Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - The Known Unknowns: Exploring the Humbling Universe | Lawrence Krauss | Part 1 (#315a)

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Lawrence Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist, bestselling author, and acclaimed lecturer. He is currently President of The Origins Project Foundation, and host of The Origins Podcast. In this episode Professor Krauss discusses his 10th and most recent book: The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos. The book challenges readers to explore the limits of what we know, and possibly what is even knowable! Can science ever explain the mysteries of time, space, matter, the origin of life, and the nature of consciousness? Lawrence addresses these challenges head on while also celebrating how far we have come in understanding the universe. Professor Krauss reminds us tha not knowing implies a universe of opportunities with the possibility of discovery and surprise.  In the episode Dr. Krauss has much to say about the risks of AI, astrobiology, the pursuit of a theory of everything, and where science can take us. He reveals his motivations for writing this latest book, and his deep concerns for the current state of academic freedom.  As an accomplished scientist with over 500 publications, Lawrence Krauss has focused on the interface between elementary particle physics and cosmology, including the origin and evolution of the Universe and the fundamental structure of matter. Among his numerous important scientific contributions was the proposal, in 1995, that most of the energy of the Universe resided in empty space. Krauss previously served as Director of Arizona State University's Origins Project, and Foundation Professor for a decade from 2008-2018, and also as Chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from 2006-2018. During his career Prof. Krauss has held endowed professorships and distinguished research appointments at institutions including Harvard University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Boston University, University of Zurich, University of California at Santa Barbara, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Case Western Reserve University, Australian National University, Arizona State University, and New College of Humanities. He has written 10 popular books, including the international best-sellers, The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing.   https://originsproject.org/ https://www.lawrencemkrauss.com/ https://twitter.com/LKrauss The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos: https://t.co/BD18qnTxtq The Cosmological Constant Paper by Dr. Krauss: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9504003 Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts  Please leave a rating and review: On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB On Spotify it’s here: https://spoti.fi/3vpfXok On Audible it’s here https://tinyurl.com/wtpvej9v  Find other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating  or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join To advertise with us, contact [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Education now, as higher education in the U.S., in particular, isn't a sad state, and I've written about it extensively, as you know. Free speech, this notion of this secular religion of assuming things are true and then not allowing anyone to question it. That's the worst part. Education should be based on constant questioning. That's why my book is, it's questions. Every chapter begins with questions. That's how we move forward. And if you can't question something, and that's happening too often throughout higher education and a sense of fear,

I mean, questioning stops when you're afraid that question. And it's that fear that scares me the moment. Welcome everyone to this two-part, fast-paced episode of Into the Impossible, reaching into the unknown with Lawrence Krause, discussing his latest book, The Edge of Knowledge, Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos, and much more. A scientist, prolific science writer, outspoken science communicator, and iconoclast.

Dr. Krause has a lot to say about the state of higher education, the risks of AI, astrobiology, the pursuit of a theory of everything, and where science can take us. In part one of this two-parter, Lawrence reveals his motivations for writing this latest book and his deep concerns for the current state of academic freedom. Don't forget, return for part two. If you're hungry for more sincere, in-depth, open dialogue into cutting-edge science and want to know what great minds are thinking, please keep into the impotivism.

possible in your feed by subscribing and following. For some extra credit, head to our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Heating, that's DR. Brian Heating, and subscribe there too. Remember to click the bell to receive alerts on new episodes as they drop and get in on the live chats. If you feel your personal intellectual universe expanding, please remember to add a five-star esterism to ours and paid forward with a share. We love hearing from you. Please let us know what you think of the

show with a review like this one from Audible. If your goal is to comprehend the universe on a larger scale or explore the properties of celestial bodies, these podcasts will help you. Dr. Keating's personal insights on a wide range of topics, coupled with such highly respected guest are mana for the mind. And now, let's go to the edge of knowledge. On Into the Impossible with Brian Keating and Lawrence Krause. Any sufficiently advanced technology is in distinction.

from magic. Open the pod bay doors, please help. Welcome everybody to an exciting episode of Into the Impossible with longtime friend of the show, almost professor of mine at Case Western Reserve University, a beloved communicator of science and practicing magician. And that, to me, is the most exciting way to start an episode, Lawrence. As you know, the namesake of the institution that I, am the associate director of at UC San Diego is called the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human

Imagination. We're going to be talking about your imagination and your thoughts on the future, but before we do that, we always open every episode with Arthur in his own voice saying the following, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. What do you have to say to those accusations, Lawrence? I have to say that, you know, Arthur obviously didn't know about real magic because there's real magic here here. In fact, let me, past part of the magic of the modern world is produced by technology as you say sufficiently advanced it would look like magic

for example here we are talking to one another looking at each other across a continent which would have seemed just impossible a while ago but this is even better I can pass you here take it for me I can pass you this invisible deck of cards we now take that invisible deck of cards out of the box

and put the box down you can shuffle them if you want put the box down yeah I think you dropped a card okay there we go could you now take it out and hold it up in front of you and look at the cards. Okay, look, pick your favorite card. Okay, now pick one to the right of it. Okay, got that? Now take that one out, take that one out of the deck. Turn it around so it's facing the opposite direction of all the other cards. Put it back down, close up the deck, and put it back in the box, and hand it to me. Okay? And the first thing that's amazing

as it comes back as a real deck, which is really magic. Okay, now what was your card? It was, of course, the four of clubs. The four of clubs. Why, of course? Is that your favorite card? Yes, long-term listeners to the podcast. No, that's my favorite.

Oh, okay, okay. Well, so that means there should be, I better get up this way. That means there should, let's see, I'm going to have to hold it up this way. There should be one card here turned over, right? Yeah. Okay, and it was the four of clubs, you tell me. That's true. Yeah.

Okay, okay. Let's just look. Let's look. Can you see it? Hold on. Oh, there's one card. There's one card. I don't know what it is. Let's just see. Unbelievable. Ladies and gentlemen, that is true magic. That is unparalleled magician at work. Undoubtedly, you are responsible for Penn and Teller's success. I mean, I'm so grateful that you've taught them so well. I've taught them everything, although I did one trick with them.

I know. I'm embarrassed. Anyway, that's the first time I've done that on the air. So there we go. Wow, an exclusive. For your program. It's good to be back with you. As you say, I was almost your professor,

but I was almost even better. I was almost your professor's boss because I was chair of the department. That's right. You were a chair. And when you... I just took out just before I came in. Yeah, I barely had the chance to kind of clean out your office before leaving. And I'm going back to Case Western.

