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1:02

conversationswithtyler.com. Hello

1:07

everyone and welcome back to Conversations

1:09

with Tyler. Today I'm here

1:12

in San Francisco chatting with Michael Nielsen.

1:14

Michael is hard to introduce and also

1:16

difficult to prepare for because he knows

1:18

and has done so many different things.

1:21

He's from Australia, has a PhD

1:23

in physics, has written what is

1:26

perhaps the best-known text or co-authored

1:28

it on quantum computing, is

1:30

one of the leaders of the

1:33

open science movement, has co-authored with

1:35

Patrick Collison on progress in science,

1:37

has worked at Y Combinator, is

1:40

an extraordinarily prolific writer, reader, commentator,

1:42

tweeter, mentor to others, mentee, and

1:45

many other things and currently is thinking

1:47

about the fragility of civilization and much

1:49

more. Michael, welcome. Thank you so much,

1:51

Tyler. So you were saying there should have

1:54

been a metaculous on the opening question.

1:57

Why is the universe beautiful to human eyes?

2:00

Oh, selection? I have

2:02

no idea. I mean, selection is a

2:04

very attractive kind of an idea. I

2:06

mean, kind of to think not just

2:08

instinctively. But yeah, I don't know.

2:12

Why are there simple rules? Why do we have

2:14

simple rules governing the universe? In fact, why is

2:16

simplicity and arguably truth somehow associated to beauty? Physicists

2:20

tend to assert that this is the case,

2:22

but I don't think anybody really knows the

2:24

reason why. How beautiful do we in fact

2:26

think the universe is? The

2:28

people don't buy paintings of the universe. People like

2:30

you might, right? But it's not. Oh, I have

2:32

a painting. I have the Hubble Deep Fields on

2:34

my wall, of course. But the most expensive paintings

2:37

are not of the universe. There are people. There

2:39

are voting scenes, right? I don't think that's really

2:41

true. I mean, the James Webb Space Telescope was

2:44

about, I think, was $10 billion and is

2:46

arguably a machine for producing that

2:48

kind of image. It's got

2:50

to be one of the most important sort of

2:53

image factories and most expensive image factories ever made.

2:55

So I'm not sure I buy that. What's the

2:57

most beautiful image of the universe? The

2:59

image of – we

3:01

have a sort of a sequence of improved

3:04

images of the three-degree

3:06

microwave background is – I

3:09

don't know. Is it the most beautiful? It's

3:11

maybe the most extraordinary. It really is sort of a

3:13

photograph of the universe as a whole. You

3:15

can look at that and it says something about

3:17

structure out in creation. Why

3:20

do the sounds of the universe not

3:22

appeal to us so much, right? So

3:24

it's beautiful visually. But orally, it's –

3:26

you know, we create very complicated things

3:28

which we call music, which are beautiful.

3:32

Yeah, that's a great question. I

3:34

don't know why music is beautiful.

3:38

People have made attempts. You know, there's

3:41

things like sort of chirp sounds that might be

3:43

produced near a black hole and sort of ideas

3:45

like this. And you're right. They

3:47

tend not to be all that beautiful.

3:49

The only ones that I can think of that

3:51

sort of offhand, you know, it's

3:53

being produced by evolution. Birdsong is beautiful,

3:55

but we're actually quite closely related to

3:57

birds. So it's maybe not so surprising.

4:00

If I think about things like, what's

4:02

his name, Ron Seksmith, I think

4:04

his name is a composer in Toronto,

4:06

has made these musical pieces based on

4:09

the different periods in the solar system.

4:11

So the time that the Earth

4:13

takes one year to go around

4:15

the sun, but also then Mars and Jupiter and all

4:17

these. And they are

4:19

noticeably not particularly attractive musical

4:22

pieces. So that's a

4:24

good question. I wonder if the beauty of light isn't

4:26

part of the reason for the beauty of the universe.

4:29

So as human beings maybe were evolved to be

4:31

attracted to light, it gives you an integrated theory

4:33

of the beauty of the universe and beauty of

4:35

paintings. Vermeer, a great painter, he's

4:37

very attractive to people because of how he

4:39

uses light. When you look at the universe,

4:42

you're typically seeing signatures of light in many

4:44

cases. You look at the Milky Way, right?

4:47

It's pretty strange. We

4:49

see in such a tiny band

4:51

of wavelengths, we're really not

4:53

seeing almost anything. We're not seeing into the

4:55

infrared and the radio. We're not seeing into

4:57

the ultraviolet and the X-ray. So

5:00

a lot of what we view as

5:02

beautiful locally, I mean, it's got this

5:04

sort of evolutionary explanation again. Why

5:07

the large scale structure is

5:10

beautiful. Okay. I

5:13

can maybe attempt to sort of, I partially believe

5:15

this explanation, which is that we

5:18

do seem to be sort of programmed to

5:20

recognize and find attractive

5:23

instinctively novelty which

5:25

is associated to structure somehow. And

5:28

so we look and we see spiral galaxies

5:30

or things like that. It's reflecting something which

5:32

is interesting. We don't necessarily know quite what,

5:34

but maybe there's kind of an evolutionary explanation

5:36

for why that is attractive at least. But

5:39

I can apply that explanation to your question

5:41

about sound. It's equally as good and unfortunately

5:43

it just doesn't seem to hold there. So

5:47

I'm not that confident. Now you've written that

5:49

in the first half of your life, you typically

5:51

were the youngest person in your circle. And

5:53

that in the second half of your life, which

5:55

is probably now, you're typically the oldest person in

5:58

your circle. How would you model

6:00

that as a claim about you? I

6:04

hope I'm in the first five percent of my life, but

6:06

it's sadly unlikely. You're 50 now and you're just 200, right?

