Joe Rogan Experience #1428 - Brian Greene

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Three, two, one. Brian…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:01

      Three, two, one. Brian Greene, ladies and gentlemen. How are you, sir?

   2. BGBrian Greene0:04

      Good, thank you. How are you?

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      Thanks for doing this, man.

   4. BGBrian Greene0:06

      Oh, it's my pleasure.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:07

      I've-- I've enjoyed your work for many, many, many years, so, uh, I really appreciate you coming in here and talking.

   6. BGBrian Greene0:11

      Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      And I j- Like I was telling you, I just started your new book.

   8. BGBrian Greene0:15

      And how's it going?

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      It's going well. It's, uh, hasn't confused the shit out of me yet, but I know it's coming. (laughs)

   10. BGBrian Greene0:20

       It will be coming, no doubt, no doubt.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:22

       With all your work. So the beginning of time, the beginning of the universe, to the end. That's essentially what you're summarizing.

   12. BGBrian Greene0:31

       Yeah, that's the, uh, that's the backdrop to the entire narrative of the book. I, I basically want the reader to get a feel for the whole thing, how it started, how things like you and me rise up, how consciousness emerges, issues of free will and whether we have it, and then on to the future, what's gonna happen to us and the world and the universe as time elapses to the far, far future.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:58

       It's, uh ... I'm, I'm just getting to the part where you're talking about how entropy and evolution sort of commingle to, to create life. And when you think of entropy, a lot of people think of something dissolving into chaos.

   14. BGBrian Greene1:11

       Yeah, exactly.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:12

       But that's the- not necessarily the case.

   16. BGBrian Greene1:14

       It's only part of the story. I mean, entropy kinda gets a bad rap, right?

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:17

       Yeah.

   18. BGBrian Greene1:17

       It's the thing that you want to avoid, but somehow the laws of physics don't allow you to avoid it. It's this disintegration, it's this decay, it's this drive toward disorder, and that's kind of true. But the reality of the situation is more subtle, because overall, entropy needs to go up. But that doesn't mean there can't be little pockets of order that form along the way. And in fact, the universe is incredibly clever. Stars, the ubiquitous feature of the heavens, they are pockets of order that naturally form, but as they form, they increase the entropy in the surroundings. So the net entropy goes up even though this beautiful, orderly, bright object in the sky appears. And it's only because of the appearance of stars that the universe is an interesting place. Without stars, the particles of the universe would just disperse. The universe would get bigger and bigger, colder and colder, and that would be it. There wouldn't be any structure in the universe if it wasn't for the force of gravity.

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:18

       Stars themselves, just the fact that they exist, is very strange, that you have this thing, uh, d- and ours is fairly small, right? It's a million times larger than Earth.

   20. BGBrian Greene2:27

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:27

       And it's gonna burn for billions of years, and it's just hovering there.

   22. BGBrian Greene2:32

       Yeah. Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:32

       And it creates all the life.

   24. BGBrian Greene2:34

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:34

       I mean, it r- literally is responsible for all the life.

   26. BGBrian Greene2:37

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:37

       And when they supernova, that creates the actual ingredients for life, which is even more strange. Like you can't have biological carbon-based life if it's not for a star exploding.

   28. BGBrian Greene2:49

       Yeah, I mean, we often, in a poetic way, say that we are made of star stuff.

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:53

       Yeah.

   30. BGBrian Greene2:53

       I guess that was Carl Sagan, who ... But you can also say that we are, are made of, you know, nuclear refuse, right? We are the detritus-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Somehow or another, I…

   1. BGBrian Greene15:00

      with a piece of paper and a calculation, a pencil, and we can figure out magnetic properties of particles like electrons to 10 decimal places. That's shocking. I mean, it's stunning, and it's something that I think all of us should be very proud of, that our species has been able to accomplish that.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:18

      Somehow or another, I don't think I'm responsible. (laughs)

   3. BGBrian Greene15:21

      (laughs)

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:21

      I don't feel proud.

   5. BGBrian Greene15:22

      Yeah, yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      I don't feel like any of my people-

   7. BGBrian Greene15:24

      You, you-

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:24

      ... were involved.

   9. BGBrian Greene15:24

      ... you've contributed your part.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:26

       (laughs)

   11. BGBrian Greene15:26

       No, it really is a collective effort.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:28

       Yeah.

