Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss LIVE Onstage at the Orpheum Theater | Origins Project in 2022

[Music] hello and welcome to the origins podcast I'm your host Lawrence Krauss this is a special week for the podcast because uh in November the origins project Foundation hosted its first public event series a series which had been long delayed because of the pandemic and the associate events associated with the pandemic it was a two night event and we're going to release the videos of both nights and today is the first the first of those which involves a dialogue between me and Richard Dawkins Richard and I as many of you know have done many dialogues over the years but what surprised us uh in this case was was the novelty of of this particular dialogue I wanted to talk to Richard about his book books to furnish a life which is uh a series of writings he's made about books and other authors and and including myself and dialogues with myself and we discussed those things in detail and it was a complete departure from our previous dialogues and and we both came off stage very excited and uh and the response of the audience was was remarkable it was filmed by uh same film crew that made our film The unbelievers so you'll be able to see it with five cameras in high def and it's been edited so it's a very special visual addition to the podcast as well as an audio version and I hope you'll enjoy it and and find it a fresh new take uh uh uh on on ideas that matter to both of us so please enjoy this dialogue between me and Richard Dawkins that was held in November at the beautiful Orpheum Theater in in Phoenix and uh and you can see once again from the images how beautiful the theater is it's appropriate also that at the same time as I I announce this dialogue with Richard Dawkins that I announced that we are the origins project Foundation is going to release the general public open up to the general public on March 23rd uh bookings for our newest trip to the Galapagos Islands uh made famous of course by Richard Dawkins and we'll have several guest speakers as part of this uh Voyage to Ecuador the Galapagos Islands including friends Duvall and Elizabeth Colbert who've both been on this podcast before were both remarkable in their breadth of knowledge in a variety of areas and and attendees on that eight day long cruise and and land trip will be able to spend time with both of of these authors uh myself and some other special guests so I hope you'll consider joining us again March 23rd is when um bookings will go on sale for the general public uh previous Travelers will be able to get an events booking before that and uh I hope we'll we'll get to meet many of you uh there as well the boat is holds only 36 people so it'll be a limited size which is what we like to do so people can have an intimate experience and we have a lot of special events planned for that period so I hope you'll consider going to the origins project website uh www.originsproject.org and uh and and look at the trip and consider joining it and of course I hope you'll consider subscribing to the podcast through critical mass our sub stack site because the funds from subscriptions go to supporting all the efforts of the origins project Foundation as well as the podcast and of course you can watch the pot this podcast without any advertising Breaks by watching it on on critical mass and uh or you can watch it of course on YouTube as one of our many YouTube subscribers or listen to it on any podcast listing site either way I think you'll find this new dialogue between me Richard Dawkins or at least I hope you'll find it a breath of fresh air as I did take care foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you one second thank you gotta take a picture [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] don't move [Applause] okay thank you so very very much it's it's so great it it is a wonderful night is so for me can you turn the lights up a little bit so I can see people it's it's uh it's wonderful for me to see you here it's great to be back in Phoenix it's been a long time and uh and it's wonderful to see people from all over the place and I want to thank you we uh we uh met in in earlier before the show people have come here from from Seattle San Diego Tucson Texas Denver I don't know where else but where Michigan everywhere they came from everywhere every state every country is represented in this room right now which is amazing and and Richard and I got to spend I'm really particularly happy that we have a lot of students here and we and Richard and I got to spend uh yeah it's great it really means a lot to us there we go now I can see people I um we got to spend time with with a number of student groups beforehand and it was nice to get a chance to chat with them we got to spend time with a wonderful teacher Zach King who brought his to his students and and and uh and it means a lot to me because when when I used to teach at ASU Zach used to come in as a student and ask me questions in my office and it's so nice to see that he's inspiring a whole new generation of students but we um we also then we got to speak to and and it's a and I should say it's Apache Junction High School right just make clear okay we met students from bioscience let's come on okay Cesar Chavez oh okay you win and what other schools I forgot shout it out which High School there we go any others and you [Applause] and at University in Chile right okay well that's that wins too um okay well thank you for being here and I hope you'll have uh we'll have a fun night and as I say it means a lot to me and and I'll talk about the origins board who've worked so hard to to make this happen it's been a long time coming with a lot of work and a lot of people what before I want to start talking obviously what I want to do is is introduce my special friend and guest tonight um Richard Dawkins he Richard is I first met Richard um probably 15 to 20 years ago when I asked a nasty question when he was lecturing and um and he said it wasn't the average nasty question and so we started to talk and we and it was a meeting and and we had a chat later and had a dialogue which later on led to a piece by the Two of Us in in Scientific American but it also led to us being asked by Stanford to do a dialogue together and Richard at the time uh was adamant about the fact that we didn't want a moderator and um because he said they only get in the way and I agree with him actually and so we tried it out and it turned out to work and as some of you have seen the unbelievers and other things you know we've done a lot of dialogues around the world and I'll talk about that in a second but Richard Dawkins does not really need an introduction he's certainly probably the not only one of the most famous scientists in the world but one of the most accomplished science writers I was going to say popularizers of Science and that's that's true but his um his book The Selfish Gene is in my opinion perhaps the best piece of science writing that's ever been written by anyone in history and I know it's had a huge influence rightfully so and it's in my life getting to know Richard has had a big influence and and uh it's been a pure joy and I'm gonna call him out right now Richard notification this is not our first rodeo and um and we have done as you've seen we've done dialogues around the world and Richard in particular but my two it's we we never want to do the same one it's kind of tempting and so we try and find different things to talk about and um what I thought I'd do tonight as a way to guarantee in some sense that we talk about new things is to talk about is to base it on one of Richard's two new books and um this is a book uh by Richard called books to furnish a life reading and writing about science and it's uh and books do furnish your life I know that one of the students early on asked me and Richard what what got us interested in science and certainly for both of us I I know for me it was reading books by scientists that really made all the difference and it's one of the reasons why I write books now and it's a lovely book and I and it prompted me to have some thoughts and I thought we'd therefore base this discussion on more or less to start with at least on that book because it's new and and what it is is a com a compilation of some articles by Richard in about other books about uh individuals and also uh transcripts of conversations that Richard has had and uh I have to say um one with me and and and then also the after he was kind enough to write the as many of you know the afterward to my book uh a universe from nothing and that's in here as well um but that's not the reason we're talking about this book by the way um uh but it's about it's about science and culture and and and I think that's a perfect way to to begin this because that's what really the origins project Foundation is all about it's about science and culture but the fact that science is a part of our culture not just not just a small part of our culture but it's central part of our culture the other day I was I was speaking to to some grouper and and it occurred to me I never thought it's for but life is an experiment when I realized if life is an experiment then then science should be a central part of life because it's a central part of every experiment our whole existence is is trial and error learning how to make it through our our brief time in Our Moment In The Sun and and and while you are a selected set of people who are I think recognize the importance of Science and culture that's one of the central themes and it's certainly a central theme of this book so I I thought I'd begin um the first part of this book in fact is about the literature of Science and you make a really interesting point that too often science is not science writing is not thought