Kind: captions
Language: en
science is you're continually proving
that and who came before you wrong
you're showing there is no such thing as
an authority a god a godhead figure
there's no one like that in science
there never should be or will be and
your job is to prove the earlier
generations who were the paradigm of
excellence and and the the expertise as
well as richard feynman has another
quote science is the belief in the
ignorance of experts not the wisdom of
experts
dr brian keating welcome to the show yes
it's great to be back here tom on the
other side of the table i was gonna say
yeah we've got the the tables are
flipped i had so much fun being
interviewed by you and i highly
encourage people to check that out it's
one of the more unique interviews that
i've done being able to ask questions
that i haven't been asked before it's
not an easy thing given how many times
i've been in front of the camera
but i really had fun learning the way
that you think and that's where i want
to start so
it'll be good for people to get a little
bit of background professor of physics
i'll let you fill in more details but
it's pretty credible to say that you
were
up for consideration for a nobel prize
didn't quite happen um and there's
reasons for that that we may or may not
get to today but
um
the scientific method is something i've
become really obsessed with
and it happened by accident so i was
trying to
figure out how i had taken myself from
laying on my
couch or honestly laying on the floor
trying to figure out how i was going to
make my dreams come true and then
finally learning how to build companies
and all of that and i thought you know
i've built companies across a couple
different industries
it's teachable it's repeatable and so
i have a course called business decision
making and i was trying to to just write
down what do i do
and i wrote it all down i called the
physics of progress and i show it to the
team and one of my employees is like you
realize this is a scientific method
right and i was like what he's like
literally step by step and i looked up
the scientific method and i realized oh
my god this really is the scientific
method recontextualized for business and
that's actually really interesting to me
because when you essentially discover
the same thing from different angles
you're probably on to something true
and in your book into the impossible you
quote richard feynman who says
in regards to first principles the first
principle is not to fool yourself and
you're the easiest one to fool
so what does that quote mean what is the
scientific method and how do we use it
in our lives to unburden ourselves from
either willful blindness or accidental
blindness i think uh it's it's probably
most economical to say that the
scientific method is a way of not
fooling yourself it is a way to ensure
you're not drinking your own kool-aid or
somebody else's which is worse it's a
way of being as authentic as possible to
this pursuit of truth
presuming that that's what you're
interested in i mean some people are you
know willing to deny themselves access
to truth or they're not interested in
truth but those of us who strive who
seek and don't want to yield to kind of
our base or urges to confirm what we
already think is true to be influenced
by prejudice by bias and confirmation
bias or some other form of authority
bias
that feynman's words are really resonant
with me because it is really where
science meets psychology and meets
humanity you know the old joke is how do
you know a scientist is outgoing well he
looks at your shoes when he talks to you
you know i'm definitely guilty of that i
have that
tendency as well we're introverted
typically by nature um but in in reality
we forget that scientists are human and
because of that prone to biases and i
was going to say that we're we have all
the same peccadillos as any normal
quote-unquote normal peccadillas yeah
hell is a mexican treat it's a
delightful dish that you should try here
in l.a um paccadillos means like foibles
okay flaws um a little idiosyncrasies
perhaps um that we all have as human
beings you know that your your kid is
the best or you're you know your your
pet your favorite home team is is the
best team and you can justify why even
though on paper like for me the san
diego padres have never you know the
only team in the only city in america
that has no professional sports
championships at all is
san diego unfortunately i always say
it's compensation right the easiest job
in the world the san diego weather
weatherman and the hardest job of san
diego sportscaster uh so yeah we just
don't win and we surrender but uh but
anyway maybe i'll turn around but but
thinking about what it really means to
want to try to make progress means that
you cannot deny
things that go against your pet theory
in other words you and i if we differ on
some scientific hypothesis or some
business strategy you should be able to
take my point of view and i should be
able to take your point of view but we
should do that with love we should do it
for a common goal and you see this in
the military most people don't think of
the military as i'm loving you know
touchy-feely organization but when they
have this red team approach you know and
they're like get the best on one side
the best on the other side they're
fighting you know and they might be
screaming at it yelling but at the end
of the day they love each other in the
sense that they want to preserve their
life and and maximize the impact on the
end on the enemy and so if they're doing
it from a point of love and i feel like
we scientists want to do that too at our
best of course i say that scientists are
humans and that means all the good
things about being humans and in fact
oftentimes it's like scientists are like
kids you know kids are curious they're
inquisitive they can be charming they
can be mischievous they can also be
jealous they can be petty they cannot
want to play give me my toy i want to
take it home it's mine and so where does
the scientific method fit into all this
and and maybe even before we get to that
why does the truth matter i think you
know the truth is what anchors us to
reality um if you and i have different
