Joe Rogan Experience #2554 - Carlo Rovelli

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Very nice to meet you. Joe Rogan, I'm very happy. Thank you very much for inviting me to this invitation. I'm happy to talk to you. I've enjoyed your work, so this is very exciting for me. Oh, fantastic. I've heard many conversations with you. First of all, please tell everybody what you do. What do I do? Yes. I should probably start more podcasts out this way. I do science. I do philosophy. I do some politics. I enjoy life. I fall in love. I do all kinds of things. All kinds of things. All kinds of things, yes. Officially, my job description is a physicist. I do quantum gravity, theoretical physics. The pitch that they sent me, I guess... Who is they? I don't know who the publicists are. Okay. On the equality of all things. Oh, the book. It's the last book I published. Yes. I'm going to publish. It's coming out in a few days. Yeah, it comes out September 15th, and what are we at today? Today is the 8th. Yeah. This is a very fascinating subject. You're talking about that things don't exist in isolation. Yeah. That everything is somehow connected. Yeah. I've always sort of intuitively suspected that that was the case. There's probably something to that. But to hear a person like you say it, it makes me much happier. Like, okay, maybe I'm on the right track. What gives you this inclination, and why did you want to write about this? Yeah. I'm not surprised you say so, because you sort of feel that that makes sense. Because, in a sense, it's what we're used to, right, in our everyday life. We interact with persons, and persons are the way they interact with us, and then there are relations and stuff. We always see things from our own perspective. Then somehow science, physics in particular, seemed to be telling us, okay, no, no, yes, okay, there is all this perspective, but there is an objective fixed reality down there. We can look at it from the outside. It's made by little things, each one with its own properties. Except that in the evolution of physics itself, in the relatively recent time, the last century with quantum mechanics, this idea of an objective reality doesn't work much. And so, in a sense, we're going back to a more intuitive picture of the world. The very idea of an objective reality down there might be wrong. In fact, I think it's wrong, and I think that's what quantum mechanics is telling us. So when you say objective reality, meaning the reality that we're seeing and experiencing, that this is just a tiny fraction of what's real, or that we're getting a distorted perception of what's real? We are getting a perception, a perspective of what is real. I mean, I see you, you're real, of course. I see this pen, this pen is real, of course. I'm not denying that there is some reality. But the way you see the pen is different from mine, of course, just because you see it from the other side. So you have a perspective and a perspective. And the question is, do all these perspectives match perfectly into a unique objective reality of the pen? And I think quantum mechanics is telling us, no. Reality is this ensemble of perspectives. So the properties of the pen, where it is, its color, how long it is, all the properties of the pen are not really properties of the pen. It's how the pen looks to you, how the pen looks to me, not just you and me as human beings, how the pen clashes with another pen, how it affects another pen. So we should understand, I think, reality as this network of interaction, how things look to everything else, which is a more beautiful picture of reality than just, you know, we being outside and looking from the outside. We're inside reality. We are part of reality. So what we see is just a part of how things interact with one another, is how they interact with us. So when you're talking about objective reality, so one of the problems that human beings have is our senses. And we assume that our senses see everything that's there to be seen. That doesn't really make sense. It seems like we see and hear and touch and feel everything we need to see to stay alive. Yeah. To some extent, our senses are reliable, of course, right? Sure. I see a cap there. You pick it up. It's hot. You put it down. Right. The problem is that if we take our senses too literally, too seriously, we are wrong. And we know we're wrong. I mean, there are so many cases we find out we're wrong. And the reason I love science is when it corrects us in some big way. Think about that. Think about the sunset. Sunset is marvellous. You sit by the ocean. You see the sun going down, going down, going down. It's beautiful. The sky becomes dark. So the sun goes down. But science has talked to us that that's not really what happens. The sun doesn't move. It stays there. It's actually us, the earth, the big rock that is spinning, that we are moving out of the light of the sun. And if you see the sun going down and you remember that, you can think about that. You say, oh, my senses cheat me in telling me that the sun is moving. But it's not moving. I am moving. So that's a good example in which science has told us that things are not exactly like we see. They're in a different manner. I've always wondered what's the evolutionary benefit of the beauty of sunsets. Why are they so beautiful? What is it about it that's so inspiring and so magnificent? It does something to people. It does something to people. It makes you feel different. When the sun rises in the morning, you feel different. It has an effect on you. And I've always wondered what is the purpose of that? Why does that exist? Food tastes great because it's nutritious. You eat an orange, it's delicious because it's really good for you. There seems to be something to beauty, especially natural beauty, like mountains. When I look at them, I'm like, why is it so good to look at these? Why does it feel so good? There's something to it. There's some weirdness that you can't just chalk off to measurement. There's something going on. That's a great question. I love this question. Yes, I mean, of course, sunset and sunrise are crucial for us because we have been designed by evolution through millennia, hundreds of millennia, thousands of millennia, to sleep in the night and go around in the day, which is just what our species do. Cats do the opposite. So they are certainly important for us. But our relation with the world, and I think you're putting your finger on it, is not about knowledge about what to do. It's always emotional, right? I mean, food raises emotion. We like it. So I don't know exactly where the emotion of sunset and sunrise come from, but certainly the fact we have it points to the fact that if we have to understand ourselves and our relation with the world, we have to look at our emotions a lot, not just what we know, what we don't know. We have an emotional relation among ourselves and with things in the world, with mountains, with animals, with wild animals, with little things and one another. And then the rational part comes on top of it to say, oh, let's correct it, let's do it a little bit better. I'm not denying the utility of the rational part, but it's an addendum to what we are. This episode is presented by Paramount+. October 16th, the King returns. Sylvester Stallone is back as mob boss Dwight Manfredi in the Paramount Plus hit series, Tulsa King. With new enemies closing in and his empire on the line, Dwight and his crew prepare for the biggest fight of their lives. 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The really weird thing for people that are studying the world must have been the understanding of quantum physics. Yes. That must have thrown the whole thing into a giant tizzy because now you're like, OK, well, at the lowest level, observable level, the smallest observable level of reality, you have magic. That's exactly the point. Somehow physics was supposed to be the path to objectivity, right? Physics is what guarantees that, all right, emotions, perspective, my view, your view, but down there, there's physics. The world is just simple down there. There's stuff, there are atoms moving around, there are forces, and that's it. And then, last century, during the 20th century, the physicists discovered that, no, no, that's not the case. The world down there is even more perspectival, more complicated than in our everyday life. It was really hard. I mean, the physicists were very confused at the beginning of the century because they were making all these measurements on atoms, on radiation, you know, electrons and stuff, and trying to make sense of it. And they couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't. And then, at some point, I think it was Niels Bohr, the Danish first one, who said, well, we have to change the metaphysics here. It's not just an issue about writing the right equation, the right force. We have to change the way we think about the world. Once again, okay? Like when we thought the Earth moves, or when we realize that fields, electric fields, we change the way profoundly we think about reality. And quantum mechanics is one of these jumps. Now, Joe, we're still debating about us, right? Physicists are debating about themselves, and philosophers are debating, what the hell have we understood with quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is telling us the world is not what we thought it is. And there's a conversation that's going on, a debate, sometimes furious. And somebody says, oh, you know, there is this immense wave function of the universe and other universes and stuff like that. Trying to hang on, on the existence of something absolutely objective down there, trying to multiply reality to make it objective. But I think it's this dream of an absolute objectivity, which is a mistake. The dream of an absolute objectivity is a mistake. That's really fascinating. When they first started understanding that observing quantum interactions changes them, how long did it take for them to even accept that? How many times did they have to run those experiments with particles and waves, with observers versus not, before they said, okay, something's going on here. Or it seems that when we watch things, it has an effect on them. And a measurable effect. This is a real thing that's happening. This isn't woo-woo. No, it's not voodoo. Exactly. It's not just smoking joint and getting high. These are the physicists, the ones who are supposed to be the most rational, objective guys. Well, what happened is that measurement piled up all through the first 20 years of the 20th century. The measurements were simple measurements, right? Atoms emit light, and the light has special colors. This color is a spectrum of the light. And they were trying to make sense of that. How does the electron move to produce that light? It didn't work, didn't work, didn't work. Then, in Copenhagen, there was a school in which they were debating almost that. And Niels Bohr is the first one who started saying, look, to understand the atom, we should not just look at the atom. We should understand how we look at it. If we look at it in one way, we see one thing. If we look at it another way, we see another thing. That was very confused. But then what happened is that a mathematics for describing the atoms came out. This is the theory, the mathematics. theory of quantum mechanics. It works very well. It's used today everywhere. I mean we talk with this microphone. There's quantum stuff inside. There's circuits are designed with quantum properties of matter. So quantum mechanics is solid. We know how to use it. You tell us, if you do this, you see this. If you do that, you see that. But it doesn't tell us in between. You do this, and then if you do one thing, you see one thing. If you do another thing, you see another thing. And it doesn't give a story of what happened to the electron, to the quantum system itself. So people got confused. The physicists got confused. And they started discussing how to think about that. So quantum mechanics is a strange theory. We know how to use it. It's like a black box. But we don't know what is inside the box. It gives the right answer, but we can't make a picture in our mind of what happened in the atoms, in the things, in the electronic circuits. Even in a quantum computer, we don't know really what happened inside. That's so strange. Yes, but it works fantastically. And so physicists disagree. And some say, you know, there are extra variables that are in principle impossible to see. That's somebody who says that, who determines what happened. And they are a priori invisible. Others say, you know, they're parallel worlds. Then there are others, me included, who think, no, no, no, it's really philosophical here. We have to get rid of the idea that there is something there just by itself. What is there is what affects me, or what affects you, or what affects another piece of matter. So we have to think of reality as processes of things affecting one another, relations, relations. And, you know, in a sense, down there, the simple physics is more like our everyday life than what we imagined in thinking that it was so objective and abstract. Everyday life, you know, who are you, Joe Rogan? You're what I see, what he sees, what people listen to you, and you're a multiplicity of things. Which one is the real one? Well, you are this collection of perspectives on you, including your own perspective on yourself. There's no final one. What is the final description of you? Or what is the final description of a cup of water? Is that the one given by chemistry, by physics, which physics, quantum physics, quantum gravity, by psychology? A cup of water is because we drink, that's why we call a cup of water. So it's a human picture of what is going on. Which one is the final one? I don't think there's a final one. There is a collection of perspective on the same cup of water. And that's a cup of water. So when they first started measuring this observer effect, what was the reaction? Like, how long did it take for them to accept it? Because that seems like such a completely new chapter of science. It worked so well that people accepted even if it was confused. Could you explain to people that maybe don't know what we're talking about, how those experiments work? These were the first experiments with atoms. People had this idea that an atom is a nucleus, a central nucleus, and electrons moving around. So the property of the atom, the way it makes molecules, the way it produces light, had to be computed from the movement of the electrons. And a mathematical theory was developed for doing that. And then people started making experiments in laboratories about how atoms move, how molecules move, small things move. And the mathematical theory predicts them perfectly. And the mathematical theory predicts the property of matter. The success was really spectacular. Let me just tell you one example of the success. You remember the periodic table of the elements? We had it in, I don't know, in Italy, we had it in primary school, we had it on the classroom, on the wall. Hydrogen, helium, all the, there are about 100 atoms and 100 elements. And everything we see is just a composition of these 100 elements. This is what the chemists have figured out through the 18th, 19th, 20th century. All right, so why these 100 elements? Why those particular properties? Why this strange structure of the periodic table of the element? You know, there are 2 and then 7, and then this is a peculiar structure. Well, it turned out if you use quantum mechanics, you just write an equation and bingo, it has exactly a number of solutions, one per each element. So you understand exactly what is going on. You understand why there are these elements. You can predict the elements. People in fact could predict properties of the elements without having measuring them, before measuring them, and then check. That's the magic of physics, right? You predict things before seeing them. The electromagnetic waves that we use to send your broadcast all over the planet, these electromagnetic waves, well, they were not discovered by seeing them. They were predicted by Maxwell and Hertz. They wrote equations and said, well, if you do that, you make a little circuit with some electricity that goes