Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Part 2 of 2: Brian Keating Λ Lee Cronin on Life in the Universe, Assembly Theory, and the Meaning of Time - A debate on Curt Jaimungal's Theories of Everything YouTube Channel ​(#211)

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

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This is part two of a special episode, a conversation with Lee Cronin, professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. And this debate took place in January and was held on Kurt Jymungle's Theory of Everything channel. He could find out more about that in the show notes below. Make sure you subscribe over there. And this audio conversation was quite wide-ranging, as you can tell. This is part two of the two-part episode that we recorded.

and I think it really gets to the heart and the meaning of what it means to be alive. How could we detect life elsewhere in the solar system in the universe and beyond, well, I don't know about beyond the universe, but certainly beyond our solar system into the galaxy and other galaxies. And Lee's quite optimistic about it, and you'll see some special questions in this episode from the audience on Kurt's channel. We read some questions and took some chat and feedback. Got a lot of views on his channel.

and you can check it out the video version on my channel as well, Dr. Brian Keating, and I hope you enjoy this special part two of two with Lee Cronin on Kurt Jamungle's Theory of Everything channel. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Open the pod bay doors, hell. And so I'm curious to know why if life is so abundant, and then you sprinkle in some Darwinian evolution, why isn't, you know, technological life abundant, and why isn't it more plausible? than not, it seems like you're saying you're kind of a life maximalist, but a UFO minimalist. So tell me, how can you rectify those two things? Because it would seem to me, unless there's a no-go theorem

against it, that maybe there is more hope. I get around that by saying, I don't think life exists elsewhere besides the earth. And if it does, it's from the earth via panspermic processes. But tell me, what could potentially forbid life from evolving technologically? Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to say a couple of things. So I think, Kurt, if you want to go to assembly through, we'll do that in a minute. So I think it's quite important this story. But let me answer Brian's question. So I think, you know, there's a Scooby-Doo. You know, always the villain says, you piss-pesty kids, I'm going to say, the reason why we can't see technological life is you pesky physicists, because the universe is really big,

and things are accelerating away. And it's, you know, and sadly, you know, I'd love to break the, I'd love to understand more about the way the universe is and the speed of light and get around. But the fact is, there seems to be little indication that we can have wormholes and break the speed of light. And, you know, designing. As a quick clarification, I'm sorry to interject Lee, then when you say that life is abundant in the universe, are you not referring to the observable universe? Sure. I think it's abundant in the observable universe and we'll learn how to find it. And I think actually frustratingly, we probably will find techno signatures, you know, hints of them and not just hints, hints that Brian and I will look at the data, we'll look at the uncertainty,

the error bars. Your point is taken. I haven't forgotten it. It's a very good point, Brian. And we will then go, well, the balance is fact here is like, we will be, it is possible remotely to get data, squeeze down those errors and know for sure there's alien technological life elsewhere in the universe. We could do it, okay? And don't let NASA and other people say it's not. We can do it. We can detect the Higgs boson. If we can look at the cosmic microwave background, we will be our fine technological signatures. But we need a better theory, which I am trying to introduce. It might not be the right one, but I've got a feeling it's going that direction. But to answer the question where where all the technology is, there's a number of

answers to that. But I want to say something quite profound. If time really is a thing, and let's say time is a commodity, and at the beginning of our local universe, where the laws are, Now, I'm going to define time, and this is going to be like, I mean, I'm not a very good singer, but this is going to be like Brian hearing a really bad singer, and he's like breaking physics. But here, I'll try. At the origin of the universe, there was some kind of singularity, which basically we seem to be, we were kind of one quantumly connected, one particle, let's say. And through that causal aperture, the size of the electron, you know, the charge of

to mass ratio of the electron, the gravitational for all the forces would produce, all that was produced there, right, in that single point. Because people say the laws and all the constants, the constants are just contingencies, right? And so we have that. And then from that process, that point in time where the universe expanded, and I think, again, Brian has the history of the universe down. Like, I think if I remember, I'm studying you that all the hydrogen in the universe

was made in the first 20 minutes or something, which I was just a mind-blowing kind of fact. And it's true. Rather than the Big Bang Theory TV show. Exactly. That's great. So now you've got this stuff, right, in time. Now, the reason is a clock is ticking.

Now, at that time, you don't have enough states in the universe to actually produce life. It's kind of cool. Basically, you actually, the thirdly paradox, and I am saying, I have to qualify this because I'm stealing this idea, I agree with it from Sarah Walker. So I'm not very good. Well, I should be clear.

I should steal more ideas. But she's convinced me. And I also think it's true. It's a natural consequence of assembly theory. The Fermi paradox is not about the fact that we don't see the aliens. We're looking back in time. And at that time, the universe didn't have the ability to produce technology. So it's like a Fermi filter.

And think for a second. It's like, oh, shit. We're looking back in time. The universe didn't have the ability to produce technology. at that time, we have to look in a different way. Well, actually, I'll push back again, just to say that there was an epoch in the universe where you didn't need a hard, rocky planet to sustain room temperature liquid water. And that was a time about, you know, 8 billion years ago when the universe Kurt was at the

temperature above zero degrees Celsius, which is, you know, about 50 degrees warmer than it is in Toronto or Glasgow. I'm just trying to make you guys jealous. You'll visit me here in San Diego in January and sometime. So the universe could have liquid water for millions, billions of years until it become frozen water. And so actually, no, there's a reverse filter. There's sort of a Cid. No, no, no, no.

That's, I have to push back. That's quite nice. But I'm saying something very profound in terms of the number of states available. I don't care how much water is available. Who cares? What I care about is a commentorial state space. Remember, I'm not a chemist here. I'm a mathematician, but in states.

But, Kurt, but Kurt, the amount, I'm going to have Sarah on my mind. show next week. But, and I'll ask her about this. But the, I mean, is a galaxy, is one galaxy sufficient a state space to create technological life? Obviously, this is what we're, this is what I think, I think the answer is no, right? And I, what we just, let's just keep going with this arguing. There's, let's just make a conjecture. I don't know, right? But isn't it interesting? You've got a smaller volume in the universe. Time is a thing. You're not going back and forwards. So you have to, there's this causal chain of events. I don't know how delicate. It plays into your argument really nicely.

What sequence of events have to happen in the first 20 minutes, the next 200 million years, the next 2 billion years to prepare the universe to be able to metabolize elements, fusion, right? Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill, four-burner gas grill, on special buy for only $199. and entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $499. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, price invalid May 14th or May 27th, U.S. only exclusions apply.

See Home Depot.com slash price match for details. Produce objects that can then have enough structure, enough surface area for selection to occur over a period of time. So you might need stability of a few hundred million years. with a certain gravitational force. But let's not add that on. I'm just saying, hey, wouldn't it be cool if the thermo paradox is actually just evidence the universe had not yet had enough causal history

to produce life, we popped up as soon as it could. So we should go, oh, okay, let's now, I'll say, let's just make this very simple for ourselves and say life in the universe kind of started to emerge when life, let's say there's nothing special about Earth, happened quickly. So life was possible in the universe about four billion years ago. And so what we now do is we reframe our observations and we look around.

I'm just making this up. So new idea I had to date. Thanks to Sarah's idea and Brian's question. Did you come up with the metabolized elements? Because that's a cool line. I'm going to steal that. Yeah, yeah. I just made it up.

I wouldn't steal it from Sarah. I would steal it from you. No, no, no. You could steal that from me. I just made it up just now. And so you've kind of got this idea that basically you're creating this infrastructure for causation that allows, you to go a bit further. And so what happens, I don't know. I mean, if only we had an astronomer

who understood how to look back here, like, if you redrew the line, said, right, we're going to now restrict ourselves looking for a four billion year old light cone. And we look at the exoplanes other objects. How does that reframe the search for life or intelligence? So, I mean, there's lots of ideas there. So the conjecture is, there is a filter that is just the universe wasn't capable of producing life until a particular time. Now it is, then technology, and then how does that go on? And that plays into redoing our error bars in the Fermi paradox and in the Drake equation. And also, my only shield, Brian, is I don't see anything magic on earth. So probably possible elsewhere. Okay, so that's a great point. Let me interject because it's difficult to interject

without interrupting you. I'm sorry, Lee. No, no, it's all good. It's your podcast. You beat us in. Come on. Yeah, okay, great. You use many ands. And so I'm not sure if the sentence is complete or if it's run on. And I don't want to seem rude. Okay, so Brian, you just made a great point. What is an example of some other phenomenon that happens on Earth that doesn't occur elsewhere in the universe? So water waves, maybe one. Well, there's maybe water waves in mountains, atmosphere. Okay, so given that, it sounds like there's nothing special about earth's life. So why are you isolating Earth's life as saying, well, that's unique. On example. If these, you know, it's like they want to have their, you know, primordial soup and eat it too. You know, they want to say it's ubiquitous. These processes are generic. And yet not seeing it, you know, it's more than just a Fermi paradox. And I will push back on

Sarah gently with respect, because I love her work. But, but the fact is, you know, those are almost borderline, you know, kind of ideas that I hear from intelligent designers, too, you know, which is that the laws of physics, the state space of the laws of physics, the constants of nature, the mass of the electron, the fine structure constant, all the things you talked about are implied. Those, you know, can be conflated with, you know, some kind of low entropy state instantiated by a designer. I don't want to talk about that, except to say that I don't think that pushes the, that filter is very fine core, fine grain. And I will talk to her about it. But I do want to say that, again, generically speaking, these processes are, you know,

ubiquitous. So therefore, the non-observation, like, that should go into the Fermi paradox, not that the universe is large, that these processes are, you know, we just detected, you know, we've detected heliocysmological effects on other stars. We've detected the existence of, you know, what we think are continental, you know, patterns. So tectonic, you know, potentiality for tectonic activity, which we do believe, some believe are, but all this kind of pushes things back. like one of my big gripes against the SETI Institute, which I know and love, and I've had Jill Tarter and Seth Stastak, and I've donated to them, and I've spoken there. But, you know, I started to get a little bit suspicious when a couple of years ago they started shifting away from the, you know,

existence of life techno signatures to extremophiles here on Earth. I don't think that necessarily answers or gets to the heart of the question, certainly not of extraterrestrial intelligence to know some smoky, deep smoker has bacteria, cyanogenic bacteria, or prokaryotic type, whatever. That's interesting, but it's not aligned with ETI. That's what I care about. I mean, let's cut the BS. What we really care about is making contact, as Eric says, you know, if you could short circuit

and get to the laws of the 25th century and get to the other side, maybe we would pass the great filter, you know, as it's been called, and protect ourselves. And I happen to think that might be wishful thinking, but I commend Eric for working on, you know, a theory to perhaps unlock some of these, some of these portals, as he calls it. But, but nevertheless, I think, again, is there, you know, is there a rubric that you and I could agree on or disagree on? And I think the audience would like to know, are there, in other words, if you hear, you know, there's been an credible account, Lou Elizando, past guests on Kurt Show, you know, has claimed, you know, really very, very, very. high credence levels in the existence of extraterrestrials capable of technologically navigating across our galaxy. Correct me if I'm misstating or overstating. The basic point, as a physicist, cares about it. And that is, you know, non-God bless you, Lee, non-God bless you, or whatever.

