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Garry Nolan: UFOs and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #262


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How would you as a higher intelligence represent yourself to a lesser intelligence?
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Do you think they saw what they say they saw?
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It didn't just start showing up in 1947.
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How hard do you think it is for aliens to communicate with humans?
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What do we believe in? We believe in technology.
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So you show yourself as a form of technology, right?
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But the common thread is you're not alone.
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And there's something else here with you.
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And there's something that's, as you said, watching you.
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You are a professor at Stanford studying the biology of the human organism at the
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level of individual cells. So let me ask first the big ridiculous philosophical question.
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What is the most beautiful or fascinating aspect of human biology at the level of the cell to you?
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The micro machines and the nanomachines that proteins make and become that to me is the most
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interesting. The fact that you have this basically dynamic computer within every cell that's
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constantly processing its environment. And at the heart of it is DNA, which is a dynamic machine,
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a dynamic computation process. People think of the DNA as a linear code.
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It's codes within codes, within codes. And it is actually the epigenetic state that's doing this
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amazing processing. I mean, if you ever wanted to believe in God, just look inside the cell.
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So DNA is both information and computer. Exactly.
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How did that computer come about? A big continue on the philosophical question.
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Is this both scientific and philosophical? How did life originate on Earth, do you think?
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How did this at every level, so the very first step and the fascinating complex computer that is
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DNA, that is multicellular organism, and then maybe the fascinating complex computer that is
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the human mind? Well, I think you have to take just one more step back to the complex computer
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that is the universe, right? All of the so called particles or the waves that people think the
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universe is made of and appears to me at least to be a computational process and embedded in that
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is biology, right? So all the atoms of a protein, etc., sit in that computational matrix. From my
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point of view, it's computing something. It's computing towards something. It was created
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in some ways if you want to believe in God. And I don't know that I do, but if you want to believe
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in something, the universe was created or at least enabled to allow for life to form. And so
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the DNA, if you ask where does DNA come from, and you can go all the way back to Richard Dawkins
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and the selfish gene hypotheses, the way I look at DNA though is it is not a moment in time.
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It assumes the context of the body and the environment in which it's going to live. And so
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if you want to ask a question of where and how does information get stored, DNA, although it's
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only 3 billion base pairs long, contains more information than I think the entire computational
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memory resources of our current technology. Because who and what you are is both what you
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were as an egg all the way through to the day you die and it embodies all the different cell
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types and organs in your body. And so it's a computational reservoir of information and expectation
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that you will become. So actually, I would sort of turn it around a different way and say if you
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wanted to create the best memory storage system possible, you could reverse engineer what a human
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is and create a DNA memory system that is not just the linear version, but is also everything
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that it could become. When we're talking about DNA, we're talking about Earth and the environment
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creating DNA. So you're talking about trying to come up with an optimal computer for this
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particular environment. Right. So if you reverse engineer that computer, what do you mean by
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considering all the possible things it could become? So who you are today, right? So 3 billion
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bits of information does not explain Lex Friedman, doesn't explain me, right? But the DNA embodies
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the expectation of the environment in which you will live and grow and become. So all the
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information that is you, right, is actually not only embedded in the DNA, but it's embedded
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in the context of the world in which you grow into and develop, right? So all that information,
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though, is packed in the expectation of what the DNA expects to see. Interesting. So some of the
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information, is that accurate to say, is stored outside the body? Exactly. Yeah. The information
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is stored outside because there's a context of expectation. Isn't that interesting? Yeah,
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it's fascinating. I mean, to linger on this point, if we were to run Earth over again a million
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times, how many different versions of this type of computer would we get? I think it would be
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different each time. I mean, if you assume there's no such thing as fate, right, and it's not all
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pre programmed, you know, and that there is some sort of, let's say, variation or randomness at
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the beginning, you would get as many different versions of life as you could imagine. And I
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don't think it would all be unless there's something built into the, you know, into the
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substrate of the universe. It wouldn't always be left handed proteins, right? But I wonder what
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the flap of a butterfly wing, what effects it has, because it's possible that this system is really
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good at finding the efficient answer. And maybe the efficient answer is there's only a small finite
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set of them for this particular environment. Exactly. Exactly. That's the kind of, in a way,
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the anthropomorphic universe of the multiverse expectations, right? That, you know, there's
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probably a zillion other kinds of universes out there, if you believe in multiverse theory.
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We only live in the ones where the rules are such that life like ours can exist.
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So using that logic, how many alien civilizations do you think are out there? There's, there's,
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there's like trillions of environments, aka planets, or maybe you can think even bigger
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than planets. How many life like organisms do you think are out there thriving? And maybe how
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many do you think are long gone, but we're once here? I think, well, innumerable. I think in terms
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of the greater than zero, much greater than zero. I mean, I would just be surprised what a waste,
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right, of all that space just for us, if we're never going to get there. That would be my first
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way to think about it. But second, I mean, I remember when I was about seven or eight years old,
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and I would love if any of your listeners could find this National Geographic. I remember opening
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the page of the National Geographic. I was about, again, seven to 10 years old. And it was sort of
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a current picture of the universe. It was around probably 1968, 1969. I just remember looking at
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it and thinking, what kinds of empires have risen and fallen across that space that we'll never
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know about? And isn't that sad that we know nothing about something so grand? And so,
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I've always been a reader of science fiction, because I like the creative ideas of what people
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come up with. And I especially like science fiction writers that base it in good science,
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but base it also in evolution. That if you evolve a civilization from something life like, right,
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some sort of biology, its assumptions about the universe will come from the environment in which
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it grew up. So for instance, Larry Niven is a great writer. And he imagines different kinds of
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civilizations. In some cases, what happens if, what happens if intelligence evolved from a herd
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animal, right? Would you lead from behind? Right? Would you be, you know, in his case,
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one of them were the so called puppeteers. And to them, the moral imperative is cowardice.
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You put other people forward to run the risk for you, right? And so he writes entire books around
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that premise. There's another guy, Bryn, David Bryn, is his name, and he writes the so called
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uplift universe books. And in those, he takes different intelligences, each from a different
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evolutionary background. And then he posits a civilization based around where and what they
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came from. And so to me, I mean, that's, that's just fun. But I mean, back to your original
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question is how many are there, I think is as, as, as many stars as we can see. Now, how many
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are currently there? I don't know. I mean, that's the whole, that's the whole question of, you know,
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how long can a civilization last before it runs out of steam? In you, for instance, does it just
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get bored? Or does it transcend to something else? Or does it say, I've seen enough and I'm done?
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What does running out of steam look like? It could be destroy itself or get bored?
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You know, or we've done everything we can, and they just decide to stop. I don't know. I just
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don't know. It's that you almost worry that we stop reproducing, or we slow down the reproduction
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rate to where the population can go to zero. Can go to zero and we can't and we collapse. I mean,
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so the only way to get around that is perhaps create enough machines with AI to take care of us.
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What could possibly go wrong? You've talked to people that told stories of UFO encounters.
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What is the most fascinating to you about the stories of these UFO encounters that
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you've heard that people have told you? The similarity of them, the uniformity of the stories.
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Now, I just want to say up front, a lot of people think that when I speculate,
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I believe something. That's not true, right? Speculation is just creativity. Speculation
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is the beginning of hypothesis. None of what I hear in terms of the anecdotes do I necessarily
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believe are they true? But I still find them fascinating to listen to because at some level,
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there's still raw data. And you have to listen. And once you start to hear the same story again
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and again, then you have to say, well, there might be something to it. I mean, maybe it's
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some kind of a Jungian background in the human mind and human consciousness that creates these
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stories again and again. It's coming out of the DNA. It's coming out of that pre programmed
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something. And Jung talked quite a bit about this kind of thing, the collective unconscious.
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But actually, one of the most interesting ones I find is this constant message
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that you're not taking care of your world. And this came long before climate change. It came
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long before many kinds of, let's say, current day memes around taking care of our planet,
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pollution, etc. And so, you know, for instance, perhaps the best example of this, the one that
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I find the most fascinating is a story out of Zimbabwe 50 or 60 children, one afternoon
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in Zimbabwe. It's a, it was a well educated group of white and black children who end lunchtime
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in the playground, saw a craft, and they saw little men. And they all ran into the teachers
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and they told the same story and they drew the same pictures. And the message several of them got was,
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you are not taking care of your planet. And it got, you know, there's actually a movie coming
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out on this episode. And 30 years later, now, the people who are there, the children who've
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now grown up say it, it happened to us. Now, did it happen? Was it some sort of hallucination?
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Or was it an imposed hallucination by something? Was it material? I don't know. But
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these kids were seven to 10 years old. You see them on video, seven to 10 year olds can't lie
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like that. And so, you know, whether it's real or not, I don't know. But I find that fascinating
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data. And again, it's that it's these unconnected stories of individuals with the same with the
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same story. That is worthy of further inquiry. Yeah, so here we are humans with limited cognitive
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capacities trying to make sense of the world, trying to understand what is real and not.
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We have this DNA that somehow in complex ways is interacting with the environment.
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And then we get these novel ideas that come from the populace. And then they make us wonder about
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what it all means. And so how to interpret it. If you think from an alien perspective,
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how would you communicate with other lifelike organisms? You perhaps have to find
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endpoints on this interaction between the DNA and its manifestations in terms of the human mind
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and the how it interacts with the environment. So get some kind of, all right, what is this DNA?
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What is this environment? I have to get in somehow to like interact with it to get to perturb the
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system to where these little ants, human like ants get like excited and figure and see stuff out.
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Yeah, yeah. And then somehow steer them. First of all, for investigative purposes,
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understand like oftentimes to understand the system, you have to perturb it.
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Exactly. It's like poke at it to get excited or not. And then the other ways you want to,
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if you worry about them, you can steer in one direction or another. And this kind of idea that
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we're not taking care of our world. That's interesting. I mean, that's comforting. That's
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hopeful because that means the greater intelligence, which is what I would hope,
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we want to take care of us. Like we want to take care of the gorillas in the national parks in
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Africa. Yeah. But we don't want to take care of cockroaches. So there's a line we draw. So you
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have to hope that. Right now, we're a bunch of angry monkeys. And, you know, maybe whatever
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these intelligences are, are also keeping an eye on us. You know, that you don't want a bunch of,
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you know, you don't want the angry monkey troop stomping around the local galactic arm.
