EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,106 words- 0:00 – 1:32
Sean Carroll launches the Mindscape podcast (and why academia needs cross-talk)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- NANarrator
All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wait a minute. Are we going live? Can-
- NANarrator
Boom, and we're live. Mr. Carroll, how are you, sir?
- SCSean Carroll
Very good to be back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very good to have you back. So, uh, you have a podcast now.
- SCSean Carroll
I do. I've joined the ranks. You inspired me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you, uh, it's important.
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
We need people like you out there. Uh, you're, uh, you have, like, what, seven episodes so far?
- SCSean Carroll
Seven episodes up, got a few more in the can. Gonna try to drib 'em out once a week, uh, for the first six months or so, see how it goes. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Are you enjoying the process?
- SCSean Carroll
I am. Mindscape, by the way, is the name, for those out there in podcast land. Yeah, I'm loving it. You know, the, the real, the thing that tilted me over toward doing it... 'Cause like, look, it's, I have a day job, right? I can't spend too much-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
... time doing this stuff. Um, but what I realized, it was an excuse, uh, a license to talk to people who are not just physicists, right? 'Cause like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SCSean Carroll
... I have intellectual interests that go way beyond just what I do for a living. And in academia, you're not allowed to take seriously anything other than your discipline, your job, right? I'm allowed to be talking about physics, but nothing else. But so now I can talk to historians and economists and philosophers and psychologists and it's great.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you could've just gone to Evergreen State and then you could talk about anything.
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, you're teaching a professor, you could just, if you're a professor, you could teach them dance.
- SCSean Carroll
We have to break out-
- JRJoe Rogan
Literally.
- SCSean Carroll
... of the system. We have to do it ourselves.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, man.
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Gotta break outta that system. So your, uh, podcast, you decided that this would be a great venue for you to just, uh, expand on subjects and just get into anything that you'd like.
- 1:32 – 7:33
Expertise, curiosity, and surviving the internet comment ecosystem
- SCSean Carroll
Well, you know, I, I have opinions about things, and I've never been one who's said you shouldn't talk about things unless you're a PhD-credentialed expert, right? I think everyone should be talking about everything, but you should know what your level of expertise is.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
So if you're not an expert, you should listen to people, and you should then make your own decisions, but you should first gather the information. And so I don't feel quite like I can go... I, I have a blog, and I can write whatever I want on my blog, but I can't really expound on my theories of economics 'cause what do I know about economics?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
But I can call up a, a very expert economist and chat with them on the podcast, and both I will learn something and hopefully the listeners will.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're gonna just basically talk about anything?
- SCSean Carroll
The shtick is we sort of try to pick an idea, right? So for the hour or whatever it is, I don't have your stamina. I can't do the two-and-a-half-hour thing (laughs) thing, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just need more of these cavemans.
- SCSean Carroll
For an hour... I know, I need more, I need more nitrous, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- SCSean Carroll
... caffeine in me. But, uh, yeah, for an hour, hour and a half, uh, I'll get someone who's an expert and we'll dig into an idea and try to understand what's going on, you know, in, in sort of everyday people's language and how it fits into the bigger picture and things like that. And, uh, trying to mix up, you know, good old professors, which are my peer group, to sort of... I got some people coming outta left field. I had a professional poker player, I have a movie director-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
... coming up, a chef, and things like that, so. But basically, yeah, whatever I wanna talk about.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's awesome. So, uh, is this for your own edification or are you just using it as, uh, just a platform? Like, what-
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, I think that my, like, philosophically, I treat it like it's for me, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, I'm not gonna do guests or topics, or not do topics because the people say so, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, there's plenty of people out there who don't want me to talk about anything other than physics, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- SCSean Carroll
Or, or, or at least nothing that involves politics or religion, but I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Stay in your lane, bro.
- SCSean Carroll
Very much, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- SCSean Carroll
But I love talking about politics and religion, so guess what?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
I'm gonna talk about those things. Um, and so, and then hopefully, they, it finds an audience, right? And, uh, so I, I'm willing to listen to suggestions, but mostly I have to treat it like it's for me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think it's absurd to ask someone to not talk about things if they're-
- SCSean Carroll
But there's, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
... interested in those things.
- 7:33 – 10:20
Social credit systems, China’s information control, and fragile democracies
- JRJoe Rogan
It would be nice if we had, like, a system, like, almost like a rating system of, for humans, like a Yelp-
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... for commentators.