Darwin bless you. Darwin bless you. When you sneeze, I have to say that. But he's making this, so can we, by laws of chemistry, physics, assembly, whatever, can we say, no, we actually shouldn't have the credulity that Luis has. And instead, he should update his priors based on these following chemical, physical, mathematical laws. Is there a way that we can do that for this? I think so. I mean, there's a way to do this. Let me just answer a little bit and then I'll explain assembly theory. So I think what I think is likely to happen if, I mean, I don't know. I mean, like I have no, I'm a curious. I would, I think it's likely that we, if life exists in the solar system, some chemical life, I'm optimistic that we'll go and find some evidence with some, you know,

sending dragonfly to Titan, the mass spectrometer on it, we're going to hopefully go to Europe and so on. We're going to hopefully do origin of life on Earth. And when I succeed but don't get the Nobel Prize, I can write my other book, you know, I can get Brian to do a forward in it and all that because the chemists hate it. And what we're likely to do, I think, is we should be looking for technological, technical signatures. I mean, I think that the exoplanet, we're going to detect an exoplanet of oxygen on it and so we're found life.

And that's just going to be baloney. So that I agree with Brian. So let me just tell you briefly what assembly theory is because assembly theory is actually a kind of a cool way of actually doing entropy but without labelling. And it's just about, as a chemist, I realized years ago,

there are molecules on Earth that are just weird, right? Weird molecules, like really complex. And so let's just take a molecule. that is used a lot called taxol. Taxol is made by the Pacific U tree. It's a secondary metabolite, which means it's made by interaction proteins in the cell. And that molecule is really special

because it's very good at killing vascularization of cancer tumors. So people get that and they use it as an anti-cancer drug. Now, to make this molecule, it's like got 62 carbon atoms, you know, a load of oxygen atom with nitrogen and so on in this pattern. And this molecule has a molecular weight of about 852.66, something like this. Someone to go and check it now. It's the wrong molecular weight. It's like, I'll Google it whilst them say, but it's a big

molecular weight. And it's a fingerprint. And the way that molecule works is the way the commentary of chemistry works. That molecule is beautiful. It's like a Rembrandt, right? It's in its features. But chemists can make loads of it. You can make literally 10 to the 23, 6.022 times 10 to the 23, and that's one mole. You can have one mole of taxol. So that's 10 to the 23 identical copies. And that's made in biology on Earth, human beings can make it in the lab. But if Brian and I did the math together and we said, right, well, look at that molecule,

we'll work out what is the probability that that molecule could form? randomly in a plasma in the universe. It's basically one in a like countless intent of 100, right, maybe more. That's just for one molecule. So if you find a detectable amount, you're like, oh, my God, this is like the biggest coincidence ever. So that's where assembly theory was born. And I realized that there's lots of molecules on Earth that pass the great filter. They are made by biology. And I realize they can make a detection system that detects molecules that are above that threshold of complexity and that when you do random miller uri and random stuff, get meteorites and look at the organic chemistry, they're way below that filter. They have an assembly number. And what assembly

theory does is it says, like, take your molecule, put it on a graph, what is the shortest route you can get from your atoms to that target? The shortest possible route, how many steps, right? So it's a bit like you take the word abracadabra, if you were to make, if you got A, B, you know, C, R-A, how many steps would you need to make the word abracadabra? Well, you can do it in a much number, the number of letters in the word because you can reuse some parts. And so my conjecture is, assembly theory says it finds where there's memory, a contingency in a chain. So it looks for lossless compressibility. That's kind of cool, right? It's a bit like a information theory, compression, Shannon, la, la, la. But it's just like, what is your shortest route to get there?

Because, like Brian, as an experiment list, the data is more important than my feelings. That's right. And so, you know, it's like, so I need to know. You just sounded like Ben Shapiro for a second. Yeah, I love Ben Shapiro. And so it's really important that we understand that because it's pervasive, right, where people just think that, And chemists think that complex molecules, this is where the chemists, they're beginning to change their view. And what I'm trying to say is that the chemists don't, because they take it for granted, that there's complex chemistry. Everyone's saying, hey, guys, it's not just RNA that's important. ATP is important.

That's my joke, Lee. I say, you know, in economics, you know, past performance is no guarantee of future results. It's like, we have past performance evidence here on Earth, but that's no guarantee. So assembly theory, what it does, it allows you, given a complex molecule, you can work out the likelihood it formed by chance. And that I think is fairly irrefutable, although publishing that paper last year took me six goes, right? I sent it to nature.

Why do you think that is? Well, because it took me, I sent to nature, I almost got in, right? I sent to nature. I got three reports back. Two said, wow. One said, can't be right. So I wrote back. And so they made sure, what do we do?

And I said, well, we can ask the referee why it can't be right? So he said, oh, do that then. And the referee, we said the referee, why can't it be right? And the referee said in the second round, because it's impossible. We're like, okay. This is like, I kid you not, right? This is a conversation we had with the editor. I said, but here's a data.

Are you saying we fabricated the data? And the referee just said, no, it's impossible. And we went in this loop. And what actually happened is one of the referees fabricated a, data from a paper to assert that we couldn't be right. That's how desperate they were. I got the evidence right. I come back. They said in this paper, it says that complexity is in part, is already present in outer space, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the editor read it went, oh, reject again. And when I pointed to the editor that the referee took the word complex

mixtures have been found in space and changed it to complex molecules because they were so believing the complex molecules are a free lunch. I then went to the fifth round to review, and the editor by this point was like, just like, go away. We're not publishing. I said, no, I believe in the rule of peer review. I'm answering all your points. This is important.

It's important we change people's views of complexity. Because Brian is on a really good side where you're saying, hey, I want the data. I know that nothing is for free. And the chemist in the middle saying, everything is for free. Complexity happens. And I'm in the middle saying, no, I can count it and quantify it. And here it is.

What actually happened? It was rejected, right? Because of, I won't go into it. I don't want to complain. I'm a very lucky scientist. I love doing the science. I just feel bad for the research group. But I got it published. I published it in nature communication. And that paper was downloaded 27,000 times in five months. Because we presented the theory, the mass spec and all the evidence. We had a load of meteorites. We even got Scottish whiskey. We proved that Scottish whiskey is evidence of life. because there's complexity in the peak, right? We show it works. So we know we can fingerprint life on earth and molecules.

And so, but we realize something more, that assembly theory is about just something about molecules. It's about every time you have a step on your path, on that you make a decision. Let's say you go down the street, and you say, I'm going to go left today, you go left. You say, right, I'm going to go left again. Then I'm going to go right,

then go left and right, and you find yourself in a very particular spot. That contingency is printed on your history, right? There's a lot of mathematics on that. And we find that this is the assembly theory that we generate. And I haven't spoken to Brian about it because Sarah and I are just finishing the paper. And oh my God, it works. And what do I mean by that? I mean that I can take a kilogram of sand and calculate the assembly of that kilogram of sand.

And I can take a kilogram of ecoli and calculate the assembly. Assembly is a number like entropy. And entropy tells you the causal power of the object. And of course, the causal power of a kilogram of a kilo, E. coli is vastly higher than the kilogram of sand because the sand can do nothing. So what about the assembly of Rule 38, Wolfram's, you know, Rule. Well, and you'll hear about this in a few weeks, maybe, but the problem with that is, that is, again, a label system. So Rule 38 doesn't exist outside of a von Neumann machine

and graph paper and observer putting in the rules in. So yeah, so there's, so the problem, and physicists get stuck with things that give complexity, that aren't really complexity. It's just games with numbers. And I think that I've got a little bit of work to do with that. And I think the Wolfram's ideas here are pretty cool. I think they're not, the problem is with Wolfram, he traps himself in a line of thought and doesn't talk to anyone and think he's the lost genius, a bit like Eric, actually, and no one will talk to him. We'll talk to him. In fact, he's got a lot of good ideas that might actually be right. But it's kind of like. I've had, not only have I talked to him and I've talked to Eric, I've talked to him and Eric at the same time.

I'm not going to take part of that conversation because I maybe can bang their heads together. But we digress. Let's do it. Let's do it. Assembly theory tells you about causation. It's now measurable. And that's why I'm excited because we're going to start to roll this out in inanimate objects. And it will help physics. I think Newton screwed physics because Newton and there's a hell of a thing to say. I'm British, right? I love Newton. There's all our coins and on our notes and everything. But Leibniz understood assembly theory.