We have a lot of listeners in Cleveland. I'm being honored. with a distinguished alumni award in October. So stay tuned for more details about that. But Lawrence, yes, you've done it again. You've written a book that in my mind is comparable to the character of physical law, but updated by five decades or so.

And that was sort of a double entendre, as you French Canadians might say, as far as I understood it. Because Feynman was a character. And Lawrence, you're a character too. Let's be honest. Okay. We just did magic, first ever live.

I've known you for not just your converse, you know, all stars that you wear on stage with, with iridescent pink socks, which is so delightful. But you've written a book. And as you know, on this show, we always open the segment with what you're never supposed to do, which is to judge a book by its cover, Lawrence. So the edge of knowledge has actually two covers. So we're going to go twice. Yeah, good choice of fingers.

Okay. So you've got the American edition there. which I read and listened to, so I had the Kindle edition, the audio edition, and the physical edition, thanks to Lawrence's, munificence. But Lawrence, now I ask you to do the following. Explain the title, the subtitle, and the cover illustration of both editions. Go. Because this just arrived a half an hour ago at my house, so I'm really excited about it. I love it when they arrive.

It's always, I didn't know that was coming. Well, explain the title. Well, the British title is easier to explain because it comes. comes from a quote from your favorite politician, Donald Rumsfeld. Yes, that's right. Rummy, Rummy. Yeah, Rummy. You and he were just like that, I think.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of Rummy, but nevertheless, you know, when someone says something intelligent, I try not to cancel people just because, you know, I try to listen what they say. And he made this great quote about when, unfortunately, in the horrendous invasion of Iraq, which I didn't agree with, he argued that there were. things you knew you, you knew, and there were things you knew you didn't know, and there were some things you didn't know you didn't know, and of course, in that case, they thought they knew something they didn't know. But the idea of the known unknowns was compelling to me. It actually came in a discussion with my British publisher, because that, you know, when we, when we do science, when

you and I do science, we're basing it on what we're trying to explore the unknown based on what we know and the questions, the things we know, we don't know. Of course, the most exciting thing in science is the unknown unknowns, okay? But that would make a very short book. And what I wanted to do, I wanted to go past, you know, I've written, say the universe from nothing, I wanted to take this book and take people to the edge, literally the edge of knowledge, which is the title of the American version. And the reason that it's the title of the American version is I use that term in the book, but also my American publishers decided that Rummy might be a little too polarizing. But the idea is twofold. First of all, to get some appreciation of the vast unknown,

I've got to take people up to that precipice. So it gave me a hook to bring people to the forefront of our understanding of science in a wide variety of areas, but also to point out that, and this is what's really important. That's why I put it in the very beginning of the book, that saying I don't know is central to science. It's what drives science. People don't appreciate that. It's not being satisfied, being so proud of yourself or knowing something. It's the search for the unknown.

And being willing to say not only say you don't know, but be willing to be wrong, to be willing to say, well, this is what I think is going to happen, but then finding something else, in fact, celebrating that. Because, you know, the best thing you as an experimentalist that you could find is something you didn't expect to find. Yeah, and I actually brought that up yesterday in my cosmology class. So shout out to physics 162 class. I'll get Lawrence to give a shout out.

Last year at this time, I had Neil deGrasse Tyson on a podcast, and he gave a shout out. So you'll have to wish them good luck in their midterms next week. But I was talking about this guy here. Do you recognize this guy, Lawrence? I have it right here. You can't see him, but he's right on camera. Okay. So I said to him, there's a proverb in the Talmud, which you, of course, know backwards and forwards.

as we talked about when you grace when you asked me on the origins podcast we had a good rousing discussion the proverb goes as follows man should have two pockets and in each note he should have a different in each pocket he should have a different note in the left pocket he should have a note that says i am nothing but dust and ashes and in the right pocket he should have another note that says the whole universe was made for me balancing the sila and caribdis of haughtiness and ego, which drives some of us, and humility, which we should be at least aware of. And I brought up Einstein because, as you know, this is, this is no, no education for you. You could, you could tell me things that I have forgotten. You've forgotten more than I know, okay? Let's stipulate that.

But Einstein in 1919, he got wrong in 1915, the GR deflection of the angular apparent trajectory of light by a factor of two. I think he was wrong by a factor of two. And let's nerd out later about exact because you you could explain it to my students better than I can. But two years and then a year or two later there was an eclipse in Crimea of all places. And he had, they had sent. I'll add your story in a second. It's even more dramatic than you say. Okay. Why you tell it? But the point is when it was finally revealed that Einstein after the 1990 eclipse of Eddington fame, that Einstein was right, the newspaper asked him, they said only 12 men in the world understand it. I love to point that out. The females in my class get really pissed off at that for good reason at the New York Times, but that's no surprise. But I said, in addition, they asked him, what would you have done if you found out that you were wrong? And Einstein said, I would feel sorry for the good Lord because my equations are correct. And yet, Lawrence, so that's the arrogance. That's the universe was made for Albert. But on the other hand, 1929 rolls around. There's old Albert. He finds out from Hubble.

The cosmological term is no more. Of course, we know that's a blunder. But he calls that reputedly to Gamov says it's his biggest blunt. How do you balance those two things? First of all, embellish the story as you wish because it's your show. But tell me, how do you balance the need to be humble with the need to be bold and have swagger to create magic? Okay, wow.

So that's an interesting question. Okay, but I will first add to your story because it's important. It's really an amazing accent of history. The luckiest thing for Albert Einstein, not for many other people, was World War I. Because the eclipse that they were going to test his ideas on was 1914. And they were going out to test it, and the war broke out, so they couldn't test his ideas.

And it was during that war that he revised his calculations, so that by the time in 1916, when he produced general relativity, they could then at the end of the war tested his new prediction. Had there not been World War I, they would attest a prediction he would have gotten a wrong, you wouldn't know who Albert Einstein is. And so he was very,

the war was very, very good to him in that sense, the first war. The other guys got kidnapped. Yeah, the guys that got kidnapped, not so much, right? Yeah, and so it's really a fluke, and it was kind of fortunate for him and the world, although I think on the whole, he would have been happier and probably the rest of the world if World War I hadn't happened. Yeah.

