Are UFOs Alien Tech? Avi Loeb vs Michael Shermer

Are UFOs Alien Tech? Avi Loeb vs Michael Shermer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj7LRq-Uq3k Transcript: Go to the Primary Sources Avi Loeb: The scientific approach is indeed should be guided by evidence and we shouldn’t have a prejudice. We shouldn’t have a view about the outcome before we see the evidence. Now, one reason I have you in the council is so that those believers will attack you instead of me for missing the scientific method. Michael Shermer: I have to say, Brian, the vitriol on both sides, it’s amazing what people say about each other. It’s not just on X, but on X especially bad. But as I’ve gotten to know Avi pretty well, I’m just amazed by the shit they talk about him. It’s like, my God, this is ridiculous. He’s not at all like this. And then people, of course, they hate on me and they hate on the believers, whatever. I don’t know. It’s almost political, right? It’s like politics. Avi Loeb: The way to think about it is what people say reflects on them more than on the subject that they are talking about. We see that a lot in politics, but we see it in science as well. And then the way to distinguish between truth and what people are saying is to look at the primary sources. So if someone says that they said something, go ahead and check if Avi said that thing. When you check the primary sources, you will realize that I didn’t say that thing. And that’s the way science is done, by the way. We go to nature, to the data that is collected by instruments to tell us what is out there, rather than talk about what is out there, which is very common on social media. You just say what you think is out there, but that’s not necessarily what is out there. Most of the time we are wrong. So the same is true when you say that a person should be dismissed because he said this and that. We should check if that person actually said that. And unfortunately, social media is such a shallow platform that people don’t really go to the primary sources. They don’t really check. Just yesterday, someone was saying that I said bad things about Jay Stratton. I didn’t say, I said only positive things about Jay Stratton. Personally, if you look at my essay, I only gave his credentials. And I said that we should look for the evidence behind what he’s talking about, which is exactly what I’m saying right now. It’s not a bad thing to say that about Jay Stratton. It’s about the fact that, enough with storytelling, enough with verbal testimonies, we are at an age where it’s time for us to look at the evidence. And that’s what I’m saying. I think that resonates very well with what the public wants. If Jay Stratton says there is a spacecraft that is withheld within government or within corporations, I want to see the spacecraft. What could be more natural than that? Before I believe it. And someone may say, well, he’s worried about showing the spacecraft because he might get retaliation. And I say, well, he doesn’t need to show it to me. He doesn’t need to show it to Michael. He doesn’t need to show it to the council. He can go straight to the White House and have a guided tour of President Trump to the spacecraft. The only person who would know about it is President Trump. There is no doubt that President Trump is interested in this subject. Why? Because he put the directive out. He sees a political benefit from being the person who provides the revelation about alien intelligence. That would be a huge event. President Trump will be remembered for thousands of years just by making this recognition that we are not alone, that we are not perhaps at the top of the cosmic food chain. So it will be a great political boon for President Trump. There is no doubt that he wants it. And so I’m saying, Jay Stratton, you know about the spacecraft, go ahead and give the inside information straight to President Trump. I’m not asking to know about it myself, but if you want, I’ll be happy to help. ## Why Isn’t She Just Opening Up the Kimono? Brian Keating: I heard the exact same thing from Michael Shermer a couple months ago when he was on my show for his wonderful new book. And he was using not President Trump, Marco Rubio. But I have a better idea. How about Councilwoman Luna? And by the way, Avi, you’re very close with her. She did a kind of a glow-up shot of herself visiting your Harvard observatory and looked through the telescope during the day. Why isn’t she just opening up the kimono? Here’s everything we know. And I respect her. She has no whistleblower concerns whatsoever. She has no security, no doxing concerns. She has every right and every responsibility as the chairwoman. Is this just a manifestation, either one of you guys, of the Peter principle, which we have in academia? The Peter principle, you rise to the level of your incompetence. We have a thousand deans and so forth. Why are there so many directors of different task force, Avi? Who are these people? We have Lou Elizondo, David Grusch, Anna Luna, Jay Stratton now, Christopher Mellon, all these people who have the podcasts and books and appearances. Who the hell are these people? And why isn’t the one at the top of the food chain, the chairwoman of the congressional committee on this task force, why isn’t she just opening up the kimono, like you just said? Avi Loeb: Well, so first of all, it’s obvious that the US government sees objects they don’t understand. The fundamental question is, do they represent alien technology, non-human made technology? That’s a very simple

Adam Grant: Don’t Trust Your Gut. Test It.

