Neil deGrasse Tyson On If We Are Living In A Simulated World, Future Of AI, + US Paris Agreement

the ever fascinating Neil deGrasse Tyson joins us from Norway I'm an educator so when I see people making decisions that seem under-informed to me then I say maybe they didn't learn this in school and so if you're going to pull out of the Paris climate Accord it must mean that you don't fully understand the long term consequences of that at every moment where you see anti-science sentiment or to science denialism there is a resistance movement that rises up to confront it so it's not going unanswered and I think that's hopeful going forward it's hard to argue against the possibility that all of us are not just the creation of some kid in parents basement programming up a world for their own entertainment Plus do you have a secret talent you could do that I am a great fan of all next on Larry King now [Music] welcome to Larry King now we're in beautiful Trondheim Norway at the star mass festival here in this fabulous city and for the third time we welcome the inevitable Neil deGrasse Tyson to the show astrophysicist author great communicator of science and now the recipient of the Stephen Hawking medal his newest book the runaway bestseller is astrophysics for people in a hurry he's surprised at how well love books doing yeah I think so well I'm delighted I should say any time had it showed up anywhere on the bestseller list that's just a triumph for science whether or not I wrote it but for it to show up there and debut at number one on the New York Times list was like whoa among all of these sort of political memoirs and there's always typically a sports biography and there's or celebrity tell-all and there it is and it landed I said maybe there's a more of an appetite for science out there than we've admitted to ourselves we're both here for the Stormers festival I spoke a couple of panels you were on one of the panel's how do you explain this festival it's a combination what the Stars and jazz and rock we have start starless as a word is the mashup of stars and music and the organizer of a Garrick israelian he's a fellow astrophysicist by the way but it works in Europe he he's good friends with Brian May the lead guitarist of Queen and I don't know if you know Brian May has a PhD in astrophysics and this festival is a reminder that perhaps creativity is not so divided between science and art and in fact I think you could argue strongly that science and art are the greatest expressions of human creativity that civilization has before I'm amazed that the kind of people here when an amazing for and you you got the Stephen Hawking Medal now I have interviewed Stephen three or four times what did it mean to you to get that medal well so we're reminded that Stephen Hawking is not only a brilliant scientist but he himself has committed so much of his life and effort to bringing the universe down to earth we I guess we can start that time clock with a brief history of time a runaway bestseller from Beck I guess was it the 80s or if not early 90s and he's done TV shows he's written multiple books ALS with ALS or whatever version he has that we can still live as long as he does but obviously he's a quadriplegic right now he he guides his communication through his eyes because he can still control what his eyes look at there's a screen in front of him and so it's just stunning that first he has the stamina for all that he creates and produces but also to be to receive a medal in his name I I think the honor of any award is established by the legacy of either who created it or others who have won it before you and so I don't I don't take this lightly I take it as action as an affirmation that somebody was paying attention are you pushing against the tide isn't there a kind of large anti intellectual movement in America yeah and I wonder if it was always there but now with excellent search engines you can find everyone else who's just as anti-science as you and and band together and have you end up looking like you're larger than you actually are one thing that is promising is that at almost every at every moment where you see anti-science sentiment or de science denialism there is a resistance movement that rises up to confront it so almost every place you see it so it's not going unanswered and I think that's hopeful going forward are you encouraged by the fact that the Trump administration didn't cut the budget for NASA well there was some there was some weirdness in there yes the net the budget was not cut we were delighted to hear that he's a fan of space but there was talk at some point of will keep the budget there or top it off but we have to remove earth science from it and this is it had that actually had appeared in that original charter back in 1958 that it would study earth as well as the planets and the stars so if you take away earth and earth is the system that supports us our life and our livelihood I don't know what the consequences of that so so you have to watch the the was the cheap and clothing had has that expression know I'm a city kids me do I know that you know that one a wolf in sheep's clothing so my hope was always with the Trump administration he's it he's a businessman businesspeople you expect them to make decisions that are sort of simple and blunt regarding money for example and any good businessperson knows that you need a healthy flow of money into the R&D part of your company to assure survival going and competitiveness going forward so it seems to me he ought to be responsive to an argument such as by the way investments in science technology engineering and math the STEM fields as a nation will help America Inc to thrive and compete in the out-years when the fruits of these investments arrive and that's a business State forget the politics you can make that just as a simple business argument and my hope is that some part of him can listen to that you said recently if I and my advisors had never learned what science is or why it works I've considered pulling out of the Paris climate Accords - are you saying that it was ridiculous to pull out of those I know I'm an educator that was a tweet that you recited there I'm an educator so when I see people making decisions that seem under-informed to me then I say maybe they didn't learn this in school or no one taught them after school and so if you're going to pull out of the Paris climate Accord it must mean that you don't fully understand the long-term consequences of that I'm thinking and if you don't but where do we