And, you know, I don't know about the other 12, people, you know, the story, the worst part of that story was when they asked Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, who was the British person who tried to interpret Einstein for the British public. And he was an incredible pompous ass about, you know, there are 12 men who understand relative, you know, general relativity, who are the other ones? And he said, and then he said, who were the other ones? You know, because that, now he was a pompous ass. I don't think he ever did the other part with that Einstein did the humility. And I think the point is, that, well, I don't want to necessarily talk about me, but I think the explorer in general,

whether it's an explorer in science or nature or geology or geography, is forced into humility because you have the boldness to go, in fact, it's where no one's gone before. I just did something with a little shatner, but in doing that, what you encounter is a universe or a geography that's so much grander than you ever imagined that you can't help realizing your own insignificance. So in my mind, yes, you need a brashness to be able, in fact, it's terrifying. We talked about this before, but there's a, you know, there's a real, one difference between experimental physicists and theoretical physicists is first you actually do something, You actually build things and actually does.

I just, you know, but it was Steve Weinberg who first said that, you know, it's incredibly intimidating. He'd be sitting in your room at night, thinking somehow when you're writing something down, that nature is actually going to obey what you're talking about. It just seems impossible. And it is. And on the few occasions where it happens that that's the case, it's just, it's just intimidating. I mean, I remember when I first started to think of the,

the energy of empty space being non-zero, and the idea that would be was just amazing. But so I think there's that combination, but that's what's wonderful about science, is it continues to reinforce the notion that that pocket, that piece of paper in that other pocket just isn't true. The universe isn't made for us. We all need to feel that way, I think, on a daily basis just to get out of bed. But science reminds us that that feeling is myopic. and we have to be reminded.

I think it's because it's so non-intuitive. It's so central to our being to sense that everything is made for us. And I think I once, I think I told you this once I was at a debate at Oxford on the question was everyone is religious. And I actually took the pro side. Yeah, that's right. My colleagues took the other side. And I said, you know, if everyone wasn't religious by nature, we wouldn't need science in a sense that in the sense that science is there to, convince us that the world isn't made for us.

You've even written that, you know, that science wouldn't exist in its current form had there not been but for the existence of religion. And I salute you. You do have. We grow out of it, but that's some of us. You have some of us. Yeah, some of us grow out of it. You know, some of us, you know, we all have lacunae in our, in our educations, right, Lent.

So what I like about this book, again, the double entendre is reminiscent and evocative of that great character from Pasadena, Richard Ford. Feynman. In this case, what it means to me, life's edge is that, or sorry, the edge of knowledge. I was thinking in the back of my mind about an interview I just did with Carl Zimmer, which will come out after this interview, about his most recent book called Life's Edge. And we got into kind of a friendly debate because he opens his book with a discussion of my friend Ben Shapiro. And Ben Shapiro's discussion about life begins at conception. And of course, Carl's like you, he's a liberal leaning, you know, a person. And, uh, and of course he has a, uh, he has a take on at that, you know,

well, if that's true, then, you know, when every time you shed a skin cell, that's life and are you killing life? So I think, but I brought up the point to him that edge cases make bad law. Okay. So he has edge in his title. You have edge in your American title. And that's because the human brain is not configured or wired for ambiguity. That's why, you know, we can agree that, in America, at least, you know, we can agree that, you know, you shouldn't have an anti-tank weapon, but you should have some form of protection, right? So the gun rights or abortion. Like, I don't think many people should say, although my father used to say, you know, I believe in abortion up until the 27th trimester. He said that when I was about nine or 10 years old.

But, but, you know, abortion. Two boys who said it should abortion should be legal until they're 18, but anyway. Exactly. That's right. So anyway, the point being, the human mind is not configured properly for this type of ambiguity and resolution. The five explorations that you, go into this book are all ambiguous in their own way. You go into life, you get into space, you get into matter. And we're going to cover all those in different levels of detail. But how do you resolve these things, Lawrence, in your own mind? How do you handle situations where there's not enough information? The human mind tries to fill it in, but it's a Schrodinger state.

It's ambiguous. The ambiguity of it is overwhelming. How do you personally handle that as a scientist or just as a man? 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's seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $499. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies, price-invaled May 14th or May 27th, U.S. only exclusions apply. See Home Depot.com slash price match for details. Well, I guess, I mean, I think it's probably psychological.

find the ambiguity in general invigorating, because I guess I've always felt that not knowing even what I'm going to be doing tomorrow is one of the reasons to wake up in the morning. And that it is so refreshing to get to that point. If you're studying science, one of the reasons, you know, people, I remember I actually dropped first year physics and asked to go to second year because, you know, you get the these inclined planes and you get all that. And what you want to get to is, well, as the edge of knowledge, you want to get to the point where, you know,

where not only is it interesting, I know an inclined plane isn't interesting, but where the answer may not be so obvious. We all love puzzles. I do think people are, while you talked about being hardwired, I think actually we are hardwired for edges visually. I think that the visual field is, you can see edges very well.

The phobia. Yeah. But I think people are hardwired to want to solve puzzles. And there's, you can imagine all sorts of evolutionary reasons for that. The teleology, the notion that there's, you know, there's something behind a mystery. It helps you save you from lines on the Savannah. And so you can imagine that. But it's that notion of solving puzzles that makes it exciting.

And I think, you know, that it wouldn't, if you were doing a jigsaw puzzle, if you imagine unraveling the world is like a jigsaw puzzle, right? If it was obvious which piece went where, it wouldn't be fun to do the puzzle, right? It's conquering, and I'm not good at it, but my wife is, but it's conquering that fact that they all look the same, and I'm colorblind, so it makes it even harder. But, but so I think, you know, I didn't, like most books I've written, I really didn't know where I was going to. to be going when I wrote it. And it took a while before I found out what I wanted to do. I didn't even know what the topic's really going to be. But I thought what I would try and do was touch in one way or another those questions that everyone asks. Because what's amazing is that the forefront of science and all areas beyond physics tend to deal with the basic

questions that we all started asking in the first place. The things that motivate everyone, are we alone in the universe out of the universe? Again, life originate, you know, what's time? I mean, and, you know, and all of, can I go backwards? Can I, can I revisit the mistakes of my youth either, either correct them or enjoy them again? But, so I think I found it gratifying to think about those central topics because one of the

things I've always tried to do in my books is to try to, you know, bridge science and culture. And the same with care. I mean, I'm very honored by your connection. connection to the character of physical law, which is which of Fireman's Masterpiece book based on his I think messenger lectures at Cornell, which I saw as a kid and I read the book. And it was

the fact that there were that there were open questions that made it so exciting for me. And I really, I think, you know, one always reinvents one's memories. And I talk about that in some sense in the consciousness chapter. But I think I do distinctly remember when this teacher at this special science program was on, gave me this book because I looked bored.

