The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Neil deGrasse Tyson: Starry Messages, Science, Culture, and Life

Episode Date: November 6, 2022

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most recognizable faces of science in the world, and for good reason. He has thought a lot about how to engage people in the wonder and joy of science, something that is also near and dear to my own heart, and to the spirit of many of my own activities, including The Origins Podcast. I was so happy that Neil agreed to return to have another dialogue on the podcast following the release of his new book, Starry Messenger, because it provided us with the opportunity to have the kind of give and take discussion that I so enjoy having with him, and which I also think is so important for people to get to watch. Neil and I share many of the same sensibilities but we don’t agree about everything, and our perspectives are sometimes different. We try to share those different perspectives with each other by respectful dialogue, and discussion. Sometimes we change each others’ minds, or at least I like to think we do. That aspect of science, open questioning, joint enthusiasm for trying to find what he calls objective truth, and what I am less willing to label as such, is one of the things he discusses in his book, and I think our dialogue provides a great example of how science can help us move forward together toward a possibly brighter future. It will be interesting to hear what you think about our discussion. In the end I hope you will find it as entertaining and informative as I did. As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, I'm Lawrence Krause and welcome to the Orchance podcast. I'm really excited about this podcast, which is my second podcast with Neil deGrasse Tyson. An old friend and colleague and of course one of the most well-known and recognized faces of science around the world. Neil has come out with a new book called Starry Messenger about having a cosmic perspective on human issues. And I wanted to talk to him about that. And it was a great chance for us to have the kind of given, take that I enjoy having with him so much and I think it's important for the public to see that. People often misinterpret the fact that we don't always agree as somehow representing some

problems between our relationship, but it's not bad. It's just the standard give and take of scientists being willing to have that conversation and not agreeing but going back and forth with respect and enthusiasm. And so of course because his book is really about how a scientific perspective is such an important part of human civilization, and that's something I've been pushing for my whole career, and my whole career as a public scientist as well. We obviously agree on those fundamentals, but parsing some of the things he says

allows us to elaborate on some of that and talk about our different perspectives, and sometimes, as I say, we disagree about some of the emphasis and some of the issues, but really it allows us a chance to give examples about the beauty and wonder of science in many different ways. And so the conversation was incredibly exciting for me,

and I hope it will be for you. You can watch it without any advertisements on our Critical Mass site, if you subscribe to Critical Mass, our Substack site. Of course, you can also watch it on YouTube, our YouTube channel, where you can listen to it on any of the standard podcast listening sites around the world,

no matter how you watch it or listen to it. I certainly hope you'll enjoy it, but I hope you'll consider either subscribing to us on critical mass or on YouTube. But either way, I hope you'll consider supporting the foundation, which happens if you subscribe to it on critical mass, because the nonprofit foundation, the Origins Project Foundation, is designed to do what this particular podcast is all about,

to connect science and culture around the world in many different ways. And I hope you'll consider supporting that effort. So thanks again, and once again, I hope you enjoy this podcast with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Well, Neil, thank you for coming back again to talk. I always have so much fun when we talk, and I'm looking forward to this. Well, thanks for having me because, you know, it's been a while. You don't call, you don't write, you know. Yeah, I know.

I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. But I, I, you know, actually, I do call and write. You just don't answer, but. No, is that what it is? Anyway, I'll check my inbox again. All right. Yeah, exactly.

That's right. I'm sure just one of the many. but one of the reasons I like our discussion so much is it is one of the reasons that I people think people don't understand our discussions because they reflect for me the friendly give and take that is really part of science and which really you talk about a great deal in this in this lovely book which I I will show because because I'm going to show it anyway because I did really enjoy it but people often think you and I don't like each other whatever because we argue and it's and it's But it's that friendly argument, the fact that you can disagree or learn from each other.

And I think I like to think we both have. I think there's some moment when we were on stage getting to some dust up. But, of course, we all go out for beer afterwards. And I think that's a very important distinction between what happens between scientists and apparently everybody else today. Yeah, but I do remember that one time on stage, you know, I wasn't one of the ones that was either holding you or wanting to hit you. So, you know, I was just watching. But I may have felt like it, but I didn't get up and do it. Anyway, what I want to do is, I want to talk about the new book, which I really enjoyed a lot,

even though, you know, there are issues that I have that we're going to discuss, but it raised, it raised perspectives that were interesting and caused me to think, which is, of course, really the point of books. And, but, and, you know, we don't have to go into your origins because we've done that before, even though this is an originist podcast. but I do want to ask about the origin of the book in some sense. What caused you to take this tack? I know you've thought about these things and often reflect in things like your tweets

and other things. You try and present what you would say as a cosmic perspective for a long time. I think I've known that. But what caused you to write this book, basically? Let me first blow a little smoke your way and say, that the whole concept of origins is so fascinating and such a challenge. It's a scientific challenge, an intellectual challenge, an emotional challenge. How do you know how something got there when you don't have more than one example of what it is that got there? And so the fact that you're maintaining,

you're continuing to carry this torch, which has been burning in bits and pieces around funding streams for a few decades now, but I don't hear much about it lately except through your efforts. So I just want to send that your way. We can end the podcast now. Oh, well, certainly. Okay. So, yeah, the origin, I would say, was when I was in middle school, where I'm ascending

rapidly in my science literacy from books I'm reading and the science classes I'm enjoying and I was an amateur astronomer. And the, in case people don't know, to say you're an amateur astronomer, it's actually a statement of ability. It's a statement of talent. You would never go to an amateur neurosurgeon, okay? But if an amateur astronomer moves in on the block, that's a good thing.

They're going to have a backyard telescope. They're going to show you the night sky. They're going to point out the constellations. They're going to show you their magazines. You know, it's their photos. Yeah. So I had this level of science literacy in early middle school. It was when I was 12, 13, 14, and I'd walk around it and I'd see adults, like full-grown

adults say things and do things like, what? Don't you know? Don't you know? How come you know? I know. But you're three, four times my age. And to see otherwise rational adults who are in charge of things. who are running for office, who wield resources be, let me say, victim of their own,

what would they be victim of? They're a victim of an educational system that doesn't value science enough to guarantee that everyone coming out of school is scientifically literate, so that when in 1973, because that's how old I am, Kamikahutech was coming around, It was billed as the Great Christmas Comet because that's about when it was going to round the sun. And it was discovered farther out than any previous comet.

So when you do that, you say this is going to be a doozy. But it turned out it wasn't very loose with its gases, okay? And so the comet has to be sort of loose enough. It's the loose gases. I love that. I'm going to, that's a deal quote I'm going to use. Yeah, but in context, okay. So comets that have been jostled a bit, there's more capacity for them to, more ability for them to

generate these gaseous plumes in their tails. But this one didn't. But that's not what matters here. What matters is astronomers discovered the comet well before it was visible to the naked eye. And I saw people adults on the street, and I am 14 years old, one carrying a placard, repent. The comet is coming. The end of the world is near. And I said, no, it's not.

I can't. You didn't even know about the comment until we told you. And these frustrations have accumulated my entire life, observing, you know, casinos, new age festivals, things where sort of adherence to scientific principles are loose if they exist at all. all. And I said, you know, I don't have time to do anything with this awareness, but I was taking notes. I was taking notes. And so over COVID, something, I think I was, I was gestating the book my whole life. And over COVID, it came to term, watching the vaccine denials and all of this. And this book was just birthed. And the funny thing is, I'm in this web universe called Goodreads, where a lot of readers talk to each other about their books.

One person asked me, when you were writing this book, what did you do when you had writers block? And I said, no, no, no. This was an entire, this was, I know writers block, and I know how that can happen, but it didn't happen with this book. Yeah, you'd been stuffed of just waiting to go. Yeah, and if you remember from the book, there are examples of cases drawn from my entire life.

Yeah, and I read that. Observations I've made. Yeah, I read that in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, and, and I also will say, I've noted that about you from, from you. You, I knew you before you were you. Okay. And, and, and, and. I think we go back to the 80s, don't we?

We, we go back a long way. And I remember, you know, giving a talk and you were, and your wife were in the back of the room. And, and, and you were. observing and I think you by the way has a PhD in mathematical physics. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And exactly. And therefore, you know, has abilities. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But no one else does, but you got to have that degree. Yeah, but I remember sitting in the back of the room and I think afterwards, you know, I came out, I ran back to see you. And, and I just remember you were commenting on, on things that I'd said or the way I'd said it. And it was just clear to me, you were

you were, you know, you really reflect on, on, have for a long time, I've reflected on not just things, but how to present them and how to think about them. And it's sort of, you know, a cumulative effort. And so, yeah, it's clear that this is a, this is the result of, you know, of a, not just a lifetime of frustration, but a lifetime of scientific experience. And, and it's the kind of thing, you know, I love, I, one of my favorite books of all is a book by Jacob Bernowski about, which is, which is his version. of this in the sense of the need. As he said, science is whole and real. It's not a matter of playing games.

