Technology, Connected - The World Was Saved From Nuclear Disaster Because Of A Human

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

On the 26th september, 1983, in the midst of the Cold War, the world was saved from nuclear disaster because of a human. An Ai wouldn't have seen the patterns and World War 3 would have been triggered. We're reading chapters 4 and 5 of Irreducible. And he lays out the groundwork for a new theory of consciousness. He proposes it's fundamental to the universe. And the repercussions of that are monumental. Please enjoy the show. And share with a curious friend. .--Chapters(00:00) Introduction to the Battle for Attention(01:01) The Cold War and Stanislav Petrov's Decision(03:40) The Nature of Information(16:40) Consciousness vs. Machines(24:12) Coding DNA and Human Intuition(26:51) Curiosity and Creativity: The Human Experience(32:26) Live Information: Energy, Matter, and Consciousness(34:40) The Nature of Meaning and Consciousness(38:02) Quantum Computing and Its Mysteries(44:47) Consciousness and Free Will: A Philosophical Inquiry–Watch Chapter 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeqTB-q-W10&t=42sWatch Chapter 3 & 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0EynDKlcnE&t=79s&ab_channel=ThinkingOnPaper

Disruptors and curious minds. Book lovers. You're tuned into the Thinking on Paper Book Club. I'm Mark. This is Jeremy. And this is your weekly check-in with your humanity. You're in a war, ladies and gentlemen. There is a battle for your attention, for your choice, for your thinking.

But you've joined us. For 30 minutes, the algorithm can't touch you. There will be no short form content. There will be no social posts. There will be no emojis. Just you and a book. Like the good old days, one chapter four and five of Irreducible by Federico Fajn. And on the 26th of September 1983, in the midst of the Cold War,

the world was saved from nuclear disaster thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov. Thank you, Stanislav, who did not trust the data sent by the satellites announcing the imminent attack of atomic missiles launched by the USA against the Soviet Union. I was an analyst, he said. I was sure it was a mistake. My intuition told me, convinced it was some error, Petrov did not communicate to his superiors that an attack was imminent and he saved the planet. Maybe I decided this way because I was the only one who had a civilian education,

while all the other employees were soldiers used to giving and following orders. Information meets consciousness, Jeremy. Yeah, I read that and I'm like, how in the world have I not heard of this guy? We would literally not be here if it weren't for him looking at data presented to him. and being someone in a very mechanical environment, the military soldiers, order comes in, you execute the order, you don't think, you do.

And like you said, his background coming from outside in is pretty interesting. And also think about in Russia back in the Cold War, USSR back in the Cold War, it wasn't the most friendly environment to just be thinking on your own. So holy crap, we need to celebrate this guy

because he was thinking on paper for sure. I have done something very, very unthinking in paper. I didn't actually check that story was true. I assumed it was true because Federico has gained my trust. I looked, so I looked it up. And ironically, this is just what got fed to me in my searches. But apparently he was like, all right, so there's only five missiles coming from the US.

If they were really doing this, would they send just five missiles? So again, the gall and pomp. That was what kind of triggered his, I smell a rat. There's a mistake. Was it because there wasn't enough? Wasn't enough missiles. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. What was the problem? What was actually the mistake? A computer system had just picked up something that... Early warning system allegedly misfired and sent this warning out without missiles being in the air. So it was a little glitch in the ones and zeros in the symbols that were being processed without semantic meaning until our friend jumps in. Wow. Yes. Well, he saved the planet. Yeah, it's a good place to start consciousness because a machine, a robot, an AI, wouldn't have had that intuition.

And it's interesting. The more I read this book, the more I think that people are already projecting AI to be this conscious entity. When at the core of things, he says this a couple of times, at the core of things all computers are doing is differentiating between a one and a zero. That's all they're doing. Which, when you think about it like that, you're like, damn, okay. So anyway, let's jump right in. So chapter. Sentient AI, people talk about it as if it's just, oh, it's going to happen next year. And there's no comprehension of what consciousness is, what being sentient is, what being aware is. All right. So chapter four, let's let's root this in at the start.

