Joe Rogan Experience #1829 - Bobby Azarian

1. 0:00 – 0:12

   Intro

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)

2. 0:12 – 3:31

   Complexity science and the book’s big claim: reality self-organizes toward life and mind

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Uh, first of all, thanks for coming, man.

   2. BABobby Azarian0:15

      Thank you for having me. This is amazing.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Well, when I g- got the request and I read the, the title and the subject of your book, I was immediately hooked. I was like, "Dude, I gotta get this guy in quickly." The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity.

   4. BABobby Azarian0:33

      Yep.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:35

      Tsk, yep. How does the... how do we know this? How do we know how the universe organizes?

   6. BABobby Azarian0:38

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:38

      Is this... Are you guessing? (laughs)

   8. BABobby Azarian0:41

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:41

      First of all, tell people what you do.

   10. BABobby Azarian0:42

       I mean, I think, I think it was an intuition that I had, um-

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:46

       Can you tell people, like, what you do? Like, what your field of study is?

   12. BABobby Azarian0:48

       But yeah. So, you know, this is, this is all backed by complexity science, and when I say complexity science, uh, that's really not one field. It's an integration of all the sciences. So, physics, biology, cognitive science, uh, computer science, and, uh, yeah. From those sciences, we're getting a new picture of the universe and, uh, cosmic evolution and the role that life may play in the process. So, my background, uh, I'm a cognitive neuroscientist, uh, I got my PhD from George Mason University. Uh, I was really interested in the problem of consciousness. So, how does the brain create consciousness? What is the connection between consciousness and complexity and cosmos? Um, so, yeah. It, it was sort of an i- intuition that I had when, uh, I guess I was an undergraduate and I started taking, like, all of the basic science courses, like a physics course, and you learn about the second law of thermodynamics and, uh, the kind of popular interpretation of that law, uh, is that the universe tends towards disorder. And that didn't completely match up with, you know, my observations and, you know, what we understood about how, after the Big Bang, you had the formation of planets and stars, and then, on this planet, we see organization all around us. Um, so most of the popular books at that time, like, that was, like, you know, I graduated high school in, like, 1999 and so, popular books were like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History in Time, um, and those books, uh, kind of painted life as this improbable, kind of, statistical fluke, not a regularity. And, um, so, you know, some of those ideas didn't seem quite right to me, and I was really interested in this increase in complexity, and so I started, like, looking up these sorts of topics and I found out about the, uh, research being done at the Santa Fe Institute, which is kind of like the, uh, mecha for complexity science, and then, uh, there was this emerging world view that the universe is becoming more and more complex and it doesn't violate the law of second, uh, the second law of thermodynamics at all.

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:23

       Can we get you to turn your phone off? Or just shut the... It dinged.

   14. BABobby Azarian3:27

       Oh.

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:27

       Just, just shut the... Just put it on, uh, do not disturb or something like that.

   16. BABobby Azarian3:31

       Yeah.

3. 3:31 – 7:07

   Second law of thermodynamics: why “entropy = disorder” became the popular story

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:31

      Um, so somewhere along the line, the idea was that the universe tends towards chaos. Like, why do you think they were thinking that? Like, what was the philosophy behind that?

   2. BABobby Azarian3:45

      So, yeah. It's kinda complicated. Um, the second law of thermodynamics started off being about, uh, heat flow. Um, thermodynamics is, uh, the science of energy or energy flow, and so originally, the law said that, um, uh, heat will flow from a hotter to a colder body, so there's this just natural tendency for, um, heat to kind of spread out and for energy to kind of disperse and dissipate. And, uh, this had to do with, uh, steam engines, and steam engines basically, uh, convert energy from heat flow to, uh, mechanical ene- energy that can power locomotives. So, uh, Sadi Carnot and Rudolf Clausius, two European scientists, um, were trying to understand this in the 1800s and they found out that this, uh, energy conversion process wasn't always 100% efficient, that, uh, some of the energy, uh, some of the useful energy would, uh, get dissipated basically, uh, when this physical process creates heat. And so what the second law said originally was that, uh, the useful supply of energy in the universe was always dwindling, uh, because every mechanical process requires energy to do work and it creates some heat, and heat is basically like you creating body heat right now. You eat food, you metabolize that, and then that energy is dissipated as heat and you can't extract the energy, uh, that was dissipated as heat again, so it becomes useless.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:44

      Mm.

   4. BABobby Azarian5:44

      It's still there. There's the first law of thermodynamics which is about the conservation of energy. You can convert, uh-... one type of energy into another type. But, uh, this, uh, useful supply is, uh, getting turned into entropy. And entropy was, uh, originally, uh, a measure of the quantity of energy no longer available to do work. It wasn't until later that there was a statistical interpretation of this law by a scientist named Ludwig Boltzmann. And he basically, uh, tried to understand the second law in terms of the, uh, uh, I guess the evolution of a mini-particle system. And what he saw was that if you had an ordered system, there would be this natural tendency towards disorder, simply because there's many more ways for, uh, a system of many components to be mixed up and spread out compared to ways to be ordered. So, then the law became about this order to disorder transition, uh, and we hear about that all the time. The popular examples are rooms get messier, they don't organize themselves.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:07

      Mm-hmm.

4. 7:07 – 8:39

   Life vs. entropy: open systems, energy influx, and Schrödinger’s resolution

   1. BABobby Azarian7:07

      Um, but the paradox that emerged from that was that life seems to, uh, defy this tendency. And so the question is, if systems tend towards decay, uh, what's going on with the biosphere and all this organization we see? And Erwin Schrödinger, uh, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, actually wrote a very influential book, uh, on biology called What Is Life? And he explained this paradox. He explained that, um, basically, the second law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems, and open systems have energy coming in. So, uh, the Earth is an open system. Uh, we have a sun, and it's beaming down energy on the planet. And that systems can evade this tendency toward decay, uh, if they can extract useful energy from the environment. For plants, it's sunlight. For us, we need to eat food. Uh, as long as we can continue to do that, we can sustain order against this second law tendency towards decay.

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:21

      So, you were, uh, looking at this idea of the universe tending towards chaos, and it didn't sit right with you. Like, how long did you theorize about this? Like, how- what- what led you to write a book about this?