It's there whether you like it or not. And any case, so obviously we resonate on that. Although, as I say, I'm not trying, there's some things I learned. There's some things that you present perspectives rather than opinions, but the question is sometimes whether, well, I want to ask you questions about your perspective. Sometimes I have.

But I love the illusion. Thanks for noticing that. I mean, the book is, I think it's, it doesn't soften anything that has to be said the way it needs to be said. And the chapter titles go deep into everything that divides us today. So race and color and gender and identity and law and order. You're not supposed to talk about. You're not supposed to talk about.

And so the whole chapter that was originally called War and Peace, but it ended up being mostly about political battles, political battles. And so I changed it to, what I call it? Law and order? No, not law in order. There's one near the end, yeah, I forget. No, no, no, it was early. I think it was, I called it conflict and resolution.

Oh, conflict and resolution. Which was more broader, which includes war, and I do talk about war. But again, it's the blunt, the blunt. the blunt revelations that a science lens, especially a cosmically informed science lens, can bring to all of these topics. And so it's not me presenting opinions, although, of course, I have opinions, but I don't care that you know my opinions. You're a different person. I don't require that of other people that they share my opinions on things. If everyone had my opinion, how boring that world would be.

Yeah, yeah, we talk about that. But everyone should at least align with the objective truths delivered by the methods and tools of science. And if you don't, then it's chaos. Yeah, and you say it in some ways that I want to actually talk about. I want to parse some of the things you say. A lot of things you say. In fact, we won't get there. I know I have notes.

I think I have about 120 questions. So we're not going to get through all this. Got to start somewhere. Yeah, yeah. But no, I mean, you know, questions or points, not all. I will say, I think the use of the word starry messenger is beautiful. I mean, the illusion to Galileo bringing us the first inconvenient truth, which was... Yeah, that's a nice way to put it.

Yeah. Correct. Yeah, I mean, something unappreciated by many, I think, is when he observed Jupiter and he saw these little stars near Jupiter, he called them Jupiter stars, right? What else? There's no other word for them, because the idea that... that another planet would have a moon was just a foreign concept. And so he watches Jupiter migrate across the sky as planets do,

and these little stars stayed with it. And that was kind of cool, and he kept watching him, and he was able to notice that they orbited Jupiter. This was the first time anybody saw that Earth was not the center of all cosmic motion. Something as simple as that. And so it's profound. It's profound, and these are messages from the universe.

Yeah, exactly. It was not, it wasn't Copernicus so much saying, well, you know, here's a reason that, you know, made the Earth's orbit sun. It was an observation that you couldn't get around. These things went around Jupiter. There's no way you could, there's no way you could get around that fact. And boy, it had to change your picture.

And I think that is indeed the beauty of sciences we'll talk about. The fact that reality can cause you to change. mind is so important and so liberating. And in my, I'm, I'm a little worried about it because it's also under attack, as we'll talk about. The, um, um, so I get so, well, okay, we'll get to, I like your use of aliens too, but we'll get to that in the second. Um, you got to throw in an alien every now and that, because they don't have any preconceived notions about us. No, I've also thought of that. I want, I, I don't want to get too far because I always tend to want to jump ahead because I like it. But you know, I will say this. I've sat in a city at late at night, day two in the

morning, or maybe in the country and I'm at a stoplight and it turns red. And I've often thought, and there's nobody around the whole, nobody. There's nobody. It's better at night too. Why would they think that I would stop the damn car? It's just, I mean, so stupid. Anyway, but okay. So, but let's stop up, start about some of the things that get our impediments to, to thinking this way. And you talk about a very important thing, which you actually ran a meeting in my Origins Institute for a while on, but the fact that Groupthink does give some survival advantages, that there are evolutionary reasons why we're not completely rational and why we, and they helped us survive. The teleology, which I think you talk about the book somewhere,

but the fact that, you know, if I did, I surely didn't use that word. Yeah, I'm sure you didn't use the word. Yeah, exactly. I know you did. I'd like. People understanding what I say. Yeah, I know. I just do that so I sound superior. But anyway, but the need to always find purpose, for example, you know, the examples of, you know, the humans on the savannah. And I think you use it, you know, if you're, if the, if the leaves are rustling and you can assume there's no reason behind it or something reason. And the people who didn't assume there are no reason that get to have babies and survive.

So, so there is this evolutionary. A cleaner summation of that is that. that curiosity is not always rewarded in the wild. Yeah. Because curiosity of something that can kill you kills everybody who's most curious. Yeah, it kills the cats. Yes.

Hence the expression. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't want to hold it against people if they're not curious. What I want to do is offer them the fact that they were once curious as children. Yeah.

And so much of our curiosity was squashed by adults trying to have us not die. But in the effort to have us not die, they're preventing us from all manner of other experiments that would have been conducted and weren't. And as a result, I'm blaming this that the seeds of curiosity just fade. You know, the blooms are not, you know, don't get fur. and you just, and the curiosity goes away by the time we're in high school, to the point where when you graduate, graduation day, graduation day, what are people saying, schools out, you know, it's that Alice Cooper song, schools out for the school's out forever.

It's a celebration of not having to learn. Yeah. And so I don't want to blame the song for making that happen. I'm going to blame schools for that even being a thought for a rock artist. to compose lyrics around. Well, I think, I know from our last discussion, I was going to mention when you said you started to think scientifically in middle school, you know, through school and other things.

But you actually did say that it was school teachers weren't a big deal in your life. And you remember you said that in our last discussion that they really didn't have, that, you know, it was internal, I think. And you didn't find school particularly, I mean, later on went to Bronx High School of Science. I would assume that was a good school. but but well you know just to be clear what makes schools good is the other students who are there more than who's doing the teaching right absolutely i mean all the way through school including all the way through you can go to a you know a fine marquee college and you take intro physics

using the same textbook as any other intro physics across the country and so it matters more in graduate school of course where you have relationships with you know brilliant professors and things but for the rest of that book learning? No, no. And so I, because I didn't shine in the ways you're supposed to in school so that a teacher will notice you and then tell everyone, oh, he'll go far. I didn't, the boxes weren't checked in my case under those conditions. And so no. And it's funny because people will start out with the question, what teacher influenced you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They start out. I was like, no, I'm where I am in spite of teachers, not because of them.

One day I'll compile all my report cards and what teachers said about me and I'll publish that, but not just yet. World's not ready for that. Wait till they're dead. I think you should wait till they're dead. It's fair. Okay. Like Copernicus, I'll be on my deathbed. Here it is.

And you write the preface. So, you know, he really wasn't supposed to publish this, but even if it really isn't how the system worked, we have to, you know, yeah, there you go. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Well, anyway, Steve Pinker, by the way, wrote up, well, his book on Rationality gives a lot of reasons why people are irrational. But I want to talk about Stephen O'N. More than I would have given. I really just touched on it. Yeah, yeah. Just so that people didn't feel like completely, like a complete idiot for feeling that way.

You write at the beginning of the book, I'm hopefully we'll work the way. Are we on question one now? What was that? One page two. Are we on question one now out of 120? Okay. But, you know, you say something like nothing is more human than the methods, tools, and discovery of science. I mean, all of that I cannot but agree with. They shape modern civilization.

I have always said science is a vital part of our culture, which people don't realize. And that's really a different way of saying what you're saying. But the same thing, right? But the question I want to ask is, is it an invisible part. Part of the problem is it is a central part of our civilization, but is it so invisible that people don't realize it is? People don't realize what they're doing is science. That's a great question. Really excellent question.

I think it's not that it's invisible, which it is, but I don't think that's the main thing. It's that we are so adaptable as a species. We simply grow accustomed to it. So it's hidden in plain sight. The fact that your smartphone gets GPS timings that have been corrected for Einstein's relativity so that you can find the shortest route to grandma's house. That's hidden in plain sight. You just know it gets you to grandma's house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I once tweeted, I said, this one, it was a little letter to say, Dear, vaccine deniers, flat earthers, homeopathic special. And I went to the whole list. Yeah. And I said, you found each other using stupefyingly advanced technology, pivoting on discoveries in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Just thought I'd let you know this. Signed your smartphone, okay? Yeah, no, I once wrote back when I used to write in the New York Times. I raised the L.A. times that time. Yeah, I was stuck in traffic in L.A. and I wrote a piece. This was many years ago on GPS and General... I hope you wrote it after you got out of the car. Yeah, yeah, I thought of the piece, yeah.