And I've been reading philosophy for the last few weeks. If you read the monodology from Leibniz, you'll see that he understood assembly theory and that objects have souls. This cup has a soul. And you're like, you're going to as Ligon or Panza. I say, no, no, the soul is not in the cup, but it's in the causal structure of the person that made it,

who made it, who made it, who made it. This cup is a fantastically improbable object that cannot have existed. to that a long line of cup makers. That's where the soul of the cup is. Okay, let's let Brian respond to what you've said. Well, you know, I think, I mean, it's unassailable to say that, you know, complexity begets complexity. And again, that Lee will take on intelligent designers with one fist, but he'll also, you know, take on chemists with the other and say, look, we, we have to address, you know, as, as, you know, Roger Penrose calls the mastodon in the room,

which is this surprising, you know, this surprising, you know, feature about the universe that we can comprehend it. We tend to impose, you know, consciousness upon it and our definitions are contingent upon our causal history and how we were assembled, you know, and I think the ultimate theory of everything when it comes to what leaves working on will have to involve the observer, which will undoubtedly then finally force him to get into fundamentals of quantum mechanics, which I don't think he can call chemistry. I'm okay with you calling, you know, entropy and thermodynamics chemistry, but I think, you know, the elementary foundations of quantum mechanics as a stretch to call it.

I've always wanted to be a physicist. It's okay. Okay, yeah, me too. But, you know, I elapsed and became an astrophysicist. But I think, you know, when we talk about how, you know, this can be used to kind of, as I say, be quantitative, how we can get something out of it, deliver some value to the audience. certainly these are, and the more flexible we are, I think, the more can be understood, but maybe to even narrow down and come back to the original definition of things. I think to have a taxonomy, you know, what is it that the name is not the thing? There's some principle like that, right? And so, yes, describing things that are complex and have originators in a mind that on the one hand is beautiful, it's elegant, it's simple.

And again, in a praiseworthy fashion, not in the, in a childless fashion. On the other hand, I do think we have to then confront the ultimate, you know, question of, you know, does there have to be some mind at work behind the cup, behind the 747, behind the DNA code? And I think, you know, we've agreed not to really get into this notion, but I think at some level, we just get to this eventual chicken or egg and this Monta Bailey, you know, retreat. And I guess, you know, I think, I think the ultimate you know, the ultimate benefit of this approach is, is that it gives a plausible scenario for life to arise from inanimate objects. That's, that's an ultimate, or it's a way to quantify

when something is animate, let's just say, or was created by something animate. And I think, you know, to look at how we can do better and maybe go further into, which I think is really important, you know, is life abundant and technological. I think Kurt's audience appreciates that. And I think, you know, we haven't spoken so much about that. Maybe we can talk about that. You know, how and what could we glean from the search as a search? You know, and where are we going? Quoavadus, you know, where are we going with the search? Is it important? It's a good use of chemist time, of physicist time, et cetera, to look at these reported unexplained phenomena. Can that tell us something? Is this something that interests you and me? And maybe, you know,

Kurt can lead us in that path and kind of, yeah, really, I mean, we're at a very interesting, you know, point in time. And a lot of it has to do with people that Kurt's had on the show and that I've tried to have on my podcast as well. And I think that, you know, kind of the abiogenesis argument is, you know, you've eloquently described it. I think, you know, if we look maybe as Kurt as an impartial observer, maybe we could say, like, where are you, Kurt, in this discussion? Because I think you're a proxy for your erudite audience. How do we, how are you feeling about the prospects of the ultimate question, life from non-life? And then we can talk about universe from non-universe. We can talk about consciousness from inanimate matter. And then we can talk about technological matter

from conscious matter. But where are you sitting right now, Kurt? If we use Lee's definition of life, which is what begets some high assembly number, then it sounds like, it's almost like Pan Psychism, Pan-Lycism. lifeism because it's a circular definition of life where, okay, well, what would have produced that? Well, then we get down to the atoms, which produce and so on, so on. So it sounds like life is abundant if we use the definition that life is what produces life. Let me qualify one second. No. So what I'm saying is you have random events that basically increase in causal power. And there's a phase transition to life, right? Life doesn't just appear magically, right?

we've already, there is, but there's a causation in the universe, right? The universe does do some stuff before life. There's a phase transition because then evolution can do stuff, like, which is just you can, and what can, and we could, there is a meaning to this, which we can come to. It's not panpsychism. I totally refute, well, no, let's be friendly to the panpsychist because there are interesting things there, but I think there's a mischaracterization. The panpsychists want something there, but I would argue they want causation.

and they're missing out on causation. So there's causations there, and then there's biology, and then there's technology. So I don't think it's circular, but I think you're really right to push on it, because I think your listeners, your viewers will be like, well, come on it. What do I mean? I mean, rocks can, through their random interactions, can have memories, and those memories just randomly will be trapped in a causal chain, which will allow certain other processes to occur.

It's not magic, it's contingent. Tell me if I'm understanding it correctly. It sounds like in your model, life is not binary. It's not alive or dead. It's actually a continuous spectrum. And if that's the case, then what I'm saying, there is no zero to life. There's no zero.

I think life is a kind of island, right? This is why we have so difficult pinning it down the physics. It's like, is this, is my cup alive? No. Was my cup produced by life? Yes. Am I alive? Yes, I think so.

You know, so this kind of is a movable feast. In the way, in the same way, consciousness is kind of, we have more. So agency, we have maximum agency in our bodies right now. But Newton is still exerting agency over all of us because of what he did, that life form. And it's kind of cool. So yes, you're absolutely right. I think life is kind of a continuum. And there's a phase transition to you have, there is really a lot of causal power and you get something special with that. That phase transition is an intuition. at this point? Is it formalized? We're formalizing it, yeah, and doing experiments. And I think that exactly, there's a Nobel prize there, the Nobel Prize there, there's a Nobel Prize. I mean, they're like everywhere. I mean, let me talk about UFOs, if that's all right. Let me just ask one more question. Sure. If you have an assembly theory and computation and all these wonderful things, could you have a BS detector? I mean, could you say, you know, now, now you feed in some some left-handed DNA, I think that's the non-stereo-isomer that doesn't occur in life that we know

about. So look what I found, you know, would this then tell you that there's this, there's some trickery and some jiggery-pokery, as you say? I mean, could it tell that this is not, and is that instantiated by you Lee? Did you put in, if you see a left-handed DNA helix, you know, tell me, how does that, how would that be? It's a sneaky way of asking about the lab leak theory. Well, actually, it's not cheeky. It's actually entirely appropriate. But maybe we don't need to go down there.

Yeah, please. I want to stay monetized. Okay, good. I use assembly theory, a very crude version, to show some plagiarism. Because plagiarism is the ultimate kind of, you know, commendation. right. And when Melina Trump gave her presentation to the Republican Convention, she used a speech, which was the same as Michelle Obama's speech. And it was like, they look the same. And I was like, oh, wow, let's take all the subjects of the sentences. And I broke them down. And with assembly

theory, it would be like, you know, number one, I talked about my, you know, my, my, my country. And number two, I talked about my childhood. Number three, I talked about my dog. Number three, You know, you went through, you went, wow, by the time I got to 14 and a match, I knew that that was plagiarism, right? Because the chances of that not being was like, you know, 14 factorial or something, right? So it was kind of cool. I was like, yeah, so you can use it as a BS detector. And yes, you can use it to look for genetic material and look for motifs that are repeating. And then you can see what engineering has been done and what evolution has done. and it should be possible to get that because entropy course grains it all out, assembly reassembles it.

Okay, so now the next question will dovetail into what Kurt was just about to ask, which is could there be an analog of assembly theory to apply to unidentified aerial phenomena? Kurt, is that okay to ask? Sure. I'd also like to explain, re-explain, if you don't mind myself, to the audience, and then you can correct my explanation of assembly theory because it's extremely important. So Lee Kronin has a number. it's almost like Kalma Gorov complexity.

So those of you who know what that is, there are different forms of putting a number to a piece of information to see how complex it is. And what you have in Lee's theory is you have elements that you consider to be atomic. So you can consider those to be axioms. And then you have certain rules of inference. Now those rules of inference are like the laws of physics,

though this can also be applied to mathematics. And that's why I think it's extremely interesting because you can quantify how difficult a formula is to prove. Anyway, so you have atoms, and then you have rules of physics. inference, and then you wonder, what is the minimum amount of steps to get from the axioms to the stated formula? So, for example, the word candy, if we consider the letters of the alphabet to be atomic, then the word candy's complexity is five. So you think, well, that makes sense. It's five letters.

Yeah, because step one, you pull a C out, step two, you pull an A out. But the word pom-poms, which is seven letters, is complexity of five because you P, okay, you pull a P out, that's step one, pull an O out, pull an M out. Then you need to put another P, but great, we have the word palm already created. So that step is taken care of by simply duplicating the palm. So then we have another step for the S. So then that's five in total. Now, is that a correct summation? Okay. Yeah, yeah, you're hired. Great, you're great. Okay. And the reason this is extremely fascinating is because you can use certain instruments like mass spectrometry potentially to assess the complexity of far away molecules. And then you can see, well, look, H2O maybe has a complexity of four. I don't know,

maybe five, whatever. It doesn't matter. Two hydrogen, one oxygen. But a simple protein may have 400 steps, a simple protein. And thus, if you can quantify by looking through a telescope, the complexity of something far away, then perhaps you can say, well, it was produced by life. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. I can tell you something quick at below your mind. Don't have to use a mass spec and use infrared. So I came up with a brinal like this, a non-gravitational lensing complexity cloak. What the fuck is that? Well, sorry for swearing. So you know black holes are black holes. But if you could make an object that would basically, so in the infrared, infrared radiation gets absorbed at specific lines. Well, all radiation gets at specific lines. But I came up the way

of making molecules to store binary code of them because I want to leave a message for some aliens when the humanity is about to end, it's put it in the atmosphere. And what you could do is you have these light, if you were able to say, right, I've got all this spectrum and I want to cover all of it, I'm going to design a molecule absorbs here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and I'll make it super light. There might be objects in the universe that are non-gravitating lens in complexity cloaks because they're light and they can absorb all that energy across and just re-radiate it some other way or be used. So it's like a, it's kind of like a Dyson sphere, but it's cooler because it's basically really dark over everything.

And what am I saying? The reason I was saying is to you, Kurt, not only was your exclamation spot on, you're talking about mass spec, but you could also use infrared spectroscopy and a telescope to go and look for not just life, but technology that basically is showing itself in the infrared and UV and maybe x-ray, whatever.

