back to indexMichio Kaku: Future of Humans, Aliens, Space Travel & Physics | Lex Fridman Podcast #45
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The following is a conversation with Michio Kaku.
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He's a theoretical physicist, futurist,
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and professor at the City College of New York.
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He's the author of many fascinating books
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that explore the nature of our reality
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and the future of our civilization.
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They include Einstein's Cosmos, Physics of the Impossible,
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Future of the Mind, Parallel Worlds,
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and his latest, The Future of Humanity,
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Terraforming Mars Interstellar Travel,
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Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth.
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I think it's beautiful and important
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when a scientific mind can fearlessly explore
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through conversation subjects
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just outside of our understanding.
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That, to me, is where artificial intelligence is today,
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just outside of our understanding,
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a place we have to reach for
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if we're to uncover the mysteries of the human mind
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and build human level and superhuman level AI systems
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that transform our world for the better.
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This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
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If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
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give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon,
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or simply connect with me on Twitter
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at Lex Friedman, spelled F R I D M A N.
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And now, here's my conversation with Michio Kaku.
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You've mentioned that we just might make contact
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with aliens or at least hear from them within this century.
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Can you elaborate on your intuition behind that optimism?
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Well, this is pure speculation, of course.
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Given the fact that we've already identified
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4,000 exoplanets orbiting other stars,
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and we have a census of the Milky Way galaxy
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for the first time,
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we know that on average, every single star, on average,
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has a planet going around it,
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and about one fifth or so of them
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have Earth sized planets going around them.
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So just do the math.
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We're talking about out of 100 billion stars
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in the Milky Way galaxy,
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we're talking about billions
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of potential Earth sized planets.
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And to believe that we're the only one
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is, I think, rather ridiculous, given the odds.
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And how many galaxies are there?
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Within sight of the Hubble Space Telescope,
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there are about 100 billion galaxies.
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How many stars are there in the visible universe?
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100 billion galaxies,
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times 100 billion stars per galaxy.
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We're talking about a number beyond human imagination.
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And to believe that we're the only ones,
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I think, is rather ridiculous.
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So you've talked about different types of,
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type zero, one, two, three, four, and five,
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even, of the Kardashev scale
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of the different kind of civilizations.
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What do you think it takes,
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if it is indeed a ridiculous notion
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that we're alone in the universe,
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what do you think it takes to reach out?
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First, to reach out through communication and connect.
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Well, first of all, we have to understand
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the level of sophistication of an alien life form
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if we make contact with them.
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I think in this century, we'll probably pick up signals,
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signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.
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We'll pick up there, I love Lucy,
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and there, leave it to Beaver.
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Just ordinary day to day transmissions
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And the first thing we wanna do is to A,
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decipher their language, of course,
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but B, figure out at what level they are advanced
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on the Kardashev scale.
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We rank things by two parameters, energy and information.
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That's how we rank black holes.
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That's how we rank stars.
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That's how we rank civilizations in outer space.
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So a type one civilization is capable
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of harnessing planetary power.
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They control the weather, for example, earthquakes, volcanoes.
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They can modify the course of geological events,
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sort of like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.
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Type two would be stellar.
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They play with stars, entire stars.
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They use the entire energy output of a star,
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sort of like Star Trek.
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The Federation of Planets have colonized the nearby stars.
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So a type two would be somewhat similar to Star Trek.
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Type three would be galactic.
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They roam the galactic space lanes.
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And type three would be like Star Wars,
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a galactic civilization.
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Now, one day I was giving this talk in London
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at the planetarium there, and the little boy comes up to me
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and he says, professor, you're wrong.
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You're wrong, there's type four.
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And I told him, look, kid,
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there are planets, stars, and galaxies.
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And he kept persisting and saying, no, there's type four,
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the power of the continuum.
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And I thought about it for a moment.
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And I said to myself,
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is there an extra galactic source of energy,
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the continuum of Star Trek?
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And the answer is yes, there could be a type four.
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And that's dark energy.
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We now know that 73% of the energy of the universe
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Dark matter represents maybe 23% or so,
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and we only represent 4%.
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We're the oddballs.
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And so you begin to realize that, yeah,
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there could be type four, maybe even type five.
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So type four, you're saying being able to harness
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sort of like dark energy,
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something that permeates the entire universe.
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So be able to plug into the entire universe
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as a source of energy.
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And dark energy is the energy of the Big Bang.
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It's why the galaxies are being pushed apart.
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It's the energy of nothing.
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The more nothing you have,
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the more dark energy that's repulsive.
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And so the acceleration of the universe is accelerating
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because the more you have, the more you can have.
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And that, of course, is by definition an exponential curve.
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It's called a de Sitter expansion,
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and that's the current state of the universe.
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And then type five, would that be able to seek
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energy sources somehow outside of our universe?
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And how crazy is that idea?
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Yeah, type five will be the multiverse.
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I'm a quantum physicist,
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and we quantum physicists don't believe
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that the Big Bang happened once.
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That would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
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And that means that there could be multiple bangs
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happening all the time.
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Even as we speak today,
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universes are being created, and that fits the data.
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The inflationary universe is a quantum theory.
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So there's a certain finite probability
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that universes are being created all the time.
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And for me, this is actually rather aesthetically pleasing
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because I was raised as a Presbyterian,
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but my parents were Buddhists.
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And there's two diametrically opposed ideas
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about the universe.
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In Buddhism, there's only nirvana.
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There's no beginning, there's no end,
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there's only timelessness.
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But in Christianity, there is the instant
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when God said, let there be light.
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In other words, an instant of creation.
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So I've had these two mutually exclusive ideas in my head,
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and I now realize that it's possible to meld them
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into a single theory.
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Either the universe had a beginning or it didn't, right?
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You see, our universe had a beginning.
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Our universe had an instant where somebody might have said,
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let there be light.
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But there are other bubble universes out there
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in a bubble bath of universes.