Although in L.A. you can actually write the piece while here now you can recite it yeah yeah we have a pretty good voice recognition today one of the things i like to learn was that you know i've always used feyman's statement that the easiest person to fool is yourself and i was pleased to learn of your scholarly um uh information here that that really the first person who said that really well at least the first person you quote was this arabic scholar ibn al hytham in in who lived in around the era a thousand years ago. Yeah, he said he should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it so that he may avoid falling into the prejudice or leniency. And then

Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinion. I mean, Feynman basically re-quoted that. And it's a really, that's great. But since you're your buds with Feynman, you've got to give him props even when you don't have to. Well, I learned it from Feynman. So, yeah, yeah, I guess so. I didn't learn. Yeah, yeah, he's my guy. He's my guy. He's my man. He's your guy. I've never met him. And you hung out with him. and played bongos with him. But so that can create a delusional sense of greatness in and of itself with how you think about Feynman,

relative to any other scientists who ever live. Well, you know, it's where, yeah, anyway, it's where you hear things. But the most important thing is that is probably, I would argue, I'm going to give you a definition of science, one definition of science, because science, what people don't realize is science is a process. It's not a set of rules. And we talk about that.

But let me put this to you on the basis of that. I would say science is a tool to overcome self-deception. What do you think of that? It occurred to me when I was writing. I took me two sentences to say that. You just did it in one. But I think it's in the book where I say, forget anything you've ever been formally taught about the scientific method.

Here is the scientific method. Do whatever it takes to ensure that you are not fooled into thinking something is true that is not or that something is not true that is. Period. If that means getting chart recorders, getting notes, taking video, repeating the experiment, getting someone else to do it, removing your sensory system as much as possible because you, you, because you're colorblind or because you have narcolepsy or whatever. Yeah. So yes, that is science. Nothing else is but that. And I think that really, I really, in some sense, it defined science. You know, I was at a debate in, well, I was online in debate at Oxford University, which is a lot of woke students will talk about that. But the premise of debate was everyone is religious. And unlike my atheist colleagues who were on the other side, I took the side that everyone is religious. And my argument was, if people weren't, we wouldn't need science. I mean, if people didn't naturally have this religious tendency, then we would have had to have invent science. It would just be so natural to everyone that it would

Yeah, I would say that another way without having to to go through that portal. I would just simply say, if scientific thinking and mathematical logic were natural, it would not have, the expression of the scientific method as we currently practice it today, widespread is really traceable to like the year 1600 plus or minus a few years. So why did it take 10,000 years before that even arose? Yes, there were nips and bits of it. And you can invent things.

Romans built the Coliseum, right? So there's not like you can't still accomplish things, but the idea that the universe is knowable, that you can come up with an hypothesis that can make predictions about something you previously knew nothing about, rather than, very important distinction that I did not make in the book,

And I want to make it even to a colleague who's not an astro colleague, although you might claim you are occasionally. I'm a half astro colleague. You dabble in the dark arts. So it is to see the rhythms of the night sky and say on this day, the sun is going to rise over the heelstone, as what occurs in Stonehenge. That's not really science. That's noticing patterns.

Yeah. Okay? And that's a very important feature of what it was to come out of the caves. Yeah. And create the rhythms of the seasons and the crops. And you notice something when certain causes and effects take place. Okay. But to say, I'm going to do this to the crop so I get a different crop later,

that's manipulating the future. That's getting controlled. over the operations of nature, and that is what science is all about, or at least it turned out to be all about that. And so that's why it's another level up to say, I know more than just the rhythms that tomorrow is going to repeat what happened a year ago. It's another level. And that's why it took so long. Otherwise, everyone's easiest class in school would be math. So I agree with you.

Science would just be a natural way of thinking, and we probably wouldn't even have a word for it. Yeah. If, in fact, it was intuitive. Yeah, it's not intuitive at all. And we have to learn it by example, and often have it pounded in our heads. And I think it's more than,

I would say it's more than just what you said, which is that in overcoming your self-deception, the key thing that the Greeks didn't have, which would have made, I mean, then, you know, they were amazing in terms of things they could do. do, but it's, they didn't realize that nature can overcome your self-saccession. How do you do that by experiment?

It's the, and the Romans said, it's the fact that ultimately you submit your views and your predictions to nature. And you don't, you don't say they're true unless you've tested it. Right. And I think that's a really important thing. And by the way, what shows up all the time, you know, you get some anti-science sentiment in any particular enclave. And they'll say, scientists don't really know.

Scientists used to think that Earth was flat. And so they have to go back 500 years for that. And I say, yeah, that's because the idea of experiment didn't really take widespread hold. Once experiments took place, 1600, I would say, and onward, and with the near simultaneous invention of the microscope and the telescope, oh my gosh. You want to turn stuff on its ear. So there you have it. And what then happens when you have experimental verification.

Not only do I get the result, but so do you and you're a competitor of mine and so does someone else using different wall current of a design of a different experiment. We'll get the same result. That is an objective truth that will never later be shown to be false. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there because that's one of the big misconceptions about science. I absolutely agree. It's that it's that the fact that you will that you will look at, at that you're willing, in fact, it's a great thing that's quote unquote scientists when saw the earth was flat because unlike, well, I don't want to, I don't want to harp religion, but we don't anymore and that's proof that science works. The fact that science can change their minds because nature tells us that our pretty pictures were wrong is a virtue. It's a feature, not a bug. Right, but I claim that's overstated because is there, we're not going to one day change our minds. You know, E actually equals MC cubed, right?

No, no, no, absolutely. We'll get there. In fact, I like your example of the Russian doll. I'm going to, we're going to get there in a second. But I want to, I do want to take. Are we up to the question two yet? We're on top question four of 120. Anyway, but so you do say that,

that this system of internal self-regulation is a unique feature of, probably unique feature of science. I don't, do you really mean that? I mean, I don't think, I think it's a unique feature of scholarship. Take history, for example. I mean, the testing keeps going on and the willingness to sort of be corrected by empirical evidence. I mean, the question is you call history science. I mean, if you're talking about this, and I'm not going to accuse that because people are doing science when they're not doing science, you know. Wait, wait, so academic scholarship broadly. Yeah. Okay. When it's done, well, ought to be susceptible to fresh views on whatever people were once thinking.

The difference is it's not clear whether any other profession can declare something as an objective truth where no one later will then show it to be false, right? So history, you can say, well, Hitler committed suicide and everyone agrees with that, but then you find out, wait a minute, there's a note. and he had a lover and had made the lover kill him and not himself. But that's new information. Yeah. So which renders what they said previously wrong.

It doesn't fit into a larger narrative. It's just wrong. Okay. That does not happen in science. Okay. Now we're going to get, I'm going to get to this point, which was later on. I would argue that the only objective truths are falsehoods. Namely, you know, I do worry about this.

You use a word, and I, and I, and I, and I, I know I have a question later on, objective truth a lot. And I kind of think that's overstated. I think objective truth is, is, I mean, there are, I believe that there are, I believe, I don't like to use the word I believe. You just did. Yeah, I just did, I know, but I don't like it when I do. Anyway, you don't believe that you like using the word belief.

No, no, I think I know where you're coming from. Don't confuse. There's no doubt that there are, that there's an objective reality. No, no, Lawrence, don't, don't confuse. absolute truth with an objective truth. I completely perfectly define objective truth. That's whatever repeated experiments

shows. Period. Okay, but if you want to, now, now, I will not take the bait of the philosopher and get into an argument about word definitions. No, no, no. Yeah, I will not do that. But let me give you an example. Let's take an example of what I mean by the fact

that subjective truth is that Newton's laws work. And Newton's laws will always work. And that's the point I try and make is that you take, no matter what we learn about quantum gravity, you take a ball and you drop it, it's going to, you know, Gallo O'Duton, we're just as right, and they will be just right in the 25th century. So everything we learned about science, scientific revolutions are not like human revolutions, which actually probably don't do away with everything that went before them anyway.

They like to think they do. They inevitably don't. But scientific, it's this, as you say, you call this Russian doll, the fact that we're sort of building layers on. But at the same time, in the sense that Newton's laws, while they fail at high speeds and high gravity, they are fully embedded within Einstein's laws of motion and gravity. Yeah, but so the question is our thought of what objective truth is does grow in the sense that new laws are right, but we know that they're not objectively true in all regimes. And so in the regimes it's tested, it's true.

Yeah, so it's tested and continued. It's true in the sense that if you ever test Newton's. laws at low speeds, you'll always get the same result. But you can't extrapolate from high speed. You want to change the definition of how I use the word objective and try to turn it into absolute truth, then I can't use the word objective. Because we're only ever more closely approximating some ultimate truth of nature. Yeah, well, that we may never get there.

