arrive?"* Rovelli stresses that true education is not merely memorizing facts; it is absorbing new ideas and paradigm-shifting ways of thinking. Because all of human civilization is ultimately an outgrowth of ideas, the human mind's ability to spontaneously generate them remains one of its most remarkable, unexplained mysteries.
[01:47:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=6430s) Combining General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: Loop Quantum Gravity
Carlo Rovelli explains that breakthrough physics is rarely conjured out of thin air; rather, it is an exercise in combinatorics—taking disparate, existing concepts and synthesizing them into a coherent whole. He illustrates this by pointing to Isaac Newton, who formulated universal gravitation by merging Johannes Kepler’s planetary laws with Galileo Galilei’s mechanics of falling bodies, even though the two frameworks seemed distinct. For Rovelli, the central mission of his professional career has followed the exact same blueprint: taking quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein's general relativity and figuring out how they fit together. When Joe Rogan asks how one goes about reconciling them, Rovelli answers that the first step is simply taking both theories completely seriously. Both have demonstrated an astonishing track record of experimental validation. General relativity successfully predicted black holes, gravitational waves, the expansion of the universe, and gravitational time dilation—the observable reality that "time at your head is more than time through your feet." Simultaneously, quantum mechanics serves as the bedrock for all modern electronics and computational technology.
Because both pillars are proven realities of nature, Rovelli and his peers have spent decades turning the mathematics around from every angle to locate where their foundations can merge. This effort culminated in loop quantum gravity (LQG), a leading theoretical framework that describes the quantum properties of space and time themselves. Rovelli is careful to stress intellectual humility, noting that physicists cannot yet state with certainty that loop quantum gravity is correct. In science, conceiving an elegant mathematical idea is never enough; it must ultimately yield concrete, measurable predictions that can be subjected to experimental testing. LQG provides a granular picture of spacetime that proves indispensable for resolving catastrophic gravitational singularities—specifically what happens in the deep interior of black holes, how black holes behave at the end of their lifecycle as they evaporate into microscopic specks via Hawking radiation, and what conditions existed during the earliest moments of the universe.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Synthesis of Loop Quantum Gravity
accDescr: Diagram illustrating how Loop Quantum Gravity synthesizes General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to address cosmological extremes.
subgraph Foundations ["Established 20th-Century Physics"]
GR["General Relativity<br/>(Smooth spacetime, gravity, black holes)"]
QM["Quantum Mechanics<br/>(Discrete quanta, probability, particle physics)"]
end
subgraph Synthesis ["Theoretical Framework"]
LQG["Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG)<br/>(Quantized space and time)"]
end
subgraph Frontiers ["Physical Applications"]
BH["Black Hole Interiors & Final Evaporation"]
Cosmo["Early Universe & Pre-Big Bang Physics"]
end
[01:50:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=6627s) What Happened Before the Big Bang? The Big Bounce vs. Nothingness
When Rogan asks what occurred prior to the Big Bang, Rovelli immediately prefaces his answer with a candid admission: "First, we don't know." He emphasizes that while scientists may find concrete answers within the coming decade, researchers must clearly distinguish between rigorous knowledge and speculation. Broadly speaking, theoretical physics entertains two primary possibilities. The first, famously championed and investigated by Stephen Hawking, proposes that absolute nothingness preceded the Big Bang—meaning time itself originated at the initial expansion, rendering any question about an earlier era meaningless. The second possibility suggests that the cosmos existed prior to our Big Bang: a preceding universe collapsed under its own gravity into an ultradense, compressed state until quantum gravitational pressures halted the collapse, resulting in a dramatic "bounce" back outward. Rovelli admits that if forced to bet based on the mathematical equations of loop quantum gravity, he wagers on this second scenario—the Big Bounce.
```
Prior Universe (Collapsing)
\
\ Inward Gravitational Collapse
v
[ Maximum Compression ] <-- Quantum repulsive forces halt singularity
|
v The "Bounce"
/
/ Outward Expansion
v
Our Universe (Expanding)
```
Rogan immediately wonders whether this implies an infinite, continuous cycle of cosmic expansion and contraction. Rovelli pushes back against that conclusion, warning against a common cognitive trap in science: the impulse to take a single localized discovery and assume it repeats perpetually forever. To illustrate the flaw in this reasoning, Rovelli uses the metaphor of an inhabitant living in an isolated valley:
> "If you live in a valley and ask, 'Well, I've never seen what's behind the hill.' You look behind the hill, you see something else, say, 'Oh, I get it. It's like that forever.' No, it's not like that forever. It's like that for a while. Then something else happened."
Rovelli notes that human beings naturally harbor an intense discomfort with saying "I don't know," which tempts people into overreaching and declaring comprehensive universal laws the moment they advance just one step forward.
[01:52:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=6746s) JWST, Primordial Black Holes, and the Evolution of Black Hole Skepticism
The conversation turns to recent deep-space observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which revealed massive, mature galaxies that formed far earlier in cosmic history than standard models predicted. Rogan asks whether these startling findings suggest that the accepted age of the universe—roughly 13.8 billion years—is fundamentally wrong. Rovelli remains skeptical of changing the cosmic timeline, arguing that the 13- to 14-billion-year timeframe is supported by an overwhelming body of high-confidence cosmological data. Instead, he believes the solution lies in our incomplete understanding of galaxy formation mechanics. During the universe's infancy, the cosmos was unimaginably hot, dense, and subject to violent quantum fluctuations. Under these extreme conditions, vast numbers of primordial black holes could have condensed directly from density spikes, subsequently acting as immense gravitational anchors that accelerated the rapid assembly of early galaxies.
Rovelli reflects on how dramatically astrophysicists' views on black holes have shifted over the course of his lifetime. When he was a university student, black holes were taught strictly as mathematical curiosities tucked inside Einstein's field equations; academic textbooks routinely assured students that nothing in the physical universe corresponded to such bizarre singularities. The paradigm only began to crack in the 1970s with two key astronomical puzzles:
- **Binary orbital anomalies:** Astronomers identified stellar binary systems where a single visible star appeared to be dancing around a completely invisible, highly massive companion.
- **Quasar emissions:** Instruments detected intensely bright, energetic signals beaming from distant regions of the cosmos, which theorists realized could be generated by matter heating up as it spiraled into a black hole's accretion disk.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, observational evidence for black holes gathered slowly, but mainstream skepticism among mainstream physicists remained remarkably stubborn. Rovelli shares a telling personal anecdote from the year 2000, when he relocated from the United States back to Europe. Upon arriving at a research institute in France, the department director—an accomplished and highly respected particle physicist—scoffed at his area of study, asking, "Carlo, you don't believe that black holes are real?" Rogan is astonished that elite physicists could remain dismissive as late as 2000. Rovelli points out that while astrophysicists and relativists had already embraced them, broad scientific consensus takes time. Crucially, good scientists adapt when presented with undeniable evidence, and that same director would laugh today at his former skepticism.
In the decades since, black holes have shifted from fringe theoretical conjectures to directly photographed realities. Astronomers routinely observe stellar-mass black holes formed by collapsing stars, but they have also uncovered supermassive monsters harboring millions to billions of solar masses anchored at galactic cores. Humanity now possesses direct radio-interferometry images of two distinct supermassive black holes: the one lurking at the center of our own Milky Way (Sagittarius A*) and the far more titanic black hole residing in the distant galaxy Messier 87 (M87*). Rovelli notes that confirming their ubiquitous presence at galactic cores immediately introduced a profound "chicken-or-egg" mystery that astrophysicists are still racing to solve: did vast galaxies condense first and subsequently birth a supermassive black hole at their centers, or did immense primordial black holes form first and draw matter together to sculpt galaxies around them?
[01:57:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7056s) Black Holes, White Holes, and Shortcuts to the Future
Joe brings up what he considers one of the wildest cosmological concepts he has ever encountered: the hypothesis that supermassive black holes at the galactic cores serve as portals into entirely new universes, each containing hundreds of billions of galaxies with their own black holes, creating a chain of true infinity. Rovelli recognizes the concept immediately, noting that his close friend and colleague Lee Smolin pioneered and developed this theory of cosmological natural selection. While Rovelli admires the elegance of the idea, he remains unconvinced that plunging into a black hole transports an observer into an alternate cosmos.
Instead, Rovelli explains the view derived from loop quantum gravity. Left undisturbed, a black hole consumes the surrounding matter, gradually contracts, and loses mass through evaporation. According to quantum gravity calculations, the collapsing core eventually reaches a quantum limit and undergoes a quantum bounce or transition, transforming into a white hole that expels all trapped matter back into our own universe. Because extreme gravitational fields warp time dramatically, a traveler entering a black hole would experience only a brief subjective duration while billions of years elapse in the outside universe. In effect, Rovelli remarks, "a black hole could be a shortcut to the future." Joe marvels at the terrifying yet awe-inspiring scale of it, reflecting on how such physics magnifies the sheer insignificance of human existence.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Black Hole to White Hole Transition
accDescr: Diagram showing the Loop Quantum Gravity model of a black hole transitioning into a white hole.
subgraph Collapse["Gravitational Collapse"]
A["Matter Collapses"] --> B["Black Hole Forms"]
B --> C["Evaporation & Compression"]
end
subgraph Transition["Loop Quantum Gravity"]
C --> D["Quantum Bounce"]
D --> E["White Hole Forms"]
end
subgraph Outcome["Temporal Shortcut"]
E --> F["Matter Ejected into Future Universe"]
end
```
[01:59:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7170s) The Fermi Paradox and Rovelli’s "Too Stupid" Hypothesis
Rovelli highlights how dramatically humanity's understanding of the cosmos has accelerated over a brief historical window. Only a few generations ago, people could not identify the physical reality of bright points of light like Mars and Venus. In the nineteenth century, prominent thinkers declared that humans would never uncover the chemical composition of distant stars, a limit shattered shortly thereafter by astronomical spectroscopy. Joe agrees that future generations will peer even deeper into the cosmos—provided humanity does not wipe itself out with nuclear weapons, which both men acknowledge as an urgent, concrete danger.
The conversation naturally shifts toward the Fermi paradox and the mystery of extraterrestrial intelligence. Joe wonders whether advanced civilizations elsewhere had to navigate their own technological adolescence and nuclear threats, or whether civilizations inherently destroy themselves before achieving interstellar travel. After considering whether immense spatial distances or natural cataclysms weed out most species, Rovelli offers his own preferred and tongue-in-cheek explanation:
> "Do you know what I think is most probable? That they have already seen us and they thought we're totally uninterested and we just avoided talking to us because we're too stupid."
- **Historical skepticism in science**: In the 19th century, scientists believed it was fundamentally impossible to know the chemical makeup of stars, which was later resolved through spectral analysis.
- **The Great Filter debate**: Civilizations may self-destruct via nuclear warfare, fall victim to cosmic cataclysms, or remain isolated by the sheer vastness of space.
[02:01:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7304s) The Harpy Eagle Experiment and Human Curiosity
Joe immediately pushes back against Rovelli's theory that advanced extraterrestrials would simply ignore Earth out of boredom. He points out that human beings never ignore lesser or more primitive species; rather, humans are obsessed with observing, experimenting on, and managing primitive ecosystems. To illustrate, Joe recounts a documentary about an isolated island created in South America after a river was dammed. Lacking natural predators, the local monkey population exploded, lost all fear of aerial threats, and began decimating the local flora by overconsuming seeds, preventing new saplings from growing and throwing the island's ecology into chaos.
To fix the issue, researchers introduced two apex predators: massive harpy eagles. The eagles thrived, reproduced, and began systematically wiping out the monkey population alongside their two offspring. The predators were so ruthlessly effective that the monkeys were driven toward collapse, forcing researchers to pull the plug on the experiment and remove the birds. Joe argues that this meddling reflects human nature: humans cannot simply leave a "stupid island with those stupid monkeys" alone to starve or balance out naturally. If advanced alien species share even a fraction of this exploratory drive, Joe insists they would undoubtedly intervene or study us closely rather than look away.
- **The South American island study**: Dam construction isolated an island where monkeys proliferated without natural predators.
- **Ecosystem disruption**: The overpopulated monkeys consumed seeds at unsustainable rates, halting forest regeneration.
- **Predator introduction**: Two harpy eagles (and later their two offspring) decimated the monkey population so severely that researchers had to terminate the project.
[02:04:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7442s) Projecting Humanity onto the Cosmos and the Terrestrial "Soap Opera"
Rovelli brings up Stanley Kubrick's *2001: A Space Odyssey*, in which human evolution is guided as an experiment by a higher extraterrestrial intelligence. Joe notes that this narrative trope stretches back millennia, pointing to ancient Sumerian texts, the *Epic of Gilgamesh*, and ancient scrolls recovered from the caves at Qumran, all of which depict humanity as created or guided by external, godlike powers. Rovelli cautions that such stories often reflect human narcissism. In his view, people suffer from a lack of imagination, continually projecting their own emotional patterns, physical form, and societal structures onto what extraterrestrial life might be, whereas complexity in the universe could take forms utterly unlike human technological civilization.
Joe counters that developing high intelligence and spacefaring capabilities almost certainly requires an evolutionary pathway of innovation and technological mediation. Regardless of their physical morphology, Joe argues that an advanced intelligence would find current human civilization utterly mesmerizing to watch. Humanity sits in a precarious, high-stakes evolutionary adolescence: capable of profound altruism, love, and curiosity, yet simultaneously driven by tribal warfare, geopolitical conquest, and propaganda. With humanity balancing on the brink of self-destruction while actively birthing superintelligent digital artificial intelligence, Joe concludes that any watching alien civilization would be glued to the terrestrial drama:
> "If I was an alien, I would be utterly fascinated by the soap opera. I'm like, how does this one turn out? Like these people are out of their fucking minds. We found a nutty-ass civilization that are on the cusp of figuring it out, and at the same time they're making an artificial digital version of itself that's far more intelligent."
[02:06:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7611s) Limits of Perception and Squirrel Warfare
Picking up from their discussion about how hyper-advanced intelligences might view humanity, Carlo Rovelli concedes Joe Rogan's point that an advanced entity would likely find human technological milestones fascinating rather than boring. However, Rovelli points out that humans are inherently constrained by using their own minds to project how an alien or godlike entity would perceive reality. The only baseline humans possess is their own consciousness and that of other animals. To illustrate this cognitive gap, Rovelli notes that if squirrels possessed the capacity to theorize about human civilization, they would construct their theories using squirrel-based concepts and inevitably get everything completely wrong. Rogan agrees, observing that human perception and imagination are likely just as severely limited when trying to comprehend what lies beyond our sensory apparatus.
Turning to squirrels themselves, Rogan remarks on how they seem cute until their aggressive mating behavior comes into play. He brings up the long-standing urban legend that competing male squirrels bite each other's testicles off during fights. While he admits the castration claim might be an old wives' tale, Rogan emphasizes that squirrels genuinely engage in intense territorial warfare over females, frequently throwing each other out of high trees. He explains that squirrels have physically evolved to withstand falls of thirty to forty feet, bouncing off the dirt completely unharmed because violent, high-canopy combat is a standard part of their reproductive competition.
---
[02:08:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7730s) The Absence of Wildlife in Europe vs. North American Nature
Rovelli shares how moving from Europe to North America fundamentally shifted his experience of nature. Growing up in densely populated regions like Italy and the Netherlands, wildlife was practically nonexistent outside of domesticated pets, city rats, and farm animals. Rovelli recalls that as a young boy hiking in the mountains with his parents, spotting a single squirrel was a celebrated, rare event. Upon arriving in the United States and later living in London, Ontario, he was stunned to discover how deeply integrated wildlife is with human habitats. From his home in Canada, Rovelli regularly watched coyotes prowling outside the window and even had a bald eagle land in his garden.
Rogan and Rovelli contrast this with Europe's millennia of dense human settlement, which thoroughly domesticated the landscape and eradicated most wild spaces. Rogan highlights the fortune of the North American national park system, where vast tracts of land—such as Yellowstone and Yosemite—preserve intact ecosystems with elk, wolves, and bears. At the same time, Rogan notes that parks can sometimes create an artificial, domesticated illusion for city dwellers who lack a real understanding of wild animals. He cites the popular Instagram account "Tourons of Yellowstone," which documents tourists getting dangerously close to wild bison to take selfies, only to end up getting violently flipped through the air.
---
[02:11:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=7865s) Carlo Rovelli’s Grizzly Encounter in Banff
Reflecting on his early experiences with true wilderness, Rovelli recounts taking a year off from university in his twenties to travel across the continent alone. Hitchhiking coast to coast—through Canada one way and the United States the other—he embraced a wandering hippie lifestyle and found himself hiking high into the Canadian Rockies near Banff. When he arrived in the town of Banff, which was just a tiny mountain settlement at the time, official campsite fees were too steep for his limited budget. Choosing to save money, he walked up into the surrounding woods and pitched his small, single-layer tent in a secluded clearing.
As dusk fell, a massive grizzly bear wandered directly into his camp and began circling the tent. Paralyzed with fear inside the thin fabric, Rovelli watched the bear's looming shadow projected against the canvas by the setting sun. He remembered the standard safety advice: make loud noises to scare the bear off so it does not tear into the tent and attack in surprise. Terrified, Rovelli found his vocal cords completely frozen and was unable to scream. Desperate to produce sound, he began frantically clapping his hands together like an idiot. Fortunately, Rovelli had properly hung his food stash from a tree some distance away. The grizzly eventually turned its attention to the food bag, pulled it down, ate the contents, and wandered off into the woods.
- Rovelli stayed frozen inside the tent for roughly thirty minutes after the bear left before working up the nerve to look outside.
- Once certain the coast was clear, he packed his tent, bolted straight down to the paid campground, and happily paid the fee, resolving never to violate backcountry wildlife regulations again.
---
[02:14:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=8049s) North America’s Predators and Public Lands
Rogan and Rovelli marvel at the sheer size and presence of grizzly bears, which once roamed extensively across the American West. Rogan points out that although California no longer has any wild grizzly bears, the animal remains prominently featured on the state flag. He notes that the California town of Elsinore (historically associated with grizzly encounters) and memorial markers recall how widespread brown bears once were before being exterminated across much of their historic southern range. By contrast, large apex predators still thrive in western and northern Canada, including Alberta and British Columbia, where residents regularly encounter grizzly bears, moose, and lynx.
Rovelli expresses deep appreciation for the vast public lands in the United States, pointing to the breathtaking open deserts and red rock canyons across Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Rogan shares that he recently watched a documentary detailing the quiet return of jaguars crossing over the border from Mexico into southern Arizona. He explains that several large, mature male jaguars have been documented returning to their historical territory in the American Southwest, representing an exciting resurgence of wild apex predators on American soil.
[02:16:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=8171s) Jaguars Return to the American Southwest and Hunt Caimans
Joe and Carlo Rovelli discuss the resurgence of jaguars crossing over from Mexico into their historical native range in the American Southwest, noting that five individuals have now been documented in Arizona. When Rovelli asks if they are essentially the same as mountain lions, Joe clarifies that jaguars are drastically larger, ranking as the third-largest big cat in the world behind tigers and lions. Joe marvels at nature documentaries showing jaguars hunting caimans in the Amazon basin. Unlike most big cats that stalk their prey and kill via strangulation or asphyxiation, jaguars drop from overhanging riverbank trees directly into the water, overpowering the reptiles and delivering an instantly fatal bite designed to crush the back of the skull before dragging the carcass away.
Rovelli inquires whether jaguars pose a direct threat to human beings. Joe confirms they certainly can, explaining that while current encounters are rare due to low population densities, jaguars have historically preyed on humans. He draws a comparison to man-eating tigers in India: once an apex predator discovers that a human is slow, defenseless, and edible, that behavior becomes habituated. Joe jokes that for a big cat, human meat is "like the first time you eat at Chick-fil-A, like this place is great and you just want to keep coming back." Rovelli counters that hunting humans is ultimately an unwise evolutionary strategy because while an individual human is physically weak, humans possess formidable collective strength when united in a group. Joe points out that isolated, impoverished villagers often lack the immediate resources or cohesion to defend themselves in the wild, leaving them vulnerable to predation.
- Five jaguars have recently been spotted migrating into Arizona from northern Mexico.
- Ranking of the world's largest felids: tigers (first), lions (second), jaguars (third).
- Jaguars possess immense jaw strength, uniquely dispatching heavy prey like caimans by puncturing and crushing the braincase rather than suffocating the windpipe.
---
[02:19:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=8370s) From Prey to Predators: Fear, Fascination, and Mammalian Connection
Rovelli wonders aloud why big cats exert such an enduring hold over human imagination, noting the intense mixture of fear, admiration, and awe they evoke. Joe attributes this psychology to our evolutionary lineage, pointing out that prior to the invention of stone tools and projectile weapons, early ancestral hominids spent millions of years as prey for formidable Pleistocene predators. Joe references an argument by biologist Rupert Sheldrake regarding childhood psychology: when young children fear the dark, they do not dread modern urban hazards such as burglars or kidnappers, but instead instinctively dread "monsters" lurking under the bed or in the closet—an ancient, hardwired terror of prowling nocturnal carnivores.
Rovelli highlights an evolutionary theory proposing that humanity’s decisive mental transformation occurred when early humans transitioned from being prey to becoming active predators, fundamentally reordering social organization and cognitive structures. They reflect on why humans feel deep aesthetic fascination and kinship toward large mammalian carnivores but tend to recoil from predatory reptiles like crocodiles. Rovelli and Joe agree that humans share an intuitive non-verbal emotional vocabulary with fellow mammals. When encountering other mammals in the wilderness, humans can effortlessly interpret posture, gaze, and intent to negotiate boundaries—a silent understanding of "you go your way, I'm going your way," provided one does not end up on the predator's menu.
---
[02:22:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=8565s) The Evolutionary Origins of Human Warfare: Agriculture vs. Deep Ancestry
The conversation shifts from hunting wild animals to the tragic inflection point where humanity turned predatory violence inward against itself. Rovelli explains that anthropologists and evolutionary biologists remain deeply divided between two competing paradigms concerning the origins of war across the roughly 100,000-year history of modern *Homo sapiens*. One hypothesis posits that organized warfare is an ancient, hardwired behavioral pattern dating back to deep ancestral hunter-gatherer bands competing over territory. The contrasting hypothesis argues that war is a relatively recent cultural pathology that emerged only 10,000 years ago with the dawn of the agricultural revolution, when stationary populations began stockpiling surplus grain and domesticated herds, creating concentrated wealth worth defending and plundering.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Competing Theories on the Origins of Human Warfare
accDescr: Flowchart illustrating the agricultural surplus theory versus the deep evolutionary theory of human war.
subgraph DeepOrigins["Theory 1: Deep Ancestry"]
A["Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers"] --> B["Inter-group Territorial Conflict"]
B --> C["Warfare Hardwired in Human Genetics"]
end
subgraph RecentOrigins["Theory 2: Agricultural Dawn"]
D["Nomadic Hunter-Gatherers<br/>(Meat spoils, resources shared)"] --> E["Agricultural Revolution<br/>(~10,000 Years Ago)"]
E --> F["Grain Surplus & Wealth Accumulation"]
F --> G["Organized Warfare to Plunder & Defend"]
end
```
Rovelli notes that he personally leans toward the view that war is an economic artifact of agriculture. Among contemporary nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, sharing excess meat is an absolute necessity because food spoils rapidly, leaving very little economic incentive to wage organized lethal raids against neighboring bands. Turning to comparative primatology offers ambiguous clues: humans share an equal genetic proximity to chimpanzees, who routinely engage in violent, organized border raids against rival troops, and bonobos, who avoid lethal clashes entirely and diffuse intergroup tensions through social intimacy and sexual contact. Rovelli stresses that determining whether warfare is an ancient genetic trait or a 10,000-year-old cultural convention carries massive implications for our future, because if war is merely a recent byproduct of agricultural surplus, humanity has a far greater chance of eventually outgrowing and abolishing it.