of literature and in fact you point out that uh there the Nobel Prize in literature has been given a few times to it's always almost always given a novelist and fiction writers almost uniquely which I'll ask you to comment on but a few times it's also been given a non-fiction writers uh Winston Churchill for example um and and uh you mentioned someone who's it's never been given to a real scientist you say The Only arguable Exception is Henry bergson I have to ask you why that's an exception all right boxing was a philosopher I suppose who counts as a scientist in many ways and and he's regarded as a scientist was regarded as a scientist in his own time um he believed that life could be explained by what he called an Ela vital and Julian Huxley satirized that by saying he could explain the emotion of a train I think it was it was driven by Elon local motif it explains absolutely nothing yeah that's the point um and and similarly a long Vitality explains nothing whatever um you have to be scientific you have to be reductionist actually you have to have to explain what it is about life that actually drives it actually makes it do the things that it does just to repeat that there's a Life Force is is that that is not science it's bad science and um I I think he's the only recipient of a Nobel Prize in um in literature who who is classified by people as a scientist but Bertrand Russell yeah I was going to say Bertrand Russell isn't mentioned your book and Ultra muscle classifies as sort of a scientist Richard Russell was a brilliant mathematician and uh had a certainly a scientific point of view he had a scientific way of thinking yeah um and uh Bertrand Russell would feel at home in any scientific Gathering of course yeah so so um I would call him a scientist but yeah I was surprised him it wasn't in the book yes I he's much more of a scientists but it is true to fair to say that he didn't he didn't win the Nobel Prize in literature for his science writing however he really wrote it he was a for the work he wrote about peace and and and and history and and so that and and philosophy which somehow classifies as being worth the Nobel Prize where science doesn't matter the way we classify books into fiction and non-fiction I mean it isn't that rather a curious division yeah um why would the whole even if 50 percent of literature is about things that never happened but might but then you know that's what science is about often things that might happen true and and that that's you know as a theoretical physicist I've written about things many things that never happen I have to say but that's a um the uh uh I I have to ask you this for for many years in physics I was a nominator for the Nobel Prize but and it's used it's supposed to be secret but I would when you no not that I was a nominator who you the the the process of what goes on is supposed to be a secret you're not supposed to know who's been nominated although they often advertise the people in peace for some reason but I have to ask you this because when I when I was reading this the first thing I wondered whether was when I started to think of what piece of literature might be worth a Nobel Prize in literature I thought of The Selfish Gene and I wonder do you know if you know do you know if you've ever been nominated I was going to ask you I think I probably should not answer that question okay okay I I was only able to do physics otherwise well I think you've gathered what from my yeah exactly okay yes you gave the answer that's good well I'll I'll keep my fingers crossed um you give a piece of science writing in this book which is by actually it means a lot to me it's by Sir James jeans Who was one of the scientists I read as a young person who he wrote a book called physics and philosophy which turned me on to physics actually and for a while uh to philosophy but I over I grew out of that um uh and uh anyway so he wrote a book in 1930 called The Mysterious Universe which was a big big bestseller at least in Britain and it's interesting and I will give a little plug because I as you know because you've read it and commented and helped me with it I have a new book coming out um next year which is in the United Kingdom it's called the known unknowns and in the U.S it's called the edge of knowledge because the known unknowns is a quote from Donald Rumsfeld and and then my U.S Publishers felt that it wouldn't wasn't appropriate to use it but um but they asked me but the British publisher who I first talked about this asked me if if I could write a book in this in the spirit of the Mysterious Universe which which I then read but here's a here's a passage from it if you really don't think of science as literature listen to this standing on our microscopic fragment of a grain of sand we attempt to discover the nature and purpose of the universe which surrounds our home in space and time our first impression is something akin to Terror we find the universe terrifying because of its vast meaning meaningless distances terrifying because it's inconceivably long vistas of time which dwarf human history to the twinkling of an eye terrifying because of our extreme loneliness and because of the material and significance of our home and space a millionth part of a grain of sand out of all the sea sand in the world but above all else we find the universe terrifying because it appears to be indifferent to life like our own emotion ambition and achievement art and religion all seem to equally foreign to its plan which is just a beautiful piece of writing and and did you read that book when there's something that that's something that that I often meet when people um uh worry about the scientific view of the universe and and of life as well actually that it is cold and empty and terrifying and in many ways it is but so what um that's the way it is you better face up too yeah you can't um you can't say oh it can't be true because I don't want it to be true um well you can and a lot of people do I think someone was running for governor in Arizona who I think I think thought that I think anyway any but but like is okay well I wasn't going to talk politics but I violated that um but life is terrifying too but that's what part of it saddens me in a way because that's part of what makes life exciting is the fact that you never know if if you're living an interesting life you never know what tomorrow's going to bring and for some people that's terrifying but for for others it should be exhilarating because who would want to know what what was going to happen I mean who would want to know what what everything that was going to happen I don't think that doesn't that's the most terrify I mean more terrifying is the feeling that we are the product possibly on this planet alone of um the blind laws of physics of milliards and milliards and milliards of particles playing their infinite game of Billiards and billiards and billiards um it's uh and yet those blind forces acting through the darwinian agency have managed to produce after a period of four billion years produce us I mean I think that's an astonishing thought it is it but it should but I think it depends on how you're wired for me it's it's exhilarating to think that I'm here by accident oh yes and because it just means that every moment is such a lucky accident yeah we're lucky to be here yes and well by accident in one sense in in another sense not because natural selection is very much not an accident but the fact that you and I are here yeah everybody in here is a an accident of stupendous magnitude I mean just think of the the luck of the particular sperm that had that cons I mean out of out of Millions yeah you know the oldest Huxley poem about about that if you can remember it I'd love to hear you recite poetry a million million spermatozoa all of them alive out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah their hope to survive and of that billion minus one might have chance to be Shakespeare another Newton a new dumb but the one was me shame to have ousted you're better thus taking Ark while the others remained outside better for all of us forward homunculus if you'd quietly died [Laughter] see I told you it's great I could just listen to your website poetry the that actually is a good segue because one of the um the the statements you've made and and in fact it's a central part of one yearbook is that is the is it science is the Poetry of reality and and which is a beautiful a beautiful sentiment if you want to elaborate on that at all or well I think it ties in with what you were talking about earlier it's part of culture the the the the thought of the vastness of space and the improbability of Life beginning at all and given that life taking the course that it does that say supremely poetic thought and the quotation from James jeans expresses it very well um or was anything ever written by Carl Sagan you could take us the Poetry of reality absolutely um any others some of the uh we'll maybe get to some because in your you actually talk about several people you admire a lot I know you talk about Peter medavares what do you tell people about the Peterman well because they may not have he wrote I first knew about with a book he wrote called Memoirs of a thinking that's right um Peter Meadowvale was a Nobel prize-winning uh medical scientist he was trained as a biologist at Oxford like me and he became a medical scientist and he was very very big in Immunology but he was also a superb essayist wonderful Style not so much a poetic style it was more a kind of lofty Patrician elegant Style um one of my favorite of his essays is a book review of the phenomenon of Man by Pierre tayar deshada was touted as a great French intellectual at one time and um It's a Wonderful it's it's the most it's the best negative book review ever written I think it's it's um just to give I could