Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Do aliens exist?

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

Today Daniel and Jorge answer questions from Karah and Oz, the hosts of the podcast Sleepwalkers. Listen to Sleepwalkers here Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone.

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy,

which is more effortful to use. unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier, ignoring is easier, denial is easier, complex problem solving, takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Morgan. I'm the creator of PhD Comics. And I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and definitely not an artificial intelligence.

And welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeard Radio. Listeners to the podcast will know that I am particularly fascinated by aliens and the search for alien intelligence because I hope that those aliens will one day reveal the future and secrets of physics to us. But I'm also equally fascinated in the search for intelligence here on Earth. And I don't mean among the political class, but I mean in our computers, whether our computers can be intelligent, whether they will be intelligent, maybe they will discover secrets of physics and unravel them for us. Well, today we have an amazing combination of those two ideas wrapped up together in one podcast. Yeah, we are once again taking questions from

some friends of ours. So today on the podcast, we have the host of a popular podcast here to ask us questions. So today on the program, we have the host of the podcast Sleepwalkers with us here today. So Kara Price and Oz Wollishing. Hey, guys. Hi. Hi. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having us. We're not just listeners, but we're super listeners and big fans and hoping that you can explain the universe to us today. Not the whole universe, just some... Sounds like a great idea of her podcast. Yeah, so Kara and Oz

produce and host the podcast Sleepwalkers, which is also by Our Hard Radio, and which is about everything you need to know about artificial intelligence, right guys? Hopefully it is everything. But yeah, the way it's affecting

people's lives in different areas. And I was interested, you know, to hear, Daniel, that you use machine learning in your work because we're focusing more on how AI can help us understand complex systems. So not just simple cause and effect, but, you know, multifarious interacting causes which produce hard to explain effects. So we were looking today at death, actually, and how death involves the collapse of

all these different systems and the collapse of one system might affect another system and how hard it is for doctors to predict time of death because it's hard for people to conceive of the interaction between different types of systems and different types of data points, but that's something that computers are very good at. That's right. One of the things we do is that we take these big, complex pictures of particle collisions, and then we have to try to unravel, and we have to try to wonder what's going on in the data, and so we use machines. We use computer intelligence to do that sometimes, but we also want to interpret it. I was listening to your podcast last week about making sure these things make sense, and how do we understand the

decisions these computers have made. And that's the same problem we have here in particle physics because nobody wants to publish a paper that says the computer found a particle in the data. We can't see it, but trust us it's there. Very interesting. Yeah, we were talking to Arthur Prabakar, who ran DARPA for a few years until 2017. And she was telling us that this concept of explainable AI is a big priority at DARPA right now. So cool to hear you're working on it. start us off maybe if you can tell us a little bit about yourselves and a little bit about the podcast and how we can find it. I mean, you said my name is Kara Price. I'm the co-host of Sleepwalkers. And my background is, well, in content production, but that's not fun for a podcast.

But I did have a show on HuffPost called Talk Nerdy to Me that was a video show where we asked other big questions, not only pertaining to the universe, but sometimes pertaining to the universe. So I do have a general understanding of some of the things that you guys talk about on your show. And I've gotten to speak to some really interesting folks at NASA. And it was during the time of, you know, when they first detected gravitational waves. And so we did a lot of research around that. And I became particularly interested in gravitational waves from that for the show. And also I grew up with a father who was obsessed with both the universe.

extraterrestrial life and actually edited a book called The Universe. And he was an adult man. So he could not go to space camp, but sent me to space camp when I was 10 years old. I think I went there before I went to sleepaway camp. So I've always had a solar system consciousness, I think more so than your average middle schooler that has to learn about it in school. At least I sort of grew up in the shadow of the 1960s and having a parent that really was obsessed, obsessed with the fact that we had landed on the moon and obsessed with astronauts and going to space and also understanding sort of is their life in the cosmos. So from a personal standpoint, these are the things that I think about kind of on a daily basis. So being on your show is quite interesting. And then also,

you know, this idea of will we ever find life on Mars or on other Earth-like planets where they can actually survive? Or will they find us? Or have they? Or have they found this? Great. And Ask, tell us a little bit about you. Yeah, I'm afraid I don't have nearly quite such a romantic origin story as Kara. But I'm interested in origin stories, origins of the universe, origins of computer science, origins of artificial intelligence. And I was a huge fan of Kara's work on Talk Nerdy to Me. So when I started thinking about sleepwalkers as a show, she was the first person I reached out to for advice on how to build it. and I got very lucky that she didn't just want to give me advice on how to build it, but also

join the show. So really, you know, it's a show which is about technology and about artificial intelligence, but it uses those topics as a way in to have big conversations about our culture, our society, and what makes us human, more of the limits of our humanity. And so, you know, as the series has progressed, we've gone from looking at how algorithms are able to understand us and know us in some sense better than ourselves and thus influence us, whether that's to buy or to vote or to appear at protests or to keep swiping on dating apps. And then as a series has progressed, we've looked at medical applications, as Cara was mentioning,

what happens in a world when we can use AI to interpret our biological signals, the mess of our biological signals to tell us when we might die or the mess of our genome to tell us what kind of illnesses we may be, to how tall our children may be and what color their eyes will be and whether we want to intervene in that. And our final episode of the series of season one is coming out in two weeks, which features an interview with Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote Sapiens and Homodeus, really asking the question, what does all of this new technology mean for our status as humans? Are we on the verge of speciating becoming a new species of people who are technologically enabled? And obviously,