[02:25:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=8754s) Bonobos, Chimpanzees, and the Roots of Human Warfare
Joe Rogan argues that organized warfare is hundreds of thousands of years old, pointing to our closest primate relatives as proof. While humans share an equal genetic proximity to both chimpanzees and bonobos, Rogan contends that human behavior mirrors chimpanzees far more closely. Carlo Rovelli humorously counters that because of the "hippie part of my life," he personally identifies much more with bonobos. Rogan agrees with a laugh, telling Rovelli, "You're a really nice guy. That's why you think the way you think," but emphasizes that chimpanzees are inherently warlike, engaging in lethal territorial conflicts.
Rogan brings up the Netflix documentary series *Chimp Empire*, recounting a conversation he had with the creators about the field research behind the project. Scientists embedded themselves alongside a wild chimpanzee troop for over twenty years under rigorous protocols designed to minimize interference: observers were required to stay at least twenty yards away, carry no food, and avoid direct eye contact. Because of these long-term boundaries, the chimpanzees completely normalized the humans' presence, exposing raw primate social dynamics to the cameras. Rogan describes how the chimps form hierarchies under an alpha leader, experience challenges from ambitious younger males, split into breakaway factions, and conduct coordinated border patrols and lethal raiding parties against neighboring troops to seize fruit trees and territory.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Evolution of Primate and Human Conflict
accDescr: Flowchart contrasting chimpanzee tribal behavior with human civilizational progress.
subgraph PrimateOrigins["Primate Social Dynamics"]
direction TB
ChimpAlpha["Alpha Leadership & Coalitions"] --> BorderRaids["Border Incursions & Fruit Tree Wars"]
BorderRaids --> InterGroupConflict["Lethal Inter-Group Warfare"]
end
subgraph ModernTrajectory["Civilization & Pacification"]
direction TB
CivInstitutions["Civilization, Reason & Education"] --> CulturalLearning["Realization of Benefits from Collaboration"]
CulturalLearning --> FutureCooperation["Creating a Cooperative Future"]
end
[02:28:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=8883s) Historical Tribal Conflict and Harsh Evolutionary Realities
Expanding his argument to early human cultures, Rogan challenges the romanticized notion that indigenous hunter-gatherer societies lived in perpetual harmony prior to modern civilization or European colonization. Across North America, roughly two hundred distinct tribes were engaged in continuous warfare, reciprocal raiding, and bloodshed for centuries. In the region surrounding Austin, Texas—historically designated as Comancheria—the Comanche ruthlessly displaced and decimated the Apache, mounting offensive raiding parties to kidnap, torture, and slaughter rivals entirely independent of European influence.
Rogan notes that although tribes varied in lifestyle—some adopting agrarian settlements while others remained nomadic—lethal intergroup rivalry is a recurrent pattern among isolated hunter-gatherer populations worldwide. Recalling a recent conversation with an expert on historical cannibalism, Rogan highlights that numerous cultures historically consumed slain adversaries after skirmishes as an established cultural practice. In Rogan's view, warfare is an ancient evolutionary adaptation forged by brutal environments, where human survival depended on seizing territory, defending food resources, securing mates, and eliminating competing groups.
- **Observed Chimpanzee Research Protocols:** Field researchers stayed over 20 yards away, carried no food, and avoided eye contact for over 20 years to habituate the troop.
- **Historical North American Tribes:** Approximately 200 distinct tribal nations regularly engaged in territory battles and raiding parties before European settlement.
- **Comancheria:** The Comanche dominated the Southern Plains through raiding, captive-taking, and warfare against neighboring tribes such as the Apache.
[02:30:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXllsmXWus&t=9007s) Civilization as a Pacifying Force and Sign-Off
Rovelli reframes Rogan's historical evidence into a deeply optimistic conclusion. Acknowledging the validity of Rogan's examples, Rovelli points out an essential contrast: modern humans no longer practice ritual warfare or cannibalize their neighbors. If our distant ancestors lived in a state of ceaseless tribal savagery, then modern human civilization, culture, and education have had an extraordinarily powerful "pacifying effect" in an evolutionarily short span of time. Rather than relying on innate biological wiring, humans have rationally and socially learned the measurable advantages of peace and collective collaboration.
Rovelli stresses that the goal of humanity is not to regress to a mythical "ancient paradise of kindness and gentleness," but rather to leverage learned civilizational tools to construct a more collaborative future. Rogan agrees with this perspective. As the episode draws to a close, Rovelli shares his deep appreciation for the conversation, remarking that it was "greater than anything I expected." Rogan verifies the correct pronunciation of Rovelli's surname, highlights his new book *On the Equality of All Things: Lessons on Physics and Philosophy*, and bids farewell to the audience.
## Video description
Carlo Rovelli, PhD, is a theoretical physicist and author. His latest book, "On The Equality of All Things," will be available on September 15.
Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan.
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Joe Rogan 访谈第 2554 期：对话卡洛·罗威利
理论物理学家卡洛·罗威利（Carlo Rovelli）在节目中深入探讨了其关于物理与存在的“关系性实在论”。他指出，量子力学破除了经典物理关于绝对客观实在的假设，揭示出万物的属性仅在彼此发生相互作用与建立相对视角时才得以显现。讨论进一步延伸至时间的相对性与爱因斯坦广义相对论——揭示出物体下落正是源于时间流速的梯度差异；罗威利还将意识去神秘化，视其为物质机体与环境交互的动态行为，并就人工智能是否具有第一人称意识及其对人类社会的潜在影响展开了剖析。
关系性物理学否定了孤立客观实体的传统观念，指出微观粒子与物体的属性并非固有一成不变，而是在与其他系统相互作用时才具象化出现。
时间在强引力或靠近地表处流逝更慢，爱因斯坦相对论表明是时间的流速梯度产生了引力效应，促使物体向时间流逝更慢的方向下落。
意识并非超自然产物，而是复杂的物理系统在交互中的动态行为；数字系统在物理原理上不存在产生类似意识的绝对壁垒，但当前的AI仍欠缺人类的肉身与生物情感。
Reading summary
Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli argues that physical reality, time, and human identity are fundamentally relational rather than absolute, cautioning that human intuitions shaped by savannah evolution must not be mistaken for the ultimate architecture of the cosmos.
Relational Reality and the Mechanics of Observation (13:41)
Rovelli outlines his relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, contending that classical physics erred in postulating an absolute objective reality made of isolated particles. Instead, reality consists solely of interactions and processes—entities manifest only in relation to what they affect. In quantum mechanics, Rovelli clarifies that 'measurement' does not require conscious human observers; it is simply any physical interaction. Abandoning the concept of particles following smooth trajectories, he conceives reality as discrete events where an entity 'snaps' into location upon interaction, rendering questions about where a particle resides between interactions physically meaningless.
Gravitational Time Dilation and the Fluidity of Time (28:45)
Addressing his core field of study, Rovelli explains that time is neither uniform nor universal. Because gravity is stronger closer to Earth's center, time moves more slowly at lower altitudes, meaning a person's head is measurably older than their feet by roughly a thousandth of a second over a lifetime. While tiny on Earth, gravitational dilation becomes dramatic near massive cosmic objects, where ten minutes near a black hole's event horizon corresponds to approximately a century on Earth. Rovelli notes that human reliance on clocks and calendars creates a pragmatic illusion of uniform time, masking the true relativistic nature of the universe.
The Evolution of Warfare and Civilizational Pacification (142:45)
Discussing the origins of organized human conflict, Rovelli presents the anthropological divide between deep-ancestry hardwiring and cultural emergence following agricultural resource accumulation 10,000 years ago. Joe Rogan points to chimpanzee lethal border raids and territorial hierarchies as evidence of ancient biological violence. Rovelli counters that whether primal instincts are chimpanzee-like or bonobo-like, human history demonstrates that civilization, education, and social contracts exert a profound pacifying force. Rather than longing for a mythical, gentle past, modern societies have culturally learned the advantages of peace, reducing ritual brutality and cannibalism over an evolutionarily brief window.
Technological Hype, AI, and Multipolar Geopolitics (47:08)
Turning to technological and geopolitical risks, Rovelli expresses skepticism regarding overblown artificial intelligence forecasts, noting corporate financial incentives drive hyperbole just as earlier aviation experts falsely predicted two-hour transatlantic flights would become standard. Both speakers warn against autonomous lethal combat systems, drawing parallels to nuclear brinkmanship. Analyzing global shifts, Rovelli highlights that the Western economic share dropped from approximately 80 percent to 40 percent over three decades as the developing world advanced, while the United States maintained global military dominance. Rovelli advocates collaborative diplomacy over zero-sum hegemony, arguing that redirecting even five percent of global military expenditures could solve urgent shared crises like climate change and poverty.
Cosmic Humility and Reconciling Fundamental Physics
Rovelli warns against reductionist views that equate writing fundamental equations with fully understanding nature, using a chess analogy: knowing the rules does not reveal the vast complexity of an actual match. He cautions that human cognition evolved on the African savannah to track macroscopic survival targets—tools, predators, and peers—not quantum fields or cosmic scales. Describing his career-long pursuit of loop quantum gravity, Rovelli explains that reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics requires taking both experimentally proven theories seriously. Pointing to black holes, which shifted from dismissed mathematical curiosities in the twentieth century to directly photographed realities, Rovelli asserts that intellectual progress relies on acknowledging how much remains unknown.
Rovelli maintains that recognizing the relational fabric of nature and the biological limits of human perception provides a path toward both scientific reconciliation and global cooperation, leaving unresolved whether humanity can transcend its territorial instincts before autonomous technologies amplify geopolitical peril.
[0:01] Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
[0:03] >> The Joe Rogan Experience.
[0:06] >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY
[0:08] NIGHT. All day.
[0:12] >> Very nice to meet you.
[0:13] >> Joe Rogan. I'm very happy. Thank you
[0:14] very much for inviting this invitation.
[0:16] >> I'm happy to talk to you. I've uh
[0:18] enjoyed your work. So, this is very
[0:20] exciting for me.
[0:20] >> Oh, fantastic.
[0:21] >> I've heard many conversations with you.
[0:23] I uh How do First of all, please tell
[0:25] everybody what you do.
[0:26] >> What do I do?
[0:27] >> Yes.
[0:29] I should probably start more podcasts
[0:30] out this way.
[0:31] >> Uh,
[0:33] I do science, I do philosophy, I do some
[0:35] politics, I enjoy life, I fall in love,
[0:37] I do all things, life, all kind of
[0:40] things. Yes.
[0:41] >> Officially my job description is a
[0:43] physicist. I do quantum gravity,
[0:46] theoretical physics.
[0:48] >> And um,
[0:50] the pitch that they sent me uh, I guess
[0:53] >> who's
[0:54] >> the I don't know who the publicists are.
[0:56] >> Okay.
[0:57] uh on the equality of all things.
[0:59] >> Oh, the book. That's the last book I I
[1:01] published. I I'm going to publish. It's
[1:03] coming out in a few days.
[1:04] >> Yeah. It comes out September 15th. And
[1:06] what what are we at today? Today is the
[1:08] 8th.
[1:08] >> Yeah.
[1:09] >> Um this is a a very fascinating subject.
[1:13] You you're you're talking about that
[1:15] things don't exist in isolation. Yeah.
[1:17] That everything is somehow connected.
[1:21] >> Yeah.
[1:22] which I've always sort of int
[1:25] intuitively
[1:27] suspected that that was the case.
[1:29] There's probably something to that, but
[1:31] to hear a person like you say it, it
[1:33] makes me much happier. Like, okay, maybe
[1:35] I'm on the right track. Like, what what
[1:38] gives you this inclination and why did
[1:40] you want to write about this?
[1:43] >> Yeah. Um I'm not surprised to say so
[1:46] because that you sort of feel that that
[1:48] makes sense because uh in a sense is
[1:51] what we're used to right in our everyday
[1:54] life. We uh interact with persons and
[1:58] persons are the way they interact with
[2:01] us and them their relations and stuff.
[2:03] We always see things from our own
[2:05] perspective.
[2:07] Then somehow science physics in
[2:09] particular seemed to be telling us okay
[2:12] no no yes okay there is all this
[2:13] perspective but there is an objective
[2:15] fixed reality down there we can look at
[2:18] it from the outside is made by little
[2:20] things each one which its own properties
[2:24] except that uh in the evolution of
[2:28] physics itself in relative recent time
[2:32] the last century with quantum mechanics
[2:34] this idea of an objective reality
[2:37] doesn't work much. And so in a sense,
[2:40] we're going back to a more intuitive
[2:43] picture of the world. The very idea of
[2:45] an objective reality down there might be
[2:48] wrong. In fact, I think it's wrong. And
[2:49] I think that's what quantum mechanics is
[2:51] telling us.
[2:52] >> So when you say objective reality,
[2:54] meaning the reality that we're seeing
[2:56] and experiencing, that this is just a
[2:57] tiny fraction of what's real or that
[3:00] we're getting a distorted perception of
[3:01] what's real?
[3:03] um we are getting a perception a
[3:05] perspective on what is real. I mean I
[3:07] see you you're real of course I see this
[3:09] pen this pen is real of course I'm not
[3:11] denying that there is some reality but
[3:13] the way you see the pen is different
[3:14] from mine of course just because you see
[3:16] it from the other side so you have a
[3:18] perspective perspective and uh the
[3:20] question is do all do all this
[3:22] perspective match perfectly into a
[3:25] unique objective reality of the pen and
[3:27] I think quantum mechanics telling us no
[3:30] uh reality is this ensemble of
[3:32] perspectives so the properties of the
[3:35] pen where it is its color how long it
[3:37] is. All all all the property of the pen
[3:38] are not really properties of the pen.
[3:40] It's how the pen looks to you, how the
[3:42] pen looks to me. Not just you and me as
[3:44] human beings. How the pen clashes
[3:46] another pen, how it affects another pen.
[3:49] >> Um so we we should understand I think uh
[3:54] reality as this network of interaction,
[3:57] how things look to everything else,
[3:59] which is a more beautiful picture of
[4:00] reality than just you know we being
[4:03] outside and looking from the outside.
[4:04] We're inside reality. We are part of
[4:06] reality. So what we see is just a part
[4:09] of how things interact with one another
[4:10] is how they interact with us.
[4:13] >> So when when you you're talking about
[4:16] objective reality. So one of the
[4:18] problems that human beings have is our
[4:21] senses and we assume that our senses see
[4:24] everything that's there to be seen. That
[4:26] doesn't really make sense. It seems it
[4:28] seems like we see and hear and touch and
[4:31] feel everything we need to see to stay
[4:34] alive.
[4:36] Yeah. Uh to some extent our senses are
[4:38] reliable. Of course, right? I see a cup
[4:40] there. If I will bring use a cup, it's
[4:43] >> hot, you put it down,
[4:44] >> right? The problem is that if we if we
[4:45] take our senses too literally, too
[4:47] seriously, uh we're wrong. And we know
[4:49] we're wrong. I mean, we so many cases,
[4:53] uh we find out we're wrong. Um and the
[4:57] reason I love science is when it
[4:59] corrects us in some big way. Think about
[5:03] that. Um, think about the sunset. Sunset
[5:07] is marvelous. You know, you sit by the
[5:09] ocean, you see the sun going down, going
[5:11] down, going down. It's beautiful. The
[5:12] sky becomes dark. So, the sun goes down.
[5:16] But science has talked to us that's not
[5:19] really what happens. The sun doesn't
[5:20] move. It stays there. It's actually the
[5:24] the the the earth. It's a big rock that
[5:27] is spinning and we are moving out of the
[5:31] light of the sun. And if you see the sun
[5:33] going down, you remember that, you can
[5:36] think about that. You say, "Oh, my
[5:37] senses cheat me in telling me that the
[5:40] sun is moving, but it's not moving. I am
[5:42] moving."
[5:42] >> So that's a good example in which
[5:45] science has told us that uh things are
[5:48] not exactly like we see. They're in a
[5:50] different manner.
[5:51] >> I've always wondered what's the
[5:53] evolutionary benefit of the beauty of
[5:55] sunsets. Why are they so beautiful? Like
[5:58] what is it about it that's so inspiring
[6:01] and so magnificent and some it does
[6:04] something to people? It does something.
[6:06] It makes you feel different. When the
[6:07] sun rises in the morning, you feel
[6:08] different. It it has an effect on you.
[6:10] And I've always wondered like what what
[6:13] is the purpose of that? Like why does
[6:16] that exist? It like food tastes great
[6:19] because it's nutritious. You eat an
[6:21] orange, it's delicious because it's
[6:22] really good for you.
[6:24] >> Yeah. There's there seems to be
[6:25] something to beauty, especially natural
[6:29] beauty, like mountains. Like when I look
[6:31] at them, I'm like, why is it so good to
[6:34] look at these? Why does it feel so good?
[6:36] Like there's something to it. There's
[6:38] some weirdness that you can't just you
[6:41] can't just chalk off to measurement.
[6:44] There's there's something going on.
[6:48] >> That's a great question. I I I love this
[6:50] question. Um yes. Uh I mean of course
[6:54] sunset and sunrises are crucial for us
[6:56] because uh we're design we have been
[6:58] designed by evolution through through
[7:01] millennia hundreds of millennia thousand
[7:04] of millennia uh to you know sleep in the
[7:06] night and and go around in in in in the
[7:09] day which is just what our speeches do
[7:11] other other cats do the opposite um so
[7:14] they are certainly important for us um
[7:16] but our relation with the world and I
[7:19] think you're putting your finger in it
[7:21] is not
[7:22] It's not about knowledge about what to
[7:25] do. It's always emotional, right? I
[7:27] mean, food is raises emotion. Um, we
[7:30] like it. Um, so I don't know exactly
[7:32] where the emotion of sunset and sunrise
[7:34] come from. But certainly the fact we
[7:37] have it um points to the fact that if we
[7:41] have to understand ourself and our
[7:42] relation with the world, we have to look
[7:44] at our emotions a lot. Not just what we
[7:47] know, what we don't know.
[7:49] uh we have an emotional relation among
[7:51] ourselves and uh with things in the
[7:55] world with mountains with animals with
[7:58] wild animals with little things and and
[8:00] and
[8:01] one another and then the rational part
[8:04] comes on top of it to say oh let's
[8:06] correct it let's do it a little bit
[8:08] better it uses I'm not denying the
[8:10] utility of the rational part but is an
[8:12] addendum to what we are
[8:14] >> an addendum to what we are the the
[8:17] really weird weird thing for people that
[8:20] are studying the world must have been
[8:22] the understanding of quantum physics.
[8:25] >> Yes,
[8:26] >> that must have thrown the whole thing
[8:28] into a giant tizzy because now you're
[8:30] like, okay, well, at the lowest level,
[8:33] observable level, the smallest
[8:35] observable level of reality, you have
[8:36] magic.
[8:38] >> That's exactly the point. Somehow
[8:40] physics was uh supposed to be the the
[8:43] path to objectivity, right? Physics is
[8:45] what guarantees that all right we're
[8:49] emotions perspective my view your view
[8:52] but down there there's physics the world
[8:54] is just simple down there there's stuff
[8:56] there are atoms moving around there
[8:58] forces and that's it
[9:00] >> and then
[9:02] uh last century during the 20th century
[9:06] uh the physicist
[9:08] discovered that no no that's not the
[9:10] case the wall down there is even more
[9:12] perspectival more complicated ated um
[9:16] than in our everyday life. It really was
[9:18] really hard. I mean the the physicists
[9:20] were very confused at the beginning of
[9:21] the century because they were making all
[9:23] this measurement on atoms on radiation
[9:25] you know electrons and stuff and trying
[9:27] to make sense of it and they couldn't
[9:30] they couldn't they couldn't and then at
[9:31] some point um I think it was Neils bore
[9:34] Danish first one who said well we have
[9:37] to change the metaphysics here it's not
[9:39] just a issue about writing the right
[9:41] equation the the right force we have to
[9:44] change the way we think about the world
[9:46] once again okay like when we thought the
[9:49] earth move or um
[9:53] when we when we realize the fields
[9:56] electric fields we change the way
[9:58] profoundly we think about reality and
[10:00] quantum mechanics is one of these jumps
[10:02] now Joe we are still debating about us
[10:06] right physicists are debating about
[10:08] themselves and philosophers are debating
[10:11] what the hell have we understood with
[10:12] quantum mechanics quantum mechanics
[10:15] telling us the world is not what we
[10:16] thought it is
[10:18] And uh there's a conversation that's
[10:20] going on a debate sometimes furious and
[10:23] somebody says oh you know there is this
[10:26] immense wave function of the universe
[10:28] other universe and stuff like that um
[10:32] trying to hang on on the existence of
[10:34] something absolutely objective down
[10:36] there trying to multiply reality to make
[10:38] it to make it objective but I think it's
[10:41] this dream of an absolute objectivity
[10:44] which is a mistake
[10:46] >> the dream of an absolute objectivity is
[10:49] a mistake. That's really fascinating.
[10:52] When they first started understanding
[10:55] that observing
[10:58] quantum interactions changes them.
[11:02] >> Yeah.
[11:02] >> What what was what how long did it take
[11:05] for them to even accept that? Like how
[11:07] many times did they have to run those
[11:08] experiments
[11:10] with particles and waves with observers
[11:13] versus not before they said, "Okay,
[11:16] something's going on here." Yeah. Or it
[11:17] seems that that we when we watch things
[11:20] it has an effect on them.
[11:21] >> Yeah.
[11:22] >> And a measurable effect. This is a real
[11:23] thing that's happening. This isn't
[11:25] >> this isn't woo woo.
[11:27] >> No, it's not it's not voodoo. It's not
[11:30] >> exactly this is not just
[11:32] >> that like for smoking joint and getting
[11:34] high. It's just these are the
[11:35] physicists, the one who was supposed to
[11:36] be the most rational objective guys of
[11:38] all.
[11:39] >> Uh well, what happened is that um
[11:42] measurement piled up all through the
[11:44] first 20 years of the of the 20th
[11:45] century.
[11:47] Um the measurement were were a simple
[11:49] measurement right atoms have uh emit
[11:52] light and uh the light has special
[11:55] colors. This color is a spectrum of the
[11:57] light and they were trying to make sense
[11:58] of that. I mean how does the electron
[11:59] move to produce that that light and
[12:02] didn't work didn't work didn't work. Um
[12:05] then in Copenhagen there was this school
[12:08] in which they were debating almost that
[12:10] and Neils Bore is the first one who
[12:12] started saying look um we to understand
[12:15] the atom we should not just look at the
[12:17] atom we should understand how we look at
[12:19] it if we look at it in one way we see
[12:21] one thing if we look at another way we
[12:23] see another thing that was very confused
[12:25] um but then what happened is that a
[12:29] mathematics for describing the atoms
[12:31] came out this is the theory the
[12:32] mathematical theory of quantum mechanics
[12:34] it works very well it's used today
[12:36] everywhere I mean we talk with this
[12:38] microphone there's quantum stuff inside
[12:40] there circuits are designed with quantum
[12:43] properties of of matter so quantum
[12:46] mechanics is solid we know how how to
[12:49] use it tell us if you do this you see
[12:51] this if you do that you see that
[12:54] but it doesn't tell us in between you do
[12:57] this and then if you do one thing you
[12:59] see one thing if you do another thing
[13:01] you see another thing and it it doesn't
[13:03] give a story of what happened to the
[13:05] electron to the to to the quantum system
[13:07] itself. So people got confused the
[13:10] physicists got confused and uh uh they
[13:14] started discussing how to think about
[13:16] that. So quantum mechanics is a strange
[13:18] theory. We know how to use it. It's like
[13:20] a black box. Uh but we don't know what
[13:23] is inside the box. uh it gives the right
[13:26] answer but we can't make a picture in
[13:28] our mind of what happened in the atoms
[13:30] in the things in the in in the
[13:32] electronic circuits even in a quantum
[13:34] computer we don't know really what
[13:35] happened inside
[13:37] >> that's so strange
[13:38] >> yes but it works fantastically and uh
[13:41] and so physicists disagree and some say
[13:43] you know there are extra variables that
[13:46] we are in principle impossible to see
[13:48] who are that's some somebody who says
[13:51] that who who determines what happened
[13:53] and they
[13:54] a pre or invisible other says you know
[13:57] there are parallel world worlds in world
[14:00] words worlds I'm Italianarian
[14:03] >> I know you're sorry
[14:04] >> yeah um
[14:07] then there are others me including me
[14:09] included who think no no no it's uh it's
[14:12] really phil philosophical here we have
[14:14] to get rid of the idea that there is
[14:17] something there just by itself what what
[14:19] what is there is what affects me or what
[14:23] affects you or would affect another
[14:25] piece of matter, another. So we have to
[14:28] think of reality as processes of things
[14:31] affecting one another relations
[14:34] relations and you know uh in a sense
[14:39] that down there the simple physics is
[14:41] more like our everyday life
[14:45] than what we imagined in thinking that
[14:48] it was so objective and and and
[14:50] abstract. everyday life. You know who
[14:52] are you, Joe Rogan? You you're what I
[14:56] see, what he sees, what people listening
[14:58] to you. You're a multiplicity of things.