No, I agree. We may never get there. Okay, anyway, I thought it would be worth discussing what we. No, I'm not going to argue definitions. You want to change the definition of my word to say that I'm wrong? you can do that and I'll use the new definition and I'll say I mean I'm a little influenced by you know the standard guys but I you know I what I kind of think is if we know is false we'll always be false. If it was my philosophers who are trying to establish the limits of science by declaring that we will never know what is actually true in nature yeah well and I claim that while that's true it's not even interesting yeah because what we do discover completely shaped civilization yeah If equals MC squared is not the absolute truth, does that really matter if we build bombs out of it and it created 60 years of geopolitics? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely about absolute. Okay. Okay. Oh, by the way, your guy, I say is your guy, because I think you even debated him at some case. I've never debate anybody. So you've got the gonads out there to do the debates. It's what's the guy's name? Deepak Chopra.

Oh, Deepak Chopra. I've mentioned the word truth in many of my tweets. He comes back and doesn't use objective truth. He says there are no absolute truths. And I said, I never used the word absolute. Okay? So he's trying to have the argument to put science in its place so that people can have whatever fucking thoughts they want

and think it's true. Yeah, I know. That are in denial of what science otherwise says is true because then all they can say, All they need to say is science hasn't gotten there yet. And when it does, it will understand astrology. And you'll understand why homeopathic medicine works. You're just not there yet because science has limits.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know to say it. This is dangerous false. It's dangerous nonsense. And I actually, Deepak, who I've talked to, desperately wants to be respected and by scientists. And I told them it's just simple. Stop staying stupid things. And leave quantum mechanics out of his conversation. Yeah, exactly.

stop. Yeah, anyway. That would be a big first step for him. Yeah, it would be a huge first step. I tried to them that. Just stop it. Don't talk about things you don't know, understand. And that's a first step. But anyway, look, in this regard about non-science, one of the things that you point out, and I sort of have argued it for some time because I am pretty political, is that not that anti-science or non-scientific thinking undermines them. democracy. And let me ask you, put it another way. Is scientific literacy essential for democracy? I don't think it's essential for everyone to be scientifically literate, but the people in power should be, or at least have advisors who are who they know how to trust. In a free society, you can't require everybody be anything. No, no, I know. I'm not requiring it. I'm just saying, is, you know, is some things of scientific literacy.

and make decisions and build civilization. Just go back to the cage. I think it's true. But does you think that explains much of the current situation then, the fact that people aren't? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. By the way, situations have been worse.

So the Second World War, as I calculated for people in the conflict and resolution chapter. Yeah. Between 1939 and 1945, a thousand people were killed per hour for every. hour across those six years in the service of the Second World War. Now, if a truck barrels through a protest and kills a dozen people, it's world headlines for a few days, local headlines for a week, regional headlines for a week, local headlines for a month. Depending on who does it. It could be headlines for a year. Yeah. Anyway, right. No, exactly. Exactly. And so, and I think to myself, what our heads have just exploded if we reported on every

death during warfare. You know, Vietnam, we lost 100 servicemen a week. Yeah. The world lost a thousand per hour. So, and right now, I think, who was it that argued this? It was Stephen Pinker, right? The better...

There were better. Yeah, better angels of our nature. Even in spite of some of the criticisms of his reasoning that was invoked, I think there's a broader truth he's getting at that we are more peaceful than ever before. living under the control of states

rather than free roaming tribes. Yeah, and it's an interesting thing because I agree and I happen to agree with him and it's an issue I've debated with Nolmchomsky a little bit who I think kind of like the natural you know, harkens back to the kind of Descartes kind of or not Descartes, Rosonean view of sort of nature is the ideal and I'm not, I think, I think.

By the way, I'm reading Rousseau now. I'm amazed I'd missed that book my entire life. So it's on my, it's on my mantle right now. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. Born free, we live forever in Jane's. It's really interesting. Anyway, one of my favorite lines.

But, okay, good. We'll talk about that next sometime. But one of the things you point out, which I think is really important, and people don't understand. I'm still, by the way, only on page five, okay? So let me just, but because a lot of these ideas to go throughout the whole book, so I don't have to repeat them. But, but that, you know, people think that science is like to agree,

Like you and I, you know, we have to have a secret handshake and we can't ever say this is, you know, we decide evolution's true, we decide this and we'll never listen to anything else. But you point out if you go to a conference that's open season on ideas and that's not only good for the field, that's an ascend. It's not just good for the field. It's essential. In fact, in fact, Jonathan Roucher, the guy interviewed and he pointed out that science is a social activity, that it's in sense that social, the willingness, the necessity that all ideas are. are open to fire by anyone in the community is an essential part of science and it couldn't be done if you didn't have that community.

And this is true with physics, but I know it's especially true in astrophysics. Our published papers do not carry your academic pedigree next to your name. It's just your name. And so you don't necessarily know who might be a graduate student or an undergraduate who had a summer project

that plugged into the research paper. So everyone is mixed there. You look at social science journals, you get all the pedigree, MPA, and I always wondered what's the point of that. I mean, now I should listen to them because they're pedigreed without regard to whether I think what they said is irrational or illogical or pointless. Really? One might be tempted to say that that's all in certain areas. That's all they have is pedigree. But I won't say that. And I won't put those words in your mouth. But I just did say it. I know, I know.

But let me point out the dark side of some of this because I'm worried. Just one thing, just in all fairness, I think the open season, as you, the phrase you used is, Oh, okay, fine. Do I use it? Yeah. I was complimenting you for using it. Yeah, there you go, but I'm deferring. Okay.

So I think at a conference, if it's a newbie graduate, student giving a talk or a very senior person and they say something wrong, we will still criticize them, we'll just do it a little more politely. Okay. Well, okay, maybe, maybe. But if you're in the middle, there's no politeness. We'll be a little polite, just if someone just, you know, has been around 50 years. No, but I'm actually want to hit a serious point here, because I wrote a piece recently about my concern about this, about the Department of Energy, which is the major funder physical science in the country. People don't realize.

Through the particle accelerators and things. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, they basically spend more money on physics. In other words, but just it's a little misleading the way you put it. It's not like they're handing money like the NSF and the NIH to academic researchers, and that's the biggest source. They're the complete funding agencies for all of the particle accelerators. Well, all the national labs, but they also find all the...

So that's what boosted up pretty. high. Yeah, it's true, but they also fund much of physics. I was sort of I agree. I'm just saying that to say they're the biggest funder. If you took away the national labs, it wouldn't be as stark. Okay, good point. Okay, good. Anyway, this is not the point I'm getting at, except what worries me is that they have presented a whole bunch of new rules, which I would say are kind of woke rules, but let's not use that word. But one of the new rules is that they won't let fund meetings unless the organizers put this code of behavior that there'll be no bullying

no harassing no no and and the question is I worry about that because first of all why do we need that we're supposed to be adults you know it's not we're not we're not kindergartners but secondly I worry about that because if you go up at say to someone at their lecture hey this is just wrong you get up afterwards say look this is just non- for this reason. Is that bullying? And is it only bullying if they're a young person or an older person? I mean, doesn't that really stifle it does not really stifles? I'm really worried about it stifling scientific communication at these kind of meetings where where there should be open season on ideas that are wrong. I haven't read the new rule book, but that issues forth from other

federal guidelines that are taking place in the in the workplace. Yeah. There's a there's a list, a growing list, I would say, but I think the rate of growth is slowing. What derivative is that? The rate of change of the growth is slowing. There's a rather complete list of protected characteristics of a person that in a workplace, you cannot denigrate, okay, without risk of being. reported to human resources and having disciplinary actions taken against you. And that includes what might be a joke, you would tell.

Yeah, yeah. Even if a joke is a joke and has a beginning, middle, and an end, if the joke references one of these protected classifications, and the joke makes fun of someone at the expense of others, that can be brought up. Okay, so now, in this architecture, It is very clear what they mean when they say bullying. Bullying is not simply telling someone they're wrong, even doing so aggressively.

It is persistently doing it so that you are on the attack on a level that only bullies are good at. And so you know the bully. The bully, there's some great movies that needed bullies for their storylines. Okay, let me take an ancient example of someone who's kind of venerated in the world, or at least, I don't know that venerate is the word, but he was, Wolfgang Powley, okay? You know what, this famous story about Wolfgang Powley. If someone was speaking nonsense, he would go up. Oh, he says not even wrong.

Well, not even that. Worse. He'd go up and take the chalk out of their hands. If they were lecturing, he'd get up and take the chalk out of their hands. So he was a bully, right? Yes, you wouldn't do that today. Okay, the problem is... Because our social mores have evolved.

What I'm asking you is that a good thing? You don't call grown black men boy, all right? As they do in the song, chat and no get-choo. Let's not conflate things. I'm not conflating. I'm saying times shift. You can't go back 70 years and say, that was good then.

Why can't it be good now? Yeah, but my question to you is, Is it a good thing? Because you're absolutely right. If you have legal definitions of things like bullying or this or that, that's one thing. But we all know in the modern world, if you after someone's lecture, you know, in the question period, say, this is wrong. And they say, why you say, no, no, don't you understand? This is the reason.