5. 8:39 – 12:49

   From consciousness to origins of life: emergence over reductionism

   1. BABobby Azarian8:39

      So, as I mentioned, I was really interested in this mystery of consciousness, because, uh, it seemed like, you know, kind of the last frontier of science. Now we know there's- there's lots of mysteries to be solved. There's like dark matter and dark energy, all- all types of stuff. But in the '90s, uh, people were thinking that physics had essentially solved all the major problems. Um, but really it's because physics, it was reductionist physics. Uh, and basically, that approach doesn't think about life and consciousness and human civilization. So, it sort of leaves those things out of the picture. Um, but, you know, you can have a physics of those things too, and that's what complexity science is. So, um, yeah, I was interested in consciousness, but what happened was I found out to really understand how consciousness emerges, and intelligence, um, it really starts with the origin of life. And I'm not saying the most simple life forms are conscious, but what I understood was, you know, you can think about a bacterium, uh, performing a process called chemotaxis. And that's kind of a scary word, but all it means is that, uh, the bacterium swims towards chemical food and away from toxins. So, it has this, uh, uh, very rudimentary, uh, intelligence. And, um, if you're trying to understand the brain and consciousness and intelligence, it seemed to me that you have to understand, uh, life as well. And so at George Mason, uh, there was a professor named Harold Morowitz, and he came from the Santa Fe Institute. So, he's a big complexity guy and one of the premier origin of life researchers. And he was doing this work that, you know, got into the stuff I was just talking about, thermodynamics, because to understand life, you have to understand it as a phenomenon that does evade this tendency towards decay. And to do that, it has to extract energy from the environment. And so he had a book called The Emergence of Everything, which was like looking at the big picture, uh, because life is one emergence, consciousness is another emergence. As the universe gets increasingly complex, new phenomena emerge with surprising properties. And this is a lot different than the other approach that I mentioned, reductionism, which is focused on how nature's simplest components, like particles, uh, act in isolation. So, complexity science cares about how, uh, more complex systems, uh, h- you know, their dynamics, their evolution. And, um, you see that systems, uh, experience, uh, or- or display properties like consciousness that aren't, um, there when the components exist in isolation.

   2. JRJoe Rogan11:55

      So, meaning like the amino acids? What do- what do you mean by-

   3. BABobby Azarian11:57

      Yeah, they're not conscious.

   4. JRJoe Rogan11:58

      Right.

   5. BABobby Azarian11:58

      So, yeah. So-

   6. JRJoe Rogan11:59

      But do we know that, though?

   7. BABobby Azarian12:01

      Uh, no. I know you had on a guest, Philip Goff, who is a panpsychist.

   8. JRJoe Rogan12:07

      Yeah.

   9. BABobby Azarian12:07

      And those people believe that there's a little bit of consciousness in everything. And I don't think that's right. But, um, you can look at the universe itself as this kind of computational machine and it's doing information processing. So, it's understandable to think about, like, everything in terms of information. But consciousness, uh, when I use that word, I'm talking about subjective experience. So, you're having a unified conscious perception of the world.

   10. JRJoe Rogan12:40

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BABobby Azarian12:41

       There's- there's a light that's on. And I don't think there is a perspective, a subjective perspective, uh, for an amino acid.

6. 12:49 – 19:13

   Panpsychism, illusionism, and the ‘hard problem’: what counts as consciousness?

   1. JRJoe Rogan12:49

      What is the argument against that? Like, what is the argument that there is a subjective experience for everything?

   2. BABobby Azarian12:54

      Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, um, basically, uh, consciousness is kind of mysterious still. Um, and, uh, there's the hard problem of consciousness, which, uh, was, uh, put forth by a philosopher named David Chalmers in the '90s. And it basically said, um, we can explain all of the physical processing in the brain in terms of, uh, mechanical processes and interactions. Um, but how- how does the interactions of these physical things give rise to the qualitative world of experience and sensation? And since that's such a hard problem, how does experience arise? Uh, one solution to that was thinking that it doesn't emerge and suddenly, like, poof into existence. That there must be a little bit of consciousness in everything, uh, and that consciousness is fundamental, and that when those things come together to form these more complex systems, the little bits of consciousness kind of add up and create more, uh, richer conscious experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan14:15

      N- so, you don't believe that, but you do ... Well, we can all agree that human beings have consciousness. Everybody agrees on that. That's, like, pretty simple.

   4. BABobby Azarian14:24

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan14:24

      But, like, at what-

   6. BABobby Azarian14:25

      Well, no, actually. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:26

      No? Some people don't believe that?

   8. BABobby Azarian14:28

      So, um, yeah. It's kind of funny. I mean- (laughs) so, the materialist position is, like, pretty much opposite of panpsychism. So, materialism is the idea that there are only material things in the world. And that would seem to exclude consciousness, because consciousness seems to be this immaterial thing.

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:52

      But is it just immaterial because we can't measure it? I mean, there's obviously something going on. There's some process going on.

   10. BABobby Azarian14:57

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan14:57

       So, whatever that process is that, uh, en- enables creativity and communication, self-awareness, correction, like, all those different things that- that ... There- there's obviously something happening. So, it- the idea that you can't measure it, is that just because we don't understand what it actually is? Like, what's-

   12. BABobby Azarian15:15

       Yes, I think so.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:16

       Right. 'Cause consciousness is a thing, right?

   14. BABobby Azarian15:19

       Uh-huh.

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:19

       We can ... We- we're talking about it. It's- it ... Even if it's theoretical.

   16. BABobby Azarian15:23

       It is a thing. So, yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:24

       Right.

   18. BABobby Azarian15:24

       I don't think it's necessarily right to call it immaterial. Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:27

       Right. So, it has to be ... There's something going on. So, is it just that we lack the tools to measure it, or the understanding of how to quantify it?

   20. BABobby Azarian15:34

       We're starting ... Yes, we did.

   21. JRJoe Rogan15:36

       We did.

   22. BABobby Azarian15:36

       And that's kind of why those, um, philosophies got big. Um, well, actually, our- our tools, you know, and our theories that are being used to start to quantify it, one of those theories, uh, interpreted as cer- in a certain way seems to support the panpsychic view, or a- a sort of modified version, saying that not everything is conscious, but that you can have very, very simple systems that are conscious as long as they're integrating some amount of information.

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:10

       So, what I was gonna ask you is, if we agree that humans are conscious, what is not? Is a single-cell organism-

   24. BABobby Azarian16:15

       Oh. So- so-

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:16

       ... conscious?

   26. BABobby Azarian16:16

       I mentioned materialism.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:17

       Yes.

   28. BABobby Azarian16:17

       So, since, uh, it was thought that consciousness was immaterial or kind of defined that way going back to Rene Descartes, they wanted to ignore it altogether. And so, that position is called illusionism, and the idea is that consciousness is an illusion. And, uh, so when you said everybody agrees that we're conscious, yeah, everybody does when they're pressed, but they have this kind of ... A lot of, uh, materialists or physicalists is kind of the- the- the modern term for that position, um, they say consciousness is an illusion. And it's not even really clear what they mean by that. I mean, they explain it, but at the same time, they say they do have experience. Um, so, yeah. It's-

   29. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       They do have experiences, s- meaning they have consciousness.

   30. BABobby Azarian17:07

       Yeah. They have consciousness.
7. 19:13 – 25:47

   Minimal intelligence without experience: bacteria, plants, agency, and self-modeling

   1. JRJoe Rogan19:13

      What, what ... if we go back to single-celled organisms, do we believe that they were conscious?

