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George thanks so much for willing to do this interview and I don't want to embarrass you

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but I know you're clearly one of the most distinguished and successful scientists

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and did you also always know you wanted to be a scientist.

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I was originally going to be a mathematician and it turns out I didn't have the brains to do that I was

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cured

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and I was really good at washing dishes so I become a chemist How early did you know wanted to be a mathematician

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Oh that was part of the sort of adolescent feeling that the closer you got to mathematics the better off you were so

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there were mathematicians and there were physicists

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and then somewhere down the road there were the rest of us it was OK were there

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scientists in your family my father was a chemical engineer so my first introduction to Science as it were was

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pouring coal tar through a little hole to measure the viscosity of coal tar black

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and I was a technician he was a chemical engineer who made concrete repair compounds so  was he happy that in the end you

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became a chemist

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I came from the Midwest in the Midwest what real men do is they go into business or they go into the army

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and as a absolute worst thing just before you go into the street you go in teaching at university

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but it was sort of OK because I was at MIT and there were engineers at MIT it wasn't bad.

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Are you who yourself surprised by kind of the way your career has developed to be honest I've never thought about it

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but I'm happy with the way my career has developed because I've reached my geriatric whatever

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and I wake up in the morning I love it it's great stuff what what what are you looking forward to every day.

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It's a combination of things what what's interesting about science is that you have the opportunity to do things that

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are important to people and you have the opportunity of following your curiosity and it's fun

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and you can actually make a living doing it when working you and so as a chemist I mean I would kind of not know.

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A better person to ask about the nature of molecules I have to think about I think it was Feynman

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who said that supposed that all science disappeared

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and there was like one bit of knowledge that we could transfer to future generations he would do was say something like

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All matter is made out of very small particles

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that that perhaps is the best clue to give Do you agree with that. the thing about chemistry is that's chemistry that's

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chemistry everything you see is chemistry so that if you really want something that has the characteristic that

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is universal it's molecules and how you construct reality based on atoms. now there is a little business of the mind

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and what happens in between matter and mind is a different story but that's molecules too

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but going to to the matter this moment or something so what do we learn of the fact that things are made out of little

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building blocks what does that tell us. it tells us about the enormous variety that one can get from a pretty limited

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set of things. the periodic table is a pretty substantial list

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but most of them don't show up very much I mean the number of occasions during the day in which you see Prometheum or

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something like that it's a very small Yes On the other hand if you just imagine the variety that comes out of carbon

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and hydrogen nitrogen oxygen it's what we call life and that's truly phenomenal

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and so the idea of the the almost almost infinite variability of forms of matter and function

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and use that you can get by taking a pretty simple collection of starting materials I think is one of the most

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remarkable things that I know. if you think about that variety you know we might naturally think about all the

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materials we find you know rocks and lifeforms that we explore that we discover.

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But I guess we're also now in a phase where we kind of kind of starts to build things that haven't existed before.

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You can build many things that haven't existed before

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and for which there has been no imaginable use. I mean a perfectly good example is a silicon and transistors

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and the Internet but you take a perfectly ordinary

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and fairly commonly available element which usually in nature occurs in a slightly different form

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but is nonetheless silicon and you take it and you clean it up

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and then you write lines in it in interesting ways

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and all of a sudden it starts doing computation for you how on earth does that happen and of course we understand it

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but that's a combination of just the particles we were talking about but also electrons

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and then this other intangible stuff called information

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and it's the mixing of the three that produces such interesting and remarkable results. do you feel that it's the.

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Purpose that kind of led to the material or did the material led to this kind of unexpected

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Useful purposes. there's a very interesting book that's appeared recently called The Idea Factory which is the.

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A history there are many history of Bell Labs but this is

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one history of Bell labs many histories of Bell Labs go along the following narrative that is they say brilliant

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physicist unconstrained by reality produced condensed matter physics and the Internet transistors

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and the Internet and all the rest of that laser wonderful example all the terrific yes

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and it's a good story 

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but according to the guy who is running Bell Labs at that point it is unrelated to reality because in fact Shannon

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and try for and Bardeen and the rest of them were all brilliant physicists that's not the issue

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but they were basically making a more efficient and profitable telephone system

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and so you know the thing about utility it was all focused on improving telecommunications

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but there was a function yes people wanted to talk to their

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brokers in New York or whatever that might be

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and so since that function couldn't be accomplished by anything that existed they had to make up something new

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and they tried other things and ended up inventing reinventing the world

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but it was the desire to do something new not the desire to invent per se that I think made it happen so this is a

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great lab that makes all these products which is called Nature right and evolution so can you say something how.

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How does nature operates and how does technology operate where are the differences or perhaps similarities.

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In a sense there's a similarity because if you believe Darwin and I'm a great admirer of Mr Darwin.

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Nature operates by the idea of fitness what does fitness mean you get into wonderful arguments about what fitness

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means but it basically ends up with the idea that whatever processes got us here got us here rather than porpoises

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or snails or something that kind

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and part of the reason we got here is that we are able to invent things that do not otherwise exist to accomplish

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purposes some good some bad which other creatures haven't been able to do so well so what got us here was the ability our

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ability the ability of our particular evolutionary experiment to do something us as human beings

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and the interesting thing about that of course is that if you say that what accounts what counts is experimentation

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and new ideas

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and adaptability we're probably not the only thing that's ever going to be able to do that so there will be other kinds of

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adaptation evolution and so if one looks into the future and ask are we necessarily the end of the line

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and the best thing that will ever happen I don't think there's much evidence that that's true

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but you're making the point that if you look at our technology

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and how develop it that in some sense it's evolution that brought us to that point. it's evolution

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but it's evolution in a funny sense because you can make an argument that one of the golden eras of science was the

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period between.

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The fifty's

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and now there's an enormous amount of stuff that happened a lot of it happened because of World War two I mean the

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the inventiveness that went into winning the war or not losing the war produced enormous benefits at the same time

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and you know many of the things that happened earlier can be associated with good

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and bad motives Yes So it's a question of how we use things in the argument is that science is is agnostic about this

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and amoral I'm not sure any of that's necessarily true

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but there are good and bad uses for most of technology so you say it was some kind of selection mechanism operative

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operating the point too because we were really fighting for survival and what will we do with nuclear X. Where 

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X Is power 

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X is weapons

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and X is who knows what it's going to be if you think particular let's first focus on what the more kind of material

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science part if you look at the. Coming of new materials now. what we know and what is still out there to explore.

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I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of forms of matter we haven't discovered yet.

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How do you see this process going

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and how do we find our ways in this kind of infinity of possibilities Well the question is what do we want to do

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because it's the function that drives invention Yes

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and one characteristic which is not always clear from the outside is that invention has a kind of ramp quality about

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it that is coming up with an idea can be fairly easy there are lots of good ideas demonstrating an application is a little

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bit more challenging whereas you have to knew something know something but the actual process of taking the idea

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and taking it all the way to what we call a product

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but even more so to a market where lots of people want it is very expensive

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and very difficult in fact so that at the end science becomes technology if people want the function that it provides

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Now what function do we want. right. and.

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I think you can make an argument for example that the functions are probably the same in some sense that they always

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were we want to be fed we want to have our children raised in reasonable ways we want to be safe we want to communicate

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we want to be amused and each one of those will be served in different ways

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but one of the interesting changes now is I think we've become accustomed the idea that information is probably as

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important as things and we are growing accustomed the idea that machines may be as capable

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or more capable than we in certain tasks and so you put together us,

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Other parts of life machines and information

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and you start having a world which actually doesn't look very much like the world of just one hundred years ago

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and you feel that it is this combination of factors that will become a driving force for exploration you know Will

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machines for instance help us explore maybe the machines can only do the exploration

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but of course what they learn we can use

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but we do we want to go and land ourselves on Pluto certainly not in the near term we have a problem so you mentioned

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also kind of the whole I mean biology the life sciences are our own bodies are part of that kind of nexus of how do you

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see from your point of view and I think as a chemist you're like perfectly positioned the material world and

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and life and how are these two worlds interacting at this moment and what will bring the future.

