Joe Rogan Experience #1428 — Brian Greene Transcript

Transcript

0:00 3, 2, 1 It will be coming. No doubt. No doubt. With all your work. So the beginning of time, the beginning of the universe to the end. of co-mingle to create life. And pockets of order that form along the way. And in fact, the universe is incredibly clever. There wouldn't be any structure in the universe yeah and when they supernova that creates the actual ingredients for life which is even more

3:12 I mean, I don't want to sound like the Lion King here, but, you know, that's really what it is. of the heavens and us. We all come from the same fundamental ingredients and the same fundamental message that I think you can draw from a more complete understanding of where we came from That to me is the vital distinguishing feature of our species. No.

6:42 Our best theories suggest to us that even protons, I'd like to use a metaphor to try to give you a feel for the times involved. I like to use the You can relax for a little bit. Yeah. they will all just dissipate In fact, the Empire State Building, that little analogy helps me to sort of give some relative sense of when things of interest will happen in the universe.

10:32 But if I was to do the same thing with electrons, you don't have, and neither do I, a quantum intuition about the wave functions and the probabilities that govern how a particle-like electron behaves. And that's simply because we were unfortunately or fortunately born as big creatures about the deep reality of the world. Do you anticipate that someday in the future,

11:44 or whatever augmented reality, It's a distinct attribute and one that is not necessarily one that has any survival value to understand black holes or the Big Bang or general relativity or quantum mechanics or entropy or thermodynamics. I mean, if you think about the beginnings of modern physics, you know, you can start with Galileo, you can start with Newton, but in any event, we're talking on the order of hundreds of years.

14:21 that we can all discern with the naked eye. That's shocking. You stop someone in the street and ask them to name a scientist. Yeah, they may say Hawking, to the ideas. Yeah, no doubt. And I think that's a vital point because without that impetus from outside the traditional educational system, I don't think we would have the kind of interest You can see it, a five- or six-year-old, right?

17:31 cell or how to balance reactions i see with my own kids i've got a 15 year old son a 12 year old Five or six? But he loved scientific ideas. So he taught me the basics of arithmetic when I was about five how can you not what what would have happened if X would have transpired instead of Y? How'd you get past that? So I got a tutor, which is somebody at the college that sets you assignments and you write papers.

21:23 So this time that you took off this year, It's the flip side of something I often encounter It had this aura of grandeur that I was unable to penetrate because I'd never really immersed myself in the ideas. a different way? and have made are substantial and exciting. But for, I think for many others, and certainly for me, into the nature of the world that

24:58 Was that a part of your initial ambition? I mean, part of my motivation in doing physics Did that torture you somewhat? You know, I don't know how you find it in the work that you're doing. that notion that you can sort of sit at a table changed uh that's so exciting though and it's what keeps you going it's what keeps you going It's luck. the very fiber of the universe itself.

29:41 for something like 35% of the gross national product. And yet, as you say, for the most part, most of us don't have a deep understanding of the Right. But you give me a couple hours One is it could be that the Big Bang was an interesting event, but not the first event in the totality of reality. It could have been the first event that sparked the expansion of

32:10 However, another answer is that the very question may not make as much sense as the words seem to And Hawking himself had a wonderful analogy to get this across. And they point you in that direction. head. What do you mean beginning of time? Yeah. quickly, you've got a hot environment. If the molecules are really moving slowly, it's a cold But fundamentally, maybe there are atoms or molecules of time, which when not arranged in the form that we are familiar with,

35:27 What also is a heavy one is what caused the Big Bang? You drop something toward the earth and it moves downward of space, that that kind of entity yields repulsive gravity. Why is that important to your question? apart. And this concept of repulsive gravity is just theoretical? Have we observed any sort of The other thing is we currently witness that the expansion of the universe is speeding up, not slowing down.

38:59 The observations in 1998, culminated in 1998, which won the 2011 Nobel Prize, showed that the distant We believe it's uniformly going through space. I like to think of it almost like a Turkish sauna. but we do have theories. And one of the theories suggests that in the very early universe, on the surface of that boiling water that flattens out. Why? That only means that the water molecules happen for an instant

41:30 inflates. And I mean explosively. It can go from a size that's much less than an atomic diameter And in fact, that's the main point. It says that it's quite likely that this explosive inflation of the region that we Their charges can be different. Perhaps infinite number of times. And moreover, small differences can also arise in these other of theory that we have been trained to avoid, to excise. However, the more forward thinking I like to describe as physicists say, hey, math has

45:48 It's like when people talk about intelligent life somewhere in the universe, that you're And maybe have made infinite variations out there yeah so yeah you know yeah and and the thing i want to stress is this sounds kooky yeah Sort of like what the bleep. Yeah, but let me tell you, if you have a moment. in on this, like the lecture agent, I can't go. And they're like, hey, Brian, it's tomorrow.