There's a bunch of people looming in the background like Elon Musk who are constantly ringing the bell for terror. And he's somebody who's worked on transhumanism in the form of Neuralink, also somebody who's interested in the potential for us living in a simulation, which is an episode of your show I really enjoyed. But we try and take a more neutral line, looking for some of the optimistic things that this new technology will allow for us and for our species to enjoy and perhaps even have more time to play. Or listen to podcasts. Of course. Listen to podcasts. Well, hopefully the area will make our next podcast, so we won't have to. Yeah.

We can still get some license views from our voice, hopefully. Cool. Well, if you are interested in artificial intelligence, which I think everyone should be at this point, please go check out their podcast. But today we'll be answering questions from us and Kara related to the universe and aliens and astrology and fate. And so let's jump in. into it. Well, I think I speak for all women. No, I'm joking. I think astrology is becoming a multi-billion

dollar industry with absolutely no grounded facts. And so I'm always interested in talking about astrology, but I don't really know so much about how it relates to astronomy, even though I probably should. And so I figured I'd ask a question about that, and maybe you guys could give me a decent answer so I can, you know, school my friends. So the question is, does astronomy have to do with astrology, right? Besides just having the word astero in front of it. I think you just answered the question, actually. I think those letters are about all they have in common. I mean, astrology is like, you know, looking at the stars and identifying constellations and imagining somehow that the constellations that were in the sky when you were born might

dictate who you are and the events that happened to you in your life. You know, it's really is mysticism, whereas astronomy, that's like a scientific study of the universe. Let's look out into space and try to figure out what's out there and how does it work and can we build a model that actually makes sense. And so there's really almost no overlap at all. The overlap might be that astrology relates to constellations and constellations are kind of weirdly a lot of people's introduction to astronomy. You know, people look up at the stars and they see these constellations and that's fun. That sort of draws them into the mystery

and the majesty of the night sky. Now, is it possible that the way in which we look at astrology today, future generations will look at what we think of as astronomy? In other words, will it be a system for understanding the world which future scientific revelations proves or demonstrates was actually a flawed understanding? I'm sure that future generations will look back at our astronomy and they will snicker at our misconceptions.

They will think, oh, my gosh, they thought that the universe was like this, it turns out it's like that. But that's the part of the process of science is corrections. And there's nothing to be ashamed of in modern day astronomy. We've made dramatic understandings and anything that we misunderstand. We're happy to have a new understanding. Astrology is a little bit different. You know, it's not a scientific understanding.

It hasn't come to be out of a method which has been built to separate fact from fiction. It is really just pure fiction. When I think about astrology, astrology is to astronomy, sort of like what weather gods are or rain dances are to meteorology. Which is a much more precise science, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, the thing that amazes me is that these things are so often linked because they really have almost nothing in common.

And I go to, I take my kids to planetariums, for example. And very often they start off a planetarium show with the constellations. They're like, this is this constellation, this is that constellation. And I'm thinking, this is supposed to be like an astronomical educational experience. It's supposed to be learning about the universe. But constellations have no insight into the universe at all. They're an artifact of where we happen to be in space. You look at the stars in a particular constellation.

They look close together because of where we are. But some of them are zillions of light years apart. You look at them from another perspective, there's no constellation there at all. So it always frustrates me that essentially they begin with astrology, with the zodiac signs. with basically Bronze Age myths, you know, as an entrance to astronomy. That always frustrates me. So the stars don't ever align, really, for anybody. I mean, some people have charmed lives, but I don't think it's because of the stars.

Is it possible? I mean, I've always wondered, you know, people feel the moon, for example. Like, I've been with people who, when it's a full moon, they feel some kind of connection to the moon or they feel some sense of excitement or wildness. Is that pure projection? Is there any possibility that solar events or planets moving through our galaxy can, on a particle level, affect us or connect with us? Well, I don't know your friends. Are they sort of, did they get sort of hairy and a little more toothy when the moon comes out?

They like that all the time. Well, they sound fascinating. I think it's not a stretch, actually, said that the moon affects people, right? Because the moon is pretty close, and it certainly has a physical effect on the Earth that causes the tides. it affects the things on the planet, that's for sure. But I suspect that a lot of that is psychosomatic, that, you know, seeing the moon affects the way people feel. You'd have to do some sort of blind study

where people couldn't see the moon and just feel it. But the other planets and stars, you know, it's funny, we were talking about this just recently on the podcast. It is true that you feel the effects of other atoms in the universe. In fact, every other atom in the universe. There's, for example, an electromagnetic field that connects you, the protons, and electrons in your body with the electrons everywhere.