Adam Grant: Don’t Trust Your Gut. Test It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajx261foD1U Transcript: Adam Grant: When you and I are vibing, our brain waves actually start to synchronize, and so do our heartbeats. The highest sign of chemistry between people is not agreeing with them. It’s actually enjoying your disagreements with them. Don’t believe anything that can’t be verified. That’s just a precept of science. But also, don’t disbelieve anything that can’t be falsified. They’re a narcissist, a Machiavellian, or a psychopath. Brian Keating: Check. Adam Grant: I’m not qualified to diagnose you, Brian. Brian Keating: Wharton’s Adam Grant runs the experiments on why some people click and others clash. At the end, he tells me why my somewhat snarky critique of his newest study has his team talking about a follow-up. This book is a stealth physics book Brian Keating: I want to start off because this book is a stealth physics book. I have a feeling, Adam, you’re a deeply closeted physicist. Because this book brings up one of physicists’ favorite topics, vibrations. Let me give you some quotes. Okay, not all these appear in the book, but some do. Max Planck, the originator of quantum theory: “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration.” Okay, that’s number one. Richard Feynman, our hero, right? “Light is waves and electric field. We represent it as a vibration.” So, this is a big deal, a big field. I used to use this as the ending of my podcast. I said, “What is the most succinct sentence that describes the most information?” And I got that from Feynman. He said that everything is a vibration. Little particles in perpetual motion. Okay, that’s Feynman. Michio Kaku, another podcaster, the highest profession, right? Podcasting professors, there aren’t many of us. Adam, “According to string theory, if we could magnify a point particle, we might see vibrating strings.” Brian Greene says the same thing. And then finally, of course, there is Tesla. “If you want to find the secrets to the universe,” Adam, “think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” What does vibration mean to you? Adam Grant: I had to cut out a lot of physics metaphors from this book for the average reader to find it hopefully interesting. But I think people throw around this word vibe and they say, “It’s a vibe,” or, “I like her vibe.” And what they’re overlooking is that a vibe doesn’t just sit there. It’s not just dormant in a place or a person. It comes alive in our interactions. So when I think about a vibe, I think about a high-quality connection between people. And I think about it happening in ways that neuroscientists can actually measure in the body and the brain. When you and I are vibing, our brain waves actually start to synchronize and so do our heartbeats. And so there is a physiological trace. And I don’t think we should find that surprising, right? We are literally vibrating on the same energy frequency. But I think when people hear vibe, they start to think of something that’s a little bit hippie or woo-woo. And they don’t realize, no, no, no. This is real. It’s observable. Brian Keating: There’s so many physics quotes you left out, including one from my favorite Southern Californians. “I’m picking up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations.” And then of course, Marky Mark, “Feel it, feel it, good vibrations.” There’s always this danger of woo-woo, and how do you avoid that woo patina? You’re a rigorous academician, scientist, and intellectual. How did you avoid that temptation to fall into the trap that Tesla and other people have so easily slipped into? Adam Grant: I try to think about this in two ways. One is I built a reputation for being an evidence-based social scientist, and this is I think my seventh book. I hope by now anybody who comes to a book of mine knows that if anything, they’re going to complain that there were too many studies cited. There are too many meta-analyses. There are too many randomized controlled experiments and longitudinal studies, and I didn’t relegate enough of them to the footnotes or references. And I will always prefer to err on that side as opposed to the other. I think secondly, the part of the fun of being academic is to try to elicit the same enthusiasm in readers and listeners that we do in the classroom when students are really sitting there. And I know that for me, my favorite moments as a student were when a professor said, “Hey, here’s a concept that you have talked about in your everyday life, that you’ve experienced. Let me give you some data for it. Let me help you use the scientific method to try to understand it.” And so that’s really what I sat down to do with Vibe. I wanted to try to figure out what do we know about how to spark, strengthen, sustain, and scale connections between people and eventually into groups and communities. And the good news is there’s now about a century of evidence on how to do that more effectively. Starting point is always to say, what findings have been replicated independently and transparently and cumulated, ideally in a meta-analysis? I rely on those where I can. When we don’t have that, let’s try to look at the best individual studies and say, what do they teach us about how we can build more durable connections? Two kinds of conflict Brian Keating: So in the mid-1600s, Christiaan Huygens, a phenomenal, renowned physicist, put two pendulum clocks on a board and found that when they were independent of each other initially, they would eventually get in synchronicity and start swinging together. And I feel like if I ever gave a guest lecture on this topic, I’d bring in a lot of demonstrations. But it seems like what I

Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence?

Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayW7SDyAjZo ## Simulation hypothesis and P(doom) Brian Keating: All right. Today we are joined for what promises to be an interesting conversation between two intellectuals I have great respect for, both past guests on the podcast. And making his second appearance, it’s Joscha Bach. Joscha, how are you doing today? Joscha Bach: Hello, thank you for having me on. Brian Keating: We had a great conversation about [inaudible], about the ghost in the machine, over the summer and the spring, and that was well received. Got more attention on Reddit. People, they’re very opinionated about you on Reddit over there, as they are about almost anything. And then Roman Yampolskiy needs no introduction, most popular guest ever on many podcasts, and now has his own and has hit 200,000. [inaudible] Roman, welcome back to the Into the Impossible Podcast. Your third appearance. Roman Yampolskiy: Thanks for setting it up. Brian Keating: Yeah, it’s a real pleasure. So I like both of you guys a lot. And when my kids fight, I get mad. Over the summer, there was some clip going around about Roman, as he’s often wont to do, promoting the concerns that I think are legitimate we should talk about with regard to AI safety, which is a term he coined and has certainly done more than anybody on earth to bring awareness to. And simultaneously, Joscha, who’s one of the deepest thinkers available, had a little bit of a snarky reply, a comment on Twitter, that it’s not possible for Roman to simultaneously believe in the simulation hypothesis and also be assured, if I get this correct, of a hundred percent, nearly a hundred percent P(doom). So I hate P(doom). I think P(doom) is like the redheaded stepchild of the Drake equation. I think it’s nonsense. I mean, just like the Drake equation, no one’s ever looked at the Drake equation and done an actual calculation or done an actual measurement that could be falsified. It’s just a framework. I think P(doom) is the same. But Joscha, can you explicate your thesis a bit more? Why is it simultaneously impossible for Roman or anybody else to believe in the simulation hypothesis? Or why is it a contradiction and also believe in P(doom)? [inaudible] Joscha Bach: No, it is totally possible to believe both that we are in a simulation and that we are doomed to a certain degree or to a hundred percent, because it could be that you simply in some kind of computer game, which I think what the simulation hypothesis comes down to, that we are running in a computer in the basement of the nerd in the parent universe. And in that computer game, we can be doomed. Of course, this can be the case. It could also be that our actions within the game, despite the game being deterministic and so on, which leads to the usual question about how we interpret our freedom of will, lead to a certain outcome in which our actions are causing the probability of that doom to change. That’s all possible. The question is whether it matters. And so when you are in a computer game, the thing that you are in is not necessarily the thing that it’s a game, right? You are in there for a certain amount of time. There’s ultimately no point to this whole thing. And so the question whether you should be worrying, whether the AI wins or you win, is a different one for most people, I would say, than it is when you believe that we [inaudible] base reality and what we do originally matters, because our creativity decides on how this universe is going to end up. Brian Keating: Do you think it’s possible, Joscha? First of all, let’s get this out of the way. Do you subscribe to any validity, any marginal utility of the concept of P(doom)? Because I don’t, but do you? Joscha Bach: Well, I think that it’s very difficult to estimate P(doom) reasonably, but you can make the argument, if you have different people who see the future differently, that this should lead to different probabilities. It might not be that these probabilities are important as a real number, but they are important in relationship to each other, in the sense of, if you were to shut down the big AI labs, is this going to increase or decrease the probability of this or that event? And in this way, I think it makes sense to ask people for how their probability estimates change, even though I think there are too many factors involved to put meaningful even magnitudes on the P(doom) estimates. I sometimes say that my P(doom) without artificial intelligence is higher than this, right? That’s also a P(doom) estimate. But I mean, in the long run, P(doom) is one, and in the long run we are all dead, as a famous economist once said, and that’s inevitable. But back to this original question. You probably remember the movie The Matrix, and in The Matrix people are living in a simulation, which means that the reality that they are perceiving is not the reality of the base universe. It’s one that is artificially created to entertain, to deceive them. It’s the smoke and mirrors reality, like ours would be, that pretends to be quantum mechanical and so on instead of indicating that we are base reality. And if that is the case, then you still have people who say, but I prefer to be in this pseudo reality instead of being in base reality, and have a good steak in there. And this good steak that you want to have, that is nicely simulated, I wonder if this is what Roman is after. So basically he is [inaudible] by being a doom monger, by going in on the topic that is most interesting, having probably the highest P(doom) rating out

“I Thought It Would Fail!” Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]

“I Thought It Would Fail!” Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cun1zuEQTVU Transcripts: **Francis Halzen:** Being a physicist from all objective point of views is a miserable career. And I don’t have to state the reasons. The only reason it’s worth doing is you just enjoy this. You’re obsessed by it. You love what you’re doing. And so if you do it as a job, it’s going to be very, very disappointing, I think. So don’t underestimate yourself. Until I went on this crazy adventure of AMANDA and IceCube, I always live with the insecurity that I didn’t belong to the circles I moved in, which I think must be true for almost every graduate student. Just get over that. **Brian Keating:** Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Well, it’s not every day you get to talk to a hero of physics, of modern physics, someone whose roots go back quite a ways, someone who’s been a leader in the field of astrophysics, of particle physics, who’s an educator and a communicator of science, but also who was actually, I think today’s guest is my first ever guest who is a professor of mine, although I took his class as an adjunct student. Well, I was at the University of Wisconsin, and he is one of my personal heroes. This is Francis Halzen, who is a Belgian particle physicist, although he’s been in America probably more than half of his life. He’s the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s a director of the Institute for Elementary Particle Physics. And he’s the principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is operated at the South Pole, Antarctica, since 2010. Before that, there was AMANDA. Francis, it’s a certain treat to be here for me to host you here, rather. And I just hope you won’t share the grade that I got in your class. Please don’t tell my audience. I don’t want to. **Francis Halzen:** I don’t think my bureaucracy, my administration is so good that I would be able to produce it. **Brian Keating:** Well, it was one of my favorite classes of all time. Not to mention the fact that back then it was rare that professors wrote the textbook that was used for the class. I think I had that only with Leon Cooper at Brown with one of his quantum mechanics books. But to take this course on particle physics with you, it was such a treat. ## Judging books by their covers **Brian Keating:** And I thought we’d start there, Francis. We just had on Martin Rees, Lord Martin Rees, last week, and he spoke about his book. And we always do a scenario called judging books by their covers, where we look at the cover of your book and we judge it. And how did you come up with the name and hopefully entice a tenfold increase in book sales instantaneously? So the book we’re talking about is called *Quarks and Leptons*. It was a wonderful, wonderful book that I had there, we’ll show it on the screen. It’s written with your co-author, Alan Martin. But I don’t recall much about him, but certainly taking it from you was quite a treat. So Francis, can you help us judge *Quarks and Leptons* by its cover? How’d you come up with the title, the subtitle, and the cover illustration? **Francis Halzen:** The title was actually… first of all, I must say this was a long time ago, and that’s the amazing thing about the book, right? People don’t realise now that this book was written a long time ago and that the W, the Z, the top quark, the Higgs, none of these things had been discovered. The whole book is kind of prediction of the standard model. And in fact, the book was in print when the W was discovered at CERN, the weak intermediate boson. And so the editor called me and said, you can still change things. I’ve read a newspaper. And I said, there’s nothing to change. And he was kind of worried that he had been part of some huge gamble. But the title is kind of embarrassing because, although I think the books were really written in parallel, Okun, famous Russian theorist, wrote the book *Leptons and Quarks* that came out around the same time. So it’s not that original. **Brian Keating:** And the illustration that you have on the cover, what does that represent? **Francis Halzen:** The only thing I remember is that I actually made it. And I remember, jets were something rather new then. Quark-gluon jets, the concept. And so I know that it represents a jet made in deep inelastic scattering or something like that. It’s amazing that I cannot remember. **Brian Keating:** No, I think that rings true. And actually, we have had on past guest Frank Wilczek many times. And he cites that the discovery of jets, at least, not by IceCube or anything personally, but he cites that as the kind of signature achievement of his career and of work that particle physics as a community has led to. And I wonder if we could pivot from this wonderful book, which I learned a great deal from and I still make reference from when I have the task of teaching to young people as well, as well as your style. ## It is rumored that you knew Lemaître **Brian Keating:** So I want to first take a step back. It is rumored that you knew Lemaître, the famous Belgian Catholic priest, the progenitor in some sense of the Big Bang. Is that true, Francis? **Francis Halzen:** I barely knew him. He died when I was doing my undergraduate thesis. And so I could tell a number of stories for a long time. But I’ll only tell you two. Because of course every interaction I had with him

Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI’s Payoff Is NOT What You Think

Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI’s Payoff Is NOT What You Think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXdGP_q0nZk # Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI’s Payoff Is NOT What You Think ## Is science possible without liberal democracies? Brian Keating: Great, Daron. It’s great to welcome you on. I will only try one phrase in Turkish that I know, which is “Ben de Türküm.” Yeah, an old friend told me that at Brown University. He had all his Turkish friends get together for lunch, as you know the Turkish will. And they all thought I was Turkish, I guess, for some reason. Daron Acemoglu: So they taught you the sentence. Brian Keating: They taught me that sentence. Okay, great. So this book has so much in it. We need multiple podcasts to talk about it, but I really loved it. I love the audiobook and I love your tweets, and I think we’re going to start with just the most basic foundation. You teach at MIT and you undoubtedly have a great facility with science, and science plays a huge role in this book. Is science possible without liberal democracies? Daron Acemoglu: Yes, a little bit. But I think liberal democracy provides a much better foundation for science and also a much better platform for us to decide which scientific ideas are a better basis for further inquiry and better for applications, and it also enables them to spread in society in a healthier way. In particular, I think liberalism at its best celebrates inquiry, experimentation, and admits the fallibility of everything, including scientists and established truths. So that’s very important because science sometimes, often, faces resistance from authorities. So you have to take those authorities with a grain of salt, and sometimes science faces resistance from previous scientific advances. And again, the fallibility, the recognition that we are continuously learning and adjusting to our environment, is a great basis for making further scientific advances. ## What would cause someone to leave a liberal democracy? Brian Keating: Well, of course you qualified that by stating that it’s not maybe a sufficient condition, because the counterexample is of course China, and your recent fellow Nobel Prize winner Omar Yaghi of UC Berkeley, he actually left the UC system to go to China. Is that a mistake, or is that driven by economic considerations or political? What do you… I know you can’t get into his mind, but what do you think would cause someone to leave a liberal democracy to go to an illiberal… Daron Acemoglu: I mean, I think I would not be comfortable in China because of constant surveillance and restrictions on what you can say, including in universities, where these are actually quite severe. In Hong Kong they have become even more severe. But if I was working, say, on RNA and suddenly my funding was cut here, I could see how it would be attractive to go to China when much better conditions are being promised. Promise is the important word. I’m not sure where all of that will be delivered, but they’re being promised. Brian Keating: Yes. Daron Acemoglu: The other thing that’s very important is, I’ve always been very critical of the Chinese regime, and I still think that their growth trajectory, though impressive, has many problems. But right now they are really investing in AI, robotics, manufacturing technologies, and they have built a tremendous engineering workforce that is so important for further progress in many of these fields. So China is not staying idle. It’s not just copying the United States. ## As long as he didn’t teach it, he could study it Brian Keating: And I study, for a lot of the research I do in astronomy, I try to follow in the footsteps of my great mentor, Galileo Galilei. Here’s a finger puppet of him. Now, he worked in an extremely illiberal kind of autocracy also. The Catholic Church was every bit as totalitarian as any of their worst fears, and yet science flourished in the Renaissance. And in fact he had many permissions that were granted by these illiberal forces. As long as he didn’t teach it, he could study it. So… Daron Acemoglu: Right, there were restrictions and there were some possibilities. Galileo was actually very good at navigating these things. Copernicus and Kepler much less. So their work was delayed. This dissemination was delayed by about a century. And some of Galileo’s works remained banned until the middle of the 19th century. Brian Keating: Absolutely. Daron Acemoglu: But there always is some opening for people who want to try them. No authoritarian regime is absolute. And human imagination and will for inquiry are quite strong. But if you put more barriers on it, it’s going to become harder. ## Peer review, they’re not democratic Brian Keating: What kind of barriers are efficacious? I mean, you and I both inhabit, I call it the second oldest profession, being a professor, and a scientific institution. And yet there are some illiberal forces within science. You can think about tenure track, you can think about grant cycles. There are zero-sum games. What sorts of things… I’m thinking peer review. What sorts of institutions that are not liberal? I mean, Reviewer B always gets the final say, right? So tell me, what are the necessary kind of illiberal factors that we need in science? Daron Acemoglu: Well, I wouldn’t say those are the illiberal factors. Brian Keating: They’re not democratic, though. Daron Acemoglu: Peer… they’re not democratic. But there is no necessity that every aspect of an organization should be fully democratic, voted on majoritarian lines. Corporations are not democratic. As long as they are embedded in democratic institutions and there’s democratic oversight and countervailing powers to their influence, especially for the large corporations, I think they are very consistent with liberal democracy. So it’s normal that fields that require specialized expertise, such as astronomy as well as many, many, many other fields, would require some sort

AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It)

AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hsn0F-09is Transcript: Mike Slater: Want to go to a very smart person, Dr. Brian Keating. He is an experimental, I want to say cosmetologist, but that’s because I’m not a smart person. He’s a cosmologist at UC San Diego and he’s a host of the show Into the Impossible with Brian Keating. Dr. Keating, how do you do, sir? Brian Keating: Very well. It’s good to be with you. And you could say cosmetology. You look very handsome and you have good hair. And that’s what cosmetologists do. But actually, yeah, they do have [inaudible] Mike Slater: I was going to say, what percentage of people call you a cosmetologist? Brian Keating: More than call me an astrologer, which I’m also not. [laughter] AI is like the Tower of Babel Mike Slater: Okay, fair enough. Well, let’s chat about AI. You made a reference earlier that AI is like the Tower of Babel. Say more. What are their similarities? Brian Keating: Well, you know what’s interesting? In the Torah and the Old Testament, in the Bible, the Tower of Babel is a very famous story, but it’s always mentioned without mentioning that in the actual Hebrew and the original, it’s actually always the city and the tower of Babel. In other words, there’s an association between the technology and the inhabitants and the population, both the population that creates it, that desires it, that seeks to actually, as it says, make war with God, to be as one with one voice, etc. And the city, the inhabitants, and the Bible is quite skeptical of cities. There are good things that come from cities, but there are a lot of bad things that come from cities. And I think one of them is this sensation that you can sort of divorce yourself from the rest of the world, the real people in sort of flyover country. I always hate that term, but living here in the coast in San Diego, we have a sort of inflated ego about our importance. And I think that’s sort of what’s happening. We see that with the creation of artificial intelligence, which is both, as also as the Bible says, a double-edged sword. So I often joke, where are the single-edged swords that only do good? But in this case, it’s a double-edged sword. It can do good. It can do wonderful things. It can discover drugs. It can help your kids with their homework. But it can do awful things, too. It can create superviruses. It can create incredible weapons and technology that could be used for destruction. And it could teach your kids to fall in love with an AI avatar that doesn’t exist, in some cases allegedly be contributing to their propensity for suicide. So how do we monitor this as parents, as members of cities, of society in America, when we can’t divorce ourselves from the other countries that are also striving to create this technology? They’ve become like gods to us Brian Keating: And what I see now is a very terrifying juxtaposition of these two forces, the two sides of the sword, the two edges, in that you have the creators, the progenitors, the ones that are responsible for that. And by the way, they have these interesting names like Sam Altman, like an alternative man, and then Dario Amodei, which means lover of God or love of God, right? Amo, like amateur. Dei means God in Latin. And then Elon Musk, I don’t know, maybe he’s got a nice smell or something like that. But there are these names that are associated, and they’ve become like gods to us, right? They can do superhuman things. It used to be if you had a question, who do you go to? You go to your priest, you go to your rabbi, you go to your minister, you go to your preacher. Now you tell things that you would never tell to them to the AIs, to get answers, to get the hive mind, the brain, the global brain working, coordinating with the sum total of human knowledge, which is both beautiful and it’s terrifying. And these models have gotten incredibly powerful, and there’s no slowing them down. And the leaders, the Amodeis, the Altmans, they’re now saying that we need to slow down our own technology because it’s so dangerous, and you need to regulate us, and by the way, you may need to take us over. And I think that is the ultimate goal. They want the government to subsidize them. They want the government to be responsible to shepherd them as they play God themselves. And I think that’s quite dangerous, unprecedented. And I’m quite excited, but I’m also worried as somebody who uses this every day for his teaching, for his own kids. I use it. I thrive on it. But you have to be very careful with it. It’s a very powerful technology. I’m an accelerationist Mike Slater: I agree with everything you said. Now to go back to our Bible, the point we made earlier was that they made bricks. So this was a technological advancement, like, wow, we’re now able to make these bricks and this bitumen and stuff. We’re able to build taller than ever before. I love your city point as well. But it’s like anything with these double-edged swords, right? Who was it who said that fire can be a good master but a terrible slave, or however that goes, right? And you can use a knife to cut your food and you can use a knife to murder someone. So, as a scientist, how do you think about technological progress? How do you think about a scientific advancement and weigh the good and the bad? From a scientific mind, how do you do that? Brian Keating: Yeah, purely scientifically, I’m an accelerationist. I would love to see

Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One

Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As5goRNDJp4 Transcript: # Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One **Robert Wright:** You feel sure everything’s going to work out fine. I don’t really understand how you can be confident of that unless you have something like religious faith in technological progress. **Brian Keating:** Natural selection is blind. **Robert Wright:** The mutations in natural selection are blind, but the selection criteria are not. One of the grimmer readings on the Fermi paradox is the reason you don’t see many civilizations that have gotten to past the point we are is that typically when they get to this point where they have the capacity to blow themselves up, they blow themselves up. I think we face the kind of test that God would give. **Brian Keating:** My guest today is Robert Wright, one of the OGs of AI. He was interviewing Geoffrey Hinton about neural networks in 1983, 2 years before Sam Altman was even born. And that was long before anyone was terrified of them. Robert thinks that AI is putting humanity through a test and that passing it takes something no lab can ship, a moral advance. **Robert Wright:** The Tower of Babel story is a truly cautionary tale and it’s a tale of kind of technology gone awry, technology wanting to compete with God, to fight with God, to make a name for oneself. And you see a lot of that. ## The kind of test that God would give **Brian Keating:** Where do you come down in this, that the fundamental aspect of the God test is, at least as I read it, but now I’m talking to the author, is: are we gods but for the wisdom? Are we able to pass this test? And maybe you should define the test, where we can prove maybe to ourselves in the absence of a God that we’re worthy of god-like technology. **Robert Wright:** The title has at least two meanings. One is, as you know, some people think we’re building a superintelligence that will ultimately in some sense maybe qualify for a term like God. It’ll be all powerful and maybe live in harmony with it and, according to some doomers, maybe get annihilated by it. But in any event we’ll be talking about a kind of, relative to us, an all powerful and omniscient in some sense being. And so the one test is, if that’s going to happen, can you build a good god, a god that is compatible with human values and would safeguard human flourishing and so on. There’s that. And although I’m not sure we’re building a superintelligence, I certainly don’t rule it out. And I explain why in the book, but there’s another sense of the God test that in a way is related to the Tower of Babel, because the Tower of Babel is a story of hubris. Who are we to build a god? On the other hand, the doomers say even if we don’t try, it’s taking shape. We’re going to have to try to stop it to keep it from taking shape. But in any event, the Tower of Babel is also a story of how humanity became divided. How they came to speak different languages and became in a certain sense kind of inherently tribalistic, at least at a linguistic level. And one argument I make in the book is that if we’re going to do a good job of navigating the AI revolution, and, leaving aside the question of whether it culminates in superintelligence, if we’re going to reconcile it with continued human flourishing and welfare, I do think we’re going to have to approach it as a true global community. I think there are a lot of policy issues that can only be handled at an international level, and there’s more and more recognition of that only just in recent months. We’ve seen that. I think the end of the story of the Tower of Babel needs to be that we all kind of get back together and navigate this challenge collectively, that is to say human beings. And so in that sense the God test is to overcome our tribal differences, to get better, to understand the perspectives on people on the other side of walls and so on, and like quit having wars. That would require something that I think would qualify as a moral advance, and I think it’s going to be necessary if we’re going to survive this in good shape. So in a way that is a test we’re being subjected to, and that is the kind of test that God would give. At the end of the book I quote the Hebrew Bible, or as we used to say in Southern Baptist Church, the Old Testament: salvation is at hand. And as I say, there are a lot of stories in a lot of religious traditions where salvation is possible, but you are going to in some sense have to pass some test. It may vary by religion. In the Christian tradition, salvation, the test has to do with accepting Jesus as the savior who died for your sins. But very often in one sense or another, it’s a moral test. And for salvation to happen, and by the way, I would also say that salvation is often salvation at the societal level, including in the Hebrew Bible. Again, Christian salvation is often construed more as an individual thing. But in many traditions, it is a question of kind of saving the social system. And I’m saying I think we face, leaving aside the question of whether there is a divine purpose unfolding, I think we face the kind of test that God would give. ## Are we making these things into gods? **Brian Keating:** There’s so much to unpack there. The classic, in the Torah, the Old Testament, the

Former NASA Physicist: The UAP Maneuver That Should Have Exploded | Kevin Knuth

Former NASA Physicist: The UAP Maneuver That Should Have Exploded | Kevin Knuth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vumiiCdAv70 Transcripts: Brian KeatingWell, this is a two-part episode. we’re discussing today, fascinating lecture that summarizes a lot of the current cutting edge research and investigations that you’ve done as a physicist. And the reason that I’m having you on for this in a podcast as well is because I think you’re doing really important and heroic work in terms of bringing scientific rigor to this problem. And one of the problems that I see most and afflicting the UAP phenomenon is. Is that there are very few actual real scientists, professors. Yes, I’m sorry to be a gatekeeper, but but sometimes we need gatekeeping. You and I met through a a chat thread with about 300 other people, some accusing others of different nefarious things, and everyone saying that they have their own truth. Well, no, there’s there’s only one scientific truth. It’s our job to investigate it, interrogate nature. And you do that through the lens of a pr practicing professional scientist. And you’re also a professor. And these these things matter. Yes, it’s important to have other people and voices as well, but we need people from agencies, from industry, from the military, but we certainly do need from the professoriate. And that’s why I think it’s really important what you’re doing. So today you’re gonna describe the the research that you’ve gone into in terms of a presentation you made at a very important conference you gave over the summer, and you’re gracious enough to provide it here, and then we’re gonna have a lot nice long conversation. Depending on which order you’re watching this in, you may have already seen the conversation with Kevin on the Into the Impossible podcast. This shows you I’m dedicating two hours to this phenomenon because I think it’s so important, so pr and it’s so prescient that Kevin’s been involved in this, bringing scientific rigor, bringing academic rigor. We hear a lot about peer review is broken, science is broken, Fauci’s this, lockup string theorist. and you know, I’m guilty of some of it too. But but the reality is Kevin’s a working professor. you can check out his website. I’ll have all of his links below. And just really grateful for your presence today, Kevin. So if you wouldn’t mind, you could take us through this presentation. I might interrupt here and there, but just to ask clarifying questions that the audience might be interested and unable to ask at this point. Prof. Kevin KnuthAbsolutely and th thank you for the very very kind introduction. Yeah, I gave I gave this talk at the scientific coalition for UAP Studies meeting, the SCU meeting this last summer and in Toronto. And I think one of the there there’s a few things that co that characterize academic scientists and make them different than others and perhaps in this field more useful is we study things and we’re trained to study things and we’re trained to be skeptical and we’re I I I don’t know how many times I’m told by somebody, I’m skeptical. well I am too. I mean I’m I’m skeptical of my own ideas, and most people aren’t. And that that’s skeptics. Yeah, skepticism works both ways. You have to be able to catch mistakes. And the fastest way to catch mistakes is for you to catch them. and then and and then on in addition to that, physicists think about things differently than other people. And so I’m I can’t say that that’s the only good way to think about it. I know that it’s not, but Brian KeatingThat’s a sign of a good scientist. Yep, that’s a sign of a good scientist. Yep. Prof. Kevin KnuthPhysicists often bring a unique perspective that’s that you can’t get anywhere else. And so this talk is basically that. I’m asking the question how anomalous is anomalous, and when it comes to UAP, and I’m going to focus on energy and power. And I think the reasons for focusing on energy and power are that in some cases we can estimate the energies and powers involved in a sighting or an interaction with these objects. And very often th those energies or powers are as much, much greater than humans are capable of dealing with. And I think this is the real evidence that we have that we’re dealing with non-human tech in many of these cases. And it’s pretty and when I go through some of these cases, it’ll be pretty obvious that this cannot possibly be human technology. I know Lockheed Martin can do some pretty cool things, but Brian KeatingYeah. Prof. Kevin Knuththere’s a lot of things that they can’t do. Prof. Kevin KnuthSo I think it’s also difficult to for people to remember that UAP are a class of phenomena, not a single thing. There are very certainly different types of UAP. Not all of them are alien spacecraft. In fact, most of them probably aren’t. And in this slide, I actually show several pictures of UAPs. one of them is actually identified. and it’s the one here in the lower the lower left. Can you see my cursor moving? Okay. You can see this one in the lower left. Excuse me. when I first saw this image years ago, I got very excited because I had recognized several other images that looked similar. And I thought, wow, maybe it’s the same type of craft. And I Brian KeatingFine. Brian KeatingYeah, that’s perfect. Yeah. Brian KeatingMm. Prof. Kevin KnuthPulled all those images together and looked at them at the same time and realized, no, it’s it’s a bird. It’s a seagull. Which is precisely why the photographer didn’t notice it while he took the pictures, because he was taking a picture of the boats in the background that I have covered up with the text. that’s actually a seagull. I’m gonna try