- SCSean Carroll
There- people are trying that. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not a bad idea. It really isn't, in terms of, like- like, y- people review your comments on things, and enough people decide, like, "Well, this is just-"
- SCSean Carroll
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... unnecessary."
- SCSean Carroll
Yelp for expertise. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, yeah, or for commentary, in general. Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, all the above.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, that's pr- they're- we're probably gonna move to some sort of a system like that. In fact, some people are actually advocating that, uh, in- y- for society to have some sort of a- a- or a, like, a ratings system for people, and almost a- a new kind of currency, like a social currency.
- SCSean Carroll
They're doing it in China, right? You've heard this?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yes.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's scary for people, though, 'cause it's China.
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
And, you know, and Ch- China is a- uh, uh, is a trippy place. And it's very trippy in terms of its sort of g- gut capitalism going, but it's also a communist dictatorship-
- SCSean Carroll
It's a big old dictatorship, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and it's controlled by the government. And the- all the companies are also in... You know the thing with Huawei? Am I saying it right? People are getting mad at me about that. Huawei? I think it's Huawei. It's, uh, the n- now the number two cellphone manufacturer in the world, and they're forbidden to work with US carriers.
- SCSean Carroll
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
The- the United States government does not trust this company, so they've said, you know, this company has apparently done some shady things, according to them, not according to certain tech people, who say it's nonsense. But they're- so n- now they're keeping them from selling their cellphones with AT&T and T-Mobile and whatever. Uh, but they're the number two manufacturer in the world now. They just surpassed Apple.
- SCSean Carroll
'Cause China's just so big.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So China's a trip.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. Well, it's- it's... They know very well. It's- it's kind of remarkable to me that China has been so stable and successful, because there are, you know, people who don't like it. There are people who rebel against the system. But they've been so- the government's been so enormously successful at controlling information.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Controlling what you learn. Like, you can't google Tiananmen Square if you're there in China.
- 10:20 – 14:10
Troll farms and polarization as a strategy (Russia, rallies, and media distrust)
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think this last election and the subsequent analysis of the manipulation of the election has been very eye-opening to people. And, um, the- the- the Russian troll farms, have you been paying attention-
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to any of that stuff?
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Th- that is- that is a- a stunning revelation, that there's 24/7 businesses where people are set up where they're hired to just tweet and post things and comment on things. And they're all working in some way to try to manipulate way- the way people look at the news.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. And the most interesting thing to me, I thought, like, if they were clever, they will do this, and they- they do it. It's not just that they have a policy that they want to push, right, or a candidate they want to push. They want to foment disagreement, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, yes.
- SCSean Carroll
They will take the most radical views on either side and pump them up just so Americans are tearing at each others' throats.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
And yeah, that kinda works, right? That's- that's pretty successful so far.
- JRJoe Rogan
There was a Radiolab podcast where these people that were Trump supporters detailed being contacted by these, uh, Russian troll farms where they organize these rallies and they organize these, uh, these protests.
- SCSean Carroll
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they even hired a fake Hillary. They fu- they hired a fake Trump. And they were gonna have the Hillary in a cage, and they wanted everybody to yell out, "Lock her up!" And this- these Russians coordinated this whole thing.
- SCSean Carroll
Right. And then once it starts, you know, it organically takes over, right? I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
... you- you probably saw just the other day, this, uh, uh, Trump rally where the CNN reporter was trying to do, uh, uh, on-camera-
- JRJoe Rogan
Jim Acosta.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, trying to do a camera spot, and he just, like, got drowned out by people shouting at him and, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
... shouting obscenities. And-... yeah, I, I don't know what, that- that's bad, right? Okay, I mean, it's bad. The- the media, I wouldn't want that to happen to Fox News. I wouldn't want that to happen to people I disagreed with.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
You gotta let the people in the media be the media. They're not the enemy of the people, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, what he's done is very dangerous.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know?
