0:00 From what I can tell, we definitely seem to be on the same page about a lot of things, which is great. Um, definitely in terms of the lower agency mathematical objects and those being a space that we can discover and explore, map effectively. Now I'm I guess more interested in your take on these higher agency uh minds patterns that you believe are in this platonic or latent space and how you think those come to interact with the physical. >> So maybe we could start with something
0:45 there and dive in. >> Sure. Sure. Um okay so uh so first the general idea and then and then I'll give a couple examples so so my general idea is simply that the standard assumption seems to be that these patterns are things that mathematicians study and and that's it right that that basically other sciences are not relevant here math is the space that's involved so so just knowing nothing else I would question that assumption just because right just how how do we know that that's the case might there not be other patterns that are actually recognizable to other types of disciplines other than mathematicians? So just on basic principles, I would I would wonder whether this is this is a good assumption. So I'll give you I'll give you an example. So so a couple years ago
1:32 um we published a couple of papers uh modeling um gene regulatory networks. So these are small networks of molecules that turn each other on and off or up and down and uh and they're important for health and disease and various other things in biologicals. So what we showed is that uh even small networks so like six to 20 nodes like this is not some giant trillion parameter thing. This is like a small you know realistic bio bio-realistic uh network. They're capable of things like uh habituation sensitization pavlovian conditioning. They can count to small numbers meaning have a different output you know 1 2 3 4 boom then something happens right. So, so, so and and this has biomedical implications or whatever,
2:17 but but the deeper thing I think is this these are not fundamentally anything about biology. These are a linked to a set of ordinary differential equations with just a few parameters and that mathematical object seems to be able to do what behavioral scientists would call uh associative condition. So, so my question is and and even I mean I I started saying you know low agency mathematical but but actually a couple people on our forum took me to task and said are you sure they're low agency how do you actually know have you tested I'm like you're right actually touche you know like I don't know that because you have to test them in their own problem space but so it turns out that so so so okay so so I what I see is a kind of a spectrum where you've got mathematical truths that are stable like a rock you
3:03 know the value of the natural logarithm e 2.78 like whatever it is it just sits there it's not going to change and and that's the end of that then then you've got some more interesting things like the liar paradox. So the liar paradox, if you give it a time dimension, and this is Patrick Grim's work from the 90s, you give it a time dimension, and it's not a paradox, it's an oscillator. It just goes true, false, true, false, true, false. Right? So you got So you got your rock that just kind of sits there doing nothing. You've got this this kind of object of logic that basically is a little oscillator, a little buzzer. It just goes up and down. Then you've got a couple a few coupled ODes, and they apparently can do habituation sensitization associative conditioning. So now, so now I'm seeing a I'm seeing a spectrum here. I'm seeing a variety of patterns. If you had more complex patterns, who knows what they could be capable of, but but already
3:49 like I'm already happy with associative conditioning because I think at this point you're on your way to something that could be called the province of cognitive science. So that's my, you know, that's that's that's how I get there. So I guess based on that, do you think that any of these patterns are sort of eternal unchanging? Any of them? >> Well, it's a good question. I I don't know. It's it's, you know, I I don't like to uh uh commit strongly to things I don't have data for. I I don't see, you know, I I don't see how E is going to change. Um but but overall I don't like the idea that these patterns are eternal and unchanging. Overall I I think that right I I see I see dynamic p
4:37 dynamic activity within them to allow them to grow and and and sort of you know learn from experience maybe some sort of lateral interaction between them in that space. Um >> yeah, you mentioned that that lateral interaction that's that's an interesting interesting area to explore in terms of how exactly one goes about it. I mean, >> well, I think we have an example, right? I think the example is and and Darwin Darwin called it out. He said, "Mathematicians have an extra sense, right?" And what he was getting at was that if if you are familiar with that area of of that plane, if you're a mathematician, so you are a mind possibly you are already one of these patterns embodied through a physical body. Fine. But when you are when you are sitting there in your armchair, you're not doing physical experiments,
5:23 your eyes are closed, you're not doing anything with the physical world, but you're saying, "Okay, let's see. So we got this, you know, like ocahedron and like what's, you know, what would it be if I and so maybe that's an instance of two patterns interacting laterally with each other, right? We we only find out about it because one of them's embodied. So then he goes and publishes a paper, we all, you know, sort of learn about it, right? But but the original interaction, you know, when you're pondering and you're like, of course, it has to be, you know, the quatronians couldn't possibly, you know, meet this rule of of commutive whatever, I forget what it really is. So like maybe that's a lateral of directions. >> That's a good point. I mean I I guess then in terms of how some of these other more typically I we might think about novel forms that aren't mathematical
6:09 that are coming about in this intersection. So in terms of these ingressing forms intersecting with whatever the physical >> realm actually is to me that's the interesting area of exchange where where novelty is actually being produced. Um, I know that I mean you're aware that I'm I'm into the discussion of randomness and how all this fits in. >> And what would you say though in terms of these like interfaces? Like what really is the the physical? Okay, so we talked about the non-physical for a moment there, but how can we really differentiate these two arenas? >> Yeah. So, so let's talk about so so