   13. BGBrian Greene15:28

       Um, and, uh, that's the beauty of science. In the end of the day, it's not that most scientists are ever going to be remembered. You stop someone in the street and ask them to name a scientist, yeah, they may say Hawking. They may say Einstein. That's kind of it, I think, for most people. And I don't think that's a bad thing per se, because it's not about the personalities or the people that have pushed the frontiers of understanding. It's the fact that we've got this body of insight that continues to grow and continues to allow us to manipulate and understand-

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:00

       Yeah.

   15. BGBrian Greene16:00

       ... the natural world. And I think that's really what it's all about.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       Don't you think that there are some personalities, like yourself, uh, like, um, Feynman, like, uh, I mean, Neil deGrasse Tyson, that because of their personality, because they're sort of, they're charismatic people, it actually makes more people intrigued about these possibilities and makes more people attracted to the ideas?

   17. BGBrian Greene16:21

       Yeah, no doubt. And, and I think that's a, that's a vital point, because without that impetus from outside the traditional educational system, I don't think we would have the kind of interest in science that I can feel growing, you know, in the world around us. I mean, the unfortunate thing in the educational system is that we teach toward examination. We teach toward assessment. And if you wanna figure out how to flatten a kid's interest in these ideas, just teach them stuff and tell them, "You're gonna be tested on this on Tuesday. You're gonna have to spit back, you know, everything that you've learned." So I find it kinda heartbreaking, the way in which so much intrinsic interest in these ideas ... And you can see it in a five- or six-year-old, right? I mean, I like to say we begin as little scientists. We're exploring the world. We're trying to-

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:11

       Mm.

   19. BGBrian Greene17:11

       ... figure things out. And then we go into the educational system, and it's not by, by malice. It's just by the nature of how we teach in the, in the current, you know, uh, approach to educational philosophy, that so many kids wind up seeing these ideas as a burden.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:28

       Mm.

   21. BGBrian Greene17:29

       So, "I don't wanna have to spend time learning about parts of the cell or-"

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:32

       Yeah.

   23. BGBrian Greene17:32

       "... how to balance reactions." I see it with my own kids. You know, I've got a 15-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter, and all they are motivated by is next Wednesday's quiz. And I'm like, "Hey, these ideas, they're, they're kind of exciting. They're kind of wonderful." They're like, "No, no, Dad, Dad, Dad. I just wanna know enough so I can..."... you know, do well on, on the quiz. And once the quiz is over, they just sort of leave the ideas behind.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       When did these ideas become attractive to you?

   25. BGBrian Greene17:59

       Well, I was, I don't know, uh, n- not unusual for a scientist, but unusual, I think, in the, in the spectrum of kids in the world because at five or six years old, I was just captivated by mathematics.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:11

       Really?

   27. BGBrian Greene18:11

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:12

       Five or six?

   29. BGBrian Greene18:13

       Definitely, yeah. My dad, my dad was not an academic. My dad was a composer. He was a vaudevillian. He was a, he was a comedian. You know, he would, in the early days, would go around the country and, uh, with a harmonica group and a stage show, that, that's what he did. You know, he liked to say that he was an SPHD, a Seward Park High School dropout. You know? So at, at, at tenth grade, he just hit the road. But he loved scientific ideas. So he taught me the basics of arithmetic when I was about five years old, and then I would ask him to set me problems. And he'd give me these 30-digit numbers by 30-digit numbers, I'd write them out on big construction paper, and I'd spend the weekend just calculating away on these huge, you know, arithmetical problems of no interest to anybody on planet Earth. But to me, the fact that you could learn a little piece of, of math and then do something that nobody had ever done before, that was exciting to me as a kid, and that's really what got me going.

   30. JRJoe Rogan19:12

       So you chose the right path, clearly.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Too strange. …

   1. BGBrian Greene30:00

      fully justifies this. But roughly speaking, you know, anything that has an integrated circuit is the result, uh, beneficiary of quantum insights. So we use this stuff, uh-... every moment of our technological lives. And yet, as you say, for the most part, most of us don't have a, a deep understanding of the reality that's responsible for the gadgetry that the science has, has given rise to. And it's a strange ... Quantum mechanics is an utterly strange reality.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:33

      Too strange.

   3. BGBrian Greene30:34

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:34

      I, I've tried many, many times to try to understand-

   5. BGBrian Greene30:38

      Right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:38

      ... whether it's Sean Carroll's books-

   7. BGBrian Greene30:39

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:40

      ... or, or yours, or any- anyone's.

