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
school that i knew best by proxy uh and
so it just it felt like it was
interesting but no it wasn't to prove
that wasn't to prove to him i'm going to
get to where i was trying to run up him
in about two seconds so i he was a
famous mathematician won a bunch of math
prizes never one there is no nobel prize
in math isn't there like a field field
yeah very good so he won a prize that's
kind of like two or three levels down
from that eminent mathematician but
later in his life he abandoned
mathematics too and went into physics
now he's playing in my turf again you're
already a physicist at this point i'm
now in graduate school in 1993 brown
university finally made the ivy league
um and i went to brown and i started to
do i was living with a roommate who is a
guy from a foreign student tomas and he
um he had been abandoned by his father
too but they had a reproach they had
gotten back together
and he said it made him so much more
psychologically healthy as i talk about
in the book he said brian you're
carrying all this baggage but the reason
baggage has handles so you can put it
down
and he was like you're so full of anger
at your dad that you don't even remember
i didn't remember what he looked like
it was unbelievable i i grew up i felt
like i grew up without a father but i
didn't need him you know i've gotten
into a pretty good schools and i've done
pretty well um and and nothing no thanks
to him people nowadays even say oh
you're only good at math because you're
down it's like i'm good at math despite
my dad you know like i worked hard as
freaking hell to learn the math to learn
the physics it never came easy to me and
i i like to think of because of that
that struggle that can relate to people
that may not be so proficient in math or
scientific thinking or reasoning
so when i got to grad school i looked up
my father's old papers
i saw he was getting into physics and i
was like all right well this is
interesting this is like a sign and then
one thing led to another and it turned
out both my grandmothers at the time
were still alive and long since passed
away but they were kind of fr they had
friends of friends in common they didn't
talk to each other either after the
divorce i never saw my grandmother my
father's mother never saw her again in
my life it's crazy you can almost see
how the father would abandon the kid
because you know he hates the mother it
feels like the kid's poisoned against
him i mean i hope to never know anything
like this but how can a grandmother you
know that
abandoned her grandson it was very
strange to me but anyway she was living
not far away from my other grandmother i
was blessedly in love with and i love my
and she loved me my mother's mother and
they lived a couple miles away from each
other in south florida as many jewish
grandmothers like to live and through
what i call the yenta net you know they
communicate via their friends over you
know at the deli uh they found out that
you know i was going to graduate school
at brown and i had some questions about
you know what my father was up to how
his health was because he had this uh he
had you know had some health issues as a
kid and i was like well i'd like to know
about my own health issues and um one
thing led to another and the two
grandmothers passed on my phone number
to my father
and uh and he started he called me one
day and this just like ignited this
thing in me both the kind of like
curiosity we talked for five hours uh
you know
good conversation very good yeah of
course there were some recriminations
and and and issues with my mother who
i'm fiercely defend to the death sure
but
it brought out a little competitive
streak in me
that i could do what he never did in
physics at least win a nobel prize
and that year 1993 two men halson taylor
won the nobel prize in physics for
discovering what are called
gravitational waves the shaking up of
the fabric of space-time due to the
massive objects in motion around one
another called binary pulsars
and this guy um hulse who won it he was
the same age i was at the time in other
words he was a graduate student at
princeton when he did the work that 20
years later would earn him a nobel prize
i was like if he can do it i can do it
and so i set off on a quest to really do
as much as i could to win a nobel prize
partially for the venal you know getting
credit and being an idol of physics but
also to why not my dad and i'm not proud
of either one of those motivations no
but this is so interesting because
you're being so honest it's [ __ ]
incredible yeah keep going yeah you have
my raptors so we you know would engage
in these mass you know just mega
conversations all night you and dad me
and my dad finally my brother got
reunited with him i flew out here to
meet him i'd never been to la i'd never
had any interest in california
whatsoever he's been proud new yorker
living in east coast i didn't care um
came out here and it was just like i saw
him like walking towards me and i was
like that guy i didn't know what he
looked like remember i hadn't seen him
since i was seven until i was 22.
i'm like that guy's walking like kevin
my older brother they were like two like
twins and he looks like my brother my
brother looks like and i was just like i
was floored because you know i i know
obviously i knew about genetics and
stuff but like and i'd like to think
there's not so much investiture and
blood and like i could be an adopted
parent or whatever but but anyway and
and oh it matters statistically i will
just tell you huge nurture and there's a
huge nature it's like you need both
right um and so we got together and we
just could not stop talking about
physics it was like he he used to joke
as a mathematician he was never
interested in kids he probably had kids
to please my mother
and make her happy and then they end up
getting divorced so it wasn't like it
was permanent uh he was like but he used
to joke like when my brother's kids were
born my older brother's my nephews he
would say well tell me when they learn
algebra you know then we can talk
he's joking but but he was just this
pure intellect super smart you know i
always uh feel like he had that that
purity of a quest to understand the
mathematical nature of the universe and
i wanted to do the same in terms of
physics so i came up with an experiment
called bicep it's a tortured acronym
that stands for background imager of
cosmic extragalactic polarization and
it's kind of a play on words because the
signal that we're looking for is kind of
this twisting curling pattern in outer
space
of these ancient photons that come to us
as relics traveling through time from
the epoch of the big bang itself they're
the oldest light in the universe and
taking that um to its extrapolation i
realized that we could discover
what ignited the big bang in other words
we know the explosion took place imagine
you come to a crime scene there's some
big explosion or firecracker goes off
you see all the shrapnel
what ignite who ignited it is it god was
it some force of nature quantum field to
fluctuate who knows i wanted to find out
what that was more than that if i did
because everybody liked the guy hulse
who won the nobel prize for the work he
did as a graduate student to these two
guys in new jersey penzias and wilson
who discovered the cmb the cosmic
microwave they all won nobel prizes it
was like showering nobel prizes from the
sky so what better way to increase the
odds to do what my father never could
have done and also
answer this fundamental question of what
caused the universe to begin it was
really intoxicating
and before i could do that i had to get
fired
i had to get fired from stanford
university so in academia you you
actually had to get fired i got fired
well
if i hadn't been fired i wouldn't be
talking to you today let me explain how
so
i went to brown prestigious university
and after you get your graduate degree
it's kind of like um you know you don't
go from double a baseball to the majors
you have to play in triple a right right
um as i understand uh of course coming
from the padres hometown it's a little
hard to know like what makes the best
baseball but anyway uh so there's a
there's an equivalent step to single a
double a and aaa before you get to
become a professor call that the major
leagues so undergraduate is like single
a graduate schools double a you get your
phd then you have to show you're capable
of independent research when you're in
graduate school it's like your employees
you still have to tell them what to do
right but what you really want to do i
think as a leader and i've heard you
talk about this elsewhere you don't want
to be concerned with just like leading
people and creating a lot of followers
you seem to me sir to want to create a
lot of leaders and doing that in
academia means you have to prove that
you're independent and capable of
leading a research campaign on your own
not telling doing what your phd advisor
told you to do and certainly not doing
homework problems like you had to do for
undergraduate that's called a
post-doctoral scholar i got a job
working for a new brand new professor at
stanford university one of the most
prestigious universities on the planet
it was my dream job moving out to
california could be close to my dad
moving from providence to um to out to
the west coast at least and he had
actually been a graduate a post a
postdoc himself so to speak at stanford
in the math department in the 1960s
so i was kind of following his footsteps
thought of making prep
and uh and i got out to stanford but i
was being paid to work on a completely
different telescope project that my p
that my postdoctoral employer she wanted
me to work on this and she had every
right to you know demand that i work on
it but i couldn't get this out of my
mind that
working for her maybe she would win a
nobel prize i wasn't going to win it
that wasn't going to satisfy a my
curiosity of understanding how the
universe began she worked on galaxies
and clusters and stuff but really cool
stuff but not the origin of time space
matter theology philosophy that i was
most consumed with um and uh and so i
started to just couldn't stop i could
not stop hypothesizing thinking up
writing down the equations for this
experiment that could take me to
stockholm sweden someday
and she got really freaking pissed off
at me and she had every right to do
and she fired me one day she said it's
not my job you know to like have your
dreams come true you know you have to
work for me and she's totally right like
if my post docs now i post they're doing
this like guys they might be listening
you know they don't get any crazy ideas
from your your mentor now and she said
you're fired but she did me a huge solid
favor and she got me an interview
with a man here in pasadena his name is
andrew lang
and he was her postdoctoral mentor
one of the most eminent scientists in
the last 50 years in this field of
experimental cosmology which is what i
do building telescopes to observe the
universe
and he had just discovered
along with colleagues and and
competitors around the world that the
universe is flat
the universe is flat not like the table
is flat and what it means to be flat has
a very precise definition in in physics
and it's not that hard to uh to to um to
explain so let me i'll try to explain it
and if i make a mistake you just let me
know
if you make a mistake because i'll know
you'll if you're confusing i will ask