- SCSean Carroll
It is.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's- it's very s- it's very sneaky and very dangerous, and it's very manipulative. And he's essentially, he's in survival mode. And when people are in survival mode, they, th- the, he's not thinking at all about the importance of the press. He's thinking about-
- SCSean Carroll
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... his- his situation, his stance, his position in life, preserve that.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- 14:10 – 23:07
Universal basic income in an AI/automation world: motivation, fairness, and ‘projects vs jobs’
- JRJoe Rogan
One of the things that's fascinating to me that s- seems to be boiling under the surface is the possibility that we might need some sort of universal basic income to deal with, uh, what's happening with AI and automa-
- SCSean Carroll
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
... automation. Like, uh, auto- automation of, um, cars, automation of, uh, what, normal jobs that people, like food preparation and things that people have come to just take for granted that a human's gonna be doing that. It's entirely possible that millions and millions and millions of people are going to be out of work within a very short period of time. And it seems to me that it's just, it's one of those really sneaky things that might just catch us before we're ready for it.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, I think that if you, you know, extrapolate very far ahead into the future and imagine what utopia is supposed to look like or, you know, the far technologically advanced civilization, why wouldn't we imagine that work is done by robots and machines and human beings are free to be creative or artistic or athletic or just sit on their butts if that's what they wanna do? If you believe that that's a possible future, then the way to get there is to, as robots and machines do more and more, make it more and more possible for people to live without working. I think that's a, is at least... I have no idea whether it works in practice. I'm not an economist. I haven't studied it, but I think it should be taken seriously as an idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you looked at it as a pessimist, and if you looked at it with a cynical perspective, you'd say, "Uh, well, people just, what, they don't have motivation. Then they behave like rich kids or entitled people or people who won the lottery. They blow all the money. They don't take it seriously 'cause they didn't earn it. It goes against human nature."
- SCSean Carroll
Yep, I get that. And maybe it does. Let them do it. Who, who am I to tell people that they need to be virtuous by earning a living in some-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
... you know, job they may or may not be able to keep for very long, right? People who say that usually haven't gotten fired from their jobs recently, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Right, right. Yeah, and I always feel like the people that are actually ambitious... But the- the real problem I think would be growing up with that. I think if you- you got it as an adult, you'd probably recognize it as the safety net that it is. But as, if it was during your developmental process, you might rely on it as a constant.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so that might be a problem in terms of motivation.
- SCSean Carroll
I think so, and I think that, uh, and you see it, right? I mean, I- I- I have friends at various levels of income and- and class-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
... that they grew up in, and you can always tell people who grew up in very comfortable, uh, environments because they don't have jobs, they have projects.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs) Say I'm working on a project. Because they're not really worried about the project failing, you know? Like, the, if- if you grew up without that safety net, you're more cautious, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, you have to have a- a fail safe. You have to have a- a backup plan. And, but what if everyone had that backup plan? What if we could all do projects instead of work? Is that really a worse world? I don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you know any trust fund people?
- SCSean Carroll
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
I know plenty.
- JRJoe Rogan
The ones that I know all blow their money. (laughs)
- SCSean Carroll
Actually, I know some, I know some very wealthy people who raise their kids really well. And you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
As trust fund people?
- SCSean Carroll
Oh, yeah, as people who, like, never need to work a day in their lives and they all work really hard.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so weird. You- you-
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, it's possible. Possible.
- JRJoe Rogan
Find those people and clone them.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. (laughs)
- 23:07 – 28:31
Designer babies and CRISPR ethics: disease prevention vs enhancement and inequality
- JRJoe Rogan
One of the big fears about China is their experimentation with, uh, genetics, is that, uh, they're willing to do things ethically that scientists in America and a lot of parts of the Western world are not w- willing to engage in yet.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Including the use of CRISPR on human embryos.
- SCSean Carroll
Yep, and I think, uh, so I have mixed feelings about that. I think it's gonna happen in all cultures. I think we're gonna do it, right? I d- actually had, um... Sorry I haven't released that podcast yet, but stay tuned. I have an excellent podcast coming with Carl Zimmer, who is a science writer who just wrote a long book about heredity and genetics. And, uh, yeah, so what they're gonna be doing, uh, with the designer babies, it's not science fiction as far as I can tell. It's gonna happen. And, uh, but it's very unclear what it will mean, because we're not any good right now at figuring out, uh, how genetics turns, uh, how your DNA turns into a person, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, it might be, like, you know, that we find something, oh, that if you increase- if you change this particular gene, uh, sure, you can live twice as long, but also you'll have Parkinson's disease when you're 14.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, we don't know what the interdependencies are and stuff like that. Uh, so, but- but it's coming. Like, I think that the idea that we will be...... choosing embryos to come to term and be people on the basis of their genes before they're, you know, uh, implanted in a uterus is, is 100%. That's gonna happen. And the chance that we're gonna be editing them is 99.99% chance. And you're right, China is way more willing to do that. And, uh, again, I'm not really sure that's good or bad. You know, I think it's gonna come here. What I'm more worried about is that, you know, people figure out a system that will make, uh, you can have a baby who's guaranteed to be, you know, tall and beautiful and smart and live for 150 years, and it'll cost you a million dollars. Then that'll be a little bit unfair, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
That will be a- that will be an issue that will come up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. But then isn't it unfair that The Rock is The Rock? How did he get to be The Rock?