Look, you've got a sign error, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. That's not bullying. Hold on. But then they report you for bullying. then if people are worried about being reported for bullying, because it's all perception now. It can be to the individual, but that's not the litmus test. The litmus test is not what the individual feels.

It's what would a sensible person observing what happened say about what happened. Okay, that would be nice. That is now part of the canon of this literature that's describing workplace conduct. Yeah, okay. Well, I would point out to you that that is ideal, but I would also point out to you that's not what happens. And I'm worried it won't happen. I'm worried that because of the prevalence of things like social media and other things

that people's sense of victimization will over, will take precedence over what you might call objective truth. And, and. Okay. I don't think that's happened yet. I don't, I'm not really worried about that. Well, here's one, for example. I was at a conference and somebody came up and gave a whole talk on why the Big Bang didn't happen.

Yeah. Okay. No one fought him. Yeah, because we don't have the time or the energy for this. They got to say they gave them. There's a talk, you know, that they've been hammering. He said he had some. I said, it was so fine.

So you can be so wrong that no one is going to. to try to correct you. Yeah, it's not worth talking to people like that. But that's, and by the way, when I comment on movies, when I comment, I'm kind of known for that now, I will only comment on movies where they actually tried to get it right. They've earned my attention. They've got me paying attention. And I say, all right, I'm going to watch you closely. I can think of talk about Interstellar then, did you? Yeah, I just, I have a deep fundamental issue with Interstellar. I haven't told. I have about 10 fundamental issues. I've won. The rest I'll give it, I'll let it go.

But the one is, just since you brought it up. Yeah. Whatever is the blight on the crops? Yeah, that's my one too. That's my number one. There's a blight, okay? Yeah. And this is the future. Yeah. So, someone

somehow declared that traveling through space, through a wormhole to an exoplanet so that we can move there, somehow that's an easier solution. than tasking your biologist to fix the freaking blight. Yeah, I know.

Recombinant DNA, we got weak. No, but it's even worse. Neil, it's even worse. They say the blight is going to, okay, there won't be any oxygen. It took two and a half billion years of plants and so since the photosynthesis to avail the amount of oxygen we have now. You kill all the plants on earth. There's still going to be oxygen.

I mean, it was just, well, plus, plus whatever it takes to terraform. the exoplanet, maybe you're going to now move the billion people to? Oh, yeah. If you have the power of geoengineering to terraform an exoplanet, you have the power of geoengineering to turn Earth back into Earth.

Of course, exactly. And, you know, so I, you know, you're the expert tweeter, but I did do two tweets in there, but one of my favorite tweets when I saw the movie was I said, I went to interstellar, three hours could be like 20 years.

Oh! Yeah, but you tell that to Kip Thorne's face. Yeah, I know, I actually have. I actually have. Because Kip, you know, there's only one thing that's right about the movie. And as far as I can tell, it's the only part of Kip's science that made it into the funny thing, which is the picture of a black hole and the of what it would look like. And that's right.

But the rest of it is... Plus the time dilation of the guy waiting in the ship for the folks to do their work down on the black hole planet. Except as we pointed out. It doesn't matter. I don't want to get into story. But okay, so I want to get back to this. What might an alien think? You know, people say, what would Jesus think?

But what would I have that when did you first start thinking about that? Because that is something that I, you know, is a mantra of mine. Like what to step back and I say, is this reasonable what we're doing as humans? What would an alien think? And you've been thinking about that since you were a little kid? Forever. Ever since I read the story and saw the film, Slaughterhouse Five, where Billy Pilgrim is be beamed up by aliens from his backyard.

I've always wanted to beamed up by aliens and just sort of participate. in their life and then come back and just sort of figure out what we look like to them you don't want to this that's the novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. slaughter has five yeah yeah Kurt Vonnegut it's fantastic yeah I also got to hear him once he was amazing anyway um you all you make the statement which I kind of agree with in a sense but I want to I want to parse of non-crapherty you say scientists may be the exclusive discoverers of what is objectively true I would agree with that if by definition you mean it's not a group of people who have a PhD or scientists it's anyone using the scientific method is yeah i'm sorry what is the wording that i used you you said scientists

may be the exclusive discoverers of what is objectively true oh sure sure i think that's over say that i should have said that the enterprise of science yeah yeah okay because anyone yeah thank you for calling that out i'll maybe in a later printing i'll see if i can get that in okay good because i think it's important to yeah and and i think that that's the whole point is Or we can redefine scientists as anybody who makes a scientific discovery. Yeah, or uses the process of science. We're all scientists if we use the process of science. I think what's more generally true here is that what you're really framing,

which I think is really important, is that there is no. I would say this and a lot of people don't agree with me, but I think you do. I think you even say it somewhere. But basically, there is no other way. There's no knowledge except empirical knowledge. namely revelation never leads to what you know what you would call objective truth and there's no way to find objective truth without empirical investigation i would just say that a little softer and i'd say okay um there is no occasion where revelation has given us an accurate description or understanding of objective reality there's no example of that if there were we'd be mining that those books for daily. That's right.

And they tried that with the Bible code. And in fact, there's an update to the Bible code with using even more advanced computers. And so these are people wanting to believe that there's insights encoded in the Hebrew of the Torah that you can pull, like almost cryptography, right? And you have to just figure out what the code is. And then you bring it out. And then you can see all of these statements about the future. But it would be pretty easy to test.

You don't find things that you already know are true, especially since the original Hebrew doesn't have vowels. So how you pronounce a word gives you a little bit of latitude. But just predict a future event and lay it down on the calendar and we'll see if it happens. Yeah. And if it does, more power to it. Yeah. So I don't want to say it never well.

I'm just saying it never has. Never has. In fact, I've given that challenge out when I had, I guess I didn't, I wouldn't use the word debate, but when I've appeared on stage with theologians, and I've done that a few times. And I never do that. I just want to say, I tip my hat. I'm just saying, no, no, these are academic, I mean, once I did some big event at Yale or academic theology. Still, I know. Yeah, I know. Anyway, but I did. I presented them. I said, give me one example in the last 500 years of a contribution of theology to knowledge. And the answer I always got was, what do you mean by knowledge?

It wasn't like if I asked a biologist, they, you know, a chemist. Oh, they give a whole litany. Yeah, yeah. This was always what do you mean by now? And that was anyway. But, okay, let me, let me, let me ask you to parse another thing,

which, which was, it caused me to think a lot. It could be because the original tree in the Garden of Eden was the tree of knowledge. Yeah. And so, and that was the. But you were not supposed to eat from it. Right, which was a little weird. But I think they've, there's been some,

reconciliation about that. Well, no, you know, I'm much more, I'm less an appeasement of this regard. You know, I have people like the new Pope because he's kind of gentler. I'm just, I know, but even the new Pope said, don't ask questions. It's not a good thing. At one point, you know, because that's, the Bible says that. And I just think that's an anathemat of my whole existence.

Anyway, we let's, we don't have to, just like the guy who didn't think the Big Bang was there we don't have to deal with religion. It's too easy to kick him when they're down. But here's a sentence you said, which I thought was it would cause me to think a lot. I don't want to ask what you mean by. He said, to deny objective truth is to be scientifically illiterate, agreed. And then you say not to be ideologically principled. What do you mean by that? I think it was an interesting additional phrase, and I wanted you to expand on it. Oh, yeah, thanks. I'm actually proud of that additional phrase to that.

I figured you might be because it stands out to me. Yeah, there are people who will say, on principle, I deny human-caused global warming. Oh, I see. On principle. There are people will say, on principle, the Big Bang never happened. God would have never agreed to that. And so there are people who will stand flat-footed against objective truths, not simply because they don't want to believe it, but they have a, a,

they have a, a, a worldview that has bits and pieces to it and the worldview prevents it. Yeah. So, so that's, that's really where I was going there. Yeah, I mean, I've always said they're hypocrites in a sense. Anyone who says the Earth is 6,000 years old should not get on an airplane or whatever, because all the things we know about how an airplane works that contribute to our knowledge that we're 8,000, 6,000 years old. So, yeah, I guess I, so that's what I thought that you might mean that.

