Joe Rogan Experience #1828 - Michio Kaku

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. MKMichio Kaku0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it.

   3. MKMichio Kaku0:16

      My pleasure.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      It's-

   5. MKMichio Kaku0:17

      Anytime.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      ... very nice to meet you in person. We actually did a radio show together once, remotely, a long time ago.

   7. MKMichio Kaku0:24

      Oh. Hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      I was on the Opie and Anthony Show, and you called in.

   9. MKMichio Kaku0:27

      That's right, yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       And I was there live, yeah.

   11. MKMichio Kaku0:29

       (laughs) Yeah. That was a blast. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       Yeah, it was very fun. To ta- when a person like yourself, you're in this documentary, A Tear in the Sky.

   13. MKMichio Kaku0:36

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       And, uh, for personally yourself, who is a, a very well-respected scientist, to be discussing the subject of UFOs, to me it signifies that there's been a shift in the way our culture perceives these things.

   15. MKMichio Kaku0:51

       That's right. Uh, it used to be the third rail of a scientific establishment...

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       Yeah.

   17. MKMichio Kaku0:56

       ... that (laughs) if you talk about UFOs, you were pretty much relegated to being a nutcase, and the giggle factor kicks in, right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:03

       Yeah.

   19. MKMichio Kaku1:03

       But things have changed then, you know? Uh, because of the fact that the military is now, uh, basically releasing hours of videotapes of things that defy the normal laws of physics. And the military has, has admitted that, quote, "They're not ours."

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       Hmm.

   21. MKMichio Kaku1:21

       Before there was always that ambiguity that maybe it's a new stealth bomber or a new fantastic device being prepared by the military. Nope. The military now admits that they're not ours.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:32

       Hmm.

   23. MKMichio Kaku1:32

       Then the question (laughs) is, whose are they then?

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:35

       Yeah, the 2017 New York Times article, uh, in my mind made, uh, that was a big shift because when the New York Times is reporting about it and saying that this is major news and this is real and there's video evidence that they can't ignore when you talk to high-level people at the government and people like Commander David Fravor, who had that in- infamous, uh, spotting off of the coast of San Diego, when you hear about people like that, that are very reputable, it starts to change the conversation-

   25. MKMichio Kaku2:07

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan2:07

       ... in a lot of peoples' eyes.

   27. MKMichio Kaku2:09

       Right. See, it used to be that one person would see something in the sky and say, "Look, Martha, look, there's something up there." Now things have changed. Now we have multiple sightings by multiple modes. That is the gold standard, the gold standard for looking for these objects. Not just one person, but several people that are reputable. Not just radar, but visual sighting, infrared sensors, uh, telescopic evidence. Now we have multiple sightings by multiple modes, and so the burden of proof has shifted. It used to be the burden of proof was on the people who believed in UFOs. They saw something, prove it. Now the burden of proof has shifted to the Pentagon, to the military. Now they have to prove that these aren't extraterrestrial. And so I think there's been a sea change, a sea change in the last, uh, s- just several years. You know, 50 years ago, there was a congressional hearing and it was coming out of Project Blue Book and there was a lot of laughter and a lot of jokes about thing, little green men in outer space. 50 years ago, that's the way it was. Now things have changed. Now people are looking about- looking at are they a threat militarily? What kinds of sensors do we have? What kind of metrics do we have? We now have frame-by-frame an analysis of these objects. These objects travel between mach five and mach 20. That's 20 times the speed of sound. These objects can zigzag and we can measure the G-force inside the- this object. The G-forces are several hundred times the force of gravity. In other words, any living person's bones would be crushed by these objects, so they're probably drones of some sort. These objects can drop 70,000 feet in a few seconds. Think about that. It can drop a tremendous distance in just a few seconds, and they can go underwater. This is something that we didn't realize before, but yes, they can actually go underwater, and they also move without creating an exhaust or breaking the sound barrier. So, these are things that we can now document frame by frame looking at these videotapes.

   28. JRJoe Rogan4:26

       So for yourself, what was the shift? And wha- how did you feel about UFOs, say like, th- 10, 15 years ago?

