Ep 011: Van Savage
*Please note that this is a robot-generated transcript. Human edited version coming shortly.
…begin transmission…
Hello, everyone. Welcome to alien crash site, a speculative conversation series from the Santa Fe Institute. This podcast is loosely based on and very much in tribute to the 70 Soviet science fiction, novel roadside picnic, which was written by Arcata and Boris <inaudible>. It was later adapted into the film stocker by Tarkovsky, and both works are frequently cited in this adventure. This week we brought van Savage into the zone. Van is a professor in the UCLA departments of ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as computational medicine. He is also external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, where he serves on our science steering committee. His work covers a broad range of interests. He researches metabolic scaling consumer resource interactions, rates of evolution, the effects of global warming on diverse ecosystems, tumor growth, and sleep.
0 00:00:51
Now we at the Santa Fe Institute are in the middle of a five-year research theme on complex time called aging adaptation. And the arrow of time, this research is funded by the James S. McDonald foundation and complex time is a multifaceted research area. As you can imagine, van is the co-organizer for the topical track on sleep. He, along with Alex Herman from the university of Minnesota are looking at sleep as it occurs across our lifetimes and across different species to try to figure out why it is that we all do it. And they've made some fascinating conclusions that we will discuss in this episode. And after that van re-emerges from the zone with not one but two alien artifacts, a triumphant trip. Indeed.
0 00:01:31
So without any further delay, let's forge ahead. I'm Kaitlyn McShea. This is alien crash site. I hope you're well rested because the zone is a dangerous place. So keep your eyes
2 00:02:13
Hi, Dan. Thanks for stepping into the zone. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing Kaitlin? I'm good. I'm good. It's been a busy week, but it's lovely here in Santa Fe. How's it in LA? It's pretty good. It was actually what people here consider high yesterday and cold today cause LA has a very near range or what they think is called in LA is probably my ideal, but it's pretty good. It's sunny. At least now it was cloudy this morning. So we have you here for a variety of reasons. You are external faculty at SFI, but you work at UCLA and you are doing a wide range of different researches. But specifically in our complex time, you've been doing a lot of work on sleep, the importance of sleep.
2 00:02:57
And I think that it would be really fun to talk, sleep in the context of this interplanetary framework, because you know, I'm thinking about things like long-term duration space flight. So yeah, so as we, as we think about things like the Rover and ingenuity, doing all of these really cool things on Mars, and we start looking at other possibly habitable planets or icy moons, we think about how long it'll take people to get there. And wouldn't it be so nice if we slept the whole way. And so could you take a moment to explain sleep on in the earth sense why it is that we do it? It seems sort of like a wasteful thing to do with a third of our lives, but clearly there's a reason for it,
3 00:03:32
Right? I think, I think that's more like a stronger argument than that is essential. That just we do it is that pretty much every animal instead of care carefully does it. So that's a really like hugely pervasive phenomenon that clearly evolved a long, long time ago before us. I don't know if you've seen this recently, but it was the news that this octopus shows two stages of sleep and turns colors, and it looks like that independently involved as to two stages of sleep. So it's clearly like some strong evolutionary pressure to have sleep submits or some function. And that is what a lot of my research has been. It's how can I actually use a comparative approach, not just focusing on humans, but across like all the different animals we see and think about what is that, you know, pressure or need for sleep.
3 00:04:18
And I think the main, what we've concluded from our research, which I think is pretty, you know, I personally was pretty compelling and strong,
2 00:04:26
But you're not
3 00:04:29
That for at least for adults sleep is mainly for repair in the brain. And I'll say that for mammals, at least I think it's broader than mammals, but at least from animals, the idea is that, you know, when we're active during the day, our metabolism is going strong or pretty much the power that creates by your products that can do damage to DNA or vessel walls. That's what it means. People are in accidents to counteract some of the free radicals produced by metabolism and the brain, especially as the highest metabolism of an organ in the body neurons don't get replaced like most cells in the body. So it's not like they can just grow a new one to replace it.
3 00:05:09
So the brain especially is under intense pressure to keep those neurons maintained, at least healthy enough to be functioning so we can process the environment and remember these things. So you need this repair feature for the brain, and that's kind of what the sleep does is you go offline and it's doing this repair process while you're asleep that apparently can do while you're awake, which is that's interesting question. He goes, why can't you do while you're awake and that's sort of for adults. But the interesting thing that we just even more recently found is if you look at sleep across development, so going from like birth to an adult sleep, actually for the first, the early stage, I'll say it's early in a second. If you look at the data there that it's completely different trends for how sleep changes in the body size or brain size.
3 00:05:54
And first we were really confused by it. But if you test and develop a theory to say that sleep is mainly about nor reorganization. So as you learn, you have to prune away connections or grow new connections to like learn the world around you. That seems to be what sleep is primarily for that early stage. And what's, I think one of the most surprising things to me is that it's that early stage for humans. It means about two and a half years old. Like that transition doesn't happen when you're like 13 or 16 or 18, and it happens at two and a half. So there's a huge transition in sleep and sort of the function, sleep and brain functioning at two and a half. And even though in terms of the dominant function, I cleanly split it into, I think sleep probably in time is developed like piggy pack functions that are on top of those for immune systems or health.