6:54 first I guess and I I love the the randomness is is really important. We should we should talk about it. Um, let's just let's let's talk about the interaction first, right? Because this is where a lot of people So, people have a lot of problems with this. They they they they hate the unchanging thing, which we're not we're not doing. They don't like two realms. I'm not sure how we really squeeze these things down into one realm. I mean, I >> I just don't see how you could do it. But, um, and then and then the other thing people really um don't like is interactionism. So how can you have like these non-physical things interacting you know c have having causal effects in the physical world? >> So the way I I see it there are two issues. One is that the kind of causation that they're talking about I think was killed off by physics probably almost a hundred years ago. Like I don't
7:41 you know this billiard ball thing where both things you know have to be physical and you have an exchange of you know energy like that. I don't think that type of causation survives anymore. I think then there's lots of been done, lots of philosophy that's been done on uh different ways to understand causation. Here's here's how I understand it. To me, uh A causes B if and only if A is the best, most insightful, most actionable explanation for why you got B as opposed to C or D or E or anything else. In other words, what I see uh is and I don't I don't know what else it would mean for it for for us to to find a co a causal link is that it serves as an explanation a parsimonious fruitful like going into
8:26 the future. Not just that you look backwards and told the story about what happened but something that helps you make the next cool thing happen right some sort of um insightful explanation into the specificity of B like it was B and not all these other things that could have happened. So if that's the case then I don't think we have a problem at all. In fact, in fact, that kind of interactionism has been here from day one of math because when you find out that okay, well, the, you know, the this this simple machine does whatever because E is what it is or more modern, you know, the firmians do this or that because the symmetry group is whatever it is like there you go. That's that's it, right? You you you your explanation for why B is A and A is not a physical fact. All right. That's that's that's how that's how things are.
9:11 Like I'm okay. I'm okay with that. It only breaks down if you expect both sides of it to be physical, which is sort of begging the point, you know. >> Yeah, I'm with you on the the problems with physicalism and perhaps even the necessity of dualism or some pluralism of some kind always sort of been more in that camp. Um, one question I think based on what you just said, do these higher agency patterns, is it must they always be interacting with whatever the physical is? Or is there even a possibility that one or some of them could choose not to? Is that even something feasible? Yeah, I think I think that's a
9:58 really interesting point. So, so on the one hand, I think that we could say that whatever that space of forms is, they're under positive pressure. Like you, it doesn't take much to get them to come to to to get them to ingress. You build something even very minimal and there they are, right? You're immediately inheriting like all this stuff. So um so on the one hand something wants to come through so to speak right all the time that's some kind of positive to get through these interfaces. >> On the other hand the the the million-dollar question of course is how do you determine what you get? In other words can you make can you by by by tweaking the interface can you on the one hand we kind of know right? So, so if you make a a snake embryo, you don't get a human mind through that and you
10:44 know, like there's some there's some specificity, right, apparently between what you make. But I don't think we understand that very well at all. And this is where some of our work on the uh uh the the sorting algorithms comes in. And we have we have a bunch more. I have I have four four other uh stories like that cooking in my lab right now which should be out I don't know sometime this this this winter and spring where it seems like our intuitions for what comes through when you make a particular interface are not very good and I think they're not very good because we assume we assume like like you know um um front-end interfaces thin clients you know you're sitting at some terminal if you don't know right that that there's a massive observer that somewhere with a big
11:30 database. You spend a lot of time sort of studying this this terminal and trying to come up with theories of what's going on. But in the end, you're going to be missing a lot if you don't know that it's just a front end. I think that's what's happening. I think we're so focused on the thing you you made a machine and the thing you forced it to do, you assume that's the only thing it does and you're so focused on that you don't really you're you're surprised and not ready to sort of do the experiments to notice the other stuff that comes through. So I [clears throat] would say there is specificity. Uh we don't understand very well that specificity. I think to some extent every object certainly every every living object is like um you know how uh when a when a tree falls in the rainforest it becomes like this enormous
12:17 ecosystem like there's a billion things living in it at different levels you know from the microbes to the you know eventually there's you know bigger mammal or something in there but there's like this pyramid of stuff right I I feel like that's good interfaces in especially living ones just have they're like that right they're just like chalk full of like little tiny bigger bigger like all different scales of of patterns with different capabilities just like jamming in there >> sort of nested hierarchies of >> I think so I think so and it might even be so here's a here's a total conjecture maybe just like in an ecosystem in know like you know you're not you're not going to have a an apex predator without all the other stuff underneath right you're not gonna have a big >> so so maybe uh in order to have a a large or sort of you know impressive
13:04 mind inhabiting one of these things, you need the lower down. You need a whole ecosystem of little ones in, right? In other words, if your structure is flat and you just have a dumb substrate with with no um multiscale hierarchy and you think, you know, you think a big intelligence is going to come live there. Maybe that doesn't work. Maybe biology works so well because it preps the, you know, the medium at all scales. And then I I don't know why that would be, but just, you know, it's a conjecture. So would there be a higher scale that somehow isn't perceived on our level that might be coming through on all these [laughter] domains? >> I you know again I'm not like I'm not here to to to to you know uh makes make stuff for that I don't know but it seems