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Do you think these folks are telling the truth? Do you think they saw what they say they saw?
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I think they saw what they said they saw. But I also think they saw what they were shown.
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I mean, if you go back to the whole notion of, okay, how long has this been around? It didn't
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just start showing up in 1947. There are stories going back, you know, into the 1800s of people
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who saw things in their farming, in their farm fields in the US. It's in local newspapers
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from the 1800s. It's fascinating. But if you can go even further back, you know, so to your point
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to your point of how are, how would you as a higher intelligence represent yourself
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to a lesser intelligence? Well, let's go back to pre civilization. Maybe you show yourself
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as the spirits in the forest. And you give messages through that. Once you get a little
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bit more civilized, civilized, then you show yourself as the gods. And then your God, well,
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we don't believe in God anymore, necessarily, not everybody does. So what do we believe in?
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We believe in technology. So you show yourself as a form of technology, right? But the common
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thread is, you're not alone. And there's something else here with you. And there's something that's,
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as you said, watching you, and at least watching over your shoulder. But I think that like any
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good parent, you don't tell your student everything, you make them learn. And learning requires
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mistakes. Because if you tell them everything, then they get lazy.
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You've looked at the brains of, or information coming from the brain of some of the people
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that have had your phone counters. What's common about the brain of people who encounter your
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phones? So the study started with a group of, let's say, a cohort of individuals that were
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brought to me and their MRIs to ask about the damage that had been seen in these individuals.
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It turns out that the majority of those patients ended up being, as far as we can tell,
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Havana syndrome. And so for me, at least, that part of the story ends in terms of the injury.
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It's likely almost all Havana syndrome. That's somebody else's problem now. That's not my problem.
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But when we were looking at the brains of these individuals, we noticed something right in the
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center of the basal ganglia in many of these individuals that at first we thought was damage.
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It was basically an enriched patch of MRI dense neurons that we thought was damage.
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But then it was showing up in everybody and then we looked and said, oh, it's actually not.
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The other readings on these MRIs show that actually that's living tissue. That's actually
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the head of the caudate and the pitamen. And at the time, and I remember even asking a good friend
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of mine at Stanford who was a psychiatrist, what does the basal ganglia do? He said, oh,
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the basal ganglia is just about movement and nerve and motor control. And I said, well,
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that's odd because there's other papers that we were reading at the time started to suggest
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that it was involved with higher intelligence and is actually downstream of the executive function
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and involved with intuition and planning. And then if you think about it, if you're
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going to have motor control, which is centralized in one place, motor control requires knowledge
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of the environment. You don't want to move something and hit the table. Or if you're
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walking across a room, you want to be aware and cognizant of what you might bump into.
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So obviously, all of that planning is requires access to all the senses. It requires access
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to your desires and memory, knowledge of where and what you want and desire to walk nearby. Like,
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I use the example of you're at a party, you want to avoid that person, you like that person,
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the waiter is about to drop something, all without thinking, you maneuver. So that actually,
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all that planning is done in the basal ganglia. And it's actually now called the brain within
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the brain. It's a, it's a goal processing system, subservient to executive function.
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So what we think we found there was not something which allows people to talk to UFOs. I mean,
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I think the UFO community took it a step too far. What I think we found was a form of
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higher functioning and processing. So what we then looked at, and this was the most fascinating part
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of it, we, we looked then at individuals in the families of those, let's say the index case
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individuals, and we found that it was actually in families. And more so, this is the most
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fascinating part. We've probably looked now at about 200 just random cases that you can download
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off of databases online. You don't see this higher connectivity. You only find it in what
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Kate Green would have called or has called higher functioning individuals, people who are,
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I mean, he, he called them savants. I don't have the means to, we haven't done the testing.
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But as it turns out, my family has it, right? We, we found it in, in me, my brother, my sister,
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my mother, we found it as well in other individuals, husband and wife pairs. So statistically,
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if you had a group of 20 individuals and you found two husband, wife pairs, both of whom had it,
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and yet it's only found it about, we think one and 200, one and 300 individuals. The fact that two
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individuals came together, two sets of individuals came together, both of whom had it implied either
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a restricted breeding group or attraction. The reason why it seems to be in let's say so called
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experiencers or people who claim if, if intuition is the ability to see something that other people
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don't, I don't mean that in a paranormal sense, but being able to see something just in front of
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you that other people might just dismiss. Well, maybe that's a function of a higher kind of
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intelligence to say, well, I, I'm not looking at an artifact. I'm not looking at something that I
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should just ignore. I'm seeing something and I recognize it for not what it is, but that it is
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something different than it is normally found in my environment. Yeah. You know, I have a little
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bit of that. I seem to see the magic in a lot of moments. Like I have a deep, it's obviously,
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not obviously, but it seems to be chemical in nature that I just am excited about life. I love
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life. I love like stupid things. It feels like I'm high a lot on like mushrooms or something
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like that where you'd really appreciate that. So you're able, I'm able to detect something
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about the environment that maybe others don't, I don't know, but like I seem to be over the top
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grateful to be alive on a lot of first, a lot of stupid reasons. And that's in there somewhere.
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I mean, it's kind of interesting because it really is true that our brains, the way we're
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brought up, but also the genetics enables us to see certain slices of the world. And
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some people are probably more receptive to anomalous information. They see the magic,
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the possibility in the novel thing as opposed to kind of finding the pattern of the common
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of the regular. Some people are more, wait a minute, this is kind of weird. I mean, a lot of those
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people who probably become scientists too, like, huh, like there was this pattern happening over
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and over and over and then something weird just happened. And then you get excited by that weirdness
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and start to pull the string and discover what is at the core of that weirdness. And perhaps,
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is that, maybe by way of question, how does the human perception system deal with anomalous
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information, do you think? Well, it first tries to classify it and get it out of the way. If it's
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not food, if it's not sex, right? If it's not in the way of my desires, or if it isn't the way of
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my desires, then you focus on it. And so the, I think the question is how much spare processing
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power, how much CPU cycles do we spend on things that are not those core desires?
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What is the most kind of memorable, powerful UFO encounter report you've ever heard?
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Just to your personal, on a personal level, like there's something that was really powerful.
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00:25:42.160
Well, I mentioned the Zimbabwe one, that's particularly interesting. And one that actually
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00:25:48.240
most people don't know about, but family driving down the highway, two little girls in the back,
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00:25:56.960
open glass topped car, and the little girls see a craft right over their car. This is in
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00:26:06.480
the middle of the day on a busy highway. The mother sees it. Nobody can, they look around,
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00:26:14.800
nobody else seems to see it. So the girls take out their camera, take a picture of it.
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00:26:19.760
And then they get home. They look at the picture. There's no craft, but there's a little object
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00:26:28.160
about 30 feet above their car or so, probably about three feet across, kind of star shaped.
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00:26:35.280
It's not the craft, but it's something else. There's obviously, there was something there.
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00:26:41.200
And so what were they seeing? Were they seeing a projection? Were they seeing,
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00:26:45.200
and why were only they seeing it?
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00:26:47.920
And the photograph was capturing something very different than they were seeing,
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00:26:53.440
but they're still an object. Can you give a little bit of context? Is this from modern day?
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00:26:59.600
It's modern day. Oh yeah, they had a camera. I mean, they had a cell phone camera.
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00:27:02.400
And this was like a four or five years ago. Report provided. By the way,
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00:27:06.320
where's like a central place to provide a report? Is this?
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00:27:08.960
Oh, there's a move on, but this isn't public. I've seen the picture.
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00:27:12.480
Oh, this is something you've directly interacted with.
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00:27:14.480
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen the picture.
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00:27:16.640
So those moments like that, they captivate your mind.
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00:27:23.120
It's so different. It doesn't fall into the standard story at all. But it also,
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00:27:28.000
but in another way, it's kind of a, it's a clear renunciation of this notion that when
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00:27:34.560
people see events, they don't all see the same thing. Now, we've heard this about like traffic
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00:27:39.360
accidents. Different people will see the color of the car differently or the chain of events
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00:27:43.840
differently. And this tells you that memory isn't anywhere near what we think it is.
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00:27:48.640
But the issue around these so called UFO reports is that the same people will see a very different
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00:27:56.000
thing almost as if whatever it is is projecting a, is projecting something into the mind rather
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00:28:04.560
than it being real, right? Rather than it being a real manifestation, you know, material in front
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00:28:11.040
of you, it's actually almost some sort of an altered virtual reality that is imposed on you.
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00:28:17.920
I mean, you know, I think the company Metta and all the virtual reality companies would
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00:28:23.920
love to have something like that, right? Well, you don't have to actually wear something on
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00:28:27.840
your face to experience a virtual reality. What happens if you could just project it?
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00:28:33.680
Well, that's the fundamental question from an alien perspective.
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00:28:37.040
When you look at it, or as we humans look at ants, how does this perception system operate?
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00:28:43.200
So not only how does this thing's mind operate? How does the human mind operate?
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00:28:47.680
But how does it, their perception system operate so that we can like
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00:28:51.360
stimulate the perception system properly to get them to think certain things? And so, you know,
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00:29:00.560
that's a really important question. Humans think that, you know, the only way to communicate is in
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00:29:07.200
like 3D or 4D space time, there's physical objects, or maybe you write things into some kind of
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00:29:14.320
language. But there could be just so much more richness in how you can communicate. And so,
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00:29:24.080
from an alien perspective, or somebody has much greater technological capabilities,
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00:29:27.920
you have to figure out how do I use the skills I have to stimulate the human, the limited humans.