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And that means that these universes are expanding
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into a dimension beyond our three dimensional comprehension.
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In other words, hyperspace.
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In other words, 11 dimensional hyperspace.
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So nirvana would be this timeless 11 dimensional hyperspace
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where big bangs are happening all the time.
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So we can now combine two mutually exclusive theories
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And Stephen Hawking, for example, even in his last book,
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even said that this is an argument
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against the existence of God.
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He said there is no God because there was not enough time
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for God to create the universe
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because the big bang happened in an instant of time.
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Therefore, there was no time available
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for him to create the universe.
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But you see, the multiverse idea
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means that there was a time before time.
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And there are multiple times, each bubble has its own time.
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And so it means that there could actually be a universe
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before the beginning of our universe.
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So if you think of a bubble bath, when two bubbles collide,
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or when two bubbles fission to create a baby bubble,
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that's called the big bang.
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So the big bang is nothing but the collision of universes
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or the budding of universes.
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That's such a beautiful picture
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of our incredibly mysterious existence.
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So is that humbling to you?
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Exciting, the idea of multiverses?
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I don't even know how to even begin
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to wrap my mind around it.
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It's exciting for me
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because what I do for a living is string theory.
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That's my day job.
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I get paid by the city of New York to work on string theory.
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And you see, string theory is a multiverse theory.
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So people say, first of all, what is string theory?
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String theory simply says that all the particles
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we see in nature, the electron, the proton,
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the quarks, what have you,
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are nothing but vibrations on a musical string,
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on a tiny, tiny little string.
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You know, G. Robert Oppenheimer,
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the creator of the atomic bomb,
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was so frustrated in the 1950s
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with all these subatomic particles being created
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in our atom smashers that he announced,
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he announced one day that the Nobel Prize in physics
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should go to the physicist
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who does not discover a new particle that year.
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Well, today we think they're nothing but musical notes
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on these tiny little vibrating strings.
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So what is physics?
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Physics is the harmonies you can write on vibrating strings.
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What is chemistry?
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Chemistry is the melodies you can play on these strings.
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What is the universe?
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The universe is a symphony of strings.
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And then what is the mind of God
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that Albert Einstein so eloquently wrote about
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for the last 30 years of his life?
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The mind of God would be cosmic music,
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resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
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So beautifully put.
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What do you think is the mind of Einstein's God?
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Do you think there's a why that we could untangle
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from this universe of strings?
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What is the meaning of it all?
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Well, Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize,
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once said that the more we learn about the universe,
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the more we learn that it's pointless.
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Well, I don't know.
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I don't profess to understand
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the great secrets of the universe.
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However, let me say two things
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about what the giants of physics
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have said about this question.
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Einstein believed in two types of God.
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One was the God of the Bible, the personal God,
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the God that answers prayers, walks on waters,
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performs miracles, smites the Philistines.
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That's the personal God that he didn't believe in.
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He believed in the God of Spinoza,
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the God of order, simplicity, harmony, beauty.
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The universe could have been ugly.
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The universe could have been messy, random,
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but it's gorgeous.
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You realize that on a single sheet of paper,
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we can write down all the known laws of the universe.
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It's amazing, on one sheet of paper,
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Einstein's equation is one inch long,
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string theory is a lot longer,
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and so it's a standard model,
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but you could put all these equations
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on one sheet of paper.
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It didn't have to be that way.
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It could have been messy.
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And so, Einstein thought of himself as a young boy
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entering this huge library for the first time,
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being overwhelmed by the simplicity, elegance,
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and beauty of this library,
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but all he could do was read the first page
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of the first volume.
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Well, that library is the universe,
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with all sorts of mysterious, magical things
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that we have yet to find.
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And then Galileo was asked about this.
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Galileo said that the purpose of science,
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the purpose of science is to determine how the heavens go.
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The purpose of religion is to determine
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how to go to heaven.
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So in other words, science is about natural law,
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and religion is about ethics,
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how to be a good person, how to go to heaven.
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As long as we keep these two things apart,
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we're in great shape.
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The problem occurs when people from the natural sciences
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begin to pontificate about ethics,
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and people from religion begin to pontificate
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about natural law.
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That's where we get into big trouble.
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You think they're fundamentally distinct,
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morality and ethics and our idea of what is right
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and what is wrong.
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That's something that's outside the reach
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of string theory and physics.
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If you talk to a squirrel about what is right
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and what is wrong, there's no reference frame
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for a squirrel, and realize that aliens from outer space,
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if they ever come visit us, they'll try to talk to us
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like we talk to squirrels in the forest,
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but eventually we get bored talking to the squirrels
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because they don't talk back to us.
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Same thing with aliens from outer space.
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They come down to earth, they'll be curious about us
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to a degree, but after a while they just get bored
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because we have nothing to offer them.
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So our sense of right and wrong,
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what does that mean compared to a squirrel's sense
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of right and wrong?
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Now we of course do have an ethics
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that keeps civilizations in line,
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enriches our life and makes civilization possible.
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And I think that's a good thing,
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but it's not mandated by a law of physics.
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So if aliens do, alien species were to make contact,
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forgive me for staying on aliens for a bit longer.
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Do you think they're more likely to be friendly,
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to befriend us or to destroy us?
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Well, I think for the most part,
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they'll pretty much ignore us.
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If you're a deer in the forest, who do you fear the most?
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Do you fear the hunter with his gigantic 16 gauge shotgun?
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Or do you fear the guy with a briefcase and glasses?
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Well, the guy with the briefcase could be a developer
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about to basically flatten the entire forest,
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destroying your livelihood.
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So instinctively you may be afraid of the hunter,
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but actually the problem with deers in the forest
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is that they should fear developers
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because developers look at deer as simply
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getting in the way.
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I mean, in War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells,
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the aliens did not hate us.
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If you read the book,
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the aliens did not have evil intentions toward homo sapiens.
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No, we were in the way.