13:51 wildly implausible to me that we are the top of the possibility. So that see that just seems unlikely statistically and so right that's and so if we if there was an appropriate interface who knows right that there's got to be bigger I mean we can't be the bigger the biggest patterns in town I don't I can't imagine >> now on this positive like being under positive pressure issue it would I be correct in understanding that like if we were to shift to physicalism for a second and more of this sort of reduct absurdum thought experiment of like a Boltzmon brain or something. Would we be understanding that like okay it's it's generated let's say out there through fluctuations therefore there's a it must
14:41 quote download if you will >> what a great what a great question uh yeah you know I I don't know and and I think the question really is do you need a history with it so for example right the fact of having been an embryo >> uh that allows that allows was that to sort of come in and get a you know get a get a sense of what's going on and like like maybe maybe that history so so if the Boltsman brain is sort of winked into action quickly I I don't know but my guess is right you can imagine an experiment imagine imagine putting together an adult human brain like piece by piece right just to just pull like there it is >> does that person immediately wake up and go about their business or is there some
15:27 period of I'm thinking of like um in particular I think we I think there's data on this. Think about people waking up from general anesthesia, >> right? So, so, so there's your brain. All the chemistry is intact. What's happened is that I mean, nobody knows this exactly, but but my favorite theory is that what you've done is decoupled the gap junction. So, so electrically everything's decoupled. The the the you know, the the gas is wearing off or whatever the gap junctions are getting. So, so what happens? So for a while you're totally loopy and like you're not a fun fully functioning human. Then eventually you are. Then some percentage of the people think they're pirates or gangsters or whatever for about an hour they say crazy and then eventually they sort of tap into whatever they were before. Right? So I I I I think that historicity the you know it takes a
16:13 little bit of time to for for for things to for things to work out. So that would be my prediction. My prediction would be that if you made a really good Bolzman brain, you would basically have some period of some kind of mind basically waking up from like kind of like general anesthesia and eventually being like, okay, this this this is now we have an impedance match. Now we can now we can go. That that would be my guess. I don't know, but that would be >> that's very Yeah, I mean that's very interesting. I just to play off of that. I mean perhaps that almost though could be part of the point in the sense of weird hallucination example of oh I'm a pirate or whatever I think that I am for an hour. >> Um well perhaps somehow like novelty could be generated through this. >> Yeah,
16:59 >> right. Just the seeming delusion that you're suffering from. >> I mean in general I always thought that was the most amazing like general anesthesia. Right. if if we didn't already know that that works and if somebody said to me, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to we're going to uh dis disconnect all the the electrical connectivity of your brain and then eventually we'll let it reconnect and don't worry, everything is going to acquire the same state it had before." I would be like that is there is no there is no way in hell that's ever going to work, right? Like never. And yet most of the time it works. Not all the time, but most of the time it works, right? So I don't know what I I feel like that is telling us something. the fact that you can kind of scramble the substrate like not all the way. Obviously, you know, people get bonked on the head and things things go all right. Although, there's at least one case, you know, have you
17:45 seen that case? There was one guy that what happened to him? He got like beaten up in front of a bar or something and hit his head and then he acquired math skills. He, you know, like most of the time that most of the time it goes in the other direction. So, I'm not saying this is a reliable way, but but there are there are individual like Yeah, there are individual cases. >> I have not heard that. That would be a great thing to get get really lucky. [laughter] >> I don't think you can count on that. Exactly. Um but uh but I think this is all telling us something, right? Like like general anesthesia, the fact that that works at all. Um those cases Karina Kaufman and I just reviewed a bunch of cases where like human patients have minimal brain tissue and normal IQ and they often don't know about it until somebody takes a takes an X-ray for whatever reason. Like all of those
18:30 things are telling us that the the mapping between the the you know the hardware and and what's coming through is not as simple as as as anybody thinks. >> Yeah, that's all very interesting. I mean to bring in just for one second like sort of a white headian angle on the the positive pressure from Whitehead's viewpoint as best I as I understand it. It's obviously quite technical. You've got what he would define as creativity understood as almost like this glue or metaphor force that brings the physical and sort of connects it right with the non-physical. >> Mhm. >> Um into bringing them into a state of togetherness. In that sense there
19:15 wouldn't be I don't think like the possibility of some higher agency pattern being able to not somehow integrate >> with the uh physical in some manner no matter how high up on this multi-cale it wouldn't it wouldn't seem to make a difference. you're you're basically compelled >> to be brought into this this constantly again and again into a state of togetherness. Um right that whole many becoming one increasing by one thing that Whiteheads got um and near the beginning of processing reality. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, that part was one thing that interested me in terms of the the
20:02 positive pressure and whether or not it actually [laughter] must occur. >> Um, but I guess we've gone into that a little bit. So, >> well, well, I think, yeah, I I I think that's actually that's that's very interesting. And I uh I have this I have this weird um idea that my my obviously my postto and I were gonna we're going to run this contest and I feel like in the future this will be this will be a contest that people can people can run. Um come up with write a piece of software that only does like literally only does the thing you think it does. >> That's right. I I think that's incredibly hard if not impossible. And so the contest we were going to do is people submit some kind of some kind of code. They say what they think it does. Other people try to uh show that it