But those things are negligible because the power of those things drops as the distance squared. So the electrons in Alpha Centauri have no measurable effect on you and the you know where that we know of. Where Jupiter is, where Saturn is,

doesn't affect whether or not you should like say yes to a date or invest in SpaceX, right? You're like, listen, Alpha Centauri is acting super crazy today. Well, to be fair, Dan, You shouldn't base those decisions on astrology or astronomy. Either one should not affect your dating matter.

That's right. Well, the stock market is just a random chance anyway. So, you know, just roll a dime and make your investments. That's my advice. But Saturn returns is real. And Mercury and Retire. They start with constellations because it sort of gives you a little bit of context about what we humans see in the sky.

and what we are yearning to understand how the sky is related to our lives, right? I think that's really interesting. So I can imagine, Daniel, it must be frustrating on the one hand to have the specter of astrology haunting astronomy. On the other hand, the fact that people have a baseline interest in the stars maybe is net positive? I think so, yeah. I just wish it wasn't diverted into astrology.

It's like if somebody asks, oh, hey, tell us about, you know, know, the particles in the universe and what everything's made out of. You don't start off with, well, there's fire, air, wind, and earth, you know, whatever, like the four elements, the Greeks thought. You know, you begin with things we actually know. You begin with, you know, true facts about the universe. I think there's so much amazing stuff in astronomy that you don't have to begin with astrology to get people excited, just wow them with reality.

The universe is a crazy, amazing place, and there's lots of cool stuff out there. You know, when people refer to, oh, well, it's, you know, the universe telling me to quit my job, or it's just the universe doesn't think that I, you know, that I should be with this guy or this girl, whatever. You know. Like the universe has a personality, has opinions about your dating life. And you would disagree. It's a degree in psychotherapy. Right, exactly. Well, it's the same we see in our coverage of AI as people like to anthropomorphize machines and algorithms. The algorithm.

The algorithm. the algorithm, you know, and it's kind of a bit of a cop-out, isn't it, to thinking about how we are responsible for our own outcomes. Yeah, I think there's something really fascinating there. Actually, it says something really interesting about human intelligence and consciousness. You know, here I'm very far from my area of expertise, but, you know, I think that people are really good at identifying intelligence outside of themselves, right? It's certainly a survival tactic to say, like, oh, this creature here seems to be aware and

intelligent and be an agent. And so I think that's how people identify, you know, will in other beings. And then it's very natural to extend that to the universe to say, like, you know, it seems like there's some organizing intelligence that's acting in this way to bring storms or to star wars or whatever. And I wonder how easily people will apply that to AI, you know, when we have AI that is, that can mimic human intelligence that really is interchangeable with a human being, will people be tempted to give them human rights, you know, because they appear to suffer? Do they

really suffer? You know, these are really fascinating questions that I think you guys probably should answer in your podcast. Well, if you watch, I mean, if you watch, like, there's there's videos on the sort of Boston Dynamics YouTube, right? Or there's videos where you watch robots either getting beat up or watch robots, you know, dog fights, breaking into dog robot fights. Or dogs pulling a truck. Am I supposed to feel bad for this robot dog that has to pull a truck, as opposed to what dogs should be doing, which is playing and using their minds and building tech companies. So, you know, I think we don't... Delivering burritos. Yeah, I think these questions are going to come up. I think they're already coming up,

you know, just in terms of who are we blaming when algorithms go wrong? Can you even blame an algorithm? Yeah. I guess the real question then is... I think obviously it all goes back to... That's right. He didn't know what he was making. When the dog AIs take over, we'll have to ask them if they're interested in astrology, if they just skip over and go straight to astronomy. What's the dog constellation? What's the... Fido?

Fido. I think Orion has a dog. Doesn't Orion have a dog? Oh, there you go. She? Maybe the hunter. Yeah. But it seems like then you're saying the answer is that astronomy is a science.

It's based on facts and observations and data. astrology is really just sort of people making stuff up. Astrology is spiritual mysticism and, you know, some people find it helpful, but it's definitely not science. In this political moment, you know, with, you know, you have the ministers in Britain saying, you know, we're past the age of experts and you have a lot of conversation about fake news in the US. And that's something we've looked at on our podcast is deep fakes and how manufactured media

can, you know, disturb the notion that truth exists anywhere. And that's obviously having big implications for our politics. How much of a concern is that in the world of science, that, you know, in the end, somebody might turn around and say, well, I choose my facts. And in my universe, astrology is just as valid as astronomy. Well, I think that there's sort of two answers there. One, I think the general public has already lost a lot of faith in science as an institution, not because science has misbehaved, but because our political leaders,

have begun dismissing it and pushing it away from having a role of the table. The facts of reality are not always convenient. But I think there's another angle to that, which is fakes in science. And actually, there are scientists who fabricate data and produce papers with images that are not actually taken from their experiments. But the fascinating thing is that they're very easy to detect. I mean, they just take an image that's in another figure in the same paper and like inverted or flip it or whatever.