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Well that question is I think one of the more interesting questions around right now because there is a fundamentally

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interesting issue there which is.

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There is matter and there is life and are they different or is life just matter

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and I have a prejudice in this which is.

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Hypothesis let's say and that is we have matter like this which is stationary

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and then we have matter of a different sort and.

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The example I like is a flame which is matter but it's doing something

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and it only really exists because it's doing something it's generating energy and you mix you mix methane and air

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and you let it burn and you get a flame.

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What's life and one argument is that life is a very complicated sort of flame you mix glucose for breakfast

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or in my case caffeine with air and you burn it

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and by a very complicated process you end up with a behavior which is not giving off heat and light

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but it's giving off Beethoven and this conversation that we're having Yes And is that is that all there is

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or is there something else there that we don't understand

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and I think that's the great question Is there something we say emergent something that is not anticipated by existing

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science that distinguishes life from everything else

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or is it simply a marvelously balanced by some set of processes that we don't understand set of molecular processes

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I could imagine that you know again  from the chemical point of view you might be perhaps biased to think the latter

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that you think that it's just a very complicated process I don't know that just is the right word because you know it

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just is a way of being a little bit dismissive. what to me is so interesting is the idea that if you can have

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static matter you can have dynamic matter you can have living matter

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and you can have thinking matter then this whole process leads you to the idea of how on earth

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and why on earth would you arrive at something that was dynamic in the sense of being alive anymore

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or even more so being dynamic and thinking intelligent intelligent matter

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but the importance of the question I think is that if you can have intelligent matter based on hearts and blood

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and whatever then there's no reason why you couldn't have intelligent matter of a number of different sorts if you if

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you think and perhaps more kind of a gray scale or you have various. Kind of gradations in which life.

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Matter is alive

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or intelligent. might these questions be answered soon in terms of real objects appearing perhaps produced in laboratories that

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are kind of exploring that intermediate area. there are I think two questions there. one question is.

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Is there are there examples in which that line is already blurred Yes And I think there are many of them

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and it one that I think is worth thinking about is simply a frozen egg. A human egg.

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There's no chemistry going on it's doing absolutely nothing there is nothing in that that would suggest it's any

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different from a rock but you warm it up and all of a sudden it's able to do something different

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and you see in the same in the sense the same thing at the thought perspective because a human egg

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when fertilized isn't thinking there's nothing to think with and when the baby's born it's not thinking much

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and there's thought going on but it's probably certainly not self-aware

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and then you end up with all of the semantic problems that you

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and I have in trying to understand what thinking is about it's a continuum both of these are continua. so what that says

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to me is that you can go from something that is not alive to something that's alive and from something that is not thinking to

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something that is thinking in a continuous way

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and the thing about continua is that they usually go on yes so we are not the end point of that curve where not the

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end point of the curve that's right and so you say isn't it dismissive to think that we're just a flame

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and the answer is no absolutely not because what you want is more complicated flames right 

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and that gives me a great deal of optimism that whatever we are a thousand years from now is not going to be what we

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are right now. so I could imagine there are

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least two kinds we can kind of have objects which are more kind of in between life and.

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dead matter but we can also think of that these things will start to kind of enhances.

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Is that something that you see happening soon. well is a self driving car fundamentally different in its function from a

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cab with a really bored taxi driver I mean the word taxi driver is it's almost certainly safe

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but the board taxi driver is probably not thinking about a lot including driving the car yes

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and whatever set of systems is driving the car in and in the vehicle that's unmanned is something quite different

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but it they're both sort of operating on a low key so yeah why not why can't we have many variations on complexity

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and why can't we more interestingly begin to combine them. are you envisioning seriously that you know artificial

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intelligence or deep learning processes will start to kind of change not only our lives

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but perhaps also the way we kind of do science and discover things. but isn't it already happening because after all the.

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We have had our the pleasure of having our younger son home with us and.

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It's very clear that he is thinking about things in a way that's fundamentally different from the way that I've ever

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thought about things I mean the Internet has rewired his brain let's assume for the better

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but I don't know that to be true

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but it has to do with the fact that for him the idea of all information is available you just assume it of course all

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information is available now what you do with it

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and how your intuition works it works along different veins so it seems almost guaranteed that this process of us as

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adaptable creatures adapting to an environment which now has all this other stuff going on which wasn't there before

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you know it has to happen it's af if there's some new competitor come along or some the temperature is changed

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or whatever has happened. and so evolution is kicking in again. evolution is kicking in. well how do you feel as.

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Particularly I think you mention the Internet and the way we're communicating it's not only operating at the individual

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level but also the kind of amount of connectivity the way we are connecting to other people and other 

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But it's really all that it's it's really it's amazing

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and well Does that give a different perspective on what it means to be a human being you feel.

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What's a human being. well instead of just looking at us as individuals that in some sense we should now look really as a

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as more as a collective.

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Process. what I think you can argue

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and we will see how it works out is that the Internet has rewired the brains of our children

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and grandchildren in such a fashion that they are part of a collective as opposed to being isolated

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and there are good features and bad features but the integration is very much a work in progress

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and what will come of something in which not only is all information available

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but all opinions are available as we are beginning to see yes plus

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or minus with who knows what wild oscillation in the system as we begin to shake down in trying to understand what it is a

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collective intelligence is like but a collective intelligence could be a next step

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and it would certainly be very different from what we're doing now. if you kind of try to have a kind of a broader

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perspective

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and you see this kind of development or technology which you just said you know is really speeding up the last say fifty

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years.

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Do you have the feeling that we're kind of entering a new age in terms of technology what the role of technology will

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be. Something like perhaps comparable to when we had like the Industrial Revolution or something.

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I think the answer to that is absolutely yes. the question that I struggle with is what's the form going to be what's the

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characteristic What's the characteristic because if we have enough matter of this sort to do many things

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but we're just beginning to explore the intersection of this with this with information yes you end up with a very

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different.

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Kind of picture and it's not clear that I

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or even you will live long enough to have a sense for what direction this is going

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but I think the direction is going to be different. if you're speculating now I think clearly you know machines

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and technology are becoming more and more important.

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In the end will it be about us the story

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or are we just kind of an intermediate phase that kind of passes the torch to perhaps the smart machine

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or something else. we know there is the argument

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and I think you may have heard about this from Martin Reese that we're just a little glimpse in between a period in

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which you don't have sentients on the one hand

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and then you have the real thing which lasts for a very long time and is based in silicon

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or does something else I don't think it's easy to see the answer to that

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but it certainly is true that you can understand that there are things that the Internet.

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Can do that we can never do because I've spent a lifetime learning stuff a very brief lifetime learning stuff I die

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it's gone but that won't happen with with other forms of memory

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and intelligence they will be there forever. well your scientific achievements will definitely live on

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and be carried on so aren't we in science in some sense also part of a much longer chain.

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We are I know that we all like to have the idea that there is some residue

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There isn't you know what happens is you understand stuff it's incorporated into things

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and then immediately is taken for granted so it's not that we don't contribute

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but there isn't much residue. it's the flame. it's that's right you turn it off it's gone but while it's there it's hot

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and it's useful. talking about machines you know you think that in the future there will be more machines around us for instance

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robots. Well you know there's an interesting word that you just use which is machine yes is a.

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Structure that thinks as clearly

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As we do

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and can do things that we can't do allthough it operates on different principles aren't we dismissing it a little bit to

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call it a machine. my lawn mower is a machine. I'm thinking about something rather different yes anyway robots.