versions of reality and relative truth i
think chaos ensues from that can i give
you a stat yeah the more delusional
somebody is the more likely they are to
be happy
self-delusional sure because i had so at
one point i was writing a book
and i had a writer that i was working
with
and i was telling her i'm not interested
in what's true i'm only interested in
what moves me towards my goals and she
really had a stroke on that
and she was like whoa whoa whoa like i
need you to go into more detail that
does not make sense to me and i was like
you know what that's actually a really
good point because i'm obsessed with the
truth in terms of i need to know how the
world really works but when it comes to
myself
i'm not prone to i'm prone to believing
the worst about myself and it seems
self-evidently true that those bad
things are real and right and so what i
had to do was stop
thinking about the truth as it related
to myself
but in the real world the only thing
that matters is the truth because it's
the only way you can make progress
and so there's this really weird like
thing of like the truth matters but the
odds of you
recognizing it are
problematic
and especially like you have to i think
you have to delineate between
understanding what is true about
yourself which you're going to have a
very hard time doing
and understanding what is true about the
way the world works
i think i think that is perceptive in
the sense that there are absolute facts
like people say you know you never hear
someone say i believe in gravity
like you say no no i have evidence for
gravity you don't even have people
necessarily anymore that will credibly
say i believe in evolution the same way
they might say i believe in santa claus
or whatever like people believe in
something that means per force they
don't have evidence for it you don't
have to believe in something and i'm not
denigrating faith or whatever as you
know you would chat a little bit i do
have a you know professor i'm an active
you know participant in religion et
cetera et cetera and we can get into
that um as your past guests you know
richard dawkins uh would say about you
know belief in god like the flying
spaghetti monster is this like you know
kind of catch-all for everything i have
my issues with richard we'll talk about
that if we have time if you want to get
super controversial i can go off on that
but uh but but the point being um
there's a qualitative difference between
that which i need evidence for to claim
is true which is repeatable which is
built upon with consensus which arrives
at from multiple different perspectives
to get at reality we have evidence for
gravity from many many levels from the
smallest scales you know almost atomic
scales even close to the nuclear scale
all the way up to the scale of the
literal cosmos itself that i study
so we don't need that we have
evolutionary evidence from all different
scales from cellular macroscopic
microscopic evolution there's missing
gaps literally missing links and all
these theories we don't have a
fundamental theory of quantum gravity
that's a huge lacuna gap in our
knowledge of physics and so on what on
what grounds can we say we understand
anything if we don't understand the most
basic aspects of reality however what
the scientific method does is it doesn't
say that's right it says that's not
wrong it says i can't tell you you know
do you believe that the earth is a
sphere
yes okay so you're not a flat earther i
am not so so you are wrong
but you're less wrong than a flat
earther you know flat earther believes
that literally and and we can show
there's evidence in unequivocal proof
the earth is not because the earth isn't
a true sphere that's why i'm wrong it's
not a perfect sphere yes because the
earth as it spins it kind of bulges out
like a ballerina doing a twirl or a
figure skater on the ice it bulges at
its equator kind of like i bulge at my
equator no thanks to anything you did
with quest but uh but it gets squished
and squashed so that's what's called a
quadripolar moment now you're less wrong
if you say the earth is a sphere than if
you say it's flat but technically aren't
you wrong well this is a matter of
degree we can say that newton was right
newton got us the laws of the
fundamental nature of physics that
allows us to get from the earth
literally to the stars to the moon
beyond the moon the planets but get to
meaning predict we can predict
exactly we predict where they're going
to be it's ten thousand years from now
where they were ten thousand years ago
uh but it wasn't precisely right in fact
it fails it doesn't fail in like some
far-off galaxy newton's laws fail in our
solar system newton was wrong on the
scale of our of the planet mercury so he
could not explain or understand he
wasn't wrong he didn't like uh claim
there was some demon or something that
was doing so it's just his laws were
incapable due to the understanding the
lack of understanding at the time of the
nature of what gravity is
that einstein later would come along and
correct now einstein isn't the final
word either most likely that's the
lesson of science science is you're
continually proving that and who came
before you wrong you're showing there is
no such thing as an authority a god a
godhead figure there's no one like that
in science there never should be or will
be and your job is to prove the earlier
generations who were the paradigm of
excellence and and the the expertise as
well as richard feynman has another
quote science is the belief in the
ignorance of experts not the wisdom of
experts not the knowledge of experts
because look if einstein just came along
and said well newton's pretty smart you
know i'm not gonna outdo newton like who
the heck am i some some guy from you
know germany austria no he said newton
could be wrong even though he credits
him with with being the foremost
contributor not only to science but
western civilization
einstein had great respect for newton
and yet he said i have enough swagger to
know i
can be right where newton the great was
wrong and i think that's a core element
that only the scientific method can
validate who is right but not
necessarily only who is right who is