quote one one phrase I think he asked the question how how have people come to be taken in by tayar dashada because many people were and he says um we have to remember that the spread of tertiary education has produced a large population of people of Highly cultured tastes who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought that's a typical piece of medowa wit I mean I just remembered another one he began a lecture by saying I hope I shall not be thought ungracious if I say at the outset that nothing on Earth would have induced me to attend the kind of lecture you probably think I'm about to give I love that yeah well I hope Yeah well yeah exactly and I hope we surprised but you know what I don't know if you remember but you were one of the people that take was taken in by Pierre Chardonnay oh yes we talked about the unbelievers yes I was I was a student and I read this book and it is um prose poetry it's beautiful it's translated from the French so I would presume that it's the same in the French it's it kind of evokes a kind of dreamy feeling of of Oneness with the universe that that kind of thing um I think Meadowvale is perhaps a bit too negative about it I mean it is good prose poetry but it's it doesn't actually say anything but in terms of but I I thought it was it it was what what I don't want to use the word woke um it's what caused you to rethink your own view of religion wasn't it yeah well yes I mean I I what it caused me to realize was that I was that I was an idiot um and and um I I we use that example sometimes when when people say uh it's no good telling people that their religious belief is stupid because they'll just react negatively to that you have to woo them in fact that was my question when we first met that that was your point um and it's a very good point uh but but in counter to that I say well I didn't mind being told I was stupid in fact um because I was and so I changed my mind and I think we all need to change our mind um as I think John Mayer on Kane said um what does he say when when the when the evidence changes I change my mind what do you do sir well that would be that that's that would be a wonderful thing if that happened nowadays it should be a mantra for it should be a meme actually is what it should be and uh speaking of memes I told those high school students who are I mean probably already impressed with Richard array but then I told him this is the man that invented Meme and I could see their eyes go wow but they didn't know what it meant um speaking of science writers actually Richard and I didn't met last night and a number of the people are here we talked about Richard actually did a reading from from this book but um we talked about a wonderful scientist who was also a science writer Fred Hoyle sir Fred oil and he wrote what is arguably I think you and I agree perhaps one of the best science fiction stories ever written called the black cloud um talk tell us explain to the people a little bit what the story is about because um has anybody read the black cloud like one one or two you should yeah um it it's um it it it's about a a cloud of of gas which appears and and goes into orbit around the sun and it it causes great havoc and destruction uh because it blots out the Sun and things like that and um uh the first thing that I noticed about it which is the the point I made in the in the uh forward to the book that I wrote what was that you learn a lot of science from this book so it's not just a good story you learn a lot of Science and the first thing you learn is that sometimes scientific discoveries are made from two completely different uh converging sources in this case the black cloud was first spotted uh by a telescope by a young astronomer who who noticed a bit of the sky being blocked being blotted out so that was the observational evidence entirely independently um from this observational evidence in California in Cambridge in England um a mathematician [Music] um deduced from movements of the planets planets were in the wrong place exactly the way by the way the planet Neptune was discovered um so planets were in the wrong place and so he calculated that there must exist an object a foreign object at a certain position and sent a telegram to uh the it was foggy in England of course and so he couldn't look look out into the sky um so they sent a telegram to get to California saying you know does there exist so and so coordinates as it was this this right declination that um and um when The Californians read the telegram having just seen this thing the words of the telegram seemed to swell to a gigantic size or magnificent piece of drama there so two different ways of of discovering the same thing that's that was point one then when they started to work out the nature of the black cloud namely that it was that actually a living organism of far superhuman capabilities the process by which they worked out that it was living it was a beautiful lesson object lesson in the way scientists work by making predictions and then testing them and then another bit of science that I learned when I read the book as a student was that [Music] um information Theory the idea that information is a commodity which can be transduced from one medium to another and it still retains its its quality because the uh there's a dramatic scene where there's a young woman pianist who plays Beethoven Sonata to the black cloud where they worked out to see the city to living thing and it absolutely adores Beethoven um although it obviously hasn't got ears but it doesn't matter because the information goes out in in the form of um pulses or something to the to the black cloud um and so it can still appreciate Beethoven accepted it asks if they would play it at I don't know 10 times the speed because it's it's too slow [Laughter] um and then finally the the the the the the book ends with what the black cloud calls the Deep problems which sends shivers down my spine the Deep problems are kind of thing Lawrence writes about what is the origin of the universe uh while the laws of physics have exactly the form that they do the why are the fundamental constants what they are and um so I've always been intrigued by the Deep problems although not being a physicist I can't really understand them well now yeah that's true um uh but why there's a few things that can come to mind when you say that you read it as a student why didn't that want to make you make you want to be a physicist sister and so on it's a it's a biological book I mean the cloud is that the black cloud is a issue in fact what are the questions they ask is um why do you the black cloud consider yourself to be a single in a single individual because you're this huge diffuse cloud of gas with radio communicating within the cloud and the and the cloud kind of makes the point that if all of us could communicate telepathically brain to brain with the same speed as we can communicate within our own brains then we would cease to be individual separate individuals we would be one great big Collective individual you know what we'd be but you won't know when I tell you the Borg do you know what the Borg is I know you I don't I don't take the illusion I'm sorry to say and but the other thing that's neat about the fact that it was foggy in the book and they and they had to go is that apparently that was exactly what happened with the discovery of Neptune I didn't there were British astronomers and French astronomers who I think was French predicted it predicted it and the British wanted to look and it was cloudy and their Discovery was made in France for that reason yes yeah because so now I wanted to pick up on that and it is a there are a few reasons for why I want to talk about it one is and I I told you last time I was gonna I I was gonna allude to this um so when you write about this book you say that oil makes only one scientific mistake in your opinion the uh eponymous super intelligence of the black cloud is asked about the origin of the first member of its species and replies I would not agree that there was ever a first member and um and then you say never mind the astronomers I must protest as a biologist even if oil and his colleagues have been right that the Universe had been in a steady state forever the same could not sensibly became for the organized and apparently purposeful complexity that life epitomizes galaxies May spring spontaneously into existence and by the way they don't they I mean they do but take they take longer than life but but complex life cannot that is pretty what what complexity means so I I get your point but the interesting thing to me when it hit me is I remembered actually from our dialogue in in I think that was recorded in in the unbelievers I think it's in Sydney Australia I can't remember that someone asked about the first fish or something like that and you and you said there was no first fish yeah okay okay uh okay um first as as you probably know Fred Hoyle uh was one of the was probably the leading proponent of the steady state theory of the universe which so there were there was no origin of the University it's been around forever and Mata is continuously created so when the uh scientists in the novel asked the black cloud about the origin of its own kind its own species it said I wouldn't agree that there ever was An Origin um this was one in the eye as the astronomers said for the for the for the Big Bang I'd idea it was it was it was a Fred Hall was making a joke but it's in favor of the studio Fred Hall would strongly proposed that the Universe was it was eternal and in what's called a steady state that it never really changed and so he invented the term Big Bang to make fun of the idea and it it caught on and in this book uh the the basically black cloud says the universe has been around forever more or less so um then I protested him