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00:29:35.440
Right. Well, I mean, let's take the ants exam again as an example. Let's say that you wanted to
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00:29:40.480
make ants practical. You wanted to use them for something, right? You wanted to use them as a
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00:29:46.000
form of biological robot. Now, DARPA and other people have been trying to use insects for, you
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00:29:53.520
know, turn them into biological robots. But if you wanted to, you would have to interact with their
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00:30:00.160
sense of smell, right? Their pheromone system that they use to interact with each other.
link |
00:30:06.000
So you would either create those molecules to talk to them, to make them do, I'm not saying talk to
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00:30:12.000
them as if they're intelligent, but talk to them to manipulate them in ways that you want. Or if
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00:30:16.880
you were advanced enough, you would use some sort of electromagnetic or other means to stimulate
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00:30:24.400
their neurons in ways that would accomplish the same goal as the pheromones, but by doing it in a
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00:30:30.880
sort of a telefactoring way. So let's say you wanted to telefactor with humans. You would interact
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00:30:39.600
with them. And this is again, this is a technology which you could imagine possible. You could
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00:30:45.440
telefactor information into the sensory system of a human, right? But then each human is a little
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00:30:52.080
bit different. So either you know enough about them to tailor it to that individual, or you just
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00:30:56.880
basically take advantage of whatever the sensory net is that that individual has. So if you happen
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00:31:02.240
to be good at sound, or you happen to be a very visually inclined individual, then maybe the
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00:31:08.240
sensory information that you get that's most effective in terms of transmitting information
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00:31:14.400
would come through that portal. I think the aliens would need to figure out the human's value
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00:31:20.240
physical consistency. So we've discovered physics. So we want our perception to make sense. Maybe
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00:31:27.840
they don't, they haven't, you know, that's not an obvious fact of perception that you have to figure
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00:31:33.840
out what kind of things are humans used to observing in this particular environment of
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00:31:39.760
earth? And how do we stimulate the perception system in a way that's not anomalous or not too
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00:31:47.840
or not too, doesn't cross that threshold of just like, well, that's way too weird. Right. So they
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00:31:53.680
have to, I mean, that's not obvious that that should be important. You know, maybe you want to
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00:31:59.040
err on the side of anomaly, like lean into the weirdness. So communication is complicated.
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00:32:06.160
Yeah. Well, that's why I always, I always find this issue of people talking about the so called
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00:32:11.600
grays as interesting because it is related to what you're saying. They're different enough.
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00:32:19.280
But they're not so different as to be scary, right? They're not venom dripping fangs, right?
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00:32:25.440
They're different enough. But they, they all it's also like they're, they're what you could imagine
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00:32:32.160
us becoming in some distant future. So is that a purposeful representation? I don't know. I mean,
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00:32:38.800
I don't believe in the grays, for instance, but I believe that people think that they see it.
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00:32:44.560
So if we're talking about a communication strategy that says, you know, we're, we're like you, but
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00:32:50.480
not the same as you, this might be a manifestation that you, that you represent in terms of a
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00:32:58.240
communication strategy. What do you make of David's favorite sighting of the Tic Tac UFO
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00:33:06.240
and other pilots who have seen these objects that seem to defy the laws of physics?
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00:33:12.400
Well, I think you have to take them at their word.
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00:33:16.880
Are they fascinating to you? Oh, absolutely. No, I know, I know a lot of these people, right? So I,
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00:33:21.680
I know Lou Elizondo, Chris Mellon, the whole crowd I've been, I saw the videos about three weeks or
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00:33:30.160
so before they went public. I was at a bar with Lou overlooking the Pentagon in Crystal City,
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00:33:39.120
and they showed him to me and my hair stood on end. And he said, he said, this is, he said,
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00:33:43.600
this is coming out soon. And I, I know one of the guys on the inside who was the Naval Intelligence
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00:33:51.280
who had interviewed all of these pilots again before this came out. And it was hair raising
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00:33:56.560
to hear this. But also exciting that, you know, here's not just people's testimony,
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00:34:04.320
these are credible individuals. And if you've seen the 60 minute episode with some of the pilots,
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00:34:11.200
you know, they have no monetary gain, if anything, they've got negative gain from coming out. But
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00:34:16.880
then you also have all of those simultaneous ship analysis from the USS Princeton and the
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00:34:24.000
radar analysis, et cetera. So, you know, at the end of the day, it's just data. It's not a conclusion.
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00:34:35.200
I'd be perfectly happy, honestly, perfectly happy if somebody showed that it was all a hoax.
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00:34:41.040
Can I go back to my day job? Right?
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00:34:43.920
That could be a hoax, but other things might not be. I mean, this is the point. I mean,
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00:34:49.520
this is why it's nice to remove some of the stigma about this topic because it's all just data and
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00:34:58.080
anomalous events are such that there's going to be, they're going to be rare in terms of how much
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00:35:04.320
data they represent. But we have to consider the full range of data to discover the things that
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00:35:10.000
actually represent something that's, if we pull at it, we'll discover something that's extraterrestrial
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00:35:16.080
or something deep about the phenomena on Earth that we don't yet understand.
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00:35:21.840
Right. Well, if it only stimulates people, for instance, to think, okay, well, what happens
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00:35:27.920
if we could move like that with momentumless movement? And it stimulates young individuals to
link |
00:35:36.800
go into the sciences to ask those questions. That to me is fascinating. I mean, after I've been
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00:35:43.120
openly talking about this in the last year especially, I've had a number of students from
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00:35:50.000
top schools who aren't my students come to me and say, if I can help, let me. How can I help?
link |
00:35:58.000
I never had thought about this before, but you opened, you and others, not just you and others,
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00:36:02.720
have opened my mind to thinking about this matter.
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00:36:06.080
Yeah, that's why it's actually funny that Elon Musk doesn't think too much about this
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00:36:11.040
these kinds of propulsion systems that could defy the laws of physics as we currently understand
link |
00:36:17.600
them. To me, it's a powerful way to think what is possible. It's inspiring, even if some of the
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00:36:26.240
data doesn't represent extraterrestrial vehicles, I think the observation itself,
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00:36:32.800
it's like something you mentioned, which is hypothesizing, imagining these things,
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00:36:39.600
considering the possibility of these things, I think opens up your mind in a way that ultimately
link |
00:36:47.040
can create the technology. First, you have to believe the technology is possible before you
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00:36:51.760
can create it. Right. In my own lab, we always look for, as I've said before, what is inevitable?
link |
00:37:00.080
And saying, inevitably, this is the kind of data we need, but if we need that kind of data,
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00:37:05.680
the instrument we want doesn't exist. Okay, so I imagine the perfect instrument, I can't make it,
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00:37:14.800
and you back into something which is practical. And then you, in a sense, reverse engineer the
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00:37:21.440
future of what it is that you want to make. And I've started and sold like at least half a dozen
link |
00:37:28.400
or more companies using that basic premise. And so it was always something that didn't exist
link |
00:37:35.440
today, but we imagined what we wanted. And at the time, many people said it couldn't be done.
link |
00:37:41.760
I mean, for instance, all the gene therapy that's done today with retroviruses
link |
00:37:46.160
came from a group meeting in David Baltimore's lab, I was a postdoc with him. And one of the
link |
00:37:53.040
other postdocs wasn't able to make retroviruses in a way that he wanted to. And I realized I had
link |
00:37:59.920
a cell line that would allow us to make retroviruses in two days rather than two months. And so he and
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00:38:06.720
I then worked together to make that system. And now all gene therapy with retroviruses is done
link |
00:38:11.760
using this basic approach around the whole world, because something couldn't be done.
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00:38:17.200
And we wanted to do it better. And we imagined the future. And so that's, I think,
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00:38:23.360
what the whole UFO phenomenon is doing for people is like, well, let's imagine a future
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00:38:30.880
where these kinds of technologies are, but also let's imagine a future where we don't blow
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00:38:34.720
ourselves up, right? So if these things are there, they manage to not blow themselves up.
link |
00:38:40.400
So it means that at least one other civilization got past the inflection point.
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00:38:47.120
So if some of the encounters are actually representing alien civilizations visiting us,
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00:38:52.000
why do you think they're doing so? You suggested that perhaps it's the study
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00:39:00.000
understand their own past, right? What are some of the motivations, do you think? And again,
link |
00:39:06.800
from our perspective, us as humans, what motivations would we have when we approach
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00:39:11.760
other civilizations we might discover in the future?
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00:39:14.160
Well, I think one motivation might be to steer us away from the precipice, right? Or on the assumption
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00:39:23.840
that even if we make it past the precipice, at least we're not a bunch of psychopaths
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00:39:31.760
running around. So maybe there's a little bit of motivation there to make sure that the neighbor
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00:39:36.880
that's growing up next to you is not unruly. But maybe it's sort of a moral imperative,
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00:39:46.480
like what we have with creating national parks where animals can continue to live out their
link |
00:39:56.160
lives in a natural way. I don't know. The problem is we're imagining from an anthropomorphic viewpoint
link |
00:40:08.480
what an alien might think. And as I've said before, alien means alien, right? I mean,
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00:40:15.280
not Hollywood aliens, but a whole different way of thinking and a whole different level of experience
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00:40:23.600
and let's say wisdom, hopefully, that we could only hope to understand. Now, but if we ever get
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00:40:31.760
out there, if we ever make it past our current problems, and even if we don't have faster than
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00:40:38.400
light travel, and even if we're only using ram scoops or light sails to get where we want to go,
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00:40:46.000
and it takes us 10,000 years to get somewhere or to spread out, we might encounter such things.
link |
00:40:53.760
And we're just going to stomp all over it, like we did in colonial South America or Africa or all
link |
00:41:00.720
the rest on our current path, likely. And so what are we going to learn?
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00:41:05.760
Well, we're getting better and better at understanding what is life. And I think we're
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00:41:12.800
getting better and better at being careful not to step on it when we see it. And this is one of
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00:41:19.040
the nice things about talking about UFOs is it expands the overton window, it expands our
link |
00:41:25.120
understanding of what possibly could be life. It gets us to think, it gets the scientific community
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00:41:31.040
to think. When we go to Mars, when we go to these different moons that possibly have life,
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00:41:35.920
you know, we're not looking at legged organisms, we're looking at some kind of complexity
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00:41:45.360
that arises in resistance to the natural world. And there's a lot of interesting...
