World Science Festival 2018 Field Report

Robert Lamb attended the 2018 World Science festival in New York City and had the chance to chat with its founder, physicist Brian Greene -- as well as a couple of noted panelists: physicist Max Tegmark and anthropologist Barbara J. King. This episode features those green room interviews, plus Robert and Joe’s discussion of their answers on theoretical physics, artificial intelligence and the evolution of religion. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
McCormick and Robert. I hear that you went to New
York and came back with some audio goodies for us.
That's right. I went up to the two thousand and

(00:25):
eighteen World Science Festival in New York City. Uh, it's
a it's a festival that I go to a lot.
I don't get to go every year, but I've been,
uh several times since I believe two thousand and eleven,
and this time, I yeah, I brought back three many
interviews that I wanted to share with everybody. Uh, these
are gonna definitely state that these are essentially field recordings.

(00:49):
These are these are green room interviews, so they're not
gonna have the fidelity of an in studio interview or
even one of our phone interviews. Necessarily, it's going to
be a slightly new beast for long time listeners to
the show. So maybe girds your ears. But you think
we got some good stuff in there that will make
it worth the audio? Yes, I believe so, because we're

(01:09):
gonna you're gonna hear me chatting with physicist Brian Green, uh,
as well as physicist Max Tegmark, as well as anthropologist
Barbara ja King. Now, each one of these people you
talked to, h. Of course, Brian Green is one of
the founders of the festival, right, but each of these
people you talked to were involved with panels that took
place at the festival this year, right, correct, Yes, Green,

(01:32):
of course, being with the founder, he moderated uh, different
panels as well. All right, we'll give us a little
background on the World Science Festival and then maybe we
can set up one of these interviews here. Alright. So,
founded in two thousand and eight, World Science Festival has
a stated mission to cultivate a general public informed by science,
inspired by its wonder and uh, convinced of its value

(01:54):
and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.
And it was indeed co founded by Clem be a
University physics and mathematics professor, string theorist, author and just
overall science communicator, Brian Green, along with his wife Tracy Day.
The World Science Festival is a it's a production technically
of the World Science Foundation, which is a five oh
one nonprofit organization headquartered in New York City, and so

(02:19):
each year, uh they host a week long slate of
science panels, salons, performances, and even a street fair. So
it's it's the kind of thing that that really reaches
out to all levels of of science enthusiasts. You see
academics there, you see graduate students, you see younger students,
you see science communicators, children, old people. Um, the whole

(02:42):
nine yards. What's the street fair? Do they have funnel cake?
It's a lot of stuff for for kids, uh, as
well as adults. So just a lot of tents set up,
a lot of like cool science activities, robots, science experiments,
that sort of thing. Did you take your son? I
haven't brought him yet. So my on is just now
six years old, and I think we're at the level

(03:04):
now where he is he is perhaps ready to travel
to New York City and do all of the walking
that that entails. But I am looking forward to bringing
bringing him at some point because uh, my again, I've
been several times, and I've been there with my wife,
but I haven't been able to really engage in all
of the kids stuff. That is also an important part
of the festival. All right, Well, to get to your

(03:26):
first interview, this was with festival founder and physicist Brian Green, right,
that's right. Yeah, I got to sit down with Brian Green.
This was after he had moderated one of the opening
discussions of the festival, Darkness Visible, shedding new light on
black holes. Black Holes are fascinating and there's something that
I've wanted to go into more depth on on the
podcast before, because not only are they one of the

(03:48):
most strange and interesting things in the physical universe, I
think the story of how we came to know about
them and how we arrived at the modern consciousness of
black holes not just sort of as some thought experiment,
but as like a real physical reality is really interesting too. Yeah.
I I really enjoyed this particular talk, and this is
one of the talks that that was filmed and is

(04:08):
actually already available for everyone else to view on YouTube
for free. I'll include a link to that on the
landing page for this episode at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. But yeah, I I greatly enjoyed it.
It really Uh, it opened opened my mind up to
some of the certainly some of the details about about
black holes and our our sort of journey towards our

(04:28):
understanding black black holes, as well as just an update
on just where we are, you know, at the bleeding
edge of understanding them. Well, what's the scoop? I mean,
the basic scoop is that we have we have gone
on this journey from a black hole is just this
mathematical possibility, this thought experiment in math, and we are
at the point where they are. They are a reality.

(04:50):
Like experts tend to agree that, yes, there's without a
doubt there are black holes. We have black holes as
the result of of dead stars. We have massive, super
massive black holes at the center of galaxies, including our
own Milky Way galaxy, and we're on the cusp of
being able to uh to to to really learn a
great deal more about them, and in doing so, uh

(05:12):
we really find out what we truly know about the
fabric of the universe. So on that note, let's go
ahead and dip into the interview here, and then afterwards
Joe and I will discuss some of the concepts that
are discussed. Which world science best will offering. Are you
most excited about this year? Well, I'm biased because I'm

(05:35):
in a few of them, so that's probably uh, not
the completely objective answer that I might give. But we
have a program on a conversation between religion and science,
and oftentimes that conversation out there in the world is
a contentious one, with each side basically trying to say
that the other is wrong or that their approach is
the only way forward. And we're not going anywhere near

(05:57):
that because that's just not a productive way to have
a melding between these two ways of looking at the world. Instead,
we're looking at whether science can give us insight into
whether the behavior that we have evidence for tens of
thousands of years, which is looking for some larger stores,
some larger narratives, some bigger picture into which we could

(06:17):
fit Could that have had adaptive value? Could the brain
have evolved in such a way that we have a
predilection for that way of thinking about the world in
some sense? Could that perspective in the world be imprinted
in our d n A And if signs can illuminate
some key aspect of human behavior, how exciting is that?

(06:38):
And that's really what the focus of this conversation is
going to be. It's called the believing brain. Excellent. I'm
looking forward to that great one and I tend to
be a black hole. Oh you did great. What do
you think when you have a topic like that? You
I really admired the legwork that you kind of had
to do to bring everyone in the audience up to
speed on it, because obviously you have uh you have

(07:00):
academics and students and graduate students in the audience, but
then also just regular people children, even uh, yeah, yeah,
you're right. I mean, the goal really is to be
broadly accessible but still take people up to the cutting
edge all, you know, in that case, in the space
of two hours. Usually our programs are ninety minutes, but
I decided that one deserve the full two hours. And yeah,

(07:22):
talking about the observational side of black holes, talking about
the new ways of examining them with gravitational ways, gravitational radiation,
and then if you're theoretical frontiers, were really describing the
quantum nature space and time and how information could be
encoded on the surface of a black hole. It's pretty
amazing time to be thinking about these objects that now

(07:43):
we know with a high degree of certainty are really
out there in the universe. Now. In in the past
of various talks of incorporating some level of performance or
performance art. Do you have anything like that lined up
for this year's after Well, we do have works that
our performance oriented's. We kicked off the festival with the
Celebration of Women in Science. You may be familiar with