   9. BGBrian Greene30:41

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:41

       It just ... It doesn't get in.

   11. BGBrian Greene30:43

       Right. And again, it goes back to, you know, our brains just weren't under pressure-

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       Yeah.

   13. BGBrian Greene30:48

       ... to think quantum mechanically. Um, but I assure you, you give me, um, uh, a couple hours. I mean, books are one thing, because it's a one-sided conversation. But you give me a couple hours and a back and forth, and I will absolutely get you to a place where you appreciate and have a sense of what these ideas really are telling us about the nature of the world.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       Here's the thing that I've always wanted to ask someone like you. What do you think was happening before the Big Bang?

   15. BGBrian Greene31:16

       Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a deep question, and a, and a, and a subtle one, and there's sort of two ways that I like to think about that question. One is, it could be that, uh, the Big Bang was an interesting event, but not the first event in the totality of reality. It could have been the first event that sparked the expansion of our part of space, but it could be that there's a grander realm of space within which we sit as a small part, and that grander realm may have been there for a far longer period of time. It may have experienced its own Big Bangs, maybe a collection of Big Bangs that may extend infinitely far into the past. So it could be that the answer to the question of what happened before the Big Bang is, a lot of other Big Bangs, or a lot of other quantum events that were taking place in a larger landscape of reality than we have direct access to. However, another answer is that the very question may not make as much sense as the words seem to suggest. We know how to parse that sentence. We know what it means to talk about the moment before the Big Bang, because we know how to talk about the moment before your birth, or the moment before the Civil War, or the moment before any event that happened in the world. We fully understand the meaning of that kind of sentence. But it could be that when it comes to the Big Bang, the sentence actually doesn't mean anything. It could be that the Big Bang was the place where time itself started, and, uh, Hawking himself had a wonderful analogy to get this across. He said, "Look." I'll dress it up a little bit. Imagine you're walking on planet Earth and you pass by someone. You say, "Hey, can you point me in the direction of north? I wanna walk in the northward direction." They point you, you continue to walk, you pass by somebody else, say, "Hey, which way is further north?" And they point you in that direction. But when you get to the North Pole and talk to somebody there and say, "Hey, how do I go further north?" They look at you and say, "Whoa. That question doesn't mean anything, because this is where north begins." There's no notion of going further north than the North Pole. And it could be that that spatial metaphor applies to time. Talk about a billion years ago, or ten billion years ago, but if you go to 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang, that may be where time started, and you can't go further back in time than the very origin of time itself.

   16. JRJoe Rogan33:35

       That freaks me out.

   17. BGBrian Greene33:37

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan33:37

       See, that, that's one th- that, that gets in your head, you know? What do you mean, beginning of time?

   19. BGBrian Greene33:41

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:42

       Why would time have a beginning?

   21. BGBrian Greene33:44

       Good.

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:45

       R-

   23. BGBrian Greene33:45

       And it could be, it could be that time is an emergent quality of reality. I'll give you an, an analogy for what I mean by that is, we all know what temperature means intuitively. Something's hot, you feel it. Something's cold, you feel it. Your body understands those concepts. What physics has done is it's gone deeper into the concept of temperature and revealed that it is nothing but the average motion of the particles making up the environment. So if the molecules are moving really quickly, you've got a hot environment. If the molecules are really moving slowly, it's a cold environment. So temperature emerges from the motion of particles. So if you have like one particle, you can't really talk about it being hot or cold, because you need a conglomerate. You need an agglomeration of particles to be able to talk about their average motion. And in that sense, temperature is this emergent idea that rests upon more fundamental ideas, the molecules and atoms that make up reality. Maybe that's true of time. Maybe time as we know it is a property that only makes sense in certain environments when there's enough stuff arranged in the right patterns, but fundamentally, maybe there are atoms or molecules of time which, when not arranged in the form that we are familiar with, don't yield time as we know it. Time itself may be a quality of the world that exists here in this environment, but doesn't even apply in other environments that are configured radically differently.

   24. JRJoe Rogan35:20

       Whoa. That's a heavy one.

   25. BGBrian Greene35:23

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan35:23

       That's a heavy one. What also is a heavy one is, what caused the Big Bang?