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So I think we have to realize that alien civilizations
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may view us quite differently than in science fiction novels.
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However, I personally believe,
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and I cannot prove any of this,
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I personally believe that they're probably gonna be peaceful
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because there's nothing that they want from our world.
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I mean, what are they gonna take us?
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What are they gonna take us for, gold?
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No, gold is a useless metal for the most part.
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It's silver, I mean, it's gold in color,
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but that only affects homo sapiens.
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Squirrels don't care about gold.
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And so gold is a rather useless element.
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Rare earths maybe, platinum based elements,
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rare earths for the electronics, yeah, maybe.
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But other than that, we have nothing to offer them.
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I mean, think about it for a moment.
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People love Shakespeare and they love the arts and poetry,
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but outside of the earth, they mean nothing,
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absolutely nothing.
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I mean, when I write down an equation in string theory,
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I would hope that on the other side of the galaxy,
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there's an alien writing down that very same equation
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in different notation,
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but that alien on the other side of the galaxy,
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Shakespeare, poetry, Hemingway,
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it would mean nothing to him or her or it.
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When you think about entities that's out there,
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extraterrestrial, do you think they would naturally look
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something that even is recognizable to us as life?
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Or would they be radically different?
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Well, how did we become intelligent?
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Basically three things made us intelligent.
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One is our eyesight, stereo eyesight.
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We have the eyes of a hunter,
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stereo vision so we lock in on targets.
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And who is smarter, predator or prey?
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Predators are smarter than prey.
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They have their eyes at the front of their face,
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like lions, tigers,
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while rabbits have eyes to the side of their face.
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Hunters have to zero in on the target.
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They have to know how to ambush.
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They have to know how to hide, camouflage,
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sneak up, stealth, deceit.
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That takes a lot of intelligence.
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Rabbits, all they have to do is run.
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So that's the first criterion, stereo eyesight of some sort.
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Second is the thumb.
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The opposable thumb of some sort
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could be a claw or a tentacle.
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So hand eye coordination.
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Hand eye coordination is the way
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we manipulate the environment.
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And then three, language.
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Because mama bear never tells baby bear
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to avoid the human hunter.
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Bears just learn by themselves.
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They never hand out information
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from one generation to the next.
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So these are the three basic ingredients of intelligence.
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Eyesight of some sort, an opposable thumb
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or tentacle or claw of some sort, and language.
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Now ask yourself a simple question.
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How many animals have all three?
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I mean, the primates, they have a language, yeah,
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they may get up to maybe 20 words,
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but a baby learns a word a day,
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several words a day a baby learns.
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And a typical adult knows about almost 5,000 words.
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While the maximum number of words
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that you can teach a gorilla in any language,
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including their own language, is about 20 or so.
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And so we see the difference in intelligence.
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So when we meet aliens from outer space,
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chances are they will have been descended
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from predators of some sort.
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They'll have some way to manipulate the environment
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and communicate their knowledge to the next generation.
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So functionally, that would be similar.
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That would, we would be able to recognize them.
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Well, not necessarily, because I think
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even with Homo sapiens, we are eventually
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going to perhaps become part cybernetic
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and genetically enhanced.
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Already, robots are getting smarter and smarter.
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Right now, robots have the intelligence of a cockroach.
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But in the coming years,
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our robots will be as smart as a mouse,
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then maybe as smart as a rabbit.
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If we're lucky, maybe as smart as a cat or a dog.
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And by the end of the century, who knows for sure,
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our robots will be probably as smart as a monkey.
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Now, at that point, of course, they could be dangerous.
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You see, monkeys are self aware.
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They know they are monkeys.
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They may have a different agenda than us.
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While dogs, dogs are confused.
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You see, dogs think that we are a dog,
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that we're the top dog.
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They're the underdog.
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That's why they whimper and follow us and lick us
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We're the top dog.
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Monkeys have no illusion at all.
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They know we are not monkeys.
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And so I think that in the future,
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we'll have to put a chip in their brain to shut them off
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once our robots have murderous thoughts.
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But that's in a hundred years.
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In 200 years, the robots will be smart enough
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to remove that fail safe chip in their brain
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and then watch out.
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At that point, I think rather than compete with our robots,
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we should merge with them.
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We should become part cybernetic.
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So I think when we meet alien life from outer space,
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they may be genetically and cybernetically enhanced.
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Genetically and cybernetically enhanced.
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Wow, so let's talk about that full range.
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In the near term and 200 years from now,
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how promising in the near term in your view
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is brain machine interfaces?
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So starting to allow computers to talk directly
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to the brains, Elon Musk is working on that with Neuralink
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and there's other companies working on this idea.
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Do you see promise there?
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Do you see hope for near term impact?
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Well, every technology has pluses and minuses.
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Already we can record memories.
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I have a book, The Future of the Mind,
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where I detail some of these breakthroughs.
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We can now record simple memories of mice
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and send these memories on the internet.
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Eventually, we're gonna do this with primates
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at Wake Forest University and also in Los Angeles.
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And then after that,
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we'll have a memory chip for Alzheimer's patients.
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We'll test it out in Alzheimer's patients
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because of course, when Alzheimer's patients
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lose their memory, they wander.
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They create all sorts of havoc, wandering around,
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oblivious to their surroundings and they'll have a chip.
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They'll push the button and memories,
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memories will come flooding into their hippocampus
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and the chip telling them where they live and who they are.
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And so a memory chip is definitely in the cards.
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And I think this will eventually affect human civilization.
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What is the future of the internet?
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The future of the internet is brain net.
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Brain net is when we send emotions, feelings,
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sensations on the internet.
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And we will telepathically communicate
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with other humans this way.
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This is gonna affect everything.
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Look at entertainment.
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Remember the silent movies?
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Charlie Chaplin was very famous
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during the era of silent movies.
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But when the talkies came in,
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nobody wanted to see Charlie Chaplin anymore
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because he never talked in the movies.