(08:04):
that program where we had Broadway stars and wonderful performers
who were telling the audience through narrative and song about
some of the greatest women scientists of the last two
hundred years. So that certainly was a melding of the two.
We also have some theater pieces that are part of
the festival this year, some film as well, and that's

(08:27):
the majority of the footprint that's in the art space.
We are next year going to have some original new
works that put art and science together in some pretty
compelling ways. But I'll just dangle that out there so
you'll be compelled to join us again next year. Now,
on the topic of black holes and I guess other

(08:49):
scientific topics that are kind of in that that same realm,
do you think mainstream media, mainstream science fiction in particular,
could be doing more to sort of prepare general audiences
for these concepts, for instance, with black holes. Uh, even
even though I come back to the topic time and
time again as a podcaster and writer, I still can't

(09:11):
shake the old Disney movie vision of it and all
its absurdities out of my head. What was that the
black hole or vent arizing? What was it called something
like that? Or there wasn't there was a rising, but
the Disney black hole where it was just um it
was it was? It was certainly not two thousand and
one right right, or even Interstellar. I mean, now, if

(09:31):
you want to see what a real black hole looks like,
just go to Interstellar. I mean the visuals they were
driven by the mathematical equations, so this is actually a
very precise rendition of what it would look like to
be in the vicinity of a black hole. But yes,
you know, I'm My view, which I think is widely shared,
is the culture needs to integrate with science in an

(09:55):
organic way. So that's not as a scientist some separate
subject that's out there that you take in school. Rather,
you really need to be the case that we use
all the tools and all the things that matter to
people from film and theater and science and science fiction
in order that the ideas are in the air and
the imagery is front and center when relevant and to

(10:20):
do it correctly. Sometimes it's more work, maybe even a
little more expensive. But if you get the real picture
of a black hole into people's minds through some wonderful story,
how great is that so that we as a culture
really being to embrace these ideas far more fully and
far more accurately. In your opinion, what's the single most
exciting research frontier in physics right now and wine, Well,

(10:43):
it's a tough question. Certainly one is gravitational waves, because
whenever you open up a whole new way of engaging
and observing and interacting with the universe, you're bound to
find surprises. You know, so far there have been some surprises,
but for the most part, we've been seeing the kinds
of things that we anticipated, seeing the kinds of things

(11:05):
that computer simulations had already given us some insight into.
And now the observations are agreeing with the computer simulations,
which is wonderful. Yeah, there are still some surprises there
as well with neutrust our collisions, But the real wondrous
moments gonna be when we get some data from the
gravitation way of observatory that fits no template, that's no

(11:25):
previous computer simulation and forces us to go back and
figure out what kind of exotic new structure out there
in the universe is giving rise to these very peculiar
ripples in the fabric of space and time. That's gonna
be an astounding moments. That's certainly one area. The other
area in physics, at least if I focus on that,
is trying to really understand quantum mechanics as it relates

(11:48):
to space and time. And there are hints that we
may be finally putting our finger on the fundamental entities,
the ingredients that may stitch together the very fabric of
space and time itself. And if that work bears fruit
and turns out to be correct, that's going to be
a real watershed moment in human kinds understanding of the universe.

(12:10):
So it's kind of a follow up here. If you
had limitless resources to dedicate to one future experimental physics
or cosmology project, what would it be and what would
be we'd be seeking to learn from it? Limitless resources? Wow, Well,
I think certainly one one major undertaking would be to
build a fantastically powerful accelerator. So we have been examining

(12:35):
the universe on scales roughly a thousand to ten thousand
times the massive a proteon. Those are the energy scales involved.
But we know that there's got to be something wondrous
happening between there and the plank scale, which is ten
to the nineteen times the mass of a proteon. So
there's fifteen orders of magnitude in there to examine. And

(12:55):
it's an expensive thing to build ever bigger machines to
floor ever higher energies, ever smaller distances. But I've had
unlimited resources, truly unlimited resources. Let's try to build a
plank scale accelerator and really see whether we can see
the effects of quantum gravity in this futuristic laboratory. That
would be a spectacor the thing to do excellent. So

(13:20):
one last question, and I apoloticiste little wenk think. But so,
as as discussed last night, black holes started out as
more more in the real thought experiment and math curiosity,
but but now we largely accept in the physical reality.
Do you think there are ideas like that out there
in physics today, Things that we are current that are
currently only a cetical math entities, etcetera, but that will

(13:43):
want will someday will accept a real physical objects in
the universe. Well, I certainly hope so, because otherwise I've
been barking up the wrong tree for a very long time.
So the work that I've been focused on in my
colleagues as well, coming Bathroom from last Night program to
is string theory, and it's ring theory does posit the
existence of new physical entities, really small entities down at

(14:05):
the playing scale tents of the mind is thirty three
centimeters and that's fantastic smallest hard to even think about
how tiny that is. And right now it is just mathematics.
It is just in the exact same template as black
Holes where it say, back in the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties.
So the hope is that we will follow the same
trajectory and that one day we'll be sitting here having
a conversation and you'll say to me, now that strings

(14:28):
are accepted as real physical entities. It wasn't it, And
and that's that's where we hope that things will go
all right. So that was that was my mini interview
with Brian Green, and I appreciate him taking time out
of his state chat with me. Uh, We're definitely going
to come back to black holes on stuff to blow
your mind. It's the kind of topic that it's probably

(14:50):
gonna take it at least two episodes to really give
it full coverage. But I do want to touch on
some of the things that the Green is talking about here.
So the key thing that Green is describing is how
black holes began again as a mere thought experiment on
the for on the on you know, first the nature
of gravity. So we have this idea of dark stars
and the Newtonian concept of a of a star that

(15:12):
becomes too massive for light to escape from it, but
mostly as a byproduct of crunching spacetime in Einstein's general
theory of relativity and the calculations of German astronomer Karl
Schwartschild who died in War One. Yeah, and it's amazing
to think back that there was a time where you
could have explored black holes as a sort of thought experiment,

(15:34):
playing around with gravity. But a lot of people might
have laughed at you if you proposed that there were
actually black holes out there in the universe. Yeah, they
were not things that we observed. Rather, there are the
things that we expected to be there based on the math.
So for decades they were pure, purely theoretical, but now
we've reached the point where experts are pretty certain. We

(15:54):
know for certain that stars collapse into black holes when
they die, and the supermassive black holes lurk at the
center of the gut of our galaxies, again, including our own.
We have twenty five years of supermassive black hole studies
under our belt, and they've revealed quite a lot. So
one of the issues here is that, you know, we
create these templates for what we observe based on the map,