   2. BABobby Azarian19:19

      So, it's a really complicated, uh, topic. And, uh, I argue in the book that, uh, single-celled organisms probably are not conscious. Uh, but they are these information processing systems, these computational systems, um, so they do have, uh, some type of intelligence or cognition. Uh, you see a difference in the way, um, any living system behaves compared to an inanimate system, like a rock or a trash can. Those things don't do anything. Um, if you see a rock move, it's because like, a gust of wind pushed it. Uh-

   3. JRJoe Rogan19:59

      Right. But couldn't the same be said for trees? Except you're looking at slow motion, you actually do see them move.

   4. BABobby Azarian20:05

      Well, so-

   5. JRJoe Rogan20:06

      You can see them grow.

   6. BABobby Azarian20:07

      Trees, uh ... so, uh, I'm arguing that the difference between life and non-life is that living things are these information processing systems, and that would apply to trees, too.

   7. JRJoe Rogan20:19

      Okay.

   8. BABobby Azarian20:19

      So they're doing photosynthesis.

   9. JRJoe Rogan20:20

      Right.

   10. BABobby Azarian20:21

       And yeah, they might not move the way like, a mammal or some other organisms do. Um, they're very slow. But um, plants will perform, um, something that's analogous to what I explained, uh, about, uh, bacteria doing chemotaxis. They swim towards food and away from, uh, toxins. So that means-

   11. JRJoe Rogan20:44

       The roots grow towards water.

   12. BABobby Azarian20:46

       Exactly.

   13. JRJoe Rogan20:47

       They also allocate resources.

   14. BABobby Azarian20:47

       It's called heliotropism.

   15. JRJoe Rogan20:49

       Yeah.

   16. BABobby Azarian20:49

       So uh, a plant will track the Sun in the sky, so it has some sort of abstract model of its environment. Some sort of statistical mapping of the environment is encoded in organisms, and it gives them this quality that philosophers call agency. And so, agency is kind of the defining characteristic of life. Uh, living systems pursue goals, intrinsic survival goals, while inanimate systems don't.

   17. JRJoe Rogan21:21

       So, consciousness is an integral part of living systems?

   18. BABobby Azarian21:28

       Yes. But you can have living systems, I'm arguing, without consciousness. That consciousness probably emerges with brains.

   19. JRJoe Rogan21:39

       Hmm. Um, what do you say about the way plants react to things, the way they react to predation, the way they react to even the sound of predation?

   20. BABobby Azarian21:50

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan21:51

       Do you know about those studies?

   22. BABobby Azarian21:52

       So yeah, they're, they're definitely intelligent. They're definitely communicating using electrical signals and chemical signals. Uh, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're having a conscious experience. So, do you think that plants have this actual subjective perspective? Is there an observer they're experiencing something, or is it a system that philosophers call a zombie system? Uh, and basically, you will have like, intelligent, uh, behavior without actually having subjective experience.

   23. JRJoe Rogan22:29

       Is that just a guess, though? I mean, it seems-

   24. BABobby Azarian22:30

       That they don't have it?

   25. JRJoe Rogan22:31

       Yeah.

   26. BABobby Azarian22:32

       So, uh, what I argue in the book is that, uh, basically, to have a self, to have an observer or an eye, some sort of witness to this experience, it's not good enough to just store some sort of model of the world. Uh, the model has to start modeling itself, and that brains create mental models of the world. But uh, in that process, uh, the, the individual and the brain is part of that world, so then it starts to model itself. And it's this, uh, phenomenon of the system kind of looking back on itself that creates, uh, a witness to experience, an observer. So, to answer your question, yeah, it's kind of a guess. Um, you know, maybe someone could argue that very simple life forms do do a very simple form of self-modeling. Uh, the biologist Michael Levin, um, would argue that. Uh, and uh, that could be right, but I think we can reasonably agree that it at least starts with life. Um, but I do think it, it probably, you know, requires some more-... sophisticated, uh, information processing, modeling machinery and that it's most likely, uh, to be in systems with brains.

   27. JRJoe Rogan24:08

       (smacks lips) And w- when we're talking about consciousness, we're, we're talking about consciousness... Uh, when we, we're, first of all, we're talking about consciousness in terms of the way human beings view consciousness. But when you get into other animals-

   28. BABobby Azarian24:24

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JRJoe Rogan24:24

       ... at what point... I mean, is it a function of avoiding predation or becoming predators? Is it a function of s- uh, m- foraging for food? Like, what is it that en- enables consciousness to emerge?

   30. BABobby Azarian24:39

       Yeah. So, um, it's all those things. So, uh, an organism must be able to anticipate inv- events in the environment if it's going to survive. Uh, and it must be able to, as we said, like, capture energy if it's going to, uh, evade this tendency towards disorder. And, uh, so it has to model the world.
8. 25:47 – 29:52

   Cosmic significance of life: “the universe waking up” through evolving agents

   1. JRJoe Rogan25:47

      So, when you're talking about consciousness in the universe, do you think that consciousness is a property of the universe that enables things to happen? Do you think that there's a reason why we have this incredibly advanced version of what we accept as consciousness? Like, are we designed for something? Are we building towards something as the universe gets ever and ever com- more complex? Are we a part of that? Because this is like a part of the whole system?

   2. BABobby Azarian26:17

      Yeah. So, uh, I guess it depends on what scale you wanna talk about. Um, you can talk about the brain, uh, emerging and consciousness emerging to, uh, model the world, to, uh, find solutions to these survival problems. But if you zoom out and you look at the big picture, uh, you see that basically, uh, the universe and the matter in the universe, uh, is starting to wake up, uh, when life emerges and you have conscious agents. It's the matter in the world that's starting to experience the world. So, you could look at this, uh, process of increasing complexity, that is this sort of cosmic scale evolutionary process, as the universe itself coming to life-

   3. JRJoe Rogan27:09

      Hmm.

   4. BABobby Azarian27:09

      ... or even waking up. So, Carl Sagan, uh, has this famous quote. He says, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." And, uh, this book takes that statement very seriously. It says it's not just poetry. Uh, literally, the universe is coming to life, not in this pan-psychic view that, you know, kinda says the universe is already conscious. I don't think that's as interesting. It's kind of reducing consciousness to something trivial if you think it's in everything already. I think it's way more, uh, you know, way more interesting, way more kind of psychedelic that, uh, the universe, uh, starts to wake up, um, as a result of this evolutionary process. And so, that would say that life is an essential part of the increase in complexity. And life actually becomes the driver of this evolutionary process. So, this worldview, if you're to accept that, uh, says life's not an accident. It's not transient. Uh, life has this larger cosmic significance. And it's basically assisting the universe in coming to life.

   5. JRJoe Rogan28:22

      When you say the universe coming to life, that means, like, this trend of ever-increasing complexity is a part of the design or a part of just how the universe functions? And that we are, in fact, like, like, the way we structure life, the way we structure civilization, we constantly move towards greater and greater levels of complexity with our electronics, with the, the sophistication of our societies and our cultures. If you go back thousands of years to today, it's a very clear trend-

   6. BABobby Azarian28:52

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan28:52

      ... that things are com- be- So, do you think that's a function of the universe itself? Like, that is how the universe operates? And we would probably find that? If we could travel to other galaxies, we could probably find that-

   8. BABobby Azarian29:03

      Yes.

