Until the End of Time: Brian Greene in Conversation with Janna Levin

Until the End of Time: Brian Greene in Conversation with Janna Levin

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Brian Greene, the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe, launches his captivating new book Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe at Pioneer Works. Join Janna Levin, our Director of Sciences, in conversation with Brian Greene to grasp and gain a refined appreciation for our fleeting, but utterly exquisite, moment in the cosmos.

This project is supported by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

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0:00

[Applause] I'm very excited to introduce my friend

0:08

and colleague and scientific collaborator Brian Greene brian is a

0:16

professor of mathematics and physics and the director of Columbia University's Center for Theoretical Physics and brian

0:24

has made incredibly important contributions to string theory which we'll talk about

0:29

he has many New York Times bestselling books including the elegant universe

0:35

fabric of the cosmos and the hidden reality and now the book we're here to celebrate until the end of time so

0:42

please join me in welcoming Brian Greene

0:51

Brian I often complain that we don't get enough of a chance to talk so I've seen

0:58

you in like three or four years it's great it's ridiculous so we're gonna pretend nobody else is

1:04

here and we're just gonna have like our own little private communion so I do

1:10

want to discuss to begin and I am gonna speak on behalf of the audience for a

1:15

second because I would be remiss not to ask you about your contributions to string theory but string theory in

1:21

general so one of the things I love about what you did with string theory is that your discoveries were unanticipated

1:27

and that's that's like the mark of some creative moment when you make an

1:32

unanticipated discovery and and so in the field in physics you're very known

1:38

for that accomplishment but also in the world for having being a spokesperson

1:45

for this this this model of the world and so I need to ask you on behalf of

1:50

everyone else for a Lightning primer on string theory Oh string theory my goodness so Albert

1:58

Einstein way back in the 1920s 30s 40s 50s dreamed of finding what it called a

2:05

unified theory of physics which would be a single mathematical equation a single

2:10

mathematical sentence if you will that would be able to put together all of nature's forces

2:16

and all matter into a single tight package that would allow us to

2:21

understand the workings of the universe from a very basic starting point and he

2:28

sought this unified theory til the very end there's a famous story that he was

2:33

on his deathbed in Princeton New Jersey in 1955 and was still scribbling

2:38

equations at the very end in the hope that he'd complete the unified theory and he didn't and string theory is our

2:44

hope that we may have it and in a nutshell the new idea is simply that

2:50

instead of the fundamental constituents being little dot particles as we have long thought of them the electrons the

2:57

quarks and neutrinos little tiny dots of no structure the new idea is that they're actually little tiny filaments

3:03

of vibrating energy and the different vibrations of the string like entities

3:09

the different notes if you will that it can play correspond to the different particles making up the world so

3:15

everything is united under the rubric if you will of the music that these strings can play that's the basic idea and it's

3:22

absolutely beautiful in that description really conveys to you why it's so important ly unifying it so here you are

3:29

you're thinking about this incredible unifying idea which really is it's mathematically incredibly challenging

3:35

it's totally profound you're basically saying anything anyone has ever seen or

3:41

ever will see or understand or think about or be is asked or played out on

3:46

the harmonics of these fundamental strings and you lift your head up from the page glaring at these stunning

3:52

equations and you look around and you say what's it all about yeah that's like

3:58

unnerving because we're kind of relying on you have all our introduction we've heard what it's all so you know you

4:07

you're you're bringing us all this sense of meaning and import and in all of your

4:12

previous books and your previous work on string theory and then you're like you're like leaving us on the precipice and you're lifting your head up and

4:18

you're telling us you don't know what it's all about so did you have like an existential crisis what happened you know I think we all should have an

4:24

existential crises sort of all the time I think it's good for the soul but the the motivation for this book was not

4:30

really to say I don't know what the answer is even though I don't really know what the

4:35

answer is but it was to give a certain perspective on the journey toward an

4:42

answer and the perspective I take in this book is one that has gotten a bad

4:49

rap I would say over many decades it's a highly reductionist view of the

4:56

world but at the same time injecting the part of the reductionist program that

5:01

often physicists give short shrift which is the synthesis you need to know what

5:07

things are made of you need to know what the fundamental laws are you need to know the ingredients and how they operate interact and so on but to tell a

5:14

full story you have to understand how the ingredients come together to build the structures of the world be those

5:20

molecules or cells or living beings there's conscious self reflective beings and when you see all of those stories

5:26

nested together in one narrative arc to me it gives a deeper understanding of

5:33

where we came from and what's happening at the moment and ultimately where we're

5:39

going and I think that's vital to the search for trying to understand why it

5:44

is that we're here at all so it very much feels like that it very much feels like a rationalists search

5:50

for meaning and you discuss the sort of many scales of meaning and and having

5:57

sought meaning in physics found it but not found all of it not found all the

6:03

ways in which to understand it what kind of march through some of the things that you describe but there's something else which is kind of the provocation of

6:10

death that you talk about yeah and you write so beautifully you have a line and I'm gonna see if I can render it

6:16

correctly you say and the ledger of birth and death with entries more numerous than stars in the galaxy will

6:24

balance with dispassionate precision in other words we live we die and that will

6:31

always balance and that is such a it's such a beautiful line but the also

6:36

intellectually the motivation of that does that spark some creative motivation

6:42

yeah well I mean I can give my own personal journey toward that perspective

6:49

which is you know way back I guess it must be in the 1980s I encountered a

6:56

book that had a profound impact on me it was a book called the denial of death by Ernest Becker I mean how many people

7:03

have are familiar with that book - yeah one or two yeah it was fantastic

7:08

it's amazing how books that are so well known in one ERA can just sort of

7:14

disappear as you go forward but what Becker was doing was basically channeling the ideas of otto ronk who is

7:22

a early Freud in broke with Freud at some point who as Becker articulated had

7:29

this view that the real motivating force behind us human beings is actually the

7:34

recognition that we are mortal and we really are as far as we can tell the unique species on the planet

7:40

that recognizes that we have these finite life spans and the question is

7:45

what does that do to us and Becker's argument which has now been carefully

7:51

furthered by a whole group of social psychologists is that we try to deny the

7:57

possibility that we can be fully erased from the world we try to leave some kind of legacy it can be a real legacies

8:04

right we we build monuments we build pyramids but it can also be a symbolic legacy where we create creative work or

8:11

we have a family I mean there are many ways in which we feel that we can integrate our existence in a manner that

8:18

will not be wiped out when we are gone and the thing that struck me about that

8:24

idea as I was studying physics alongside of it is the more you study physics you realize that there is a recapitulation

8:31

of the death of the human being at the level of the universe the universe itself had a beginning it has aged it

8:38

matures and if you follow laws of physics in the manner for instance that I described in some detail toward the end of the book there is strong reason

8:45

to believe that there is a sense in which the universe itself will die and so this interplay between the death of

8:51

the universe is described by physics and the death of the individual well known to all of us to me felt like a very fertile place to

8:59

explore yeah you very much open the book and mirror it in the end which is as

9:05

though you're not satisfied with the sense of dread that every human being

9:10

has that is aware of their own death you want to make sure that you're like hanging us off the glass with this

9:16

hollow sense of dread that it will all be gone like the end of everything in

9:21

time and so what the hell's going to want to read this book you know so there's a turn that happens in the now

9:29

that may be worth discussing which is I am quite upbeat about the death of the

9:34

universe look I mean you know we were talking about longevity but there has to

9:39

be an end to life itself I mean nobody wants to live forever I mean there's one of these novels where where the

9:45

character at the end says you know is in heaven for if for ages and says well is

9:50

there an alternative to all this bliss and the joy and the golfing and everything I want and they're like yeah you know this like right over and he

9:57

says does anyone ever take that path and I think it's the angel says everyone yeah right you know there are so many

10:05

works that have explored the possibility of immortality and in the vast majority

10:12

of them it does not turn out very well so it's a it's a deep human wish and

10:17

desire but at the same time when you think it through in some detail it's unclear that it yields the return that

10:23

we can envision but but the point that that I think is really important to

10:30

stress and it's one that I develop as you know from reading the book is that when you recognize that we are the