I protest about his saying that I would not agree that there ever was a first member of my species because that suggests that complex life supremely complex life which is what the black cloud is just happened and it's all very well saying that matter can come into existence spontaneously because that was the steady state Theory and uh there's nothing wrong with it except it wasn't true but it but it was it was a very a very interesting uh Theory that's just matter coming into existence but matter coming into existence is a very different thing from complexity complexity of the of our kind of life let alone the black cloud kind of life that doesn't happen it cannot happen that's what complexity means it means improbability on a gigantic scale and evolution builds up to that gigantic scale by slow gradual incremental steps that's what makes it possible that's the whole point of Darwinism and so that that's my very strong objection to what the blood Cloud said but I thought I'd give you a chance to explain because it's a neat bit of object lesson in evolution why there was never a first fish well okay now that that's quite that's a different thing it is but it's the same sense people often say well who was the first human the very I mean the first member of the species homo sapiens and my answer to that is there never was a first member of the species Homo sapiens because uh any individual that you choose to pick say um I don't know 200 million sorry 200 000 years ago um must have had parents and its parents would have been classified if taxonomists had been around at the time it would have been classified in the same species every animal ever born was a member of the same species as its parents and his children so some people think that's a problem with with how you can get new species because the intermediates are all dead and therefore we don't see them but if by some magic wand waving every animal had ever lived could somehow be magic back into existence it would be impossible to draw dividing lines between one species and its ancestor then so there never was a first human there never was a first fish in that sense but of course that doesn't mean that it didn't have predecessors it doesn't mean it didn't have progenitors it had Parents yeah it's just that they were they would have been classified as being the same species as as it yeah okay now and I I think I think it was an I thought would be a good point to illustrate the difference between yeah what they meant and what you meant yeah the same statement but I uh but it also gives me it's and it's self-serving but I'm asking the question so I can do that um uh at least right now when you ask you can um it turns out that in fact in cosmology in my area of cosmology people actually discuss now exactly the likelihood that something like the blackout could Cloud could come into existence spontaneously and the argument is um well it really comes related to the to the universe from nothing the fact that quantum mechanics allows things to spontaneously arise from nothing particles to emerge from empty space Etc and if as seems to be the likely case our universe the future of our universe is in is eternal okay then you could ask what's the probability that life would evolve which is a very complicated process versus what's the probability that spontaneously and I mean spontaneously a solar system would appear out of empty space due to the laws of quantum mechanics and life forms would appear and you and I would appear on this stage and all these people and we weren't didn't exist here five seconds ago and it sounds ridiculous but it's actually discussed as when you the problem with infinity is that of course probabilities become really weird but some people would argue that if you actually look at the likelihood of a long complicated process of evolution taking four billion years versus the likelihood that in an infinitely long Universe wheat spontaneously rise because in an infinite long universe everything that can happen will happen that it's much more probable that we didn't exist a half an hour ago and and there isn't that crazy as Bertrand Russell said we might have come into existence five minutes ago complete with no holes in our socks yes I mean that that kind of argument is that to leave a darwinian code um it's it's because it's it's not just that you and I could be sitting here and but I could have a green mustache yeah and and and and you could be standing on your head and and it's it's and it all will happen yeah and this whole night would happen again and again and again with one word different yeah it's really it's and I've gone to physics conferences and people talk seriously about this well yes I cannot um I'm attempt to quote the poet Yates you are still wrecked among Heathen dreams um it's it negates the entire point of of everything that I've lived for which is Darwinism okay um it's and that doesn't mean it's not true but um the whole point about darwinian evolution is that it explains how you get yeah improbability of a certain kind it things work birds fly because they they're well designed to fly um you don't get um all the impossible freaks that that don't fly because their wings are they're upside down or something like that where in the your argument about everything that can happen will somewhere out there there's a cricket team to beat the Australians um it it [Music] um it's sort of it's a nihilistic kind of idea yeah it is impossible to do really yeah in fact that's the point I want to make and I think I wanted to make it because I think and I've argued this in meetings the reason that one can do science and you and in fact you're in your career early on it was really doing probabilistic calculations with natural selection which is really what you started to do in your research is that is that one probability is an incredibly misunderstood thing in our society but you can do it if you understand what the probabilities are or you can calculate them or estimate them if you know the all possible outcomes then you can then you can do something but when you have infinities then then you can't then not then nothing makes sense you can come up with anything you want and that's why it really isn't science in my opinion because if you argue you don't know what the you don't know what the the the the weight function is you don't you can you just guess and if you guess what the probabilities of of different infinite things are you can come up with any answer yeah and the whole point of science just sort of disappears well I'm first I could ask you a question um I I I'm I'm sort of I'm aware of different interpretations of quantum theory um The Copenhagen interpretation of the many worlds interpretation and my my colleague David Deutsch is a great proponent of the Hugh Everett many worlds interpretation um and so um well perhaps you could I mean explain okay very related to what we've just been talking about yeah it is in a way in a way although in quantum mechanics you she can calculate probabilities which is what's really makes it science but the idea is that Quantum mechanic the central premise of quantum mechanics can be stated as saying that systems at a Quant at the fundamental scales where quantum mechanics really operates not the classical scale where we live are doing many things at the same time and and and uh even though that seems classically ridiculous it it happens and it's true in fact now it's the basis of quantum computers that electron which behaves like it's spinning before you measure it it's not just spinning in One Direction it's spinning in all directions at the same time until you measure it now and measurement becomes the key part of quantum mechanics people argue therefore that if all of these states are existing and you make a measurement and it turns out there's a probability that you'll measure it's been going this way or the probability that it measures spin going that way and we can calculate those probabilities in quantum mechanics but once you measure it it's doing it's doing that so the idea is what happened to all the other possibilities and the the this argument developed by a guy named Hugh Everett is that reality branches every time you make a measurement one possibility becomes real but all those other universes where it was doing something else are never accessible to you but they exist and every time you measurement it branches and you and and so if you basically get an infinite number of universes branching into an infant number of universes one of which is the universe we're all in at this time so Schrodinger's cat in some universes it's dead in other universes it's alive uh in principle when you the shortest cat experiment is it it's not an experiment no one does it experiment but um at least I don't think anyone's done it is is the cat is in a box with a radioactive device and if if the device goes off the bullet goes and kills the cat but but Quantum mechanically you could think that the cat is both alive and dead until you make them until you open the box it's not a it's not the best analogy but it's it makes shredding did it as a way of satirizing yeah yeah he did it and he did it with Saturn I saw there was a wonderful a wonderful cartoon in the New Yorker yeah so in a in a a Veterinary surgeon's waiting room and um uh and the nurses come into one of the people sitting there and saying about your cat Mr Schrodinger I have some good news and some bad news yes by the way another Point I've heard if you're playing Russian roulette uh-huh you shoot yourself one in six chance you know it's safe because if you die then you're not in that universe but in in five of the six universes um yeah yeah and so you'll always be alive um in some universities don't don't try this at home don't try it at home and it's but but part of this the reason I want to get to it