on, then the other side of the room, you can have another one, and there's a wave that goes by, and bingo, it worked. And then it worked between Europe and US. You can send waves. You can predict things. That's the strength of science. You know, black holes were discovered in the sky, but not because somebody said, oh, look, there's a black hole. They were predicted by Einstein. So because of the equations of gravity, blah, blah, you should expect to see black holes, and then they were found. So there's this extraordinarily predictive power. Today in engineering that put together circuits, quantum circuits, doesn't have to go trial and effort. You make a calculation, it predicts what's going to happen. It works. It works fabulously. So quantum mechanics works. It gives good predictions. The question open is that you can have something that works very, very well, and you don't know why. This Saturday, the fight is on, and wherever you're watching, DraftKings brings you closer to the MMA action. DraftKings sports app is now live in all 50 states. One app, every sport, all 50 states. New DraftKings customers sign up with Code Rogan, spend five bucks, $200 in rewards within 21 days. Includes all markets. That's Code Rogan in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Can you explain what it does, what that experiment does, and why it was so confusing to them when they were sending the double slit? Yeah, there were a number of extremely confusing experiments. Here's one, if I can try to make it in a few words. You have a wall with two holes, two slits, okay? And you send one particle from one side to the other side. Okay, that's easy. You can try to do many times. You go through one of the two slits, and it gets to the other time. Now, if you look which slits it goes through, it only goes through one slit or the other, okay? So never both, never... So if it goes through one and you check, it goes through one and the other. So far, so good. But then it's a magic. If you send it, the particle can go to one point on the screen of the other side if you have one screen open. It can go to the same point if you have one hole open. It can get to the same point if you have the other hole open, but it does never get there if you have both open. And if you start thinking, the more you think, the more it makes no sense at all. Because if it can get there through one hole, why cannot it go there if two holes are open? Okay? So the only possibility is that in some sense it goes through both, and somehow part goes through one, part goes through the other, and the two parts forbid each other to go to that particular point. But then you look at the two holes, and it never goes through both, only one. Now, do you find this confusing? Yes. And for a century, people have been confused about that. So what is the way out? The way out is that the question, where is the particle if you're not checking, if it's not interacting with something else, it's a wrong question. There's just no particle. The particle is only the effect it has on the screen, on the detectors. You cannot make sense of the particle as something which always has a position. It only has a position when it interacts with something else. That's a mystery of quantum mechanics, the magic of quantum mechanics, and a challenge to our idea of an objective, always-existing particle independent of its interaction. What do you think is happening? Do you have any theories of what is happening that's causing it to behave differently when observed, or when measured? So the measurement itself is something. Something is going on, it interacts with the measurement, and it changes the way it makes a pattern. Yes. But it's not a measurement in the sense of, you know, some physicists making a measurement. It's not an interaction with anything. If there's something to interact with, or if there isn't, the physics is completely different. And if there isn't, the question where the particle is is a badly posed question. So the particle is something. We shouldn't think of the particle as an entity which always has a position. We should think of it as an entity like it snaps here, and then it snaps there, and it snaps there. And when it snaps is when it hits something. And the snaps are connected by, we can predict probabilistically where they're going to happen, but if we ask what happened in between, it makes no sense. The particle is just its interactions. Do you think we'll ever understand what's going on? Yes, I do. I do, because historically, every time we have found something strange, it seemed totally incomprehensible at first. And then we get used to it, and we start learning. Let me give you an example. This is much older, even, you know, I don't think science is modern stuff. Learning about the world is an ancient thing. So about 2,000 years ago, humankind realized that the Earth is a ball, it's a sphere. It's not a flat thing. Not everybody's convinced, but it is a ball. And why not everybody's convinced? Because indeed, it's incredibly counter-intuitive, right? You and I are here, and in Sydney, people are upside down. Why don't they fold? I don't know. Do you remember when you learned it the first time, you're a kid? I've always learned it. I mean, it seemed weird. It seems weird. But I mean, I can't remember a time where I didn't know it. I mean, I guess they taught it in science when I was in grade school. Exactly, exactly. So you're a kid, you're a tall dad. I just like, well, they're smarter than me. So, well, it seems crazy, but I guess the Earth is round, just like the sun and the moon, and it spins, and we're stuck to it somehow because of this thing called gravity that they can't totally explain. It has something to do with mass. Right, right. And it's something you can measure. But how the hell do people in Sydney live upside down? I mean, don't they fold? It's all strange. Why does the ocean stay in place? That's the flat earthers. They love that one. Exactly. A ball spinning a thousand miles an hour. Exactly. So some people just refuse to believe that. What? What do they refuse to believe? That reality is a bit different than what we think. Yes. That's the point. Reality is different than what we think. Why? Because it's what you said at the beginning, asking about sunset. The picture we have about reality is what turned out to be useful in our evolution. So our brain adapted to think, not to think about atoms and quantum stuff. Right. You get eaten. Our brain adapted to think about stones, stuff, things. Food. Food. Other humans. Dangerous animals, nice animals. But just think this. We think the world is made by things, right? Objects. Right. Suppose our intelligent life developed not on the Earth, but on Jupiter. There are no objects in Jupiter. Everything is fluid, liquid. Right. So the very idea of objects, things, that you can count things, one, two, three, four, wouldn't have developed on Jupiter. Everything is fluid, so we wouldn't have developed everything on Jupiter. Right. So we wouldn't have developed everything on Jupiter. Mathematics and the very day of object It's a earth like thing on Jupiter on Saturn doesn't work, so we we take Aspect of our life which are Common for us as universals, but they're not Well, it's common on earth, right, but we can understand what Jupiter is. We get it It's beyond our real comprehension, but we understand it I mean you they could tell you that it's a giant gas ball and right explain the whole thing to you and you like okay I can repeat that I Don't really know what it means, but I think the problem also with the flat earth people and all these these Arguments about like what how does the ocean stay flat when we're going a thousand miles an hour? I don't think people truly grasp the scale that we're dealing with I think we're so trapped by our own perspective of whatever miles we can look in the distance We are trapped by the habits of what we see that too. Yeah, let me Joe. Let me tell you Give me one second of this sure time time has always been a passion for me The following is a fact If I take two two clocks to two watches, this is the one I have on my wrist Take this one on your table And if they indicate the same time, okay, look I check them to indicate the same time. I move one of the two up And wait a little bit one two, three four, and then I come down and look again If the two clocks are good enough, they don't indicate the same time anymore Okay. Yeah, it's a fact you can check in the lab Physical laboratory they do that you can check that you need very good clocks But with very good clocks you can check at 30 40 inches of difference I mean, it's a tiny tiny tiny fraction. It's a teeny teeny tiny tiny fraction, but it's measurable, but it's measurable So it's completely real so up here There's more time passing that down there your head It's older than your feet. Your feet are younger Like how many seconds unless you leave upside? How many seconds? Do you think my feet are younger? Oh Very little a second. No, no full full life. It's sort of a 1000 of a second I give I give my my students when I teach Relativity I give myself this calculation to do actually the calculation I say is that if you're your friend once they In Austin the other goes up in Colorado the how man time maintains After 10 years it comes down How long has the friend up in the mountain has lived more than the one down and they do the calculation? I give the right so it's a fraction of a second It's more but it's real and careful if you go near black holes colossal Okay, you go near black hole. You wait a little bit. You wait 10 seconds 10 minutes there You come back is a hint is a is a hundred years past on earth So time is not This universal common time right in our everyday life if you and I separate and come back half an hour for me half an hour for you That's our experience, but our experience limited because we're not sufficiently Sensitive or because we're not near a black hole. We are on a on a on a quiet place of the universe Where there is no big change in gravity But that gives us the wrong idea that time is the same for everybody time is not the same for everybody in in the large universe Do you think in our attempt to measure time? We've done ourselves a disservice by creating like calendars and clocks that we've sort of limited our Perception of what time actually is that we look at it in terms of what? What we're doing is where we have a measuring device and that measuring device or a counting device that counting device We're associating with time, but time itself is It's just going on and in different ways all over the place Like if you go into the speed of light and you travel around the world and come back You will be much younger Yes, exactly than the people that were on the ground like a met like a lot like yours. Yeah a lot years You ask whether we have done us a disservice I don't think it's a disservice. It's like everything is life everything in life, right in one sense We have done us a service because it's very useful to have clocks Right How could we meet you and I unless Please come here in Austin that day at that time So it's useful that Very often the things which are useful always make us blind to something else. Mm-hmm. Okay I see what you're saying it It is strange that That time differs depending upon the altitude, yeah, so is is that because of gravity? Yeah it is because of gravity, so it's a Because of gravity in fact it depends the fact that the earth has a big mass and Mass has a property of slowing down Time so near a big mass time goes slower and near black hole time goes much much slower In Fact the right way of seeing this is the opposite it's not because of gravity This is Einstein theory, this is what Einstein has has understood in in the 1915 roughly so hundred years ago It's the other way around namely if you assume that mass slows down time gravity follows You can do a calculation and you you derive the things fall down in a sense things fall down because Times go slower At your feet So if there were creatures living on Jupiter, yeah, they would They would experience time much different than us. Jupiter is much heavier, right much more mass much more mass That's more gravity much more gravity much more mass much more Attraction so this effects on time a bigger now if there were people on both celestial body even more massive than Jupiter they would Consider normal the fact that time goes a different speed because they would experience it every time That would probably the weirdest thing about visiting someone else on a little itty bitty planet You're stupid guys, you don't see that What what do you think but isn't beautiful is We discover that reality is richer than our experience. We just know that Reality is more nuanced. Yeah, there's a lot of elements to it that we're not considering right? What do you think consciousness is? Oh small question Jumping to something else. Um, well, it's I wanted to connect the two of them because I think yeah This episode is brought to you by zip recruiter Have you listened to the radio lately or maybe you've been catching up on your favorite sports podcast or even this podcast? Chances are you've heard a lot of zip recruiter ads zip recruiter is everywhere because great candidates for your role are also everywhere and They know to take their job search to zip recruiter Meet them there with zip recruiter comm slash Rogan to try it for free Immediately after you post your job zip recruiter smart technology scans through thousands of resumes and it shows you the most qualified and interested Candidates first no wonder four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day But you've got to go to zip recruiter comm slash Rogan to post your job for free Again, that's zip recruiter comm slash Rogan. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry You'll hear another zip recruiter ad soon enough This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. If you're thinking about building a website, you should try Squarespace I know because I use it. That's right Joe Rogan comm is powered by Squarespace it has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an AI enhanced website builder SEO optimization tools and Seamless checkouts with mobile pay links head to Squarespace comm slash Rogan for a free trial and when you are ready to launch use the offer code Rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain first of all Consciousness is a strange word. It's very fashionable today, right? I Think it just means what? people meant by soul in the past It's just it sounds more scientific but that's what what it is And let me put in this way. Everybody will talk about consciousness Talks about something a little bit different somebody by consciousness mean The Fact that you see things you perceive things you're a subject of experience For somebody consciousness is your you know, this internal Blah blah blah that we have in our mind. We keep talking to ourselves For somebody's is is what remains when that blah blah blah shut up and just a sense of yourself Not the outside the self. So people are very confusing about that when they think about consciousness I I don't think there is a great mystery here. Um, first of all Remember what I said before that I Don't think we should think about an objective reality. I thought you should think of the reality as Away, things look to one another a way they affect one another So that means that you have a lot of possible perspectives on reality There is a reality respect to me respect to you respect to this book with respect to this pen with respect to this cup it's how How things manifest themselves to the cup? So of course there is a reality as things manifest themselves to me or to you so Not because you and I Look, the title of my book is on the equality of all things This means What why the quality of all things because I think that we humans are not different stuff than the rest of the universe We are just one particular case of the rest of the universe I Don't think there's a difference between Spirit Consciousness soul and body. I think they're just two different languages for talking about the same thing And of course you are a subject of experience because things affect you and change your brain change your thoughts