less wrong hey guys hope you enjoyed the
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enjoy the episode
what is the scientific method like what
are the steps yeah um
how are we using them and then i really
i'm gonna keep pinning you down until we
get to why truth matters i have a theory
as to why i think truth matters but i'm
really curious to hear in a single
sentence with no commas parentheticals
okay uh that's why it's almost
impossible for a new york jew to talk
without any comments
next you'll tell me i can't move my
hands um
so truth is again for me the core
element of establishing what is real for
such that i can function
is to know that there's a core bedrock
of fact so that's what i want to talk
about that i can function what do you
mean how do you use the truth like when
you so you're dealing at a cosmological
level and so i don't know for most
people that just spirals it's so big and
so grandiose and like doesn't help you
know go to the grocery store and get a
pint of milk um a quart of milk
i don't drink milk yeah metric system um
please
so yeah so take me to as you think about
the truth
is is there like just sort of a a
grounded thing that you consider a life
well lived that you need to understand
the truth in order to move in a way that
makes sense or
is it something different than that i
think well there's one law of nature
that will probably never be overthrown
and it's the laws of thermodynamics and
entropy and we chatted about that a
little bit i want to get a little deeper
into it maybe if time permits
so entropy is a fundamental realization
that there is order and there's chaos
and the separation between order and
chaos the mixture between the two
can lead to some startling inconvenient
and perhaps you know completely
destabilizing effects if everything is
chaotic just think about in your own
life if you didn't live in a country
where the rule of law prevails
you would have a very tough time being
happy organizing your life and living
and functioning and so in that sense
yeah you might you know not like the cop
that gives you a speeding ticket or
whatever but you thank goodness that
there is such a thing as a law order so
everybody does everything it is pure
chaos interestingly the second verse in
the in the bible the old testament the
torah is everything was chaotic and and
void so when something is chaotic it
lacks organization to do work so if you
have ever seen a fighter jet take off an
after burner on just like blasting away
it's tremendous amount of heat
tremendous amount of energy but if it
just exploded out in all directions the
fighter jet wouldn't move at all the
fact that it can propel itself near mach
one or two is because it's organized
through the jet through the afterburner
you organize energy energy by itself is
meaningless it's almost nothing but
organized energy can do anything and
that's i think the core principle is
that you need organization organization
implies order and we can argue is there
a fundamental law giver i.e a god or
something like that or is it are the
laws of nature kind of evolutionary or
do we recognize the patterns of nature
in other words math at the core of
physics is math created is it invented
or is it discovered
these are all things that are describing
laws of nature but if one day two plus
two equals five and the next day equals
four and the next day it equals a
pineapple that life would be completely
unlivable and unworkable the fact is we
live in a universe of order and it's
pretty surprising because you look out
in the universe the natural tendency to
things you know from the second law of
thermodynamics is towards disorder
and that's why i believe that that which
gives order is is perceptible as almost
like a symmetry something organized
orderly you know precise that to me is
what i call the nature of livable life
is that you have some kind of structure
and that implies there is some sort of
nature of truth um and it can be
extended on multiple levels for
individuals to collectives but to say
that like there are only relative laws i
mean that's not what we mean most people
think oh einstein showed everything is
relative no he said everything is
exactly ordered and organized in a
specific way
but it happens to be certain uh certain
physics equations can depend on what the
observer's doing so in that sense it's
relative to his or her state of motion
it didn't mean that like here you add
the two velocities together and on
jupiter you have to divide by a
pineapple and plus it can't no it's very
very organized it's not relative at all
okay so i actually think there's a
really powerful answer uh in there which
is this idea of entropy so when i talk
about business a lot i talk about
entropy and i'm like look there is a
reason that if you just keep doing what
you're doing now your company's not
going to go where you want it to go and
that's because everything is moving
towards chaos you have to inject a ton
of energy
to your afterburner example this is
exactly why i think the truth matters
that
if you don't understand the way the
world works you're unable to accurately
channel that energy or even to know
where to apply that energy in order to
change the world in the way that you
want to change it so to inject that that
um directionality the order into the
system to get a desired outcome
um said another way i and it's weird to
me that this has become like a
controversial word but power to me power
is the ability to close your eyes
imagine a world better than this one
and then open your eyes go get the
skills you need to make that world come
true and then actually do it that that's
just self-evident and and so when i say
power i mean it's that ability to put
the energy into the system to create
order in the way that you want it to now
what gets very confusing and i think
about this a lot in terms of
relationships
there are things that we want to be true
because they just they feel better they
feel more fair whatever
but when you try to deal with like
relationships that men and women are the
same it gets crazy making because
in reality just the way that the brains
are wired they're not and so if you're
trying to treat them as if they are