10:37

product of purposeless mindless laws of physics playing themselves out on our

10:44

particles because we are all bags of particles and think as I mentioned this

10:49

is a line that came out in a Stephen Colbert interview on The Late Show and he shot back immediately that is a great pickup line and it is I

10:58

should tell you feel free to use it at any time but but when you realize that that's all that we are it changes

11:05

the way you search for meaning and purpose you recognize that looking out to the

11:12

cosmos to find some answer that sort of floating out there in the void is just

11:17

facing the wrong direction in the end of the day we have to manufacture our own

11:23

meaning our own purpose we have to manufacture coherence which is what we do as physicist and what artists and

11:29

everybody else in the world does in their everyday lives to try to make sense of existence and when you

11:34

manufacture purpose that doesn't make it artificial that makes it so much more

11:40

noble than accepting purpose that is thrust upon you from the outer world so

11:47

in the end the final story that you're led to from this kind of journey I think is one that is and no bling not one that

11:55

leads you to the darkness and you feel this so much in this journey and so I

12:01

would like everyone just to have the opportunity to kind of start where you start in the book and and how you get to

12:09

this very optimistic telling of you know in some sense the story of our lives

12:15

and you begin with these very austere principles these forces that basically

12:21

carve reality out of the space of possibilities which are dual entropy and

12:26

evolution so let's let's talk about the person because their evolution is a little more familiar to people entropy

12:31

everyone's heard of and uses but is a difficult concept or one destroys one

12:37

builds and does that work together so so the rough description is the one that you describe I think many of us use the

12:44

phrase entropy in everyday life as a description of going from good to bad

12:49

you know order to chaos you know the degradation of structure

12:55

that's the feeling that the notion of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics which describes the

13:01

relentless increase in entropy across the universe throughout time that's what it brings to mind and that's partly true

13:08

but the point that I stress in the book is one that isn't as emphasized as

13:14

perhaps it should be which is even though the universe is on

13:19

to have ever increasing disorder ever increasing entropy there can be the

13:25

forces of nature in fact ensure that pockets of order can form within the

13:31

overall drive to disorder and the pockets that are most prevalent are stars you might ask yourself how in the

13:38

world could stars form if the universe is heading toward disorder there these orderly beautiful structures in the

13:45

heavens how could they ever come to be and a careful discussion of the force of

13:50

gravity and how it talks to this principle of the increase in entropy allows you to conclude that when a star

13:57

forms yes you get order here but in the process it releases so much disorder to

14:04

the environment that on balance the entropy goes up even though order forms

14:09

in a local region of space and it's something I call the entropic to step to

14:14

give you a sense of it's really an entropic dance where the entropy goes down here the entropy goes up in the

14:21

surrounding environment and that's how it's not totally the destruction of

14:26

structures in the world it's actually building up structures so long as in the

14:32

process they yield enough disorder to balance it all out so our friend Sean

14:37

Carroll has said things like when you make an omelet you're taking an ordered egg and making a disordered omelet

14:42

you're doing cosmology because it's a reflection of the fact that the Big Bang began in an incredibly ordered stage

14:48

that's right and so somehow this idea of the second law of thermodynamics the increase of entropy that that is also

14:54

the era of time that our past is ordered our future is disordered we live with

14:59

this great fortune that our past was ordered yes and we don't know why we don't know why and do you think there's

15:06

going to be a resolution to that question why was the past ordered why will you know why are we so fortunate as

15:11

to be able to do the entropic two-step yeah point you're making is absolutely right if the Big Bang itself is highly

15:18

disordered then there wouldn't have been the opportunity for order to form in the

15:23

future because we'd go from incredible disorder to yet more disorder but we began for some reason that remains

15:30

mysterious in a configuration near the Big Bang that itself had very low entropy a lot

15:36

of order and we have been living through in some sense the degradation of that order through cosmological history so

15:44

the question is can we explain where that ordered first configuration of the

15:50

world came from and I don't know I know I've I've written papers on this I I

15:57

don't believe the papers that I've written on them they they felt right at the time but you know you rethink things

16:04

and it's less convincing and and the and the other thing is it's unclear that it's even a question because you know if

16:13

if the use a one way of framing the issue is this when things are highly

16:18

ordered we often think about them as highly unlikely to have randomly arisen

16:25

right you throw all your stuff on your desktop and it will fall in some

16:30

disordered high entropic State because that's the easy way the simple way for

16:36

the ingredients to fall you would be surprised I think if you threw all your

16:41

junk on your desktop and it just happened to be the case that the pens and pencils all went right into the

16:47

holder the pages just landed all in order you know on your desktop that's

16:52

such an unlikely highly ordered state of affairs that you just don't think it

16:57

could possibly happen without a guiding intelligence so could you have a highly ordered beginning to the universe without a guiding intelligence and the

17:07

supposition in there is that a highly ordered Big Bang is itself unlikely just

17:13

like throwing your junk on the desk and getting an order configuration is unlikely but is it really unlikely if

17:20

the Big Bang happened once then there's kind of a hundred percent certainty that it happened as it did right there is no

17:27

other opportunity it's not although you are throwing darts at a wall and where the dart lands determines what the Big

17:34

Bang was like there is simply an event that took place that had certain properties and maybe you just need to accept it for what it was and move

17:40

forward from there well so I want to ask you this said this to you once at Columbia when we were hanging out and you you looked

17:48

at me like I was crazy so a chicken gives birth to an egg not a

17:54

scrambled egg yeah so why you know we understand that as being an execution of

17:59

certain DNA codes and yes overall the entropy increases of the whole larger system yeah but in that process there

18:06

was a code that was executed it was a very prescriptive and made something very ordered actually why can't we think

18:11

the laws of physics that way that when the universe began there were these laws of physics and it created an ordered egg yeah I I don't I if I looked at you like

18:18

you were crazy indigestion or something you know maybe they're reading more into it than it was

18:24

it could well be that the laws of physics themselves when playing out in a

18:31

cosmological setting guarantee that some first event would be highly ordered you

18:37

know giving birth to the universe like giving birth to the egg the problem I have with turning that into a real full

18:46

explanation is I don't see how that happens in our current configuration of

18:52

the laws of physics they tell us about how things evolve over time but they don't tell us the initial conditions so

18:58

is it the case that we could come up with laws that determine the conditions

19:04

as opposed to laws that tell us how the conditions change and that's the part of the story that that feels okay really

19:12

fun this gonna be like a good DeLeon setting its own initial data like awesome good talk about this later

19:17

but then you bring us from the idea of entropy and evolution and evolution you

19:23

haven't really touched upon but you will I think in this next step which is the

19:28

emergence of life so somehow we get from these austere physical laws or principles at least to life and and

19:37

that's a big leap and life is incredibly ordered right and has to do what you're describing which is this kind of

19:43

entropic to stuff so life is somehow maximized or not if not maximizing exploiting the entropic potential of the

19:50

universe yeah so take us to that step of life yeah well I think many of us certainly it was a case for me when I

19:57

first learned about evolution in high school mrs. Goldberg Stuyvesant High

20:02

School remember it was all in the context of the framework within which Darwin and Wallace really wrote their

20:10

initial ideas down which is understanding the great wealth of species on planet Earth and in that

20:18

setting we all know what they told us right in the descent from parent to

20:23

progeny there's descent with modification and those modifications are such that some of the progeny are worse

20:29

at surviving and those are the ones that will be less likely to reproduce some are better at surviving they're the ones

20:36

that are more likely to reproduce and their first spread that particular mutation widely through the genetic pool

20:42

now of course that version of evolution assumes that life already exists a question is does evolution give us any

20:50

insight perhaps into how life itself may have first gotten started and they're

20:57

our versions of natural selection and evolution which haven't developed over

21:02

the decades which do go further back there is a version called molecular Darwinism and molecular Darwinism is a

21:11

kind of evolution of the universe in which you're starting with atoms and particles and you recognize that once

21:19

those atoms learn a very specific trick once they learned how to replicate make

21:25

copies of themselves that's not all that hard if you have a bunch of atoms that are stuck together in a configuration