Okay, great. Now, onto the UFO question. Brian, when you say that scientists have an incentive to find life in the universe and the incentives via Nobel Prize and money, et cetera, I don't buy that per se. I think they have an incentive to find a certain form of life in the universe, but not life in general. And the reason is that life in general borders on what is considered to be woo or paranormal. For example, if you were to study UFOs and say, is there credibility to these reports that's almost not done besides a few individuals like Kevin Canuth, for example, because I think almost none of us, I don't think any of us are actually pursuing the truth, including myself, which is why I don't like when people say, this channel is for truth seekers.

Almost none of us care about the truth per se, because the truth can be extremely hard. So we care about it in a certain bounded fashion. So we also care about our reputations. We care about not sounding like these incenseate deseribrate rednecks, which is what the people in the academy generally think of those who consider the UFO reports to be real. they generally consider them to, and let's be honest, they consider them to be cooks. And I think that academics generally care much more about either sounding intelligence or not appearing to be inane more than they care about the truth per se.

And so it's extremely bounded by their place in a social hierarchy, by their place among their peers, they don't want to be ostracides. It's anathema to analyze UFO reports. So that's why I say, I don't buy when you say that, well, we have an extreme incentive to find life in the universe, a certain type of life, I agree. Yeah, well, I think largely that is accurate, although I will say in my defense, you know, I did join the Galileo project with our mutual friend, Navi Loeb, specifically for this reason, not as a researcher, but as a member of the external oversight board, because

I actually don't think they need my help as an observational astronomer. I'm pretty good, but, you know, Harvard is not exactly hurting for money, and, you know, they can certainly raise funding, especially when you have the, you know, former chairman, the longest serving chairman in Harvard's history in the astronomy department at the helm, who's, you know, Joe Rogan's appearance blew up the internet and has, has, you know, number five bestseller, you know, last year in the New York Times. So I don't think they need my help, you know, kind of necessarily doing the research. I do think they can always use help, holding them to account.

And, you know, if I, I told this to Avi, you know, I wouldn't have called it the Galileo project. I think it's dangerous when, you know, astronomers begin by, you know, kind of bringing up the names like Bruno and Galileo and persecuted figures in history. I think that's a fraught perilous endeavor. And I think I would be, even that is sort of a be lying a bias. In other words, his claim is that just like Galileo suffered from the inability of the powers that be the funding agencies of this time, the Venetian Doge and Senate and other agencies at first. look through in the Catholic Church later on, to look through his telescope and see for themselves as if that would have proven anything. I mean, just looking through a telescope proves nothing.

It's the connection of the human mind and the formulation of a hypothesis and evidentiary data that could disconfirm his hypothesis. You know, Galileo had many blunders, Kurt. I'm pleased and privileged to be working with Jim Gates, Carlo Rovelli, Frank Wilcheck, Fabiola Giannati, and my good friend from graduate school, Luccio Picharillo, on the first ever audiobook version of any of Galileo's book. Oh, that's interesting. And I also didn't know that that was the genesis of the word Galileo in the project. I thought it just meant I'm going to be looking out like Galileo looked out.

No, no. I mean, I think the project's really dangerous. I'd like to kind of push back on you. I mean, not push back. I'd like to reassure you. I mean, I can't speak for Brian. Just a second. Just a second.

I was so sorry. I was so sorry. I just want Brian to finish because I interrupted him. And then, so please, finish Brian. And then leave. Kurt's used to me interrupting him. Punch him. But so we're translating Galileo's book.

We have the rights to the first ever audio book for Galileo with a forward by Einstein. And that's read by Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2004 and Jim Gates. So what does it say? It says Galileo wrote the definitive treatise on the scientific method on what you're supposed to do with evidence, et cetera, et cetera. And yet in that very book, he makes a catastrophic confirmation blunt. at the very end on day four, it's a trialogue between these three characters. I'm one of them, Carlo Rebelli's another one and my friend Lucio's the other. And we go about and we're trying to disprove Galileo's character, Salviati, is trying to disprove the earth-centered notion of the universe.

That's held by Simplicio, the simpleton, who is espousing the words of the Pope, that the earth is the center of the universe. And then I'm playing Sagredo, the kind of knowledgeable layperson who is interpreting between them. And Gala is a phenomenal writer, but he goes through and describes these things in such loving detail that even I become convinced when he goes about and says that the times on the earth are proof that the earth is going around the sun. That's complete balderdash. We know that's not correct. And it would take Newton to do it. And his argument is very simple and persuasive. It uses data. It would have gotten accepted by nature probably if nature had existed, not like, you know, Lee's travails. But his argument is that you've got this, you know, you've got this object

that's going around the sun, here's the sun over here, and here we've got tides on the earth, and as it goes around the sun, it orbits and the tide slashes around, and that's why we have it's totally wrong. The tides are caused by the lunar gravitational force, the tidal force, quadripolar moment of the lunar gravitational force field. Nothing to do with our motion around the sun, really. And yet, it's incredibly persuasive. And so if you took the lessons of absolute objective history, and you say, like, should we have listened to Galileo? No, you'd throw out that book. you throw it out. He'd say it's nonsense. Even though he brings up relativity for the first time in human history, the notion of relative motion does not affect the laws of nature, which we now call a rents invariance.

These are foundational things. And yet the summary of the book is totally wrong. The conclusion of the book is totally misproven. And he didn't use the best evidence in hand. So look for that coming soon, hopefully on Galileo's birthday in February. But this is all to say. When it comes to when it comes to Avi's project, Avi Loeb's project, I think they need oversight more than they need my insight. which is to say that I think the first reaction that we have to have is skepticism because we do want to believe. I think if we all go back to our 12-year-old boys, when we were 12-year-old boys, forget about funding and I'm going to lose my status as a chair professor or Lee's going to lose. No, we're just little boys. And we're playing with that little pebble on the beach, like Ninton said, and we're looking for a shinier pebble. If we were to discover that, I mean, it raises the hair in the back of my neck, that there was extraterrestrial intelligence. First life, you know, I have my misgivings.

I've talked to Lee about that. We'll talk about that. But just about slime mold on the planet Enceladus or on the moon Enceladus. I don't think that will make as big an impact as Lee does. But let's leave that aside. Let's just talk about UFOs. I don't want to believe. I want to have evidence.

And I think if you bury your head in the sand, you won't get evidence. So I have to say, and I hope this is true of Avi, too, that we are kind of the 12-year-old boys sitting on the bed, not being able to fall asleep at night, looking up at the stars. we do want to know the truth, but we want to have evidence for it as mature men, as scientists at this very moment. So anyway, Lee, you were going to say you've got some problems with the project. And I'm happy. Again, I don't speak for them.

I'm on their external advisory committee. I think it's important to do. But I am predisposed. It's like the bets that Stephen Hawking used to make with Kip Thorne. He would bet against Hawking radiation ever being validated so that if he lost the bet, you know, he'd have the thrill of intellectual superiority being correct. So what say you, Lee? Yeah, I mean, it's no big deal. I think I've got a lot of sympathy for Kurt's position

or kind of worry about where we are, as scientists look for the UFOs. But I think that, I know Avi very well, he's great, but he's playing a very strange game here, I would like to say. He's kind of saying, oh, the scientific establishment's not ready for this. I'm a genuine contarian, and I'm just going to basically come up with these things

I'm being ignored. No, he's just making stuff up, right? Like what? What is he making up? A Theolo Cution with Leon Cronin and Avi Lowe is about to be booked. We got a plan. Yeah, so what I mean by he's making stuff up, he's making up a false argument about that people are kind of, you know, when it comes to this interstellar object that came through and he was just, he was saying why it could be alien space junk.

Sure, it could be all sorts of things, but we were trying to understand what the characteristics of trajectory we're telling us. So he's kind of making up stories, which are fine. I don't mean he's fabricating stuff. I mean he's saying a narrative. And I'm wondering, why is he making that narrative? What does he have to gain other than some kind of, you know, fame and notoriety? And I'm going to be downtrodden by the establishment. Because if I suddenly said to Brian, hey, Brian, we've just found wormholes. I saw it over there. Look, wormhole over there, wormhole over there, wormhole over there. And then Brian says, Lee, you haven't got any wormholes. You just make, you know, you haven't got any date and I'll be like, you're just beating me up, big professor, you know, and I think it's a bit like

like this. So what I'm really glad that Brian's on the other side. That is kind of borderline ad homonymly. I have to point that out. I mean, I love Avi. I fight with Avi. But that seems like impuging his impugning his character almost. You can disassociate yourself from it. What I'm trying to say, so it's not clipped out of context, is that I like the idea of searching, but I, there is this, So what I'm trying to say, there's this cultural vibe going on right now. Our culture is changing. People are asking questions. What are these things that the Pentagon has released? What is the probability of this happening? And I'm saying that we don't, we could play together. I would love to help Avi be successful. I don't think it's the, I don't think the establishment is

against him. I don't think even I'm in the establishment, nor Brian. We genuinely want to know. and I do agree with you that there is some, we could put our careers on the line if we get it wrong. But actually in science, you have become better scientists the more you're wrong. And what I'm saying here is Abby's adopting an extreme viewpoint where he may not allow himself to be wrong. And it's not an ad homin.

I'm not saying he's even bad. I'm not saying he's doing anything dishonest. I'm saying he's making a narrative. Well, let's be precise. So I had him on my show and it was a wonderful episode. And this is long before I decided to join. And I said, Avi, I don't believe that you believe this is real. That this, Omoa, Moa is an extraterrush.

And he said, why, but I am? And I said, because if you did, you happen to have access to a resource that's highly complex, has a lot of assembly behind it called Yuri Milner, who is a Russian billionaire. And he's showered upon you, the potential as a leader of the breakthrough Star Shot Prize, one of the leaders, this tremendous resource. So instead of sending, you know, 10 to the fourth cell phone cameras to Proxima Century B, why don't you send one of them at, you know, not even half the speed of life, not even 10% of the speed of just, you know, 3, 4% the speed of life, and catch up to a muamu, mu.