is that part of it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of quantum mechanics that because when you get those kind of absurd arguments when science leads to absurd arguments sometimes as we'll talk about sometimes it just means you're not thinking the right way but sometimes it means you're not that you're interpreting the science incorrectly and in fact in my new book I talk a lot about this quantum mechanical aspect that whole notion of the interpretation of quantum mechanics is not just in my opinion but I remember learning it from a scientific colleague of mine when I was at Harvard it was much smarter than me because now that passed away Sydney Coleman is the wrong way of thinking because the world is quantum mechanical so why do you try you should not try and interpret a world that's quantum mechanical in terms of a classical cluge because you're always going to come up with some weird nonsensical picture the correct thing to do is think of the interpretation of classical mechanics to describe the apparent the the illusion that is the reality we live in in terms of the fundamental Theory instead of trying to analyze the fundamental theory in terms of the illusion because when you do that you'll always come up with weird nonsense with the spooky action at a distance that bothered Einstein so much about about quantum mechanics so so I I bristle when I read books about the interpretation of quantity and people still write them about the many worlds interpretation it's it's Much Ado About Nothing in my opinion literally Richard Feynman said shut up and calculate yeah exactly and but but interestingly enough Richard the the the the the the the fact that the quantum systems are doing many things at the same time as I said is the basis of quantum computers because class computers are based on bits either ones or zeros and you manipulate those ones and zeros in ways that that allow you to do logical progressions that allow you to do calculations but if you if if you do it with Quantum particles you know you can think of an electron that's been spinning this way as one and spinning this way as a zero but the electron is doing many things at the same time so if you could do a calculation without disturbing the electron in the middle the electron will be doing a huge number of calculations at the same time because it's spinning in many different directions and therefore a quantum computer could do something a classical computer can't do which is to do many different calculations at the same time and therefore potentially do calculations that would take longer than the history of the universe for a classical computer in a quantum computer that's why so much money is being spent on quantum computers right now and the idea of doing it but Feynman who was one of the first people to propose think you have quantum computers did it for another reason he said I'm a classical person and as he said in other people said if you think you understand quantum mechanics you don't okay because you can never intuitively picture quantum mechanics because we're we're not Quantum beings we only live in a classical world and he said if I could invent a quantum computer the quantum computers the whole basis of its thinking if you wish would be quantum mechanical and maybe the quantum computer could explain quantum mechanics to me and I thought that was a wonderful argument they the other thing I want to mention which is the interplay between between um literature and science which happening personally I did not know of the black cloud I'd never read the story but I was doing a physics problem I was having a debate with a a another scientist who was much smarter than me Freeman Dyson when we were at The Institute for advanced study together for I spent a year there about the future of life could he had argued he written a beautiful paper that life could persist forever in an eternal Universe the ultimate optimism you ask a question could can a species can a can a set of life forms persist forever if the universe is eternal and he argued the answer was yes by a very typical dysonian argument which was tricky and and amusing but naive but and but in principle right and I like and a colleague countered him and said you're wrong and we spent a year debating this and we came up with an example of why a life form could not do what he said you do and he said what about the black cloud and he talked to us by the blackout and the black cloud would allow exactly what we said was impossible we later on showed that it couldn't do what we wanted to do for other reasons and he finally agreed I think we're wrong but it was interesting to me that that invention that science fiction invention allowed him to have an example that was it became a part of a real song and we both wrote both wrote scientific papers about that very subject and the black cloud became a part of it so I think it was a nice example of that interplay but the last thing I I don't want to harp on that too much but you mentioned the Deep problems and you and and and kleiny mentioned one of them is can something come from nothing which was my book but but um do you there is a question of are there things that that that might never be addressable with science that there'll be limits to knowledge and and people often talk about that and I want to ask you if you think they're I mean this is just pure speculation but do you suspect that there are physical questions that will never be resolvable because of limitations of our intellect well I don't think so but I'm not qualified to say it it it's it's I don't think anyone else thinks things like um where do the fundamental constants of physics come from just those numbers which visitors can measure but don't have a theory to account for I don't see why they shouldn't eventually come to explain them all um I I suppose I'm an optimist about this I think it's in a way equally it's I mean it it could be that the human brain which is naturally selected to survive in Africa um by hunting and Gathering um but in a way it's absolutely amazing that that such a brain can do quantum mechanics and do relativity and do higher mathematics and what on Earth prepared this animal to do such things when when all it really had to do was to find a Kuru to hunt and dig up some tapioca Roots absolutely it's amazing actually I forget where I was but I was on a discussion where someone asked the question do you think it is amazing I mean certainly humans didn't evolve to do quantum mechanics but we can but someone asked the question if I thought that was an evolutionary male adaptation do you think this accidental fact that we can do science is a maladaptation or not well it it it in one sense and it probably would never have helped our ancestors to survive and reproduce um not directly anyway never mind about Quantum Theory just just um Pythagoras's Theorem I mean it even that is is um you don't think you know it helps you survive and reproduce to go into a party and say hey I'm a physicist well actually it doesn't I mean that in in a sense has been suggested uh um that that um intelligence is sexy and and um uh so uh I mean there's that biologist called Jeffrey Miller who um has written a book suggesting that a lot of what's unique about humans is due to sexual selection Darwin's other Theory the the idea that what matters is not individual survival but reproductive success in in his thinking in terms of success in in attracting mates so that um the the human mind is a kind of mental peacock's Tale uh which is a display um I think it's quite plausible yeah um but we our brain seems to have utterly overreached anything that could be remotely useful in in exactly I mean as you know I'm very proud of the fact that nothing I've ever done in my research is remotely useful and that's fine well I I knew a mathematician when I was a student who said that one of the mathematicians that he was studying had his ambition was to discover a completely useless theorem and then and then some tasks and physicists came along and used it that's what happened but actually it's mathematics the reason I I don't buy I agree with you completely I don't think there's ever people always say well there's got to be a limitation because in mind but the human mind has discovered mathematics yeah and Language by the way and and Norm Chomsky with I've had many dialogues just point out that language allows it essentially an infinite number of progressions yeah but mathematics does yeah so the minute you do mathematics you're not limited there's an infinite set of possibilities that the human mind can explore and therefore I do not see just the fact that our Hardware is involved by Evolution and is therefore limited the software seems to be unlimited and and I don't therefore I don't see I I if you had me if I ever had to guess I don't think there'll ever be limits to what will I mean there may be limits to what we can learn because of practical of practical things but not because of some fundamental limits of our intellect I think it's one of the most inspiring things I know that that the human brain does have this almost unlimitedly open-ended capacity in its software yeah it's uh me too and it'd be great if more people used it um let's move on you had a conversation with a service scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson um no he's a friend um and we just did a podcast together and and it was a lot of fun you should listen to it if you didn't it was the last one came out but Neil is it like is is it America perhaps the most well-known um science popularizer and for many good reasons I I think um what I liked about that dialogue and I wanted to at least talk a little bit about was the very fact and like you said um I think there's a kind of unwarranted pride in being bad at mathematics you'll never hear anybody saying