We get a little bit of a bit of information processing history. We talk about these vacuum tubes that were invented to amplify weak radio signals that thankfully ended up in my 69 Vibrilux amplifier that makes it. sound really amazing. Then we move into the idea of diffusion bipolar transistors, germanium transistors, this evolution of technology, until we get to Federico's Intel 4004, which essentially changed the game. Quote, with Silicon Gates, the part becomes the whole. Everything kind of changed from... Wouldn't it be nice to write about the history of computers when you invent it?

Oh my gosh, right? Yeah. The Intel 404, the first 4-bit CPU, which I designed in 1970. Yeah. And then the 80-80, the Intel 80-80, right, is the next one. It's cool to root this stuff in. But a couple cool things I pulled out, you know, Informa, the Latin root of information, meaning to give shape to something. And we think about, we think about bits, these ones and zeros,

encapsulating something, encapsulating some form of early information. But information to a computer is different from information to you and I. So a computer sees a one or a zero. It's very this or that. You and I witness an event, which is a collection of information. The semantic meaning is going to be different for me than it is to you. And again, as we run through this book, it's the difference between computers and people. How did you?

Quick break in the action, friends. Mark, I got a question for you. She. What can these listeners do to help support us and continue this mission of? of delivering groundbreaking content, unique insights, and generating what tech means for us now and in the future. Well, if we're gonna get Sam Altman, if we're gonna get SpaceX,

if we're gonna do a show from NASA, we need more likes, we need more subscribers, we need more energy. And I know the people are listening to this or watching this. Wherever they are, whoever they are, they're full of that because they think on paper, so like, subscribe, help us, help you. The chapter's called The Nature of Information I've got a question for you on information. So just, I want to read a little bit first.

The fact is the term information has many meanings which vary according to the context in which it is used. It can indicate data, facts, news, instructions, knowledge, intelligence, relevance, meaning what is represented by a particular arrangement of signs or symbols, the amount of information carried by a particular symbol and so on. René Tom from morphogenesis to structure. He's a French mathematician, so it's René Tom. information. The term information, too full of all its intentional and anthropothentric connotations, should be banned from science. Okay, and then Federica goes on. The central concept of information has to do with a particular relationship between an observer and an event that transmits information to the observer. The event is a sign that brings with it

information, that is, new knowledge for the observer. Note that if the observer knew in advance which event would occur, the event would bring no new information, but only confirmation of what he already knew. If, on the other hand, the event increased his knowledge, it would have transmitted information. Okay, what about music, which you've heard before? If you're the expert... Go on. Well, as soon as I read that, about it only being information when the knowledge is new,

I immediately thought of information which wasn't new knowledge, the replication of what's and before, like when you listen to a song, which you might have listened to a thousand times before, it still has an impact on you. It still changes something. I still think that is information. Well, that's difference between the symbolic nature of information, I think, in the semantic nature of information. So once that, once that song comes through, how it was captured, you know, let's say, I don't know, this might be a stretch, but let's say all the little pieces of the song are symbolic, like the notes are symbols, are symbols of information representing, you know, like A, the note A is a representation

of a frequency at 440. That's what A is. And those are symbols. But when I listen to them all together and I've listened to them multiple times, it generates meaning and maybe even attachment, maybe even, that's why songs are so meaningful. Like when you hear them multiple times, you hear them tied into moments in your life, they're part of that moment. They're part of that piece of information. And when you said before, when the universal wave collapses, to create that memory, that song is linked to that memory. That's part of that information. In simpler terms, it's subjective versus objective. And I have consciousness so I can have a subjective entanglement with that information, whereas a machine that is only interested in

objective information can't. Yeah, what we, yeah, this is interesting. So as we read on, And what we call information is always based on a prior agreement, which questions the universality of what is meant by objective. Yeah, this is a little mind-melting. Well, then he gets into Shannon, the Claude Shannon theorization of information. Claude Shannon created this objective view of information using a lot of maths, which I won't go into here, to create a blueprint for what information is. And this objective information is what modern computers can understand work on, look for, kind of built around his framework of what information is from a mathematical perspective. Well, so, yeah, so he didn't define, and our author and hosts references this in his book. He said Shannon didn't define information.