   27. BGBrian Greene35:28

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan35:28

       Like, why would something smaller than the head of a pin-

   29. BGBrian Greene35:32

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan35:32

       ... become everything that we see in the cosmos?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. BGBrian Greene45:00

      who see this implication and say, "Whoa. You guys have fallen off the deep end. Your theory has imploded because any theory that predicts that kind of a wealth of realities that are kind of untestable because they're so far away that we will never interact with them, that's the kinda theory that we have been trained to avoid, to excise."

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BGBrian Greene45:22

      However, the more f- you know, forward thinking, I like to describe us physicists say, "Hey, uh, math has proven to be a very valuable guide over the course of hundreds of years. And if this is where the math is taking us, it's at least worthy of our attention to investigate it fully and possibly come to the conclusion that this is how reality actually behaves."

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:44

      Jesus. That's the weirdest one, the weirdest one. It's like when people talk about intelligent life somewhere in the universe, that you're out there-

   5. BGBrian Greene45:53

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:54

      ... or a version of you or infinite versions of you.

   7. BGBrian Greene45:56

      Yeah. And it can, um, be disturbing. Like, what do you mean by you-

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:03

      Right.

   9. BGBrian Greene46:03

      ... if there are many of yous out there, each of whom has an equal claim on being you because they've had the same experiences-

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       And-

   11. BGBrian Greene46:11

       ... they have the same memories.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       ... and maybe have made infinite vari- variations in the decisions that you've made through your life.

   13. BGBrian Greene46:17

       That's right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:18

       So you could meet a, a B- Brian Greene your age somewhere out there in the universe that's gone left-

   15. BGBrian Greene46:23

       Made the right choices.

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:24

       ... when you have (laughs) - Or the wrong ones.

   17. BGBrian Greene46:26

       Yeah. Right. Exactly.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:27

       You become a gambling addict.

   19. BGBrian Greene46:28

       Yeah. You know, it's like-

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:29

       Get face tattoos like Post Malone.

   21. BGBrian Greene46:29

       ... a Star Trek episode where you've got, where you've got, like, Spock and evil Spock.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:33

       Yes.

   23. BGBrian Greene46:33

       You know, the one that had the little beard on.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:34

       Right, right. (laughs)

   25. BGBrian Greene46:35

       You know? So there's gonna be a little bearded version of me, a goatee out there.

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:38

       Yeah.

   27. BGBrian Greene46:38

       So yeah. You know?

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:39

       Yeah.

   29. BGBrian Greene46:39

       And, and, and, and thing I wanna stress is, this sounds kooky.

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:43

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      in real life situations, you've already prepared for them.

   2. BGBrian Greene1:00:03

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:03

      You know the path.

   4. BGBrian Greene1:00:04

      Right, right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:04

      That's what that's all about, and-

   6. BGBrian Greene1:00:05

      I, I agree with that. A- and in fact, I have to tell you, you know, i- in one of the chapters, uh, later chapters in the book, I describe...... theories about why it is that we, for instance, tell fictional stories. I mean-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:18

      Mm-hmm.

   8. BGBrian Greene1:00:18

      ... could there be any evolutionary value in two individuals telling each other a story that they both know is false, that they know has no connection to the world around them, but yet we've been doing that since the emer- emergence of language?

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

      Right.

   10. BGBrian Greene1:00:33

       And there are these interesting evolutionary scenarios in which what you're saying is brought to bear in that unfamiliar context. We tell stories because it's the mind's way of rehearsing for the real world, but it's a way of rehearsing for the real world that's completely safe.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:49

       Hmm.

   12. BGBrian Greene1:00:49

       So you can go on all sorts of crazy journeys, to the underworld, up into the clouds. You can engage in all sorts of battles. You can fight gods or demigods. Uh, all these things can take place within your imagination, so you're completely safe. And yet when you encounter something that's analogous to the stories that you've been told or retold or embellished or told to others through other accounts, your brain is more attuned to respond in a beneficial way because it's not as novel as it would have been had you not been engaged in this fictional account of telling stories. So there's value in, in visualizing. There's value in telling stories.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:28

       Hmm.

   14. BGBrian Greene1:01:28

       But it's not the causal part that some individuals would want us to believe it is.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

       Yeah, the only thing that I would say, uh, contrary to that is some people develop expectations based on fictional accounts.

   16. BGBrian Greene1:01:44

       N- yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:44

       And it's a real problem, like romantic movies, where y- some people will expect behavior that exists in these romantic movies only.

