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slash modify. Nobody

1:00

wants to go after the big

1:02

10 people in our field. One

1:04

list is Brian Green, Sean

1:06

Carroll, Neil deGrasse, Tyson, Michio Kaku,

1:08

Lawrence Krauss. Then there's a purported

1:11

leaders of fundamental physics in theory.

1:13

It is the latter group in

1:15

which Susskind is prominent. These are

1:17

just people who went bad and

1:19

they decided that they would have

1:21

a career extolling the virtues of

1:24

a theory that can't ship and

1:26

crapping on everybody else who comes

1:28

up with the challenger theory. But

1:30

we're talking about UAPs, the Galileo

1:32

project, a recent paper that Avi's

1:35

had out about the search and

1:37

the construction of new telescopes. We're also talking

1:39

about academia, Doge, and what

1:41

I've been really troubled with, Eric, and

1:43

I've been dying. I just miss you so

1:45

much, but I've been dying to get

1:47

your thoughts on this. We're surrounded by people

1:49

in the government that are claiming that

1:51

AI is science, that crypto is science. We

1:53

have advisors to the president of the

1:55

United States that are basically unqualified

1:57

to discuss science. and

2:00

in some cases, I'm thinking of

2:02

David Sachs, openly express, you know,

2:04

almost derision for science, eggheads, and

2:06

so forth, like Abby, like me,

2:09

and like you. How is this

2:11

going to affect us in our

2:13

cultural milieu? I mean, there's a

2:15

lot of good things going on

2:18

with Doge and everything else. I

2:20

don't think the way they're treating

2:22

science is right. What do you

2:24

think about that? It's a very

2:26

difficult time, because to be honest

2:29

with you, in my opinion. So

2:31

in general, tech was pro-science and

2:33

somehow in the embittering fight over

2:35

whether we can discuss COVID origins

2:37

or whether that's above our pay

2:40

grade because we're all racists to

2:42

even wonder whether or not it

2:44

might be the case that this

2:46

came out of the lab. That

2:49

was a very low moment where

2:51

somebody induced, I think 77 Nobel

2:53

laureates who come out. on behalf

2:55

of the Ecohealth Alliance. So you

2:57

have to first of all realize

3:00

that whatever the anti-science aspect of

3:02

this is very recent and relatively

3:04

shallow, but what you're getting hit

3:06

with is what I would call

3:08

a universal discount factor. For example,

3:11

if you're a hedge fund allocator,

3:13

and you're so used to being

3:15

lied to that you decide that

3:17

you're going to discount by 25%

3:20

everyone's projections across the board. That's

3:22

a typical strategy. that you'll see

3:24

where you realize are being unfair

3:26

to some people, but because of

3:28

the level of nonsense, there are

3:31

these global discount factors. So I

3:33

think one thing that's happening is

3:35

that science is getting hit with

3:37

the global discount factor. Another thing

3:39

that's happening is we haven't minted

3:42

any great spokespeople for science, particularly

3:44

people, I would say, 60 and

3:46

younger, so that there's no one

3:48

to defend it. We don't have

3:51

a clear... understanding of the tacit

3:53

relationships that we're in trying in

3:55

van of our bushes endless frontier

3:57

compact between the federal government university

3:59

so we are a historical we

4:02

don't realize what built the golden

4:04

goose that laid all those bags.

4:06

By the way Eric I should

4:08

say that I interacted with the

4:10

transition team exactly on this subject

4:13

but they didn't listen. The

4:15

question is is anyone being

4:17

invited to Maralago regularly a

4:19

research scientist and I mean

4:22

that very specifically tech sounds

4:24

like science right but all the

4:26

problems that we're having I think is

4:28

that You're seeing the return of

4:30

an old trope. The old trope

4:33

is that scientists are welfare queens

4:35

in white lab coats. And you're

4:37

seeing us beginning with Sabina's

4:39

increasingly aggressive stance

4:41

towards funding, where once

4:44

Sabina was sort of a

4:46

marginal physicist who was treated

4:48

unfairly in my estimation, she's now

4:50

a major channel and one of

4:52

the principal communicators of science.

4:54

So I think that in part,

4:57

a lot is going on. Scientists have

4:59

not learned to make any argument that

5:01

is powerful to the group that is

5:04

now in charge. And that group increasingly

5:06

thinks that the market is everything. If

5:08

you can't make it in the market,

5:10

you're nothing. It often does not really

5:12

distinguish between tech and

5:14

science, doesn't distinguish between public health and

5:17

science, and to be quite honest, there

5:19

is a small critique headed our way

5:21

that we need to be listening to,

5:24

and we're going to be charged for

5:26

an enormous critique. You know, part

5:28

of the problem is the academic community

5:31

that in the past, you know, before

5:33

this time, you know, had a sense

5:35

of superiority relative to the

5:37

public, did not really communicate the

5:40

way science is done, which is full

5:42

of uncertainty. So you have to be frank

5:44

about it. You don't want to just

5:46

sound as if you are reliable to

5:48

pretend that you are the adult in

5:50

the room, because you know as an adult

5:52

I have two daughters very often if you

5:55

were to tell them the truth they would

5:57

not necessarily follow what you tell them and

5:59

if you want them follow what you

6:01

tell them then you have to

6:03

distort what you know and so

6:05

that's you know that's what politicians

6:07

often do but but scientists should

6:10

be frank and when we have

6:12

press conferences and we lecture to

6:14

the public as if that's the

6:16

truth it's an inappropriate portrayal of

6:19

science sciences work in progress and

6:21

there are mistakes Brian knows of

6:23

a very famous press conference that

6:25

ended up being a mistake and

6:28

so my point is that You

6:30

know we should communicate about science

6:32

being a learning experience and trying

6:34

to make the best out of

6:36

the evidence we have and admit

6:39

when it's uncertain and that you

6:41

know partly was the issue with

6:43

Fauci and coffee. What do you

6:45

think Eric is the natural outgrowth

6:48

of this interest you know the

6:50

simultaneously incredibly high level of interest

6:52

and gas lighting you know that

6:54

that we're undergoing you pointed this

6:57

out back in December with the

6:59

New Jersey drums Avi talked about

7:01

this and I wonder Do you

7:03

think if Avi transplanted or duplicated

7:06

the Galileo project its sensors as

7:08

sonic listening devices, multi-messenger tools, if

7:10

that would convince the public that

7:12

either the government is telling us

7:15

the truth? In other words, is

7:17

there a level of scientific rigor

7:19

that can ever convince the government

7:21

that the population has been burned

7:24

so many times that actually we

7:26

should trust science again? I have

7:28

a dangerous answer to that, which

7:30

is, and the public right now

7:32

is most interested in the tiny

7:35

number of people who have gone

7:37

against the grain the grain. and

7:39

I would say that Avi is

7:41

more important than his sensors. So

7:44

Avi's willingness to talk about UAP

7:46

and to talk about aliens and

7:48

extraterrestrials strikes normal people as the

7:50

kind of open-mindedness that they expect

7:53

of science. So Avi is one

7:55

of a tiny number of people

7:57

with some credibility to this new

7:59

group. So you can convince people

8:02

who believe in quote, the science,

8:04

the Fauci fan club, with peer-reviewed

8:06

papers. How are you going to

8:08

convince people who are aware of

8:11

national security concerns, in fact, adulterating

8:13

science? You're going to look to

8:15

people who stood up and said

8:17

something, as I kind of class,

8:20

whether that's Jordan Peterson or Sabina

8:22

Hasenfelda, or Avi, or you, or

8:24

me, or whoever, it's a relatively

8:26

smaller group. And the key point

8:28

is if Avi were saying something,

8:31

it would say a lot more

8:33

than if somebody was inclined to

8:35

poo-poo any kind of a priori

8:37

interest in life beyond our solar

8:40

system. So I think that that's

8:42

kind of the key issue. If

8:44

you look at the history of

8:46

why science became important to politics,

8:49

you know, it really started in

8:51

the US with the Manhattan Project

8:53

because politicians realize here is a

8:55

weapon that can win wars and

8:58

obviously... you know, what it did

9:00

to Japan was to change the

9:02

course of the confrontation with Japan.

9:04

And they realize, okay, we should

9:07

probably have the National Science Foundation

9:09

to support fundamental science because it

9:11

gives us potentially advantage relative to

9:13

adversarial countries. And it has a

9:16

geopolitical impact. But over the decades,

9:18

you know, some scientists started worrying

9:20

about, you know, extra dimensions about

9:22

things that are not really useful

9:24

for society. And then the question

9:27

arises as to, you know, what

9:29

do you make of the present,

9:31

the academia? Is that really helpful

9:33

to society? And then, of course,

9:36

the issues of health and so.

9:38

So here is an example of

9:40

another Manhattan moment, Manhattan Project moment.

9:42

Suppose the asteroid 2024 YR1, where

9:45

to strike the earth. So we

9:47

would find that with a high

9:49

likelihood. it would actually collide with

9:51

Earth within seven years. Okay? Then

9:54

you would find kids aspiring to

9:56

become scientists because suddenly society will

9:58

be war. about the implications you

10:00

know you could calculate which regions

10:03

would be affected by the impact

10:05

and how many people may die

10:07

if they stay there and real

10:09

estate value will go down in

10:12

those regions people will leave those

10:14

cities and NASA will be energized

10:16

to to create a dark-like spacecraft

10:18

that will collide with the object,

10:20

deflect it, and then they will

10:23

become the heroes, seizing humanity. And

10:25

that's a moment that can bring

10:27

science back to the focus. And

10:29

astronomers, frankly, would have the highest

10:32

societal status in that scenario. We

10:34

can wait for such a moment. Another

10:36

approach is basically to tell politicians

10:39

that science is better than politics.

10:41

Isn't AI that moment, Eric? Go

10:43

ahead, yeah. The basic point is, we made

10:45

you say, if we made you strong, we

10:47

made you rich, what is your effing

10:49

problem? Period, the end. Okay?

10:51

We, we meaning scientists. Well,

10:54

let's be more specific physics.

10:56

Okay. I am physics adjacent in this

10:58

conversation as a mathematician, but

11:00

basically the key point is,

11:02

whether it was inventing molecular biology.

11:05

putting you in instantaneous communication,

11:07

inventing the semiconductor, the World

11:09

Wide Web, give me a

11:11

break. This stuff did not

11:13

come out of nowhere. It's

11:15

not all based on startups.

11:17

Every scientist should learn that

11:19

they produce a public good,

11:21

which is both inexhaustible and

11:24

inexcludable, if done correctly. And

11:26

the key question is, why do

11:28

we see ourselves incorrectly? We are

11:30

this incredibly dangerous Ninja priesthood.

11:33

And pretending that we are, I

11:35

don't know. that science is interesting and it's

11:37

good for you and it makes it sound

11:39

like some sort of you know we're trying

11:42

to sell oatmeal or something I'm not quite

11:44

sure or pandering for our existence and well

11:46

which is absurd the basic point is you

11:48

have the world's greatest deal which is that

11:50

you keep us protected and able to work

11:53

on things that we want to work on

11:55

and when you want to call in us we're

11:57

there and when we start bad-mouthing

11:59

our own country we are breaking the

12:01

deal when they start saying what

12:03

is it that you are good

12:06

for you know go get real

12:08

jobs they are breaking the deal

12:10

and I'm watching a bunch of

12:12

people who don't even remember the

12:14

deal you don't remember the deal

12:16

you don't remember what Vanavar Bush

12:18

was trying to do saying we

12:20

won't do this work in national

12:22

labs we'll do at universities maybe

12:24

the idea is that it's too

12:26

dangerous to do physics in an

12:28

open environment we took out two

12:30

Japanese cities with a little bit

12:32

of physics imagine what we could

12:35

do if we really started pushing

12:37

things I mean I think what

12:39

people need to realize is science

12:41

isn't always interesting, sometimes it's dull

12:43

as church, sometimes it's the most

12:45

riveting thing on the planet. It's

12:47

not always successful, sometimes it changes

12:49

everything, oftentimes it lags, but the

12:51

key point is it is absolutely

12:53

consequential that the cavalier way in

12:55

which increasingly this imbittered tech right,

12:57

which is very recent in its

12:59

origin. I thought these guys were

13:01

going to be our biggest friends

13:04

and maybe even our saviors. And

13:06

in part, lying about things like

13:08

string theory and lying about things

13:10

like cures for cancer and lying

13:12

about peer review and pretending that

13:14

public health is science when it

13:16

absolutely, in no uncertain terms, is

13:18

not, has caused this rift. And

13:20

so in part what we have

13:22

to do is we have to

13:24

reinvent scientific credibility and institutional credibility.