(16:15):
and then we see how the template matches up to
our observation. That's kind of how a lot of things
work in science. You know, you're you're creating expectations based
on the data you have, and then you see what
occurs when you bring that template to nature. It's a
model testing. You make a model and see is the
model right to match the data. And this is all
actually going down as we speak, as we record this,

(16:36):
even because we have the Event Horizon Telescope project, which
is a global network of radio telescopes that essentially turns
the Earth into a telescope large enough to observe and
measure the environment surrounding the Milky Way. Supermassive black hole
uh Sagittarius A. And in doing it, we're not only
verifying the existence of black holes, but as Green astrophysicist

(16:59):
Andrea Guez and astronomer Sheep Doleman pointed out, we're actually
putting Einstein's general theory of relativity to the test, and
we may be forced to move beyond it in our
understanding of the universe. That's weird because we generally think
no pun intended. We generally think of general relativity as
something that's sort of beyond dispute at this point, right, Yeah, Well,

(17:21):
but as they point out in this talk, it's you
have kind of a trust but verify situation with it,
Like we have to trust it because we've built so
much of how we view the universe is built upon it.
But as we learn more, we're inevitably reaching the point
where that too is a template that must be put
to tests, that we must hold up to nature as

(17:42):
we develop better and better ways of observing it. Well,
I mean, there are some ways in which we know
that it is at least partially right. But yeah, that's
the question of like, at the margins of our understanding,
are are there ways we need to sort of updated,
I guess right now. Another topic that Green touched on
here is quantum mechanics, and of course we recently did
a fairly deep dive into some of the properties of

(18:04):
quantum mechanics and our quantum immortality episode, so I don't
know that we really need to refresh a lot there.
We just say if you if you have questions about
what this whole quantum mechanics thing is about, do check
out our recent episode on quantum immortality, or again check
out this talk in full from the World Science Festival.
But I know one of the things in that arena
that Green is interested in is the idea of discovering

(18:25):
quantum gravity, right, like, what is what? How does gravity
apply at the quantum scale? Yeah, and a Green touches
on towards the very end of this interview. Uh, there
is of course the realm of superstring theory, and this
is certainly one of Green's core areas of studies and
core area of contribution. This is the idea that miniscule

(18:46):
strands of energy vibrating across multiple dimensions create every particle
enforce in the universe. So particle physicists define elementary particles
or fundamental particles as the smallest building block in the universe.
In other words, particles such as leptons and courts have
no substructure there as small as it gets. Ultimately, string

(19:07):
theorists are aiming to fulfill Einstein's unrealized goal of unifying
general relativity with quantum theory. And one of the interesting
points brought up in the in the talk and black
holes is that string theory actually helps us make sense
of the entropy problem with black holes. Now, what is
that problem? Okay, so the basic idea here and ultimately
Green presents us a lot better in in in the

(19:29):
actual world Science Festival talk, but they give us the
bad version. That the bad version, if you will, or
the rough version, is how can a black hole be
in a high entropy state if everything inside is super
crunched down to a state of less entropy than normal matter?
Where is the missing entropy? So, according to string theory,

(19:52):
you find that missing entropy and the six microscopic spatial
dimensions that exist in addition to the three spatial dimensions
that we can observe earve And the example Green often
uses to explain like low versus high entropy, is that
it's essentially you're talking about a high ordered state and
a low ordered state. In his frequent example is if
you do you have a book of pages without a

(20:14):
binding and they're in order, high order, right, throw that
in the air and then all the pages, uh fall
to the ground and now they're in disorder. Loss of
information organization. So speaking of black holes, when you talked
to Brian Green, was we're all trying to talk about
Event Horizon. The Event Horizon. Was that like sort of

(20:34):
coming to the surface? It did kind of, yeah, because
I brought up Disney's The black Hole, and I'm not
not sure he was familiar with or had a you
know that's necessarily remembered that film, which of course gives
us a very ridiculous notion of what a black hole
would be. It's basically just a big, you know, glowing
vortex in in in the least realistic space you could

(20:56):
possibly imagine. And he thought you were talking about what's
name Sam Neil, And oh, yeah, an Event Horizon, which
is a film that I really enjoyed, and now we
know Brian Green's seen it. I I can't even imagine
Brian Brian Green responding to the science of event Horizon,
which of course is a is a horror movie, a

(21:16):
haunted house movie set in space, with some black holy
science thrown in there, but basically the idea being that
a black hole takes you to Hell and and does
Hell raise your things to you. I want to hear
Brian Green's thoughts on the the scientific accuracy of Mortal
Kombat Annihilation. Well, you know, but I do love that

(21:36):
he brought up Interstellar though it's a film in which
the mathematics is is very sound. Uh. That definitely makes
me want to sit down and watch Interstellar again, which
I enjoyed the first time. But but but I do
feel like I need to give it a review. Well,
one of my favorite things about an Interstellar was the
way it took seriously the time dilation of texts of

(21:59):
the Unian that came a crucial plot point is is
how the passage of time changes in relation to say,
your proximity to a supermassive object or you know, travel
through space and all that. I thought that was one
of the most interesting things about the story, and I'm
glad they did that. Yeah, you don't. You really don't
see enough of it in science fiction films anyway. And

(22:20):
I think that's exactly what Green is talking about when
he said, you know, he says in his discussion with
you that the culture needs to integrate with science in
an organic way, right. You know, He's like, essentially, we
should work to make our current best understanding of science
not a thing separate from popular culture, but a fundamental
part of popular culture. The same way that you might
get a mostly accurate picture of what, say, well, actually,

(22:44):
I don't know how accurate this is, but you might
get a somewhat accurate picture of what the streets of
New York look like in two thousand and sixteen by
watching a movie shot that year. Uh. You know that
that's like cultural information is being embedded in that popular
culture media. Shouldn't we also get a sense of what
the science looks like in sixteen embedded in popular culture

(23:08):
and media. Yeah, which, of course brings me back to
Jurassic Park in Jurassic World, like you wouldn't You wouldn't
have a movie set in New York and and go
out of your way to represent two thousand and ten
New York or or or you know, nineteen eighty New York.
So why would you do that with your depiction of
these dinosaurs, Why wouldn't you give them feathers of coloration

(23:30):
or even you know, some symbolance of behavior that matches
up with our best understanding, our best current understanding of
what they were. Well, because you're making Jurassic World and
you don't care about life. Uh, But I totally agree
with with Green's perspective there. I think it is a
noble thing to try to do two more deeply integrate

(23:51):
our best picture of science with popular culture. And in fact, uh,
I'd say that's something we tried to do a lot
on the show. Right, We're constantly trying to lay a
real science and other aspects of culture like movies and
books and religion and mythology side by side so they
can sort of get wrapped up together into one world
of thought and one conversation. At least I hope that's

(24:13):
what we do. Yeah, that that's certainly the aim. So
what do you think about doing a science fiction film
about a plank scale accelerator. I love that idea. I
love I love him talking about the you know, the
future of particle colliders. What energy level could we get
up to? And I think that's something we could also
do an episode on someday. What what would a plank
scale accelerator look like? Uh? Is such a thing even