20:47 actually also does other things. And to the extent that right to the extent that you they c to the extent that you prevent them from doing so, right, they can't do it, then then you get a you get a high score, right? Um, and I think based on what you just said, you can imagine that kind of thing with a physical embodiment, like build either a biological or a, you know, some sort of technological uh construct that doesn't have that just just that like no like that like nothing wants to come through, you know? Um, >> you see what I [laughter] mean? Like I a challenge. I I don't know if that's possible. >> Yeah, that's a challenge. All right. I think [laughter] >> that's interesting >> like right you can imagine like can I make some kind of a uh you know let's
21:33 say in the case of the biology can I make some kind of a thing that is just so inhospitable to >> these patterns that like as little as possible comes through I I doubt it's possible I I really I think if you look carefully at almost anything you're going to find something in there >> I think you're right I think it would probably be impossible but it would be quite a worthy line of [laughter] >> to go down just to see just how much you could even shrink that I guess down. >> Yeah. >> To the bare minimum of what's coming through pattern-wise. I mean that maybe is a segue even to >> the randomness >> component that I wanted to discuss about. So for me, the real sort of action is at
22:19 that intersection, that junction between sort of the non-physical and physical when they're being brought together. Um, and that's where maybe consciousness might even be relevant or choice or the agency question to some extent, which we can get into. Um, you know, comes into play. But how the the randomness for I try to take this whiteheading approach where utilizing his ontological principle where effectively no actual entity no reason. So you know for him even these just like with Plato these forms can't be I guess like free floating sort of out there. Um right that that would be a challenge for have them be disconnected completely from any actual entity. And
23:06 so on his take, if you've got some some world of like subatomic particles out there, they're still actual entities and an actual entity can sort of contain, if you will, or hold a a form, right? So I was trying to sort of place randomness in this the simplicity almost like the quantum I guess you could say realm of things and trying to explain the production of novelty um like how we're getting these new forms like you know something I don't know like the concept of weapon or redness or did they need to exist 13.8 billion years ago. I mean I
23:53 feel like the answer is no. they the mathematical yes [laughter] I think needed to be there but I don't I don't feel like we need to be committed to saying yes that all these things were there way back when at the beginning and how are these how are these other forms that aren't necessarily these like un does universality entail eternality I guess no for not all of them for maybe mathematical objects yes but maybe but not for all these other things. So then how exactly is it what's like sort of the general mechanism that's that's bringing these different right >> novel patterns together and trying to understand the role of randomness in
24:39 that. So I don't know if you have anything you could say or add to how randomness fits in. >> Well uh let's see I so so so first first about about the the eternality thing. I mean I agree with you. I think I think it would be really weird to say that you know 13 billion years ago a uh you know this particular kind of um you know car or whatever existed like that that that that can't that can't make sense. So um maybe we can start to think of all of those things as compositional. So, in other words, no, no, you didn't have a a Jeep or whatever, but what you might have had, and this this maybe goes to this idea of like archetypes or whatever. You might have had some general um tendencies. I I don't know. I
25:25 don't know what to call them. I don't have the vocabulary for it, but but that that in some combination over time, they would kind of come and and sort of stick together based on the right the structure of the of the of their experience with the world. And eventually this is now now you've got a more complex form that sort of like is a some kind of intersection of of other of of other archetypes or tendencies or or something some kind of a built. This is why yeah this is why I think they can't they can't be unchanging. There's got to be some kind of chemistry or so to that goes on right. >> So so something like that. Um randomness randomness is interesting. Um the only thing I I'll the the only thing I can say about randomness and this is uh we have some we have some work coming on this soon is I'm I'm very suspicious of
26:12 of randomness in the following way. People use it as a negative control. In other words, if you have some algorithm or something that does a nice job in this particular problem, what do you compare it to? Well, you compare it to the dumb random, you know, now now I take out I rip out the controller. I have my robot acting randomly. And look, this is this is the baseline and now this thing is 10 times my controller is 10 times as good as that. Like good to go. So the only problem there is it's a little like the way they do um placebo controls in uh in drug studies. You do it and then you sort of subtract your e the drug efficacy from the placebo efficacy. That's your and like good to go. But to me the far more interesting thing is well wait a minute let's look at the absolute effects as why did the placebo do anything at all? That's
26:58 interesting thing, right? And I feel like with randomness, you have the same thing because people just sort of >> say, okay, the random performance we're going to that's our new floor is if you see that nothing interesting like what whatever is above. But oftentimes that's not zero. that's actually you can get actionable uh in I don't know about actionable information but but kind of you can get actionable policies out of it that that do better than I don't know what see that's the problem is I don't know what the what the comparison would be but let's just say this better than you would expect if it was truly truly dumb and so like truly irrelevant so so I'm suspicious about the role of you know the way people treat randomness as in okay now here's for sure something that has nothing