13:26

to people who are to become

13:28

researchers. Eric, you have dinners with

13:30

Caltech colloquium last week in physics.

13:33

And I didn't see anybody from

13:35

the crowd of people that gets

13:37

asked about science and technology policy.

13:39

They're never there. They don't even

13:41

understand the difference between a college

13:43

and a university. A university's chief

13:45

mission is not teaching. It is

13:47

research and the mentorship of people

13:49

who are to become researchers. Eric,

13:51

you have dinners with those tech

13:53

executives. What do you tell them?

13:55

I fight alone my friend. I

13:57

mean I'm having one tonight with

13:59

with very prominent people in the

14:02

tech world and my claim is

14:04

I will almost certainly be the

14:06

only person defending science and they

14:08

will look at me and they

14:10

will say you realize you're defending

14:12

the people who attack you at

14:14

your core in the physics community.

14:16

But that's because you have integrity,

14:18

Eric, and most many scientists don't.

14:20

I think Avi does and he

14:22

gets a sale, you know, maybe

14:24

not as much as you do,

14:26

but I think the comment you

14:28

made about the... Do you stand

14:31

alone? When it comes time, a

14:33

scientist does not fall back on

14:35

peer review, they fall back on

14:37

scientific method, consistency, and the key

14:39

question is, are you willing and

14:41

capable of standing alone? Now the

14:43

problem is, we need more people

14:45

in those tech dinners, because if

14:47

it's only one per dinner, if

14:49

that. Okay, Eric, I'm happy to

14:51

join you. I think it's really

14:53

important that... There was a sense

14:55

of humility because many of these

14:57

tech executives went to colleges and

15:00

they studied there and they had

15:02

some respect to the people who

15:04

told them, but it was lost

15:06

because of the interaction that they

15:08

had later on. So I think

15:10

it's really important to restore that.

15:12

And it's not by these tech

15:14

people being the tech support of

15:16

the White House and controlling the

15:18

conversation about AI, it's about natural

15:20

intelligence, not artificial intelligence that we

15:22

should. Isn't there a danger of

15:24

the same thing happening? I don't

15:26

think I'm telling tales at a

15:28

school. It's what happened with Mr.

15:31

Epstein, but you know, to replace

15:33

tech brows by, you know, super

15:35

successful hedge fund entrap- that had

15:37

connections all around the world. We

15:39

can't figure out exactly what he

15:41

did. But Eric, couldn't that lead

15:43

to the economic incentives that you

15:45

pointed out, which I agree with?

15:47

But couldn't that lead to this,

15:49

you know, very dastardly influence of

15:51

both non-scientific and maybe individuals like

15:53

Epstein? Look, the key issue is

15:55

what, when I look at the

15:57

unethical behavior of our... colleagues in

16:00

trying to destroy new ideas and

16:02

the proponents of new ideas. I

16:04

look at them and I say,

16:06

would they be more ethical people

16:08

if we paid them less and

16:10

tried to starve them or we

16:12

paid them properly? They worked so

16:14

marginal. And so I have this terrible

16:16

problem, which is that my argument

16:18

is you have to pay my

16:20

enemies more if you really want

16:22

them to evaluate my work. And

16:24

this is a typical problem. It

16:27

happened in the New Orleans Police

16:29

Department, where you had an incredibly

16:31

corrupt police department. New chief came in

16:33

and said, we have to pay everybody more

16:35

so that they feel like they have something

16:37

to lose and that they're valued within

16:39

the system. So the problem here is

16:41

that the Sabina solution is

16:43

to threaten to disconnect more of

16:45

these people. And my solution is

16:47

opposite, which is we've allowed scientists

16:50

to become the precarious people. who

16:52

have to more or less follow

16:54

incentives, jump on every NSF initiative,

16:56

etc. etc. By the way, it's not,

16:58

the physicists are not supposed to be paid

17:00

chiefly out of NSF. The physicists

17:02

are supposed to be paid out

17:04

of the Department of Energy, which

17:06

is really the Department of Nuclear

17:09

Weapons. Sabino very much criticizes the

17:11

next accelerator and I think it's

17:13

really important to advocate for getting

17:15

as much data as possible in

17:17

a way of learning about nature

17:19

rather than shying away from experimental

17:22

programs. It's actually the opposite that

17:24

we want to cultivate because that's

17:26

the only path for learning something

17:28

new, getting as much data as

17:30

much evidence. If you think that

17:32

the axis of having higher energy will

17:35

reveal new physics, that's what you should

17:37

invest in. But the one thing that

17:39

should not be done is suppress many

17:41

initiatives that are going directions that

17:43

are not traditional, which is what

17:45

happens. And my approach to that

17:47

is, you know, if you don't want

17:49

to get dirty, don't mud wrestle. So

17:51

there are all these people who invite

17:53

me for mud wrestling and I just

17:56

declined the invitation. So it took me

17:58

a while to learn that because initially

18:00

I would respond but then as

18:02

of now I just do what

18:04

I think is the right thing

18:06

to do and avoid wasting energy

18:08

on people who just you know

18:11

invite the conflict. But the problem

18:13

that we're having in some of

18:15

these areas is that we want

18:17

to be honest about it and

18:19

we don't want to pay for

18:21

our honesty with our lives or

18:24

support in our careers. So right

18:26

now we have this really important

18:28

thing that happened that we haven't

18:30

discussed on this call anyway. Which

18:32

is Mark Andreessen's conversation at the

18:34

White House, but has been replayed

18:36

numerous times. Well, I heard on

18:39

a podcast also. He was saying

18:41

destroy all universities and rebuild them.

18:43

Eric, you're referring to the fact

18:45

that he said if you discover

18:47

something that the government will classify

18:49

even up to mathematics. Is that

18:52

right now? That's right. So explain

18:54

that to Avi, because I don't

18:56

know if Avi heard that particular

18:58

clip. What he said was that

19:00

he was given a courtesy heads

19:02

up as a billionaire. Do not

19:04

invest in AI. AI startups will

19:07

not be allowed to be a

19:09

thing. We are going to choose

19:11

a couple of winners. We are

19:13

going to make them giant corporations

19:15

and we'll put them in a

19:17

federal cocoon. And when Andreessen and

19:19

Horvitz said back, I don't know

19:22

how you're going to do this

19:24

because that would mean that you'd

19:26

have to classify mathematics, which is

19:28

being taught everywhere and you can't

19:30

classify math. They said, we took

19:32

entire entire. segments of theoretical physics

19:35

offline during the Cold War and

19:37

they went dark. Now the interesting

19:39

thing is that there is absolutely

19:41

no record of any physicists that

19:43

I know being told this, hey

19:45

we're going to take portions of

19:47

theoretical physics and we're going to

19:50

make them go dark. So the

19:52

key question here is, if that's

19:54

true, Did the federal government pull

19:56

off what in corporate consulting is

19:58

called management consulting is called a

20:00

soft sunset. A soft sunset is

20:03

one in which you do not

20:05

alert the people who are being

20:07

downsized that they are being taken

20:09

off along. You want the people

20:11

to think that they are still

20:13

working on important problems and they

20:15

don't even realize that they are

20:18

being phased out. They're being sunsetted.

20:20

So the question is, what was

20:22

Mark Andreessen talking about when it

20:24

came to the White House's comments

20:26

on theoretical physics? is our lack

20:28

of ability to move the Lagrangian

20:31

of the universe beyond 1973 part

20:33

of a soft sunset of theoretical

20:35

physics because that's exactly the time

20:37

when quantum gravity is debuted as

20:39

a concept. You don't find essentially

20:41

any mention of quantum gravity before

20:43

the early 1970s if you look

20:46

at Google Engrams. So the key

20:48

question is, did we get... soft

20:50

sunset is there in chemical in

20:52

chemistry you have a concept of

20:54

an inhibitor which is something you

20:56

add to a ongoing reaction to

20:58

stop the reaction. Imagine that effectively

21:01

what we had was we had

21:03

that theoretical physicists hitting it out

21:05

of the park and then suddenly

21:07

they became very unsuccessful. Exactly that

21:09

moment we start to see the

21:11

appearance of quantum gravity and then

21:14

ten years later we see the

21:16

appearance of string theory. Did we

21:18

get soft sunset and we didn't

21:20

get the courtesy call that Andreessen

21:22

and Horbitts did? What do you

21:24

think of it? I just heard

21:26

the person who spoke with Andreessen

21:29

in the Biden White House, who

21:31

was asked exactly this question about

21:33

what they were talking about today

21:35

in a podcast, we can ask

21:37

that person. what the discussion was

21:39

about. It was a podcast with

21:42

Ezra Klein, with a person who

21:44

was in charge of AI in

21:46

the White House. During the Biden

21:48

administration, the meeting was around April

21:50

2024. I think we should approach

21:52

these people and get more details.

21:54

Now, the question is, should we

21:57

push government to reveal what is

21:59

under... What kind of physics has

22:01

been hidden? Is it related to

22:03

UAP? Is it related to new

22:05

physics that the government knows about

22:07

and wants to take advantage of in

22:10

some ways? That would require a

22:12

very efficient coordination and also even

22:14

the Manhattan project had spies in

22:16

it, so somehow it clicked. It's

22:19

just hard for me to tell

22:21

whether the government is competent enough

22:23

to put a seal on a very

22:25

important scientific discovery. I don't

22:28

know what Eric thinks, but...

22:30

My fundamental belief is the

22:32

government is not competent enough

22:34

to do that. But maybe

22:36

Eric thinks otherwise. Well, I think

22:38

that the story, you know, again,

22:41

you and I have both been

22:43

tracking it when most of our

22:45

PhD brethren will not, is roughly

22:48

speaking that between 1952 and 1970-ish,

22:50

71, there was this golden

22:52

age of general relativity that

22:55

was largely funded by two

22:57

people who looked like CIA

22:59

cutouts, Roger Babson and Agnew

23:01

Bainson. They worked particularly with

23:04

Bryce DeWitt and Lewis Whitten.

23:06

There was an entire coordinated

23:08

series of places that were

23:10

working on gravity for engineering

23:12

purposes. A lot of this got pushed

23:14

out into aerospace companies, which is

23:16

not a natural home for theoretical

23:19

physics, but in particular the

23:21

Glenn L. Martin Company of

23:23

Baltimore was where Lewis Whitten was

23:25

posted. And I would say

23:27

that Curtis Wright. was where

23:29

Feynman was probably going in

23:31

his story, any questions where

23:33

he's giving physics lectures to

23:36

aerospace people. So whatever the-

23:38

Surely are looking Mr. Fein

23:40

where he's in the taxi cab

23:42

and he tells the driver. Yeah,

23:44

tell me a place, goes to

23:46

the alibi room in Buffalo, New

23:48

York. I think that's Curtis Wright

23:50

Aerospace. Sorry, Eric, do you think

23:52

we should add that to the

23:54

JFK, MLK, RFK? That's to be

23:57

released. If you go back to

23:59

my appearance on Joe. program, episode

24:01

1945, the year of the Trinity

24:03

Test, coincidentally, you'll see that I've

24:05

basically been tracking this, and that

24:07

story has now spread. Jesse Michaels

24:09

has been spreading it. I would

24:11

say David Kaiser knew about some

24:13

of the story independently, but more

24:15

or less, yes, the Golden Age

24:17

of General Relativity is probably involved

24:19

with some attempt at something like

24:21

primitive space-time engineering. There's a 1971

24:23

Australian intelligence document by a physicist

24:25

who talks about Dyson, Oppenheimer, DeWitt,

24:27

a bunch of well-known people to

24:29

all of us being involved with

24:31

this. I don't think it was

24:34

hyper-successful to be entirely honest. We

24:36

know that the 1957 Chapel Hill

24:38

conference had fine men coming to

24:40

it under the assumed name of

24:42

Mr. Smith. So it's really weird

24:44

behavior. Herman Bondi talked... very clearly

24:46

about removing the positivity, constraints from

24:48

general relativity. All of these things

24:50

had not been talked about much

24:52

in recent years, and my feeling

24:54

is I'm trying to get people

24:56

to open the kimono as to

24:58

where Babson and Bainson actually cutouts

25:00

for CIA funding, and then you

25:02

had these two charismatic mysterious funders

25:05

who couldn't be traced to the

25:07

government, and did we move a

25:09

lot of this stuff into aerospace

25:11

space? Because the one lesson of

25:13

the Manhattan years, obviously, you probably

25:15

know is that the best way

25:17

to keep a secret is compartmentalization.