6:09

Which is plausible. Which is plausible. And you would now

6:11

be in the second half of your life. Yeah. I

6:14

mean, I can give shallow reasons. I can't give good

6:16

reasons. The good reason in

6:18

the first half was so much of the work I

6:21

was doing was kind of new fields of science, and

6:23

those tend to be dominated essentially for sort

6:26

of almost sunk cost reasons. People who don't

6:28

have any sunk costs tend to

6:30

be younger. They go into these fields. So there's

6:32

kind of early days of quantum computing, early days

6:34

of open science. They were dominated by people in

6:36

their 20s, and then they'd sort of

6:38

go off and become faculty members. They'd be the youngest person on

6:41

the faculty. Now, maybe

6:43

it's just because I found sort of San

6:45

Francisco and it's such an interesting cultural institution

6:48

or sort of achievement of civilization.

6:50

We've got this amplifier for 25-year-olds

6:53

that lets them make dreams

6:55

in the world. And that's for me anyway, for

6:57

a person with my personality, very attractive for many

6:59

of the same reasons. Well,

7:01

let's say you had a theory of your

7:03

collaborators. And other than yes, they're

7:06

smart, they work hard, but trying to pin down

7:08

in as few dimensions as possible, who's likely to

7:10

become a collaborator of yours after

7:12

taking into account the obvious? What's your

7:14

theory of your own collaborators? They're

7:17

all extremely open to experience. They're

7:19

all extremely curious. They're all extremely

7:21

prosocial. They're all extremely ambitious. They're

7:24

all extremely imaginative. And

7:27

do you think that ends up pairing you with

7:29

collaborators who are more different than you? So

7:32

a lot of collaborators are very similar, and then

7:34

other types are very different. So almost always as

7:36

well, I will select for somebody who has at

7:38

least one very strong skill, which I do not

7:41

have. And that's sort of enough diversity

7:43

from my point of view. And that

7:45

may account for some of the age differences throughout

7:47

your life. But also then there's also just this local

7:49

selection effect. I live in the Bay Area. There's a

7:51

lot of really amazing 29-year-olds around. It's

7:54

just incredible. I was told to ask,

7:56

what's the influence of Simone Weil on you? interesting

8:00

question. She's one of the

8:02

maybe the best examples of sincerity that

8:05

I know of. The fact that

8:07

she wrote what she wrote for herself, she

8:09

wasn't attempting to get published. It was just this

8:12

deep internal colloquia that was going on. And

8:14

it's reflected in every aspect of her life. She

8:16

went off to fight in Spain at a time

8:18

when women did not go off to fight in

8:20

Spain. Everything that she did, she did at 500

8:22

miles an hour. She's remarkable

8:25

as kind of a ... She's an extreme, very

8:27

extreme type of a human being in a way

8:29

that I find very interesting. If

8:31

you and she collaborated, what would it be on? I

8:35

don't think ... I'm sure she was

8:37

a difficult person. Although, her brother Andre Vile

8:39

was a very great mathematician. And you can

8:41

sort of see in some of the stories

8:44

about the two of them that she must

8:46

have quite liked the sort of scientist types.

8:48

Maybe we would have found something to

8:50

collaborate on. Why is Charles

8:52

Sanders Perr still an important thinker? I don't know

8:54

enough about Pierce to be able to answer that

8:56

question. You and I

8:58

were both fans of Olaf Stapleton, who wrote

9:01

the dual classics, Last and First Men and

9:03

Star Maker. What's the

9:05

biggest analytical mistake he made in those

9:07

narratives? So a lot of

9:09

implausible things happen, right? But those are too simple

9:12

to point to. Where is his understanding of the

9:14

social world going wrong? He

9:16

was both, certainly to some degree, a socialist

9:18

and certainly a pacifist. Though in World War

9:21

II, he switched out of pacifism. He did.

9:23

Yeah, as in many people. I

9:26

find myself as I read those books

9:28

actually becoming a little bit more sympathetic.

9:30

I'm not a priori, particularly sympathetic to

9:32

them. And I start to think

9:35

he has this very long view of

9:37

history, I mean, much longer than most people who

9:40

say they have a long view of history. And

9:42

I think he sort of he sees some of

9:44

his pacifism in that light. It's kind

9:46

of questions about what's actually good for a species

9:48

or in fact, not even a single species, but

9:50

across multiple species is it good to be pacifist?