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Robots were developed of course originally to replace people in tasks that were not doable or difficult

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or unpleasant than lifting body panels into an automobile assembly line or working in a mine or things of that sort

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and that's worked really very well

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and there are a series of what our machines which have the unpleasant characteristic that if you happen to be standing

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too close to one of them when it swings its arms

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it simply cuts you in half and doesn't notice. so one of the things is beginning to happen now is the development of

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what's known in the trade as collaborative robotics meaning robots by which I mean very broadly almost anything that's

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a machine that interacts in a dynamic way with its environment.

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Robots that are designed and do work cooperatively

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and safely with people. it's a very important kind of distinction because with cooperative robotics one can imagine.

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The step in which on the one hand we already have us thinking together with machines computers I think all the time

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we're very happy with that and if we can now add to this something in which we interact with machines

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and maybe even machines that look like us although I don't think that's necessary as a part of this then you fuse the

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two together with the with the corporeal self

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and the information thinking self in ways that you can't tell the difference then all of a sudden we've done something

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which is really remarkable which is depending upon your point of view creating a living or thinking pure competitor

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or cooperative species and how we make that out will.

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Depend upon how things go I can't answer the question. are you in any way worried that.

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These cooporative new species will kind of dominate us or take over. in the short term no

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and we have a wonderful example

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when people bring up the issue of aren't robots taking jobs yes of course robots are taking jobs

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but in the nineteen thirty's.

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There was a very important class of robots introduced not called a robot but it was a washing machine

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and a dishwasher Yes And what these did was to take fifty percent of the population otherwise known as women who were

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spending their time basically washing things get rid of all that and allow them to go on

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and do all the other things that people yes women men do so liberating liberating what it did was to create

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opportunities to do more interesting things and so if we assume that what will happen with.

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Advanced information systems artificial intelligence robotics whatever it might be if we assume that that will take

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over some of the less interesting jobs

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and there are many of those then the question is will we be clever enough to have other things that need to be done in

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which this yes can work

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and the answer to that of course in a kind of I don't know ethical sense is yes because picture number seventy percent of

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the world's population still lives if not in poverty in difficult circumstances

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and one could go about basically improving the standard of living. health housing education for everybody

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or we could do something else and we'll probably try both.

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I just want to also kind of come back to evolution 

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and as you said you know now at this point we are at this phase where technology enters and becomes part of it

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but if you trace back in the other direction we talked about the kind of. Mysterious properties of.

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Matter that has come alive I know you also think about the origin of life. right.

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Because that's somehow the essential question that might be the point where we go from one one phase to the other

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what are your thoughts about that.

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To me the origin of life is the most interesting question I know in science right now I mean absolutely the origin of the

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universe in space and time these are wonderful questions

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but we don't actually have very much contact with the origin of the universe so it is not an everyday event for me yes on the

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other hand you and your colleagues are everyday events and where could they have come from. I have no idea

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and the characteristic of a good scientific problem is you don't know the answer before you start yes

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but it's all well and good to say that you have a flame

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but how a flame becomes the remarkable set of things that represent it is represented by life is not at all obvious

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and there are two parts to this question there's a there's a part which is Darwinian evolution so once you have a cell

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how does the cell become over many many many generations how does it become Beethoven in a vague way we understand how

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that could happen how how do you take random sludge being a radiated by a U.V.

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Rich sun and boiled by volcanoes and things like that and have that turn out to be the first cell I have no clue

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and so what's wonderful about it is that I have a feeling there that at least in the detail we don't understand what's

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going on at all but

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but and the but is interesting what it does say is that it's possible to take things that seem totally disorganized

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but have energy

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and have them by some process bootstrap themselves into something that is totally different in terms of its characteristic

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Yes we don't understand really how that happens in very vague terms yes

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but how does it really happen I don't know. I mean if you wonder about the origin of the universe itself it was

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intellectually of course very stimulating question and.

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The same is true for asking what happened four billion years ago on planet Earth

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but I could imagine that if you that the question of the origin of life is also quite relevant.

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Now studying complicated processes etc something it's not only it's something that you could possibly replicate

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or could show processes that we weren't aware of. perhaps

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but that implies that if we're going to do it now it implies that we sort of know how it happened because if you look

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at what seems to be required to make the simplest cell it is so complicated that it doesn't seem likely to have

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happened by accident there has to have been some direction in terms of going downhill in energy

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or something we don't know what that might be

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and I don't think we know what that is there's a real difference in the opinion of the community that thinks about this

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and I happen to think we don't have a clue there are people who think we're almost there we can go from pond scum to

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the first cell Yes And then there are people who think that once you've got to the first cell you don't have to worry

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about the rest of it you just assume it yeah yeah well how do you think that in the end we will settle that question what what kind

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of do you at least see a pathway of investigation getting to the answers Yes I think there are pathways of investigation so from

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the kind of approach that we take not knowing how to do it we ask the question of how do you take reactions

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and how would reactions begin to interact with one other cooperatively how would they self assemble

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and if you could do that if you could find out principles which would suggest that then you might be able to think that

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maybe in this environment that set of things might have been and have become a group not of five separate reactions

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but five reactions that are somehow working together and talking to one another

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but what I just said how the reactions talk to one another we know how it happens in life now

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but we don't have any idea how it could have happened to the life then and so it's a wonderful problem.

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George we're talking about origin of life. I just want to make a little detour what you feel about life in the

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universe. Are we

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Alone. we don't know. yes. I mean the issue there is that if you're in the model I'm in which says I can't see how it

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happens if it happens by accident it's so improbable that I have no way to get my arms around it but of course.

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You know the sort of number as you hold your arm at arm's length and look at the size of a quarter

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and in any direction that's a billion galaxies included in that and the billion galaxies has ten billion suns

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and most of the Suns have planets

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and they're experimenting all the time with everything I have no idea how to think about what's going on several years

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of years over billions

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and billions of years so there's lots of room for things to happen if I had to bet I would say that it's one of two

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possibilities either there's only one or it happens all the time everywhere

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and I don't know what the answer is. You think we can find out if we find out somehow the origin of life will it also tell

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us something about.

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what could have happened. can happen at other

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other planets. I think it will answer everything if we have an idea that it it actually is not so hard you

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know maybe you have to have the right conditions then with all those experiments it's bound to happen over and over

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and over again

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but there are probably events that are very rare I don't think we have any idea how often the universe firms forms

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how often does nothing

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burp into something how often does lifeless burp into life I don't know how to estimate that kind of number

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I like that word. The Big Burp. the burp yeah the Big Bang it's the same B but it's another idea.

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But you know the issue of evolution is also interesting in another sense

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when Darwin thought about evolution he was thinking about finches and.

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And the Galapagos finches and he was thinking about predators and prey

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and surviving in competition with other competitors at the beginning if you think about the beginning there were no

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competitors and the first cell had no living competitors but as it was

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and probably what it had to do more than fight off competitors

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and breed fast it had to fight off the consequences of meteor strikes and volcanoes

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and things of this sort so that it may well be that what at the beginning was Darwinian evolution was actually

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robustness the ability to survive dramatic change

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and then that evolved into the ability to run faster than either what you wanted to eat or what ate you

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and now the question is for the future yes what is going to be the vector for for for evolution what will we be

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running toward or running away from and I think it will be very interesting if we both run away from

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and towards something which we have created.

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That's an interesting idea so we are one of the very few species that likes to be both predator

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and prey for ourselves. so you're also telling us that we are kind of we are struggling with many of the issues that we created

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ourselves many of the issues we create ourselves. what are the things that you worry about. what do I worry about I don't

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know I don't worry about much because there isn't that much you can do

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but the kinds of things that I think in a personal sense one worries about is.

