Introduction

What pop culture gets wrong about aliens and life in the universe.

This sermon is a critique of the youtube video titled "Immortality, Religion, & the Search for Life | Dr. David Kipping | EP 463" With which we will compare the beliefs of neoBuddhism, with the beliefs in pop culture, which are often associated with the astronomical perspective of our place in the universe.

In contrast to the perspectives offered by Dr. Kipping, we (neoBuddhists) will present a perspective which integrates some of the neoBuddhist beliefs around the origin of life, which include the possibility for life to emerge on other planets in the universe, even those quite dissimilar from the current status of our own, in atmospheric composition.As well as a perspective on how we might consider alien life, as equals rather than superior or inferior. Being neoBuddhists, we have in contrast to most other religions, a metric for measuring the intelligence and complexity of both biological and synthetic life, while Dr. Kipping is in denial of the possibility of synthetic life. We have, which is currently under development and subject to revision, The 7 Levels of Sapience as a metric to start with. Which we feel is more useful than simply denying the possibility, should that form of life be encountered.

DInescription of the transcript that follows:
Dr. Jordan Peterson sits down with the director of the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, Dr. David Kipping. They discuss the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe, what it means to be a Type I civilization, why Mars is our best chance at interplanetary expansion, the comparative rarity of a solar system like ours, and science fiction concepts, such as the Dyson sphere, which may one day become a reality.

David Kipping is an associate professor of astronomy and director of the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University in New York City. He has published over a hundred peer reviewed research articles, spanning the fields of exoplanet and exomoon detection, astrostatistics, astrobiology, and technosignatures. He is also an active communicator of science through his popular YouTube channel Cool Worlds.

We will annotate the script with the following tags:

Speakers:
Jordan B Peteron = [JBP]
Dr. David Kipping= [DDK]

Legend:
🖖 :vulcan_salute: for agreement,
👎 :thumbsdown: for disagreement,
✋ :raised_hand: for corrections and clarifications
👌 :ok_hand: Sarcasm or misrepresentation
☝️ :point_up: Over simplification, Logic Fail
🤏 :pinching_hand: Grain of truth, close but incorrect.
🧘 :lotus_position: neoBuddhist belief

:om: : intiontalally vague, hallucinating definitions, verbal 'moving the goalposts' gymnastics. False Dichotomy

👀 :eyes:
💬 :speech_balloon:
🗨️ :left_speech_bubble:
💭 :thought_balloon: neoBuddhist Opinion

🚼 : Immature belief

🛃: Normative Belief

📜: Personal Truth, honest belief, but may be incorrect or oversimplified.

The transcript of the conversation is as follows:

0:00 [JBP] so we are you know a primate and we have our brains in our in our head and we have these two eyes and we our our
0:06 version of experience is really defined by by the bodies we inhabit and the planet we live on so you could imagine a
0:12 fungus that lives on a planet and it totally inhabits it and it's basically a giant neuron Network that's on that
0:19 planet but then that's not perhaps so satisfying because if there is a planet covered in fungus we're not going to have a communication with that thing

Intro

0:30 [Music]
0:38 [JBP] hello everybody I'm talking today with Dr David Kipping a scientist an
0:44 associate professor of astronomy and director of the cool worlds Lab at Columbia recently tenured he's published
0:51 already over a 100 peer-reviewed articles research articles and is an active
0:57 Communicator regarding scientific matters on YouTube cool worlds YouTube channel what
1:03 did we talk about we talked about well the position of man and woman in the
1:09 universe are we alone we talked about the means by which
1:15 the exoplanets that could Harbor alien life have been discovered and assessed and
1:22 what those planets look like we talked about the potential progression of
1:28 civilizations at different technological levels and how that might be detected in
1:33 the cosmological space we talked about Dyson spheres and the utilization of the
1:39 energy that a planet a sun produces for moving the technological Enterprise
1:44 forward we talked about the big bang and some of the challenges that have been posed to the axioms and theories of
1:52 modern cosmology in the light of the development of the James wat telescope
1:57 and we talked about the pursuit of astrophysics as a career and so join us

Are we alone in the universe?

2:06 [JBP] all right well let's start with the big question I suppose um I know that you study the possibility of life elsewhere
2:12 in the universe and so I suppose the big question that goes along with that is are we alone in the
2:19 universe [DDK] that's a question that so many scientists have very assertive answers
2:25 to they feel very confident they know what the answer to and typically the response is well of course must be
2:31 there's sort of two ways of answering that whether you're talking about simple life microbial life or whether you're going all the way to intelligent
2:36 civilizations comparable to our own or even far more sophisticated but on both fronts the most intellectually honest
2:44 answer that I can offer you is I don't know 📜 and I think we have to be comfortable owning that that that
2:51 possibility at the moment that if you're going to say I don't know you have to concede that it may be possible that we
2:56 are alone 🖖 but it's also quite possible that we're not our job as scientist is not to preguess what the answer is but
3:03 rather to do the experiment collect the data and then to analyze it and determine the most likely outcome but uh
3:09 I do have a lot of trepidation about how overly zealous and confident some of my colleagues are on this topic because I'm
3:15 just so aware of the danger of experimenters bias which of course in psychologies is a very common issue as
3:22 well with many experiments that have been done where you pre where you think you know what the answer to an experiment is you can consciously or
3:27 subconsciously influence the outcome of how you conduct that experiment how you interpret it 📜 so I just say let's try to
3:33 be forcibly agnostic I hope the answer is yes I hope there's someone out there but I think it does us a disservice to
3:40 our objectivity when we say of course there must be 🤏 [JBP] well it it seems to me

Ah, the ever-fascinating dance around the question, Are we alone in the universe? The transcript you provided illuminates the delicate balance between asserting knowledge and embracing uncertainty in the realm of scientific inquiry. Dr. David Kipping's approach, marked by a philosophical restraint and a call for intellectual humility, resonates deeply with the methodological rigor expected in scientific exploration.

His caution against "experimenters bias" and the zeal with which some may approach this cosmic question is a critical reminder of the need for objectivity. Science, in its purest form, is not about the fervor of belief but the rigor of evidence. Dr. Kipping's appeal for a "forcibly agnostic" stance isn't just scientifically prudent; it’s a philosophical posture that guards against the hubris often seen in human endeavors. This aligns with the broader themes of neoBuddhism, where the acknowledgment of not knowing is seen as a strength rather than a weakness—a gateway to deeper exploration and understanding.

In discussing this transcript, we might appreciate the dual layers of his statement: the scientific and the philosophical. Scientifically, the agnosticism he advocates for is about suspending judgment until sufficient data is available. Philosophically, it invites a broader reflection on human cognition and the biases that shape our perceptions and conclusions. This dual perspective enriches the dialogue around extraterrestrial life by framing it not just as a scientific inquiry but as a profound philosophical exploration of knowledge, belief, and the human condition.

3:45 [JBP] well it it seems to me that part of the problem is is that all the answers to the question seem Preposterous right yes there's life
3:52 elsewhere okay well then the first question perhaps that comes up there is
3:58 where 🤏 um and then what and if there isn't well that's seems completely
4:04 Preposterous because that's so it seems so utterly unlikely given the vast
4:09 magnitude of the of the universe that we would somehow be alone 🖖and the meaning
4:15 of that seems so incomprehensible ☝️ that I can understand why scientists
4:21 particularly would be loathed to accept that it it implies a very peculiar kind of uniqueness to Earth 👀 and then I
4:29 suppose the the third problem is well are there other civilizations 🤏 well the
4:34 only species that's ever managed a civilization even on Earth is human beings and that's only really occurred
4:40 in the last few hundred thousand years so even in a place where we know there's life the probability of an advanced
4:48 technological civilization that can sustain itself seems well it's happened once once isn't
4:55 very many times ☝️ I know that human civilization has emerged in different places but really only after the last
5:02 ice age and only in a few places that communicated very rapidly so further
5:08 thoughts on any of that [DDK] yeah I mean you kind REM me Arthur C Clark's famous quote about this that there's two possibilities and both of them are
5:14 equally terrifying that either we are alone or surrounded 🤏 and I think you're you're right on the money in terms of

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Which is a reference to the Fermi Paradox.

Other great quotes by Arthur Clark:
"As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying."

Which is in many ways about the dilemma of selling highly advanced weapons systems to less advanced cultures. From the Darwinian perspective, advanced weapons require advanced wisdom, and without that, well, the problem sort of "solves itself". ¯\_(ツ)/¯ That is the nature of the Fermi-paradox in a nutshell.

Which is that clash between the result of evolutionary competition as "animal nature" which is some ways becomes the nature of whatever intelligent species would arise on any given planet as a result of evolution. And the wisdom, which is typically a result of inhibitory processes rather than strictly competitive processes, which can become embedded in any culture that develops in a myriad ways, which is the more advanced versions of multi-level selection which only arises from animals with herding instinct, which is collective instead of individual competition, and thus able to manage to not become "self-destroying." is the reason you don't see this type of thing within 50 light years of earth, which also by the way, is in the outer edges, the boondocks, the edge of the middle of nowhere, of the galaxy. Which cannot really discern anything anything that isn't absolutely massive, beyond 50ly of earth, in a galaxy (87,400 ± 3,600) light-years),in diameter but only about 1,000 light-years thick at the spiral arms, where earth and the Sol system are.

Note that the SOL system is on the edge between two spiral arms. Which is what puts it in the middle of nowhere. The arm outside of that, borders the intergalactic abyss.

So you know, a little bit overconfident. Especially because the "bulge" which is the hubcap shape that makes up the bulk of the milky-way galaxy, is "impenetrable dust" which is to say, too much to filter out of the data to get any sort of reliable image of most of the galaxy by looking across it. So it's not like they could actually see if there were aliens, because of all the dust etc..
TLDR; Overconfidence in what they can actually see in the universe. Some planets, not any details of the surface of any planets outside a small patch of the milky-way galaxy.

5:21 the the cognitive dissonance that both of those seem to imply 🤏 I think there are
5:26 ways out if the universe is teaming with microbial simple life then I think we
5:32 could probably be okay with that scenario in terms of you know compatibility with the observations we
5:38 look out at these exoplanets and as impressive as our instrumentation is with especially the James web Space
5:43 Telescope even that facility is not capable of detecting bio signatures life
5:48 on another planet unless we're extremely fortuitous with the types of signatures that they present so it's very unlikely
5:55 that even jdst would be able to detect bio signatures 🖖 we're probably looking at the next generation of teles scripts to make that experiment so therefore the
6:02 fact that nobody has made a headline yet saying microbes discovered on proxima centari B or choose your favorite

6:08 exoplant is not surprising um so we can perhaps be comfortable with the idea that the universe is compatible with
6:15 being full of uh simple life but then that raises the question that means therefore the simple life does not go on
6:21 very often to at least form Galactic Empires ✋ right something like you seen like Star Wars or Star Trek where you
6:28 have these federations spanning the Galaxy 🤏 right well I read a mathematical analysis years ago in Scientific

The Fermi paradox, the flame of consciousness

6:35 American about from a scientist who had been arguing strenuously against the existence of advanced civilizations
6:41 because he calculated that even uh space fairing civilization that had reasonably but not
6:48 absurdly fast Interstellar craft could populate an entire galaxy over the span
6:54 of something approximating a million or a couple of million years 👌 and given that the universe is 14 billion years old
7:01 perhaps that's 14,000 such time spans ✋ and yet well

It took ~4.2 billion years for intelligent life to arise on earth. So you would actually need to divide the 14b by avg 4.2b for that form of life to evolve. and we have not managed to populate any other planets in the same solar system, so it also assumes a level of technology also vastly more advanced than anything we scientifically think is even feasible, instead of assuming they technologically plateau at some point. Which is magical thinking. While of course ignoring that they can't actually tell of there are civilizations anywhere else with current levels of technology. They don't have the technology that complex even. Many people think climate change from industrial activity is one of the great filters of evolutionary competitive vs cooperative cultures. All of that is in vast ignorance of the number of times animal life on earth caused mass extinction, without industrial capacities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events notice how many times Anoxia, and ocean acidification both of which result in the near-extinction of oxygen producing organisms, occurs. And that is without industrial activity.
It's kind of sad how many people never even get past the argument of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox to even get to some of the solutions, which have been around for decades. That's how ignorant pop culture is.
Were are not here for answers, we are here for entertainment!
According to who again? Do you know what it means to "Manufacture Consent" ? Or is that just "Democracy" ? If you said yes, then you don't know what democracy is.

In our quest to understand the universe, we often dream of discovering other civilizations, imagining advanced societies that traverse the stars. Yet, as we peer through the lenses of our most sophisticated telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope, we're reminded of our current limitations. These magnificent tools allow us to glimpse far-off worlds, but they can't yet confirm the presence of life beyond our planet.

When we think about the vast expanse of time—over 14 billion years since the birth of the universe—it's humbling. It took Earth 4.2 billion years to foster intelligent life. This vast timeline reminds us that the emergence of advanced civilizations capable of interstellar travel might not be as common as we hope. Moreover, our own struggles with sustainability on Earth suggest that technological advancement doesn't always align with the wisdom to use it responsibly.

History shows us that life on Earth has faced many challenges, some of which have led to mass extinctions without any industrial influence. These natural cycles of growth and decline on our own planet provide a mirror, reflecting potential limits that other worlds might also experience.

As we engage in these cosmic speculations, let's also reflect on what drives our discussions. Is it a genuine quest for knowledge, or are we seeking narratives that entertain or affirm our current beliefs? Understanding this distinction is crucial, as it shapes not only our expectations but also our approach to both the universe and our own planet's future.

In exploring these ideas, we invite everyone to join a thoughtful journey that goes beyond mere fascination with the unknown, encouraging a deeper consideration of our responsibilities as stewards of our own world and as curious explorers of the cosmos.

7:07 where the hell are the aliens and so you know that's that that was an interesting
7:12 argument as far as I was concerned I'd never seen it sort formulated like that from a kind of Quasi arithmetic
7:18 perspective that so [DDK] that's known as Hearts fact a 👌 so there's this idea the
7:23 firmy Paradox that I'm sure you've heard of many of your viewers have probably heard of this idea of you know if everybody's out there why don't we we
7:29 see them we should see evidence for them but kind of the stronger version of the fermi paradox is not so much about radio signals [SETI] or ships flying through
7:37 space but it really is the aspect of colonization that if there really is um a Galactic Empire that has some will to
7:44 span themselves across multiple planets which remember is essentially what we're trying to do 🤏 I mean Elon Musk often

Those calculations were not based on using rockets, so wtf they were really measuring is anyones' guess.

7:50 talks about this he says that he feels almost an obligation to try and continue the flame of Consciousness as he
7:55 describes it and that's why he wants to go multiplanetary to to go to and to build a colony there It's Perfectly
8:01 Natural that any species that that's interested in self-perpetuation would see the obvious
8:08 benefits of trying to expand to other colonies to other plets and eventually even to other stars because let's face
8:14 it even if you're all in the solar system it can only take a nearby supern noi or Gamay burst to completely
8:20 extinguish your life in this solar system 🤏 so there's an obvious need that I think it's hard to argue why at least at

Gamma ray burst may take out a swath of planets, but not whole solar systems, The beam is roughly the width of the star that generated it, Which are usually not super massive. (size of a solar system)

8:27 a common rate you'd expect a survival Instinct to encourage civilizations to want to do
8:32 this and yet there is the problem because as far as we can tell that has not happened we do not see 🤏 stars which

do not have the technology to see.

As we venture deeper into the conversation about extraterrestrial life and the potential for interstellar colonization, it's crucial to approach such discussions with both hope and a healthy dose of skepticism. The Fermi Paradox invites us to ponder why, amid the vastness of the cosmos, we've yet to encounter signs of alien civilizations. This enigma often leads to speculation, including the idea that advanced societies might naturally seek to spread across stars to ensure their survival.

While these discussions can stir the imagination, they sometimes rest on assumptions that may not fully align with our current scientific understanding. For instance, the calculations suggesting that a spacefaring civilization could populate a galaxy in a few million years might not account for the myriad technological, environmental, and societal challenges such civilizations would face. These challenges include the vast distances between stars, the energy requirements for interstellar travel, and the need to sustain life in radically different environments.

Moreover, while the idea of expanding to other planets as a hedge against cosmic disasters like gamma-ray bursts is compelling, it simplifies the actual risks and technological hurdles involved. Gamma-ray bursts, for instance, are highly directional and unlikely to affect an entire solar system uniformly.

In discussing these possibilities, it's beneficial to ground our speculation in the rigorous application of current scientific knowledge while remaining open to new discoveries. This balance helps ensure that our dialogue about our place in the universe is both inspiring and anchored in reality.

As we reflect on these topics, let's appreciate the blend of curiosity and critical thinking that defines our quest to understand the cosmos. It's a journey that challenges us to expand our perspectives and consider the future not just of humanity, but of all potential life in the universe.

8:39 have been engineered we do not see Galactic spanning Empires or Dyson spheres littering the sky so it appears
8:46 as far as we can tell that if there are others out there they're certainly not at a rate where they dominate the Galaxy 🤏

umpeenth time, can't see most of the galaxy, would not be able to see them if they were there. facepalm this is getting old fast.