Carlo Rovelli: Free Will Is Real. Physics Can Prove It.

Carlo Rovelli: Free Will Is Real. Physics Can Prove It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngAQz-4_F_o Transcripts: Carlo Rovelli:It’s not true that things get disordered. In fact, very often in nature, things left alone get ordered. To imagine that to be free you have to violate the laws of nature is stupid. You, Brian, can be in a superposition. You can be in LA and also in San Francisco. Your head is older than your feet. Brian Keating:That was Carlo Rovelli, one of the men who built Loop Quantum Gravity, telling me that the second law doesn’t say what I think it does. But he didn’t stop there. Over the next hour, He’s going to take apart the 3 things you were told that just ain’t so, ranging from the frost on the window where you may be sitting right now to the clock on your wall. And the clock is the one that really got me. He blew my mind by telling me that my head is older than my feet. And then he told me why that’s the least strange thing he was going to say. So Carlo, let’s start with the frost. You’re telling me that things left alone can get more ordered? That’s not what I was taught. Brian Keating:Walk us through that. Carlo Rovelli:First of all, I, I do think that the thermodynamic arrow, it’s very Basic. A lot of phenomena which we connect to the direction of time. For instance, I remember our last conversation. We don’t remember our next conversation, right? We have a picture of Brian young. We don’t have a picture of Brian old. We can decide where to go to dinner tomorrow, but we cannot decide where to go to dinner yesterday. So there’s all this profound difference between future and past. And I got convinced in the last, I would say, 10 years working a lot about that, I’ve written a lot of papers, that all these differences can all be traced to the thermodynamics arrow of time, to the entropic arrow of time. Carlo Rovelli:It’s not obvious, but the reason we have memories of the past and not the future has to do with entropy growing. If it wasn’t for entropy, there wouldn’t be this dissymmetry between— Now, this Have we fully understood the story? No, I think there are various aspects that we still get confused. And there are also, as you say, aspects that we oversimplify badly. Let me give you an example which is dear to me. We always make this story, okay? Take like latte, caf, coffee and mix and look, they mix. In fact, take water and vinegar, put some vinegar in water, mix and, you know, they mix. Now take water and oil. Mix, they separate. Brian Keating:Oh yeah. Carlo Rovelli:So is this contradicting our entire understanding of the universe? No, it’s just things a little bit more complicated than the way they usually said. It’s not true that under any definition of order or disorder, things get disordered. In fact, very often, In nature, things left alone get ordered, and oil and water separating is one of the many examples of that. If you have a box with balls that you shake and then you put it there on the table, all the balls go very nicely in order on the bottom. Okay? They order themselves. If you look at a beach, at the ocean, all the little grains are together and the big stones are on another side of the beach. They’re ordered by the same. Who ordered them? Okay? If you look at frost, the beautiful ordered structure there, who ordered that? I mean, a lot of things in nature get ordered by themselves. Carlo Rovelli:So the idea that entropy is disorder, careful, under a proper definition of order, under a proper definition of everything. But most of the things we call order and disorder are not connected to entropy in the way it’s usually said. That’s one example in which popular science is bad. In fact, maybe scientists are very confused about that themselves. And that’s important, right? Because people are surprised because biology came in, the very complexity of biology. Biology is a lot of order. So on the crust of our planet, the Earth, there’s all this structure that formed. Okay. Carlo Rovelli:People say, oh, this seems to be against entropy. No, why? Entropy grows and creates orders just happen all over. Brian Keating:Let’s talk about the early universe. You already mentioned the block universe and, and our mutual distaste of that hypothesis. I, I don’t like that. I want to ask the why question. I, I really— I do want to ask the why question, but I know why questions are not usually answerable. But, but the universe was somewhat lower entropy, right? It was in a very special configuration. Does that, in your mind, point to some reason why the arrow of time points in one direction? Carlo Rovelli:Yeah, yeah, the two are very, very connected. It’s not that one explains the other one because we need an explanation for either. I think the, the, the path law of entropy and, and the arrow of time, second law of thermodynamics, are different manners of explaining, of, of pointing out to the same phenomenon about which I think there is more to learn. Brian Keating:Does loop quantum gravity shed light on the low entropy boundary condition as I think it does? Or does it merely modify how a singularity would or would not be used? Carlo Rovelli:You might find some colleagues of me that disagree, but my answer is not at all. It tells us the dynamics of something that might have happened. If loop quantum gravity is correct, we sort of are able to compute what happened at the early universe. But I don’t buy the stories that connect that to initial low entropy or things like that. You see, I’m a conservative guy in science. Loop quantum