And you know what he said? He said, no, no, no, we don't need to do that because when Ruben Telescope, which is the Vera Ruben Observatory in Chile, which is going to be a phenomenal instrument, it's designed, it was the original name was the large-scale synoptic survey telescope to survey the whole sky with a huge case. cadence very quickly, looking for objects that are anomalous that could do. And he says that's one of the dream machines for discovering. We already discovered one of them using Pan Stars on Hawaii. So we're going to discover millions of these things. I said, well, Avi, you know, I don't know if you know about this, but like, you know, sometimes, you know, things happen only once. You know, there's an end of one problem that we talk about. And what if this, yeah, what if they are abundant and what if

there are forces that conspire against in our solar system, just particular not to the cosmos, to our solar system, maybe the lunar, you know, so tidal, solar, whatever, whatever it is. And it makes these objects very, very unlikely to ever be seen again, even though they're abundant. Wouldn't you want to catch up to the only one with all the resources you have? And he was sort of agnostic about it. That gave me some pause. And that's one of the things I'm going to push back on as an external advisor. But I would, you know, and I love you, Lee, but I don't think he's doing it for fame.

I mean, he has an ego, as it's well known, he has trouble controlling. You know, sometimes his passions for what he does. I think he's doing an incredible, valuable service. But I just want to talk about from the perspective as an observational astronomer. Can observational astronomers provide information in the way that you've been using it about this phenomenon? In other words, we survey the sky in all wavelength bands, 24-7 around the Earth from Antarctica, where I've been twice for two months of my life and to the North Pole to space. Now we've got JWST.

what would it convince a believer to give up the expectations? In other words, Carl Sagan said lack of evidence is not evidence of absence or absence of evidence. But we also have to admit we have conserved resources in finite time, which is the most prominent of all resources. Let me just come in quickly. So I completely agree with all characters, right? And I know Abby is great.

All I'm trying to say is I want him to succeed. So exactly. I think my, the only thing I would comment here is say, how can we help you? Let's help you do this, right? Whatever you think the narratives are capturing the day. I do think we have a responsibility, though, and it's not an ad homeman. It is kind of a bit way in this polarization in the time of COVID elections. We do have a responsibility for correctly framing the arguments. We're not leading people down the up the garden path. That's the only point of getting at. I mean being too optimistic or being too high salesmen.

Exactly, exactly. That's all I'm. nothing else, everything else is good. So what I would say to Avi is like, how can we help you? What I would say to Kurt is like, what do you think science, mainstream science is doing enough of you're finding frustrating? Because, you know, I'm a cheap scientist in the regard that I want to know why I'm in the universe, I want to know why I'm here, I want to have meaning. If there are aliens out there, I want to know. It's not just the right type of alien, any will do me, any evidence. And I, and I have to talk about that. getting meaning from science and meaning from life in the universe.

That might have to be a part two, Kurt. But anyway, yeah, I know we both want, we want evidence, right? We don't want to just, you know, just marginally. And we only have finite amount of time and intellectual time. But don't forget, you know, our forgetting curve, you know, is peaking. I can tell you from experience in a few years, you're going to have trouble remembering your kids' names. And, you know, hopefully, you know, that'll stop.

But we only have so much time for attention, to pay attention to things of of great import to us. So I, you know, I guess the subject is, what, what else should we be doing? We being astronomers. Obviously, he's not going to build, you know, a large Hadron Collider squared, you know, look for interdimensional aliens, you know, manipulating wormholes to get here, right? He's an astronomer. He's an economist, by the way. He's not an observer. So, so I think he needs help. I think the, you know, having you involved, you know, from that perspective. But then how do we translate the signatures from, you know, can be, how do we translate? How do we translate that into an actionable metric that will allow us to reduce our uncertainty getting back to our

rubric at the beginning of this conversation. Well, let me answer to one direct thing. I think we can do this with image data and time series data. And one of the things that would be very interesting is like if you take any given image on this dimensionality, and let's say, I mean, Kurt, you've got assembly in one second. It's brilliant, right? You can apply the same thing to two-dimensional images and also time series images. Of course, you have to define your axioms precisely.

Like when you're looking at how this image can be created. It's very rare you see like a straight edge in nature. It just doesn't happen. Yeah. And so I think that's right. And what I would say, Kurt, quickly, is I've looked at these Pentagon images and I spoke to someone who was responsible for releasing some of them. And I was like, are you just trying to basically, are you just, be bored one day?

Or did you need more funding or something? Why did you do it? And they were like, no, actually, we genuinely think public paid for this. data in a way and we're just throwing it out there. So when I try to get out of them, what they thought? They wouldn't tell me. So what do you think of these images? I mean, you must have, I've looked at them. I've listened to people on podcasts, on Geo Rogers' podcast and in particular, and looked at the data. And there's all this mischaracterization of different people looking at different datasets and saying things like there's this object that I think, Brian, you've talked

about, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, uh, this tick-tack that went from supposedly, you know, very high up to 50 feet off the ocean in like a second. But, Kurt, you have a look at this data, what do you think of it? Do you think it's compelling or are you frustrated about the quality? Or what is your opinion? I think it's sad that people hold these as evidence of UFOs because I don't think they are necessarily. I think that they're extremely poor evidence.

And what about sightings? What about eyewitness? That's why all of it has to be looked at. So when someone, if someone is to tell me that Bigfoot exists and I ask for footage and then they show me some pixelated video, I don't think that that's great evidence for Bigfoot. Now, that in tandem with a variety of stories from people who we would think of as credible in any other situation, that in tandem with, let's say, a rape trial, we would send someone to jail based on two or three witness testimonies. And yet we have a team of people who are extremely credible who testify to the strangeness of this phenomenon. and then we don't we think well perhaps their eyes are misleading them well i don't think that's reasonable so i think it's strange i don't find any single one of the videos to be compelling i find

the set of videos to be somewhat compelling that there's something strange happening but i find the total set of i'm putting evidence in scarequotes here evidence of UFOs to be interesting and i also don't believe that we want to believe in UFOs i know that you said that brian i know well I want to believe in, I want to have evidence. Yeah, yeah. Well, you also mentioned that we have this need to believe in external life. And I don't think that's true. For me personally, I hope that all of what's happening with UFOs is false.

Well, Lee said something. Sorry, Kurt. Well, I'm just afraid of the implications. And I think that anyone who seriously thinks about this perhaps should be, because it may indicate that we're not at the top of the food chain. It may mean that we don't mean what we think we mean in terms of our place in the universe, our purpose even. I feel the same way about the prospects of hell.

I don't want to believe in hell. Not that I do, but I don't want to believe in it. In some ways, I don't want to believe in God. In some ways, I find comfort in that consciousness ends. So there are so many beliefs that people say, well, people have a need to believe in God. People have a need to believe in UFOs. Some do. Some don't.

And I think that if you seriously thought about UFOs, perhaps you would want to believe that they don't exist. When I say UFOs, I mean, obviously UFOs exist. The alien life that's supposedly behind it is what I'm referring to. Well, I think that example. is why you're one of the best in the business, Kurt, and what you do on this channel, and that you have this, you know, kind of humility, epistemological humility, but you also have tenacity, and that is a rare combination.

I think, you know, one nice place maybe to wrap up, and, you know, Lee is often, I claim in a good sense, you know, my belief fundamentally is that no one's an atheist. Everyone has a religion, you know, for some, even that don't go to, you know, church or synagogue, you know, that religion, as I documented my first book, losing the Nobel Prize, it is often the Nobel Prize. And this is kind of a kosher idol, you know, that, yeah, it doesn't cause that much harm. And yeah, funding decisions are made on it. And, you know, Lee's mentioned it more times than I have today. And it's obviously,

you know, top of mind for many scientists. And Zygazen, hopefully he would win it. I don't have anything against the people that win it. I've interviewed a dozen of them on my show. But on the other hand, you know, even lack of a religion, secularism, I think that there is a religion of scientism, which is that science can provide meaning. And I'd like to push back on that. I'd like to explore what Lee and you think, Kurt, about this very notion. In other words, the word science in Greek means knowledge. It doesn't mean wisdom. You know, sapien means wisdom, you know, one who knows that he knows sapienism. I talked about this to Lex Friedman on the podcast that just came out and look forward by.

by the way, to Lee Cronin, who inspired me, you know, to get connected to Lex again. You know, Lex hosted Lee before me. And Lee helped me prepare a lot for my episode because he was on Lex's show and he'll hopefully have that episode out soon too. Might have been, allegedly. We never know. I can't wait to see that one. But, you know, I talked about this, you know, that I don't get any meaning from science.

I think science is intrinsically inherently. You know, we may have curiosity. And the motto of my channel is ABC, always be curious. but curiosity and wisdom don't necessarily go together. And I documented many times, you know, Nobel laureates that were Nazis, you know, and had great knowledge and used their knowledge of chemicals and, you know, forefathers, you know, Fritz Haber, you know, Lee could tell you way more about it. Prince Haber, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's evil, you know, and he was a Jew and his Zyclon B eventually led to the gassing of many of his own family members. So anyway, don't look to science for wisdom. So if you can't look at it for wisdom, why do we look to it for me? meaning. So, Lee, I can, I can give you a quick answer, but maybe Kurt, it's your show, whether you want to go first. Yeah, yeah. Here's what I suggest. I suggest that we take a bathroom break and that Brian, you check with your wife, see if it's okay if you keep talking for a little while longer and leave with whoever you have to speak to as well, because there are some audience. Queen, he has to talk to the Queen. There are some audience questions we haven't gotten to.

Oh, yeah. I'd like to get to those. All right, yeah, yeah, I've got a 25 minutes. This just in my wife says 25 more minutes. I'll take a two minute break. Yeah, yeah. And also quickly, before we go, so, Lee, do you have anything to promote? I'll make this transition smooth once we edit this. Do you? Like a podcast channel or something?

No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm on a clubhouse a lot. I mean, I, I mean, I, what am I promoting? I'm, I think that, um, I just want people to kind of ask more questions in, in an unframed way and, and know that they can get framed, you know. I have a, for me, we'll talk about when we come back from break, but I genuinely love not knowing and then finding a little dent and then getting something. Yeah, yeah. It's like climbing a hill.