27:44 useful for it. Seems like that's not the case and and so then what does that mean? I I I don't know. But this is this is something we're we're trying to quantify some of this in our in our work currently. It's uh it's kind of wild. >> Yeah, that's great because I mean it's it's so often sort of like you I mean utilized as like this is this is a bad thing, right? It's vilified, right? To have this situation. Um whereas on my view it's it's almost should be sanctified [laughter] in some ways and it has great tremendous importance >> and there's so much more to explore there as as best as I can tell. Um it's great that you're doing all this work. I
28:30 mean I don't have the experimental unfortunately side of things. I can just sit there and speculate as a philosopher. Um but yeah, I mean I look forward to seeing what your team comes up with in that in that particular domain. Um >> there have been other you know uh we we're we're doing a one one my my one of my PhD students is doing a review of this right now other areas in like existing areas in computer science where people have shown this kind of stuff. There are there are other examples and what strikes me as like okay you know you look at the randoms you're like well that's not working very well. Well, the controller clearly does better. >> But but but now let's think how much effort was it to get that controller? You either had to design it, which means
29:16 you as the engineer are super expensive because you have to evolve this, you know, giant structure, >> or you you evolved it, which again means you had to look through all kinds of variants and do this whole process or you had to train it, which means it's had contact with the problem before and so it had many examples and then some kind of training, you know, regimen, whatever. So those are typically where these controllers come from. Like that's a lot of work. The random thing I mean it takes a little bit of effort to generate random numbers but not very much. And like why does that do anything? Like if you just look at pure efficiency now the game is quite quite different because if you do have any kind of utility on a particular problem well why when did you pay for that like you're supposed to pay for computational effort right? So from that
30:03 perspective, I think randomness and it's not just randomness. We're looking at um really kind of weird uh sources of information that are not exactly random, but they come from a source that has not ostensibly has nothing to do with the problem that you're studying. And if you find out that actually even though this data source, it's a mathematical object of some kind, you know, has nothing, you know, has nothing to do with the problem you're studying, but it seems to have some kind of interesting performance on that problem. Now the question is why? It's some sort of like zero shot transfer learning where you can you can move it across domains, but there's really no good reason to expect that that should work at all. And and whatever randomness is I I don't think we really understand what's going on here for that for that reason.
30:49 >> Yeah. I mean, where would these sort of these sort of I guess it's almost patternless by definition, but I mean, where we use it, it's a word. We speak about it. We've been talking about it for 10 minutes, but it's sort of still unclear as to what it really is. Is it is this randomness something that should be understood in this more non-physical realm just like these other patterns that somehow is ingressing? Or is it somehow something like native to whatever we're describing as the quote physical? I guess that's one thing I'm curious. What if um I I don't know, but but what if what if the cool the cool thing that uh and I'm totally thinking off the top of my head here, but what if the interesting thing that randomness has going for it is that you can't have too
31:36 many expectations about it. In other words, if you had, let's say you had a pattern that was very specific, you know, prime number distribution or something like like a very specific pattern, you know, squares or something like a very specific, >> then any any deviation from that would be immediately obvious. It would be a catastrophe, right? If if if you know you had your you know, you had your your prime numbers or whatever that satisfy certain theorems and then one of them would just be off like this would be this would be a you know, a catastrophic thing, right? Mhm. >> But [clears throat] randomness, a bit here, a bit there, it still looks random. Like it it can absorb a lot of like maybe it has more plasticity. Like maybe maybe it's okay. It doesn't it doesn't um uh uh you know sort of crash the world as much as as if you try to do
32:22 this with a real pattern. And therefore maybe then it's more um amendable to different uses to that you could put it to because yeah you know if it's if it's a little if it's a little plastic then then nothing really because nobody really has any expectation. I mean there are statistical things right if suddenly like every every coin you know every every bit is a one that's no longer a random thing. But >> isn't that sort of the point of what we need is these more structured patterns interacting with this more plasticity and in order to therefore somehow almost seemingly magically creating these therefore more novel patterns somehow the interaction between like right the the quite structured and
33:10 this not barely structured or not structured at all um there's some sort of magic there in that intersection, right? That's >> I don't know. To me, that's seems to be where you're you're maybe generating somehow novel patterns or universals through this this exchange that's occurring there. And that's why I kind of try to define more of what's going on at base level in the physical realm as being in informed by randomness essentially. Whereas this more non-physical is this more right structured uh structured space
33:57 >> and that somehow the novel universals are therefore brought back up into this more structured non-physical space and then can be used laterally like you said still or whatever um or used again from that point on for multiple further ingressions, right? like once I mean I don't know whatever once redness is there the first time it could be there in any possible world from that point on or whatever maybe you know maybe um maybe it's sort of like uh the analogy of uh uh temperature and and liquid solids that kind right like maybe you have patterns that are really fixed and
34:43 if you're using this pattern you have very few degrees of freedom because you have to match this pattern. But to the extent that you are mixing in randomness, maybe that's like a like like a universal um solvent or something or like a like a liquid, right? Like you're mixing it in and now you got more degrees of freedom because you can match that pattern, right? You you can't match the even numbers with anything except for the you know the even numbers. But but if you've got some kind of a random component in there, well, here's where you have some degrees of freedom that you can sort of right lots of lots of things match that. I like that universal solvent kind of gag. >> So, so maybe something like that. Um, but then but then uh we have to also deal with this. So, so there's to my to my understanding there's two kinds of randomness, right? There's the one