9:52

And there's a really interesting point of view. It's

9:54

hard to reconcile with kind of a selfish gene,

9:56

kind of a point of view. But of course,

9:59

this is an ongoing problem in evolutionary biology,

10:01

it actually seems like group

10:04

selection doesn't quite work, but

10:06

something at that level has to be a little bit

10:08

true. So if you take that seriously,

10:11

then maybe his pacifism, which just seems

10:13

like sort of an outright mistake, maybe

10:15

it's actually justifiable in some way. Actually,

10:17

I'm not answering what I've answered. I've

10:20

answered the inverse of your question, which is

10:22

to justify the bits that I, a priori,

10:24

find most implausible. But yeah, I think those

10:26

are mistakes. I worry that he too quickly

10:29

assumes collective action problems are solved, which

10:31

is close to your answer. So he

10:33

thinks the League of Nations can be

10:35

effective for a long period of time,

10:37

which I suspect was not really contingently

10:39

possible. And he has this

10:41

Hegelian sense, what Hegel would call a national

10:43

spirit, for him is a

10:45

civilizational or certain stage of

10:47

man spirit that so shapes how

10:50

people think. And

10:52

I hang out with a lot of economists. I

10:54

think that's much stronger than the economists believe, your

10:57

overall view of the world and what's important. But

10:59

I don't think it's nearly as strong as

11:02

Stapleton believed. So the way

11:04

in which collective spirit rules millions, billions

11:06

or trillions of beings, I

11:08

feel he's overestimating the efficacy of that. The

11:12

comment about the League of Nations is really interesting. I think

11:15

there's this spirit at the time, lots of

11:17

people wanted this idea to work, lots of

11:19

his friends would have wanted it. I

11:21

think it's a sort of a shallow kind of a

11:23

mistake that he made there. That your comment about collective

11:26

action problems seems much more to the

11:28

heart of it. I think he didn't

11:30

really believe in them

11:33

or actually sort of understand just how difficult

11:35

they are to solve, how difficult it is

11:37

to supply public goods and these

11:39

kind of things. He always does away with

11:41

it sort of narratively and it's just assumed

11:44

away without really a mechanism being

11:46

given. He assumes a

11:48

lot away in those books. When the

11:51

problems are interesting, he usually doesn't and that problem

11:53

is interesting and he still assumes it away. I'm

11:55

not very sympathetic to that at all. But I'm

11:57

not sure how big a mistake League of Nations...

12:00

Was so clearly it didn't work

12:02

and i just criticized him for it but

12:04

if you think about eighteen fifteen up through

12:07

the first world war almost a century you

12:09

have an unprecedented degree of peace in much

12:12

not all of europe. And

12:14

everyone has just lived through that and they may be

12:16

thought that was not possible and maybe that is itself

12:18

still a bit of a mystery. And

12:21

then there's world war one and you feel

12:23

you can get back to some version of what you

12:25

had in the league of nations appears

12:27

to be the closest path to doing that and

12:30

it might have been more possible at the time.

12:32

I'm just saying this thing is a gap between

12:34

aspiration and what actually happened with the league and

12:36

then later with the united nations i think you

12:39

had the hopes and then you had the

12:41

what actually happened. Yeah there's a gap with

12:43

the as prototypes you know over the next

12:45

few centuries maybe these things are terrific maybe

12:47

we learn a lot from them things like

12:49

that i don't know whether the montreal protocol

12:51

have been possible without the united nations probably

12:53

not. I have a very concrete

12:56

question for you and this is to clear up

12:58

a confusion of mine so i've asked experts in

13:00

quantum computing what's the status of quantum computing right

13:02

now some of them say we already have it

13:04

some of them say the others will tell you

13:06

we already have it but we don't. Others will

13:09

say we're on the verge of having it and

13:11

there's two or three other answers i

13:13

hear often people who nominally would seem to know

13:15

what they're talking about. So

13:18

let me ask you michael what is actually

13:20

the status of quantum computing right now i

13:22

am i'm the wrong person i am determined

13:24

leave very agnostic about this i stopped i

13:26

worked on it from ninety ninety two two

13:28

two thousand seven. Actually

13:30

i do keep up with friends i'm

13:33

going to have coffee after this with

13:35

somebody who's still on the quantum train

13:37

it's very impressive progress each year it

13:39

is an extremely difficult problem it's not

13:41

solved there's no way it's definitely not

13:43

solved. But the fact that there's sort

13:46

of order hundred cubit systems which you can apparently manipulate

13:49

as you will suggest to me we just

13:51

wait it's going to happen we don't know

13:53

what it will mean. What's your

13:55

maximum likelihood estimate for

13:57

the first year when it will do something useful.

14:01

Useful to me or useful to symbolization? Useful

14:03

to anyone. And the most interesting thing

14:05

would be to discover that quantum mechanics was wrong from

14:07

my point of view. The other most interesting thing is

14:10

probably discovery of new materials. How

14:12

would it discover new materials? Just by being

14:14

able to do simulations very, very rapidly. It's

14:17

very hard to do simulations of stuff down at

14:19

the quantum scale. The way that we have are

14:21

pretty terrible and often produce wrong results. The fact

14:23

that we may actually have a very high throughput

14:26

way of doing lots and lots of

14:28

simulations which give correct results. It's

14:30

like being able to do a thousand times as many

14:32

experiments as before. That will just speed things up

14:34

insofar as there's anything to discover. I can't tell

14:36

you what we'll discover. Will there be

14:38

quantum money? Will all money be quantum money in this

14:41

world whenever it comes? I actually don't know. I mean,

14:43

there's this old idea of Steven Wiesner, which he called

14:45

quantum money. It's meant to

14:47

be uncountifedible. I don't know. But

14:50

isn't everything else countifedible if

14:53

quantum computing is up and running and

14:55

thus you need quantum money to protect

14:57

against just your counterfeiting? Most

14:59

of the 19th century monies, they were often counterfeit.