3 00:06:43
And you probably always doing a little bit of everything, but that's sort of like the dominant,
2 00:06:47
Well, I've got a couple of things to say when I was reading through the papers and I saw that the line is at two and a half. I was so surprised to see that it happens so quickly. You would think there's a lot more to build before there is to repair. So I found that really alarming, much more respect for my two and a half year old nephew. It's like, you're doing important things right now. The other thing I want to talk about, you know, you said that the highest metabolism within mammals is the brain. And I guess I will probably switch to scaling for a bit here too. So the brain is at larger than the lungs, but maybe it's more densely packed or is it higher in math?
3 00:07:16
Right. So, I mean, that's a, that's a good question. I think it's, it is damning compared to the lungs. For example, lungs are mainly like, even though it's a big bullet, a big chunk out of your body, most of that is air. So surface area is like a relatively small amount of mass and cells to support. And the brain on the other hand is like, it's, it is definitely packed. But on top of that, you're sending signals all the time. And those signals are basically electrical and chemical signals. And that is very costly. We're doing lots of processing in the brain to keep our body running the environment, to think about what we want for lunch and all those things. You have to send signals like electrical signals, which take a lot of energy. And in the brain, for example, there are axons that sort of go out and each neuron to go talk to the other.
3 00:08:00
And a lot of the cases that axon becomes myelin, which just means it has a layer of fat, which allows the signal to go fast. So like for example, for our whole body metabolism and scaling theory, what's optimize is sort of your ability to do that and save energy for other things like reproducing eating and you're like that. But for the brain, I think it's optimized, actually, I'm working with a graduate students that give us an outline of the paper. It's more optimized, like maximizing the speed of getting a signal somewhere, even if that's really energetically costs.
2 00:08:33
Yeah. It's like a hype processor. It's like, it's like a concentration of all of that. That makes perfect sense. Okay. It almost seems in some of the popular science descriptions of this two and a half year old building versus post two and a half year old repair phrases, like tiny things sleep the most. And I wonder if that's the same across body, massive animals. So that could be a thing to say about babies, but is it true that the mouse sleeps more than the whale if that around? Huh?
3 00:09:00
That is absolutely sure. So that, so for example, for a baby to an adult that might be more like comparing a cat to an adult human or a dog. And they're, if you compare like a cat and dog, don't see the same amount as does that B so it's not the exact same numbers, but the general just qualitative trend is true that like a mouse does begin with an elephant. And in fact, an elephant only sleeps about three hours a night and like a whale, for example, especially the huge whales blue whales sleep, maybe an hour and a half per day. And also it's fascinating. There is they sleep half the brain at a time. They have to keep swimming alone.
2 00:09:36
That's my next question is, does it differ between land animals and water animals since there's constant movement? There is
3 00:09:45
A teaching they've had for that is just the path of being at the time to have the reeds, taser work and swimming and a half the brain space. And the other thing that's true for not just Marine mammals, but also, and probably, I think it's from some, like, see migratory birds that migrate like long, often times, they'll also do that. They've also evolved to sleep at a time.
2 00:10:06
Hmm. That seems sort of maybe what, what might have to do with zero gravity. Let's say you're like tethered to a ship or maybe you're not, and you're just floating around in the free space. You're probably not bluffing. I mean, I guess you are kind of gently carried along so you can, it might be very comfortable, but yeah.
3 00:10:18
And then for big things, that's sleep is that lions actually are not just like the wines are good example, sweet way, way more than you would think based on their sides. And there's lots of theories for that. Like, you know, potentially there, the top, founder's gonna have to worry about being eaten so they can just spend, or they're just, you know, efficient hunters are foods like higher, higher proteins. That's more efficient. That's just something to think about. Like they release other pressures, they can sleep a lot more. But like you said, like you think that would be a waste, right. If they don't need to sleep that much, why do they, why do they then add on all that extra sleep?
2 00:10:58
Well, it's, it's, it's two things, right? If they're, they're, they're very successful predators, they're eating large quantities of like high protein. So they probably have all of this metabolic energy to make use of. And maybe it's good to put that to sleep then running or what have you. But also I like the idea, you know, the King of the jungle, having all of this leisure time, it maps directly onto like those who are wealthy or Royal, et cetera. So that's really funny.
3 00:11:21
That is the tempting way to think about it is. Yeah.
2 00:11:26
Okay. What about like hibernating animals? We talked about this, you know, over a drink in the past, but, but what about those animals that sleep in, in chunks of their life as opposed to daily?
3 00:11:36
So actually one of the things, so I'll do a first take tackle a hibernation. So hibernation people often think of asleep, but it actually isn't. And when you're hibernating, they, they go into this really low metabolic, reactive state. They lower their temperature. It is to save energy and less food, but they're actually not sleeping. So for example, when like a band that gets out of hibernation, it's obviously starving, but it's also super tired. So one of the first things that we'll do is sleep and sleep a lot, trying to make it like a deficit. So hibernation and power, they're not seeking much, but there is a chunk thing too like that the other issue is like the chunk, like for example, most animals don't sleep in chunks or they don't sleep in like one chunk per daily divided up.
3 00:12:23
And if you look at human societies, at least the studies have come out recently, like Hunter hundred gathers and they also sleep, not, not consolidated or chomp. They like to spread it out in different times during the day. And so it seems like that's just like a modern society then that we've chunked into one, one time store. Huh?