   9. JRJoe Rogan29:04

      ... all over the place?

   10. BABobby Azarian29:04

       Absolutely. So, it's something that emerges from the, uh, laws and constants of physics and the evolutionary dynamics that naturally emerge from those laws. So, it is built in to the design of the universe. When you use the word design, um, you know, some people could think that you're getting at something maybe, like, spiritual or religious. And so, that's, like, another conversation as to why there seems to be this apparent fine-tuning of the laws to allow for life. And if you believe in this paradigm I'm describing, that the laws don't just allow for life, that they necessitate life, and they necessitate intelligence and consciousness. And so, yeah, it does seem to be baked into the fabric of reality.

9. 29:52 – 35:14

   Design, deism, and simulation talk: fine-tuning without mystical intervention

   1. JRJoe Rogan29:52

      What do you think is going on? Like, when, when you're saying it in this way, you're saying it almost like as if you're hinting that there's some sort of a design-

   2. BABobby Azarian29:59

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan29:59

      ... behind it all.

   4. BABobby Azarian30:01

      Um, so-... yeah, it sounds like it when I say that. There, there are all these different options as to why there could be this fine-tuning. Um, but, uh, w- while the story I'm telling in the book is purely mechanistic, so you can describe this process, which I think is very spiritual and, uh, psychedelic. It's, um, also something that, you know, you can describe and articulate, uh, mathematically, uh, in ter- in computational terms. So, there's no m- mystical force pushing this. It's just, uh, basically, uh, components in nature interacting and evolving and adapting. But, uh, there does seem to be this larger design. So, for example, um, I know Elon Musk is a friend of the show. He believes in this, uh, simulation theory.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:58

      Yeah.

   6. BABobby Azarian30:59

      That we're not in base reality, and that there could be a base reality that co- sort of like encompasses this, and we are maybe a simulated world the way we can create computer simulations and video games. Those agents aren't conscious yet, but could it be possible? Maybe, maybe not. But that idea that we are living in a simulation, to me, is not that different from any sort of intelligent design theory of religion, uh, so you could see, um, a sort of general version of the world's religions as being something similar to a simulation theory that says that this, you know, reality is created by some other intelligent agent.

   7. JRJoe Rogan31:45

      I'm not sure I follow you. So, w- a s- simulation theory is similar to intelligent design?

   8. BABobby Azarian31:51

      Yeah, so the simulation theory is, uh ... Well, it depends on ... Okay, so there's the intelligent design movement, which says that life is, uh, like a product of God being like, "Okay, I'm going ... There's a universe already."

   9. JRJoe Rogan32:07

      For lack of a better word, God.

   10. BABobby Azarian32:08

       " Yeah, and I'm gonna-"

   11. JRJoe Rogan32:09

       Yeah.

   12. BABobby Azarian32:09

       "I'm gonna create life right now."

   13. JRJoe Rogan32:10

       Okay.

   14. BABobby Azarian32:11

       And that violates like the causal closure of the universe, basically the idea that, um, things can happen in the world that aren't caused by other physical causes. Um, so that's a bad theory. Uh, it, it doesn't, uh ... It's, it's not a scientific theory. But the idea that the universe is a simulation created by intelligent agents that are somehow outside of this reality is very similar to, uh, deism. And a lot of our most famous physicists and scientists of history were deists. So, the, the difference between deism and theism is that, uh, deism, uh, imagines a creator that set the laws of physics and then let the system evolve according to those laws. So, many of our greatest physicists, uh, Newton, uh, later, even more mo- you know, ones that came after him, like, uh, Maxwell and, uh, Sir Arthur Eddin- Eddington was a proud mystic. These were men of science. Uh, Kurt Gödel, the mathematician, was religious. Um, so, uh, the idea that this universe has some sort of design created by an intelligent agent, I'm not saying that's the case. But I'm saying, people who are considering simulation theories, there's not much of a like functional difference between those models. Um, you're talking about an intelligent agent that designed this process. Here's the thing. Uh, that agent, even if you're saying it's something like a god, could have been created by an evolutionary process as well. So, all we're doing is acknowledging that this level of reality might not be base reality.

   15. JRJoe Rogan34:12

       I see what you're saying. So, even though it is a biological thing, like, uh, evolution created life, but life created a simulation theater.

   16. BABobby Azarian34:21

       Well-

   17. JRJoe Rogan34:21

       That could be possible. This is, this is what people think.

   18. BABobby Azarian34:24

       I, I guess-

   19. JRJoe Rogan34:24

       They think that if, if-

   20. BABobby Azarian34:25

       Yes, sir.

   21. JRJoe Rogan34:25

       ... if we are right now currently able to make things like virtual reality and Oculus Rift and all that stuff-

   22. BABobby Azarian34:31

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan34:32

       ... that one day, we will be able to create something that's indiscernible from reality itself.

   24. BABobby Azarian34:38

       Yes.

   25. JRJoe Rogan34:38

       So, how do we know if we're not in that already-

   26. BABobby Azarian34:41

       Exactly.

   27. JRJoe Rogan34:41

       ... in the questions? We don't.

   28. BABobby Azarian34:42

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan34:42

       And so, when they ... The laws of probability theory, that's when this comes into play. When they take into account all of the potential life out there in the universe, all the in- potential intelligent life, where we're going, what we will 100% eventually attempt at least to create, which is some sort of an artific- artificial environment. I mean, that's what Facebook is doing with Meta, right? All those commercials?

   30. BABobby Azarian35:09

       Yeah.
10. 35:14 – 44:20

    Inevitability, progress, and steering the train: tech acceleration, metaverse, and risk

    1. JRJoe Rogan35:14

       This is the baby steps. When, you know, you've s- I'm sure you've seen that commercial, right? Where the-

    2. BABobby Azarian35:18

       Uh, no.

    3. JRJoe Rogan35:19

       ... the kids are at the z- th- they're at a painting, and the painting comes to life. Have you seen it?

    4. BABobby Azarian35:22

       No, I haven't.

    5. JRJoe Rogan35:23

       It's very compelling. But it's also interesting because you're wa- l- we'll show them the commercial. You're watching it, and you're like, "Wow. Like, is this a good thing?" Like, what are we saying? Like, you have these, um, these p- these kids, so watch this. So, they're in an art gallery, and they're looking at this painting, and they all step towards this painting, and then the painting comes to life.

    6. BABobby Azarian35:45

       Yeah. It's pretty trippy.

    7. NANarrator35:47

       (instrumental music) This is the dimension of imagination. (instrumental music) Hey, hey. Hey, hey.

    8. JRJoe Rogan36:12

       So all the sudden-

    9. BABobby Azarian36:13

       (music)

    10. JRJoe Rogan36:13

        ... the environment around them becomes just like this painting, and they're dancing and having the best time ever. Look, they're bobbing their head like they're at an awesome concert. This is going to be fun. Is it fucking really gonna be fun?

    11. BABobby Azarian36:27

        (laughs)

    12. JRJoe Rogan36:27

        I'm not sure.