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00:41:54.080
I like that resistance to the natural world. Yeah.
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00:41:57.520
Somehow there's a rebellious process, complex system going on here. And I don't know, you know,
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00:42:04.560
the many ways it could take form. And there's a sense, you know, for aliens that
link |
00:42:10.880
as the technology develops, they take form more and more as information, as something that can
link |
00:42:18.080
influence the space of ideas, of the processing of data itself. So I just, this idea of embodiment
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00:42:27.440
that we humans so admire, physically visible, perceivable embodiment may be a very inefficient
link |
00:42:38.000
thing. Right. If you think just about, you know, your area, AI, you know, we're trying to make smaller
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00:42:46.480
and smaller and smaller circuitry that is basically closer and closer to the physics of how the
link |
00:42:58.400
universe operates, right, right down at the level of, I mean, quantum computers are basically
link |
00:43:03.120
right down about quantum information storage. So fast forward 10,000, 100,000 years,
link |
00:43:09.760
maybe somebody found a way to embody AI directly into the physics of the universe, right? And it
link |
00:43:16.720
doesn't require physical manifestation. It just sits in space time. It's just a locally ordered
link |
00:43:24.480
space. We're just locally ordered space time, right? You know, I mean, people, but maybe they
link |
00:43:31.200
found a way to embody it there. They probably have to get really good at not, you know, trampling on
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00:43:37.120
the ants. The better your technology gets, the easier it is to accidentally like, oops,
link |
00:43:44.160
just destroy these simpleton biological systems. We constantly think about whatever these things
link |
00:43:49.920
might be. We think that they are some sort of a unified force. Well, maybe they're not unified.
link |
00:43:58.720
Maybe they are as disparate as you and I are. And maybe what keeps them from stomping all over
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00:44:06.080
the ants is each other, right? That they are in a self tension to prevent one or more of them from
link |
00:44:15.520
running amok. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's kind of the anarchy of nations that we have on earth. So
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00:44:22.400
there's always, there's always going to be this hierarchy, this hierarchy that's formed
link |
00:44:29.440
of greater and greater intelligences. And they're all probably also wondering,
link |
00:44:33.600
wait, what's bigger than me? Exactly. That's what I always wonder is that maybe that they're,
link |
00:44:39.200
what keeps them in line is something that is beyond them. Like what created the universe?
link |
00:44:45.120
I mean, that's probably a question that bothers them too. What about the communication task itself?
link |
00:44:52.960
How hard do you think it is for aliens to communicate with humans? So is this something you
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00:44:57.760
think about about this barrier of communication between biological systems and something else?
link |
00:45:04.880
How difficult is it to find a common language?
link |
00:45:08.400
Well, I think if you're smart enough, or technologically enabled enough, it's relatively
link |
00:45:15.520
straightforward. Now, whether your concepts can ever be dumbed down to us, that might be hard.
link |
00:45:30.720
Again, talking to the ants. Talking to the ants. On Instagram.
link |
00:45:38.160
You want to look good in this picture? Let me explain to you why.
link |
00:45:41.440
Yeah. So that's the essential problem of, perhaps they realize who it is that they're
link |
00:45:52.480
talking to. And they say, rather than muddy the picture, we're only going to give them
link |
00:45:58.800
limited information. Yeah. Right. And yeah, maybe we could sit down like you and I and have a
link |
00:46:05.280
conversation. But then they would make assumptions. The humans would then make assumptions about us
link |
00:46:10.640
that aren't true. Because we're not humans. Right? So let's stay at arm's length. Let's
link |
00:46:17.680
just let them know that we're here. Right? And here's the limited amount of communication.
link |
00:46:23.600
Again, this notion that if you give somebody everything, they'll get lazy. And if they've
link |
00:46:32.400
been around as long as they have, they've seen every kind of thing that can go wrong.
link |
00:46:36.400
And so it's, they know as much as they might want to step in, that would be a wrong thing.
link |
00:46:45.520
Yeah. You have to also understand that the amount of wisdom they carry.
link |
00:46:50.160
Yeah. And so it's very easy as well for religions to, I don't want to get
link |
00:46:57.360
into a whole religious conversation, but you could, very easy for, you could see how religions
link |
00:47:01.920
could call them angels or devils or what have you. Because again, if you're trying to fit it into a
link |
00:47:09.200
framework of cultural understanding, the first thing you reach for is God. And so it, when you,
link |
00:47:19.200
when you look at what these things are, and again, with the angels and the devils,
link |
00:47:24.240
in a similar sort of way, their communication is limited. They just kind of give little,
link |
00:47:30.400
what's the oracle of Delphi? They kind of give these Delphic pronouncements. And then it's up to
link |
00:47:37.120
you to figure out what it is that they really mean. Stephen Greer claimed that a skeleton
link |
00:47:44.480
discovered in Atacama region of Chile might be an alien. You reached out to him and
link |
00:47:52.640
took on the task of proving or disproving that with the rigor of science. The result is a paper
link |
00:47:58.240
titled, Whole Genome Sequencing of Atacama Skeleton Shows Novel Mutations Linked with Displasia.
link |
00:48:06.160
Can you tell this full story? The story was, as you put it right there, correct. Reached out,
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00:48:15.680
got a sample of the body, did the DNA sequencing, then worked with a team of two other Stanford
link |
00:48:24.320
scientists and Roche Sequencing Group, Roche Diagnostics, and probably a total team of about
link |
00:48:32.160
11 or so people. And as is standard in these kinds of things, the professors actually don't do the
link |
00:48:39.440
work. The students do the work and figured out the answer. And then we helped them put together the
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00:48:46.240
story. And the story was simply that it was human, 100%. I went into it thinking it was originally
link |
00:48:55.760
a monkey of some sort. I got kind of excited a few months into the process thinking, well,
link |
00:49:02.960
what happens if it is an alien, right? Can you describe some of the characteristics of the
link |
00:49:08.160
skeleton that make it unique and interesting? Primarily, it had dysmorphias of the brain.
link |
00:49:13.120
And so the first thing I did, actually, when I got pictures of it, I took it to a local expert at
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00:49:18.800
Stanford, and he was on the paper. And he was the world expert in pediatric bone dysmorphias.
link |
00:49:29.200
He literally wrote the book on this, because that's what you do. You go to an expert when
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00:49:35.840
he's outside of your field of interest. And he said, well, I haven't seen this particular
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00:49:40.720
collection of mutations before, or this physiology before, but here's what I think it might be.
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00:49:50.800
And he said, but based on the size of the thing and the bone density,
link |
00:49:58.160
it would appear to be like six or seven years old. Now, again, that's the thing where I think the
link |
00:50:06.640
lay public doesn't understand or takes a speculation like that and turns it into a fact.
link |
00:50:15.360
No one ever said that it was that age. We only said that the bones made it look like it was that age.
link |
00:50:21.520
But then we went back and looked for genetic explanations of why things might look the way
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00:50:27.760
they did. And if you, again, read the paper is very carefully caveated to say that these mutations
link |
00:50:35.440
might result in this. But what we did find was an unexpectedly large number of mutations associated
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00:50:45.200
with bone growth in this individual. And it was just a bad role of the dice, right? You roll
link |
00:50:52.320
the dice enough times with enough people born every year, and someone will roll the wrong dice
link |
00:51:00.240
all at once. So the sad part about it was individuals in the UFO community who wanted to
link |
00:51:07.360
think that there was some sort of conspiracy around it, right? That somebody had somehow
link |
00:51:14.720
convinced all of my students to lie. I mean, come on. I would lose my job, first of all,
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00:51:23.520
and they would all be in trouble forever. Yeah. But also it's just projecting malevolence
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00:51:31.200
onto people that I don't think exist in normal populace and especially doesn't exist in the
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00:51:37.920
scientific community. The kind of people that go into science, I mean, this is what bothers me
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00:51:42.160
with the current distrust of science, is they might be naive. They might not, especially modern
link |
00:51:49.840
science, look at the big picture, philosophical ethical questions, all that kind of stuff. But
link |
00:51:54.720
ultimately, they're people with integrity and just a deep curiosity for the discovery of cool,
link |
00:52:03.040
little things. And there's no malevolence, broadly speaking, in the scientific community. So I mean,
link |
00:52:13.520
there's a bigger story here, which is there's a hunger in the populace to discover something
link |
00:52:20.880
anomalous, something new. And science has to be both open to the anomalous, but also to reject
link |
00:52:28.160
the anomalous when the data doesn't support it. What do you make of that walking that line for
link |
00:52:34.160
you? Because you're dealing with UFO encounters, you're dealing with UFOs, you're dealing with
link |
00:52:41.040
UFO encounters, you're dealing with the anomalous. Well, people have said, let's go back to the
link |
00:52:48.960
Atacama case that I was debunking it. Well, debunking is a loaded term, sort of assumes that
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00:52:55.680
you were going in purposefully to prove something is wrong. I wasn't, I was just going in to collect
link |
00:53:02.560
the data. And, you know, I showed that this one was human. There was another skull that somebody
link |
00:53:10.160
had at one point, it was called the Star Child, they called it the Star Child skull. I said,
link |
00:53:14.800
you know, I looked at it, I looked at the DNA sequencing that they had done. I said, this is
link |
00:53:18.400
human. End of story. The people who owned the thing at the time disagreed with me. And then
link |
00:53:26.640
eventually, another group came in and proved that I was right. And it's not about debunking. It's
link |
00:53:32.400
about getting the more spectacular and hyped cases off the table. I mean, the reason I got
link |
00:53:38.640
interested in it is because somebody was hyping it. And not because I wanted to disprove it,
link |
00:53:42.640
but because I just wanted to know. And let's get it off the table, because it's usually
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00:53:46.800
the most extravagant things that are most likely to be wrong. Somewhere in the rubble will be
link |
00:53:55.520
something interesting. And so that's what you do. You get the, you get the, the, the dross off the
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00:54:01.280
table. And then somewhere in the data will be something worth real inquiry. And that if you
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00:54:10.880
inquire deeply enough will be extravagant. Yes. Exactly. And that's what actually excites scientists
link |
00:54:16.560
is to, I mean, you want with the rigor of science to actually reveal the extravagant.