2 00:12:43
I liked it. I like that. It turns out that a function potentially of sleeping is like a repairing of all of these neural pathways because I do a lot of it. And so my husband is not the best sleeper and I am, and I can tell him that it's because I'm doing good work for myself and that's great.
3 00:12:57
It's totally true. And it's actually made me feel even more important to sleep. Like I was slapped it. Like if I've been sleeping a long time, I figure I need it. So I don't feel guilty about it.
2 00:13:07
That's right. Well, so in order to study this, you clearly have to do something like research trials. There's gotta be some clinical elements to this kind of research and, and you work with Alex, I think in that capacity, is that right?
3 00:13:17
Well, Alex does, he actually is working in psychiatry and he is doing some studies related to like definitely the brain and epilepsy and maybe similar to the sleep, but sleep. Isn't his main thing. And I don't do the clinical trials myself, but we can get data of people who do or people who do. It's like Gina Poe, who is in the piece of paper. She does a lot of studies in rats. I'm talking to people when I do studies involves, I knew people on hiring a disorder to be sleep studies with humans and these really intense environments. And I think that, so there are a lot of people out there doing this studies lucky for us, and that's how we get data. They analyze and across mammals too, there's not as much study the more and more now there's even studies in fruit flies and other organisms, but it's been slower to like go outside of
2 00:14:04
No, that makes sense. It's also high stakes, right? I can imagine. And maybe we should talk about this, given the importance of the function, like sleeping, clearly, something bad must happen when you don't get that sleep. When I'm, when I, that's why I'm cranky. And I'm also like for, at performance, like looking at the volt in the mice and larger mammals it's it would be hard to do it to a Perth and it would almost be like torture. So can you talk about some of the tangible effects that come from a lack of sleeping that you've seen?
3 00:14:31
Well, like for the voles, at least the person who was saying, well, they basically have shown that in early development, if you are not getting as much sleep, it looks like it affects your ability to like bond and socialize with your mother or others. Right? Like rats, things like that. There used to be these studies. I don't, I don't really get nothing anymore. They're kind cool to read about where they kept the rats awake for long periods of time. And they're not sort of interested. I mean, my media there probably is that they were dying from lack of sleep, but you know, there's always this component back to like, maybe it's because of like how you're keeping them awake and what was that? It's not all bad. And as humans, you know, I think the world record, I can't remember his name who had had this.
3 00:15:11
He did it sort of, you know, it wasn't done to him. <inaudible> maybe a high school or college study. And I mean, he was delusional like delirious. Like he was having like fallen, who was the nation after a few days. And there's not this, there isn't a show of like learning and memory, even though we're adults, I feel really that reorganization learning kids, you know, even for adults, if you're getting lack of sleep, you don't learn things as well. You don't remember things as well, you know, driving a manipulation, it's almost like being intoxicated. Like it's, it's a big effect.
2 00:15:42
Is there any research about something like this cognitive capacity drop, like maybe keeping a mouse alive and seeing how poorly it solves amaze or something to that effect?
3 00:15:50
They do do that. Yeah, exactly. But they do. There's lots of running of muses with rats, seeing how they do after sleep versus not sleep over. They can share things like that, that they have certain neurons that fire when they're running, the name is, and then at night when they sleep, you can see the same as I grow on Spire in the same sequence. So they're clearly like replaying the knees in their heads as they, I mean, I think they can ask that, but it seems strongly like they're replaying the maze in their head as they sleep and probably, you know, dreaming about the means running as a way to learn about
2 00:16:24
Okay. Pin, because I definitely want to return to dreaming because I think that that's a hugely important element of the experience of sleep. But before we get there, I wonder if there is such a thing as too much sleep. So while we're talking about the impacts of not getting sleep, the deprivation of sleep, as I think about putting humans to sleep, to handle four years in a, in a duty to go to space, what might come as a negative for something like oversleeping, if you have a sense.
3 00:16:50
So, yeah. So I guess there's two things there. One is before I get to the sort of long-term sleeping, look for space travel, I'm here eight hours, I think six to nine hours. It's kind of like, what's considered a normal range, but I mean, there are, you know, studies where if you're getting more than an hour, it's often like a sign of depression. Maybe that's a symptom of depression or maybe sleeping too much can actually be related to feeling depressed. Somehow there's also just natural radiation, but for the long-term like friends like that, the problem would be like, just your muscles atrophy, right. Then you would just lose muscle tone. But you know, maybe there are, you know, since we're really being thinking futuristically now, I think if they did that, you know, maybe you could do things like have electrical stimulation or signaling to your muscles, like exercising the muscles as you sleep to keep them around.
3 00:17:41
And then also, I guess, I don't know if you woke up after that long asleep, that'd be like this time lapse or time hole. I think that would be cognitively weird. I don't know how damaging it would be. That would certainly be like a weird them to adjust, to
2 00:17:56
Make it how confusing it would be if you haven't like used your brain in a sort of rational waking sense. Now you're atrophied too, unless you've got like all the little sticker is making your muscles go and you're arriving to a totally new world where there's no human contact. It's like it would be quite jarring. I think I also wonder, as you said about the rats that are dreaming of the maze and building new architectures in their, in their brain, as a consequence of learning, maybe long duration sleep would, would almost be detrimental to that sort of like maybe pathways would dissolve in certain ways. Like you wouldn't be building anything new. And so there's like this obsolescence of the architecture that you already possessed for her.