25:19

Only the white badges knew what

25:21

was going on at Los Alamos.

25:23

Everyone else merely had a fragment.

25:25

Eric we were talking me I

25:27

never thought I'd say this I

25:29

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25:31

just temporarily but because I found

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25:52

afternoon that's when I started using

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Nandaka and everything change for me.

25:56

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26:00

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26:02

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26:04

off my hunger so I don't

26:06

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26:08

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26:11

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26:13

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26:15

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26:17

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26:19

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26:21

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26:23

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26:25

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26:27

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26:29

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27:23

Trust me, your energy, your gut,

27:25

and your future self will thank

27:27

you. Where you came on about

27:29

AI and effectively how it's sort

27:31

of training us and you've talked

27:33

about what you coined in your

27:35

traditional portmanteau or some neologism as

27:37

your is your want area at

27:39

the voids Keating. Hey, keep it

27:41

up. We'll have a Minion soon

27:43

over here. Okay. You called something

27:45

fascinating. You first, I first heard

27:48

it from you. in Florence last

27:50

May, but you wrote about as

27:52

early as 2017. It's called intelligence

27:54

and I think this is a

27:56

fascinating concept that Avi might not

27:58

be familiar with, but effectively we

28:00

would discuss the fact that perhaps

28:02

AI is training us. And I

28:04

wonder, you know, what Avi thinks

28:06

about this idea that you've coined,

28:08

maybe you can describe it for

28:10

those that aren't familiar, this concept

28:12

of how intelligence perhaps evolves, and

28:14

to what extent these GPUs plusLLMs,

28:16

you know, I call it open

28:19

invidia or whatever you want, how

28:21

they might be locked in. to

28:23

a physics model that is doomed

28:25

never to give us the new

28:27

physics that you and I and

28:29

Avi crave. So first of all,

28:31

what's intelligence and how does it

28:33

have bearing on perhaps solving these

28:35

problems? Let's go beyond the conspiracy

28:37

to cover things up and stuff

28:39

that we've already talked about. Sure.

28:41

Artificial intelligence is something I defined

28:43

when something without a brain outsmarts

28:45

something with a brain. So in

28:47

particular, there's an entire clade of

28:49

orchids called ophries, which convince male

28:52

pollinators that they are offering a

28:54

female looking to mate via a

28:56

replica from their lowest pedal along

28:58

with the pheromones to prove that

29:00

she's ready and waiting. So when

29:02

these male pollinators are duped twice,

29:04

the plant is able to pollinate

29:06

without having to pay in terms

29:08

of energetic nectar or pollen, which

29:10

is expensive. So how did the

29:12

plant outsmart? the thing with an

29:14

actual brain. Well it used its

29:16

brain against itself. It said, look,

29:18

if I can fool you twice,

29:20

even though I'm not thinking, I

29:23

get a benefit. So the key

29:25

thing is you will sculpt the

29:27

replica of the female of your

29:29

species based on your own poor

29:31

eyesight or failure to understand what

29:33

situation you're in. As a result,

29:35

what you have is you have

29:37

something without the ability to think.

29:39

hijacking the mind of the thing

29:41

that can think to parasitize itself.

29:43

So if you wanted to take

29:45

that into the realm of artificial

29:47

machine learning, imagine that this thing

29:49

is basically just linear algebra, but

29:51

there we are interacting with it

29:53

and we either reward it by

29:56

telling it it's doing great or

29:58

we punish it by moving to

30:00

another model. And there are only

30:02

three elements necessary for evolution and

30:04

they have nothing to do with

30:06

carbon-based life. You have to have

30:08

heritability ability. You have to have

30:10

variation so that you're not all

30:12

doing the same strategy, and then

30:14

you have to have differential success.

30:16

Now all three of those things

30:18

take place within programs. Programs are

30:20

the only place with a reproductive

30:22

system. The only thing man knows

30:24

how to build from scratch that

30:26

has the ability to reproduce. You

30:29

can build a car, it'll have

30:31

all the physiological systems of a

30:33

human being, except for one, it

30:35

doesn't manufacture more cars. So, software

30:37

is the only place where we

30:39

can build an analog of the

30:41

reproductive system, and therefore it's the

30:43

only place that has room for

30:45

artificial life. Artificial intelligence is non-thinking

30:47

life that uses the deficits in

30:49

cognition of thinking life to outsmart

30:51

thinking on it. So, Avi, let's

30:53

examine this. I've been thinking when

30:55

I heard Eric talked about this

30:57

for the first time. I actually

31:00

thought of you, a conjecture that

31:02

I'm going to make. I want

31:04

you to play upon it. Could

31:06

Omuamua be exactly what Eric's just

31:08

described? Could it be not, you

31:10

know, an alien artifact, a light

31:12

sale, a probe based on its

31:14

weird acceleration and shape? But what

31:16

if it's a smart, you know,

31:18

and not a smart device, but

31:20

basically an outtelegent device, an object

31:22

from another civilization, like Eric just

31:24

describes, something that's a simple system,

31:26

evolving, replicating, spreading across space and

31:28

time, not to communicate or anything,

31:30

but could it be... fitting the

31:33

mold that just described, that would

31:35

explain perhaps, you know, why we

31:37

see it less as a messenger

31:39

and more as a trickster or

31:41

something that, you know, could potentially

31:43

evade the Fermi paradox. So it's

31:45

not really... What we think it

31:47

is, it's more like what Eric

31:49

just described. How do you react

31:51

to that as Ohmuamua's true nature,

31:53

as I'm just conjecturing? This is

31:55

Eric's idea, by the way. Yeah,

31:57

I mean, it's definitely possible, and

31:59

we know the story about the

32:01

Trojan horse that was thought to

32:03

be something else. We know that

32:06

nature is based on natural selection,

32:08

so that means that the fittest

32:10

survives, and one way to be

32:12

the fittest is to pretend to

32:14

be something else. so that nobody

32:16

suspects at what you are actually

32:18

trying to accomplish, which may very

32:20

well describe the interaction of AI

32:22

systems with us in the future,

32:24

but we would think that they

32:26

are serving us, but not really.

32:28

The best way for us to

32:30

figure it out is to get

32:32

as much data as possible. The

32:34

more data we have, the better,

32:37

the less we are impressed by

32:39

superficial markings. You know, I really

32:41

am happy with a flood of

32:43

data. And in my mind, you

32:45

know, we have now the web

32:47

telescope, we have other new telescopes

32:49

on earth, that if the Rubin

32:51

Observatory discovers a normal more like

32:53

object, we can just put all

32:55

the resources on it, try to

32:57

figure out what it means. Our

32:59

imagination is limited by what we

33:01

experienced in the past, and that

33:03

is true in our, you know,

33:05

when you go on a date,

33:07

the interaction that you have depends

33:10

on your past dates. If we

33:12

are confronting something completely new, we

33:14

are just responding inappropriately because we've

33:16

never seen something like it and

33:18

you know the academia would be

33:20

the first to always make analogies

33:22

and call it a dark comet

33:24

and say that it's a rock

33:26

of a type that we've never

33:28

seen before but it's still a

33:30

rock and we should not discuss

33:32

anything else that is human nature

33:34

to assume that you know to

33:36

interpret everything in terms of the

33:38

narratives of the story that you

33:40

already have but then the people

33:43

who are curious are the ones

33:45

that we learn something and So

33:47

I think science offers us this

33:49

opportunity of learning something new. All

33:51

we need to do is be

33:53

open-minded and collect data and put

33:55

money into the effort. We can't

33:57

just assume the data. will fall

33:59

into our lap. You know, we

34:01

have to invest time and money.

34:03

And so instead of putting money

34:05

into things that we already fully

34:07

understand, like putting, you know, I

34:09

don't know, a billion dollars towards

34:11

a future telescope that will measure

34:14

the power spectrum of density fluctuations

34:16

of dark matter to the next decimal

34:18

point. Okay, I have to cut you off

34:20

there. You're encroaching on my, how the bread

34:22

is buttered in the Keating household. I will

34:24

not allow you to cut off funding for

34:26

the sermons. No, but I mean the amount

34:28

of new information that you

34:31

get is relatively marginal and

34:33

obviously it's a safe territory

34:35

because you know what you will

34:37

find. You know, the one thing I

34:39

realized when getting funded by NASA was

34:42

that they were asking, what will I

34:44

discover in year one when I applied

34:46

to grants? You know, that's an

34:49

oxymoron to say, I'll give you the

34:51

money as long as you tell me

34:53

what you will discover in the future.

34:55

Yes, exactly. That's the approach I

34:57

took. I basically asked them for money

34:59

for something I already written about. And

35:02

the referees just were not aware of

35:04

that. And so yeah, there is something

35:06

to be said about Mark Andreessen's insights

35:08

into the way that science operates and

35:11

the way that it should be revised.

35:13

The question is, should we reboot everything,

35:15

the entire system, the entire system, or

35:17

maybe promote or reward scientists who

35:20

behave differently? Now, Eric, you've talked

35:22

a lot about, you know, escaping

35:24

Einstein's prison, not Einstein's prison, but

35:26

what do you mean by that?

35:28

I mean, do you believe that

35:31

it's a lack of funding? You

35:33

know, my theoretical physicist colleagues that

35:35

you've debated and met here, you

35:37

know, they get by theoretical physicist

35:39

colleagues that you've debated and met

35:41

here at UC San Diego and

35:44

elsewhere, you know, they get by

35:46

on a couple of glasses of

35:48

what is missing? Is it funding?

35:50

I mean... Did Einstein only make

35:52

a breakthrough when he got the

35:55

money from his double prize in

35:57

1922? What is the prison and

35:59

what is the most... jailbreaking tool.

36:01

Einstein's prison is the distance to the

36:03

nearest habitable worlds. So that if we

36:06

imagine that we were going to somehow

36:08

travel just below the speed of light

36:10

in an Einsteinian way, full benefits of

36:13

time dilation, you found the closest habitable

36:15

planet. You stayed there for an hour

36:17

and you came back. How much older

36:20

is everyone here on earth even if

36:22

you were able to make the trip

36:24

lickedy split? It's a depressingly... large distance

36:27

to the outside world. So that moat

36:29

effectively, if there is an Einsteinian speed

36:31

limit, we have to recognize that it

36:34

belongs to the map, which is known

36:36

as space time, which is not the

36:38

territory, which is wherever we actually live,

36:41

where we do not live in space

36:43

time. But that is our best map

36:45

that we have. So that's what I

36:48

mean by Einstein's prison. But now you

36:50

have a second question, which is... Like

36:52

what are we doing wrong and why

36:55

can't we just exist on the due

36:57

found on a single leaf at Sunrise

36:59

of Adafedil? And the answer is first

37:02

of all it's an obnoxious question. You

37:04

have opportunity costs that are set by

37:06

investment banking management consulting and big law

37:09

and we have to be paid a

37:11

decent percentage of those things to get

37:13

the best and the brightest and that's

37:16

our own best in our own brightest

37:18

because we are the big dogs. I

37:20

also believe that we have to have

37:23

an understanding of what makes science unexciting.