questions okay but i have a feeling i
will not know if you make a mistake this
guy named euclid who lived about 2400
years ago and he came up with all these
postulates for geometry it's probably
the bane of many kids listening out
there
these postulates to describe the
properties of of lines and angles and so
forth and one of his postulates is if
you draw a triangle
and you count and you measure the angles
of each of those three angles and you
add them together you sum them up
they'll always add up to 180 degrees
which is true on any flat surface you
draw it on that'll be true however on a
sphere we can go from here in la go all
the way around the equator go around to
bangkok thailand and uh that's exactly
180 degrees around on the earth's
surface then we go up to the north pole
and then we come back down to la that
triangle is has basically two 180 degree
and in other words its angle sum up to
360 degrees or more and so it's not true
unless you're on a flat surface now it
could be our universe even though the
earth is curved that the universe is
flat in the following way could be
proved take three any three triangle
points in the universe three stars three
galaxies or three blobs of the cosmic
microwave background measure their
angles and if they add up to 180 degrees
the spatial plane in which those three
objects lie is a flat plane
so that is what it meant and he measured
this uh this this value that they summed
up to 180 degrees along with colleagues
and competitors and andrew lang and his
team measure this experiment called
boomerang
which was launched it flew around the
antarctic continent
about 20 years ago now and it was a
shoe-in for a nobel prize
and i just thought if anybody could
appreciate these big ideas to go back
even further in time to when those when
the universe itself came to be not just
when the universe adopted the curvature
that we measure a tab um it was him it
was andrew and he believed in me hired
me on the spot i gave a job talk he
offered me a job moved down there and he
he was like like a steve jobs or elon
musk super charismatic except he was he
was a sweet individual like i've heard
about elon you know no offense he's a
genius wonderful guy but he's not the
easiest guy in the world to work for
okay that that he you know doesn't
suffer fools lightly andrew lang didn't
either but he would also engage in much
more of a personable relationship
offering me
fatherly advice you know when should i
get married i mean it wasn't things that
like normal bosses would but he was kind
of adopting that father figure role that
i had missed
as as a scientist because my father
himself wasn't there
and so taking on learning from him
developing the tools skills and tactics
to lead a successful scientific
experiment and he believed in this idea
that would become bicep we proposed it
to the president of caltech who is named
david baltimore winner of the nobel
prize in medicine and he wrote us a
million dollar check to start building
that experiment in 2001.
so we started building it and we
couldn't keep it here in la or san diego
we had to take it to the south pole
antarctica and the south pole is a
desert most people don't think about it
like that it's one of the driest places
on earth it's drier than the sahara
desert and it's incredible it's drier
than los angeles the mojave desert it's
much much dry because it's so cold you
grew up i don't know if you grew up in a
cold climate ever but on the east coast
where i grew up oftentimes we'd get
pissed off because on a snow day
sometimes the weather be so cold it's
too cold to snow all the i all the water
vapor that could precipitate us snow
condenses and basically comes out as
frost so it wouldn't snow um so the
south pole is like that but it's a whole
continent so imagine um imagine a it's a
continent so it's made of rocks and and
and and rocky material unlike the north
pole where santa lives that is uh that
is pure ocean underneath it
and there's 9 000 feet of ice over the
years of precipitation out over tens of
thousands of eons and it's built so it's
9000 feet above sea level it's
incredibly cold incredibly dry
incredibly high very windless perfect
place for astronomy it turns out the sun
is down half of the year the sun comes
up on september 21st
and it goes down on march 21st and
that's it it doesn't go that's one day
one day per year so we want people to
work there we say we'll pay you 75 grand
you just have to work for one night
that's all we want you to do nice and
they'd be surprised how many guys do it
uh and so we built this telescope built
it here in pasadena and then san diego
assembled it shipped it to the south
pole assembled it took data for years
with it um and realized we had to
upgrade it and make it better and we
like an iphone you're actually down
there yourself yeah i've been there
twice for how long it's like uh about a
month total jesus yeah not that not the
winter over you know with the family and
teaching responsibilities but um
it's like the planet hoth i mean it's
it's flat frozen white the buildings
have to be built up on stilts do you
have to have like a surge in there in
case something goes wrong no you at
worst you have to get if your appendix
is the slightest hint of inflammation
they take it out or you can't go if you
have a wisdom tooth problem they take it
out before you even go there and
sometimes they say after they take it
out you can't go because we're afraid
it's not the cert you know of an
infection so it is there's no doctor
there there's a doctor there during the
winter but not during the summer when i
go
and uh it's the most one of the most
remote places on earth right now which
is the end of the winter season um down
there beginning to go on the summer
there could be 40 people
in the whole station and those are the
only 40 people within a 700 mile radius
you see john carpenter's the thing uh i
have i've said they not only have i seen
it they watch that as the last plane
leaves they watch that and in the middle
it'll be so fun in the middle of winter
they watch um uh what's the jack
nicholson movie with the one place oh
the shining the shining yeah they're
like good so they have kind of a macabre
sense of humor
so built this experiment took it down
there realized it's not quite powerful
enough we gotta upgrade it like iphone
one to iphone two it gets twice as more
powerful chips are better more sensitive
cameras better
and we're building cameras right so
we're making it better and better
deploy that one in 2009 2010
come back
get a phone call
and i had
you know been in communication with
andrew for a while
and uh but i hadn't talked to him in
like a month and he took on all these
extra responsibilities he's dealing with
uh with a divorce
and um
and i we got a phone call um i was at a
scientific meeting with his phd advisor
at uc berkeley we had a meeting up there
and he just turned he's like andrew's
dead
he's 47 years old whoa
he had taken his own life oh god this is
a man
handsome tall
young vibrant three kids
at the premier place on earth shoe in
for the nobel prize
he was like a father figure to me
why do you kill himself
we don't know he left a note we don't
know
we don't know we have no idea and
the tragic thing is not
look winning nobel prize winner ended up
his wife won the nobel prize for a
different in chemistry she's a professor
at caltech
this is like royalty but we i don't
think it had anything to do with that i
think what it had to do with was um you
know
he had some demons and the thing that
hurt me the most tom and this is veno
and stupid of me but like god damn it
why didn't you freaking pick up the
phone i would have done anything for him
he would have done anything for me i'm
sure if i had called him up threatening
to potentially inflict harm upon myself
he would have like raced down to san
diego that was the relationship we had
and that i had no idea that he was
wrestling with whatever he was wrestling
with
and um
yeah a couple years ago i drove by and
he was in a hotel here he took his life
and i went to the hotel i just sat
outside and cried i was like why didn't
you when i
you know it's irrational like
who the hell am i he's got kids like
nobody right but still like we always
react with a personal lens on us
and then then fast forward four more
years later we come to this announcement
that we actually discovered the spark
that ignited the big bang the signal
called inflation these waves of gravity
permeating the entire universe that he
had seen in me and our other team
members that we could do and we did it
he wasn't there to see it
now this is in 2014
we make this discovery it's on the front
page of the new york times
it's on the front it's on cnn it's on
you know any newspaper any was round the
world headlines scientists discover the
smoking gun behind the big bang what
caused it to ignite
and i wasn't there i wasn't there at the
press conferences held at harvard
university
because after andrew died
he was my kind of protector he was like
my don and and the other guys in the in
the team they wanted credit and they had
done a tremendous amount of work and
they didn't feel like i fit in
especially since i kind of started
another project
with team members at uc berkeley and
become collaborators and friends as well
and they didn't want me at this press
conference and so i didn't get a ticket
and it turned out to be one of the best
things that happened to me too again
like getting fired see that's the thing
tom i once did a google search you know
you could do these engram searches and
search on the popularity of a phrase you
can search on impact theory and see and
you'll see it'll be zero and then all of
a sudden when you start it like uh 2015
and 2016
it'll go like that search pulitzer prize
search nobel prize search whatever you
want and in this context i once did a
search i said
take the words it was the best thing
that ever happened to me and tell me
what were the words that hap that were
just said the sentence before that
sentence it's always i got fired i lost
my job
um the forklift somebody needed to use a
forklift uh i was the only one who could
do it right um and uh and it seemed
catastrophic but that's what that's
where the magic lies in life when you
think it's gonna be really bad because
that's the entropic flip how did this
become good though so
we were eventually proven wrong
that we hadn't discovered it that we
weren't going to win a nobel prize like
everybody said including the new york
times including the washington post
everybody saying that we not only
discovered
the origin of our universe but
concomitant with that is something
called the multiverse
which is a fascinating corollary to the
uh the theory of how our universe came
to be and it's not too dissimilar to the
notion that as you know there's uh seven
other planets in our solar system since
pluto got demoted by neil degrasse tyson
and others so there's only seven other
planets but we know there's literally a
hundred billion suns just like our sun
stars in our galaxy there's not only
that there's a hundred billion galaxies
or more
in the observable universe so if there's
many planets if there's many people if
there's many solar systems if there's
many galaxies why can't there be many
universes
and that concept is called the
multiverse which literally says there
could be an infinite number of other
universes that exist in what's called
the multiverse and that was a direct
corollary a direct implication of the
announcement that we made on this day in
2014.