21:31

and they're very good at drawing in the very same ingredients out of which they are made they can form the template that

21:37

copies that atomic configuration that molecular configuration yielding copies of itself so once a collection of

21:45

molecules learns how to replicate then you're in an interesting situation because if mutations if some copy is not

21:54

identical to the original and if that copy is even better able to make copies of itself it will draw in more of the

22:02

raw material in the environment and dominate the molecular demographics and if in that replication process you

22:09

get another mutation that's even better replicating it will then take over and indeed you can have molecules coming

22:16

together in even more complicated structures and in that way making copies and holding on to information that

22:22

allows them to not only make copies but direct the creation of copies and so

22:28

this idea a kind of chemical combat that is a molecular version of Darwinian

22:35

natural selection maybe how we go from a bath of particles to collections that

22:40

are ever more ordered ever more complicated ultimately taking us to the molecules necessary for life and you say

22:47

life is physics orchestrated it do you you you do not have any illusions of trying to make some magic step yeah you

22:54

very much are a physicalist and a reductionist in that sense you see life is physics orchestrated but no less magical exactly I mean there was a time

23:01

in the 1800s when scientists didn't have that perspective the view was how can

23:09

you make life out of lifeless particles and the answer was you can't you have to

23:15

inject something else the life force has to be put into these particles but as we

23:21

have studied life with ever greater intensity nobody says that any longer no

23:26

scientists say that any longer the recognition is that the laws of physics and the particles of matter coming

23:31

together in the right configurations that kind of choreography allows life to emerge you don't seem to need anything

23:39

but the ingredients and the laws and these processes that put the particles

23:45

together so you're marching us from this completely austere inanimate world of

23:52

these theoretical principles towards a consciousness where life becomes a

23:58

vehicle of consciousness that can reflect and begin to ask these questions reflect on meaning and so it's really at

24:05

this next step when you you you bring in life as a vehicle for consciousness may begin to think about well is

24:10

consciousness exactly the same way is it absolutely reducible to the orchestration of physical particles and

24:17

their relationship that consciousness emerges and there's magic there and this is of course still a very aggressive ongoing debate

24:24

although there are very few people who say it's anything other than yes I mean I mean there's some of course that do

24:30

say that you need more but you're absolutely right I mean the progression is you have living beings that

24:36

ultimately emerge from these processes some of those living beings acquire some degree of conscious self-awareness

24:43

conscious self-reflection and the very same conundrum that for the browser

24:49

scientists in the 1800's comes to the fore here again because you can just articulate the same question but swap

24:57

out some words how can mindless thoughtless particles come together in a

25:02

configuration that somehow yields the inner sensation of thought feeling emotion how can they possibly generate

25:11

that if they themselves don't have any intrinsic version of those conscious

25:17

qualities from the get-go now some people respond much as those in

25:22

the past did with life they say those particles can't create consciousness on their own there has to be something else

25:29

a consciousness field that we somehow tap into or the particles themselves may

25:35

themselves have a little proto conscious quality so the electron might have

25:40

electric charge and mass and quantum mechanical spin david chalmers idea exactly yeah and in addition to the

25:47

properties of particles that we are familiar with maybe they have a little bit of consciousness and when you put a

25:52

lot of them together you got a lot of consciousness and that's what we are my own feeling and there's no proof to this

25:59

but my own feeling is that we are recapitulating the same story with life and that at some point when we fully

26:04

understand or better understand the brain and mind we will no longer invest

26:09

such mystery in the emergence of consciousness we'll look back at these days and kind of quaintly smile at the

26:15

ideas that were put forward and we will recognize as we do with life that consciousness is nothing but particles

26:22

coursing through a gloppy gray in our particular structure head and within that motion those particles generate the

26:30

conscious sensations that we all experience so there is this very interesting

26:37

transition we can think about with consciousness which sort of helps which is the idea that some distant relative

26:43

in the past first developed before consciousness attention this idea of you

26:48

know maybe there was some worm that needed to decide between the heat or the light or the food and began began to

26:57

develop a map of the external world and this idea I think of simplifying or

27:03

making a map of the world is a very interesting attitude towards consciousness because it since we're kind of over inflating it in some sense

27:09

consciousness might be a consequence of our inability to analyze all the data right that there's just too much data

27:16

coming from the outside we can't possibly do it in terms of the number of the frequencies or the exact

27:21

temperatures but so instead we make an approximate map of the external world and that's probably the first step and the next step is a map of the internal

27:28

world yes exactly so so one person has articulated a view like that as Michel

27:34

Graziano Princeton and he has basically stressed the fact that we look out at

27:39

the world we see patterns and we make models of those patterns in order that we can navigate reality but those models

27:46

are always imprecise incomplete and when we take that same idea and apply it

27:53

internal to understand not only say what's happening inside my head but as I look at you right now I'm kind of trying

28:01

to figure out what's happening inside your head - right like am I going on too long you want me to do something you're

28:06

right and these are important things for us to do as a social species so that we can engage in a manner of mind exactly

28:13

another matters I see right and but my map of your mind as well as my map of my

28:18

own mind is incomplete its imprecise and with that imprecision we lose the full

28:24

link to all of the physical processes responsible for conscious sensation

28:29

which is an explanation perhaps for why it is that it feels like that voice up here is floating untethered is floating

28:37

unmoored in our mind the reason it feels unmoored is because we have this imprecise incomplete map of what's going

28:45

on and we leave out the very ingredients that Woodmoor it that would tether it to physical processes and that

28:51

makes it feel so ethereal that we invest it with qualities that may in fact not

28:56

be justified so if we imagine an incredible ai that it's able to do all

29:03

the computations necessary to understand the room in terms of every single bit of data that reaches it would it need to

29:09

develop consciousness would it need to think and feel and have emotions and yeah well need is an interesting

29:14

question what it at all what are you if it doesn't need to with Darwinian adaptation suggest it wouldn't yes so it

29:21

could simply be the case that when you have this kind of complexity and when

29:28

you have a structure able to undertake the kind of information processing that we are familiar with each and every day

29:34

every scene every moment of our lives and maybe that conscious self-awareness

29:40

emerges as a byproduct of that kind of information processing it may simply be

29:47

the case that it has to be that way that it can't be any other way as this is part and parcel of the same

29:54

system and that really leads us to the very thorny concept of free will

30:01

yeah because it's only with consciousness that you begin to reflect on having choices yeah and and you know

30:09

freewill is a is a bitter bitter debate and not a very popular concept anymore

30:15

and I and I do believe that also you are very skeptical about the existence of free will but not totally about the idea

30:22

of freedom so start us with annihilating free will and then we'll think about how to resuscitate some notion of freedom

30:28

yeah well let's throw them a little buoy after we like drown them well about we throw one one buoy first I'm happy to go

30:34

to freewill I love to talk about that subject but even just unconsciousness again to my mind when you describe

30:44

consciousness in the manner that we have just now I don't think that in any way

30:50

diminishes consciousness some I've had these conversations you know I remember

30:55

having an on stage discussion of this sort a couple years ago and when this discussion of

31:01

consciousness happens someone in the back yelled out you're describing hell you know and it's like and I get it

31:08

because if we're used to thinking of consciousness as this pristine spectacular quality that we are endowed

31:16

with from something magical in the external world to frame it in a reductionist way can feel like you're

31:22

flattening it however I think it's utterly spectacular that the very same

31:29

physical processes that are responsible for this picture of water or the structure of this table is what's

31:35

responsible for conscious self-awareness how miraculous that collections of

31:41

particles can do and think and feel what we do that I think is the conclusion it

31:47

amplifies and elevates the wonder of it all it doesn't take away from it now to

31:52

turn to freewill or if you want to know it's the reductionist defense to say it

31:57

does not take the shine off of the experience ya are still conscious we still feel it it doesn't you don't by

32:03

magically analyzing it this way annihilate the experience of feeling right now when it comes to free will

32:09

though I think we do annihilate it you know so it's holding hands and humming you know and and and the