So there might be a day when scientists use sophisticated AI to generate false data for their papers, but that day is not yet here. Well, and you also just have the larger problem of misinformation in the case of the flat-earther movement. I still can't tell if the flat-earther movement is a bunch of trolls or people really believe that. You know, like, does anybody actually seriously believe that? I mean, I think it's a crazy offshoot of YouTube radicals. I don't think there's going to be much progress made in the scientific establishment. it's an interesting example of how the algorithm has impacted people's perception of reality and science because those were most people who have been radicalized in that way were radicalized on YouTube

by being suggested other videos like videos well folks just need to listen to our show and they'll understand everything exactly well the thing about that idea of fake science is that do you think Daniel that we can always just verify these things you know like if somebody says hey I can clone human beings but nobody else can do it then you know that casts some shadow on their claim right

yeah that's the nice thing about science is that there's always somebody else out there who wants to prove you wrong and so fake results don't last very long we talked about that on a podcast recently about cold fusion how folks claim to have invented fusion that you could do at room temperature but then within months lots and lots and lots and groups tried to reproduce it and couldn't. And so it went from a media sensation to, you know, to fringe

ridiculousness in just a few months. And so I think that's one of the real strengths of science. It has this self-correction because we can always refer to the experiments, because in the end it's grounded in truth and facts. That's not always the case about, you know, mainstream discussions and the news media. So you have two other questions. I do. And these are pretty interesting about life and other planets and also about those UFO sightings by the Navy. Yes. And so we'll get into those, but first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TW. A terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism.

Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder. to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK. Storytime Podcasts on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're here with Kara Price and Oz Wolleshin, the host of the podcast, Sleepwalkers, which is about artificial intelligence and society and culture. And today we're taking questions from them, two experts in AI asking one expert. about the universe and one cartoon is deep questions about the universe. And so Kara, what's your second question? Well, it really freaks me out to think that there could be a bunch of life-like creatures living on a planet that I don't know exists. So my question is what are the chances that there's such a thing? Why do you say life-like? Well, I guess, I guess, you know, it really trips me out to think about there are human beings on another place that don't know that there are human beings on Earth.

So we're both living, minding our own business, shopping at Whole Foods, living on different planets. And is that happening? Is that possible that there are supermarkets on another point? You mean like humans-like people? Or just like weird, blobby, green aliens who also happen to have Whole Foods?

I think Kara's worried that maybe on alien Whole Foods, the prices are lower. How do I get there? That's impossible. That is physically impossible. No, I guess my point is, is, you know, if there are Earth-like planets, could they be producing Earth-like human beings? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, is there life elsewhere in the universe?

And, you know, if they only exist as slimy tentacled creatures, can they still push a shopping cart at Whole Foods, right? That's a deep question about the universe a lot of people have asked. And I think it's a fascinating question because it goes right to, like, the context of human existence, you know, are we alone in the universe or are we one of many? you know, is there other civilizations out there? And I think that's something people have wondered for a long, long time. And the fascinating thing is that we still really have no idea what the answer to that question is. But the most amazing thing is that I think one day we will. This is the kind of question that we're currently ignorant of the answer, right?

We don't know if there's lots of other civilizations out there or we're the only one. But one day we will know and people will look back and wonder like, what was it like to be ignorant about this really basic question about the universe? And so it's fascinating and exciting and also sometimes frustrating to live back in that age of ignorance about the universe. But is it possible that there are other intelligent life forms in the universe and we will never until the end of time, no? Absolutely. I mean, all of these things are possible. You know, here's the whole range. We know that there's lots of Earth-like planets out there.

We know that like 20% of stars out there have an Earth-like planet, which is incredible because there's 20%. One in five, yeah. And, you know, we only learned that recently. We've known for a long, long time that there's zillions and zillions of stars in the universe, but we didn't know how often they made Earth-like planets. Like, is it unusual? And that's the problem, is that we only have this one data sample Earth. And so we're tempted to extrapolate and wonder if there's lots of others,

but we don't know if we're unusual. And does Earth-like mean between 30 and 40 degrees, or between zero and 40 degrees Celsius, normally with oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and water? What's the definition of that's like? And whole foods, yeah. No, it means a rocky planet, so there's a surface, and roughly the right amount of solar radiation so that you could get liquid water on the surface.

We don't know if there's going to be liquid water there. We certainly don't know about oxygen. Oxygen is actually hard to make. You need microbes for a long time to produce oxygen typically. But just very basic rocky planet with about the right distance from the sun so that the water is not frozen, and so it's not super-duper hot, right?