3 00:18:35
Actually, I think that's, that's, that's true. That's my concern. Like there's an neuroscience, there's this Maxim that says neurons, that fire together wire together. So ideas of using it and wires. Right. But if you stopped for a long time and you got stuck in a dream state about like, you know, your childhood home, that's all, you're stimulating and not stimulating the stuff you usually do in a day. I mean, I think it would be a concern, like lose some of those connections. I also think it'd be tricky to think about, like after that long you might sort of lose your sense of what's real and what's a dream, right? Like, I mean like my son or kids in general, they often have more trouble distinguishing. What's a dream though. That's real. But if you're in a dream state that long, I think that would become the hot state.
3 00:19:18
At some point I made it really hard to distinguish in that dream reality when you first woke up
2 00:19:22
And then, okay, so let's talk about dreaming because you know, it obviously there's the kind of analysis way we could go about like why it is that we visualize these certain things and what they mean for us, but just personally speaking, it seems like I work out a lot of weird things in my dreams that thank God existed my dreams and not in person. Right. Just embarrassing or violent things or what have you. And also really wonderful things too, but it's very good for me. I think psychologically that, that happens in the safe space of my imagination, but it does like it a conversation with you right now. So is that, is that true? Is that observable?
3 00:19:56
I think, no, I think it's a good hypothesis. I will say the last meeting we had in say a phase two on sleep, one of the people give a talk, but that was really thought provoking and interesting with the idea when we're sleeping and dreaming specifically there, we're basically exploring the solution space for whatever problems we have. Like whether it be an interpersonal problem, a mathematical problem, like whatever is like in your psyche and it's important to you or, you know, finding, you know, a farming problem. The idea is that you're able to explore this solution place while you dream. Like you say, and I think there's two things. One is you can just explore scenarios. You couldn't explore in a Wiki or wouldn't want to go to, there's also the theory this person put forward, which I think is I find kind of compelling is that our brain is able to do it more efficiently.
3 00:20:48
We always think we cut off all our external stimulant Nan. So you're able to sort of like really focus, maybe more brain power around just that problem, right? Like just like if you, I mean really hard. I feel like I phase out the world around me, some even awake if you're asleep, but like you really, really do so you can do it all your resources to it. And the belief is like even more efficiently go through all the possible solutions. There's all these computer science methods to give a mathematical problem to try to search in that space. That's very difficult and some are more efficient than others. And I think that our brain, not even the conscious part, like I think the subconscious part of our brain, we have trouble directly talking to is very good at that. Right. I mean, animals have just one more time before we read in like probably fully conscious.
3 00:21:29
I think it's probably my brain working things out and try to communicate this a way because it's not like indirect connection to your unconscious brain. Some of it,
2 00:21:37
Yeah. It's like a consciousness counterfactual or like a mind laboratory. And it's true that the idea of the stimulus bit is something that I hadn't considered, but you know, we are assaulted by stimuli in our waking life. And so if we're putting energy, metabolic energy towards navigating that and suddenly all of that disappears, it's like our brains are bored. They have to do something with all the energy. And it seems like this is a cool kind of creative way to be use it. And in terms of the observable part,
3 00:22:03
It's hard to, with our current methods, I think it's hard to be as commentator about that, you know, list all these people are cell phones, they're steep and there's a lot, including in science.
2 00:22:15
Right. Beautiful parts of physical theory just to come to you, right? Yeah,
3 00:22:18
Exactly. It is hard to like measure, like put an EEG on somebody or MRI at this point. Yeah.
2 00:22:26
Would you be willing to share a recent dream that you had so we can try to figure out what's going on in your subconscious?
3 00:22:32
I can share. Let's see. I had a weird dream recently. I think somebody sounded like, sort of in the middle of the Navy and I spent the next morning he drinks a lot. I never something like, I think I talked to him the night before about like volcanoes creating like land and like that's how the game was created. Cool by the ocean. And then my dream somehow was like, we were these huge beans who were like just dumping stuff in various parts of the ocean. They would like create like new con you know, terraforming a planet by just dumping this, like, love it into it somehow, but it's not really like, you know, we're doing an extra with huge beans. So that was a strange reaction.
2 00:23:11
That's great. And thanks for sharing. Kind of put you on the spot. I haven't talked about dreaming so much in this series, so it seems like a natural question. Do you have any interesting? I have this recurring dream that's I mean, I'll share it, but it's a little silly, it's sort of a nightmare. And I don't know. So I'm, I'm a young girl. I'm like seven or eight and I just got a brand new lunchbox for which I am like responsible. Like I will be in trouble if I lose this lunchbox. It's the burden of responsibility on top of me and I'm in the bus, but I fall asleep. And so when I wake up, it's like the bus is parked at the bus Depot, so I'm confused and I leave and I'm trying to find an adult to help me. And I realized I leave my lunchbox in the bus. So I go back into the bus and we turn around.
2 00:23:53
There's just like this army of <inaudible> on the bus getting closer and closer to me. So I don't know what that's about.