So I had to do a little research to get my head around this stuff. I've heard of Claude Shannon. and I know he was critical to information theory and computer networks and communication. Basically, the idea is like everything is better when it's converted to bits first before you send it from one place to another. He did a couple of things according to this research. Number one, he created this, came up with this formula for the minimum number of bits per second to represent the information he's trying to represent.

And he calls that, here's the E word again, Mark, be careful. Entropy rate, which is represented by H. And then he also created, or he also came up with this idea of capacity. So I'm actually flipping to my notes here just to make sure I get this right. So a formula for the maximum number of bits per second that can be reliably communicated in the face of noise. So as long as capacity is greater than entropy, as long as C is greater than H, you have reliable communication. At least that's my understanding of things. So, hey, feel free to pop in the comments.

Call me a Yahoo. I'm always looking to get better here. But that is, that's my understanding of things. I'll say off for that. What about value of bits? There was a little part. There was a little part. I think it was, might have been a little, little reference section in here, I think.

But the value of bits, I didn't know this. So let's talk about what a one and a zero actually is. This was, this was super fascinating. So a one actually is voltage. in the node of a circuit between 0.6 and 1 volts. So we freaking quantify it. So you always talk about ones and zeros. I never knew what the heck it was.

So that's what it is. And a 0 is voltage in a node of a circuit between 0 and 0.4. So that's how you distinguish these ones and zeros. And guess what point 4 and 0.6, the area between those two are. It's the noise that Shannon was talking about. I did like that bit. And as the naive observer, which he then references, after that, I will take the role as the naive observer because he essentially writes what I thought

and I think what most people thought. So, quote, a naive observer who had the task of understanding how a microchip works by measuring what is physically accessible inside, but knew nothing about binary computer systems would think that the important information is represented by dynamic signals that change rapidly. That yes, what I thought. Instead, the information that matters is represented by stable but fleeting states during which, by convention, the signals have meaning. By observing only the dynamic voltages that are constantly changing at various points in the system, it would be difficult to understand what is going on because the logical description is anchored firmly, but elusively on an agreement that is not evident to an ordinary observer.

I think the first part of that is the bit that everyone thinks. It's just, I think the gates flicking around, but it's not. Well, go back, I think we did this a couple episodes ago, or maybe it was in another book that we were reading, but this analogy of light switches on a wall. So you have, if it's like a 10-bit system, there are 10 light switches. And any combination of those light switches captured

is the capacity of the system, I guess, is way. So you have like the first switch is on and the rest of the nine are off. The first switch is on, the second switch is on, the rest of the. So all of the infinite combination of those little signals is kind of where we get to this. But I love pulling out like these.

these little collections of words that are kind of inspiring. So bits are not physical objects, but must be robustly represented by a physical barrier. Robustly represented. That's kind of some cool language, man. Robust, not anti-fragile. Yes, sir. So I think after explaining what information is for a computer, a brief history of how computers came to be, then starts the rage against the machine, doesn't it?

I think there's a sudden break in the prose in his choice of words and in the argument and he suddenly churns against the machine and focuses on consciousness, conscious entities, life, organic matter, atom, cells, DNA. He gets into all of it. Question for you related to that. Yeah, go for it. Why don't we fully grasp the difference between conscious and unconscious? Why don't we fully grasp the difference between conscious and unconscious?

Well, because to be, to understand that difference, you'd have to be conscious when you were unconscious. Oh, there you go with the loop. The infinite loop. So I asked, words are not identical to things, knowing words relating to facts is in no way equivalent to the direct and immediate understanding of the facts themselves. Myster, I don't know the answer to your question. What's the answer? So as I understood it based on what he was working us through in this chapter is we do both as humans. We act both as machines and as conscious entities.

When we're walking down the street, once we start walking, it's very mechanical. It's like, okay, we're just doing this thing. We're not constantly going, my right foot's touching the ground, my left foot's touching the ground. But there's what Buckminster Fuller in his book, Nine Changed to the Moon, which we're actually going to read at some point. He refers to this as the Phantom Captain, basically our subconscious that allows us to go, shit, we're about to step into a hole. You need to move to the right. So we move between this mechanical existence and this conscious existence. We do machine-like things, but we also have our phantom captain helping us navigate the in-betweens.