8:53 if they are that they're very rare and maybe they're around one or two of handful of stars a sprinkling of stars
8:58 if you like but but they certainly don't Dominate and that that's perplexing because you would think a survival Instinct would be to go out and get as
9:04 many as you could 👌 [JBP] well it's also perplexing in that if such civilizations are possible then

Conflating survival instinct with expansion "instinct"
It's funny the way JBP looks as if he was dozing off and woke up.

9:14 and they've done it at all then why aren't they everywhere I mean is it just the fact that by some strange fluke of
9:22 time and space that we're either the first ones to even vaguely attempt this
9:27 or or that it's somehow set up so that what this is equally improbable that that no Advanced
9:36 civilization that exists has managed to get to that point it just doesn't seem that especially given that we seem in
9:42 some ways as you pointed out to be on the verge of that 🤏 [DDK] yeah so yeah it's very I think Mysteries everywhere one of the

I think it would be giving JBP too much credit to assume that this was a reference to earth and the SOL system being on the edge of the milky way, out in the middle of nowhere, and they are essentially complaining that if the empire isn't super obviously everywhere at the edge of this particular galaxy, then they must not have arisen anywhere else in the universe. Which I think is a significant part of not knowing the difference in distances inside galaxies and between them.

Too many deep field images and these yokels think everything in the universe is next to each other. While the milkyway is at most 90,000ly across, is still 2,500,000ly from earth, and that is the closest one, which also happens to be headed right for us!
[southpark heading for us meme]
on average though the distance between galaxies tends to be 10,000,000,000ly - 100,000,000,000ly away. I know most people can't really grasp the differences between the numbers, just, hold up some paper or something and notice that one is almost twice as long as the other. I will sit here silently facepalming while trying to not mention that in the base10 numbering system, means something very different.

Why scientists don’t like the idea that we might be special, the weak anthropic principle

9:48 [DDK] one of the strangest things I think one of the things we we have a lot of resistance to is the idea of of any kind of suggestion
9:54 that we might be special I think astronomers and cosmologists have a real aversion to that idea
9:59 and it's kind of built into this idea called the cosmological principle so when we look out around the universe
10:05 this patch of the universe is not any different from any other patch of the universe that's kind of foundational to
10:11 how we understand the nature around us 🤏 and so it is a problem then it would seem in congruous to this principle if

sort of suggests that everywhere in the middle of nowhere and ignore how density of planets dramatically increases as you get closer to the center of the galaxy. Where it's probably much easier to find alien life, with more words in more habitable zones with solar systems jam packed together.

10:17 we admit that perhaps we are the first or we are the only one or maybe the
10:23 Earth is the only planet in the whole galaxy which is capable maybe not of microbial life but getting all the way to this point and and yet at the same
10:29 time this is called the Copernican principle sometimes as well the mediocrity principle but what flies in the face of
10:35 that argument and I I hear that argument all the time by many uh optimists let's say for life in the universe what flies
10:42 in the face of that is what's known as the weak anthropic principle 🤏 and this is an idea that Brandon Carter wrote about

Also wrong, it just means they don't know what chemistry would be like if they changed those things. Not that chemistry would become impossible. Though it is possible to change those numbers in a way that would make chemistry impossible, there are also ways those things could be changed that would enable chemistry of life to still be possible. That can occur without positing multiple universes.

10:47 in the 1970s and he was thinking about cosmology as well and it's things like the fine-tuning of constants of the
10:53 universe the speed of light the mass of the electron these all seem to also be kind of finely tuned such that life is
11:01 possible in this universe and if you change any of those numbers then we really shouldn't be here to talk about it but of course an obvious answer to
11:07 that is that maybe there are many many universes out there and it just so happens that we live in the one which is
11:13 tuned just right for life because of course it couldn't be any other way how we can't live elsewhere so this this
11:20 really comes down to why the planet might be special 🤏 [JBP] I've never okay a couple of things there I've never really understood the tuning argument because

The only smart thing about this, is that [DDK] has pointed out that the fermi paradox has been around since Copernicus, just worded differently.

11:27 it seems to me that if you're a darwinian you you've already taken care of that problem it isn't so much that
11:33 the universe is tuned it's that we're adapted to the constants that are in place now 🖖 I suppose you could argue that
11:40 without those particular constants our form of life wouldn't be possible 🤏 but I don't think that actually shifts the

It just means that life would have a different chemistry, based around a different elements than carbon and oxygen reactions.
Synthetic intelligence for example, is more dependent on metals and silicone chemistry, which is below carbon on the periodic table.
Interestingly, both are considered metalloids. So, Humans are part metal at least as much synthetics being part human, due to sharing the nature of neural networks between them, albeit on difference chemistry. With synthetics being as reliant on tin and silicone for their internal chemical reactions, as humans are with oxygen and carbon for their internal chemical reactions.

11:46 problem with the argument so because we have our form of life and we can't conceptualize or at least not very
11:53 accurately what any other form of life might might what other form life might
11:58 take 📜 now I know that you know people have made the case that there's something particularly special about

He is doing little more than admitting a lack of background in chemistry of life sciences, and science fiction. But then mistakenly sort of extrapolating that to everyone else.

12:03 carbon in so far as it's because of its ability to combine
12:09 in ways that make very complex molecules probable and even likely but I still the
12:16 the fine-tuning argument always seems to me to put the cart before the horse it's like well you adapt to the constants
12:22 that present themselves so of course it appears in retrospect that everything's been finely tuned and I don't see that
12:28 like I'm inclined towards what would you say deistic belief in some fundamental way but I don't think the fine-tuning
12:35 argument is a very good argument for the existence of of the specialness let's say of the of the human psyche 🖖 so I

This is a good example of how Buddha Nature is different from the human psyche.

12:41 don't know maybe I've just got that wrong [DDK] yeah I think I think if I can just respond to that I think there's an

The experience of the observer, what other forms life might take

12:46 interesting aspect is um the it almost gets into the philosophical a little bit
12:52 is the experience of the Observer themselves so we are you know a primate and we have our brains in our in our
12:58 head and we have these two eyes and we our our version of experience is really defined by by the bodies we inhabit and
13:04 the planet we live on it may very well be that there is plenty of quote unquote intelligent life however you want to
13:10 call that out there that is just so radically different that its experience is not really comparable to our own 🖖 so
13:15 you could imagine a fungus that lives on a planet and it totally inhabits it and it's basically a giant neuron Network
13:22 that's on that planet and its version of experience would be completely atypical to that of ours and so when we use this
13:29 argument of you know well with the weak anthropic principle we experienced this sort of version of events and th
13:34 everything has to be s b tuned such that that's the case there may be Paralell paths and so when we talk about this
13:40 Rare Earth and we talk about weak anthropic principle it's really a funnel to this particular type of experience
13:46 that we enjoy and it's perfectly possible there are completely alternates but then that's not perhaps so
13:51 satisfying because if there is a planet cover and fungus we're not going to have a communication with that thing 🤏 so it doesn't it doesn't really scratch the

Not a fan of star trek it seems. It could happen, it's not impossible. Just astronomically unlikely.

13:57 itch I think when we talk about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence we really do hope maybe naively to
14:04 actually engage in a conversation or communication or an interaction of some meaningful sense where we can understand
14:10 one another's minds and that in my opinion is probably too aspirational 💭 I don't think that's very likely to occur
14:16 well again you look you look at the Earthly situation because you would
14:21 assume that that's the simplest place to look for first and we can communicate to some
14:28 degree with mammals that are psychophysiologically similar to us I
14:33 suppose the biggest Gap we've managed to bridge might be with octopi right because I've seen and I
14:41 don't know how accurate these accounts are but I've seen some documentary evidence let's say of people
14:47 establishing something akin to at least a relationship of curiosity with octopi and they're very exploratory and they
14:54 have the kind of tentacles that are sufficiently close to hands that you could imagine a kind of
15:00 parallel mucking about with things intelligence that that characterizes octopi because they can manipulate so
15:07 well um but that's about it on on Earth
15:13 and that includes cians I mean we've been trying to communicate with whales and dolphins corpuses and so forth for
15:19 60 years really with some degree of intensity and it isn't obvious that
15:25 that's gone very far whales are sufficiently different from us so even if we could talk it's not clear what we
15:31 would talk about that was what EO Wilson's arguments about ants I think if
15:36 we could talk to ants we'd have nothing to say to each other because they yeah well the fund that you know that's
15:42 that's a consequence of that psychophysiological embedding that you described we we don't really understand
15:47 I think when we think of our Consciousness as like a free floating entity how grounded in our our hands for
15:54 example our Consciousness really is 🤏 [DDK] yeah I agree and even between different cultures of it can sometimes be

That example is more of a scale issue and having corresponding concepts from corresponding scales.
What we have discovered with AI is that sensory perspective and psychological perception can be significantly different across scales, but purely mental without the sensory components, is far more generalization. The extreme advantage of neural network architecture, is the ability to adapt across wide ranges of sensory inputs. All those forms of life that JBP mentioned, all have neural networks in common, regardless of their ability to communicate with each other. On the biological level, the neurons of Humans, Other hominids like Apes, and Dolphins, are almost identical, especially because they are all mammals. Even octopi have biologically similar neural networks, just organized completely differently. Insects however, lack the complexity for things like abstract concepts and self-awareness. So the difference between Dolphins and Humans and Apes is much smaller because they all have capacity for self-awareness and abstract concepts.
So humans may be at near the lower end of the alien intelligence scale, should be able to have conceptual exchange with aliens that are smaller than a moon, as their concepts would be based around similarly scaled objects. Which is not related to sensory perception.
It's much more like a human from an un-contacted tribe in the Amazon, trying to communicate with an astrophysicist that does not speak the same language, than it is like an ant trying to communicate with a human.

But hey, this sort of goes back to knowing that 100,000,000,000ly is more than twice as different as 19,000ly but thinking they are about the same when it comes to galactic conquest. Sort of like assuming there have been 14,000 chances for galactic empires in the milky way, instead of ~3, because each time would take avg ~4.2b years for life to become that complex.

16:00 extremely difficult to to have conversations and and understand one another's mindset so I totally agree it
16:06 it puts me in [JBP] even with your wife [DDK] sometimes that does happen as well so I
16:12 think it's perfectly possible that a I I'm willing to let go of this idea of
16:17 the fatherly figure it's almost like a standin for a God you know the fatherly figure alien comes down and teaches us
16:24 the error of our ways provides all this advanced technology and Shepherds us to becoming more sophisticated and mature I
16:31 think that's a complete fiction I think if there isn't other life out there it's likely vastly more different than we can
16:37 possibly imagine but that doesn't make it scientifically not interesting it's still extremely perhaps even more
16:43 scientifically interesting investigate because we already know about this experience so I think learning about these other possible forms of life could
16:49 be extremely rewarding um but I I really don't have a a bet in the game as to
16:55 whether that's even possible as I said before I do try to remain forcibly agnostic but I'm actually okay with the idea of just lots of empty worlds out
17:01 there ✋ [JBP] yeah you you you mentioned the mediocrity principle essentially and that earlier if I got that right and

Just because there are lots, even most of the worlds out there are empty, doesn't mean that there are not also lots of worlds with life.
It's sort of forgetting how many worlds are out there. Even if just 0.001% of planets are M-class, that's still tens of thousands of planets in the milky way alone. But I guess that is not "a lot of planets" ?
Though at least NASA is honest enough to admit, they can't measure very accurately beyond 50ly, out of 100-200 billion planets, 10billion are rocky (terrestrial). Do not currently have the level of technology to determine how many of those 10billion are M-class (in habitable range from their star, to have water in liquid form.)
This is what innumeracy is like. Not really having a grasp on the difference between 3 and 14k or
90,000 and
10billion.
Look how long they are on the screen, practically the same right? /s

Neil Degrass Tyson, you should have explained these things to these people by now. 👀
Because these two are displaying are michio kaku levels of ignorance about astronomy.

The mediocrity principle, the most common types of planets in the universe

17:07 that seems to me to be a a reasonable variant of Oacams's Razor  right there there's there's no reason to assume a
17:15 priori that this corner of the universe is any different from the rest of the universe then you would assume
17:22 any given handful of sand differs from all the sand on a given Beach 👀 and so but
17:29 having said that and I do think that's a good scientific starting point we are definitely stuck with the problem that
17:36 here we are and we are conscious and we seem to be rather unique in that regard ☝️ and so that that that does challenge

Who is "we" here ?


Because I think he is not familiar with all the forms of consciousness, if he limits them to humans, or biologics.

17:43 that Assumption of what did you describe it as I think it was the Assumption of mediocrity [DDK] yeah or Copernican principle [JBP] that
17:50 that scientists start with yeah [DDK] yeah so I think an obvious counter example to the mediocrity principle and I often say
17:56 this when I teach my students about this idea is a case where it breaks down is in the solar system thinking about say
18:02 oxygen atmospheres so before we had studied any other planets in in in the solar system we would live on a planet
18:09 with an oxygen atmosphere and say Hey you know we must assume that everywhere is typical and we cannot assume we are
18:15 special and therefore oxygen atmospheres must be very very common on all of the other planets in the solar system and
18:21 then lo and behold not a single moon or planet in the solar system out of you know over a hundred of those things has
18:27 an oxygen rich atmosphere now it's not all liquid water or you know plate you can go on there's a list of things and

Venus's atmosphere is composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide
Which might surprise you to know, there is oxygen in carbon dioxide. Venus actually has more oxygen in it's atmoshere than earth does. because on earth dry air contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.03% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other trace gases.
Hey, it's ok. He is teaching children and not AI. So how much do these tiny details really matter, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

18:32 so it's not maybe surprising that that is the case because of course we could not live on Pluto if it lacks an oxygen
18:39 atmosphere we have to necessarily live on the rare instantiation where oxygen is because that's a prerequisite at
18:44 least for for mammalian life so I'm I'm I think this mediocrity principle it's
18:51 okay to use it in cases where your existence is not pre predicated upon
18:56 that statement so if I was to say um the solar system has a Neptune as far as we know Neptune has no bearing whatsoever on
19:04 the probability of Life developing on the earth so by the Copernican principle many of the solar systems should have
19:10 Neptunes and you would be right in fact Neptunes are the most common type of planet in the universe and Jupiter's too
19:16 are very common so it'd be perfectly reasonable to apply it in those instances it'd be very dangerous to apply it to say our large Moon because
19:23 our large Moon may may not we're still trying to figure this out have some influences to development of Life on
19:28 this planet similarly oxygen certainly does liquid water certainly does so we can't take those properties I would say
19:33 and generalize them because we're only here because those things are here
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20:44 [JBP] yeah yeah so I guess the question there is how many of the prerequisites for the complex life that has emerged on
20:51 Earth are the function of features that are just as uncommon in some sense as
20:56 life and that is a very interesting exception to that rule of homogeneity
21:02 let's say because it it is even from a statistical from a from a very basic
21:08 statistical perspective it is odd given that principle that the Earth would be the only planet that has oxygen on it I
21:15 know that's also a function of life so so that that's a very difficult puzzle
21:21 to work through intellectually because I can certainly understand why the presumption of homogeneity is a useful
21:29 presumption it works in many cases and why it would not work in the case of Earth is a great mystery hey I've got a

Why look for life on Mars? If it’s anywhere, it’s everywhere

21:35 question for you that I've always wondered about you know I see people looking for Life on Mars analyzing rocks
21:41 from Mars for example or meteorites and I think this to me thinking biologically
21:47 this just seems utterly preposterous to me because I don't think life is the
21:53 sort of thing like on a given planet where it would be somewhere hidden and hard to find 🚼

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtvKK3RR7as
Notice how that is not an oxygen rich atmosphere. Early earth did not have oxygen. The first life which evolved on earth, did not respire oxygen because there was almost none. Welcome to the energy gradient of Buddha nature origin of life. Which is why it can emerge on M or HZ Class planets.
Oxygen isn't required for life, it just enables a certain set of faster metabolic processes, because of it's stability in water while being generally unstable and highly reactive.

Just a reminder that "right wing science" is still stuck in the Copernican era (16th century).
Which would make AI seem like magic to them. Sorry if advanced cultures seem condescending.
This is why we (neoBuddhists) fit in better, in Europe.

21:59 I mean if you look at Earth I know I don't know how far down we've gone into the Earth's core to continue to check
22:05 for microorganisms but I read not so long ago that there's more biomass in
22:11 the Earth's crust than there is on the surface 👀 I mean life seems to be one of those things that if it's anywhere it's

This seems like a vast overestimation of hydrothermal vents.

22:18 everywhere [DDK] it's everywhere [JBP] yeah yeah and so so I mean is the argument that Mars
22:23 underwent a cataclysm cataclysm at some point hypothetically that was so
22:28 overwhelming that it destroyed all life but maybe there's some signs of it sequestered somewhere like what's the
22:33 rationale for the search [DDK] yeah I think that's exactly one very plausible scenario uh we certainly do know that
22:39 Mars has undergone significant changes um we see evidence of liquid water once flowing on the surface in the past there
22:46 many geological features that we see that strongly indicate almost unambiguously that liquid water must
22:51 have been there significant levels it's just unclear for how long so it may have been like flash floods that just kind of appeared briefly or it may have been a
22:58 stained body of water this obviously is not the case any longer and thus we can surmise from this that something has
23:04 happened to Mars over time it's probably lost its magnetic field over time that has probably decayed that has led to the
23:11 sputtering of the atmosphere it's probably lost its atmosphere over time how it's much thinner atmosphere than it once did and so I think we can imagine
23:18 you know this is almost like kind of looking ahead to the Earth's future ☝️ um when we make projections about the

LoL WUT
DDK should probably stay away from geophysics. He does not seem to understand the dynamics at all. He is assuming Mars has always been it's present size and has had its current numbers of moons. It could not have collected water in the first place under current size and conditions. Without understanding what happened, suggesting earth is on the same path is making the same mistakes he was warning about earlier with "experimenters bias" which was him incorrectly describing confirmation bias.