people said goodbye universe hello
multiverse
you know inflation this sparked and
ignited the big bang hello nobel prizes
and so yes you said in the beginning
like i was like and almost almost ran
for the nobel prize because people noted
that i had created the experiment that
eventually morphed into the second
experiment along with andrew and others
and uh that if the committee does their
homework they'll see the contributions
that brian keating played
now it turns out in science using the
scientific method there should be a
little bit of add-on where you check to
see am i fooling myself
fooling yourself in science means that
you're a victim of confirmation bias you
have a hypothesis you're going to drill
into it nothing can dissuade you no
disconfirming evidence can prove you
wrong no confirming evidence will not be
included in your list of things of
proving why you're right it comes up all
the time and people that believe in the
flat earth or believe in ufos or believe
in things that are actually true um so
it's a hell of a drug you know it's
might even rival for scientists dopamine
for lay people uh and so
we
were so convinced that the signal we saw
was the very signal we sought
the one that i sought to win the nobel
prize that my father hadn't won
that we almost didn't consider the
alternatives we did it turns out we did
consider the alternatives but we had
enough kind of a feeling to rule them
out so we didn't allow the full brunt of
the scientific method to play out and
instead we didn't have the paper
peer-reviewed
so we submitted it and the media knew
about it and there was a press
conference and i was not at that press
conference and to me i wouldn't have
attended most likely i mean i felt like
left out at the time
and that's when i came up with the idea
for the name of this book because i knew
one of two things was going to happen
i was going to be you know kind of
vindicated that we weren't really fully
correct that we had observed an imposter
syndrome signal which in this case is
called dust there's dust in the universe
just like micrometeorites that pervade
the cosmos and they can align and make
in the magnetic field of the milky way
reproduce the signal exactly mimicking
what we saw
and so that was right so we wouldn't win
the nobel prize because we were wrong
that was one possibility or we would win
the nobel prize because we were right we
just need to be confirmed by somebody
else but i wasn't going to win it so
hence the title losing the nobel prize
it also has to do with the fact that
their aspects of the nobel prize i
believe need to be jettisoned and we
need to lose those aspects so it's kind
of a double entendre as the french would
say
um and in that whole event figuring out
that i wasn't at the press conference i
didn't get the limelight so i didn't
have to eat as much crow perhaps as i
should have
and it always resonates a little bit
sourly with me just in the following
sense to this day i meet fellow
scientists or people and say oh you were
part of that team that discovered the
origin of the big bang in other words
they don't know that we retracted that
yeah and why is that because the claim
comes on page one of the tuesday edition
of the new york times the science times
and the retraction c17 section page 12
column 4 on the saturday edition that
nobody reads
and that's a big problem in science and
one of my goals in science is to make
sure if you have a pr budget that you
reserve a little bit as a put
just in case your theory has to be
retracted your experimental data has to
be retracted and this has happened not
only to us we didn't make a blunder we
actually measured exquisitely accurate
the signal and the experiment continues
to this day
so it's not a failure it's not an error
and it's an error interpretation and
overreach that wasn't wrong
so to my mind we should be careful as
scientists
to not communicate to the public
that
we are infallible i think that's and
that's kind of a big lesson in my second
book
that again humanizes these otherworldly
intellectual titans these nine nobel
prize winners into the impossible
yep tell why why that title
so the podcast that i run at uc san
diego is part of the arthur c clarke
center for human imagination and we are
affiliated with arthur c clarke the late
arthur c clark who conceived of the
first geosynchronous satellites he had
ideas for ipads and silver urge 2001 a
space odyssey he has extremely large
contributions to both arts and science
science fiction science fact hard
science and we wanted to kind of bring
together a center that would that would
kind of emulate him that would have the
two hemispheres of the brain and not
have this secondary division between the
two and so we created the center the
arthur c clarke foundation that he had
no children i think no no
next of kin so to speak so we have
access to this name and i decided
because of all the great intellects that
come through from kim stanley robinson
david brynn uh we have richard dreyfuss
all these great intellects that come
through including nine nobel prize
winners that would come through in one
way or another that it would be a real
shame were i not to preserve
conversations like you and i are having
but for everybody to learn from these
laureates at scale so not just for me to
benefit from their lecture but to record
it and then put it on the internet so i
started doing that and i thought uh with
a colleague patrick coleman at who runs
the clark center
we came up with a name it had to be one
of clark's famous quips and he had many
one of the most famous ones i open every
show with any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from
magic
he had another saying which kind of
resonated with richard feynman he said
for every expert there's an equal and
opposite expert and then a third one
which is um the only way to discover the
limits of the possible
is to go beyond them into the impossible
now that's very poetic but back it up
for me how do we actually go beyond the
possible into the impossible what does
that mean so there will be things that
will be said of you as a scientist that
you cannot do that einstein failed at
that he died trying to come up with a
one inch long equation the god equation
as michio kaku calls it the string
theorist
who are you to come up with this it's
impossible um but it's actually
oftentimes people short the human
intellect and what we're capable of
doing i mean if you just look back in
history and go like on the savannah like
your conversation with richard dawkins
he's thinking about if you looked at
these primates on the savannah in africa
there is no way you could predict that
someday they'd be zipping around
interplanetary you know as an
interplanetary species there's just no
logical so what would you have said
those are impossible that's impossible
but what would you be you'd be
incredibly wrong but you'd also be doing
child abuse
i think of his child abuse which is why
child abuse because you you were telling
a kid that he or she can't do something
because it's never been done before all
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my friends give these a shot i use them
all the time take care and be legendary
do you know moran's surf by any chance
it sounds familiar but no interesting
guy had him on the show really really
early and that was sort of his punch
line he had
been doing this dream recording
basically trying to record areas of the
brain and and much like you were saying
they
it got picked up by the news and
somebody called him and um asked him if
you know given the brain signals you're
picking up on could you end up recording
somebody's dreams and he was like yeah i
guess actually you could and so it
becomes this huge story he starts
panicking he was like no they they like
woke me up i wasn't thinking clearly of
course you can't record people's dreams
and it's not possible and then like a
year later this japanese researcher
because moran had said that and he
didn't see that moran has been
desperately trying to retract this
statement goes and actually starts an
experiment to actually record people's
dreams and like ends up showing that it
probably on a long enough timeline is
going to be possible right and so moran
said the punch line wasn't that i was
right when i said that
you couldn't record dreams it was that
you can't ever say that something can or
can't be done until
because you're just going to stop
somebody from even trying exactly and i
thought that was really interesting to
your point about child abuse that
saying that it's impossible
is the wrong statement because you never
know that's right you have something
called the banister effect named after
roger bannister i know it well yeah the
first person so that was thought to be
impossible now i looked it up one of my
kids is like super fast and i looked up
and it must be an error it's like how
what's the fastest you know that some
kid can run a race in in junior high
school whatever and it's like five
minutes and i was like that's insane
because like 100 years ago that was like
olympic caliber you know race but that
was thought to be impossible once
somebody does something or you ever play
video games your sister or somebody
around here you got a lot of video games
right um they get a high score they kill
the big boss and levels ah that's like
impo and then you do it literally the
thing that you couldn't do for weeks now
you do it the next day so
things are only impossible until they're
not impossible right and so to short the
human that's why i don't like this this
this saying follow the science
you know science is supposed to be about
questioning authority and now we're in
this lane where you have to follow
authority i think almost nothing could
be less scientific than saying like oh
because this particular person like
feynman would say something that i'm not