how proud they are at being ignorant of Shakespeare but plenty of people will say they are proud of being ignorant of mathematics well the ignorant of Shakespeare maybe maybe Donald Trump but the rest of of um uh but the rest of people would be not but plenty people say they're proud of being ignorant mathematics and it's true and I want to ask you why do you think that I I mean it shocks me I mean many people admit to being ignorant mathematics but some people view it as a as a a badge of honor that they're somehow artistic or humanistic yes and I wonder where you think that comes from there's another um quote from Peter Meadowvale which I'm trying to no no I I can't I can't get it um there was an uh an editorial in the Daily Telegraph which is which is a British um conservative newspaper and it was about the fact that some a scientist had done some research on on ignorance in people of Science in in people and they discovered that I think it was 19 of the British population think it takes one month for the earth to orbit the Sun and um the and the editor of the Daily Telegraph put in Brackets doesn't it add so he was obviously he didn't really think that but he was parading the fact that the editor of a major London newspaper um could could even pretend to be ignorant of such a an elementary scientific fact you know it come I don't know if it happens so much in biology but I I really hit me when I first started to write because every now and then you have you read well you have to read reviews of of your books and um but I I read scientific reviews and I realized you pick a an economist like my era was John Kenneth Galbraith was a very and you read a review and say the New Yorker or some literary magazine and the person would go on for 10 pages about this whether they understood it or not but a really good review of a science book is it boggled my mind I didn't understand it but it boggled my mind and the notion that somehow when it comes to science you're allowed to stop thinking yeah that you're not allowed to that that somehow you shouldn't puzzle that that it's too much to ask you to puzzle through a scientific argument but a historical argument or political argument or an economic argument that's okay for normal humans but but but heaven forbid that you that you be forced to actually think through something and it's somehow I don't know where it comes from if it's not if it's in our educational system that or or or where I I you know and you're from Britain in them well I I think it boggles your mind is is is not a disreputable thing to say actually it isn't but don't you think the book deserves a little more discussion oh yes I mean that's what I'm saying the best review is like half a page long I didn't understand it but it was amazing yeah and and that if you wrote If you wrote a review of a history book and said you know I didn't understand it but it was amazing yes it wouldn't it wouldn't be in the New Yorker no that's true yeah anyway okay um there's a wonderful there's a wonderful chapter on The Uncommon Sense of Science and it and it it involves Lewis wilpert and other it's it's a book review yeah a book review he was a wonderful another wonderful popular Riser of Science and and it really hit home for me because he because I've used an example then I thought it was pretty clever and then I realized well I talk about stuff it would take me 15 minutes to explain it and one sentence he explains it but it relates to something that's an experiment I want to do here at least and and so I want everyone to take a deep breath and hold it in okay I'm just just keep holding it I just want to make some notes keep holding it keep holding it you're not holding it okay you let it out okay too many people are smiling well that actually wasn't part of the experiment but I wanted to see if you do it but um uh it was sort of part of the experiment because it's a famous fact that I I teach when I teach when I we used to teach undergraduates that Every Breath You Take You are breathing in some of the molecules of air of oxygen or particular that Julius Caesar breathed out in his dying breath when he said at two Brutus and you can show that it's true it's not just true of that but you're breathing in the breath of almost everyone who ever lived you're breathing in the the and I I often would tell myself that I'm you know when I'm working on physics and making nowhere that every breath I take I'm breathing in some atoms that Einstein breathed out the moment he put the last dot on his theory of general relativity but you're also breathing you're also breathing in the atoms that Hitler breathed out when he put the last dot in mine Camp Hitler had bad breath by the way but anyway so it's an amazing fact and I and I you know if we had enough time I could work through it but Walbert gave an example which is a very similar example that you quote which is that um and you this is your writing pour one glass of water into the sea allow time for it to be thoroughly dispersed through the oceans of the world and that's probably maybe 50 years then scoop another glass full out of the sea anywhere almost certainly you will retrieve at least one molecule of water from the original glass and it's true I've argued that if you take a if you take a a drop of blood and put it in the ocean and pick glass you'll find later on a bit of your blood and no matter where you are around the world and and also pointed out that that every time you you take a drink of water you're drinking in secretions from virtually everything that's ever existed and which by the way gives the light a Homeopathy yeah yeah exactly but but I do I I mean it it actually lends truth my mother who passed away one of the reasons we do we had to delay this because of the passing my mother who had lived to the 100 and had a great life but um she used to say don't touch that you don't know where it's been and she was right but any case so I would have given a long explanation but Wilbert's explanation was perfectly clear he just said that's because there are many more molecules of in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea it's pretty clear and I was blown away that he didn't need to do all the math that I did and and but but you use that as an example of The Uncommon Sense of science that science can take us places where our common sense doesn't take us and I I love that and I and I and it in I used to work in museums a long time ago and we call it the AHA experience everyone has gone into a museum of any sort or anywhere suddenly you see the world in a new way sound I just it it boggles my mind um but it's a new thing so I wanted to ask I've had that experience as a scientist where I was sure something was the case and then working through it I realized something that I would never have thought was possible that it would have seemed totally to defy any of my own common sense and I'm wondering if you've had that experience that was a long way of asking that question yes um well not in a very big well yes let me give I mean an example would be the handicap principle which is a theory of sexual selection I already mentioned sexual selection things like peacock's tail where um Darwin just simply said that the reason the peacock has a huge great fan is that females like it and so males was bigger and bigger and bigger Tales got got more likely to pass their genes on because the female is like them and so jeans for big Tails got passed on um but in um someone in the 1960s and Israeli biologist called amoxic zahavi um produced a radical new theory of sexual selection which was called the handicap Theory and it it said that everybody agreed that that having a great big tale was a handicap but we we all thought that it evolved in spite of being a handicap so Harvey said it evolved because it was a handicap uh the reason why females like it is that it is a handicap only very very tough strong males can survive carrying this really great handicap on their backs and so there must be a good a good bit bet as a mate and I and essentially everybody else in the field ridiculed the Harvey at the time because it seemed they were all very well saying that um it must be a good a good mate but on the other hand he does have the handicap and so it just cancels it out and um John Maynard Smith the great John Maynard Smith tried to model it and said it doesn't work but then much later my former student and now colleague are now indeed Mentor Alan grafen at Oxford produced a mathematical model which showed that the handicap principle does indeed work and so I had to uh eat Humble Pie and say I was wrong it part of the problem was that the Harvey was had a rather colorful way of putting expressing things he would usually used anthropomorphic uh language he said things like um if a if a woman watches a a race between two two men and they come in as a dead Heat but one of them is carrying a sack of coal on his back um she chooses him and and so I think um anyway you asked me whether I changed my mind and that that was one case where I had to change my mind and did and in particular we're something that seems it's not just changed your mind something that seems like it's not common sense it turns out to be common sense yeah well not common sense but but turns out to work and now that Alan Grafton has done the maths and shown that it can work I now feel it intuitively exactly and you know that's when I talked about earlier about how sometimes science leads to absurdity what seems like absurd sometimes though the reason is you're thinking about it the wrong way and so people when I've had debates with sometimes with religious people about and they bring up Common Sense common sense is okay but it's overrated when it comes to science because common sense is based on our experience yeah D.H Huxley said wrongly I think science is nothing more