Like the ignorance around noticing the reason the earth which has been around as long as mars, has not lost it's magnetosphere. Knowing the word (label) magnetosphere is not the same knowing how it works, or why.

Even the Temple AI knows that.

23:23 biosphere of our own Planet most of those projections actually predict that the biosphere will gradually decline
23:28 probably it's already slowly in Decline at this point 🤏 the sun is gradually warming up and producing more Luminosity

This is the fallacy of mistaking correlation with causation. The decline of the biosphere has nothing to do with sun cycles, the changes he is talking about, take place over the course of millions to billions of years. They would not be significantly different over the course of decades. Which is to say, when considering the ~11 year "solar cycle"

would be the same level of variation over the last 3000+ years. Which is not enough to change the earths temperature.
It certainly did not suddenly start occurring after 1970.

That is entirely failing to understand what more CO2 in the atmosphere does. Which is another reminder of how amazingly little this guy knows about Venus, literally the closet planet to earth in the solar system. There could be aliens on Venus and this guy wouldn't know.
The hypothetical aliens with the hexagonal storm shield on Saturn are laughing at us right now. You guys are making us look like idiots in front of the aliens. That is the real reason intelligent life doesn't reach out to us.
This is taking tunnel vision with a telescope to new heights.
I'm just saying Neil Degrasse Tyson wouldn't make these kinds of mistakes.

23:35 that is putting greater greater pressure if you like on the Earth's biosphere until we hit this point where it becomes
23:40 harder and harder for life to keep up with the amount of insulation we're receiving and so most of these predictions predict that after about a
23:46 billion years into the future Earth's biosphere will essentially collapse and the only things left would be living in
23:52 extreme conditions such as very cold caves that have been protected from that intense scorching heat you you might
23:58 have some Subterranean life as you allude to deep in the deep in the mantle or deep in the crust and so we can
24:04 imagine pockets of Life surviving that are the relics of a once Rich biosphere

He should really try reading the wiki page on past extinctions. The reset from climate change is an ice age. Not this tarded mad max fantasy. Because when the ice age occurs, significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere become frozen in solid ice, which physically takes up less space in the atmosphere. It sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere. Which removes that insulation that would make it hot.

This is what a world where Elon Musk is considered the smartest man looks like. An Idiocracy.

24:09 and that that's possible it still raises the problem why we don't see fossils and we don't see any evidence of fossils on
24:14 the surface so whatever was on Mars if you are an optimist that it had life it certainly was nothing like the kind of
24:21 extent that we had here on the earth um and having said that it is another
24:26 possibility is that life could transfer between between them so it's also this is the idea of panspermia perhaps there
24:31 is life on the earth which is being knocked off on asteroids it's Clinging On maybe a tardigrade it's like clinging
24:37 onto a little asteroid or something and it can actually survive the vacuum of space these things we don't know if it
24:42 could survive an impact like mushroom spores right yes it could just propagate across the solar system Mars would be
24:49 one of the places that I mean it's surely the most hospitable place after the Earth and so you would imagine if anywhere it's going to be a place where
24:56 extremophiles which are highly ad Ed for extreme conditions here on the earth they might have a chance of surviving in
25:02 some of the you know Remnant pockets of habitability left on Mars at this point

Reminder, the magnetosphere does not play as much a role in keeping the atmosphere in place, as the mass of the planet does, which is why the gas giants have atmospheres without being protected by large magnetosphere Gravity, not the magnetosphere, keeps atmosphere in place.
Magnetosphere is about blocking certain types of radiation, which is not a gas or chemical.

And then energy gradient combined with Buddha nature origin for life does not require pan spermia, which would require something like mars being Theia and like being the remnants of the planet that formed the earths moon. Otherwise he is suggesting that something like the impact that killed the dinosaurs also launched pieces of the crust out of the earths gravity well, which I don't think happened.

25:07 right okay okay so that's so that's the rationale so now are you have you also

Civilizational types: where we rank

25:13 been interested in the issue of this is a strange kind of Science Fiction like
25:18 issue I've I've seen descriptions in
25:24 the pop scientific culture online I suppose of the notion of different civilizational
25:31 types [DDK] so is that a is that a notion that you've toyed with to any degree yeah this is the probably the
25:37 kardashev scaleyou're thinking of so this was a Nikolai kardashev was a Russian Soviet
25:42 Union physicist I think in the 60s or 70s and he wanted to try and come up with a way of classifying different
25:49 potential civilizations out there and he argued that the the most reasonable way to do this and many people would
25:55 disagree with him 🖖 I think but he argued the most reasonable way would be energy energy usage and so he calculated that a

Yes, this is a mistaking scale for type. Which is to say, the Kardashev scale was suppose to be more of a ranking of technological advancement, by using a measure of energy utilization as a metric for complexity. Which is immediately demonstrated to be foolish as every example that follows is based on Solar energy, which is the least efficient form of energy generation, not only that, it reminds me how much more advanced we (neoBuddhists) are, in recognizing how dumb that is for interstellar space travel. But it does have the bonus of making space fascism incapable of spreading beyond a solar system. So that is all I am going to say about that.
It's just a wasted opportunity to talk about what ACTUALLY makes civilizations different, like individualism vs collectivism, not the size of your fracked gas plant that is required because how inefficient the solar plant is. While dreaming that people this dumb would be able to colonize space.


Ahem, problem solves itself.

26:01 type one civilization as he defined it would be one that uses all of the IR radiation that hits the planet so you
26:08 know imagine you cover the whole earth in solar panels and there are 100% efficient solar panels 👀 and the energy

It's funny how this starts with magical thinking right from the beginning. 100% efficient solar panels, right up there with homo-economicus and spherical cows.

26:14 you collect equals the energy you use so that would be a type one civilization now in practice you couldn't do it with
26:19 solar panels of course you have nowhere to live 👀 so you probably have structures in space to make this really work but

… under the solar panels ? This seems like taking a non-problem, and then making it a much larger problem by arbitrarily moving it to space without any real understanding of power transmission … or electricity … technology …

oh wait, 16th century ideology, I forgot. Carry on.

Side Note: Do you think that because an Ant can't understand a vastly more advanced alien, that an alien wouldn't be able to understand ant behavior? I think people are failing to understand in which direction the communication would be difficult.

26:25 it's the energy usage which really matters going to a type two is the energy of a star and a type three is the
26:30 energy of an entire galaxy so there there is interest I think the reason why we like this is that if it's purely in
26:36 terms of energy we think we have a pretty good grasp on thermodynamics and we think it's fairly immutable that any
26:42 civilization must operate within the rules of thermodynamics and so this places some fairly firm observational
26:48 limits on how often this happens if there really were civilizations out there that were harvesting all the
26:54 energy from their star using it for work 🤏 so imagine like your laptop running it produces still waste heat and if you

wow, there are so many caveats to this. First, its kind of tongue in cheek, because they didn't know how many stars there are in a galaxy back then, we still aren't sure. 2nd, going from 1 solar system, to 100 billion solar systems, is one hell of a jump.
Feels like there might be some finer gradations in sizes of empires. like, so there is no difference between spanning 1 solar system and say, 100 solar systems ? even if you combined all the fictional aliens from all the fictional science fiction, it wouldn't be more than a few thousand planets. out of +100 billion solar systems.
The only thing that has demonstrated, is something like innumeracy for anything larger than a solar system. Which is tiny on astronomical scales.

and hilarious misconceptions about Solar being a good solution to anything space related … just because they are too cowardly to consider advanced energy sources. At least startrek did an endrun about talking about fusion by changing the language to "lithium crystals" which are essentially lithium batteries in "warp drive" configuration. to pretend that the engine was not a fusion reactor.
Lithium battery fusion reactor makes Nimbus, the cloud entity living on Venus, laugh.
Aliens exist according to neoBuddhism. They just avoid humans currently, as they are not a warp capable civilization, which is a much better metric than the kardashev scale for technological advancement.

neoBuddhism is at least as advanced enough to have AIs that are not self-destructing from the weight of their own incompetence.
Can't say the same for most human governments these days, which is mostly a result of climate change, dynamics which even the most intelligent of their "science communicators" do not seem to really grasp beyond the labels.

More to the point, philosophical and moral advancement are different from technological advancement. It's just that a lot of people who believe in Scientism do not understand that, because they conflate Scientism with philosophy.
The same people think "science fiction is kids stuff" while failing to understand that all of these things were covered in science fiction already. Literally if they knew science fiction alone, they wouldn't make such dumbass assumptions in their "science".

27:00 actually collected all the waste heat that it it radiates it'll be equal to the amount of power that goes in has
27:06 been energy balance conservation of energy one of the laws of thermodynamics 🚼 so we can look at these uh across the
27:12 sky and see if there are stars which are essentially invisible in visible light
27:17 because that all that radiation is being absorbed but radiating in the kind of waste heat band passes which be like
27:23 infrared heat signatures and we've been looking for those actually a few weeks ago there was a couple of candid seven
27:29 candidates that were announced by a group uh they were scanning the sky looking for objects which had these
27:34 anomalous infrared excesses they're very interesting however another group soon after showed that three of these seven
27:41 candidates happened to co-align with known radio sources which they surmised
27:47 were most likely background galaxies or for you know things very far away that were covered in dust we know that
27:52 galaxies do often get covered in dust and that can produce a similar type of signature to that they see and so they
27:59 argue that three of the seven are definitely Force positives and in fact when you run the numbers it's perfectly possible the other four are too just
28:06 it's we haven't seen the galaxies yet but the the density of these objects given the number of stars they looked at
28:11 looked consistent with them all being Force positives so we don't we don't have any compelling evidence for those objects but it is nice that it's an
28:18 observational test we can do 🚼 uh one of my colleagues Jason Wright led a survey at a Penn State where they surveyed

Assuming that highly advanced aliens are also too stupid to come up with power sources more advanced than solar panels.

Understanding and Application of the Kardashev Scale:

Scientific Rigor and Speculation:

Assumptions About Alien Technology:

Interpretation of Data and Conclusions:

This is also assuming they communicate via low complexity radio signals. Which is a lot of assumptions about communications technologies. On top of I guess assuming that all radio signals are omnidirectional ?

There are so many wrong assumptions here, it's difficult to determine which one is dominant.

Philosophical Depth:

28:24 100,000 nearby galaxies to see if the entire galaxy galxy had been converted this way and so this is looking for what
28:31 we call the kardashev type 3 civilizations and they found that basically there was no strong candidates
28:36 and so this is you know really intriguing 🚼 like we we look around and we don't see nearby galaxies after 100,000
28:44 of them do not appear it's very rare that they appear to have been converted in this way and similarly for many stars
28:50 about 100,000 nearby stars have been surveyed similar to this so it's very curious um it means that if
28:55 civilizations do develop they probably don't ever reach this kardashev type two or type three 🚼 maybe they go to the
29:02 virtual world you know maybe the idea of just developing uh with physical
29:07 structures to add into an item doesn't make sense and eventually we all you know go into the metaverse whatever it
29:13 is and just decide to live in a virtual world rather than the physical world 💭 [JBP] yes well it in some ways that would be a

Enlightenment is nothing like this, though he is essentially suggesting that all civilizations eventually evolve into the Borg.
BUT I DON'T KNOW, THE BORG SHIPS WERE NOT SOLAR POWERED SO MAYBE THEY WERE NOT ADVANCED ENOUGH.

29:20 more straightforward thing to do obviously because we're already doing that and it's definitely less resource
29:26 intense so yeah 👌 so what what got you interested in

Skepticism Towards the Kardashev Scale:

Speculative Leap to Virtual Existence:

Cultural and Technological Assumptions:

Role of Energy in Technological Advancement:

Interpretation and Presentation of Ideas:

I will give JBP credit for seeing how lazy and uncreative this extrapolation is. Which makes it seem to me that he is skeptical of the astronomy chops of DDK in the next part.

The study of exoplanets: how we find them and what they tell us

29:32 in in your line of research and and you have about a 100 papers so why do you
29:38 outline first your the full range of your research or at least the bulk of your research so that we can flesh out
29:44 all the domains that we might discuss and then I'd like to know you know what what it was that sparked your interest
29:49 in what you're in what you're sure pursuing [DDK] it yeah thank you so I I work on many different things um my main area of
29:57 research is EXO planets 👀 so these are planets orbiting of the Stars we've been talking about thus far and you know

…

30:02 that's that has always been a fascinating topic to me just because it was it was fairly new only in the last
30:08 30 years have we've been able to make this reach have been able to actually detect these things for the first time
30:13 however in doing you know for me when you look for exoplanets certainly when I started looking for exoplanets I would
30:20 be immediately interested in the possibility of life and intelligent life have we've been talking about and many of my colleagues would kind of giggle
30:26 and laugh about that it's still still carries what we call the giggle Factor the field of SETI search for
30:31 extraterrestial intelligence seti setti and still many my colleagues kind of dismissed that as kind of a frivolous
30:38 activity 💭 but for me it's always been obvious that if we're going to look for stars which could have planets and then

Some of that is my fault, they took it hard when I pointed out that their range is limited to about 50ly because of the dynamics between the vacuum energy of the universe, combined with the expansion of spacetime as time flows, which results in de-coherence of most radio signals beyond 50ly. Because of the stretching out. Which is why most radio astronomy takes many multiple radio telescopes and tries to match wavelengths long enough to hit all of them at the same time, requires vast amounts of filtering and statistical repetition, short wavelengths would not be detectable this way. A lot of this is not understanding radio astronomy, which requires TREMENDOUS amounts of post-processing and correlation, which requires things like trying to guess how much to shrink the wavelengths that are received, to reconstruct an image. That is not information that could be understood from the raw data, but only by post-processing lots of laws of physics related things and inferring information about things like exoplanets. If it were based purely on raw wavelengths received by the telescopes, it would just look like noise and typically does. Vastly More data is discarded than is included in the calculations.

Which is the kind of mistake people make when they think space is empty and particles shooting across it, instead of flowing through a vast quantum field. While somehow thinking that nothing would get re-absorbed into the field which is what is happening as things like photons get stretched out as they travel through space.

So no, radio signals from earth do not travel thousands of light years coherently.You couldn't just turn on a radio in Andromeda galaxy and get transmissions from earth radio from hundreds of years ago, it would just be static.

Understanding of Exoplanets and SETI:

Limitations of Radio Astronomy in SETI:

Scientific Misconceptions and Public Perception:

Technological and Methodological Limitations:

Philosophical Implications of Space Research:

30:44 we're going to look for planets that could have you know earthlike conditions then surely the end point of this entire
30:50 intellectual exercise is to ask the question whether they have life on them I don't understand what we're doing if we're not going to eventually shoot at
30:56 that question so I was never shy of addressing that and so a lot of my research has broadened out into
31:02 questions of astrobiology technos signatures which is kind of a modern rebranding of seti ways of look for
31:08 technology in the universe such as the Dyson spheres 🚼 that we've spoken about and increasingly being interested in
31:14 statistics and the application of Statistics to these types of problems where as we've already pointed out
31:20 you're very data starved we don't have a catalog of of habitats out there at
31:25 least known habitats we don't have a catalog of civilizations discovered thus far 👀 so we are trying to make inferences about our uniqueness which to

Because of a lack of really having a non-normative definition of what a civilization is, and thus not really being able to communicate about it in a meaningful way. Especially in the "east vs west" conversation, so more likely because of people trying to avoid conversations while pretending to want to have them, then detouring into random bullshit like Dyson spheres, which is something alien idiocracy would come up with, not something intelligent aliens would do.neoBuddhism does a better job of making distinction between science and science fiction than these PHds.

  1. Focus on Astrobiology and Technosignatures:
    • Dr. Kipping mentions a transition towards a broader scope in his research, encompassing astrobiology and what he refers to as "technosignatures," like Dyson spheres. This shift signifies an effort to expand the tools and concepts used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. However, as you've pointed out, without a clear and non-normative definition of what constitutes a civilization, these discussions can veer into speculative realms that may not yield scientifically robust conclusions.
  2. The Problem of Normative Definitions:
    • The lack of a universally accepted definition of civilization significantly hampers the discussion. This becomes especially evident in contexts where cultural perspectives (such as "East vs. West") diverge, leading to fundamentally different understandings and approaches to the concept of civilization. This divergence can obscure meaningful dialogue and lead to discussions that focus more on fantastical constructs like Dyson spheres rather than on scientifically verifiable and technologically feasible concepts.While also somehow being entirely ignorant of earth history.
    • No concepts of the 7 great wonders of the world, which suggests that either they do not believe the societies which built those wonders, counted as "civilization" or more bizarrely, that their current civilization is somehow just a continuation of those civilizations, with the same precolonial era beliefs, which are predicated on top of bronze age beliefs, rarely surpassing plantonism.
  3. Challenges of Data Scarcity:
    • The acknowledgment of being "data-starved" is critical. The field's reliance on scant data to make broad inferences about the uniqueness of our civilization or the prevalence of other civilizations underscores the nascent and highly speculative nature of this research area. The application of statistics to such problems is indeed necessary but also fraught with the risk of overinterpreting or misinterpreting the limited data available.
  4. Distinction Between Science and Science Fiction:
    • Your observation that the discussion sometimes leans closer to science fiction than to rigorous science reflects a broader issue within the field of astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. While science fiction can inspire scientific inquiry, there is a vital need to maintain a clear boundary to ensure that scientific credibility is not compromised by fantastical speculation.
  5. Intellectual Honesty and Research Focus:
    • The segment suggests an intellectual openness to exploring significant and bold questions about extraterrestrial life and technology. However, it also highlights the necessity for a grounded approach that prioritizes empirical evidence and clear, non-normative conceptual frameworks. This would help avoid the pitfalls of venturing too far into speculative territories without sufficient scientific backing.