learn those long-term consequences of fluency in science and technology and the causes and effects of things the the consequences of your actions and the consequences of your in actions and people hardly ever talk about inaction because what is what what does a journalist - what did you do and what consequences came from it rarely do they say what didn't you do and what consequences came from and that's not a story people don't write about what didn't happen relative to what then happens later so so my sense was that maybe not enough people who were making that decision knew or understood how science works and what it is by the way if they did understand science and still made that decision for me that's actually a little more understandable they just said we choose not to care but at least be honest and say that because that that takes the argument in a whole other regime I'll be right back with Neil deGrasse Tyson right after this his book astrophysics for people in a hurry we're at the star mass festival in Norway don't go away back when Neil deGrasse Tyson were at the starless Festival in the beautiful city what a city this is beautiful I'm Norway you recently tweeted we all want to make America great again but that won't happen until we first make America smart again are you saying the Trump isn't smart all right I don't I don't invest much energy criticizing politicians politicians are the duly elected representatives of a an electorate that that that put them there so you can say all you want about the politician but there's still the matter of all the people who voted for him and so right so so that starters now you look around in the last few years and you see the rise of people's our earth is flat or there is no climate change or and I'm think something's not clicking out there there's some absence of knowledge and wisdom and insight that can come to you if you as a minimum understand for example what science is and how and why it works because that is shaping civilization before so it's I so I said that but as an educator if you're smart I don't even like the word smart I prefer it made a better tweet but my preferred word would be you can't make America great again until it until America becomes curious again about what we don't know about the unknown and when you're curious there's something that's not quite right you investigate it and then you find the answer yourself you become a self driven learner that everyone rises up on their own on the wings of curiosity that we all had as children and we have to reinvigorate that as adults and then when someone says something to you that's a little off you say I want to check on that I'm going to investigate it you don't get handed your opinions by others is religion your enemy no no I mean it's there are factions of most religions especially the the monotheistic religions that that make statements about the physical world in particular you have genesis in the bible for example and if you want to take Genesis as literal truth ya got a problem with you you you don't understand the actual universe if you're referencing biblical Genesis as your understanding of nature but that's not the majority of religious people you have an entire enlightened class of religious people who for whom religion provides their spiritual fulfillment and their spiritual enlightenment and they're not referencing their Bible the Torah the court they're not going back to it to get an answer to their science quiz so they're drawing a line in the sand in fact what's the number it's 60% of scientists in the United States pray to God pray oh I'd say so excuse me 40% of Western scientists and that spread goes below then and above that obviously that's just the average but that's not zero that's my point if it's not zero and you're productive scientists then the answer is there does not have to be conflict between the two because empirically there are people for whom there is so that's the answer Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have sounded the alarm on artificial intelligence mr. musk called super intelligence humanity's greatest threat you agree yeah I'm I am fearless of AI and I'm an outlier and I recognize this and you might even say well if I studied the problem more deeply I would be as afraid as others perhaps but in my life I've probably written 10,000 lines of computer code I have some street cred and the just conducting the science that I've done in my life what I can tell you is when we imagine these AIS we're thinking of some humanoid thing as though the human form is something to emulate no no if you have AR you're gonna task AI in very specific ways if you go back to the era of the Jetsons here's what they would imagine Oh instead of having you drive the car have your robot drive the car they're not thinking have the car drive the car so the car then is an expression of AI at some level and so we we parcel the AI the Hubble telescope is an expression of AI we program it and it does it they're all worried about the general intelligence AI where it can deduce that make decisions that you never programmed it to make and I think that's the kind of cool thing if it can do that I don't have a problem with it but and if it gets out of line if it judges humans are a virus in this world in need of extermination in America you could just shoot it I can unplug it I mean I'm just bring it on I'm ready for and on top of that they're assuming in some parts of it that a I will achieve consciousness and thereby help be self driven but we don't even understand our own consciousness you're gonna tell me one create a machine that on its own achieves consciousness when we don't even understand it in ourselves um no stop making so much sense I'm chill I'm totally chill with with is that even still a hip thing to say I'll be right back black guy from the Bronx Jewish guy from Brooklyn sitting here - Trondheim Norway we'll be right back go back we're at the Stormers festival in Trondheim Norway if you ever get a chance to come here to do so we were Neil deGrasse Tyson and the book is astrophysics for people in a hurry and he won the coveted Stephen Hawking medal great honor and a great watch goes with it oh yeah yeah they give me a watch you got to ask me what time it is no one does that anymore because everyone has their own I still do it you got I gotta watch it I look at the white are you surprising your celebrity I'm I'm yes yes I'm surprised I'm more intrigued by it it's how I would say it it happened slowly enough so that it wasn't one of these