   29. MKMichio Kaku4:33

       Well, there is this giggle factor, and, uh, it's the third rail, of course, of your scientific, uh, reputation if you believe in these things, but the evidence is accumulating over the last several years. Now, when I was first approached by Carol Ann Corey, uh, the producer of this film, A Tear in the Sky, I was skeptical. I said to myself, "Come on. I mean, five days? Five days you're gonna look for (laughs) flying saucers in the sky? What happens if the aliens are camera shy and they don't show (laughs) up in five days?" So, I was pleasantly surprised when they actually found something. They actually have photographic evidence of objects that can gyrate just the way the Pentagon has said. And so we now have a sea change. A, a center of gravity has changed with regards to looking at these objects. We no longer simply look at one individual seeing something in the sky. No. We demand hours of videotape, multiple sightings by multiple modes. That's the gold standard now.

   30. JRJoe Rogan5:36

       So what do you think is happening? Do you think that this is something that maybe an- another government from another country has created that far surpasses our abilities, or do you think that this is coming from somewhere else?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. MKMichio Kaku15:00

      Trek. Star Trek would be a typical Type II civilization where they manipulate entire stars. Then there's Type III. Type III is galactic. They roam the galactic space lanes, they play with black holes, like, like, uh, the Empire of, uh, the Star Wars series would be a typical Type III civilization. Then the next question is, what type do you have to be to harness the Planck energy, the energy at which space and time become unstable, where wormholes may develop, gateways through space and time, portals through empty space? You have to be Type II or most likely Type III. Then the next question is, how long will it take before you become Type III? Well, we are maybe 100 years away from being Type I. We're maybe a few thousand years from being from Type II. And we're maybe 100,000 years being, uh, from being Type III.

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:01

      Mm-hmm.

   3. MKMichio Kaku16:02

      And 100,000 years is nothing, nothing on a galactic scale. The age of the universe is, as I said, over 13 billion years old. And so once a civilization reaches the Planck energy, that is a Type III civilization, space and time become your playground.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:21

      How do they make the estimates of how long it would take to develop such technology?

   5. MKMichio Kaku16:26

      Uh, by looking at the gross, uh, d- national product of nations. We know that most nations grow at the rate of maybe 2 or 3% per year in energy consumption. Given that number, 2 to 3% per year, we then calculate how much energy they would have in 100 years, 1,000 years. Now, we are about a civilization, about 0.7. Carl Sagan did the calculation. We're not point, uh, we're not a Type I civilization yet. We're Type 0.7. But that means that by the year 2100, at the turn of the century, we'll probably be Type I. And you can see that everywhere you go. What is the internet? The internet is the beginning of a Type I communication system. We're privileged to be alive to see the first Type I technology fall into our era. What about sports and culture? Uh, the Olympics, the beginning of a Type I sports. Uh, soccer-... the beginning of a Type I fashion with Gucci and Chanel, the beginning of a Type I language. The number one and two languages on the internet are English and Chinese. So we're seeing the beginning of a Type I language. So in other words, the greatest transition in human history is maybe 100 years from now when we become Type I, a planetary civilization harnessing planetary forces. That is perhaps the greatest transition in modern history, and we're about 100 years from becoming Type I.

   6. JRJoe Rogan18:04

      So the Type I, we, we would be able to control weather events and we'd be able to control planetary events.

   7. MKMichio Kaku18:11

      That's right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan18:11

      Like, you, you believe that by Type I, we'll be able to prevent super volcano eruptions, things along those lines?

   9. MKMichio Kaku18:18

      That's right. We'll have the power of an entire planet at our, our disposal and we see the beginnings of that today because that's been the biggest change in the last 100 years. 100 years ago, we existed as a fragmented civilization, nations battling each other for small turfs. Now, we're beginning to see the emergence of planetary blocks, a planetary economy beginning to dev- develop. And the internet, as I said, is the first Type I, uh, telephone system to fall into this century.

   10. JRJoe Rogan18:50

       When you think of technologies that could potentially change the pattern of progression, meaning that, you know, w- we're on this sort of exponential rate of increase in technology, what about something along the lines of what Elon Musk is proposing with Neuralink, something that would change the way a human being's brain interfaces with information and with each other?

   11. MKMichio Kaku19:14

       Yeah, I think that's coming. Uh, first of all, when you look at the history of science and technology, um, the first phase was the Industrial Revolution of 1800, uh, when we physicists worked out the laws of steam engines and thermodynamics. That was the first great transition in human society. The second great transition was when we physicists worked out electricity and magnetism. There you have us the Electric Age with dynamos and generators and radio and television. The third great transition was the Computer Revolution when we physicists worked out the quantum mechanics of transistors. So all of a sudden, we have lasers, transistors, and the internet. Now, we're entering stage four. Stage four is physics at the molecular level, meaning artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. You are now talking about the fifth wave, the fifth force, and that is physics at the atomic level, meaning brain net.