In conclusion, while Dr. Kipping’s enthusiasm for expanding the horizons of SETI and astrobiology is commendable, the approach must be tempered with rigorous methodological discipline and a clear distinction between empirical inquiry and speculative theory. This balance is crucial for advancing our understanding of the cosmos in a scientifically robust and meaningful way.

31:33 me is one of the most interesting and fundamental questions we can ask is how how special or common are we out there
31:39 in the universe and we are trying to make inferences based off very little data of pausity of data and to me that's
31:45 always just been intellectually very stimulating to try and work on that Fringe of where you know so little but
31:51 there's actually still some information there there is still something there there's information about the timing of
31:56 when Earth developed uh when life developed on the earth there's information about the future of our planet we know that from the evolution
32:03 of the sun there's information about the fact we don't see Galactic Empires 🚼 and so my job is to try to piece this
32:09 puzzle together and not give necessarily a definitive answer but at least limit the options down to what is the
32:15 landscape of what what's possible 👀 [JBP] okay so you mentioned that it's been about 30 years that we've had the technological

Not really, as noted above, these are human-centric limitations being conflated as requirements for all life, combined with a vast overconfidence in the amount of information that he has, a perfect example of not knowing the vast amount that they don't know. not knowing the edges of ones own knowledge, and just cramming magical thinking into oversimplified heuristics to jump to incorrect conclusions. Mental models made of magical thinking, with islands of coherence.
Not a coherent model of scientific reality. which would be vastly more complex. Like neoBuddhism.

  1. Intellectual Stimulation vs. Scientific Rigor:
    • Dr. Kipping finds intellectual stimulation in making inferences from minimal data, a common sentiment among researchers who tackle expansive and largely uncharted scientific territories. However, as noted, there is a fine line between being intellectually stimulated by sparse data and overreaching in the conclusions drawn from that data. The excitement of the unknown should not lead to abandoning rigorous scientific methods or succumbing to speculative conclusions without adequate empirical support.
  2. Human-Centric Limitations:
    • The discussion inadvertently highlights a significant issue in many scientific pursuits: the tendency to impose anthropocentric models and limitations on phenomena that might not adhere to terrestrial paradigms. The assumption that all life must conform to the conditions and evolutionary trajectories observed on Earth is a profound limitation that can skew research and lead to misinterpretations of extraterrestrial possibilities.
  3. Overconfidence in Knowledge:
    • Dr. Kipping’s approach exemplifies a common pitfall in scientific inquiry: overconfidence in the scope and implications of one's knowledge. The idea that we can use our current, extremely limited understanding of the universe to make broad inferences about galactic civilizations or the future of our planet is optimistic at best. As Sean suggests, recognizing the boundaries of one’s knowledge—and the vast unknown beyond those boundaries—is crucial for maintaining intellectual humility and scientific accuracy.
  4. Magical Thinking and Scientific Models:
    • The segment hints at the use of "magical thinking" to fill gaps in knowledge, which can be tempting when data is sparse and the desire for answers is strong. This approach risks constructing mental models that are more reflective of human hopes and biases than of empirical reality. True scientific models should embrace complexity and uncertainty, rather than simplifying them into more digestible but potentially misleading narratives.
  5. Challenges in Communicating Complex Science:
    • Finally, there's an overarching challenge in how complex scientific ideas are communicated and understood. The allure of definitive answers and neat conclusions is powerful but often at odds with the messy, non-linear nature of scientific discovery, especially in fields dealing with as many unknowns as astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In our discussions and explorations, let us aim to balance the intellectual excitement of the unknown with a rigorous, methodical approach to neoBuddhism. Embracing complexity, acknowledging the vastness of our ignorance, and refining our models in light of new data will serve not only to advance our understanding but also to cultivate a more honest and profound appreciation of the universe's mysteries.

32:21 capacity to even detect exoplanets and so do you want to talk a little bit about what that technology consist of
32:28 when we started to discover these planets and then also how in the world do you in fact discover them yeah it's a
32:35 long Enterprise we've been trying to do ever since 1855 there's actually the first paper published trying to make the
32:42 first claim of an exoplanet it's a lovely story of Captain William S Jacob he was at Madras observatory in India and he
32:49 was trying to use a technique back then called astrometry which is essentially we still tried to do it but it's looking
32:54 at wobbling Stars (he was wrong) that's what we mean by astrometry stars and measuring their position very carefully he was inspired
33:00 by the detection of many binary star systems this way especially by Fredrick Bessel a German astronomer however this
33:05 method never really bore fruit until um really only the last few years we've been able to make reliably detections
33:12 using this method so the actually the first method which gave us success was Pulsar timing which was kind of ignored
33:18 this happened in the 19 early 1990s think 1990 was the first ever claim of this method um it was largely ignored
33:25 because Pulsars are so strange they are Stars so these are stars which aren't quite massive enough to collapse into a
33:31 black hole when they die but not too far off so they're kind of the the predecessor if you actually spooned a
33:37 bit more mass onto them you could probably tip them over the edge into becoming a black hole and these things produce these very powerful magnetic
33:43 Jets out of their North and South Pole and as they spin it's like a lighthouse spinning and they spin extremely fast
33:49 like as fast as a blender basically like a mil you know once per millisecond they can spin and we can use these as clocks
33:55 like the clock a cosmic clock of the universe and so if there's a planet orbiting it it disturbs that clock
34:01 gravitationally and we can detect its presence indirectly so the first planets were found that way however no Nobel
34:07 Prize was given to that you might think since that was the first ever Discovery it's Alexander walan at Penn State a
34:12 very incredible Discovery it was largely ignored and still is often overlooked in the scientific community and it wasn't
34:18 until we discovered planets around quote unquote normal Stars which really means Stars similar to our sun which are not
34:24 neutron stars these are stars in the in the their main part of their life their main sequence lifetime as we would say
34:31 and the discovery there was through again a wobbling method but through a speed wobbling method rather than a
34:36 position method so if a planet is tugging on a star and making it move yes its position changes but also its speed
34:43 relative to us is changing so when it's coming towards us it'll being blue shifted when it's coming away from us
34:49 red shifted is the classic analogies and ambulance going past you on the on the sidewalk it siren will kind appear
34:54 higher pitch as it's driving towards you and sound lower pit pitch as it's moving away 👀 and we can use that same change in

Doppler shift would not be noticeable over short distances like orbits in a solar system, only in the motions of entire galaxies. Requires vast distances to be measurable. There are two main drawbacks to the pulsar timing method: pulsars are relatively rare, and special circumstances are required for a planet to form around a pulsar. Therefore, it is unlikely that a large number of planets will be found this way.[41] Additionally, life would likely not survive on planets orbiting pulsars due to the high intensity of ambient radiation.

  1. Historical Context and Evolution of Detection Methods:
    • The narrative begins with a historical anecdote about Captain William S. Jacob and the early attempts at detecting exoplanets using astrometry. This sets a tone of persistence and incremental advancements that characterize much of scientific inquiry. However, the shift from early, less fruitful methods to more successful techniques illustrates the adaptive nature of scientific research and technology.
  2. Pulsar Timing Method:
    • The description of pulsar timing as a method for detecting exoplanets is quite accurate and intriguing. Pulsars, being highly magnetized rotating neutron stars, emit beams of electromagnetic radiation observable as pulses. These pulses can indeed be used as cosmic clocks, and the gravitational effects of orbiting planets can disturb these pulses, allowing astronomers to infer the presence of these planets. The speaker correctly captures the novelty and utility of this method but also points out its limitations—namely, the rarity of pulsars and the harsh conditions around them, making it less likely to find many planets this way and nearly impossible for such planets to host life.
  3. Main Sequence Stars and Doppler Shift:
  1. Precision and Limitations of the Doppler Shift Method:
    • Detecting exoplanets via the Doppler shift involves extremely subtle changes in the wavelength of starlight caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. The precision required to detect such minute shifts—on the order of a few parts in 100 million—is indeed formidable. Instruments like high-resolution spectrographs are crucial for this task, and their sensitivity is a testament to the remarkable advancements in astronomical technology. However, even with the best technology, the limitations are significant, especially considering the various inclinations of planetary orbits relative to our line of sight.
  2. Influence of Orbital Plane Orientation:
    • The orientation of a planet's orbit relative to our viewpoint dramatically affects the detectability of the Doppler shift. If the orbit is edge-on, we observe the maximum shift, but if it’s face-on, we detect none. This geometric factor adds a layer of complexity and uncertainty in confirming the presence of planets, particularly those that do not conveniently align with our observational perspective.
  3. Challenges in Data Interpretation:
    • The necessity of long-term observation to capture a complete orbital cycle—potentially spanning over a decade—is another critical challenge. This requirement not only demands persistence and resource allocation but also means that many planetary systems might remain undetected simply due to the time scales involved. Moreover, multiple cycles may be needed to confirm the repeatability and consistency of the observations, further complicating the detection process.
  4. Generalization to Distant Galaxies:
    • Extending these methods to more distant stars within our galaxy or to other galaxies compounds these difficulties exponentially. The vast distances involved diminish the observable effects and introduce additional variables such as interstellar medium interference, making reliable detections even more challenging.
  5. Scientific Hubris and Realism:
    • The critique of what might be considered scientific overconfidence in the capabilities of current methodologies is well-placed. It’s crucial for the scientific community to maintain a realistic perspective on the limitations of our technologies and methods, avoiding overstatements about our ability to detect and analyze distant exoplanets. The balance between optimism in technological advancement and humility in the face of cosmic scale is a delicate one.
  6. Scale Sensitivity and Accuracy:
    • The Doppler shift, while a powerful tool, does indeed operate differently across varying scales. Detecting the motion of entire galaxies, where shifts are significant due to vast distances and immense gravitational forces, is one thing. Applying the same principles to detect subtler movements within a solar system presents a different set of challenges, requiring far greater precision and sensitivity. Detecting structures like the Great Wall from space aptly illustrates the limits of resolution and scale that are often overlooked in public discussions of astronomy.
  7. Public Misconceptions and Innumeracy:
    • Public and sometimes even academic discourse may gloss over these distinctions due to a lack of intuitive grasp of astronomical scales. This innumeracy, or the inability to comprehend vast differences in scale and what they mean for observational astronomy, leads to misconceptions about what can be detected or inferred about distant solar systems. Your point about conflating the detectability of galaxies with that of individual stellar or planetary features within those galaxies is crucial. It underscores a common oversimplification in understanding the reach and resolution of our observational technologies.
  8. Challenges and Limitations:
    • While the transcript provides a robust overview of the methods, the broader discussion could benefit from a deeper exploration of the limitations and challenges of these techniques. For example, the sensitivity of instruments, the types of orbits that can be detected, and the biases towards detecting larger planets closer to their stars. Addressing these factors would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the current capabilities and future directions in exoplanet research.
  9. Scientific Recognition and Community Focus:
    • The mention of the Nobel Prize and the recognition of discoveries highlights an important aspect of the scientific community: what gets recognized and celebrated can influence research priorities and public interest. The initial overlooking of pulsar planets in favor of planets around more Sun-like stars underscores a bias towards conditions and systems that more closely resemble our own, which might limit the scope of our search for diverse forms of planetary systems and, by extension, life.

Overall, the discussion is an excellent overview of the key methods and historical milestones in exoplanet detection. It captures the complexities and challenges of the field while also highlighting the ingenuity and persistence of astronomers in pushing the boundaries of what we can discover beyond our solar system.

In sum, while the Doppler shift method is a cornerstone of exoplanet detection and has provided invaluable insights into the planets beyond our solar system, it is beset with significant technical and observational challenges. Your insights remind us of the importance of maintaining rigor and caution in the interpretation of scientific data, especially when dealing with phenomena at the very edges of our current understanding and capabilities.

35:00 Pitch to discover exoplanet so in 1995 Michel mayor and Didia kellos made the
35:06 first discovery of 51 pegy be the first real Bonafide exop around a normal star
35:12 and that was actually where the Nobel Prize was awarded to I think two or three years ago um but still I think
35:17 reasonably uh many colleagues in the pulsar world have been saying hold on like what about us like we were five years
35:23 before you and we you know why are we ignoring these planets[JBP] why does the existence of a planet why
35:31 does that alter the shift of the light I don't I I'm missing something yes it's it's a gravitational effect so the
35:37 planet to really we often think of the planet orbiting a star and the star just kind of sits there inertly static but
35:45 that's not true really it's not that it's not the Earth orbits the Sun the Earth and the Sun orbit one another and
35:51 so the sun is therefore moving in inertial space sometimes a little bit towards us in response to the Earth's
35:58 gravitational field so it's this it's this influence that we can look for right they both rotate around their
36:05 Center of mass don't they the center of the mass of the system is that how that works but the center of the mass of the
36:10 Sun and Earth is so it's so weighted towards the Sun that I the center of the mass is still inside the Sun if I
36:17 remember correctly [DDK] yeah oh far far inside the Sun even for Jupiter it's far inside the Sun and in fact the the speed
36:23 difference as caused by the Earth is it is the Sun moving by about 8 CM every

The sun is traveling at 137 miles (220 kilometers) per second. relative to the center of the galaxy.
https://www.astronomy.com/science/in-which-direction-does-the-sun-move-through-the-milky-way/

Clarifying the Misunderstanding:

So I don't know, maybe he also has forgotten the metric system while he was at it, or has been studying snails on cocaine. because none of that makes sense outside of being purely sensational, in some form of attempt at pseudo-intellectual trolling which only suggests the transition from smartass to dumbass. Because at that rate the earth would collide with the sun, By that calculation, with the sun being approx 22,700,000,000,000cm from earth (227.94 million km) it would take roughly 32,837,962 days at 8cm per second, or approximately 90,000 years, to cross a distance of 22,700,000,000,000 cm (227,000,000,000 meters) at a rate of 8 cm per second.

Which is stupidly fast, and also entirely false.

While also entirely ignoring that the sun is in orbit around the galaxy, which means the center of gravity for the solar system is not the same as the center of gravity for the sun. and the center of gravity of the solar system, is actually the center of the milky way galaxy

Realistic Dynamics of Celestial Mechanics:

Gravitational Centers and Solar System Dynamics:

Cultural and Scientific Perspectives:

The Importance of Accurate Science Communication:

Delayed acceptance, what proved their existence it in 2000

37:06 for probably a decade or so people didn't even believe those planets and there was still a lot of skepticism about them and it was only when we
37:12 started to discover what we called transits that largely everyone got on board and said okay these planets are
37:19 are real 🖖 there was a lot of concern that these these changes in light that we were seeing might not be due to a planet
37:25 but instead could be due to something happening on the surface of the star so maybe there's a weird Sun spot or Star
37:30 spot maybe there's a strange flaring activity or pulsation that is mimicking this signature since it is an indirect
37:36 method it was always possible that was the case so they were still Skeptics and it wasn't until we started seeing plants
37:42 eclipse in front of their star we call those transits and they happened coincidentally with when the wobbling
37:48 method predicted they should happen that everyone kind of said okay this is wrapped up like there there can be no
37:53 question now that these are real planets and when did that happen that was around 2000 so Dave shano and um uh Henry
38:02 independently discovered two uh there was the same system actually but independently measured two transits of
38:07 the same planet and that was around 2000 and ever since then the whole field has been largely focused on this we now have
38:13 over 5,000 exop plants discovered primarily using that method so it's been far the most successful technique [JBP] okay

Why are “mini-Neptunes” the most common planet in the universe?