    13. BABobby Azarian36:28

        Yeah. (laughs)

    14. JRJoe Rogan36:28

        I don't know what that is. Like, that's a weird commercial, but it's- it's almost like-

    15. BABobby Azarian36:32

        Makes it look fun.

    16. JRJoe Rogan36:34

        Yeah. It's like, it's- it's- it's- it's a little honey pot trying to drag you into this weird world-

    17. BABobby Azarian36:40

        Yeah. It's-

    18. JRJoe Rogan36:40

        ... that they're about to create.

    19. BABobby Azarian36:41

        It looks cool, I wanna be there. But it's a little scary that it's Facebook.

    20. JRJoe Rogan36:44

        Well, it's, um ... Well, it is a little scary, because the amount of people that use and how quickly it will be adopted.

    21. BABobby Azarian36:50

        Yeah.

    22. JRJoe Rogan36:51

        Yeah. I mean, and what is that? Like, what- what are we doing? And is that inevitable? Like, if we're talking about l- increasing levels of complexity that seem to be inevitable, it seems to be ... Like, I've said this before, but this is m- my thought about people and technology, that I am fascinated by how we don't think about what we're doing, we just do it. Like, if you looked at the- the- the earth, if you looked at the human civilization from afar, if you had no context, you- you had no cultural connection to it, but you watch the way people interact and move, you'd say, "Oh, this is a life form that creates better and better stuff."

    23. BABobby Azarian37:30

        Yeah.

    24. JRJoe Rogan37:31

        'Cause that's what we do. So what ... And also, there's this tendency towards materialism. Like, what is materialism? Well, it's this obsession with objects and, you know, and this romantic idea that those ... that's futile, and you should just be out there in nature, and you don't need much. And ...

    25. BABobby Azarian37:48

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan37:48

        But what is ... Why is it intrinsically? Why is it, like, it- it's inexorably connected to humans, that they want more stuff.

    27. BABobby Azarian37:56

        Yeah.

    28. JRJoe Rogan37:56

        They want better stuff. Well, I feel like because that is the engine that fuels innovation. If you constantly want newer and better things, there has to be a desire for that. And one of the desires for that is materialism.

    29. BABobby Azarian38:08

        Yeah.

    30. JRJoe Rogan38:08

        Materialism is almost like a built-in instinct that enables innovation. And if you look at where that goes, it goes to some sort of symbiotic interaction and connection with electronics, because that's our number one creation. That's the thing that we make that's better than anything else.
11. 44:20 – 54:40

    Authoritarianism vs adaptive complexity: China, information flow, and decentralization

    1. BABobby Azarian44:20

       It's a possibility for an amount of time, but I don't think it's sustainable because ... So, one thing I talk about in the book is, uh, complexity is kind of a function of a couple things. Uh, for a system to be like, optimally complex, it has to have a lot of parts, and those parts have to be connected. So, the more parts with the more connections, the more complex something is. But you also want a diversity or variety, uh, amongst those parts. So, all of ... So, when I'm saying parts, you could ta- be thinking about, um, a civilization, a society, like Chinese society or American society. It's composed of all of these people. These people, uh, basically form something like a social organism or, uh, something like a brain. And because we're exchanging information in much the same way cells in a body or neurons in a brain, uh, communicate through chemical and electrical signals. So, (clears throat) uh, basically ... Yeah, um (smacks lips) , uh, Chinese, um (smacks lips) , ideology, uh, it has one good aspect. They believe in this concept of the interdependent whole. So, people should kind of, uh, care about, like, society as a whole. Um, you should put, you know, the greater good, uh, before your individual good. But, um ... So- so, that will allow the emergence of something like this social organism, which is a natural part of evolution. But, uh, China specifically doesn't allow, uh, criticism of the government and, uh, new ideas, uh, so there's not a diver- diversity of ideas in that culture. And so, the social organism that is that nation, uh, can't evolve, uh, optimally. It won't be sustainable. Um, you need this, uh, diversity of ideas to have the most functional, um, productive society. That doesn't mean in the short term China can't be like, super productive. But when something happens, when shit hits the fan, like we saw with the pandemic ... I don't know if you saw those videos of people just like, screaming out of their apartment buildings-

    2. JRJoe Rogan46:42

       Mm-hmm.

    3. BABobby Azarian46:42

       ... when like, they had all these lockdowns.

    4. JRJoe Rogan46:43

       Yeah.

    5. BABobby Azarian46:44

       When their freedoms are taken away and like, there's some sort of existential threat looming, then, uh, the system gets chaotic. And, uh-

    6. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       Yeah. But it's just people yelling. I mean, it- it- I don't-

    7. BABobby Azarian46:56

       Yeah, no.

    8. JRJoe Rogan46:57

       The- the system's been around for 1,000 years. I mean, China has been functioning in one form or another-

    9. BABobby Azarian47:03

       Yeah.

    10. JRJoe Rogan47:03

        ... as a dictatorship for a long, long time.

    11. BABobby Azarian47:06

        Well, so, uh, with a society, you want this optimal balance of like, top-down and bottom-up control, or, uh, centralization and decentralization. We hear about-

    12. JRJoe Rogan47:17

        Mm-hmm.

    13. BABobby Azarian47:17

        ... decentralization with the crypto and blockchain-

    14. JRJoe Rogan47:20

        Yep.

    15. BABobby Azarian47:20

        ... movement. Um, so China has this like, top-down control, and they don't allow people to express opinions and criticism. So, they're not having that bottom-up influence of ideas, uh, that's necessary-

    16. JRJoe Rogan47:33

        Right. So, they need us-

    17. BABobby Azarian47:33

        ... for this balance. Yeah.

    18. JRJoe Rogan47:35

        ... to steal ideas from.

    19. BABobby Azarian47:36

        (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Which is another problem. Um-

    20. JRJoe Rogan47:39

        Which is fascinating.

    21. BABobby Azarian47:39

        Yeah.

    22. JRJoe Rogan47:39

        I mean, that's a big thing that they do in- in intellectual property theft.

    23. BABobby Azarian47:43

        Yeah. Yeah. I know. So, um, with, you know, these sorts of authoritarian governments, you can get a lot done quickly because people at the top are making decisions. And, um, sometimes, you know, those decisions will be good for the people. But in the long run, I would argue that it's not a sustainable model.

    24. JRJoe Rogan48:05

        And you think this is because of the access of the information also seems to exponentially be increasing? I mean, if you go back to the invention of the printing press to what we have going on today-... one of the things you see consistently is that the access to information increases. And as the society expands, the access to information increases, technological innovation increases, and all of these things work functionally together. And what China's trying to do now is, uh, they're trying to create a bottleneck, right? They're trying to stop that and, and lock things down.

    25. BABobby Azarian48:37

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan48:37

        They're trying to keep people from accessing the full internet, and people are getting around that through VPNs and all sorts of different things.

    27. BABobby Azarian48:44

        Yeah.