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Every one has a vector mine happens to be children. I care about children

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and so as a child you are basically raised in our society to do work and ideally work that makes a difference

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and meaningful work whatever meaningful is. If we find that we've handed everything over to.

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Some other form of machinery then we've got to figure out what what people do.

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What do people do to fill the day and that I think is a little worrisome

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because I am not sure even now in Western Europe

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and in the United States we have the constituentive problem that there are more people than there are good jobs for

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people and when that happens everyone becomes mischievous

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and mischievousness amplified with nuclear weapons leads to real trouble.

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What do you see as the role of science and particular also technology in this I mean you could argue again you know technology is

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operating on both sides of the equation in some sense you know it's creating lots of problems

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but often it's also seen as one of the few solutions of these problems. there's no shortage of problems I mean just think for a

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moment we have the environment and the environment everyone is interested in energy and everyone is

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interested in CO2 we all recognize it's a problem

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and we really don't have a good way of solving it. probably the best way is going to be.

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The most acceptable way will be to reduce energy usage yes the other way of course is to reduce people

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and the most benign way of solving both of those problems is probably education

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and education isn't very popular so I don't know whether we've got that

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but there's that kind of issue we are creating we as human beings are creating a social construct that didn't exist

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ever before in history called the Mega city so fifty million or more people living in a small space

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and we have no idea how these things operate but they have to operate well for for the people 

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and I think about this as being a purely chemical materials problem you have energy coming in you have food coming in

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you have waste going out you think about stuff spreading both information and epidemics you have to do things with the

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individual components but that will be done by a distributed system I mean it's a wonderful problem

383
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and then you have. And you see technology in some sense as having opportunities to that. I think that will

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happen. will happen yes.

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One has in I think a very interesting construct in Europe called Ludvigshafen

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and Ludvigshafen is the home of BASF.

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Which is one of the few you know real chemical companies standing

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and it's an enormous plot of land which is basically one factory and a mega city is almost the same thing

389
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they are the same basic kind of constructs. stuff comes in energy is used stuff goes out

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but we know how to run Ludvigshafen because we created it. yes. we don't have any idea how to construct a megacity because

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it created itself. there's a very interesting question I think if you look at the usual definitions of life you know

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self-aware energy using dissipating food in stuff out self replicating would you say that the city was alive.

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I would. yeah. I mean it seems to me to have many of the right characteristics. so that's. we've talked about the

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Internet

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but it may be that cities fall in the same category. anyway there's the population of the world that is still poor

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and hungry. I mean an enormous number of problems there. there's the basic question of how we deal with the detritus from

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the past there's there's just an enormous number of problems how do you ease the pain

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and suffering of dying because we're all going to die. how do you do this. so there's no shortage of problems the

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question is how do you provide the education the interest the resources so that people are engaged in solving these

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problems which will be what we call jobs as opposed to watching their handheld devices which is not a job

401
00:37:39,71 --> 00:37:42,69
or making things even worse. right. Well I don't know if it's going to make it worse

402
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but it's a little bit of drawing a blank card. is this. We were talking George about the problems in the world and I

403
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want to ask you is that motivating your own research if you go into the lab are you thinking about.

404
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Adressing some of these big challenges. it is a major motivation.

405
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And my argument for it is that my salary and the salary of my students is paid for by people who deliver the mail

406
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and pump gasoline and things like that

407
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and the process you can follow the money. the process is that they produce money they in corporations produce money

408
00:38:18,88 --> 00:38:22,86
which they give to the government which we all give to the government not because we're good people

409
00:38:22,87 --> 00:38:24,85
but because we go to jail if we don't

410
00:38:25,46 --> 00:38:30,97
but in the back of our mind is the idea that something comes out of it the government spends it for security

411
00:38:30,98 --> 00:38:31,67
and education

412
00:38:31,68 --> 00:38:38,09
and good things of that kind then the government of course has no way of actually doing anything with money because it

413
00:38:38,31 --> 00:38:46,83
just is sort of a bag man so the government takes the money and gives it to a tiny fraction of it to universities

414
00:38:46,84 --> 00:38:52,35
and sometimes to corporations on the theory that this makes for better outcomes

415
00:38:53,28 --> 00:39:02,84
and then the universities have no way of doing anything either so whatever they come up with knowledge or invention

416
00:39:02,85 --> 00:39:09,8
or whatever it might be has to be handed to another entity which is generally called a company to do something with. yes

417
00:39:09,84 --> 00:39:15,96
and all of a sudden that produces something which society recognizes the person who put up the money recognizes as

418
00:39:15,97 --> 00:39:22,3
a benefit but if you don't go through that it becomes self-referential it becomes.

419
00:39:22,3 --> 00:39:29,00
Academics saying that we deserve to be supported because basically we're stunningly beautiful

420
00:39:29,47 --> 00:39:35,39
and actually we're not we are just like everybody else and so the world is full of problems

421
00:39:35,4 --> 00:39:40,87
and both from the point of view of helping to pay the bill you get the money you should give something in return

422
00:39:41,08 --> 00:39:47,34
and also because it is so immensely stimulating to work on a problem that you have no idea how to solve we should do it

423
00:39:47,76 --> 00:39:55,02
what are particular problems that motivate you. the one that we work on is we're very interested in health care for the

424
00:39:55,03 --> 00:39:59,98
developing world and in much of Africa some parts of

425
00:40:00,01 --> 00:40:07,41
South America Western China there are lots of places where things have gone wrong actually in much of the Middle East

426
00:40:07,42 --> 00:40:13,21
now for different reasons. their people have very little access to health care they have very little access to hospitals

427
00:40:13,25 --> 00:40:18,12
they can't do what we do in the United States which is we feel sick we go to the emergency room

428
00:40:18,36 --> 00:40:24,77
and all of a sudden all the panoply of stuff is available. so how do you how do you provide help

429
00:40:24,98 --> 00:40:33,99
and my argument at least in part as a chemist that you can't fix it if you can't measure it so that if you want your

430
00:40:34,00 --> 00:40:38,41
physician you want to help you have to know help at what and that's diagnostics

431
00:40:39,08 --> 00:40:43,36
and so. it's knowledge of the body. knowledge of the body and knowledge of the disease or the injury

432
00:40:43,37 --> 00:40:51,45
or whatever it might be so the question is how do you provide information in a way that's accessible to people who

433
00:40:51,46 --> 00:40:54,58
do not have front end hospitals working with them

434
00:40:54,91 --> 00:41:01,56
and it's a very interesting problem because it actually super imposes almost on problems in animal health and the

435
00:41:01,57 --> 00:41:05,95
problems in environmental monitoring and the problem of the city and other things

436
00:41:06,67 --> 00:41:16,16
and what one asks as I would say more an engineer than a scientist in this regard is taking everything that you know

437
00:41:16,55 --> 00:41:22,25
can you come up with stuff that helps to fix this problem in a way that's affordable

438
00:41:22,26 --> 00:41:27,42
and easy enough that anyone can use it and it's simple and you can't really screw it up yes

439
00:41:27,56 --> 00:41:30,34
and I think the answer is yes but it is not straightforward

440
00:41:30,88 --> 00:41:40,7
but on the other hand probably it will involve some very kind of high advanced technology and investigations right I mean

441
00:41:40,71 --> 00:41:45,43
it's you're not doing basic stuff here. you're really exploring. I think the answer is yes

442
00:41:45,44 --> 00:41:52,77
and no. the actual work that we do is to make diagnostic systems that are based on little pieces of paper

443
00:41:53,34 --> 00:41:59,87
and this. the origin of this idea was that we were looking for some way of making. Systems that.