15:01

We don't know the exact percentage, but we believe

15:03

it was quite high. Yeah.

15:05

Well, it's still true in the world

15:08

today, never mind the 19th century, as we've talked about

15:13

before. I won't be surprised if

15:15

we end up with systems like that. It's hard

15:17

to make it stable. That's the issue. But my

15:20

guess is that in the long run, we actually

15:22

will find ways of making

15:24

quantum systems surprisingly stable. That's

15:26

speculation on my part. But if I

15:28

come back in 100 years' time and that's true, we

15:31

may just have quantum coherence everywhere. Do

15:33

you think that leads to a mass privatization of

15:36

a lot of social activity? So something like AI,

15:38

we're in San Francisco, the private sector does it.

15:41

No government is really close to doing it,

15:43

right? You have

15:45

to pay high salaries, hire the most talented people.

15:48

So if AI and quantum computing are done

15:50

by the private sector, what

15:52

is government in that world? I

15:54

don't know. I mean, it's

15:57

an interesting fact, right, that work on nuclear weapons

15:59

was at... actually nationalized in I think 1948

16:01

or something like that. So,

16:04

potentially that's just one answer, right? Because sort of

16:06

contingently... But that seems more of a brute force

16:09

thing. Sure. But then what does it

16:11

say? Open AI is done. I'm just saying

16:13

that's a potential outcome. I think quite a

16:15

plausible potential outcome. I don't think it's likely,

16:17

but it's not 99% unlikely either. Yeah,

16:20

I mean that's certainly... I mean it's kind of a

16:23

very Neil Postman point of view. You have this basically

16:26

you... Or almost Larry Lessig,

16:28

Coder's Law. You just keep building

16:30

more and more sort of governance infrastructure

16:32

into the technology, and you're moving

16:34

it out of the hands of the population and

16:36

into the technology. And that seems to be certainly

16:38

the story of the last hundred years and very

16:41

likely the story of the next hundred years. Is

16:44

the status of linear algebra rising? That's

16:48

a great question. It probably has, yeah.

16:50

It's prominent in quantum, right? It's

16:53

prominent in AI. Digital

16:55

is built on, you know, matrix multiplication. It's

16:59

prominent for a lot of reasons. What

17:01

should we infer from that about the whole nature of the

17:03

world? So if differential equations

17:05

were rising in status to a similar degree,

17:07

we might infer one set of

17:10

things. But linear algebra, you almost feel

17:12

a bit more grounded, don't you? When

17:16

I took that class, I felt I understood it. I

17:19

never quite know what your status questions mean, Tyler. I

17:22

don't know what it means for something to rise in

17:24

status. Well, AI now seems more

17:26

important than it did five years ago, and

17:29

matrix multiplication is a big part of that.

17:31

If quantum computing happens, as you're predicting it

17:33

will, well, that I think would also

17:35

make matrix algebra rise in status.

17:37

Like, oh, this is a really important tool.

17:39

It's behind all our quantum money. Do

17:42

you mean it's going to have more money go

17:44

to it, more power go to it, more glamour

17:46

go to it? Are people going to regard this

17:49

as all of those? But

17:51

you would revise your ideas about the fundamental

17:54

nature of the universe, just like our current

17:56

understanding of quantum mechanics. It might be incorrect,

17:59

but at least in the short term. short run, it seems

18:01

like probability theory is somehow more

18:03

important than Einstein might have thought.

18:07

And as you know, he famously asserted God

18:09

is not playing dice with the universe, perhaps

18:11

incorrectly. I mean, the

18:14

people who remake this

18:17

understanding are very good at

18:19

ignoring status. But

18:21

others aren't. But others aren't. I think

18:23

I'm inclined to think. I mean, maybe.

18:25

I don't care. I

18:28

actually just don't care that much. I

18:30

mean, if you're searching for comparative advantage in doing creative work,

18:33

you want to know where status is, but mostly so you

18:35

can avoid it. Yeah, absolutely. Be short

18:37

status, as Peter Peele has to say. Yeah,

18:39

exactly. That's what we'll put. Yeah. Is

18:42

there any chance Roger Penrose is right and the human

18:44

brain is some kind of quantum computer? I

18:46

would love it if he was right. I

18:48

think the answer, unfortunately, is not really. It's

18:51

certainly possible that there's some very interesting structure in

18:54

there that is quantum mechanical in some really interesting

18:56

way. I mean, lots of structure in there is

18:58

quantum mechanical. The reason why atoms are stable has

19:00

to do with quantum mechanics, like all these sorts

19:03

of things. But like an interesting,

19:05

unsuspected way would be... That would be terrific and

19:07

I think is not completely out of the question,

19:10

but it probably doesn't affect anything about consciousness or

19:12

anything like that. I would be very surprised if that

19:14

were the case. How

19:16

are we going to make progress toward a theory of

19:18

quantum gravity, a general understanding of

19:21

everything? We seem to be stuck. Many

19:23

people hate string theory. Many people hate

19:25

Everett, many worlds. Those seem

19:27

to be two major contenders. Where

19:30

are we at and what's going to happen next? One

19:33

fun reason for working on quantum computing

19:35

is you're trying to build the largest

19:37

scale fully

19:39

quantum coherent systems that have ever been built. Whenever

19:42

you push on into a new regime like that,

19:44

there's some chance that things break down. If

19:46

something was to break down there, that would be fantastic. Because

19:49

we'd learn a lot. Because we'd learn a lot. The

19:51

problem in some ways in physics has been that the fundamental

19:53

theories have been just too successful for the last 50 years.