And it's the first book I read where kind of it was clear to me. You know, I've been reading about Einstein and read about all this. But it was now clear that it wasn't all done. And it wasn't even all done, you know, by dead white men 200 years ago. And that notion that one could participate in the future and was really what turned me on. And as you say, I don't have the presumption that that'll have. But I'd like this to be an invitation for some young people to say, look at these, you know, it's amazing what we discovered.

But what's more amazing is what's yet to be discovered. And not to be embarrassed. That's the other thing. But to celebrate. I mean, scientists really do celebrate not knowing. And it's the only area of human inquiry. I think we can do that so well. Wouldn't it be a better world of politicians as well as parents and teachers celebrated not knowing?

where will he say, I don't know, let's try and figure it out. Let's try and do a public policy. I don't know if it's going to work. Let's see if it works. Yeah, I mean, the problem is another type of game, you know, where edges come into play are these concepts of infinite games versus finite games. You know, a finite game, you know, it's a finite game. In an infinite game, the object is to keep playing. And science, I always say, is an infinite game, but it's comprised of an all.

a lot of finite games, you know, from getting into graduate school to getting a postdoc, to getting a professorship, to getting tenure, to winning the Nobel Prize. You know, these are finite games, but the enterprise of science is never done. Somebody said once, I mean, my father used to tell me of my late father, you know, science is like a battle where the enemy is infinite, but they're always retreating away from you. So you have this illusion of progress, but you also have this true progress that you do win. So let's get into the books. You know, I think there are a lot, I think I have to say, I'm going to interrupt you because you know I do that. Yeah, of course.

But it's interesting that you say that. And it's interesting that your father said that because, you know, in the 1980s, and you're just a baby, so you won't remember them. 51-year-old baby. Yeah. But physics made this sudden switch to the presumption of some people that we're going to, they would have what was called the theory of everything. And suddenly, you know, it would all be done.

And it's interesting, Feynman who never liked string theory for a variety of reasons. He said it didn't answer any questions. I think one of the reasons he didn't like it was, again, driven by his character. He likened the universe to being like this onion with an infinite number layers. And for him, you know, it didn't matter if they're an infinite number layer. It didn't matter if he never got to the absolute truth. All he wanted to do was peel back another layer and see the next layer and understand more tomorrow than he than he did today.

And by the way, I have to, you, the other thing you remind me of was a quote at the end of my book from one of my favorite science writers and scientists, Jacob Bernowski, who used to live in La Jolla. He used to live in La Jolla. Yeah, yeah, and I met his daughter, but he had already passed away before I got to know.

But I, I just ate up his wonderful series he sent a man, and I mean, and he's just brilliant. Anyway, we could go into that some other time. But one of his favorite quotes which I put in the epilogue of the book, is dream or nightmare. We have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake.

We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science, and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simply by taking sides. And I think that's really important in our society now, people who claim to know everything. And I tend to think that all these culture wars would be so much better, people just said, you know, maybe I don't know, I should listen. But it's also true among scientists.

You can't, you know, it's not, it's sure it's a game, but you can't, but taking sides is fine if you're willing to change sides in the middle of the game. Yeah, I mean, I used to say when I give a talk that the reason that so many people love astronomy is because there's no, you know, Republican constellation or, you know, there's a democratic asteroid over there. But increasingly, science is becoming more and more politicized. You've pointed out, and you're not a culture warrior, but I think you're reluctant battle. in this dissent of scientific prestige.

And I always say we have to be very careful. And what you and I do, I think, is important outside of the science that we do is the communication that we do. Because typically what someone will say is, you know, I'm very specialized. You know, I've got this giant brain. Yeah, you paid for it because of your taxes and so forth. And every scientist, I'm supported by, you know, the most private funding of almost any person, not me personally, but the Simon's Observatory, the Simon's Array by Jim Simon's

Minificence, right? So I'm supportive. But I got my education. I teach at a private school, at a public school, rather. I work for the governor of California, right? So the point is, and used to be the same in the regions of Arizona State University. So, but Lawrence, where's me here. First of all, I work to three private schools and then one public school.

Exactly, right. So, but even if you're private, I mean, you were funded by the National Science Foundation for many years. Well, actually, Department of Energy for most of them. A little bit. A little bit. Okay. I was funded by, I was certainly. The public pays your dollars.

Yes. They paid me to hang around and have fun. And I never forgot. Yeah, and if you had a business, I mean, you and I aren't businessmen, but we had a business and we had an employee and said, you know, Brian or Lawrence, you know, you can't really understand what I'm doing. It's very special. Keep shoveling in the money. I think what we do is very important that we communicate to the public about the state of science because the moment that the public loses confidence in the scientific enterprise, I think it's game over. I think it's checkmate. So you're doing very important. And I know that you're, so let's talk about it. So let's, let's, I'm going to reveal something. I have. revealed and I want to get your reaction to it. So Jordan Peterson, our mutual friend, he came to visit me a couple months ago.

We hit it off. I've been on his podcast. You've been on his podcast. You've had him on your podcast. He's coming on my podcast. He's starting a new endeavor called the Peterson Academy, which is for-profit but very low-cost, accredited educational institution.

They've asked me to be a professor at this institution. I've agreed. This is not in- Are you going to quit your president? institution? No, so. I'm sorry, because I'm skeptical of all these institutions. People are professor. I've been a professor at some institutions that I show up a week a year on too, but anyway, go right. No, so this is more akin to, you know, teaching at a, you know, giving a seminar or doing stuff like that. It'll be, it'll be for credit and there will be, you know,

there's a small amount of money, which I'm going to donate as I have in the past to lowering the cost for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships here for women at UC San Diego. So I've done that. That's already pre-decent. Yeah. So I think the question I'm asking you, that academy has no political ideology. You're supposed to get a degree in philosophy or green, whatever, not physics. I mean, they're not kind of degrees in physics. What do you make of this? And in terms of the future of education is what I'm most interested in your opinions of.