it's wonderful but the
the point i'm making is that it becomes
crazy making to not accept that they are
different and therefore when you try to
inject um directed energy into that
relationship to make things functional
you can't and you can't figure out why
it isn't working and so truth to me
matters because it allows you to figure
out how to improve things
and
so as i think about the scientific
method i'm like okay
either it's just me
or everybody falls into the following
camp i certainly am not smart enough to
guess right all the time
and so once i know that i can't guess
right all the time i need a process by
which to figure things out and the
process by which to figure things out as
it turns out even in business is the
scientific method
um
what are the steps of the scientific
method so that the audience may channel
their energies intelligently to discover
what is true so that they can
make progress yeah so the first thing to
note is that there is no scientific
method there's no one single scientific
method there's no one father of the
scientific method sometimes it's crea
it's credited with galileo
and he did use aspects of the scientific
method that we in its modern form there
are earlier you know muslim islamic
scholars that are credited with it even
thousand years before galileo perhaps um
and so there there in my mind there's
two broad ways of thinking about it and
one is called the deductive scientific
method approach and the other one's
inductive so in the deductive you're
starting i like thinking deduct is going
down you're starting from some
hypothesis and you're making some
predictions some projections about what
you'd see if that hypothesis is true
then suggest some analysis some
observation that can produce data the
data then can be compared to the
original hypothesis and there's a
flywheel that starts to spiral and spin
so you might say well there might be a
market for you know these tokens that
could then be used in a in a sense to
build up a brand to build an
organization to build a network to build
a self-organizing system and remember
then the word organize is kind of a
weird word it has the word organ in it
like we think organ inside of our body
isn't that weird well organization means
that our body has organs they're very
constant they have a specialized
function your pancreas is not pumping
blood around your body if you did you'd
be in serious physical drama right
the other method is called the inductive
method kind of going up so you start
with some observation it might be
serendipitous in my field which is the
cosmic microwave background radiation
the oldest most ancient photons that
exist in the universe these are 13
billion 820 million year old photons
artificial yeah
that's right they should you know they
belong in l.a they make everyone feel
young
in hollywood here um
instead the inductive method is starting
maybe with some surprising observation
that demands an explanation then the
explanation can be used to go back and
say let me construct a more general
theory hypothesis which will then
perhaps suggest more data that can be
taken and used to then explain why that
evidence for the original theory is true
or the original observation took place
so in the field of
ancient photons it was discovered
serendipitously there were two guys in
new jersey of all places i can't believe
it i'm a new yorker i can't believe i
have to give credit to people from new
jersey uh but there's two radio
astronomers working at a t bell labs and
why would two radio astronomers be
working at bell labs well because back
then they viewed diversive intellectual
pursuits as extremely valuable not for
scientific reasons for monetary reasons
in other words that's where the first
cell phones were invented that's where
the first radio transmitters they were
looking up at the satellite that had
been launched at great cost maybe an
equivalent dollars today 100 billion
dollars and every time they looked at
this satellite which is the only
satellite it was the only internet in
1965 every time they looked at it they
got some signals you know they were
getting their their you know their their
internet cover their wi-fi but it was
extremely noisy unreliable low bandwidth
terrible and they couldn't figure out
why is the noise so high so they
constructed what's called the signal to
noise ratio how pure is the signal that
they're trying to transmit which they
knew there's some radio signals some
message you know hi i'm you know it's
brian and tom are calling new jersey for
some reason and uh and but the noise
was horrible static why is it so large
they had a model for how their telescope
their receiving instrument should behave
and it was totally crapping out it
wasn't behaving as well as it should not
because of anything in the instrument
but because of the cosmos itself the
cosmos was raining down static static
noise on them radio signals stacked just
like in the old days nowadays kids i
tell my kids you know go on the tv and
tune to you and they're like what are
you youtube is where it's there's no
static on youtube in fact you can search
static on youtube if you if you must but
that static is coming from the origin is
that what that really is coming from og
tv about one percent of it right so i
need to get back to the method yeah
you're saying there really is no method
because if you look it up on google it's
gonna tell you that there are steps and
those steps so match what i use in
business
that now now i want to fight these are
fighting words brian
uh
i'm going to tell you the steps that i
use
and then help me understand because if i
were a budding scientist and i just
heard what you said i wouldn't know how
to do anything and i want to i want to
see if there's a process that people can
loop on like they can in business yeah
so in business it goes like this you
have a goal so you have to have that
goal if you don't have your goals super
clear none of this is going to work so
very clear goal then you identify the
impediment that stands between where you
are and your goal
then you come up with your best guess so
your hypothesis on what you would need
to do in order to overcome that
impediment and reach your goal you then