(24:35):
possible to build on Earth? Given you know we we
were asking him a hypothetical question about limitless resources, given
real resources, could you do such a thing? Alright? Well,
on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
and when we come back we will dive into another
interview and discuss what Max Tegmark had to say. Thank you,

(24:55):
thank you. All Right, we're back. So, Robert, you talked
to mad Max. Yes. Us. This was definitely one of
the highlights of World Science Festival two thousand and eighteen
for me getting to set down with Max tag Mark,
president of the Future of Life Institute, UH physicist advocate
for positive use of technology. He's also a professor doing
physics and AI research at m i T, author of

(25:17):
Our Mathematical Universe, as well as his most recent book
Life three point oh Being Human in the Age of
Artificial Intelligence. Now, I do want to warn everybody this
one is probably this one probably has the roughest audio
quality of the three that we're airing here. This was
recorded in a fairly noisy green room, but the content
is so good. I just just really, we just really

(25:39):
have to share it with you. You're not going to
be confused about which voices. Max's right, Max is Swedish Americans.
You'll you'll detect a slight accent here. But yeah, this
was a fabulous little talk. Max's super chill and I
really appreciate him taking time out of his day right
before he went in and participated in a panel discussion
to talk about these topics. And here we go. So

(26:06):
what is your most optimistic model for a post technological
singularity world? Well, everything I love about civilizations is the
product of intelligence. So if we can amplify our intelligence
with machine intelligence, you know, we have the potential to
really solve the toughest problems that are stumping us today
and tomorrow. I came. I was in the hospital recently

(26:30):
visiting a friend had been diagnosed with an uncurable cancer,
for example. But it's obviously not uncurable. Humans just weren't
smart enough to figure out how to cure it. This
is an example I think AI can completely transform healthcare
and medicine together with the rest of science. Similarly, the

(26:51):
fact that we struggle with a lot of people in
poverty is not because there really aren't enough atoms on Earth.
With more intelligence, we can have it do enough great
stuff with our resources to help life flourish like eleven
before here on Earth and throughout the cosmos too, if
you want, you know. Okay, now on the pessimistic end

(27:14):
of the spectrum, what are some of the negative possibilities
that we were least prepared for anticipating a well. Some
people seem to take it in an article of blind
faith that all new technology is automatically good, and then
disrepeat this over and over and again as a mantra.
But the truth is, of course, the technology isn't good,

(27:36):
nor is it evil. It's neutral. It's just an amplifier
of our ability to do stuff. It's fire good or
bad one it's good to heat your home within the
winter and bad to use for arson, and AI is
really no different except much more powerful. So to me,
the really interesting question is how can you win the

(27:57):
wisdom race between the growing power of technology and the
growing wisdom with which we manage it. I think my
concern comes from the fact that we're we haven't realized
we have to change strategies to win this race. We
used to staying ahead of the game by learning from mistakes.

(28:19):
You know, we invented fire and screwed up a bunch
of times and invented the fire extinguisher, but with more
powerful tech like nuclear weapons and super human AI, we
don't want to learn from mistakes. We want to plan
ahead instead and get things right the first time, which
might be the only time we have some I'm optimistic
that if we do plan ahead, we can create a

(28:42):
really inspiring future. But it's going to take planning and
hard work. We can't just bumble into this. That's a
lot of the culture at large, science fiction of I
didn't need to particular science fictions you potentially partially particularly helpful.

(29:05):
I just rewatched Kubrick's two thousand and one the other
night with my family, and I think it's not only
the one of the oldest, but also one of the best, actually,
because when Hal says I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that,
it illustrates the point that we shouldn't worry about AI

(29:30):
turning evil, because how isn't evil. We should just worry
about AI turning very competent and having goals that aren't
aligned with ours, because that's exactly what we're wrong. On
that Jupiter mission. It doesn't matter so much if the
machines goals disagree with yours, if the machine is much
dumber and less powerful than you, because you just switch

(29:50):
it off, right. But if you have a he's taking
missile chasing after you and you feel that you don't
like its goal, it's not so easy to just switch
it off. And if we create a computer system that's
literally smarter than than humans in the future, then we

(30:12):
better make sure that we shared our goals, because what's
given us more power on this planet than any other species,
isn't there we have bigger biceps that were smarter. How
will digitize consciousness of play a role in humanity future?
I think we need to distinguish between digital consciousness artificial

(30:34):
consciousness on one hand, and artificial intelligence on the other hand,
because there are two very very different things. Artificial intelligence,
if we make it really powerful, well well beyond that,
the best thing ever, the worst thing ever, depending on
how it's used and who or what you know controls it.
Consciousness this subjective experience that you and I have when

(30:57):
we drive down the street. We experienced colors and sounds
someone We don't know whether self driving car experiences anything
at all, whether it feels like anything to be it,
and the world leaning experts actually argue passionately about this.
Some think, uh, the stupid question. Of course machines can't
be conscious. Others say that's a stupid questions because, of

(31:19):
course consciousness is the same thing as intelligence, so a
robot that talks like a human will feel like a human.
I think the answer is neither of those two. I
think it's somewhere in between. Because we know that most
of the information processing happening in your brain right now
you're actually not aware of, like your heartbeat regulation and
a gazillion other things. But consciousness, it's sort of like

(31:41):
the CEO of your brain, a small part of the information.
So I think it's gonna be really important to figure
out actually what information processing is conscious and what isn't.
You might want to have a home helper robot that
isn't conscious like the zombades you just so you only
need to feel guilty when switching off or giving it
boring chores. Or maybe you would want it to be

(32:04):
conscious so you don't feel creeped out when it acts
as if it were conscious. And either way, there's a
really tough science question here. What is consciousness, and I
think we should have been humble and realize that it's
actually not just philosophy, it's actually an unsolid science question,

(32:26):
and we should tackle it. We believe we will find
an answer in their future because we will have a
definite model of human conscious I'm in a small minority
actually thinks yeah, and that we are going to make
real progress. We've wondered about this for thousands of years
with very little progress because we had almost no data.
But now we're getting incredibly good data from our brains.

(32:50):
I can put you in our many Magneto and Pholography
machine at m I T and read out from six
three and four Superconducting Center a bunch of stuff and
tell you in real time which of a bunch of
objects you're thinking about, for instance, and and that and
opens up the possibility of doing some really cool experiments
that it mast have been done, Like if someone has

(33:11):
a consciousness theory that predicts which information in your brain
is conscious and which isn't, you can sit in the
machine and just test that on yourself. If it predicts
that you are conscious of things that you aren't and
rice versa, theory goes in the garbage can, right, And
once someone comes along with a theory that passes those
sorts of tests will start taking it seriously, and hospitals

(33:34):
will start to have consciousness detectors in the emergency room,
so when an unresponsientation comes in, the doctor knows whether
they are actually in a coma or have locked in syndrome.
And that should just add in the longer term. This is,
of course incredibly important because imagine one day if someone

(33:56):
like great Hurts File, who wants to upload himself into
a robot, managed to do that and it talks like
Ray and actually like Ray, and he's like, yes, awesome,
now it's okay if my biological body gives up the ghost.
If it turns out that this robot is actually just
a zombie, isn't conscious at all, he will be pretty bummed. Right.