3 00:24:02
Like are some of the biggest rooms sleepers out there? That's funny steep. Cloudify that's interesting. I mean, the whole thing is interesting because unusual,
2 00:24:12
I have a lot of teeth dreams and I understand that's a super common thing. The fact that so many things sleep and so many things, dream and humans dream about the same things. Those strange universals are so curious to me, and that's kind of like, those are the patterns that you and your group are examining
3 00:24:28
At least for the patterns of like the amounts of time. And let's take the spore
2 00:24:33
A complex perspective to sleep, trying to find these universalities and see what they tell us. I think that's a really cool way to look at it. I think it's a good question. I think it really illuminates what SFI is sort of about. It's a question that you don't think you need to ask, but as soon as you ask it, you're like, yeah, why do we sleep?
3 00:24:49
I think that is like one of the great things about SFI is before sort of brainstorm more and are less inhibited. I think that's what context when we asked you these questions. Exactly. You're like, that's true. Like it's so obvious that her asked it, but like, it's, it's really like a good question. That's my favorite kind of a question
2 00:25:06
It's really great service to the mind of like, you have to jettison all of your assumptions. Let's maybe transition into the even more speculative alien side. Have you seen stocker or red roadside picnic? No, that's okay. So I'm going to explain what's happening behind me. This is an image stalker and this essentially what happens with these individuals, three people, a writer, a professor, and a stalker enter into these zones. And for some reason, once they get to this sort of green wet space, they are compelled to lay down and sleep for a long time. And it's, it's strange because you know that the zone is dangerous. You don't want to spend a lot of time in the zone, but for whatever reason, the zone forces you down and maybe it's so that you dream because essentially they're on their way to this room and the room like grants your wish.
2 00:25:51
And so maybe the point of the sleep is to get them to bring up to mind, whatever their true intended wishes. I'm not sure if that's a theory. It's an interesting thing that sleep plays so seriously in the zone, in both the book and the film. So that's the link, I guess. So, okay. So now we'll ask you, this is a perilous place. You might end up sleeping in there for hours without knowing hopefully you don't lose your legs or something, but at the risk of imprisonment, personal injury, even death, what alien artifact or object would you hope to uncover from a zone like this?
3 00:26:24
So I thought about it and I cannot tell like two things that came to mind were kind of, here's my, here's my, my answer.
2 00:26:31
You can get to you maybe have a super successful trip to the zone and you find two.
3 00:26:36
I'll talk about the second one in relation to the first. Maybe I could get you. That'd be awesome. But the first one is I would say, I would call it like an intention or detector, intention, indicator, maybe more catching, you know, there's light detectors. We think the idea is like we do light detectors to tell us the truth, but then which is useful. But in my view, you can actually say a lot of facts together. They're true. And still exposing this lead someone, or you can actually get your facts pretty wrong. They should be telling them a deeper truth. So I think that's not like always the heart of the matter, especially when it comes to things like politicians or people having the various tents, some have good intent, but I just mean it'd be great if like there was something where you could do like, know what their intention is like, you know, good dad hate love.
3 00:27:20
Like you just read what the intention really is behind it. Yeah. Well, I can say more about it. Maybe I'll stop there if you want to.
2 00:27:25
And so I just want to hear it. I wrote it down. Just making sure that I heard you correctly. You want to call it the intention indicator. I think that's really good. I love it. I love that you compare with the name. Yeah. And I think, you know, even beyond policy, I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of like experimentalism, like experiments that scientists do, obviously you have to propose a hypothesis and your methods, but I wish there was something more like, I really want to find this or like, I expect that this will go this way, but it would be so much cooler if it didn't for these reasons, like the intention driving the experiment itself. So yeah. Please continue. Tell us more
3 00:27:58
The context of science that hard, but that does make, I mean, certainly scientists when they come up with an idea, do you have, like, I think this is true or not. You and I for experiments is true too. Like I've heard, I've heard. I mean, some experimentalists are very conscious about that because I've had to talk to others where like, when I do an experiment, I just measure stuff. I don't have an apotheosis or an idea. And I'm like, I don't even know how that's possible. So it would be useful to have that for science as well
2 00:28:28
Under the impression that there's no such thing as a controlled experiment for this very reason. And so something like an intention indicator could almost be, it would almost like make quantifiable what that lack of control is. And then you can take that out and you would suddenly have like a controlled system to observe. It would be like revolutionary to scientific experimentation. It would be revolutionary
3 00:28:47
Because at one level it's like, you know, I want to know, is this politician, or is this person that works someone who I can trust their intentions, they're trying to mislead me, but you know, it's also true fear for, and what you're getting at there with the science thing, I think is even deeper that you could use it for yourself. Like you said some way to like feedback there and be almost like if it could read what your intentions are even deeper than your conscious level, because sometimes our conscious understanding or rationalization or interpretation of our own intentions is not really what on a deeper level intentions are. And if you could get that feedback, learn from it and compare it as a scientist or just in your personal life, I think that'd be super useful and fascinating.