link |
00:54:23.920
And so look at CRISPR as probably the most perfect example of that. These weird sequences
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00:54:30.480
in bacterial genomes all arrayed one after the other with these strange sequences around them.
link |
00:54:37.040
But when you looked at the sequences, they looked like viruses. And so how did they get there?
link |
00:54:42.640
And lo and behold, after, you know, a lot of effort and work, well, a couple of Nobel prizes
link |
00:54:47.280
went out the door, but these strange things ended up having extraordinarily extravagant
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00:54:55.680
possibilities. You've also looked at UFO materials. You are in possession of UFO
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00:55:02.000
materials yourself. Claimed UFO materials. Alleged. Alleged UFO materials. That's right. So
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00:55:10.240
what's another term? Weird materials that don't seem to have a story. They have a
link |
00:55:17.680
story that doesn't seem to be of natural origins, but it's not, you know, there's a process to
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00:55:24.960
proving that. And that process may take decades, if not centuries, because you have to keep
link |
00:55:31.440
pulling at the string and discover where they could possibly come from. But anyway, you're
link |
00:55:36.960
in possession of some materials of this kind. Can you describe some of them? And maybe also
link |
00:55:45.760
talk to the process of how you investigate them? How do you analyze them? Right. So let's say that
link |
00:55:51.520
there's two classes of materials that I've been given by people and not given by like the government
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00:55:57.840
or anything, just given people who've collected them. And there's a reasonable chain of evidence
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00:56:02.480
associated with them that you believe is not just a pebble, somebody picked up off a road.
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00:56:09.440
There are almost always things that people have claimed have either been dropped off as like some
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00:56:15.200
sort of a leftover material, molten metals, or they are from an object that was released from this,
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00:56:26.480
so that kind of exploded. They're almost always metals. I have some couple of things that might
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00:56:32.560
be biological that are interesting that I haven't really spent a lot of time on yet.
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00:56:36.560
When you look at a metal, you basically, well, okay, what are the elements in it? And what's
link |
00:56:42.960
it made of? And so there's pretty standard approaches to doing that. Most of them involve
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00:56:48.640
a technology called mass spectrometry. And there's probably about five or six different kinds of
link |
00:56:53.280
mass spectrometry that you could bring to bear on answering it. And they either tell you, depending
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00:56:59.360
upon the limit of the resolution of the instrument, they either tell you the elements that are there,
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00:57:05.040
or they tell you the isotopes that are there. And you're interested not just in knowing whether
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00:57:09.120
something is there or not, you're interested in knowing whether there are, you know, the
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00:57:16.000
amounts of it. And in the case of elements, how many different isotopes are there? And that's
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00:57:24.000
kind of where in some of these cases, it gets interesting, right? Because in at least one of
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00:57:29.200
the materials, as we first studied it, the isotope ratios of in this case, it was magnesium or way
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00:57:35.760
off normal. And I just don't know why it doesn't it doesn't prove anything. It just all it proves is
link |
00:57:44.960
that it was probably accomplished by some kind of an industrial process, whether it's the result
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00:57:53.200
of a process or whether and this is sort of the leftover, or whether it was made that way
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00:57:59.600
for a particular purpose. I don't know. All I know is that it it was engineered.
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00:58:09.760
That's it, right? But then it's the question is, sort of you go one step deeper. Why would you
link |
00:58:17.840
engineer it? Right? Well, why? And what does the engineered means? There's all kinds of,
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00:58:25.120
it could be a byproduct, it could be the main result of an engineering process.
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00:58:34.000
It would be a small part of the engineering process that is the main part.
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00:58:38.960
Well, so the ratios of isotopes for any given element are basically the result of stellar
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00:58:45.920
processes. Supernova blew up sometime several tens, you know, several billion years ago. That
link |
00:58:55.600
became a cloud. Those atoms coalesced gravitationally to form another sun and a ring that became a
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00:59:04.720
rocky planet. And the ratios of the isotopes were determined at the time of that explosion.
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00:59:13.360
And so everything in the local solar system is more or less of that ratio, depending upon certain
link |
00:59:19.360
gravitational difference. But by fragments of a percent, not whole tens of percent difference.
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00:59:28.480
So what do humans use isotopes for? Mostly to blow stuff up. I mean, the vast majority of the
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00:59:34.640
isotopes that have been made in the per pound or ton are things like certain ratios of plutonium,
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00:59:42.240
and uranium to blow stuff up. We don't make or engineer isotopes, which it's today is relatively
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00:59:50.560
easy to do, but it's still expensive. For any other reason, apart from, let's say, as anti cancer,
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00:59:59.360
we use stable isotopes and money these days as a counterfeiting tool. You basically embed
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01:00:05.200
certain ratios of isotopes in to make it harder for counterfeiters to accomplish.
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01:00:10.960
And so, but other than that, we don't do anything with that. So why would you make
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01:00:18.640
grams of such material in this one case and drop it around on a beach in Brazil?
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01:00:25.520
So which case are we talking about? This is the this is the uva tuba case.
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01:00:30.400
Can you describe this case a little bit further? Like what material we're talking about,
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01:00:34.400
just the full story of the case. So it's an interesting one.
link |
01:00:37.360
It's an interesting one. So a fisherman saw an object that released something or it exploded.
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01:00:45.680
And it was this relative, I've got some big chunks of it, relatively pure magnesium
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01:00:53.920
with obviously something else in it because magnesium burns. So it had something in it that
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01:00:58.640
would other metals, simple alloy, that would prevent it from basically burning up. And so the
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01:01:08.240
question is, and so then we had we had two pieces that came from two different chains of custody,
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01:01:15.600
both claimed to be from the same object, at least physically, when you look at the two
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01:01:22.800
things, they look the same, right? So we took small fragments of each of them,
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01:01:29.680
we put them in an instrument called a secondary ion mass spec, which is an extremely sensitive
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01:01:34.880
instrument. And it can see down to 0.0001 mass units, which is important for, let's say,
link |
01:01:44.320
more arcane reasons, but it's a sensitive instrument. And so one of the chains of custody,
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01:01:52.720
we had two pieces from the same chain of custody, and then two pieces from the other chain of custody,
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01:01:59.360
one of them had completely normal magnesium isotope ratios, magnesium 24, 25, 26,
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01:02:06.480
and the other was off, not just like slightly off, way off, and they were both off to the same
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01:02:10.880
extent. So, I mean, it was sort of like you had an internal control of what was normal,
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01:02:18.640
then you had this other one, which was, which was wrong. And so you're left with kind of an
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01:02:26.080
open question. Was this a hoax? Were these two chains of custody, one of them a hoax,
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01:02:32.240
that somebody purposefully introduced those things? Because you could do it. It would
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01:02:36.480
cost a lot. I mean, at the time that this was found, I guess the 1970s or so,
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01:02:44.080
might have been earlier, I forget. The amount that I had would have cost several tens of thousands
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01:02:50.800
of dollars to make. And again, it's not something you would just throw around. And why would you
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01:02:56.720
do it in the hope that some guy 30 years from then would pick it up and study it?
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01:03:02.160
Yeah, it's a very subtle, subtle draw. Yeah, it's a long term plan. So, I just don't know,
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01:03:09.840
I just don't know what to make of it, except it's interesting. But it's, so a different
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01:03:15.840
kind of question that you're asking is, what constitutes evidence, right? So, is this
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01:03:24.400
sufficient evidence? Absolutely not. But somebody's put it forward, I have the time,
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01:03:30.320
it's my time. I'll study it. And I, my objective is to sort of take those that I think are credible
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01:03:37.360
enough and do a reasonable analysis, put it out there. And maybe somebody else will come up with
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01:03:42.320
an idea as to what it is. Now, what would be better is some sort of true technology, right?
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01:03:50.960
Something that is obviously, we don't have it. You know, and people like Neil deGrasse Tyson
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01:03:58.320
and Seth Shostak have come out rightfully and have said, you know, when you show up with,
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01:04:06.720
you know, something really obviously technology that we don't understand,
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01:04:13.360
you know, then we'll pay attention, right? Not just material. Not just material. A piece of
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01:04:18.560
metal is, is interesting. But, and several of the things that I've looked at and things that
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01:04:26.400
people, other things that people have come to me with, we've found to be completely banal,
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01:04:32.000
or we're actually pieces of aircraft that were invented back in the 1940s. And so, take them
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01:04:39.600
off the table. See, but I think, again, I think showing up with technology that humans would
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01:04:48.560
find completely novel is actually a really difficult task for aliens, because it obviously
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01:04:54.720
can't be so novel that we don't recognize it. For what it is. Yeah. For what it is. And so,
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01:05:00.240
and I would say most of the technology aliens likely have would be something we don't recognize.
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01:05:07.360
So they, it's actually a hard problem how to convince ants. Like, you first have to understand
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01:05:13.360
what ants are tweeting about, like what, what they care about in order to like inject into their
link |
01:05:20.320
culture. Because, you know, that's why I think it would be the technology that you could present
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01:05:27.840
is in the space of ideas is in the, is try to influence individual humans with the encounters
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01:05:35.680
and try to, with this kind of thing that you mentioned about us not taking messages about us
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01:05:43.200
not taking care of the world. It's difficult to, I mean, I, to, for them to understand,
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01:05:49.600
you have to come up with trinkets that impress us. I mean, maybe the very technology, the fascination
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01:05:56.880
with the development of technology and the development of technology, the actual act of
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01:06:01.360
innovation itself is the thing that they're communicating. Right. I mean, this is kind
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01:06:06.640
of what, you know, Jacques Valais thinks about is the role of the control system. He calls it
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01:06:13.040
the control system. Well, let me ask about Jacques. Who is he? You know him. Who is Jacques Valais?
link |
01:06:22.720
What have you learned from him about life, about about UFOs, about technology, about our
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01:06:31.520
role in the universe? Well, I met Jacques actually soon after the whole Atacama thing happened.