32:17

argument you know I think is is quite straightforward which is if we buy into

32:24

this version of consciousness we recognize that every decision every

32:30

thing that we thought we were the ultimate author of is in fact at the

32:35

level of particles nothing but those particles coursing through our minds going this way or that resulting in us

32:42

saying either yes or no or going left or right and if the motion of those

32:47

particles is nothing but physics articulated in the language of particles

32:53

if there is no place for us to intercede in the mathematical unfolding and I assure you there's no place in the

33:00

fundamental laws of physics where it says keep on chugging along but when you get to this point

33:05

ask ask the person what they want to do at that point you know that there's simply no place for us to insert

33:11

ourselves in the mathematical unfolding of physical law and that being the case there is no justification for the

33:20

intuition that we are the ultimate authors of our actions that we can somehow supersede the strings that are

33:28

pulling us that are governed by the equations of physics so that version of

33:34

free will which is the strongest one that we are fully calling our own shots

33:39

we are the authors of our actions we are autonomous that notion of free will

33:44

seems to be completely incompatible with our understanding of the physical world so this is your line to colbert when you

33:51

said to him you're just a bag of particles controlled by the laws of physics yeah yeah and yet you you do a little about-face

34:00

it's any not an about-face that's not fair to say but you do a little you give us a bone you give us the buoy

34:06

I don't know I'm losing my metaphors but you know this idea that there is still some sense of freedom

34:12

yeah and that we're more complex than Iraq right exactly yeah so so I I don't

34:18

really consider it a bone per se but I understand exactly why you frame it that way but my view is that there is an

34:26

alternative notion of freedom not the freedom of the will that I think we all

34:32

intuitively have and the one that I described the absence of but there's a kind of freedom that we humans have that

34:39

distinguishes us from the inanimate world and the point that you're making Iraq is a good counterpoint rocks can't

34:47

respond in any interesting way to stimuli from the external world we can

34:55

why can we do that not because we have free will in the traditional sense but rather because our arrangement of

35:02

particles is so exquisite compared to the arrangement of particles in Iraq

35:07

that our particles are able to respond in a wealth of different ways to stimuli

35:13

that we receive from the environment so our freedom is not the freedom from the

35:20

tyranny of mathematical laws that doesn't exist instead our freedom

35:26

is a freedom to execute a range of behaviors that are unavailable to the inanimate world we have unshackled our

35:33

behavior through evolutionary development which has allowed us to do things that rocks simply cannot and I

35:41

really do mean that as a substitute not as a bone I truly feel in my bones

35:48

that this resolution is is really satisfying me right now I just

35:54

articulated a sentence how do I view it I say to myself how my particles just

36:00

you know they came together and and they they got that sentence out and I'm

36:05

really pleased that they they did get that sentence out and and and thank goodness for those particles doing you

36:12

know the good thing doing the good work and and and there's a gratification that

36:18

comes with it's a little different from the kind of gratification from free will but I feel responsible for my actions

36:24

because heck it's my particles doing it yeah it's the laws of physics that are guiding at all but who cares

36:30

fundamentally it's me because I am impressing my individuality on what I do because my responses to stimuli are

36:39

highly iconic to me in the particular arrangement of particles in my brain as it is for everybody else now this

36:46

reminds me a little bit of this theory of mind question that you raised earlier you're trying to figure out what I'm

36:52

thinking I'm trying to figure out what you're thinking and I look at you and I don't have a perfect theory of other minds and so to some extent I have to

36:59

attribute to you the kind of freedom that you're describing simply in my uncertainty of being able to reduce to

37:06

the mechanics of the particles and the arrangements and the interactions in your mind because of that I'm left with

37:12

the complexity so vast and a range of options so vast the rock doesn't have that I ascribe to you a sense of freedom

37:18

yes and so I I guess I want to ask you in the same way that you do to yourself for the same reasons and I guess what I

37:24

want to ask you is are you to some extent saying that the illusion of free will is equal to this variety of freedom

37:32

that that we can live with yeah I don't know if I need to equate them

37:38

and I rather would describe them in terms of the role that they play in my

37:45

thought process of how I am in the world and and I I'm I'm willing and feel

37:53

forced to jettison the intuition that I have free will but this other variety of

37:59

freedom feels really good to me so I don't consider them to be the same or equal but this latter version of freedom

38:07

makes it such that I don't pine so much after the old version so you really are

38:13

marching us towards even being able to frame the question of what is the meaning of life to some extent and and

38:22

the next step is really development of language and storytelling yeah in this March and you you reflect on the

38:31

Darwinian explanation possibly of language and you kind of take it and

38:37

leave it and you take it and leave it but I think it's interesting to reflect on a scientific explanation for the

38:44

emergence of language but even more of storytelling yeah and and then doesn't matter if we understand the Darwinian

38:51

explanation yeah or another it's a good question and it all depends on the kinds of mysteries

39:01

that excite you and the kinds of mysteries that you hunger to have an explanation for and one of the mysteries

39:10

that has certainly captured the attention of a community of researches and one that certainly has captured my

39:16

attention is why in the world after we developed language and there many

39:22

theories of where language comes from and as you discuss I described a number of them in the book but there is

39:29

reasonable evidence that language has evolutionary utility right we are able

39:36

to communicate we can coordinate actions we can do things more effectively as a group if we can speak to each other and

39:41

communicate so imagine that language plays that role but after we have language why in the world would we start

39:49

getting together and telling each other fictional tales of non-existent beings in realms that

39:56

have no relevance to the real world why would we spend time doing that that's an

40:01

interesting question to explore yes a storytelling it's really is really the country you and fictional storytelling

40:08

in particular but you know it strikes you as why wouldn't they go out and sharpen some Spears as opposed to talk

40:15

about demigods you mean why wouldn't they gather more fruit and nuts as opposed to you know spending all this

40:21

time we're both members of the conversation know what they're talking about is utterly false from the

40:28

perspective of alignment with things in the outer world and do you feel compelled by a adaptive explanation III

40:34

do I mean it's highly controversial and you're entering a realm where people can

40:40

make up all sorts of just-so stories that you need to be skeptical of because

40:47

you're entering a realm where it's not as though we can go back and think and

40:52

interview those folks who are telling the first tales and figure out why it is that they were doing what they were

40:59

doing but nevertheless there is an interesting idea that researchers have developed that storytelling prepares us

41:06

for challenges in the real world in a very safe way much as ethology right you know play among animals widely

41:13

documented as rehearsing practicing for encounters in the real world right some

41:19

plays very rough hopefully the animals don't get hurt but they're preparing themselves it appears to be the case so

41:25

that when they're in a real fight out there in the world world they have practiced certain kinds of moves and

41:32

responses we may do the same thing with fictional storytelling we may enter a

41:39

whole realm of distinct worlds and encounter a realm with distinct

41:45

personalities and deal with a whole range of distinct challenges and problems all from the safety of

41:52

storytelling as opposed to going out in the dangerous world and having to encounter these situations in order to

42:00

gain the practice and expertise in nuance in response that story to can give us it's kind of like

42:05

theoretical physics versus experimental physics thank you so yeah yeah you see math allows us to commune with other

42:13

realities and language and storytelling allows us to commune with other minds

42:18

yes I'm the deepest way for us to get inside the head of another and they know

42:23

another way of saying it is this you know if you imagined a group of

42:28

individuals say you know some other species of human I'm a human I'm Foreman

42:34

on planet Earth and imagine that they were completely rational I mean maybe in the in the Vulcan sense if you don't

42:40

mind me invoking you know an old Star Trek you know trope so imagine you have these individuals and all they ever do

42:46

is the sensible thing right they never tell fictional accounts waste of time

42:51

they go out they get the food they sharpen the spears and so forth now you know if they were in competition with

42:57

individuals like us who do these wild things where we make up ideas and we

43:02

pursue these crazy which do you think well which would be the better dinner

43:08

companion right you know you have the Vulcan over and all they're talking about is the molecules and atoms and the

43:14

tape and you're like I'm not going to invite that person again right you know but in terms of competition between the

43:19

two I think it's clear that innovation ingenuity surprise discovery is going to

43:25

be the purview of the species like us and I think we ultimately would triumph

43:32

in that kind of a competition so yes could there be could there be I'm not saying that there is could there be an