Okay. The answer is no. He doesn't have anything to promote, but you should go and look at his TED Talk. I need to go to the toilet as well. Yeah. Because I want to just promote right now and then let's go to the washroom so people can click on this. So Brian has losing the Nobel Prize as a book. You also have Into the Impossible, which is a book, as well as a,

podcast and the links are in the description. I have purchased both of them. Additionally, Brian, your interview with Lex Friedman just came out either today or yesterday. So that's fresh. And Lee, you have a TED Talk and I believe an upcoming Lex Freeman podcast interview, hopefully. Allegedly, I'm not saying anything. Brian's build a room. On Lex's podcast, we have, Lex has an image of me and Lee talking on my podcast. So it's definitely coming out. People who are watching, just click on those links and look up Lee and Brian. work. See you soon. Yeah, back in a minute. You should know that releasing in just a couple hours is the Stefan Alexander interview and that one we talk about matrix models and string theory. It's

super interesting. Look forward to that. It's premiering in about three hours. Stefan Alexander, coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, is one of Brian Keating's best friends, if not his best friend. So are you at home or are you at the office? This is my home office. Oh, wow. In fact, in the corner there, that is a cellular automata running in 3D in my LED cube. That's interesting. In fact, it's Conway's Game of Life. You've incorrectly implemented boundary conditions because I'm rubbish at that. Interesting, okay.

My lab is moving. So we've been in Glasgow. I'm in the chemistry department, which is a lovely old building, but it's not quite fit for purpose. and I'm moving my team onto a new floor and we've got all these fume hoods all kit with all the digital camera history kit. So the dream experiment that I wanted to build 10 years ago will be constructed in March

and we have the assembly meter. So you never know. By April 2024, we might have the answer or an answer. Yeah, so I've been doing a lot of work at home Obviously, with COVID, we're all being trapped, but now COVID is almost hopefully cross whatever. Unless the person who wrote COVID, I'm joking, has updated the firmware. I saw that on. So it's like there's lots of jokes at the moment about that.

You know, the problem with, you know, I was listening to some of your jokes, Brian, but was it someone about the problem of Omicron if we don't solve it now? You know what comes after Omicron? He's pie and that just goes on forever. that's hilarious. Who said that? Oh, it was on a, it was on a podcast. I heard a UK political podcast called The Bunker. So all a load of left wingers, we're sad about Brexit. I mean, I'm sad about Brexit, but no politics here. Okay. So let's get to some audience questions. Also, well, another time, we can talk about free will in time. We started off with that and I'm so We can solve time, consciousness and free will in one easy podcast. Okay.

Well, briefly, Lee, when you said that time is fundamental, I don't know if you actually said that, but when you were talking about entropic time is what we normally think of as physicists as precipitating the arrow of time. And you're saying that, well, that may be the wrong way of going about it. So are your views more aligned with Lee because Lee believes time to be fundamental? briefly Lee, if you don't mind. Sorry, Lee, as in Lee Smolin. Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so I first met Lee Smolin, and I told him my theory at times, oh, that's my theory. And I'm like, wow, our names are both Lee. Yeah, so mine is slightly more dramatic in that, remember, I'm a professional idiot, Regis idiot. And what I mean by that is that I don't get confined by discipline boundaries. So it was when I first told Sarah my theory of time, she was just like, this is just can't be true. You know, this is just, but all I'm saying is that there is no. such thing as space, there is time. Okay. And time creates space, right, in some mechanism that

we don't really understand. And that breaks in everything we need. I tried to argue with Sean Carroll about this, but he didn't even want to argue. He said, no, you're just wrong. I was like, well, my theory is better. Time can go forward and backwards. And I'm like, that breaks causality. So time is primal. Time creates space. And there is a finite amount of time that has existed in our current universe, right? That doesn't mean there aren't things outside our universe. And it works a bit like that. And that's why assembly helps us quantify that through. Assembly is almost like looks at the degree of asymmetry since the beginning of time that's recorded. But I can budge on some of it, but that's it in two or three sentences. Yeah, we'll talk about

that. We'll perhaps have another podcast. And so people who are watching, if you have questions for Brian and or Lee, leave them below. Okay, Brian, do you have any quick comments on the nature of time before we get to the questions from the audience? Well, I think, you know, a time again is one of these things that, you know, we kind of know know it when we see it. It's like, you know, what does it feel like to be a bat, you know, Nagel's question? You know, it's always just like, we don't know.

And I find it sort of interpretable in the sense of we know it when we feel it, we know it, we know it when we see it. We have biological clocks. returning grayer and grayer. Kurt doesn't know that yet, but someday he will. We take comfort that his diminution and beauty will only, only catch up to our stuff. Well, you look like Buzz Lightyear, man. That's a huge compliment. Someone in the Lex comment said that. And I thought, man, that's exactly right. And you're an astronomer as well. And Lee, you're a great looking guy. Yeah. I remember when I saw him, I'm like, this is a good looking guy. I don't want to be in the same

podcast to assume. Lee, you're a good looking guy too, Brian. Yeah, thank you very much. But that means he lives in a bubble. You know, doesn't... Your power... You're a powerful looking dive, Brian. I'd say that. Thank you. Well, I do have a strong aroma.

Well, I'd rather be... But okay, never mind. So, it's time, you know, I talked about this with Frank Wilczek on my end of The Impossible Podcast. I said, what is time? You know, just like I asked Lee, what is life? I asked other people, hoping to have Philip Gough on. I'll ask him, what is consciousness?

You know, it's like, we know when we see it. Frank said to me, Wilchek said, you know, time is what clock's mentioned. All right, thanks a lot. you know, but anything can be a clock. So I think that's interesting is to pursue the path that Lee has pursued, you know, what is the simplest, you know, chemical that can form, yeah, with inspiration, with direction towards evolutionary purposes. And he has simulations that you can see in his TED talk about.

It's brilliant. I think there's an experiment done at NIST, and I'm going to have Nicole Halpern Younger on, who's a brilliant scientist at NIST in Maryland. And she has a new book called Quantum Steampunk, which is really delightful, kind of in the vein of a Roger Penrose Emperor's new mind in which she talks about, you know, what is the world's simplest clock? And on my channel, I make explainer videos. And one I did is what is time and how can you understand time by making the world's

simplest clock? And what is a clock something that ticks? Okay, well, what is something that takes? Well, it has quantum states. And I think the revolution that would be interesting for another podcast, maybe Lee and Kurt will come on my podcast. Maybe with Avi Loeb, we can have a knockdown drive. drag out a conversation, Lee Smolin, just get everybody in there, Mosh Pit, is to talk about,

well, what are the quantum implications? You know, there's quantum thermodynamics that's coming to the front, things like Silard entropy and stuff that Lee knows about that I'm just learning about. I think these are all really fruitful, and I wonder how that could feed into things that Lee is working on. But yeah, for now, maybe you want to talk about meaning from science or do you want to talk to audience questions. I want to make sure that we answer all the audience questions. Yeah, yeah, let's get to the audience. So this one comes from sneaky toaster. That was my kids.

That was my first choice for my middle child's mental name. So the question is Eric Weinstein and others are advocating for the irrefutable data the government has on UAPs UFOs to be released to the science community. Should the science community be granted access? Well, I've pushed back with respect to Eric. I've told them on clubhouse chats on my podcast. You know, what do you mean? Like the data, like data is the data of the Hubble Deep field. Like if there are aliens, you know, in the universe, then, you know, there's 10 to the fifth or 10 to the fourth galaxies in the Hubble ultra deep field.

Then, you know, there's probably an awful lot of aliens in there, you know, go for it. But, but I wonder, you know, is that really true? There's data. Again, the Hubble deep field tells you exactly one thing as far as I can tell. Maybe it tells you a little bit more. It allows you to estimate with about 50% uncertainty. And again, the issue is not the error is not the value that is measured, the mantissa. You know, it is the error bars.

That's where the science comes in. I can measure something. I could go into Lee's lab and make some chemical reactions. And, you know, I'd probably make H.O.2 or, you know, whatever. I'd screw up everything. I joked that when I did biology, I would dissect the frog. The frog would live. I'm terrible at these wet sciences.

But the error bars, that's where the scientist comes out. And I think unless you tell me what is your way of doing what's called a blind analysis. Here's an example. With my telescopes, I measure data. I measure data from the big bang, the origin of the universe, the origin of the elements called the cosmic microwave background radiation. If I make an observation of the polarization looking for waves of gravity that could indicate the presence of an early exponential phase of inflationary expansion, which is, you know, surely could garner many, many accolades and satiate our knowledge of perhaps

all of the conjectures about things called the multiverse. Well, if I do that and I make a claim, I have to show that that data is immune from dust. But I also have to show that the data I got on Tuesday is the same as the data I got on Wednesday. And that the data I got when the telescope was slewing to the left at four degrees per second is the same as the one that slew to the right at four degrees per second. That's a critical. It's peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast.

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during times of high network usage. Sorry, I want to interrupt. I want to frame something here, because this is almost getting what I was saying about Avi earlier and also what Eric is saying is that when he says show us the data, it's almost like this, like he's kind of invoking some kind of conspiracy and stuff. And there's all these, you know, little green men. And what Brian is just really precisely is I know, what we want to know is that this spot on earth at this time when

this was happening, what was happening, show us, show us, show us. So we've got a comparable data set at control. Sorry to interrupt you, Brian, but I think it's really important that we, because we're both eye to eye on this. Yeah. And the point is that you have to tell me ahead of time. When I do an analysis, we have to show in a blind analysis what the error bar will get for a variety of different scenarios. Until you tell me, I might give you data, but until you tell me, and actually, we don't even do it because it's a tremendous amount of work for us to process data in a way that another person could come in to understand calibration, flat fielding, spectral line, flat, dark currents,

all the things are going to just imaging. And imaging is simple compared to measuring the CMB, just in terms of like these detectors have been around 40 years longer than the type of detectors that I'm working with. I'm not saying it's easier or harder globally or more important. But the bottom line is, I have to, my student has to tell me how she's going to analyze the data and how she's going to assess the final error bar long before we unblind and let her see the result. So tell me, how could you mistakenly interpret in the image, which I don't think is really as probative as spectral data or radar data, whatever. But let's just stipulate it is.