19:56

Yes, you're right again. It's very attractive for sort

19:58

of a few years. but over 50 or 60

20:02

years it's terrible. And I think

20:04

that's certainly part of the issue with

20:08

quantum gravity. Does it bother

20:10

you that so many people hate string

20:12

theory, think it's now low status, think

20:14

it's not aesthetic, think it's unintuitive? Does

20:17

that carry any weight with you or do you want

20:19

to be like short status again on this one? I

20:22

mean there's the question of sort of

20:24

inside and outside. Well, there's a question

20:26

of inside and outside the profession. There's also the question

20:28

of inside and outside the group of people who know

20:30

something and those two are not exactly the same group

20:32

but there's a lot of overlap. So

20:35

I mean outside it affects funding

20:37

a little bit. Well, we actually need to be quite

20:39

a bit. And so in that sense it matters. But

20:42

internally I think I'm

20:44

more interested in the question of just how

20:46

much diversity of opinion is there. People

20:48

pursuing lots of different ideas. One of the

20:50

things that I've noticed over many years is

20:52

I just find mathematicians when I talk to

20:55

them. It's such a healthy culture because each

20:57

mathematician is really, well, a lot of them

20:59

are very unique. They've got their own sort

21:01

of particular path and their set of beliefs.

21:03

Physics, theoretical physics often seems just a little

21:05

bit more monotone. They can sum

21:07

themselves up in a few words when they're

21:10

talking to their professional colleagues and that's not

21:12

so healthy. So I'm really

21:15

not so interested in the question you asked. I'm much more

21:17

interested in the question of how do you generate that kind

21:19

of diversity. And do you

21:22

feel that ultimately the final theory of a

21:24

universe or metaverse ought to be simple? Who's

21:28

declaring ought here? But

21:31

when someone presents a theory to you, do you ever say,

21:33

no, that's too complicated. It might be an intermediate theory

21:36

at some level, but it's not going to be the

21:38

final theory because I hear this from many people.

21:41

A lack of satisfaction. You

21:43

want surprise. It's the same when I've, you

21:46

know, the little tiny pieces of economics I've

21:48

learned when I hear about, I don't know,

21:50

Ricardian comparative advantage or something like this. Just

21:53

a nice little element of surprise. You're getting a

21:55

free lunch somehow. So I'm more interested in that

21:57

than I am maybe in the question of simplicity.

22:00

What makes for physicists who age well? I

22:05

spent quite a bit of time thinking about this as actually

22:07

in my late 20s and went to

22:09

look and see what seemed to

22:11

distinguish older physicists who had aged

22:13

well and and older physicists who had maybe

22:16

gotten a bit too complacent. So I can

22:18

tell having younger mentors was really the key.

22:20

And why is that important? I

22:23

don't know. I mean, I have theories. This was

22:25

an empirical observation. Yeah, but what's your best theory?

22:27

What I think is probably the case, it's

22:29

almost a network effect. Basically, if

22:32

there is some slight sort of downhill slide

22:35

and most of your friends, you

22:37

know, are not quite at the edge anymore,

22:39

that's going to infect you. But

22:41

if you still have mentors who are 25, 28,

22:44

extremely active, and they're active in

22:47

the latest ways, you get

22:49

to partake of kind of the positive network effects.

22:51

And so I think that's why it's very important

22:53

not just to have not to have people who

22:55

work for you, lots of 70 year

22:57

old physicists have 23 year old students, but

22:59

actually to have 23 year olds, 28

23:02

year olds who you really learn from and

23:04

you regard as your mentors. And

23:06

holding constant your degree of power and

23:08

influence, what's the best way to attract

23:10

younger mentors? Find

23:12

people whose work you admire and befriend them. And

23:15

you think that works pretty well. Yeah. And just

23:17

being nice. I'm

23:20

not sure being nice is the right... You

23:23

have a lot of younger mentors. You're

23:25

known famously for being very

23:28

nice, right? This is partly

23:30

a question about your own self-awareness, but

23:32

has you being very nice helped you get more

23:34

younger mentors, or are they attracted to

23:36

other aspects of you? I am extremely disagreeable,

23:38

but in a polite way, I hope, and

23:41

a kind way, hopefully. So you are very nice then.

23:44

Well, people often find people who are

23:46

disagreeable actually quite difficult. But if

23:49

you look at all of the younger mentors I've had

23:51

in the last, say, seven or eight years, they're all

23:53

people who enjoy disagreement. They

23:56

say the thing that they think is obvious and you say, here's

23:58

another way of looking at it. And they're like,

24:00

oh, they want to engage. Some people get insulted or

24:02

they get threatened or they get annoyed when you do

24:04

that. And those people are not going to be –

24:07

they're not going to be good collaborators. They're not going

24:09

to be a match. As

24:11

the years pass, do you think your probability for

24:13

God existing is going up or down? Which

24:16

type of God are you referring to here?

24:18

Are you referring to like an Abrahamic God

24:20

or what? Not a particular

24:22

religion, but some explanation

24:24

that would seem to stand prior to

24:26

and outside of what we call physics

24:29

and would be mystical in some way?