make that
thing that you can do actually doable
and you do it so
you run that experiment as it were but
it might fail and it almost certainly
will fail to some extent right so if um
it's very rare that it just works oh and
here we go so sometimes it works a
little sometimes it's a catastrophic
failure sometimes you stay steady but
you paint a picture of what success
would look like in math
you run the experiment and you check the
math and did it move you towards hold
steady or move you away
and in that if you're willing to truly
look at the data because a lot of times
people get emotional to richard
feynman's point they fool themselves
because they don't want to be wrong they
don't want to be embarrassed like the
number of times in business i embarrass
myself because i was just wrong just
like it didn't work
and there's so much sort of emotional
stuff at stake when you're on a youtube
show or you know you're on twitter
instagram yeah and you're wrong people
are like ah this guy's a sucker
uh and so it's difficult so you wanna
see in the numbers what you want to see
but if you can objectively look at the
data then it tells you to some extent
what you might have done done wrong
which you were mentioning earlier
and then as henry ford says failure is
merely the beginning the ability to
begin again more intelligently so you
figure out what that was you formulate a
new hypothesis and a new experiment
exactly and you run it and that loop of
try fail to some extent learn
reformulate try fail to some extent
that's what i call the physics of
progress and i think that is the as
parallel exactly and i can translate
into the deductive scientific method
where you have an idea which is you know
sort of going to lead to a tentative
hypothesis yeah it's going to lead to
attentive hypothesis then you're data
driven you have to be quantitative it's
not science it's not quantitative in
some level you have to have the ability
to prove that you're not drinking your
own kool-aid as i said that's called
falsification how could i be wrong about
this i thought everybody wanted you know
uh you know whatever widget or whatever
you you had it turns out nobody wants it
but but this model suggested no the
total addressable markets that bill you
know everyone eats right but uh you know
but but my hypothesis people like
something that's bland tasteless does
you know doesn't look like any kind of
food that i would ever have um but you
know but it's just healthy it's purely
satisfying and nutritious no nobody's
gonna so then if you're there was a
business that did that though the uh
yeah exactly and maybe they're not as
quite as good as quest now there's
another way there's another method which
is the inductive method twitter i don't
know do you know how twitter started
what its original purpose was so it was
like it was like a podcasting software
of some kind of yeah twitter podcast
this is what i'm saying yeah it started
off as like micro thing publishing not
publishing no it had something to do
with like release like
analyzing or categorizing podcasts okay
had some weird start instagram also had
a weird totally unrelated to what it
would later become but then serendipity
struck like with these cmb photons
raining down on us we have explained why
are they coming in why are they
increasing the noise the guys at twitter
the guys at instagram i said wait a
second people are using this not to
share like some weird rss links or
whatever for podcast they're actually
using it for micro blogs wow now they
see this that flywheel then spun up they
said well our users care about this
let's jettison we were wrong about our
original thought of what this could be
serendipity proved where the market
wanted us to be that's kind of the
inductive method so that's then they
said well of course give that to me in
steps
so i'll i'll use youtube because i know
that story quite well so started as a
dating service
and uh wasn't going well nobody wanted
to do that but they found that people
were watching these really sort of funny
videos just as like entertainment
and so then they get the idea okay well
maybe then this is a
form of entertainment and people can
just upload whatever videos they want
right and it starts to take off that way
so
if you were looking at that from a
scientific standpoint
and that were you know like the bell
labs example yeah what's so first you
have the idea people that was that was
first i would say that was more the
serendipitous like they discovered
almost despite themselves like there are
people that probably went down that road
and kept saying oh well let's keep
making a dating service that has you
know whatever features but in this case
they kind of discovered by accident that
it was very very powerful as a vector in
a different direction by looking at the
data by looking at the data so it's
scientific method they then analyze
assess the praise the flywheel starts to
kick in but it's different than say like
quibby do you remember quibby from like
a year ago
but almost nobody so quibby was like
well people really want like highly
produced things but 10 minutes long
they're kind of like melding you so they
had a they had a hypothesis and then
they sunk tons of money into it without
ever doing the market research people
don't want 10 15 20 minute produced
content they want tick-tock they want
youtube shorts or whatever um and so
that hypothesis ended up having a huge
flywheel sucking up cash because they
didn't actually have find that their
their hypothesis was valid they went
down this huge rabbit hole we see it in
science too there are theories like
there's a theory there's a theory
originally that if you took a lump of
material and put it on a table uh it
would spontaneously produce life that
was the hypothesis life existed in
molecules and is purely chemical in fact
you could get organic life like maggots
from iron and like inorganic compounds
that was called the the this original
kind of
spontaneous generation that was the name
of that hypothesis totally blown away
once the theory of cell structure came
along and then eventually natural
selection and so forth another one is
they used to think that something that