He spoke about that in the last chapter with the driving example of when you're driving on autopilot. See, the problem is when you said the difference between being conscious and non-conscious, I just imagine. See, this is the transfer of information, objective and subjective, and I subjectively understood it as being like knocked out unconscious, not being a roeastern. just not being a robot. So when you said, what's the difference? I was thinking, how can I? Yeah. So my.

So you, well, when a robot hits me with the right cross and knocks me out, this is how I feel. Here's another quote that was pretty cool. Computers are physical structures to which we have transferred a portion of our mind in the form of programs, creating a bridge between mind and matter. So again, pointing back to you, hey, we're machine-like, but we're conscious. We now transfer a portion of that experience. to a machine to help us do things by translating, by translating, by giving meaning to some of these symbols that we understand as programmers of the system. But the computer doesn't understand

the meaning of the one or the zero or the, you know, the combination of those things. We direct it. And all it does, this was really interesting. All it does is go one or zero. Is it a one or zero? Is it one or zero? And that's the basis of all of this stuff. But we assign meaning as programmers and we also assign meeting as, you know, interpreters of the output of that as well. And that is essential to clarify that point because the ambiguity of the words used to describe robots and artificial intelligence system tends to eliminate the abyss that separates human beings from so-called intelligence machines, which you've described that. I like the use of the word abyss, just to really drive home the wedge of the difference.

Last bit in this chapter real quick. Yeah. So I pulled this. I think it's relatively paraphrased here. I'm not sure if I wrote it down exactly. But conscious processing of meaning is very different from the automatic processing of symbols. It's something that I just kind of said in a different way, but said that way is a great reminder as we read these other chapters and dig further that that is the difference between man and machine. Well, I'll read the full quote from a thing, what you might have just paraphrase, qualia and meaning of properties of consciousness not available to computers. Well, this is this, so I'm bouncing this, this book off of Lights on by Anika Harris, who I would love for you to come on the show and talk through this with us to in relation to this book, in relation to just your work in general. But really, really interesting fact that as we, as we think about it, so you have a computer and you have a person and a computer can can take, a camera can take a signal in. And that signal can be the color yellow. But the color yellow is, I think it's light vibrating at like 1,400 nanometers, just like the note A is a sound wave at 440 hertz. But we don't look at the cycles.

We don't look at the frequency of these things. We look at it as yellow. And I look at yellow. Oh, I think warm. I think sunshine. I think this. But that is different than what a computer just registers as that. But could a computer be programmed to interpret?

that collection of that signal as what I am interpreting in it as a human. Meaning, could I give the computer instructions to say, hey, if you see light vibrating at 1400 nanometers, I want you to respond with understanding that it's warm, it's sunshine, you know, whatever else you might relate to the color yellow. Anyway, there's not a question. There's not a question there or, or I don't know, it's just something I've been thinking about. Well, yeah, you could, but it still would only just be working.

in the paradigm of what you've told it, it wouldn't have access to the qualia to actually feel. Say that one more time. That's a brilliant distinction, I think. It would still be operating within the framework of what you told it. It doesn't have the qualia to feel subjectively what that is. It's the quote by Aircart. Words are not identical to things, knowing words relating to facts is in no way equivalent to the direct immediate understanding of the facts themselves. Change the wording in that. And you could just say, knowing the sensation is not the same as feeling the sensation or

knowing what you're supposed to feel and feeling are not the same thing. Are they knowing what you're supposed to say and saying the right thing? I mean, you can just say about anything, really, but they don't have the qualia. They don't have the live information. Perfect. Bridge. Bridge into chapter five. Perfect bridge in chapter five.

So let's stay on that. I'm jumping ahead just a touch. But I think we can bring this all back because this makes a lot of sense. So you said that the computer is only reacting to the instructions that you've given it previously. And those instructions could have changed over time. The first time you see instruction A in, then maybe a couple weeks later, you put instruction B, instruction C, instruction D. And over time, this computer now has a program of instructions that have evolved based on human input. So this idea of coding DNA is really interesting to me. So coding DNA is about 1.5% of human DNA,

and it specifies the structure of our 1,000 whatever proteins, right? So super important. But there are other pieces to the DNA that we don't really know what the potential is. He talks about that. But I want to focus on the coding DNA. So consciousness versus intuition. So our DNA holds information that allegedly has been changed over centuries based on experience, the evolution thing, the gene thing. So DNA is instructions. Yeah, it's the blueprint for life. Okay. So why is it? Yeah, sorry. And again, I'm not debunking consciousness, but I just want to think about the idea of like, when I react to something, how much of that is intuition going back to my code, my, this coding DNA, this 1.5% instruction set to generate a response.