That's good. I like that phrase. Okay. One of the things you point out in, you know, we're resuming through one page 10 is, is differences of opinion enrich the diversity of a nation, sure, ought to be cherished and respected, provided everyone remains free to disagree with one another, and most importantly, again, I think this part last phrase is really important. Most importantly, everyone remains open to rational arguments that could change your mind. You know, I think I want you to comment this because it was really Christopher Hitchens

who first illuminated this from me that the importance of free speech is not the freedom to make to speak, but what, but by infringing upon free speech, you affringe upon the listeners right to learn that they're wrong. If you, and I think that's a brilliant thing. I mean, it's really what you're getting at here. You have the, you lose the right to learn. you're wrong if you censor people who might cause you to change your mind. Right. Right. No, that's an important other way to look at that very same fact. And in fact, it may be even a more important feature of that fact. Yeah, I mean, it was him who really, you know, opened that up. But I think it's really what you're getting at. And I thought I'd just let you know that Christopher

had said that because I think it's really interesting. But you point out and you say the second part of that paragraph says, you know, hey, but the problem is, sadly, the conduct of social media has devolved in the opposite of this, which is absolutely true. Echo chambers, people want to be punitive, you find an opinion to disagree with and unleash waves of anger and outrage. So, you comment on that, but as one of the original tweets, Twitterers, I want you to sort of comment. So what do you think about Twitter, Twitter in that regard as a negative, positive or negative, in the sense that, I mean, on Twitter, and it sort of turned out into Facebook and other things. It tends to, you're the, you've seen the same thing as me.

You put something out and you get unleashed this wave of anger and hatred rather than, you know, I mean, and the point is there's no room for irony or subtlety in Twitter because, you know, but. Right, but especially if you're expressing opinion. So I learned just not to express opinions. But you haven't learned because you've been, you've been attacked. I mean, well, no, no, no, no. You talk about your forbidden tweets, the ones you put out that you should know. I didn't post those.

No, no, but you point out that you have. And that's a mistake. One of them I did. One of them. So the forbidden tweets are tweets that are so true and up against what people don't want to be true that it would just be upsetting. And my goal as an educator is not to upset people. I want you to want to learn more. And so I have a forbidden Twitter file.

And I gave one or two examples in the book. from that file, all right? So they don't count as having tweeted. No, no, but once or twice you say, oops, after I made a mistake and I shouldn't have, because I did upset people. Yeah, the mistake is, I mean, you're not going to know you're going to say people. The mistake is not having expressed an opinion. But here's an example of why they're not opinions.

So during, after one of the horrific school shootings, I, I tweeted that at Walmart, the nation's largest gun seller, you can buy. buy an AR-15 rifle, yet company policy bans the sale of pop music with curse words. That's all it was. That was the tweet. And watch what happens, okay? The response bifurcated. Of course.

The people who are assuming I'm trying to fundify an opinion out there when all I did was state of fact. but what happened was there was a branch of the responses that said, First Amendment, free speech, you know, dot-da-da-da, but they're private companies, so they could have, okay, fine. Then the Second Amendment people said, that guns, they should be able to sell guns. And these two camps each thought I was arguing some opposite opinion. Yeah, yeah. What they were attacking.

And I realized it must have succeeded of having no opinion at all. Because everyone is putting an opinion on it that, in fact, is not there to begin with. So it's their own lens through which there's viewing. But, you know, and that may be one of the differences of many differences of you and me, and maybe one reason you're so much more popular. But, I mean, much more loved is that you don't, you know, you don't, you don't, you try not to upset people. And I guess I'm not as worried.

I'm not as worried about upsetting people. and that's been a fact of my life. But one of the reasons is I think one can't help. You may not intentionally do, but you cannot, you cannot, just stating a fact will inevitably upset some people. And I think that's just, you have to acknowledge that and realize it as a reality.

Let me push back on you here. Okay. Good. Well, that's the whole point. Okay. You, in part of your life, I would say a big part of your life, you're an educator.

If by presenting information in a particular way, it upsets people and then they no longer want to listen to you, you have failed in that moment to continue to enlighten an audience. And so because effectiveness is not just, are you right? Do they get it or not? It's a convolution of being right and having some act of persuasion. that works because what my father always said was it's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. Yeah, sure.

So to say it's their problem if they can't handle the truth. No, no, that's... No, it's your problem as an educator. Of course. You figure that out. Exactly. And you have to... And I tell educators that.

The biggest mistake you make is assuming people are, first of all, are interested in what you have to say. And you're, you know, just telling people that they're wrong is... And I used to argue with Richard this way. Don't be the teacher who says, These students just don't want to learn. Yeah, because that teacher should. Yeah, exactly.

They should be thinking, maybe I suck at my job. Yeah, exactly. You say exactly those words in the book. And I agree with you, except I don't think of it as so much to make people angry. I think it's to provoke. And sometimes it's, you know, you make the presumption that if people are angry, they're not going to listen to you. The question is, if you provoke someone, sometimes that's the way to get them to think about their own, they're all you know if you get them

emotionally involved then they sometimes if you follow it up correctly when angry they dig their heels in and well anger but anger's different than provoking it's not going to happen no I agree you you want to you want to go to where people are and try and use where they're from to try and help them learn and that's

there's no doubt about that but but we have to realize that at the same time I think it's naive to argue that to expect that you will not provoke. Well, you know, like your tweet. You were naive to say it's naive to say that. Yeah. You're naive because if, because you are doing less thinking about it than you could. Yeah. Is my claim. You've stopped at a point and say, look, this is the best I can do. No, you're not

even saying that. You're saying, this is what it is and it upsets them and that's what it is. Well, let me give you an example. When you talked about in that chapter about, you know, about, I think it was forbidden tweets in that regard, and maybe the example used of Walmart is in there. It reminded me of a time when I tweeted maybe, which I thought afterwards might be a forbidden truth. So the first time I was called a snowflake or woke, I never heard those terms before.

Now, of course, people say I'm the opposite. But I argued a fact, which I think is still an important fact. You know, people were so hung up on terrorism. and the fear, which I think people use, I pick politicians use fear as a way to control people. And I point that, I think it is true that statistically, as an American, living in America, you are more likely to be killed by a refrigerator falling on you

than by a terrorist. And you just look at the numbers, and it's true. More people are, you know, then, and including 9-11, integrated over 10-year period. And boy, did that provoke a probably the most angry response I've ever gotten because people were, but I still think it's important to be able to say that. So in the chapter Risk and Reward, which we're nowhere near in your sequence of questions at this moment, I'm going to zoom through.

I addressed that point that people have emotional reactions to some risks that are not, rational. Yeah. But in terms of a person's happiness or a person's perception of safety and stability, perception has to show up in that equation because that's because we're, that's what we are as human beings, right? And so you can make a physics enclave where, you know, you bring in, and I give this example in the book, you bring in the mountain lions to attack the deer so that cars don't keep slamming into deer.

Yeah. And you reduce auto deaths, you reduce insurance bills and everything. But the cougar runs away every now and then with your kid who's playing in the backyard. Yeah, yeah. So it'll eat 30 children a year,

but that's a small price to pay to save the hundreds of adults who were otherwise died or maimed. Yeah. This is an unutterable sentence. Yeah. Okay. It was an oath.

Yeah. Okay. You can't, even though that's true. Yeah. You cannot utter that sentence. But you did utter it. No, you do, but then no one will listen to you again ever for anything you'd ever say. It has consequences.

So. Did you, oh, I thought you said you had uttered it. I thought you said you had actually. No, I said other similar things. Yeah. But people still listen to. In October, after 9-11, I said, In the 30 days that is October 11th, I think.

Yeah, you talk about the number. The 30 days that of elapsed, we've lost as many people on the roads. Yeah. As we lost on that day. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, we lose this many people every month. Yeah. And so, and I ranked the risks.

Yeah. And that was early on, you know, nobody was woke yet. The word hadn't been invented yet. And so, or used in an aggressive way. So that, so by the way, I monitored the public's reaction to tweets that have fundamentally the same content. Yeah. And you get to see the ground shifting beneath our feet. And I used to complain about that.

And I said, no, this is something to navigate, not to try to resist because you're going to fail, trying to resist it. It's the direction society is moving. Get over. Well, get to that because the one thing, there's one thing I want before we end at some point. There's one, you know, there's one thing I really disagree with in the book. and I think it comes, it's something, anyway, we'll get there. I want to do that as, I don't know whether that's the culmination, but it's a really important point you make,

and I think it's, we have to recognize the fundamental irrationality of humans, and we can't assume that the world will ever be really irrational. And if we do that, if we assume that, I think we miss them. Okay, but hold that thought then. You, if you agree with me now, wait to see if you agree with me in a few minutes. It's unrealistic. By the way, I just wanted to make sure when we go there that we had about 90 minutes, And that is that a heart cut off for you?

So, you know, I want to make sure, originally your assistant said something like, you know, 90 minutes. Yeah, I got stuff going on. I got to make 90 minutes pretty tight. Yeah, okay, I want to know because I want to get there. Okay, no worries. No problem with the heart cut off. But, I mean, because we can go on a long time. As is, it's the longest podcast I would have done in the last two years.

Great. I appreciate. I'm honored. Okay. And I appreciate that. I just think it's so much fun that it goes by like that. You know, I didn't. You know, a few years ago, we did a two and two, over two hour in your office.