Because it's changed a lot since I became a professor and I imagine since you became a professor. What do you think about the future of education in the context of some of the themes of this book where you get into artificial intelligence. You start to talk about the emergence of these natural language models. What do you think is the future of our profession? How can it remain the same as it was in the year 1,100 in Bologna, Italy, when some guy was standing up and scratching on a piece of rock with another piece of rock. How can we maintain this monopoly, this cartel, this monot for a millennium? Is the end in sight? You know, I was funny. I was just listening to a book by Bart Ehrman on revelations on the way back in my car and listening to all of the

end in sight nonsense that's been involved in that over the centuries. Look, first of all, I don't know, I'm sure I've told this before. I don't make predictions about the future unless it's two trillion years in the future, which in which first of all, I think I can say some things with confidence. And secondly, I can say with even more confidence that no one's going to be able to check me to see if I'm wrong. So the near term is much harder. And I don't know what the future is.

And in fact, it's because I don't know what the future is that I spend time writing about things that I'm concerned about because if I knew how things were going to turn out, it wouldn't be worth it. But I try and have some kind of impact one way or another in my writing, speaking, and other things. Education now, as higher education in the U.S., in particular, is in a sad state. and I've written about it extensively, as you know. Free speech, this notion of the secular religion of assuming things are true and then not allowing anyone to question it. That's the worst part. Education should be based on constant questioning.

That's why my book is what it's questions. Every chapter begins with questions. That's how we move forward. And if you can't question something, and that's happening too often. And it used to just happen in the humanities and to some extent social sciences. When I taught at Yale, the science departments were on this thing called Science Hill at Yale, which we thought was allegorical as well. But most students didn't make their way up the hill.

But we would laugh. We'd look at the deconstructionist literature department, English department, down the hill. And what's happening, unfortunately, is those things are happening throughout higher education and a sense of fear. I mean, questioning stops when you're afraid to that question. And it's that fear that scares me the most. And I've seen it happen when I write something. Yale in particular.

Yeah. Yale is just one of many. But Yale in particular is that end. But, you know, when I've written things, I've gotten newspaper op-eds and say the Wall Street Journal or somewhere else, I've gotten letters from academics under pseudonyms or from private accounts saying they're writing me. They agree. but they're afraid to do it from their institutional account. And, I mean, 40 years ago, that would have just been impossible to imagine, at least in my experience. And, of course, it may have been limited.

There were people. Actually, my friend, Noam Chomsky says that, you know, it's nothing new to him. Cancer culture, you know, goes back 50 years, a lot longer. But so there are problems. I am dubious of Jordan's solution. I mean, I think it's, Noma, I talked about this in terms of another proposed solution. There's a University of Austin, which has been proposed to try and somehow involve free speech.

These will always be peripheral. And because, you know, the heart, the heart of higher educational institutions, research institutions, is the research. It goes on. The teaching, you get the benefit. I mean, liberal arts colleges are fantastic. I'm not saying they're not important. I think they're wonderful. It's one of the things that's wonderful about the U.S.

is how many of them there are. I got involved in actually for a while a for-profit liberal arts college in England for precisely that reason that they didn't have them. But what's great about being at a research institution if you're there, and it's not for everyone, is that you get access to people who are pushing those forefronts and their excitement, their curiosity somehow can be conveyed to you.

And also, if you're lucky, and undergraduates are in various places and as well as graduates, you can participate in that voyage of discovery. And that's wonderful. And so I think those will always, I think at a higher education level, those will always be the driving forces of education. Well, what do you make, though, just to push back?

It's true that major research institutions, many faculty don't give a hood about teaching. And you often get much better teachers at liberal arts colleges, but it's not always that way. And it's that, it's that connection to that, to that ongoing search that's so important. And I just don't see these, I mean, it's nice to have a place that people can go. And you hope it's not an echo chamber for, you know, for your own views. And we'll see what happens with the Peterson Academy. I think the fact that it's called the Peterson Academy is likely to be self-selecting to some extent.

And, you know, I think it's great. But it'll just be another cog. It's not going to solve the problem. It's not going to say, oh, we exist and now Yale is going to close its doors or forget Yale. I don't think that's the goal. But I mean, like Harvard. But you do look at these rapid phase shifts that are occurring, you know, especially in the knowledge worker industry, thanks to these language models. And as you know, and with your co-author, Frank Wiltschek, last year, I recorded the first ever audio book by

this guy, here we go. I'm getting the thumb. Here we go. So here's Galileo. So he never had an... Yeah. So he never had an audiobook.

So I said, this is a Shonda. This is a claim. This cannot stand. And so along with Carlo Rovelli and Lucio Petcherillo, Frank Wilcheck, Fabiola, Gianate, Jim Gates, we recorded the first ever

audiobook of Galileo. Guess what, Lawrence? I now have a million words written by Galileo. And you were just saying before how, you were, you know, motivating your undergraduate institution to bump you up because of this inclined plane, you know, nonsense that all freshman physicists are tortured by, right? But, but why,

you know, whoever your teacher was, I mean, imagine if he said, well, look, inclined planes were first studied by this guy, Galileo, okay? And guess what else? He also wrote like a poet, and he was also a polymath of unparalleled renown. And in fact, so much so that if you study the true controversy, not to teach the controversy about intelligence. The controversy of the time that got him thrown into jail, an sumptuous jail, I have to say. I mean, to give him his due, I think Bernie

Madoff would have loved to be. So, so, I mean, Bruno didn't fare as well. But anyway, the point being, Lauren. I hear Bruno was, well, anyway, I've heard conflicting stories about whether Bruno was burned at the stake because of his statement about stars or just because he, everyone hated him so much. Right. And he

was basically espousing anti-church doctrine, you know, in addition to alien worlds. But anyway, Lawrence, the point is, like, why sit there and learn from as great a communicator as you might be or, you know, Brian Green or somebody like that? Why learn from them when I can just sit there with an avatar in three dimensions of Galileo and ask him, or Einstein or Richard Dawkins or whoever you want to talk to, Charles Darwin? And I can learn from them because they've written at least 100,000 words. That's enough to make an LLM for them. So why do you think, why are you so confident that at least the undergraduate education won't change. I see it as very vulnerable.