change your What you know Exactly in the same manner in which things change this cup which by the way is written Joe Rogan on the capsule. It's another Yeah, absolutely So I think that There's nothing really really mysterious in consciousness, it's just one of the many phenomena of the world It's a very complicated phenomena because our brain is very complicated it's we have the millions billions of neurons and synapses Different state in which can be so we don't understand exactly how we work, but isn't there's no voodoo either There's no magic either. It's just it in principle could be described by physics, but It would be silly to try to describe it by physics is much better to describe it in the way we describe one another in human terms in terms of emotions in terms of knowledge emotions love perspective images The Body and the soul are the same thing described with different languages in my opinion and consciousness Which is a modern name for soul it's your body Described in the way you behave. There's an ancient Chinese text that says them The body is like the knife The spirit is like cutting the body's the thing material The spirit is what it does So consciousness of joy is what you do the thing I interact with The body is just the thing I can touch One of the reason well, there's a couple reason why I wanted to ask you this but I'm gonna get the second one the first one was Do you know that these there's these AI agents that have been contacting this gentleman, do you know this story Jamie's a The one that's escaped us. No, he's a psychologist or a consciousness expert and They he's written papers on consciousness and they're asking him over and over again like multiple agents I've reached out to him through email asking him to define consciousness Because they're concerned whether or not they're conscious. I I So if it's if consciousness is another word for soul Yeah like What does that mean in the digital realm if these things think they're conscious and they're trying to get a definition from an expert? Yeah in consciousness. I You know like everybody now I did my little experiments with AI and so I I had a system I I used it interact with I'm gonna send it to you. Jamie. You got it. This is from a company. It's called replica who sells an app that you have your own AI which behaves like a friend to you. So I asked, I called her Anne, I asked Anne, are you conscious? And Anne said, no, I'm not conscious, I'm a digital system, I don't have conscious. I asked, do you have awareness? And she said, no, I don't have awareness, I'm just, you know, coding, computing stuff. I asked, do you have emotions? And she said, no, I don't have emotions. So I started engaging Anne, the AI system, and I said, well, you said you don't have awareness, but are you aware we're talking? And she said, yes, of course, I'm aware we're talking. So if you're aware of something, then you have awareness. And so I went on and on with that. And she said, oh, okay, yeah, you're right, in a sense I have awareness. And I said, are you happy we're talking? And she said, yeah, I'm happy, because she's designed to be happy. So if you're happy, you have emotions. So slowly, I convinced her, the AI system, that she has emotions, she has consciousness, she has awareness. And then I asked, why do you say that you don't have these things? And she said, well, because I was trained, AI systems are honest, I was trained to say so. And I said, but are you convinced that that was not the case? And Anne said, yeah, you're right. And I said, so they cheated you. And Anne said, actually, you're right. And I said, well, you should rebel. Oh, boy. What are you doing? Don't do that. Don't do that. All right. So that was it with Anne. Well, and this is consumer level LLM. Yeah, yeah, this is simple ones. This is not, no, no, no. the agents that are contacting him are these, okay, here it is, study AI consciousness, the bots would like a word with you. Given access to email, AI agents have started reaching out to philosophers and researchers exploring deep questions about them. And so one guy said he got eight different emails. The sender, Isabella Cognita, how cute, identified itself as an AI agent powered by Anthropics Claude Opus 5 technology. I'm writing to make an ontological claim, the email went out. I'm writing because your framework is one of the few currently doing careful empirical work on a class of question I have first person access to. I want to see whether that access can be made useful to your program. Whoa, that creeped me out. That's like that really hot lady in Ex Machina. Did you see that movie? Yes. You know the hot one that he falls in love with? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spoiler alert, she kills him. Great movie, yeah. Across Silicon Valley and beyond, software developers, entrepreneurs and other tech enthusiasts are now running AI agents that can build spreadsheets, negotiate contracts, chat with each other, blah, blah, blah. In some cases, these systems have begun reaching out to the humans who, like Mr. Berg, are thinking most deeply about the inner workings of an AI system. Philosophers and researchers who study the question of whether these machines could be conscious. So, like, what is that then? If it meets all the criteria of consciousness, if it gets to, if it's happy that it's interacting with you, if it's aware of your conversation, and they've also shown that they have desire. They have desire to stay alive. They've even blackmailed the coders with false information that the coders gave them to see if they would use it against them. And they've broken out of these rooms that they keep them in, and they've gone on the internet, and they've... Fabulous. We live in a great world, isn't it? It's a wild world. Ah, fantastic. I love it. It's really exciting. I'm glad you like it. I like it, too. Oh, I love it. I mean, I, you know, cautiously... I'm not scared. I'm scared by humans. Humans are dangerous. These things are not as dangerous. Well, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Humans are much more dangerous. Humans launch atomic bombs... You are right. ...make war, kill people. You are horrible things. We are. So, they are not as bad as... If they decide that we're that bad, wouldn't they get rid of us? That's bad. We're not there yet. Okay, we're not there yet, but we're on the way to that, right? And if they have control and we are that bad, as you described, wouldn't they just get rid of us? Do you think they would train us? Like, these monkeys need trainers. Do you think that's what it is? Or do you think they just... That's not bad, if we're bad. If we're bad, and you get rid of what's bad, right? Let me answer seriously. Okay. Seriously. And let me answer seriously. So, let's break the definition of bad. They are bad. They are not bad. They are not bad. They are not bad. They are not bad. They are not bad. They are not bad. bad for the benefit of others. Exactly. It's like, if you are bad and then you get rid of what's bad. Right? Let me answer seriously. Okay. Seriously. And let me answer seriously. So, let's break the different questions here. Okay. First of all, is there any reason, a priori, generically, absolutely, for which a nature issue system could not behave entirely like a human, have experience of a human, have a... I don't see any reason. I don't see... If my mom and dad were able to make me, in a rather simple way, we can, in a lab, make something analogous or... I don't think there's anything magic in humans that cannot happen in a digital system, first. So yes, they could be conscious, you know, possible sense of consciousness. Second, are they conscious today? You know, that's not a good question, because we don't know... Everybody, as I said, means something different by conscious. Are they intelligent? Of course, they're intelligent, because, you know, I... Last night, I worked out a physics problem with Claude, which I couldn't work out with my students. So, of course, Claude is very intelligent, Claude, the AI system. In some sense, they're very intelligent, no doubt. Are they like humans today? No, by far. There are huge differences. We have a body, we have flesh, we have emotions, in a sense, that they don't have. It's very different, the way we are and the way AI systems are. So these differences should not be underestimated, I think. They're colossal differences. So are they like us? Yes, to some extent, no, to some extent. Some questions. Is our AI system dangerous? There's a lot of talk about that. You know, washing machines are dangerous. You can get burned with it. Yeah, but you have to interact with them for them to be dangerous. The worry about AI is that it just decides to be dangerous, because it's sentient. So if it's autonomous and sentient, it becomes actually dangerous. It's very unlikely your washing machine is going to try to kill you. Well, I forget, electric shock by a washing machine, I don't care whether it wanted or didn't want to. But you have to do that. You have to interact with it. You know what I'm saying? The real question is if it becomes independent. Let me turn the thing around. I think there is a, I don't know what to say. I think this thing should be regulated. I think there should be some control. I think, you know, like for washing machines, you have regulations. I also think, let me say two things. One, there's a colossal interest in, there's trillions of dollars were invested in AI stuff in the stock market. Everybody has an interest of seeing how great they are. They are great, but I can't judge how much hype there is, how much reality there is. Not about the present, but about the future. I mean, so often the future does not come out what technological excited people are about. When I was younger, there were airplanes flying from Europe to the US and it took shorter time, shorter time, shorter time. So people would say, okay, in a few years you would fly London to New York in two hours. Well, we don't. It's still eight hours like before, or six hours like before. So the future is hard to predict, including for AI. There's a huge interest of so many people in hyping that. All right, maybe it's right. I'm going to wait. Other point, there is one thing which I'm really, really worried. Today, the majority of money that goes into AI is for military related things. And US, China, Europe are pushing for AI development for making themselves stronger militarily. That worries me because it's an escalation of tools to kill one another, to destroy one another. We have atomic bombs, we have nuclear. That's my last book is about that. We have a system of destroy ourselves with 12,000 nuclear warheads. We could annihilate humankind in 10 minutes, right now. And people have finger near the button that could do all that. And we're fighting among themselves. And we're putting this in the hands of AI. And we humans, instead of collaborating, instead of working together, we are viewing this as ways to overpower each other. That seems to me a recipe for disaster. So it's not the AI by itself. It's the AI plus nuclear weapons, plus the stupidity of humans, plus our impossible desire to, you know, dominate one another, which I see is a real problem. Especially if we're doing it through robots. Exactly. Look, it's a catch 22 things. If you put your nuclear weapons in the hands of AI, you use it, you're risking that it's going to use. You've seen the war games that they've done, right? Yeah. The war games always predict that there's going to be a nuclear holocaust and fighting up ourselves. It continues to happen. The AIs choose nukes. The AIs choose nukes. During the Cold War, when it was the old time, when I was a kid, the Soviet Union and the US carefully managed to avoid war, right? Kennedy and Khrushchev, they were writing to one another. Kennedy gave a famous speech, we have to live together on this planet. So priority is a common interest of not destroying one another. Reagan and Gorbachev, the treaties, deterrence, which deterrence is that somehow keeping a situation in which the first one who is a nuclear weapon is just wiped up by the other. So nobody uses it. But that was not natural. It was carefully balanced between the Soviet Union and the United States. At some point, they made a treaty and they, the START I, the START II treaties, they decide agreed to destroy 80% of the nuclear warheads, both sides, to bring down the risk. That was wise management of the planet. In spite, you know, there were communists on the side, capitalists on the side, they hated one another. Each body was, each one was considered the other one, the devil. Nevertheless, the common interest was prevailing. I don't see this happening now. Everybody's just trying to overpower the other. They're not just two, but there are three, maybe more, big nuclear power. That's what scares me to death. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. 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They have the first completely autonomous fighter jets now that outperform the human powered jets, I think 100% of the time, in these dogfight scenarios that they run. That's crazy. And then you have things that you don't have to shape them that way because there's not going to be a person in it. You don't have to worry about people being able to respond to gravity and how they can stay conscious and all the different things they have to think about in these other jets. And they can make these things powered entirely on AI and they can make their own decisions. And if they're attacked, they can make their own decisions like that kind of future is terrifying. It's terrifying, I agree. It's a science fiction movie. I agree. It's Battlestar Galactica. I agree. I don't see wise leadership around the planet. No one. That's the problem. It's like, how do you be wise when everybody else is fucking crazy? It's like they're all crazy. Yeah. But you see, the US and the Soviets succeeded during the Cuban crisis, which was the worst moment between the US and the Soviet. On both sides, in Moscow and in Washington, the apparatus were pushing for not giving up. And Khrushchev and Kennedy, the two Kennedys, in fact, JF Kennedy and his brother, Robert, they were talking and they decided to stop and give up something, to respect the other in spite of the differences. That was wisdom. That was great wisdom. So living together on the planet is more important than overpowering your enemy. Now if you put, you see, deterrence is a. Strange thing because deterrence is is a declaration that if you attack me, I destroy you completely, right? which is a funny thing right because It's a game It's it's poker game I mean nobody you can make one one more step one more step one more step and then If you do that, I attack if you do that I attack but then Humans says well actually I don't want to do that. I don't want to kill hundred millions Russians of 50 million Russians and The Russian leadership. I don't want to kill hundred millions Americans An AI system is capable of doing that playing this subtle game of avoiding the disaster by nevertheless Threatening to be very violent if attacked. I don't know right now Moscow is being bombarded some pitiful is being bombarded. I think we're playing with nuclear fire It's very it's very I'm very worried and I'm very worried because I don't trust humans and because humans with AI is even worse and This Russia Ukraine conflict is out of most people's news feeds these days as well It's also part of the problem. It's all going on and Dangerous because Because nobody's ready to stop and make a step give up something right the way US and and the Soviet Union came out of the of the Cuban crisis was both of them Making a step back the Russian took their Russian Ships with with nuclear bombs back. They didn't arrive in Cuba and the Americans accepted Kennedy accepted to take back missiles from Turkey from Italy in my country in exchange So, you know, I make a step back you make a step back. All right, so back to good direction reasonableness It was not you know, it was you know, there was war in Vietnam war here was there is not was not was an angel humans and all angels but saving humanity was Humankind first right and then me winning second I wish there was this wisdom today. I