   12. JRJoe Rogan20:17

       Hmm.

   13. MKMichio Kaku20:17

       Brain net is when we harness the power of the brain, connect it to the internet. Also, quantum computers, when we start to use individual atoms to compute with not simply transistors, but no, atomic transistors. These are called quantum computers. They're coming. And third is fusion power. We're gonna have the power of the sun in a bottle in the fourth stage of technology. So Elon Musk, I think, is ahead of his time, but it's gonna take time to develop the, the brain hooked up to the computer hooked up to the internet. So the future of the internet, Internet 2.0, is brain net. When we mentally control the internet, you simply think and all your commands are, your wishes are fulfilled.

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:07

       Hmm.

   15. MKMichio Kaku21:07

       We put a chip in the brain. This has already been done. The chip in the brain is then connected to a laptop. The laptop deciphers the electrical impulses of the brain and then operates the internet, operates a typewriter, operates a wheelchair, operates the lights so that the person who's totally paralyzed can now live a (laughs) , a reasonable approximation to a normal life. We can easi- actually connect a human to a exoskeleton and have them kick a football to initiate the soccer games in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

   16. JRJoe Rogan21:46

       Whoa.

   17. MKMichio Kaku21:46

       Two years ago in Sao Paolo, Brazil, it made headlines when a paralyzed man was hooked up to an exoskeleton designed at Duke University and he kicked the football, initiating the soccer game, international soccer games in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

   18. JRJoe Rogan22:04

       So was that a vi- is there a video of that available?

   19. MKMichio Kaku22:06

       Oh, yeah. Uh, Google it.

   20. JRJoe Rogan22:07

       See, see if you can find that.

   21. MKMichio Kaku22:08

       Yeah, you can simply Google it. You can see him. You see him, uh, walk up to the ball and, and kick the, kick the soccer ball. And so eventually, we're gonna connect the human mind to the internet. So this means that emotions, feelings, sensations can be sent on the internet, not just digital signals, and that means that entertainment is gonna be totally revolutionized.

   22. JRJoe Rogan22:34

       Hmm.

   23. MKMichio Kaku22:34

       You know, Charlie Chaplin used to be this great actor, dominated the movies until the talkies came. And when the talkies came, nobody wanted to see Charlie Chaplin anymore. You wanted to see actors talk. That lasted (laughs) for 50 years. And once we have brain net, then the actors of today could be put out of business 'cause people will want to know what actors are feeling, their emotional state, their sensations, and that's then gonna be the internet of the future, Internet 2.0.

   24. JRJoe Rogan23:09

       D- What is the bottleneck in terms of communication? Is it, uh, the, like, if we do develop some sort of a, a method where human beings can commu- communicate through technology with our brains, uh, via Neuralink or some similar technology, would the bottleneck be language? And if so, would there be a way to create a universal language? Like, we, are we married to the m- the languages that we currently have because of our region? Because of, you know, you live in America, you speak English or Spanish or whatever you speak, but it's primarily English and Spanish. But you, if you live in Chinese, you speak the various dialects. You l- you, well, obviously, there's a lot of languages and that is an impediment to understanding each other.... do you think that it's possible that a universal language could be created? And if so, would it be created in a way that is very different than any language that's ever existed before?

   25. MKMichio Kaku24:09

       Well, we're not there yet. Uh, first of all, the impulses of the brain are digital signals, uh, little blips on a computer screen, and then a computer simply tries to interpret what these little blips are-

   26. JRJoe Rogan24:22

       Right.

   27. MKMichio Kaku24:23

       ... and then tries to construct, for example, an alphabet so that you can type. You can type by thinking about it. But that requires you to take the, the signals from the brain and then have a computer decipher it through the English language into text. You want something different. You want a universal brain language. Uh, we're not there yet.

   28. JRJoe Rogan24:46

       What about a visual language, like a hieroglyphics, like something along those lines? Like, where you could have a, a universal visual language that everyone learns at a young age?

   29. MKMichio Kaku24:58

       Well, we already, at the University of California at Berkeley, been able to put the human brain into an MRI machine which calculates blood flow at thousands of points inside the living brain. Once you know the blood flow at thousands of points on the human brain, you feed that into a computer and the computer prints out a picture, a picture of what you are thinking.