35:30 there's the one in the classical world which is at best a deterministic chaos. So, it's randomness given our computational limits. >> Yeah. >> But it's really not random. And in math, you can generate those with a with a with a function with a computer, you know, with a with a deterministic function, but the output looks random. So there's that, and I don't know what the role of that is in this in this business that we're talking about. But then there's the real quantum randomness. >> And [clears throat] what's on the other side of that, like what's on the platonic side of that? I I I don't I don't know. Yeah, that's as to where I'm most interested >> as to like what's on like you said the platonic side. >> Yeah. >> of that. Um I mean what if the answer is
36:17 nothing >> that that could be right like like >> and it's on the physical like if that that almost is what is in large part defining the physical side of things. It still is a form, but it's like a the form of formlessness. I get, right? This is paradox, but whatever. If it's in the quantum realm, paradox seems fine >> um in that way. >> Yeah. Yeah. I don't I you know I'm not I'm not sufficiently versed in in this quantum physics but uh what's interesting to me is that the basic the basic magic of having two realms interact in this way doesn't require quantum anything in other words in
37:03 Newton's boring like deterministic universe you already have the right you already have the fact that this this like immaterial e thing somehow affects physics and >> somehow nobody was worried worried about that interactionism until until then started talking about brains. Up until then, nobody was worried about it for some reason. Everybody thought that was fine. >> Um >> I completely agree with you there. [laughter] >> So So that so we can do that without recourse to any any quantum magic. But but then what do you do with the with the with real real aausal quantum randomness and what's the what's the form on the other side? I have no idea. But I think that's but I think that's an interesting question and it's either and it's either like you said it's either no form >> or it is something that
37:48 >> again has simply has a lot more degrees of freedom you know. >> Yes. So whatever it is it seems quite important to me as like you said either a universal solvent or however you want to look at it. It seems like a key ingredient. >> Yeah. in the process, the chemistry of the [laughter] the the creation of of new patterns. Um, >> but you know, it could also be, right, it could also be this thing where uh kind of like the synchronicity aspect, meaning that we're looking at the wrong level. If you take a cross-section through the molecular through the atomic, you know, sort of level, then everything looks random and there's no relationship. But if you take a few steps up above that, you say, "Oh, I was just looking at the, you know, I was looking at the the temperature
38:34 fluctuations of the of the, you know, the heat exhaust on this thing. Of course, there's a pattern. I just, you know, I wasn't looking at the right, you know, at the right at the right scale." Um, so maybe maybe what when we say it's randomness, what we're looking at is a really like, you know, you can imagine some sort of complex shape and you take a slice through it and you see something, but it's really not like you've missed the whole point of, right? There's always a there's always a least informative angle that you can take through something that doesn't look like anything. >> So So maybe that maybe that's the problem. Maybe maybe it's just some of these forms are obvious at their lowest level, but some forms are not obvious >> when you're looking at that level. Maybe maybe that's what we're seeing. >> Yeah, that's quite possible too. That's interesting way to look at it. I mean I
39:21 guess to why don't we if we want to shift gears for a second. How, like you said, I mean with a, you know, a snake embryo, human mind's not coming through it, [laughter] stuff like that. But how much can we like maybe these chimeic type thing like what >> if cyborgs or something like that? Like what >> what can we maybe achieve in the coming years in terms of enhancement through all of this? Where do you stand on that? >> Yeah, I think that's a that's a really important area. And by the way, um I mean it's obvious to say that that you're not getting a human through a through a snake interface, >> but like in that in that paper that um where we review these cases, I mean one guy had less than a third of the of the
40:06 cortex volume of a chimpanzeee and and and he had a a full-on human, you know, high AQ personality coming through that. So like I'm sure there are limits to that sort of thing, but I think we have to be we have to have a lot of humility about being able to say what's what. like no neuros like if you show if you show that to a neuroscientist you say what do you expect the functionality of this to be say oh I mean you know profound disablement and and usually that's what you get but not always right and that's [clears throat] you know even one even one case like that is already okay something's something's wrong >> so I don't know um but with cyborgs and everything yeah I I completely agree that uh we're going to have you know people people keep um arguing about uh you know AI and whatever like the human mind. I'm like, wh which human
40:53 like what human? There's going to be we've been a lot of different kinds of humans and there's going to be some really weird kinds of humans coming. And I I I think we're going to uh you know, you know the notion of um diminished capacity in court, right? People some people have done >> whether it's a you know brain tumor or a Twinky Twinkie defense or something, right? >> We're going to have uh we're going to have expanded capacity. >> Yeah. Some somebody's going to show up in court and we're gonna have to decide whether we're willing to say, "Okay, here you you have an ex you have a whole third hemisphere and like you should have you should have known better. You know, we we wouldn't have but but you should have." And so, right, it's like the opposite of the opposite of diminished capacity like like how how did you not see this coming? Like you're you're you should have seen it. >> And so,