43:38

evolutionary basis for this kind of behavior I think the answer is possibly yes you also invoke Tony Morrison and

43:46

connecting an idea that you open the book with with this bringing it to the

43:51

point of thinking about language where Tony Morrison says we die that might be the meaning of life but we do language

43:58

that might be the measure of our lives yeah I mean it's really with language that we can articulate a vision of the

44:05

world that is so much richer than the mere facts of existence and you know

44:13

people have taken these ideas in different directions right victims and had this notion that language might

44:19

actually set the border limits yeah the limits and and nobody knew what he was talking about well actually

44:25

you're the expert on this talk about this you know again correct me if I'm

44:30

wrong but that always struck me at least in the naive interpretation as a very

44:36

limited perspective on the nature of reality and nature of truth there are so many things in the world that I feel

44:44

like I engage with that I understand to some degree that I don't have any means

44:49

of articulating in language in fact the number of times that I have felt like if only would there was a word for that but

44:57

there is no word for that and it resolves itself in a different way in my

45:04

understanding so just in defense of Vick and Stein who really should not be defended just cuz

45:09

he was such a nut but you know he he said he was talk about the limits of language and as he said the rest should

45:15

be passed over in silence to that effect but I always interpreted Vic and Stein as saying it just cause something

45:22

actually closer to what you're saying because he said the limits of language are the limits of my world but I I think

45:27

really ultimately he was seeing something else that there was like this negative space almost that he fell into

45:33

to experience something beyond that that that could not be summed up by language

45:38

but also the beauty of Vic and Stein is we can project whatever we want right on top and so there's another quote that

45:45

you raised in which also connects this idea of railing against mortality which is just really motivating force in your

45:52

book is one of Shakespeare's and I'm gonna see if I can get this one right he

45:57

says when all the breathers of this world are dead you still shall live such

46:03

as such virtue has my power yeah and so

46:09

here we are trying to be immortal yeah it fits right into the theme because

46:14

here's an example of two deaths being described within the context of a single

46:21

work and the reality is quite distinct from the words that Shakespeare actually

46:29

uses he's BAE saying aye Shakespeare will be forgot the next right part is how he will die

46:35

threatening an epitaph he's running up imagine writing epitaph assume the dot and says you will carry on because my

46:41

words my pen is so powerful that symbolically you will achieve immortality whereas the poet will not be

46:49

remembered now how many people remember Shakespeare and how many people remember the epic did the person for the whom the

46:55

epitaph was written so it's a symbolic version it's exactly sort of reflects right back on ronk and becquer it's a

47:01

symbolic version of reaching beyond the mortal nature that we have and you know

47:08

that the question arises you know in some sense which is where do you get

47:17

that symbolic immortality from so one of the things that captivated me in in in

47:24

reading the various perspectives on these questions is a question that I was

47:30

asked you know many years ago after a conversation like this which was you

47:35

know which would trouble you more learning that you are gonna die saying

47:42

six months or learning that the entire species is going to be wiped out in six

47:50

months and it's a curious question to reflect on because at least for me my

47:55

response to each of those two is completely different you know my response to learning that I'm going to

48:00

die I think would be a desire to wring as much life out from the final six

48:08

months that I have if however I learned that the species are going to be wiped out in six months there's a sense of is

48:15

there any point doing anything any longer because there'll be no longer descendants who will be able to receive

48:22

anything that we create either real or symbolic that we imagine being passed on to the future so it's an interesting

48:29

question where do you put the weight of your own desire to not be as Robert

48:36

Nozick described it wiped out erased and

48:41

that brings us in this sort of pilgrimage to thinking

48:48

about myths and religion which you describe to some extent in your own sort of intuition as being railing precisely

48:55

against oblivion to mollify the anxiety of understanding our impermanence yeah I

49:03

mean there's exactly I mean there's a sense in which every religion is stephen jay gould noted that every religion

49:08

began with a recognition of our own mortality and it's not the only role that religion plays but a powerful way

49:17

of dealing with the recognition that your time is finite is to imagine that

49:23

it's not finite to invent myths where we're in the center and we triumph in we yes exactly and that's and there's and

49:31

if you think about it that's actually incredibly creative it is an amazingly

49:38

impressive move to ameliorate the otherwise debilitating impact of

49:45

recognizing that everything you care about everything that you're part of everything that has been within the

49:51

reality that you've experienced will go away how do you deal with it imagine that it doesn't now I'm going to by the

50:00

way he's going to tell us it does so but we'll get there but I do I do want to ask are you a religious person it

50:08

depends exactly what one means by religious person and I think you probably anticipated that would be the

50:14

answer that I'd give you IIIi don't consider myself a religious person in following the dictates and the

50:24

dogmas of any specific religion right I mean you know I was raised Jewish I

50:31

don't I don't practice that religion in in any systematic manner but I certainly

50:37

do consider myself to be a spiritual person and by that I simply mean I think

50:43

there's great value in not just trying to understand the external world which is pretty much what we have done with

50:50

our lives trying to understand the basic laws and the particles and cosmology and

50:55

things of that sort but there's something deeply important and wondrous of turning that lens inward and

51:02

trying to understand our own inner world our own inner experience and I consider

51:08

that to be a spiritual quest to figure out how we're part of this reality so in

51:14

that sense yes I mean you also describe both with language and with myth and religion these narrative layers that

51:21

give you a higher level truth within the rubric of being physical exactly and and

51:28

today I also wanted to ask you cuz I know that you have this unusual relationship with your brother where your view become this very influential

51:36

theoretical physicist and your brother is quite a religious person yeah very much in the sense of doctrines that are

51:44

adapted from history yeah I don't know if he's actually here at the moment Joshua okay I'll talk more freely no no

51:54

I say exactly what I said if he was here you know my brother's a good deal older than I am about 13 years older and so he

52:02

was growing up in the 60s a very different time and found things

52:08

distressing as many did in the late 60s and left America and traveled to Europe

52:14

and India and various places and became a Hari Krishna devotee your father

52:20

taking you to Central Park to watch the Hari Krishna's and this realization that one of them was your brother yeah it was

52:26

a nice way of introducing you to his brother's turn no it's exactly right you know one sunny Sunday afternoon I don't

52:33

know a seven or eight years old and my dad took my sister and he took me and we

52:38

went strolling you know and I think it's called poets walk right by the Birdman show and as we're walking along we

52:45

stopped because there was this big group of Hari Krishna devotees drumming and chanting and things of that sort and

52:51

over there in the corner I look and it's my brother and I had no idea I thought

52:57

it was a college I had no idea that this is the direction that his life had taken but you know he had you know the shaved

53:03

head with with just a hair and in one spot and the flowing robes and was out there uh you know energetically

53:11

part of this this ritual and does he remain with that same group um he does

53:20

and it's been an interesting and and curious and and long journey I mean

53:25

there were times you know when my brother would visit my father and you

53:31

know the the apartment in Manhattan and ultimately came to the conclusion that he couldn't visit any longer because he

53:37

couldn't bear to be in the room with somebody who was not a hard Christian devotee that's how it was in the early

53:43

days and you know this was hard my dad would would would cry with with

53:48

ferocious intensity at having lost what he viewed as losing his son because you

53:56

know of this perspective over time it has definitely mellowed and now you know

54:03

if my brother was here he no longer wears the robes and no longer has a particular outfit but he still deeply

54:10

devoted to that kind of spiritual journey and do you engage in conversations about your different paths

54:16

to meaning well we we do and we have certainly in the in the early days you

54:22

know when I was a graduate student in physics you know there are times that we would meet and I would tell them the

54:27

things that I was doing and working on even the discovery here there and at the

54:32

time almost everything that I told him about he would be like yeah Vedic text

54:38

number twelve you know so I was a little frustrating at some level but but at the

54:47

same time I recognized with hindsight now that what he was really saying was there was a resonance with the kinds of

54:55

questions that were firing me up and the kinds of questions that were firing him

55:00

up even though our pathways to try to come to terms with those questions were radically different yeah I'm glad you