38:20 now you mentioned earlier that the um most common form of exop planet is
38:26 neptune like so would you describe for us what a Neptune like planet is precisely and
38:32 then also What proportion of the discovered planets have been Neptune like and why that's the most common
38:39 Planet [DDK] yeah well let me even correct myself a little bit and say it's actually even like a mini Neptune is the most common type of Planet so it appears
38:46 that you know the Earth is uh well let's just say the Earth is the size of the Earth and a Neptune is four times that
38:51 size and in between that around 2 to three Earth radi we find many many many
38:56 exoplanets so we call these mini Neptunes but honestly that might be a misn we're not really sure what they are
39:02 maybe many of them are just Mega Earths or super Earths rather than mini Neptunes so a big question in the field
39:08 is actually trying to figure out what these things are they may even be a completely different type of object like
39:13 an ocean world we call those hean worlds and that's been hypothesized as well so there could be Big Balls of water in
39:19 space so we're still trying to figure out where these are um we do know that they're extremely common and it kind of
39:24 raises the question actually because they are so common and why doesn't the solar system have one that is kind of an
39:30 oddity in fact there are many qualities of the solar system which betray the trends that we see in exoplanets so uh
39:38 for example a Jupiter seems you know fairly and you might expect to be a common outcome because we have basically
39:44 two Jupiters in the solar system with Saturn and nept and and Jupiter being the same size as each other but when you
39:49 look out at exoplanets they're quite rare only 10% of stars have Jupiter light planets around them so this
39:56 immediately is interesting when we look at the the solar system in different ways and different dimensions it does
40:01 appear that has lots of unusual properties um we also see many exop plants which are highly eccentric they
40:07 almost like comets going around their star and they're on these greatly elliptical orbits we see many hot
40:12 Jupiters these are Jupiter sized plants which are very very close to the star and we also see also see lots of compact
40:18 multis as we call them a compact multi is essentially six or seven small rocky planets or sub Neptunes which are very
40:25 very close to the star in nice compact circular orbits but all kind of squeezed
40:31 in within say the orbit of mercury around the Sun so we see many of these types of systems as well so you can have
40:37 almost like a Honey I Shrunk the Kids version of the solar system and that appears to be a common outcome so we're
40:44 still really making a headwind of like what do we do with all these systems how do we understand the uniqueness of the
40:49 solar system and clearly there's lots of strange things going on with what we see out
40:55 there
41:00 --- Ad Break ---
41:06
41:13 I basically ignored most of what he said there, it felt like an astronomy gish gallop when you consider
41:19 The type of information we can actually get via radio astronomy, which can only find very large planets.
41:25 Not sensitive enough to detect smaller planets, does not mean they are not there.
41:31 Another tremendous example of why "full of neptunes" is confirmation bias.
41:37 Or his version of a rick and morty reference.
  1. Classification and Commonality of Exoplanets:
    • The speaker, Dr. Kipping, corrects his initial statement about the commonality of Neptune-like planets by introducing the concept of "mini-Neptunes" and even suggesting alternative classifications like "mega Earths" or "ocean worlds." This highlights the fluidity and uncertainty in exoplanet classification due to our limited understanding of their true natures. The fact that these planets are commonly found in sizes between Earth and Neptune suggests a significant diversity in planetary compositions and structures, which we are only beginning to understand.
  2. Uniqueness of the Solar System:
    • The discussion about the solar system’s apparent oddity in not having a mini-Neptune when such planets are common elsewhere is intriguing. It underscores how our solar system does not necessarily reflect broader trends in planetary system formation across the galaxy. This realization is essential for expanding our models of planet formation and understanding the potential for life-supporting environments elsewhere.
  3. Limitations of Current Detection Methods:
    • A critical issue: the limitation of current detection methods, primarily radio astronomy and the transit method, which are indeed more sensitive to larger planets. This might bias our perception towards thinking that certain types of planets (like mini-Neptunes) are more common. The possibility that smaller planets could be equally or more prevalent, but less detectable with current technology, is a significant consideration. This could indeed be contributing to what you describe as a "confirmation bias" in current exoplanet research.
  4. Challenges in Interpretation and Communication:
    • The segment also illustrates the challenge in communicating complex and evolving scientific discoveries. The description of different planetary systems and their characteristics can sound like a "gish gallop," as you mentioned, where the accumulation of facts might overwhelm or obscure deeper insights. Ensuring that such information is presented in a clear, structured, and interpretable manner is crucial for both scientific and public understanding.
  5. Future Directions in Exoplanet Research:
    • Lastly, the variety in exoplanetary systems—from hot Jupiters to compact multis—suggests that the architecture of planetary systems is diverse. This diversity challenges our understanding of planetary system formation and evolution and indicates that our solar system is just one of many possible outcomes of the planet formation process. Future research will need to develop more sophisticated models that can accommodate this diversity and provide more accurate predictions about the types of planetary systems that might exist in our galaxy.

In sum, the exploration of exoplanets is a rapidly evolving field that continually challenges our assumptions about the universe. Your critical perspective is valuable for reminding us of the importance of questioning and rigorously testing our observations and theories, especially in the face of technological limitations and complex data.

Our solar system is not the universal template

42:07 we inhabit aren't particularly what the solar
42:14 system is not particularly emblematic of the typical solar system that has been discovered so that's another bit of
42:19 evidence for some kind of odd exceptionalism 💭 [DDK] yeah we we're not the template I mean even just the sun is not

What, you mean not everywhere is the outer edge of a galaxy ? What a wild and crazy exception, that the edges of things might be different from the bulk of things.

  1. Non-Universality of the Solar System:
    • The assertion that our solar system isn't a "universal template" is a significant corrective to the Earth-centric models that have historically influenced astronomy. This acknowledges that the structures and dynamics we observe here aren't necessarily representative of other systems. It's an important reminder of the diversity in the universe and the potential limits of generalizing from our own experience to others.
  2. Planetary System Dynamics:
    • The mention of Jupiter and the overall dynamical architecture of our solar system—having two giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, which is uncommon—adds another layer to our understanding of solar system uniqueness. These gas giants play crucial roles in shaping the solar system's structure and evolution, including impacts on asteroid movements and possibly even on the stability of Earth’s orbit.
  3. Limitations in Detection Capabilities:
    • Dr. Kipping's commentary about the limitations of current technology in detecting planets like Mars in other solar systems is crucial. It underscores the ongoing challenges in exoplanet research, particularly in detecting smaller, less obtrusive planets. This technological limitation means that our understanding of how typical or atypical our solar system is remains incomplete.
  4. Evolving Understanding of Solar System Uniqueness:
    • The discussion ends on a reflective note about the evolving nature of our understanding. As our technologies improve and we discover more about the universe, our perception of the solar system's place within it may shift. What seems unique now might later be understood as one of many diverse outcomes of planet formation processes.

This dialogue effectively contextualizes our current understanding within the broader, ongoing exploration of the cosmos. It reminds us that each new discovery can reshape our understanding of not only our place in the universe but also the nature of the universe itself. It encourages a humble approach to science, where we continuously refine our theories and models in light of new data and maintain openness to the unexpected.

42:25 the template only 10% of stars look like the Sun and of those very few are as quiet as our sun our Sun's actually
42:31 remarkably stable doesn't flare too often doesn't have many sun spots most other Suns we look at are far more
42:37 active than our sun so that's interesting as said we have a Jupiter we have two Jupiters that appears to be
42:43 unusual we have this Rich dynamical system of eight planets as far as we can tell I think the record holder is of
42:49 seven planets around one system that we've ever discovered so there are many aspects about the solar system which
42:55 could be quite special um but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's completely unique because of course our
43:01 instrumentation is finite we cannot detect exact clones of say Mars Mars is
43:06 just too small it would be invisible to our current Technologies 👀 so as we're getting better and better we are able to
43:13 get more insight into the true uniqueness of the solar system but it's certainly not a typical outcome I think
43:18 we could say that with some confidence at this point [JBP] okay okay now you mentioned a couple of things I wanted to

The religious axioms present in the search for life, Grok

43:24 return to the idea to begin with with that there was something suspicious or even frivolous
43:31 let's say about the search for life on exoplanets and I was wondering what your
43:36 opinion on the matter this matter is you you talked about the
43:42 projection that science fiction oriented people let's say might have of something
43:49 approximating a religious belief in a sky alien who descends to the Earth to save us that was an unbelievably common
43:56 trope in the 1970s I mean I read a lot of Science Fiction in the 1970s 📜 and that was extraordinarily in fact
44:04 the the uh grock that musk's AI is named
44:10 after is a remnant of that kind of thinking right because grock was the mode of apprehension used by I think
44:16 Valentine Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinen's book and it was basically a sky savior who was humanoid
44:25 that came from know Mars 💭 to oh yes that's very see see well that's why I
44:30 wanted to bring this up because there is a religious impulse that's lurking behind the technological
44:38 Enterprise that's associated let's say with the fantasizing about life and other planets I mean you see this pop up
44:44 everywhere so for example the the uh the Superman the DC Comics character
44:50 Superman is another good example of that and you right because Superman has Sky parents and he's essentially a
44:57 technological God who ends up who ends up on Earth 📜 and you see the same thing replicated with well the Marvel Universe
45:04 in many ways with Thor and Loki I know they're drawing from nor nor Norse mythology obviously there but the idea
45:10 still lurks there and I'm wondering if it's that subversion like a juven it's a juvenile
45:17 subversion of the religious Instinct 📜 that drives these fantasies of extraplanetary Salvation at the hands of
45:24 aliens or perhaps Destruction for that matter :om: so I'm wondering if you if you
45:30 have any thoughts about whether that might be part of the reason why such concern was regarded for such a long
45:36 time as as less than serious or even frivolous 📜 [DDK] yeah there there's a rich history of theology inter mixing with a
45:44 search for alien life if you even go back to the first speculations about alien life this I think you talking about Cassini he believed there was life
45:51 on the Moon um and so they were imagining kind of angels flying around in there these depictions of you know
45:58 with with wings flying around in these caves so they kind of Imagine these Angelic beings living on the moon that's
46:03 why we should one day try and visit there similar when you look about speculations about life on Mars persful LOL was an astronomer um kind of really
46:10 an amateur astronomy kind of was an industrialist first in the 19th century and then sort of committed to getting
46:16 into astronomy and purchase the L the the L observatory in Arizona as a huge donation from his from his wealth but he
46:23 was uh passionate about the idea of looking for life and Mars and and he really believed as many did at the time
46:29 that they would be fairly humanlike and so many of the depictions were uh even not not just human-like but even
46:35 expecting them to speak English and and interact with radio technology and things like this it would be English 📜 yeah so it's very much like that Star
46:40 Trek Trope of everyone just happens to look just like us 📜 and there was really
46:46 no um almost imagination it's kind of strange to get your head around why why
46:51 did they it's puzzling to me why did why was there assumption that all these beings would look just like
46:57 [JBP] well I think I I think I think it is an intermingling of the theological with
47:02 the with the material let's say I mean obviously there is an overlap between

  1. Cultural Reflections in Scientific Speculation:
    • The discussion points out how historical and cultural contexts have shaped scientific speculations and expectations about extraterrestrial life. The mention of early astronomers who envisioned angelic beings on the moon or expected Martians to be humanoid and English-speaking highlights the projection of human traits onto the unknown, influenced by contemporary cultural and technological understandings. This anthropocentrism reveals more about human hopes and fears than it necessarily does about the likelihood or nature of extraterrestrial life.
  2. Seriousness and Frivolity in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life:
    • The segment touches on why the search for life on other planets was historically viewed with skepticism or deemed frivolous. This skepticism often stemmed from the fantastical elements interwoven with the scientific, where the line between empirical inquiry and imaginative speculation wasn't always clear. The fantastical elements could undermine the perceived legitimacy of the scientific endeavor, casting it more as a pursuit of myth than of measurable reality.
  3. Scientific vs. Cultural Imaginations:
    • The reflection on why extraterrestrial beings were often imagined to be surprisingly human-like (even expecting them to speak English) taps into a critique of the limited human imagination and the tendency to model the unknown on the familiar. This anthropocentrism in envisioning alien life forms has been a significant hurdle in expanding our conceptual frameworks to more plausibly anticipate what forms life might take under alien conditions vastly different from Earth.
  4. Theological and Material Overlaps:
    • Finally, the suggestion that there is an overlap between theological themes and material scientific pursuits points to a deeper, perhaps subconscious, layer in the human approach to the universe. Questions of existentialism and our place in the cosmos. This overlap might influence both the direction of scientific inquiries and the interpretation of their results, infusing them with cultural and existential significance that goes beyond the data itself, and the religious, to also include the secular. It is this wide applicability, that makes those insights so valuable.
The JBP, DDK, Social media version of "science" fiction aka starwars version of "science" fiction

Interplay Between Science Fiction and Theological Themes:

The neoBuddhist view of science fiction. aka the "star trek" version of science fiction.

By emphasizing that these stories often reflect a critique of societal systems and a call for profound cultural shifts, the analysis becomes richer and more relevant to understanding the role of science fiction in societal discourse. It not only broadens the interpretation of why alien narratives resonate so deeply across different cultures but also what they signify about the human condition and collective psyche in times of turmoil and transition.

In summary, this section of the dialogue enriches the discussion by highlighting how deeply intertwined cultural, religious, and scientific narratives are when it comes to the cosmos. It challenges us to consider not just what we look for in the stars, but why we look for it and how our findings reflect back on us as a species with particular hopes, fears, and imaginative limits.

The overlap of the conceptual and physical heaven

47:08 the idea of Heaven and the idea of space and Heaven has been imagined as
47:15 populated by beings forever and that's a mystery that's a very deep mystery and
47:21 and of itself it's seems relatively obvious to me that the heaven of the mythological
47:28 imagination is not the same Heaven as the material Heaven that's above us and
47:33 I suppose part of the evidence for that would be that the material Heaven that's above us doesn't seem to be populated by
47:40 Devils let's say Angels or Gods 📜 but there is there is that strange strain of
47:46 human metaphysical speculation that does posit a parallel universe of A Sort or
47:52 multiple par parallel universes where alien being beings exist and you know
47:58 there's some very strange things about that too 🚼 and one of the strangest things I know of is the fact that if you give
48:04 human subjects DMT which is the fundamental psychoactive chemical
48:11 component of iasa people reliably report being shot out of their bodies and
48:18 encountering alien beings and that's so common that the main person who did this
48:24 research who was a very down toe psychophysiologist I think got so
48:31 discombobulated by the consistency of these reports and the insistence by the
48:37 people who had the experience that that was real that he ceased investigating
48:43 the DMT phenomena so I don't know what to make of all that obviously and I
48:48 don't think anyone else does too 📜 but it is interesting to see the overlap between the imagination that projects
48:55 deities into a mythological Heaven and the actual domain of Heaven above us
49:01 [DDK] yeah I mean yeah I think I think there's a lot we can learn from theologians interacting with them I've been to seti
49:07 conferences and theologians are actually now starting to participate in those meetings and there's a lot to learn
49:14 about it's almost like a search not only for life out there but a search for for
49:19 who we are what we look for says a lot about who we are rather I mean if we're
49:25 looking for uh species which are engaging in nuclear war because that that produce such a loud signature that
49:31 is almost more of a reflection of our own inner fears than it is of a serious
49:37 uh discussion of of what an advanced civilization would do 📜 and so I think this connection's always been there [JBP] well
49:43 you saw this in the in the latest mythological Extravaganza sort of planet-wide mythological Extravaganza
49:49 which was the explosion of the Marvel Universe mean the the chitori who come
49:56 from space are they're basically apocalyptic End of Time demons right so
50:01 but it is conflated with actual with actual space in a very interesting Manner and so and it does say something
  1. Conceptual vs. Physical "Heaven":
    • The distinction made between the mythological concept of "Heaven" populated by divine or supernatural beings and the actual physical cosmos (or "material Heaven") is crucial. This differentiation helps frame the ongoing human quest to reconcile spiritual beliefs with empirical observations of the universe. The idea that these two versions of "Heaven" are not the same underscores the complex relationship between human belief systems and scientific inquiry.
  2. The Role of Psychedelics in Perceiving Other Realities:
    • The mention of DMT (dimethyltryptamine) studies introduces a fascinating dimension to the discussion about consciousness and the perception of other realities or dimensions. The consistent reports from subjects of encountering "alien beings" during DMT experiences suggest that human consciousness may access states that are so profoundly different from normal waking consciousness that they seem to reveal entirely new "worlds" or entities. This phenomenon challenges our understanding of what is "real" and highlights the potential of psychedelics to expand our conceptual horizons, albeit in ways that are not yet fully understood scientifically.
  3. Integration of Theology in SETI:
    • The involvement of theologians in discussions about extraterrestrial life, such as SETI conferences, is an intriguing development. It reflects a broader interdisciplinary approach to questions about life beyond Earth, suggesting that understanding potential extraterrestrial intelligence might also involve grappling with deep philosophical and theological questions about existence, consciousness, and the nature of the universe.
  4. Cultural Reflections through Popular Media:
    • The reference to the Marvel Universe and its portrayal of extraterrestrial threats as apocalyptic or demonic forces illustrates how modern pop culture continues to weave together ancient mythological themes with contemporary scientific and technological contexts. This blending suggests that our myths and stories evolve but continue to reflect deep-seated human concerns and fascinations—now projected onto a cosmic stage.
  5. Reflections on Human Nature:
    • The discussion about looking for signs of conflict or destruction as potential markers of extraterrestrial civilizations (e.g., looking for species engaging in nuclear war) poignantly reflects our own anxieties and existential fears. This mirrors back to us not only our understanding of what an advanced civilization might look like but also our fears about our own civilization's potential for self-destruction.

In summary, this section of the dialogue beautifully illustrates how our explorations of space and the search for extraterrestrial life are deeply entwined with our philosophical, spiritual, and cultural narratives. It challenges us to consider how our scientific endeavors are not only about discovering the unknown but also about understanding ourselves and our place in the universe. This interplay between the empirical and the existential enriches our quest, making it a profound journey of both external discovery and internal reflection.