(34:17):
And imagine if humanity one day has these robot descendants
were very proud of and they go on and do
all this cool stuff but they aren't conscious. Wouldn't that
be the ultimate zombie apocalypse where the whole universe just
goes back to being a play for empty benches. Well,
because I guess you're potentially creating all these zombies because

(34:37):
then it's also potentially we're nothing zombies as well. Well.
I think you know subjectively that you are not because
you are conscious, You are aware of these things. But
I think we have to be humble. That doesn't mean
that every system that does clever stuff is actually experiencing anything.
It's not at all clear that a self driving car

(34:59):
has any subject of experience it at all, and that
it feels like anything to be it. And for some devices,
again that's probably the way we wanted. But if we
create really sophisticated machines that we want to people want
to upload themselves to, or that we want to be
able to have view as beings with ethical with moral

(35:25):
rights and that maybe feel proud of the sentence, we
better know whether there as someone home, whether it feels
like something to be them, or whether they're just zombies.
The aims we could discuss. Then you talk about the
problems of the kind of propagation and they spreading and

(35:45):
it's truly every interest. It's like you can't do your
process managing an I development where the AIS do not
quote unquote want to oppligate. If they don't want to
change and evolved it, maybe they want to terminate. Certainly,

(36:07):
I think it's important to remember that the mind space
m kind of AI motivations you can build is vastly
larger than the mind space of evolved organisms, because all
of us, of all the organisms, have this very strong
urge to eat, to drink, to not get destroyed, to reproduce,
because that's what evolution and you know andvowed us to do, right.

(36:32):
Whereas if you build something, if you build a laptop,
there's no reason why you should build it, so it's
afraid of being turned off or any of those things.
So we should rather than ask what will these machines
ultimately want, we should ask what do we want them
to want? And try to understand how can we actually
put goals into machines. Anyone like me who's a parent

(36:57):
knows how hard it is to make children and understand
my goals and adopt my goals and then retain them right.
And we also know his parents that there's a big
difference between our kids understanding where you want to actually
doing what we want right. Yet that's exactly what the
problem we have to solve if we ever build machines

(37:19):
that are as smart as us or smarter, and also
if these machines keep getting ever more smart, we'd like
them to keep the goal of being nice to humans.
My sons were very excited about Legos when they were little,
and now and when they're teenagers, you know, not so much.
And we don't want arm machines to become his board

(37:40):
with this goal of taking be nice to humans. My
kids are with Legos either. So there are many nerdy
technical problems and AI safety research of this kind how
to make machines understand our goals, adopt them, retain them
that we really need to solve before anyone the scientists
which in a super intelligence, and those problems are so

(38:03):
hard it might take that case to solve them, which
is why it's so important that we actually research them now,
not the night before someone hits the on switch. I
think I probably have templed one more question here. Um.
So it seems to be the case that certainly we
can have a human level or higher intelligence that is
not conscious through computing. You would you agree or when

(38:28):
I think this is an open question, we don't know.
I have college to think the answer is obviously yes.
I have college to think the answer is obviously no. Um. Right,
My guess is that it could be either yes or no.
Like we have pocket calculators today. They are vastly better
than any human that multiplying numbers fast, but they're probably

(38:51):
not conscious at all. So there's no guarantee that just
because you're better than humans and some things, you're going
to be conscious. Okay, but how about biological intelligence do
you think? What do you think it would be possible
for a biological intelligence of human level or above to
be not to be non conscious or at least not

(39:12):
conscious in the same way that we think of I
think biology is a bit of a red herring here. Actually,
I have many colleagues. We think of intelligence and consciousness
is something mysterious that can only exist in biological organisms. Um,
but I feel that this is carbon chauvinism. You know,
this attitude that you can only be smart or conscious

(39:34):
if you're made of meat. I'm basically food rearranged, and
I'm made of exactly the same kind of electrons and
quirks as my food and as my laptop. It's all.
The only difference is the pattern and with the arrange
the information processing that happens. So I certainly don't think

(39:57):
it's impossible to have machines that are as intell isn't
at us as us that aren't made of meat, or
as conscious as us that aren't made of meat. But
we have to practice sized problem of what isn't specifically
about the information processing that makes it intelligent and it
makes it conscious? All right, So there you go. Max

(40:20):
has interesting thoughts about artificial intelligence. One of the things
is that he he says something that a lot of
the people I read on the subject would probably disagree with,
but then ends up I think in the same places them. Uh.
Max makes the technology is a neutral argument, and there
are some people who I think to really would really
disagree with that to some extent. For example, I think

(40:41):
about many of the critics of social media, like jarn
Lanier and Tristan Harris, who we've talked about, who I
definitely don't want to put words in their mouth, but
I think they would say something like, you know, there
are some kinds of technology that possess something like a
will of their own, not any not in any spooky
or conscious sense, but just in the sense that there
are certain applications for which they will be most easily

(41:04):
and eagerly deployed by humans, and that sort of technological
will often favors evil or negative applications. So there are
technologies that, you know, you can say, well, technology isn't
inherently moral or immoral, but they're definitely technologies that lend
themselves very easily to immoral or evil or destructive applications.

(41:25):
Wouldn't you agree, Robert? Yeah. I mean, for instance, if
you're talking about like some of the big ones we've
talked about, of course, uh, atomic energy, Um, certainly chemistry, Yeah,
the emergence of both chemical weapons and many favost lifesaving
chemicals that emerged during the twentieth century. But then other

(41:47):
things like I don't know, fabric science, uh, some meta materials.
You could probably make an argument that these maybe lend
themselves more for more towards non violent, non destructive uses
than others. Yeah, I mean, I definitely think about social
media algorithms being a thing that you could easily make
the argument that, oh, that's just a neutral technology. You know,

(42:07):
it could be used for good, could be used for evil,
and I guess that's technically true. But which way is
it most likely to be used given what it's capable
of doing. Yeah, And of course, of a lot of it,
as as Max touches on, here, is is going to
come down to human will and the humans involved in
shaping it and and sense raising it so that the

(42:28):
title of this particular panel discussion that Max was about
to participate in was Teacher Robots Well, and it was
about the idea of essentially, how do we prepare AI
for the potential technological singularity when they will be the
entities with the power. Yeah, and whether you think the
say the Kurt Swiley and sense of the singularity is