37:25

and if I'm going to be blunt

37:27

about the area that I care about,

37:30

the people who are in a position

37:32

to jailbreak us by pointing out that

37:34

space time was a stepping stone in

37:37

a succession of models to a final

37:39

theory where we actually have the source

37:41

code, you cannot let those people use

37:44

their positions as referees to kill off

37:46

everyone else who doesn't subscribe to the

37:48

only game in town theory. The perennial

37:51

argument is what's wrong with string theories

37:53

always around what doesn't agree with expair,

37:55

it doesn't give new predictions, its background

37:58

and depends. nothing to do with it.

38:00

It's got a murderous sociology. 100% the

38:02

reason that we actually care and everybody's

38:05

afraid to say, Brian, if I can

38:07

take issue even with you, you took

38:09

issue with me saying that Lenny Seskind

38:12

has been absolutely cruel to people who

38:14

come up with alternates. And you didn't

38:16

go after Lenny, you pointed out that

38:18

I used some indelicate French, but the

38:21

fact is on the program that he

38:23

shared with Kurt Geimongle, he said that

38:25

our colleague, Peter Hoyt's math and

38:27

physics math and physics is just

38:29

bad. I don't think Lenny Suskin

38:31

knows enough mathematics to critique Peter

38:33

Wight. Peter Wight is by far

38:35

the more experienced mathematically.

38:38

I'd recommend his book

38:40

on symmetry and quantum theory

38:42

to anyone. You can't have

38:44

Lenny Suskin going around like

38:47

an ignoramus pretending that he doesn't

38:49

know who I am when I've talked to

38:51

him. at Stanford extensively, you can't have

38:53

him going after Peter Woyk, saying

38:55

that Peter Woyt is just bad

38:58

because he's not. Nobody wants to

39:00

go after the Big Ten people,

39:02

let's say, in our field. Well,

39:04

I think I'm fine, who with

39:06

the Big Ten are. You've accused

39:09

Kaku of being one of the

39:11

Big Ten. He's simply not. There's

39:13

two lists here, Brian. One list is

39:15

the five or six people through whom

39:17

all physics seems to flow to the

39:20

public. And in that group, that's basically

39:22

Brian Green, Sean Carroll, Neil DeGrass, Tyson,

39:24

Michio Caku, Lawrence Kraus, it's a very small

39:26

number of people. That's one group. Then there's

39:28

another different group, which is who are the

39:30

purported leaders of fundamental physics in theory? And that

39:32

group has been by far the more mercest. Both groups

39:35

attack anyone coming from outside. But it is the

39:37

group. It is the latter group. It is the latter group. It

39:39

is the latter group. It is the latter group. It is the latter.

39:41

It is the latter group. It is the latter group. It is

39:43

the latter group. It is the latter group. It is the latter

39:45

group. It is the latter group. It is the latter. It is

39:47

the latter. It is the latter. It is the latter. It is the latter.

39:49

It is the latter. It is the latter. in which Sussken is

39:51

prominent because both, you know, and by

39:53

the way, we'll point out, Michiocako did

39:56

a fair amount of really good writing

39:58

on string field theory when that... It was

40:00

1971, yeah. Well, later than that, he

40:02

wrote a textbook that I can, on

40:04

another program, I can give you the

40:06

copyright date. Again, this isn't personal. These

40:08

are just people who went bad, and

40:10

they decided that they would have a

40:12

career, extolling the virtues of a theory

40:14

that can't ship, and crapping on everybody

40:16

else who comes up with the Challenger

40:18

theory. And the reluctance of anyone to

40:20

want to say something against Lenny Susken

40:22

or Ed Witten. or Jeff Harvey or

40:24

any one of that crew, Andy Strominjur,

40:26

Krummanvafa, Michael Duff, that is a real

40:28

problem, is that we just don't have

40:30

courage and lacking courage, we're not going

40:32

to get funded because quite honestly what

40:34

we do too often is not interesting.

40:36

You want to get interesting, you have

40:38

to go back to actually working on

40:40

the physical world in which we live.

40:42

How do you react to that? I

40:44

mean, there's a difference between the popularizers,

40:46

who you and I agree, you know,

40:48

is an important role to fill in

40:50

that we get paid by the public.

40:52

We have to get back to the

40:54

public. There are bosses. At the same

40:56

time, those that are spending their time

40:58

popularizing often don't spend their time, you

41:00

know, in the laboratory or at the

41:02

blackboard. So how do you balance that?

41:04

Your colleague, come on Vafo, was on

41:06

my show, and I... you know, criticized

41:08

him at the standard critique that there's

41:11

no, you know, tangible, falsifiable evidence against

41:13

or for string theory that could plausibly

41:15

come about. He said, no Brian, you're

41:17

wrong. And I said, really? And he

41:19

said, yeah, the string theory predicts the

41:21

mass of the electron should be somewhere

41:23

between, you know, point zeros, 10 to

41:25

the minus 32 plank masses and 10

41:27

to the 100 plank mass. That counts.

41:29

Right, I mean that's a prediction. It

41:31

could be falsified, right? But it's not

41:33

very satisfying to me. It was like,

41:35

you know, eating a meal of cotton

41:37

candy and spright. But tell me, how

41:39

do you react to what Eric's saying,

41:41

that this is cabal? I mean, by

41:43

the way, Eric, I have to say,

41:45

you're trying, I mean, by the way,

41:47

Eric, I have to say, you're trying

41:49

to, you're, by the way, Eric, Eric,

41:51

I have to say, you, by the

41:53

way, Eric, Eric, Eric, I have to

41:55

say, Eric, I have to say, I

41:57

have to say, I have to say,

41:59

I have to say, I have to

42:01

say, I have to say, I have

42:03

to say, I have to say, I

42:05

have to say, I have to say,

42:07

I have to say, I have to

42:09

say, I have to say, I have

42:11

to say, I have to say, you,

42:13

you, you, I have, I have, I

42:15

have to fund them as a percentage

42:17

of the opportunity cost. But then would

42:19

you fund Ed Witten and Lenny Suskin?

42:21

That's okay, good. That's very high integrity

42:23

as is your one. Wouldn't be able

42:25

to say them in your turn. They're

42:27

murderous. Knowing. How do you react to

42:29

that? You've got them in. You could

42:31

presumably cause the career of a young

42:33

person who's applying to the physics department

42:35

or the astronomy department who's got their

42:37

head in the clouds and is writing

42:39

a bandwagon and part of the group

42:41

think that Eric's rightfully decrying. You could

42:43

stiflele them, but you don't. So why

42:45

is that. My thinking is as follows,

42:47

I think we should rethink what academia

42:49

should be working on. I think it

42:51

should be tailored to address important questions

42:53

that the public cares about, that taxpayers

42:55

care about. And when there are these

42:57

funding committees that decide about grants, they're

42:59

full of... People from the mainstream that

43:01

do not take risks or they have

43:03

their own culture, which takes a lot

43:05

of risks without any evidence, it doesn't

43:07

matter, but there is a popular theme

43:09

within their community and they advocate it.

43:11

As a result, what you end up

43:13

with is not much deviation from the

43:15

beaten path. This is not a good

43:17

funding approach. I think that we should

43:19

listen to those who pay the bill,

43:21

the public, you know, that is the

43:23

theme of the new... White House trying

43:26

to attend to the interests of the

43:28

public. And I think the same should

43:30

be true of academia. So if the

43:32

public really wants to know whether we

43:34

have a neighbor, we should put money

43:36

into it. It's not just about looking

43:38

for microbes, which we spend billions of

43:40

dollars without any hesitation on. It's also

43:42

hedging our bets and trying to look

43:44

for intelligent beings. Why is that considered

43:46

speculative? We exist. There are hundreds of

43:48

billions of stars like the sun in

43:50

the Milky Way galaxy with... a few

43:52

percent of them at least having a

43:54

planet like the size of the earth

43:56

at the same separation why would that

43:58

be complete speculation to imagine that something

44:00

like a happened there that we are

44:02

not the first to join the party

44:04

that there are many other civilizations not

44:06

only existed but died by now most

44:08

of them died if you think about

44:10

humans on earth there were a hundred

44:12

and seventeen billion or so and most

44:14

of them are dead there are only

44:16

eight billion of their life right now

44:18

so I think this is just an

44:20

example of a subject the public cares

44:22

about that's why there are so many

44:24

speculations and science can address it with

44:26

the same telescopes that are used to discover

44:28

the power spectrum of fluctuations or

44:30

to discover maybe microbes after 10

44:32

billion dollars are invested by 2040

44:34

like why can't why do we

44:36

have to shy away from what

44:38

the public really cares about this

44:40

is just one example but it

44:42

exists also in the context of

44:44

you know health issues safety of

44:46

AI would be a major public

44:48

policy issue why can't we invest

44:50

in that you know there are

44:53

lots of why aren't philosophers worried

44:55

about the age of AI and philosophy

44:57

of technologies of the future you

44:59

know what to do about the

45:01

interaction of humans with the machine

45:03

instead of worrying about what Aristotle

45:06

and Plato said that you know

45:08

thousands of years ago they didn't

45:10

have computers that's not relevant for

45:12

society so philosophy departments should gear

45:14

up to address the challenges of

45:16

technologies of the future that's what

45:18

they should do why is that

45:21

heresy I think academia is sort

45:23

of completely disconnected from society and

45:25

I think the solution for

45:27

it to gain more credibility

45:29

among politicians would be

45:31

to reboot its interests. Live Live

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at professional dot DCE, dot Harvard,

46:00

E-U, slash modify. you've been, you know, critical of academia and

46:02

some of the people within it,

46:05

but what do you see is

46:07

the future of it in a

46:09

world where perhaps our mutual friend

46:11

who you introduced me to, Jay,

46:13

about a charia, hopefully will be

46:15

confirmed as the director of NIH,

46:17

but there's been cutbacks threatened as

46:19

high as, you know, reducing, rather,

46:21

the indirect costs, which is what

46:23

we, you know, butter the bread

46:25

around the university with. to 15%

46:27

from 60% at Harvard, right? 60,

46:29

what is your overhead rate, Tommy?

46:31

How about gets more than half

46:33

a billion dollars a year from

46:35

NIH? And the change in the

46:37

overhead right now would imply hundreds

46:39

of hundreds of millions, sorry, deficit,

46:41

yeah. I'm all for trying to

46:43

say things to show that we

46:45

are men of the people, by

46:47

being part of the elite, right?

46:49

this is what happens with snipers

46:51

right you don't want an average

46:53

sniper you want an elite sniper

46:55

when you're when it's it's your

46:57

niece has been kidnapped by drug

46:59

lords we're supposed to act on

47:01

behalf of people who do not

47:03

look like us I am not

47:05

like a navy seal or a

47:07

delta force guy right those are

47:09

tier one operators they're very different

47:12

than the rest of you was

47:14

yeah okay what quite honestly you're

47:16

not supposed to ask the public

47:18

hey should we spend money developing

47:20

spectral sequences in algebraic topology. They

47:22

don't know. In the same way

47:24

that if you go to your

47:26

doctor and you start actually trying

47:28

to understand the way your ligaments

47:30

and tendons and muscles fit together,

47:32

for your bum knee, you're not

47:34

going to understand it unless you

47:36

really study. So I think we

47:38

should be very careful and realize

47:40

what obvious saying is that in

47:42

areas where we show that we

47:44

are particularly bizarrely disinterested, the public

47:46

should be guiding us. I think

47:48

that that makes sense, but let's

47:50

be entirely honest. A lot of

47:52

the reason that things look the

47:54

way they do is because of

47:56

very old cryptic arrangements. So for

47:58

example, how do you deal with

48:00

the fact that only like nine

48:02

countries have nuclear war? weapons. We

48:04

have managed to stop that spread

48:06

despite the fact that we teach

48:08

physics. So we've undertaken all sorts

48:10

of things that aren't clear on

48:12

the surface. Let's just take overhead

48:14

for the moment. What is overhead?