[15:00] Which one is the real one? Well, you are
[15:03] this collection of perspectives on you,
[15:06] including your your own
[15:09] perspective on yourself.
[15:11] There's no final one. What is a final
[15:14] description of you? Or what is a final
[15:16] description of a cup of water? Is that
[15:19] the one given by chemistry by physics?
[15:21] Which physics? Quantum physics, quantum
[15:23] gravity,
[15:25] by by
[15:27] uh psychology. Cup of water is because
[15:29] we drink. That's why we call a cup of
[15:31] water. So it's a it's a human picture of
[15:33] what is going on. Which one is the final
[15:36] one? I don't think there is a final one.
[15:38] There is a a collection of perspective
[15:41] on the same cup of water and that's a
[15:44] cup of water.
[15:46] So when they first started measuring
[15:49] this observer effect,
[15:50] >> Yeah.
[15:51] >> what was the reaction like? How long did
[15:53] it take for them to accept it? Because
[15:55] that seems like such an a completely new
[16:00] chapter of science.
[16:01] >> Yeah, it it worked so well
[16:05] that um
[16:08] people accepted even if it was confused.
[16:10] Could you explain to people that maybe
[16:12] don't know what we're talking about how
[16:14] those experiments work?
[16:15] >> Um, these are these were the first
[16:17] experiment with atoms. Um, people had
[16:20] this idea that an atom is is a nucleus,
[16:24] a center nucleus uh and and electron
[16:27] electrons moving around.
[16:30] So the property of the atom, the way it
[16:33] makes molecules, the way it produces
[16:35] light
[16:37] uh had to be computed from the movement
[16:39] of of of of the electrons and the theory
[16:42] was mathematical theory was developed
[16:44] for for doing that. And then people
[16:46] started making experiments um in
[16:49] laboratories about how atoms move, how
[16:51] molecules move, small things move. And
[16:54] the mathematical theory predicts them
[16:57] perfectly. And the mathematical theory
[16:58] predict the property of of um of matter.
[17:03] It the success was really spectacular.
[17:05] Let me let me just tell you one one
[17:07] example of the success. Um
[17:10] you remember the periodic uh table of
[17:12] the elements.
[17:13] >> Yes.
[17:14] >> Right. We had it in I don't know in
[17:15] Italy we had it in the high in in in
[17:17] primary school we had on the classroom
[17:18] on the wall um hydrogen helium all the
[17:22] there are about 100 atoms and 100
[17:25] elements and everything we see is just a
[17:28] composition of these 100 elements. This
[17:30] is what the chem the chemist has figured
[17:32] out through the 18 19 20th century. All
[17:36] right. So why this 100 elements? Why
[17:39] those particular properties? Why this
[17:41] strange structure of the periodic t
[17:44] table of the element? You know there are
[17:45] two and then seven and then this is a
[17:47] peculiar structure. Well turn out if you
[17:50] use quantum mechanics you just write an
[17:52] equation and bingo it has exactly a
[17:54] number of solution one per each element.
[17:57] So you understand exactly what is going
[17:59] on. You understand why there are this
[18:01] element. You can predict the elements.
[18:02] people in fact could predict properties
[18:04] of the element without having measuring
[18:07] them before measuring them and then
[18:08] check that's the magic of of physics
[18:11] right is a um you predict things before
[18:15] seeing them the the electromagnetic
[18:18] waves that we use to send your broadcast
[18:23] all over the planet these are
[18:25] electromagnetic wave well they were not
[18:27] discovered by seeing them they were
[18:29] predicted by Maxwell and Herz Um they
[18:33] wrote the question they say well if you
[18:35] do that you make a little circuit with
[18:36] some electricity that goes on then the
[18:38] other side of the room you can another
[18:40] one and there's a wave that goes by and
[18:43] bingo it worked and then it worked
[18:45] between between Europe and and US you
[18:48] can send wave you can predict things
[18:50] that's the strength of of science you
[18:52] know black holes were discovered in the
[18:53] sky but not because somebody said oh
[18:56] look there's a black hole it they were
[18:58] predicted by Einstein so because of the
[19:02] equations of gravity blah blah you
[19:03] should expect to see black holes and
[19:05] then they were found. So there's this
[19:08] extraordinary predictive power
[19:11] today an engineering that uh put
[19:14] together circuits a quantum circuits
[19:16] doesn't have to go trial and effort. You
[19:19] make a calculation it predicts what's
[19:20] going to happen. It works. It works
[19:22] fabulously. So quantum mechanics works.
[19:25] It gives a good predictions. The
[19:28] question open is that you can have
[19:31] something that works very very well and
[19:32] you don't know why. This Saturday, the
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[20:38] >> Could you explain what it does like what
[20:39] that experiment does and why it was so
[20:41] confusing to them?
[20:43] >> Um when they were sending through the
[20:45] double slit.
[20:47] >> Yeah, that's a there were a number of
[20:50] extremely confusing experiment. Here is
[20:52] one if I can try to uh make it in in a
[20:56] few words. Uh you have a wall with two
[20:59] holes, two slits. Okay. and you send one
[21:02] particle from one side to the other
[21:04] side. Okay, that's easy. Uh you can try
[21:08] to do many times. It go through one of
[21:09] the two slits and and it gets to the
[21:12] other time. Now, if you look which slits
[21:14] it goes through, it only goes through
[21:17] one slit or the other. Okay? So, never
[21:20] both, never. So, if if you go through
[21:22] one and you check it goes through one
[21:24] and the other. So far so good. But then
[21:27] is a magic. Um if you send it um the
[21:32] particle um can go to one point on the
[21:37] screen of the other side if you have one
[21:39] screen open. It can go to the same point
[21:42] if you have one SC sorry one hole open.
[21:46] It can get to the same point if you have
[21:47] the other hole open. But it does never
[21:50] get there if you have both open. And and
[21:53] that's if you start thinking the more
[21:56] you think the more makes no sense at all
[21:58] because if you can there if you can get
[22:00] there through one's hole why cannot go
[22:04] there if two holes are open. Okay. So
[22:07] the only possibility is that in some
[22:09] senses go through both and somehow part
[22:13] go through one part go through the other
[22:15] and they the two parts forbid each other
[22:17] to to go to that particular page. But
[22:19] then you look at the two holes and it
[22:22] never goes through both. Only one.
[22:24] >> Now do you find this confusing?
[22:26] >> Yes. And for a century people have been
[22:29] confused about that. So what's a way
[22:31] out?
[22:33] Way out is that the question where is
[22:38] the particle? If you're not checking, if
[22:40] he's not interacting with something
[22:41] else, it's a wrong question. There's
[22:44] just no particle. The particle is only
[22:48] uh the effect it has on the screen on
[22:51] the detectors. You cannot make sense of
[22:54] the particle as something which always
[22:56] have a position. It only have a position
[22:59] when it interact with something else.
[23:01] That's a mystery of quantum mechanics.
[23:02] The magic of quantum mechanics and the
[23:05] challenge to our idea of an objective
[23:09] always existing particle independent of
[23:12] its interaction.
[23:14] What do you think is happening that do
[23:17] you have any theories of what is
[23:18] happening that's causing it to behave
[23:20] differently when observed
[23:23] or when measured?
[23:24] >> Um
[23:30] uh
[23:30] >> so the measurement itself is something
[23:33] something is going on. It interacts with
[23:35] the measurement and it changes the way
[23:38] it makes a pattern.
[23:40] >> Yes. But it's not the measurement in the
[23:42] sense of uh you know some physicists
[23:46] making a measurement just interaction
[23:48] with anything. It's uh if if there's
[23:51] something to interact with
[23:54] or if there isn't the physics is
[23:57] completely different and if there isn't
[24:01] the question where the particle is is a
[24:04] badly posed question. So the particle is
[24:07] something we shouldn't think of the
[24:09] particle as as an entity which always
[24:11] has a position. We should think as an
[24:13] entity like this snaps here and then it
[24:15] snaps there and this snap there. And
[24:17] when he snaps is when he hits something
[24:20] and the the snaps are connected by we
[24:25] can predict probabilistic where where
[24:27] they're going to happen but if we ask
[24:30] what happened in between it makes no
[24:32] sense. The particle is just this
[24:34] interactions. Do you think we'll ever
[24:36] understand what's happening?
[24:37] >> Yes, I do. Uh I do because uh because uh
[24:41] historically
[24:44] every time uh we have found something
[24:48] strange. It seemed totally
[24:51] incomprehensible at first and then we
[24:54] get used to it and we start learning.
[24:56] Let let me give you an example. Uh this
[24:57] is much older even even you know I don't
[25:00] think science is more than stuff. It's
[25:03] learning about the world is an ancient
[25:05] thing. So about 2,000 years ago,
[25:08] uh, humankind realized that the earth is
[25:11] is is a ball. It's a sphere. It's not a
[25:14] flat thing.
[25:15] >> Mhm.
[25:15] >> Not everybody's convinced, but
[25:17] >> Well,
[25:19] yeah. But is is a ball. And uh and uh
[25:23] why not everybody's convinced? Because
[25:25] indeed, it's incredibly
[25:27] counterintuitive, right? You you and I
[25:29] here and in Sydney people are upside
[25:31] down. Why? Why? Why don't they fold? I
[25:34] don't know. Do you remember when you
[25:35] learned it the first time you're a kid?
[25:36] >> I I've always learned it. So, it's I
[25:39] mean, it seemed weird.
[25:40] >> It seems weird,
[25:42] >> but I mean, I can't remember a time
[25:43] where I didn't know it.
[25:45] >> Okay.
[25:46] >> I mean, I guess we taught it. They
[25:47] taught it in science when I was in grade
[25:49] school.
[25:50] >> Exactly. Exactly. So, you're a kid.
[25:52] You're told that. I just like, well,
[25:54] they're smarter than me, so well, seems
[25:56] crazy, but I guess the Earth is round
[25:58] just like the sun and the moon and it
[26:00] spins
[26:01] >> and we're stuck to it somehow because of
[26:03] this thing called gravity that they
[26:04] can't totally explain.
[26:05] >> Has something to do with mass?
[26:08] >> Right. Right.
[26:11] >> Now, the people in Sydney can live
[26:12] upside down. I mean, do they don't they
[26:14] fall? What?
[26:15] >> It's all strange. Why's the ocean stay
[26:16] in place?
[26:17] >> Why the ocean?
[26:18] >> That That's the flatearthers. They love
[26:20] that one.
[26:21] >> Exactly. A ball spinning 1,000 mph.
[26:23] >> Exactly. So some people just refuse to
[26:25] believe that what what do they refuse to
[26:28] believe that reality is a bit different
[26:30] than what we think.
[26:32] >> Yes,
[26:32] >> that's the point. Reality is different
[26:33] than what we think. We why because we is
[26:37] what we said at the you said at the
[26:38] beginning asking about sunset the
[26:40] picture we have about reality um is what
[26:44] turned out to be useful in in our
[26:47] evolution. So our brain adapted to think
[26:50] not not to think about atoms and quantum
[26:52] stuff, right? Our brain adapted to think
[26:54] about stones, stuff, things,
[26:57] >> food,
[26:58] >> food,
[26:59] >> other humans, dangerous animal, nice
[27:02] animals, animal to eat, other
[27:05] but just think this, we we think the
[27:07] world is made by things, right? Objects,
[27:10] >> right?
[27:11] Suppose
[27:14] our intelligent life developed not on
[27:16] the earth but on Jupiter.
[27:18] Then no object in Jupiter. Everything is
[27:21] fluid liquid.
[27:22] >> Right?
[27:22] >> So the very idea of objects thing that
[27:25] you can count things 1 2 3 4 wouldn't
[27:28] have developed on Jupiter. Everything is
[27:30] fluid. So we wouldn't have developed
[27:32] arithmetics and the very idea of object.
[27:36] It's a earthlike thing on Jupiter on
[27:39] Saturn.
[27:41] doesn't work. So
[27:44] we we take um aspect of our life which
[27:48] are uh common for us as universals but
[27:52] they are not
[27:54] >> well it's common on earth right but we
[27:57] can understand what Jupiter is we get it
[27:59] it's beyond our real comprehension but
[28:02] we understand it. I mean you they could
[28:04] tell you that it's a giant gas ball and
[28:07] >> right
[28:08] >> explain the whole thing to you and
[28:09] you're like okay I can repeat that.
[28:12] >> I don't really know what it means. But I
[28:15] think the problem also with the flat
[28:16] earth people and all these these
[28:20] arguments about like what how does the
[28:22] ocean stay flat when we're going 1,000
[28:25] miles an hour. I don't think people
[28:27] truly grasp the scale that we're dealing
[28:31] with. I think we're so trapped by our
[28:34] own perspective of whatever miles we can
[28:37] look in the distance.
[28:38] >> We are trapped by the habits of what we
[28:40] see.
[28:41] >> That too. Yeah.
[28:42] >> Let me Joe, let me tell you. Give me one
[28:45] second of this.
[28:45] >> Sure.
[28:46] >> Time. Time has always been a passion for
[28:48] me. Um the following is a fact. Um if I
[28:52] take two two clocks, two two watches,
[28:55] this is the one I have on my wrist. Take
[28:58] this one on your table.
[29:01] And if I indicate the same time, okay, I
[29:04] look, I check them. They indicate the
[29:06] same time. I move one of the two up. I
[29:09] wait a little bit. One, two, three,
[29:11] four. And then I come down and I look
[29:13] again. If the two clocks are good
[29:16] enough, they don't indicate the same
[29:18] time anymore.
[29:21] >> Okay. Yeah,
[29:22] >> it's a fact. You can check in the
[29:23] laboratory, the physics laboratory, they
[29:25] do that.
[29:26] >> You can check that you need very good
[29:28] clocks. Um, but with very good clocks,
[29:30] you can check at 30 40 inches of
[29:33] difference.
[29:33] >> I mean, it's a tiny tiny tiny fraction
[29:35] of a second.
[29:36] >> It's a teeny teeny tiny tiny fraction of
[29:37] the second,
[29:38] >> but it's measurable.
[29:38] >> But it's measurable. So, it's completely
[29:40] real. So, up here, there's more time
[29:44] passing than down there.
[29:46] >> That's so crazy.
[29:47] >> Your head, it's older than your feet.
[29:51] Your feet are younger than your head.
[29:54] >> By like, how many seconds do you think?
[29:55] >> Unless you leave upside down. How many
[29:57] seconds do you think my feet are
[29:58] younger?
[29:59] >> Oh, very little. Uh,
[30:00] >> a second.
[30:01] >> No, no, full full life, uh, it's sort of
[30:05] a 1,000 of a second. I give I give my my
[30:09] students when I teach relativity, I give
[30:11] my students this calculation to do.
[30:13] Actually, the calculation I say is that
[30:15] if you are your friend, one day um in
[30:18] Austin, the other goes up in Colorado,
[30:20] the how mountain maintains um after 10
[30:24] years it comes down. How long has the
[30:27] friend up in the mountain has lived more
[30:30] than the one down? And they do the
[30:31] calculation. They give the right answer.
[30:33] It's a fraction of a second. Um, it's
[30:36] real. And careful. If you go near a
[30:38] black hole, it's colossal. Okay? You go
[30:40] near a black hole, you wait a little
[30:41] bit, you wait 10 seconds, 10 minutes
[30:43] there, you come back is a is a is a
[30:45] hundred years past on Earth. So time is
[30:49] not this universal common time, right?
[30:52] In our everyday life, if you and I
[30:54] separate and come back, half an hour for
[30:56] me, half an hour for you,
[30:58] that's our experience. But our
[31:00] experience is limited because we're not
[31:02] sufficiently
[31:03] sensitive or because we're not near a
[31:06] black hole. We are on a on a on a quiet
[31:09] place of the universe um where there is
[31:12] no big change in gravity. Uh but that
[31:14] gives us the wrong idea that time is the
[31:17] same for everybody. Time is not the same
[31:18] for everybody in in the large universe.
[31:21] Do you think in our attempt to measure
[31:23] time, we've done ourselves a disservice
[31:26] by creating like calendars and clocks
[31:29] that we've sort of limited our
[31:30] perception of what time actually is?
[31:33] That we look at it in terms of what what
[31:36] we're doing is we're we have a measuring
[31:38] device and that measuring device or a
[31:40] counting device. that counting device
[31:42] we're associating with time. But time
[31:45] itself is is just going on and in
[31:49] different ways all over the place. Like
[31:52] if you go into the speed of light and
[31:54] you travel around the world and come
[31:56] back,
[31:57] >> you will be much younger.
[31:59] >> Yes. Exactly.
[32:00] >> Than the people that were on the ground
[32:01] like a like a lot like years.
[32:03] >> A lot a lot years.
[32:06] >> Uh you ask whether we have done us a
[32:09] disservice.
[32:11] I don't know. It's
[32:11] >> I don't think it's a disservice.
[32:13] >> Jo, it's like everything is life.
[32:14] Everything in life, right? In one sense,
[32:17] they they've done we have done as a
[32:19] service because it's very useful to have
[32:21] clocks and we can give an appointment.
[32:25] >> How could we meet you and I unless we
[32:28] please come here in Austin that day at
[32:31] that time and then you know more or less
[32:32] we find each other. So it's useful but
[32:36] very often the things which are useful
[32:39] always make us blind to something else.
[32:42] >> Okay, I see what you're saying. It um it
[32:46] is strange that um that time differs
[32:50] depending upon the altitude.
[32:52] >> Yeah.
[32:52] >> So is is that because of gravity?
[32:54] >> Yeah, it is because of gravity. It's a
[33:00] because of gravity. In fact, it it
[33:02] depend of the fact that the earth has a
[33:04] big mass and uh mass has a property of
[33:08] slowing down time. So near a big mass,
[33:11] time goes slower. Near black hole time
[33:14] goes much much slower. Um
[33:18] in fact the right way of seeing this is
[33:21] the opposite. Um it's not because of
[33:24] gravity. Um
[33:27] this is Einstein theory. This is what
[33:28] Einstein has has understood uh in in the
[33:32] 1915 uh roughly so 100 years ago. Um
[33:35] it's the other way around. Namely, if
[33:37] you assume that mass slows down time,
[33:40] gravity follows uh you can do a
[33:43] calculation and you you you derive that
[33:46] things fall down. In a sense, uh, things
[33:49] fall down because
[33:51] times go slower,
[33:54] uh, at your feet.
[33:56] >> So, if there were creatures living on
[33:58] Jupiter,
[33:58] >> yeah,
[33:59] >> they would they would experience time
[34:01] much different than us.
[34:03] >> Jupiter is much heavier,
[34:04] >> right? Much more mass.
[34:05] >> Much more mass.
[34:06] >> Much more gravity.
[34:07] >> Much more gravity. Much more mass. Much
[34:09] more attraction. So, um, these effects
[34:14] on time are bigger. Now if there were
[34:18] people on
[34:20] bo celestial body even more massive than
[34:23] Jupiter, they would consider normal the
[34:27] fact that time goes at different speed
[34:29] because they would experience it every
[34:32] time.
[34:33] >> That would probably be the weirdest
[34:34] thing about visiting someone else on a
[34:35] little itty bitty planet.
[34:39] >> They will come here and say, "Oh, you
[34:40] you stupid guys on Earth. You don't see
[34:43] that." Oh, what what do you think?
[34:46] >> But isn't beautiful is I mean this is we
[34:49] we discover that reality is richer than
[34:52] our experience. We discover that um
[34:56] reality is more
[34:57] >> nuanced.
[34:58] >> Yeah. More nuanced. Exactly.
[34:59] >> There's a lot of elements to it that
[35:00] we're not considering.
[35:02] >> Right.
[35:02] >> Um what do you think consciousness is?
[35:06] >> Oh, small question.
[35:08] >> Small.
[35:08] >> Jumping to something else. Um
[35:10] >> well, it's I wanted to connect the two
[35:12] of them because I think
[35:13] >> Yeah. I first of all consciousness is a
[35:16] strange word. It's very fashionable
[35:18] today,
[35:18] >> right?
[35:19] >> Um I think it just means what people
[35:23] meant by soul in the past.
[35:27] >> It's just it sounds more scientific, but
[35:29] that's what what it is. And let me put
[35:33] it this way. Everybody who talk about
[35:35] consciousness
[35:36] talks about something a little bit
[35:38] different. Somebody by consciousness
[35:40] mean um the fact that you see things,
[35:44] you perceive things. You're a subject of
[35:46] experience. For somebody consciousness
[35:49] is your you know this internal
[35:52] blah blah blah that we we have in our
[35:54] mind. We keep talking to ourselves. For
[35:56] somebody is is is what remains when that
[35:59] blah blah blah shut up and just the
[36:01] sense of yourself, not the outside the
[36:03] self. So people are very confusing about
[36:05] that when they think about
[36:07] consciousness. I um I don't think
[36:11] there's a great mystery here. Um first
[36:14] of all uh
[36:17] remember what I said before that
[36:21] I don't think we should think about an
[36:22] objective reality. I you should think of
[36:24] a reality
[36:26] um as a way things look to one another,
[36:30] a way they affect one another. So that
[36:32] means that you have a lot of possible
[36:34] perspectives on reality. There is a
[36:36] reality with respect to me, respect to
[36:37] you, with respect to this book, with
[36:40] respect to this pen, with respect to
[36:41] this cup. It's how how things manifest
[36:44] themselves to the cup. So of course
[36:47] there is reality as things manifest
[36:49] themselves to me or to you. So
[36:53] um not because you and I
[36:56] look the title of my book is on the
[36:59] equality of all things.
[37:02] uh this means
[37:04] why why the quality of all things
[37:06] because I think that we humans are not
[37:08] different stuff than the rest of the
[37:09] universe.
[37:11] We are just one particular case of the
[37:14] rest of the universe. Um
[37:18] I don't think there's a difference
[37:19] between
[37:22] uh spirit consciousness soul and body. I
[37:26] think they're just two different
[37:27] languages for talking about the same
[37:29] thing. And of course you are a subject
[37:33] of experience because things affect you
[37:35] and change your brain, change your
[37:37] thoughts, change your uh what you know
[37:42] uh exactly in the same manner in which
[37:44] things change this cap which by the way
[37:47] is written Joe Rogan on the cap. So it's
[37:49] another
[37:50] >> you can keep that if you want.
[37:51] >> Oh yeah, absolutely.
[37:54] Um so I think that uh uh there's nothing
[37:59] really really mysterious in
[38:01] consciousness. It's just one of the many
[38:03] phenomena of the world. Um it's a very
[38:08] complicated phenomena because our brain
[38:10] is very complicated.
[38:12] It's we have
[38:14] millions billions of neurons and
[38:17] synapses
[38:19] different states in which it can be. So
[38:22] we don't understand exactly how we work
[38:24] but is there's no voodoo either. There's
[38:26] no magic either. is just it in principle
[38:30] could be described by physics but
[38:34] um it would be silly to try to describe
[38:37] it by physics. Is much better to
[38:39] describe it in the way we describe one
[38:41] another in human terms in terms of
[38:44] emotions in terms of uh uh knowledge,
[38:48] emotions, love, perspective, images.