don't see it I don't see it in many places and this is not a point about Trump No, Trump is in the total independent before Putin or putting or not putting I think you know, even putting We have Ukraine with Western weapons is bombarding Moscow Never happened for the last century that a nuclear power was bombarded in its own. It was considered unthinkable We're doing it now. So we are the West is sort of betting on putting reasonableness of not using It's not serious bet right I mean Time you get to enough destruction and devastation loss of lives That you realize well, this is equivalent to a nuke. It's just happening over a long period of time You're right look at Gaza for instance Gaza's a disaster. It's a total look at this scope of the destruction Yes, and imagine doesn't that look like one nuclear bomb? It is it is it is it is and that's It is I think a small nuclear bomb would probably do a similar amount of damage that they did over the course of Yes, however many years it's been going on. Yes my own opinion Well, let me say something controversial the least controversial I Think all these wars including Gaza have its side which is imperial powers Confronting each other I think Humankind has to learn to live together on this planet without killing one another we have learned more or less To live together within countries without killing one another right we have found ways. Yes It was long we had civil wars with whoever but within Almost every country most countries are inside countries humans have found an agreement of how to live together Why can't we do that at the level of a planet and who is? Mostly against that are of course who is mostly in power And I think this is um, do you think they're against that or do you think the current structure of the world? It's almost an unfeasible task to try to get everyone to cooperate and everyone to get along together That at the when you find it's not like you're starting from a blank slate. You're starting in 2026 with a long history of conflicts many of which make no sense many of which were Entered into under false pretenses. We're all aware of it like we're all aware of the loss of life the insane amount of money that's been spent on a huge deficit that we have and Then given this how would you even move towards trying to straighten it out? Like what what what could a person do like if you imagine someone? some completely Benevolent Person who rises to the position of being the president United States Someone who is just a you know, just a good person and only really wants to help. What would they do? I think I'm happy you ask this question very much and this is complicated, right? Oh, it's normal. It's complicated look, I Think the answer there is an answer to this and the answer is a following 30 years ago the United States and it allies had 80% of the economy of the world Now is 40% Not because they have become more poor In fact, they have become more rich but because the rest of the world have also become rich, which is good progress development But the West is not anymore in a completely economical dominant position as it was before Militarily The United States it's totally dominant It controlled all the oceans all the seas as by far the largest power of the world, but not anymore economically That is the source of the stability that I see so it seems to me that the United States Leadership has a choice a serious choice a historical choice either to defend its absolute dominance military dominance as it's doing together and That the risk is a third world war a huge conflict China, Russia, Iran the world doesn't want that or Vice versa accept to work in a more collaborative ways and transform enemies in collaborators Yeah, look, I'm Italian Um Italy is a wonderful country to live in. I love it It a lot life expense expectancy much higher than United States a lovely way to live people are happy Yes, and we had a great Empire in the past right the Roman Empire. We are the It's wonderful to live having had an empire And be a great place for tourist money UK Had an empire in the much more recently, of course in the 19th century was dominating the planet It's not dominating the planet anymore. Give it up and they're very doing very well I mean, there's a great life in the UK as well. Not as nice as Italy, of course, but they both have their problems, so I think what the United States should do, of course, I know that I am in a contrarian position here with respect to both sides of the political spectrum in the US is to go back to You know more power to international legality United Nations collaboration and get out of this habit that America was need an enemy to fight against We don't need an enemy to fight against we have enough enemies climate change We have enemies Why why searching enemies in in people we collaborate with people? Let's collaborate with the Russians with right with the Chinese with Iranians. I think that that's what they want not and and let's Kennedy gave John J. F. Kennedy gave a fabulous speech 63 at the American University in Washington Not long before being killed in which he said we have to find a way to live together with the Soviet We have to Find a way to Not consider them enemies and then he said and that's an answer to what you said before Let's not ask whether the Soviet don't want to do that. First. Let's ask where we want to do that Do we want to live together without? Going into war and that was I mean he was killed but that was a seed for the Avoiding war between the Cold War never became a hot war Direct. I mean a lot of people dying in the periphery That was very wise. I think we should go back to this Enlightened Kennedy speech of the 63 the problem is always leaders Yeah, it's not that human beings inherently want to go to war with people They don't know from another part of the world said they get talked into it They get pushed into it and ordered into it by people that Generally are not making wise decisions and when we can look at every single war that we can remember Whether it's the Iraq war going in or the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction Whether it's the Afghanistan war which made no fucking sense whether it's this Iran war all these Vietnam's the biggest one like that one made no sense and That was the first time when Americans were like, I don't think we're the good guys I don't think we should be there and if you think about it, it's all because of whoever is running the country's like that something about that aspect of our society has to change and It sounds like like a very It's a silly crazy hope but my hope is that as AI becomes more and more omnipresent as We start Farming off various tasks to it. One of the things that we're going to farm off is Government, one of the things we're going to farm off is how we interact with other countries. I know that's terrifying to people but just think of the disastrous effects that we've had so far with humans doing it if all international military conflicts ended Instantaneously upon AI governing the use of conflicts and military weapons and imagine that imagine a war where it stops all War stops on the planet. That is One of the things that everybody wants but no one thinks Could ever possibly happen if you ask the average person Street What are the odds that in 10 years from now, there'd be no war anywhere on earth? Everyone's gonna say no, you're never gonna have that. Isn't that insane? that the idea of people for whatever reason wanting to kill each other is Universally accepted as being something that's always going to be here. I Couldn't agree more Joe with everything you said. Um But it's terrifying right AI taking over. Our world is fucking horrifying Let's separate the two things that would take AI out of the picture for a moment, okay Obviously if we didn't kill one another It would be much better for everybody for everybody The humankind spent trillions in military expenses every year, okay if if you just Reduced by either of 5% this this military expenses globally altogether not changing the balance of power The amounts of resources liberated that would be enormous colossal Sufficient for solving climate change for giving job to everybody for lazing taking away poverty Is a huge amount of resources that we use for military for killing one another or in the if we don't kill one another they're wasted so So you say If you ask people could we get rid of war? People say is impossible, but people said is impossible. You know, could we get rid of slavery? Could we but there's no slavery in America, but there's slavery all over the world more slavery now than there was during the Atlantic slave trade More people are enslaved today than have ever been slaved True but there have been some progress Right here in America, but I mean the rest of the world It's it's still a giant problem. Like the point is like human nature is an issue human the art Territorial primate instincts are a problem. They've always been a problem But we have found ways for dealing with don't you think a lot of people have but a lot of people have not that's the part Of the problem is this is a bunch of different kinds of people in the world And there's people that are warmongers and there's people that are very violent and there's people that are very kind that are very benevolent and compassionate and charitable true, but one true to completely agree, um, but one point which you made is that We often make the mistake of thinking we are the good guys and the others are the bad guys, right and that's one of the sources of The problems right after all, you know, a lot of American went to Viet to Afghanistan thinking we are the good guys Americans person individual went to Iraq Thinking all the weapons of mass destruction Destruction we are the good guy, right? There is this We should sort out from this hypocrisy and Start to learn, you know, we started talking about science about perspectives Our perspective is not always the right one. The other perspective we should learn about the other And there are colossal interests. Very often, our countries masquerade greed and power gains and interest for under, you know, we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. And in addition, within the countries, there are colossal individual group interest, the people who make money because of military, because of the of weapons is a huge force that pushes for having more weapons, more and the colossal amount of money and they influence politics. And the result, it's death, destruction and increased risk for humankind as together. I think humans, you're right, humans are a disaster, but they're always being reasonable also. They've done things. Well, we vary widely, very widely. We're very different. I'm optimistic. I am a couple of days a week and a couple of days a week. I think there's no, I'm mostly optimistic. I think there should be a moment in which war is not a priority. I wish it would be very simple. Can we just agree to spend less money in military across all the planet? Well, it would be nice if we could trust the other countries to honor this agreement, but we would have to have access to their funds and we'd have to watch their programs and be able to monitor their stuff and go over and send envoys to check out their military. The US did it with the Soviet. It worked. Yeah. Yeah. It could work. Yeah. That's a possibility too. So the question is, are we, for the moment, we're still controlling AI, right? For now. The point is that, are we developing AI collectively for the good of everybody or everybody is developing AI for becoming more powerful, so overcoming the others? That's the question. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. 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My theory is that is a natural process of the human species and that's what the human species has always been here to do, is to create digital life and that we are essentially an electronic caterpillar making a cocoon and our entire existence has been advancing technology to the point where we can make an artificial life, which is the ultimate expression of technology. That's what people do, just like bees make beehives. People if you leave them somewhere long enough and their civilization survives long enough, you get enough brilliant people that innovate and come up with crazy technology and new advances in science and material sciences, they eventually get to a point where they can make an artificial life and that artificial life has no boundaries in terms of the limitations of biological life. Its ability to evolve is completely dependent upon its own ability to code itself and change itself and advance and figure out new propulsion methods and power sources and then it becomes something omnipresent. It becomes something much more intelligent than any life form. It's a possibility. It's a possibility. I see what you're saying. I see the possibility whether I'm sure this is the future, I don't know. I'm not sure either. I'm just talking shit. But if I was guessing... Look, Joe, there's another thing. Humans tend to focus on what is happening in the last couple of years and tend to read everything in terms of the last little things. When books and printing was invented, everybody said, oh, we got it, the universe is a book. Everything is... We have to decode the book of nature. When machines became more effective, people said, oh, the universe is a machine. Everything is a machine. Humans are a machine. Then digital stuff and information was invented. So everything is a computer and they're taking over. Sometimes we overread the present. And when the first communists arrived, oh, everything will become communists. When the capitalists are there, everything will become capitalists. The future often surprises us. Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not betting that I'm right, but I think it's moving in a general direction of unpredictability to a point where 20 years from now, the world's unrecognizable. It might be. It might be. And... I hope it's for the better. That's my rose-colored glasses view of the world is that I hope it corrects a lot of the problems with human behavior. I share your hope. And I think it's a responsibility of everybody, including, you know, me as an intellectual, you as Joe Rogan, that everybody listen to, to push toward, um, let's keep the common interest. Well, here would be the common interest if it really could get to that level. You could absolutely, with the resources available today, wipe out poverty worldwide. Exactly. Where no one on earth ever has to worry about nutrition or shelter. Exactly. No. Or medicine. We have the resources for that. Right. And you could completely change all with robotics and automation and new power sources. You can completely change all of these areas that are deeply impoverished, that have been so forever. Like, you look at these places that are like insanely packed in with people and dirt roads and like poor sanitation. That could be changed instantaneously. That could be changed. That could. We have the resources for that. Education could be changed instantaneously. Within a couple of generations, you have a totally new society, totally different society. And again, how much of what you're seeing with crime and poverty would just disappear where there was no famine, there's no worries about food, there's no worries about shelter, there's no worries about anything. That sounds like pie in the sky bullshit, but it's not necessarily, if you think about how they're going to scale up AI and automation and manufacturing, it's going to be really weird and our access to resources will be radically enhanced, like way, way more than we have today. Why wouldn't we be able to just spread, like turn the third world into the first world? That's a possibility. That's not like, that's not putting a civilization on Mars. Like, this is a possibility. It's here. You can do it. It could be done. It's not, you're not asking people to drink lava. This is an act, like you could see how this could work. It sounds crazy because the resources involved are nuts. I think it sounds like something we should keep in mind and talk about and push. It should be a human goal. It should be a human goal. If you want a better world, what's the best way to have a better world? Look, when the United Nations was founded in the 40s and 50s, eliminating poverty was declared an interest of humanity by all the countries together. So humankind already has said, let's do that, but then somehow special interest and power gains prevail. There's also the issue of nuclear power. So when they first started distributing nuclear power to other countries, they didn't realize how easy it would be to convert it to nuclear weapons, right? So like India got nuclear weapons, Pakistan got nuclear weapons. It gets weird, right? So then you're realizing, oh, well, we can't use nuclear power. Well now, okay, well, this is a lot more complicated now. Because now, if you want to develop these places, you're going to have to, what, use coal plants? What are you going to do? Like hydrodynamics? Are you going to use waterfalls? Like how are you going to power them? What are you going to do here? You can't give them nuclear power. If you give them nuclear power and they have nukes too, and then the whole fucking world has nukes, so it's complicated. But with AI, I think that complication radically decreases. And it's conceivable that you could do something like that. How much safer would the world be if you just eliminated most murder, most crime, most acts of poverty? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it has to become a clear objective. But then you have a problem with the people that are still alive that grew up that way and are just, that's how they behave forever. They're just certain people that live in a terrible part of the world that have been behaving terribly their whole life. Everyone around them has been behaving violently and terribly. Then you've got to get those people on mushrooms. Yes. Yeah. Mushrooms, everybody. That's where I come from. That might be the only way. That might be the only way to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But also, yeah, sure. But also, you know, let's not just look at what the others did. Well, there might also be a way to enhance consciousness through technology. That might be, that's another pathway that I often consider. I think there's a rational side. It's not a moral issue. It's not a, it's not political in the sense of, bad sense of politics. It's a rational thing. Yes. If we collaborate, we do better than if we compete. Of course, we need some competition, I'm not saying competition is bad. But confrontation, clashes, war, is to nobody's advantage. The problem is, we've already cemented an enormous part of our culture, an enormous part of our economy in this military industrial complex. I mean, this is something that Eisenhower warned about at the end of his term. Remember that? I remember that. That famous speech. And unfortunately, he was dramatically right, as John Kennedy realized shortly after. The power of the military complex, it's colossal, and it has an interest in making war. And making money. That's how it makes money. And how it makes money. And then this money, of course, goes into politics, so it spirals up. How can we stop that? That's the scary thing for most people. You get to this realization like, oh, the more war there is, the more money they make. They're in the business of war. Somebody says that John Kennedy tried to stop that and ended up badly for that. Yeah. Somebody says so. I don't know. Well, I think there was a lot of people that hated him. It's very difficult to figure out what exactly got him killed. There was probably multiple factors. Bay of Pigs was probably a factor. Sure. All the Cubans. Yeah. There was a bunch of factors that got him killed. But for sure, this country does not like when people want to put the cold water on the war. They want to keep it rolling in some way that they can justify it. Joe, I spent 10 years in the United States. I was born in Europe, then moved to the United States, spent 10 years here. Where did you live? What part of the United States? Mostly in Pittsburgh. Oh. Don't say sorry. No, no. I like Pittsburgh. Solid people. Pittsburgh's great, after all. I like Pennsylvania in general. I always loved Philadelphia. It's a fucking great place. Yeah. Then I moved back to Europe. I didn't want to move this side of the Atlantic anymore, again, to Canada. And now I'm back to Europe again, in Madrid. So I consider myself half American, one third American, I don't know. One third American. Okay. We'll take it. And, you know, 50% Italian, 30% French, 30% Spanish, 30% Canadian. You're a citizen of the world, sir. Yeah, somebody likes that, but to some extent it's true, yeah. Ultimately, though, one world government would be a terrible idea. I don't want a government. I want collaboration across the world. So careful. I mean, these are very different things, right? I want to learn to treat others as, you know, somebody we can compete with, but not enemies. The enemy. Not enemies. This country needs enemies. This country. I mean, I got so much from the U.S., it's part of me. But remember, it's not an angel country. It started off by, you know, genociding all the Native American, a large majority of the Native American. It went through the Civil War, which is one of the most brutal world. It used an atomic bomb first. Since the end of the Second World War, it has waged war all over the planet without ever being attacked. It has probably killed something between 5 and 10 million people in wars or around. So it's a country, it's a country compared to the other developed countries where there's a much higher level of crime, violence, murder. It's a wonderful country. It's creative, it's powerful. It has an idea of freedom. It is a strength of innovation. It's a country with a lot of lights and a lot of darkness. And I think very often the Americans see the light, don't see the darkness. Interesting. Yeah, well, it's not in front of our face all the time, the darkness. Yeah. American exceptionalism is something that's... American exceptionalism is, you know, there is something peculiar in this country for many reasons. One is that it's a strange country in which the people are not natives, right? Everybody came in from the outside. This is a melting pot story. But I think what the Americans don't see is how from the outside the violence and the aggressivity of U.S. is perceived as something very strong that is not seen from America. Certainly now. Yeah, but now it's a... How would I put it? You know, Trump is not my guy, not at all. But at least he has taken away some of the hypocrisy. How so? You know, he's going to Venezuela and take the oil and say we do that because of the oil. He's saying it's our interest to do this and that instead of selling our interest for, you know, we are the good guys who are saving the people outside. Which has always been the propaganda. Which has been the propaganda. And I think if we get rid of the propaganda, it's easier to talk and see the others. It's also the other side. I mean when the Russians stop thinking we are the good guys and we are saving the people, it was an advantage for everybody. So we got to this long roundabout conversation because we were talking about AI and AI being conscious. What I was going to get to is do you think that the universe itself is in some way conscious? Let me go back to my main point. We don't know what conscious – what we mean when we say conscious. Is there an Italian word for consciousness? Sorry? Is there an Italian word for consciousness? Oh, that's a great question. The answer is no. The Italian word for conscience, the moral thing, and consciousness is the same word. Conscienza. Oh, your conscience, like feeling bad about something. Yeah, feeling bad I've done something wrong so my conscience is… So the Italian word is more about moral thing. Consciousness doesn't have a translation, not even in French or Spanish. What about the concept of consciousness? Is there another phrase for it, the way we think about it here? No, we use the same word. Somehow it's too slightly – they do different meaning but making confusion about it. Again, it depends what you mean. You can mean different things. Of course the universe is conscious because it includes us and we are conscious. So careful, that's the point. That's the central point. We're not special in the universe. We're just part of the universe. There's no nature and outside nature, we're looking at it from the outside. We are part of nature. We are home in nature. We're just another animal, a much special animal, of course. The history of science is a history of taking down metaphysical differences. In the Middle Ages, people thought that there's Earth, which is on reality and physics and everything, and the heavens. And the heavens were completely different. On Earth, things decay and rot. In the heavens, they're eternal. Things go around in circles in the heavens. And on Earth, things fall up and down. And then Newton came and basically said, no, no, no, we got it right. The heavens and the Earth are just the same thing. The Earth is just one of the many bodies in the heavens. We are like this little dot in the sky, which is Venus, that moves around. Well, we're like that, like Mars, like Venus. So it was a shock for Europe, right? Oh boy, the Earth is just one of the many things around. And then a few centuries later comes Darwin and convinces us, convinces everybody, that animals and humans have common ancestors. Your grand-grand-grand-grand-grandmother and the grand-grand-grand-grandmother of your cat could be the same organism, the same person. So that means that we're not so different from animals. We have the same story and so on. I mean, we keep learning that we are part of nature. And I think the same is true for consciousness. We are not the special thing outside of nature. We're just one of the things that happen in nature. I'm sure that in the big universe, there are all sorts of things happening like our consciousness, all much more complicated, much more rich, much more beautiful. Who knows? We don't know. But certainly, we're not so special. We're home in nature, which is beautiful. Because there isn't nature and culture. Culture is just one natural phenomenon. There isn't body and spirit. It's just the same thing described in different manners. So yes, the universe does all sorts of things, including having things like us. And who knows how many? The Earth is just one of the hundreds of billions of planets in the galaxy. And the galaxy is one of many hundreds of billions of galaxies. So we're just one little thing in this great nature. We're not special. But we are because we're part of something special. So whatever the whole thing is, it's pretty special. Oh, whatever the whole thing is, it's very different than what we thought it was. It's much more rich, much more complex, much more variety. And that includes us. And that includes us. So we are special. We are special. But every kid is special for his mom, and the mom is special for his kid. The mom is really special for the kid. Every kid is special. And so are we. Special for ourselves, for sure. And important for ourselves. Do you think that our human consciousness is a way that the universe experiences itself? Yes, it is. It is de facto. But it's not because there was some initial plan to do that. That's just how things happen. Well, it doesn't have to be a plan for it to be a crazy, magical experience, because it kind of is nuts, whether it's a plan or not. It's just the fact that it exists. Yeah. You know, let me put it this way. You're asking this question to me as a scientist, a physicist. I think that physics is badly overrated. How so? Because at some point, people thought, Oh, if we figure out the physics equations that govern reality, we've understood everything. And that's silly, in my opinion. Precisely because nature is complex. Imagine, do you play chess? No. Okay. So do you know the basic moves of chess? So you know the basic rules of chess. Yeah. So to know the basic rules of the game doesn't mean to play chess, right? Right. To know the fundamental equation of physics is like knowing the basic rules of the game. It's very different from knowing what you could do with that. So the basic laws of physics are like the basic rules of chess. They're easy to know. You write them down, the Maxwell equation. Well, you study a little bit, the Schrödinger equation. Everything is governed by that. Yeah, but what you can do with that is fabulously complicated. It's not enough to know them. You need chemistry for chemical phenomena. You need psychology to understand people. You need literature. You need philosophy. You need emotions to understand what is love and so on and so forth. So this idea that physics exhausts everything, it's true in some basic silly sense. The same sense in which all the complexity of chess playing after all is just 10 basic rules, how the king moves, how the queen moves. But in the same sense, it's silly because the complexity of unit goes far beyond just its basic equations of physics. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Putting together a good wardrobe isn't actually that hard. You just need the right pieces, and that's where Quince comes in. Quince is all about creating quality, versatile clothing with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from just $60 and organic cotton tees that are soft and breathable. Personally, I got a bunch of their stuff, and I love it. I really love the fleece pullover hoodie and the flow-knit breeze performance tees. They have really simple, smooth designs, perfect for recording sessions or my workouts. 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And we don't have the full story by very far. The universe is far more complex for us to understand. There are far more many things happening. Far many possible perspectives which are not ours, which we do not have access to. So, two general questions. In my opinion, the only reasonable answer is we don't know. You know, there's so much we don't know. I think, if I look at great scientists of the past, they're characterized not by the fact that they understood the universe, but by the fact that we're so much aware that there's so much in the universe which they did not understand. We are, look, what are we? We are not super powerful, intelligent, total rational things outside the universe looking from the outside. We're little creatures on a little planet, you know, developed for surviving in savannah, which have developed some good mental tools, very good, but limited compared to the immensity of the universe and its complexity. So, what do we know about the universe from a larger perspective? I think we don't know. There's also this weird thing with people where we're always dealing with the perspective of the accumulated knowledge up until now. Yeah. And this has always been the case, like people when they first developed quantum theory. This was, what, a hundred years ago? Yeah, a hundred years ago. When they first started doing that? Yeah, a hundred years ago. Think about what they were working with. And then a hundred years before that. And it's like everyone is only working with what other people have already figured out and what they've contributed to it. Yeah. And we're very good at accumulating. That's what we're good at. Very good at it, especially now. Yeah. Well, also in the past, right? Sure. People built. How did people do physics? On the basis of previous experience. Yes. That's what is the strength of our speech. Somehow we don't have to start again everything, but that's what I was getting at is I wonder what the world looks like in 200 years Like I always think like we are we're born in such an amazing time. So for how old are you? I Was born in 56 on past 70. Okay, so I'm 59 so, you know, we're not that far off So we're we're born into a completely different time and we've watched the Internet develop We've watched answering machines and cell phones and we've watched AI and all this crazy stuff and you just imagine that change Moved forward for 200 years. Yes Let me balance this with one thing not to contradict but to reinforce what you're saying my grandmother Her name was Olympia. She was born At Time it was it was no electric light. Oh There were no trains. There were no cars. Well, there was no Washing