Oh, I'm convinced it will change. I'm convinced, I mean, things change. That's going to, and AI is going to change a well as I talk about at the end of the book. What I'm not convinced of is that it's going to make the world a dystopic future that's going to destroy the world. It could make it better. And the example I used, which you know of is my favorite one about Plato and Socrates, who, in the starting the ninth and then by the sixth century BC in Greece, after writing had been introduced, they hated the idea of writing. They said it would destroy storytelling.

And I think writing's been okay. And so I suspect things are going to change dramatically in ways that we, some of the ways we can't imagine, but more excitingly in the ways we can't. And, you know, even I read a, there was a lovely review of my book this the other day by a very thoughtful man who said, well, Krause didn't, you know,

really worry about the fact that super intelligent AI, if such things ever is going to exist, is going to maybe displace humans. And I'm not as worried about that even, because I think what will happen, it's not going to be a displacement. It's going to be an evolution of a change. And humans to keep up will have to incorporate aspects of that technology,

and it'll change what it means to be human. But it already is changed to be what it. I mean, what we do every day is so different than what humans did 500 years ago, that are ready to be human is something very different. And so I don't, I think, you know, it is terrifying. to not know what's going to happen.

And there are certain aspects that do terrify me about AI, mostly capitalist ones, mostly the fact that, you know, when the Industrial Revolution was, Keynes argued the Industrial Revolution should be great because, you know, machines would come in, everyone having more leisure time, that the fruits would be more productive, the fruits of the productivity be shared.

Right, poetry. Coffee shops. And I've heard, you know, my friend Jeffrey Sachs, who's an economist say that would be a great future, for sure, it's okay if it's okay if AI displaces most jobs. If the rest of us can spend time in coffee houses, listening to music and having great conversations. But I suspect that given the way things are already going, that instead it's going to concentrate

wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the people who have the first AI that can do X, Y, or Z. And so it may produce more economic chaos. But when, you know, when I wrote the climate change books, I said that one of my favorite phrases from that book was that the future is charging at us like a freight train, but it's doing so on tracks that we've built. So we can, you know, we do have the virtue of having prepared minds if we, if we are willing to discuss these problems and think about them. And therefore the future is an overall, you know, one of one of my favorite lines, because I was first, when I first discovered, my name was Lawrence. I didn't know my name was Lawrence

when I was younger. It was a different name. But we were on the same time as the movie Lawrence Arabia came out before you were born. I fell in love with that movie. My favorite line in the movie is where he goes out into the desert and he saves this young boy who's falling off his camel and they say that, you know, it's dead. It's written and he comes back and almost dead the next day. He comes in, nothing is written.

I remember that as a 12-year-old or 10-year-old and I thought, that's what's great. nothing is written. Nothing is written. And that's what's so wonderful about that's why for me this is such a labor of love. The future isn't written. The future of science isn't written. And it can go in so many different directions. And we can celebrate that excitement because that future is also humanity's future. It's also our cultural future. The ideas that things are going to shape what it means to be human and what it means to the joy of being human. And the fact that the next great piece of music isn't written yet. And the next great piece of literature isn't written yet. All of those things make waking up every day more fun. Yeah, I agree. And speaking back of capitalism,

I mean, we can't ignore the, well, I don't know if he's still the richest man in the known universe, but Elon Musk. And I want to pivot back to the very beginning of... It's hard to lose that well. Well, yeah, he's... I'm contributing. I know you are too, the eight bucks a month. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not. In fact, I don't. I won't really this to make you jealous. Okay, please do. Yeah, yeah. Please do. I lost my blue tick. And Elon, I happened to be in communication with Elon.

Elon said, oh, I'll pay for yours if you want. And I didn't accept that initially. And I don't know. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. It was a mistake, but it was nice to say it. But anyway. Oh, that is nice. So let's talk about Elon. So this morning I had a response to Elon.

because he sent out some tweet that was basically that the existence of the plank length somehow limits and diminishes or puts a practical limit, whatever that means, on the number of digits of pie. So let's go back to the very beginning of the edge of knowledge where we talk about space. Is it true? Is there anything actually important, relevant about the plank length, first of all? because I made the point that if that were true, then there's nothing relevant about two times the plank length because we also don't have any evidence about anything below two times the plank length. So what level does it matter when we...

Actually a calculation that we had done 20 years ago, which hasn't been publicized very much. What is it? I don't think he understood it, which is that quantum mechanics and puts limits on computing. A quantum computer can be reversible. That's fine.

It can be reversible and therefore it doesn't dissipate any energy. But every time you want to do new computation, generally you have to erase a register. And that dissipates at least H-bar, you know, because of quantum mechanics, a fine amount of energy. And actually my, actually a former, another case Western professor, Glenn Starkman, who I hired him very well. And I wrote a paper, which did a calculation saying,

Assume, you know, asking the question, given, especially given an eternally expanding universe, how much, is there a limit to the total number of computations you can do? And we argued there was from that. And it comes from quantum mechanics, ultimately from the plank scale, because you couldn't, you couldn't cool things down more or less before below the plank temperature. And that would give a, I mean, this is all hypothetical, gave a limit. I think we came out with 10 to the 120 bits of, to be. But, you know, I don't think. In fact, like many of my favorite papers, that one never got accepted. But, and so because of the archive, it didn't need to. It's out there. But I think, so I think if there's any sense, I didn't know, I saw that.

And I thought what it wasn't, well, not necessarily an irresponsible thing to say. But I don't, it's not. It's fine. It's fine to say. He said more irresponsible things, Lawrence. He actually said something more irresponsible. I'm sure. I know, I know.

But, but, but, and so do I. I'm sure. But, as you would say, let me be not the first one to cast the first stone. That's right. A Jewish guy said that. A Jewish guy, yeah. But anyway, the more important thing is that it doesn't put a limit on the, in any way, I understand the number of limits of digits of pie. But on your ability to calculate the digits of pie, yes.

Sure. Yeah, but I guess that's a deeper question than what Elon's asking. I mean, you could say the same about like the back is the plank length. Does that produce a limit on the number of prime numbers there are? It's totally irrelevant. It's comparing literally apples. But I do want to ask you, is there operationally? It's operationally.

Operation. Yeah. And then the plan, but you hit on another important point that you don't realize you hit on. Okay. Unintentional of brilliance. I'll take it. And that is that this notion that understanding the physics associated quantum gravity would give you a theory of everything is ludicrous for many reasons.