And that's a pretty basic requirement. And so we now know that there's zillions and zillions of those. And now the question is, how many of those have life and how many of those have intelligent life and how many of those have technologically intelligent life? And how many of those have technologically intelligent and intelligible life, right, that we could actually communicate with and recognize. And the frustrating thing is that the number is either somewhere between 100% of those planets have life.

and earth is the only one right one over like a trillion and we just really don't know the answer it's that or somewhere in between and the reason is that we've only ever seen this one planet where it's happened which is earth there's a book uh called the unbearable lightness of being by milan kondera beautiful book about about love and the protagonist is wondering uh about his relationship and and should he stay or should he go and uh there's this phrase in German, which survives in the English translation, which is, one is kind mal, or once is none, basically to say that if you only have a sample size of one,

you can never make a good decision. Scientifically, we only have this one data point, and it'll just blow it open once we can visit one more planet. Just one more will tell us a huge amount. Because if that other planet also has life on it, boom, life on another planet. We've discovered it. We've answered the question. And if it doesn't, right, then it tells us that the number is probably a lot less than 100% of Earth-like planets have life on them.

And the other reason why it's sort of a struggle is that we still don't really know how life started on Earth. You know, if we had a really detailed mechanistic understanding of that process, you know, to go from lifeless but with the ingredients of life to life beginning, then we could answer this question scientifically. We could build models. We could say how often that happened. but we don't. It's still a mystery to us. We know it took about 500 million years or maybe a billion years is some controversy, but we don't know how it happened. And so we can't really speak concretely about whether it's likely to happen elsewhere. Well, I can have a question for you guys. So let's assume that there is an advanced civilization out there or there are many out there. Do you think it's inevitable that they will all be overtaken by artificial intelligence or that they will develop it and maybe taken over by it as some people fear. will happen to us. Do you feel like AI is inevitable? That's a very interesting question. Yeah. I mean, I was about, I was going to say that, you know, if you think about statistics, you know, one over a trillion chance, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bet on that. So from that point of view,

you know, I would, if I was a gazillioner, Fonsetti, because I would think that, you know, a statistical likelihood is that something does exist out there. So what is AI? I mean, AI is statistics and probability and computers are able to harness the power of statistics and probability in order to make predictions about the future. So you would assume that other beings of our sentience and intelligence would also create, you know, computer-like machines to help with mathematical equations. And if they did, the logical progress of that would, I think, to be towards artificial intelligence. I'm curious for Daniel's thoughts on that. I think that's a wonderful question. I actually once wrote a science fiction story in which an organic creature

develop artificial intelligence, which then wipes them out. And then thousands or millions of years later, that machine-based society develops organic computers, which then grow into intelligence and wipes out the machine-based civilization. So it all comes full circle. What is an organic computer even look like? Oh, you have one in your head right now. Oh, true. A brain. Sorry.

Well, there you go. Neural networks. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that these are really fascinating questions. And this is exactly why I want to meet the aliens. why I want to collaborate with them, why I want to be first in line to talk to them, because these are deep questions that can only really be answered by getting more data. Is the physics that we've developed, the physics of the universe, or the physics of humanity?

Is artificial intelligence a natural outgrowth of technology and computerization? Or is it just the consequences of human thought in civilization? We really don't know the answer to that, and we can't really ever tell until we meet those aliens and talk to them about it. Well, speaking of meeting other aliens, we'll get to. to your last question, Kara, which is about those UFO sightings by the Navy. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then,

at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.

that's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging. he out with his young professor a lot.

He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age.

And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again.

Welcome to Brown ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick

your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment, free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Kara, what's your last question? It's about something that seems straight out of the X-Files, right? Yes, it is out of the X-Files, I think. I mean, what's going on with the U.S. Navy and UFOs? I've always followed UFOs sort of casually or just the hype

the crazy but it seems like it's in the New York Times now so it must be real so now I'm paying attention I mean an unidentified flying object is a drone no if we know what a drone is it's not a UFO right I mean a UFO is a technical

description of something in the sky that is unregistered by whatever the air traffic control is right so it could be a teenager flying a camera. Right. But in this case... That's not so glamorous. No, it's not. In this case, the Navy pilots have seen weird stuff

in the sky and because they're in the Navy, we're inclined to trust them more than, you know, the Tin Hat Brigade. But the real question is, is what they're seeing real or is it more likely that their brains are being, you know, in some sense, overwhelmed by all the sensory data of flying that fast

and that high? What's going on? Tell us, Daniel Lohai. Let's step back for a second, so assume they'd like it For example, I have not seen these latest articles in the New York Times. Is there something new going on in the world of UFO sightings and spotting? There is a little bit. There's sort of a long history of Navy pilots seeing weird stuff and reporting it. And there was like an incident in 2004 around an aircraft carrier

where some pilots reported seeing something that could do things that no plane could do. You know, it could drop really, really quickly towards the ocean. It could disappear under the water and come back up. And the pilots there said that it looked like a big tick-tack. And, you know, these things happen occasionally, people brush them off. But recently, the Navy released some footage, some video of an encounter in 2014, 2015, where the pilots actually got this stuff on video. And it shows these aircraft doing some pretty weird stuff, you know, making sudden stops and starts and turning really quickly, dropping really fast, accelerating really quickly, things that appear to do things that we, that, humans couldn't survive, you know, because humans can't survive very, very fast accelerations.