Oh, okay. Yeah, anyway, you just thought it was just much less because it was so much fun. Okay. In your chapter on exploration discovery, which I know you, which is really basis of your, of your love of space exploration in a way that I don't always share. But you do make a point that, that when you talk about the caveman, you say perspective lurks beyond the cave door. let me turn that around and say the way I would frame that is to say you got to keep

By the way, I'm woke enough, I'm pretty sure I didn't use the word caveman. No, yeah, I was wondering when I said it, I thought I wondered whether, whether, whether you're better. I'm more woke than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I'm understanding. I just learned, I didn't realize you were surrounded by your daughter, is your sister, your, I don't know,

I mean, I'm amazed. No, my kids. Yeah, but you also said someone else as an HR person as a DEI. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a, my, my sister-in-law, former sister law. Yeah, I know. I mean, I'm amazed. There's a DEI specialist, yeah. Yeah.

Ooh, okay, I don't want to even use those. But okay, but, but, but, so beyond the cave door, I would, you know, that, and I think some extent you were trying to argue ultimately why we need to explore space with people and all that. And I don't want to have that argument because we've had it before. But I would turn it saying, it really means keep looking and keep testing and never trust theorists, namely, if, if, I'm, putting words in your mouth, but I think that's what you're really saying in the sense that

the perspective requires you to keep looking. If you stop looking, you're going to come up with nonsense. Is that a fair way of really... I'd say if you stop looking, you ossify wherever you were. And we know there's more to learn out there. And when it's controlled by wise people, every prior example of that has improved civilization, the health, the wealth, the security of more people than ever before. You know, at one point, you, you, uh, you, trying to jump ahead a fair amount, um, not a lot, but we're getting, we're getting, I think the rate I'm going, which is going to be exponential, which I'm going to get to in a second.

We'll get to the end in time because we're going to do, we're going to go through this book exponentially fast at the end. Um, the, um, there's a whole section of a chapter on exponentials. I know that's my next few questions. Okay. Um, the, but, um, you do point out that, that one of the reasons. that when you talk about exploration discovery, with systems in place to disseminate thoughts such as scientific conferences, peer reviews, etc., there's no reinventing the wheel, no wasted effort. And I want to point out, I think that's another point, another real misconception about science.

Partly comes from the movies, partly I don't know where else it comes from, but not really isn't that science is cumulative, namely it generally proceeds by baby steps. People have have this vision of someone being in Einstein sitting alone in the room at night and suddenly grand leaps, that's not the way science generally proceeds. And I think I wanted to have that in a little discussion so we could- No, I agree. Entirely. I mean, was it Isaac Asimov who said, most scientific discoveries do not occur by someone saying Eureka. It occurs by someone saying, hmm, that's funny. Or that's odd. Just something that's something, little thing, make a note of that. Yeah. And, and whole branches of research unfold from it.

Yeah, but science doesn't always just proceed by whole new branches coming out. It perceives by a cumulative bit of knowledge. I mean, I know what I used to love when I, you know, I would do when I was working research and I'd go into a new area, which I used to like to do a lot, usually with my friend Frank Pocchek when we were thinking about experiments and I was a theorist. But what amazed me is whatever, whenever there, gee, have people thought about this? Is there any data? And you'd always find, like, you go to the journals, and there's massive, whatever question you had,

people have worked on it. And it's such a gratifying aspect of science. And again, it stands in the flies in the face of people's imagination that everything is, I hate the word quantum leap because the quantum leaf is pretty small. It would be little, right, right. Yeah, but everything is a great leap. Quantum leap is a great leap.

And science doesn't always proceed by great leaf. And I would say further that science isn't always undoing a previously held idea. Yeah, sure. Most science is an incremental new idea that didn't undo anything. Like the DNA molecule didn't undo. We just had no freaking idea of what was encoding our identity. Yeah. People had to hope.

People expected there was something, but they didn't know what it was. They didn't know what it was. We discovered DNA. We didn't have to discard something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. In fact, it led, as usually is the case with a good discovery, it leads, it not only doesn't lead to discarding, it leads to a whole bunch of new questions that you wouldn't have even asked if you hadn't made the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wouldn't have known to ask those questions. And, and, um, no, you let me to think of something, but I never forgot it. Anyway, um, um, yeah, um, yeah, I was just going to say, well, Newton's famous quote, quote, which of course was not what he intended, which is, I've only gotten one. I've gotten by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Everyone thinks it was so magnanimous of him. But of course, he said it because one of his competitors, the competitors was a dwarf, and he was an awful man and made fun of him. But it is true. We only, we only, if Einstein, if Maxwell hadn't been there, Einstein could have been the smartest person in the world,

but he never would have come up with relativity if Maxwell hadn't developed electromagneticism first. And it's just, right, I think the bigger truth there is, unlike Vango's Starry Knight, where no one ever preceding Van Gogh or following him would have ever drawn that painting. It's right behind you as you forget that that's your background. The Einstein's special relativity in particular, it was on the docket.

It was at the gates. And it might have taken three or five people instead of one person. It might have taken an extra 10 years, but it would have happened. Oh, sure. And general relativity may be a little longer. That's more of a singular leap. Well, David Hilbert was, you know, was was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was really concerned that Hilbert would, would, would, would, would, uh, would get it. Um, anyway.

Yeah, you're right. Well, I mean, the point is that, yeah, he generally, yeah, these people push us further and faster than we would have before. It happens very rarely, but there are people who push us further and faster than we ever before. But the main great thing about science is if they hadn't been there, we would have gotten there eventually anyway, generally. Correct. Yeah. And now in your exponential chapter, which I think is really kind of, or your discussion of exponentials, which is kind of neat, is everyone does think the present is the most exciting time. I suspect that's partly evolutionary. Because if you didn't feel that way, we wouldn't want to wake up in the morning in some sense. I mean, you have to kind of feel like the president of the most exciting. But it is this flaw. No, no, I would say most of the history of civilization, nobody is thinking that way. I think that's a very American thing. thing, actually? Because or anyone who participated in the Industrial Revolution

could fully expect to be living differently tomorrow than they did yesterday. That was not true for most of the history of our civilization. So I'm not going to say we evolutionarily need to think that today is a brand new day. I don't,

you just want to survive. Yeah. If all you're trying to do is survive, then, then, I mean, that's, you need to be able to get beyond that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's one of the luxuries and why science was done by, early on by people who had the luxury. They didn't have to, they didn't have to survive. They were rich or, you know, and that's the way it was.

Independently rich, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, that's what I worked early on. But this notion that the future is always more exciting is, in some sense it's true. If there's exponential growth of knowledge, the future will be more exciting. But let me ask you the question, do you think that's going to, do you think the future in our century, do you think that's, that's going to continue to be true? I'm not given any reason to doubt it. Okay. Given what the evidence has been over the last 150 years.

Yeah, okay. And I arbitrarily started the clock from 1870. I probably could have started from 1840. But 1870 was nice and clean because just on the doorstep of the 20th century. Yeah. And it divided cleanly in 30-year increments up to 2020. Yeah, yeah. Because in 2020, people were saying, gee, let's predict what the world is going to be like in 2050.

No, you can't. That is, well, but that doesn't stop you for making predictions, too, of which I think I'm manifestly wrong. I just did because I couldn't, it was low-hanging fruit. It was definitely and I said, I got to make a fool of myself by making predictions. Yeah, and one of the happy things about you, as you don't define, unlike some colleagues we know, you don't define yourself, when anyone calls himself a futurist, I tell people, when someone calls himself futurist, that's when you stopped listening. Because they miss everything.

That's what discovery is all about. One of my favorite John Prine songs, I don't know if you know John Prine is, one of my favorite singers. But he said, we're living in the future. You know, how do I know? Because we're driving and, you know, in flying automobiles.

All the things that in 1950s thought with the 1980s would have, none of it. But they didn't think of the internet. And, you know, and so there's a danger or make predictions, but I want to point out a prediction. I have to say that I think I disagree with the way. Speaking, I got to put it out there. This year we're doing this podcast,

2022, is the birth year of George Jetson. George Jetson. Okay, I didn't know that. Excellent. Morning in 2022. And it's also the year that Soylent Green took place. Oh. Yeah. Okay. And I don't know if you're old enough. I saw Soilin-Lipin when it first came out, but I think you're a little younger.

How much older are you then? No. You're like a year older than I am. Is that I'm only a year older? No, you're born, what, 55, 1955? 54. Okay. So you're four years older. I'm born in 1950. And so therefore, wiser.

Okay. Anyway, one of your predictions, which I just thought was manifestly wrong, I have to say. Oh, I love it. Tell me. Is the neuroscience one that we will. Oh, why do you think that's wrong? I just wrote in my new book about consciousness, and I'm so clear to me that we you said neuroscience and understanding of a human mind will become so advanced that mental, by 2050,

that mental illness will be cured? Oh, come on. I hope we're both around in 2050, and when you're wrong, you will owe me a very expensive bottle of wine. No, because in the book, I say, I will put these out here so that everyone can show me how wrong I am.