overnight things and so here's I ended up measuring it not how many times you're in the paper or how big is your name and I measured it by how many strangers in a day want to come up and get your autograph in the old days today it would be a selfie it started out maybe five a month maybe 20 years ago five a month and then it became two or three a day and then 10 a day and then it's just so you just watch it go up now it's several hundred a day and for me yes so I lose privacy with that but it's self-inflicted right I could just walk away tomorrow or never have done it so I can't sit here and complain about it but what I can say is that there's a side effect where I now feel obligated to be a little bit of groomed before I leave in the morning so I shave a little more I my clothes are a little more pressed I smell a little better because once you like hug for a selfie you know it's out of respect for the picture they're trying to get with you so in extra 15 minutes a day has been subtracted from my life for this bit of vanity what part of your study of astrophysics did Stephen Hawking play Stephen Hawking is a physicist he's best known for work concerning the universe there's a lot of physics that has nothing to do with the universe Lord broadly speaking so I there's surely people who have the interest in energy to do what I'm doing in whatever is their field but maybe the press calls them a little less often because they don't feel that urge because I can say well the universe of the universe flinched yesterday there was an eclipse to black holes collided we discovered exoplanets there might be microorganisms in the hidden oceans beneath the frozen surface of Jupiter's moon Europa these are news stories that cascade down from our telescopes and from our laboratories and from our computers and I don't know if I'm biased but it seems to me that the public has a deep curiosity for what's going on when they look up and Hawking contributed and yes so he he made major discoveries related to black holes he basically brought black holes into into a next generation of understanding in fact there's a whole there's a kind of energy that ISM emanates from a black hole that bears his name was called Hawking radiation and if you where in Norway I guess they give the peace Nobel Prize here but the Nobel Prize it's he's surely done enough work to get a Nobel Prize you would think yeah I mean if he doesn't get one I'd be disappointed but I you know what I think I think he's transcended the Nobel Prizes little bit same with Einstein if you talk about Einstein he did this the relativity you don't then say did you know he won a Nobel Prize that's a climactic what he actually accomplished at that level so he might transcend all Awards he could possibly be given we do a few a few only new questions just a little fun well who would can i I can look silly if I don't you know it'd be anything you like okay who would you trade places with for a day Oh in every way Isaac Newton I'd want to I want to feel how he thinks about the world because I can write I can read what he's written about how he thinks but I want to get inside his head because he was plugged into the operations of nature like no one else do you have a secret talent [Music] you could do that I am a great fan of calligraphy well it's a guilty pleasure you have I am a foodie and my wife and I we go to restaurants slightly more expensive than we should be paying just to see if there's a dish that might reveal itself to us that we would then emulate and I buy the wine that's slightly more expensive than I it should be because maybe it'll be something transcendent so the guilty pleasure is reaching a little further into the pleasures of life what should we all be paying more attention to the consequences of our action not only on others but on the fate of civilization itself audist fan encounter someone came up to me and wanted me to sign a frozen pig heart you asked you asked what don't look at me like that you asked the strangest happens to me all about what is so unusual about that Vol'jin pig heart there's a million of them here on nine so it was it was shrink-wrapped so I was be signing the plastic casing of it and I think it was a medical student that I don't know what they were doing but that was I think that was like one of the artists there are other odd things but there's the artist Vidya you think there's a medical student I think it was an inmate something you wish you were better at oh I wish I was better at music I mean I'm a really great listener and I'm a very careful listener and I love music that if I could compose music perform music maybe as a first step can possibly compose it later in another life I would I would be the librettist for Broadway musicals oh yeah strangest job you ever had - for the full package of paying the college tuition there would be a work-study program and you get a grant and alone and in there I cleaned dormitory bathrooms for a year and a half and what was a little odd is I'm cleaning the bathrooms of fellow students and so that was just a lot of school that was up it was at Harvard they're clean bathrooms are housing you have a scholarship yes I did well no the school so I wasn't poor enough to be completely scholarship covered so if they judge how much money you have in your capacity to pay they say we'll take this much from you and we'll cobble together the rest of the tuition by the rest is I have later learned that they no longer have students cleaning the bathrooms of other students it just it creates an awkward dynamic in your social life and the college event of the town so that's so it's not odd but it was just for for what it was it was a little weird is there something you long believed to be true and then realized wasn't you know what it is I'll tell you what was eyes I calculated this I thought it would take nine seconds to cook a pizza on the windowsill and if you are on the planet Venus because Venus is 900 degrees Fahrenheit take a pizza put on a whistle close the window cooks in nine seconds I calculated this the temperature Venus the density of the air and then I find out I was off there's a physicist turned chef who said you missed a term in your calculation there's the radiative energy from the air itself just the radiative not just the touching of the pizza with the molecules but photons infrared photons coming in so that way it'll heat the pizza in like two seconds instead of nine seconds so I said dad miss that I was I I was so sure about I'm proud of my calculation and I just got out geeked