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01:06:38.480
And I was visited by those people associated with the government and the whatever around the
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01:06:46.880
Havana, what ended up mostly being Havana syndrome patients, but also Jacques at the
link |
01:06:51.040
same time. And they were actually working behind the scenes with each other that, oh, here's this
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01:06:55.680
Stanford professor who is willing to talk about this stuff and investigate things.
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01:07:01.360
Maybe we should go talk to him. And he, he reached out through a colleague and, you know,
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01:07:06.800
I had lunch actually at the Rosewood Inn upon near Sandhill. So Jacques is one of the first
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01:07:15.440
openly active scientists. And he's really a scientist in this area, going back to the 1960s.
link |
01:07:26.160
And, you know, he's put forward a number of ideas, speculations about what it might be
link |
01:07:34.560
that people are interacting with. And he, the first thing that I learned from him is this
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01:07:38.640
notion of what he called Kabuki Theater, that many of the things that people have seen are,
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01:07:45.040
I remember reading his books and thinking, he uses this word absurd a lot.
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01:07:50.480
He said, the things that people claim they see are absurd, right? A ship doesn't land
link |
01:07:58.720
in a farmer's field, and then come up and knock on the door and say, can I have a glass
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01:08:03.120
of water? And these are stories literally out of newspapers from the 1930s. It's absurd.
link |
01:08:09.520
You know, and the other thing that people say, ships don't crash. If you're so technologically
link |
01:08:13.920
advanced, you don't crash. It's absurd that they crash. So he says, this is put on as a show.
link |
01:08:24.480
It's meant to, it's an influence campaign, right? It's, it's not meant to influence individuals,
link |
01:08:31.760
it's meant to influence a culture as a whole. Maybe they don't look at us as individuals,
link |
01:08:37.520
maybe they look at us as an organism that lives on a planet, right?
link |
01:08:43.360
And perhaps rightly so. And so that's how you interact with them. That's how you influence
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01:08:48.160
them. So that was one of the first things that kind of took me back and realized, wow, there's
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01:08:52.960
actually a, maybe there's a puppet master behind the scenes that's, you know, doing this influencing
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01:09:00.560
that all this stuff about aliens is just, is not true per se. They're just a representation of
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01:09:06.800
something that is meant to influence. So that was probably the most interesting thing. I mean,
link |
01:09:11.440
the man is brilliant. He's also, it can be, and I'm sorry, Jacques, he can also be incredibly
link |
01:09:17.200
annoying to have a conversation with because he will pick apart your arguments or anything that
link |
01:09:24.240
you think you know, and show you why you don't know what you think you know. And he uses the,
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01:09:29.840
he used the example that for me, that is, is all you need is one counter example to any
link |
01:09:38.560
conclusion, and you're wrong. And so I learned from him, I mean, I'm supposed to be a good
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01:09:44.720
scientist, but I learned from him, don't talk about conclusions, just talk about the data.
link |
01:09:50.720
Because data is not wrong. I mean, convince yourself that the data is not wrong or not an
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01:09:54.640
artifact, but be careful about your conclusions because whatever is going on, it's, it's much
link |
01:09:59.680
more complicated than we, than we imagine. Well, that's powerful. Being able to always step back
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01:10:05.520
because we get, we humans get excited. Yeah. We start to jump to conclusions from the data,
link |
01:10:10.160
but always step back. Well, powerful. Being able to always step back because we get, we humans
link |
01:10:14.640
get excited. Yeah. We start to jump to conclusions from the data, but always step back. Well,
link |
01:10:19.760
in some of my Twitter feeds, when I dare to go on Twitter are full of, well, when are you going
link |
01:10:24.480
to give us the answer? Well, you know, science is not immediate. You're going to have to be patient.
link |
01:10:30.880
And even some of my science colleagues have said, well, where's the data? My answer then has been,
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01:10:36.720
where's been your work to try to produce any? You know, I'm not here to give you everything
link |
01:10:41.120
on a silver platter. We talked offline, how much I love data and machine learning and so on.
link |
01:10:47.200
And it's been really disheartening to see the US government not invest as much as they possibly
link |
01:10:54.240
could into this whole process. So let's jump to the most recent thing, which is what do you make
link |
01:11:00.000
of the report titled preliminary assessment on identified aerial phenomena that was released
link |
01:11:06.880
by the office of the director of national intelligence in June, 2021. So this was like,
link |
01:11:12.800
okay, we're going to step back. And we're going to like what, where do we stand and where do we
link |
01:11:20.560
hope the future is? What do you make of that report? Is it hopeful? Is it? I see it is very
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01:11:24.800
hopeful, very hopeful. I think the adults are finally stepping up in and being in charge, right?
link |
01:11:31.760
In the good sense of adult. What's that? In the good sense of adult. Childlike curiosity is pretty
link |
01:11:39.200
powerful thing. That's true. Yeah. It's, but it's also, I think the people who were worried
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01:11:45.120
that the populace at large might run screaming into the streets and riot.
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01:11:50.880
You know, they have, you know, they basically, the empiric evidence is they're wrong.
link |
01:11:55.200
You know, this, these videos and all these things have been out for now, what, five years?
link |
01:12:00.320
Most people don't even know about it, right? So as, as, as hyped as it's been and all over
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01:12:06.080
the newspapers that it's been and et cetera, you know, even Tucker Carlson has talked about it many
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01:12:11.760
times on his news program. Joe Rogan has a lot of people don't know about it. So I think people,
link |
01:12:17.760
if it's not affecting their day to day life, they're going on with their day to day life.
link |
01:12:23.120
So, but that said, I think it was an important sea change in the internal discussions going on in
link |
01:12:31.360
the government because, and the reason being that I think this is actually partly true with the,
link |
01:12:39.120
the maturation of human social technology. It was becoming so obvious that this stuff was
link |
01:12:46.320
showing up again and again and again around our ships. They just couldn't keep it quiet anymore.
link |
01:12:51.520
Right. And so it's like, we need to do something about it. And Lou Elizondo and Chris and others
link |
01:12:55.760
to their great credit found the right angle to talk about this. It says, well, okay, let's say
link |
01:13:02.160
it's not out there. Maybe it's the Russians, the Chinese or somebody else, we should know about this
link |
01:13:08.240
because we damn sure know it's not us. So that to me is an important thing to, to finally be a
link |
01:13:17.360
little bit more open about the matter. But like I often say, I'm not looking for people to give
link |
01:13:24.480
me permission to do anything. I'm just going to do the analysis myself with what I have.
link |
01:13:29.040
Avi Loeb has taken the same approach. He said, I'm not going to wait for the government to give me
link |
01:13:34.960
telescopic information about technologies or things that might be even on our own solar system.
link |
01:13:41.840
I'm just going to collect it myself. And, and that's the right way to do it. Right. Don't
link |
01:13:46.560
wait for somebody else to give it to you. It's also possible to inspire a large number of people
link |
01:13:52.480
to do a wider spread data collection. Yes. I mean, you yourself can't do a large enough data
link |
01:13:59.440
collection that would, if you're talking about anomalous events, right, right, you should be
link |
01:14:06.160
collecting high resolution data about everything that's happening on earth in terms of like,
link |
01:14:13.280
in terms of the kind of things that would indicate to you a strong signal that something weird
link |
01:14:19.040
happened here. And this is why governments can be good at funding large scale efforts.
link |
01:14:26.080
Yes. I mean, NASA and so on working with SpaceX with Blue Origin to fund
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01:14:35.920
capitalistic sort of fund companies, fund company efforts to do huge moonshot projects.
link |
01:14:42.240
Right. And in the same way, do huge moonshot data collection efforts in terms of UFOs. I mean,
link |
01:14:48.000
we're not, it needs to be like 10x, like one or two orders of magnitude more funding to do this
link |
01:14:54.240
kind of thing. And I understand on the flip side of that, if you make it about what are the Russians,
link |
01:14:59.680
whether the Chinese doing, you know, make it a question of geopolitics, it gets touchy because
link |
01:15:06.960
now you, you kind of taken away from the realm of science and making it military, making it
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01:15:13.120
military. Some of the greatest, this is what makes me as an engineer, makes me truly sad that some
link |
01:15:18.560
of the greatest engineering work ever done is by Lockheed Martin. And we will never know about it.
link |
01:15:24.960
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I wish we were, it was different, but it's the world we live in.
link |
01:15:33.360
You know, but related to that UIP task force announcement that you just said, you know,
link |
01:15:39.600
the bill was passed in the Department of Defense and now it formally establishes an office to
link |
01:15:45.520
collate that information and also to be transparent about it. Money is now set aside.
link |
01:15:52.480
Right. Well, what do you think of just in case people don't know the DOD establishing new department
link |
01:15:57.600
to study UFOs called airborne naming, come on. But yes, airborne object identification and
link |
01:16:05.520
management synchronization group. Do you know how to pronounce that? No, I do not. AOI MSG.
link |
01:16:12.000
It's stupid and needs to be renamed, but AOI MSG AO, all right, is directed by the
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01:16:18.480
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. What do you make of this office?
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01:16:24.160
Are you hopeful about this office? I think there's still a tug of war going on behind the scenes
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01:16:29.600
as to who's going to control this. But I do know though that money has been set aside that
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01:16:35.360
will be used to make things more public, right, to start to get others involved. And you know,
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01:16:46.960
there's, I'm involved with an effort to get other academics involved.
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01:16:51.680
So you think there might be some of that money could be directed towards funding, maybe like
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01:16:55.840
groups like yours to do some research here. So they would be open to that, you think?
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01:17:01.040
I hope so. I mean, nothing is set in stone yet. And I'm not hiding anything because I just don't
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01:17:07.120
know anything, right? But I do think that there will be public efforts. Now, there are being
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01:17:16.800
set up other private efforts to bring monies involved and to use that to leverage and get
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01:17:24.400
access to some of the internal resources as well. So what you're seeing is kind of an ecosystem
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01:17:32.080
building up in a positive sense of people who are willing to do the research. So, you know,
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01:17:40.320
before it would be, you couldn't even go to a scientist and ask them to help.