48:52 It's this weird place. And the first thing I see is there are all these people walking around a grassy field with their arms out like this. Oh, boy. the odds of probability of that happening are kind of not unreasonable, And like, And, you know, so she'd pull out these cards and she'd say, OK, it's going to be seven And I'm like, okay, I appreciate it, but, like, why are you giving me a standing ovation?

51:10 you'll get the rank. it's appreciated, that are searching for the deeper truth. revealing strange features of the world. So I get the urge, I get the desire. The problem is So after this, they take me to the dinner. Are they really? But it was too goddamn long of a hug. Imagine if she's really channeling it. comes to the Big Bang, I what the hell that even means.

55:31 Why are you so happy? And then I was just starting to understand Outside of another one of my shows At a different comedy club And I said hey how you doing didn't dash her dreams i just was like wow okay and then i saw her a year later outside of uh them, hey, how did you get very successful? And they say, I thought about it all the time. I have You have a bias in successful users.

57:40 a philosophy that you could sell a course on. over that high bar. And I think it was the director or one of the producers I was on the phone with. and said, I want to apologize to you. You are absolutely right. I have finally realized what a bad film this was to be involved in, and I completely regret it. process how you're going to adjust on the fly all those things are great because then when things do

1:00:25 know has no connection to the world around them, but yet we've been doing that since the emergence told or retold or embellished or told to others through other accounts, your brain is more is some people develop expectations I mean, I think the vital thing is that your brain has had sufficient experience that it can weight these fictional accounts in a way that can enhance your response to the world but not set undue expectations of things that are just, you know, only going to be true in a fictional setting and not in the real world.

1:02:42 talking about before you know i think that the whole hero worship that we have as a culture comes again from our recognition of how powerless we are against the forces of a being that can transcend the limitations that we mere mortals are always subject to. mere mortals will be able to undertake, resists the call and the laws of physics necessarily constrain us to.

1:04:55 I mean, it would mean nothing. Kurzweil is a fascinating character. And how sad it is. It's a downloaded version of you that will exist in some sort of a computer. build new memories on top of them, have experience, maybe there's an avatar that you're able to drive through, you know, your mental machinations is out there in the world. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's perhaps the deepest question that faces science or even humanity at some level.

1:09:14 the product of their ingredients and laws of physics are all that there is, And we'll say, aha, when electrons and quarks and protons move in this particular configuration, one of the byproducts is an inner sensation that we call conscious experience. or quarks that are anguishing, And to move from our current understanding of the world to leapfrog to a place where

1:12:16 scientists say, yes, life is wonderful. Life is, in some sense, miraculous, but life is nothing but the particles of nature coming together to I actually have an inner world where I feel that color red. They try to get away from danger. of course it makes sense that there would be more complexity. And it's just going to continue to evolve Because we see small changes in DNA, a tiny fraction of a percent,

1:15:59 the physical makeup and the laws describing it, then how would the injection, say, of death perception and understand shapes that the human mind and particularly these glands that produce these psychedelic chemicals, people having these religious spiritual epiphanies have you done anything have you done any psychedelic Because – So I did that version, and it was the most terrifying experience of my fucking life.

1:19:11 Smoked. And I actually said to my wife, tie me up. And I was like, she was like afraid this would be like in the newspaper because I just like give a lecture to the queen, you know? Sugar is – I don't know the chemistry behind this, but sugar is the antidote. Right. But the more profound psychedelic chemicals that are also produced by your brain, if you

1:22:14 know you we know it's produced in the lungs it's the body makes it yeah right but it's got it's in Our heads are getting bigger. This is a thing that comes up whenever you're talking about other life inside the universe. structure i buy that argument the least you do really because we're interested in butterflies that those kinds of taxonomy questions

1:25:01 That would be fascinating. so they may be uh galactic as opposed to planetary in their hegemony and the notion of some little It's really cool. And we look at life on planet Earth and it's, you know, a handful of billions of years old. ahead of us, that to me would be the unexplained coincidence. if the spatial expanse of the universe Is that true?