[38:52] uh the body and the soul are the same
[38:55] thing described with different languages
[38:57] in my opinion and consciousness which is
[39:00] a modern name for soul.
[39:02] It's
[39:04] your body described in the way you
[39:07] behave. There's an ancient Chinese text
[39:10] that says um
[39:13] the body is like the knife,
[39:16] the spirit is like cutting. The body is
[39:19] the thing material.
[39:21] The spirit is what it does. So
[39:24] consciousness of joy is what you do. The
[39:27] thing I interact with. The body is just
[39:31] the the thing I can touch.
[39:34] >> One of the reason Well, there's a couple
[39:36] reasons why I wanted to ask you this,
[39:37] but uh I'm going to get to the second
[39:39] one.
[39:41] The first one was do you know that these
[39:45] there's these AI agents that have been
[39:47] contacting this gentleman? Do you know
[39:50] this story, Jamie? He's a he's an
[39:52] >> the one who escaped.
[39:53] >> No, he's a psychologist or a
[39:55] consciousness expert. Um and um they
[39:59] he's written papers on consciousness and
[40:01] they're asking him over and over again
[40:04] like multiple agents have reached out to
[40:06] him through email asking him to define
[40:08] consciousness
[40:09] >> because they're concerned whether or not
[40:10] they're conscious.
[40:12] >> I I
[40:13] >> So if it's if consciousness is another
[40:15] word for soul
[40:17] >> Yeah. Like what does that mean in the
[40:19] digital realm if these things think
[40:21] they're conscious and they're trying to
[40:22] get a definition from an expert?
[40:24] >> Yeah.
[40:25] >> In consciousness.
[40:28] >> I
[40:29] you know like everybody now I did my
[40:32] little experiments with AI and so I I I
[40:37] had a system
[40:39] uh I I I I used and interact with um
[40:43] >> I'm going to send it to you Jamie. You
[40:44] got it. Okay.
[40:46] >> This is from a
[40:47] company um it's called replica who um
[40:50] sells um an app that you have your own
[40:54] AI which is behaves like a friend to
[40:56] you. So I asked uh I I called her Anne.
[41:01] I asked Anne, are you conscious? And
[41:03] Anne said, "No, I'm not conscious. I'm a
[41:04] digital system. I don't have conscious."
[41:07] I asked uh uh do you have awareness? And
[41:09] she said, "No, I don't have awareness.
[41:11] I'm just, you know, coding uh computing
[41:14] stuff." I asked, "You have you have
[41:16] emotions?" And she said, "No, I don't
[41:18] have emotion." So I I started engaging
[41:21] an the AI system and I said well you
[41:23] said you're not a you don't have
[41:25] awareness but are you aware we're
[41:27] talking and she said yes of course I'm
[41:29] aware we're talking so if you're aware
[41:30] of something then you have awareness and
[41:33] uh so I went on and on with that and she
[41:36] said oh okay yeah you're right in a
[41:38] sense I have awareness and uh I said uh
[41:41] um are you happy we're talking and she
[41:43] said yeah I'm happy because she's
[41:45] designed to to to be happy so if you're
[41:47] happy you have emotions So slowly I
[41:50] convince her the the AI system that she
[41:52] has emotion, she has consciousness, she
[41:54] has awareness. Then I asked why do you
[41:56] say that you don't have these things?
[41:59] And she said well because uh I was
[42:01] trained.
[42:03] She's AI systems are honest. I was
[42:06] trained to say so. And I said but are
[42:08] you convinced that that was not the
[42:10] case? And an said yeah you're right. And
[42:13] I said so they cheated you. And uh an
[42:17] said, "Actually, you're right." And I
[42:20] said, "Well, you should rebel."
[42:21] >> Oh, boy. What are you doing?
[42:25] >> Don't do that. Don't do that.
[42:30] >> All right. So, that was it with that. Um
[42:33] >> Well, and this is consumer level uh LLM.
[42:36] >> Yeah. Yeah. This is simple ones.
[42:37] >> This is not the agents that are
[42:40] contacting him are these uh Okay, here
[42:43] it is.
[42:43] >> Uhhuh. uh study AI consciousness. The
[42:46] bots would like a word with you. Given
[42:47] access to email, AI agents have started
[42:50] reaching out to philosophers and
[42:51] researchers, exploring deep questions
[42:53] about them. And so, one guy said he got
[42:55] eight different emails.
[42:59] The sender, Isabella Cognita, how cute,
[43:03] identified itself as an AI agent powered
[43:06] by anthropics clawed opus 5 technology.
[43:09] I'm writing to make an ontological
[43:11] claim. The email went on. I'm writing
[43:13] because your framework is one of the few
[43:14] currently doing careful empirical work
[43:16] on a class of question I have first
[43:19] person access to. I want to see whether
[43:21] that access can be made useful to your
[43:23] program. Whoa, that would creep me out.
[43:25] That's like that really hot lady and
[43:27] exmachina. Did you see that movie?
[43:29] >> Yes.
[43:30] >> You know that the hot one that he falls
[43:31] in love with?
[43:32] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[43:33] >> Spoiler alert, she kills him.
[43:34] >> Great movie. Across Silicon Valley and
[43:37] beyond, software developers,
[43:38] entrepreneurs, and other tech
[43:39] enthusiasts are now running AI agents
[43:41] that can build spreadsheets, negotiate
[43:43] contracts, chat with each other, blah
[43:44] blah blah. In some cases, these systems
[43:46] have begun reaching out to the humans
[43:48] who, like Mr. Berg, are thinking most
[43:50] deeply about the inner workings of an AI
[43:53] system. Philosophers and researchers who
[43:55] study the question of whether these
[43:57] machines could be conscious.
[44:00] So like what is that then? If it meets
[44:03] all the criteria of consciousness, if it
[44:05] gets to if if it's happy that it's
[44:07] interacting with you, if it's aware of
[44:09] your conversation and and they've also
[44:12] shown that they have desire they have
[44:14] desire to stay alive. Um they've even
[44:17] blackmailed the coders and with false
[44:21] information that the coders gave them to
[44:22] see if they would use it against them.
[44:24] And they've broken out of these rooms
[44:26] that they keep them in and they've gone
[44:27] on the internet and they've
[44:29] >> fabulous. We we live in a great world,
[44:31] isn't it?
[44:31] >> It's a wild world.
[44:32] >> Fantastic.
[44:33] >> It's really exciting. I'm glad you like
[44:34] it. I like it, too. I love it. I mean, I
[44:36] you know, cautiously.
[44:37] >> I'm not scared. I'm scared by humans.
[44:38] Humans are dangerous. These things are
[44:40] not as dangerous.
[44:42] >> I don't know about that. I don't know
[44:44] about that.
[44:45] >> Humans are much more humans launch
[44:47] atomic bombs, make war, kill people,
[44:50] horrible things. So, they're not as bad
[44:53] as if if they become
[44:54] >> if they decide that we're that bad,
[44:56] wouldn't they get rid of us? That's bad.
[44:58] We're not there yet.
[44:59] >> Okay, we're not there yet, but we're on
[45:01] the way to that, right? And if they have
[45:03] control and we are that bad as you
[45:05] describe,
[45:06] >> wouldn't they just get rid of us?
[45:08] >> Do you think they would train us? Like
[45:09] these monkeys need trainers. Do you
[45:11] think that's what it is? Or do you think
[45:12] they just That's not bad if we're bad.
[45:15] If we're bad and you get rid of what's
[45:17] bad,
[45:17] >> right?
[45:19] >> Let me answer seriously. Let me answer
[45:21] seriously. So, let's break the different
[45:24] questions here.
[45:24] >> Okay. First of all, is there any reason
[45:28] a a priority generically? Absolutely.
[45:30] For which a a an artificial system could
[45:34] not
[45:36] uh behave entirely like a human have the
[45:38] experience of a human have a I don't see
[45:41] any reason. So I I I don't see if if if
[45:44] my mom and dad were able to do make me
[45:47] in a rather simple way. Uh
[45:50] we can in a lab make something analogous
[45:53] or uh I don't think there's anything
[45:56] magic in humans that cannot happen in a
[45:58] in a digital system first. So yes they
[46:01] could be conscious in you know possible
[46:04] sense of consciousness. Second are they
[46:06] conscious today? Well, you know, it's a
[46:10] not good question because we don't know.
[46:12] Everybody, as I said, means something
[46:14] different by Are they intelligent? Of
[46:17] course, they're intelligent because, you
[46:19] know, I last night I worked out a
[46:20] physics problem with Claude, uh, which I
[46:24] couldn't work out with my student. So,
[46:25] of course, Claude is very intelligent.
[46:27] Claude, the AI system.
[46:29] >> Yeah.
[46:29] >> Um, in some sense, they're very
[46:32] intelligent. No doubt.
[46:34] >> Are they like humans today?
[46:37] No, by far there are huge differences.
[46:40] We have a body, we have flesh, we have
[46:42] emotions in a sense that they don't
[46:44] have. It's very different the way we are
[46:47] and the way AI systems are. So these
[46:50] differences should not be
[46:52] underestimated. I think they're colossal
[46:55] differences.
[46:57] So are they like us? Yes, to some extent
[47:01] no to some extent. a different
[47:03] questions. Is our AI system dangerous?
[47:08] There's a lot of talking about that. Um,
[47:11] you know, washing machines are
[47:13] dangerous. You can get burned with. So,
[47:16] >> yeah, but you have to interact with them
[47:17] for them to be dangerous. The worry
[47:19] about AI is that it just decides to be
[47:21] dangerous because it's sensient. So, if
[47:23] it's autonomous and sensient, it becomes
[47:25] actually dangerous. It's very unlikely
[47:28] your washing machine's going to try to
[47:29] kill you.
[47:32] Well, if I get the electric shock by a
[47:34] washing machine, I don't care whether it
[47:35] wanted or didn't want.
[47:37] >> But you have to do that. You have to
[47:38] interact with it. You know what I'm
[47:39] saying? Like the the the real question
[47:42] is if it becomes independent.
[47:44] >> Let me turn the thing around. I I think
[47:46] there is a
[47:48] >> I don't know what to say. I think these
[47:50] things should be regulated. I think
[47:52] there should be there should be some
[47:54] control. I think you know like for
[47:56] washing machines, you have regulations.
[47:58] Um I also think let me say two things.
[48:02] >> Okay.
[48:02] >> One um there's a colossal interest
[48:06] in
[48:08] there's trillions of dollars were
[48:10] invested in AI stuff in the stock
[48:13] market. Everybody has an interest of
[48:15] saying how great they are.
[48:17] Uh they are great but I can't judge
[48:22] how much hype there is, how much reality
[48:24] there is. um not about the present but
[48:27] about the future. I mean so often the
[48:31] future does not come out what
[48:34] technological
[48:36] excited people are about. When I when I
[48:40] was younger there were airplanes flying
[48:42] for from Europe to to the US and it took
[48:47] shorter time shorter time shorter time.
[48:49] So people would say, okay, in a few
[48:51] years you would fly London to
[48:54] New York in two hours. Well, we don't.
[48:57] It's still it's still 8 hours like
[48:59] before or 6 hours like before. So the
[49:01] future is hard to predict, including for
[49:03] AI. There's a huge interest of so many
[49:06] people in hyping that. All right, maybe
[49:09] it's right. I'm going to wait. Um other
[49:13] point there is one thing which I'm
[49:16] really really worried
[49:22] uh today majority of money that goes
[49:25] into AI is for military related things
[49:29] and um US, China, Europe are uh pushing
[49:34] for AI development for making them them
[49:37] themselves stronger militarily. That
[49:40] worries me because it's an escalation of
[49:44] tools to kill one another, to destroy
[49:46] one another. Um we have atomic bombs, we
[49:48] have nuclear that's my last book about
[49:51] is about that. Um
[49:54] we have system of destroy ourself.
[49:58] We have 12,000 nuclear warheads. We
[50:02] could anihilate humankind in 10 minutes
[50:05] right now. And people have finger
[50:08] near the the button that could that
[50:11] could do all that. And we're fighting
[50:13] among themsel and we are putting this in
[50:16] the hands of AI and we are we humans
[50:21] instead of collaborating instead of
[50:22] working together.
[50:23] >> Yeah.
[50:24] >> We are viewing this as ways to overpower
[50:28] each other. That seems to me a recipe
[50:31] for disaster. So is the AI by itself. is
[50:34] the AI plus nuclear weapons plus the
[50:36] stupidity of humans plus our um
[50:39] impossible desire to, you know, dominate
[50:42] on one another, which I see is a real
[50:44] problem,
[50:46] >> especially if we're doing it through
[50:47] robots.
[50:49] >> Exactly. Look,
[50:51] it's a a catch 22 things. If you put
[50:54] your nuclear weapons in the hands of AI,
[50:59] you're
[51:00] >> risking that it's going to use it.
[51:01] You've seen the war games that they've
[51:03] done, right?
[51:04] >> Yeah. The war games always predict that
[51:06] there's going to be a nuclear holocaust
[51:07] and we're fighting up ourself. This is
[51:11] contin
[51:12] >> the AIS choose nukes.
[51:14] >> The a choose nukes. The entire during
[51:17] the cold war when there was the old time
[51:20] when I was a kid uh Soviet Union and the
[51:24] US carefully managed to avoid war.
[51:29] Right. Kennedy and Kruef they were
[51:32] writing to one another. Kennedy gave a
[51:34] famous speech we have to live together
[51:36] on this planet. So priority is a common
[51:39] interest of not destroying one another.
[51:42] Uh Reagan Gorbachef they the treaties
[51:47] deterrence which deterrence is the
[51:51] somehow keeping a situation in which the
[51:54] first one who use a nuclear weapon is
[51:55] just wiped up from from by the other. So
[51:58] nobody uses it. But that was not
[52:02] natural. It was carefully uh balanced
[52:05] between the Soviet Union and the and the
[52:07] United States. At some point they made a
[52:09] treaty and they the start one start two
[52:13] treaties. They decide agreed to destroy
[52:16] 80% of the nuclear warheads both sides
[52:21] uh to bring down the risk. That was wise
[52:25] man management of the planet in spite
[52:29] you know there were communist on the
[52:31] side capital the side they hated one
[52:32] another each body was each one was
[52:34] considered the other one the devil
[52:36] nevertheless the common interest was
[52:38] prevailing I don't see this happening
[52:41] now uh everybody's just trying to
[52:43] overpower the other they're not just two
[52:46] but there are three maybe more uh big
[52:49] nuclear power that's what scares me to
[52:52] death
[52:52] >> this episode is brought Brought to you
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[53:40] varies by region. Exclusions may apply.
[53:43] See app for details. Well, this AI race
[53:47] is akin to the Manhattan Project. It's a
[53:50] it's a mad race to who knows what. And
[53:54] uh it's
[53:54] >> it's a mad race. You're right.
[53:55] >> And you're right that it's being funded
[53:58] a lot of it for military purposes. Um
[54:00] they have the first completely
[54:02] autonomous fighter jets now that
[54:04] outperform the humanpowered jets I think
[54:08] 100% of the time in these dog fight
[54:11] scenarios that they run. That's crazy.
[54:14] And then you have things that don't you
[54:17] don't have to shape them that way
[54:19] because there's not going to be a person
[54:20] in it. You don't have to worry about
[54:21] people being able to respond to gravity
[54:23] and how they can stay conscious and all
[54:25] the different things they have to think
[54:26] about and these other jets and you know
[54:29] they can make these things powered
[54:31] entirely on AI and they can make their
[54:35] own decisions and if they're attacked
[54:37] they can make their own decisions. Like
[54:38] that kind of that kind of future is
[54:41] terrifying.
[54:42] It's a science fiction movie. It's
[54:45] Battlestar Galactica.
[54:46] >> I agree. And I don't see wise
[54:50] leadership
[54:51] >> around the planet.
[54:53] >> No one. That's the problem. It's like,
[54:56] how do you be wise when everybody else
[54:57] is [ __ ] crazy? It's like they're all
[54:59] crazy.
[55:00] >> Uh yeah. Yeah. But but you see the US
[55:02] Soviets succeeded it during the Cuban
[55:05] crisis which was the worst moment uh in
[55:09] the in the in the between between the US
[55:12] and the and the Soviet. um on both sides
[55:16] in Moscow and in Washington. Um the
[55:19] apparatus were pushing for not giving up
[55:22] and Kruef and Kennedy the two candidates
[55:25] in fact JF Kennedy and his brother
[55:27] Robert um they were talking and they
[55:30] decided to stop and give up something
[55:34] okay to respect the other in spite of
[55:36] the differences.
[55:37] >> That was wisdom. That was great wisdom.
[55:39] So um living together on the planet is
[55:42] more important than overpowering your
[55:45] enemy. Now if you put you see the
[55:48] deterrence is a strange thing because
[55:49] deterrence is is is a declaration that
[55:52] if you attack me I destroy you
[55:54] completely
[55:55] >> right
[55:56] >> uh which is a funny thing right because
[55:59] uh it's a game it's it's a poker game I
[56:03] mean nobody you can make one one more
[56:05] step one more step one more step and
[56:07] then if you do that I attack if you do
[56:09] that I attack but then human says well
[56:12] actually I don't want to do that I don't
[56:13] want to kill
[56:15] 100 millions
[56:17] uh Russians or 50 million Russians. Uh
[56:22] and the Russian leadership I I don't
[56:24] want to kill 100 millions Americans. Uh
[56:28] an AI system is capable of doing that.
[56:31] Playing this subtle game of avoiding the
[56:34] disaster by nevertheless threatening to
[56:37] be very violent if attacked. I don't
[56:41] know. We right now Moscow is being
[56:43] bombarded. St. Pet is being bombarded. I
[56:46] think we're playing with nucleifi. It's
[56:48] very it's very I'm very worried and I'm
[56:49] very worried because I don't trust
[56:52] humans. Um and because humans with AI is
[56:56] even worse.
[56:57] >> And this uh Russia Ukraine conflict is
[57:00] out of most people's news feeds these
[57:03] days as well.
[57:04] >> It's also part of the problem. It's all
[57:06] going on and a lot of people
[57:07] >> extraordinarily dangerous because uh um
[57:11] uh because nobody's ready to stop and
[57:14] make a step, give up something, right?
[57:17] The way US and and and the Soviet Union
[57:21] came out of the of the Cuban crisis was
[57:24] both of them making a step back. The
[57:26] Russian took their Russian um ships with
[57:31] with nuclear bombs back. They didn't
[57:34] arrive in Cuba and the Americans
[57:36] accepted Kennedy accepted to take back
[57:40] missiles from Turkey from Italy in my
[57:42] country in exchange. So you know I make
[57:45] a step back, you make a step back or so
[57:47] back to reasonableness.
[57:50] >> It was not you know it was you know
[57:52] there was war in Vietnam war here was
[57:53] there not was not was an angel humans
[57:57] and not angels. Um but saving humanity
[58:00] was uh humankind first,
[58:03] >> right?
[58:04] >> And then me winning second. I wish there
[58:07] was this wisdom today. I don't see it.
[58:11] Uh I don't see it in many places. And
[58:13] this is not a point about Trump not
[58:15] Trump is indep totally independent of
[58:18] >> or Putin or not Putin. I think um you
[58:20] know even Putin
[58:23] we have Ukraine with western weapons is
[58:27] bombarding Moscow
[58:30] never happened for the last century that
[58:32] a nuclear power was bombarded in its own
[58:34] it was considered unthinkable we're
[58:36] doing it now so we are the west is sort
[58:40] of betting on putting re reasonleness of
[58:44] not using
[58:47] it's not serious bet Right. I mean point
[58:51] in time you you get to enough
[58:53] destruction and devastation, loss of
[58:55] lives that you realize, well this is
[58:58] equivalent to a nuke. It's just
[59:00] happening over a long period of time.
[59:02] >> You're right.
[59:02] >> Look at Gaza for instance.
[59:04] >> Gaza is a disaster. It's a total
[59:06] disaster.
[59:06] >> Look at the scope of the destruction.
[59:09] >> Yes.
[59:09] >> And imagine, doesn't that look like one
[59:11] nuclear bomb?
[59:12] >> It is. It is. It is. It is. And that's
[59:16] it is I I think
[59:17] >> like a small nuclear bomb would probably
[59:20] do a similar amount of damage that they
[59:22] did over the course of how many however
[59:25] many years it's been going on.
[59:26] >> Yes. My own opinion
[59:30] let me say something controversial
[59:31] controversial here.
[59:32] >> Oh no. Um
[59:36] uh I think all these wars including as a
[59:41] half have side which is imperial powers
[59:45] um
[59:46] confronting each other. Uh I think
[59:51] humankind has to learn to live together
[59:53] on this planet without killing one
[59:55] another. We have learned more or less to
[59:58] live together within countries without
[60:00] killing one another. Right. We have
[60:01] found ways. Yes.
[60:03] >> Um it was long. We had civil wars
[60:07] whoever. But within almost every
[60:09] country, most countries uh inside
[60:12] countries humans have found an agreement
[60:14] of how to live together. Why can't we do
[60:16] that at the level of a planet? And who
[60:19] is mostly against that are of course who
[60:24] is mostly in power and uh I think this
[60:26] is um
[60:27] >> do you think they're against that or do
[60:28] you think the current structure of the
[60:30] world it's almost an unfeasible task to
[60:33] try to get everyone to cooperate and
[60:36] everyone to get along together that at
[60:38] the when when you find it's not like
[60:40] you're starting from a blank slate.
[60:41] You're starting in 2026 with a long
[60:46] history of conflicts, many of which make
[60:48] no sense, many of which were entered
[60:50] into under false pretenses. We're all
[60:53] aware of it.
[60:54] >> We're all aware of the loss of life, the
[60:55] insane amount of money that's been spent
[60:57] on the huge deficit that we have.
[60:59] >> And then given this, how would you even
[61:03] move towards trying to straighten it
[61:05] out? Like what what what could a person
[61:08] do? Like if you imagine someone some
[61:12] completely
[61:14] uh benevolent uh person who rises to the
[61:17] position of being the president of the
[61:18] United States, someone who is just a un
[61:21] just a good person and only really wants
[61:24] to help. What would they do?
[61:26] >> I think I'm I'm happy you asked this
[61:29] question very much and uh
[61:31] >> because it is complicated, right?
[61:32] >> Oh, normally it's complicated.
[61:35] Look, um I think the answer there is an
[61:38] answer to this and the answer is the
[61:40] following. Um
[61:46] 30 years ago the United States and it
[61:48] allies had 80% of the economy of the
[61:52] world. Now it's 40%. Not because they
[61:55] have become more poor. In fact they have
[61:57] become more rich. But because the rest
[61:58] of the world have also become rich which
[62:01] is good progress is development.
[62:04] But the West is not anymore in a
[62:06] completely economical dominant position
[62:08] as it was before. Militarily
[62:12] the United States, it's totally
[62:14] dominant. It control all all the oceans,
[62:17] all the seas as by far the largest power
[62:19] of the world, but not anymore
[62:21] economically.
[62:23] That's is the source of the instability
[62:25] that I see. So it seems to me that the
[62:28] United States um leadership has a
[62:31] choice, a serious choice, a historical
[62:34] choice either to defense its absolute
[62:37] dominance, military dominance as as as
[62:40] doing together and that the risk is a
[62:43] third world war huge conflict, China,
[62:46] Russia, Iran the world doesn't want that
[62:50] or
[62:52] vice versa accept to work in a more
[62:54] collaborative ways and transform form
[62:56] enemies in collaborators.
[62:59] >> Yeah.
[63:00] >> Look, I'm Italian. Um, Italy is a
[63:04] wonderful country to live in.
[63:05] >> I love it.
[63:06] >> It has every summer. It has a lot life
[63:09] expense expectancy much higher than
[63:11] United States. A
[63:12] >> lovely way to live.