It's actually a theory of very little, almost nothing. It's vitally important for those of us who are interested in how the universe began or what happens at the center of black hole. But to understand almost everything else that happens in the universe, quantum gravity is just irrelevant. It's a theory of almost nothing. It's profoundly intellectually important. But to understand how water boils, you don't have to have a theory of quantum gravity.

And no matter what Roger Penrose may think, I suspect that in order to understand how the brain works, you don't need a theory of quantum gravity. And so it is important for a limited set of questions, which are not. And I don't want to minimize them because I spend a lot of my life worrying about them. You know, how did the universe begin? And I think most people are fascinated by it. So intellectually, they're credibly important.

But operationally, as far as the progress of science is concerned, it's not, it's just a theory of very little. Yeah. And thinking about quantum computing, which you get to towards the end of the book, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about consciousness. I just want to remind everybody, we're talking to the renowned physicist, communicator, educator, film star, many other accolades and honors, and that's Lawrence Krause,

who is the proprietor of a rival podcast called the Origins Project podcast, which competes against the Into the Impossible podcast. I think it's a rising tide raises all ships. I don't think that's right. We've shared guests. We've communicated back and forth about guests.

We've had on many, many eminent people in common. And we have a different, you know, we should go on the road. In fact, we're planning to go on the road here, at least. I'm planning to stay. event with you. Stay home. That's right. So we're working on that. So I'll have some news for you after the podcast ends, hopefully some good news. But Lawrence, what you do on the theoretical front on the

kind of grand vistas, I try to kind of concretize. And what I'm doing is really talk about what are these things good for that you brilliant theorists come up with and try to shine and experimentalist light on it. And one of those things you mentioned is Feynman and quantum computing. So Feynman basically said that these quantum computers, could be phenomenal at describing the properties of quantum computers. He actually said it would be, they'd be incredibly unparalleled at solving Lagrangians. Now, I don't know about you,

but I get along just fine with this thing, which only has a paltry, you know, 15 billion transistors in it, but none of them are quantum. What good are quantum computers? I mean, in reality, their hype around them is so maximalized. But in reality, they're, yeah, so tell me what, what's their promise? well okay and and to mimic you i'll i'll at least point out that that i'm in the podcast in the podcast i had a good conversation with an old colleague of mine and a friend for many years john

prescoe who leads a quantum computing effort at caltech to ask exactly that question i think look there are two things that quantum computers will be good at if they you know if if if they can achieve even a small fraction of the hype that they get. One is of great interest to physicists and to Feynman, they will be wonderful at solving quantum mechanical, quantum mechanics problems and giving us insight into the behavior of quantum mechanics because they utilize quantum mechanics in the calculation. So they can intrinsically do quantum mechanical calculations that we can't do because we, you know, process things classically. So from a scientific perspective, to even make progress in scientific problems.

You don't need many cubits. So I'm suspicious of how easily it'll be to scale up a quantum computer to do a lot of the stuff that people claim. But you don't need more than 40 or 50 cubits, even if that, to begin to do some kind of problems of solving molecular dynamics and that sort of thing. And that's, by the way, what interested in Feynman. Feynman said the great thing about a quantum computer is would help him understand quantum account.

mechanics. And, you know, and a lot of people think he had a good understanding of quantum mechanics, but ultimately we can't because we're classical beings. And part of the, one of the things I really enjoyed being able to do in the edge of knowledge was to talk about quantum mechanics from a different perspective, because there's so much nonsense, so much pseudomysticism applied by, even by physicists to write books about, you know, the many world's interpretation and called something else. But, you know, and it's really, in my mind, misplaced because it's, you, you, they talk about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is really the wrong thing to do because the world is quantum mechanical on this basis and the classical world is an illusion. So to try and interpret quantum mechanics in terms of the illusion is the wrong way around. You should interpret the classical world in terms of the fundamental quantum mechanics. And it was Sidney Coleman, who first, who was at Harvard and as I point out, certainly was a friend and not really a mentor, but the smartest person at Harvard when I was there. And he gave a great lecture called quantum mechanics in your face and I was able to reproduce a little bit of it by talking about the fact that

that you know all this way of talking with spooky action at a distance and trying to make it seem sensible or at least cloak it in classical terms is just that it's cloaking and and Feynman realized that and said well a quantum computer won't have to do that it'll it'll just do quantum mechanical calculations now the next thing a quantum computer could be good at precisely because quantum systems are doing many things at the same time, and they are like it or not, that if you have quantum mechanical bits, qubits that are doing many things at the same time, especially when you're not measuring them, then you can imagine a computer that can do many parallel computations at the same time. And therefore, so many that a classical computer could never do that in a reasonable amount of time.

And if you had enough cubits, you could imagine, therefore, doing incredibly complicated calculations that you wouldn't be able to do in the lifetime of the universe, classically, quantum mechanically, because you're doing many, many computations at the same time. They're the ultimate parallelizable systems, if you want, because, you know, electron, when you don't measure it, is spinning in all directions at the same time. So quantum mechanics would tell us if you, I mean, again, that's a classical picture of what's really happening. Right. But, and so they hold out some promise.

But the question is the reason, the reason quantum mechanics is so counterintuitive is because it doesn't manifest itself easily in the world that you and I live in. I mean, it's true that my, that the phone that you talk about is depends vitally on quantum mechanics, semiconductors and transistors depend rightly on quantum mechanics. And so we rely on it for using it. But the world, you know, is, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, And like, you know, I can run at my wall for now to the end of time and I'll never end up on the other side.

But electron going through a barrier can do that. That's right. As I learned from John McGreevy. It's all those things that make the world classical that make it difficult to maintain these special conditions that the quantum world requires for the weirdness of quantum mechanics to be manifest. There's certain places like in superconductivity where it is manifest. And there's certain cases where if you're very carefully prepared a,

system, you can do that quantum teleportation of a few states. But the idea of having large-scale computers that are behaving quantum mechanically in that sense with quantum coherence and correlations preserved is difficult and maybe not impossible. There's been great progress, but that's the difficulty in imagining quantum computers being scaled up. And many, many people are working very, very hard and already, you know, achieving things that surprised me. So I'm not going to say, I think 10 years ago, I said, I don't think, you know, I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime that these things will be workable on a large enough scale to provide anything substantively new. And now I think I'm more hesitant.