(42:50):
realistic or makes any sense at all, there is at
least another version of it you can entertain that might
be more plausible, which is just the idea that at
some point AI will surpass human intelligence in many important ways. Right.
But I do want to come back to what I
said about tech Mark because I don't want to put
him to at odds with with the other idea I

(43:11):
was just explaining, because ultimately I think Techmark ends up
in the same place saying that we we have to
be very careful with certain types of technology, specifically AI,
that can't be allowed to just grow in the wild. Right,
Sometimes we let technologies just grow in the wild of
the marketplace and see what happens with them AI. We
can't treat that way right certainly, And in Max Tegmark,

(43:34):
he did not specifically mentioned James P. Cars, the author
of Finite and Infinite Games, which we talked about recently. Yeah,
he didn't. He didn't bring that up specifically. But one
of the things that he was was pressing is the
idea that as we develop AI, we should develop it
in a way that it benefits humanity as a whole,
you know, rather than fulfilling political or national or or

(43:58):
or a particular social function or business function. In other words,
we need to raise AI, develop AI so that it
is playing an infinite game rather than any number of
potentially destructive finite games. Right Because, as Max talks about,
like the idea, the really scary version of how AI
could go wrong is not terminators. It's not that AI

(44:20):
decides I'm evil and I must kill humanity. I mean,
of course anything is possible, but that doesn't seem very likely.
What seems far more likely is that there are lots
of negative side effects that are very destructive and harmful
to us as a byproduct of it attaining some finite goal.
It's it's playing a finite game. It's trying to do
X y Z for some business purpose, and they're just

(44:42):
happened to be some really negative side effects to it
achieving that goal. And so anyway, I mean what this
comes back to is that we have to have a
guided type of development for AI. It it has to
be informed by our desire for AI to do good
and not evil. You could put other types of technology
in this category. As we were just talking about nuclear

(45:03):
fission seems like a good candidate for something that could
be used for good, could be used for evil. If
you just allow it to develop naturally in the wild,
it's probably going to be far more destructive than it
is beneficial, right. I think it's a valid argument. Yeah,
and it's one of It's another example if you if
you had definite guidelines that said this must be developed

(45:24):
in a way that benefits everybody, uh and and does
not further particular finite game. Uh, then it would be
we'd all be better off in the long run. Now,
I guess the big question is, so like, even if
you can get people to agree to that, say, okay,
we won't we won't develop AI in the wild. We'll
do it as some part of some part of a
global project to develop wholly beneficial AI that will treat

(45:48):
everyone well and be aimed towards the betterment of humanity
as a whole. How do you get people to sign
on to that? That sounds like a whole other Maybe
maybe you need an AI to solve that problem to
begin with. Yeah, you get into this hilaria than you know,
who's who's governing the AI? What are they? What are
the mechanisms in place? There's like a problem of politics
that sort of proceeds us getting to the stage where

(46:10):
we're ready or mature enough to develop AI. Yeah. Which
makes me glad though that we have people like Max
tech Mark out there that are participating in conversations about this,
not only with with World Science Festival attendees or with
podcast host but actively setting down, uh and having these
discussions with some of the people that are in a

(46:31):
position to do something about it and to and to
lay the framework for the future. Yeah. So if you're
influencing the influencers, you need to be bringing this question up. Uh.
So here's another thing. Tech Mark mentions machine consciousness as quote,
not philosophy, but an unsolved science question. And I think
this is interesting because you will definitely get a lot

(46:52):
of people who don't agree with that. Right, Let's say,
how could it be a science question? You can never
really know, You can never really have fully, you know,
a fool proof objective test for for detecting consciousness in
some other creature. I don't know what I think the
answer to that question is, I'm, you know, of two minds.
I see the wisdom in both camps there. But tech
Mark definitely thinks the question of detecting consciousness could be

(47:16):
a scientific question, and I think that's an interesting perspective. Yeah,
I should also know. You know, we discussed the work
of Susan Schneider and the AI test for consciousness. You
can hear it Susan Schneider in the background of my
conversation with with Max. Because she was on the same panel.
I thought maybe you were going to get to talk
to her. It was in the cards, but there are

(47:36):
a lot of moving pieces putting together a panel like that.
Ultimately ended up having only time to chat with Max.
But hey, maybe we'll get to have Susan on the
show sometimes that'd be great. Well, she I mean, she
has I think, what is a really interesting step toward
trying to come up with objective frameworks for detecting consciousness.

(47:57):
It's obviously, Uh, it's it's a very limited kind of step.
I mean, as we discussed in the AI Consciousness Test episode,
there are a lot of there are a lot of
limitations to to what these types of psychological test could do,
you know, like asking it asking a machine if it
understands the concept of souls, or trying to see if
it understands movies like Freaky Friday. Uh. I think that's

(48:21):
really clever and that's a good step, but obviously that's
not there yet to like a full understanding of where
of how we could see consciousness in an objective way
outside of ourselves. And I don't know if we'll ever
get there where, but it sounds like Max thinks we could. Yeah.
I like that. Max brought up two thousand and one
a Space Odyssey Yeah in the interview, and it just
drove home for me that since this is a landmark

(48:43):
year for two and one Space Odyssey film, it is
what what's the landmark? Oh, it's a fifty years, half
a century if two came out. Yeah, So given that
it is such a pivotal piece of science fiction, with
so much one a full science in it. Uh, we
really need to do a whole episode about it this year.

(49:04):
But where we really discuss uh the movie, perhaps the
book as well, and just why it has stood the
test of time as a work of science fiction. Yea
discussed ancient aliens. Yeah, yeah, well do you know we're
into that? So wait are we? Well, we're into exploring
the possibility we are not ancient aliens enthusiasts, not ancient
aliens advocates. No, no, no, we're at least as into

(49:28):
discussing the idea as Karl Sagan was into discussing the idea.
That's the good place to be. Yeah, yeah, the Sagan zone. Alright, Well,
on that note, we're going to take one more break,
and when we come back, we will feature the interview
with Barbara J. King. Thank alright, we're back. Okay, So, Robert,
you the third person you spoke to here was the

(49:49):
anthropologist and author Barbara J. King. What was the deal here? Okay?
So this was the third interview. These are These are
featured in order that they occurred. Um And she is
an anthropologist in Arthur author for twenty eight years. She
taught biological anthropology Primate Behavior and Human Evolution at the
College of William and Mary. She's the author of six books,
including two thousand and thirteens How Animals Grieve, and she's

(50:12):
the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. She's also the author
of her latest book two thousand seventeens, Evolving God, a
Provocative view on the origins of religion, and she participated
in the Brian Green moderated The Believing Brain, Evolution, Neuroscience
and the Spiritual Instinct alongside Stephen Pinker, neuroscientists and psychologist