    28. JRJoe Rogan48:44

        They're trying to, you know, hide things about Tiananmen Square and all the atrocities of the, of the CCP, and they're doing their best to try to keep everybody scared and locked down. But you think that, like, ultimately, this is only ... They only have short-term success in doing this, but the system itself is just far too complex and expanding, and they won't be able to, like, keep all the water in the net?

    29. BABobby Azarian49:05

        That's what I think. Um, I mentioned that, you know, there are these two, uh, aspects to complexity, where you want a diversity of parts and you want, uh, connections between those parts. And so, us becoming connected through the internet, through blockchain systems, um, uh, allows ... Z- it's basically like creating, like, uh, synapses that are in the brain. You have, like, this, um, structure of the brain where you have 80 billion neurons, and every neuron is connected to another neuron by 10,000 connections. And so, everything is connected. Um, so that's kind of what the internet is doing, and social media and blockchain, and it's allowing for greater information exchange among individuals. And so, when you try to cut people off from the internet, um, you're basically, like, cutting these connections, uh, off, uh, that the system really needs to, uh, do computation. And like, collective computation is what nations do. They are very similar to, uh, standard biological organisms, which are communities of cells working together in an integrated fashion. So, one thing that I talk about in the book is how ... Basically, we can look at, um, evolutionary principles, uh, 'cause evolution is really optimizing systems to be as robust and energy efficient and stable as possible. We can look at these systems, we can look at how brains work, and we can try to model society after those principles.

    30. JRJoe Rogan50:39

        And so, you think that this is a process that is leading towards what? Do you extrapolate? Do you, do you really think that ... Like, do you wonder, like, what humans are actually doing, what consciousness is actually doing, and why the universe has this as a, a tendency-
12. 54:40 – 1:05:02

    Cosmic attractors and the next transitions: from global brain to spacefaring life

    1. JRJoe Rogan54:40

       And, but what do you think the universe wants? Like, uh, what's the ultimate goal out of this?

    2. BABobby Azarian54:45

       So, yeah. So, um, you know, when you talk about what the universe wants, we're already getting into, like, a little language trap.

    3. JRJoe Rogan54:52

       Yeah.

    4. BABobby Azarian54:52

       Because are we saying that the universe is conscious, that it has a conscious intent? I don't think so. I-

    5. JRJoe Rogan54:57

       Well, let me ask it in a different way.

    6. BABobby Azarian54:58

       Okay.

    7. JRJoe Rogan54:59

       Where do you think this is going?

    8. BABobby Azarian55:01

       Well, no, it, so it's, it's good to kind of break that down and be like, "Does the universe have a conscious intent?"

    9. JRJoe Rogan55:06

       Right.

    10. BABobby Azarian55:06

        So, I don't think it does, but I think it has a sort of design. And when I say design, it's something that's not mystical. I'm saying that the laws of physics, uh, are such that, uh, complexity increases, and, um, the universe does have something like a goal. So it may not have a conscious intent, but life emerges inevitably in that the laws of physics place something, uh, you know, analogous to, uh, DNA in an organism. So, the laws of, and constants of physics are sort of cosmic DNA that ensures that this evolutionary program plays out. So, uh, maybe the universe is moving towards something like a cosmic attractor. And an attractor is a term that physicists use to describe, uh, a state of order. Um, so for example, when you take the stopper out of your bathtub, you will get the formation-

    11. JRJoe Rogan56:12

        Mm-hmm.

    12. BABobby Azarian56:13

        ... of a whirlpool, so you get this spontaneous order.

    13. JRJoe Rogan56:15

        Where gravity is attracting the water down the pipe and whoosh.

    14. BABobby Azarian56:18

        Yeah. So, so you have these attractors, which are basically kind of this goal state of a system. In living systems, attractors, uh, are basically states of stability that, that the system, that the living system is trying to maintain against this second law of thermodynamics. And, uh, so, um, it seems like cosmic evolution is a process of, uh, generating increasingly complex attractors. So when I say that, uh, there are these evolutionary transitions, which are versions of phase transitions that I just explained. So, if you look at the story of the universe, it's a story of nature's simplest parts coming together to form larger functional wholes. So, atoms come together to make molecules, which come together to make cells, which come together to make multicellular organisms, which come together to form societies. And now we have something like the emergence of a global brain, which is, uh, the network of humans connected by the internet as well as AIs. And so when humans, uh, leave the planet, like people out there like Elon Musk with SpaceX are trying to get humans off the planet, I'm saying that that's part of this natural evolutionary process. It wasn't just like a decision someone made or, you know, something that we decided to do because we're clever or something. It's actually baked into this process, and, uh, that's because if life is going to continue to persist, it has to get off the planet before its star dies. So it's sort of, it creates like a game clock that forces life to spread. What is the end state? M- maybe something like this cosmic attractor, where some very legitimate scientists have speculated, people like Paul Davies, um, Ray Kurzweil, you know, is a technology guy, may seem, you know, futurists may seem a little bit more out there. But, um, there's this idea that, you know, the universe is evolving, uh, and waking up, and that there could be this integrated state where something like a cosmic mind emerges from this process.

    15. JRJoe Rogan58:39

        Is, uh, is it an egocentric way of looking at consciousness to, to think that the universe is waking up? I mean, we are th- this tiny speck that's riding on one planet that is but a molecule in the vast infinity of the universe.

    16. BABobby Azarian58:57

        Yeah.

    17. JRJoe Rogan58:57

        For us to say, "Oh, one day the universe will catch up with us-"

    18. BABobby Azarian59:00

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan59:00

        "... and be conscious like us."

    20. BABobby Azarian59:02

        (laughs)

    21. JRJoe Rogan59:02

        Isn't that kinda goofy? Like, but isn't it, like, if you think about it, isn't it kind of an egocentric biological function, the idea that consciousness, the way we term it, th- w- thinking about all our problems and the way we fit in with the universe and coming up with solutions for unique situations that we have to deal with, we think that's so amazing? But the universe is literally, they have stellar nurseries out there. They're creating stars.

    22. BABobby Azarian59:30

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan59:30

        We have hypernovas. Stars are exploding that create carbon, which is literally the, the building blocks for all carbon-based life. That's, all that stuff is happening, and we're like, "Yeah, one day they're gonna catch up, it's gonna be conscious."

    24. BABobby Azarian59:44

        (laughs) Well-

    25. JRJoe Rogan59:44

        Like, why is consciousness even important?

    26. BABobby Azarian59:46

        Well, first of all, you need stars and planets to have consciousness.

    27. JRJoe Rogan59:50

        Right.

    28. BABobby Azarian59:50

        So that's part of the process too. The first ordered structures that were created by this cosmic evolutionary process, which includes life, are, uh, those, those ordered structures.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:00:02

        Right.