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And so a whole generation of actors lost their job
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and a new series of actors came in.
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Next, we're gonna have the movies replaced by brain net
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because in the future, people will say,
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who wants to see a screen with images?
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Sound and image, that's called the movies.
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In our entertainment industry,
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this multi billion dollar industry is based on screens
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with moving images and sound.
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But what happens when emotions, feelings, sensations,
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memories can be conveyed on the internet?
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It's gonna change everything.
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Human relations will change
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because you'll be able to empathize
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and feel the suffering of other people.
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We'll be able to communicate telepathically.
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And this is coming.
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You described brain net and future of the mind.
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This is an interesting concept.
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Do you think, so you mentioned entertainment,
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but what kind of effect would it have
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on our personal relationships?
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Hopefully it will deepen it.
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You realize that for most of human history,
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for over 90% of human history,
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we only knew maybe 20, 100 people.
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That was your tribe.
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That was everybody you knew in the universe
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was only maybe 50 or 100.
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With the coming of towns,
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of course it expanded to a few thousand.
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With the coming of the telephone,
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all of a sudden you could reach thousands of people
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And now with the internet,
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you can reach the entire population of the planet Earth.
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And so I think this is a normal progression.
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And you think that kind of sort of connection
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to the rest of the world,
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and then adding sensations
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like being able to share telepathically emotions and so on
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that would just further deepen our connection
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to our fellow humans.
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In fact, I disagree with many scientists on this question.
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Most scientists would say that technology is neutral.
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A double edged sword,
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one side of the sword can cut against people.
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The other side of the sword
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can cut against ignorance and disease.
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I think technology does have a moral direction.
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Look at the internet.
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The internet spreads knowledge, awareness,
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and that creates empowerment.
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People act on knowledge.
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When they begin to realize
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that they don't have to live that way,
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they don't have to suffer under a dictatorship,
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that there are other ways of living under freedom,
link |
then they begin to take things, take power.
link |
And that spreads democracy.
link |
And democracies do not war with other democracies.
link |
I believe in data.
link |
So let's take a sheet of paper
link |
and write down every single war you had to learn
link |
since you were in elementary school.
link |
Every single war, hundreds of them.
link |
Kings, queens, emperors, dictators.
link |
All these wars were between kings, queens,
link |
emperors, and dictators.
link |
Never between two major democracies.
link |
And so I think with the spread of this technology
link |
and which would accelerate with the coming of brain net,
link |
it means that, well, we will still have wars.
link |
Wars, of course, is politics by other means,
link |
but they'll be less intense and less frequent.
link |
Do you have worries of longer term existential risk
link |
from technology, from AI?
link |
So I think that's a wonderful vision of a future
link |
where war is a distant memory,
link |
but now there's another agent.
link |
There's somebody else that's able to create conflict,
link |
that's able to create harm, AI systems.
link |
So do you have worry about such AI systems?
link |
Well, yes, that is an existential risk,
link |
but again, I think an existential risk,
link |
not for this century.
link |
I think our grandkids are gonna have to confront
link |
this question as robots gradually approach
link |
the intelligence of a dog, a cat,
link |
and finally that of a monkey.
link |
However, I think we will digitize ourselves as well.
link |
Not only are we gonna merge with our technology,
link |
we'll also digitize our personality,
link |
our memories, our feelings.
link |
You realize during the Middle Ages,
link |
there was something called dualism.
link |
Dualism meant that the soul was separate from the body.
link |
When the body died, the soul went to heaven.
link |
Then in the 20th century, neuroscience came in
link |
and said, bah, humbug.
link |
Every time we look at the brain, it's just neurons.
link |
That's it, folks, period, end of story.
link |
Bunch of neurons firing.
link |
Now we're going back to dualism.
link |
Now we realize that we can digitize human memories,
link |
feelings, sensations, and create a digital copy of ourselves,
link |
and that's called the Connectome Project.
link |
Billions of dollars are now being spent
link |
to do not just the genome project
link |
of sequencing the genes of our body,
link |
but the Connectome Project,
link |
which is to map the entire connections of the human brain.
link |
And even before then, already in Silicon Valley,
link |
today, at this very moment,
link |
you can contact Silicon Valley companies
link |
that are willing to digitize your relatives
link |
because some people want to talk to their parents.
link |
There are unresolved issues with their parents,
link |
and one day, yes, firms will digitize people,
link |
and you'll be able to talk to them a reasonable facsimile.
link |
We leave a digital trail.
link |
Our ancestors did not.
link |
Our ancestors were lucky if they had one line,
link |
just one line in a church book,
link |
saying the date they were baptized and the date they died.
link |
That was their entire digital memory.
link |
I mean, their entire digital existence summarized
link |
in just a few letters of the alphabet, a whole life.
link |
Now we digitize everything.
link |
Every time you sneeze, you digitize it.
link |
You put it on the internet.
link |
And so I think that we are gonna digitize ourselves
link |
and give us digital immortality.
link |
We'll not only have biologic genetic immortality
link |
of some sort, but also digital immortality.
link |
And what are we gonna do with it?
link |
I think we should send it into outer space.
link |
If you digitize the human brain
link |
and put it on a laser beam and shoot it to the moon,
link |
you're on the moon in one second.
link |
Shoot it to Mars, you're on Mars in 20 minutes.
link |
Shoot it to Pluto, you're on Pluto in eight hours.
link |
Think about it for a moment.
link |
You can have breakfast in New York
link |
and for a morning snack, vacation on the moon,
link |
then zap your way to Mars by noontime,
link |
journey through the asteroid belt of the afternoon,
link |
and then come back for dinner in New York at night.
link |
All in a day's work at the speed of light.
link |
Now, this means that you don't need booster rockets.
link |
You don't need weightlessness problems.
link |
You don't need to worry about meteorites.
link |
And what's on the moon?