going to question it of course he has to
be wrong just as newton was wrong just
as galileo was wrong many times by the
way einstein i was having a debate with
my friend stephan alexander as an author
and
the president national society of black
physicist and a professor at brown
university where i went to you know he
and i were grad students together and
and i was showing he's like you know
that man freaking einstein i know you
love him but he had he was wrong more
than he was right and he's like what are
you talking about that guy
i was just like
here are like seven different ways that
he was wrong and and he was right when
it counts and he goes yeah but because
of relativity he gets a pass and i was
like i gotta give it to you and i was i
always joke you know like it's too bad
he made those seven mistakes because
otherwise he could have had a good
career you know he could have been known
as somebody uh but but in reality he's
definitely wrong about he's wrong about
seven major things he's called his
biggest blunder even and if you think
about that if you teach kids that
einstein is an infallible uh you know
omnipotent genius
no kid einstein himself wouldn't have
said i am an einstein and so we
shortchange the potentiality for young
people to enter into science when we say
that something is solved everyone agrees
and there's no no room for progress so i
think of that and the into the
impossible kind of mantra as a way to
inspire people to think about it maybe
not possible but but you won't know
until you really give it a true try and
and give it all you can leave it all out
there on the floor and i think that
there's that's the that's the that's the
thing that only curiosity can sustain
that kind of a quest
multi-decade long quest as it did for
einstein
try and fail to come up with the theory
of everything
but that's beautiful in a way look
i know you're not i don't know no you're
not super religious maybe like but look
at the essence of like moses you know
the founder of of judea like the the key
lesson is he does not get into the
promised land we all have our promised
lands we all have things that we aspire
to that we want to do but he never
stopped asking god please let me in even
fly me over it like let me see it from a
mountain and then we don't even know
where he was buried
because that great man we don't want to
have it as a place of worship because he
was just a man he wasn't a god himself
and i look at that and i say like you
know the nobel prize for me became an
idol it became a promised land even if i
get into it like the characters the real
people but i you know i can think of
this character in into the impossible
they have all won the nobel prize but
seven out of the nine
tell me that they have the imposter
syndrome
in these interviews and i'm like what
are you talking about in fact barry
barish who won the nobel prize for just
a little thing of detecting two
ginormous black holes colliding together
near the speed of light a billion years
ago in a galaxy we don't even know
exists anymore he discovered those with
his teammates on the ligo experiment the
laser interferometric gravitational wave
observatory and um and he said when you
win a nobel prize which i'll probably
never know now uh you win a nobel prize
you go to stockholm you meet the king
you have a reindeer sandwich with the
king and then you bend down and he puts
a gilded graven image of alfred nobel
around your neck and then they say oh
you win a million dollars too or some
fraction of a million dollars with the
with the people that you want it you
have to sign this book and the book
has all the people that have ever won
the nobel prize in physics and he's a
curious guy so he opens it up he turns
who won it last year two years ago five
years oh there's fineman there's fine
wow
there's oh there's marie curie that's
pretty there's einstein and he said i'm
not worthy
i'm an imposter
and i said how do you feel that now
after winning the nobel prize he goes i
can't live up to what he did i said
barry i have to tell you something
albert einstein had the imposter
syndrome he's like what are you talking
about
he said that isaac newton did more
not only for physics but for western
civilization
than any person before or since meaning
even including einstein himself i
remember hearing a quote i don't know if
it's apocryphal but where somebody said
to einstein what's it like to be the
smartest man alive and he said i don't
know you have to ask nikola tesla
i always found that interesting you know
to your point about um
the
[Music]
the imposter syndrome but there's also
something more that you discount the
thing that you're good at because
it um
like i'll take speaking so
my wife decided to start speaking and so
she when she did her her only ted talk
thus far but when she went to do a ted
talk she you know had me like coaching
her and so i'm training her all this
stuff
and
for her it was a magic trick it was a
sufficiently advanced technology my
understanding of speaking that to her it
seemed magical whereas to me it's so
self-evident as to be not impressive
yeah and so it's really interesting how
when you have
so i think all of us have something
where we get disproportionate returns
right so
um i've put an inhuman amount of energy
and effort getting good at speaking so
it is not something that just came
naturally but it is something to which i
have always if i put an hour of energy
into speaking i get a 1.3 x let's say
right and somebody else might get a 0.6
x and so now the differential between me
putting an hour of energy into it and
then putting an hour of energy you can
see how it would be very frustrating
very quickly absolutely but it doesn't
feel like um it's hard to be impressed
by the things that you get that
disproportionate return on so i can see
how yeah everybody begins a discount
there something called a curse of
knowledge which is like you maybe have
experience with professors or teachers
like they're so erudite they're so
intelligent they're so smart that they
forget what it was like not to know and
therefore they can't communicate the end
levels between you and them to get you
to level n plus one where you're at like
that's all you need from a teacher i
think of teachers as hacks like they let
you hack on and get up and i want to
just resonate with something because
something i use to prepare for this
interview is something that i learned
from neil degrasse tyson
um
in an episode of into the impossible on
my youtube channel where he actually
semi-hinted that my question was almost
racist
and i actually said the episode's called
neil degrasse tyson plays the race card
i'm brian cutie and what it was was i
said to him um you know when he was a
kid he was a great athlete and he went
to bronx science you know best high
school in the world uh anything but
especially in science and um he was also
pretty big and good as an athlete six
two six threes a couple you know 1800
and he took it seriously and they wanted
him to wrestle and they were like apply
to college on a wrestling scholarship
he's like i don't want to do that and i
want to do it you know intellectually
and i said to him
like where did you get that from because
he wasn't like saying like the courage
to make that decision like i probably
would have just taken yeah i'll get into
harvard any way i can you know a cornell
right um i would have done it he didn't
want to do that and i said what gave you
that strength was it something that
you're born with some some pretty
natural gift that you have that gave you
the confidence to say no to the trope of
african-american let's just put them
into sports and he said i'm now going to
mention the race card to you because you
see somebody who's eloquent and gifted
and as a black man and you say oh it
must be a gift implying that he didn't
have to work on it i actually disagree
with him and i push back on him but then
he said um you see me when i go on
colbert report or whatever the late show
and you see me
and you look like it's so easy and i'm
having this great conversation it's
flowing back and forth
and you think that's just a gift because
i'm a black man and you think i might
have the gifted gab and he said no no no
no you're wrong what it comes from is i
am a scholar of whatever craft i'm doing
in that case is public speaking
i watch every episode of jon stewart or
colbert
for the last two months before i go on
every time and i time the amount of
space between the questions and the
pause and response i time what are the
uh levels of kind of jokes to you know
per unit time that i can lay in how much
deep science can i lay in and then and
then he says i have to go back four days
because it's not five and it's not three
i go back four days and i look at the
news cycle and stephen's gonna ask me
something in that three days but not
five days so i don't waste my time go
back 10 months ago or yesterday he's
going to ask me what happened last three
days
so he's a scholar of that one niche and
so he gets this disproportionate return
now i look at that i'm like oh i'm going
but now i took that i used it i said tom
asked certain questions he he will talk
for you talk by the way for an average
of 3.5 minutes per question uh which i
love uh so i know that i'm gonna shut up
because he's gonna ask these questions
so great to hear and learn from you uh
and but he's also gonna let me ramble on
too um and i wanna you know tie things
into the past episodes because i want to
go back to your first episode this guy
moran because maybe no one will watch it
it's too long a tale but you had on uh
richard dawkins recently i was just or
andrew huberman or uh you have uh you
know just amazing guests and you know so
i i benefit from even though it's kind
of like leveling on me
but it's so evident that someone it's
hard to teach that like he gave me a