1:28:18 So everything is finite now. But I don't know of any such principle. But don't we look at observable planets and solar systems and discover Goldilocks planets. However, if they are so far away, they're going to be examining Earth as it was hundreds strange property For a long time, my operating theory on aliens was when I see something that's interesting,

1:31:49 That's so attractive that I think it messes with your ordinary ability to observe and to objectively analyze what's real and what's not. there is no answer floating out there in space. That makes a lot of sense. You can ask yourself, sure, Earth may go away, some way that the particles that it spawns electrons neutrinos photons whatever somehow being to be able to release that heat to the environment and to avoid burning up in its

1:35:38 When we take into consideration that are infinitely larger than us and responsible for life itself. and emotions the infinite universe But I encourage people. Each one of these quantum events, and there are nearly infinitely many of them, could have turned out that way instead of this, yielding a universe in which neither you nor I nor anybody else would be here. And yet against those astounding odds, astounding odds, we're here.

1:38:08 You might have to eat your words. To the average person, if they think about space, holes slamming into each other, creating gravitational waves that we can actually detect. And that's the precious commodity that somehow we want to be sacred. Yeah. And I thought it was called Science and the Spiritual Quest. And it was a there's one Nobel laureate in the room who got up and sang psalms as part of his presentation. And I was sitting there and I was

1:41:48 hope that your journey will finally take you to the place where I have been for many years. I was the one who was- and it was based on a series of lectures I think he gave in Scotland. And it is the most heartfelt and rational approach to religion and science it can be, you know, you talk to people like Sam Harris, and, you know, it's a destructive force

1:44:12 decimal places. That's the purview of scientific investigation. And if you can keep these straight Yeah, and I got to tell you, there's a funny thing. Look, we don't agree in totality. You know? And for me, it was such a beautiful human moment. It was such a beautiful human I would love to see Richard Dawkins outside of a haunted house saying, I'm not going in there.

1:46:54 And it's not as though something is right or something is wrong. Yeah, exactly. survived. And to sort of come at the world with a scientific club that's meant to smash away anything that of particles guided by then causes different thoughts in their mind. going over a problem? by allowing my brain to fly off through whatever musical experience I was playing and allowing the freedom of thought to then emerge within that unusual, for me, environment.

1:51:47 Do you know Pentatonix? So is this something that you sort of evolved over the course of your career? And you've got to So we have a house – we live in Manhattan. I was struggling on certain things. when I'm doing mathematics, it does need, at least for me personally, to be that kind Well, my early books were all focused on trying to bring scientific ideas out to the general public.

1:56:57 the emergence of language, why we tell myths, why we engage in religious experience, why creative I'm trying to actually, if you will, touch the heart and soul of the reader. or enhancing that description. I think I was a very hard-nosed science thinker when I started. The other thing that's had a vast and vital impact on me are students. And in that course, I had students from across the campus, not just the physics students,

2:00:47 as opposed to something that is just pure inspiration More than one? course in which you're focusing upon how it would be that this institution of religion might ideas can make you rethink your life, at least it'll cast it in a different light. It'll illuminate Were they just trying to get everybody to calm down and stay in line? There is evolutionary value to that.

2:04:22 So I think you're absolutely right. Having a conversation It was like so sudden. But it was deeply comforting. Yeah. I'm glad I'm in here, too. It's a weird bond. Or that mob mentality. He's a brilliant thinker. He's an original thinker. He's a brilliant thinker. And yet, within this group Bond together through shared experience. Yes. He describes it in terms of the sublimity of the stars.

2:11:28 Right. that has a genuine understanding of how human beings react and what the benefits of community and having these environments where loving, with particles and laws of physics. On top of that, you've got the chemist story, self-examination. It's real in the sense that I think most people are that way. the guy giving the lecture, he did recognize me and I could tell how uncomfortable he was

2:15:03 And I think that, to me, is the value of it. I'm sure I'm just translating from what they were saying in the lecture into a language that I'm it allows my brain to operate in a different way. So when I translated it into that language, So do you do this? Like a deprivation? i find it a little bit terrifying do you live in manhattan i do yeah there's plenty of them

2:17:51 I tried. Yeah. Really? I don't know because it wasn't always there. Really? I can't do it I don't know what it is To sort of take a TM course because uh my friend Tom Papa he's really into TM and he he raves about it yeah There's a lot of benefit in that in the same way in that it's so difficult. And my wife does a lot of yoga Your body is Last Oh, okay.

2:21:42 Did you get an MRI? And what they do is it's essentially a more advanced version of platelet-rich plasma. Right into the area where the spine is bulging. neck that was making my hands go numb so my toes are numb yeah yeah yeah but they can give you I go, what's the matter? Regenikin's amazing. And then I found out that they were opening offices in America.

2:24:02 Because it's been tough. and it kind of pulled the feet, I guess, away from the back. You have a whole gym out here. And he's like, well, a disc is compressed. have a mind that can sort of the edge of the cosmos man but you got a bulging disc it doesn't Listen, we've already talked for two and a half hours. Until the End of Time. Bye, everybody.