444
00:42:00,01 --> 00:42:07,77
Pump blood around and things of this kind in which we could adapt something that existed before for that purpose

445
00:42:07,78 --> 00:42:10,61
and what we settled on was making comic books

446
00:42:11,2 --> 00:42:18,31
but I was making comic books if you've ever seen a rotary press you know it generates enough pieces that big

447
00:42:18,32 --> 00:42:22,08
or enough area if you think about this way to cover the surface of the earth

448
00:42:22,13 --> 00:42:28,09
and you want to run in thirty miles an hour in a you know a sixty foot web it's amazing so that technology was there. 

449
00:42:28,13 --> 00:42:36,72
all we had to do is in a sense think of how to use it and that part is is actually trying to make things low end

450
00:42:36,76 --> 00:42:42,19
and as simple as possible and simple is not easy. a transistor is simple but it's not easy

451
00:42:43,00 --> 00:42:52,66
and then the high end part of it is that the assumption is everywhere that healthcare now will not be ever again just

452
00:42:52,7 --> 00:42:55,29
patient and doctor

453
00:42:55,47 --> 00:43:02,89
but rather patient doctor archival patient based database epidemiology that covers you know good fraction of the world

454
00:43:03,03 --> 00:43:08,02
history of all diseases of that sort we're not there yet. A huge dataset. Huge data sets

455
00:43:08,31 --> 00:43:14,75
and so that's the highest end so putting these things together is what in the sense is interesting how do you take

456
00:43:14,76 --> 00:43:19,41
something which is designed at the level of individuals to be as simple as they can be

457
00:43:19,65 --> 00:43:27,4
but at the level of collectives is more sophisticated than we can really imagine. thinking about also the collective So

458
00:43:27,41 --> 00:43:35,38
the kind of immensity of data for you know perhaps everybody's life history and medical history.

459
00:43:35,38 --> 00:43:36,66
It's kind of interesting that somehow

460
00:43:36,67 --> 00:43:42,31
analyzing this is really a collective thing. it's no longer we somehow do this as a species as a

461
00:43:42,32 --> 00:43:43,91
planet.

462
00:43:43,91 --> 00:43:52,39
But you know even there you see it very much just looking around any room. you can tell if you walk into a room pretty

463
00:43:52,4 --> 00:43:59,67
much even not a doctor who's healthy and who's not and and the big things are weight.

464
00:44:00,88 --> 00:44:07,2
Exercise you can tell that by how people move not smoking and you can tell that by watching them

465
00:44:07,21 --> 00:44:13,34
when they smile their face either breaks up in normal crinkles or in plaques and.

466
00:44:13,34 --> 00:44:16,26
You know they have to look basically slept

467
00:44:16,27 --> 00:44:20,71
and they get to get enough rest it's not all that complicated now lots of other things happen

468
00:44:20,72 --> 00:44:26,65
when stuff begins to go wrong but we have a model in the United States in Europe in Japan

469
00:44:26,66 --> 00:44:29,22
and many places of high end end of life medicine

470
00:44:29,79 --> 00:44:36,65
and it comes from this basic idea that life is invaluable so we will spend any amount of money to keep you alive

471
00:44:36,66 --> 00:44:41,28
do anything that is necessary. anything that's necessary this doesn't make sense to me

472
00:44:41,61 --> 00:44:48,29
but if you take that point of view then you tend to focus on people who are already sick rather than the obvious which

473
00:44:48,3 --> 00:44:49,59
is keeping people healthy

474
00:44:50,31 --> 00:45:00,31
and you know my idea is that drop off the edge of the cliff rather than slowly sink into the swamp like a baby 

475
00:45:00,32 --> 00:45:03,38
hippopotamus in La Brea

476
00:45:03,38 --> 00:45:09,53
George are you fundamentally optimistic about where the world is heading where our life heading I'm fundamentally

477
00:45:09,54 --> 00:45:13,72
immensely optimistic but I don't know optimistic about what

478
00:45:14,12 --> 00:45:20,75
because I don't know how it's going to come out. do you know why what motivates your optimism.

479
00:45:20,75 --> 00:45:26,65
I think as a species we have tended to get better

480
00:45:27,58 --> 00:45:33,98
and life is not as miserable I spend very little time worrying about whether I'm going to be set upon by robbers

481
00:45:34,29 --> 00:45:42,07
whether I'm going to make it past my thirtieth birthday you know these kinds of things are not probable. It was not that

482
00:45:42,08 --> 00:45:49,88
long ago. it wasn't that long ago that it's one hundred years ago that all of this was unknown. children died of perfectly

483
00:45:50,12 --> 00:45:59,58
we regard perfectly preventable disease. what's happened a little bit is that is the genie out of the bottle problem

484
00:45:59,65 --> 00:45:59,97
we've.

485
00:46:00,16 --> 00:46:07,7
Released the Internet we have nuclear weapons we have the ability to do things which we use for good

486
00:46:08,00 --> 00:46:10,92
but which if we're dumb we will use the wrong way

487
00:46:11,38 --> 00:46:17,51
and so the question is a little bit Are we smart enough to keep the car on the right side of the road

488
00:46:17,52 --> 00:46:24,31
or do we insist on driving in the wrong way. I found interesting there was an article I read by John van Neumann I think

489
00:46:24,59 --> 00:46:29,54
from the mid fifty's with the title Can we survive technology.

490
00:46:29,54 --> 00:46:36,92
And his conclusion was that it's like basic human qualities that help us answer that question just decency careful

491
00:46:36,93 --> 00:46:38,82
deliberation are you agreeing with that yeah

492
00:46:39,58 --> 00:46:48,81
and the argument that comes into technology and comes into science which I actually quite profoundly disagree with is that

493
00:46:48,82 --> 00:46:52,92
it is a subject which is distinct from ethics

494
00:46:52,93 --> 00:46:59,32
and human values. Ethics and human values do not help you solve problems in quantum mechanics on the other hand

495
00:46:59,36 --> 00:47:03,31
without ethics and human values you don't know what problems to solve or how to solve them

496
00:47:03,32 --> 00:47:10,81
or what to do with the answers once you have them so one of my major problems with education now at least at the

497
00:47:11,63 --> 00:47:20,81
gradular level is that we teach students what to do with enormous skill but we don't teach them why to do it

498
00:47:21,68 --> 00:47:24,91
and is that the right thing to do and I think not for them

499
00:47:25,00 --> 00:47:34,48
and not for society you think that we need these kind of moral and ethical dimensions to literally to survive.

500
00:47:34,48 --> 00:47:44,29
I think we need them to survive in a more direct way I think as a student if I were going into a field science would be

501
00:47:44,3 --> 00:47:49,67
one because it is so interesting and actually has the potential for impact on society

502
00:47:50,18 --> 00:47:55,31
but I would like to have the feeling that I'm doing it because it's important not because it's career advancing

503
00:47:55,79 --> 00:47:59,98
and that's something you can do in science it's not necessarily something.

504
00:48:00,01 --> 00:48:03,45
You can do if you are in other professions some other professions

505
00:48:03,86 --> 00:48:11,22
and to minimize that potential pleasure of doing something that is not only interesting and technically challenging

506
00:48:11,23 --> 00:48:18,3
but also helps other people seems to me like a worthwhile thing to do. Are you worried that you know.

507
00:48:18,3 --> 00:48:28,26
Our technologies and our insights become so advanced that they basically are understandable to many we talked about.

508
00:48:28,26 --> 00:48:33,12
the quantum and quantum mechanics and you know many people have not a clue what is this is

509
00:48:33,13 --> 00:48:40,92
and this might yet be driving our technology. Well yes but I don't do you have a clue of how the Internet works

510
00:48:40,93 --> 00:48:49,69
and I don't know nor do I I mean I know how a transistor works sort of yes but do I really know and one of my.

511
00:48:49,69 --> 00:48:54,87
One of my annoyances in life is that I spend a fair amount of time on airplanes

512
00:48:54,88 --> 00:49:03,24
and on the sides of airplanes are these things called Wings and the wings hold the airplane up how they do so.