link |
On the moon, there is a mainframe
link |
that downloads your laser beam's information.
link |
And where does it download the information into?
link |
Now, what does that avatar look like?
link |
Anything you want.
link |
Think about it for a moment.
link |
You could be Superman, Superwoman, on the moon, on Mars,
link |
traveling throughout the universe at the speed of light,
link |
downloading your personality into any vehicle you want.
link |
Now, let me stick my neck out.
link |
So far, everything I've been saying
link |
is well within the laws of physics.
link |
Well within the laws of physics.
link |
Now, let me go outside the laws of physics again.
link |
I think this already exists.
link |
I think outside the Earth, there could be a super highway
link |
a laser highway of laser porting
link |
with billions of souls of aliens
link |
zapping their way across the galaxy.
link |
Now, let me ask you a question.
link |
Are we smart enough to determine
link |
whether such a thing exists or not?
link |
No, this could exist right outside
link |
the orbit of the planet Earth.
link |
And we're too stupid in our technology
link |
to even prove it or disprove it.
link |
We would need the aliens on this laser super highway
link |
to help us out, to send us a human interpretable signal.
link |
I mean, it ultimately boils down
link |
to the language of communication,
link |
but that's an exciting possibility
link |
that actually the sky is filled with aliens.
link |
The aliens could already be here.
link |
And we're just so oblivious that we're too stupid to know it.
link |
See, they don't have to be in alien form
link |
with little green men.
link |
They can be in any form they want
link |
in an avatar of their creation.
link |
Well, in fact, they could very well be.
link |
They can even look like us.
link |
One of us could be an alien.
link |
You know, in the zoo, did you know
link |
that we sometimes have zookeepers that imitate animals?
link |
We create a fake animal and we put it in
link |
so that the animal is not afraid of this fake animal.
link |
And of course, these animals brains,
link |
their brain is about as big as a walnut.
link |
They accept these dummies as if they were real.
link |
So an alien civilization in outer space would say,
link |
oh yeah, human brains are so tiny.
link |
We could put a dummy on their world, an avatar,
link |
and they'd never know it.
link |
That would be an entertaining thing to watch
link |
from the alien perspective.
link |
So you kind of implied that with a digital form
link |
of our being, but also biologically,
link |
do you think one day technology will allow
link |
individual human beings to become immortal
link |
besides just through the ability to digitize our essence?
link |
Yeah, I think that artificial intelligence
link |
will give us the key to genetic immortality.
link |
You see, in the coming decades,
link |
everyone's gonna have their gene sequence.
link |
We'll have billions of genomes of old people,
link |
billions of genomes of young people.
link |
And what are we gonna do with it?
link |
We're gonna run it through an AI machine,
link |
which has pattern recognition, to look for the age genes.
link |
In other words, the fountain of youth that emperors,
link |
kings, and queens lusted over.
link |
The fountain of youth will be found
link |
by artificial intelligence.
link |
Artificial intelligence will identify
link |
where these age genes are located.
link |
First of all, what is aging?
link |
We now know what aging is.
link |
Aging is the buildup of errors.
link |
That's all aging is, the buildup of genetic errors.
link |
This means that cells eventually become slower, sluggish,
link |
they go into senescence, and they die.
link |
In fact, that's why we die.
link |
We die because of the buildup of mistakes
link |
in our genome, in our cellular activity.
link |
But you see, in the future, we'll be able to fix those genes
link |
with CRISPR type technologies,
link |
and perhaps even live forever.
link |
So let me ask you a question.
link |
Where does aging take place in a car?
link |
Given a car, where does aging take place?
link |
Well, it's obvious, the engine, right?
link |
A, that's where you have a lot of moving parts.
link |
B, that's where you have combustion.
link |
Well, where in the cell do we have combustion?
link |
We now know where aging takes place.
link |
And if we cure many of the mistakes that build up
link |
in the mitochondria of the cell, we could become immortal.
link |
Let me ask you, if you yourself could become immortal,
link |
No, I think about it for a while,
link |
because of course, it depends on how you become immortal.
link |
You know, there's a famous myth of Tithonus.
link |
It turns out that years ago, in the Greek mythology,
link |
there was the saga of Tithonus and Aurora.
link |
Aurora was the goddess of the dawn,
link |
and she fell in love with a mortal, a human called Tithonus.
link |
And so Aurora begged Zeus to grant her
link |
the gift of immortality to give to her lover.
link |
So Zeus took pity on Aurora and made Tithonus immortal.
link |
But you see, Aurora made a mistake,
link |
She asked for immortality,
link |
but she forgot to ask for eternal youth.
link |
So poor Tithonus got older and older and older every year,
link |
decrepit, a bag of bones, but he could never die.
link |
Quality of life is important.
link |
So I think immortality is a great idea,
link |
as long as you also have immortal youth as well.
link |
Now, I personally believe, and I cannot prove this,
link |
but I personally believe that our grandkids
link |
may have the option of reaching the age of 30
link |
and then stopping.
link |
They may like being age 30,
link |
because you have wisdom,
link |
you have all the benefits of age and maturity,
link |
and you still live forever with a healthy body.
link |
Our descendants may like being 30 for several centuries.
link |
Is there an aspect of human existence
link |
that is meaningful only because we're mortal?
link |
Well, every waking moment,
link |
we don't think about it this way,
link |
but every waking moment,
link |
actually, we are aware of our death and our mortality.
link |
Think about it for a moment.
link |
When you go to college,
link |
you realize that you are in a period of time
link |
where soon you will reach middle age and have a career.
link |
And after that, you'll retire and then you'll die.
link |
And so even as a youth, even as a child,
link |
without even thinking about it,
link |
you are aware of your own death,
link |
because it sets limits to your lifespan.
link |
I gotta graduate from high school.
link |
I gotta graduate from college.
link |
Because you're gonna die.
link |
Because unless you graduate from high school,
link |
unless you graduate from college,
link |
you're not gonna enter old age with enough money
link |
to retire and then die.