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:23

       Hm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Really? …

   1. MKMichio Kaku30:00

      can roam the moon and not have to suffer from weightlessness, cosmic rays, accidents, loss of oxygen. No, you are an avatar controlling all the movements on the moon. In other words, you can explore the galaxy this way. At the speed of light, the fastest known velocity in the universe, your digital brain waves and information about your brain and thinking can be shot throughout the universe. Now, this is all well within the laws of physics, and this is something that could easily be done within the next 50 to 100 years. However, I'll stick my neck out. I think this already exists.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:42

      Really?

   3. MKMichio Kaku30:43

      I think that aliens in outer space don't use rocket ships. They don't use that rocket ships 'cause they, they crash, they have problems with gamma rays, radiation, food, whatever. They've digitized themselves, placed, placed their consciousness on a laser beam, and there's a laser highway, a laser highway that could be right next to the Earth for all we know, carrying the digitized souls of civilizations, and we're totally clueless. We're so stupid, we don't even know that that's how the aliens move from place to place.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:19

      What other options are there? I mean, isn't there an option of without, uh, with a lack of better words, folding space-time and generating enough power where you can move from one point to another point almost instantaneously?

   5. MKMichio Kaku31:35

      Yeah, there are two ways to do that. Uh, first of all, in 1935, Einstein with his student, Nathan Rosen, wrote a paper about wormholes. So, a black hole is like a funnel. Take two funnels, stick them back to back, nose to nose. Uh, that is a wormhole that connects one funnel universe to another funnel universe. So, I have two universes connected by a gateway, uh, which is called the Einstein-Rosen bridge, otherwise known as a wormhole. That's one way to do it. The second way to do it was done by Mi- Michael Behr, a friend of mine, who was watching Star Trek one day and noticed how the Enterprise zapped across space by contracting the space in front of you and expanding the space behind you so that you do not go to the stars, the stars come to you.

   6. JRJoe Rogan32:31

      Mm.

   7. MKMichio Kaku32:31

      So think of walking across a carpet. You can walk across a carpet, which is the long way, or you can contract and compress the carpet in front of you, expand the carpet behind you, and then simply hop, hop over to the other side of the carpet. That is called the Alcubierre drive. Now, then the next question is, what's the catch? There's always a catch someplace, right?

   8. JRJoe Rogan32:56

      Right.

   9. MKMichio Kaku32:56

      Otherwise, we'd be zapping across the universe today, and that is energy. You would probably have to have energy comparable to that of a black hole. In other words, a Type III civilization would have the power perhaps to utilize wormholes or compress space to go across galactic distances. This, of course, is science fiction, but it's well within the known laws of physics that wormholes and Alcubierre drives, uh, that are there possible within the laws of physics.

   10. JRJoe Rogan33:27

       What kind of an energy source could at least theoretically be used to generate that kind of power?

   11. MKMichio Kaku33:34

       Well, in Star Trek, of course, they talk about the dilithium crystals.

   12. JRJoe Rogan33:37

       Yeah.

   13. MKMichio Kaku33:38

       Of course, there's no such thing as dilithium crystals, but there is something that can energize this machine, and that's called negative energy. Now, energy, as we know, is positive, but there is a situation where energy can become negative, and that's called the Casimir effect, which is actually measurable. We've actually measured in the laboratory. Uh, the Casimir effect is negative energy, and that's the fuel for a wormhole. Wormholes are stabilized by negative energy. In fact, it was Stephen Hawking who actually created a theorem using Einstein's equations to show that all possible wormholes, all of them, are based on negative energy. That's Hawking's theorem, where he proved that mathematically. Which means that if you have enough negative energy, then in principle, you could rocket to the stars.

   14. JRJoe Rogan34:30

       And you could rock to the stars pretty quickly.

   15. MKMichio Kaku34:33

       Oh, instantly.

   16. JRJoe Rogan34:34

       Instantly.

   17. MKMichio Kaku34:34

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan34:35

       So, l- if we're talking about a civilization that is 100,000 or a million years more advanced-

   19. MKMichio Kaku34:41

       Type IIIs, right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan34:42

       Yeah, that's what we're possibly looking at.

   21. MKMichio Kaku34:44

       That's right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan34:45

       So when you have these, uh, encounters like they had with that Tic Tac-shaped object that went from, I believe it was 60,000 feet above sea level to 50 feet above sea level and, you know-

   23. MKMichio Kaku34:57

       Seconds.

   24. JRJoe Rogan34:58

       ... less, yeah. So when you're talking about that kind of speed, possibly that's what you're looking at.