2 00:29:27
Yeah. And also like in terms of social communication, like, you know, my husband and I have arguments, occasionally it would be good if I had this attention indicator to say like, am I actually mad about this? Or do I just want to be right. I did think, I did think
3 00:29:42
About that example. And it's true. Like you start to like, especially if you're like in a relationship and it's, long-term, nothing's things happen sometimes you do just like get dug in to want to be right. You know, and it's, it would be good to have some feedback for that for yourself, because I could imagine like, you know, for example, you could say, I want a mind reader, so I know exactly what someone's thinking or history or history, but actually I don't, I actually don't want to read someone's mind. Like I don't need to know everything. It's like too much information. That's not really my business overall. And like maybe for my club, like, you know, my partner or my closest friends, I want to know like why they feel certain things. But if it's like for the world, I don't really,
2 00:30:22
You can of worms. You don't want to stick your hand in. Yeah, no, I thought about that too. In, in past conversations where people have thought of items, there's been this sort of everyone's a lot of people have converged towards something like an empathy machine. Like, could I understand the context from which this individual is standing to help me understand what they're actually trying to communicate? Because of course communication is imperfect. I like this better because that feels like a mind reader thing. And it's kind of voyeuristic, whereas this is just enough information for you to like process and compute and function with it's like the perfect limit.
3 00:30:58
That's my, that's my thing. It's like a lot of nutrients. Like, it sounds great, but I do think it was a common practice.
2 00:31:06
Yeah. And this obviously seems like this intention indicator seems a little more peaceable than something like a mind reading machine. Like only the villains want to do that. I'm not saying that past guest willing and they didn't say they wanted to read everybody's mind. What do you think it looks like? How would you, how would you recognize it in the zone?
3 00:31:22
I think if there, you know, your intentions are largely housed in your brain, maybe even the subconscious part. So it could be like, you know, some part like a helmet on the other thing. I mean, it's true. Like our heart rate, our hormones, all kinds of things also indicate lots of feelings. So you could imagine, I mean, it'd be cool to have it, if it could work like a mood ring, but I'm moving to like, has colors for your intention. So I think, I guess either a helmet is like the practical side of me being how to really sense it. But, you know, if I could just come up with any of them, they'll be like trans colors.
2 00:31:56
Yeah. That's cool. Like a, a visual representation of what the intention might be. Of course you hope that you would also discover the legend. Okay. And you said you thought of a second thing that is sort of a consequence or additional to the intention indicator. Let's talk about that.
3 00:32:11
So I know it wasn't like an emotion indicator, which isn't quite the same thing as an intuition indicator, literally a mood ring, literally I decided to get to the end, but the one thing I listened to your past shows, or at least one, the last ones was Michael Lockman. He was saying he wanted like a, basically some of the Woodson's emotions for other animals. So you can get here to animals and see if their emotions are really different, which think is fascinating. It's a cool, really cool idea to think about animal emotions and compare them to Alex. I'm not sure I agree with him. They're totally dependent on us, which is part of my I'll talk about, I think the animals, I mean, I do experience like, I mean, at least for everything I can possibly gather fear, desire, excitement, caring, I would say.
3 00:33:03
And I think that those are sort of like the roots of most emotions. And we can either, depending on your culture side, you might have like a hundred days for emotions or findings for emotions. So it depends on how fine-grained do you want to get and how subtle you want to get into it. I think those are a basis for a lot of emotions. And then it got me thinking about just naming the, I was trying to get a good names from this Michael's concern was that often we anthropomorphize, right? That we project our human characteristics on the animals are certainly does happen a lot. But then I started worrying about like the opposite, you know, what sins, and that's why I came with the word. So opposite on top of more, maybe not very good. You can give me feed that.
3 00:33:43
We often think humans are really, really special. Like we're really highly of ourselves. And like we think the earth is the center of the universe. We think we've been in here since the beginning of time. We were the first organisms. We think we're especially ordained by God to be in charge. I mean, people believe this also in science, I've had scientists who say only humans have real rooms, the, for all humans do this or do that. And waste, I think are just not true. Like I think people often, even in science wants to like make Q1 special in some way that I just don't often find true. So I thought they should be like some word it's like the opposite of anthropomorphizing. So the word, so the word apotheosis means like it's like the highest version, almost like the godly version of something or Supreme version of something.
3 00:34:30
And so I used to be like, you know, and thrombophilia, so this is my order to the highest form. That's always like the best in the godly version. And I almost was like an anti-intellectual theosis machine teachers. Like not nearly as different and special as we think could be improved. Honestly, naming is not my strong, it's not my strongest suit, but I'm looking at,
2 00:34:53
But I'm really glad that you did this because one, it's a, it's a thought exercise and like, you're, you're safe. This is a safe space to throw words together. But it reminds me of what you said earlier about how some cultures have a hundred words for various emotion. Some have five. And this sort of came up in my conversation with Michael about the kind of semantic filter that comes at the cost of true communication. Like if you don't have, if you're using a word differently than someone else, that's it, the message does not have a cross. And I was thinking about how this happens with color. Apparently, you know, I would say, I read a lot of classics and Homer describes the sky and the ocean is wine dark because there was no such thing as blue semantically. I love that.
3 00:35:33
I do love that too. Actually. I think that, I also think that is super cool. Yeah. So in order for this
2 00:35:38
Thing to come about, or like for the Institute of extra terrestrial culture to glean the function of this object, you sort of have to invent it by name. Have you ever read Ted Chiang's short stories?