24:33

It's been – that hasn't changed

24:35

since I was seven years old. But

24:37

that's weird that it hasn't changed, right? You've

24:39

learned a lot. Why shouldn't it change in

24:41

whichever direction? I had explained to

24:43

me three basic theories of cosmology when I was

24:45

seven, one of which was the Big Bang and

24:47

then there were two others which was the steady

24:49

state theory and a third whose name I don't

24:51

even remember anymore. And

24:56

they leave some questions unanswered. Why

24:58

is there anything? But as far as I can

25:00

tell, we haven't made any progress on sort of

25:03

those things in the 40

25:06

odd years since. Yeah, it's frustrating

25:08

actually that that's the case. I mean, I think

25:10

you're correct to say, you've learned a

25:12

lot. Why haven't you changed? And

25:14

my response to that is, I've learned a

25:17

lot. Gosh, it's really annoying that it hasn't

25:19

impacted that question more. I

25:21

think my pee has gone up a modest amount

25:23

over time. So when I was saying

25:25

in my young 20s, I thought

25:28

physics was going to make more progress than it

25:30

has at fundamental theoretical levels. And

25:32

the fact that it hasn't, it nudges me a bit

25:34

to wonder, well, these other

25:36

types of explanations that I was not so

25:38

keen on, maybe they're a

25:41

bit more important than I had thought. That

25:44

hasn't happened with you? No.

25:46

I think that that's an interesting – it

25:49

hasn't really. I think I just don't think 40 years

25:52

is very long. If it had been 100,000 years, so it's – But

25:55

it's all I've got in a sense. I mean, I'm – I

25:58

know. My

26:01

opinion time span is going to be 40 plus

26:04

something. I think my appreciation for God has gone

26:06

way up. I

26:08

appreciate the construction of the religions far more

26:10

than I did, what notions of

26:12

God do for people, vastly more appreciative.

26:15

But my probability, I don't think, has

26:17

really changed. And what about evolutionary frameworks

26:20

where there's some Darwinian process, some kinds

26:22

of universes within a broader metaverse,

26:24

they reproduce at greater frequencies, that

26:27

shapes the properties of what we live in.

26:29

Isn't that a kind of substitute for a

26:32

good explanation and that rises in probability just

26:34

a bit? No. I

26:36

mean, why not? You

26:39

know, you're relabeling what you mean by universe. If

26:42

you just sort of use a term that

26:44

means everything that is, then that hasn't changed.

26:46

Our model of what it might be has

26:48

potentially changed quite a bit over the last

26:50

few decades. But maybe there's a

26:52

simple theory for the metaverse, but we can never,

26:54

ever see it. It's like mastic religion. And

26:57

then our own universe, there's not a simple theory, but

26:59

we do know the parameter values we got are

27:02

enough to drag it across the finish line. And

27:04

that takes some of the burden off physics in

27:06

a way. Just like,

27:08

well, the platypus, it seems an unlikely creature, but

27:10

it has in fact survived. Okay. Some

27:14

of the things that came arbitrary. And being a

27:16

good Australian, you appreciate the platypus, right? Yeah, indeed.

27:18

The platypus is quite a bit, it's good for

27:21

fooling, visiting Americans about whether or not this animal

27:23

can exist or not. Yes. I

27:25

still don't find that compelling. I think because there's

27:27

always, we've always known that there seem likely to

27:29

be fairly contingent facts about the universe. I mean,

27:32

it shifts the level at which they are. It's

27:34

more interesting if the value of the

27:36

fine structure constant is actually a contingent fact. That

27:39

is interesting. Or if some of

27:41

the other couple of constants are changing over

27:43

time or sort of models like this. But

27:45

it's not particularly, it's still not getting

27:47

at the essential question from my point of view, which is

27:50

why is there something rather than nothing? What

27:53

I've long thought is an impossible question. So

27:56

we might have theories of parameter values or

27:58

be able to predict how things are going. interact or what happened

28:01

a long time ago. But

28:03

the Heideggerian question, I don't think

28:05

it's a meaningful question at all. Because

28:09

the word why is already embedded

28:11

in some context, which it sends

28:13

a self-undercutting query. The

28:16

open science, why do some

28:18

fields have preprint platforms and others not?

28:20

Is there an actual regularity or is

28:22

that random and path dependent? I

28:25

think a lot of that probably comes down

28:27

to individuals. One of my favourite things, years

28:29

ago, before they started to spread in biology,

28:31

I would often ask physicists

28:34

and biologists this question. Why

28:36

is there preprints in physics but not in

28:38

biology? The biologists

28:41

would say, well, biology is

28:43

so much more competitive than physics

28:45

that we can't possibly bear to share our

28:48

results too early. The physicists would

28:50

say, physics is so much more competitive than biology

28:52

that we have to share them as rapidly as

28:54

possible to get the word out. But with COVID,

28:56

didn't biology go the route? Clearly some parts of biology

28:58

go the route of physics. And it just seems like

29:00

it's just a cultural problem. It turns out it's a

29:03

little bit more like fashion or something like that. It

29:05

does need to be solved. Like if you look at

29:07

what was done in the early days of the physics

29:09

preprint server, some very clever things,

29:11

actually things which are reflected in some of

29:13

my favourite economists, some of their ideas were

29:15

done by Paul Ginsberg when he was starting

29:17

up the preprint server. He went very narrow.