    30. BABobby Azarian1:00:02

        And, uh, so, um, well, one point you made was that, you know, we're on this small planet. Uh, what the book argues and what a lot of origin of life researchers are arguing is that life isn't improbable. It's probably not only here, that where you have the right conditions, life emerges inevitably. So if you have the right ingredients, it'll cook something up.... uh, and that will be life. So, there, uh, are estimated to be something like, you know, billions to maybe trillions of Earth-like planets out there that life may have emerged on and maybe intelligent life. To assume that we are the only intelligence out there is to say that what happened on this planet is extremely, almost infinitely improbable, and I don't think that's the case. People like Richard Dawkins have argued that, uh, life emerging on other planets will evolve according to Darwinian mechanisms and these new, uh, processes of self-organization that we're describing. And so, if the universe is waking up through life ... and so when I say that, I wanna be very clear that I'm not talking about panpsychism. When I'm saying, "The universe is awake," I'm talking about just, you know, conscious agents like us are awake and the univer- verse used to be all inanimate matter prior to life, so in a very literal sense, the matter in the universe is waking up. So, if there is this process and we find ourselves on this planet at this point, it's, of course, going to look, you know, like there's not much other life out there and that consciousness doesn't have this cosmic significance. But that's just how it looks right now at this stage, and we're already starting to see how technology can bring life off the planet. I mean, you know, couple hundred years ago, people thought it was impossible to fly. Actually, I, I learned this from a friend, there was a New York Times article that came out something like 10 months before the Wright Brothers created the plane that said it would take, like, 10 million years, some ridiculously long amount of time, for humans to invent, like, you know, aircraft. Um, so we can already see that this process, um, basically has no limits. Uh, and, um ... So, the, the other thing you said was that, you know, is it kind of like anthropocentric, uh, to, like, you know, people think we're projecting human qualities on the universe when you say, like, maybe, like, the universe is waking up. But I think that's a mistake to, th- to talk about humans as if we're not part of the universe. We're part of that physical system, so I don't think it's right to be like, "Oh, consciousness is something that only, you know, applies to humans and it's this, like, quirky thing." Um, we are part of the cosmos, and you can't strip away consciousness from the description of the universe without taking away one of the, its most interesting aspects.
13. 1:05:02 – 1:21:01

    Cosmological natural selection: black holes birthing universes and evolutionary fine-tuning

    1. BABobby Azarian1:05:02

       what sort of spiritual implications you might, you know, take from that, you know, that's very subjective. But, uh, let me give you one example of a theory that would explain this design and this, uh, movement towards something conscious, um, that is not religious in nature.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:05:24

       Okay.

    3. BABobby Azarian1:05:25

       So, there's a theory called cosmological natural selection, uh, by a physicist named Lee Smolin, and he put this out in, like, the '90s. And string theorist Leonard Susskind, he, uh, said this theory should, you know, should get a lot more attention. Um, it's kind of strange that it doesn't. Um, people like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, uh, like this theory. So basically, it says, what if our universe, uh, is not the first universe? Um, in this model, basically, uh, so we have singularities, right? We, we know about the Big Bang. That's the beginning of the universe, but we also have black holes that are singularities. This is a little bit complex, but I promise-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:06:13

       (coughs) Okay.

    5. BABobby Azarian1:06:13

       ... it's gonna be simple in a second. So the idea is that when a black hole forms in this universe, it creates a baby universe, so it creates, like, this, you know ... There's this pocket of universes that evolve through this process. Now, the baby universe will inherit, um-... the laws and constants of physics of the parent universe, but with a slight, uh, variation, because nature is fundamentally noisy. Uh, it's, it's not going to give rise to the exact same thing. So now, you have a picture of a universe that gives rise to offspring universes, and, uh, those universes, uh, the ones that are good at creating black holes, uh, will thrive the way organisms that are good at reproducing thrive. And so, then you're going to have this gradual cosmic, uh, cosmological natural selection process, where universes that reproduce are the ones that are favored, and the conditions that favor black holes also happen to be the conditions that favor stable universes that produce life. So over time, even though you start with this, uh, lifeless universe, you will get this, um, tendency to create universes with order, that are stable. And then you can take the theory a little bit farther and, uh, say that, um, uh, an intelligent, technologically advanced civilization can create new universes by creating black holes with something like a particle accelerator. Uh, cosmic inflation, uh, theorists like Alan Guth, people have talked about how it could be possible, theoretically, to create a universe. Um, the idea would be that, uh, since life, uh, technologically advanced life could create universes, you get this natural tendency towards life, not only life-friendly universes, but these universes that become increasingly complex over time. So now, you can explain the fine-tuning of the laws and all this design in terms of an evolutionary process at the level of universes.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:08:39

       So, the, the idea is that consciousness ultimately leads to the birth of the universe-

    7. BABobby Azarian1:08:45

       Uh, so-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:08:45

       ... or a universe.

    9. BABobby Azarian1:08:46

       Yeah. So, so it's interesting, um, you know, it depends on the sort of language you use, because now it's starting to sound like panpsychism again, right?

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:08:55

        No, no, not necessarily. The ... Look, I used to have a joke about this, that, you know, the Big Bang is one of the great mysteries of science, right? They, they didn't, they don't know why it cre- and-

    11. BABobby Azarian1:09:03

        Yeah.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:09:03

        My thought was that if you sp- get enough time and people get more complex and develop more and more technology, and you develop people that are socially disconnected and maybe on the spectrum, and they're super geniuses, and one guy makes a Big Bang button. And, uh, and he just goes, "I'll fucking press it," and he hits it. Boom. And every 14 billion years, people get smarter and smarter and to the point where they can create a Big Bang.

    13. BABobby Azarian1:09:33

        Well, it sounds like you already have this theory.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:09:34

        And they just reset, like a control-alt-delete reset for the universe.

    15. BABobby Azarian1:09:38

        Yeah, we need to create a Wiki page and show you as the founder of this brilliant theory. I think ... No, I th- I think it ma-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:09:45

        (laughs)

    17. BABobby Azarian1:09:45

        (laughs) No, I think it makes sense, but the question is where did they come from?

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:09:49

        Right. Well, yeah. What came first, the chicken or the egg?

    19. BABobby Azarian1:09:52

        Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:09:53

        And why ... But the, the, the thing I'm getting at is like, why is, if ultimately stars die and ultimately they consume all the, the, the gases around them, the planets around them, like, what is so important about biological life? And I guess the answer could be if biological life leads to further and further complexity to the point where further and further competency, uh, the ability to actually restart a universe or create a universe or create the kind of pow- Like, I had Michio Kaku on yesterday.

    21. BABobby Azarian1:10:27

        I heard, yeah.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:10:28

        It was really fun, really interesting conversation. But one of the things we talked about was the different types of civilizations.

    23. BABobby Azarian1:10:33

        Mm-hmm.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:10:33

        That we are about, uh, zero seven to 10 in, uh, l- in terms of like a Type I Universe.

    25. BABobby Azarian1:10:40

        That Kardashev scale.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:10:41

        We're 7 out of 10.

    27. BABobby Azarian1:10:41

        Yeah.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:10:42

        Yeah. And that a, a Type I, uh, t- excuse me, Type I civilization. Type I civilization has the ability to control the weather. We have the ability to stop natural disasters and ward off asteroids.