recipe but there's still some secret
sauce that he has i don't i don't think
it's an insult to say someone's gifted
in something but you might be gifted in
public speaking and how do you convey a
gift to somebody else like lisa might
not be so easy it's interesting so
i think that
it's probably misleading the only person
i know who just claims straight up like
this is a gift is bo jackson bo jackson
was like i never had to work for it like
i mean he just owns it wow and was
obscenely gifted yeah
but most people even
somebody like lionel messi who's just
known for being completely talented he
says you know look i've had to work my
ass off so i think that it is a one-two
punch of you get that disproportionate
return but it's kind of like steroids
you can take steroids and not add any
muscle at all you still have to go work
your face off in the gym so i think it
you know it it is that double thing and
it is a little like if somebody were to
say well it's easy for you tom because
you're naturally gifted at speaking it's
like no i get a disproportionate return
but i've had to put an insane like
starting at age
12 or 13. i started practicing in front
of the mirror modulating my voice
looking at my facial expressions you
know practicing practicing at the time i
thought i was going to be a stand-up
comic so it was like you you end up
having to still put an inhuman amount of
time and energy into something
but yes i do think it matters if people
identify the thing that they get the
disproportionate returns and if you love
that and can also leverage that now i
believe you also have to work on your
weaknesses if your goals demand it but
yeah it's um
i don't know a lot of people that are
just gifted but i see like if you lost
you know god forbid you lost whatever
you i mean just the fact that you've had
multiple you know bites at this app
different apples you know if you lost it
i heard maybe it was gary vaynerchuk on
um
uh your show or
um maybe it was uh jordan harbinger show
but he's like like sometimes i wish i
could lose it all you know just to do it
again and i'm like in science you kind
of feel that way too for one reason is
there are
500 companies in the fortune 500 right
there's only one company if you like
that wins the nobel prize there's only
one experiment every year there's more
people on the space station than i've
won the nobel prize in the last couple
of years like right now it's insane uh
so it's like a monopoly and it's very
hard and but a lot of these guys once
they win the nobel prize they do
something totally different pivoting as
the kids say right they want to do
something else why because they don't
get the same dopamine hit like once you
win it like you've basically come as far
as you can go in that specific sub
discipline and now you want to do
something because you've got this you
know 8 000 horsepower brain
and and you don't want your career to be
over and so they pivot in something else
now sometimes they take these flights of
fancy and they don't do anything it's
kind of crazy someone goes off the deep
end become eugenicist or racist or
whatever i mean this has happened yeah
they invented the transistor uh became
like a real eugenicist who came up with
the idea that we should actually
encourage blacks not to reproduce and he
contributed to what's called the nobel
prize sperm bank the repositories yeah
this guy's but is that a one-off just
that guy are you saying there's
something about the mega maniacal nature
of winning something like that there
could be i mean you look at you know
where do you go from here and i actually
had this astronaut chris hadfield on my
show a couple a couple of months ago
he's the guy who's like playing major
tom's a junkie in the space station
canadian restaurant and i asked them i'm
like are you you know familiar with the
hedonic treadmill like once you make
this achievement
um you know being an astronaut living on
the space state like where do you go
from there and he had you know author
and he wrote a fiction book he's written
two non-fiction books a kid's book now
he's written a murder mystery
so like but it's clear like there he's
wired in this way that he cannot stop
doing achievement and a lot of these
people in this book are like that too
and sometimes they think that because
they've won it now everyone should
listen to them and and really pay heed
to some of their loony notions um the
co-discoverer of the double helix uh
james watson
said like really negative things about
women and minorities and and yet he
still has his nobel prize the one award
that never gets retracted harvey
weinstein had his membership in the uh
in the academy awards whatever retracted
rescinded many prizes have been taken
away not the nobel prize they never take
it away and why maybe because it's the
most prestigious idol on earth but it
only is that for now
if it continues to maintain some sense
of integrity and i hope it will and part
of the goal of into the impossible was
to bring out the human side of these
lawyers and show they do i mean they
suffer from some of the things that you
and i suffer from except they can crush
it they can crush the imposter syndrome
to really unlock
you know for on a sustainable basis and
what is that key like how do you step
into the impossible how do you get past
imposter syndrome how do you believe
that yes you can do it like what's that
key
for
really getting into something that's
grand i think it has to be a balance it
can't be only that you are defined by
what you do in the laboratory or on a
chalkboard or whatever you have to have
some scaffolding some superstructure
outside of your business outside of your
your what your career is outside of
science in a sense all of them had very
very um
deep gratitude for father figures in
their lives
for people that were mentors to them and
for them to be mentors and i point out
in the book in the russian language the
word for scientist is one who was taught
in other words you are if you're taught
you're a scientist and it kind of
harkens back to the scientific method we
start like kids are natural scientists
you see them doing stuff they make up
concoction they blow up stuff you know
they're curious what happens they test
the limits of their parents you know
doing crazy crap um so they're testing
they're doing hypothetical refining and
then they become like you know hairless
apes that actually behave properly
hopefully
in this case having you know a
passionate level of curiosity but also
being able to collaborate to work with
other people
to listen to your critics
but not so much that it goes to your
heart and listen to your your
your complimenters but don't let it go
to your head
like you get to this level and you might
have objective metrics you could be a
billionaire you could win a nobel prize
you have these objective measures very
tempting then to let that be your
definition so therefore you must define
yourself by activities and people and
your network outside so they all have
broad networks and i don't just mean
like you know social networks or
whatever but they broad interest they're
into you know like hobbies scuba diving
and you know flying planes or you know
doing cool crap and and it keeps them
diverse and thinking about stuff from
art music you know
archaeology things like that to me
that's kind of the notion that speaks to
me that you can't just only do what you
do you must also have something that
you're doing it for there's a scientist
robert wilson
who said something when he was asked
about um why should we build these
particle accelerators that cost billions
of dollars you know shouldn't we use
that to build up you know the military
and keep this is during the you know the
cold war and he's like well the military
is great because it defends the country
but when we do science like this it
makes the country worth defending
and i think doing what one of my
laureates in the book said um sheldon
glashau who's the inspiration for young
sheldon and big bank there uh he said
there's a power and useless ideas and
it's kind of like you talked about once
like the blank space on your calendar
like you should have blank space in your
calendar because it's in those
interstices that creativity comes out
and it's no no secret you know part of
that's why you get ideas in the shower
and you're thinking about stuff all the
time you need that blank space and
sometimes those hobbies and that's blank
space from your from thinking about
grand unified field theories and you
need that in order to then pour that
energy into these things it's not going
to make a faster internet connection
it's not going to build a more efficient
you know solar panel or it's it's it's
useless in that way
but sometimes we think of science in the
wrong way we think of science as so
valuable we want our kids to do stem
right why because it makes technology
but science can be much more than that
you know i always say like what the
value of science that doesn't produce
some widget that does something better
what's the use of a baby
babies don't do anything you know they
they come into your house they poop on
your your floor yeah they don't carry
your genetics into the future and that's
nature's trick so
i get it
that one is all right all right let me
push back
so people talk about carrying genetics
and stuff into the future um so we
talked when you're on my show about kids
and you were very candid honest
authentic about that and i really love
it and i don't want to recapitulate that
i want people to watch the interview on
my channel into the impossible but um
but you said you want to have this
impact you want to go to your death bed
and on your deathbed not have to say i
regret the choice of not having kids
because it would have precluded me from
doing the impact in my business in my
work with my wife with my network um
that would have done it now i think