   25. MKMichio Kaku35:03

       That's right. Uh, we're talking about them reaching us through a method that is far beyond chemical rockets. Chemical rockets, as I said, take, uh, 70,000 years to reach us from the nearby stars. While if, this is a huge if, if you could harness the power of Einstein's wormholes or Alcubierre's drive, then you could do this almost instantly, but you would need negative energy on a fantastic scale, stellar scale. In other words, you're basically Type III. So if you are a Type III civilization, then you do have access to the Planck energy, which is the energy of a black hole.

   26. JRJoe Rogan35:43

       So, we're doing a lot of looking at the potential for the future, and we're looking a lo- uh, you know, what we think human beings are capable of doing thousands of years from now. What about... Are we...... are we looking at the potential different kinds of life forms? Like, we're the only intelligent life form on Earth that manipulates its environment in the sense of like what humans do. We build houses and planes, and things along those lines. We have other intelligent life, like orcas and whales, but they don't have the same capabilities that we have. Is it possible that there's something that exists that evolved in a way far different than us that has access to, uh, intelligence beyond what we think is possible?

   27. MKMichio Kaku36:36

       Well, there are three basic ingredients that made us become intelligent. First is the opposable thumb, or a claw, or a tentacle, a manipulation device. Second is predator eyesight, eyesight of a predator. Predators are smarter than prey. Predators have to scheme, they have to stalk, they have to have camouflage, they have to deceive, which is much more difficult than that of a prey, which simply has to run. So, in other words, some kind of stereo eyesight of some sort. Third, language. Uh, a baby learns, uh, you know, several words a day. Uh, by the time they're in high school, they know f- several thousand words. Animals are lucky if you can get maybe 50 or, or so words out of them. So, those are the three ingredients that made us intelligent. And then you ask yourself a simple question, how many other animals have all three, an advanced language, opposable thumb of some sort, and stereo eyesight? Well, (laughs) we're the only game in town. But that doesn't mean that in the universe there couldn't be other situations with different combinations which have these three ingredients-

   28. JRJoe Rogan37:50

       Hmm.

   29. MKMichio Kaku37:50

       ... communication, manipulation of the environment, okay, and coordination of that. Um, that's how we became intelligent, and it could happen in, uh, o- other planets.

   30. JRJoe Rogan38:02

       Do you think that one of the impediments is what we were talking about earlier, that the, the languages are so different? Like, in order for us to share knowledge with people in China, we have to learn their language, to share knowledge with Germany, we have to learn their lang- w- there, there's gotta be some sort of, uh, communication. What if a species developed where they didn't have a language barrier, or perhaps they communicate in a method that we don't understand yet, or that we're not capable of 'cause we live in a completely different environment than them? Like, maybe they communicate from the jump telepathically.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   But what's interesting that…

   1. MKMichio Kaku45:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      But what's interesting that you just said, uh, to communicate things like power hierarchies requires more words, but they have power hierarchies. So, how are they communicating that?

   3. MKMichio Kaku45:11

      Well, I don't know. I'm not an, not an insect scientist.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:14

      I didn't know that they farm fungi. Yeah. That might have a lot to do with it. You may have seen the impressive spectacle of leafcutter ant highway full of millions of bugs carrying cut sections of leaves, grass, or flowers back to their homes. Well, did you know that leafcutter ants don't eat the leaves that they harvest? So, they use this th- to, uh, okay, here it is. Leafcutter ants use leaves as their fertilizer to grow their crop. Fungus. They cultivate their fungal gardens by providing them with freshly cut leaves, protecting them from pests and molds and clearing them of decayed material and garbage. In return, the fungus acts as a food source for the ants' larvae. So, tha- that's really interesting, right, because we know that fungi and, uh, mycelium allows plants to communicate back and forth with each other through the soil.

   5. MKMichio Kaku46:04

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:05

      (laughs) And they, they even use it to distribute resources.

   7. MKMichio Kaku46:09

      Mm-hmm. But I claim that the, uh, number of words necessary to communicate with other entities, like insects, is probably not that large. Uh, uh, a human being, for example, could reasonably work with about 5,000 words. Someone who is semi-educated, went through high school, knows about 5,000 words. But just to create a society that works (laughs) probably requires only a few hundred words.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:33

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MKMichio Kaku46:33

      And that's probably well within the capabilities of insects.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:36

       Is it ... Are we limiting our, uh, ability to th- theorize by saying words? By thinking of words? Is it possible that instead of words, they have an understanding of the tasks at hand without defining them with sounds or with symbols and that this allows them a freedom of communication without all of the baggage that comes with words? Enunciation, context, all those different things.