And it's one of those many cases where I love to be proved wrong. Yeah, that's the most exciting, right, the most exciting, you know, words and science occurring to Isaac Asimov. It's only, it's only slightly lower excitement than proving you wrong. Well, it's, it's much harder to do it to prove me wrong. As you know. No, you, I was delighted to see my experiment gets a call out and a shout out in this book, Bicep 2. I don't appear, but that's fine.

But anyway, a person that does appear, we talk about it. $8 a month. That was the problem. Anyway, go ahead. I didn't get my blue and gray, Spartan blue checkmark. Anyway, so my colleague, after I went to Case Western and barely evaded your harsh grading rubric, I went to Brown University where my advanced quantum mechanics professor was none other than Leon Cooper. And Leon was a character still is. He wrote a great undergraduate text, by the way, which I used when I taught physics or poets. I thought it was a great text. Anyway, but he did not with his colleague, Bardeen, John Bardeen, his colleague, John Bardeen, who is the co-inventor of the transistor, the only person, as you know, to win two physics Nobel Prizes. But Bardeen didn't look at the laws of quantum mechanics and say, let me put this crystal.

of germanium and then this coat hanger and then some some chewing gum and they just they engineered it it was more of an engineering solution so it seems to me quantum computing sort of the opposite like we're starting from the Lagrangian and we're trying to derive something useful they stumbled upon you know this this Verister and these through through trial and error at some level and they came up you know on the heels of vacuum tubes and and dinodes and stuff like that and then came up with a working device so it seems to me fundamentally qualitatively different I don't expect a response but I was just going to say, I don't know. To what extent do you like?

Let me ask the question. Let me ask the question, though, Lauren. So the question is the following. I hear, I've heard it said by past guest and friend of mine personally and friend of the show, Eric Weinstein, that, you know, if we do come up with a unified theory or a theory of everything, then we can look into it and it will help us solve, you know, mysteries of the universe, perhaps even teleportation, perhaps even, you know, time transportate, whatever. I don't ask you to react to that. But the notion that physicists somehow from the equations alone derive technology, I think that that's inaccurate. So how do you react to that? Based on the example that we didn't look at the Grange and the Shruder equation and say,

oh, well, let's make a transistor. Instead, the transistor emerged from engineering solutions. So can we hope to get time travel and other things if we did get a unified theory of space and time? Well, look, I think the point is that technological discovery is also serendipitous at a in many, at its most interesting level. It's true that they weren't using Lagrangians to build a transistor, but at the same time, if they've been told, we need you to make a faster computer,

at Bell Labs, we'll spend all our money trying to make a faster computer. They would have had wheels, and they would have had, you know, pulleys and wheels. Smaller vacuum tubes. And so what often drives the greatest technological discoveries is people just being curiosity-driven. They may not be driven by equation, they may not even know what they're doing, just like theorists don't often.

I mean, some of my most important papers are things that I don't think I understood till well after they were written. And I think the same, I mean, I'm not putting myself in Einstein playing, but having written a lot about Einstein, it's clear that I think that's true of Einstein as well in some of his more important papers. He didn't really appreciate until after the fact. General, to be the importance of, but gravitation waves and black holes and things like that. Edging.

Yeah, that's true. So let's, let's, sorry, go on. But anyway, so I think that's it. I think so it's, it's just people playing. And sometimes it's theorists playing. But you're right, it's rarely that theorists are playing, and suddenly technology emerges. Yeah. But here's the thing.

There will be engineers. There might be. I don't want to say will be because it sounds like a prediction. Especially prediction that could be falsified. But there may be, you know, when I was a campaign, case. One of the things I was proud of, and I did a lot of things as Cherit Case and I'm proud of, including hiring most of the faculty of there now. But we developed an engineering physics program, which was the best of both worlds for many students. Their parents wanted to be engineers.

As you know, probably your parents, one of the reasons people went to Case is they were, you know, often working class kids and their parents said, no, we don't want you to do physics. We want to get a job. Wanting to be an engineer. And so, but, you know, but here they could get a training in physics, which is not just applying, you know, plug and shut. like too often engineering was, but learning how to solve problems. And most, as I used to say, which is true when I was trying to get students

to take the program or at least talk to parents about it, is most physicists are actually employed as engineers in the world today. That's right. Because they know how to solve problems. They may not know the details that an engineer knows, an electrical engineer knows about a circuit, but they can solve problems and learn those things.

I say if you... But what I'm going to get at, is just that simply 20 years from now, the engineers of the future may be playing with things that come from Lagrange's. For them, it may be second nature to play with the tools that are generated by quantum computing and do their thing. Just like for Bardeen, you know, working with coat hangers and, you know, and soldering guns may have been their time.

So I don't know if it won't be down the road something very similar. And that's all I wanted to get at. Yeah. No, I agree. And I always say if you want to prove, you know, Thevenin's theorem in 11 dimensions, ask an electrical engineer. But if you want an actual circuit that works, or your toaster's broken. And you've pointed out many times.

I love to steal your quote, you know, the problem with science is sometimes it produces technology. And that is. It leads to these expectations that, you know, this is the job. And as I discussed with Nobel laurean and past professor at UC San Diego, Duncan Haldane, he said, no, you should come up with useless ideas. The useless is the more better. Yeah, but, you know, in that same quote, which is a quote I'm happy about, I'm glad you quoted it,

and more, I'm even happier you referenced me appropriately. But is the statement that not only, am I was going to say now, that, oh, yeah, that not only is it as unfortunate that byproduct of science as technology, because people expect, then don't think the science is important unless it produces technology. But by the same token, it is remarkable to me that the other areas of human activity that I view as as equivalent to science in the sense of celebrating the humanity people, arts and literature and music, people never say that about a Mozart symphony or, you know. Or a newborn baby, right? Then I never say, oh, what good is this newborn baby? I don't want to even use that example because, yeah, it's overused.

But I like to think, because a newborn baby may actually be useful. but a Mozart symphony and a Picasso painting will never produce a better car. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thanks for listening to Part 1 of this two-part episode of Into the Impossible featuring Lawrence Krause and his new book, The Edge of Knowledge, Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos. Return for Part 2, where Lawrence and Brian discussed astrobiology, the nature of consciousness, and the risks of AI. Keep in touch and inspired by signing up for Professor Keating's Monday magic email at Briankeetting.com slash list.

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