- SCSean Carroll
It is, but I think just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Got lucky?
- SCSean Carroll
... psychologically, it's- I think he worked hard. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Yes, but it's also-
- SCSean Carroll
But he also had some benefit, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
... you know, a giant human.
- SCSean Carroll
He started, yeah, he started in the right place. You know, the story of Yao Ming, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. So, Yao Ming, the, the basketball player from China-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
... he was basically the result of a breeding program.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- SCSean Carroll
Like, they encouraged his parents, who were both really tall basketball players, to have a baby, and, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh.
- SCSean Carroll
... it worked for him. It doesn't always work. It's a, it's a crapshoot, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
... uh, um, it can work. Yeah, and so-
- JRJoe Rogan
But that's normal breeding. That's like, uh-
- SCSean Carroll
It was encouraged.
- 28:31 – 40:47
Anti-aging, lifespan extension, and why “not dying” changes human behavior
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. No, and I think that that's probably right, and I think that it's one of the things that's happening. Like we're, we're still the beginning-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
... of technology, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, we're, technology is not that advanced compared to where it's gonna be. Um, you know, I have another podcast guest coming up who is an expert on aging and how we can fix that by messing with genes a little bit, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it Aubrey de Grey?
- SCSean Carroll
No. No, this was a real scientist (laughs) at Princeton, you know, someone who's just doing experiments-
- JRJoe Rogan
Isn't he a real scientist?
- SCSean Carroll
Uh, well, he's, I don't know him that well, so I shouldn't say, but I, I, I, I think of him as an advocate for anti-aging.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Which is good, which is cool. But the, I'm, I'm, but my guest, Colleen Murphy, is just like a biologist who's working on things and discovered something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
Right? Like that was, she's not trying that hard.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
Uh, you knock out a certain gene in a certain worm and it lives twice as long and without any decay, right? Like, it doesn't get old. Because it's, it's fascinating. Like, why do we die? Why do we grow old? Like, it's not necessary. Like, you could design an organism that doesn't get older. It would die from random bad things, get hit on the head with a brick, but you don't need to die. The reality is that evolution programmed aging and death into us 'cause once we have kids or once we've outlived our reproductive lifespan, we're not useful anymore.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
So biology is- wants us to die. And so that, that, in other words, it's potentially fixable, you know? It might not be easy, might be not happen 100 years from now, but it could. So I, I think that, you know, aging, genetic engineering, brain computer interfaces, you know, all that stuff is going to, within the next 100 years, totally change what it means to be a human being. And we're totally not ready for it, and so I was saying this to Carl. He, he, Carl's like not that, Carl Zimmer...... was, is more or less sanguine about it. It's like, "Don't worry, just, you know, we'll put regulations on, it'll be fine." And my attitude was, no, actually we should think of the absolute craziest science fiction scenarios 'cause I wanna be prepared, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Even if it doesn't come to pass, I wanna worry about the least probable things because it might spark something that actually helps us down the road.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, there was a recent discovery, they figured out a way to shut off whatever it is that causes wrinkles and reverse the process.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, whatever is causing your skin to get wrinkly and sag-
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... they're reversing that process.
- SCSean Carroll
We might be, uh, members of the last generation to die. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa. Or of old age.
- SCSean Carroll
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
We won't be immortal.
- SCSean Carroll
Well, then if you thought you were immortal, if you thought that, well, let's say if you thought that your average lifespan was a million years, would you suddenly become way more cautious?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, I'd start jumping off buildings and shit.
- 40:47 – 51:40
Brain–computer interfaces, neural lace, and the privacy nightmare of recorded perception
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. Well, this is what I was saying about the brain-computer interfaces. I think that's the- the real... That's even bigger, um, frontier-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
... than synthetic biology or genetic engineering, because computers are really useful for things, robots are very useful for things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Human beings are just gonna sort of blend in. It's not like we're gonna have AI and super healthy humans, it's we're gonna just have everywhere on that spectrum.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking as well. There's gonna be some sort of a symbiotic thing, like a chip or... You know, they tried it with the Google Glasses to try to get people to wear them, but they were goofy.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I put them on, they felt too science fiction-y.