3 00:35:50
Well, I have a couple, I think, yes. I think it's 72 letters. No, I haven't sent it to you.
2 00:35:56
I recommend it to everyone. Who's listening to you. It's short and it's sweet, but it's exactly this making these automata function in a certain way, by inserting the proper name in to them. A it's a commentary on programming and artificial intelligence in general, but like that's how it works. You have to name them in order for them to do the thing that they're supposed to do. So I'm glad that you took this exercise as seriously as you did.
3 00:36:17
Oh, he's 72 letters. I really just want to make even two of his really liked things. So yeah.
2 00:36:24
So obviously we can learn a little bit about this alien species that passed by our planet based on the fact that these items are left behind, what do you think they are using these devices for?
3 00:36:34
That's a good question. I have to say. Like, I mean, I haven't, you know, read into it. So I don't know, within the context of the full story, when it was described, like what came to my mind was almost like a junk yard and like a leftover after party there to hang out. And these items of them are just like normal items and they just like forget them sometimes and leave them around. That's sort of like Shabbat reactions precisely. Right.
2 00:37:03
Great. So this is something that they possess, but perhaps take for granted and don't notice like don't even miss when they're, you know, on their way to a better destination or something. What does that indicate that something like an intention indicator is like superfluous
3 00:37:16
That's right, exactly. That's in my head, how I was thinking about it. Although I do like the idea of some, you know, beneficence aliens coming to help us well, then maybe they could just give it to us directly and not make it so dangerous to get there.
2 00:37:27
The other thing, the fact that they chose to like have a party and litter, I think suggest that they think that we're pretty insignificant and that earth is the dump. It's a dump.
3 00:37:37
So maybe getting maybe that you would need the anti-apartheid theosis <inaudible> because I'm maybe thinking the aliens there and how insignificant they considered us, but sort of get that message across even better.
2 00:37:50
We could still employ it in what we believe is our significant experience. We still think we're special because we improvable,
3 00:38:00
Obviously
2 00:38:00
This is something that we could use to better understand perhaps this alien species, if they gave us the time of day. But I was thinking about thinking of alien life forms in general. And of course, half the time I do that, I'm thinking about things that look like humans, but are green and gushy or something. But then, you know, you see these kind of scarier versions, which is essentially just a thing whose intention is to eat and survive. And therefore it seems evil to us because it wants to eat us and survive, but it's not mal intended. It's just trying to grow,
3 00:38:31
Right. Just like a lion or a tiger. Yeah, no, exactly. I agree.
2 00:38:39
So like maybe something, you know, let's say you're trapped on a ship with a very scary blob. That's coming to each of you, at least you can, with the intention indicator recognized, like it's not personal,
3 00:38:48
<inaudible> Three body problem. And that
2 00:38:57
Yeah, no, I should totally lose on the list. We should. We should have, I should.
3 00:39:02
No, you should. I mean, you've already done a lot of things I haven't, but I wish I'd love to be on that. Like only read the first one. I mean, when I ask you them now situated the second one, but sort of, that's the message of them. The first one is that they're like, you know, these aliens might consider us as like insects.
2 00:39:19
And so this is an attempt to resolve the therapy paradox. Right. Is that correct?
3 00:39:23
It is scientifically, that's where it comes from, but it's a lot more, it is actually, that's where the name comes from and the science of it. But it's a lot deeper. There's a lot more to it.
2 00:39:33
The proposal it's not, yeah. Okay. That's what I'm wondering because I think what I understand is that yeah, we could be insignificant like insects or it's like, they're so smart, but they've just made themselves completely private in their ability to be perceived by others. Like they're better at it than we are. We project ourselves quite broadly. And we might not, maybe that's singular it's as humanity.
3 00:39:53
Maybe that's a quite good question. I do think he was projected to something a lot. I wonder how talking this specific. Yeah.
2 00:39:59
I mean, I guess we won't know until we stumble upon another intelligent species. Okay. So I want to ask what you would use this intention indicator for aside from, you know, peacefully resolving domestic arguments or
3 00:40:14
Yeah,
2 00:40:14
But so like now we have, let's say there are many of them and they get like kind of broadly distributed across the planet. What is your intention for the use of the intention indicator?
3 00:40:23
I mean, I do have to say all my initial uses would just need to like political or corporate interest and try to, you know, have people see where people are coming from. And, and, you know, I, and my belief is in some cases, like see that like the intention doesn't at all match, the words being said that might be enlightening to people and change the way they think about it, more working together to progress potentially, or just rejection of certain ideas or leaders kind of, what would you use it for myself personally, it would be good to learn about myself,
2 00:40:57
Something like that. You know, obviously I think a lot of people today in, you know, post COVID vaccine time, post political turmoil are thinking about the proliferation of fake news or false news. And quite often that is done intentionally to misrepresent facts for like a purse, a purse, a purpose, excuse me. But sometimes there's just an error in the way that something is reported. And so if you had got a news story on your Twitter and you put intention indicator to it, you could say like, Oh, this author meant well, and just misrepresented this one fact as opposed to, Oh no, this author wants to further a certain political agenda.