   11. MKMichio Kaku47:09

       Well, it's possible to record memories now. This has been done in a laboratory and these memories could be universal. Now, how do you do this? Short-term memories go through what is called the hippocampus. It's shaped like a horseshoe. It's at the very dead center of your brain. That's where the hippocampus is. If you put two electrodes, two electrodes on either side of the hippocampus, you can then calculate the, uh, the impulses that go back and forth. You recor- record it like a tape recorder. So, I now have a tape recorder of a memory created by a mouse whose hippocampus was connected to the tape recorder. Then, I take that memory and put it into another mouse.

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:51

       Hmm.

   13. MKMichio Kaku47:51

       Or I play it back to the first mouse after they've forgotten that memory. And bingo. Memories can now be transferred to the same mouse over time or to another mouse. So, this has been done already. So, it's possible that memories may be, in some sense, universal. The memory itself can bypass the English language and go directly to another human.

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:16

       And perhaps bypass ant language. Like, there's no need for it, that they can express themselves without that.

   15. MKMichio Kaku48:23

       Right. This has been done with mice already.

   16. JRJoe Rogan48:25

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MKMichio Kaku48:25

       Now it's being done with primates. We wanna see whether or not primates can learn a simple task, like, for example, drinking water. That's what the mice were trained to do.... drink water, record the memory of drinking water, and then give it to another mouse.

   18. JRJoe Rogan48:40

       Was it a complicated way to drink water? Was it like drinking water from a feeder or something?

   19. MKMichio Kaku48:44

       Very simple. These are simple memories 'cause, of course, this is the first time it's ever been done.

   20. JRJoe Rogan48:47

       Right.

   21. MKMichio Kaku48:48

       And so by doing this, you can actually transfer memories between organisms that seem to be universal.

   22. JRJoe Rogan48:55

       But isn't drinking water a universal thing with mammals?

   23. MKMichio Kaku48:59

       Uh, yeah, but any, any feat that they learn, okay, can, in principle, be encoded in the hippocampus, and then the hippocampus, in turn, its memory can then be encoded into another hippocampus. That's the point, that memories, in some sense, can be recorded.

   24. JRJoe Rogan49:17

       I understand, but how do we know that the memories of drinking water are recorded and transmitted to another mouse? Because-

   25. MKMichio Kaku49:22

       Uh, because they learn skills.

   26. JRJoe Rogan49:24

       Oh, okay.

   27. MKMichio Kaku49:25

       You can transfer skills that the other mouse did not have by transferring this.

   28. JRJoe Rogan49:29

       So skills on, uh, different methods of acquiring water?

   29. MKMichio Kaku49:33

       Yeah. So that different memories can be... And again, these are small snippets of memory. We're not talking about reading a book.

   30. JRJoe Rogan49:40

       Mm-hmm.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   One of the things…

   1. MKMichio Kaku1:00:00

      effort to make a robot walk because every single motion you have to include Newton's laws of motion, mechanics, leverage, and so on and so forth. That's a lotta work. However, bugs, bugs can walk instantly as soon as they're born. How do bugs do it when our most advanced military robot cannot do it? You take our most advanced military robot, put it in the forest and ask them to move around, what happens? They fall over. They, they're upside down like a turtle that's upside down. How does nature do it? Nature does it by neural networks, by rewiring itself after it learns every new task. So, you make a mistake. Well, you learn from that mistake. You make another mistake, you learn from that mistake. It's like when every mother says to their child taking music lessons, "How do you go to Carnegie Hall?"... practice, practice, practice. That's a bottom-up approach. So what ha- we now realize that human beings are both. We have the bottom-up approach when we're children and infants. We learn by bumping into things. That's why, uh, babies bite their toes. Why do babies bite their toes? Because they don't realize that their toes is connected to their body. (laughs) Their, their toe, they think is just an, an alien thing. They have to bite it in order to convince themselves that the toe is connected to the brain. That's the bottom-up approach. The top-down approach is when we go to college. When we go to college, we take courses on literature, philosophy. That's the th- the top-down approach. We now realize you have to have both. You have to have both. One is the bottom-up approach, what's called the neural network approach, and the other one is the top-down approach, which is what most people think robotics is.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:01:45

      One of the things that we were talking about with th- in the nurse outside before we came into this podcast is that I think that what we are now is not long for this world. I think that this thing, this romantic thing that creates music, that can-