That's crazy interesting to me. But the DNA is a quantum. It's a quantum construction, not a classical physics construction that lives in the machine. That's the difference. I remember junk DNA. We studied the DNA score, and I remember them talking about junk DNA,

and I never once heard somebody suggesting that, in fact, maybe that junk DNA, the other 97% is actually the meaning of life, the force, the qualia. It's all... It's all wrapped up. Yeah, it's the dark matter of your, of your blueprint, of the construction of your life. I want to ask you, so following on what you just said,

creativity and curiosity, if what you just assumed, okay, can you not just learn it by the code and then over time evolve to feel, do whatever that the human can do? Note also that a truly creative event could not be part of the alphabet of events to which we could assign a probability

since that event never existed before. And the quote on, curiosity. When an event is novel, a conscious entity becomes curious about it. And this curiosity there, so again, when an event is novel, a conscious entity becomes curious about it. And this curiosity motivates its exploration. Comprehension and curiosity are non-alorithmic properties that emerge within the entity's consciousness that can supervise the mechanical aspects of the body, which we spoke about earlier. Okay. Curiosity and creativity evolve, emerge from the quantum realm, from the quantum qualia, which I now call them, the Q, the QQ.

But the same thing applies to your question that you said all of these things that you can do. So curiosity and creativity can be, well, he says they can't be algorithmic, but you question whether they perhaps can be. Yes, but let me clarify, I am probably the biggest proponent of curiosity. That's exactly why I asked you. As a, well, here's the thing. Here's the thing, the beauty of this stuff is to challenge our intuition, our perceptions,

are beliefs of things in this environment, because I think curiosity and creativity are some of the things that make us human. When you get to the root of something, creativity is the unique arrangement of elements that are found already. So if a computer finds four blocks and they arrange them in a way that hasn't been done before,

is that creative. So then thinking about curiosity, curiosity to me is like the fuel, the power, the drive to dig deeper to understand something. could there be algorithmic instructions to say, look at this book, look at this book again, look at this book again in order to find the connection between X, Y, and Z, look at this book again and talk to Mark about it. But the difference is, we do that innately, whereas we have to script it.

We're jazz. Computers are classical. We're conscious. They're not. I don't know about you, but on the creativity, curiosity thing in my head when I think about it, I can more easily imagine creativity being, I can imagine. Imagine a robot and a computer and AI being creative more than I can genuinely curious. I think that, of course, it can fake curiosity.

Of course it can, and it does. And you can see them thinking now. You program something into Gemini. You can see it thinking. You program something in a deep. So you can see it thinking. And it gives this impression that it's curious. But it's not real conscious curiosity that we have.

It's not sitting there, Q&I, you know, glasses kind of right. Yeah. No, you hit the nail on the head. this is a, it's mimicking the behavior that's innate within us. And it's easier to mimic creativity than it is to mimic curiosity. So curiosity requires a lot of things. So yeah, I've been writing a lot about empathy lately. And you know, empathy, a lot of, a lot of the most powerful leaders in the world right now,

which is super unfortunate, they're diminishing the value of empathy, calling it the fall of our civilization. I'm not going to mention any names, but think of the two biggest Yahoo's that are out there purporting this kind of stuff. Guess what? Our previous author and host, Noah Yuval Harari, has stated historically and by research and fact that humans thrive based on our ability to be empathetic because our ability to be empathetic allows us to communicate.

It allows us to cooperate. And that's why we haven't gone extinct and other folks have. Rabbit hole. But I think empathy is important in curiosity as well. I'm using empathy for Yuval because you wait, come on thinking on paper. He will stay at it. He's too busy having interviews with Natalie Portman, so I'm like, I understand. She can come along too.