513
00:49:03,24 --> 00:49:05,47
I have never quite believed that it works out

514
00:49:05,48 --> 00:49:11,02
and yet it goes up. that's right it's a miracle it's right it's astonishing to me

515
00:49:11,23 --> 00:49:12,91
Yes And you know

516
00:49:12,92 --> 00:49:19,56
when you start talking about the more sort of homey things like watching a baby develop It's unbelievable how does this

517
00:49:19,57 --> 00:49:23,57
happen no it's not technology but if you say that technology

518
00:49:23,58 --> 00:49:30,13
and life are just parts of the same different chapters of the same book then there should be common principles.

519
00:49:30,13 --> 00:49:33,07
George you talked about the wonder of seeing an airplane go up

520
00:49:33,14 --> 00:49:42,14
or a baby develop right is that sense of wonder important for you just as a scientist. what I live for I mean curiosity

521
00:49:42,15 --> 00:49:49,17
is a phenomenally useful characteristic for a human being to have because you're never bored because you can never

522
00:49:49,18 --> 00:49:50,79
understand the world around you completely

523
00:49:50,8 --> 00:49:54,14
and so there's always something interesting going on. so you're motivated by that 

524
00:49:54,15 --> 00:49:59,98
what you don't know. motivated I'm amused and interested and then some

525
00:50:00,15 --> 00:50:05,23
Small parts of that become motivation and some even smaller parts become problems to work on so

526
00:50:05,42 --> 00:50:10,39
but you know if you look at anything and say how does that happen you can never answer the question

527
00:50:10,44 --> 00:50:16,78
and so it's an endlessly interesting business. You have some kind of intuitive image about how much we don't now know how

528
00:50:16,79 --> 00:50:21,04
much is out there in terms of things to be discovered and explored

529
00:50:21,05 --> 00:50:28,66
but there's also there's a certain humility that comes from looking at something recognizing that you

530
00:50:28,67 --> 00:50:34,34
understand finally how it works and then coming back a week later and recognizing that you were completely wrong

531
00:50:34,7 --> 00:50:37,81
and you have it totally off base does and that happens over and over

532
00:50:37,82 --> 00:50:43,26
and over again is that true were there moments in your your own career that you were totally wrong Yeah

533
00:50:43,52 --> 00:50:49,41
and well I mean potentially every moment any time every day any time I say that I understand it I know I'm wrong it's

534
00:50:49,42 --> 00:50:51,66
just a question of how long it's going to take to find it out

535
00:50:51,67 --> 00:50:56,77
and what the nature of the wrongnesses is. is that fundamental to science that you're always going to have are is always

536
00:50:56,78 --> 00:50:57,55
kind of moving

537
00:50:57,56 --> 00:51:05,67
it has to be because how. the wonderful thing about quantum mechanics in particular is that it describes a world

538
00:51:05,68 --> 00:51:10,58
that we can't really understand. let's assume it's right yes which I don't do one hundred percent know

539
00:51:10,59 --> 00:51:13,23
but let's assume it's right and how do I understand it

540
00:51:13,63 --> 00:51:20,18
and it's things like interference for example I used to think this was OK you know interference was OK because it was

541
00:51:20,68 --> 00:51:25,27
it was something that happened with electrons whatever an electron was or a photon or things like that

542
00:51:25,87 --> 00:51:29,52
but now I find that Mr Zeilinger can take.

543
00:51:29,52 --> 00:51:35,83
Atoms and molecules actually big molecules Yes and run them through two slits

544
00:51:35,84 --> 00:51:42,24
and it does whatever happens. It behaved like an electron. like an electron Yes I have no idea how to incorporate

545
00:51:42,25 --> 00:51:44,31
that idea in my universe

546
00:51:44,35 --> 00:51:50,28
and I think I always think quantum mechanics you know whatever the amount of introspection I think you would never come

547
00:51:50,29 --> 00:51:56,29
up with that right. it is something we were taught by nature and we were very difficult students

548
00:51:56,51 --> 00:51:59,98
and it took a long time for us to appreciate it. and then these arguments

549
00:52:00,05 --> 00:52:05,87
that say that perhaps spacetime is quantized.

550
00:52:05,87 --> 00:52:06,89
I mean I have the words

551
00:52:07,26 --> 00:52:15,94
but if you say to me time is quantized then that raises the question of what's going on in between the moment. the bits of time

552
00:52:15,95 --> 00:52:19,17
ah yes and how do I describe that and it's clearly not an understandable

553
00:52:19,18 --> 00:52:21,67
notion now it may be that I phrased it wrong

554
00:52:21,68 --> 00:52:26,35
and it's something different if you think about it in a more sophisticated way than I can you can get your grip your

555
00:52:26,36 --> 00:52:27,87
mind around it get a grip on it

556
00:52:28,2 --> 00:52:35,24
but I can't. Are you surprised how far we came in terms of understanding the world around us I mean it's seems to be

557
00:52:35,25 --> 00:52:36,53
absolutely spectacular

558
00:52:36,54 --> 00:52:45,39
and there seem to be no signs like forbidden for human beings. Well yes I amazed because of course.

559
00:52:45,39 --> 00:52:49,9
It's always relative to what

560
00:52:50,38 --> 00:52:57,64
and if you say that there's some gigantic examination that we are involved in and there's a score of zero

561
00:52:57,9 --> 00:53:02,14
and we're clearly not a zero and then there's a score of one hundred in terms of understanding

562
00:53:02,15 --> 00:53:06,58
and I don't know now whether we're at five or ninety five in any of these areas

563
00:53:06,59 --> 00:53:12,46
and one of the things about chemistry is that actually the basics of putting together molecules

564
00:53:12,47 --> 00:53:21,31
and matter we understand to an extent we can use it as a tool box as well design. what to do is a different issue yes.

565
00:53:21,31 --> 00:53:25,76
When you start talking. There is this question of basically you are the designer and what to make right

566
00:53:25,77 --> 00:53:29,24
and I design where you have the materials that's right you understand the materials

567
00:53:29,28 --> 00:53:36,74
but then if you take the next step and say that the problems now are megacities and public health and the poor

568
00:53:36,75 --> 00:53:43,38
and the environment all of those are problems in which you're dealing with collections of things you're dealing with

569
00:53:43,39 --> 00:53:44,11
systems

570
00:53:44,37 --> 00:53:51,57
and the solutions for an individual part of a system are not necessarily the right solutions for the system you know so

571
00:53:51,58 --> 00:53:57,55
we may have to redesign with a totally set of differ different set of design rules which are the systems rules as

572
00:53:57,56 --> 00:53:59,77
opposed to the individual component rules.

573
00:54:00,07 --> 00:54:01,39
And that opens the whole book again

574
00:54:01,59 --> 00:54:06,92
but That's going back to our beginning of our conversation were you said we are a sort of grade of building blocks that you can make

575
00:54:07,14 --> 00:54:12,11
anything out of it but if the building blocks have the characteristic that you make something

576
00:54:12,12 --> 00:54:14,92
and it turns out to be exactly what you wanted to be

577
00:54:14,93 --> 00:54:20,42
but exactly the wrong thing for what turns out to be the problem which you didn't understand at the beginning yes yes

578
00:54:20,91 --> 00:54:27,98
you can stay amused doing that. that's right. George if you. Go to.

579
00:54:27,98 --> 00:54:35,12
Part of the series is also that we kind of describing the various kind of I would say kind of personalities that we find in

580
00:54:35,13 --> 00:54:45,68
science because we might study the same phenomena but there's a great diversity also in the personal approach and.