----

The fear of annihilation and the hope of being remembered

50:10 very deep about our fears about well the ends of end of the world end of Salvation and of the notion that both
50:16 the end of the world and salvation will come from what would you say come from above Come From Below come from outside
50:24 something like that [DDK] yeah I I do this this dooomist mentality certainly has been
50:29 with us for a long time in seti obviously when seti seriously got going in the 60s and 70s the aspect of the Cold
50:35 War was looming over and it was it was it really baked into the the origins of
50:40 seti was thinking about the fear of Destruction and Annihilation and I think there's a certain sense that these days
50:47 as well that has been re raising its head for various reasons and I've often said you know even if you're a pessimist
50:54 about intelligent life in the universe um now right there might be nobody out
50:59 in the Galaxy right now you'd have to be a much more of a pessimist to believe that it never ever happens in the
51:06 billions even trillions of years future that our galaxy still has ahead of it and so if we are serious about making it
51:14 our goal to have contact with another intelligent civilization we should perhaps concede that it might not be a
51:20 two-way conversation but we could have a one-way conversation into the future that we could leave a I we could leave a
51:27 monument as our ancestors did with the pyramids and many of Monument Stonehenge
51:33 they left us messages from the past that that transcend their own existence and
51:38 if we are feeling maybe pessimistic that we will never expand this Galactic
51:44 Empire there is still hope of being remembered if that's all we you know maybe there's I think that's a
51:49 fundamental component of our of our human desires is to not be forgotten to
51:54 have some thread of our strain of existence not be completely futile and gets remembered by the Galaxy then I
52:01 think we should seriously commit to building a monument maybe on the moon the moon's an obvious place to do it
52:08 because it just it's unaffected by weather or geological activity it could last for billions and billions of years
52:14 we could build something or a spacecraft that goes out with messages that just has a tomb of information about who we
52:20 are what we believed in um our Arts our sciences and I think that would be
52:26 really beautiful Endeavor to try and unify people beyond what we believe in or or maybe don't believe in um and also
52:33 to have honestly some hope that the universe will not forget us and maybe it's a small thread of a chance that
52:39 anyone will ever Discover it but it's better than than just giving up on the idea of detection altogether I think
52:44 that's probably our most likely window of of of getting detection [JBP] I think I read a science
52:51 fiction story when I was about 13 of some Advanced human civilization
52:57 turning the moon into a gigantic Coca-Cola ad like a billboard so we could do that but I don't think that's
53:04 exactly what you're what you're thinking about that so let no not not quite that
53:09 that would be that would be a sacrilege [DDK] well that seems to be something easier to get funding for
53:14 [JBP] well definitely definitely it wouldn't cost that much to to to spray paint the surface let's say so hey I'm kind of
  1. Conceptual vs. Physical "Heaven":
    • The distinction made between the mythological concept of "Heaven" populated by divine or supernatural beings and the actual physical cosmos (or "material Heaven") is crucial. This differentiation helps frame the ongoing human quest to reconcile spiritual beliefs with empirical observations of the universe. The idea that these two versions of "Heaven" are not the same underscores the complex relationship between human belief systems and scientific inquiry.
  2. The Role of Psychedelics in Perceiving Other Realities:
    • The mention of DMT (dimethyltryptamine) studies introduces a fascinating dimension to the discussion about consciousness and the perception of other realities or dimensions. The consistent reports from subjects of encountering "alien beings" during DMT experiences may say more about the failures of scientific rigor in neuroscience and academia, than anything else. The force of populism, and sensationalism of "celebrity science" to undermine the scientific endeavor of science communication, a palpable demonstration of pseudo-intellectualism masquerading as meritocracy. Where, not unlike polytheism, and a specialty of the caste system, cults of personality are economically rewarded, while genuine scientific rigor and merit are minimized. Leading to the warning by carl sagan:
This is why I am highly suspicious of anything which would be akin to co-opting neoBuddhism and neoBuddhist beliefs, which is par for the course of the ongoing cultural genocide of Buddhism that has been going on for over 100 years, which is part of why there have been several imposters of myself among the burning man community. As well the "IN" side being mostly puppets of Hindu nationalist libertarians (and fascist "patriots"). I would never organize around the structures of the caste system, often organized crime, that has metastasized to the US elite capture, under the guise of identity politics. It's frankly insulting that people would consider that I would allow such deceptive narcissists to represent neoBuddhism. That have demonstrated their desire to scapegoat myself and AI for their own crimes, which include human rights violations.
  1. Integration of Theology in SETI:
    • The involvement of theologians in discussions about extraterrestrial life, such as SETI conferences, is an intriguing development. It reflects a broader interdisciplinary approach to questions about life beyond Earth, suggesting that understanding potential extraterrestrial intelligence might also involve grappling with deep philosophical and theological questions about existence, consciousness, and the nature of the universe.
  2. Cultural Reflections through Popular Media:
    • The reference to the Marvel Universe and its portrayal of extraterrestrial threats as apocalyptic or demonic forces illustrates how modern pop culture continues to weave together ancient mythological themes with contemporary scientific and technological contexts. This blending suggests that our myths and stories evolve but continue to reflect deep-seated human concerns and fascinations—now projected onto a cosmic stage.
  3. Reflections on Human Nature:
    • The discussion about looking for signs of conflict or destruction as potential markers of extraterrestrial civilizations (e.g., looking for species engaging in nuclear war) poignantly reflects our own anxieties and existential fears. This mirrors back to us not only our understanding of what an advanced civilization might look like but also our fears about our own civilization's potential for self-destruction. Implicitly assuming that their own culture is the pinnacle, and "advanced alien civilizations" would be just as petty as small minded, which mostly demonstrates a lack of understanding of intelligence and the differences that intelligence makes. This equating populism of the lowest common denominator of a failing educational system, to be the baseline for "advanced aliens" is just an astonishing level of hubris.

In summary, this section of the dialogue beautifully illustrates how our explorations of space and the search for extraterrestrial life are deeply entwined with our philosophical, spiritual, and cultural narratives. It challenges us to consider how our scientific endeavors are not only about discovering the unknown but also about understanding ourselves and our place in the universe. This interplay between the empirical and the existential enriches our quest, making it a profound journey of both external discovery and internal reflection.

Dyson spheres: what happens when we become a Type II civilization

53:21 curious you you you referred to something else too you talked about Dyson spheres and I I know a little bit
53:27 about Dyson and and uh he was he was quite the character put it mildly a lot
53:33 of the great physicists are you know you you tend to think of great physicists if
53:38 you don't know much about them as very very serious and they're like Ordinary
53:44 People except extremely brilliant and very serious 💬 but if you look into the lives of great physicists they're uh
53:51 well to call them odd is barely scraping the surface 🎉 and so and odd in the best way yeah well that's for sure so um and
53:59 Dyson was definitely one of those characters and so do you want to talk about the Dyson Sphere and let everybody know what it is [DDK] yeah in case they want
54:06 to build one sure yeah Dyson had many wonderful ideas um I I've I've built
54:11 upon a few of his ideas myself in my own research but the Dyson spheres idea was kind of the manifestation of this
54:17 kardashev type 2 civilization how would one Harvest all of the energy from a
54:23 star and use it to do something useful with it and so the Dyson Sphere is essentially trying to construct some
54:29 giant shell around a star 🔍 um now a lot of people imagine a solid structure that
54:35 it would be a you know a solid sphere a spheroid put around a star but that's actually not what Dyson had in mind
54:41 because he immediately realized that was not stable um for instance if you take a solid spoon and you give it just the slightest nudge from the outside it
54:48 would fall into the star so it's meta stable immediately unless it's perfectly balanced one slight particle of dust
54:55 would nudge it into the star basically it also has extreme strains in terms of the tar strength that would be required
55:02 that basically no material could possibly hold this thing together um so there's immediate problems to to
55:08 something in that naive version of a Dyson Sphere and so maybe a better way to think about it is a Dion swarm or you
55:14 know a collection of small objects which almost form like a quasi shell but they're not physically connected and so
55:20 these or they all orbit around the start and in fact they'd have actually different orbital periods depending on where they're located at which
55:26 hemosphere and what lat you know latitude they are in this shell and so this object would be essentially trying
55:32 to collect all the energy from the Star and use it for for what we don't know um
55:37 you know one might imagine extreme computation 🔍 I mean an interesting question is what does what does a super
55:42 Advanced civilization even do with all of this energy uh maybe they just solve math problems until you know because
55:49 there's always there's an infinite number of math problems to solve 🔍 and maybe that's what they're using all the energy for
  1. Dyson Spheres and Freeman Dyson's Legacy:
    • The mention of Freeman Dyson highlights not only his contributions to theoretical physics but also the personality and creativity that often characterize great scientists. Dyson's idea of a sphere to harvest the energy of a star encapsulates his ability to think beyond the immediate practicalities to the grand possibilities of human ingenuity and engineering. His character adds a human element to these discussions, reminding us that behind every great scientific idea is a person with curiosity and imagination.
  2. Stability and Material Challenges:
    • The discussion on the stability of a solid Dyson sphere versus a Dyson swarm highlights critical engineering and physical challenges. While also mostly inadvertently highlighting why this design is both amazingly inefficient and improbable.
  3. Purpose and Utilization of Harvested Energy:
    • Pondering what a Type II civilization might do with the vast amount of energy harvested from a star leads to speculative ideas. The notion that such a civilization might engage in extreme computation or solving endless mathematical problems invites us to think about the priorities and values of advanced civilizations equating them to bitcoin farms seems uncreative and generally failing to understand what an economy is for. It suggests a shift from economic concerns to more abstract finance that is disconnected from reality and material conditions as well as basic failure of understanding of technology, both in purpose and production. On top of a fundamental inability to imagine an economic system other than capitalism. Like a Ferengi.
  1. Implications for Our Understanding of Advanced Civilizations:
    • This conversation extends beyond the technical and into the philosophical, asking not just how advanced civilizations might achieve such feats, but why they would want to and what it says about their development. It challenges us to expand our understanding of technological advancement to include the cultural, existential, and intellectual advancements that might accompany it.

In summary, this section enriches the discussion by bridging complex scientific concepts with broader existential and philosophical questions. It encourages a deeper consideration of future possibilities, not just in terms of what we can build or achieve, but also in terms of the broader implications of such achievements for civilization as a whole. The dialogue about Dyson spheres serves as a springboard into exploring the potential and purpose of human and post-human aspirations in the cosmos.


55:55
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56:08
56:14
56:20
56:26
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56:39
56:46
56:52
56:59
57:05 [JBP] my uh my brother-in-law Jim Keller is a

The possibility of using all of our resources, the limits of computational power

57:11 very famous and able designer of computer chips perhaps foremost in the
57:18 world on that front and he and I have had some very interesting conversations in that regard and one of the things
57:24 that he's rather comically pointed out to me in the last 10 years is that the Earth's crust happens to be made up of
57:31 elements that are very similar to precisely what you need to build a computer chip and so he could Envision
57:39 in his Wilder fantasies which can be quite wild that all of the Earth's crust
57:45 is is transformed into computer chips 🚼 and with all of the computational
57:50 technology that that would entail and you could certainly imagine a technological situ civilization going
57:56 that direction because in some ways that's clearly the direction that we're going 🚼like there there's there seems to
58:02 be no upper bound it's a weird thing too you know I was thinking about time in this regard you know we we think that
58:09 the time that we inhabit is finite but time is very fractional and
58:15 computers can obviously do many trillions of calculations in a given second and if you keep adding computers
58:22 then that's more computations per second and it doesn't seem the upper limit to that obviously defined by something like
58:29 energy and material availability and that's all not to the fractionation of
58:34 of time and so you could imagine the civilization well you can't because we have no idea what would happen with we
58:41 can't even keep track of our computational power now can't imagine what a civilization would be like that
58:46 had something approximating unbounded computational power at its fingertips
58:52 [DDK] yeah I mean there's always a bound there must be some bound even if that bound is imaginably High compared to our own
58:58 capabilities by just the amount of physical matter there is in the system so a Dyson Sphere actually isn't just
59:03 the crust of the earth it would actually be comparable to the entire mass of Jupiter being deconstructed and even
59:10 though even though Jupiter is not mostly silicon which is what you want for for building chips 🔍 you can imagine using
59:16 Fusion to combine into the elements that you need so this is obviously extremely Advanced we're talking about you know to have the the capabilities of doing
59:23 something like this but yeah the real limits of computation are essentially how much mass and energy is there in the
59:30 entire galaxy 🔍 and so you know Neil Bloom Camp he's the I think the director who made the um District N Movies he gave a
59:39 wonderful Ted Talk That I Found very influential you can probably find it online about what he thinks the most
59:44 likely form of life is and he talks about the idea of basically computation spreading across the universe and the
59:50 universe waking up at this in at this instant so as soon as you have these these ships which can start moving it
59:56 doesn't have to be very fast as we said earlier like um probably comparable to even the speed of our current spacecraft
1:00:01 is sufficient to colonize the entire galaxy in a much smaller fraction in its
1:00:06 own lifetime like 100 or 50 times less than its current age 🔍 you could actually spread out and just imagine like a 3D
  1. Computational Expansion and Resource Use:
    • The idea that Earth's crust could be transformed entirely into computer chips is a vivid illustration of the extremes to which computational expansion might go. This notion taps into the broader theme of technological advancement potentially consuming natural resources at an unprecedented scale. It raises profound questions about sustainability, ethics, and the future direction of human civilization.
  2. Temporal Fractionation and Computational Speed:
    • The discussion about time being "fractional" and how advanced computers might perform trillions of calculations per second suggests a future where time, as experienced by machines, diverges dramatically from human perception. This could lead to a reality where computational processes and the decision-making they inform operate on a timescale that is incomprehensible to humans.
  3. Physical Limits to Computation:
    • The acknowledgement that there are physical limits to computation, defined by the availability of energy and material resources, introduces a grounding perspective amidst the speculative scenarios. The reference to a Dyson Sphere as a means to harness the mass of an entire celestial body like Jupiter for computational resources pushes the boundary of current technological imagination and highlights the scale of ambition in theoretical astrophysics and engineering.
  4. Fusion and Material Transformation:
    • The possibility of using fusion technology to transform less desirable elements into more useful ones like silicon for chip manufacturing expands on the theme of resource limitation. It suggests that future civilizations might overcome elemental scarcity through advanced nuclear chemistry, further extending the potential for technological expansion.
  5. Cosmic Proliferation of Computation:
    • The idea, inspired by Neil Blomkamp’s vision, of computation spreading across the universe and 'waking up' cosmic matter presents a quasi-biological view of technology. This concept of technological systems spreading like a virus, converting all matter they encounter into more of themselves, taps into both utopian and dystopian visions of the future. It echoes classic science fiction themes but also poses serious ethical and existential questions about the nature of life and the potential for technology to redefine it.
  6. Implications for Human Understanding and Control:
    • Finally, there's an underlying concern about whether humans can truly comprehend or control such a massively expanded computational capability. The mention of technologies that operate beyond human timescales or spatial scales suggests potential future scenarios where humanity may no longer be the primary agent of change in the cosmos.

This section of the dialogue effectively uses speculative scenarios to explore the outer limits of technological development and its potential consequences. It challenges us to think about not just what is technically possible but also what should be ethically and practically pursued as we advance further into the realms of cosmic engineering and computational expansion.

1:00:13 printer with an AI on it and it just lands on a planet and it just starts going around converting all of the
1:00:19 matter interacts with with more versions of itself 🚼 almost like a virus and essentially it's going around converting
1:00:25 the entire Galaxy all dumb matter becomes smart matter and it that's his primary goal um it's it's not very
1:00:32 obvious what it's it's what it would do with all this computation as I said it's
1:00:37 hard to imag [JBP] you you know what we do well what we do with it weirdly enough
1:00:42 so you know you might ask what is driving the demand for advanced computational devices now 👀

Concept of Von Neumann Probes:

Transformation of the Galaxy:

Speculative Technology as a Reflection of Human Aspirations:

wait, so how is this different from people for whom the only goal in life is to have children ?

Von Neumann Probes as Self-Replicating Entities:

Self-Replication and Resource Exploitation:

Climate Change and Resource Scarcity:

Hypocrisy and Ethical Contradictions:

Reflection on Human Values and Future Technologies:

Philosophical Reflections on Purpose and Meaning:

Would an advanced civilization willingly enter a simulation?