than organized Common Sense yeah but it it becomes common sense because it defies your expectations and then once you learn it you say oh gee why didn't understand that all along it makes sense but but common sense is not it's certainly a first guide for scientists but but you learn that our experience is just an example of myopia that the world is far grander than our experience which is one of the beauties of science because it takes us outside our comfort zone yes totally and and makes us uncomfortable which unfortunately in universities now is a bad thing but it's the best thing that can ever happen to any of you students and if you're never uncomfortable you haven't learned a damn thing yeah yeah um anyway um the the speaking well actually speaking of change your mind I want to ask you there's a nice piece about the the Shelf I think was written in this 50th Anniversary or 40th anniversary of the shellfish Gene and um there are two things that I liked about I wanna one I mentioned one you talked about eight fingers in Fred Hoyle it was a lovely story and and a lot of our counting is done in in powers of ten and presumably it's because we have ten fingers and we and we um learned account using our fingers and if we'd had only um eight Fingers um we would have instead of having decimal based arithmetic they would have octal arithmetic or if we had 16 fingers we'd have hexadecimal of arithmetic and that makes Computing using computers binary computers much easier so if you've ever if you've ever done programming in a computer machine code you you have to learn to think in octal or hexadecimal and so I think it was Fred Hall speculated that same Fred oil speculated that if we'd been born with eight fingers computers might have been invented a century earlier yeah I thought it was a wonderful click but but that aside this is the kind of I I this is the kind of question a journalist might ask so I hesitate to say it but but is there looking back in the selfish Gene is is any of it particularly molded or more importantly what's what's the newest result you know of in biology that that relates to what you might an idea in the book that that you you know would have liked to have included back then if you'd if it if it if it had been developed is there such a thing you know that one that comes to mind the funny thing is that um because it's all about darwinian Evolution and the and the central idea is that the unit of selection is the gene that is the thing that goes through the generations that is the uh the entity in the hierarchy of life which is potentially immortal and therefore there is a significant difference between those entities those genes which actually succeed in being Immortal and those that don't and um that does that property doesn't apply to anything else like the individual or the group or the species or the ecosystem it's only the gene has that property and nowadays we know a hell of a lot more about how genes work and what they do in development and the whole thing you don't hear the word genetic so often nowadays you hear the word genomics um and um some people think that that ought to check to have changed the selfish Gene but it doesn't at all actually because fascinating though which is interesting though it is it doesn't in any way change the fundamental point that that which is Immortal potentially immortal is bits of DNA it doesn't have to be a gene as a as a unit in the way that a molecular biologist would understand it but but I think I yeah I said the it doesn't any any length of chromosome which which has the property of being replicated with sufficient frequency so the the book could have been called not the selfish Gene but the slightly selfish big bit of chromosome and the even more selfish little bit of chromosome probably wouldn't have done so well not not a casual title okay let I want to move on to someone we both admire a lot and you talk about um Carl Sagan and we both agree I I think the demon Haunted World I can't as a science as a candle in the dark it is my favorite book of his and it's mine yes yeah and and in there he he talks about um the great thing about science the the great gifts that science has to offer is a baloney detection kit and and I'll read from from your quoting him I occasionally get a letter from someone who is in contact which is interesting because he wrote a book called that in contact with extraterrestrials that kind of thing yeah I'm invited to ask them anything and so over the years I prepared a little list of questions the extraterrestrials are very Advanced remember so I ask things like please provide a short proof of fair Math's Last Theorem or the gold box conjecture I never get an answer on the other hand if I ask something like should we be good I always get an answer almost always get an answer anything vague especially involving conventional moral judgments these aliens are extremely happy to respond to but on anything specific where there's a chance to find out if they actually know anything beyond what most humans know there's only silence and the baloney detection kit is what he talks about a science as a way of of Jews and just that it actually reminds when I read it it reminded me I don't know if you know the story Groucho Marx who I was a big fan of um used to love to go up to to um psychics you know who can you know they always ask you go in and you pay money and and they say yes you know ask me any question and he say what's the capital of North Dakota they never get it right but anyway um that was his baloney detection kit and I thought it was a it was a nice convergence between Carl's taking and Groucho Marx but um more interestingly what about you know and people in spite of the fact that they're taken in have an innate Trust of science uh something I once said and I've seen it as a meme now is is uh if you're choking do you want me to pray for you or do the heimlich maneuver and and most people you know will say the Heimlich maneuver we all know science is is really the way to do things yet somehow we don't have a baloney detection again I'm wondering why Evolution didn't seem to provide us natural just on the Heimlich maneuver there's a lovely story in an old people's home somewhere in America one of the old people started okay choke and another old old man in the in the um in the uh old people's home laptop and did the Heimlich maneuver and his name was heimlich it was heimlich himself um in in the old people's home I think the only time he ever actually did it and and then that's where the name came from that's wonderful yes but why don't we have a baloney detection have you ever thought about that because why why isn't science more natural I mean in some sense we're all scientists we're as young kids babies we're all scientists we explore the world around us and we touch things and if they're hot we don't touch them again but um but why does why does the devony well so what when a when a plumber or an electrician has to diagnose or a car mechanic he's trying to diagnose what's wrong they use perfect scientific method and isolate this is this fault here or here seems to be here okay let's narrow it down a bit a bit further right let's change this one and see what that so we we all um people who do that kind of job um are using scientific principles all the time Stephen Pinker has just written a book which I recommend yeah came out this year called rationality which is a book about um the rational and how it's partly a manual on how to do how to think rationally and he's very keen on Bayesian reasoning but he begins the book by talking about the sound I'm going to attempt to do that some um hunter-gatherers in Kalahari and he says he points out that they are superb scientists in in making inference about the game that they're hunting and and working out how to track animals and things like that so in many ways we we are an innate scientists but we were susceptible to so much baloney which is the second part of the problem yes we we are at somewhere else in the book he says that um we quote someone else is saying we are not so much born scientists as born lawyers um born to persuade and argue and influence because we're social animals and one of the ways in which we succeed in a darwinian sense is to outwit outmaneuver out General uh our Rivals yeah in fact that that it's a great book and I love that book and I I uh he and I did a talk a podcast about it actually and yeah and I think he points out from the point of view of evolutionary psychology rationality is not always the best strategy and and you're the example you gave is just yeah social animals and and um if you if you're if you are surrounded by a a group of of um colleagues friends all of whom believe some kind of baloney like um that that um Trump really won the last election um then you you actually um if you if you if you stand out against that then you lose face with your with your peers you lose you lose Prestige you you don't succeed and what really matters in in a highly Social Animal like homo sapiens ill named um because uh you you you you one way to succeed in a darwinian sense is to be accepted and admired by your social group absolutely yeah no I think it's that's I think that's the best possible answer to that actually by the way there are various people are getting very antsy in the back of the room and probably some of the technical people because it was listed in the program maybe that we were gonna go till about 8 15 with our religious discussion I put that in just in case it wasn't interesting but I'm enjoying it so we're going to go a little longer okay but um yeah so and we'll so we'll go till I till I say we stop but um uh but anyway um there's just a few more things I want to get but one of your one of your conversations in there is with a joint hero of both of ours and a friend of both of ours the