that's that's admirable and i've been
thinking about that ruminating on that
since we spoke in october i actually
have not stopped thinking about that
because i'm like
there's something about tom saying
that's resonant with me but i want to
work through it and first of all i
started thinking about this
teleportation into the future like
are kids the only way to do it like you
said it and you don't have kids it's
very impressive that you say that i'm
always a little bit reluctant i have
kids i don't like to talk about you know
the kids personal stuff but um
i have kids
and i think about them as little little
robots and little not in a good way
they're going to be able to do stuff on
their own they'll be independent for the
first you know 18 years of life they're
almost right they can't sustain
themselves unlike every other animal on
earth it's not interesting even though
we share 99 of our chromosomes with apes
the apes are free at age one you know
they go off to college or whatever they
do right our kids 18 like and even then
they're not even that they're not ready
right um so i started thinking like is
that the only way because i get a little
self-conscious like you maybe i have a
friend she couldn't have kids like i
don't want to say the only way to
transmit your your genetics into the
future is if she has kids because that's
offensive right it's not fair to her she
couldn't have kids why is it offensive
if it's true if you can't do it
right now look i feel bad if somebody
wants kids and can have kids but that
doesn't mean that it isn't true
and so genetically the only way to get
your genetics into the future is to get
your genetics into the future if you see
what i'm saying okay so it i guess
theoretically it could be donating eggs
or sperm or whatever and something in
the future will happen that's one way
but my thing is
that kids are ready-made fulfillment
and i think fulfillment is the ultimate
aim i think that i have chosen a much
harder path to fulfill it maybe a better
way to say it a much more dangerous path
to fulfillment because it may not yeah
may not be harder because being a parent
truly i wish i knew who said this but i
heard a quote that the only impossible
job is raising children that strikes me
as abundantly true and i have started
thanking people for having kids because
somebody needs to do it i'm super
grateful
um
you need fulfillment i have chosen a
more dangerous path where i'm trying to
build something that will outlast myself
and it's incredibly rewarding but it's
also very high risk so i don't get why
it would be offensive to say something
is true even though my heart breaks for
somebody that wants to so strictly
speaking um i actually don't as i said
before there's nature there's nurture i
don't put as much weight on on nature as
you might think even as a scientist i
don't particularly think like imagine
you know i have kids again if somebody
came to me and said actually you know
your your second kid
he's not yours he happens to look just
like me but anyway um
he's not your kid all right if i don't
care you're not going to transmit my
genetics so i don't of course not
similarly you know if there was someone
who was your kid and he does something
despicable as a murderer those horrible
you're gonna be like yeah he's my
genetics though into the future no
but instead what is important is
teleporting
into the future
your ideological values not your
biological values and this i don't think
it's the only thing that matters i think
it's the only thing but i'm with you and
by the way also she can adopt like it's
but you know it's again it's much more
i'm much more of a values and
behaviorist type personality where i
think that that is your actions are much
more valuable which is why you know i do
certain things religiously and so forth
like i don't necessarily believe in an
and certain thing like richard dawkins
and i both don't believe that god is
some guy with a white beard you know we
also
we have a very radical difference of
opinion in other ways but thinking about
what is meaning of life and if you don't
have kids can you have the same meaning
in life and i started to think about
what what is what should you do in life
and i came up with an analogy from
physics because that's basically my you
know i don't have claws i don't have
sharp teeth i've got a brain and i try
to work on stuff through ideas
i try to think about that i said well um
tom right now
could i double your happiness could i
make you
twice 10 times as happy right now
without drugs
i don't think drugs would make you happy
for more than
i think they make you much less happy
now now we have to define happiness so
because i think of happiness as
something so transitory
uh yes i think you probably could if you
put me on mdma i think for the next
couple of hours i would be ten times
happier especially if you let me be
around my wife oh my god i have
fantasized about doing mdma with my wife
i think it would be insane
sex toys it makes sex more fun i'm like
you're doing it wrong like it's pretty
fun right you know
you remember you brought it up yeah but
now i will say so i don't do drugs
i've never done a drug in my life okay
so now i have something for you smoke
weed and then have sex report back dude
so first of all i am not a proponent of
drugs i think people should avoid them
like they are bad news but if you're
going to try something once
smoking weed and having sex it's a
totally different sport it's unreal can
you be happy
is it possible for you to be hurt not
you anybody
well that's the question yes i totally
believe in happiness i think happiness
is amazing i think you can get happiness
from a bowl of ice cream i'm i'll
this is not universally defined but i
have found that using happiness is the
word to describe very momentary very
transient happiness
is very useful and there are many things
that make me give me momentary happiness
then there is joy
which is joy is a deeper more resilient
form of happiness which has to do with
like contributing to other people and
doing things where you feel like
you're yeah you're progressing and
elevating other people and then there's
the ultimate one for me which is
fulfillment which is a positive state of
mind without being sort of
that questy dopamine-y kind of thing
that we think of with like ice cream or
sex happiness
but yes i believe in those and think
that people should optimize around
fulfillment and joy personally have you
ever heard that like uh inuits or eskimo
people have like 80 words for snow yes
so judaism has like men or hebrew has
many words for like intelligence and has
many and has many words for happiness
there's kind of happiness like like you
said there's simcha there's reena
there's like laughter kind of happiness
then there's there's like bittersweet
happiness like you can be happy because
you fail but preach man some of that
[ __ ] is the juice but what you said is
so interesting i claim that you can
continue to become happy but you cannot
be happy in other words do you meditate
right you can't stay happy with that
like would i be understanding you if i
said that i say happiness is like an
unstable equilibrium it's something that
which small perturbations around where
you are can make you only less happy or
more happy in other words you can
meditate right you meditate so when
you're meditating like you don't win
meditating right but you you get to a
place of more and more equanimity and
then it ends already but imagine like if
you could continue meditating whatever
that means like the kind of not it's not
dopamine it's some deep sense of
equanimity where you're just like well
it's literally a different brain waves
it's a different brain and it is in
parallel to drugs so that's the only
type of drug i do is until you're on
eating you know whatever but so in other
words you can progress and it might be
this jagged kind of you're climbing this
mountain you're getting to the top but
then
um you get a phone call and uh mary mods
you know has been hacked and
like in other words my point is that it
would be very hard for bringing up merry
mods by the way that's nice that's nice
i did not ask for that i just want the
record to but imagine i said to you uh
merry mods doubled like would you be
twice as happy
um i'd be i'd be happy what about your
two houses
can you use two houses no what about i
bought you two jets that would make me
deeply uncomfortable like you bought me
two houses oh what's happening right so
in other words most people say yeah if i
won the lottery i'd be much more i'm not
denying it would make you happier if you
won the lottery even temporarily yeah on
a treadmill right it would make you
hedonically treadmill satisfaction but
now let me ask you and this you don't
have to it's a little different but
i can make your life 10x worse in a
nanosecond right i mean a theoretical
like a meteorite or whatever right for
people i don't even want to say it
me thinking about it like brings tears
death of a child thinking about kids
dude that's one of the reasons i don't
know yes i know you said that [ __ ] okay
so the point is this goes back to
entropy what is entropy entropy is chaos
randomness disorder but what it really
is is there's more states for an egg to
be broken than there is for an egg to be
whole right there's more states where
you put
coffee and cream together where it's
mixed together then when you eventually
the laws of physics don't prevent it
from being half coffee and half cream
forever right but there's many more
infinite number almost more states where
they're mixed together so life tends to
more entropy which means more
availability of possibility so therefore
when you get to a peak the only way down
as they say the only way you know off of
the peak is down so there's 10x 1000x
more ways to make your life infinitely
worse than to make it infinitely better