was flammable had a substance in it
called phlogistin phlogiston it kind of
sounds like it's dirty but it's not and
phlogistin would be the substance that
when ignited would burn but it turned
out it really wasn't that at all it was
the reaction between something that had
carbon and what and the element oxygen
which wasn't discovered we take for
granted this is interesting i think i'm
beginning to understand the disconnect
between the way that the science
community is thinking about the
scientific method and what i think about
in terms of
um the physics of progress is that you
guys are trying to discover things you
don't know what they are
and so your goal is a goal of discovery
of sort of fundamental truth whereas
mine is a sense of i'm trying to get
there i'm trying to get to a given you
have a
you have an organized purpose in mind
whereas in science we might have lofty
goals like we want a theory of
everything we want to understand quantum
gravity those are kind of broad goals
but but usually if you start off there's
a danger in science and i experienced
this with my experiments um i wanted to
experiment in this book losing the nobel
prize yeah walk me through that because
i actually don't know what the
experiment was that got everybody so
hyped so let me take a big step back um
i have kind of a weird upbringing story
my origin story from your comic book
days is very very kind of abstruse and
strange i was born uh two parents both
jewish in long island my dad was a math
professor uh they end up getting
divorced as many people did in 1970s
separated my mom remarried i became an
altar boy in the catholic church strange
thing for a young jewish kid to do uh
but i was always interested in like the
big picture questions existence so i
want to know about god and i want to
understand you know jesus christ and
what i learned about and i said if i'm
going to do anything i'm going to do it
full-on i'm going to go as far as you
can go and i don't know if you remember
when you were 13 you know which is the
age i was when i became an altar boy to
go full-on meant i had to become a
catholic priest age 13 i knew enough
about priests that they couldn't have
relations with women i knew at least
that was one of the forbidden and i was
like hmm do i really want to do this or
can i you know can i do it from the side
and so i abandoned that aspect of my
role understandably so yeah at 13 years
not have convinced me to do that so yeah
at the same time when i should have been
preparing for my bar mitzvah lessons as
a jewish person
i got a telescope i got a small little
refracting telescope which i tell all
parents out there and even adults too
get a telescope because with a telescope
unlike any other piece of scientific
apparatus you can not only replicate the
discoveries of these ancient and earlier
astronomers
including galileo my hero but you can
replicate how they felt when they made
the discovery now tom try imagining how
did it feel when they discovered the
higgs boson well first of all there was
no like one day when they discovered it
took 14 years 10 billion dollars 8 000
people and and there wasn't just like
some moment where you say eureka there
it no but what galileo saw when he
turned this tiny little telescope and he
looked at the moon he saw hmm it has
these weird holes on it it has these
weird mountain ranges on it i thought it
was supposed to be a perfect crystalline
sphere that aristotle told me it was
maybe i have a hypothesis that those
craters are caused by the impact of
meteors or asteroids hitting into the
surface
maybe those mountains are some kind of
tectonic phenol you know what on earth
did he write about this what would make
him think that there were other things
flying around that would hit it so they
had seen things in the skies and
actually there was a big debate you've
heard about comments and you've probably
seen meteors i hope you have some of the
most beautiful phenomena as you can see
there was a debate our comets in our
atmosphere we know now that they're
orbiting around the sun the same way the
earth is they're just highly elliptical
elongated orbits highly eccentric and
they come closer and farther away from
the sun they're made of ice and they
start to melt and boil off ice and dust
and they were guessing at that they were
done some people felt that they were
that they were objects in the solar
system some people thought like galileo
that they were in the atmosphere that
they were cruising through the way that
meteors are it was it was found from the
speed of the meteors and how fast they
travel in a meteor shower that they had
to be cl much closer to us than comets
uh but it wasn't clear if maybe a
comet's just like a really so they
understood that a meteorite a shooting
star was something burning up in the
atmosphere yeah it seemed to make sense
to them that it was because they would
also early did they understand that i
think that they would find these objects
there was there are natural craters that
you can see um some people that i've
actually seen actual objects impact the
earth there's a woman i think in
connecticut who's hit twice by meteor i
mean not not this is not 100 400 years
ago this is like 1950s or something um
so impact they do impact quite
frequently and you could find them and
it was more or less and sometimes they
make noise and sometimes they're
incredibly bright and then they're found
not too far away so there there was some
phenomena that these were some objects
that were coming from so then you look
at the moon you think okay same thing's
happening yeah what if that have you
ever gone down to the beach you take a
baseball throw it into the sand it makes
a crater exactly like galileo saw so he
was like i made a hypothesis that these
objects on the moon is basically just
like the earth and in fact the moon is
orbiting around the earth and that
wasn't really well understood how the
dynamics of that worked until isaac
newton came along with the real theory
of gravity and how tides on earth way
but when i saw the telescope through the
telescope i saw the rings of saturn the
moons of jupiter so jupiter has four
enormous moons that you can see through