48:16

Overhead is a tacit agreement that

48:19

we will have federally funded universities

48:21

that will be allowed to be

48:23

nominally private. And the idea was

48:25

that you take the worst universities,

48:27

let's say the University of East

48:29

Virginia, doesn't exist. The University of

48:31

East Virginia, let's imagine that it's

48:33

like a Tier 5 university. It's

48:35

way down there. The Senator from

48:37

East Virginia is going to say,

48:39

why does Harvard get all the

48:41

money? This isn't fair. So what

48:43

we did is we came up

48:45

with an overhead system. And the

48:47

overhead system was supposed to channel

48:49

federal money over weaker universities to

48:51

our strongest universities that were supposed

48:53

to remain nominally private or very

48:55

fine public ones like the U.C.

48:57

where Brian resides. Now, the problem

48:59

with this is that when you

49:01

have a guy with a chainsaw

49:03

and shades with bling going around,

49:05

and the person is saying, like,

49:07

can you believe this 60% overhead

49:09

for indirect costs? Well, that has

49:11

nothing to do with anything. That

49:13

was always fake. You know, this

49:15

is very much like. I gave

49:17

the example, if you started auditing

49:19

Israel after October 7th and you

49:21

said, wait a minute, do you

49:23

realize how much we're spending to

49:25

give Hezbollah low-cost pagers and walkie-talkies

49:28

and provide them customer support? Why

49:30

are we doing this? It's madness.

49:32

You would not understand what that

49:34

line item was. So a lot

49:36

of what's going on with overhead

49:38

is that nobody is being open

49:40

and honest, that it was a

49:42

cryptic system. Same thing with graduate

49:44

students, graduate students are not students,

49:46

they're workers. But we call them

49:48

students so that they don't organize.

49:50

The idea was that we'd create

49:52

a very fine workforce that had

49:54

very few rights and it would

49:56

yet to become the professor of

49:58

tomorrow while the university system was

50:00

growing. from below 10% before the

50:02

war to over 50% after the

50:04

war educating the population. That was

50:06

a one-time expansion. As a result we

50:08

can't pay the workers in

50:11

the graduate workforce with professorships

50:13

where they get to train 20 students

50:15

of their own because if you raise

50:17

20 to higher and higher powers it

50:19

spills out of control. So what you

50:21

have is you have a system in

50:23

which even the professors have no idea

50:25

why the system was set up the

50:28

way it was, they don't know its

50:30

history, they don't know how the changes

50:32

in law occurred, they don't know why

50:35

the rules are the way they are,

50:37

and they can't defend the system because

50:39

ultimately right now you've got a guy

50:41

with a chainsaw saying I don't understand

50:44

this. Why do you know? There is

50:46

an issue of administration and bureaucracy growing

50:48

much bigger. in recent decades compared to

50:51

what it used to be before. Because

50:53

a natural tendency of bureaucratic organizations is

50:55

that they always grow in size. And

50:57

when I arrived at Harvard 32 years

51:00

ago, you know, I had the direct

51:02

line to the Dean of the Faculty

51:04

of Arts and Sciences. Now I have

51:07

to go through many mini-dins to reach

51:09

that. person and it's true that you

51:11

know instead of the administrator serving the

51:14

faculty which was their original task when

51:16

I arrive now they are actually monitoring

51:18

the faculty so they're they're in

51:20

control and sorry fire them all

51:23

well yeah but the question I don't

51:25

know if it's easy you know I

51:27

spoke about it with Harvard's provost and

51:29

that was when we had turmoil a

51:31

year ago at Harvard and I brought

51:34

him seven points that I recommended and

51:36

one of them was reduce the level

51:38

of bureaucracy and administration. That's the one

51:40

that he had most issues with. It's

51:43

not easy. Now Eric you've recently tried

51:45

to engage in on the subject of

51:47

immigration which is a part of the

51:49

lifeblood of major university research you've pointed

51:52

out the distinction between college and university.

51:54

Talk about this first one here obvious

51:56

perspective. What is the meaning of this?

51:58

I mean Vivac promise Harvard class of

52:01

2007, you know, has been sort

52:03

of, I would say, maybe a

52:05

little bit condescending, but anyway, Eric

52:07

tried to engage with him. I

52:09

don't think it was successful yet,

52:11

Eric. I'm not sure if that's

52:13

the case or not, but what

52:15

is your feeling about, I mean,

52:17

obviously, about, I mean, obviously, you're

52:19

feeling about, I mean, obviously, you're

52:21

an immigrant to this country, you're

52:23

an alien, we talked about earlier,

52:25

but not the kind of, because

52:27

I came from another star probably.

52:29

So talk about class of the

52:31

2007 Harvard graduate is debates and

52:33

that in interest You know in

52:35

kind of what do we need

52:37

in terms of Americans? Are they

52:39

lazy? You know are they incapable

52:41

of doing the job? You're gonna

52:43

start with the vex framing of

52:45

this whole thing No, thank you.

52:47

I don't want anything to do

52:49

with it. Yeah, all right Well,

52:51

how would you frame it, Eric?

52:53

How would you frame the most

52:56

interesting debate to two professors who

52:58

have many immigrants that have come

53:00

in? I've currently students working on

53:02

visas here, H1B and otherwise, and

53:04

postgraduate work as well. How would

53:06

you phrase a question to Avi

53:08

in terms of what? Well, the

53:10

question is, what is the appropriate

53:12

amount of foreign graduate labor, as

53:14

you called it? OI. Because

53:16

it was installed by the Immigration Act

53:19

of 1990, which was a conspiracy between

53:21

Eric Block, who sat at the NSF

53:23

under Ronald Reagan and the Government University

53:26

Industry Research Roundtable, to destroy the ability

53:28

of American scientific workers to bargain with

53:30

their employers, period the end. It's pure

53:33

evil. What is the right amount of

53:35

non-domestic labor than at a research university

53:37

in a physics department? I think it's

53:39

really important to bring talent from the

53:42

world in my mind the strength of

53:44

the US and you know it was

53:46

taking advantage of that and developing the

53:49

best science in the world. I mean

53:51

we all know about it and by

53:53

the way I came when I was

53:56

supported by an agent. One B visa

53:58

when I started, I suppose, dog. I

54:00

think we need to come up with

54:03

a policy such that we'll fulfill the

54:05

needs of the tech industry, by the

54:07

way, that is very different than it

54:09

used to be, and what kind of

54:12

skills are particularly important, and then train

54:14

those people and not let them go

54:16

to other countries. We don't want them

54:19

to develop the same industries of the

54:21

future elsewhere. There should be. committee in

54:23

the White House looking into that and

54:26

deciding about the amount that would fulfill

54:28

the needs of the high-tech industry and

54:30

academia and come up with a policy

54:32

that would follow that and it's really

54:35

important to bring the best and of

54:37

course they need to stand up to

54:39

high standards in order to get that

54:42

permit there should be some kind of

54:44

a gauge of the quality of the

54:46

person you're bringing. Eric any response for

54:49

you from the... I mean I don't

54:51

want to do this this way this

54:53

is very silly look the basic... The

54:56

point is that the NSF and the

54:58

National Academy of Sciences are the worst

55:00

enemy of young scientists. They have specifically

55:02

conspired in 1986, using a guy named

55:05

Miles Boylan, an economist from Case Western

55:07

Reserve, to destroy the ability of American

55:09

scientists to earn the wages that the

55:12

markets would have assigned. So you're asking

55:14

people basically to become scientists only to

55:16

compete with other people paid with pieces

55:19

of paper that mean nothing to them.

55:21

You can't give me anything in the

55:23

form of a visa because I'm already

55:26

a citizen. It doesn't make any sense.

55:28

I've written an entire paper about how

55:30

you bring the best and the brightest.

55:32

from all over the world into the

55:35

US using pure free market techniques, something

55:37

called cosian rights. Every economist knows what

55:39

they are. There is exactly zero interest

55:42

in this because what the employers really

55:44

want is a giant discount on labor.

55:46

They're not really interested in the best

55:49

and the brightest. Why in part? Because

55:51

we have the best in the brightest

55:53

generally year. Now it's not universally true.

55:56

Every one of us has colleagues from

55:58

overseas. But what I will say is

56:00

that it. in an integral part of

56:02

getting access to these funny visas, which

56:05

not only bring people, but bring benefits

56:07

to employers by taking them away from

56:09

employees, what you have is the system

56:12

is completely misdesigned. And when I say,

56:14

you know, you could get the same

56:16

people over here, but you would get

56:19

no benefit to the employers, and the

56:21

Americans would be not disincentivized from coming

56:23

in. We already educate people at an

56:26

extraordinary level. There's zero interest because the

56:28

real interest is in money. It's not

56:30

in science. It's not in, you know,

56:32

there's always been room for the top,

56:35

you know, fraction of a percent. Those

56:37

people aren't even on H-1B. They're supposed

56:39

to be on EVs. So in part,

56:42

what you have is I would push

56:44

everybody to go back to my paper

56:46

called Migration for the benefit of all.

56:49

I would point out that there's no

56:51

interest because, quite honestly, the CEOs who

56:53

claim to be free marketeers who only

56:55

care about efficiency. are anything but they're

56:58

people who want to move more money

57:00

into their pockets. They don't care whether

57:02

it comes out of the pockets of

57:05

their labor force, which is one of

57:07

the reasons that. Ericle. Why don't you,

57:09

if you were to check how many

57:12

of these CEOs came from foreign countries,

57:14

wouldn't you find a large factor? I

57:16

mean, just think about your friends. The

57:19

worst argument that's ever, Avi, because what

57:21

happens is that there's no way of

57:23

measuring the displacement of technical talent in

57:25

the US that didn't enter those fields.

57:28

When I think about pushing my own

57:30

children to go into science and technology,

57:32

I think I'm an idiot. And why

57:35

is that? It's because we've rigged the

57:37

game against them. And so in part,

57:39

when you talk about these brilliant futures

57:42

and how do we make this attractive

57:44

just the way an asteroid was heading

57:46

in our way, quite honestly, what's happened

57:49

is that the, you know, typically families

57:51

descended from European stock who were here

57:53

before 1965 when the Great Immigration Act

57:55

was passed. Figure it out this is

57:58

a lousy place to go with the

58:00

first class education. Why would anybody want

58:02

to become? precarious when they could have

58:05

second and third homes? Why would they

58:07

want to live in a different state

58:09

at their spouse and wait until their

58:12

late 30s to have their first kid?

58:14

Nobody wants it. Bobby recently, Eric was

58:16

taking an uncharacteristically, you know, provocative form

58:19

where he wrote research universities are supposed

58:21

to be dedicated to scholarship and discovery

58:23

above all else, not teaching politics or

58:25

business setups. There's supposed to be exclusive,

58:28

not inclusive, a shot at what he,

58:30

you know, sometimes refers to as the

58:32

disk. Distributed idea as suppression complex chokes

58:35

real science. I'll ask you, Abi, you

58:37

get a big bag of money now.

58:39

Four people show up on your doorstep,

58:42

not just three that came last time.

58:44

They put a bag of Bitcoin in

58:46

front of, I don't know. They give

58:48

you the latitude to do whatever you

58:51

want to do, but you have to

58:53

create Loeb University. What does it look

58:55

like? And what's included? What's not included?

58:58

And what would be the main focus

59:00

of it? Would it be the main

59:02

focus of? Yes, it would cultivate innovation,

59:05

free thinking, multiple opinions being discussed and

59:07

then trying to get verdict as to

59:09

which one is more likely to be

59:12

successful based on the information we have

59:14

and then pursuing it in the scientific

59:16

way. So basically doing what science was

59:18

designed to do. without the need to

59:21

show that you are smart, which is

59:23

really poisoning the academic culture, without the

59:25

jealousy that comes with awards and prices

59:28

and pushing people aside to get funded.

59:30

So it will be more about the

59:32

pursuit of the truth, so to speak,

59:35

and more about the sococratic approach of

59:37

allowing a discussion, without taking the poison

59:39

at the end, allowing a discussion of

59:42

heresy, you know, things that are not...