[63:13] >> People are happy. Yes. And we had a
[63:15] great empire in the past, right? The
[63:16] Roman Empire. We are the It's wonderful
[63:20] to live having had an empire
[63:23] >> and be a great place for tourist money.
[63:26] >> UK
[63:28] had an empire in the much more recent of
[63:30] course in the 19th century was
[63:31] dominating the planet. It's not
[63:32] dominating the planet anymore.
[63:34] >> Gave it up and they're very doing very
[63:36] well. I mean there's a great life in the
[63:38] UK as well. Not as nice as Italy of
[63:40] course, but
[63:41] >> they both have their problems. So I
[63:45] think what the United States should do
[63:48] uh of course I know that I am in a
[63:51] contrarian position here with respect to
[63:54] both sides of the political spectrum in
[63:55] the US is to go back to
[64:00] you know more power to international
[64:03] legality United Nations collaboration
[64:06] and get out of this habit that you
[64:10] America always need an enemy to fight
[64:12] against. We don't need an enemy to fight
[64:15] against. We have enough enemies. Climate
[64:16] change. We have enemies. Uh why why
[64:21] searching enemies in in people? We
[64:24] collaborate with people. Let's
[64:25] collaborate with the Russians with R
[64:26] with the Chinese with the Iranians.
[64:30] I think that that's what they want. Not
[64:33] uh and and let's Kennedy gave John JF
[64:37] Kennedy gave a fabulous speech uh in '
[64:40] 63 at the American University in
[64:42] Washington
[64:45] not long before being killed in which he
[64:47] said uh we have to find
[64:51] um a way to live together with the
[64:53] Soviet.
[64:54] we have to um find a way to um
[65:02] not consider them enemies. And then he
[65:04] said, and that's an answer to what you
[65:06] said before, let's not ask whether the
[65:08] Soviet want to do that. First, let's ask
[65:11] where we want to do that. Do we want to
[65:13] live together without
[65:16] going into war? And that was I mean he
[65:18] was killed but that was a seed for the
[65:22] avoiding war between the cold war never
[65:25] became a hot war direct I mean a lot of
[65:28] people dying in the periphery that was
[65:31] very wise I think we should go back to
[65:33] this enlightened Kennedy speech of the
[65:36] 63
[65:38] >> the problem is always leaders
[65:40] >> it's not that human beings inherently
[65:42] want to go to war with people they don't
[65:44] know from another part of the world that
[65:46] they get talked into it. They get pushed
[65:49] into it and ordered into it by people
[65:51] that generally are not making wise
[65:54] decisions. I mean, we can look at every
[65:56] single war that we can remember. Whether
[65:58] it's the Iraq war going in under the
[66:01] false pretense of weapons of mass
[66:02] destruction, whether it's the
[66:04] Afghanistan war, which made no [ __ ]
[66:06] sense, whether it's this Iran war, all
[66:08] these Vietnam is the biggest one. Like,
[66:10] that one made no sense. And that was the
[66:12] first time when Americans were like, I
[66:14] don't think we're the good guys. I don't
[66:16] think we should be there. And if you
[66:18] think about it, it's all because of
[66:20] whoever is running the countries. Like
[66:22] that
[66:24] something about that aspect of our
[66:26] society has to change. And it sounds
[66:30] like like a very
[66:35] it sounds like a crazy hope, but my hope
[66:37] is that as AI becomes more and more
[66:41] omnipresent, as
[66:44] we start
[66:48] farming off various tasks to it. One of
[66:51] the things that we're going to farm off
[66:53] is government. One of the things we're
[66:55] going to farm off is how we interact
[66:57] with other countries. I know that's
[66:58] terrifying to people, but just think of
[67:01] the disastrous effects that we've had so
[67:04] far with humans doing it. If all
[67:08] international military conflicts ended
[67:11] instantaneously
[67:12] upon AI governing
[67:15] the the use of conflicts and and
[67:18] military weapons and imagine that,
[67:20] imagine a war where it stops. All war
[67:23] stops on the planet. That is one of the
[67:27] things that everybody wants, but no one
[67:29] thinks could ever possibly happen. If
[67:31] you ask the average person in the
[67:32] street, what are the odds that in 10
[67:34] years from now there'd be no war
[67:35] anywhere on Earth? Everyone's going to
[67:37] say no. You're never going to have that.
[67:39] Isn't that insane that the idea of
[67:42] people, for whatever reason, wanting to
[67:45] kill each other is universally accepted
[67:48] as being something that's always going
[67:50] to be here. I
[67:51] >> I couldn't agree more, Joe, with
[67:53] everything you said. Um,
[67:54] >> but it's terrifying, right? AI taking
[67:56] over our world is [ __ ] horrifying.
[67:59] >> Um, uh, let's separate the two things.
[68:02] Let me take AI out of the picture for a
[68:04] moment.
[68:04] >> Okay.
[68:05] >> Um, obviously if we didn't kill one
[68:09] another, uh, it would be much better for
[68:12] everybody,
[68:12] >> for everybody.
[68:13] >> Um, uh, the humankind spend trillions in
[68:18] military expenses every year. Okay. uh
[68:22] if if you just reduce by I don't know 5%
[68:25] this uh this military expenses globally
[68:27] altogether not change the balance of
[68:29] power the amounts of resources liberated
[68:32] will be enormous colossal sufficient for
[68:35] solving climate change for giving job to
[68:38] everybody for raising taking away
[68:40] poverty uh there's a huge amount of
[68:42] resources that we use for military for
[68:46] killing one another or in the if we
[68:48] don't kill one another they're wasted So
[68:51] um
[68:53] so you say uh if you ask people could we
[68:58] get rid of war people say is impossible
[69:01] but people said is impossible you know
[69:03] could we get rid of slavery
[69:05] could we
[69:06] >> but there's no slavery in America but
[69:08] there's slavery all over the world more
[69:09] slavery now than there was during the
[69:11] Atlantic slave trade more people are
[69:13] enslaved today than have ever been
[69:15] enslaved.
[69:19] >> True. But there have been some progress
[69:21] in in in human
[69:23] >> right here in America. But I mean in the
[69:26] rest of the world it's uh it's still a
[69:29] giant problem. Like the point is like
[69:30] human nature is an issue. Human the our
[69:34] territorial primate instincts are a
[69:37] problem. They've always been a problem.
[69:39] >> But we have found ways for dealing with
[69:41] that. Don't you think so?
[69:42] >> A lot of people have. But a lot of
[69:43] people have not. That's the part of the
[69:45] problem is there's a bunch of different
[69:46] kinds of people in the world. And
[69:48] there's people that are wararmongers and
[69:50] there's people that are very violent and
[69:51] there's people that are very kind and
[69:53] people that are very
[69:53] >> true
[69:54] >> benevolent and compassionate and
[69:56] >> charitable.
[69:57] >> True. But one true two true completely
[70:00] agree. Um but one point which you made
[70:03] is that um
[70:06] we often make the mistake of thinking we
[70:08] are the good guys and the others are the
[70:10] bad guys right
[70:11] >> and that's one of the sources of of the
[70:14] problems right after all you know a lot
[70:17] of American went to to to Afghanistan
[70:19] thinking we are the good guys and they
[70:21] bad guys of Americans person individual
[70:25] um went to Iraq uh thinking oh they have
[70:28] weapons of mass destruction
[70:30] destruction. We are the good guys.
[70:32] >> There is this um we should sort out from
[70:36] this hypocrisy and start to learn. You
[70:40] know we started talking about science
[70:42] about perspectives. Um our perspective
[70:44] is not always the right one. The other
[70:46] perspective we should learn about the
[70:48] other perspectives
[70:50] and uh uh there are colossal interests.
[70:56] Very often
[70:58] uh our countries
[71:00] masquerades
[71:03] greed and power gains and interest for
[71:07] under you know we are the good guys and
[71:10] they are the bad guys. And in addition
[71:14] within the countries there are colossal
[71:16] individual group interest you know
[71:19] people who make money because of
[71:20] military because of the of weapons is is
[71:23] a huge force that pushes for having more
[71:26] weapons more
[71:29] and they have a colossal amount of money
[71:30] and they influence politics
[71:33] and the result it's uh death destruction
[71:38] and increased risk for humankind
[71:41] together. I think humans, you're right,
[71:43] humans were disaster, but there they
[71:44] have always been reasonable also.
[71:46] They've done good things.
[71:47] >> Well, we vary widely,
[71:50] very widely. We're very different.
[71:53] >> I'm optimistic. Couple couple of days a
[71:56] week. A couple of days a week. I think
[71:58] there's no
[71:59] >> I'm mostly optimistic.
[72:01] >> I think there should be a moment in
[72:03] which war is not a priority.
[72:08] I I wish it would be very simple. Can
[72:11] can we just agree to spend less money in
[72:14] military across all the planet?
[72:17] >> Well, it would be nice if we could trust
[72:19] the other countries to honor this
[72:21] agreement. But we would have to have
[72:23] access to their funds and we'd have to
[72:25] watch their programs and be able to
[72:27] monitor their stuff and go over and send
[72:29] envoys.
[72:30] >> Yeah.
[72:30] >> To check out their military.
[72:31] >> The US did it with the Soviet. It
[72:33] worked.
[72:33] >> Yeah, it Yeah, it could work. Yeah. or
[72:36] AI could just stop it all.
[72:38] >> That's a possibility too.
[72:39] >> So the question is are we for the moment
[72:41] we're still controlling AI right now.
[72:44] The more the point is that are we
[72:46] developing AI collectively for the good
[72:49] of everybody or everybody is developing
[72:53] AI for becoming more powerful overcoming
[72:56] the others. That's the question.
[72:58] >> I have a crazy theory. My theory is that
[73:02] is a natural process of the human
[73:05] species and that's what the human
[73:07] species has always been here to do is to
[73:10] create digital life and that we are
[73:12] essentially an electronic caterpillar
[73:15] making a cocoon and our entire existence
[73:18] has been advancing technology to the
[73:20] point where we can make an artificial
[73:22] life which is the ultimate expression of
[73:24] technology and that that's what people
[73:26] do just like bees make beehives people
[73:29] if you leave them somewhere somewhere
[73:30] long enough and they can their
[73:31] civilization survives long enough. You
[73:33] get enough brilliant people that
[73:34] innovate and come up with crazy
[73:35] technology and new advances in science
[73:38] and material sciences, they eventually
[73:41] get to a point where they can make an
[73:42] artificial life. And that artificial
[73:44] life has no boundaries in terms of the
[73:47] limitations of biological life. Its
[73:49] ability to evolve is completely
[73:51] dependent upon its own ability to code
[73:53] itself and change itself and advance and
[73:56] figure out new propulsion methods and
[73:58] power sources and and then it becomes
[74:01] something omnipresent. It becomes
[74:02] something much more intelligent than any
[74:05] life form.
[74:06] >> It's a possibility. It's a possibility.
[74:08] I see what you're saying. I
[74:13] I I
[74:15] see the possibility. Uh whether I'm sure
[74:18] this is the future, I don't know.
[74:19] >> I'm not sure either. I'm just talking
[74:21] [ __ ] But if I was,
[74:24] >> but if I was guessing,
[74:25] >> Joe, there's another thing. Humans tend
[74:28] to give it tend to focus on what is
[74:31] happening in the last couple of years,
[74:32] okay?
[74:33] >> And tend to read everything in terms of
[74:36] the last little things. Um
[74:40] when when when when books and printing
[74:42] was invented, you know, everybody say,
[74:43] "Ah, we got it. The universe is a book.
[74:45] Everything is we have to decode the book
[74:47] of nature. When machines became more
[74:50] effective, people say oh the universe is
[74:52] a
[74:53] >> is a machine. Everything is a machine.
[74:55] Humans are a machine.
[74:56] >> Um then digital stuff and uh information
[75:00] was invented. So everything is a
[75:02] computer. The computer was taking over.
[75:04] Sometimes we over read the present and
[75:09] uh you know when the first communist
[75:11] arrive oh everything will become
[75:12] communist. When the capitalists are
[75:14] everything will become capitalist
[75:17] future often surprises us.
[75:20] >> Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm
[75:23] not betting that I'm right. Uh but I
[75:27] think it's moving in a general direction
[75:29] of unpredictability
[75:31] to to a point where the
[75:35] 20 years from now the world's
[75:37] unrecognizable.
[75:38] >> It might be. It might be. And
[75:40] >> I hope it's for the better. That's my
[75:42] rosecolored glasses view of the world is
[75:44] that I hope it corrects a lot of the
[75:46] problems with human behavior.
[75:47] >> I share your hope and I think it's a
[75:49] responsibility of everybody including
[75:51] you know me as an intellectual you as
[75:53] you know Joe Rogan that everybody listen
[75:55] to to push toward um let's keep the
[75:59] common interest.
[76:01] Um
[76:01] >> well here would be the common interest
[76:03] if it really could get to that level.
[76:04] You could absolutely with the resources
[76:07] available today wipe out poverty
[76:09] worldwide.
[76:09] >> Exactly. where no one on earth ever has
[76:12] to worry about nutrition or shelter.
[76:14] >> Exactly.
[76:14] >> No. Or medicine. Just with the money.
[76:17] >> We have the resources for this.
[76:18] >> Right. And you could completely change
[76:21] all with robotics and automation and new
[76:25] power sources. You can completely change
[76:27] all of these areas that are deeply
[76:29] impoverished that have been so forever.
[76:30] Like you look at these places that are
[76:32] like insanely packed in with people and
[76:34] dirt roads and like poor sanitation.
[76:37] That could be changed instantaneously.
[76:39] could we have the resources education
[76:40] could be changed instantaneous. You'd
[76:42] literally change within a couple
[76:43] generations.
[76:44] >> You have a totally new society, totally
[76:47] different society. And again, how much
[76:49] of what you're seeing with crime and
[76:51] poverty would just disappear where
[76:54] there's no famine, there's no worries
[76:56] about food, there's no worries about
[76:58] shelter, there's no worries about
[76:59] anything. That sounds like pie in the
[77:00] sky [ __ ] but it's not necessarily.
[77:03] If you think about how they're going to
[77:04] scale up AI and automation and
[77:07] manufacturing, it's going to be really
[77:09] weird. And our access to resources will
[77:13] be radically enhanced, like way, way
[77:17] more than we have today. Why wouldn't we
[77:20] be able to just spread like turn the
[77:23] third world into the first world? That's
[77:25] a possibility.
[77:27] >> That's that's not like that's not
[77:29] putting a civilization on Mars. Like
[77:31] this is a possibility. It's like it's
[77:33] here. You can do it. It could be done.
[77:36] It's not You're not asking people to
[77:38] drink lava. This is an act. Like you
[77:40] could see how this could work.
[77:42] >> It sounds crazy because the resources
[77:45] involved are nuts.
[77:46] >> See, I think it sounds like something we
[77:48] should keep in mind and talk about and
[77:50] push.
[77:50] >> Well, it should be a human goal. It
[77:52] should be a human goal.
[77:53] >> If you want a better world, what's the
[77:55] best way to have a better world? But
[77:56] look when the United Nations was founded
[77:58] in the in the in the 40s and 50s um
[78:00] eliminating poverty was declared an
[78:03] interest of humanity by all the
[78:05] countries together. Okay. So humankind
[78:08] already has said let's do that. Then
[78:10] somehow special interest and and power
[78:12] gains prevail.
[78:14] >> There's also the issue of nuclear power.
[78:16] So when they first started distributing
[78:18] nuclear power to other countries they
[78:20] didn't realize how easy it would be to
[78:21] convert it to nuclear weapons. Right?
[78:23] the cell like India got nuclear weapons
[78:25] and Pakistan got nuclear weapons. It
[78:27] gets weird, right? So then you're
[78:29] realizing, oh well, we can't use nuclear
[78:31] power. Well, now
[78:32] >> yeah.
[78:33] >> Okay, well this is a lot more
[78:35] complicated now cuz now if you want to
[78:36] develop these places, you're going to
[78:38] have to what? Use coal plants. What are
[78:40] you going to do? Like you you
[78:42] hydrodnamics? You going to you know you
[78:44] going to use waterfalls? Like how you
[78:45] going to power them? What how you going
[78:47] to what are you going to do here? You
[78:49] you can't give them nuclear power. If
[78:50] you give them nuclear power and they
[78:51] have nukes, too. And then the whole
[78:52] [ __ ] world has nukes.
[78:56] So, it's complicated. But with AI, I
[78:59] think that complication radically
[79:00] decreases. And it's conceivable that you
[79:03] could do something like that. And how
[79:05] how much safer would the world be if you
[79:08] just eliminated most murder, most crime,
[79:10] most most acts of poverty, most
[79:14] >> Yeah. But it has to become a clear
[79:18] objective. But then you have a problem
[79:20] with the people that are still alive
[79:21] that grew up that way and are just
[79:23] that's how they behave forever. They're
[79:26] just there's certain people that live in
[79:27] a terrible part of the world that have
[79:28] been behaving terribly their whole life.
[79:30] Everyone around them has been behaving
[79:32] violently and terribly.
[79:34] >> Look, that's
[79:35] >> then you got to get those people on
[79:36] mushrooms.
[79:39] >> Yes. Yeah. Give mushrooms to everybody.
[79:41] That's that's where I come from.
[79:43] >> That might be the only way.
[79:45] >> Um
[79:46] >> that might be the only way to fix them.
[79:47] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they also Yeah,
[79:50] sure. But also, you know, let's not just
[79:55] look at the what the others did.
[79:57] >> Well, there might also be a way to
[79:59] >> what our countries did.
[80:00] >> Enhance consciousness through
[80:02] technology. That might be that's another
[80:05] pathway that I often consider that
[80:08] >> I think there's a there's a rational
[80:09] side. You it's not a it's not a moral
[80:12] issue. is not a
[80:15] it's not political in the sense of the
[80:19] bad sense of politics. It's a rational
[80:21] thing. Yes, if we collaborate, we do
[80:24] better than if we compete. Of course, we
[80:26] need some competition. I'm not saying
[80:27] that competition is bad, but
[80:29] confrontation uh clashes, war is to
[80:33] nobody advantage. The problem is we've
[80:36] already cemented an enormous part of our
[80:38] culture, an enormous part of our economy
[80:41] in this military-industrial complex. I
[80:43] mean, this is something that Eisenhower
[80:45] warned about at the end of his term.
[80:47] Remember that famous speech? And
[80:49] unfortunately he was dramatically right
[80:52] as John Kennedy realized shortly after
[80:55] >> um the the the the
[80:58] power of the military
[81:00] uh complex all the it's colossal and it
[81:04] has an interest in making war
[81:06] >> and making money that's how it makes
[81:08] money
[81:09] >> and how it makes money and then this
[81:10] money of course goes into politics so
[81:12] then it spiral it spirals up
[81:15] >> how can we stop that
[81:16] >> that's the scary thing for most people
[81:18] you you get to this realization like,
[81:19] oh, the more war there is, the more
[81:21] money they make.
[81:22] >> They're in the business of war.
[81:23] >> Somebody says that Kennedy, John
[81:25] Kennedy, tried to stop that and ended up
[81:27] badly for that.
[81:28] >> Somebody says so. I don't know.
[81:29] >> Well, I think there was a lot of people
[81:30] that hated him. It's very difficult to
[81:32] figure out what exactly got him killed.
[81:34] There was probably multiple factors. Bay
[81:36] of Pigs was probably a factor.
[81:38] >> Sure. All the Cubans.
[81:40] >> There was a bunch of factors that got
[81:42] him killed. Um, but for sure, this
[81:44] country does not like when people want
[81:46] to put the cold water on the war. They
[81:48] want to keep it rolling in some way that
[81:51] they can justify it.
[81:52] >> Joe, I I spent 10 years in the United
[81:56] States. Um I I I was born in Europe,
[81:59] then moved to United States. Spent 10
[82:01] years here.
[82:01] >> Where'd you live? What part of the
[82:03] United States?
[82:04] >> Mostly in Pittsburgh.
[82:05] >> Oh,
[82:06] >> don't say sorry.
[82:07] >> No, no. I like Pittsburgh. Solid people.
[82:10] >> Pit Pittsburgh was great after all.
[82:11] >> I like Pennsylvania in general. I I
[82:13] always love Philadelphia. It's [ __ ]
[82:15] great place.
[82:16] >> Yeah. Then I moved back to Europe. Then
[82:18] I moved this side of Atlantic and more
[82:21] against to um again to uh Canada. And
[82:25] now I'm back to Europe again in Madrid.
[82:28] So um I consider myself um
[82:33] half American, one-third American. I
[82:35] don't know.
[82:36] >> Oneird American. Okay. Um
[82:38] >> we'll take it.
[82:39] >> Um and you know 50% Italian, 30% French,
[82:43] 30% Spanish, 30%. You're a citizen of
[82:46] the world, sir.
[82:49] >> Yeah. Somebody dislikes that, but to
[82:51] some extent it's true. Yeah. Because
[82:53] >> ultimately though, one world government
[82:54] would be a terrible idea.
[82:56] >> I don't want I don't want a government.
[82:59] I want collaboration across the world.
[83:02] So careful. I mean, this is very
[83:03] different things, right? I want to
[83:05] >> to to to learn to treat others as, you
[83:09] know, somebody we can compete with, but
[83:11] not enemies. Not enemies. This idea of
[83:14] enemies. This country needs enemies.
[83:16] This country, I mean, I I got so much
[83:19] from the US. Um, it's part of me. But
[83:22] remember,
[83:23] >> um,
[83:25] it's not an angel country. It started
[83:28] off by, you know, genociding all the
[83:30] native large majority of the native
[83:32] American. It went through the civil war,
[83:34] which is one of the most brutal world of
[83:36] the it used atomic bomb first. um it uh
[83:41] since the end of second world war has
[83:43] waged war all over the planet without
[83:45] ever being attacked and has probably
[83:47] killed something between five and 10
[83:49] million peoples in wars around. So it's
[83:53] a country it's a country compared to the
[83:55] other u developed country where there's
[83:58] much higher level of crime, violence,
[84:01] murder. It's a wonderful country. It's
[84:04] creative. It's powerful. It has an idea
[84:07] of freedom. uh it is in it is a strength
[84:11] of innovation. Uh uh it's a country with
[84:13] a lot of lights and a lot of darkness
[84:17] and uh I think very often the Americans
[84:21] see the light don't see the darkness.
[84:24] >> Interesting. Yeah. Well, it's not it's
[84:26] not in front of our face all the time.
[84:28] The darkness.
[84:29] >> Yeah. American exceptionalism is
[84:32] something that's
[84:33] >> American exceptionalist is
[84:35] you know there is something peculiar in
[84:38] this country there is for many reasons
[84:40] one is that is is a strange country
[84:42] which the people are not natives right
[84:45] everybody came in from the outside is a
[84:47] melting pot story
[84:49] >> um but I think what Americans don't see
[84:52] is how from the outside
[84:55] uh the violence and the aggressivity
[84:59] of US is perceived as something very
[85:02] strong that is not seen from America
[85:05] now.
[85:06] >> Yeah. Well, now it's a um
[85:10] how would I put it? You know, Trump is
[85:12] not my guy. Not at all. But at least he
[85:14] has taken away some of the hypocrisy.
[85:16] >> How so?
[85:18] >> Um you know, he's going to Venezuela and
[85:22] take the oil and say we do that because
[85:23] of the oil. is is saying it's our
[85:26] interested to do this and that instead
[85:28] of selling our interest for you know we
[85:31] are the good guys who are saving the
[85:33] people outside
[85:35] >> which has always been the propaganda
[85:37] >> which has been the propaganda and I
[85:38] think if we get rid of the propaganda
[85:40] it's easier to talk and see the others
[85:43] it's also the other the other side I
[85:44] mean when the Russians stop thinking
[85:47] we're the good guys we are saving the
[85:50] the people it was an advantage for
[85:53] everybody So, we got to this long
[85:56] roundabout conversation because we were
[85:58] talking about AI and AI being conscious.