a telescope from right here in the heart
of los angeles you can see the exact
same things that he saw and you can feel
the things he felt tom how often do you
experience a visceral sensation that
unites you with a great scientist from
human history it doesn't matter you're
not the first person to make the
observation you're making it the first
time for yourself so i tell all parents
do that for your kids and in fact do
that is 50 on amazon i always joke i
should make keating brand telescopes you
know my own uh
nfts of a certain kind of non-fungible
telescopes someday maybe i will but for
50 bucks even you can do it just don't
look at the sun okay that's the only
thing i ask you to do um but you can
replicate that emotional experience and
when i did that i fell in love with
astronomy i didn't know you could do it
for a career it's like if somebody told
you fall in love with it
i think the uh the connection between
something with regularity at that time
my parents having been divorced growing
up we were kind of broke all the time it
was chaotic in my home life i wasn't
like super popular in high school i had
a couple friends i'm still friends with
them now i pimple face i was overweight
um and uh i wasn't super happy and and
it literally transported me because i
could learn about these things during
the day this is 14 years before google
was invented right so you had to do real
research it wasn't just like looking it
up on youtube google like you were
explaining about the scientific you want
to go to like the library or wait for
the sunday new york times to come out
with like one inch page about on the
page about what's happening in the
heavens nowadays it's trivial and it's
almost too it's almost too easy nowadays
and i want to relate a story just put a
pause in the origin story for one second
einstein said he wasn't an inquisitive
kid he wasn't super inquisitive as a kid
in fact he said i discovered relativity
because i never asked my dad the
question of what would happen if i was
going at the speed of light and i looked
at myself in the mirror he never asked
his dad that and it's good he said had i
asked my dad that question einstein said
he would have given me the wrong answer
by definition because einstein the elder
einstein albert had it come of age and
invented himself so he would have been
deflected detracted from the right path
what would happen not uh this is like
we're nesting these ideas here but what
would happen if you were traveling at
the speed of light and you looked into a
mirror well so nothing with mass can
travel at that speed so you can travel
close to the speed of light so the punch
line is you can't you can't do it but
even if you travel at large speeds you
would still see yourself because light
is the only thing that always moves at
the speed of light so you would see your
reflection off the mirror but now what
an observer on earth would see
stationary observer is radically
different and that does throw into
almost quasi-chaotic nature
the nature of what does it mean to be
simultaneous so if i tell you i snap my
fingers
at the same time you know what that
means but if i'm in motion and in your
stationary you'll hear
and it'll look different similarly if
you're in motion the color of light will
change and there are all sorts of
strange phenomena that take place but
getting back to the origin story when i
looked up and saw that there was order
in the heavens i could do research
during the day at the library pieces of
paper dead trees and i could do research
and i had invested energy and that gave
me power like you said before investing
energy organizing it into something that
gave me intellectual power i wasn't a
great student i didn't like get the
highest scores in sats and aps and stuff
like that i went to public school modest
means and what i wanted to do is just go
as far as i could but i never knew no
one ever told me because i wasn't in
that milieu where i could learn about
i could be a professor someday of
astronomy it's like if somebody told you
you could have your job today first of
all it didn't exist when you were a kid
but you'd be like why would somebody pay
me or why would i get remunerated for
something i would do for free because i
know this about you you would do this
all for free you love doing this you
love the connectivity you love the the
the bonding between people that maybe
you'll never meet you do it for free i
would be a professor for free don't tell
gavin newsom please because it might
take you up on it uh but you know as a
public employee but um i wanted to do it
but i was like who the hell's gonna pay
it's like being an ice cream taster you
know is anyone gonna pay you to be a
wizard you know the uh no i just it
didn't enter my lexicon it wasn't it
wasn't even possible for me to become a
professor little did i know you know it
is possible it's just there are more
people that play in the nba you know
starting uh teams in the nba than all
the professors of cosmology in america
it's not a very very popular you know by
numbers uh and that's partially because
it you know it takes a long time to get
there but you know
i definitely feel like the the path from
the inquisitive curious kid that i was
at age 12 did give me not that just the
passion because i always think of
passion is kind of like passion's like a
spark that can ignite the afterburner
but you need the fuel to keep the
afterburner going and curiosity is that
fuel so i'm i am nothing as einstein but
if not passionately curious all i get
such a thrill such a dopamine hit you
and andrew huberman talked about this
like that's like the fundamental
currency of the human body is dopamine
well scientists i'm sure you know this
have shown you get a little hit of
dopamine when you investigate curiosity
people use this in meditation for weight
loss
and for smoking cessation drug addiction
that if you now surf the urge you get
cured why do i feel hungry i just ate i
just had a quest bar you know but if you
get curious you can overcome addiction
that's because it'll satisfy a tiny bit
of the dopamine sensor i get those
dopamine hits all the time courtesy of
this thing i've been really passionate
and curious about since age 12.