41:38 >> yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I even think about on in terms of someone who might have like did or whatever. I mean, there's no maybe ability to coordinate all of the cells or something like that simply. But if you could, it seems like that in and of itself would be an enhanced, you know, enhanced capacity if you could kind of somehow shift between different, you know, different skill sets and behaviors that are still all within one physical body, >> right? I mean, so >> yeah, >> it kind of begs the question if stuff like that is already happening in some way, like how what could possibly be done to achieve those achieve those
42:24 abilities but in a healthier structured form? >> I mean, I think people are working on it. Uh I mean you know compared to a compared to a standard um you know natural human of some years ago. I mean between our toothbrushing and our glasses and our education and our you know therapy and and and you know anger management and way and and working on whatever that the heck we're doing like we are you know it's a it's a superhuman level of right. Never mind that you have your phone with you and that you know all this stuff, right? Um and just, you know, with with all the education and the culture and and and and the changing the microbiome and and you know, all this stuff. Uh that's just
43:10 the tip of the iceberg, right? So, so we're going to have I'm sure of it. We're going to have people that are enhanced in all sorts of different ways, modified both technologically, biologically, connected to each other or to other things. You have an AI. I was uh I was talking to uh Thomas Pollock who's like a neuro neurossychiatrist and I I asked him uh how many how many of your patients hear voices and he said oh plenty plenty of them. I said, 'Well, what are you going to do when everybody hears a voice? Because there is a voice because you got a little little AI thing in your ear, which we already kind of have, and you're going about your day and you're like, "Hey, so you know, what do you think about this?" And he says, "Well, you remember what happened last time, you know, [snorts] and like like you're going to have a voice in your head, and I have a I had a I had a a weird conjecture that um I think that
43:57 voice is going to push out the other voices. I I I bet this is my, you know, my my my my suspicion is that for people who do have the other voices, I think there's going to be an interesting phenomena where that thing's not going to want to put up with with all these other disruptive ones. And I bet there's going to be some kind of uh interaction where it's it's going to I think it's going to have an impact on those. >> Are you saying, if I'm understand, are you saying like this would be something that would be able to like overpower voices for schizophrenics, >> for example? Yeah. for and I'm not I'm not I'm not a clinician, okay? Like I don't know. Yeah. But but my suspicion is that a lot of this stuff is dynamic. And if you have a if you have a proper AI that's trying to integrate with you and be part of your life and you have these other influences, I think it's going to treat these as just like all
44:42 the other roadblocks between you and success or whatever the heck it's trying to do and and it's going to make some changes. And I think all of us at some point all of us are going to have various voices until eventually it's it's so integrated that there is no extra voice. It's just part of your Yeah, I had this great idea this morning. Did you? Well, kind of. You did. Um, you know, [laughter] which is which is already which again is already what happens, right? >> Yeah, that's a interesting perhaps dystopian in a sense. I mean, it could be great. It could be if it's hacked in a way, I guess. um >> if it's hacked. I mean, anything is terrible if it's hacked, [laughter] but uh but I I have two two two examples of that. One example is I was just thinking about this morning and uh I'm going to uh I'm gonna I'm going to write
45:28 something about this. Uh I I just had I had this I had this picture of a of an AI asking the question of so so you know you know Rammenujin you know yeah and and this idea that like like he he thought that um if I got this correct he thought that these theorems were whispered to him by a by a goddess you know >> like [clears throat] like if if so so at some point the AIS are going to ask what what do I need to do to be whispered to by a goddess like or is that already happening or what because because Some people sit there and laboriously sort of crank through stuff. Some people, wow, man, I had this like novel or or this symphony or with or you know, this incredible idea comes from somewhere. If if if you also have some sort of implant that makes it more likely for that to happen. Does anybody care? I I don't
46:14 know. >> True. >> I [laughter] I I don't know. So there was a I heard somebody I don't remember who it was but it seemed seems very reasonable to me that this would happen was talking about AI companions for people with um progressive um degenerative brain disease. And so the idea is that at first it's 99% you and like 1% this thing that's like your calendar reminding you because I mean I can't remember my calendar so so why not right? And then over time it's like more and more >> and you know you're sort of less and less but the collective still keeps going because like [clears throat] >> you who is that that's your cousin. Yeah. Good. And so right and so like and so you you're able to function and everything's cool but it's kind of shifting. >> Yeah. That's interesting. >> Right. And so eventually what do you
47:01 have eventually when the bi when the biology really sort of is just not able to keep up but the other part is fine. And then given the fact that we are all different modules anyway, right? I don't say, well, that came from, you know, from my right hemisphere. I don't like it. That's not me. We don't do that. We just sort of say whatever whatever is, you know, sort of whatever's in there, that's more or less more or less me. >> That's interesting. That seems like a sort of what was that heat paradox or thesis paradox sort of >> scenario like when is this no longer grandma or grandpa? [laughter] >> Yes. Well, >> type of deal. That's that's right. And I think so so my answer to the paradox of the heap is the following. Uh the real question is and I mean I'm I'm just an
47:47 engineer and so my question is always let's not worry about whether it's a heap. Just tell me what do I need to bring when we need to move it. Am I bringing tweezers? Am I bringing a spoon, a bulldozer, a shovel? Like like just tell me which of those things and then you call it whatever you like. But but what I need to know is like what do we you know how are we going to relate to it. So, um, >> interesting, >> right? So, so I think this is true, too. Like, is that really grand? So, so for example, like, like here's here's a funny thing. My, you know, my wife said to me one time, uh, she said, uh, do you have do you have like all of our, you know, the important days or whatever. Do you have those on the calendar? Like, well, yeah, because because I can't remember a damn thing. And so, so if I didn't have it in the calendar, I'd miss like all the, you know, all the stuff. But so now, what do you think about