- SCSean Carroll
Just like the first portable phones were these giant things, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
That doesn't mean... Right? That's not a long-term prognostication tool. Yeah, lots of, uh, lots of people are working on it. Elon Musk has a little company that no one knows about, uh, that is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they do now. You're rounding them out.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah. Well, people know about it if they care, but it's not like one of his famous ones, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
Um, to- to implant a neural lace, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- SCSean Carroll
To put something in your body that reads your brain.
- JRJoe Rogan
Neural lace, I don't like the way that sounds.
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Where does it go?
- SCSean Carroll
You want it more macho? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You pointed to the back of your head too.
- SCSean Carroll
No, you mo- no, I didn't mean in terms of lace, like... (laughs) I didn't think of it as lingerie.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you open up your skull and you... (laughs) It's like a doily.
- SCSean Carroll
I was thinking of it as, like, a mesh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what... That's the idea.
- SCSean Carroll
It just seems creepy that it's gonna latch onto your nerves and... (groans)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, and improve you, yeah.... neural lace.
- 51:40 – 54:16
Autonomous weapons, drone warfare, and why the next war won’t look like the last
- SCSean Carroll
The next big war is going to look very, very different than the last big war.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very weird, right?
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's ... Hopefully it won't happen, but if it does, yeah, it's gonna ... There's a big emphasis on automated things, not just drones-
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but physical things that are running around on the ground.
- SCSean Carroll
That can make decisions, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SCSean Carroll
You know, give it a little bit of AI and then, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you s- do you watch Dark Mirror?
- SCSean Carroll
Uh, I haven't seen it yet. Is it may- in my queue.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's an insane episode on, um ... Do you remember the name of it? The one with the-
- SCSean Carroll
Black Mirror?
- JRJoe Rogan
Black Mirror. Did I say Dark Mirror? Yeah. Black Mirror, uh, there's an insane episode on, uh, these little robots that are chasing-
- NANarrator
I think Metal Face or something like that or-
- JRJoe Rogan
Metal Head, something like that.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Um, it's about, uh, robots chasing after this lady. And it's, it literally is these little tiny Boston Dynamic robots, but they can kill you.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're, they're on a mission. And this is not outside the realm of possibility at all.
- SCSean Carroll
Nope. It really isn't. And, and li- like I said, it's ... We don't even know ... It's easy to extrapolate right ahead to sort of the central differences.
- JRJoe Rogan
There it is. There it is.
- SCSean Carroll
Right.
- NANarrator
Here it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
That's, uh, from the episode. It's a fantastic episode, too.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- SCSean Carroll
There's so many good episodes of that show. Black Mirror is just amazing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I gotta start watching that.
- SCSean Carroll
Um, but that, that's a concern. I mean, there's, there's a real concern. I mean, we're, we're doing it right now with drones.
- 54:16 – 58:10
Virtual reality beyond ‘realism’: gravity-free worlds and new modes of existence
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think they're gonna be writing anymore. I, I think there's, there's a real, uh, possibility that we're gonna create virtual reality that's indistinguishable from regular reality and people are gonna live in there like Ready Player One.
- SCSean Carroll
Well, it'll be better.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, this very kind of thing.
- SCSean Carroll
I think that the, the big flaw to me in things like Tron or Ready Player One is that they make the virtual reality look too much like the real reality.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
There's no reason why virtual reality has to have gravity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right.
- SCSean Carroll
There's no reason why it has to be three-dimensional. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, true.
- SCSean Carroll
There's no reason why, you know, you have t- any limit on how strong you are or how fast you are or anything like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SCSean Carroll
Like, there's no reason why you have to have only one body. I mean, there's a million different ways in which it could be very, very different.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it also could be implemented with something like the tank, the float tank that we were talking about earlier.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, you could climb into that float tank with some sort of apparatus, hook these gloves on, put this helmet over, and literally not be subject to the whims of gravity. You can't even feel it.