55:07

reminded me of that because you have described how Hinduism and Buddhism are often touted as already having predicted

55:13

string theory or quantum mechanics or something else and you have a very good response to this I think in in in

55:18

particular in your conversation with the Dalai Lama so I'd love for you to have a chance to adjust that because it is a question I'm

55:25

sure you often get wasn't it already predicted quantum mechanics and all physics in in ancient texts right so so

55:32

there actually was an event some years ago down in down in Texas where I was

55:38

doing an event with the Dalai Lama and I had the opportunity to ask him some questions and one of the questions I

55:44

asked him was precisely that which was I said look there's so many books out there which claim that Eastern

55:52

traditions have long ago come upon the insights of modern physics and do you

55:58

think that's true and he just immediately answered with complete honesty and said I do not

56:05

he says when it comes to figuring out the deep nature of reality it is you guys it is the physicists that we need

56:12

to follow and we are happy to update our understanding of reality based on the

56:17

discoveries that you make at the same time he said when it comes to consciousness we have much to teach you

56:24

and that's the domain in which the insights from our practice can give

56:31

incredibly deep insights into nature of self-awareness and in the path of

56:36

self-awareness art looms large right it's the next kind of step in the ascent

56:41

and you describe in a really interesting way kind of the uselessness and from a

56:47

Darwinian perspective of art like why use all of these resources on something

56:53

that has no adaptive or survival value in the face of an angry bear or drought and and it's a kind of like sexual

57:01

selection argument but again I think you you kind of play that dance with maybe we know maybe we don't know about the

57:07

rejection what you think is the best that you can do in in these kinds of domains I don't think there's a

57:13

slam-dunk argument in any of these humanistic undertakings as to their

57:20

adaptive role or lack thereof but there are interesting arguments on both sides of the story and you know perhaps Steven

57:28

Pinker is well known for articulating one of the strongest statements about

57:33

the lack of a to utility of certain art forms music in

57:38

particular being one that he stresses he even goes so far as to say and I think many people are familiar with the quote

57:45

that these forms of art are nothing but mental cheesecake right right junk food

57:52

so so we have certainly adapted certain delight in eating things that are dense

57:59

with fat and sugar because in the ancestral world those of our forebears

58:05

who had a predilection for eating fleshy fruit and and ripen nuts they're the

58:11

ones that stored up on the calories that allowed them to survive when times turned lean but now here in the modern

58:17

world we create things like cheesecake that prey upon those adaptive sensibilities even though the Cheesecake

58:24

itself offers no nutritional value of its own and that's his view for certain

58:29

art forms they're preying upon our highly attuned say sonic sensitivities

58:35

right those of our forebears walking around the African savannah who were well attuned to a noise over there or a

58:41

sound over there were the ones who better understood their environment had a better chance of surviving music comes

58:46

along and then leverages that sonic sensitivity by pushing our pleasure

58:52

buttons in a way that offers in today's world no adaptive survival value at all

58:59

so that's sort of an extreme position of the exact of uselessness of art but he's

59:04

not making a comment about our appreciation or experiential the same way that you have been defending

59:10

consciousness is not being diminished by the reality of its physicality nor this

59:16

experience of some sense of freedom nor art yeah it is a mistake to assume that

59:22

the ultimate arbiter of value is whether something has an adaptive role it's not

59:29

it's simply a fact equality an element of how the world operates so Pinker

59:36

himself has great respect for and highly values artistic exploration and works of

59:43

art he's simply asking is it the case that these behaviors

59:48

are of value in one particular domain helping us to survive and in that one

59:56

barometer he's saying that they don't so do you agree with Pinker well I

1:00:01

personally don't my my you know it could be that you know my dad was a composer

1:00:07

was a musician I grew up around music from from the time I was crawling around right so that maybe has biased my

1:00:15

perspective but it feels to me and it feels to me deeply that artistic

1:00:21

exploration is vital to the ability to innovate the ability to think about

1:00:27

things in a different way you know Glenn Gould has this wonderful remark where he talks about a Bach fugue

1:00:35

and the way in which the melodic lines can be inverted and turned in on

1:00:41

themselves and yet even with that miraculous rearrangement of the notes

1:00:46

yields something that is deeply wondrous in its melodic line and I see physics in

1:00:54

much the same way what do we do we rearrange the building box of reality what did Einstein do in developing the

1:01:00

special theory of relativity he took the old ideas of space and time in the speed of light and he rearranged them in a

1:01:07

sparkling new configuration in which the speed of light was constant forcing space and time to be relative and that

1:01:13

rearrangement of the building blocks yielded a radically new picture of the world that turns out to be correct

1:01:18

and it feels to me that artistic exploration over the course of a hundred

1:01:23

thousand generations is what primed the brain - rearranging structures in the

1:01:29

world and creating new patterns and within those new patterns creating new insights into how the world actually

1:01:34

works it's a beautiful description and I often say theoretical physics is one of the

1:01:41

last places or one of the last disciplines in which with a straight face you can describe beauty as being a

1:01:47

motivating factor yeah and it really is I mean we can see one solution and another solution it comes to the same

1:01:54

answer at the bottom of the page but one is beautiful and want to somehow clumsy one is elegant one is elegant like the

1:02:00

universe yes and all of this really these assessments are assessments of conscious

1:02:07

minds that have some experience of freedom if only by the complexity of the internal prodigious arrangements that

1:02:13

they're allowed yes that you know came from exploiting the entry potential of

1:02:18

the universe you know came from this very austere beginning in a Big Bang that was just these principles driving

1:02:24

us to this point we are pretty sure we exist because after all consciousness is the only thing we're really sure of true

1:02:31

and then you bring us to the frontier of the end of time which returns us it sort

1:02:40

of leaves behind this complex tapestry for a second of these of these things

1:02:46

that emerged from from this complex evolution and and returns us to the austerity of entropy and the unfolding

1:02:53

of the universe you have an absolutely beautiful description of the to the best

1:02:59

of our knowledge the end that we face to a cosmological time yeah and I was

1:03:05

wondering if you would be willing to take us through some of that yeah sure um in in the book I use a metaphor to

1:03:11

try to help give the reader and frankly me as well an intuitive understanding of

1:03:18

time scales that really defy human intuition because to really talk about the far future of the universe you need

1:03:25

to talk about time scales that are fantastically longer than even the stretch all the way back to the Big Bang

1:03:32

so to do that I asked the reader and I'll ask you here now to go with me

1:03:37

imagine that we use the following metaphor imagine we have the Empire State Building and imagine that every

1:03:43

floor of the Empire State Building represents a duration that's ten times that of the previous floor so ground

1:03:49

floor is one year first floor ten years second floor 103rd floor a thousand and so forth so in this scheme we are going

1:03:56

exponentially far into the future as we climb up the stairwell of the Empire State Building now in this scheme

1:04:03

everything that's happened from the Big Bang until today extends to just above the 10th floor roughly 10 billion years

1:04:10

and as we go forward we're just going expand beyond that and I'll just take you through a couple of the floors to give a

1:04:17

sense of what happens by floor 11 the Sun is going to swell to over 200 times

1:04:22

its current size engulfing the inner planets and maybe even the earth as well by floor 14 most stars will have used up

1:04:30

their nuclear fuel and will fade to black by floor 19 the earth if it wasn't

1:04:36

swallowed up by the Sun on floor 11 it's now going to spiral into the dark Sun having lost energy through gravitational

1:04:42

radiation by floor 30 most stars will fall into the galaxy's central black

1:04:49

hole by floor 38 protons the very heart of complex matter are likely to

1:04:57

disintegrate showing that complex matter will be gone when you pass by the 38th floor by floor

1:05:03

50 any cogitating beings that still exist and there may simply be none

1:05:08

around once protons decay but if there are cogitating beings left in the universe they will think their final

1:05:15

thought because the actual process of thinking creates waste heat entropy that

1:05:21

the universe needs to absorb but by the floor 50 the universe won't be able to absorb it which means that when that

1:05:27

thinking being thinks one more thought it will fry in the own heat that it's thought generates between between floors