And so there were these footage and the Navy released it to the public. And so it's out there is on YouTube, people like watching it and dissecting it. And, and then there was just very, just a couple of weeks ago, I think the Navy briefed a bunch of top lawmakers in the United States, you know, about what is the status of the UFO thing. And so it's sort of come like into the mainstream away from the fringes. So I guess that's the big news is that the Navy is being kind of open about it, right? I think that's what is throwing people off, that it's openly talking about these sightings and it uploaded video. Yeah, exactly. And the Navy has now like an official policy for pilots for how to report UFO sightings. Whereas it used to be like something

I think pilots were loath to admit, you know, because it made them seem crazy. Now the Navy's encouraging pilots and giving them a formal process to report this stuff so that we can get a clear picture for sort of what's going on. Which I think says a lot about the times in which we live, that now you're not crazy if you see a UFO. You're just being a good pilot. Well, you're probably crazy to be a pilot in the Navy, maybe a little bit. No, I'm just kidding.

There is a relationship between this and AI, actually, because it's the same Senator Mark Warner. One of the people who's called for a briefing from the Navy is also today introducing something called Dashboard, which stands for designing accounting safeguards to help broaden oversight and regulations of data act. Oh, man, that is a golden acronym. It is, it is pretty good. He's the guy who's out in front on trying to compel technology companies to tell users

the value they're generating from their data each month. Like literal cash value. But he's also the guy who, as Kara said, called these closed-door hearings. I mean, if they're closed door, there may be something going on with the Navy about these UFO sightings and his spokesman said something like doesn't matter what they are, whether it's drones or little green men.

Senator Warner is focused on keeping our pilots safe. And getting Google to pay me back for all my geo-location data. Well, I thought this is really fascinating and I was wondering, like, what do people out there think about UFOs? Do they think it's evidence of aliens? Do they think that's impossible? So I walked around campus at UC Irvine this morning actually

and asked folks what they thought about the latest UFO sightings and whether they thought aliens had ever visited the Earth. Here's what people had to say. Do you think aliens have visited us here on Earth? No. No, why not? Don't have proof of that or any signs of them visiting us. Okay, cool.

I don't think so. No, why not? It's because you would have known by then. Like, I'm not sure, like, if we have actual evidence. What about UFOs? I don't know. It could be anything. I think it's possible, but I don't think, like, there's any reason to think that they have.

What about UFOs? I feel like that could be, like, just stuff in space. But I think it's possible that there's aliens and that they visited us, but, like, I just don't have any reason to believe it, I guess. I mean, there's been that whole thing with the Navy, right? So I think it's definitely possible. But I don't know if there's definite proof that it has happened. If they're here on earth and flying around, why don't they just make themselves known?

Right, unless they're waiting for, like, us to become a quote-unquote intelligent species by their standards? No. No, why not? I'm saying because I'm Egyptian, so that would mean that the pyramids would build by the aliens, and I don't like that. I think there's explanations that don't involve extraterrestrials,

but again, I don't know. So you're just generally skeptical of the alien hypothesis? Skeptical is a good word. Yeah, so some pretty, a wide range of answers there, right? Right. A lot of people seem very skeptical, and some people seem very Egyptian and had strong opinions about UFOs. I think he took that as a cultural threat, yeah. Pyramids being appropriated by extraterrestrials. Yeah, but I think overall there's a lot of skepticism.

I think, you know, people have heard about stories of UFOs, but I think they imagine, you know, if aliens came, it would be a thing. You'd read about it in the cover of the New York Times. You'd see the aliens meeting the president, right? like it wouldn't just be one story and then fizzle away. So I think because people have heard of these stories a lots of times and it sort of turned into nothing, there's a lot of skepticism now built up in the general public about whether aliens have visited.

And that would be the time for aliens to strike, by the way. That's right. Spoof over a bunch of times, and then when our guard is down, they can swoop in. That's right. Why would you imagine they strike? Maybe they're just visiting here as a scientific delegation to give us the secrets of the universe, right?

But first they want to play practical jokes on us? Is that what you're saying? One of the things I found interesting about this story is that the Navy pilots, very few of them have actually seen these things with their own eyes. What happens is their radar systems or their weapon systems will tell them there will tell them there's something there, we'll see an object. And then they'll fly down to where the object's meant to be and there'll be nothing that they can see with their own eyes. Although there was, I think, one case where this kind of ball flew straight past the window of the end. airplane. So short of aliens, what are the explicable phenomena of physics, which should explain what's happening here? Yeah, this is really fun because I look this up and I said, like, what

experts say? And the experts have like a list of explanations, but they're all very generic. You know, they're like, well, pilot fatigue, basically hallucination. But, you know, we see these videos, right? So there's something there. It's not just the pilots being tired. Or they say like weird atmospheric effects or you know classified government programs testing new kinds of aircraft basically your list of generic explanations and at the end they always say of course it could be aliens but you know that's very unlikely and so there's just sort of this go-to list but the problem with those explanations for me is that they're not specific they're not saying well I looked at this video and here's an alternative explanation there's no specific credible hypothesis that can say here's how this event

happened, here's how that event happened. It's just sort of a general, sort of the same reaction that the folks on the street had. It's sort of a general skepticism. So like, well, I'm just not going to believe it unless I have three or four, ten pieces of data that show me its aliens. They're willing to just sort of scoff off one event.