I didn't say that thinking I'd be right. It's wishful thinking. Yeah, that is definitely wishful thinking. Predictive thinking. Why are you in such denial of it? Because when I wrote, the new book on which you have written a lovely blur for and and wrote a lot of interesting comments that helped me i would say what's coming out next year i spent a lot of time on consciousness

that's a recent manuscript that i reviewed yeah okay yeah yeah yeah and the last part was unconscious and that really convinced me of the challenge the challenge is to understanding uh the brain are i i used to think they were great and and writing that book really convinced me they were so daunting that i think it's really optimistic to think in 20 years that we're really going to make that much problem that reminds me reminds me the quote from Claudius Ptolemy, AD 150, as he watches the planets, move against the background stars, go into retrograde, and then back again. And he says, when I trace at my pleasure, the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch Earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of Ambrosia.

He was invoking God of the Gaps. He had no fucking idea what he was looking at. Zeus is doing this, all right? And there it was until until Kepler and Galileo and Newton figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was way more than 30 years later, of course. Exactly.

I think it's, I think, you know, look, I don't deny, what I really hate is when people say, we'll never know this, because I think it's not tuberous because how do you know, you'll never know unless you know? I'm not one of those people, but you're kind of saying. No, I know. You're kind of saying that about the brain, though. Well, no, no, I'm not.

I'm saying 20 years. I expect we'll learn. I expect eventually, I just think it's, I have more respect for the complexity of that whole issue that I think it's going to, I'll be amazed if, you know, maybe there'll be an Einstein of the brain come up. But it's going to just takes a breakthrough. Yeah, that's, this is the, this is a point that Ray Kurzweil makes when they were at the beginning of the human genome project. Okay. After a couple of years, they made it 10% advance on it. and people say, oh, it'll be another 100 years before we get the genome. He said, no, this will be 10 years because we were still in the Moore's Law growth of computing, and it's computing intensive activity. And sure enough, 10 years later, the human genome was mad.

Because everyone at the time was thinking linearly, as you are now about the brain. No, no, no, I don't think, well, I think, yeah, anyway, I think it's really, it's really complex, but I don't think the half-life, the exponential doubling time is in that terms of if I look at how much we know about consciousness now versus 20 years ago, I don't think the exponential doubling time is less than 20 years. I think it's more like 50. But we'll see. We'll see. Anyway, who knows? That's the great thing about sciences. We don't know. We'll find out. If you knew, then it wouldn't be discovery. I want to see neuroscience, psychology in the way chemistry supplanted alchemy.

I'm with you there. Absolutely. Absolutely. By the way, one of the things that I learned, but then I realized I disagree with, but it was, I mean, a little bit. It was really neat. Was this earthrise, which you point out, a really important thing. There is no earthrise on the moon. Right. Right. But it, but it isn't, but then I realized I thought about it. It's not really fair because the earthrise was, you point out, was taken from the command module and if you're orbiting the moon there isn't earth rise right no my only point was when people

saw the word earth rise and the earth on the lunar horizon they assumed that you were does on the moon what the moon does here no no that was right i'd always i'd never thought about it and it was really neat for me to think of it but but then i at least realized it was fair for them to say it was an earth rise because they were seeing it every it was fair but but educationally misleading and i think about how people receive information i know and it caused me to think it could It caused me to think. Yeah, I caused me to think. You're lecturing to people if you're not thinking about how they're receiving information. Absolutely. You're right. And anyway, it caused me to think that, hey, you're right.

There is no worth rise. I never thought about it. And a neat thing. Now I'm going to jump ahead 150 pages. Okay. Because you've got the, you know, you have the wrong set of priorities and you have to leave me. But anyway, I, so here, you know, you have agreed with me that people. People aren't rational and there's nothing you can do about it. And I just, no, no, no, hold on. I just let's get to this because, okay. I didn't say there's nothing to do about it. I'm saying the irrationality of human being is a feature, not a buck.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, I agree with you there. And want us to use that feature. And so you talk about this and it really great on me, this sort of this Star Must experience. I've had the same experience at Googleplex. We have these incredibly naive group of scientists who have no experience in the real world, never been politicians, never had to do policy.

Suddenly think, I remember this, you know, Google put together these weekend meetings. And at the end of the people think they're solving the problems of the world and in a weekend. And if they could be solved at a weekend, they wouldn't have been solved. So you have this great tweet, which I love. Well, sort of love. Earth needs a virtual country, rationalia, with a one-line constitution. All policies should be based on the weight of evidence.

I think what you're saying is that country is science, but that country can never be politics. And you try and talk about politics can never be based. Let me make the argument that politics can never be based on the weight of the evidence because it has to be because the whole art of politics is making decisions in advance of the evidence. My wife used to work for the government of Australia and she reminded me, scientists used to would come in and think that the scientific issues were really relevant to politicians. But the politicians have a lot of other factors they have to deal with, including the known irrationality of humans. And so, for example, the one example you use is capital punishment.

Yeah, we should have a policy about capital punishment that's based on seeing if it deters crime. But we can't base it until we have a policy that there's capital punishment. So you have to have that policy or decide if you're going to have that policy in advance of knowing anything. And I think a lot of the time, that's what politics is based on. So your ideal country is impossible because politics can never be based on the weight of events. What should happen is if the evidence shows you're wrong, you should be able to change your policies. I agree with that. But you always have to make policies if you're a politician, I think.

Is your brain invertedly wired in this moment? I don't get what you're saying. I'm saying you make a big point of saying that politics should always be based on the weight of evidence. invoke capital punishment. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now you can do research and talk to criminals, talk to people who are already incarcerated.

You can talk to, you do your best you can. Psychology would be elevated to the most important science of a government under these in rationalia. Because human behavior is everything. Okay. You know what the politics is? The politics is not arguing whether this human cause global. climate change. The politics is, do we tax solar panels from China versus this? Do we have carbon credits? But then you debate that and you say, what is the evidence for carbon credits to

achieve what we want? What insights do we have on this? And then you talk about other things, other credits, because maybe you have exactly carbon credits, but you have some other example. But I would, you're right. And I'm with you in spirit complete, but I would argue that in the real world, you have to say, ultimately, we have to decide on whether we're going to have carbon credits or not.

And we don't know what the answer is going to be. And if we're going to be, let me just finish one second. You're by the way, the only person who can really talk over me as much as I talk over other people. But, but, because we've had pollution credits, right?

No, no, hold on. But you can say, I think what you can say is we don't know for certain whether they're going to have that effect. What would be great in the rationalia, in the country rationality, is if we then put in carbon credits, and five years later we discovered that there were all these unexpected side benefits and side effects that suggested maybe it wasn't the best thing,

and we should have another policy, if politicians were willing to say, you know what, our experiment failed, let's try a new thing, and that never happens. But I think inevitably in the real world you have to... Yeah, but I think in the real world, you always have to make policies in advance of knowing of you have some evidence and you have some basis for your

presumption but you never and then you base the law but right in proportion to that evidence correct okay well then we're completely agreed we're both rational and um and by the way the irrational elements of being human I think is responsible

for the greatest works of art there ever were no one is analyzing art saying how rational is it oh yeah exactly nor are they saying it how useful is it? They always say about science, how useful is general relativity, which it is useful. But they never asked that about a Picasso painting or your favorite painting behind you, Van Gogh. Yeah, they never ask that for a Mozart symphony.

You know, it's, but science is like a Mozart symphony at its best, is like a Van Gogh painting. It is part of our culture, which is what you said at the very beginning of the book, and which is one of the reasons why science and starring messengers can be important for our thinking about ourselves because I care about you, Neil, and I know that you need to go. And I think that's a good way to summarize that, you know, I didn't really matter what part of the book we discussed because I knew the discussions would be about the importance of science. And I really enjoyed it. Well, you're a deep enough thinker on most topics that any place, you know, you just close your eyes and drop your finger,

throw a dart into the book, it's going to hit a place that makes a good conversation. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. No, I really did. Thanks a lot. All right. Well, thanks for having me on. I hope you enjoyed it too. So if I'm on Joe Rogan, I'll say I had a longer interview with Lawrence Krause.

That's what I tell you. Then you might try to top that. I don't know. Yeah, of course. He will. Of course. That's okay. Okay.

You take care, young man, because you're younger than me. And be well. And I hope to see you in person. sometime. You take care. All right. You got it. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. This podcast is produced by the Origins Project Foundation, a non-profit organization whose goal is to enrich your perspective of your place in the cosmos by providing access to the people who are driving the future of society in the 21st century and to the ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world.

To learn more, please visit Originsproject Foundation.org