581
00:54:45,68 --> 00:54:50,34
I'm looking here at this animal that's on the on the table tell me what it is

582
00:54:50,55 --> 00:54:56,59
and why is it there. this is a wart hog and my wife brought this model back from someplace from Zambia

583
00:54:56,6 --> 00:54:59,95
or wherever she was and I'm very fond of it

584
00:55:00,73 --> 00:55:08,69
and one reason for being fond of it is that I do believe that in the idea of totems A totem is an animal that you think

585
00:55:08,7 --> 00:55:17,81
might embody some of your best characteristics and so I have two and one of these totems is a.

586
00:55:17,81 --> 00:55:23,12
Rhinoceros and the reason I like rhinoceroses is it's not a particularly bright animal

587
00:55:23,16 --> 00:55:28,71
and it solves problems by going through the problems. Concrete wall you go through the concrete wall you don't go around

588
00:55:28,72 --> 00:55:32,16
the concrete wall and I feel an emotional kinship with that

589
00:55:32,87 --> 00:55:40,86
and then these are so beautiful these animals they are you know not maybe to you and to me but to their mothers

590
00:55:40,9 --> 00:55:42,12
they are so beautiful

591
00:55:42,47 --> 00:55:50,43
and so I feel I fit in that category too so I'm I'm I'm for both of these animals. if you look around and you look at your

592
00:55:50,44 --> 00:55:55,05
colleagues do you see other animals in the natural I do I do I do I do

593
00:55:55,06 --> 00:55:59,98
and they run all the way from the most glorious of creatures to others.

594
00:56:00,91 --> 00:56:11,75
One it would be impolite to make that that two column yes two column Excel spreadsheet but it's there.

595
00:56:11,75 --> 00:56:19,41
An issue which is an interesting one about which we haven't talked is the division between science and engineering

596
00:56:19,45 --> 00:56:23,98
or more properly I think the fact that that's not all there is.

597
00:56:23,98 --> 00:56:28,25
So the argument there's an argument now in the United States that science

598
00:56:28,26 --> 00:56:32,16
and engineering are just slightly different colored versions of the same thing

599
00:56:32,21 --> 00:56:39,33
and I think that's not correct because scientists really like to understand things even if it's not necessarily useful yes

600
00:56:39,37 --> 00:56:46,11
and engineers have this wonderful enthusiasm for taking something that basically exists in some ways

601
00:56:46,45 --> 00:56:51,26
and making it better yes I mean it is a different point of view but there's a third part of it

602
00:56:51,34 --> 00:56:59,35
and maybe even a fourth part. the third part is invention and people who are inventors are the ones who go from not

603
00:57:00,18 --> 00:57:06,64
and to one hundred or one to ten but from zero to one. give an example of a canonical example of an invention

604
00:57:07,19 --> 00:57:12,85
and a canonical example of an invention is probably a transistor because there was no such thing before

605
00:57:13,12 --> 00:57:16,89
and it came into being for a different reason but a stool

606
00:57:17,1 --> 00:57:24,27
or a fire I mean these were. a wheel was invented by someone you know an invention is not necessarily a flash of

607
00:57:24,31 --> 00:57:27,92
lightning it may be a process that gets you somewhere

608
00:57:28,19 --> 00:57:35,39
but it nonetheless creates an idea a concept of how the world could be that wasn't there before yes

609
00:57:35,43 --> 00:57:41,52
and so we need to be a little bit careful not to say that you can be a scientist or you can be an engineer

610
00:57:42,02 --> 00:57:45,39
but that's all there is. perhaps a difference between inventing something

611
00:57:45,4 --> 00:57:52,44
and discovering something. the two are related Well in one case you look at the world

612
00:57:52,53 --> 00:57:56,41
and you see what's there that you don't understand and you abstract an idea from it

613
00:57:56,42 --> 00:57:59,29
and that's the charm of much of the.

614
00:58:00,01 --> 00:58:02,31
Interface between the physical sciences

615
00:58:02,32 --> 00:58:07,75
and the biological sciences. life offers so many interesting opportunities to do that

616
00:58:08,71 --> 00:58:15,36
but the you know the other is sometimes you just are curious you say Could this be done counterfactual thinking is

617
00:58:15,37 --> 00:58:21,89
actually I think very useful in science as if you get up in the morning and you say the sun rises in the east

618
00:58:22,64 --> 00:58:27,66
and you realise that what you're really saying is that every day I've looked at it the sun rose in the east

619
00:58:27,7 --> 00:58:34,31
but what would happen if the sun rose in the West and you are sometimes led into pathways that are quite interesting

620
00:58:34,32 --> 00:58:41,61
and sometimes you're led to go nuts. right you know yeah. both work. yes what about the other disciplines you know In particular

621
00:58:41,62 --> 00:58:43,24
if you think about invention

622
00:58:43,25 --> 00:58:51,47
of something creativity I also naturally think about the arts. you think about the arts Yes And they of course operate

623
00:58:51,66 --> 00:58:53,08
in a somewhat different way

624
00:58:53,09 --> 00:59:00,97
but with the same kind of process if you look at the Arts which is so far as I can see a human construct it's a

625
00:59:00,98 --> 00:59:05,56
construct of sought and you ask how that happens and what do they come up with

626
00:59:05,57 --> 00:59:08,85
and how does that work it's astonishing

627
00:59:09,18 --> 00:59:16,95
and it you know part of that which is actually fairly interesting is that if you read as a child as I did science

628
00:59:16,96 --> 00:59:19,45
fiction.

629
00:59:19,45 --> 00:59:26,86
It's easy to look back and say well all they did was think about spaceships and the Internet

630
00:59:27,02 --> 00:59:28,96
and life on other planets

631
00:59:29,49 --> 00:59:34,09
but what you have to realise is they thought about all this before none of these ideas were there. I mean they

632
00:59:34,1 --> 00:59:40,29
created. even nuclear arms. which come into being yes and it was an astonishing act of creation

633
00:59:40,57 --> 00:59:44,81
and in the same way people create of course societies and they create personalities

634
00:59:45,33 --> 00:59:53,39
and the people who do this know things that we haven't gotten a grip on in some way that is this is also about 

635
00:59:53,43 --> 00:59:59,78
the power of our imagination. how important is that imagination in driving this I mean and how do you.

636
01:00:00,01 --> 01:00:05,06
Kind of explain this that we can see things imagine things that aren't there yet I don't think we know

637
01:00:05,95 --> 01:00:12,94
and one of the interesting notion was about for example machine intelligence is that.

638
01:00:12,94 --> 01:00:24,39
It is showing us things that we have not previously appreciated the interesting baby example was Alpha go the program

639
01:00:25,2 --> 01:00:31,92
that had the characteristic that it actually defeated the world's champion Go that's not so interesting

640
01:00:31,96 --> 01:00:34,92
but what was interesting to me was that there were apparently one

641
01:00:34,93 --> 01:00:44,12
or two games in which the program made moves which the human player apparently would not have made now that's creation

642
01:00:44,22 --> 01:00:49,94
and it is creation in a very defined universe with a tight set of rules but that's OK

643
01:00:49,95 --> 01:00:58,04
and that we know that that will change. I found it interesting that actually this defeat of human beings by a machine

644
01:00:58,47 --> 01:01:05,37
actually lead to a lot more interest in Go because particularly with this element that this might be an incredible.

645
01:01:05,37 --> 01:01:07,12
enriching process 

646
01:01:07,13 --> 01:01:16,99
for understanding the game. one of the things that crops up in in science fiction is the notion of systems that can make

647
01:01:17,00 --> 01:01:18,17
very rapid decisions

648
01:01:19,17 --> 01:01:27,51
and if you look at an area which is tended to be one which stimulated great creativity in the sense which is war fair

649
01:01:27,63 --> 01:01:34,18
and you find exactly that's going on because those systems make decisions in ways and at distances

650
01:01:34,19 --> 01:01:40,08
and in wavelengths we can't begin to really get a good grip on yes so it's happening

651
01:01:40,09 --> 01:01:47,72
and everywhere around you look you in your group has a drone drones didn't exist ten years ago yes

652
01:01:47,73 --> 01:01:51,7
and now drones are everywhere now our little eyes you know flying around

653
01:01:51,71 --> 01:01:58,38
and looking for us in interesting directions so the opportunities for change are absolutely everywhere if you're

654
01:01:58,39 --> 01:02:03,78
curious about. You know can I make a bookcase fly yes I can make a bookcase fly.