Tell me how you're going to interpret to guard against, as Feynman said, you fooling yourself and you, everyone I'm looking at you out there, you are the easiest person to fool. I'm happy to share data. and I'll advocate for you about getting data out of the Galileo project. However, you have to do some legwork too. You can't say, oh, they're hiding it from me, therefore they're hiding something from everything. No, tell me what you're going to do with it. Tell me how you're going to prove yourself wrong and so that I will say to you, you are my fellow scientist, even though you may not have a PhD.

Okay. This was a live chat question. Someone wants to know Lee, Tom Poliska. Tom Poleski asks, Lee, why hasn't your SETI experiment with spectrograph in the infrared been done by anyone yet. Because I happen to have a big mouth and all the stuff happening in the lab. I always talk about it, publish it, but the paper's almost finished. And when people said to me, you couldn't possibly get assembly number out of mass spectator.

We did. But we can do it with a thing called NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance, and infrared, and we've just done it and we've proved it works. So I very much hope that once we get this out there, that we will put out enough data and the algorithm required for people to start an experiment. Indeed, there are people who are going to be getting spectroscopy, spectroscopic data from out of the solar system, what I want to try this with.

But we need to be cautious because the resolution is really so poor, there's limited amount of things we can do. But my dream would be to put a spectrometer, an infrared spectrometer in orbit above Venus. There's a lot of maybe one in orbit, maybe in Titan, and we could do exactly that. experiments was a really good point. And literally, assembly theory was kind of invented last year. We published the paper, the experiment in the Mass Effect paper in May. We've been working on

several theory papers and more experimental paper and that's just coming. So yeah, it's really literally hot off the press. So it's not made up, it works, but I just need to literally get it into a preprint in publication. And I'm talking to various organizations that may or may not have lots of money and may or may not have lots of maybe private and public that are planning missions. And I'm advocating very strongly for us to do that. Send a telescope that can do infrared spectroscopy all around the solar system and map the assembliness of everything. Okay. This question comes from Vison Kausman. This is to both of you. Ask all of your materialist guests to give one single example of something outside of consciousness.

I think there are great difficulties in doing that simply because we are the ghost in the machine that is defining, A, what consciousness is, what are experiences, what is materialistic or not. I should say that, you know, I'm much more, much less materialistic than I assume Lee is. I know what Lee is. I don't know so much about Kurt, but I'd love to know more. In that, there are, what I usually talk about is, you know, are there, is there permission to believe? believe. Not not the proof. I said this on Lexus Pocket. Like, I don't care if I believe in God. You know, like, is God need me? Does God care about Brian Keating? Who gives a cry? You know, maybe, maybe if God believes in me, you know, if God exists. But the question of whether or not you,

I'm a behaviorist. So I think that people manifest how they behave, the underlying consciousness that they are internalized, that they have internalized is manifest externally by their behaviors. So I to things like religion in a very practical sense. Can this give community? Can this give a purpose? Can this without necessarily accepting the reality as provable in a scientific context? I don't think you can't prove or disprove. And I give upbraid my religious friends too. I say, if you don't learn science, you're basically just, you know, kind of living in this bubble. If you don't learn, because science may actually bolster your faith. As I said, you know, Alexis podcast, I'll have said other places, you know, what if the fact that we can perceive an infinite

spectrum of colors, an infinite diversity of life, an infinite number of tastes and, you know, dimensionality of, what could be otherwise. And the fact that the universe is extravagant is potentially a clue, a symbol, a talisman. I'm not saying it's proof, of course, because I don't think there can be proof. But I think those are sort of a non-materialistic. But again, it's materialistic and a reduction in a sense because I do believe that you can practice it for your own benefit. You can glean wisdom from it. You can glean experience, community, charity, things that improve you, stoicism. You know, I'm one of the few people.

I read the Christian Bible every day and the Jewish Bible every day. I read the Stoics, the ancient Greeks, the Romans. These are things that I think broaden your mind, whether you believe it has to be true or not. So I'm more of a pragmatist, I would say, in terms of what consciousness things could be. not be explainable via science. I'm going to ask you one more time simply. So can you point to something that exists outside consciousness? Lee, what would you say?

I would say there's lots of things that exist outside consciousness, but I think we have to do that. Doing that null experiment is hard, right? I think that the causal chain that gave rise, so how chemistry, so I'm going to give the boring answer, but I think that the process of evolution in the universe and selection exists outside consciousness because it had to invent consciousness, I would be interested to know if computation is a fundamental thing in the universe that didn't need to go through consciousness. That's an interesting question. But my simple answer is I think that a lot of the universe

exists outside of consciousness, but I will never really convincingly be able to prove it because I am a conscious entity. Just to make it clear, because I want to make sure this person doesn't write in the comments, they equivocated. What is one example of something that is outside consciousness? I think understanding consciousness. I think the meta problem of, you know, what is it like to be about? How do you separate in the heart? David Charles is coming on my show in a couple weeks. I'll certainly ask him this question. Oh, you're saying, you're saying to something beyond conscious comprehension intrinsically, right? Is that what the person is getting at? Let's imagine I say X is outside consciousness. Well, that X appears to you in your own consciousness. So it's not technically

outside consciousness. Now, you can think maybe it can exist besides me, outside of me, but even that itself is an idea within consciousness. The easy answer, right? And I think Brian, well, I mean, I think Brian might agree with this is like, I'm not, I think that the ground truth for quantum mechanics appears to be outside of consciousness because quantum mechanics wasn't constructive conscious beings. And then we get all else, and it's shown by, you know, there are people who are closets, many worlds people, right? And they get really stuck. Another thing is that I can imagine that there might be something outside of the universe that is entirely separate to this universe. I can imagine it. But I just, but I, there is something

beyond my imagination, because clearly what can it be, right? I mean, I could say, this is really like me saying, I can imagine all the set of prime numbers, but I can't tell you. what the next one is. And that's really important. So I think there are things outside of, that are intrinsically outside of consciousness. And, and I think that we have to be humble because I think even if we think we could nail everything.

I mean, actually, I'm not religious, right? But I have a great deal of respect for religious people. I do not like the approach that Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krause take to people who have religion and say, they're stupid, because they're not. They have belief. And I have beliefs. And my beliefs are kind of a bit boring, but I do have beliefs.

And one of the reasons why I get a buzz out of science is I'm taking something in my belief box and putting it into my fact box. And it's not that I'm trying to disprove God, but it's like I'm going through this process of actually understanding more about the universe, the more in awe of it. And the more I know there's more belief. And so I don't think we're ever going to get to the answer. So I think, of course, intrinsically, there must be things. I think, is this provable? I think we would need to get a proper philosopher who would take us through the thought processes and understanding how it set up the axioms and the argument. But I believe my crude answer would be

probably almost yes. There's lots outside of our consciousness. Okay, this question comes from David, and it's directed toward you Lee, but you can comment on it as well. Brian, in what sense does Lee think that we need new laws for life, like extra stuff at the fundamental level or some emergent higher level type of stuff? Well, I've already said it. I think that so not new laws necessarily, but I think that I, well,

I would say that we can get rid of some laws, get rid of the second law, and account for it correctly. So I think there's a new law needed there. So we have to remove the second law. We have to deal with the fact that we require order at the beginning. Again, get rid of the second law,

have time. So I don't think there's a nice thing about this. It's provable. It's going to be experimentally tractable. So I'm not saying we need to tear up all the rules. I'm just saying that Newtonian mechanics is not appropriate. And I think I would say something very, very crisp here. And I'm saying there's a very, I think Lee Smolin has the same idea that everything in the universe,

every object in every event is unique because it has a unique place in the universe. As I said to the person we were talking about earlier, I went to Austin, I flew to Austin. I've been to Austin before and I flew back to London. I've been to those places before, but I've never been there before because the planet is a different place in our solar system. And our solar system is a different part in space. And so I think that we need to understand that time is not reversible and that physicists should stop be given a free get out of jail card without time travel because I think that's cheating

causality. So I would say, ask that question is that we need to be clear about causation. from quarks all the way up to, you know, from rocks to Rachmaninoff. So I think, yes, we need a new formulation of the laws, but it's not magic. It's just reframing. Brian? Well, I would say they're, it's poetic. It's there's certain romanticism about what Lee's talking about.

I think, strictly speaking, you know, I don't, I always say, you know, cosmology is the one specialization of physics that doesn't require biology. You know, it's like almost everything else, yeah, to instantiate itself or perhaps the other way around. I never make use of, when I teach my undergraduate, say you're going to learn thermodynamics, electromagnetic, electromagnetic, nuclear physics, particle physics, but you're not going to learn anything about biophysics or, you know, you'll even learn some chemistry, right? We'll talk a little bit about the formation of the chemical elements. But that being said, I don't think that there's anything to learn about G-minus 2 of the muon

or of sterile neutrinos or, you know, from a new interpretation that involves life. I think, you know, much, much like I joke about this, like string theory is the best theory ever made to describe problems in string theory. In other words, there'll be new technology. There'll be new, you know, new kind of tools that could be used, new tactics to approach the problem, the essence of life. And don't forget, Erwin Schrodinger recently canceled, by the way. Did you hear about that?

That Schrodinger's been canceled. finally for some sexual improprieties that are quite awful, if true. But the bottom line is, no, I don't think that to understand that there may be additional forces and fields, gauge bosons and so forth, and the standard model, there probably certainly are. I don't know. But I don't think that those will necessitate or require the conceptions of life to be emergent within them. So I've pushed back to Bryce slightly. I want to push for that. I agree with what from Brian said, but I think he's kind of causation, physics doesn't have causation in the standard model, in the core models we call it. And that is a big error. And I am really

a certain very strongly with some courage and humility that I think that we need to add that in. And I think Brian, correct me from wrong, because we were kind of left the ring now. We're kind of like, I don't know whether it's a drawer or there was a, who went on point. But I would say that really, we do need causation at the beginning. Then that shouldn't be, that shouldn't be, because when I speak to Frank, we'll check about it. He just, he just, I mean, I was speaking to him about it. And he was very, very good.