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01:17:45.120
Now, if there's money, as I said before, scientists are essentially capitalists. We go
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01:17:50.320
where the money is. I mean, the work that I've done, I did out of my own pocket.
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01:17:56.000
And probably about $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 of money went into the paper we published
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01:18:02.240
out of my own pocket. But the amount of money that needs to go in is in at least the few
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01:18:09.120
millions to do a proper analysis of these materials. The work I know that the Galileo
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01:18:15.600
project is involved with, it's probably in the five to 10 million range to get stuff done.
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01:18:23.200
But that's actually a relatively modest amount of money to accomplish something that has been in
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01:18:29.520
the zeitgeist for decades. I should also push back a little bit on something you probably will
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01:18:37.200
agree with. You said scientists are essentially capitalists. What I've noticed is there's certainly
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01:18:42.960
an influence of money. But oftentimes when you're talking about basic research and basic science,
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01:18:48.880
the money is a little bit ambiguous to what direction you're doing the research in.
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01:18:56.160
And the scientists get really good at telling a narrative of like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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01:19:01.680
we're fulfilling the purpose of this funding. But they end up doing really what they're curious
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01:19:08.160
about. And of course, you cannot deviate like, if you're getting funded to study penguins and
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01:19:12.960
Antarctica, you can't start building rockets, but probably you can because you'll convince some kind
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01:19:18.880
you concoct the narrative saying, rockets are really important for studying penguins in the
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01:19:23.520
entire right. I think that's actually, this is one thing I think people don't generally understand
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01:19:31.600
about the scientific mind is I don't know how capitalistic it is, because if it was,
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01:19:37.360
they would start an FN company. No, no, no, no. I mean, when I meant capitalist, I didn't mean
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01:19:42.320
in the, they'll start companies per se. I mean, we can only do the research where there's money.
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01:19:49.920
And so from, you know, maybe it's a bad use of the term capitalist. So, but the,
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01:19:57.600
we will only do the research where there's money. I mean, why do most people work,
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01:20:01.200
many biologists work in cancer research, because there's a lot of money there. It's an important
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01:20:08.800
problem. But I might not have ever gotten involved in it. If there wasn't money, I might have gone
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01:20:15.760
and I was going to be a botanist when I, when I was a kid. That's what I wanted to do. So,
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01:20:24.400
having money available will bring people to bear. Now, another mistake that's often actually made,
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01:20:30.960
I think, by the lay public about science is that people think that we're paid to do things.
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01:20:36.640
Just as you said, I get a research grant and luckily from the NIH there, they give you a fair
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01:20:41.600
amount of latitude. I will go my own way and I'll find something, I might have proposed something,
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01:20:47.520
but I'll end up somewhere entirely different by the end of the project. And that's how good
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01:20:52.160
science is done. You follow the, you follow the data, you follow the results. And so that's what
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01:20:58.960
I'm hoping can be done here. I think the worst kind of thing that could be done with this
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01:21:05.760
subject area is to put it inside another company where they have a set plan of what it is they're
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01:21:12.640
going to do and the scientists either tell, do what the executives tell them to do or not.
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01:21:18.240
That isn't how anything will really get discovered. Put it, get it out into the public,
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01:21:23.360
get open minds thinking about it and then publishing on it and doing the right kind
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01:21:29.120
of work. That's how real progress will be made with this.
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01:21:33.680
Let's again put our sort of philosophical hats on. Do you think the US government or some other
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01:21:39.600
government is in possession of something of extraterrestrial origin that is far more impressive
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01:21:49.040
than anything we've seen in the public? I've not seen anything personally,
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01:21:56.240
but if I believe the people who I don't think can lie, yes.
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01:22:03.120
How does that make you feel in terms of the way government works, the way our human civilization
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01:22:08.320
works, that there might be things like that and they're not public? Is there a hopeful message
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01:22:15.200
for transparency that's possible? If you were in power, and I'm not saying president because
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01:22:21.920
maybe the president is not the source of power here, would you release this information in some
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01:22:29.520
way or form? Yes, if I were. I think it's something that can bring humanity together.
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01:22:38.320
I think that knowledge of this kind of thing to know that we are more alike than we are different
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01:22:48.320
in comparison to whatever this is is a positive thing for us. I don't necessarily
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01:23:00.480
care that the government has been hiding it and I think people who've been talking about
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01:23:04.560
we should give government officials or whatever amnesty, I think that's probably the right
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01:23:10.960
answer. This isn't a time to look back and say you did something wrong. You did whatever you
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01:23:16.320
did because that was the data you had available to you at the time and you had good reasons for
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01:23:20.080
doing it. Now, if your reasons were selfish, if your reasons were you wanted to do it because
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01:23:26.080
you wanted to monetize it yourself to your benefit but against that of others, then I think maybe
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01:23:33.440
there's something else that could be said but an opportunity to get all this information out,
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01:23:39.520
if I were in charge, I would try to do it. Now, I might be shown something though that says there's
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01:23:46.720
a reason why you don't want to let anybody know this. Maybe you don't want everybody having access
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01:23:51.520
to unlimited energy because maybe you might turn it into a bomb or something that gives you hints
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01:23:59.920
that something like unlimited energy is possible but you haven't figured it out yet and if you
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01:24:05.120
make it public, maybe some of the other governments you have tensions with will figure it out first.
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01:24:13.040
It's kind of an arms race going on, I think. In all forms and it makes me truly sad because
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01:24:18.560
it's obvious that for example, the origins of the COVID virus, it's obvious to me that the
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01:24:28.480
Chinese government, whatever the origins are, is interested in not releasing information about it
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01:24:35.840
because it can only be bad for the Chinese government. Every government thinks like this.
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01:24:44.320
Every actually, this has been disappointment to me talking to PR folks at companies. They're
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01:24:51.920
always nervous. They're always conservative in the sense like, well, if we release more stuff,
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01:25:00.400
it can only be bad. Then an Elon Musk character comes along who tweets ridiculous memes
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01:25:07.680
and doesn't give a fuck. I've been encouraging CEOs, I've been encouraging people to be
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01:25:14.080
transparent. Of course, government is national security is really another level,
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01:25:20.080
it's human lives at stake, but let's start at the lighter case of just releasing some of the
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01:25:27.200
awesome insights of how the sausage is made, the technology and being transparent about it
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01:25:33.520
because it excites people. Like you said, it connects people. It inspires them. It's good
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01:25:43.200
for the brand. It's good for everybody. I honestly think this kind of idea that people will steal
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01:25:48.320
the information and we use it against you is an idea that's not true in this idea of the 20th
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01:25:56.400
century. Like you said, some of the benefits of the social media, our social world is that
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01:26:02.480
transparency is beneficial and I hope governments will learn that lesson. Of course,
link |
01:26:07.040
they're usually the last to learn such lessons. What do you make of Bob Lazar's story in terms
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01:26:13.840
of possession of aircraft? Do you believe him? I don't believe in the Bob Lazar story, to be
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01:26:18.640
quite honest. I mean, Jeremy Corbell has done a great job interviewing him and has done some
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01:26:28.960
beautiful documentaries. I don't know how to interpret it. Again, there's some of the people
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01:26:41.920
who I fraternize with think it's all rubbish. Maybe he's right, but I don't know. I mean,
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01:26:49.920
the problem is, and this is a little bit different about how I approach the whole area than a lot
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01:26:57.040
of others, I'm less interested in going over old paperwork and all these old histories of who said
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01:27:04.800
what the whole he said, she said of the history of UFOs. I'm a scientist. I worked on the brain
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01:27:15.520
area because it's something I can collect data on. I can go back to the same individual,
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01:27:19.920
collect an MRI again, and redo it. I can hand that MRI to somebody else. They can analyze it.
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01:27:25.920
I can get materials. I can analyze them. I can get some of these skeletons. I won't touch any
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01:27:30.640
skeletons ever again, but I can analyze it and somebody else can reproduce the data. I mean,
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01:27:36.160
that's what I'm good at. I'm not going to go into the whole, I'm not a historian.
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01:27:43.520
Yeah, that's true, but there's a human side to it. Sometimes I think with these, because again,
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01:27:51.360
anomalous, rare events, some of the data is inextricably connected to humans, the observations.
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01:27:58.320
Right. I mean, I hope in the future that sensory data will not be polluted by human
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01:28:07.600
subjectivity, but that's still powerful data, even direct observations, like if you talk
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01:28:13.920
about pilots. It's an interesting question to me whether Bob Azar is telling the truth,
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01:28:18.800
whether he believes he's telling the truth too, and also what impact his story and stories like
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01:28:26.560
his have on the willingness of governments to be transparent and so on. You have to credit
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01:28:34.480
his story for captivating the imagination of people and getting the conversation going.
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01:28:40.800
He's maintained his story for all these years with little to no change that I'm aware of.
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01:28:47.600
But there's so many other people who are, let's say, experts in that story.
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01:28:51.360
They're gut, you accumulate a set of circumstantial evidence where your
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01:29:01.600
gut will say that somebody is not telling the truth. Yeah.
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01:29:05.360
You mentioned Avi Loeb. I forgot to ask you about Omomua. Because you've analyzed specimens
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01:29:14.800
here on earth, what do you make of that one? And what do you make broadly of our efforts
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01:29:19.760
to look at rocks, essentially, or look at objects flying around in our solar system?
link |
01:29:27.920
Is that a valuable pursuit, or maybe most of the fascinating things could be
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01:29:34.480
discovered here on earth or on other nearby planets?
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01:29:37.680
Just going to Omomua, I think Avi's insight is an interesting speculation, right?
link |
01:29:46.880
Like I was saying before, people can sometimes look at something and not see it for what it is.
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01:29:53.520
Many would just look at that and say, oh, it's an asteroid and dismiss it.
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01:29:57.920
There was something odd about the data that Avi picked up on and said, well, here's an
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01:30:03.440
alternative explanation that actually better fits the models than it just being a rock.