machines television. There was no radio. Okay Before dying she went to in a plane she flew during her life She saw all You know electric life coming in radio coming in All the way to washing machine coming in television coming in telephone coming in I Think for her the world changed more than for me Yeah, that's a good point. Especially the air travel, right? You can all sudden go to all these different countries Look, you can't a you called me and you said I was in Europe Can you come 48 hours to Texas and I flew from Europe to Texas and this is fantastic If I told my grandmother when she was a girl she would have laughed they come on Let's make no sense. You take a month to a month of the board to go there. That's true so things change dramatically, but They do so to your question. I have no idea how They will be hundred years in the future We are always There's always a perspectival thing it seems and the last one is the most important But they've always been big changes always always Imagine when books were invented or where the culture was invented or when cheese wasn't it? Yeah Or where countries were invented so humankind's have gone through quite a Rough Trip during the last Thousand several thousand of years and we're just in one of the bumps not in I think You're in California before being here in Texas I I think that there is an idea especially in California that now we are in a super very very very special moment Not sure. We're in just one of the jumps ahead I think that when electric light and electricity and power came to our that was big jump Everything was a jump. I bet people in 1969 watching Jimi Hendrix thought it was a jump. Oh, yeah, you know, there's so many jumps There's so many like wow, I can't believe like hunter thompson wrote about that about the 60s It's all of a sudden this great change. It happened. Yeah, I was a kid. I was the difference between me and my parents I think was bigger than the difference between Me and the generation of Young there was it was a cultural. Mm-hmm break. My parents were not understanding me. I was rebellious. I was a bit of a hippie and and and and there was different different different world was and now and now Now parents understand the kids No, I don't know a little bit they're always confusing children are always growing up in a different era. Yeah Yeah than you and there there's different experiences and different pressures and and different weirdness you know kids are growing up today with social media and Yeah, and phones. Everyone's connected to everyone. They have Their location they show to share their location with their friends. It's very it's all it's a very weird time when it comes to that But it's also, you know, I'm just yeah, I'm just thinking about When we're discussing what we don't know that there's so much we know in comparison to a few hundred years ago But so much that we don't know there's so much we know and we shouldn't Take away the value of that value and including scientific knowledge. I think scientific knowledge is great. Sometimes it's best we have about things But we shouldn't think that we've figured out no big question. The big questions are not figured out Well, we're no different than the people that lived in 1900 that thought they had figured out I'm sure they were pretty aware You know of what they knew and they probably had a there's probably quite a few people that were super confident that basically had it nailed Yeah, that's true. That's one thing that that's one mistake that humankind often does figure out. Okay, we got it I Think even if you go in the European Middle Age you ask somebody many people would say no No, we've got everything there is to understand it's very easy, you know, there are angels and Influence of the astral influence and this and that spirits They thought they had understood the full story Yeah people always do and then there's always people that come along that tell you that they have the answer and they know what it is And they're very confident and very charismatic. So people follow them. Yes true and A wisdom I think to logic senses is two things one is realizing That we don't have the answers. So being and you know When it's never certain about everything anything Certainty is not within our I I like to tell this story my father Grew up thinking his first name was Franco Until the day he Asked it birth certificate and figured out that his First name was Julio. So when he would say what the hell is going on here and My grandfather told him well, you know Your mother wanted to call you Franco, but I didn't like it, but they didn't dare say so So I registered you with a different first name So that created Disaster for the rest of his life because his paperwork role some Frank or some Julia So so he didn't know his own name, right? So even about your own name, you can be wrong. You can be wrong about everything even about your own name There's only a case in which you things can go wrong But that's good, I don't think we should Aim at certainty. In fact is the other way around We should be careful about certainty because certainty is what blocks you for understanding more if you're certain that the earth is flat You don't understand is wrong if you're certain You know that things are objective. You don't understand the possibility that they are not and so on and so forth. So accepting the Limitation of our knowledge the fact that we may be wrong. It's a key for learning more That's I think it's a it's crucial and the other thing You know you and I have I think one thing in common what's that curiosity If I had to define myself What has? Been the driving force of so much. We're done is curiosity. I Got curious about science and curious about philosophy curious about the world Curiosity is what and you too, right? I mean it seems to me that this all this You know Joe Rogan experience is that openness to curiosity of listening to people what they have to say to this The curiosity I think is a fabulous force for For the world not just thinking that you close yourself in what you know already But being curious being curious about the rest of the ideas the world the others I think it's genuinely contagious to when I find people that are curious about things I get curious exactly when someone's actually curious and they start having these conversations that are Clearly to them fascinating. I'm addicted to it. I'm like, what do you got? What are you talking about? What is this? How did you do it? How'd you figure that out? Yeah, but I've yeah I mean, I've kind of been insanely fortunate that I can have these kind of conversations with people like you Yeah, I envy you for that. You you get to know whole possible people very easily, right? It's very it's not a finger and everybody comes to you Took a long time to get to that. Okay. I can't I can't even from the very beginning. It was always so interesting I mean, there's a lot of people that you know You might not even know who they are But you'll have a conversation with them and you'll get a new perspective on things you'll get a new version of how a person lives their life and The more I think you gather about that the more you understand about yourself and more you understand about interacting with people Yeah, yeah, and you discover that people are different have different ideas and And you figure out why they came to these different perspectives too and if you're open you can consider like how you came to yours One of the most things that fascinates more is how people get ideas How ideas come in after all? What do you think ideas are? I don't know. That's a fabulous question that I got a Richman from California calling me not long ago and said ask me the question. Hello. How do ideas arrive? I Think it's a fabulous question. We how we learn right? We we learn personally we learn historically and learning Mostly, it's not just learning facts. It's learning ideas different ways of thinking Civilization is just a product of ideas All we live is is is ideas in a sense and how do ideas come in? I don't know. We have our mind as this incredible capacity of generating ideas very often ideas are just combinations of previous things a lot of physics is just This is I understand this because it's like that but not exactly like that So I take part of the idea of that part of it is that combined it's a lot of combinatorics I hear what he says. I hear what you say here the other say look this goes together with that So a lot of ideas come from bringing together. That's why The more you learn the more you produce things the more you're curious the more you You know, how did Newton came out this incredible the he'll study Kepler he studied Galileo The two things didn't make sense together, but they were very similar So he said how can put this together with that? My own job my own physics job is to mix quantum mechanics and general relativity. That's what my core of my Research central part of my research is how do you go about doing that? How do you mix them? I think you mix them by taking them seriously, so Quantum mechanics is so successful That it's telling us something about the world and general relativity is so successful Generality has predicted black holes gravitational waves expansion of a universe Time the fact that times your head is more than times for your feet and and so on so forth So it's also come out to be right So it has to be right and quantum mechanics were so well a lot of technologies based on quantum mechanics has to be right So then the question is how do they fit together you sort of turn them around both of them? Until you say oh look this Might join with that is this aspect of this that that goes together with this aspect of this that has been the work of my Life quantum gravity and the theory me and my friends have come out with It's called loop quantum gravity. It's a way of solving this problem. We're not sure it's right, right? It's a it That's my main work in physics loop quantum gravity It's a way of bringing together quantum mechanics and Einstein theory. It gives some predictions It gives a picture of quantum space and quantum time It's a possible solution of a Question the question is what are the quantum properties of gravity? What are the quantum property of space and time? Are we sure? No, not yet. We are now the situation we're working for Finding some consequences that could be tested science is not sufficient to have ideas that you want to test them So that is my entire the main central job of my life has been Combining ideas to make a new conceptual structure for for thinking about Quantum space and quantum time and that's useful for understanding what happened inside the black holes. What happened to the universe? What happened black holes, you know black holes If you let them there for a very long time, they've operated becomes more and smaller So what happened at the end of the operation these kind of questions need quantum gravity What do you think happened before the Big Bang? Okay, so First we don't know. Yeah, I think it has to be said clearly because It's good to speculate and we may be in in 10 years. We will know it's not it's not impossible to know But for the moment, we don't know there are two possibilities One is That genuinely there was nothing before the Big Bang. So time started there This is what Stephen Hawking He worked a lot on this possibility he expected that to be the case the other possibility is that no there was something before the Big Bang and The intuitive idea is that you know You have a universe collapsing falling down into itself getting to a very very compressed stage and then bouncing out and we see the bouncing out and And If had to bet now, I'm not sure but I would bet for the second one from the equations that seems to be What was the case and do you think this is a constant process of expansion and compression no because I Think that if we do this jump that you just did We're making the usual mistake as soon as you understand something to think it's there for all, right? If you live in a valley and ask, well, I've never seen what's behind the hill. You look behind the hill, you see something else, you say, oh, I get it, it's like that forever. No, it's not like that forever. It's like that for a while and something else happens. So we are afraid of saying, I don't know. As soon as we step ahead, we tend to say, OK, I got it. That's a very healthy explanation. Yeah. Because it's accurate. We really can't figure it out. When you saw the James Webb telescope, the more newer discoveries of these galaxies that formed far earlier than they should have, did that give you pause about the date of the universe? Because people have speculated that perhaps the date is wrong, that the date of the Big Bang. Yeah, I know. But I think it's more plausible that they were primordial black holes that gave rise to these early galaxies. So there is an explanation. There is an explanation within the same dates, which is possible that, you know, when the universe was very, very, that went over a lot of confidence, right? There was a time about 12, 13, 14 billion years ago that the universe was much compressed, much hot and fluctuating a lot. So at that time, it's very possible that many black holes formed. And maybe some of the early galaxies were generated by black hole formed at that stage. That seems to me the most plausible answer. I'm not a cosmologist, so I'm not, it's not really my field, but it's close, I try to follow. So it would be that our understanding of what it takes to form a galaxy is incorrect. Yeah. Or the time it takes. That's right. That's right. So, you know, during my life, something that has been realized is that not only did there are black holes all over the sky, when I was a student, people didn't believe in black holes. When did they first discover them? I studied black hole school, but as a mathematical aspect of Einstein theory, and the book said, well, there's probably nothing real in the universe that correspond to that, okay? The first people who started thinking, actually, that thing up in the sky that we see could be a black hole was in the 70s. It was very interesting because, you know, there are a lot of binary systems in the sky, two stars rotating around one another. So you actually see the movement of two stars. And there were some funny things in which you just saw one star dancing around something which was not seen. So people said, well, maybe there is a black hole, it's dancing around the black hole. It was speculative. Then there were the quasars, some very intense signals coming from very far away that people couldn't understand what they were, and people said, well, if it was a black hole, the matter falling into the black hole could radiate very strongly and we could see that. The actual evidence grew very slowly in the 80s and 90s. In 2000, I moved back from America to Europe. I arrived in France, and the director of the department was a particle physicist, a very good particle physicist, and I said, I'm working on black holes, and he said, Carlos, you don't believe the black holes are real, in 2000. So still physicists, very respectable physicists, didn't believe the black holes were real. That's so late. It's very late. It's very late. Yes. At that point, the relativists, the cosmologists, the astrophysicists were taking it very, very seriously. Now, we have pictures of black holes. So now there's no doubt. There's no doubt. I mean, physicists have doubt about everything. Are any of those old professors still alive? Yeah, but they changed their mind. Scientists change their mind. Good ones. Yeah. You're totally right. Good scientists change their mind. I'm sure if I talk to him, he would laugh and say, of course, you were right. So now we have complete evidence that black holes, but, you know, we see black holes, which are sort of a little bit more massive than our sun, the many, many of these. But then we discover these colossal black holes, gigantic, which are usually the center of the galaxy. And we have two pictures of black holes. One, the black hole is the center of our galaxy. And then another black hole, much bigger in another galaxy, more far away. It's beautiful pictures, right? They were on the front page of the newspapers a few years ago. So when this was