2 00:41:38
Exactly. That would be something. And then as I said earlier, I liked the idea of it being like a scientific hope pop thesis, right? Like what are you actually, you know, you're building this machine or this invention that serves a purpose re is worthy of funding, but like, what are you actually hoping that it does? Right? What's the underlying motivation of the development of this project. I would like to know that those things, because that's the other thing about science. That's so interesting, you know, this much better than I do because I'm not a practitioner, but there are certain sort of wiggly ways you have to present your work to the world because of the system, through which you get funded, key performance indicators and things like that.
2 00:42:20
So maybe the intention indicator would, would, aluminate what the kind of inspirational element of science is, which is more interesting to me
3 00:42:29
Actually. I think it's watching a lot of people. Like I feel, I think it's, you're right. That's the reality. As long as in case of it was that things a certain way to get across to the field or funding agency, things like that. But I often think like, you know, for example, for like a lot of the work I do, I often like do several scraps. I gotta do a scratch. Then I do a better set of notes that like, you know, it gets rid of all the scribbles, which was long ideas. Then I do like another set of notes to like check and really make sure that I'm, that I'm right. And then I, you know, eventually write it up into a paper. These checks, the final version was like a much more professional field, you know, using documents, but honestly the handwritten notes aren't much for the actual dog process.
3 00:43:14
And for, and I was think it'd be even more compelling. Like you say, like they're just, you know, everyone, because you can see much more about how the processes is working. So I always thought it'd be nice to have that. Like the papers, like you just upload your, your barest run instead of notes on it.
2 00:43:31
I think that would be amazing. It reminds me of, as someone who worked at SFI, I have the privilege to like sneak into working groups and eavesdrop about what's happening. And then as someone who's outside of SFI, you get the white paper that results from the meeting. And what you don't see is that the first two days are like 10 to 15 thinkers just scribbling on whiteboards and erasing stuff and crumpling up papers. That's where, that's where the magic of the process starts.
3 00:43:57
Exactly. And I don't want to have you say, well, are you worried about the results? Not all the, you know, I've heard people say, for example, science is like making sausages, just wanting to get the good salts that you are making on the other hand. I think you're right though. I think that is the magic part. I think in terms of being compelling or intriguing to like a broader audience, I think that is the metric part. And it'd be good for people to see that. Right.
2 00:44:19
But then the counter to that of course, is that the best idea sort of emerge in the private space of like a closed room. And so it's possible that not everyone in the room would agree that they would like to upload their scribbles. People don't even share their slides occasionally, you know? So there is this trade-off
3 00:44:37
For researchers that, yeah, that's absolutely true.
2 00:44:40
Nope. I'm just like a lawyer. I'm like a science boy. I just want to see behind the scenes, but that's not necessarily the best thing to do in service to the science itself. Okay. I have one closing question. This is a new question that I'm hoping to employ. And it occurred to me that like literature and film and visual art music is a really cool medium through which people can come to understand each other, what they choose to share. And so this is the weird way that I'm framing it as you're psyching yourself up to go into the zone in service, to succeeding by getting in and out safely. What's the song that you're playing to pump you up and get you motivated. It's like the most important workout of your life. What's the song that you would be like.
3 00:45:20
It's interesting. So, you know, there's two ways to approach that. I think what I would honestly do my issue is I used to get too excited. Right. So usually I'm trying to like calm myself down, like being clear. So, I mean, for example, you he'll just think that listen to the past 24 hours, there's this song. I think it's called kinder music true as the truer, that soundtrack Zimmer. And I find that one just really peaceful. Somehow
2 00:45:43
You're talking about it's so beautiful.
3 00:45:45
It's beautiful. Or there's like, I just randomly today listen to like, don't look back at nearby Elisa, which also I find kind of like common somehow and the opposite side, wouldn't be like, I need to be as aggressive as possible. And what music should I listen to? Like the first thing has been in mind, like see guns and roses, Metallica, like as noses, like, you know, you should be mine and welcome to the jungle.
2 00:46:07
Yeah. I, it's funny because I just have it in my mind that I was thinking like a Metallica, like a hard, that kind of a thing when I posed the question, but you're so right. You know, these doctors have to be extremely careful. They have to kind of plot their steps so that they don't get into a Meyer bog and they're stuck there forever. So the idea of having something that kind of lays or focuses your pursuit, it probably more in service that success then like drums and electric guitar.
3 00:46:32
Well, for me, it is usually like stuff that's like actually call me, but I like that question.
2 00:46:37
And you do the focused, inspiring kind of mental music on the way in, and then once you have the object, it's Metallica on the way. Yeah,
3 00:46:47
Exactly.
2 00:46:48
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking that on and for both of your objects, the intention indicator and the anti anthropo theosis machine.
3 00:46:57
Perfect. And you pronounce it better than I do
2 00:47:01
For taking the time to spend this hour with me. It's really nice to see you for people who are listening van and I are actually close friends. We used to hang out in person a lot more than we get to now, but it's very nice to see you and you're safely out. You are free.
3 00:47:13
I'm, I'm happy that I, I hope that I can walk about and see you more in the future.
2 00:47:17
Yeah. And now that everything's kind of reopening up, I'm pretty sure that we'll be doing well. We'll be doing time meetings together, obviously. So more sleeping, more talking, less dangerous forays into alien crash sites. Yeah. I didn't have a great day. Yeah. Okay.
0 00:47:33
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