He's very smart. He's a bit cheeky. He said, you know, you should do this. And some people get prizes for that. And I was like, it's just a prize dude. Who cares? Tell me if causation is at the beginning. And I could question.

There are people who work on it. You know, I mean, there are people that talk about the causal, you know, the structure. or Joe Amagio, Lee Smolin, Stefan Alexander's going to be on soon on this very podcast. So yeah, and I agree. I would, you know, maybe just kind of rectify my comment by saying, I don't personally have much, you know, faith into the Wolframian, which is the most kind of like lifelike, you know, at least in terms of complexity and rules and algorithmically computable essence, that that will, you know, make concrete astrophysical predictions that laws will emerge from it. And maybe it may be that understanding life allows us to understand artificial intelligence, which then allows us to make up new laws.

I'm also kind of an AI minimalist, but that's really a podcast for another time because wife and kids will come and get me soon, Kurt. Okay, so then this is the last one, and it relates to what you said about causation. Okay, why is this, this is from Kamar 910, why is there something rather than nothing? And Lee, when you say causation, so physicists obviously study causal structures like Brian mentioned, but those usually mean you're waiting. and then the light cone. And it's as simple as that, not this caused this. So when you have a model of causation, which I'm unsure how one could formulate that, how does that not lead to an

infinite regress or either an uncaused caused at some point, especially if you consider time to be fundamental, which ties into why is there something rather than nothing, which is Kamar's question. Yeah, let me give you two-cent summary. So the theory paper I'm just finishing with Sarah right now actually tackles that very question. And it's to accept that there are, at the beginning, there is no causation, but that causation gets baked in when information can be stored about the past that can affect something differently in the future. And it's really as simple as that. And the only reason physicists have missed it is because they call screen it out. So all I'm all I'm slightly asking for is to remove entropy, change it to assembly, have time going forward,

and suddenly you do have causal cones, and those causal cones actually are limited by the light cone. And I think that Brian and I one day will be talking about assembly cosmology. And we'll be looking for those artifacts out there. But I think we're a little bit far away from that. I need to prove the theory, do the experiments, get the data, show the error, convince peers. Because right now it's just a kind of cool idea, a bit like lots of things in string theory. You need to get that mathematical structure and the reality. And I think we'll be able to, but we'll have to be held account on that.

So it's a really good question. but I'm pretty sure I know where it is what we're doing. Right. I'm also going to re-ask you, Lee, so you can expound some more, but Brian has to go. So, Brian, please. So again, the question from Kumar again is, is why is there something rather than nothing? Okay. So what I thought Lee might say is the why questions are kind of anathema.

Even though they're the most interesting questions and the most natural questions, my toddler will ask me why, why, why. And of course, Lee, as a parent, Kurt doesn't know this yet because he's not a dad yet, but please God, there'll be a father soon, Kurt, you and your lovely wife. But Lee knows the ultimate causal chain with an infinite series of why questions. Lee, how do we answer our kids? I guess so. I mean, I just say, tell them to look for themselves or to shut up asking the question, right?

The answer is why, why, why, why, why, why, why? Because I said so. There is a way when these regression is fast, right? Because I said so. But look, you have a point, you have an origin, and you have a cause, an effect. Now, the infinite regress isn't infinite. What happens? This is, I just don't want to, this is the mechanism of selection. So what this person just asked is, I'm sorry, you have to get, Brian has to go. And I'm going to talk to you about this. You can keep talking about that,

but after Brian goes, I know what it's like to have a wife that once you've gone immediately. No, no, I mean, I think Lee is, is, is, is correct. And I do want to see this. And maybe I'll talk with Sarah about that when she comes on my show. But, but ultimately, why questions are not necessarily part of what scientists should do. Why implies a meaning? And I think meaning, you know, it will bring up questions of, you know, teleological implications. And I don't mean that they're necessarily anathema, but usually when people ask why they mean how or what, you know, how did the causal chain get established? Those have great answers in cosmology as well, except they have great problems too and great mysteries. And Lee alluded to the one three hours ago now

almost, which was, you know, how did the whole thing get kicked off? And what? And what? was the initial generation of, you know, a universe and so forth. You could ask why is there a universe. But I think the question of why, first of all, it could be trivial. If it didn't exist, we wouldn't be here asking why it doesn't exist. And there's your whiskey. That's wonderful. I wish I could have some Scottish, some Scottish coffee at this time of the day. But in reality, in cosmology, as Kurt and I, you and I talked, you know, I only have one regret when it comes to is that I was on his channel when it had the square root of the number of viewers that it does now, and it deserves the square of the number, if not more.

But we talked about briefly, you know, what are the laws of physics? Are they so-called geodesically complete? Can we extrapolate the laws and chain of causality within the light cone when you have a singularity? And Lee mentioned singularity a few times. I happen not to believe that there is a quantum theory of gravity. At least I don't believe it's as well motivated. I think physicists get distracted by it. I think that they're pursuing the theory of everything for the greatest.

grandeur, the glory, the accolades that Einstein never lived up to. That's the very first paragraph of Micho Ococo's new book. Einstein died with his unfinished symphony that he couldn't come up with the theory of everything. No, despite that being the name of this channel, I think the gut is almost, you know, being overlooked, the grand unified theory. We don't understand how the lower energy forces or the higher energy force are unified, let alone how all four are unified. And who, if not, you know, one of us has the temerity to say that there has to be a law of qualifications. gravity? What if there's not? So I'll channel my inner, you know, Lee and say, you know, I don't believe that there is quantum gravity because I want to inspire my colleagues to think

harder about it. And we've been going about this for decades now with little signs of progress, not to say to stop even string theory, which I have my problems with. But the alternative, as they say, you know, the string theory is the worst theory except for all the others. That could be true, according to Witten. But I think ultimately the why questions are the most interesting, but we should be careful not to ask for motivation. I think that evokes teleology, but also we should be very precise. We should answer all the how questions, as Gallo said, measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not yet so. And as experimentalist, Lee and I try to do that. Yeah, that's a great way to end it, put it. I agree.

Thank you so much to the both of you. I appreciate it. And the audience does as well. My pleasure. Thank you, Kurt. And thank you, Lee. I can't wait to be together with both of you guys at some point in the near future light cone. And all of the links to Lee Kronin's and Brian Keating's work are in the description. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, guys. Good job.

Thank you. So Lee, I know I was cutting you off, but I know Brian has to go. Did you want to expand on what you were saying before? Yeah, just very quickly. So this whole idea for infinite regret doesn't have to happen. If you have an origin and you have some events to happen, the events are random. but as soon as they start to, although they're random,

as they go on in time, they become contingent because what happens in the future has some relationship to that in the past, and as long as you don't course-graining it out. Now, when you start to then create an object, that can then, that object can then actually interact on the infinite regress,

go back in the loop. They're not back to the beginning and give some knowledge from the future, if you like, to the past, then that infinite regress is not an infinite regress, it's just selection. So what that means is you have a series of processes where you make an object. So let's just say you've got some chemistry occurring. Let's say you have two different streams of chemistry, and they're random, right?

But then in each stream, so you've got stream A, random, stream B, random, and they're becoming less random. There's some structure. And then stream A is able to interact with stream B and to change the reaction. so it can act back on itself with more efficiency. So that's such that B can act back on itself? Yeah. And then you basically then,

then you get all sorts of crazy things going because in A and B become intertwined and mutually dependent. And then that goes up. And then this process of selection starts to transition. And I think that's the secret. But I haven't got there yet. We have seen evidence of this in the laboratory. And I think this is the answer to the origin of life.

but we need to literally run the experiment. Put a heavy emphasis on selection. And I'm wondering, the selection in your model of life come prior to reproducing and variation? Sounds like variation was there, though, in the Bay, A and the B. Yes. So variation was first that produced selection, which then produced reflection. Exactly. Yeah.

Where you have heterogeneity, then you can get selection and this kind of variation and things interacting. And evolution can actually still occur. on very long time scales on these infinite timelines, if you like. And what happens is that biology weaponizes evolution through autonomous reproduction because it like grabs all those causal chains and can combine them together in one object. And the way it weaponizes is it basically replicates a genome, stores information very efficiently from the environment, and then adapts.

And it can basically produce lots of attempts at copying, itself with slightly different causal structures. And so what I see biology is, biology is like a, it creates evolution, which is an amplifier for selection. And all the universe is trying to do is become fitter. I see, I'm having a difficult time understanding it. And I think it's because I don't know what definition of cause you're using to say that there was a first cause that came from something that was uncaused. So I think that's where my, well, I'm just saying you've just got basically is let's think about symmetry breaking. So you've got a highly symmetrical system and then things interact and time. Because the thing is, this is where physicists get really

stuck in that if you've got a time symmetric system, where does a symmetry breaking come from? You have to add something in, an imperfection, some heterogeneity in homogeneity. If you have time, you break that symmetry necessarily. So there's something really interesting that we don't understand about time. But that's probably for another podcast. Sure, man. And the door's open if you ever want to come back on and talk about time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It was really, really, you were very patient with us. So it's good because Brian is a really great debater. And it's good, you know, I've got a lot of respect for him and what he's doing. And he's really, his mission is very good. The way he's being precise, I'm learning a lot from him. So it was a pleasure,

honor indeed, to kind of be with both of you guys and talking. The honor is online, man. Thank you so much. All right. You have a nice day. Take care, man. And any notes that you have for me? Just email me and we can communicate there.

I'll stay and talk to the audience for a little bit. Sorry. Impressed by the questions. And also that you really had to look up the assembly theory. So I'll ask you about it sometime. It's pretty good. All right, man. Take care.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Take care, everyone. Thank you so much for joining. Any sufficiently advanced technology? is indistinguishable from magic. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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