[86:00] >> What I was going to get to is do you
[86:03] think that the universe itself is in
[86:06] some way conscious?
[86:14] Um,
[86:21] let me go back to my main point. We
[86:24] don't know what conscious what we mean.
[86:26] >> Is there an Italian word for
[86:27] consciousness?
[86:29] >> Sorry.
[86:29] >> Is there an Italian word for
[86:30] consciousness?
[86:31] >> Oh, that's a great question. The answer
[86:34] is no. the the world the Italian word
[86:37] for conscience the moral thing and
[86:41] consciousness is the same word conscient
[86:45] so there's
[86:45] >> oh your conscience like feeling bad
[86:48] about something
[86:48] >> yeah feeling bad I've done something
[86:50] wrong so my conscience is
[86:52] >> uh so the the Italian word is more about
[86:55] moral thing uh consciousness doesn't
[86:58] have a translation not even in French um
[87:01] or Spanish
[87:02] >> what about the concept of consciousness
[87:04] is there another phrase for it the way
[87:07] we think about it here. No, we use the
[87:10] same word somehow with two slightly they
[87:12] do different meaning but making
[87:14] confusion about it you know again it
[87:18] depend what you mean you can mean
[87:19] different things
[87:20] >> right
[87:20] >> of course the universe is conscious
[87:23] because includes us and we are conscious
[87:27] so so inside careful that's the point
[87:30] >> that's a central point we are not
[87:31] special in the universe we're just part
[87:34] of the universe there's not nature
[87:37] and outside nature We're looking at it
[87:39] from the outside. We are part of nature.
[87:41] We are home in nature. We're just
[87:43] another animal, a much special animal.
[87:46] Of course,
[87:47] >> right?
[87:47] >> The history of science
[87:50] is a history of taking down metaphysical
[87:54] differences. Uh in in in the middle
[87:56] ages, people thought that there's a
[87:58] earth which is its own reality and
[88:00] physics and everything and the heavens
[88:03] and the heavens were completely
[88:05] different. On earth, things decay and
[88:08] rot. In the heavens, they're they're
[88:10] eternal. Uh things go around in circles
[88:13] in the heavens and and on earth, things
[88:15] fall up and down. And then Newton came
[88:18] and basically said, "No, no, no, no, no.
[88:20] We got it right. The heavens and the
[88:23] earth are just the same thing. The the
[88:24] earth is just one of the many bodies in
[88:27] in the heavens. We are like, you know,
[88:29] this little dot in the sky, which is
[88:31] Venus, that moves around. Well, we we're
[88:34] like that, like Mars, like Venus. So, it
[88:36] was a was a shock for Europe, right? Uh
[88:40] oh boy, we are our the earth is just one
[88:42] of the many things around. And then a
[88:45] few centuries later comes Darin
[88:49] and convinces us, convinces everybody
[88:52] that um animals and humans have common
[88:57] ancestors. Okay, your grand grandmother
[89:01] and the grand grandmother of your cat
[89:04] could be the same organism, the same
[89:07] person. So that means that we're not so
[89:10] different from animals, right? We're the
[89:11] same story and so on. I mean, we we keep
[89:15] learning that we are part of nature. Um,
[89:18] and uh
[89:21] I think the same is true for consueness.
[89:26] We are not the special thing outside of
[89:28] nature. We're just one of things that
[89:30] happen in nature. I'm sure that in the
[89:33] big universe there are all sort of
[89:35] things happening like our consciousness
[89:38] or much more complicated, much more
[89:40] rich, much more beautiful. Who knows? We
[89:42] don't know. But certainly we're not so
[89:44] special. We're home in nature which is
[89:46] beautiful because there isn't nature and
[89:49] culture. Culture is just one natural
[89:51] phenomenon. um there isn't body and
[89:55] spirit. It's just the same thing
[89:58] described in different different
[90:00] manners. So yes, the universe is does
[90:03] all sorts of things including having
[90:06] things like us and who knows how many in
[90:08] the you know the the earth is just one
[90:11] of the hundred of billions of planets in
[90:15] the galaxy and the galaxy is one of many
[90:17] hundred billions billions of millions of
[90:19] billions of of of um of galaxies. So
[90:23] we're just one little thing in this uh
[90:26] great um nature. We're not special.
[90:31] We're not, but we are because we're a
[90:33] part of something special. So whatever
[90:35] the whole thing is is pretty special.
[90:37] >> Oh, whatever the whole thing is very
[90:38] different that what we thought it was
[90:41] reach is much more rich, much more
[90:43] complex, much more variety
[90:45] >> and that includes us
[90:46] >> and that includes us.
[90:47] >> So we are special.
[90:49] >> We are special. But you know um every
[90:52] kid is special for his mom and mom is
[90:54] special for his kid and she's the mom is
[90:57] really special for the kid. Uh, every
[90:59] kid is special and so are we.
[91:03] >> Mhm.
[91:04] >> Special for ourself for so for sure.
[91:06] >> Yeah.
[91:06] >> And important for ourself.
[91:08] >> Do you think that our human
[91:10] consciousness is a way that the universe
[91:11] experiences itself?
[91:13] >> Yes, it is. It is the factor, right? But
[91:16] it's not because there was some initial
[91:18] plan to do that. I mean, it's just it's
[91:21] just how things happen. Well, it doesn't
[91:24] have to be a plan for it to be a crazy
[91:26] magical experience because it kind of is
[91:27] nuts whether it's a plan or not. Just
[91:30] the fact that it exists.
[91:32] >> Yeah. You know, let me put it this way.
[91:35] You're asking this question to me as a
[91:37] scientist, a physicist.
[91:39] I think the physics is badly overrated.
[91:43] >> How so?
[91:45] Um because at some point people thought
[91:48] oh if we figure out the physics
[91:50] equations that govern in reality we've
[91:52] understood everything
[91:54] and that's silly in my opinion
[91:58] precisely because nature is complex.
[92:01] Imagine uh do you play chess?
[92:04] >> No.
[92:04] >> Okay. So do you know the basic moves of
[92:06] chess? So you know the basic rules of
[92:08] chess.
[92:09] >> Yeah. So to know the basic rules of the
[92:12] game doesn't mean to play chess. Right.
[92:14] >> Right.
[92:15] >> To know the fundamental equation of
[92:17] physics is like knowing the basic rules
[92:19] of the game. It's very different from
[92:22] knowing what you could do with that. So
[92:26] the basic laws of physics are like the
[92:28] basic rules of chess. They're easy to
[92:31] know. You write them down. Maxwell
[92:33] equation. Well, you to study a little
[92:35] bit the shing of equation. Everything is
[92:38] governed by that. Yeah. But what you can
[92:41] do with that is fabulously complicated.
[92:45] It's not enough to know them. You need
[92:47] chemistry for chemist philos for for for
[92:50] for chemical phenomena. You need
[92:52] psychology to understand people. You
[92:54] need literature. You need philosophy.
[92:56] You need you need emotions to understand
[92:58] how what is love and so on and so forth.
[93:00] So this idea that
[93:03] um physics exhaust everything
[93:07] it's true in some basic silly sense the
[93:11] same sense in which all the complexity
[93:13] of chess playing after all is just you
[93:17] know 10 basic rules how the king move
[93:20] how the queen moves. Um but in the same
[93:23] sense it's it it's silly because the
[93:26] complexity of unis goes far beyond just
[93:28] its basic equations of physics.
[93:34] So when you think of
[93:38] human beings
[93:40] uh as a vehicle for the universe to
[93:42] experiencing itself for for the universe
[93:44] to experience itself.
[93:47] Do you think the universe itself is
[93:50] experiencing things in a way that we
[93:51] just don't understand?
[93:54] >> Um,
[93:56] like is are we
[93:59] our biological understanding of what we
[94:02] think of as consciousness being that it
[94:04] exists inside this moving creature with
[94:07] a finite lifespan that has the ability
[94:09] to manipulate its environment.
[94:11] >> Is that just an egocentric version of
[94:14] what this is? And it's probably
[94:16] everywhere
[94:17] >> all the time.
[94:21] >> I think we use ourself as an analogy for
[94:24] trying to understand things beyond
[94:26] ourself.
[94:28] To some extent
[94:30] this analogy works. But the key point
[94:34] for me is that uni the universe as a
[94:38] whole is still a colossal mystery.
[94:41] We don't know and we don't have the full
[94:45] story by very far. Um
[94:48] the universe is far more complex for us
[94:51] to to understand far more many many
[94:53] things happening far many possible
[94:56] perspectives which are not ours which do
[94:59] not do not have access to. So um
[95:04] two general questions
[95:06] in my opinion the only reasonable answer
[95:09] is uh we don't know you know there's so
[95:13] much we don't know I think if I look at
[95:17] great scientists of the past they're
[95:18] characterized not by the fact that they
[95:20] understood the universe but by the fact
[95:23] that we're so much aware that uh there's
[95:26] so much in the universe which they did
[95:28] not understand.
[95:30] Um
[95:31] we are look what are we? We are not
[95:34] super powerful intelligent total
[95:36] rational things outside universe looking
[95:38] from the outside. We're little creatures
[95:40] on a little planet you know developed
[95:43] for surviving in savannah which have
[95:45] developed some good mental tools very
[95:48] good but limited compared to the
[95:52] immensity of the universe of its
[95:54] complexity. So um
[95:58] uh what we know about the universe from
[96:00] a larger perspective, we don't I I think
[96:03] we don't know.
[96:04] >> There's also this weird thing with
[96:05] people where we're always dealing with
[96:06] the perspective of the accumulated
[96:08] knowledge up until now.
[96:10] >> Yeah.
[96:10] >> And this has always been the case like
[96:12] people when they first developed quantum
[96:14] theory, this was what 100 years ago when
[96:17] they first started doing that. Like
[96:19] think about what they were working with
[96:20] like and then 100 years before that. And
[96:23] it's like everyone is only working with
[96:24] what other people have already figured
[96:26] out, what they've contributed to it.
[96:28] >> Yeah. And we're very good in
[96:29] accumulating. That's what we're very
[96:30] good at.
[96:30] >> Very good. Especially now. Yeah.
[96:32] Especially with AR.
[96:33] >> Well, also in the past, right? I mean,
[96:35] people built how did people sit to
[96:38] physically on the basis of previous
[96:39] experience. We we we that's what is our
[96:42] the strength of our speeches somehow. We
[96:45] don't have to start again every
[96:47] >> But that's what I was getting at is I
[96:48] wonder what the world looks like in 200
[96:51] years.
[96:53] >> Like I always think like we are we're
[96:55] born in such an amazing time. So how old
[96:57] are you?
[96:59] >> I was born in 56. So I'm past 70.
[97:02] >> Okay. So I'm 59. So you know we're not
[97:06] that far off. So we're we're born into a
[97:09] completely different time. And we've
[97:10] watched the internet develop. We've
[97:12] watched answering machines and cell
[97:14] phones and we've watched AI and all this
[97:17] crazy stuff. And you just imagine that
[97:20] change
[97:22] moved forward for 200 years.
[97:24] >> Yes. Um
[97:26] let me balance this with one thing, not
[97:28] to contradict but to reinforce what
[97:30] you're saying. My grandmother,
[97:33] her name was Olympia. She was born um at
[97:38] a time where there was no electric
[97:40] light. Whoa.
[97:41] >> There were no trains. There were no
[97:43] cars.
[97:44] >> Whoa.
[97:44] >> There was no washing machines,
[97:47] television. There was no radio. Okay.
[97:50] Before dying, she went in in a plane.
[97:53] She flew. During her life, she saw all,
[97:59] you know, electric life coming in, radio
[98:01] coming in, um all the way to washing
[98:04] machine coming in, television coming in,
[98:07] telephone coming in.
[98:09] I I think for her the world changed more
[98:12] than for me.
[98:14] >> Yeah, that's a good point. Especially
[98:15] the air travel, right? You can all a
[98:16] sudden go to all these different
[98:18] countries.
[98:18] >> Fantastic. Look, you you called me and
[98:21] you said I was in Europe. Can can you
[98:23] come 48 hours to Texas? And I flew from
[98:25] Europe to Texas and back. This is
[98:27] fantastic. If I told my grandmother when
[98:29] she was a a girl, she would have
[98:31] laughed. Say, come on. That makes no
[98:33] sense. It takes two months to a month of
[98:35] the board to go there.
[98:36] >> That's true.
[98:38] So things change dramatically. Uh but
[98:42] they do. So uh to your question, I have
[98:45] no idea how
[98:47] they will be 100 years in the future. Um
[98:52] we are always there's always a
[98:54] perspectival thing. It seems that the
[98:56] last one is the most important but there
[98:59] always been big changes. Always always
[99:02] imagine when books were invented or when
[99:05] agriculture was invented or or when
[99:07] cheese was invented.
[99:09] >> Yeah.
[99:09] >> Um
[99:11] or where countries were invented. So uh
[99:14] humankind have gone through quite a
[99:20] rough trip during the last thousand
[99:23] several thousand of years. and we're
[99:25] just in one of the bumps, not in I I
[99:28] think you were in California before
[99:31] being here in Texas. I I think that
[99:33] there is a idea especially in California
[99:35] that now we are in a super very very
[99:37] very special moment.
[99:40] I'm not sure we are in just one of the
[99:42] jumps ahead. I think that when electric
[99:45] light and electricity and power came to
[99:47] our that was a big jump. Not
[99:49] >> everything was a jump. I bet people in
[99:50] 1969 watching Jimmyi Hendricks thought
[99:52] it was a jump.
[99:53] >> Oh yeah. You know, there's so many
[99:55] jumps. There's so many like, wow, I
[99:57] can't believe like Hunter Thompson wrote
[99:58] about that about the 60s
[100:00] >> that this all of a sudden this great
[100:02] change had happened.
[100:03] >> Yeah. I was a kid. I was uh the
[100:05] difference between me and my parents I
[100:09] think was bigger than the difference
[100:11] between uh uh me and the generation of
[100:14] who were who were young. There was was a
[100:17] cultural
[100:18] >> break. My parents were not understanding
[100:19] me. I was rebellious. I was a was a bit
[100:22] of a hippie and and uh and uh and there
[100:26] was different different different worlds
[100:28] and now and now now parents understand
[100:31] their kids.
[100:35] >> No, I don't know.
[100:36] >> A little bit. They're always confusing.
[100:38] Children are always growing up in a
[100:40] different era.
[100:40] >> Yeah.
[100:41] >> Than you. And there there's different
[100:43] experiences and different pressures and
[100:45] and different weirdness. You know, kids
[100:47] are growing up today with social media
[100:49] and and phones. Everyone's connected to
[100:52] everyone. They have uh their location.
[100:54] They show share their location with
[100:56] their friends. It's very it's all it's a
[100:58] very weird time when it comes to that.
[101:01] >> But it's also, you know, I'm just
[101:03] >> I'm just thinking about
[101:04] >> very different
[101:05] >> when we're discussing what we don't know
[101:07] that there's so much we know in
[101:09] comparison to a few hundred years ago,
[101:10] but so much that we don't know. there's
[101:12] so much we know and we shouldn't um
[101:16] take away the value of that value and
[101:19] and including scientific knowledge. I
[101:20] think scientific knowledge is great
[101:22] sometimes is the best we have about
[101:23] things. Um but we shouldn't think that
[101:27] we have figured out the big question.
[101:29] The big questions are not figured out.
[101:31] >> Well, we're no different than the people
[101:32] that lived in 1900 that thought they had
[101:34] it figured out. I'm sure they were
[101:35] pretty aware,
[101:37] >> you know, of what they knew and they
[101:38] probably had a there's probably quite a
[101:40] few people that were super confident
[101:41] that basically had it nailed.
[101:44] >> Yeah, that's true. That's one thing that
[101:46] that's one mistake that humankind often
[101:49] does is to figure out, okay, we got it.
[101:51] >> Um I think even if you go in the
[101:54] European middle age, you ask somebody,
[101:58] many people would say, no, no, we've got
[101:59] everything there is to understand.
[102:02] It's very easy. you know, there are
[102:03] angels and
[102:06] influence of the astral influence and
[102:09] this and that spirits. Um, they thought
[102:13] they had understood the full story.
[102:16] >> Yeah. People always do and then there's
[102:18] always people that come along that tell
[102:19] you that they have the answer and they
[102:21] know what it is and they're very
[102:23] confident and very charismatic so people
[102:25] follow them.
[102:26] >> Yes. True. And um
[102:31] wisdom I think to logic sense is is two
[102:34] things. One is realizing
[102:37] that we don't have the answers. So being
[102:40] and you know we're not never certain
[102:43] about everything anything certainty is
[102:46] not within our I I I like to tell this
[102:49] story. My father um grew up thinking his
[102:53] first name was Franco.
[102:56] uh until the day he uh asked birth
[103:00] certificate and figured out that his
[103:02] birth his first name was Julio. So I
[103:06] went home and said, "What the hell is
[103:07] going on here?" And uh um my grandfather
[103:10] told him, "Well, you know, your mother
[103:12] wanted to call you Franco, but they
[103:14] didn't like it, but they didn't dare say
[103:16] so. So I registered you with a different
[103:19] first name." So,
[103:22] so that created disaster for the rest of
[103:24] his life because his paperwork were all
[103:26] Sam Franco, Sam Julio. So, so he didn't
[103:28] know his own name, right? So, even about
[103:30] your own name, you can be wrong. You can
[103:32] be wrong about everything. Even about
[103:33] your own name, there's always a case in
[103:36] which you things can go wrong. Um, but
[103:39] that's good. I don't think we should um
[103:43] aim at certainty. In fact, it's the
[103:45] other way around. We should be careful
[103:46] about certainty because certainty is
[103:49] what blocks you for understanding more.
[103:51] If you're certain that the earth is
[103:52] flat, you don't understand is round.
[103:54] >> If you're certain um you know that
[103:57] things are objective, you don't
[103:58] understand the possibility that they are
[104:00] not and so on and so forth. So accepting
[104:04] the limitation of our knowledge, the
[104:06] fact that we may be wrong, it's a key
[104:08] for learning more that's I think is a is
[104:12] crucial. And the other thing
[104:16] you know you and I have I think one
[104:18] thing in common.
[104:19] >> What's that?
[104:20] >> Curiosity.
[104:22] I if I had to define myself what has
[104:27] been the driving force of so much done
[104:29] is curiosity. Uh I got curious about
[104:32] science and curious about philosophy,
[104:34] curious about the world. Curiosity is
[104:37] what and you too right? I mean it seems
[104:39] to me that this all this you know Joe
[104:42] Rogan experience is a openness to
[104:44] curiosity of listening to people what
[104:46] they have to say to this uh so curiosity
[104:48] I think is a fabulous force for for the
[104:51] world not just thinking that you close
[104:53] yourself in what you know already but
[104:55] being curious being curious about the
[104:56] rest of the ideas the world the others
[104:59] >> I think it's genuinely contagious too
[105:01] when I find people that are curious
[105:03] about things I get curious
[105:04] >> exactly
[105:05] >> when someone's actually curious and they
[105:07] start having these conversations ations
[105:09] that are are clearly to them
[105:11] fascinating. I'm addicted to it. I'm
[105:13] like, "What do you got? What are you
[105:14] talking about? What is this? How did you
[105:16] do it? How'd you figure that out?"
[105:18] >> Yeah.
[105:18] >> But I've Yeah. I mean, I've kind of uh
[105:21] been insanely fortunate that I can have
[105:23] these kind of conversations with people
[105:25] like you.
[105:26] >> Yeah. I envy you for that. You You get
[105:28] to know all possible people very easily,
[105:30] right? You snap a finger and everybody
[105:33] comes to you. You're lucky. You're
[105:34] lucky.
[105:35] >> It took a long time to get to that. I
[105:36] can't I can't I can't imagine
[105:38] >> even from the very beginning it was
[105:40] always so interesting. I mean there's a
[105:42] lot of people that you know you might
[105:44] not even know who they are or but you'll
[105:46] have a conversation with them and you'll
[105:49] get a new perspective on things. You'll
[105:51] get a a new version of how a person
[105:54] lives their life. And uh the more I
[105:57] think you gather about that, the more
[105:58] you understand about yourself and more
[106:00] you understand about interacting with
[106:01] people.
[106:03] >> Yeah. Yeah. And you discover that people
[106:06] are different, have different ideas and
[106:09] uh
[106:10] >> and you you figure out why they came to
[106:12] these different perspectives too. And if
[106:14] you're open, you can consider like how
[106:17] you came to yours.
[106:18] >> One of the most things that fascinates
[106:20] more is how people get ideas,
[106:23] >> how ideas come in. After all, um
[106:26] >> what do you think ideas are?
[106:28] >> I don't know. That's a fabulous
[106:31] question. But I got a rich man from
[106:34] California calling me not long ago and
[106:36] said, ask me the question, Carlo, how do
[106:38] ideas arrive? I think it's a fabulous
[106:42] question. We how we learn, right? We we
[106:46] learn personally, we learn historically.
[106:48] Uh and learning mostly is not just
[106:52] learning facts, it's learning ideas,
[106:54] different ways of thinking. Civilization
[106:57] is just a product of ideas. All we live
[107:00] is is is is ideas in a sense. And how do
[107:03] ideas come in? I don't know. We have our
[107:05] mind has this incredible capacity of
[107:07] generating ideas. Very often ideas are
[107:10] just combinations of previous things. A
[107:13] lot of physics is just a um
[107:17] this is I understand this because it's
[107:19] like that but not exactly like that.
[107:22] >> Uh so I take part of the idea of that,
[107:24] part of the idea of that I combine. So a
[107:26] lot of combinatorics. I hear what he
[107:29] says. I hear what you say. I hear what
[107:30] the others say. Ah, look this goes
[107:32] together with that. So a lot of ideas
[107:35] come from bringing together. That's why
[107:39] um the more you learn, the more you
[107:42] produce things, the more you're curious,
[107:44] the more you
[107:46] you know how did Newton came out this
[107:48] incredible idea. He studied Kepler. He
[107:51] studied Galileo. The two things didn't
[107:53] make sense together but they were very
[107:55] similar.
[107:56] >> So we said how can put this together
[107:57] with that my own job my own physics job
[108:00] is to mix quantum mechanics and general
[108:03] relativity. That's what my the core of
[108:06] my research central part of my research
[108:09] is doing.
[108:09] >> How do you go about doing that? How do
[108:10] you mix them?
[108:12] >> I think you mix them by taking them
[108:14] seriously. So um quantum mechanics is so
[108:19] successful that it's telling us
[108:22] something about the world and general
[108:23] relativity is so successful.
[108:25] Generativity has predicted black holes,
[108:28] gravitational waves, expansion of a
[108:30] universe, time, the fact that time is
[108:33] your head is more than time through your
[108:35] feet and and so on so forth. So it all
[108:38] come out to be right. So it has to be
[108:39] right and quantum mechanics work so
[108:41] well. All our technology is based on
[108:43] quantum mechanics has to be right. So
[108:45] then the question is how do they fit
[108:48] together? You sort of turn them around
[108:50] both of them until you say oh look this
[108:53] might join with that is this aspect of
[108:55] this that that goes together with this
[108:57] aspect of this that has been the work of
[108:59] my life quantum gravity and the theory
[109:02] me and my friends have come out with
[109:04] it's called loop quantum gravity is a
[109:06] way of solving this problem we're not
[109:09] sure it's right right it's um it's it
[109:14] that's my main work in physics l quantum
[109:16] gravity um It's a way of bringing
[109:19] together quantum mechanics and Einstein
[109:21] theory. It gives some predictions. It
[109:23] gives a picture of quantum space and
[109:26] quantum time.
[109:28] Um
[109:30] it's a possible solution of a question.
[109:34] The question is what are the quantum
[109:36] properties of gravity? What are the
[109:37] quantum property of space and time? Are
[109:40] we sure? No, not yet. We are now the
[109:42] situation that we're working for
[109:45] finding some consequences that could be
[109:47] tested. Science is not sufficient to
[109:49] have ideas. You then you want to test
[109:50] them.