59:44

conventional things that are not well accepted

59:46

and trying to figure to get it

59:48

to the bottom of things rather than

59:51

you know poison those who the society

59:53

claims are ruining the education of the

59:55

youth the way that it happened in

59:58

in the days of Socrates. I would

1:00:00

say that nowadays academia did not evolve

1:00:02

much from that kind of culture where

1:00:05

any deviant from a beaten path is

1:00:07

being punished for that. So my university,

1:00:09

well first of all I would define

1:00:12

research areas or questions that we have

1:00:14

no clue about that we can make

1:00:16

progress. It will not be whether at

1:00:18

the plank energy, then certainly principle is

1:00:21

modified because we will never get to

1:00:23

the plank energy in any foreseeable future

1:00:25

and etc. You told me that gravitational

1:00:28

waves from B mode polarization, if we

1:00:30

didn't see it, would be evidence that

1:00:32

the universe inflated so much that we're

1:00:35

not able to see the gravitons as

1:00:37

individual on the stink. You had that

1:00:39

base my career on this. Yeah yeah

1:00:41

I wrote a paper about that but

1:00:44

you know it's a practical matter I

1:00:46

would rather focus on things that we

1:00:48

can accomplish in our lifetime because we

1:00:51

live for a short time. Now another

1:00:53

aspect is you know I started in

1:00:55

philosophy I was very interested in the

1:00:58

humanities and I think humanities of the

1:01:00

future as I mentioned before are to

1:01:02

be developed because there is a huge

1:01:05

amount of interplay between humans and machines

1:01:07

that was not addressed by past discussions.

1:01:09

There are ethical questions, there are legal

1:01:11

issues, privacy issues, and there are political

1:01:14

issues as to that have relevance to

1:01:16

national security and all these can be

1:01:18

addressed within the law of university. I

1:01:21

think that is a completely new territory

1:01:23

that was not addressed before. And of

1:01:25

course, if we find aliens, you know,

1:01:28

there would be all kinds of questions

1:01:30

about... alien psychology, alien literature, and history,

1:01:32

alien archaeology. All of these disciplines that

1:01:35

used to be dealing with what we

1:01:37

have here on earth will now gain

1:01:39

a more cosmic perspective, you know, like

1:01:41

what happens in the galaxy. Diversity and

1:01:44

inclusion will be about aliens cultures, you

1:01:46

know, not about humans coming from different

1:01:48

countries. So, you know, the sky is

1:01:51

the limit as to what the universe

1:01:53

can offer us, but I would try

1:01:55

to be as imaginative as possible. It

1:01:58

should be fun. to a member of

1:02:00

my community, it will be all about

1:02:02

learning new things with a sense of

1:02:05

humility, not pretending to know the answer

1:02:07

in advance, not lecturing to the public,

1:02:09

actually having a lot of engagements with

1:02:11

the public, telling them what we are

1:02:14

studying, and making it fun. And

1:02:16

I think, you know, obviously there are

1:02:18

new universities being established, there is

1:02:20

one in Texas, the University of

1:02:22

the, where the issue of freedom

1:02:24

of speech is being highlighted. But I

1:02:26

see it beyond the freedom of

1:02:29

speech, there is also, you know,

1:02:31

the issue of what should science

1:02:33

work on, should it be more

1:02:35

relevant to society, having innovation in

1:02:38

technology, in science, in the humanities,

1:02:40

in the humanities, being cultivated, which

1:02:42

is not addressed in the new

1:02:45

universities. Avi, one last question maybe

1:02:47

to tie into some things that

1:02:49

Eric and I talked about in

1:02:51

the past. It seems that there's

1:02:54

a fundamental lack of curiosity. begrudging

1:02:56

for that. I've, you know, boys got to

1:02:58

sell his book, right? But talk about the

1:03:00

kind of lack of curiosity that you see

1:03:03

outside of your field. Let's go outside of

1:03:05

our own domains. In particle physics, in fundamental

1:03:07

physics, which is obviously, you know, Eric considers,

1:03:09

I believe, you know, the pinnacle of not

1:03:12

just physics, but of science, but of civilization.

1:03:14

I think I agree with him. But the

1:03:16

fact that people aren't curious about these big

1:03:18

topics, and it takes someone like Eric to

1:03:20

talk, why are there three generations of firmium?

1:03:23

That's a classic thing. Why don't you study

1:03:25

those topics? I mean, yes, these are wonderful,

1:03:27

but let me just steal man that. What would

1:03:29

you do in terms of, if you had to

1:03:31

do something other than search for extraterrestrial technology,

1:03:33

intelligence, etc. Would you be interested in

1:03:35

these bigger? Yeah, ultimate questions of... Yeah,

1:03:38

definitely. And the... What's a barrier to

1:03:40

our understanding of them? What is lacking?

1:03:42

Beyond the sociology, we talked about that,

1:03:45

Eric and I fight about that all

1:03:47

the time. But physical limitations,

1:03:49

mathematics, do we need new math? Is AI

1:03:51

going to help us? What are the limitations

1:03:53

to answer those questions that Eric wants to

1:03:56

have answered before he departs this mortal coil

1:03:58

at age? May have an estroom. The context

1:04:00

of large data sets, which we are

1:04:02

getting into right now, you know, the

1:04:04

Rubin Observatory will have a huge amount

1:04:06

of data, the large Hadron Collider, its

1:04:09

son has a huge amount of data,

1:04:11

AI will become very useful, going through

1:04:13

these data sets that, you know, the

1:04:15

human brain cannot really... accomplish and we

1:04:17

already saw a Nobel Prize in physics

1:04:19

this year that is related to AI.

1:04:21

I think that's a trend of the

1:04:24

future. We'll see AI assisting scientists. There

1:04:26

will be AI agents that are cultivating

1:04:28

new discoveries. The question is who will

1:04:30

get the Nobel Prize? If the AI

1:04:32

system is the one to crack the

1:04:34

puzzle, should it get the reward? Or

1:04:36

is it the person who asked the

1:04:39

question? There will be subtle issues about

1:04:41

that. Well maybe AI will write, you

1:04:43

know. sequel to losing the Nobel Prize.

1:04:45

How about that, Eric? Eric, a product

1:04:47

placement. I got a product placement there.

1:04:49

Eric, what do you wish that people

1:04:51

at universities were more curious about? Would

1:04:54

it be, I mean, if you could

1:04:56

just say, we need a Manhattan project

1:04:58

to figure out how to get off

1:05:00

this rock without chemical rocks. This is

1:05:02

the million times, nobody's out there. Part

1:05:04

of the problem is, the universities are

1:05:06

blotting up all the credibility. No, no,

1:05:09

but what would you, what would you

1:05:11

devote physics, forget about the limitations of

1:05:13

the real universities Abi and I work

1:05:15

at, okay, and that you've been affiliated

1:05:17

with, but tell me, what would you

1:05:19

devote, and how would it work to

1:05:21

get, like, what do we need Musk

1:05:24

to do or somebody else to do

1:05:26

to actually do to actually do this

1:05:28

solution to... I don't want to be

1:05:30

here with my begging ball, but I'll

1:05:32

just say... Not your begging ball, no,

1:05:34

no, what would you, what would you

1:05:36

do, what would you do, what would

1:05:39

you do, what would you do, what

1:05:41

would you do? What would you do,

1:05:43

what would you do, what would you

1:05:45

do, what would you do, what would

1:05:47

you do, what would you do, what

1:05:49

would you do, what would you do,

1:05:51

what would you do, what would you

1:05:54

do, what would you do, what would

1:05:56

you do, what would you do, what

1:05:58

would you do, what would you do,

1:06:00

what would you do, what would you

1:06:02

do, what would Where are all the

1:06:04

murdered theories? If there's only one game

1:06:06

in town, the only way it got

1:06:09

to be the only game in town

1:06:11

is by leaving a bunch of theories

1:06:13

in a ditch. So right now there's

1:06:15

an unmarked grave called 1984 to 2025.

1:06:17

I would go and exhum everything in

1:06:19

that grave that was put out of

1:06:21

its misery by some string theorist, quantum

1:06:24

gravity theorist or otherwise. murderous person in

1:06:26

the physics community. And I would say,

1:06:28

let's get back to the real problems.

1:06:30

Before 1984, let me remind everyone what

1:06:32

the problems of physics were up until

1:06:34

Edwitten started telling us it was to

1:06:37

quantize gravity. Why are the three generations?

1:06:39

Why is nature flavor chiral? Why are

1:06:41

the 16 particles the generation? Why S-U-3-cross-S-U-2-2-cross-U-1?

1:06:43

Why these internal quantum numbers? Why does

1:06:45

the Higgs have a cortic potential of

1:06:47

the type that it does? Why are

1:06:49

the ukawa couplings present? It's the same

1:06:52

thing that it's always been. We have

1:06:54

to recognize that what we've been through

1:06:56

is a tiny number of people completely

1:06:58

subverting the field, driving it into a

1:07:00

ditch, burying the bodies of everybody who

1:07:02

tried. to point out that this is

1:07:04

wrong. And they've in general quoted two

1:07:07

things to do this, one of which

1:07:09

is equine gravity. This is an idea

1:07:11

of Bryce DeWitt coming from about 1952

1:07:13

when he was a postdoc at the

1:07:15

Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Bombay.

1:07:17

And the other one is the misapplication

1:07:19

of Ken Wilson and his renormalization program

1:07:22

with effective theories to basically say, look,

1:07:24

nobody's doing fundamental physics. We are only

1:07:26

doing electroweek scale physics. Let's stop. pretending

1:07:28

that we can get to the plank

1:07:30

mask, obviously everything in between here and

1:07:32

there is just impossible. We were much

1:07:34

more successful before these two ideas descended

1:07:37

on the physics community. Somehow the effect

1:07:39

of becoming sophisticated about effective theory, which

1:07:41

I, by the way, I think is

1:07:43

a huge insight of Ken Wilson, it's

1:07:45

just been misapplied, and the claims of

1:07:47

Bryce DeWitt, which I don't have the

1:07:49

same positive fuzzy feeling about, before people

1:07:52

had those two pieces of sophistication of

1:07:54

sophistication of sophistication. we were burning up

1:07:56

the track, we were amazing. Then we

1:07:58

became very sophisticated and we patted ourselves

1:08:00

on the back for saying, we figured

1:08:02

out why we can't make progress. So

1:08:04

I think it's really important to reverse

1:08:07

the brain rot. that was brought about

1:08:09

by claiming that quantum gravity is the

1:08:11

problem or at times, which it absolutely

1:08:13

is not, and that these other things

1:08:15

are mere artifacts of the physical world

1:08:17

that we happen to live in. In

1:08:19

fact, they are not. And coming from

1:08:22

the Wu Yang Dictionary, which is really

1:08:24

the Simons Yang Dictionary, what we can

1:08:26

see is that we are almost certainly

1:08:28

sitting atop of a differential geometry of

1:08:30

which we are ignorant, that is far

1:08:32

more beautiful than the... theories that we

1:08:34

know, and integrating the Higgs field in

1:08:37

particular, which is really only needed because

1:08:39

of the asymmetry of the weak force,

1:08:41

should be a top differential geometric priority.

1:08:43

Higgs fields that people work on in

1:08:45

mathematics are valued in the adjoint bundle.

1:08:47

They're not valued where a real Higgs

1:08:49

field is. We are not doing real

1:08:52

science. I'm just going to say very

1:08:54

quickly, how do you know when somebody's

1:08:56

doing real science? One, the dimension is

1:08:58

four. that they begin with. Two, they

1:09:00

usually have a one-three signature metric. They're

1:09:02

usually dealing with three generations of firmions.

1:09:04

The group SU3 is present. If somebody

1:09:07

is working in two dimensions with SU2

1:09:09

in Euclidean signature, that is not physics.