   3. NANarrator1:02:02

      (coughs)

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:02:04

      ... that can create a Jimi Hendrix or that can make comedy, create a Richard Pryor. Like, that thing is emotions. That thing is illogical sometimes, impulsive, but it creates these brilliant, moving works of, of art that affect us. It doesn't affect other creatures. I mean, I'm sure if you played a Jimi Hendrix song to a giraffe, it wouldn't give a shit. But to us, it's something incredibly magical. But I think that if you looked at what's possible in the future, that might be more of an impediment than it is an asset. And I wonder if w- with our integration, if we have this symbiotic integration with technology, that that might be one of the bottlenecks that we have to lose, and that our future selves, whatever we become... Like, if we used to be a single-celled organism, we became multi-celled organisms, we became a- ancient primitive primates, we become modern humans, we become symbiotic with some sort of an electronic thing. We, we intertwine with this. And one of the problems, if we look at all the things that are going on in the world, if we look at the greed that makes people become corrupt politicians, if we look at the horrors of war, we look at some of the more terrible things that people are capable of, how many of those things are attached to our ancient primate minds and our ancient primate instincts? And wouldn't it be far simpler and far easier to evolve if we left all those behind? But in doing so, we're gonna lose everything. We're gonna lose art. We're gonna lose love. We're gonna lose creativity and chaos and laughter and music and literature. We're gonna lose it all because we're not gonna be people anymore. We're gonna be more efficient thinking machines.

   5. MKMichio Kaku1:04:14

      Well, some people ask yet another question, which is corollary to what you said, and that is, at what point do the machines become dangerous and turn on us? Well-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:04:24

      Artificial intelligence.

   7. MKMichio Kaku1:04:25

      First of all, our robots today, believe it or not, our military robots have the intelligence of a cockroach, a retarded cockroach, a lobotomized, retarded, stupid cockroach. You put them in the forest, and they get lost. They get lost. You put a cockroach in the forest, they find food, mates, shelter. They do perfectly well in the forest. But I can visualize a time in the future when our military robots have the intelligence of a mouse, and then maybe a rat, and then maybe a rabbit, and then maybe a dog or a cat, and by the end of the century, I think perhaps, uh, the intelligence of a monkey. At that point, I think they're potentially dangerous because they have a mind of their own. They realize that they're not human. Now, dogs... You see, dogs are confused. Dogs think that we are a dog.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:05:22

      Do you think... You met Marshall. You met my dog out there.

   9. MKMichio Kaku1:05:24

      Yeah. I-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:05:24

       Do you think he thinks you're a dog?

   11. MKMichio Kaku1:05:26

       Yeah, because imprinting, when you're very young as a puppy, you imprint immediately on who's the top dog, who's the mother dog. And you're very early in your stage of, of growing up, you know your pecking order very, very clear because they are pack animals, unlike cats. Cats are not pack animals. They're hunter, lone hunters. That's why cats are very mysterious. While dogs are pack animals. They understand the hierarchy, and they understand that you are the top dog. They are the underdog, and they are, uh, you are the top dog.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:06:00

       But if you met my dog, you know that he reacts very differently to people than he does to animals. If he meets another dog, it's a very different experience. I think he knows the difference between a dog and a person. I just think he accepts the fact that humans are the dominant animal, but I don't think he thinks we're dogs.

   13. MKMichio Kaku1:06:21

       Well, he thinks that w- they're his tribe-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:06:23

       His tribe.

   15. MKMichio Kaku1:06:23

       ... because dogs are tribal animals-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:06:25

       Right.

   17. MKMichio Kaku1:06:25

       ... that whatever you call it, we are members of that tribe, and we're the top dog. We're the leader of that tribe, and therefore, they follow.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:06:34

       But I don't think he thinks you're a dog.

   19. MKMichio Kaku1:06:34

       Bu-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:06:34

       I think he's got the ability to discern between people and dogs.

   21. MKMichio Kaku1:06:37

       Well, it's a question of hierarchy. We are at the top of the hierarchy. Whatever you call it, okay? Now-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:06:42

       Right.

   23. MKMichio Kaku1:06:42

       ... what I'm getting at is, what happens when they have the intelligence of a monkey? At that point, they're potentially dangerous-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:06:50

       Right.