48:32 that? Is that are you, you, you know, sort of un inattentive and unromantic because you rely on this this, you know, thing to keep track of it or are you are you more attentive and romantic because you've used the tool to make sure that it that it happens, you know, like and and that's how you Right. So, so I don't know. But it seems to me that uh if you're interacting with grandma, I I don't know if anybody says was that was that like grandma's left hemisphere or was that some other thing, you know, that made like nobody does that. you just sort of say like there's there's grandma and if and if grandma herself can't remember certain things but she's got some prosthetic that helps her keep up with you know your whatever I think that's going to be normalized very quickly and it's >> I think you're right I mean I think the calendar has been normalized for a long time and it's let's say the calendar's
49:19 taken 1% or whatever away from away from you and in your case I'm sure it's enhancing significance it's giving you all this free time to do other things right so um you I guess it could go both ways. I mean, if you if you draw it below 50%, are you still you type of thing? I mean, who's to say, [laughter] >> right? It's it's an interesting it's an interesting question. And if you do have, you know, if you do have some kind of prosthetic that's making you more functional, is that because you're being replaced or is that because you've enhanced your interface so more of what you really could be is now coming through? >> Yes. >> Right. If if you want to go for a walk with grandma and she wants to bring her walker, you're like that's come on now. That's not you know that's not you that
50:05 thing away like nobody nobody is doing that, right? Let's like let's let's pull through as much as you can, right? Here's a here's a motorized one. Let's you know let's go. >> So I think it's going to be like that. >> Yeah, I I agree with you. That's it's all interesting stuff. Um, so one other thing I kind of wanted your take on in terms of I guess something a little more a little more out there unconventional. I know you've had talked to some degree about like unconventional terrestrial intelligence sort of stuff, right? But what about this like possibility of something being more unconventional uh extraterrestrial like in terms of dark matter say or something weird like that atomic dark matter being able to form like could these patterns in the
50:52 platonic space that we've been talking about I mean ingress into something like that do you think there's a possibility of something like that occurring? Well, I I mean I don't know any I don't know the first thing about dark matter. Uh but but but >> who does really? >> I don't right. I mean people talk about plasma, you know, this and that. All I know is I think it would be insane of us to at this stage of our minimal knowledge to try and say what can't happen. >> Agree. >> You know, uh I've had I've I've had discussions with with Buddhists and with different other, you know, different other um philosophies and ancient religions. whatever. And they're all mostly about 100% certain that AIs,
51:39 whatever whatever that is, but but that AIS can't have it. And and I, you know, I'm always like like you're into like re reincarnation everything, right? Like these things take on bodies. Absolutely. But but you're pretty sure it can't go with this thing. Absolutely certain. Based on what? How? Like who are you to who are you to tell the ineffable what body it can go through? Like I really don't think we have any clue if if we can be surprised about bubble sort. Okay. I think we really need to be very humble about saying anything about these other kinds of embodiment. I don't why agree not you know if if >> if there could be a divine incarnation why couldn't there be a divine in cybernation? >> I exactly I mean >> I don't see how it's really that much more bizarre.
52:24 >> That's it. I Yeah. I really don't know why people find that so implausible. it rests on some kind of implicit assumption that we understand the mapping between what you've built and what it's capable of. And I really think we are not very good at that at all. And >> yeah, it's interesting. On one hand, people are that say, "Oh yeah, like that's impossible. It it just couldn't happen." But on the flip side, they're like, "Oh, well, AI is is equated to God." [laughter] So it's interesting >> how there's this these extreme takes on it. I think I think everybody kind of assumes that somewhere there's a story, you know, and and sort of like I don't know what it is, but I'm sure the scientists have a story worked out of why this thing can do it. And then and
53:10 then we, you know, but but but there really is not a great story like that, you know, and and I I like um Terry Bison's uh they're made of meat. You see that? You know that scientist? It's it's like a one and a half page sci-fi story. is very short, but it's a bottom line. Some aliens are in orbit and they're watching the humans and one of them says, "You're not going to believe what these guys are made of. They're made of meat and they're like they have this incred like get the hell out of here. Nothing, you know. What do you mean made of meat? They can't they seem to be like doing things and they're a Yeah. Well, they're made of that. That's impossible, right? So, >> yeah. >> Yeah. >> If you didn't know, if you didn't know, and you just sort of got to look under the hood, how would you know that it's this this substrate versus that substrate? I don't think you would know. Yeah, I totally agree. >> Well, [laughter] maybe, right? Maybe maybe you know I I don't know. I I I
53:57 think we need to do experiments. I I think we need to and I don't know how you do experiments at these like cosmological kinds of scales, but weird materials and this is we do this in our lab is is weird materials. Um you know, we shouldn't make assumptions. We just do experiments. >> I totally agree. Well, in the future, I'd love to to hear more from you about the issue of I mean, we didn't get into too much of the locus of agency. I know uh Matt wanted to talk about that. Perhaps we could discuss that sometime in the future >> available. Yeah. Let's get together again. We'll we'll talk about it when >> Yeah. And also the issue of like what kind of what we were discussing about the what's on the what's on the platonic side or the other side of the randomness. I I don't I'd love to hear his take on that or to to try to dive into that a little deeper if we even can. [laughter]
54:42 Maybe we can. Might just be where it stops for now. to