i don't even think you can make it i
haven't told this many times but
jim simons who's the man who funds my
experiment he's like
a hero to me he's a mentor to me he's an
incredible soul he's one of the richest
man in the world um gulfstream yacht
everything um and he's a brilliant
scientist as well um and people say oh
he's got is so great i did anything to
be jim simons oh yeah
jim lost two adult sons in different
accidents oh god and and we named our
telescopes after his sons uh he is and
and he he has this he's just like almost
like a buddha you know there's something
about him and his wife marilyn
um and they're just they're just like
angels on earth and the older i get i
don't like get angry at the bad people
on earth the devils that there are
plentiful on earth they're multitudes
that you meet those angels and they're
just like they just give you faith in
the world but anyway so would you trade
no you wouldn't trade with him so shut
the f up you wouldn't trade in a second
so don't ask about that now i started to
think though tom i said so that's
something very valuable because i have a
lot invested in my kids more than
anything and my wife and you have it
with your wife i said do those things
this is my meaning of life okay i'm
going to lay on it
do those things that which
if taken away from you would devastate
you
maximize the number of things the
connections the businesses the brands
whatever the connections that if it were
taken away from you like yeah you could
build another business you would be
pretty devastated but you could do it
but like your relationship with your
wife no no i'm not saying get married
multiple times and that could be that's
a really interesting
statement
it's really interesting statement that's
making me strangely emotional
yeah i feel that way and it's because of
you i came up with this kind of analogy
to think about it like that in other
words it's a horrible way it is hard
it's beautiful at the same time
do that which you would be devastated if
it got taken away god damn
i do sometimes think
i'm i'm tortured by my decision not to
have kids
it's really fascinating and
when i think about entry i wouldn't have
used these words but because you're
priming me with it yeah when i think
about kids
entropy creeps into the scenario there
are so many more ways for it to go wrong
than there are for it to go right
that uh because i love my life so much
that
i just can't bring myself but you know
what really worries me part of my brain
was betting on the fact that i would be
an uncle really and it's not come true
like my entire [ __ ] family both sides
my side my wife's side no one has
children so i'm just like you are the
like having tom is your uncle dude i
would be such a good uncle i'm
heartbroken that my name is tom so i
would be uncle tom that's [ __ ]
terrible
but you know something that's come up
and it really makes me feel
real antipathy towards my fellow
scientists there's a crisis of like you
said something beautiful you said like
i'm so glad that people have kids
like and i know that's genuine there are
people that think of kids as like a
plague you may know this that there's
this whole movement of not reproducing
kids especially that's so simple it's
incredibly jaded and i think that's one
of the worst qualities you see in a kid
and and by the way like i look at you
tom and i see i see this potential this
this this jt11 engine that's f18 super
hornet quality planes okay so i don't
know if i'm being complimented right now
11 engine has uh 18 000 pounds of thrust
that's used on s18 strike hornet and you
know putting it out there and i'm like
you know tom there there are kids out
there i think about i have kids i think
about adopting kids when i hear about
like um the guy dave thomas he founded
wendy's
he was adopted and because he was
adopted out of foster care he was able
to change the lives of millions of
people because he came a billionaire
he was able to not only have like foster
kids but to have like foster care
siblings
it's wrenching like if i didn't have my
brother i was adopted by my stepfather
if he went to like a different like he
went to live i wouldn't i don't know
where i'd be tom
i think about that with like a dot like
i sometimes think about adoption my wife
wants to kill me what i think because
it's like low much lower you know and i
don't want it to be like oh it's like
getting a pup no it's the hardest thing
but it's also like when you get that
when you have that sense and it's not by
the way the beginning years are pretty
frustrating and not like yeah the first
time they hold your hand when they come
out of the mother that's awesome that is
unlike any that's like making contact
with the species on another planet times
a billion and their whole hand tom fills
up one knuckle oh it's bananas and
you're the first human being they've
ever touched now for the next six months
they're barfing peeing puking they don't
speak english they're crapping on the
floor and the father can almost do
nothing right you know like
but when you're influencing people
connecting people
that's the only form of time of time
travel and teleportation people are so
freaking greedy
people want to teleport
and bring their body with them
and you can't do that you can't go into
the future as far as we know right now
can't go into the past but you can take
your values into the future so i think
you are doing that here's something
interesting and and
i'm literally forgetting that there are
people watching this and i'm just going
to [ __ ] this fascinating but
nature plays games that are incredibly
subtle
and i don't think
we fully maybe it is only the poets
among us that can fully articulate it
but i know because i
because i'm a human and so i've been on
both sides of this equation
because i have a brain like everybody
else i can predict this and because i
big brother for so long
i know what it means to
to
look at
an external
instantiation of
this thing that you love and
it it you mentioned earlier those
feelings of it's a happiness but it's
tinged with something bittersweet
and for me those might be my favorite
emotions that melancholy
the
the knowing that they won't be young
forever and that you know they
they go beyond you into the world in a
way that is joyful and sad all at the
same time and so vulnerable and so
vulnerable and [ __ ] just terrifying
it is
that that's a gift the fact that it is
sad and joyful like i mean just
the the
i've had a very good life so let me say
i'm coming from the perspective of
somebody who despite it not being
perfect like you know loving parents and
all that
um
it uh
it's just a wild ride that we're on that
you ultimately lose everything and yet
while it's here it's [ __ ] beautiful
and you can make of it what you will and
i don't know there's something about the
the ride as it were
and i'm not because i am not a poet i'm
not able to capture this subtle thing
that nature does when you were
describing the baby's hand like wrapping
around yours
like
that didn't need to be a poetic moment
but nature has made it so that it is
and that people are just
flummoxed right by that moment and
there's nothing wrong with it there's
nothing wrong with be told in society
just to like take care of yourself and
go for yourself and do for
and and but we're almost told that it's
selfish to do things like for global
warming there's a mathematician and he
put out like one of the best things he
listed all the things you can do to
reduce your carbon footprint don't eat
meat fine like i could cut down a number
you know of burgers i eat i could
probably do that for health reasons too
and like many things just double edged
sword you know reducing climate change
impacts of greenhouse gases probably
helps with asthma and helps with you
know other you know childhood mortality
so we went through this whole list of
things don't eat meat don't travel on
airplanes don't do this don't have a car
live in a city and a lot and all these
were reduced by like 10 metric tons per
year per family and the last one was 9
000 tons
um
consider a smaller family
i was like [ __ ] you
how dare you tell me that again it's the
same thing it's like oh yeah what if
einstein's parents did the same thing
what if back then by the way in the
1800s 1900s they had their own versions
of like climate change or like you know
what the number one problem was on wall
street
in 1909 or something like that literally
before the depression it was there was
too much horse crap
let me say something to this
what if it's true
and so my thing is like
one i think there are second and third
order and fifth order and six order
consequences that people are not
thinking about when they talk about
reducing the population yeah i know [ __ ]
about this i want to be very clear i am
not an expert i have no [ __ ] idea
what people should do truly truly so
this is merely me saying there might be
a way to think through this that's more
useful than another way one i just i
want that person to be able to say what
they think is true yeah now
it
might not be the right answer but i want
to make sure that people can
throw it out and that we can look at it
yeah so for instance that we can
actually find the truth but the thing
that freaks me out right now you said
something earlier that really resonated
with me which is
i loved
the phrase follow the science until you
just said but wait a second the whole
point about science is to recognize
these people are almost certainly wrong
in some way and to be scientific is to
challenge it all and say hey there might
be a better truth here and that's
actually what i love yeah
so i just want to make sure that we
don't lose sight of that that feels like
something that we have a real tenuous
grasp on right now that people
they they are convinced
that they know what is right and they're