They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter

They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GMokB04qt4 Transcript: Brian Keating:Welcome everybody. This is a very special and urgent lecture episode featuring my friend and professor at my alma mater, Rick Gaetzkill. Joining us from Brown University, Rick is the spokesperson of the LZ Collaboration, which stands for Lux Zeppelin, which is located at the Sanford facility in America. Denny Sanford was a friend. He lived here in La Jolla. I met him many times. We have some conversations together. Really wonderful that you guys have done so much to celebrate this great contributor to philanthropy and also to our understanding of the cosmos. Brian Keating:So, Rick, I’m really excited. You’re going to talk to us about one of the most exciting announcements in very recent history, and that has to do with an event that was announced just about a week ago. So this is really urgent and emergent, as I said. So, Rick, please take it away. Rick Gaetzkill:Brian, thanks so much. You know, it’s marvelous to see you. So the Lux Zeppelin experiment is the sort of latest in a line of dark matter direct detection experiments that I’ve been involved in over the last 40 years. It always helps me to gain a little bit of perspective looking backwards as well as, as you say, what we’ve announced from the work of LUXEP just in the last week or so. It is always a little sobering that if you sort of just consider what’s happened in the last 3 years, for instance. The universe has actually expanded measurably in the sense that it’s about a 5th of a part per billion, which I always find quite remarkable. You know, just the universe continues relentlessly doing its thing. But from a dark matter perspective, we’ve been improving our sensitivity looking for so many or testing so many different models of dark matter. Rick Gaetzkill:And as you’ll see, you know, in a moment, just how extensive that testing has been. And then my— one factor is my weight, which actually for once has fluctuated down and not up, which, you know, for 3 years is not bad. I am going to take the opportunity always to sort of remind people a little bit about why we’re still engaged in looking for dark matter particles, even given that we’ve been looking for them for 40 years. And then, of course, as you’ve said, we are actually sitting on an event. An event has shown up in the LZ. Now, as anybody who sort of follows more closely rare event searches, you know, one has to recognize that a single event is, you know, simply a— at the start, if you like. And, you know, either statistically or in terms of our growing understanding of of the conditions that might have contributed to the event, that the interpretation is, you know, could either be that we’re going to see subsequent events consistent with the dark matter hypothesis, or it could be we’re going to see events consistent with some other, you know, more sort of, well, exotic but mundane at the same time background. And this, you know, as experimental physicists, is something we are absolutely focused on always in search The talk, or our discussion, there are so many abbreviations, buzzwords, acronyms these days. Rick Gaetzkill:I think I’m going to forego the usual jokes I make about some of these, other than to mention when people hear the word WIMP, for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, which is after all these significant, you know, number of years that we’ve been trying to test such a hypothesis, You have to understand that physicists do have a little bit of a sense of humor, and the WIMP acronym actually came about at a time when dark matter could also be solved by MACHOs, which were massive compact halo objects. So there was a very deliberate, I think, sort of element of humor in the WIMP, MACHO. Now, MACHOs have actually been something that we’ve managed to test that particular hypothesis, and it is significantly— the amount of dark matter that could be satisfied using a Macho hypothesis is very much smaller and certainly would not solve the entire dark matter issue. Now the other thing I’m going to do a little bit of is I will end up mentioning supersymmetry, but again, I’m not going to get too heavily into the acronyms. And let’s— anyway, let’s move on. Brian Keating:I— Rick Gaetzkill:the other thing is, as you will see, these slides in fact do not have any AI used in their preparation. Certainly with respect to prettification. Brian Keating:Wow. Rick Gaetzkill:There is an interesting aspect of, of AI in rare event searches when it comes to the analysis chain. And while this is something that, you know, like many scientific, you know, experimental that we are, you know, doing a great deal of investigation in, we also have to subject any points in the analysis where AI has been used, you know, we have to be very rigorous about understanding how it’s working, which is not always the way that people choose to use AI. We’re a very constrained case, so we are excited to see what can be done in terms of making better and better use of data that we’re taking. But equally, we, you know, as you might imagine, if we’re talking about a single event, we don’t want to be— we would not be in a situation where an analysis chain simply popped an event out of magic because of an AI component, and that that was what we stood behind. That it’s simply, as you might imagine, you know, would not work like that. And that’s not something that— The other thing is, I have to, you know, let’s not talk about the AI. Let’s talk about the natural intelligence that we have. This, like, you know, is a large scientific collaboration,