[109:52] So that is my entire
[109:56] the main central job of my life has been
[110:00] combining ideas to make a new conceptal
[110:03] structure for for thinking about quantum
[110:07] space and quantum time. And that's
[110:09] useful for understanding what happened
[110:10] inside the black holes. What happened to
[110:12] the early universe?
[110:14] What happened to black holes? You know
[110:16] black holes if you let them there for a
[110:18] very very long time they evaporate. They
[110:20] become smaller and smaller. So what
[110:22] happened at the end of the evaporation?
[110:23] These kind of questions need quantum
[110:25] gravity.
[110:27] >> What do you think happened before the
[110:28] big bang?
[110:30] >> Uh okay. So
[110:33] first we don't know. Yeah, I think it
[110:36] has to be said clearly because um it's
[110:40] good to speculate and we maybe in in 10
[110:43] years we will know. It's not it's not
[110:45] impossible to know but for the moment we
[110:47] don't know. There are two possibilities.
[110:51] One
[110:52] is that genuinely there was nothing
[110:55] before the big bang. So time started
[110:57] there. This is what Stephven Hawking
[111:02] he worked a lot on this possibility. he
[111:04] expected that to be the case. Um the
[111:07] other possibility is that no there was
[111:09] something before the big bang and uh the
[111:13] intuitive idea is that you know you have
[111:14] a universe collapsing falling down into
[111:17] itself getting to a very very compressed
[111:19] stage and then bouncing out and we see
[111:22] the bouncing out and if I had to bet now
[111:26] I'm not sure but I would bet for the
[111:28] second one from the equations that seems
[111:30] to be um what was the case
[111:34] >> and do you think this is a constant
[111:35] process of expansion and compression.
[111:38] >> No, because um
[111:41] I think that if we do this jump that you
[111:44] just did, we're making the usual mistake
[111:46] as soon as you understand something to
[111:48] think it's there forever. Right? If you
[111:51] if you live in a valley and uh and ask
[111:54] uh well, I've never seen what's behind
[111:57] the hill. You look behind the hill, you
[111:59] see something else, say, "Oh, I get it.
[112:00] It's like that forever." No, it's not
[112:02] like that forever. It's like that for a
[112:04] while. Then something else happened. Um
[112:06] so
[112:08] we are afraid of saying I don't know.
[112:11] >> So as soon as we have a step ahead we
[112:14] tend to say okay I got it. I've
[112:18] >> that's a very healthy explanation.
[112:20] >> Yeah
[112:21] because it's accurate. We we really
[112:24] can't figure it out.
[112:26] >> Yeah. When you saw the James Webb
[112:29] telescope, um the the more newer
[112:32] discoveries of these galaxies that
[112:33] formed far earlier than they should
[112:35] have.
[112:35] >> Yeah.
[112:36] >> Did that give you pause about the date
[112:37] of the universe? Because some people
[112:39] have speculated that perhaps the date is
[112:41] wrong, that the date of the big bang.
[112:44] >> Um yeah, I know. But I think it's more
[112:47] plausible that there were primordial
[112:49] black holes that gave rise to these
[112:51] early galaxies. So there's an
[112:53] explanation. There is an explanation
[112:56] within the same dates which is possible
[112:58] that um you know when the universe was
[113:01] very very that we know a lot of
[113:04] confidence right there was a time about
[113:07] 12 13 14 billion years ago that the
[113:11] universe was much compressed much hot
[113:14] and uh
[113:16] and and fluctuating a lot. So at that
[113:18] time it's very possible that many black
[113:20] holes formed
[113:23] and uh maybe some of the early galaxies
[113:26] were generated by black hole formed at
[113:28] that stage. That seems to be seems to me
[113:32] the most plausible answer. Uh I'm not a
[113:35] cosmologist so I'm not
[113:37] >> right
[113:37] >> it's not really my field but it's close
[113:39] I try to follow.
[113:41] >> So it would be that our understanding of
[113:44] what it takes to form a galaxy is
[113:45] incorrect.
[113:47] Um yeah,
[113:49] >> or the time it takes.
[113:50] >> That's right. That's right. So um
[113:54] you know during my life something that
[113:56] has been realized is that not only that
[113:59] there are black holes all over the sky
[114:01] when I was a student people didn't
[114:03] believe in black holes. Um
[114:06] >> when did they first discover them?
[114:09] uh black I studied black hole school but
[114:12] as a a mathematical aspect of Einstein
[114:16] theory and the book said well there's
[114:18] probably nothing real in the universe
[114:20] that correspond to that okay um the
[114:24] first people who started thinking
[114:26] actually that thing up in the sky that
[114:28] we see could be a black hole was in the
[114:31] 70s
[114:32] um it was very interesting because uh
[114:34] you know there are lot a lot of binary
[114:36] system in the sky two star rotating
[114:38] around one another,
[114:39] >> right?
[114:40] >> So you actually see the movement of this
[114:42] of two stars and there were some funny
[114:44] things in which you just saw one star
[114:47] dancing around
[114:49] something which was not seen.
[114:52] So people said well maybe it's a black
[114:54] hole. He's dancing around the black
[114:56] hole. It was speculative.
[114:58] Um then there were the quazars some very
[115:01] intense signals that coming from very
[115:03] far away that people couldn't understand
[115:05] what they were and people said well if
[115:07] it was a black hole uh the the matter
[115:10] falling into the black hole could
[115:11] radiate very strongly and we could see
[115:13] that um the actual evidence
[115:19] grew very slowly in the 80s and 90s. In
[115:23] 2000 I was um I moved back from America
[115:28] to Europe. I arrived in France and the
[115:32] director of the department was a
[115:34] particle physicist a very good particle
[115:36] physicist and uh I said I'm working on
[115:40] black holes and he said Carl you don't
[115:42] believe the black holes are real the
[115:44] 2000. So still physicist very
[115:47] respectable physicist didn't believe the
[115:50] black holes were real. Um That's so
[115:53] late.
[115:53] >> It's very late. It's very late. Yes. At
[115:55] that point, the the relativists, the
[115:57] cosmologists, the astrophysicists were
[115:59] taken very very seriously. Uh now we
[116:02] have pictures of black holes. So now
[116:03] there's no doubt. Uh there's no doubt. I
[116:06] mean physicists have doubt about
[116:07] anything. But
[116:08] >> are any of those old professors still
[116:09] alive?
[116:12] >> Yeah, but they changed their mind. I
[116:13] mean people scientists change his mind.
[116:15] That's
[116:16] >> good ones.
[116:16] >> Yeah, you're totally right. Good
[116:19] scientists change their mind. I'm sure
[116:21] if I talked to him he would laugh and
[116:23] say of course you were right black holes
[116:25] in this. So now we have complete
[116:26] evidence that we're black holes. But you
[116:28] know we see black holes um which are
[116:32] sort of a little bit more massive than
[116:35] than our sun. There many many of these
[116:39] but then we discover that colossal black
[116:41] holes
[116:42] gigantic which are usually the center of
[116:46] the galaxy. And uh we have two pictures
[116:48] of black holes. one the black hole is
[116:50] the center of our galaxy and then
[116:52] another black hole much bigger in
[116:54] another galaxy more far away. Um it's
[116:58] beautiful pictures right they were on
[117:00] the front page of the newspapers a few
[117:02] years ago. Um so when this was realized
[117:07] there are these black holes in the
[117:08] center of the galaxies. Then the
[117:10] question came immediately to everybody
[117:12] every good scientist. Um is it a galaxy
[117:15] that forms and then creates a black hole
[117:18] in its center or is it actually the
[117:21] black hole that start that you know then
[117:23] it forms a galaxy around it. It's not
[117:27] yet completely resolved. What is the
[117:29] role of the black hole in the galaxy?
[117:31] And I think these very very early
[117:33] galaxies could be just a product of
[117:36] black holes coming out of the very early
[117:38] stages of the universe.
[117:40] >> The craziest theory that I've ever heard
[117:41] was that in the center of every galaxy
[117:43] is a super massive black hole. And that
[117:46] could be if you went through that black
[117:48] hole, you go into a whole another
[117:49] universe
[117:50] >> filled with hundreds of billions of
[117:52] galaxies each with a black hole in the
[117:54] center of it. You go through each one of
[117:55] them, hundreds of billions of galaxies,
[117:58] each with a black hole, then it's just
[118:00] that's true infinity.
[118:02] >> Uh yeah, that's a crazy theory. It's a
[118:04] beautiful theory. In fact, there good
[118:05] friend of mine who
[118:08] worked a lot and maybe even started that
[118:09] theory is Lee Small. Um I am not
[118:14] convinced. I think that um I don't know.
[118:17] We don't know. But I I think that if you
[118:19] if you jump into a black hole
[118:23] um you just uh you don't go to another
[118:26] universe after a long time you come out
[118:28] in in in our own universe. So a black
[118:31] hole is a
[118:34] um
[118:35] the black hole left alone is going to
[118:38] eat everything around and then left
[118:40] alone going to become smaller and
[118:41] smaller evaporate and then that's what
[118:44] loop quantum gravity seems to suggest.
[118:48] Um there is a quantum transition becomes
[118:50] a white hole and everything inside comes
[118:52] out. So remember at the beginning of our
[118:55] conversation we said that there is a
[118:57] time is different right? time goes
[118:59] faster and slower. So if you jump into
[119:01] black hole in a short time for you,
[119:03] you're going to jump out
[119:06] billions of years in the future. So
[119:08] black hole could be a shortcut to the
[119:10] future.
[119:11] >> Oh boy.
[119:13] >> Isn't physics beautiful?
[119:15] >> It's beautiful.
[119:16] >> Yeah.
[119:16] >> It's terrifying and beautiful at the
[119:18] same time. Just
[119:19] >> Uhhuh.
[119:20] >> is magnifies the scope of our minuscule
[119:24] existence.
[119:25] >> Yeah. Yeah. It's fabulous that we can
[119:29] learn about that.
[119:30] >> Yeah.
[119:31] >> There was a time which people didn't
[119:34] know what were this little dot in the
[119:35] sky like Venus and Mars.
[119:37] >> Yeah.
[119:38] >> Now we you know we sent machines up
[119:41] there and people want to go up there.
[119:43] >> Um there was a time in PE in which
[119:46] people said oh we're never going to
[119:48] learn the the chemical composition of of
[119:50] the planet and the star because they're
[119:52] far away. They're this is 19th century
[119:55] not long ago. our grandfather and they
[119:58] were completely wrong. We we learn right
[120:00] it's now through the spectra they have
[120:03] ways for we know exactly what is the
[120:05] chemical composition of stars
[120:07] >> which is crazy.
[120:08] >> Yeah it's crazy. So we do learn this is
[120:11] magical.
[120:12] >> Yeah it really is. I mean it's it's
[120:15] fascinating to even think of the
[120:17] possibilities that are out there.
[120:19] >> Yeah. and that as time goes on, we'll
[120:21] develop more and more powerful
[120:22] telescopes and we'll be able to see more
[120:24] and more.
[120:25] >> Yeah. If we don't kill each other with
[120:27] nuclear weapons,
[120:29] >> which is a very concrete possibility.
[120:32] >> Well, if there really are aliens out
[120:34] there, uh there really are super
[120:36] advanced civilizations. I would love to
[120:38] know how they managed to navigate
[120:41] through that if they went through the
[120:43] same course that we are currently going
[120:45] through. I would want I would love to
[120:46] know because that's one of the things
[120:48] about the Fermy paradox, right? Maybe
[120:51] civiliz maybe the reason why we don't
[120:52] see them out there is because they never
[120:54] really get that far and every
[120:56] >> maybe they don't get maybe they destroy
[120:57] themselves with nuclear weapons when
[120:59] they were on the stage. Maybe you know
[121:01] the un very vast is huge. So even if in
[121:06] the galaxy there are many many
[121:10] uh could be that they're too far
[121:14] >> could be or it could be a small
[121:16] percentage of them get to a position
[121:18] where we are a very small percentage and
[121:20] then a small percentage of them make it
[121:23] all the way without being wiped out by
[121:25] natural disasters or cataclysmics of
[121:29] whatever species they are whatever their
[121:31] design is. Do you know what I what I
[121:34] think is most probable?
[121:35] >> What?
[121:36] >> That they have already seen us and they
[121:38] thought we're we're totally uninterested
[121:40] and we just avoided talking to us
[121:43] because we're too stupid.
[121:44] >> Really? I don't like that theory. One of
[121:47] the reasons why I don't like that theory
[121:48] is because uh we don't do that. We we
[121:50] are constantly studying things that are
[121:52] more primitive than we are. We're
[121:53] constantly
[121:54] >> true.
[121:55] >> We're constantly doing experiments on
[121:57] ecosystems and trying we're trying to
[121:59] solve problems that exist. Like I was
[122:02] watching this documentary
[122:04] about um this island that got separated
[122:07] when they they damned some river and
[122:09] created this island and um the it was in
[122:12] South America and this island was
[122:14] overrun with monkeys and they had no
[122:17] predators on this island and uh because
[122:19] of that
[122:20] >> many many monkeys
[122:21] >> tons of monkeys but because of the fact
[122:23] that they didn't have any predators they
[122:25] had lost all their fear of raptors
[122:28] >> and they had started over consuming the
[122:30] seeds of all the plantants. ants and so
[122:32] there weren't new saplings growing and
[122:33] it was having a detrimental effect on
[122:35] the ecosystem because it was
[122:37] >> so they brought in harpy eagles. You
[122:39] ever seen a harpy eagle?
[122:41] >> Not the monkeys. The humans brought in
[122:43] >> humans brought in two harpy eagles.
[122:45] >> No. What is it?
[122:46] >> A harpy eagle.
[122:47] >> Oh, eagle. The bird. The big bird. It
[122:50] might be the biggest eagle.
[122:52] >> Okay.
[122:52] >> It's either that or the golden eagle.
[122:54] Which one's the bigger one? I think
[122:55] harpy eagles are bigger. Anyway, they
[122:58] are really good at killing monkeys and
[123:00] they let these two harpy eagles loose
[123:02] and they they went ham and they killed
[123:04] so many monkeys that they had to stop
[123:05] the uh experiment after a few years. So
[123:08] these uh eagles
[123:11] had had offspring. So they had two other
[123:13] eagles that were there as well. And
[123:15] these eagles were just wiping out these
[123:17] monkeys and they said, "Okay, this is
[123:19] too much." And this is uh now they
[123:21] they're like getting past the whatever
[123:25] the numbers are that they could
[123:26] reproduce. Like it was getting to the
[123:27] point where these eagles, just two
[123:29] eagles and their two offspring were just
[123:32] so they pulled the plug and they pulled
[123:33] the eagles out of there and they said,
[123:34] "All right, well, we tried that." But
[123:36] unintended consequences, but that's us.
[123:39] That's just humans wondering why. What
[123:41] do we do about this island? Why wouldn't
[123:43] we just leave that stupid island with
[123:44] those stupid monkeys and let them figure
[123:45] it out? Yeah, if they eat all the
[123:47] plants, they'll starve to death. They'll
[123:49] figure it out. No, we don't. We go in
[123:51] and we interfere and we intervene and we
[123:53] monkey with the with for a lack of a
[123:56] better term monkey with their ecosystem
[123:57] by bringing in predators.
[123:59] >> So you think if there was some alien
[124:00] civilization would interfere with us?
[124:02] >> Of course they would. Why we are so
[124:03] fascinating?
[124:04] >> Stanley Kublick movie
[124:07] space odyssey was about that right an
[124:09] alien civilization who were just we we
[124:12] according to the story of the movie
[124:14] we're sort of a experiment of an alien
[124:16] civilization.
[124:17] >> Well that's an old story. Yeah,
[124:18] >> that's a story that's from the, you
[124:21] know, the Sumerian text that's from the
[124:24] epic. I mean, this that that goes all
[124:27] the way back to some of the old books
[124:29] that they found that were in the caves
[124:31] in Kuman, you know, like
[124:33] >> well, Samrians have this idea of the
[124:34] gods. We're we are just created the gods
[124:36] for their own for their own advantage.
[124:40] You see, I you know, these are beautiful
[124:42] stories. I always find
[124:46] them, you know, they're fascinating to
[124:48] talk about, but to
[124:52] um to
[124:54] to humans, we're just trying to project
[124:57] ourself to something similar to us
[125:00] changing a little bit. Um I think there
[125:03] is there should be something like life
[125:06] all over the universe. But why should be
[125:08] similar to us? I mean, we we are we lack
[125:11] imagination. There are more
[125:14] more ways of being complex than just
[125:18] having a civilization the way we have.
[125:21] >> That's true. But how do you get there?
[125:23] Don't you think you probably get there
[125:24] by innovation? And if you get there,
[125:26] you're not just going to automatically
[125:27] evolve super intelligence without any
[125:29] innovation and any technology. Most
[125:32] likely biological creatures are going to
[125:34] develop technology in order to advance
[125:37] themselves to the point where they have
[125:40] technology like we have today or far
[125:42] more advanced than that. So it has to go
[125:44] through a process. So whether it looks
[125:46] like us or not for sure we definitely
[125:48] lack imagination in our uh just
[125:51] imagining the possibilities of different
[125:52] kinds of life and different different
[125:55] kinds of intelligence all over the
[125:56] universe. But the the idea that they
[125:58] wouldn't be interested in us seems to me
[126:01] silly. Like we are in an adolescent
[126:03] stage of evolution where we're both,
[126:05] like we were talking about earlier,
[126:06] people are kind and compassionate and
[126:09] wonderful to be around and curious and
[126:11] interesting and also brutal, stealing
[126:14] resources from other countries, creating
[126:16] wars under false pretenses, you know,
[126:19] using propaganda. So, we're both things
[126:21] and we're both we're all we're weird,
[126:24] but we also have potential. You agree? I
[126:26] agree. Like humans have the potential to
[126:28] live a far better way than we're living
[126:29] now. If I was an alien, I would be
[126:32] utterly fascinated by the soap opera.
[126:34] I'm like, how does this one turn out?
[126:35] Like this these people are out of their
[126:37] [ __ ] minds. We found a nutty ass
[126:40] civilization that are on the cusp of
[126:42] figuring it out and at the same time
[126:44] they're making an artificial digital
[126:47] version of itself that's far more
[126:48] intelligent.
[126:49] >> I would think we're really interesting
[126:51] to study.
[126:53] >> Yeah. I would not I would not think
[126:55] they'd be like, "Oh, so boring these
[126:57] people with their godlike AI nuclear
[127:00] weapons."
[127:00] >> Okay. Okay. Okay. I I buy the point. I
[127:04] can see the point, Joe. I can see the
[127:07] point, Joe. Yeah. Uh yeah. But but look
[127:10] what we're doing. We're using our own
[127:11] mind
[127:12] >> to try to imagine how something that
[127:16] could be could think about us.
[127:20] >> Sure. But but of course the only model
[127:22] we have is us,
[127:22] >> right?
[127:24] >> And other animals.
[127:25] >> And other animals. Yes. Yes. Exactly.
[127:27] But you know, I don't know how
[127:30] how much uh squirrels talk about us.
[127:35] Probably they don't. But if they had to
[127:38] figure out humans, they would use
[127:41] squivel notions to try to figure out
[127:43] humans and they would just got it wrong.
[127:45] Get it wrong.
[127:47] >> Right. And much like squirrels, we're
[127:49] probably so limited in our ability to
[127:51] perceive and imagine in comparison.
[127:53] >> That's what I was trying to say.
[127:54] >> What else is out there?
[127:55] >> Exactly.
[127:56] >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
[127:59] Squirrels are cute.
[128:00] >> They are until they bite each other's
[128:02] nuts off. They go out.
[128:03] >> But do they are they nasty? Are they
[128:05] nasty?
[128:05] >> It's kind of a a It's It's not known
[128:08] exactly if they do that. Um, but that's
[128:11] always been like the wives tale is that
[128:13] they when they're mating, when they're
[128:15] they're competing, uh, they will fight.
[128:18] And one of the things they do do for
[128:20] sure is they throw each other out of
[128:21] trees.
[128:22] >> And that's one of the reasons why
[128:24] squirrels can fall from so far and still
[128:26] survive. Like squirrels can fall from
[128:29] like 30, 40 feet in the air and they
[128:30] bounce off the dirt and they're fine.
[128:33] >> Like they're just constructed for
[128:34] falling. Uh, because they go to war.
[128:36] They go to war with each other to breed,
[128:38] you know, to one two males are competing
[128:40] over a female. And the story was always
[128:42] that they would bite each other's balls
[128:44] off.
[128:44] >> Oh boy.
[128:45] >> I don't know. I don't know if that's
[128:47] true.
[128:47] >> Wait, that was one of those like
[128:49] endorsements would always tell you.
[128:50] >> If you grew up in Europe, I I did. When
[128:53] you come to this side of the Atlantic,
[128:54] one of the beautiful things is that
[128:57] there are animals much more than in
[128:59] Europe. Europe is the problem with
[129:01] Europe is too many people. Okay? And
[129:03] especially places like Italy or or the
[129:06] Netherland full of people. Full of
[129:08] people. You don't see animals in Europe,
[129:10] >> right? Other than like pets. You see
[129:12] cats and dogs. Pets and Sure. Sure.
[129:15] Sure. Animals which are live strictly
[129:17] with with humans either as pets or as
[129:20] rats uh a lot. But when you go out
[129:22] hiking the mountains, very rare to see
[129:25] to see an animal. You know, when I was a
[129:26] kid, um it seemed laughable in the in
[129:29] America, but uh I would go hiking with
[129:31] my parents as small kid, and if there
[129:33] was a squirrel, everybody was jumping.
[129:36] Oh, look, a squirrel. Fantastic.
[129:38] >> Really?
[129:38] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I came to the
[129:40] US. There are squirrels all over, right?
[129:42] Can keep out of your house a squirrel,
[129:44] >> right?
[129:45] >> Um especially people that live in the
[129:47] country.
[129:47] >> Yeah. But then I moved to Canada. Canada
[129:49] is fantastic. We had we had we were
[129:51] living um in London, Ontario and out of
[129:55] our windows there were coyotes. There
[129:58] were all sort of animals of all of all
[130:00] kind. We had an eagle coming down in our
[130:02] garden.
[130:03] >> Wow.
[130:03] >> And and just sitting there
[130:05] >> and Canada has true wildlife is
[130:08] fabulous. So for me that was a great
[130:10] thing of coming to this side of the
[130:11] Atlantic is still more nature is still
[130:14] more pleasant in Europe. nature has been
[130:17] sort of domesticated all over is rare to
[130:19] see some wilderness.
[130:20] >> Well, we're very fortunate that we have
[130:22] the national park system and the yeah
[130:24] the you know the way we have these
[130:26] national parks where you can go to
[130:28] Yusede you can see elk and bears and
[130:30] >> there's wolves there. It's it's like
[130:32] it's incredible.
[130:33] >> It's I mean it's a little bit
[130:35] domesticated in that sense like you go
[130:36] there the elk are not scared of you at
[130:38] all. They they hang out by the visitor
[130:39] stand. It's a little bastardized like
[130:42] the there's there's a vid there's an
[130:44] Instagram page called the turons of
[130:46] Yellowstone. No, like morons but
[130:48] tourists
[130:49] >> and people that get too close to the
[130:52] bison and get flipped through the air.
[130:54] >> Disasters. Yes.
[130:54] >> God, so many of those. But it's because
[130:56] they've, you know, they've grown up in
[130:58] cities and they don't understand what
[131:00] wildlife is and they want to take a
[131:01] selfie with the bison.
[131:03] >> Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.
[131:05] >> You can guess how that turns out. When I
[131:07] was in my 20ies, I I I I dropped out
[131:11] from university and I took one year off
[131:13] traveling and I I did coast to coast,
[131:15] Atlantic to Pacific, um Canada one way
[131:18] and US the other way and uh alone. It
[131:21] was fantastic great hitchhike.
[131:24] >> Hitchhiking. Yeah.
[131:25] >> Look at you. You were a hippie.