link |
And so, yeah, people think about it unconsciously,
link |
because it affects every aspect of your being.
link |
The fact that you go to high school, college,
link |
get married, have kids, there's a clock,
link |
a clock ticking even without your permission.
link |
It gives a sense of urgency.
link |
Do you yourself, I mean,
link |
there's so much excitement and passion
link |
in the way you talk about physics
link |
and the way you talk about technology in the future.
link |
Do you yourself meditate on your own mortality?
link |
Do you think about this clock that's ticking?
link |
Well, I try not to,
link |
because it then begins to affect your behavior.
link |
You begin to alter your behavior
link |
to match your expectation of when you're gonna die.
link |
So let's talk about youth,
link |
and then let's talk about death, okay?
link |
When I interview scientists on radio,
link |
I often ask them, what made the difference?
link |
What changed your life?
link |
And they always say more or less the same thing.
link |
No, these are Nobel Prize winners,
link |
directors of major laboratories,
link |
very distinguished scientists.
link |
They always say, when I was 10,
link |
when I was 10, something happened.
link |
It was a visit to the planetarium.
link |
It was a telescope.
link |
For Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize,
link |
it was the chemistry kit.
link |
For Heinz Pagels, it was a visit to the planetarium.
link |
For Isidor Rabi, it was a book about the planets.
link |
For Albert Einstein, it was a compass.
link |
Something happened,
link |
which gives them this existential shock.
link |
Because you see, before the age of 10,
link |
everything is mommy and daddy, mommy and dad.
link |
That's your universe, mommy and daddy.
link |
Around the age of 10, you begin to wonder,
link |
what's beyond mommy and daddy?
link |
And that's when you have this epiphany,
link |
when you realize, oh my God, there's a universe out there,
link |
a universe of discovery.
link |
And that sensation stays with you for the rest of your life.
link |
You still remember that shock
link |
that you felt gazing at the universe.
link |
And then you hit the greatest destroyer of scientists
link |
The greatest destroyer of scientists known to science
link |
is junior high school.
link |
When you hit junior high school, folks, it's all over.
link |
Because in junior high school, people say, hey, stupid.
link |
I mean, you like that nerdy stuff.
link |
And your friends shun you.
link |
All of a sudden, people think you're a weirdo.
link |
And scientists made boring.
link |
Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner,
link |
when he was a child,
link |
his father would take him into the forest.
link |
And the father would teach him everything about birds,
link |
why they're shaped the way they are,
link |
their wings, the coloration, the shape of their beak,
link |
everything about birds.
link |
So one day, a bully comes up
link |
to the future Nobel Prize winner and says,
link |
hey, Dick, what's the name of that bird over there?
link |
Well, he didn't know.
link |
He knew everything about that bird except its name.
link |
So he said, I don't know.
link |
And then the bully said, what's the matter, Dick?
link |
You stupid or something?
link |
And then in that instant, he got it.
link |
He realized that for most people,
link |
science is giving names to birds.
link |
That's what science is.
link |
You know lots of names of obscure things.
link |
Hey, people say, you're smart.
link |
You know all the names of the dinosaurs.
link |
You know all the names of the plants.
link |
No, that's not science at all.
link |
Science is about principles, concepts, physical pictures.
link |
That's what science is all about.
link |
My favorite quote from Einstein is that,
link |
unless you can explain the theory to a child,
link |
the theory is probably worthless.
link |
Meaning that all great theories are not big words.
link |
All great theories are simple concepts, principles,
link |
basic physical pictures.
link |
Relativity is all about clocks, meter sticks,
link |
rocket ships and locomotives.
link |
Newton's laws of gravity are all about balls
link |
and spinning wheels and things like that.
link |
That's what physics and science is all about,
link |
not memorizing things.
link |
And that stays with you for the rest of your life.
link |
So even in old age, I've noticed that these scientists,
link |
when they sit back, they still remember.
link |
They still remember that flush,
link |
that flush of excitement they felt with that first telescope,
link |
that first moment when they encountered the universe.
link |
That keeps them going.
link |
That keeps them going.
link |
By the way, I should point out that when I was eight,
link |
something happened to me as well.
link |
When I was eight years old, it was in all the papers
link |
that a great scientist had just died.
link |
And they put a picture of his desk on the front page.
link |
That's it, just a simple picture of the front page
link |
of the newspapers of his desk.
link |
That desk had a book on it, which was opened.
link |
And the caption said more or less,
link |
this is the unfinished manuscript
link |
from the greatest scientists of our time.
link |
So I said to myself, well, why couldn't he finish it?
link |
What's so hard that you can't finish it
link |
if you're a great scientist?
link |
It's a homework problem, right?
link |
You go home, you solve it, or you ask your mom,
link |
why couldn't he solve it?
link |
So to me, this was a murder mystery.
link |
This was greater than any adventure story.
link |
I had to know why the greatest scientists of our time
link |
couldn't finish something.
link |
And then over the years, I found out the guy had a name,
link |
Albert Einstein, and that book was The Theory of Everything.
link |
It was unfinished.
link |
Well, today I can read that book.
link |
I can see all the dead ends and false starts that he made.
link |
And I began to realize that he lost his way
link |
because he didn't have a physical picture
link |
to guide him on the third try.
link |
On the first try, he talked about clocks
link |
and lightning bolts and meter sticks,
link |
and that gave us special relativity,
link |
which gave us the atomic bomb.
link |
The second great picture was gravity
link |
with balls rolling on curved surfaces.
link |
And that gave us the Big Bang,
link |
creation of the universe, black holes.
link |
On the third try, he missed it.
link |
He had no picture at all to guide him.
link |
In fact, there's a quote I have where he said,
link |
I'm still looking.
link |
I'm still looking for that picture.
link |
He never found it.
link |
Well, today we think that picture is strength theory.