Well, she's got a book club. Of course she does. Of course. Think it's more well attended than ours? It's a little bit. So anyway, let's go into the final straight because then he turns up the dial again going right into the, what he calls live information. And we, let me just read his proposal. What's the proposal?

He actually says what he wants to outline. his name. In this chapter I will introduce the concept of live information, a new concept suitable for the types of transformations that occur within cells where matter, energy, information and meaning are inseparable. I am convinced that the study of this new type of information in which the semantic aspect cannot be separated from the symbolic aspect and from matter energy will play a fundamental role in the understanding of life and will lead us to a deeper understanding of the nature of reality and consciousness. The essence of life is about experience

and consciousness in what allows us through the body to have our first person experience of ourselves and the world. Question for you, Jeremy. Is there meaning in the universe? Man. So you've got to define meaning. So what is meaning? Is that a semantic understanding of interactions?

The universe is a series of interactions. We're all part of these, we're all little pieces interacting in certain ways. if we subscribe to, you know, the understanding quantum events, you know, there are certain instances as the wave collapses that are, that things move from being quantum to classical. So the conversion of quantum to classical when a wave, wave collapses. But the meaning is, I'll rephrase it for you where you can think about that one. And then he says here, conscious, conscious, I didn't do my warmups.

He said here, consciousness must be brought into. the domain of physics and can no longer be ignored. Do you agree with that as a non- consciousness must be brought into the domain of physics and can no longer be ignored. Consciousness should be part of, I mean, we should probably ask a real physicist what they think of. So, all right, so let's bounce back to light. Controversial. Let's bounce back to lights on. Annika Harris, again, please come on the show and talk with us. But I think in chapter. It sounded a bit desperate then, Jeremy. Be more a chapter two, chapter three. Just a nice invite. Just a nice

invite. I'm not desperate. The idea of, man, you made me lose my train of thought. So she, so, yeah, so she, she kind of proposes, and she, she did this through a paper a couple of years ago, proposes that consciousness is fundamental to atoms, to quarks, to the components that make up the universe. So that is fundamental and not this outside force generated in our brains, generated, you know, by whatever it is, it's innate to these little particles. And she had a consciousness field proposal, just kind of like a gravitational field or electromagnetic field. So if you're talking about making it part of physics, you would have to look at what is physics,

what makes physics, and how does consciousness, how does consciousness emanate from that? And I think the field idea is really interesting. Wouldn't it be part of the quantum field, though? There's only one. How many fields are there? Surely there's just one field somewhere. Well, do you want to go to string theory? I want to go to, so what you're following on from what you just said, quantum,

because he kind of ends the chapter on quantum. And I think that ties into what you said about Anna Harris. So she's all free will exist. Doesn't Sam Harris say that free will doesn't exist? So if they must have a right, oh, ding dong about free will. Absolutely. Absolutely. What did you think of this which was quantum computers cannot exist entirely in our physical world?

Only in the setting of the program, the initial conditions and the recording of the result of the calculation can be obtained in the classical world as classical information. Quantum information processing cannot be openly performed in space time with classical matter because qubits and their entanglement are non-local properties. So where does quantum computing take place? The question has puzzled physicists since the exception of this technology, but there is still no adequate. answer. It's a great Joe Fitzsimons question, for sure. We should ask that to all our quantum guests. What are your thoughts on this?

Yes. What did you think of the... It's a mad question, though, isn't it? Like, the quantum computation doesn't... I mean, there's probably some kind of quantum explanation where, in fact, they do take place in our reality. Maybe it doesn't, but yeah, where do they take place somewhere else? In that world, it's like the...

It doesn't exist until you interact with it, does it? So they don't exist. So the computation doesn't exist until it. until it's created. So where does it take place? It doesn't take place anywhere because it doesn't exist. So think about like, let's just think about quantum events. Think about quantum event number one.

And let's say you have four perspectives, four observers of that quantum event. So according to many worlds, that quantum event would spin off the amount of worlds that we have observers, observers for that. So, yeah, the idea of like you just can't, it's bonkers because you can't explain it. You can't like, hold on, I'm just going to pop in a quantum world real quick and just kind of see what's happening over there and I'll be right back. We don't have the, we haven't unlocked the ability to perceive the quantum world yet in here. Maybe that's in our junk DNA. Maybe we could, maybe we can unlock it through junk DNA. Can it answer what's on the edge of the universe as well?