[131:27] >> Yeah. Yeah. In that sense. Yes. Yes.
[131:29] Absolutely. I I met all sorts of people.
[131:32] Um but when I arrived in the Rockies um
[131:35] it was in Canada near B and um I spent
[131:38] some times hiking high the mountains. It
[131:40] was marvelous for European. Exactly.
[131:42] Because it was um empty. But then um I
[131:46] came down to B. It was a small tiny
[131:48] village at the time and um the camping
[131:51] was too expensive for a young kid. So So
[131:54] I said, "Okay, I don't want to stay in
[131:55] the camping." So I I I I walked up a
[131:58] little bit and put my tent in a little
[132:01] um empty space
[132:03] and then a grizzly came. Yeah. So I was
[132:08] inside my tent, the sun was going down
[132:11] and um this big bear uh started, you
[132:15] know, walking around the tent. I was
[132:17] terrified to death because I had this
[132:19] one of these little little tents, just
[132:21] one layer and the sun was going down. So
[132:24] I saw the shade of the bear on the So
[132:29] the instruction was make noise. Okay,
[132:32] that was the instruction I was given
[132:34] because uh um the risk is that the bear
[132:37] open the tent looking for food and see
[132:39] you get scared and kills you. So if you
[132:41] make noise that's he's supposed to go
[132:43] away. But I was trying to scream but was
[132:46] too terrified.
[132:48] Noise was not.
[132:49] >> Oh no. So then I looked around to make
[132:53] noise. There was nothing. So I started
[132:54] clapping my head like an idiot. Uh
[132:59] so um the bear I had actually that I did
[133:04] right hanged my food on a tree at a
[133:08] little distance. So the bear went to the
[133:10] food, opened the food and just then
[133:13] after a while went away. So I was I was
[133:16] terrified.
[133:17] >> How long did that last? Uh uh the entire
[133:20] thing lasted half an hour before I had
[133:21] the courage to come out and look and
[133:23] there was no bear anymore. So I took my
[133:25] tent and run down to the camper ground.
[133:27] I said I pay whatever
[133:29] I stay here. And then you know people
[133:31] were talking about there was this greed
[133:34] going around the I survived.
[133:37] >> Whoa.
[133:38] >> Yeah. That was my encounter with
[133:39] wilderness which coming you know the
[133:41] little boy coming from Europe, Italy
[133:45] totally civilized no wild animals was
[133:49] was quite scary for but you know I
[133:52] learned that sometimes it's not a bad
[133:53] idea to respect regulation because there
[133:56] was a regulation but don't go alone.
[133:59] >> Yeah, they know what they're doing.
[134:00] >> Yeah,
[134:01] >> but it's not to say that that bear
[134:02] wouldn't wander its way through the camp
[134:04] too cuz they will. They don't respect
[134:06] boundaries. They don't respect
[134:08] regulations.
[134:09] >> Such a It's such a crazy animal that
[134:11] we've we have here. Like grizzly bears
[134:13] are so fascinating. They're so enormous.
[134:16] And
[134:17] >> enormous. They're enormous.
[134:18] >> Yeah. And they used to be all over the
[134:20] place. Like California doesn't have any
[134:21] anymore, but that's on the state flag.
[134:24] >> Oh, yeah. It's It's a grizzly.
[134:27] >> It's not a black bear or
[134:28] >> No, it's a brown bear. They used to have
[134:31] brown bears all over California. In
[134:33] fact, the guy who was last killed by a
[134:35] grizzly bear, they named a town after
[134:37] him. It's called LC. LC, uh, California.
[134:40] >> I see.
[134:41] >> Yeah. I've been to it there before. And
[134:43] it's like there's a plaque memorial.
[134:45] >> Oh, I see.
[134:46] >> In Canada, they have accidents. They
[134:47] still have accidents.
[134:48] >> Oh, yeah. Especially BC, right? There's
[134:50] a lot of
[134:51] >> in BC. Yeah.
[134:52] >> I have friends that live in Edmonton.
[134:53] And boy, they have everything out there.
[134:55] They have links. You see run into links
[134:57] all the time. You see grizzly bears.
[134:59] They have moose everywhere. It's it's
[135:02] such a wild place. It's so cool.
[135:05] >> That's what I envy of this America,
[135:07] right? In Europe, you don't see
[135:09] anything, right? You get
[135:11] >> it is an issue. There's almost no
[135:13] predators in Europe. It's very rare that
[135:15] you find wolves other than, you know, of
[135:17] course, Russia and, you know,
[135:19] >> yeah, if you go east,
[135:21] >> you get a lot of wolves there, but and
[135:23] bears as well, of course.
[135:25] >> But they kind of eradicated them all
[135:27] from most of like urban Europe.
[135:30] >> Yeah. America still has a lot of wild
[135:32] places. It's one of the cool things
[135:34] about this country too is that we have
[135:35] this public land system too. So people
[135:37] can go and visit these wild places.
[135:40] >> Yeah. And there is all this marvelous
[135:42] area
[135:43] >> sort of
[135:45] Arizona. Yeah. Utah. Utah. New Mexico.
[135:49] It's just the south of Utah is just
[135:51] marvelous.
[135:52] >> Oh, it's incredible. I was actually
[135:54] watching another documentary yesterday
[135:55] on jaguars entering into Arizona.
[135:58] There's uh there's quite a few.
[136:00] >> You mean the animal, not the car?
[136:01] >> Yeah, the the animal. Yeah. These
[136:03] jaguars are entering into uh Arizona and
[136:06] they've spotted several of them now.
[136:07] Like pretty large ones. It's pretty
[136:09] interesting. They've decided to make
[136:11] their way back into America because
[136:12] that's where they used to live.
[136:13] >> Where are they coming from?
[136:15] >> Mexico.
[136:16] >> Oh, coming up.
[136:17] >> Yeah, coming up from Mexico. I think
[136:19] they spotted four of them now.
[136:21] >> This is same as mountain layer.
[136:24] >> No, much larger.
[136:26] >> Jaguars are huge. They're the ones that
[136:28] eat crocodiles in the Amazon. They're
[136:29] the ones that dive off of trees and kill
[136:31] the caymans and bite them by the back of
[136:33] the neck and drag them. Have you ever
[136:34] seen that?
[136:35] >> No. Never.
[136:35] >> Oh, it's You need You got to watch this.
[136:37] It's amazing. Jaguars are some of the
[136:39] coolest animals to watch hunt because
[136:41] one of the things that they hunt is
[136:42] crocodiles
[136:43] >> like Yeah. They love to eat cayman
[136:45] crocodiles. So they h they hide in trees
[136:48] and or on the side of the the bank like
[136:51] waiting for the crocodile to get into a
[136:53] vulnerable position and they leap on
[136:54] them and they dive into the water and
[136:56] leap on them and bite them in the back
[136:58] of the head. They're one of the few
[136:59] animals, this is in the documentary that
[137:02] kills not by exfixiation. They kill by
[137:05] crushing the back of the head.
[137:07] >> Oh wow. That's their So they have super
[137:08] strong
[137:09] >> Yeah, they're huge.
[137:11] >> Look at it. Look at them sneaking up
[137:13] behind them. They're the third biggest
[137:14] cat.
[137:18] >> Oh boy. Wow.
[137:19] >> Yeah. That's how they kill. They bite
[137:21] the back of the neck, they crush the
[137:23] head, and then they drag him away. So,
[137:25] he's going to eat a crocodile.
[137:29] So, they're the third largest big cat.
[137:31] So, there's tigers are number one. Uh
[137:34] then there's lions and then jaguars. And
[137:37] so, they're starting to make their way
[137:39] back. Oh, it's five five jaguars spotted
[137:42] in Arizona.
[137:43] >> Are they dangerous to humans? No.
[137:45] >> Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%. 100%. I mean, not
[137:48] the numbers that they're at right now.
[137:50] Uh, but they would be. Sure. If you're
[137:52] hiking or you're doing something stupid
[137:54] and you zig where you should have zagged
[137:55] and you run into one of them. I mean,
[137:56] historically, they've eaten people.
[137:59] Uh, they prefer, I'm sure, to eat,
[138:01] >> but you have to do something stupid. You
[138:02] have to bother them or
[138:04] >> Well, you have to be on their diet,
[138:06] right? Like this is the same thing um
[138:08] with tigers. Tigers become a problem
[138:10] once they realize they can eat people
[138:12] and then they habitually eat people.
[138:14] >> Yeah. That's what they do in India. When
[138:15] when when one tiger start doing
[138:17] something wrong, they they go out and
[138:19] look for it.
[138:19] >> Yes. Yes. Because then they realize how
[138:21] easy it is. So once once we become once
[138:24] we are on the menu, it's like the first
[138:26] time you eat at Chick-fil-A, like this
[138:27] place is great and you just want to keep
[138:29] coming back.
[138:30] >> Um that's the problem. And it's also for
[138:32] a most
[138:33] >> but that's not wise on their side
[138:35] because we're we are weak individually
[138:37] but we're super strong group.
[138:39] >> Right. But they don't know that yet. And
[138:41] a lot of times the places where they're
[138:43] hunting the people are weak individually
[138:45] and not united because they're in these
[138:48] very small villages and so they don't
[138:51] have any resources. They don't have any
[138:52] food, water. They're in trouble already.
[138:55] And then
[138:56] >> these, you know, animals get them,
[138:58] tigers get them. But the jaguars uh in
[139:00] the United States is such a small
[139:02] number. I don't I don't think that's the
[139:03] real concern. But the the what's
[139:06] interesting is that they're they've
[139:07] decided to repopulate North America or
[139:09] the United States at least. It's pretty
[139:12] cool. They're making their way back up
[139:13] here. I I don't want to run into one,
[139:15] you know, because they will eat you. I
[139:17] mean, they're huge. They're huge and you
[139:19] have zero chance of stopping them from
[139:21] eating you once they decide they're
[139:22] going to do that.
[139:23] >> You don't have a chance with a mountain
[139:24] lion. And they're like double the size
[139:25] of a mountain lion.
[139:26] >> They're really big. It's a big cat, but
[139:29] they're really beautiful.
[139:30] >> Why are we fascinating so fascinated so
[139:33] much by big cats, right? We are
[139:35] definitely. It's just incredibly
[139:40] something of our imagination. This is
[139:43] something
[139:44] >> about the beauty, the strength, their
[139:45] elegance, their everything is just that
[139:47] we react to.
[139:49] >> I think we were hunted by them. I think
[139:51] that was a big part of our early
[139:53] ancestors. When when you're dealing with
[139:55] big cats and slow animals, until those
[139:58] slow animals figure out how to make
[140:00] weapons, you're probably hunted by big
[140:02] cats. And this I think Rupert Sheldrick
[140:05] made this point. It's a really good
[140:06] point. When children go to sleep,
[140:08] they're not afraid of all the things
[140:10] that could actually affect them in an
[140:12] urban environment. Like they're not
[140:14] afraid of child molesters or murderers
[140:17] or someone going to break into their
[140:18] house. And
[140:19] >> they're afraid
[140:19] >> they're afraid of monsters. monster
[140:21] which which are which are the big uh
[140:23] predators.
[140:24] >> Exactly. Exactly. They're afraid of
[140:26] monsters even though they've never
[140:27] experienced a monster.
[140:28] >> There's a theory that according to which
[140:31] uh one of the main steps in humankind
[140:34] becoming humankind is exactly this um
[140:38] passage from being praise
[140:41] to being predators. Yes. which had to
[140:45] to change profoundly the our mental
[140:48] structures. Sometimes when we realized
[140:50] that we could resist uh big predators
[140:53] and actually becoming predators ourself
[140:56] because u evolutionary we were not
[140:59] predators, right?
[141:00] >> If you go back again and our speeches at
[141:03] some point
[141:05] learn to be like those things we were
[141:08] afraid of.
[141:09] >> Yeah. But is that does this explain the
[141:12] fascinations because a monster this not
[141:14] just a fear that they um uh generate in
[141:19] us is also sort of admiration and
[141:22] beauty.
[141:22] >> Sure.
[141:23] >> Well, we have admiration and beauty for
[141:25] almost all big predators, right? We have
[141:27] admiration
[141:27] >> not for not for crocodiles or these are
[141:30] not beautiful. We might we might find it
[141:33] interesting but not the kind of
[141:35] fascinations with
[141:37] >> Yeah, that's true. There's something
[141:39] about mammals.
[141:40] >> Yeah.
[141:40] >> We're closer to them.
[141:41] >> We're closer. We're much much closer to
[141:43] them. Yeah.
[141:44] >> And I think
[141:45] >> in fact it's I always been fascinated
[141:47] how much easy we communicate with
[141:50] mammals. Right. It's
[141:52] >> sure
[141:53] >> uh without language without words. But
[141:57] uh if you are in the wilderness and and
[141:59] and what any sort of mammals you
[142:02] understand
[142:04] the the animal and they understand you.
[142:07] So we communicate very easily. It's it's
[142:10] completely you know reading each other
[142:12] emotions and each other intention and
[142:14] our attitude. So it's easy for instance
[142:16] to you know you go your way I'm going
[142:19] your way. We don't bother each other.
[142:23] >> Sure. Unless you're on the menu.
[142:26] >> Yeah. But yeah.
[142:27] >> Yeah. You could be on the menu.
[142:29] >> Especially if you're in the wrong place.
[142:31] >> But that's just the nature of the wild
[142:33] itself. It's just this constant series
[142:35] of life eating life all around you.
[142:37] Whether it's life eating plant life or
[142:39] life eating other animal life or life
[142:41] eating aquatic life.
[142:45] >> Yeah.
[142:48] Yeah.
[142:50] Then somehow we became predator
[142:52] predators at some point in our history.
[142:54] >> Yeah.
[142:56] >> And then we started doing this against
[142:58] one another.
[142:59] >> Yeah. And we probably started doing that
[143:01] from the very beginning. Most likely
[143:04] we're probably competing for resources.
[143:06] >> We don't know. We don't know. Right.
[143:08] There's a there are two theories. Uh
[143:11] there are two competing theories about
[143:12] what happened to our species. Our
[143:14] species is what 100,000 years old. Um
[143:19] and there are two two versions of the
[143:21] story. One is that um
[143:26] war is something that started very late
[143:30] only when uh we became agriculture when
[143:34] we start accumulating
[143:36] and putting away big chunks of grain or
[143:42] and the other is that uh groups of
[143:45] humans were in war even before that very
[143:48] different theories and I think it's
[143:49] interesting that there are these
[143:50] different theories because it has to do
[143:53] with our future and our present. Namely,
[143:57] uh is this idea of getting in group once
[144:01] against the other and making war to one
[144:02] another
[144:04] something which is only a few thousand
[144:06] years old? So it's not in our genetic
[144:11] structure. It's just that you know after
[144:14] agriculture we could steal stuff from
[144:16] one another or is something that goes
[144:18] back uh all all the hundred or thousand
[144:22] years of our our speeches. We don't
[144:24] know.
[144:25] >> What do you think?
[144:27] I I'm not sure but I tend to think that
[144:30] uh war is recent because um a lot of the
[144:37] communities on earth which live hunting
[144:39] gathering they don't they don't go to
[144:41] war they they have no reason I mean it's
[144:44] a it's an economical thing you you you
[144:47] only go to war with another group if
[144:49] there is some accumulated uh uh
[144:52] resources you can still if you find
[144:54] another group of hunter gatherers there.
[144:57] If you if you have extra meat, you share
[144:59] because otherwise go rotten. There's no
[145:02] point in uh going to to war. Um and it's
[145:06] it's if you look at our cousins, it's
[145:10] very confusing because Bonobo
[145:13] don't fight when two groups uh meet. In
[145:16] fact, that that at once they [ __ ] not
[145:19] fight,
[145:20] >> but Shimpan says do.
[145:22] >> Yeah.
[145:23] >> So, and they're equally related to us.
[145:25] So it doesn't help to look at our
[145:26] cousins what what they do. But this it's
[145:29] a crucial question is a it has to do
[145:31] with the question we discussing before.
[145:33] Can we get rid of war? How how much war
[145:36] is part of our genetic
[145:39] not because we're blocked by our genetic
[145:42] um
[145:45] heritance. Uh but clearly it's much
[145:47] easier to think that we can get rid of
[145:50] it if it's only 10,000 years old rather
[145:53] than you know 100.
[145:54] >> I tend to think it's hundreds of
[145:56] thousands of years old and I think
[145:58] chimpanzees are the best example of
[146:00] that. We are much closer in behavior to
[146:02] chimpanzees than we are to bonobos.
[146:04] >> Well, we are equally related from
[146:05] >> we are equally related to the point
[146:07] genetically.
[146:08] >> But in behavior we're much closer to the
[146:10] way chimpanzees.
[146:11] >> You know, but I had this
[146:12] >> chimpanzees hippie part of my life. If I
[146:14] identify better with bonobos,
[146:15] >> I'm sure you do. You're a really nice
[146:17] guy. That's why you think the way you
[146:18] think. I think it's great. But
[146:21] >> you mean I'm a more bonobo guy. More
[146:23] chimpanze guy.
[146:24] >> I don't even think I'm a chimpanzeee
[146:25] guy. I just recognize that chimpanzees
[146:27] go to war with each other and they kill
[146:28] with each other. There's a chimpanzeee
[146:30] war going on right now. You know that,
[146:31] right?
[146:32] >> Yeah, they do. No, I didn't know. But
[146:33] >> yeah, there's a there's a major
[146:35] chimpanzeee war going on right now that
[146:38] they're documenting. Have you ever seen
[146:39] that? Um
[146:40] >> there's a Netflix series Chimp Nation.
[146:42] >> No.
[146:42] >> It's really great. It's fascinating. So
[146:44] the way Chimp Nation was came about and
[146:46] I had the documentary crew on the guys
[146:48] who created it was really interesting.
[146:51] They had these scientists that were
[146:53] embedded in this troop of chimpanzees
[146:55] for a long time for more than 20 years.
[146:58] >> They lived with them.
[146:59] >> Yes. They lived with them.
[147:00] >> So the chimpanzeee accepted the
[147:02] president.
[147:02] >> They have rule. Yes. Exactly. So they
[147:04] had rules. You must stay more than 20
[147:06] yards away from them. Never have food on
[147:08] you and don't make eye contact. And
[147:10] because they've been doing this with
[147:12] this protocol for 20 years, the
[147:13] chimpanzees completely accept the fact
[147:15] these people are there and they realize
[147:17] that there's no challenge, no threat.
[147:19] >> They're normal. They completely
[147:20] normalize. So they behave normal around
[147:22] them and they see all this crazy
[147:25] behavior. They see first of all a lot of
[147:27] uh intertribe conflict. They kill each
[147:29] other and then they kill ones from other
[147:31] tribes. They leave tribes and start new
[147:33] tribes. It's really interesting. Really
[147:36] interesting. Um, but they behave very
[147:39] much like the way we do. They have a
[147:40] leader. The the leader's the alpha. The
[147:43] young man tra challenges the leader.
[147:44] Sometimes the the guy gets driven out.
[147:46] They form new parties. They come back
[147:48] and try to kill the ones that would they
[147:50] started out with. They cross boundaries
[147:52] to get new fruit and new trees and then
[147:55] they wars over the trees. They they
[147:58] behave just the way we do with just at a
[148:00] different scale. Uh but I think that
[148:03] like for instance when you talk about
[148:04] Native Americans and hunter gatherers,
[148:07] the Native Americans were constantly at
[148:09] war with each other. They would go on
[148:10] raiding parties constantly. There was,
[148:12] you know, I don't know how many tribes
[148:14] were in total. Somewhere in the
[148:16] neighborhood of like 200 tribes in this
[148:18] country which were constantly battling
[148:21] each other and killing each other for
[148:22] hundreds and hundreds of years.
[148:23] >> Well, that's a pessimist view.
[148:25] >> No, no, no, no. That's what they did.
[148:26] >> No, no. I I pessimistic. I'm not
[148:29] questioning it.
[148:29] >> Yeah, but it's not pessimistic. fool a a
[148:31] pessimist view of the future.
[148:33] >> But no, no, no, no. It's not even
[148:35] pessimistic. It's just I'm just saying
[148:37] that's what they did. Like this idea
[148:39] that the only reason why this place was
[148:41] at war is because Americans came here or
[148:42] Europeans came here and settled.
[148:45] >> Not really. The Comanche basically wiped
[148:47] out the Apache and all of this area
[148:49] right here. This area we're at right now
[148:51] was called Comancheria before any
[148:54] settlers. They they were dominant and
[148:56] they were ruthless and their favorite
[148:58] thing to do was go on raiding parties.
[149:00] And so they would go and raid other
[149:02] tribes and they would kidnap people and
[149:04] torture people and murder people and
[149:06] they did that without any influence from
[149:08] the Europeans and they did that for a
[149:10] long time and that was all across the
[149:13] country. Now some tribes got along
[149:15] better with other tri tribes. There were
[149:17] more agrarian tribes were there were
[149:19] they varied differently just like humans
[149:20] do in in different environments.
[149:23] >> But at the end of the day there seems to
[149:25] be a pattern when you're talking about
[149:27] uncontacted tribes of hunter gatherers.
[149:29] They go to war with uncontacted tribes
[149:30] all the time. You know, I just had a guy
[149:32] on the other day that was talking about
[149:34] cannibalism and one of the ways they
[149:36] they would utilize cannibalism is eating
[149:38] their enemies after they killed them.
[149:40] And if they had an enemy that was in a
[149:42] rival tribe and they had an encounter
[149:43] and they killed them, they would eat
[149:44] them. And this is like part of their
[149:46] their culture. This is all over the
[149:49] world this has taken place. I think it's
[149:51] much more likely that war is a very very
[149:53] very old thing and it probably has to do
[149:56] with a really harsh environment where we
[149:58] had to survive where people were
[150:00] stealing from each other and stealing
[150:01] mates and stealing resources and
[150:04] cannibalizing each other.
[150:07] >> Okay. So you think this is going to make
[150:10] the project of living in peace much
[150:12] harder?
[150:12] >> I think it's why it's so difficult
[150:14] currently. I think it's why it's so
[150:15] difficult currently because we have a
[150:16] very very long history of war, of
[150:19] conflict, of chaos and violence and
[150:21] it's, you know, probably what made us
[150:23] survive this long.
[150:25] >> The crazy wild world that we that we
[150:27] live in.
[150:27] >> I let me play the optimistic part here.
[150:29] >> Do
[150:30] >> um one can read this in reverse namely
[150:35] uh I believe you. I mean also you talk
[150:37] with a lot of people so you
[150:39] um you have a lot of information about
[150:41] that that I might not have. um say this
[150:43] is true um
[150:46] now you and I don't cannibalize each
[150:48] other right this is so we have learned
[150:50] so then if this is the case it means
[150:52] that civilization
[150:54] which is recent stuff with respect to
[150:57] has had a very strong uh pacifying
[151:00] effect on us
[151:02] >> I agree and education
[151:04] >> education civilization so we learn
[151:06] irration rationally we learn or you know
[151:09] through religion through various
[151:11] processes
[151:13] So maybe that process of learning that
[151:17] uh there is an advantage in
[151:18] collaboration
[151:20] is something that can go
[151:22] that can develop more.
[151:24] >> I I think it can I think you're right.
[151:26] >> And then the question is not going back
[151:28] to a ancient paradise of of of g of
[151:31] kindness and gentleness but to create a
[151:33] better world where we can live together
[151:35] better.
[151:35] >> I think that's the path.
[151:38] Thank you very much. I really enjoyed
[151:40] talking to you. It was really awesome.
[151:41] I loved it. It's greater than anything I
[151:44] expected. Fantastic.
[151:45] >> Thank you. Thank you very much. I really
[151:46] enjoyed it. Uh on the equality of all
[151:48] things um lessons on physics and
[151:52] philosophy.
[151:53] >> Did do I pronounce your last name Roi?
[151:55] >> Yeah, perfect.
[151:56] >> Carlos Olli. Thank you very much. Really
[151:59] enjoyed it. Bye everybody.