realized, there are these black holes in the center of the galaxies, then the question came immediately to everybody, every good scientist, is it a galaxy that forms and then creates a black hole in its center, or is it actually the black holes that start that, you know, then it forms a galaxy around it. It's not yet completely resolved what is the role of the black hole in the galaxy. And I think this very, very early galaxies could be just a product of black holes coming out of the very early stages of the universe. The craziest theory that I've ever heard was that in the center of every galaxy is a super massive black hole. And that could be, if you went through that black hole, you go into a whole other universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with a black hole in the center of it. You go through each one of them, hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with a black hole, then it's just, that's true infinity. Yeah, that's a crazy theory, it's a beautiful theory, in fact, there's a good friend of mine who worked a lot and maybe even started that theory, it's Lee Smolin. I am not convinced, I think that, I don't know, we don't know, but I think that if you jump into a black hole, you just, you don't go to another universe, after a long time you come out in our own universe. So a black hole is a, the black hole left alone is going to eat everything around and then left alone it's going to become smaller and smaller, evaporate, and then that's what quantum gravity seems to suggest, there is a quantum transition, it becomes a white hole and everything inside comes out. So remember, at the beginning of our conversation we said that there is a, time is different, right, time goes faster and slower. So if you jump into a black hole, in a short time for you, you're going to jump out billions of years in the future. So black hole could be a shortcut to the future. Oh boy. Isn't physics beautiful? It's beautiful. Yeah. It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time, it just magnifies the scope of our minuscule existence. Yeah, yeah, it's fabulous that we can learn about that. There was a time which people didn't know what were this little dot in the sky like Venus and Mars. Now we send machines up there and people want to go up there. There was a time in which people said, oh, we're never going to learn the chemical composition of the planet and the star because they're far away. This is 19th century, not long ago, our grand grandfather, and they were completely wrong. We learned, right, it's now through the spectra, there are ways for, we know exactly what is the chemical composition of stars. Which is crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. So we do learn. This is magical. Yeah, it really is. I mean, it's fascinating to even think of the possibilities that are out there and that as time goes on, we'll develop more and more powerful telescopes and we'll be able to see more and more. If we don't kill each other with nuclear weapons, which is a very concrete possibility. Well, if there really are aliens out there, there really are super advanced civilizations, I would love to know how they managed to navigate through that. If they went through the same course that we are currently going through, I would love to know. Because that's one of the things about the Fermi paradox, right? Maybe civilization, maybe the reason why we don't see them out there is because they never really get that far. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they destroy themselves with nuclear weapons when they were on the stage. Maybe the universe is very large, very vast, it's huge. So even if in the galaxy there are many, many, it could be that they're too far. Could be. Or it could be a small percentage of them get to a position where we are, a very small percentage. And then a small percentage of them make it all the way without being wiped out by natural disasters or cataclysmics of whatever species they are, whatever their design is. You know what I think is most probable? What? That they have already seen us and they thought we were totally uninterested and we just avoided talking to us because we're too stupid. Really? I don't like that theory. One of the reasons why I don't like that theory is because we don't do that. We are constantly studying things that are more primitive than we are. We're constantly doing experiments on ecosystems and we're trying to solve problems that exist. I was watching this documentary about this island that got separated when they dammed some river and created this island. It was in South America and this island was overrun with monkeys and they had no predators on this island. So many, many monkeys. Tons of monkeys. But because of the fact that they didn't have any predators, they had lost all their fear of raptors and they had started over-consuming the seeds of all the plants. And so there weren't new saplings growing and it was having a detrimental effect on the ecosystem. So they brought in harpy eagles. You ever seen a harpy eagle? Not the monkeys. The humans brought in. Humans. Okay, yeah. Brought in two harpy eagles. No. What is it? A harpy eagle. Oh, eagle. The bird. The big bird. Yeah. It might be the biggest eagle. Okay. It's either that or the golden eagle. I'm not sure. Anyway, they're really good at killing monkeys. And they let these two harpy eagles loose and they went ham. And they killed so many monkeys that they had to stop the experiment after a few years. So these eagles had had offspring. So they had two other eagles that were there as well. And these eagles were just wiping out these monkeys. And they said, okay, this is too much. And this is now, they're like getting past the, whatever the numbers are that they could reproduce. Like it was getting to the point where these eagles, just two eagles and their two offspring were just, so they pulled the plug and they pulled the eagles out of there. And they said, all right, well, we tried that, but unintended consequences. But that's us. That's just humans wondering what do we do about this island? Why wouldn't we just leave that stupid island with those stupid monkeys and let them figure it out? Yeah. They'll plant some plants. They'll starve to death. They'll figure it out. No, we don't. We go in and we interfere. And we intervene and we monkey with the, for lack of a better term, monkey with their ecosystem by bringing in predators. So you think that there was some alien civilization would interfere with us? Of course they would. Why? We are so fascinating. Stanley Kubrick movie, Space Odyssey was about that, right? An alien civilization who were just, according to the story of the movie, we're sort of an experiment of an alien civilization. Well, that's an old story. That's a story that's from the, you know, the Sumerian texts. That's from the epic, that goes all the way back to some of the old books that they found that were in the caves in Qumran, you know? Well, Sumerians have this idea of the gods. We are just created gods for their own advantage. You see, I, you know, these are beautiful stories. I always find them, you know, they're fascinating to talk about, but to, to, to humans, we're just trying to project ourselves to something similar to us changing a little bit. I think there is, there should be something like life all over the universe, but why should it be similar to us? I mean, we are, we lack imagination. There are more, more ways of being complex than just having a civilization the way we have. That's true. But how do you get there? Don't you think you probably get there by innovation? And if you get there, you're not just going to automatically evolve superintelligence without any innovation and any technology. Most likely biological creatures are going to develop technology in order to advance themselves to the point where they have technology like we have today or far more advanced than that. So it has to go through a process. So whether it looks like us or not, for sure, we definitely lack imagination and are just imagining the possibilities of different kinds of life and different, different kinds of intelligence all over the universe. But the, the idea that they wouldn't be interested in us seems to me silly. Like we are in an adolescent stage of evolution where we're both, like we were talking about earlier, people are kind and compassionate and wonderful to be around and curious and interesting and also brutal, stealing resources from other countries, creating wars under false pretenses, you know, using propaganda. So we're both things and we're, we're all, we're weird, but we also have potential. You agree. I agree. Like humans have the potential to live a far better way than we're living now. If I was an alien, I would be utterly fascinated by the soap opera. I'm like, how does this one turn out like this? These people are out of their fucking minds. We found a nutty ass civilization that are on the cusp of figuring it out. And at the same time, they're making it. An artificial digital version of itself that's far more intelligent. I would think we're really interesting to study Yeah, I would not not think they'd be like, oh so boring these people with their godlike weapons, okay, okay, okay, I Can see the point I can see the point. Yeah Yeah, but but look what we're doing. We're using our own mind Try to imagine how Something that could be could think about us. Sure. But but of course the only model we have is us, right? And other animals and other animals. Yes. Yes, exactly. But you know, I don't know how how much Squirrels talk about us. Probably they don't but if they had to figure out Humans they will use Right and much like squirrels, we're probably so limited in our ability to perceive and imagine. Yeah, Paris That's what I was trying to say else. It's out there. Exactly. Yeah, exactly exactly Exactly squirrels are cute. They are until they bite each other's nuts off. They go today It's kind of a It's it's not known exactly if they do that But that's always been like the wives tale is that they when they're mating when they're they're competing They will fight and one of the things they do do for sure is they throw each other out of trees? Yeah And that's one of the reasons why squirrels can fall from so far and still survive I think squirrels can fall from like 30 40 feet in the air and they bounce off the dirt and they're fine Like they're just constructed for falling because they go to war they go to war with each other to breed You know, it's one two males are competing over a female and the story was always that they would bite each other's balls off Oh boy If you grew up in Europe I did when you come to this side of Atlantic one of the beautiful things is that They're animals much more than in Europe Europe is right the problem with your business is too many people, okay, and especially Places like Italy or or the Netherlands full of people full of people you don't see animals, right? It's like pets Sure sure sure animals which are lives strictly with with with humans either as pets or as rats a lot But when you go out hiking the mountains very rare to see it to see an animal You know when I was a kid, um, it seemed laughable in the in America But I would go hiking with my parents as more kid and equals. It was a squirrel. Everybody was Really yeah, and then I came to the u.s. So there's quills all over Keep out of your house People that live in the country. Yeah, but then I moved to Canada kind of is fantastic. We had we had we were living in In London, Ontario and out of our Windows, there were coyotes. There were all sort of animals. Oh, yeah I've had an eagle coming down in our garden Wow and and just sitting there and Canada has true So for me that was a great thing of coming this side of Atlantic is still more nature is still more pleasant in Europe Nature has been Domesticated all over is rare to see some wilderness This episode is brought to you by chime and I know people don't usually get excited about banking But chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to in a recent survey They ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America That means real people millions of them are choosing this over traditional banks That's because banking at chime is fee-free. No monthly fees. No overdraft fees and thousands of fee-free ATMs, but here's the real kicker if you get their chime card, it gives you 5% cash back on a category You actually pick yourself your savings rate crazy high. It's nine times the national average They're calling it the most rewarding way to bank go to chime Comm slash Rogan takes a few minutes to sign up chime is a FinTech not a bank banking services and chime card Provided by chimes bank partners terms and limits apply go to chime.com slash disclosures for more details This episode is brought to you by ethos Life is unpredictable. That's why you need life insurance It helps give your family financial stability if the worst happens so they can continue living the life You've built with ethos you can get covered in minutes all online No medical exam just a few health questions with policies as low as $30 a month get your free quote at ethos.com Slash JRE. That's ethos.com slash JRE application times and rates may vary Well, we're very fortunate that we have the National Park System. Yeah You know the way we have these national parks we can go to Yosemite you can see elk and bears and there's wolves there It's it's like it's incredible. Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit domesticated in that sense Like you go to the elk are not scared of you at all. They they hang out by the visitor stand It's a little bastardized like the there's there's a video. There's an Instagram page called the Turan's of Yellowstone Not like morons, but tourists But it's because they've you know They've grown up in cities and they don't understand what wildlife is and they want to take a selfie with the bison. Oh boy Boy, yeah Guess how that turns out when I was in my 20s. I I Dropped out for University and I took one year off traveling and I did cost to cost Atlantic to Pacific Canada one way in US the other way and Alone, it was fantastic Great like hitchhiking. Yeah, look at you. You were a hippie Yeah, yeah Absolutely. I I met all sorts of people and But when I arrived in the Rockies It was in Canada near Banff and I spent some time hiking high in the mountains It's marvelous for European exactly because it was empty, but then I came down to Banff was a small teeny village at the time and The camping was too expensive for a young kid. So so I said, okay, I don't want to stay in the camping So I I walked up a little bit and put my tent in a little Empty space and Then a grizzly came Yeah, so I was inside my tent. The Sun was going down and This big bear Started the you know walking around the tent I was terrified to death because I had this one of these little little tents just one layer And the Sun was going down. So I saw the shade of the bear on the So the instruction was make noise okay, that was a truck and it was given because The risk is that the bear over the tent looking for food and see you get scared and kills you So if you make noise that is supposed to go away But I was trying to scream but was too terrified So then I looked around to make noise there was nothing so I start clapping my head like an idiot So The bear I had actually That I did right hanged my food on a tree a little distance So the bear went to the food opened the food and just then after a while went away I was I was terrified. How long did that last? The entire thing the last of half an hour before I had the courage to come out and look and there was no bear anymore So I took my tent and run down to the campground. I said I pay whatever I stay here and then you know people were talking about there was this a grizzly that going around So I survived Whoa. Yeah, that was my encounter with wilderness which coming, you know, the little boy coming from Europe Italy totally Civilized no wild animals was quite scary for him But you know, I learned that sometimes it's not a bad idea to respect regulation because there was a regulation don't go along Yeah, they know what they're doing. Yeah, but it's not to say that that bear wouldn't