in the moment how lonely your lives be right back more Neil deGrasse I don't but we'll be right back dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson in the book is astrophysics four people in a hurry with the Stormers Festival in Norway we have many social media questions for you all sure go for it terror it morosa if you got the chance to fly away tomorrow with some aliens to explore the universe's father's corner without the chance of coming back would you go ooh if I bring my family yeah we'll just bring the family and not come back no button but if I couldn't bring my family no I would stay I don't love Trump's exploration at least for me Yolanda Luna go Vandergrift what do you think is the best things we as humans can do to slow down climate change or better reverse it you know there's a people who thought seriously about this because you're told so many different things paper or plastic electric or a carpool or not and and some of that can just be confusing because if you're if your heart is in the right place you want to do the right thing and so I don't I didn't have the expertise to compile this but they did forgive me I forgot the name of the book but it is a list a ranking of the things you can do in order so that you can have the maximal effect based on what your your habits are and from everything I've seen and heard and read a change of diet can make a huge difference in and eating locally rather than you know what you know where does how far away does your food come from for example be great if we had farms on rooftops oh my gosh if buildings have their own built in farms systems imagine the transportation would be not wouldn't be necessary that's one of the biggest consumers the biggest carbon footprints out there is transportation for Commerce and if half the commerce is in on your roof food you got it Gavi Galindo why don't you run for Congress we need people like you thank you for that I for me the issue is not how scientifically literate your congressperson is it's how scientifically litter is the electorate if you can get a scientifically literate electorate I think it would be impossible for them to put someone in Congress who was not also that and once you do that you can transform a country overnight Alta is 99 like mr. musk thinks are we living in simulation I find it hard to argue against that possibility meaning meaning you look at our computing power today and you say I have the power to program a world inside of a computer well imagine in the future where you have even more power than that you can create characters that have for example free will or their own perception of free will so this is a world and I program in the laws that govern that world that world will have its own laws of physics and chemistry and biology now you're a character in that world and you think you have free will and say I want to invent a computer so you do hey I want to create a world in my computer and then that world creates a world in its computer and then you have simulations all the way down so now you lay out all these universes and throw a dart which of these universes are you most likely to hit the original one that started it or the countless simulations the dotter simulations that unfolded thereafter you're gonna hit a simp you're going to hit one of the simulations so statistically based on that argument which first appeared by a philosopher from Oxford named Nick Bostrom back in the 1990s right when computers were becoming real enough to think this through it's it's hard to argue against the possibility that all of us are not just the creation of some kid in a parents basement programming up a world for their own entertainment and then every time something weird happens in the world some disruptive leader takes charge and I wonder if that programmers just got bored and had to stir the pot so it's throw somebody in there just to just for their own entertainment for me that's some of the best efforts live in a simulation because this happens every time there's peace and tranquility in the world but if it true what can we do about it if like the Truman movie other was that we're in yeah well he can try to escape by going in the Truman movie to go through the barrier yeah but yeah if you're if you were programmed by somebody yeah you know there's nothing you can so what difference does it make if I'm programmed by someone I guess is I don't know it I guess it doesn't make any difference at all Neil I I would I would if I could go one place I would go in like to be in your mind for one day just to think about the things you think about them wonder about this no okay I think you're you're I'm flattered but before this interview we spent some time together you know last night over dinner and I'd never really spent that much quality time with you you are as curious a person as there ever has been in this world and to be curious you have to also be open to learning something new which you have been and are and all I am is a curious kid who happens to occupy an adult body and when you do that you're you're a scientist so you're an honorary scientist based on your curiosity alone I have one far I asked Stephen Hawking what is something he doesn't know about and he said women oh uh why and this is the greatest question mankind has never answered that Neil Tyson can answer maybe why does peanut butter go so well with jellies yeah I think think about it astrophysics yeah you know know so I thought about this I'm sure you had long ago long ago and I think what we have found is that in the traditional senses that we think of a taste yes no sweet sour salty and now we have the fifth one umami alright which is stop which transcends the other four knob you want to keep it simple and simple why this peanut butter goes so well with Joe because peanut butter is salty and jelly is sweet and each of those titillate us we need salt to live we need we need sweets which has high calorie content and it's a survival mechanism to be attracted to those two features this is why we like peanut butter and jelly that is the meaning of life I guess neil degrasse tyson his book is astrophysics for people in a hurry we're both in Trondheim Norway believe it thanks for joining [Music] you

Channel: Larry King

Views: 493,124

Rating: 4.7850118 out of 5

Keywords: agreement, ai, artificial, change, climate, degrasse, education, elon, hawking, intelligence, larrykingcid, living, musk, paris, simulation, stephen, trump, tyson

Id: 5mDzcxy2KVI

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018