so convinced that they're prepared to
make that like a blanket statement do
what i think
like even in this company
i am
utterly convinced that i don't know
enough for people to just do what i say
and so i go way the [ __ ] out of my way
to make sure everyone in the company
feels very comfortable challenging my
ideas that's right because i don't think
i'm smart enough to come to the right
answer all the time by myself
there's only one thing where i feel that
people should literally just listen to
me and do exactly what i say and that's
los angeles um house design
because i don't feel like if people are
doing a good enough job of that i'm
kidding people should be able to do
everything
but yeah that that to me like that level
when people have that kind of certainty
that scares you oh it's very dangerous
you see it man and lots of different
aspects people go into military things
or but let me just take that um
so i think it's important what you're
talking about is goes by the name of
epistemic humility that you don't know
the right answer but the epistemologies
you want to find the right answer you
want to search for what is quote unquote
true and you should do so with love you
should have a debate and you should have
the red team approach with the same
common goal what is the second time you
brought it up you have to say what it is
the red team is an approach usually
associated with the military where
you've got different red team and blue
team just opposing sides you're asking
people to argue from the other side
fight it out man just like even if they
believe blue side right even your
smartest people you put them on red team
you say [ __ ] go after
the convention here's an example a jury
system some people talk about diversity
oh we should have diversity let's
sprinkle some diversity dust on no it's
actually true the more diverse a jury is
the more likely they are to come to a
correct decision it's not just [ __ ]
and a lot of my friends on the right or
diversity is bs no actually it's been
proven diver more diverse the jury is
the more accurate the judgment and isn't
that what we want in our jurisprudence
system of course we do right so you
should take that but that is kind of an
adversarial notion a jury shouldn't just
like be unanimous actually in the past
in the sanhedrin which is the highest
court in judaism that was the only court
responsible for killing somebody for
adult or whatever if the judges 70
judges if they came to a unanimous
decision this person should be killed
they would then vacate the decision the
person would go free
because the supposition was there has to
be one member who doesn't you know told
the line and has to have someone
advocating for it and this is 2500 years
ago it's pretty advanced anyway the red
team is that it's have the best on both
sides fight it out for a common goal
like you ever hear a presidential debate
2020 presidential debate oh i was going
to vote for biden but you know trump has
such a good debate never happ nobody
changes minds why because they're not
debating for love they're debating to
win
the great thing about science tom is you
never win science there's also the same
as winning science you might win a nobel
prize or win tenure or get into a good
school but you're not winning signs
because it's an infinite game it cannot
be won that's what's so magical about it
similarly too when we have a problem you
notice a problem there will be people
entrepreneurs and people like that that
are often demonized people like musk or
even yourself talking about um
let's have a technological approach to
these vexing problems the globe is
changing its climate is is warming
does that mean it will continue
infinitely absolutely not there's only
so much carbon on earth right there's
only so much way that we can convert to
carbon dioxide the planet by the way is
going to be just freaking fine without
us if we don't if we disappear i hope
that god that we won't but
you know i always think about this in
the context of alien life like if i told
you
if if tomorrow i say my name shelly
wright's a wonderful brilliant professor
at uc san diego she's looking for
technological signatures of
extraterrestrial intelligence
if i told you she just found some um not
extraterrestrial intelligence but she
found unequivocal evidence for amoebic
life on uh planet uh you know uh pro
cyren b
how would you react and how would the
world react to a discovery unequivocal
positive evidence aliens exist but
they're microbes for now how would you
react and how would the world react i
would be so stoked okay why
that's so much more interesting to me
so
one
when we were talking about looking up
the moon with a telescope and you said
you know there's order in the world and
i thought well that's really interesting
it's not at all what i find interesting
about it right what i find interesting
is it triggers the same thing in me that
science fiction triggers
it it's just expansive it's so
interesting to think about that little
amoeba on you know some other planet and
then it makes me think you know what
else is there and then i end up at star
wars and i'm just like ah this is so
cool and so yeah to me anything that
makes
my mind feel like it's expanding i find
that intoxicating i think it's brilliant
how would the world react how would it
change it'll be a mixed bag some people
are going to freak out
anybody that has sort of a traditional
religious bent where we're the only ones
i think it might be a little hard to
swallow but i also feel like i don't
know we're living in a
we're living through a time where it's
just sort of become so pervasive in the
culture that there's probably
life out there that aliens are probably
visiting us i mean you know it's like
that's become such a popular notion that
i don't think people now are just
debating whether they've actually
already landed and the government is
covering it up right it doesn't seem as
big of a thing so i think people would
just sort of go on with their day and
some people say like oh and connect this
with the cosmos and make us feel this
harmony throughout the universe and i
say you know what tom i have good news
for you you can take this cup take it
about 15 miles to the west
go out there pacific ocean scoop it up
and you'll find more amoebas there than
there are stars in the milky way galaxy
that's crazy okay so you pick it up now
does that change your notion of you know
where we fit in the cosmos maybe it
changes it slightly until you think what
are we doing to the ocean what are we
doing to you know dumping and awful
economic you know and i'm an economic
positivist i want to i'm a technological
optimist i want to keep growing and
improving as a science you know feynman
once said that no scientist does not
wish to live forever because he or she
wants to see these cool scientific
discoveries most people ask my mom she's
not oh i've lived a long life you know
when i'm time to go i'm going to go but
most she's not you know so when i think
about that then i think about well let's
let's forget about imams for a second
what if i told you there's this like um
there are these people they're called uh
they're called cambodians they live
there and uh you know and they're
they're
infinitely complex i believe they're
created in the image of god um you know
infinite superior to any other creation
on earth and guess what
you know about six million of them were
slaughtered by their own government just
in the last 50 years in my lifetime
you'd be like how could that possibly
happen when we're thinking about we're
going to cherish you know this microbe
that we find on the planet pros iran b
and i just think like everything about
humanity like i want to turn it inwards
i care more about the planet than you
know i could imagine caring about on the
other hand i also don't want to deny as
you said in reference to something we
earlier said
when you say follow the science or
whatever you say listen to the experts
you're implicitly tacitly saying you
can't do better like we're not going to
find a solution to this vexing problem i
think we are but to cap it at literally
the
oxygen mask that's going to save us
namely the children saying to me as this
professor did
don't have kids or consider not having
kids
i think it's awful i think that denies
the predicate of science which is that
the future will be better than the past
and we all see it we all live better
than the richest kings and queens of
europe 80 years ago not like a thousand
you know it's amazing and that's large
part thanks to technology and that's a
large part thanks to science so for me
i'm not as worried about that and i
don't want to stem you know cut the seed
corn and throw it away which could be
the children that we won't have i think
you want to sacrifice don't eat meat
you know don't go to conferences in your
jet whatever don't do that fine um but
also look at things like nuclear power
which we know in san diego we got six
nuclear reactors within uh you know the
city limits you know they're in nuclear
submarines and aircraft carriers we've
lived with those for 60 years now
there's nothing wrong with it we could
use that to power cities why not do it
and there you go into politics and
that's where i find it lesson i always
joke i got into astronomy because
there's no democratic constellations
there's no republican comments you know
it's all
it's all extra extraterrestrial off of
this earth for the sake of the heavens
brian i have really enjoyed my time with
you yet again this was so much fun uh
where can people follow you uh youtube
dr brian keating into the impossible
podcast and twitter dr brian keating
those are the main ways i love it thank
you man so much for joining us a lot of
fun guys speaking of things that are a
lot of fun if you haven't already be
sure to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care peace