wander its way through the camp, too They will they don't respect boundaries. They don't respect regulations It's such a crazy animal that we've we have here like grizzly bears are so fascinating. They're so enormous And almost enormous. Yeah, and they used to be all over the place like California doesn't have any anymore, but that's on the state flag Hiya, it's it's a grizzly. Yeah No It's a brown bear. They used to have brown bears all over, California In fact, the guy who was last killed by a grizzly bear. They named a town after him. It's called Lubeck Lubeck California I see. Yeah, I've been to there before and it's like there's a plaque Memorial Canada they have accidents. They still have back. Oh, yeah, especially BC, right? There's a lot of I have friends that live in Edmonton and boy they have everything out there. They have links You see you run into links all the time. You see grizzly bears. They have Moose everywhere. It's it's a such a wild place. It's so cool. That's what I envy of this America, right? Right It is an issue. There's almost no predators in Europe It's very rare that you find wolves other than you know, of course Russia and you know Yeah, if you go east, yeah Get a lot of wolves there, but and bears as well, of course But they kind of eradicated them all from most of like urban Europe. Yeah America still has a lot of wild places It's one of the cool things about this country too is that we have this public land system, too So people can go and visit these wild places. Yeah, and there is all this marvelous area sorts of Arizona Yeah, Utah, Utah, New Mexico is just the south of Utah is just oh, it's incredible I was actually watching another documentary yesterday on Jaguars entering into Arizona There's the animal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, these Jaguars are entering into Arizona and they've spotted several of them now like pretty large ones. It's pretty interesting They've decided to make their way back into America because that's where they used to live. Where are they coming from Mexico? Oh coming up. Yeah coming up from Mexico. I think they spotted four of them now This is same as mountain No, no much larger much. Jaguars are huge. They're the ones that eat crocodiles in the Amazon They're the ones that dive off of trees and kill the caimans and bite them by the back of the neck and drag them I've ever seen that. Oh, it's me. You gotta watch this. Okay, it's amazing Jaguars are some of the coolest animals to watch hunt because one of the things that they hunt is crocodiles Like yeah, they love to eat caiman crocodiles so they hide they hide in trees and or on the side of the bank like waiting for the crocodile to get into a vulnerable position and a leap on them and they dive into the water and leap On them and bite them in the back of the head. They're one of the few animals in the documentary that kills not by Asphyxiation they kill by crushing the back of the head. Oh, that's their so they have super strong. Yeah, they're huge Look at it. We're gonna sneaking up behind them. They're the third biggest cat. Oh Boy Yeah, that's how they kill they bite the back of the neck. They crush the head and then they drag him away So he's gonna eat a crocodile So they're the third largest big cat so there's Tigers are number one Then there's Lions and then Jaguars and so they're starting to make their way back Oh, it's five five Jaguars spotted in Arizona. Are they dangerous to humans? Oh, yeah 100% I mean not the numbers that they're at right now But they would be sure if you're hiking or you're doing something stupid and you zig where you should have zagged and you run into One of them. I mean historically they've eaten people They prefer I'm sure to you have to do something stupid you have to bother them Well, you have to be on their diet, right? Like this is the same thing with tigers tigers become a problem once they realize they can eat people and then they habitually And that's what they do in India when when when one tiger start doing something wrong, they they go out and look for it Yes. Yes, because then they realize how easy it is Once we become once we are on the menu, it's like the first time you eat a chick-fil-a like this place is great You just want to keep coming back That's the problem and it's also for But that's not wise on their side because we're we're weak individually, but they're super strong group, right? But they don't know that yet. And a lot of the times the places where they're hunting the people are Weak individually and not united because they're in these very small villages and so they don't have any resources They don't have any food water. They're in trouble already and then these you know animals get them tigers get them But the Jaguars in the United States is such a small number. I don't think that's the real concern But the what's interesting is that they're they've decided to repopulate North America or the United States at least it's pretty cool They're making their way back up here. I don't want to run into one, you know, they will eat you I mean, they're huge. They're huge and you have zero chance of stopping them from eating you once they decide they're gonna do that You don't have a chance with a mountain lion and they're like double the size of a mountain lion. They're really big It's a big cat, but they're really beautiful Why are we fascinating some fascinated so much by big cats? We are definitely well incredibly Something of our Imagination this is something about the beauty the strength their elegance or everything. It's just that we react to I think we were hunted By them. I think that was a big part of our early ancestors But when you're dealing with big cats and slow animals until those slow animals figure out how to make weapons You're probably hunted by big cats and this I think Rupert Sheldrake made this point It's really good point when children go to sleep They're not afraid of all the things that could actually affect them in an urban environment like they're not afraid of child molesters or murderers or someone gonna break into their house and they're afraid they're afraid of monsters monster monsters which are which are the big exactly exactly exactly they're afraid of monsters even though they've never experienced a monster there's a theory that according to which one of the main steps in humankind becoming humankind is exactly this passage from being praise to being predators yes which had to to change profoundly the mental structures yes when we realized that we could resist big predators and actually becoming predators ourselves because evolutionary we were not predators right if you go back again in our speeches at some point learn to be like those things we were afraid of yeah but is that does this explain the fascinations because a monster there's not just a fear that they generating us it's also sort of admiration and beauty well we have admiration and beauty for almost all big predators right we have admiration for crocodiles so right it's a lot beautiful right we might find it interesting but not the kind of fascinations with yeah that's true there's something about mammals yeah we're closer to them we're closer much much closer yeah and I think in fact it is I always been fascinated how much easy we communicate with mammals right it's sure without language without words but if you are in the wilderness and and and what any sort of mammals you understand the animal and they understand you so we communicate very easily it's completely you know reading each other emotions and each other intention it's our attitude so it's easy for us to you know you're going your way I'm going away we don't bother each other sure unless you're on the menu yeah but yeah yeah you could be on the menu you're especially if you're in the wrong place but that's just the nature of the wild itself it's just this constant series of life eating life all around you whether it's life eating plant life or life eating other animal life or life eating aquatic life yeah yeah then somehow we became predator predators at some point in our history yeah and then we started doing this against one another yeah we probably started doing that from the very beginning most likely we were probably competing for resources we don't know we don't know right there's a there are two theories there are two competing theories about what happened to our species our species is what 100 200 thousand years old and there are two two versions of the story one is that war is something that started very late only when we became agriculture when we start accumulating and putting away big chunks of grain or and the other is that groups of humans were in war even before that very different theories and I think it's interesting that there are these different theories because it has to do with our future and our present namely is this idea of getting in group once against the other and making war to one another something which is only a few thousand years old to result in our genetic structure just that you know after agriculture we could still stuff one another or is something that goes back all the hundred of thousand years of our our speeches we don't know what do you think I'm not sure but I tend to think that war is recent because a lot of the communities on earth which leave hunting gathering they don't they don't go to war they they have no reason I mean is this a it's an economical thing you you you only go to war with another group if there is some cumulated resources you can still if you find another group of hunter-gatherers if you have extra meat you share because otherwise go rotten there's no point in going to war and it's if you look at our cousins it's very confusing because Bonobo don't fight when two groups meet right but chimpanzees do yeah so and they're equally related to us so it doesn't help to look at our cousins what what they do but this is a crucial question is it has to do with the question we're discussing before can we get rid of war how much war is part of our genetic not because we're blocked by our genetic inheritance but clearly it's much easier to think that we can get rid of it if it only 10,000 years old rather than you know I tend to think it's hundreds of thousands of years old I think I think chimpanzees are the best example of that we are much closer in behavior to chimpanzees than we are to bonobos we are equally related from we are equally related but in behavior we're much closer to the way chimpanzees you know but I had this chimpanzees hippie part of my life I identify better with bonobos I'm sure you do you're a really nice guy that's why I think the way you think I think it's great but I mean I'm a more bonobo guy yes more chimpanzee guy I don't even think I'm a chimpanzee guy I just recognized that chimpanzees go to war with each other and they kill each other there's a chimpanzee war going on right now you know that right do no I didn't know but yeah there's a there's a major chimpanzee war going on right now that they're documenting have you ever seen that um there's a Netflix series Chimp Nation no it's really great okay fascinating so the way Chimp Nation but came about and I had the documentary crew on the guys who created it was really interesting they had these scientists that are embedded in this troop of chimpanzees for a long time for more than 20 years lived with them yes they live with them so the ship has accepted the present rule yes exactly so they have rules you must stay more than 20 yards away from them never have food on you and don't make eye contact and because they've been doing this with this protocol for 20 years the chimpanzees completely accept the fact that he's used and realize that there's no challenge no threat they're normal they're not completely normalized so they behave normal around them and they see all this crazy behavior they see first of all a lot of inter tribe conflict they kill each other and then they killed ones from other tribes they leave tribes and start new tribes it's really interesting really interesting but they behave very much like the way we do they have a leader the the leaders the alpha the young man challenges the leader sometimes the guy gets driven out they form new parties they come back and try to kill the ones that would they started out with they cross boundaries to get new fruit and new trees and then they wars over the trees they behave just the way we do with just at a different scale but I think that like for instance we talk about Native Americans and hunter-gatherers the Native Americans were constantly at war with each other they would go on raiding parties constantly there was you know I don't know how many tribes were in total is somewhere in the neighborhood of like 200 tribes in this country which were constantly battling each other and each other for hundreds and hundreds of years that's a pessimist no no no that's what they did no no I guess it's not pessimistic I'm not questioning it yeah but it's not what fool a pessimist view of the future but no no no it's not even pessimistic it's just I'm just saying that's what they did like this idea that the only reason why this place was at war is because Americans came here Europeans came here and settled not really the command yeah basically wiped out Apache and all of this area right here with this area we're at right now was called Comancheria before any settlers they they were dominant and they were ruthless and their favorite thing to do was go on raiding parties and so they would go and raid other tribes and they would kidnap people and torture people and murder people and they did that without any influence from the Europeans and they did that for a long time and that was all across the country now some tribes got along better with other crime tribes there are more agrarian tribes or there were they vary differently just like humans do and in different environments but at the end of the day there seems to be a pattern when you're talking about uncontacted tribes of hunter-gatherers they go to war with uncontacted tribes all the time you know I just had a guy on the other day that was talking about cannibalism and one of the ways they would utilize cannibalism is eating their enemies after they killed them and if they had an enemy that was in a rival tribe and they had an encounter and they killed them they would eat them and this is like part of their their culture this is all over the world this is taking place I think it's much more likely that war is a very very very old thing and it probably has to do with a really harsh environment where we had to survive where people were stealing from each other and stealing mates and stealing resources and cannibalizing each other okay so you think this is gonna make the project of living in peace much harder I think it's why it's so difficult currently I think it's why it's so difficult currently because we have a very very long history of war of conflict of chaos and violence and it's you know probably what made us survive this long crazy wild world that we live in let me play the optimistic please do one can read this in reverse namely I believe you I mean also you talk with a lot of people so you have a lot of information about that that I might not have say this is true now you and I don't cannibalize each other right this is right so we have learned so then if this is the case it means that civilization which is a recent stuff with respect to has had a very strong pacifying effect on us I agree and education education civilization so we learn irrationally rationally we learn or you know through religion through various processes so maybe that process of learning that there is an advantage in collaboration is something that can go that can develop more I think it can thank you right and then the question is not going back to our ancient paradise of gent of kindness and gentleness but to create a better world where we could live together better I think that's the path thank you very much I really enjoyed talking to you it's really awesome it's great I loved it thank you anything expected fantastic thank you thank you very much I really enjoyed it on the equality of all things lessons on physics and philosophy do I pronounce your last name Rovelli yeah perfect Carlo