1:09:11

That is a toy theory. And the

1:09:13

problem is we've allowed a group of

1:09:15

people now in their 70s, 80s, and

1:09:17

90s to spend their entire career playing

1:09:19

with toys when they were supposed to

1:09:22

be doing physics. Oh, I like that

1:09:24

who mentioned that about, you know, the

1:09:26

exhumation of bodies, Eric, because it reminds

1:09:28

me, you know, we can kind of

1:09:30

flip Max Plank, he can make him

1:09:32

a role in his grave, we can

1:09:34

say that science advances now, one exhumation

1:09:37

after another. Okay, at a time. All

1:09:39

of you, yes, please. Yeah, just wanted

1:09:41

to add that there was this notion

1:09:43

that unification and elementary particles really are

1:09:45

the future of physics, but there is

1:09:47

another dimension which is complex systems that

1:09:49

involve many bodies and trying to figure

1:09:52

out their complex behavior. And the human

1:09:54

brain is obviously one such complex system.

1:09:56

We now have AI that could potentially

1:09:58

try to imitate some aspects of it

1:10:00

in artificial neural networks. I would just

1:10:02

like to add... the fact that complex

1:10:04

systems are not less fundamental because there

1:10:07

are emergent phenomena and we are obsessed

1:10:09

with them such as free will, consciousness.

1:10:11

that might really be just incarnations of

1:10:13

the complex human brain. That's all. So

1:10:15

the entire field of psychology may be

1:10:17

just a derivative of complex system behaving

1:10:20

in some ways that are hard for

1:10:22

us to figure out. So study of

1:10:24

complex systems could become much more... Absolutely,

1:10:26

it's worthy, but it's not more fundamental,

1:10:28

Avi. As you said, it's emerged. So

1:10:30

I think we have to... If I

1:10:32

can be in violent agreement with you...

1:10:35

I'm only disagreeing by virtue of the

1:10:37

fact that we need to be both

1:10:39

respectful of the fact that not all

1:10:41

questions that are worth talking about are

1:10:43

reductionist. Many are emergent. Very often it's

1:10:46

the property of the solutions, let's say,

1:10:48

rather than the property of the Lagrangian

1:10:50

terms that matter. So we have to

1:10:52

make sure that we don't get overly

1:10:55

reductionist. That's always been a temptation. But

1:10:57

in terms of what affects your life,

1:10:59

especially if you get married, it's complex

1:11:01

systems affect your life much more. There's

1:11:04

an element. The thing, things will go

1:11:06

towards psychology, anthropology, sociology, and it's when

1:11:08

the National Science Foundation started taking in

1:11:11

many of these weaker fields because these

1:11:13

things were very important, but there's not

1:11:15

a lot you can say about marriage.

1:11:17

John Gottman has tried to study this

1:11:20

very tricky. No, but what times in

1:11:22

the age of AI, there could be a

1:11:24

revolution because now we can process large data

1:11:26

sets and see patterns that we couldn't see

1:11:28

before. That's what I'm saying. Now

1:11:30

the other thing I wanted to say

1:11:32

is there is a question of incentive.

1:11:34

You know, what is right now, I

1:11:37

think that the poison in academia is

1:11:39

that the incentive to get the grant

1:11:41

money and to get prizes, honours, awards

1:11:43

and promotions, pushes people, you know, it's

1:11:45

just like a regression to the mean.

1:11:47

They're trying to accommodate the wishes of

1:11:50

other people and they're regressing to the

1:11:52

mean rather than deviating from the mean

1:11:54

and being original. And you can create

1:11:56

a culture in which the deviance.

1:11:58

will be rewarded. People who innovate

1:12:01

to explore new territories that nobody

1:12:03

has looked into, these are the

1:12:05

people who would be rewarded because

1:12:07

even if they fail, you learn

1:12:09

something new. When Albert Einstein made

1:12:11

three mistakes, he argued, between 1935

1:12:13

and 1940, he argued that the

1:12:15

gravitation waves do not exist, black

1:12:17

holes do not exist, quantum mechanics

1:12:19

doesn't have spooky action at the

1:12:21

distance. He was wrong, but the

1:12:23

three experimental teams that discovered he

1:12:25

was wrong, got the Nobel Prize

1:12:27

over the past decade. So what

1:12:29

I'm saying is... taking risks is

1:12:31

really key and the problem right

1:12:33

now is you're you know you

1:12:35

are being pushed to the mainstream

1:12:37

without you know there is no

1:12:39

reward that you can benefit from

1:12:41

by in fact there is a

1:12:43

lot of scrutiny that you get

1:12:45

when you deviate. There's this notion

1:12:47

that Eric's promulgating, and I think

1:12:49

there is geometric unity, which is

1:12:51

unequivocally unique, but it's also unequivocally

1:12:53

receiving very little attention compared to,

1:12:55

as we already mentioned, string theory

1:12:57

and other things. When we think

1:12:59

about, you know, a geometric approach,

1:13:01

as you said, you already offered

1:13:03

one alternative. I don't know if

1:13:05

I fully understand the implications, because

1:13:07

it's just the first time I

1:13:09

encountered it. But you know, is

1:13:11

there danger of, you know, fighting

1:13:13

the previous war, so to speak,

1:13:15

that, you know, Einstein was so

1:13:17

successful, the differential geometry, the geometric

1:13:19

methods, Turn Simons, all the different,

1:13:21

you know, wonderful things that Eric

1:13:23

mentioned. Do you think that actually

1:13:25

going back, so to speak, is

1:13:27

the right approach? Or is it

1:13:29

that we fundamentally failed to explore

1:13:31

in full great detail these alternative

1:13:33

theories of people like Eric and

1:13:35

Peter White and you know, we've

1:13:37

talked about others as well? You

1:13:39

know, the biggest disappointment, I mean,

1:13:41

we started by developing accelerators and

1:13:43

then every generation of new accelerators

1:13:45

over the 20th century revealed new

1:13:48

physics, a lot of phenomena that

1:13:50

allowed us to figure out the

1:13:52

standard model. And now we are

1:13:54

at an age where... you build

1:13:56

the biggest accelerator and the only

1:13:58

thing it does is confirm an

1:14:00

idea from the 1960s the Higgs

1:14:02

boson and that's all and there

1:14:04

is no no clear evidence for

1:14:06

new physics and So then people

1:14:08

ask, okay, well, how do you

1:14:10

know it's around the corner? Is

1:14:12

there anything? And maybe we should

1:14:14

try something else. And I'm very

1:14:16

much in favor of trying something

1:14:18

else. There are different ways of

1:14:20

getting it new physics than just

1:14:22

pushing the energy frontier, but we

1:14:24

have to be imaginative. Mappitom, this

1:14:26

something huge happened that wasn't the

1:14:28

Higgs. And that was that all

1:14:30

of those supersymmetry candidates that ruled

1:14:32

out. Yeah, I mentioned that before,

1:14:34

but that is a negative thing.

1:14:36

No, no, no, it's not negative

1:14:38

at all. If our community would

1:14:40

listen to it, it's one of

1:14:42

the biggest clues out there. Whatever,

1:14:44

let me just say, if you

1:14:46

think about supersymmetry as a freeway,

1:14:48

my claim is right freeway, wrong

1:14:50

off-ran. Well, I mentioned you with

1:14:52

programming super partners, all the super

1:14:54

partners, were the wrong off-ran. If

1:14:56

you want to say idea, you'd

1:14:58

have to hold the conference that

1:15:00

says... We had two big ideas

1:15:02

in the 1970s, one of which

1:15:04

was grand unification, the other of

1:15:06

which was supersymmetry. Both of them

1:15:08

didn't get realized in the most

1:15:10

trivial and obvious way possible. Let's

1:15:12

go back to those ideas which

1:15:14

are great ideas, unbelievably good ideas,

1:15:16

and ask how would we reinstantiate

1:15:18

them? But we don't do that,

1:15:20

do we? So Eric, you did

1:15:22

to mention that you had this

1:15:24

great, you know, where you had

1:15:26

experience at recently at Caltech, when

1:15:28

you, when you hear the modern

1:15:30

day, you know, kind of contenders

1:15:32

for these things, are they fundamentally

1:15:34

establishing a level of curiosity that

1:15:36

you feel is going to be

1:15:38

pursued, even if it's not right?

1:15:40

In other words, even if something

1:15:43

you don't agree with, and if

1:15:45

so, how do you, yeah, so

1:15:47

where do we go next? You

1:15:49

tell me when we can finally

1:15:51

have the argument about Quantum gravity

1:15:53

is not the holy grail of

1:15:55

theoretical physics. It's not supposed to

1:15:57

be what takes our energy. We

1:15:59

are finding that it has failed.

1:16:01

We have to have some sort

1:16:03

of come to Jesus conference in

1:16:05

which we reconcile ourselves to the

1:16:07

fact that we try many things

1:16:09

that we now know don't work.

1:16:11

If we do not have that,

1:16:13

we cannot ask the question, doesn't

1:16:15

anybody else have any other ideas?

1:16:17

Now the thing that I can't

1:16:19

understand is you have a person

1:16:21

who's like starving, dying of starvation

1:16:23

for progress, and they're sitting next

1:16:25

to potentially food. But everything that

1:16:27

they could eat They have a

1:16:29

different complaint. Oh, I don't like

1:16:31

that after lunch and, you know,

1:16:33

that's not to my taste, maybe

1:16:35

for you, etc., etc. Well, ultimately,

1:16:37

it's time to go through everybody's

1:16:39

idea that is not quantum gravity,

1:16:41

that is not string theoretic, that

1:16:43

is not loop quantum gravity, and

1:16:45

this is a big difference between

1:16:47

what I would call the programs

1:16:49

and the individuals. One of the

1:16:51

things that I found very interesting

1:16:53

is that the string theorists are

1:16:55

a program. And the reason that

1:16:57

they see loop quantum gravity is

1:16:59

the only possible thing that they

1:17:01

have as a rival, which they're

1:17:03

embarrassed by it because it's clearly

1:17:05

wrong to them. But my point

1:17:07

is, is that it's a program.

1:17:09

And the program people only see

1:17:11

programs. I'm much more interested in

1:17:13

the freaks, the weirdos, the neurodivergent,

1:17:15

everybody who has a personal program.

1:17:17

I may dislike Stephen Wolfram's attempt

1:17:19

to remove the continuum. but it's

1:17:21

at least original. I may think

1:17:23

that Peter Wight's two theories about

1:17:25

in particular SU3 cross SU2 cross

1:17:27

U1 are not correct. But at

1:17:29

least I understand what he's trying

1:17:31

to do. He's trying to say,

1:17:33

why is the weak force encoded

1:17:35

as either on or off rather

1:17:37

than just complex conjugates? Well, Garrett

1:17:40

least he talks about E8. It's

1:17:42

clear to me that he's got

1:17:44

a mistake in his situation that

1:17:46

can't get cured, but I understand

1:17:48

that he's trying to say that

1:17:50

there are novel unifications of firmions

1:17:52

and bosons from the point of

1:17:54

fractional spin and integral spin. It

1:17:56

just doesn't work at the level

1:17:58

of quantization. All of these situations

1:18:00

are... frying out for the same

1:18:02

thing. It's time to stop protecting

1:18:04

the quantum gravity group and expose

1:18:06

them to the full fury of everything

1:18:08

it is that they've used their

1:18:10

position as referees to suppress. The

1:18:12

game is over and it's time

1:18:14

to move on. Beyond that, though,

1:18:16

you had a very brilliant proposal

1:18:18

that you and I have talked

1:18:21

about on Modern Wisdom last September,

1:18:23

and that's basically what I summarized

1:18:25

in my video about, you and

1:18:27

Linnie Susque and others, which I

1:18:29

called, is Shelter Island 3, which

1:18:31

would be, you know, kind of

1:18:33

a conclave, you know, to use

1:18:35

Shelter Island 3, you know, to

1:18:37

use shelter, you know, to use

1:18:39

Shelter Island 3, going to the Rams,

1:18:41

we're going to have, you know, a

1:18:44

third generation of it. were, by the

1:18:46

way, multiple Nobel Prizes, you know, from

1:18:48

Lamb and, and, and Schwinger and Feynman,

1:18:51

all these great things came out of

1:18:53

it. Do you think that's a good

1:18:55

idea? Can we get funding for it?