- SCSean Carroll
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
The effects of gravity will be, uh, inconsequential because you will feel like you're floating, and then from there, you'll be able to fly around and do all sorts of weird stuff.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, I think, like, this weird period between, you know, the year 1900 and 2000 or 2100 or whatever it's gonna be, uh, it'll be a weird transitional period in human history where we invent technology and not really put it to work yet. And there might be some equilibrium that we reach in 100 or 200 years where the whole mode of life is utterly different than what it is now.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you could put priorities in terms of, like, what you think people should concentrate on first when, w- in regards to this kind of stuff, what do you think those would be? Like if, if someone said, "Sean, you're a super smart dude."
- SCSean Carroll
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"Let's, uh, let's get on the ball here and figure out what, what direction should we take this in?"
- SCSean Carroll
I mean, what I do for a living is more, like, foundational, what are the laws of physics kind of thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SCSean Carroll
Right? So I'm not the person, uh, to, to speculate on this stuff, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
But who is?
- SCSean Carroll
Well, I think, um, this is why I said earlier, like, I think we should be talking to each other 'cause nobody is. No one person is, right? Like, that's why we need to have people from different areas of expertise talk about each other's areas, if only then to be corrected, right? But, you know, to be open to that dialogue. So I think that, for example, an enormous amount of effort has been put into nanotechnology, building tiny little machines. I suspect that mostly the real, uh, advances there are not gonna be in nanotechnology, but in synthetic biology, where you take bacteria or multicellular organisms that already exist and adapt them for your purposes, make them do whatever you want. 'Cause biology has already solved a lot of the problems that, uh, technology is still struggling to figure out.
- JRJoe Rogan
So the concept of nanotechnology is you're gonna take, like, almost like a cell-sized machine-
- SCSean Carroll
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and many of them are gonna go into your body and find areas that are damaged or that are problems.
- SCSean Carroll
Or do whatever, yeah.
- 58:10 – 1:09:49
Quantum computing basics: qubits, entanglement, speedups, and fragility
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, here's a question that's not totally related, but you might be a good person for this. What is quantum computing? Now, I've, I've, I keep hearing about this.
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That one of the big breakthroughs in, in computers is going to be quantum computing.
- SCSean Carroll
Right. I'm almost the right guy. I'm not completely the right guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um-
- SCSean Carroll
I actually did teach a course at Caltech that involved quantum computing, so I'm-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, then perfect.
- SCSean Carroll
... I'm above average. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Definitely the best guy to do that.
- SCSean Carroll
But yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- SCSean Carroll
So, um, so quantum mechanics, this is the book that I'm writing right now, uh, that's gonna be out a year from now called Something Deeply Hidden. It'll be about quantum mechanics, and the goal of the book will be to make quantum mechanics understandable to everybody and convince them that quantum mechanics really does imply the existence of multiple worlds where things look very much the same except for tiny differences. And one way to think about what quantum mechanics says is in classical mechanics, which is what came before quantum mechanics, le- let's imagine you have a bit, right? That is something is either zero or one, right? One piece of information. In quantum mechanics, you have a quantum bit, a qubit as they call it. Very clever. So the difference is that instead of it being a zero or a one like it would be classically, quantum mechanically, it is in some superposition of zero and one. It's some combination of a little bit zero, a little bit one. And it's not that you don't know which one it is, it's that it really is both. It might be 90% zero and 10% one or something like that. So take that fact, number one, okay? Fact number two is that quantum mechanics has a thing called entanglement.... which means that if you have two bits, classically, so you have 00011011, right? Four different possibilities. So quantum mechanics says it's not that this one bit is in a combination of zero and one, and this other bit is also in a combination of zero and one, it's that the two-bit system is in a combination of 00011011, right? So it might be that it's 50% 00 and 50% 11. So you don't know what either bit is, but you know they're the same. Right?
- NANarrator
Okay.
- SCSean Carroll
So that's entanglement. So you take these two ideas that the, you have a combination of zeros and ones rather than just one or the other, and that the different bits can be entangled with each other. And then you just say, "Well, what is a computer?" A computer is something that takes bits in, does manipulations, and spits out the answer, right? You solve problems, you, that's what's literally going on in your computer is a bunch of zeros and ones being pushed around. So a quantum computer is pushing around a bunch of qubits, right? A bunch of spinning particles or something like that. The spin of a particle that can either be spinning clockwise or counterclockwise is a qubit. And so these particles can interact with each other, they can become entangled, and you invent a quantum algorithm, right? Like there's algorithms for, you know, finding the area of a surface or something like that, factoring large numbers, you know, solving the shortest distance between two different points. You can do this using the rules of quantum mechanics instead of the rules of classical mechanics. And the belief, which is not yet 100% established, but we think is true, is that there are some problems that are really, really hard to solve for a classical computer, which means that you can easily make the problem long enough that it would take the lifetime of the universe to solve it on a classical computer, which quantum computers can solve quite quickly and efficiently. And so it's, we're not, we haven't proven that. That's not a mathematically precise-
- NANarrator
Why is the-
- SCSean Carroll
... statement.