Which is fair, right? I don't know. Is it fair? I mean, if aliens came to Earth, how would it happen, right? I think that's sort of the more interesting question. Like, say aliens had come to Earth, right? What would that be like? Why would they be here and sort of zip around playing games over the ocean near fighter, near U.S. Navy

fighters and not make themselves known, right? That's sort of a, like, in what scenario does that happen? To me, that's sort of the interesting question. You mean they could be like tourists or scientists studying us, that kind of thing? Yeah, exactly. I mean, we talked a minute ago about, you know, the likelihood of finding other life. My personal belief, not based on any science at all, is that the universe is filled with life and um because it just seems very unlikely that the earth is the only place for this to have happen. We know how many earthlike planets there are. And so I imagine that the universe is filled with life. And then the question is like, why haven't the alien visited? And you might say, oh, they're really far away. But it turns out that the universe is, um, is pretty old in

comparison to its size. So it doesn't actually take that long to explore. Like if you're a single civilization and you want to explore the whole galaxy, it doesn't take billions of years. It only takes tens and thousands, tens of thousands of years. And the galaxy is very old in comparison to that number. So it sort of feels like they should be out there. They should be exploring. We should have been contacted. So then if you wonder like why haven't we been, you have to come up with explanations like they're, they have come, but they're hiding from us because like you say, maybe they're scientists, they're observing us or they're tourists or whatever. When you say it's older than it is large, you mean it grows very slowly and therefore it's more navigable. What's the relationship

between the age and the size of the universe that makes it more likely that we should have been contacted? I mean that the galaxy is big, right? And so you might think, oh, it's too far to get to those stars, you know, like the nearest star is tens of light years away or light years away. And the other side of the galaxies is thousands and thousands of light years. And that's true. And that means it would take a long time to get there. But it's been there for a long time. That's what I mean, that it's older than it is large. But we also don't have any life forms that live longer than... We don't have life forms that live hundreds of thousands of years, sure, but civilizations

might, right? And that's another question is like, could it be the civilizations only last for 50 years before they get taken over by AI or kill themselves in nuclear holocausts? That's certainly another possibility. That's bleak. I mean, but you have to find... Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Hopefully the stars will align and Mercury will be in the right...

phase and we'll survive. But you are confronted with that fact, the fact that the universe seems like it's filled with places for life to flourish. And it's not that big. So life, if it had developed, might have found us already, but it hasn't. And so you have to try to answer that question. Like, why haven't we been just full-on contacted by alien visitors? But it certainly is true that if aliens come to visit us rather than us finding them,

it's very likely that they're more technologically advanced than we are, which means. means they might have the technology to stay hidden. But you know, you have to wonder about the motives there. Like, why would they stay hidden? If I went to another planet, if I found intelligent life on another planet, I'd want to go talk to them, meet their scientists, talk physics, you know, figure out what math they figured out that we haven't. Why stay quiet?

So it kind of sounds like you're saying, Daniel, that it is physically and mathematically likely that there are other life forms out there. But it seems unlikely that they would come visit us. and be so kind of weird and secretive about it, right? Like, you would have these beautiful signings without a big splash or that, you know, we would see these small glimpses of them, and that's it. Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, you know, make some assumptions about alien psychology,

which certainly I'm not justified in making. But it seems unlikely to me that they would come all this way, spend all that energy, and then just sort of like not engage. And that they would be able to, they would come all this way, and not engage, and yet still be spotted. That seems sort of like clumsy and immatureish in contrast with the amazing technology required to get here, right? You're like, it sounds like a bad plot point.

There's also the assumption that we would know how to understand them. Oh, yeah. That's a whole other question, right? Could we even speak to them? Could we understand their language? Maybe there are aliens that are here. We just don't know how to understand them yet

or see them because they're maybe in a different visual plane. I just always wonder, maybe it's not them, it's us. not you. It's me. That would be their answer. Yeah. Why don't you want to talk to us? It's not you. It's us. Well, that touches on a whole different fascinating question, which is, could we even recognize alien life? It's possible we could land on another planet and there could be life going on, but it's just of a form that's so literally alien to us that we don't even

recognize it because we're looking for life that's recognizable because we've only ever seen life on Earth. And life could be, you know, could take place on much longer time scales. You could have life that, you know, where the beings last for hundreds of thousands of years and their metabolism is crazy slow. And so we don't even see them moving, right? They're talking to us, but they're, they speak so slowly. We only get a tiny little snippet of it. You know, it's, we have to broaden our minds when we think about life in the universe because we've only ever seen this one example. Why is it? I've always wanted to know that water is considered to be the crucial ingredient for all life. I mean, is it possible we'll look