29:19

He didn't try and solve the problem all

29:21

across all the fields. And he went and

29:23

kind of twisted the arms at some level

29:26

of some very high status, high

29:28

profile physicists to say, I would

29:31

like you to use this service, send me your

29:33

best paper. So on the first day, Andy Strominger,

29:35

who I think is at Harvard, was

29:38

on the preprint server and Ed Witten showed up

29:40

very quickly. So these are very prominent people. And

29:43

you get this sort of just a tiny community, but then

29:45

you can sort of, you can start to attach

29:48

other communities. But that

29:50

was just, that's a very contingent fact about history.

29:53

It could have happened in some sub-discipline

29:55

of biology as well. Why do

29:58

so many crummy journals survive? can be

30:00

quite expensive, you might also have to pay

30:02

to publish in them. They seem

30:04

terrible that if a good piece were in them, the

30:07

journal would not certify the piece. If

30:09

anything, the piece would help certify the journal. Why

30:11

can't we get out of that? Yeah, I mean there's

30:14

a complicated set of things going on. One

30:16

is that libraries pay not individuals

30:18

usually for subscriptions. They're not actually that

30:20

really the person getting the utility is

30:23

not the same as the person

30:25

making the buying decision. That's always bad. There's

30:28

also the fact that since the 1990s

30:31

and the rise of the Internet, we

30:33

get economies of scale. You don't subscribe.

30:35

Libraries don't subscribe to individual journals for

30:38

the most part. They subscribe to all

30:40

these giant bundles. It was actually a

30:42

terrific idea at some level.

30:44

It's a way of passing on economies of

30:46

scale in publication to the customers, but it

30:48

does go some way to explaining why these

30:50

crummy journals persist. But you think

30:53

in part libraries are inefficient at capturing rents

30:55

for themselves. They get this budget,

30:57

they spend it on bad journals. It

30:59

might be better for the world if they just

31:01

took the money home and bought ice cream. Or did

31:03

whatever. Yeah. There's many other things that

31:05

could be done with that money. It's

31:07

difficult for them to reason about having talked to many

31:10

librarians. They will do things like they will use impact

31:12

factor. I mean that's the

31:14

differentiator that they tend to use. So

31:16

they'll try and get all impact factor,

31:19

whatever it is, and above journals. That's

31:21

the kind of the way they seem to think.

31:23

They're just using very imperfect proxy. They understand as

31:25

well as anybody that their proxy is imperfect, but

31:27

they don't have anything better to do as far

31:30

as I can tell. So it's

31:32

a very unfortunate situation. And

31:34

right now, how high are the

31:36

marginal returns to greater openness? So

31:39

put aside terrorists, manufacturing, new pathogens.

31:42

Put aside people figuring

31:44

out how to make their own nuclear weapons,

31:46

AI problems. So putting aside the very negative,

31:49

just if the good stuff were more open, how

31:52

much more rapidly would science progress? Per

31:55

se, I mean that's a very weak word.

31:57

You need to be much more specific. could

32:00

say the culture around Jupiter Notebooks in machine

32:02

learning, I think having those very openly available

32:04

and widely available really has driven a lot

32:07

of progress. You can just write

32:09

your Jupiter Notebook with your experiment, you make it

32:11

available to other people and that can really drive

32:14

a lot of progress. It's not the same as

32:16

making your journal article openly available. It's a much

32:18

more active kind of a material. Do

32:20

I think that that is an important

32:23

component in really significantly speeding up science?

32:25

Yes. But it's

32:27

not going to be too x. I think that there's much

32:30

larger than 2x possible and

32:32

this is a piece of that. Yes,

32:35

but it's not 2x on its own. No,

32:38

it's actually too undefined a term. Openness

32:40

is always with respect to what platform, with respect

32:42

to what set of institutions, with respect to what

32:44

set of norms. With the current sets

32:47

of norms and institutions that we have, it buys you

32:49

a little bit. I don't think it buys you that

32:51

much. But the norms and institutions, they're going to change

32:53

in response. The way in which people work will change

32:56

in response. The Jupiter

32:58

notebook example I gave is I think a good

33:00

example of that. Why are science

33:02

textbooks so expensive? Is it

33:04

marginal cost? Is it third party payment

33:07

problems? Is it something else? I

33:09

don't know. Is it instructor lock-in because the notes are

33:11

geared to the text they've worked with for 15 years?

33:15

Yeah, very

33:17

few professors make that much money

33:19

from the textbooks that they write. But they're often

33:21

very protective. I see people complaining

33:24

on Twitter that they're not going to get the

33:26

$400 check next year

33:28

for their textbook under a new open access

33:30

policy. And they're really up in arms about

33:32

this $400. That's interesting.

33:35

It's hard for me to empathize with

33:37

psychologically. Don't

33:40

understand. I

33:42

wrote this neural nets textbook which I put

33:44

online for free. And that

33:47

massively, that's really made a

33:49

really large difference to the impact which

33:51

it's had. In fact, even if

33:53

I just think purely financially, I wasn't doing it and

33:56

thinking, oh, financially this will be better off. But

33:58

The greater impact has actually benefited. the Me:

34:00

much more financially than any amount of royalties

34:02

ever. would you mean like giving talks are

34:04

being invited Skyn? I just in general people

34:07

know. B. O P Bar what you've done

34:09

what you're interested in and they're much more likely

34:11

to provide all sorts of different opportunities including jobs.