1:05:38

68 and the peak even black holes will disintegrate through a process that

1:05:43

Stephen Hawking taught us about they will radiate energy into space and disperse into a bath of particles that

1:05:50

will simply walk through an ever larger and ever colder cosmos that's it

1:06:03

so this really is the apex of the journey the idea that not just do your

1:06:11

particles cease to be organized in your particular way but that ultimately the

1:06:17

entire universe actually has an end an end where thought cannot be anymore and

1:06:25

I think it's very much embedded in your title until the end of time you don't you say something to the effect that

1:06:33

it's a noble charge that we have to try for ourselves to find meaning until the

1:06:40

end of time because after that shrug shrug there's one little epilogue that's

1:06:47

Brad as a footnote just to bring up when you have all these particles floating in

1:06:53

the void and when you have virtually unlimited time for them to meander around the cosmos there is something

1:07:00

weird that on occasion can happen those particles can slam into each other and

1:07:06

sometimes stick together in groups of two or groups of three or maybe even groups of four sometimes they'll disperse but sometimes they'll continue

1:07:13

to group into ever large configurations there is a nonzero chance that those

1:07:19

particles can come together to yield a particularly interesting structure a

1:07:24

human brain floating in the void imprinted say with the thoughts that say

1:07:30

it's my brain my brain there's actually a nonzero chance that if wait long and if my brain will reconstruct out there

1:07:37

in the void and if that were to happen that brain would think that it's having this conversation right now even though

1:07:45

that brain had no history whatsoever because it just spontaneously formed under the motion of particles so there

1:07:52

is a bizarre way in which thought may be resurrected over fantastically long

1:07:58

timescales I should just say what the time skills are the Empire State Building took us up to say ten to the

1:08:03

hundred years that's a really long time scale the time scale for a brain to form

1:08:09

in the void from the random two particles is 10 to the 10 to the 68

1:08:16

that is a fantastically long time scale but think about it there would be nobody

1:08:21

waiting around for that brain to form say hey come on brain like what's going on there and therefore if you have the

1:08:28

virtual eternity these weird things may possibly happen you also raise the

1:08:33

separator that the universe is infinite and we won't even go near the multiverse that actually they're called Boltzmann

1:08:39

brains yeah that the number of Boltzmann brains will exceed the number of what we call ordinary brains yeah that's quite

1:08:44

disturbing disturbing because if I if I were to ask anyone in the audience human

1:08:51

brain yeah well I say you know where did your brain come from and you say that's a little personal but I don't really mean it in that sense you know your

1:08:57

brain you would tell me emerged you know when you were born when you were conceived and you'd go through the whole

1:09:03

lineage you know your parents and grandparents and so forth and you might take us right back to the Big Bang that

1:09:08

might be the story you tell of where your brain comes from but as Janet just mentioned these weird so-called

1:09:14

Boltzmann brains that form out of the random motion of particles they can happen for a near eternity while your

1:09:21

story only holds water between roughly the 1st and the 10th floor of the Empire

1:09:26

State Building or maybe let's go to the 30th floor to be really generous in our assessment beyond that range there

1:09:33

simply aren't the particles to yield the kind of story that you just told

1:09:39

which means sheerly based on probabilities there are so many more Boltzmann brains out to Eternity than

1:09:46

there are brains that form in the traditional manner that you describe that if you're rational and and think

1:09:52

just about the numbers and probabilities it's far more likely that your brain just formed out of the void and thinks

1:09:58

it's having these experiences so the story you told was really beautiful and

1:10:04

quaint but it has no basis in reality if you allow for these brains to form in

1:10:10

the void which is a very disturbing conclusion even to physicists I should say because it undercuts rationality

1:10:17

itself if my brain could possibly have just formed in the void thinking that it

1:10:23

studied quantum anacs and general relativity and thinking that it understands the data

1:10:28

that supports those theories but if all that is wrong because it never happened

1:10:34

then i can't trust even the very laws that lead us to conclude that these brains should form in the void so we

1:10:41

really undercut our own sense of rationalism if we allow these crazy things to happen which means just to

1:10:48

summarize we physicists pretty much used this as a diagnostic tool if our theories really allow for these

1:10:54

spontaneous brains to form and avoid we think that our theory needs to be

1:10:59

reanalyzed reassessed modified in some way to get rid of this quality so you've

1:11:09

brought us to this precipice in which there is this ultimate death of even thinking itself in a universe that faces

1:11:18

a kind of oblivion that is totally profound and not specifically human and much more severe than that and yet in

1:11:24

the opening of this conversation you said but yeah yeah but yeah but i view this in a wonderful way and you I very

1:11:31

much feel that we're on this trip with you that this was something you were going through yes and and you come to

1:11:38

this point where you describe your own kind of epiphany this moment where you felt this calm connection and you

1:11:45

described a feeling of gratitude yeah like for experience itself yes and I

1:11:50

think that would be a beautiful place to hear you close this trip yeah well that

1:11:55

is is a good summary again because when you recognize that we are the product of

1:12:01

these laws that have no purpose they have no meaning they're they're not endowed with anything beyond the

1:12:07

mathematical qualities that they have and when you recognize that you realize

1:12:13

that there isn't some answer that's floating out there and rather you change your perspective and recognize that we

1:12:21

are the product of these laws acting themselves out from the Big Bang to the

1:12:28

present time and that involves a nearly infinite collection of quantum processes

1:12:34

right each of which could have turned out that way instead of yielding a reality which neither you nor

1:12:40

I nor any of us would exist and yet against those astounding odds we are

1:12:46

here and it's more than that it's not just that we're here we are collections

1:12:51

of particles as we describe that have the incredible capacity to think about

1:12:57

the world to reflect on reality and that to me gives me an incredible sense of

1:13:03

gratitude that collections of particles through a flitting burst of activity can create beauty can experience wonder can

1:13:12

illuminate mystery and that recognition is something that for me borders on

1:13:18

reverence how remarkable how stunning that we are here and that we can do the

1:13:23

things that we do and frankly in a world that has qualities that many of us find

1:13:29

distasteful dark chaotic destructive debilitating to have a sense of

1:13:34

reverence for our moment in the cosmic timeline adds something which I think is

1:13:39

deeply valuable Brian thank you so much

1:13:44

[Applause]

1:13:57

I am so thrilled that we've had Brian here and I and I got to hog the

1:14:04

conversation and we want to give everyone a chance to ask some questions so let's just keep those mics moving

1:14:10

we'll do about 10 minutes of questions keep those mics moving if you have a mic ask a question as soon as you're done pass it on and move that mic to somebody

1:14:16

else yes hi I have a question it's about I'm right over here

1:14:22

hi it's about Einstein and Einstein's idea about free will and when Michele

1:14:30

Besso died Einstein said to his widow essentially he's not dead because for physicists the

1:14:39

past the future the present are all illusions of course he believed in this

1:14:45

concept of a block universe so I my question is do you feel that basically

1:14:52

his belief was the future already exists so is there free will probably not but I

1:14:59

know that you support ideas that are closer to a multi Multi universe so I'm

1:15:05

just wondering like do you think the difference between the existence of freewill could be do we live in a block

1:15:10

universe something that's already said where the future exists or does every decision that every individual make

1:15:15

create a new universe yeah so it's a very good question and and one way of

1:15:21

framing that question which I think retains the essence of what you're asking is Einstein was viewing the world

1:15:30

in terms that we consider to be classical physics quantum physics was

1:15:35

something that didn't really move him in the way that it moves physicists today

1:15:41

and in a classical world you have the situation where if you tell me the state

1:15:48

of the world right now the equations dictate precisely what the world will be like later on and in that world it seems

1:15:56

virtually impossible to talk about freewill at all the future is locked in

1:16:01

place by virtue of the knowledge that you have of it today in a quantum world

1:16:06

things are a little bit different the quantum laws do not predict what things will be like tomorrow based on

1:16:13

how they are today they predict the likelihood the probability that they'll be one way or another tomorrow based on

1:16:19

how they are today now some people see in that an opening for free will they say aha it's the choice in some sense of

1:16:27

the outcome that's where we're able to intercede in the unfolding and the problem is that's utter nonsense because

