Conflict Might Be Preventing the Discovery of Alien Life

the jurogan experience just to give you an example in my book i talk about winston churchill winston church 1939 wrote an essay about the fact that there could be life around other in on other planets around other stars and we should search for it now he didn't have a chance to publish it because he became prime minister and then had to fight the the second world war against the nazi regime so much money was wasted in that war if that money was allocated to the search for extraterrestrial life the way the churchill envisioned it before the war we might have we might have known the answer by now and what i'm saying is this is just an example for how non-intelligent we are we are not working together towards a better future we are fighting each other and that's the answer to your question that we might not live very long but you're saying this as you work at harvard and as you're writing books on extraterrestrial objects right i don't necessarily agree with you i think there are massive problems with people but i think we are far better than the human beings that live 2000 years ago in that regard and i think that we will probably be looking back on this day and age and mocking how stupid we are when we are more advanced two thousand i really hope so and that's what i'm trying we're moving in that direction well that's what i'm trying to promote but i'm not necessarily as optimistic as you are i think our cake is still in the oven let's hope so i really want that future but you know i'm doing my best but you can see from the pushback yes to which i don't have access because i i'm not you know i don't have a an account on the social congratulations again for that i think that's i i think we're moving i think there's conflict but i think for whatever reason the way human beings operate we oftentimes need conflict in order to make improvements right we need a yin and yang we needed a given a poll if we don't have that we get we get complacent why can't we understand the the best path forward without you know it's just like using a gps system and it says recalculating every time we have a crisis recalculating so we recalculate our next move based on all the mistakes we've made why can't we be smart in the first place i think we have biological limitations that are based on our ancestry and our ancestry is filled with tribalism and chaos and we're primates i mean that's that's part of the problem and i think that our issue with racism is the same issue that we have when we have religious discrimination or cultural discrimination it's tribalism i agree and we are you know we're just it's wired into our dna now my problem is why couldn't science given that you know there are billions of earth sun systems within just the milky way galaxy and then a trillion galaxies like the milky way in the observable volume of the universe you know why can't the mainstream of astronomy simply say conservatively you know just assuming the most conservative not speculative assumption conservatively we are at the middle of the road you know kind of life uh it's very likely that we're not unique and special and let's just look for evidence you know search for it why should that there be a taboo on discussing this subject that makes no sense for example astronomers are now thinking contemplating new telescopes of the future that will cost billions of dollars to taxpayers okay that would search for oxygen in the atmospheres of other planets around other stars because oxygen could be indicative of life microbial life i say it will never be conclusive such a search even if it costs billions of dollars because the earth for two billion years the first two billion years of the earth history didn't have much oxygen it's in its atmosphere there were microbes but the oxygen level was quite low and then it suddenly rose after two billion years half of its life so not finding oxygen doesn't mean there is no life and then if you find oxygen it can be produced by many natural processes like breaking water molecules or other things so it will never be conclusive how can you make a conclusive statement if you find industrial pollution in the same atmosphere you just search for cfcs these are the molecules produced by refrigerating systems by industries if you find evidence for that there is no way that nature can make these very complex molecules naturally so i say to the mainstream of astronomy use the same instruments and motivate them by this question of can we detect industrial pollution and i wrote a paper but and the thing is the public is extremely interested in this question and the public funds science so how can the scientific community shy away from a question that it can address with existing technology you know when the public is very interested in that how can there be a taboo on this question that's the thing that really puzzles me now you know i wasn't working in this area until the last five years or so i was working in studying black holes studying the universe and i came across a number of ideas that led me in into this rabbit hole into this subject now i'm about to publish this book at a popular level but also a textbook six months later that describes all the signs that we have related to the search for life outside earth far from earth and i'm just amazed that it's not part of the mainstream you know it's really surprising to me and i think it's inappropriate because you look at physics theoretical physics there are lots of speculative ideas in it like people talk about extra dimensions the multiverse you know super symmetry super string theory all of these have no evidence to their credit you know there is no experimental test not even thought about you know like in the next decade the next two decades but these ideas are part of the mainstream so you see physicists giving each other awards and doing intellectual gymnastics you know just demonstrating that they're smart and to me that's an unhealthy situation in physics you know you can do it in mathematics where it's completely detached from any application to reality but in physics we are supposed to describe reality and yet you have this intellect so it's as if the physics community some parts of it decided that the most important task is to demonstrate that you're smart and that is really strange to me because you know we're supposed to understand nature not show that we are smart catch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back catalog jre videos on spotify including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on spotify you can listen to the jre in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data cost all for free spotify is absolutely free you don't have to have a premium account to watch new jre episodes you just need to search for the jre on your spotify app go to spotify now to get this full episode of the joe rogan experience

Channel: PowerfulJRE

Views: 1,991,362

Keywords: Joe Rogan Experience, JRE, Joe, Rogan, podcast, MMA, comedy, stand, up, funny, Freak, Party

Id: Fafk-6i37jI

Length: 7min 40sec (460 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021