(50:33):
Lisa Barrett, and neuroscientist Zoron Joseph Avich. So this was
an interesting interview too. I I guess we should play
the interview and then we can talk about it all. Right,
here we go. So I'm gonna start with the pretty
broad question here, and that is our humans hardwired for belief,

(50:53):
as the saying sometimes goes. I think we're hardwired for connection,
for belongings, as I call it, and for mattering to
each other. In some cases this does take the form
of religion spirituality, but I don't think we're necessarily hard
wired for any specific type of religious imagination. So my

(51:15):
work really looks at the deep evolutionary roots of religion
and puts that right in the being wired for connection. Okay, um, Now,
I understand this question might not be going back deep
enough to really do your area of expertise, But do
you have any thoughts on what are perhaps some common
mistakes that we make and trying to understand earlier or

(51:39):
ancient people or even truly prehistoric people's concepts of religion. Yeah.
I think many people do focus on belief, and of
course belief doesn't fossilize, So what I try to do
is shift a little bit and talk about practice. So
I'm looking for the material culture that can get us
a window onto practice and to get your misconception part

(52:01):
of the question. I think there's a tendency, for example,
to equate a burial automatically with a belief in the afterlife.
We can't do that. The material culture cannot reveal to
us whether there's a belief attached to that or not.
So it's quite tricky looking at the evolution of belief.
When I speak about practice, I'm talking about some kind
of ritual that takes us beyond the here and now.

(52:23):
But to ascribe a particular belief to that really tough.
So you've written on how animals grieve? Are there any Now?
Obviously these are not rights, uh as you say, But
did you see any anything like the roots of religion
in the practices that if you want to lit not
practice behaviors of animals. I do, yes, I've written quite

(52:46):
a lot about this. I look for rule following and empathy,
compassion and imagination, all of these things I see in
our close living relatives, for example, chimpanzees, binobo, some monkeys,
and some people would like to interpret those things as
spirituality full stop, and I don't. I do see them

(53:07):
as the building blocks. The idea of deeply profound emotions
in other animals is coming back into science. Darwin did it,
but then it disappeared for a good long time. And
those profound emotions that are felt around social behavior, love, death,

(53:28):
I think do play into an understanding of deep religious roots.
Can I say one more thing? I mean. Part of
the reason I say that is because for me, religion
is about emotional meaning making. So when I look at religion,
I want to look at that sense of transcendence, that

(53:48):
sense of being suffused with emotion, and that's where I
start making the connection with other animals and how they
feel so deeply. Do you see there? Do you see
there being a distinction between religion and belief? Can one
have religion without belief? One can have religion without belief

(54:09):
in a particular type of God. But I think belief
has to be part of the picture when we're talking
about contemporary societies. Again, though, I want to disentangle that
when we're talking about the past. And that's what makes
it hard to draw a linear line, if you will,
between the past and the present, because at some point
we want to pick up with that belief when we

(54:30):
haven't necessarily been able to trace it all the way
back into the past. So, in broad strokes, where does
human religion come from? I think it comes from all
these pieces that we see in our primate relatives, the empathy,
the compassion, the need to belong, the need to follow rules,

(54:53):
the need to kind of cooperate, And then throughout the
hominid trajectory, our brains began to take on an ability
to see more and more beyond the here and now,
to ask questions that are hard to answer without projecting
into the supernatural. So I really do think just as

(55:14):
technology evolves, and language evolves and culture evolves. We can
see a process. So it doesn't come from some particular
society or some particular moment. It comes from this trajectory
of constantly exacerbated abilities to bond, to see beyond the
here and now, and then begin to attach those things

(55:36):
to other forms of being supernatural beings that I don't
think other animals care about or imagine at all. You
mentioned the distinction be made between your burial practices and
then actual religious rights. Uh do do we do? We
currently hold that the Neanderthals likely had religion. Yeah, that's

(55:58):
a fantastic quest, and I think that there's a very
good argument to be made that yes, Neanderthals did, But
it's an argument with a question mark attached. So we know,
for example, that Neanderthals not only were very smart and
hunted cooperatively, but that they hunted raptors to take their
feathers and adorn their bodies with feathers as part of

(56:19):
their identity. They would bury their toddlers who died with
bison skulls, rhinos skulls, or x horns elaborate sort of
funeral ceremonies. It is possible to imagine these in the
absence of any religion, to simply think about respect for
the individual who died. But I also think it's compatible

(56:40):
with their big brains, the way they're beginning to interact
with the world. So I think we have a very
good likelihood for yes, without a certainty for yes. UM.
So one last question, UM, and you have any thoughts
about where religion is going. Religion is still evolving, um,

(57:01):
if we are changing the ways we interact with religion,
I think that certainly increasing secularization is an important trend
to look at. But there is this strong need, as
I mentioned, for connection and belongingness, and so if those
needs are not being filled by religion, they need to
be filled by something else. And so it's a very

(57:22):
good question. I don't know where we're going, but we
need something, We need something else to fill in and
I think that that is the question that I have
as well. What is going to replace, if you will,
this community? Because religion is so much about community and practice,
and I really do think that's under estimated in our

(57:42):
most of our discussions about religion. I've read a little
bit about the side of hyper real religion, where individuals
will will take same a concept and fandom. They might
be like Jeties or The Big Lebowski, and they will
it times it's kind of a playful, you know, spaghetti

(58:03):
monster type of international music religion. But then there's this
argument it becomes more that it perhaps fulfills that need
you're talking about. Right, Well, I think about this a
lot because my particular brand of transcendence happens at a
Springsteen concert. And you know, I'm not thinking of that
in a particularly religious sense, but it does. It's a

(58:24):
community of people who become transformed in the moment in
concert with another being. So how is that really different
than what we're talking about? Right? It's not something supernatural,
So perhaps we are changing to lose part of that
belief in things that aren't is material, that aren't, is concrete.

(58:44):
We can turn to the Springsteen and the Jedi model
in place of some of these other more supernatural beings.
So I love this interview because this is something I
wonder about all the time, that the actual or a
gens of religion. Now a lot of times when religion
and science come up together, it's like people want to

(59:07):
have they want to fight out that question, like do
religion and science conflict. Can they co exist? I'm much
more interested in the question of the scientific investigation of
what religion is and where did it come from? Like
what what what were the first religions? What do they
look like? How did this instinct arise in our brains?
And what's happening in our brains when we practice religion?