   18. BGBrian Greene1:01:54

       Right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

       And it's not indicative of human beings in the real world.

   20. BGBrian Greene1:01:57

       Yeah, yeah. Uh, uh, point well taken.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:02:00

       Yeah.

   22. BGBrian Greene1:02:00

       I mean I think the vital thing is that your brain has had sufficient experience that it can weight these fictional accounts-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:02:09

       Yeah.

   24. BGBrian Greene1:02:09

       ... in a way that can enhance your response to the world, but not set undue expectations of things that are just, you know, only gonna be true in a fictional setting and not in the real world.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:02:19

       It's just so strange to me that we desire those. I mean hero movies, right?

   26. BGBrian Greene1:02:23

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:23

       Like hero movies in particular.

   28. BGBrian Greene1:02:25

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:25

       Especially superhero movies.

   30. BGBrian Greene1:02:26

       Right.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:20:17

   Primitive. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      and will be something that makes this today look like-

   2. BGBrian Greene1:15:04

      Primitive.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:05

      ... the way we look at single-celled organisms or chimps or whatever.

   4. BGBrian Greene1:15:07

      Yeah. I can well imagine that.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:09

      Yeah.

   6. BGBrian Greene1:15:09

      I mean, because we see, you know, small changes in DNA, you know, tiny fraction of percent yields a radical change in what the being that has that DNA is able to accomplish. But at the same time, you, you made reference to psychedelic experiences.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:23

      Yeah.

   8. BGBrian Greene1:15:24

      And I trust you agree, but tell me i- if you don't, that those psychedelic experiences were generated by a slight change in the chemical makeup of the particles coursing through your brain and your body.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15:36

      Sometimes not even a change. Sometimes a, a lot of them, the heavier ones are actually produced by the brain.

   10. BGBrian Greene1:15:41

       Right. So-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:15:42

       Yeah.

   12. BGBrian Greene1:15:42

       ... so, so to me, that's a great piece of data that speaks to the fact that all it is, is particles and chemicals coursing through a structure, because if the mind was somehow external to the physical makeup and the laws describing it, then how would the injection, say, of some kind of foreign substance, or as you say, the brain producing some sort of substance that it didn't ordinarily have within its makeup, why would that be able to have such radical impact on conscious experience?

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:16:17

       The way I would look at it if I was trying to argue against that would be that your eyes and e- the, the, the organs of the human eye are taking in light, and through that light are able to perceive physical objects in the world that they would not be able to do without light.

   14. BGBrian Greene1:16:33

       Yes.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:16:33

       There's, it's, uh, it's something that allows you to see and i- uh, allows you to take in depth perception and understand shapes that the human mind, and particularly these glands that produce these psychedelic chemicals, when experiencing these chemicals, it allows the brain to experience things that might be there all the time-

   16. BGBrian Greene1:16:54

       Yes.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:16:55

       ... but that you cannot perceive with normal human neurochemistry that needs to be enhanced or the levels need to be changed and shifted. And what's v- really perplexing about th- these chemicals is that these chemicals are produced by your brain. And if you do take these, like particularly dimethyltryptamine-

   18. BGBrian Greene1:17:11

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:17:12

       ... is the most potent of all the psychedelic chemicals, if you take that, th- you have these insanely profound visions-

   20. BGBrian Greene1:17:17

       Right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:17:18

       ... which is, you know, leads to a lot of people having these religious spiritual epiphanies. Have you done anything? Have you done any psychedelic experiences-

   22. BGBrian Greene1:17:25

       Uh, uh-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:17:25

       ... that you're allowed to talk about?

   24. BGBrian Greene1:17:26

       Yeah. Uh, I, I, I have. Uh-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:17:29

       What have you done?

   26. BGBrian Greene1:17:29

       Not, not many. And I'm a complete lightweight in this arena, because I hardly drink, you know, I hardly do anything that i- puts foreign, uh, substances into the body.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:17:39

       Mm-hmm.

   28. BGBrian Greene1:17:40

       But, um, yeah, I was in, uh, I was in Amsterdam. Uh, I was, uh, I was there because I was giving a lecture to the Queen of Holland. And I gave the lecture, and my wife and I were both there, and after that was over, we decided to do a little experimenting. Uh, and for somebody like me who doesn't experiment, um, I made a mistake.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:18:00

       (laughs)

   30. BGBrian Greene1:18:01

       Uh, uh, because, uh-

Episode duration: 2:26:40