1:16:36

the way quantum mechanics works is the outcome from the realm of possibilities

1:16:42

is a random choice that comes out of features of the world that we don't even

1:16:47

fully understand right now but we know that it's not something that comes from a volitional decision so if you learned

1:16:54

that the way your particles move was say governed by somebody flipping a coin

1:16:59

backstage with that probabilistic freedom give you a sense of autonomy I

1:17:05

don't think so that's not what we mean by autonomy that's not what we mean by free will and therefore the real way of

1:17:14

framing this problem from my perspective is not whether you're in a classical or quantum world it's not whether you have

1:17:20

deterministic laws or probabilistic laws the issue is do you have laws is the

1:17:27

universe lawful does it progress from here to there by a lawful progression

1:17:32

and if the answer to that question is yes and I think most physicists and I think most people think deeply about it

1:17:38

think the answer is yes then there is no room for the traditional notion of free

1:17:43

will because you cannot intercede in that lawful progression excellent we

1:17:49

have another mic question if you got the mic feel free to speak hi everyone

1:17:55

my question first I'm going to say I spent it and now an hour on the phone

1:18:01

with a quantum mechanic in Australia I went to school with and his question for you was was Peter Brock correct and I

1:18:08

thought it was a joke because Peter Brock was a racecar driver and now I've been listening you have to look him up

1:18:14

the quantum mechanic is a his name is Rob Proctor he's an based out of Niro -

1:18:22

Trey Leah but question is I geek out on blockchain and it's a bit off-topic

1:18:27

but could we use blockchain to travel back from the future well I'm gonna

1:18:34

leave this to Janna no I'm throwing it back at you but I'm gonna rephrase it there you you your it

1:18:41

doesn't matter if it's blockchain or anything else the question ultimately is there any mechanism by which we could

1:18:48

travel backwards in time we know we can time travel and you often point us out we know we can travel into someone

1:18:54

else's future yes through special relativity we know that that's absolutely possible that you and I could

1:18:59

part ways and travel at different speeds and you're different black holes and one I'll come back into your future and

1:19:05

we'll have lost sync but the question can I go into my own past is actually one that Einstein thought about yeah I

1:19:12

think many many many others have thought about this and I think the the Ferriss statement is that there's still a

1:19:19

possibility that you could travel to the past people have actually proposed mechanisms by which you could do that

1:19:26

usually the most prominent one involves wormholes wormhole you may know as a

1:19:31

tunnel from one location in space to another it's kind of a shortcut through space if you move the mouths of a

1:19:38

wormhole the openings lose synchronicity with each other and then you're no

1:19:43

longer just traveling from one position in space to another position in space you're moving for one moment in time to

1:19:49

another moment in time one directions going forward in time the other direction is going backward in time

1:19:54

although the mathematics in principle can work I think most physicists believe

1:20:00

that you could never realize this in the physical world first of all we don't know if wormholes are real I mean there

1:20:06

are in Deep Space nine and other you know so many sci-fi films we don't know if they're actually real we don't know

1:20:12

if you could actually traverse a wormhole so wormholes might be real out there but you can't actually travel

1:20:17

through them in the manner that you imagine with the tunnel so I think most physicists would say that when we

1:20:23

understand the laws of physics more fully travel to the Past will be ruled out but there's still the doors open a

1:20:30

crack I think is the most fair way of describing it so there are chronology protection conjecture switch asserted

1:20:36

that exactly that that when we fully understand the laws of physics that will not that will be just allowed but there are also stories and I think

1:20:42

Fineman told her really one of the great versions of the grandfather paradox where you you know a grandson goes back

1:20:50

in time kills his grandfather before his father was born and therefore could not

1:20:55

have been born to go back and because grandfather but you can try to make it since there is no freewill anyway that

1:21:02

the stories are totally self consistent and nobody can execute a test that's inconsistent with the laws of physics

1:21:07

right so that even if you can go into your past you simply won't be able to kill your grandfather you won't you

1:21:13

might graze him which makes him kind of psycho which makes your father not so good which makes you want to go back and

1:21:19

kill your grandfather right and as long as it's consistent everything's fine right anyone else about roediger I mean

1:21:30

he was trying to reconcile biology with physics and I thought that that some

1:21:36

biologists thought that was sort of problematic but I've heard a lot of biologists refer to biology has sort of

1:21:42

the messy science and then physics doesn't really explain everything in

1:21:47

biology and then also in terms of biology talk a lot about natural selection but somebody I'll just start

1:21:53

talking about survival the luckiest know that there is an actual such utility to

1:21:58

a lot of the traits that now in your book you make reference to Schrodinger's book on life yeah I mean Schrodinger

1:22:06

wrote a book you know called what his life in 1943 based on lectures that had

1:22:13

given the previous year and he was one of the rare physicists who was willing to move outside his domain of expertise

1:22:21

and try to use physics to address questions that other scientists have been pondering for some period of time

1:22:27

so I think now as we reflect back on what Schrodinger said he got a lot of

1:22:33

things wrong in that book you know it was the 1940s it was before the discovery of the structure of DNA

1:22:39

nevertheless he had many ideas that hinted at the right direction and and

1:22:46

the point that you're making is a good one as science progresses we challenge old ideas

1:22:51

try to refine them we try to ensure that they're better able to describe the better data that we acquire through our

1:22:58

intense investigations of the world and things will change over time but I think

1:23:04

the the bottom line assessment of Darwinian natural selection is that it's

1:23:09

rock-solid sure there are details around the edges that people are going to think

1:23:14

about and work on and refine over time but the core idea that Darwin gave us is

1:23:21

is alive well and solid let's take one more question if you've got a mic feel

1:23:29

emboldened I've got a mic if you don't

1:23:35

yes okay someone's getting one gotcha okay this may be a weird question so if

1:23:45

the structure of things from macro to micro is really kind of similar from

1:23:51

universe to galaxies to solar systems to have it in earth and having condors and cities and families and those families

1:23:57

are made of people and people are made of molecules and molecules are made of atoms couldn't we all be tiny conscious

1:24:05

particles within a live evolving universe instead of you know like a God

1:24:12

and a religion and maybe that's the tethering life force have you seen an animal house that question was was was

1:24:24

asked by the frat boys you know could we be in the fingernail of some giant being

1:24:30

and and you you know the answer I think

1:24:35

one way of thinking about an answer to that question is we as scientists look

1:24:43

out at the world we have certain theories about how the world works and

1:24:48

over time were forced to move incrementally away from all theories by

1:24:54

virtue of the new data the new experiments the new observations that we encounter but we're fairly loath however

1:25:01

while the ideas that we may have discussed here tonight we're fair loath to move to a place that's not

1:25:07

dictated by an observation by a measurement by a mathematical equation

1:25:13

emerging from ideas that themselves have already received a mountain of

1:25:18

experimental support so is it possible that the chain of conscious awareness

1:25:24

that you're describing may extend in the manner that you imagined it's possible

1:25:30

but there's nothing that leads us in the manner that I've been describing

1:25:35

incrementally from what we know to that very big version of conscious awareness

1:25:42

floating out there in the void so is it possible yes is it compelling not at the

1:25:48

moment so I have the privilege of being able to ask you the last question and I

1:25:55

was reminded in this conversation that you quote also Emily Dickinson and you say forever is composed of nouse and so

1:26:03

here we are now and so what how are you

1:26:08

going to seize this moment having been on this really I think quite provocative

1:26:14

evolution of your own what's now I don't know and that's really what makes it exciting you know I I think I think many

1:26:22

of us and and I think it's even more prevalent among kids today because I see it in my own kids there's a desire to

1:26:29

kind of map out the world map out the life impose the coherence that will

1:26:35

allow you to answer questions of that sort in terms of where you're going to be what you're gonna do and I think and

1:26:41

personally I think this partly comes from the focus on electronic gadgetry where we are constantly engaged with

1:26:49

something and never allowing the mind just to be so for the moment having spent this time writing this book

1:26:56

thinking about these ideas I just want to let my mind be and see where it goes

1:27:01

Brian such a pleasure thank you so much for joining us [Applause]