link |
The strength theory can unify gravity
link |
and this mysterious thing that Einstein didn't like,
link |
which is quantum mechanics,
link |
or couldn't quite pin down and make sense of.
link |
Mother nature has two hands, a left hand and a right hand.
link |
The left hand is a theory of the small.
link |
The right hand is a theory of the big.
link |
The theory of the small is the quantum theory,
link |
the theory of atoms and quarks.
link |
The theory of the big is relativity,
link |
the theory of black holes, big bangs.
link |
The problem is the left hand does not talk to the right hand.
link |
They hate each other.
link |
The left hand is based on discrete particles.
link |
The right hand is based on smooth surfaces.
link |
How do you put these two things together
link |
into a single theory?
link |
They hate each other.
link |
The greatest minds of our time,
link |
the greatest minds of our time
link |
worked on this problem and failed.
link |
Today, the only theory that has survived
link |
every challenge so far is string theory.
link |
That doesn't mean string theory is correct.
link |
It could very well be wrong,
link |
but right now it's the only game in town.
link |
Some people come up to me and say,
link |
''Professor, I don't believe in string theory.
link |
Give me an alternative.''
link |
And I tell them there is none.
link |
It's the best theory we got.
link |
It's the only theory we have.
link |
It's the only theory we have.
link |
Do you see, you know,
link |
the strings kind of inspire a view,
link |
as did atoms and particles and quarks,
link |
but especially strings inspire a view of a universe
link |
as a kind of information processing system,
link |
as a computer of sorts.
link |
Do you see the universe in this way?
link |
Some people think, in fact,
link |
the whole universe is a computer of some sort.
link |
And they believe that perhaps everything,
link |
therefore, is a simulation.
link |
I don't think that there is a super video game
link |
where we are nothing but puppets dancing on the screen
link |
and somebody hit the play button
link |
and here we are talking about simulations.
link |
Even Newtonian mechanics says that the weather,
link |
the simple weather is so complicated
link |
with trillions upon trillions of atoms
link |
that it cannot be simulated in a finite amount of time.
link |
In other words, the smallest object
link |
which can describe the weather
link |
and simulate the weather is the weather itself.
link |
The smallest object that can simulate a human
link |
is the human itself.
link |
And if you had quantum mechanics,
link |
it becomes almost impossible
link |
to simulate it with a conventional computer.
link |
This quantum mechanics deals with all possible universes,
link |
parallel universes, a multiverse of universes.
link |
And so the calculation just spirals out of control.
link |
Now, so far, there's only one way
link |
where you might be able to argue
link |
that the universe is a simulation.
link |
And this is still being debated by quantum physicists.
link |
It turns out that if you throw the encyclopedia
link |
into a black hole, the information is not lost.
link |
Eventually it winds up on the surface of the black hole.
link |
Now, the surface of the black hole is finite.
link |
In fact, you can calculate
link |
the maximum amount of information
link |
you can store in a black hole.
link |
It's a finite number.
link |
It's a calculable number, believe it or not.
link |
Now, if the universe were made out of black holes,
link |
which is the maximum universe you can conceive of,
link |
each universe, each black hole
link |
has a finite amount of information.
link |
Therefore, ergo, da da!
link |
Ergo, the total amount of information in a universe
link |
This is mind boggling.
link |
This, I consider mind boggling,
link |
that all possible universes are countable
link |
and all possible universes can be summarized in a number,
link |
a number you can write on a sheet of paper,
link |
all possible universes, and it's a finite number.
link |
It's a number beyond human imagination.
link |
It's a number based on what is called a Planck length,
link |
but it's a number.
link |
And so if a computer could ever simulate that number,
link |
then the universe would be a simulation.
link |
So theoretically, because the amount of information
link |
is finite, well, there necessarily must be able
link |
to exist a computer.
link |
It's just, from an engineering perspective,
link |
maybe impossible to build.
link |
Yes, no computer can build a universe
link |
capable of simulating the entire universe,
link |
except the universe itself.
link |
So that's your intuition, that our universe
link |
is very efficient, and so there's no shortcuts.
link |
Right, two reasons why I believe the universe
link |
is not a simulation.
link |
First, the calculational numbers are just incredible.
link |
No finite Turing machine can simulate the universe.
link |
And second, why would any super intelligent being
link |
If you think about it, most humans are kind of stupid.
link |
I mean, we do all sorts of crazy, stupid things, right?
link |
And we call it art, we call it humor.
link |
We call it human civilization.
link |
So why should an advanced civilization
link |
go through all that effort just to simulate Saturday Night
link |
Well, that's a funny idea, but it's also,
link |
do you think it's possible that the act of creation
link |
cannot anticipate humans?
link |
You simply set the initial conditions
link |
and set a bunch of physical laws,
link |
and just for the fun of it, see what happens.
link |
You launch the thing, so you're not necessarily
link |
simulating everything.
link |
You're not simulating every little bit in the sense
link |
that you could predict what's going to happen,
link |
but you set the initial conditions, set the laws,
link |
and see what kind of fun stuff happens.
link |
Well, in some sense, that's how life got started.
link |
In the 1950s, Stanley did what is called
link |
the Miller experiment.
link |
He put a bunch of hydrogen gas, methane, toxic gases
link |
with liquid and a spark in a small glass beaker.
link |
And then he just walked away for a few weeks,
link |
came back a few weeks later, and bingo.
link |
Out of nothing and chaos came amino acids.
link |
If he had left it there for a few years,
link |
he might have gotten protein, protein molecules for free.
link |
That's probably how life got started, as a accident.
link |
And if he had left it there for perhaps a few million years,
link |
DNA might have formed in that beaker.
link |
And so we think that, yeah, DNA, life, all that
link |
could have been an accident if you wait long enough.
link |
And remember, our universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old.
link |
That's plenty of time for lots of random things
link |
to happen, including life itself.
link |
Yeah, we could be just a beautiful little random moment.
link |
And there could be an infinite number
link |
of those throughout the history of the universe,
link |
many creatures like us.
link |
We perhaps are not the epitome of what
link |
the universe is created for.
link |
Look to your left, look to your right.
link |
When do you think the first human will step foot on Mars?
link |
I think it's a good chance in the 2030s
link |
that we will be on Mars.
link |
In fact, there's no physics reason why we can't do it.