very interesting
now going back to the experiment what
was the experiment that you ran
that got everybody
hot and bothered so the way i heard you
tell and for anybody looking at the
screen here the book that you are
showing losing the nobel prize is not
the book that we're actually going to be
talking about which is um into the
impossible which is what i read for this
interview but um
i had heard you intimate that you
specifically set out to create a um
experiment that would get you a nobel
prize
so what was the experiment yeah so first
of all i should say with the nobel
prizes the nobel prize is the most
important award i claim of any kind on
earth including the oscars the grammys
the latin emmys whatever they are right
yes i would hope it's more important
than the oscars not to diminish as
somebody who would love to win an oscar
trust me i'm not in any way shape or
form diminishing that so it's given out
in six different subjects every year
predominantly in sweden and norway
and categories like medicine chemistry
physics obviously there's a peace prize
there's a prize in economics et cetera
et cetera and literature and these
prizes are supposed to award those
people for whom made the greatest impact
not only in their field but on all of
humanity in other words a physics
discovery that not only you know
satisfied the curiosity of nerds like me
but actually had some some tangible
benefit for all of humanity so the first
person to win the nobel prize is the guy
who came up with the x-ray machine who
discovered the uh you know the bones
could be cracked you could see teeth it
cured people and within a couple of
months it was used all over the world
after its invention he was william
rengen he won the nobel prize for that
alfred nobel was the inventor of
dynamite so he made uh probably he was
thought of he had 355 patents one of
which was dynamite and he was kind of
like the steve jobs or elon musk of the
1800s and after he had no wife no kids
and when he died he endowed all of his
fortune which was a massive amount of
money to this prize to not only
scientific discoveries but scientific
discoveries that changed the world and
made humanity better
so ultimate kind of impact on on the
world and so it's very intoxicating not
only will you be kind of a hero among
nerds in in my career and you'll be as
world famous and as an idol as anybody
can be in science you know besides neil
degrasse tyson there's only one of him
but you know for most scientists this is
the ultimate goal this is the promised
land that you aspire to get into
and uh i didn't mention about my father
my father was an eminent mathematician
who became a scientist and we were
pretty competitive i don't know are you
doing a public school if your dad is
like a super high level mathematician
very good question so my parents got
divorced and he basically gave us up for
adoption so i was adopted by my my
mother my biological mother and my
stepfather some heavy [ __ ] yeah it was
it was really heavy and growing up how
old are you when this happened so they
were separated when i was three
and then divorced when i was seven and i
have an older brother and he was also
abandoned by my father
so my father moved out moved to the west
coast and you know i didn't see him for
15 years i just did another interview
today on the boy crisis have you heard
of this i've heard of it of course who
is so interesting warren farrell uh okay
finish the story and then i want to come
back to what how that would have set you
up so yeah so i didn't have uh this you
know i didn't have my biological father
in the picture so he's in he moved to
the west coast he went to l.a okay and
uh
and you know he's a mathematician i know
he's a mathematician i knew he was a
professor and you're struggling in
public school in math public school
math getting a little bit angry and then
i was like um you know i wanted to and
then i was applying to colleges and i
was like he taught at cornell he was one
of the youngest tenured full professors
of math at corn are you guys still in
contact uh he unfortunately passed away
i mean at that at that time no no no i i
had a chip on my i didn't want to talk
to him really anything to do with us so
don't he like it you know abandoned me
and i always felt for me tom you know i
was seven
you know and this is crazy to think like
this but as a seven-year-old is the way
you think
how how could you abandon kevin my older
brother he's ten he can do stuff with
you you guys used to go fishing like i
don't remember doing much with him i
think he taught me how to ride a bicycle
uh but that was basically all but you
know there's an exponential growth in
connections in the neurons in the brain
between a boy and his father especially
i have sons and and and uh brothers and
there's a huge connection that takes
place from seven to ten so i was like
how the hell i was pissed off at him i
didn't want to talk to him in fact he
was a professor cornell famous world
famous professor
and i applied to cornell and i never
once mentioned and we had different last
names i never once mentioned that he my
father taught there and i didn't get in
consequently i didn't get in twice the
corner i was rejected twice by cornell
but it's okay did you ever consider
giving no i never wanted to owe him
anything but you wanted to go to the
school that he taught at because it was
a great school and because it had carl
sagan it was that really it i mean
that's like that's it wasn't the only
place i applied no for sure you know
what i'm saying
was was the fact that your dad was there
part of the reason did you want to show
him that you could hang it was more my
mom went there my mom is a brilliant
woman who's uh who's got the other side
of the brain i always forget which is
left or which is right which probably
means i'm either left or right uh so my
mom was is this wonderful gracious thank
god she's still here and living
and she's so brilliant and worldly and
erudite she doesn't know anything about
math physics science or whatever and um
and so she spoke so incredibly about the
scholastic environment of what ithaca
was like in cornell that it really made
this you know it was very romantic the
notion of going there and being in the
cold and the gorges and just like in the
ivy league um you know is the one that
sch