What's on either side of the edge of the universe? Is that another question that lives in that same bit of junk DNA? Language. Language. Let's talk about language for a minute. So intermeeting converted to outer symbols. Outer symbols converted to intermeeting. This idea of, I don't know how to pronounce this word, prosody, prosody.

Prosity. Prosity. That's the way that you speak. Wow. I know you're going to sing today. Yeah, so intonation. I wasn't speaking. That was like talking.

Intonation, rhythm, nuance, all of that stuff. All right. So page 105, if I read this correctly, given a longer text, All languages have equal letter probability. Did I read that right? If so, that's kind of bonkers, man. Hold on. I've played Scrabble in French, and I need more to that because...

Scrabble is not long text, though. That's just little words, right? Yeah, but in English, every second letter is E. And then in French, every second letter isn't either. They have different points on their scramble board for different letters because the letters appear more often than others. No, but I think what he's saying is the idea of, like, Like, not just E compared with the other languages version of E is of alphabet.

Alphabet 1 versus alphabet 2, the probability distribution between the letters and the alphabet is similar, given a longer text. Okay. Like I said in the last episode, if it's a math question, I just accept it. Yes, I agree. So you, all right. So you accept the axioms as self-evident. Okay, heard. Statistics.

That's math. Yeah, I accept that probability. Can I go down this rabbit hole just a touch longer? So alphabets and translating symbols, so the difference between humans and machines, understanding symbols, making the one zero determination, not knowing the semantic understanding because they don't have comprehension. And you look on the cellular side, the human side, human life is 99% made up of six elements. So let's say six letters, six letters of the alphabet to create humans, right? The Earth ecosystem has 40 elements or 40 letters, all right? Quantum mechanics has six postulates, according to this theory,

this operational probabilistic theory that we're going to get into later in the book, has six letters. So are there symbols there to create? I thought that was really an interesting parallel. If ever there was a lesson to simplify, then that must be it. So few things that create so much. John Wheeler added again. Yeah, I saw it from bit.

Good old John. John Wheeler. Is he put a couple of questions for you as we finish up this chapter. How can it physics, this is a quote from the book, how can it physics entirely based on objective information explain the existence of consciousness? It can't. This isn't hot buttons, Mark. I need more.

Okay, and the other one you already asked. It definitely can't. It definitely can't. All right. Good stuff. Well, hey. What's the other question you said there's two? You actually already answered that.

does quantum computation take place. The end of the chapter teases an explanation of consciousness and free will by this O-P-T operational probabilistic theory, which I'm assuming he's going to get into in the next chapter. Chapter 6, the nature of life and any chapter in a book that begins with a quote from Marcus Oralius is something I want to read, chapter 6. What's the Marcus Aurelius quote? Go ahead and tease it for us. When you wake up in the morning, remember what a precious privilege it is to be alive,

to breathe, to think, to feel, joy, and to love. which is a bit like what I said at the end of last week's book club, really. You are conscious, people. We are reading a book about consciousness. It is Friday evening. It is spring. You are conscious. What are you doing?

Now you finish listening to this. Walk out the door wherever you are. Look at the sky. Look at the birds. Listen to the birds. Find somebody. Say hello. Do something.

Use your consciousness. Find somebody say hello. I love that. I love that. Well, there you have it. Chapters 4 and 5. Irreducible. Again, our ability to reduce these chapters is also

appropriately named the title of the book. But that was fun, man. I feel like I got my head around some of this stuff. I excited to dig in deeper. What are these guys and gals need to know about what's coming up next for us? I think there's only really one thing that the disruptors and curious minds of thinking on paper need to know. And that's next Friday we are speaking with Kevin Kelly,

futurist, wired founder, optimist, wise man. He's been on Tim Ferriss. And now he's coming on thinking on paper. and that will be released as soon as I can work out how to edit it after the show, so maybe in about 10 days. Next week, I'm in Paris at Blockchain Week. If you're there, come and say hello. And anything else, Jeremy?

That's it. Be curious. Stay disruptive. Keep thinking on paper.