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It's an engineering problem.
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It's a very difficult and dangerous engineering problem,
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but it is an engineering problem.
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And in my book, Future of Humanity,
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I even speculate beyond that, that by the end
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of this century, we'll probably have the first starships.
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The first starships will not look
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like the Enterprise at all.
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They'll probably be small computer chips
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that are fired by laser beams with parachutes.
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And like what Stephen Hawking advocated,
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the Breakthrough Starshot program
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could send ships to the nearby stars,
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traveling at 20% the speed of light,
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reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years time.
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Beyond that, we should have fusion power.
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Fusion power is, in some sense, one
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of the ultimate sources of energy, but it's unstable.
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And we don't have fusion power today.
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First of all, stars form almost for free.
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You get a bunch of gas large enough, it becomes a star.
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I mean, you don't even have to do anything to it,
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and it becomes a star.
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Why is fusion so difficult to put on the Earth?
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Because in outer space, stars are monopoles.
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They are pole, single poles that are spherically symmetric.
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And it's very easy to get spherically symmetric
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configurations of gas to compress into a star.
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It just happens naturally all by itself.
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The problem is magnetism is bipolar.
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You have a North Pole and a South Pole.
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And it's like trying to squeeze a long balloon.
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Take a long balloon and try to squeeze it.
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You squeeze one side, it bulges out the other side.
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Well, that's the problem with fusion machines.
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We use magnetism with a North Pole and a South Pole
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to squeeze gas, and all sorts of anomalies
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and horrible configurations can take place
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because we're not squeezing something uniformly
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Stars, in some sense, are for free.
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Fusion on the Earth is very difficult.
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But I think it's inevitable.
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And it'll eventually give us unlimited power from seawater.
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So seawater will be the ultimate source of energy
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for the planet Earth.
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What's the intuition there?
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Because we'll extract hydrogen from seawater,
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burn hydrogen in a fusion reactor
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to give us unlimited energy without the meltdown,
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without the nuclear waste.
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Why do we have meltdowns?
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We have meltdowns because in the fusion reactors,
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every time you split the uranium atom, you get nuclear waste.
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30 tons of nuclear waste per reactor per year.
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It's hot for thousands, millions of years.
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That's why we have meltdowns.
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But you see, the waste product of a fusion reactor
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Helium gas is actually commercially valuable.
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You can make money selling helium gas.
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And so the waste product of a fusion reactor
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is helium, not nuclear waste that we find
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in a commercial fission plant.
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And that controlling, mastering and controlling fusion
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allows us to, converts us into a type one,
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I guess, civilization, right?
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Yeah, probably the backbone of a type one civilization
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will be fusion power.
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We, by the way, are type zero.
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We don't even rate on this scale.
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We get our energy from dead plants, for God's sake,
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But we are about 100 years from being type one.
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In fact, Carl Sagan calculated that we
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are about 0.7, fairly close to a 1.0.
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For example, what is the internet?
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The internet is the beginning of the first type one technology
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to enter into our century.
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The first planetary technology is the internet.
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What is the language of type one?
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On the internet already, English and Mandarin Chinese
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are the most dominant languages on the internet.
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And what about the culture?
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We're seeing a type one sports, soccer, the Olympics,
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a type one music, youth culture, rock and roll, rap music,
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type one fashion, Gucci, Chanel, a type one economy,
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the European Union, NAFTA, what have you.
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So we're beginning to see the beginnings of a type one
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culture in a type one civilization.
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And inevitably, it will spread beyond this planet.
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So you talked about sending at 20% the speed of light
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on a chip into Alpha Centauri.
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But in a slightly nearer term, what
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do you think about the idea when we still have to send
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our biological bodies the colonization of planets,
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colonization of Mars?
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Do you see us becoming a two planet species ever
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Well, just remember the dinosaurs
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did not have a space program.
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And that's why they're not here today.
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How come there are no dinosaurs in this room today?
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Because they didn't have a space program.
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We do have a space program, which
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means that we have an insurance policy.
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Now, I don't think we should bankrupt the Earth
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or deplete the Earth to go to Mars.
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That's too expensive and not practical.
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But we need a settlement, a settlement on Mars
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in case something bad happens to the planet Earth.
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And that means we have to terraform Mars.
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Now, to terraform Mars, if we could
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raise the temperature of Mars by six degrees, six degrees,
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then the polar ice caps begin to melt, releasing water vapor.
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Water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
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It causes even more melting of the ice caps.
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So it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
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It feeds on itself.
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It becomes autocatalytic.
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And so once you hit six degrees, rising
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of the temperature on Mars by six degrees, it takes off.
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And we melt the polar ice caps.
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And liquid water once again flows
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in the rivers, the canals, the channels,
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and the oceans of Mars.
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Mars once had an ocean, we think,
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about the size of the United States.
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And so that is a possibility.
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Now, how do we get there?
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How do we raise the temperature of Mars by six degrees?
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Elon Musk would like to detonate hydrogen warheads
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on the polar ice caps.
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Well, I'm not sure about that.
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Because we don't know that much about the effects
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of detonating hydrogen warheads to melt the polar ice caps.
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And who wants to glow in the dark at night reading
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So I think there are other ways to do it
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with solar satellites.
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You can have satellites orbiting Mars that beam sunlight
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onto the polar ice caps, melting the polar ice caps.
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Mars has plenty of water.
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I think you paint an inspiring and a wonderful picture
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I think you've inspired and educated thousands,
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Michio, it's been an honor.
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Thank you so much for talking today.