lake Christopher Hitchens who are both privileged to know and honor and a privilege to know him and I'm still amazed that he liked me but anyway um that but there's a at the very beginning of the discussion which was some time ago obviously because he's been he's passed away a while ago you you ask him do you think America is in danger of becoming a theocracy and his answer was no I don't the people who who we mean when we talk about that maybe the extreme evangelicals who do who do want to God Run America I believe it was founded on essentially fundamentalist Protestant principles I think they may be the most overrated threat in the country now do you think he would have changed his mind today I never I never try to guess what he would do yeah okay but do you think that that I mean there was a there was a time and and we were talking about this earlier together I think and I don't know if he did in public but um you know we've both I I certainly spent a lot of my time 30 20 years ago fighting the effort to remove Evolution from the or replace evolution of the public schools whether the channel tonight probably the first way I became known to the public at was probably in that effort I was upset the biologists weren't doing it and so I I started to speak out but um but that sort of well let me know I met um one of the lawyers on our side in the in the um cases that's right yeah kids miller right now um and um after a conversation with him uh um he he said well thank goodness we didn't choose you as an expert and I tell you why um it's because I would have I I if I was being honest I would have said um not only is evolution true but there's no God and that's not what you have to do if you want to win that case yes um what what you should be what you should say and they got um Kenneth Miller to come and say Ken Miller who's um religious uh was was um evolution is true and you could have God too yeah um and uh so that's what they would have wanted me to say and I and I would have well I could I could have perjured Myself by saying it but no no but you wouldn't no Richard you one of the many things I love about you is that you say what you mean and you won't change that and then that's an important very important thing yeah but um I I guess I want to ask you that question yeah because that aspect that trivial aspect not so trivial but the effort to impose intelligence design in schools that's kind of died away we've won that for the most part it still gets it rises every now and then but in every High School District where I went from Texas to otherwise we we more or less won that but at another sense in terms of the impact of people who claim that America is a god-run country and that and that the pr I mean and and I say this in an objective way I mean you you see you can't help but watch the Trump rallies and see that that that people are arguing that he is a a been sent by God to help the country and so I would argue that it is a greater threat than than Christopher would have thought and it's and it's and I don't know where it's setting now what do you but well you could be right and and and it could be that that that Trump is responsible for that although I don't suppose he actually believes in God himself oh I'm sure he doesn't um yeah uh I mean he seems he's an astonishing well not he's not astonishing a phenomenon and the fact that he cons people is astonishing actually there's a there's a I was reading not that I read the book but there's a New York Times excerpt from the book by um Mike Pence who talks about an episode in the last days of the administration um where at the end and of course Trump was very upset with pants and when and and Penn said but I will I will play you know I pray for you and Trump looked up and said don't bother yes which I think really really Deb represent his real ideas well look I wanna I do want to give people a chance to go to the bathroom before and I'll talk to you about what's going to happen in a second I should have said it at the beginning um actually I'll tell you now before we get to this last bit you all have question cards and at the beginning of intermission we have four lovely I think four lovely and wonderful uh um uh young people and other not so young people um uh without boxes that are going to be in the aisles and if you could hand those cards in over intermission I'm going to go through them and and and and and and and we'll be able to do answer your questions but um but but the last thing I want to talk about it's a little bit modeling the introduction but I love I I love the the LA the epilogue of this book which is something you said you'd asked to be read at your funeral so could you read it not that this is your funeral well I don't want to suggest that anyway um it may be too well known it's it's the opening paragraphs of my book on reading the rainbow so so um well let's assume not everyone's read it okay like oh you need your glasses I mean I could read it but I like this you read it better we are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones most people are never going to die because they're never going to be born the potential people who could have been here in my place but it will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sound grains of Sahara certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats scientists greater than Newton we know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people in the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I in our ordinariness that are here we live on a planet that is all but perfect for our kind of life not too warm and not too cold basking in kindly Sunshine softly watered a gently spinning green and gold Harvest Festival of a planet what are the odds as a planet picked at random would have these complacent properties imagine a spaceship full of its sleeping explorers deep Frozen would-be colonists of some distant world perhaps the ship is on a forlorn mission to save the species before an Unstoppable Comet like the one that killed the dinosaurs hits the home planet the voyagers go into the deep freeze soberly Reckoning the odds against their spaceships ever chancing Upon A planet-friendly to life if one in a million planets is suitable at best and it takes centuries to travel to travel from each star to the next the spaceship is pathetically unlikely to find a tolerable let alone safe haven for its sleeping cargo but imagine that the ship's robot pilot turns out to be unthinkably lucky after millions of years the ship has the extraordinary luck to happen upon a planet capable of sustaining life a planet of Equitable temperature raised in warm sunshine refreshed by oxygen and water the passengers Rip Van Winkles wake stumbling into the light after a million years of sleep here is a whole new fertile Globe a lush planet of warm pastures sparkling streams and waterfalls a world Bountiful with creatures darting through alien green Felicity our Travelers walk entranced stupefied unable to believe their unaccustomed senses or their luck I am lucky to be alive and so are you privileged and not just privileged to enjoy our planet more we are granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes are open and why they see what they do in the short time before they close forever I love that I think that's worth a thought I I asked you to read it because it's a lovely statement and I I I I I wanted to hear you say it and and I think I wanted the audience to have the opportunity to listen to read it originally I was going to take the off on that as a chance for us to talk about aliens and such but we we have gone 15 minutes over and I do want to give people a chance to that but I just want to say that I want that that notion of our luck is I think what what I want to leave as a central part of our dialogue here but also what I what the foundation the origins project Foundation is all about the the incredible luck that we all have to be able to ask these kind of questions celebrate them together people like Richard talk to each other about it is is really what makes life worth living and and I feel particularly lucky that you're all here and I know that we're all very lucky that that sperm was made you thank you very much so you have a an intermission uh and and please put your questions and Richard and I'll be happy uh to answer them and thank you very much for being here thank you [Music] I hope you uh enjoyed watching the dialogue between me and Richard at the Orpheum Theater in November for the origins projects Foundation First uh public event while you're watching I shaved my period and in any case uh the this our dialogue was followed by a q a and we're going to make that q a available the video of that q a available uh uniquely for our paid subscribers for the next month and after that we'll make it public to just to thank you for your support for us so I hope you enjoyed the dialogue and I hope some of you will become paid subscribers to see the uh q a session which was quite interesting but to all of you thanks again for your support and interest in the uh efforts of the origins podcast in the origins project Foundation [Music] I hope you enjoyed today's conversation this podcast is produced by the origins project Foundation a non-profit organization whose goal is to enrich your perspective of your place in the cosmos by providing access to the people who are driving the future of society in the 21st century and to the ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world to learn more please visit originsprojectfoundation.org

Channel: The Origins Podcast

Views: 97,530

Keywords: The Origins Podcast, Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Project, Science, Podcast, Culture, Physicist, Video Podcast, Physics

Id: IfXMllEUnE0

Length: 92min 16sec (5536 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023