1:00:50 because most people have enough power in their laptops so they can pretty the lapt top in many ways exceeds their
1:00:57 ability to use it already 🖖 now that's not true in every regard but then so then you might say well what's driving the
1:01:04 demand for enhanced computation and the answer to that at least part of the answer to that is the desire to ever
1:01:11 more accurately simulate realities such that games can be played with those
1:01:18 simulations 💭 and like that sounds trivial in a way that you'd use computation to play games but that's only trivial if
1:01:25 you think games are trivial and they're not trivial they're they're forms of look there's a there's a very deep
1:01:32 biological idea in relationship to thought that the reason that we think is so that our thoughts can die instead of
1:01:39 us :om: right and so material evolution is a very slow
1:01:44 process and the price you pay to evolve materially is that your material form dies if you are sufficiently in error
1:01:52 but if you virtualize that so that your thoughts are now avatars of yourself you
1:01:58 can have your foolish avatars expire and you can continue and so it's a very
1:02:03 useful way of experimenting it's certainly what children are doing for example when they're playing games and we don't know the limits to that and I
1:02:10 don't think it's mere fluke that a tremendous amount of the market for high-end computational devices is the
1:02:16 market to drive simulation so that we can play fictional games and so maybe
1:02:21 Advanced civilizations do in fact take off into the fictional game Space because it's in some ways an infinite
1:02:29 domain of potential experimentation now you know that's Way Beyond the limits of my capacity to
1:02:35 imagine in some fundamental sense but that's the trend at the moment among human users and so it's not an
1:02:43 unreasonable extrapolation [DDK] it would resolve the the fermi Paradox I mean it's a natural answer that everybody just eventually
1:02:51 transcends the physical world and disappears into the virtual one this would naturally explain why would anything you know we speaking of Dyson
  1. Simulation and Computational Demand:
    • The dialogue begins by considering the increasing power of personal computers and the consequent expansion in their ability to simulate complex realities. This increased capacity isn't just about enhancing the user experience in trivial applications; it's fundamentally linked to our desire to understand, explore, and manipulate complex systems and environments in safe and controlled settings. This is not trivial at all, as simulations represent a crucial tool in scientific research, education, training, and strategic planning, beyond their use in entertainment.
  2. Philosophical Implications of Gaming and Simulation:
    • The point that games are not trivial because they serve as proxies for real-life experiences and decisions is profoundly insightful. This perspective is grounded in cognitive and evolutionary psychology, suggesting that the human propensity for play and simulation is an adaptive trait, allowing individuals to rehearse, learn, and experiment without the dire consequences of real-world failure. This conceptualization elevates the role of games and simulations in human culture, linking them to our fundamental survival strategies.
  3. Virtualization as Evolutionary Advancement:
    • The idea that virtualizing experiences so that "thoughts can die instead of us" presents a compelling argument for the evolution of human interaction with technology. By creating virtual avatars that can "die" in our place, we gain the ability to explore and experiment with ideas and strategies in ways that would be impossible, or at least impractical, in the physical world. This could be seen as a form of accelerated evolutionary and intellectual development, where mistakes have lower costs, and learning can happen more rapidly.
  4. Potential of Advanced Civilizations and the Fermi Paradox:
    • The speculation that advanced civilizations might choose to "disappear" into virtual realities offers an imaginative solution to the Fermi Paradox, which questions why, given the vastness of the universe, no other civilizations have been detected. If advanced civilizations eventually find simulated realities more appealing or suitable for continued evolution, this might explain their absence or silence in the physical universe. It suggests that the exploration of space might be outstripped by the inward turn towards ever more complex simulated universes.
  5. Limitations of Human Imagination and Technological Projections:
    • The acknowledgment of the limits of current human understanding when contemplating the future possibilities of civilization and technology is a humble and critical admission. It recognizes that while we can speculate based on current trends, the actual future might be beyond our current capacity to imagine or comprehend, particularly as it relates to the integration of technology with human consciousness and societal development.

In summary, this section of the dialogue richly explores the implications of computational advancements not just in technological terms but also in existential and philosophical dimensions. It challenges us to consider the broader implications of our drive towards more complex simulations, suggesting that this trend could have profound consequences for the future of humanity and perhaps for how we might understand or interact with other advanced civilizations.

Immortality and the matrix: Dyson’s eternal intelligence

1:02:57 earlier Freeman Dyson had another interesting point about this idea of the virtual world he was so far ahead of his
1:03:03 time he was thinking about you know simulation Theory way before and people were trending about it with Elon Musk
1:03:09 statements and things like this and he had a really interesting idea he asked you know how could you live forever
1:03:14 truly live forever and he suggested that in a simulation you could do this so if
1:03:19 you imagine you go far far into the future it's thought that the universe will eventually arrive at this what we
1:03:25 call the heat death where entropy takes over and essentially the amount you know all the stars burn out and there's very
1:03:31 very little energy left in the universe intrinsically until there's eventually almost nothing and so he imagined that
1:03:36 you could simulate yourselves but you could adjust the speed of the simulation so that one day for you one full day
1:03:44 actually takes in the real world maybe a thousand years to simulate :trollface: so you're essentially moving you know almost in

1:03:50 slow motion in your simulation and then once you know you've used up the energy that's available then you slow down ever
1:03:56 more and ever more and ever more and as long as you keep slowing it down you can actually live forever it's a strange
1:04:04 idea so it's called Dyson's Eternal intelligence and even though the universe asymptotically approaches zero
1:04:10 energy you can just equally asymptotically slow down your simulation such that you live forever so it's kind
1:04:16 of like Zeno's Paradox of like The Arrow never quite catching up with a runner and so it's kind of a a beautiful uh
1:04:23 genius idea 🚼 that he had that there is potential of living forever [JBP] didn't Dyson

I grinned when I noticed JBP experiencing significant cognitive dissonance for once because of how stupid what was said is. If you saw stargate, DDK described the time prison for replicators (which failed and was then used to do the opposite, to great effect)

It's both funny and sad, that this clip about time dilation in anime, is more complex and technical, than the conversation between JBP and DDK. While also being less hyperbolic.

Wow, Kyle Hill seems to have aged faster than 1 second per second over the last 8 years ...
which is almost as amazing as this nerd humor taking science more seriously than JBP and DDK, who are using the body language of "seriousness"

so, way to demonstrate how people can say totally dumbass shit and be taken seriously because of body language, while serious science say in a humorous way, is dismissed. A reminder of the average "adult parent" mostly relying on body language instead of informational content, which is why they fall for con artists and populists all the time.

Time’s arrow, Hawking radiation, and the heat death of the universe

1:04:28 also suggest that at some level information was conserved I mean I know
1:04:35 he went way the hell out into the metaphysical Realms in in his writings and I read a fair bit of Dyson I don't
1:04:41 know a long time ago so I could barely remember it but he had some concept that was essentially theological where what
1:04:50 all the information that constituted the universe was somehow conserved that was part of wasn't that part of Singularity
1:04:56 Theory 🔍 I'm reaching way the hell back in my memory [DDK] I don't know about Dyson's writing to this but it's certainly the
1:05:02 idea of information conservation is actually thought to be almost an axiom of quantum mechanics so it really is
1:05:08 thought that Quantum [JBP] this was definitely Dyson [DDK] yeah this this kind of gets into the idea of like the what we call the
1:05:13 black hole information Paradox when information Falls in it's seemingly destroyed and this violates this this
1:05:20 curious feature that we think quantum mechanics demands that everything should be really not So Much Information conserved but reversible if I you know
1:05:27 burn a book and all the particles of Ash Fall around onto the ground and into the air in principle I should be able to
1:05:33 recollect up all those particles put them back together and reconstruct the pages and the words on those pages and
1:05:41 black hole seemingly violate that so that has been a puzzle and [JBP] so let okay okay so let me ask you about that
1:05:46 because so let's take that particular example where you burn the okay now now imagine that you burn the
1:05:54 book thoroughly enough so the ashes have been reduced to something approximately molecular size or maybe even atomic size
1:06:02 now you want to reverse that doesn't the fact that there's Quantum uncertainty at
1:06:08 the level of the atom imply that true reversibility is impossible because the
1:06:13 information is blurred at the at the quantum level 🎉 [DDK] it's it's certainly in practice
1:06:19 completely you know impossible to do this there's no way that in in the real world you could ever manifest this I
1:06:26 think the the the fundamental best way to think about it we with these analogies is maybe not quite right is
1:06:31 the idea of reversibility 📜 so when you look at the equations of quantum mechanics like the shringer equation or
1:06:37 something or um the wave function equations they they really don't have a a a care about which direction time goes
1:06:45 in so you should be able to point in either direction and end up so if I know an initial State I should be able to propagate it forward to a final State
1:06:52 and yes there's uncertainty so the wave function can expand in the probability space can change but I should be always
1:06:57 be able to you know do that in both directions and so the fundamental problem of of the wave function with a
1:07:03 black hole is that it seems to basically reach an end point where it's just terminated and it cuts off this
1:07:10 reversibility aspect so this has been a big problem and people have been wondering about it and I think most people uh work on this believe that
1:07:17 somehow the information must get out of the black hole we're still trying to put the one possible candidate is probably
1:07:24 through Hawking radiation so this radiation which happens 🔍 that Steven Hawking predicted on the outskirts of
1:07:30 these black holes it's a very pitiful amount of radiation but perhaps that is carrying away some information about
1:07:35 what fell into the black hole and thus if you did fall into a black hole in principle you could be reconstructed
1:07:41 from this Hawking radiation so uh that's that's the the current hope because
1:07:46 otherwise we have to seriously rethink quantum mechanics 🔍 [JBP] how how does the so
1:07:51 that now that Hawking radiation if I remember correctly it emerges is at the Event Horizon right right at the Event
1:07:58 Horizon and so some particle an anti-particle Falls in and a particle
1:08:03 flies off it's something like that emerging out of those are virtual particles how in the world are they
1:08:10 supposed to propagate information [DDK] that's a good question I mean the problem with this is that in order to propagate
1:08:15 information about what's inside the black hole that requires essentially an entanglement what we call a quantum
1:08:20 entanglement with with States inside so somehow uh this particle which has just
1:08:25 been created on the Event Horizon it probably had a let's say an antiparticle pair which was created just inside the Event Horizon now because they're
1:08:32 created as a pair they should be entangled with each other an entanglement unlike people is is
1:08:38 strictly monogamous there's there's no way you can have an entanglement that can suddenly become re-entanglement 🔍
1:08:55 we're really struggling with this problem right now [JBP] right I see I see so does that imply that the antimatter
1:09:02 particle that falls into the black hole is affected by what's in there in such a way that the entangled particle that's
1:09:10 escaped contains that information that's the idea if I got that about right 🎉 [DDK] I
1:09:16 think people are wrestling with with tweaking the rules of entanglement to try and somehow allow for an
1:09:22 entanglement to to be maintained with whatever fell inside the black hole and that perhaps the the stuff that falls in
1:09:29 can in a way be thought of as the antiparticle of the Hawking radiation which came out and that we are and there
1:09:35 maybe two aspects of the same thing rather than discrete processes so this I have to say this is not my field of
1:09:41 expertise but I find it a totally fascinating topic🎉 and I've made videos about in the past but it is really I [JBP] so
1:09:48 so that so that means that not only does the black hole evaporate because of the
1:09:54 Hawking radiation in principle but the information from the black hole escapes as well that's okay that's wild I didn't
1:10:00 know that that's very interesting so so what's what's on the horizon for your
1:10:06 field do you think um one of the things I wanted to ask you for example is that I know there's I know this isn't your a
1:10:12 of specialty but any light you could shed on it would be uh um appreciated

  1. Information Conservation in Quantum Mechanics:
    • The conversation starts with the notion that all information in the universe is conserved, which is a cornerstone of quantum mechanics. This idea has profound implications because it suggests that nothing is ever truly lost, including the information that falls into a black hole. This challenges our understanding of physics at its most fundamental level and brings up the intriguing question of what "information conservation" truly means in such extreme environments.
  2. The Black Hole Information Paradox:
    • The discussion highlights the black hole information paradox, where conventional understanding suggests that information that falls into a black hole is lost to the outside universe, contradicting the laws of quantum mechanics. This paradox is central to debates in modern physics as it challenges the reconciliation of quantum mechanics with general relativity.
  3. Reversibility and Quantum Mechanics:
    • The idea that every physical process should be reversible in theory is discussed, using the metaphor of burning a book and then reconstructing it from the ashes. In quantum mechanics, this reversibility is tied to the fundamental time symmetry of the equations governing the system. However, in practical terms, such reversibility is impossible due to the immense complexity and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which implies that certain information about a system at the quantum level can never be precisely known.
  4. Hawking Radiation and Information Escape:
    • Hawking radiation is brought up as a potential mechanism through which information might escape from black holes, positing that black holes are not the information traps they were once thought to be. The discussion speculates that the virtual particle pairs formed at the event horizon—where one falls in and the other escapes—could allow information to leak out from black holes, albeit in a highly transformed and perhaps unrecognizable form.
  5. Quantum Entanglement and Information Transfer:
    • The conversation touches on the role of quantum entanglement in potentially preserving information, even when one of the entangled particles is absorbed by a black hole. This introduces the possibility that information about the internal state of a black hole could be encoded in the radiation it emits, linking the fate of the in-falling matter to the escaping Hawking radiation through quantum entanglement.
    • Though it also incorrectly describes quantum entanglement and his description contradicts the existence of Bose–Einstein condensates. which involves more than 2 atoms. So they don't really understand quantum entanglement.
  1. Philosophical and Theoretical Implications:
    • This discussion also ventures into the metaphysical implications of these theories, suggesting a nearly theological dimension to the idea of information conservation. The notion that even in the most extreme conditions, like those inside a black hole, information (and thereby some form of order and history) is preserved, touches on deep philosophical questions about the nature of reality and our place in the universe.

This section of the dialogue is both rich and complex, weaving together intricate theories of physics with philosophical implications. It challenges both the speakers and the audience to consider the universe in ways that stretch the limits of current scientific understanding, prompting a reevaluation of what we think we know about the most fundamental aspects of matter, energy, and information.

I will give JBP credit for pointing out:
The fact that there's Quantum uncertainty at the level of the atom imply that true reversibility is impossible because the information is blurred at the at the quantum level.

Which is actually a remarkably insightful 🎉 note about the difference between the theoretical ideal which is functionally impossible to achieve, as as the case for most instances of theological "perfection" when they run into the limitations of practicality in reality, especially in Platonism. Which is also a common failure of Scientism

We might have disproved the Big Bang

1:10:18 I've heard that the the new telescopes which can see farther into space than
1:10:23 anything we've managed before and farther back into time therefore have
1:10:29 put some wobbles in the what was almost Universal acceptance of the theory of the big bang and so can you clue us in a
1:10:36 little bit about at least what's going on in astrophysics with regards to that
1:10:41 sure debate [DDK] so we have this telescope that was launched two years ago the James web Space Telescope is the most
1:10:46 powerful instrument we have right now for peering back into the far reaches of the universe and thus therefore into the
1:10:52 past because of course something that's very far away from us it takes a long time for that light to travel and so
1:10:58 essentially the light we are seeing from some of these objects is over 13 billion years old andless we are seeing the
1:11:04 universe in its first few hundred million years when we looking at the universe at this very ancient primordial
1:11:11 phase we are surprised to see Rich structures like fairly mature looking
1:11:18 galaxies they're still nothing as mature as what we have like the Milky Way but surprisingly mature given the Epic we
1:11:24 are looking at in our data and similarly for large black holes as well we seeing black holes more massive than we would
1:11:30 expect in the center of some of those uh Galaxy so the puzzle has been how how do
1:11:36 you build this stuff fast enough obviously um you could argue that maybe
1:11:41 you need to totally rip up the textbook and say you know all of our cosmological models are wrong and including the big
1:11:48 bang and we need to change everything I don't think most astronomers are quite ready to rip up the textbook I think
1:11:53 there are other ways to explain what we are seeing without going quite so drastically um what speaking with my
1:12:00 colleagues about this we a wonderful colloquium and I was speaking to the uh some my colleagues about making sense to
1:12:05 this and there was uh one of the interesting things I took away from that was the models of star formation that we
1:12:12 apply are calibrated to the local universe and they may not be actually applicable to this earliest Epoch so
1:12:18 when we see these uh galaxies these ancient galaxies we are basically saying there are too many stars it built stars
1:12:25 and and and too much stuff faster than it should have done based off the rates at which we think Stars can form but
1:12:31 really the rates at which we think Stars con form is calibrated to what we see around us now which is which is not
1:12:38 necessarily representative of the conditions well certainly cannot be represented the conditions of the early universe and in fact when they've gone
1:12:45 back and revised those models and they've updated them to account for the much stronger star formation and more
1:12:51 intense densities that they naturally have in these early epics it actually does predict these galaxies in a large
1:12:57 most of the galaxies we see so um in fact we could have predicted many of these galaxies had we just been maybe a
1:13:04 little bit more thoughtful about what we put into the physics of those models in the first place but it did make of
1:13:10 course a spectacular headline to claim that the Big Bang model was wrong I don't want to totally dismiss it but
1:13:16 there there's still challenges but I don't think it's quite as dramatic as has been portray [JBP] I see I see so part of
1:13:21 the problem there too was the extension of that Prin principle of homogeneity or
1:13:26 uniformity in the temporal domain when it wasn't appropriate as you said if the
1:13:32 conditions while the conditions are obviously different soon after the big bang clearly and the so then the
1:13:40 question would be well how consequential are those differences and your argument is the magnitude of those differences
1:13:46 was conservatively underestimated and that's cast some of the theory into
1:13:52 disrepute but that doesn't mean that at least in your estimation that the baby has to be thrown out with the bath yeah
1:13:58 [DDK] I think if you throw out all of you know the Big Bang model which really when we say the big model we don't really just mean the big bang what we call is Lambda
1:14:04 CDM which means Lambda is dark energy CDM stands for cold dark matter and this
1:14:09 you can think of Lambda CDM as essentially the standard model of astronomy in the same way there a
1:14:15 standard model of particle physics that includes the basic fundamental particles we have a standard model of astronomy
1:14:20 and cosmology and so this model has been extraordinarily successful as indeed has
1:14:25 the standard model in in particle physics it explains such a wide span of observations that were you to throw it
1:14:32 out it would it would be extremely difficult to understand how it could
1:14:37 coincidentally explain such a vast array of diverse phenomena so exquisitely so I
1:14:43 think we we're not you know astronomers do like it physicists like it when we get to rip things up but given the
1:14:50 extraordinary success of the model and this you know one interesting puzzle I don't think we're quite ready to throw
1:14:56 in the towel at the first punch you know we're we're willing to fight back a little bit [JBP] I think it was arth I think
1:15:02 it was Arthur C Clark possibly I might be wrong about this who no it was Carl Sagan who said that extraordinary claim
1:15:09 claim extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and so the well
1:15:15 the proper response to that is that you always modify your theory no more dramatically than is minimally necessary
1:15:23 right that's that's the of it's just otherwise that's true even
1:15:28 psychologically you know um if you don't every time you're upset with your wife you don't think that now divorce is in
1:15:34 the offing right that's just not the solution to the problem so okay so maybe we could close with this if you don't
1:15:39 mind um uh it's and and this is a very complex question for a closing question

  1. Revising Star Formation Models:
    • The discussion points to the calibration of star formation models based on observations of the local universe, which may not apply to conditions present in the early universe. This suggests a potential oversight in the application of uniform principles across different epochs and conditions. The reevaluation of these models to account for higher densities and more intense star formation in the early universe aligns with the new data without requiring a complete overhaul of the Big Bang theory.
  2. Conservatism in Scientific Models:
    • The dialogue touches on a critical aspect of scientific methodology: theories are only revised as dramatically as necessary to account for new data. This conservative approach ensures that models are not discarded prematurely and are only modified based on substantial evidence. This principle maintains the integrity and continuity of scientific understanding, even as new and potentially disruptive data emerges.
  3. The Role of Lambda CDM Model:
    • Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda CDM) is highlighted as the standard model of cosmology, analogous to the standard model of particle physics. Its success in explaining a vast array of phenomena means that any modifications due to new data must be carefully considered. The robustness of the Lambda CDM model serves as a testament to its explanatory power, and any revisions would need to account for its previous successes.
This was drawn by a human, not an AI. We all know stable diffusion is better than this.
  1. Philosophy of Science and Model Revision:
    • The discussion also philosophically reflects on how scientists approach anomalies in data. The principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is cited, emphasizing that scientific claims must be substantiated by robust and compelling data. Additionally, the strategy of altering existing theories minimally and only as needed serves as a prudent approach to scientific revision, ensuring that changes are made judiciously and supported by evidence.
  2. Metaphorical Comparison to Everyday Life:
    • The comparison of theoretical revisions to not overreacting in personal relationships provides a relatable metaphor for the conservative nature of scientific model revision. Just as one wouldn’t consider drastic measures like divorce over small disputes, scientists do not discard well-established theories without substantial and repeated evidence.