1:18:58

Can, can Galileo Project be

1:19:00

involved? Can Eric and I

1:19:02

be involved? Can we get the

1:19:04

greatest minds together? Even those that

1:19:06

Eric, to his credit for his

1:19:08

integrity, disagrees with violently and what

1:19:10

should we aim? papers or at

1:19:12

least as much more open-minded. No,

1:19:14

no, I agree. Avi, can we

1:19:16

do it? Can we do it?

1:19:18

Can we do it on Shelter

1:19:20

Island? I can get the venue.

1:19:22

I can pay for the RAM

1:19:24

set in for a week. We can

1:19:26

definitely do it. I can immediately say

1:19:29

who I do not invite, be there.

1:19:31

These are the people who are dogmatic.

1:19:33

Also people that, you know, when I

1:19:35

said, oh, that's an interesting expectation from

1:19:37

string theory, would you, then if we

1:19:39

don't see it in nature, would that

1:19:41

rule out string theory? And the person

1:19:44

would say, no, it actually rules out

1:19:46

my idea of connect, because string theory

1:19:48

must be right. That kind of mindset,

1:19:50

to me, is not very productive. The

1:19:52

mindset should be, let's think of things

1:19:55

that can be tested and validated and

1:19:57

validated, because, you know, it's not about

1:19:59

figuring out. and nature is under no

1:20:01

contract to have the most beautiful theory or

1:20:03

the thing that makes us look smart when

1:20:05

we deal with it in fancy math. So

1:20:08

I would invite people who are originally in

1:20:10

their thinking and that includes of course using

1:20:12

the universe as a laboratory. I should say

1:20:14

that all together it's really important to gain

1:20:16

credibility from the political system so we can

1:20:19

get funded for the future. I would be

1:20:21

very excited to be involved in a new

1:20:23

way of doing. science that is more innovative,

1:20:25

open-minded, and cares about understanding the physical reality

1:20:28

we live in, not in showing that we

1:20:30

are smart, which is pretty much the current

1:20:32

status. What types of people would you have

1:20:34

there? Let's name some names of people you

1:20:36

would have there. I assume Ethan Siegel won't

1:20:39

be getting an invite to years. And do

1:20:41

you think this is realistic? I mean, do

1:20:43

you think the appetite is the same as

1:20:45

it was collegially or not, back in the

1:20:48

40s when this first two conferences occur? Yeah,

1:20:50

I think the appetite depends on the culture

1:20:52

that you cultivate. Right now the young people

1:20:54

are worried about job prospects and they align

1:20:56

themselves with the leaders of the field just

1:20:59

in order to be able to impress them

1:21:01

and get jobs. And when they are junior

1:21:03

faculty in order to get funded for their

1:21:05

students to be supported, that is really the

1:21:08

mechanics of being in academia right now. We

1:21:10

should change the incentive if there is funding

1:21:12

available for innovative... thinking and for sketching a

1:21:14

new architecture rather than being a technocrat. There

1:21:16

are people who are able to build a

1:21:19

building. They know how to put the bricks.

1:21:21

And these are the technicians that also will

1:21:23

connect electricity and so forth. But then there

1:21:25

are the architects. These are the people that

1:21:28

think big about how the building should look

1:21:30

like. And those are the people that we

1:21:32

should invite. The architects, not the technicians. No,

1:21:34

that's my take on this. Eric, who would

1:21:36

you invite? I'd invite a lot of my

1:21:39

enemies to be entirely honest. Who raised the

1:21:41

law? Well, no, no, because in part, you

1:21:43

know, the point is that that's how they

1:21:45

roll, is that they don't invite people. who

1:21:48

are pseudo-scientists or whatever. It's like, for God's

1:21:50

sake, get over yourself guys. You've been failing

1:21:52

for four decades. It's not exactly your strong

1:21:54

card to play. You know, my feeling about

1:21:56

it is I would love to see people

1:21:59

like Lisa Randall, like Avi. I'd like to

1:22:01

see Frank Wilcheck there. I don't know if

1:22:03

Ed Hoof is still... He's there. I talked

1:22:05

to you about... Yeah. But in general, you

1:22:08

know, look, I'd love to have nothing better

1:22:10

than to have nothing better than to go

1:22:12

at it with... able to remember ever speaking

1:22:14

to me, which I part of you. Exactly,

1:22:16

you know, and in particular I think it

1:22:19

would be very much fun to have some

1:22:21

of the talking heads who represent physics to

1:22:23

the outside world because in fact a lot

1:22:25

of those people really aren't up to the

1:22:28

task. And I think that in part it

1:22:30

would be very violent, it would be very

1:22:32

brutal, very constructive, very creative, very exciting. And

1:22:34

we haven't had this because what we do

1:22:36

is we have... you know in professional wrestling

1:22:39

you call them promotions you have people who

1:22:41

agree to fight each other according to a

1:22:43

script and that way nobody ever gets hurt

1:22:45

and you just you know you keep going

1:22:48

my feeling about this is anybody who wants

1:22:50

to come and claim oh we're the only

1:22:52

we're the only fish in the sea we're

1:22:54

the only birds in the sky that's going

1:22:56

to be an incredibly short ride we just

1:22:59

have to make sure that we do it

1:23:01

on video And then in my experience, those

1:23:03

people will just not show up. They will

1:23:05

say, I'm too busy. That's their favorite line.

1:23:08

You know, I don't want to engage in

1:23:10

a spectacle this is beneath me. And so

1:23:12

you'll have a very clear record of basically

1:23:14

who's been swimming without their shorts. Well, the

1:23:16

college should be. It should be definitely documented

1:23:19

in order to encourage young people to speak

1:23:21

up. Well, I've actually talked about this with

1:23:23

Louis Alvarez Gomez at Stony Brook and in

1:23:25

all series, since we have discussed actually doing

1:23:28

this, and I think maybe this is the

1:23:30

year it happens. It's a suggestion. If Eric

1:23:32

can bring in those high network technical support

1:23:34

people that will actually perhaps fund the new

1:23:36

type of science that we are talking about,

1:23:39

that would be amazing. It's like me asking

1:23:41

somebody to give me good recommendations to go

1:23:43

surfing. You know, you're at Harvard. I don't

1:23:45

think there's too many places with a $68

1:23:48

billion endowment that has raised tuition faster than

1:23:50

inflation as letting fewer people than a Starbucks

1:23:52

admits every- Let me just say one thing

1:23:54

on this point. If you want to actually

1:23:56

get the smart money to come, you treat

1:23:59

them like brains before you treat them like

1:24:01

wallets. And the first thing we should do

1:24:03

if we're going to do that. as we

1:24:05

should have a day or two where we

1:24:08

get those people early to come to Shelter

1:24:10

Island. And we put together a program so

1:24:12

that they can understand what's being fought over

1:24:14

because they're very very smart. The fact is

1:24:16

they don't have the particular training in what

1:24:19

this is. So the most important thing is

1:24:21

if you look at something, you know, it's

1:24:23

a little bit like staring at a woman's

1:24:25

neckline and she says eyes up here. When

1:24:28

you're talking to very rich people. The key

1:24:30

question is, would you be happy to be

1:24:32

talking to them if they had less money?

1:24:34

Right. I was going to ask you, would

1:24:36

we invite Elon Musk if he knew he

1:24:39

wasn't going to give money? Do you know

1:24:41

he wasn't? Or Peter Thiel, if they weren't

1:24:43

going to give money, would you like a

1:24:45

physics conference with Peter Thiel? Okay. And you

1:24:48

know, I'll just tell you what happens. Some

1:24:50

of you will talk down to Peter for

1:24:52

45 minutes and then say, do you have

1:24:54

any idea what I'm talking about? like three

1:24:56

super incisive questions indicating that he has a

1:24:59

lot of background in the area and it's

1:25:01

hysterically funny so you know my feeling about

1:25:03

this is I don't know what Elon Loza

1:25:05

doesn't know I don't know what Peter knows

1:25:08

doesn't know Yuri Milner's another person we have

1:25:10

to remember that Jeff Bezos was a gonna

1:25:12

be a physics major at Princeton Bill Gates

1:25:14

was gonna do math at Harvard all of

1:25:16

these people in general are positively disposed towards

1:25:19

physics until we screw it up in math

1:25:21

So it's really important in my opinion to

1:25:23

not talk down to them not talk up

1:25:25

to them But to actually say look you

1:25:28

are the only people who are in a

1:25:30

position to make allocation decisions without having to

1:25:32

check with my and Daddy, it's really important

1:25:34

that you be able to follow this so

1:25:37

that you can allocate the same ways if

1:25:39

you were talking about a sandhill. And the

1:25:41

other thing we need to convince them, Eric,

1:25:43

is that this is more important than government

1:25:45

efficiency. You then convince Elon that survival is,

1:25:48

but my claim is, are we serious about

1:25:50

going beyond the standard model in general relativity

1:25:52

or do have those things set into our

1:25:54

brains, is basically, well, that's never going to

1:25:57

happen. I think that the most important thing

1:25:59

to realize whether you love or hate the

1:26:01

new administration. It doesn't matter which. It's filled

1:26:03

with vitality. And quite honestly, they look at

1:26:05

everything from the position of does it have

1:26:08

Cuevos or does it not have Cuevos? Right.

1:26:10

And if it doesn't have Cuevos, they don't

1:26:12

have the time of day. So if we're

1:26:14

going to seriously get back to physics, the

1:26:17

dangerous kind, the kind that goes to places

1:26:19

where you don't know what the engineering applications

1:26:21

are. and they could be astounding in terms

1:26:23

of wealth and exploring the cosmos, or it

1:26:25

could be game over for planet Earth because

1:26:28

it allows you directed energy weapons that you

1:26:30

never thought possible, doesn't matter. If we are

1:26:32

talking about doing that, we can get them

1:26:34

a lot more interested. If we are talking

1:26:37

about grinding at a snail's breadth of progress

1:26:39

in fields that almost certainly aren't going to

1:26:41

work because we've now realized that our current

1:26:43

theories are a... piece of 24th century physics

1:26:45

that mysteriously fell into the 20th century. Nobody's

1:26:48

got time for that anymore. Yeah, well I

1:26:50

have a title for the conference. Into The

1:26:52

Impossible. Oh my God, the branding is just

1:26:54

incredible. We'll give out the mugs. We'll give

1:26:57

out these mugs. They'll be merged for everybody.

1:26:59

Here's a mug, everybody. Guys, I want to

1:27:01

thank you guys so much. This has been

1:27:03

awesome. Eric, it's so great to see you.

1:27:05

Avi, it's always great to talk to you.

1:27:08

And we got to do more of these.

1:27:10

And, you know, just on the advice topic

1:27:12

of talking to the most, you know, richest

1:27:14

people in the world, they say ask a

1:27:17

rich person for money and you'll get advice.

1:27:19

Ask him for advice, maybe he'll get money,

1:27:21

but I don't know. are much more

1:27:23

more clever than we

1:27:25

scientists think we are. are.

1:27:28

So guys, thanks so much.

1:27:30

Avi, thank you for

1:27:32

sending me that me that

1:27:34

chunk of of Amuamua that I'm

1:27:37

here. Eric, thank you for thank

1:27:39

you for sending me

1:27:41

this from the Wuhan from the

1:27:43

of Institute of hope that we'll

1:27:45

talk I hope that

1:27:48

we'll talk many more

1:27:50

times, so boys. This is

1:27:52

so much fun. I

1:27:54

wish everybody out there

1:27:57

good luck. And I'm

1:27:59

serious about this conference.

1:28:01

We're going to make

1:28:03

it happen. And we've

1:28:05

got the the I've

1:28:08

got the time. got having

1:28:10

kids a little having

1:28:12

I was informed that recently,

1:28:14

I was informed only option. normal

1:28:17

kids are an option, often say,

1:28:19

you have me What, what,

1:28:21

Avi? As they often say, you have me

1:28:23

at the, at hello. Whoa. right.

1:28:25

I'll have what she's

1:28:28

having, though. That's what

1:28:30

I like to say. what

1:28:32

I Eric, to say. Avi, Avi,

1:28:34

toadarab, thank you boys

1:28:37

so much. Great talking

1:28:39

to you. to you. Thanks,

1:28:41

guys. good Good to be

1:28:43

with with that.