655
01:02:03,78 --> 01:02:11,07
We talked about artificial intelligence could you also talk about artificial imagination.

656
01:02:11,07 --> 01:02:15,51
That's a question to which the answer has to be yes but whether you

657
01:02:15,52 --> 01:02:23,88
and I can talk about it I don't know magination is the ability to imagine worlds that don't exist that's not enough

658
01:02:23,92 --> 01:02:26,7
because it has to be an interesting world that doesn't exist

659
01:02:26,71 --> 01:02:32,65
or a world that doesn't exist according to rules that people have not taken for granted yes

660
01:02:32,77 --> 01:02:40,08
and it is counterfactual I think it's basically a notion of imagining what cannot be assuming it to be asking how you

661
01:02:40,09 --> 01:02:44,76
get there and then asking what happens once you've gone there so there is perhaps a process

662
01:02:45,01 --> 01:02:52,54
but it's not something which everyone necessarily does in a way that has an influence on those around them. George we

663
01:02:52,55 --> 01:02:54,61
talked about the evolution of life

664
01:02:54,65 --> 01:03:01,31
and you know from its very mysterious beginning through great complexity to the emergence of intelligent

665
01:03:01,32 --> 01:03:02,98
life.

666
01:03:02,98 --> 01:03:10,68
And now we're in this phase where certainly you know human beings but also you know very smart programs and machines

667
01:03:10,69 --> 01:03:15,89
and computers are kind of linked together.

668
01:03:15,89 --> 01:03:22,8
How do you see this I mean if you just take a almost like a planetary perspective.

669
01:03:22,8 --> 01:03:25,00
That looks almost like the planet is coming alive

670
01:03:25,04 --> 01:03:33,1
and becoming an intelligence by itself yes I mean if you threw out the issue of replication why not why not have a

671
01:03:33,11 --> 01:03:40,49
planetary intelligence that consist of everything one of the more interesting technological things that's come along in

672
01:03:40,5 --> 01:03:46,67
the last period of time has been the ability to read signals from the brain

673
01:03:46,68 --> 01:03:52,28
and use those to cause intentional motions you know to run a robotic arm

674
01:03:52,29 --> 01:03:54,85
or something like that it's pretty primitive at this point

675
01:03:55,38 --> 01:03:59,95
but what it connecting our minds to sort of say the mind of the robot the mind.

676
01:04:00,01 --> 01:04:07,03
The mind of robot yes and it's at the action it's a level not of thought but at the level of.

677
01:04:07,03 --> 01:04:10,1
Action and mechanics but it's a step

678
01:04:10,37 --> 01:04:15,43
and it's really interesting step to a world in which you don't have to have physical connections

679
01:04:15,44 --> 01:04:23,47
to have things happen now you say that well there's no way of going from that to.

680
01:04:23,47 --> 01:04:32,05
Something which is more to do with thinking on the other hand having tried Oculus Rift I can't tell the difference

681
01:04:32,06 --> 01:04:36,34
between that world and the real world it's a virtual reality it's a virtual reality world

682
01:04:36,8 --> 01:04:43,25
and so you put all of this together and all of a sudden you begin to imagine moving things at a distance

683
01:04:43,31 --> 01:04:51,51
and looking through the eyes of those who are not you at these things in wavelengths that you can't imagine you will

684
01:04:51,52 --> 01:04:52,62
build memories from that

685
01:04:52,71 --> 01:04:59,2
and you will construct your own reality from that so I don't know that I necessarily have to think what you're thinking

686
01:04:59,31 --> 01:05:04,72
but if I experience what you're experiencing it may have the same effect and I'm shaping your brain

687
01:05:04,73 --> 01:05:09,58
and you're shaping my Yeah you're welcome to go at mine.

688
01:05:09,58 --> 01:05:14,99
If you take even more a kind of a wider perspective think of it you know of the cosmos

689
01:05:15,00 --> 01:05:20,93
and in the title of the series is the mind of the universe.

690
01:05:20,93 --> 01:05:27,5
Is that a grandiose overstatement of what we are doing here on planet Earth.

691
01:05:27,5 --> 01:05:35,29
Well we've got a problem when one goes long distances we think because of the issues of speed of light

692
01:05:35,76 --> 01:05:42,04
but on Earth that's not such much of a problem really we we are a little limited

693
01:05:42,05 --> 01:05:47,86
but not that much limited so is there any reason to think we couldn't have global connectivity we have global

694
01:05:47,87 --> 01:05:52,74
connectivity you know it's just a question of having it adapt and evolve

695
01:05:53,49 --> 01:06:02,01
and what it evolves into what are the what will be the evolutionary pressures on a system in which. There are no.

696
01:06:02,01 --> 01:06:08,51
Competitors and because very. again it's only one. Like the first cell. that's right

697
01:06:08,62 --> 01:06:15,26
but of course there was only one cell at the beginning and it evolved its own predators. yes. that makes me a little uneasy

698
01:06:15,74 --> 01:06:22,64
this is outside of my lifetime but it's not necessarily outside of lifetimes twenty generations from now. yes

699
01:06:23,07 --> 01:06:31,46
and in fact you can argue I suppose that hacking is a little first you know it's one finch throwing a stone at another

700
01:06:31,47 --> 01:06:34,09
finch or something of that kind.

701
01:06:34,09 --> 01:06:43,23
Going back again to the beginning of your life you told you were as a child interested in math and science.

702
01:06:43,23 --> 01:06:47,47
Kind of looking back everything you've seen.

703
01:06:47,47 --> 01:06:52,45
Are you amazed by just what what happened what you've seen in terms of science and research

704
01:06:52,46 --> 01:06:55,95
and technology. you have to be amazed of course one is amazed

705
01:06:55,99 --> 01:07:02,26
and one is amazed every day but there's a little bit of a problem in that kind of question because I would have been

706
01:07:02,27 --> 01:07:09,13
amazed by almost anything as children don't know anything so everything is amazing I mean if you ask what's the best

707
01:07:09,3 --> 01:07:10,00
scientist

708
01:07:10,01 --> 01:07:14,77
and everyone who thinks about it would agree the best scientist in the world is a two year old yes who invents all these

709
01:07:14,78 --> 01:07:17,41
Newtonian physics balls falling down

710
01:07:17,42 --> 01:07:23,36
and all the rest of it while inventing language while doing all the rest is just truly phenomenal that's what they do

711
01:07:23,37 --> 01:07:28,42
because they're really interested yes because if they don't get it right they fall down so it's

712
01:07:28,43 --> 01:07:31,33
downhill from there it's downhill from there in a certain sense

713
01:07:31,96 --> 01:07:36,01
but you know I think one would be equally amazed by just going out

714
01:07:36,02 --> 01:07:42,24
and looking at the world yes that what you get in science is the ability to intervene

715
01:07:42,78 --> 01:07:50,93
and that makes to me a world of difference I just think it's so much fun to figure out I think that my work that way

716
01:07:50,94 --> 01:07:55,65
well if it works that way maybe if I poke here something will come out over there and I poke here

717
01:07:55,66 --> 01:07:56,82
and it doesn't it comes out over here

718
01:07:57,01 --> 01:08:02,93
and that you know that really gets you up in the morning thank you for sharing some of that fun with us it's been a

719
01:08:02,94 --> 01:08:04,04
real pleasure thank you.