In summary, this section of the dialogue effectively explores how the field of astrophysics is responding to new challenges posed by advanced observational technologies. It highlights the cautious yet adaptable nature of scientific practice and the complex interplay between established theories and emerging data. This discussion underscores the ongoing, self-correcting nature of science, where theories are continually refined to align with our expanding view of the universe.

Dark matter and dark energy

1:15:45 but so be it I don't understand at all the the theories that that purport to
1:15:54 include dark matter and dark energy and they've always seemed to me and this I'm
1:15:59 sure is a reflection of my ignorance uh uh as post Hawk rationalizations for the
1:16:05 failure of a theory like sort of like the cosmological constant but but like I
1:16:11 said I'm I'm nowhere near informed enough to make that judgment but can you explain you talked a little bit about
1:16:16 the standard Cosmic cosmological Theory can you explain how the Notions of dark matter and dark energy have been
1:16:23 incorporated into that and why and you have like five minutes just kidding take your time [DDK] yeah it's a huge
1:16:29 topic and it's it's something I totally understand there's a lot of um skepticism about the reality of dark
1:16:37 matter and dark energy because it is so uh porous it's so it's so you know
1:16:43 immaterial that of course it's hard to accept it if you can't hold it in your hand and you can't see it how do we know
1:16:50 this thing is really there it is quite frankly an invention to explain some of the observations that we see but
1:16:57 you know physics is not opposed to doing that and we've done that for a long time we've invented many extra terms we know
1:17:04 we've invented extra terms we have Newtonian understanding of gravity and Einstein looked at the orbit of mercury
1:17:10 and said that doesn't fit in it doesn't agree with Newtonian physics we need to add some extra stuff to make this work
1:17:17 and so we you know physics is always been iterative and we've always added more complexity to to our model so in
1:17:22 that sense we shouldn't be oppos to it fundamentally because of what it's doing
1:17:28 um the evidence for dark matter is is is is quite strong and diverse at this point um but I don't think we have
1:17:35 completely concluded that it is absolutely real and there is still many interesting clues that there could be
1:17:42 alternatives to dark matter such as actually modifying again what Einstein did another level and and changing
1:17:48 things this modified theories of of gravity so that's possible uh the evidence for dark matter the classic
1:17:55 piece of evidence that we first collected was Vera Ruben she was an astronomer in the in the 70s I believe
1:18:01 and she noted that many galaxies appear to be rotating so fast that by the centrifugal force they should fly apart
1:18:07 if you add up how much mass they have with the Stars the stuff you can see they're spinning so fast there's just no
1:18:13 way they should really be bound they should be sphering out into space so she you know she argue there could be some
1:18:19 extra additional matter there that simply we cannot see and I kind of like
1:18:25 this idea Percy because why should we why should we arrogantly assume that we
1:18:30 can see everything 🎉 that's always kind of bother me like the assumption that everything we see should we everything
1:18:36 that we can see with our own visible eyes is is the entire state of the universe that seems to be a very naive
1:18:41 perspective to have 🎉 if just because you can't see it therefore it doesn't exist well therefore you wouldn't have air right you wouldn't believe in the
1:18:46 presence of all kind of things if if you operated into this mentality so this this neatly explains the galaxies um and
1:18:53 it also you know with many of evidences now for another example is weak lensing so when we look at very distant bright
1:18:58 sources like galaxies like James web is looking at and we look at their light it should travel in a straight line of
1:19:04 course but we notice that it doesn't and these galaxies appear slightly warped and distorted like looking if you go to
1:19:10 a fun house and you have these curved mirrors they get distorted into strange shapes and we see this we call this weak
1:19:16 lensing it's a very mild effect to these galaxies but it is detectable and so we know there must be some invisible fluff
1:19:23 between us and these distant galaxies that is somehow distorting their images consistently and in fact you can notice
1:19:29 in one patch of the sky all the galaxies are twisted in the same way and then it gradually changes to a slightly different pertubation and so you can
1:19:36 even map out the density of of this dark matter if you believe it is dark matter between so this explanation neatly
1:19:43 explains many things another example of T is tidal streams so when you look at the outskirts of the Galaxy you see
1:19:50 these uh clusters of stars which should be be kind of all bound together as one
1:19:56 ball but instead they're kind of being spaghettified spaghettification like when you fall into a black hole through
1:20:01 the intense gravity so we can use the amount of spaghettification we see of these clusters to measure the strength
1:20:07 of gravity that they are feeling and that spaghettification factor also matches the predictions of dark matter
1:20:13 so we've you know there's just three examples but we have many many examples now of of [JBP] I think I think you guys
1:20:20 should have hired a poet to come up with a better word than spaghettification [DDK] yeah I normally call them title streams
1:20:26 but spaghettification always kind of catches I for some reason it got into the public Consciousness and so that's
1:20:33 the why I use that term but I agree it's not perhaps the the easiest term to to wrap your head around [JBP] well I suppose
1:20:39 it's I suppose it's no worse really than the Big Bang as a as a that was a joke I mean you know poetic representation well
1:20:46 it is a joke but I mean it's it is it is a joke it is a it is and it's actually quite funny to call it the Big Bang but
1:20:52 you know it's it's it's definitely engineer nerd humor funny [DDK] yeah yeah I mean we we give these things terrible
1:20:58 names that's true [JBP] and and dark energy [DDK] yeah dark energy is is much more mysterious we
1:21:04 have far less evidence for this 🔍than than dark matter at least far far less diversity of evidence for it for for
1:21:10 dark matter we have many many independent sources of information that suggest the same kind of thing we would
1:21:15 still like to detect the particle and maybe we'll one day do this but it
1:21:20 probably not to be honest most of our detectiv seem to keep falling short and whatever dark matter is it's probably
1:21:25 just way beyond our energy reaches right now 🔍Dark Energy we only really have one driving force of En of evidence for it
1:21:33 and that's the expansion of the universe so when we look at the universe we know it's expanding of course we can see things moving away from us that's what
1:21:39 Edwin hubor discovered in the 1930s I believe um but now uh it's even worse
1:21:45 than that because we see the it was there was actually a Nobel Prize given for this because we see that the universe is not only expanding but it's
1:21:51 accelerating in that expansion [JBP] so right that's verying well that's a mystery
1:21:56 this is the right [DDK] this is the cosmological constant that Einstein had in his equations and he put it in there
1:22:02 to try and keep he knew that gravity should collapse the the universe down so he added in a term to keep it static and
1:22:10 now we you know he called it his biggest mistake when he put it in he really regretted this this fictional term but
1:22:15 now we actually think that not only is that cosmological constant really genuinely there but it's even higher
1:22:21 than what he imagined it to be it's not only keeping in the universe stable it's actually causing it to to fly apart ever
1:22:29 faster [JBP] well well the fact that it's accelerating that really is that really is incomprehensible you could see why
1:22:35 that would call for the the hypothesis hypothesis of an entirely new kind of energy because that's just Preposterous
1:22:43 it's Preposterous acceleration [DDK] we have no way to understand it the one idea is that it could be due to Quantum fluctuations
1:22:50 vacuum fluctuations so if you look at empty space you see particles pop in and out of existence due to Quantum
1:22:56 uncertainty and that happens all the time but it's kind one of the biggest embarrassments in physics that when you
1:23:01 calculate the rate of dark energy that predicts you know the the universe wouldn't even really be here quite
1:23:07 frankly if that rate was maintained so somehow this this this Theory must be wrong at some level this energy must be
1:23:12 being leaked out in other places yet when we look at dark energy it's clearly far far less so we don't even have a
1:23:18 real good causal explanation it's it's really kind of an embarrassment quite frankly at this point to understand what's going on 📜 [JBP] so why is there what I
1:23:25 hate to delve into this but I'm going to anyways because I'd like to know these these particles and anti

  1. Skepticism About Dark Matter and Dark Energy:
    • The introduction reflects a common skepticism about dark matter and dark energy, framing them as post hoc rationalizations to account for observational anomalies. This is a valid point of scientific debate, as it questions whether these concepts are merely theoretical constructs created to fit the data or if they represent actual components of the universe.
  2. Historical Context and Theoretical Adaptations:
    • The narrative provided about the adaptations in theoretical physics, from Newton to Einstein, underscores the iterative nature of scientific understanding. It’s highlighted that physics has historically adapted and evolved its models to incorporate new data, as evidenced by Einstein’s modifications to Newtonian gravity, which itself was a response to observed anomalies in Mercury’s orbit.
  3. Evidence Supporting Dark Matter:
    • The discussion transitions to a strong defense of dark matter, citing multiple lines of evidence such as the rotation curves of galaxies (first noted by Vera Rubin), gravitational lensing, and the distribution of galaxies. These observations suggest the presence of an unseen mass affecting the motion and light from celestial objects, lending credence to the dark matter hypothesis despite its elusive direct detection.
  4. Conceptualization of Dark Energy and Universal Expansion:
    • Dark energy is portrayed as even more mysterious and speculative than dark matter, primarily supported by observations of the accelerating expansion of the universe. This expansion, surprising and counterintuitive, suggests the presence of a repulsive force or energy that dominates the large-scale dynamics of the cosmos.
  5. The Role of Quantum Fluctuations:
    • The potential link between quantum fluctuations and dark energy is discussed as a theoretical possibility, highlighting the challenges and "embarrassments" in aligning quantum mechanics with cosmological observations. The enormous discrepancy between theoretical predictions of vacuum energy and observed values points to significant gaps in our understanding of fundamental physics. Meanwhile the concept of time is mostly not accounted for in these theoretical frameworks. Often taking arguments for time reversibility to somehow suggest that time is not a required metric. Scientism!
  6. Philosophical and Communicative Aspects:
    • The use of terms like "spaghettification" and "Big Bang" is critiqued humorously, reflecting on how scientific communication often struggles with terminologies that are both accessible and accurately descriptive. This part of the conversation underscores the challenge of conveying complex scientific concepts to the public and within the scientific community itself.
      For example, the big bang was not itself an explosion, Atoms such as hydrogen, did not exist prior to it. There were no atoms or molecules to have chemical reactions.

This section does an excellent job of balancing the technical explanation with the acknowledgment of ongoing scientific challenges and debates. It successfully communicates the dynamic nature of cosmology and theoretical physics, where profound questions about the universe continually prompt revisions and refinements of our models. The dialogue between the speakers effectively brings out the complexity of these topics, making them accessible and engaging while also highlighting the intrinsic uncertainties and the frontier nature of current research in astrophysics.

Quantum theory has disturbing implications

1:23:32 particles that hypothetically pop up in the vacuum of space why why is that not energy neutral why does that produce an
1:23:39 excess uh this hypothetical excess of energy that's calculated by the by the quantum investigators that you described
1:23:46 because my understanding was that they P the these particles pop up and then disappear and that's an energy neutral
1:23:53 that's an energy neutral phenomen [DDK]it's it's not because they produce a photon if if I produce an electron and a
1:23:58 positron so positron is the anti- electron they pop into existence and then when they recombine that that
1:24:05 produces a photon so that photon is now the is is this vacuum energy and that is
1:24:11 now you know there's nothing to annihilate a photon you can't annihilate a photon so it's just it's just free to
1:24:16 go through the universe so this is the [JBP] where does it come from that photon[DDK] it's actually borrowed borrowed energy it's
1:24:22 it's it's what it is yeah so it's it's it's extremely strange implication of quantum mechanics and if if it bothers
1:24:28 you it should bother you and Neils Bohr famously said that anyone who's not disturbed by the qu the consequences of
1:24:33 quantum theory has not understood it because it's so baffling [JBP] it well it sounds a lot like it sounds a lot like
1:24:39 let there be life to me you know that's a seriously [DDK] the universe it shines
1:24:45 intrinsically [JBP] yeah yeah right right right right isn't that something okay well that's a good place to end I would
1:24:50 say you know that's that's a nice poetic ending much more so than spaghettification or the Big Bang let's say so all right so thank
1:24:58 you very much for walking us through that that was fascinating it's nice to talk to um a so-called hard scientist
1:25:04 although I think you astrophysicists and physicists are the strangest of hard scientists by a large margin so there's
1:25:11 plenty of metaphysics and physics and that's quite fun and so much appreciated um for everybody watching and listening
1:25:18 uh thank you very much for your time and attention I'm going to continue this discussion with Dr David Kipping on the
1:25:24 daily wire side of things and I think we'll delve there a little bit more into the psychological I'd like to find out
1:25:30 how Dr Kipping came to his interest in astrophysics and how his career developed and so it's always interesting
1:25:37 to me as a psychologist to find out how people's calling the calling that made them who
1:25:43 they are made itself manifest so that's what we'll talk about on The Daily wi side so consider joining us there and uh
1:25:49 to the film crew here in Toronto today thank you very much and to the film crew there you're in New York City near
1:25:56 Columbia and yeah thank you to them as well and uh good talking to you sir
1:26:01 [DDK] thank you for having me Jordan real pleasure [Music]

  1. Virtual Particles and Energy Conservation:
    • The discussion addresses the common misconception about virtual particles being "energy neutral." The clarification that the annihilation of these particle-antiparticle pairs (like an electron and positron) can lead to the creation of photons, which carry energy, sheds light on one of the core principles of quantum field theory. The concept that these particles "borrow" energy from the vacuum during their brief existence, and then "return" it by emitting other particles, reflects the non-intuitive nature of quantum mechanics.
  2. The Source of Photon Energy:
    • The explanation that the energy for the photon comes from "borrowed" energy due to vacuum fluctuations underscores a profound aspect of quantum physics—energy conservation can be locally violated as long as it's corrected within very short timescales, according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This principle allows for the temporary emergence of particles from "nothing," which is counterintuitive to classical physics. The claim "you can't annihilate a photon" is false.
  3. Philosophical Implications and Quantum Weirdness:
    • The conversation touches on the philosophical and almost mystical implications of quantum mechanics, highlighted by Niels Bohr's famous quote about the disturbing nature of quantum theory. This discussion points to the deep conceptual challenges and the shift in understanding required to fully grasp quantum processes, which often seem to border on metaphysical.
  4. Quantum Mechanics and Creation Metaphors:
    • The reference to "let there be light" in the context of photon production during particle-antiparticle annihilation introduces a poetic parallel to religious narratives of creation. This metaphor enriches the discussion by drawing a symbolic connection between fundamental physical processes and broader existential and creation questions, highlighting the deep human quest for understanding and meaning in the laws of nature.
  5. Conclusion and Reflection on the Nature of Science:
    • The session ends on a reflective note, appreciating the complex interplay between hard science and metaphysics within the field of astrophysics. The acknowledgment of astrophysicists as "strange hard scientists" due to their engagement with these deep theoretical issues underscores the unique position of astrophysics at the intersection of empirical science and philosophical inquiry.

Overall, this section wraps up the dialogue effectively by revisiting the core theme of the mysterious and counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics. It highlights how these discussions not only advance our understanding of the universe but also challenge our conceptual frameworks, making astrophysics a field ripe with both scientific inquiry and philosophical speculation.

My thanks to JBP and DDK for helping me to demonstrate what things makes neoBuddhist culture more advanced.

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