(59:28):
How do we get this way? Yeah? I think a
lot of what she presents is uh. It really squares
with some of our recent explorations of consciousness. For instance,
the idea presented by Susan Schneider's test for consciousness in AI,
the notion that anything with consciousness must be able to
grasp concepts of the soul mind transference or or transmigration
of the soul. Uh. And one can easily imagine the

(59:50):
roots of this in animal contemplations of loss. Perhaps it's
even unnecessary, you know, precursor for consciousness. This is something
Susan Schneider's writing really made me think about. I guess
I just never considered before how important the link is
between ideas about souls and the presence of consciousness. For example,
the whole basis of the AI consciousness test is that

(01:00:13):
a machine that wasn't conscious, say, it knows how to
use language, it knows how to have a conversation, But
if it's never heard anything about disembodied souls, how would
it even make sense of religions ideas about disembodied souls
if it did not have something that it could imagine
being separated from its physical substrate. You know, Yeah, And

(01:00:34):
I mean the idea is that the Barbara J. King
presents here, They do make me sort of rethink all that,
and and wonder, well, if you have any species for
which death is a reality, then to what extent is
it inevitable that they would reach this, this point in
their cognitive evolution, that they would develop these ideas of

(01:00:54):
based on the question where did they go? Where is
the where is the force that animal ated this being?
The force that made it a thing that was of
value to my life? Yeah, she's got a point of
view on religion that resonates very strongly with me that
I think it's it's got that truthiness feel. I mean,
you know, I can't judge if it's true, but it

(01:01:15):
seems true at least that in religion, the emotional and
social aspects of religion precede and pre date the literal
dogmatic beliefs of religions, and that the literal dogmatic reliefs
of beliefs of religions are outgrowths of those social and
emotional functions. Yeah. And and to her point, if you

(01:01:36):
can find that at a Bruce Springsteen concert, yeah, or
in you know, jeddi is m or Judaism, Uh, then
you don't necessarily need these older models of religion. But
on the same note, like that I think is one
of the key things that people prize in their religious
organizations that they're still a part of, or the religious
movements that they're still a part of. Yeah. I think

(01:01:58):
a lot about what will, if anything, what will replace
religion in secularizing societies. So if you've got a society
where people are losing their their literal beliefs in the
dogmas of religion, like they stop believing, Okay, there is
literally a God that literally created the world and all that.
But if king is right and that the basis of

(01:02:20):
religion is still all these instinctual drives we have for
things like belonging, this connection, mattering to each other, rule following, cooperation,
that they blend together into this kind of emotional stew
that makes us want something like a religion. What do
we fill that void with? Yeah, I mean, you know,
there's a number of different directions you can go with that.

(01:02:42):
I think some corporations kind of fulfill that purpose, either
as an outsider to it perhaps you just really like
apple products, or as an insider. I mean, I think
a lot of us know somebody maybe who works at
a at a particular business or corporation, and it's it's
it's managed well enough where it has the right atmosphere

(01:03:04):
or mix of benefits to where it is like a
truly inspiring place to work and it and it perhaps
fulfill some of the roles. You know, it's like people
looking out for each other and an organizational structure looking
out for them and forming informing some aspect of their identity.
But then also I think, uh, I think that maybe
it's sports. It's not a god that I necessarily follow,

(01:03:25):
but perhaps it's organized sports and the fandom for particular
organized sports teams. Can I tell you my nightmare scenario
is that in secularizing society, is that the literal beliefs
of religion are going to be replaced by social media religions.
Oh I don't know what to think about that. I'm
gonna have to sleep on that one and have a

(01:03:45):
few nightmares. The social media app is where you get
your use, where you fulfill your need for connection, for belongingness,
for mattering to each other, for rule following, for cooperation.
It all happens on there, and you can you can
come up with with sort of like ritualistic, systematic ways
for it to happen. Right, The programmers of the apps

(01:04:06):
can can sort of like almost design the liturgy of
your social media religion. Can can you see it? Yeah?
I just wonder if they'll be able to skip ahead
on the religion or we have to go through like
all the dark days of a particular faith evolution through
the social media app. Like maybe one version one point
oh is very optimistic and individual based, and then version

(01:04:28):
two point oh is very chaotic, Version three point oh
and entales of crusade. Then again, I guess we all
we also have to question our assumption. So maybe it's
not true that something has to replace it, you know,
Maybe it's true that you can have the literal beliefs
of religion vanish, and so all the trappings of religion
go along with it, and people don't necessarily need a

(01:04:50):
thing to fill that whole. Maybe they're maybe they're just
other ways for them to feel empathy, compassion, belonging, rule, following, cooperation,
and all the things came to talks about. Yeah, I
mean one thing that I you know, I've talked about
religion on the show a lot, and I have various
ideas about how I process it. I kind of think
of it in terms of lenses. There are certain lenses
I can choose to lay over my perception of reality,

(01:05:13):
and sometimes it's helpful to use one that is the
religious inform and other times I'm just gonna, you know,
fall back to the base sort of scientific and skeptical
view of the world. But on the other hand, I
have to realize that like not you know, and everybody
else isn't necessarily like me. We all have different minds,
different brains, that different different backgrounds, So I can't I

(01:05:35):
don't feel comfortable just going around saying, hey, everybody, you
should think about religion exactly the way I think about it,
because that's that's probably not um that's not a realistic expectation,
either culturally or just cognitively. I think also just the
experimental problem that King talks about is really interesting, you know, like,

(01:05:55):
how do how do you infer from the physical remains
of the ancient world? Old? What what kind of lens
is they were using? Where you're talking about how minds
can be different in process religion differently, how can you
infer just from artifacts and paintings and burials and stuff
like that. What the what their picture looked like? Yeah,
it's just how similar it was to yours? Yeah, yeah,

(01:06:17):
but but specifically her answer in the Neanderthals found very interesting. Yes, Um,
you know, to what extent can we just look at
these very basic remains and and and and see something
like belief like religion in their in their activities, in
the remains of their activities. Yeah, and all the while
being very conscious of the fact that we could easily

(01:06:38):
be misinterpreting things. That's what we're good at, it is,
all right. So there you have it again. I want
to give my thanks to to Brian Green, Max teg Mark,
Barbara J. King, and just the World Science Festival as
a whole. They were very accommodating of me and uh
and uh and and allowing me to to attend these

(01:06:59):
talks and to actually score a little interview time with
these three individuals. And I want to remind everybody that, hey,
if you're interested in attending the World Science Festival, this
is something that is very open to the public. If
you live in the New York area, you should definitely
check out of whichever panels or activities appeal to you
the most. Um And if you live outside of New York,

(01:07:20):
make a trip of it. New York City is a
place with a million things to offer, and during the
World Science Festival, uh, science is an excellent reason to
visit the Big Apple, New York's Great science City. Anyway. Yeah,
you give the Museum of Natural History right there waiting
for you. That is an American treasure. It is. If
you've never been, you should go sometime, right And if
you are just not going to New York City anytime soon,

(01:07:41):
you can still check out World Science Festival dot com.
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of various panels. Not everything that that goes on there
is necessarily filmed, but a lot of it is. And
you can go back and view these different scientific discussions.
And as for us, well, our website Stuff to Blow
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(01:08:02):
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(01:08:26):
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Is it how stuff works dot com would treat with

(01:09:02):
twenty tho