- NANarrator
... why would they think that quantum computers would be able to solve it quicker?
- SCSean Carroll
There's more information in the quantum computer. Like if you have two bits, 0001, et cetera, there's only four things it can be, right? If you have a quantum computer, there's an infinite number of things it can be, because it's any combination of those four things, right? 10% this, 20% that.
- NANarrator
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
So there's like a continuum of possibilities. It's, it's analog rather than digital in some sense. And so what you, what you can do, you know, the, the quantum computer can just sort of take advantage of that extra power, um, to look, I mean, because of this entanglement, what, this is, this is, I'm gonna get in trouble with my quantum computing friends 'cause it's not quite fair, but roughly speaking, rather than manipulating bit by bit, because of the entanglement between the bits, the quantum computer can move all the bits a little bit at once. So let's say that you're, you're searching for something in a list, right? A very elementary, uh, computer science program is I'm giving you a list, find an element that is equal to a certain number, right?
- NANarrator
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
It sounds easy, but if that list is 10 trillion things long, that's hard, right? So what the quantum computer can do is say, take every element in the list, nudge it a little bit towards zero if it's the wrong answer and towards one if it's the right answer. And you don't know where it is in the list, but you can do that nudging over and over again, and at the end of the day, you look for where, where's the one, it's very easy to find.
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
So you can get the answer much quicker, it, it is believed. And so things like cryptography, privacy, right, are dramatically changed by this because if, one of the things that we think quantum computers should be able to do faster is factor large numbers, which is the, the, the difficulty in factoring large numbers is the, uh, basis for much modern cryptography, uh, but also simulating systems that were just too difficult to simulate, you know, just, just it took too much computer power to do it. Now, maybe we can do it 'cause nature is truly quantum mechanical at, at the core. It turns out to be very hard because the problem is you have all these bits, if you touch one of them, if the outside world bumps into one of them, right, like a cosmic ray or an atom hits it-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- SCSean Carroll
... the whole entanglement is ruined between everything. So it's very, very delicate, and that's what the, you know, right now, um, they're, they're working on systems of, let's say, dozens of qubits entangled at once. You would, you would like it to be way more than that 'cause you can store an enormous amount of information in these things, and, uh, if, if it works, it's, I think it'll be way better at computing if it works. I'm not at all sure that quantum computers will be efficient or cost-effective or anything like that in the near term, but, you know, doing computations faster is something a lot of people wanna be able to do.
- NANarrator
So right now, they're working with dozens of qubits, and what's preventing them from expanding that or they're doing it slowly to sort of make sure that it all works correctly and get a, a, a, an accurate model?
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah, so the, the problem is if you have a qubit, it can be in a combination of zero or one, right? Any combination whatsoever, but as soon as you look at it, you never see the combination. You see zero or you see one, that's it. And you've ruined, you've erased this preexisting combination, right? If you see zero, now it's in the state zero.
- NANarrator
Right.
- SCSean Carroll
If you see one, it's in the state one. So if you have a group of many, many qubits, what I mean by "look at" is literally anything else in the world bumping into it.
- 1:09:49 – 1:14:04
Many-worlds and the interpretation crisis: quantum works, but what does it mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right over their head. What is, what are these guys talk- this quantum is so weird. Like, one of the things that you said earlier you were- when you were talking about quantum, you were talking about worlds that are very similar-
- SCSean Carroll
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but with very small differences.
- SCSean Carroll
Right. Yes. So, uh, yeah, I forget whether we talked about this, uh, last time, but, you know, there, so there's this whole version of quantum mechanics. Well, let me, let me back up, 'cause we have time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- SCSean Carroll
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- SCSean Carroll
Quantum mechanics is weird because, among other things, it is by far the most successful theory of physics ever invented. We've tested it to enormous precision, right? There's n- zero evidence that quantum mechanics is in any way not right. But we don't understand it. We don't... We, like, not just people in the street, like professional physicists don't know exactly what quantum mechanics says, right?
Episode duration: 2:34:27
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