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01:30:09.040
And to his credit, he just has ignored the critics because he believes the data is real
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01:30:17.360
and is using that then as a battering ram to go after other things. So I think that's great.
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01:30:25.040
Yeah. What is his main conclusion? Does he say it could be of alien extraterrestrial origin?
link |
01:30:32.320
Well, that's one of the things. I mean, he's explained how it could be a light sail.
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01:30:36.000
And a light sail is certainly within near human capabilities to make such a thing.
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01:30:44.240
I think Yuri Milner, he's a Russian billionaire. He's involved, I think,
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01:30:50.400
in a project to make light sails with laser, to launch them with laser power, essentially,
link |
01:31:00.000
towards Alpha Centauri. So it's something that humans could make. I think Avi's proposal is
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01:31:09.440
perfectly within the realm of possibility. Sadly, the thing is now nearly out of our solar system.
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01:31:15.760
Yes. I mean, to me, that's inspiring to do greater levels of data collection in our solar system,
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01:31:22.240
but also here on Earth. It just seems like we should be constantly collecting data because
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01:31:27.440
the tools of software that we're developing get better and better at dealing with huge amounts
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01:31:31.440
of data. It's changing the nature of science. I mean, collect all of the data.
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01:31:36.240
Right. Collect the data. I mean, the Galileo project asked me over the weekend to join,
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01:31:41.920
and I did. So I'm not a specialist in any of the stuff that they're doing,
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01:31:48.400
but in looking at the list of people who are on there, there are really no biologists on there.
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01:31:54.400
So at some point, if my expertise is required for something.
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01:31:58.800
What's the goal and the vision of the Galileo project?
link |
01:32:01.280
Better talk to Avi, but my understanding and just actually looking at the
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01:32:06.800
the bylaws this morning, literally just got them, is number one, collect the data on UAP,
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01:32:13.760
and number two, collect data on local, potentially local technological artifacts.
link |
01:32:22.000
I need to look into this. This is fascinating. And Avi is heading the Galileo project.
link |
01:32:26.800
Yeah. Have you spoken to him on this podcast? Yes. That was before, I believe,
link |
01:32:30.880
is before he was headed. It's a new creation. Yeah. The Galileo project was, I think it's
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01:32:35.920
about six or seven months old now. That's amazing. And he's getting a group of scientists together.
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01:32:40.800
Oh yeah. About a hundred. Oh, it's actually, I am, I was looking at some of their stuff over the
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01:32:46.480
weekend. I'm shocked at the level of organization that they've already got put together. That's
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01:32:50.880
amazing. It looks like a moonshot project. I mean, I've been involved with a lot of NIH,
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01:32:56.000
large NIH projects, which involve a lot of people in coordination, and they're putting it together.
link |
01:33:05.920
So you're extremely well published in a lot of the fields we began this conversation with.
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01:33:15.040
So you're legit scientists. But yet you're keeping an open mind to a lot of ideas that
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01:33:27.680
maybe require you to take a leap outside of the conventional. So what advice would you give to
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01:33:34.560
young people today that are in high school or in college that are dreaming of having impact in
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01:33:44.400
science or maybe in whatever career path that goes outside of the conventional that really
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01:33:51.600
does something new? If you believe in something, you believe that an idea is
link |
01:33:58.880
valuable, or you have an approach to something, don't let others shame you into not doing it.
link |
01:34:05.280
But as I've said, shame is a societal control device to get other people to do what they want
link |
01:34:13.120
you to do rather than what you want to do. So shame sometimes is good to stop you from
link |
01:34:18.560
doing something unethical or wrong. But shame also is something that is circumscribing your
link |
01:34:25.920
environment. I've never let people who've told me, you know, you shouldn't do that
link |
01:34:30.480
line of science, you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking that, give me a break.
link |
01:34:36.560
I'm, you know, why is it wrong to ask questions about this area? What's wrong with asking the
link |
01:34:42.400
question? Frankly, you're the person who's wrong for trying to stop these questions. You're the
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01:34:49.040
person who's almost acting like a cultist. You basically have closed your mind to what the
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01:34:56.160
possibilities are. And if I'm not hurting anybody, and if it could lead to an advance, and if it's
link |
01:35:01.760
my time, why does it bother you? I mean, I had a very well known scientist once tell me that I
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01:35:08.080
was going to hurt my career talking about this. If anything, it's enhanced my career.
link |
01:35:13.680
I have a couple of questions on this. So first of all, just a small comment on that.
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01:35:18.240
I've realized that it feels like a lot of the progress in science is done by people pursuing
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01:35:25.200
an idea that another senior faculty would probably say, this is going to hurt your career. I think
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01:35:31.840
it's actually a pretty good indicator that there's something interesting when a senior wise person
link |
01:35:38.720
tells you this is going to hurt your career. I think that's just the one, as a small, if I were
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01:35:43.840
to give advice to young people, if somebody's senior tells you this is going to hurt your career,
link |
01:35:48.400
think twice about taking their advice. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the primary thing.
link |
01:35:53.120
And the other I tell my own students, I have a lab of about 20, 30 people and has been that big
link |
01:36:00.960
since 1992, people come and go, is it's not the data that falls in line that's so interesting.
link |
01:36:12.000
It's the spot off the graph that you want to understand. When something is way off the graph,
link |
01:36:23.440
that's the interesting thing because that's usually where discovery is. And the number of times that
link |
01:36:29.520
I've stopped people in my lab and said, wait a second, go back a few slides. What was that?
link |
01:36:34.400
And then it ended up being something interesting that made their careers. I could count on a few
link |
01:36:42.800
hands. Yeah, get excited by the extraordinary that's outside of the thing that you've done in
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01:36:50.560
the past. Just on a personal psychological level, is there, I'm sure at Stanford, I'm sure in you
link |
01:37:01.760
exploring some of these ideas, there's pressure. How do you not give in to the pressure? How do
link |
01:37:09.840
you not give in to the people that push you away from these topics? What would you say shame?
link |
01:37:19.360
I just point to my successes. I say, you're the ones who told me not to start companies
link |
01:37:25.600
all this time ago. And now you're the one coming to me for advice for how to start a company.
link |
01:37:31.520
Yeah. Right. But from the scientific area, it's you're wanting to take something off the table
link |
01:37:42.720
that might be an explanation. How is that the scientific method? I reverse shame them.
link |
01:37:52.000
Reverse shame them. So purely with reason through conversation, you're able to do that. So it doesn't
link |
01:37:57.120
feel, because to me, it would just feel lonely. There's a community. There's a community of
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01:38:02.080
science. And when you're working on something that's outside a particular conventional way
link |
01:38:09.360
of thinking, it could be lonely. I mean, there's in the AI field, if you were working on neural
link |
01:38:15.440
networks in the 90s, it could be lonely. I have met some of the most fascinating people ever that
link |
01:38:21.760
had I stayed the conventional track, I would never have met. I mean, truly brilliant people
link |
01:38:29.360
because of this. So it is for those worried about, well, should I step outside of my
link |
01:38:38.880
comfort zone, you're going to meet some really interesting people. And because I'm open about
link |
01:38:44.880
this area, I'll go and give a talk in Boston, Harvard or MIT. And at dinner, inevitably,
link |
01:38:55.200
this subject comes up. And inevitably, somebody else at the table will admit
link |
01:39:00.240
both that they're interested or that they've seen something. And suddenly, the whole tone
link |
01:39:04.320
of the conversation changes. It's kind of like there's safety in numbers. And then,
link |
01:39:11.440
or I've had people come to me afterwards after dinner and say, hey, I don't talk about this
link |
01:39:17.520
openly. But so the number of scientists who know that there's something else going on
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01:39:25.920
is much larger than the scientific community would like to think.
link |
01:39:31.840
That's a really powerful one, which is I don't talk about this openly. But here's what I believe.
link |
01:39:39.040
And you'd be surprised how many people speak like this and hold those beliefs. And I am optimistic
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01:39:45.360
about social media in a more connected world to reveal more and more, like us not to have these
link |
01:39:50.960
two personalities. We're like this public and private one. We've mentioned the big questions
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01:39:56.800
of the origins of the universe. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
link |
01:40:01.280
For us humans, our human existence here on Earth, or just at the individual level of a human life,
link |
01:40:09.280
what, Gary, is the meaning of life?
link |
01:40:14.160
I think that what we're going through today with this realization, it's kind of like you've lived on
link |
01:40:24.480
an island, your whole life, and you've looked across the ocean and you've never imagined
link |
01:40:31.680
there was another island with anybody else on it. And then suddenly a ship with sails shows up.
link |
01:40:39.120
You don't understand it, but you realize that suddenly your world just got a lot bigger.
link |
01:40:44.960
I think we're in one of those moments right now that our world view, our galactic view,
link |
01:40:52.160
our galactic view is opening to something a little bit bigger. And not just that there might be
link |
01:40:58.640
somebody else, but that there's something else. And what it is is yet to be understood.
link |
01:41:06.560
And the fact that it isn't understood to me is what's exciting because I can fill it with my
link |
01:41:14.000
dreams. And this discovery, our world might, is about to get a lot more humbling and a lot
link |
01:41:25.360
more fascinating once we look out and realize we were on an island all along. It makes us both
link |
01:41:31.280
smaller but larger at the same time to me. I can look outside at the stars and think
link |
01:41:40.240
and imagine what else might be out there. And although I know that I will never see it all,
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01:41:46.640
it excites me to know that it's there.
link |
01:41:50.000
Well, Gary, both to respect your time and also because at 12 I turned into a princess.
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01:41:58.480
Let me just say thank you for doing everything you're doing as a great scientist, as a person
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01:42:05.680
willing to reject the conventional. And thank you for spending your extremely valuable time with
link |
01:42:10.800
me today. Thanks for talking. Thanks so much. It was great talking. Thanks for listening to this
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01:42:15.680
conversation with Gary Nolan. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the
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01:42:20.160
description. And now let me leave you some words from Stanislav Lem in Solaris. How do you expect
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01:42:28.560
to communicate with the ocean when we can't even understand one another? Thanks for listening and
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01:42:35.840
hope to see you next time.