    29. BABobby Azarian1:10:53

        Mm-hmm.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:10:53

        And that as you get to Type II and then Type III civilizations, which could take, uh, ab- ... What was the timeline he gave us? I believe it was millions of years, right?
14. 1:21:01 – 1:43:45

    UAPs, extraterrestrials, and ‘progress’ taboos: Bayesian uncertainty and cultural distortions

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:21:01

       What are your thoughts on extraterrestrial intelligence and whether or not we are in contact or have been observed by extraterrestrial intelligence?

    2. BABobby Azarian1:21:13

       Um, so I recently wrote an article on this. And, uh, you know, it's really hard for me to, to say whether, you know, we're in contact or anything like that. But ... So I, I will talk about that, that though. I won't dodge that. But I will say that I do think there's, uh, intelligent extraterrestrials, and, um, Richard Dawkins would agree with that. Uh, basically the idea is that on these other planets with sufficiently Earth-like, uh, planetary chemistry, we get life inevitably. And then the book really argues that, uh, there is this, uh ... That the evolutionary process, um, creates this statistical tendency towards more intelligent life forms. Now, that was, uh, in, in, in the 20th century, there was a evolutionary theorist, um, named Stephen Jay Gould who was very influential, and he tried to kill this idea of, uh, the evolutionary process being this progressive process. And that's for a couple of cultural reasons. So one thing, people weren't comfortable with it because it was this kind of, uh, Christian-seeming process that said the process inevitably gives rise to humans, and that, you know, we're super special and that it's all about us. Um, first of all, um, yeah, that's not right. It didn't necessarily have to give rise to humans, but, um, that's not what most of the evolutionary biologists who do believe in this, you know, narrative progress were saying. They're just saying it has to lead to higher intelligence. It doesn't have to be a human made in God's image or anything like that. The other reason he was so against the idea of progress ... And I didn't know this at first. I thought it was mainly, you know, this war between science and religion, where science basically was forced to kind of take the opposite stance of religion. So if religion said, "Reality has meaning and life has purpose," then science kind of had to assume this, uh, opposite stance, which-

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:23:20

       That doesn't seem very scientific.

    4. BABobby Azarian1:23:22

       Yeah. No, and that, that's what's so scary.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:23:25

       (laughs)

    6. BABobby Azarian1:23:25

       No. It's, it's, it's not. And, and, and we are pretty blind to how, uh, culture and social norms, things like that, have, like, really shaped science a- at the time.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:23:36

       Yeah.

    8. BABobby Azarian1:23:37

       Um, so, uh, yeah. What I learned was that, uh ... And he ... And it was from a book called Complexity by Roger Lewin, uh, exposed that Gould, uh, was so against it because the Nazis used this idea of, uh, progress towards, uh, something higher, this sort of ladder of progress, um, to, uh, justify ideas about there being, like, superior and inferior races.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:24:04

       Oh. Okay.

    10. BABobby Azarian1:24:06

        And, and this, this theory that, you know, I describe in the book is definitely not saying there's anything like that. It's actually very important that we understand that, like, for this global superorganism that's emerging, that is human civilization, you need diversity. Diversity's super important. So, um, uh, yeah. The, this idea that there was this progressive evolutionary process, uh, for a long time, uh, um, scientists were just like, "We shouldn't talk about that." Actually, evolutionary theory was sort of banned from every field other than biology because there was this scare of that.Um, so for example, Herbert Spencer, who was a contemporary of Darwin's, he actually was more popular than Darwin in his time, thought that society was evolving towards something higher. And he talked about, uh, social evolution. But his ideas, uh, which were actually really good, got, uh, uh, appropriated by the Nazis and this idea of social Darwinism and survival of the fittest. And it really hurt evolutionary theory for a long time because people thought, "Okay, we shouldn't talk about culture as a whole as evolving, uh, towards something higher or more complex." And it's only been recently that this idea of progress has been revived. M- a lot- a lot of it has to do with the work being done at the Santa Fe Institute and, you know, complexity of science in general. And, uh, so now we're seeing that those ideas, um, were probably, you know, the ideas of Herbert Spencer, he was onto something seeing the universe as getting more and more complex. Uh, this process would occur on other planets so you would get something like intelligent aliens, uh, because, um, more complex niches, uh, emerge. So life starts out simple and it has a simple energy extraction task. Plants get sunlight, bacterium, uh, bacteria can live off, like, chemical molecules, like, that's their source of food. It's pretty easy to capture that. But, uh, a random genetic mutation will cause a change in an organism's design that will unlock a new source of energy. So for example, suddenly life will be able to eat other things. Life... The earliest forms of life were autotrophic, meaning they could survive off, like, inorganic inputs. But, um, then, uh, more complex life emerged that, um, eats other organisms. Now when you have that, now your food source isn't just like, you know, plants. We talked about tracking a sun in the sky, that's a pretty simple energy extraction problem. But if your food source is smart like you and it's trying to outrun you, then you have to, uh, have a lot more sophisticated predictive model encoded in the brain. And, um, basically, uh, life gets increasingly complex because we have a complex world around us. So you should see this trajectory where on alien planets, you would get, uh, a more intelligent system that has more, uh, mental states, more computational states because they can respond to more challenges in the environment. And, um, so they may be out there, but they maybe haven't been able to get here yet because it's possible that it's- everything is emerging sort of according to the same timeline. So maybe-

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:27:52

        Right. But-

    12. BABobby Azarian1:27:52

        ... maybe they're not just here. Maybe they are though.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:27:54

        Right. But our planet is only, what, four point whatever billion years old.

    14. BABobby Azarian1:27:58

        Yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:27:58

        Whereas the universe is 13-plus billion years old.

    16. BABobby Azarian1:28:01

        Yep.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:28:01

        So the concept of... L- like, it's not like we're on the same starting point as every other planet.

    18. BABobby Azarian1:28:07

        No, we're not on the same starting point, but you still need, like, stellar and planetary evolution. So you're not gonna have, like, life emerging elsewhere in the universe, like, 10 billion years ago because you-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:28:17

        Right. But you could have it 10 million years ago easily.

    20. BABobby Azarian1:28:20

        Yes. That's true but the-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:28:21

        So there could be 10-

    22. BABobby Azarian1:28:21

        ... universe is a big place.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:28:22

        Right. But think about life on Earth, right?

    24. BABobby Azarian1:28:25

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:28:25

        Life on Earth, y- you know, if it wasn't for the giant asteroid that hit the Yucatan-

    26. BABobby Azarian1:28:31

        Mm-hmm.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:28:31

        ... we would be dominated by giant lizards. I mean, that would be what was running the planet was dinosaurs.

    28. BABobby Azarian1:28:35

        Maybe not. Maybe there would be some sort of catastrophe such that, uh, dinosaurs wouldn't make it and basically, uh, a lot of the organic material that comes from, like, dead dinosaurs (laughs) , like-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:28:49

        Okay.

    30. BABobby Azarian1:28:50

        ... create, uh... Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:09:11