   25. MKMichio Kaku1:06:50

       ... 'cause they can scheme.... they know that we're not monkeys, we're alien to them. So I think we should put a chip in their brain to shut them off once they have murderous thoughts.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:06:59

       But don't you-

   27. MKMichio Kaku1:07:00

       Then-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:07:00

       ... think-

   29. MKMichio Kaku1:07:01

       ... the next question is-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:07:01

       Sorry.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:29:28

   Hmm. …

   1. MKMichio Kaku1:15:00

      and they have an image, an image of something sitting on their chest staring down on them.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:06

      Hmm.

   3. MKMichio Kaku1:15:06

      And if you don't believe me, Google it. There's some paintings done during the Victorian era-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:10

      Oh, I'm well aware of it, yeah.

   5. MKMichio Kaku1:15:12

      Yeah. And they are the gremlins.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:13

      Yeah.

   7. MKMichio Kaku1:15:14

      So, it's part of our subconscious mind that we fear this image of a, of a dwarf-like creatures, uh, weak, big eyes, and that's the aliens that we see, uh, in the movies.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:25

      T-

   9. MKMichio Kaku1:15:25

      It's part of our subconscious.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:27

       But, uh, uh, the, the gremlins, the images of the gremlins were always grotesque and terrifying. It's more nightmarish visions than... and mo- seems like it's more connected to the animal world than it is to some sort of a futuristic, advanced civilization tar- type thing. I wonder if we know when human beings started seeing that very specific iconic image, the image of the gray, because that's the, you know... Like, I, I mean, how much of it is through pop culture? We don't know, but I know Betty and Barney Hill were one of the first people that experienced this. You know, ironically, it always happens at night, right? So, it always happens when people are sleepy and the, the problem with th- that I have with that is that we know that when people are asleep, when they're dreaming, the brain releases all sorts of psychoactive chemicals, and that's responsible for these hallucinations and all these wild, vivid imageries. And I wonder how much of what's happening when people see these aliens is just because it's permeated pop culture from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is the, you know, the quintessential alien encounter movie. I mean, that's what they all look like. There are these tiny creatures with the big heads. You remember that movie.

   11. MKMichio Kaku1:16:47

       Yeah. Well, I agree with you that there's a canonical alien-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:16:50

       Yeah.

   13. MKMichio Kaku1:16:50

       ... that, uh, big eyes and a dwarfish body and spindly arms and legs and so on and so forth, but that may have nothing to do with the aliens that actually do exist in outer space.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:17:01

       Right.

   15. MKMichio Kaku1:17:02

       I believe they are out there. I believe that there are intelligent life forms in the galaxy. Galaxy has 100 billion stars and, uh, we know that 100%, uh, of them have planets on average. 100% of the stars you see at night have planets going around them.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:17:19

       Hmm.

   17. MKMichio Kaku1:17:19

       Therefore, they probably have life forms on them, but they don't have to look like us. As I said before, all you, all you need is eyesight and, uh, uh, an appendage to manipulate the environment and language. Beyond that, like an octopus, I believe you could take an octopus, breed it, breed it for a few thousand years, and perhaps it'll become intelligent because it has eyesight, which is kind of feeble, but it has eyesight, it has tentacles by which to manipulate the environment, but it has no language. Okay? But I think it is possible that we could, if we could orchestrate this, grow an intelligent species from the Earth that don't look anything like us.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:18:00

       Hmm.

   19. MKMichio Kaku1:18:01

       So, the fact that we see these alien creatures look just like a, uh, a dwarfish version of us is imprinted in our hippocampus and, and our, our, uh, amygdala of our brains.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18:13

       Is intelligence limited to language, though? Because we do know that octopi do things that seem to indicate intelligence, like they know how to twist jars open, they know how to open things, they know how to manipulate stuff, they know how to climb out of a fish tank, go into another fish tank, climb in, kill the fish, and then climb back into their fish tank. Have you ever seen those videos?

   21. MKMichio Kaku1:18:35

       Yeah. Amazing what they can do, right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:18:38

       Yes.

   23. MKMichio Kaku1:18:38

       But they do these as solitary creatures.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:18:40

       Right.

   25. MKMichio Kaku1:18:40

       They don't do this in a coordinated fashion.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:18:43

       Mm-hmm.

   27. MKMichio Kaku1:18:43

       To build a starship, you had to have lots of coordination, uh, lots of minds put together to create a starship.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:18:48

       Right. I'm not saying that they have the kind of intelligence that we have, but there's a type of intelligence. You can't say that octopi aren't intelligent.

   29. MKMichio Kaku1:18:56

       Oh, no. I think they have a level of intelligence that we've underestimated.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:19:00

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:31:47