back on water as the astrology of 2019 and why do why we so convinced that two hydrogen one oxygen particle which supports our life is crucial to all life throughout the whole galaxy yeah it's a great question and the only argument really is that all life we've ever seen relied on water right but again that's only life on earth and so you're totally right it could be that there's a completely different way for things to be alive and it doesn't require water or they can live in frozen in water or they can live in vapor or something like that. And so, you know, one question is there is there earth-like life out there? And that would be fascinating because it's more likely we could speak to them and learn physics from them. But another question is, are there weird

other forms of life? You know, is there life in the sun, in currents of energy in the sun? Totally possible, right? So people are living off of the sun, essentially. The sun could be alive for all we know. Well, that's Australians. I've often wondered if they're aliens. No, to our Australian listeners, we love you. I feel like our questions have been answered. I'm curious, Kara and Oz, you sort of said that this idea of life and other planets really trips you up. Can you tell us a little bit about why that trips you up and why you brought these questions to us? I think the question of life is very relevant to our Sleepwalkers podcast and AI because, you know, people see autonomy in algorithms, they see an output, whether it's an AI making a song or whether it's

an AI making a diagnosis or whether it's an AI doing a job that was previously done by human. And the natural response, as we talked about, it's to say, okay, well, you know, to assign personhood and say, okay, that's life. But is it? I mean, there's such a big definitional question here. What is life? And one of the questions we're going to look at in our final episode of the series is, is there a fundamental difference between carbon life, us, and silicon life computers? And if we do believe that such a thing as silicon life exists, well, it doesn't require oxygen or water to exist. And so I think the question which has been haunting our podcast is, what are we and how do we define ourselves? And as humans, we've always, you know,

like to define ourselves in opposition or in the absence of. So, you know, if you look at the history of theology in the, you know, in the 16th century, God was a total explanation until, you know, you had people who came to to challenge the status quo about the creation and the seven days and where the earth was flat. And so this concept of the God of the gaps emerged where every phenomena that couldn't be explained was attributed to God until the number of phenomena that couldn't be explained shranked the number that, you know, the God who was only responsible for those wasn't so much for God anymore. And so I think for me, the reason why we wanted to get your incredible insight today into life on other planets is because it really starts to pull

on the same strings that we're pulling on, which is, you know, what is life and how do we define ourselves and you know this desire this human quest to explore the universe or to understand how AI works is you know is constantly in search of a question i think which often comes back to who we are do AI lives matter basically well that and also are our lives at risk i think it's a lot of people's big question not at risk but you know will we be dominated in a certain sense some of us obsessed about what life means here on Earth, maybe there are, there's clear evidence of life out there, or while some of us obsessed about life out there, maybe there's really interesting and amazing things redefining life right here on Earth, right?

I think it's always interesting to think about the way in which, you know, alien invasion is depicted in films and in science fiction. I mean, not always, I can't speak so, so much on science fiction and literature, but the idea that it's somewhat sinister, I think, is what's interesting to me that we fear what we don't understand especially when it resembles us in some way right it's the same with robots yeah i mean if you look at truly again going back to this you know the sort boston dynamics examples if you look at some of these robots that they're developing it's uncanny not that they it's the uncanny valley it's not so much as they they look like human beings but they look almost like dogs or almost like human beings and that's what's really

scary about it not that it's some robot version of a person it's a robot that looks like what a person is supposed to be. And it makes you feel. Right. It makes you feel. This week there's been two stories, right? There's been the continuing interest in the UFOs and the Navy hearings. And there's also been the methane emerging from Mars.

And people don't care so much about the methane emerging from Mars because it's not human-like. And even if it does signify life, it doesn't signify any kind of life that we can compute it similar to our own. Whereas these things flying through the sky, obviously, you know bring to mind pilots that's right and so for those of you who aren't aware about the the methane issue people have found methane on the atmosphere of mars and that's usually a hallmark of microbial life these little bugs are producing methane as they metabolize something and it's convincing because methane doesn't last very long and so it's produced it breaks down in the atmosphere which means if you find it it was recently made and so people wonder if there's

microbial life under the ground on mars and that raises another fascinating question about whether there's life elsewhere in the universe that we talked about once in this podcast, which is, are we the aliens? Because there is one school of thought that says maybe life began on Mars and then came to Earth as microbes and then flourished. We don't understand the process for how this began. And it's certainly possible for rocks to get blasted off the surface of Mars and land on Earth. So one, not too crazy theory is that we are all Martians.

Well, that's the immigration debate, right? No, I mean, it is really. When we talk about the United States. No wall will protect us from Mars. All right. Maybe we should save that for the next podcast. Right. But thank you so much, Kara and Oz, for joining us here today.

I'm bringing your questions. So if people want to find your podcast, what do they search for? Sleepwalkers podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Or the IHeart Radio app. Yeah. Or Instagram, Twitter. All right. Well, thank you for joining us today.

And we look forward to hearing your podcast. Thank you so much, guys. That was really interesting. Great to talk to you. you. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeart radio. For more

podcast from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. speed and AI-powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Lenovo, Lenovo. Unlock AI experiences with

the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot.

He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe. Find out how it ends by listening to. the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.