34:13

I think from the point of you have the

34:15

authors it really actually doesn't make that much sense

34:18

From Bolivia, the publishers, the hood it might might

34:20

might make more sense like that can make of.

34:22

I mean is that the devil tix? What market

34:24

is not huge but it's It is multi billions.

34:27

Uber well known article with Patrick

34:29

Collison on progress and science slowing

34:31

down and it's published at a

34:33

point say, right before M R

34:35

and A vaccines right before Gpc

34:37

for other developments. Or. How

34:40

well can we know? The progress of science at

34:42

any point in time isn't there often and everything

34:44

all at once. Effect. And

34:46

in fact those years we were building up

34:49

and investing in things that very suddenly than

34:51

flourished. Yeah

34:53

it's amazing to think about your different point of time

34:55

it's and which you could brighten trying right? the same

34:57

article sorry that the it for the principia you would

34:59

have been if the to to do the same thing.

35:02

That there's some question about. Like.

35:05

What? Certain. Types of institution.

35:07

My puzzle I see I I, I think

35:09

really, but the hired a bit in my

35:11

responses. gonna be something what? like I just

35:13

a guy is is not yet one hundred

35:16

percent clear, but I think it's very likely

35:18

to drive a lot of scientific progress over

35:20

the next few years and it's just a

35:22

cases and we're moving all about. So much

35:25

recognition and eventually also the actuators. That's the

35:27

way we operate in the world out into

35:29

these devices. Whale of a sudden it becomes

35:31

much more mutable and and hopefully improvable to

35:33

think the private sector wages as scientists. Are

35:36

a good proxy for progress and science. Science

35:40

it is. Iris is declining in value. You'd

35:42

think scientists would be paid less and less.

35:44

But. Over the last forty years. Mostly.

35:47

Those wages haven't fallen. I editing to get

35:49

Isaac Newton wasn't the the the richest person

35:51

to ever live but he probably did more

35:53

for human understanding than than and but there's

35:55

more of a market now thought the Isaac

35:57

Newton of today. Would. probably be pretty

35:59

wealthy Einstein, maybe, had

36:01

he done more media, right?

36:05

But he wouldn't have been wealthy for what

36:07

he did well. But still,

36:09

his wage would have reflected his

36:11

fame. He could have endorsed ski boots and

36:13

other things. Well, famously, he asked for $3,000

36:16

a year when he moved to the IAS,

36:18

and they gave him I

36:21

think he wasn't very good at negotiating. But just

36:23

say that the wages for private sector pharma

36:25

scientists, they seem to go up for quite

36:27

a while. And the drug

36:29

pipeline seemed slow. Should we have inferred from

36:31

that while we're building up to some big

36:33

things, some blockbusters, or not? Yeah.

36:37

This is a question for you, Tyler. It's not a

36:39

question for me. Well, that's what I'm asking, right. Good

36:41

reason to do so. I think I'm inclined to think.

36:44

And there's always this interesting balance. Actually,

36:46

AI is a really interesting example at

36:48

this point in time. There's this theory,

36:50

which has become widely believed by almost

36:52

everybody, that scaling is very important. Scaling

36:55

is a very capital-friendly story. So it

36:57

actually moves some of the power, the

36:59

negotiating power, from individual researchers, I think,

37:02

to centers of capital. But

37:04

it is just a story. I think it's quite interesting

37:06

that it, in some sense, gives

37:08

the individual researchers less negotiating

37:10

power, whether or not this

37:13

is going to eventually result in a

37:15

diminished ability to build personal brands and

37:17

then capture value from that. I don't

37:20

know. I'm really interested, actually, to see what

37:22

will happen over the next few years. It

37:24

used to be that the big companies published

37:26

a lot of papers very openly, and that

37:28

is gradually going away. And as

37:30

that goes away, it damages the individual researchers

37:32

because they're not able to build their brands

37:34

publicly in that way. They're not as easily

37:36

able to say, I am the person who

37:38

did whatever. But this is a small city,

37:40

doesn't everyone know? I had dinner

37:43

with a bunch of AI researchers last night.

37:45

They all seem to know each other's relative

37:47

importance. Yeah. I mean, and you

37:49

look at their salaries. So there's rumors. They're

37:51

doing fine. And these researchers can be offered

37:53

five to ten million dollars a year. Those

37:55

must be some of the highest science salaries

37:57

ever. And you're saying AI is a big

37:59

thing. such a big thing, it seems

38:01

to be coming down on the side of the

38:03

wages predicting something. I

38:06

think so much money is going

38:08

in and it's going in on the basis of brand

38:11

to some extent. We've hired such and such a

38:13

person who did such and such a thing and

38:15

if that can make your

38:17

company valuation go up by a few hundred million

38:19

dollars then offering them another extra million dollars a

38:22

year makes sense. But I don't have a grand

38:24

... This is all local

38:27

storytelling. It's not grand theory

38:29

of what's actually going on.

38:32

I haven't thought it through in enough detail

38:34

to have any confidence there. Now you're working

38:36

on what I think you call the vulnerable

38:38

world hypothesis, yes? That's what ...

38:40

Nick Bostrom, yeah, that's his term. What do you think

38:42

is the cost at which a

38:45

nuclear weapon could destroy a city? So

38:47

if that costs only $50,000, it seems

38:50

to me the world's in big, big trouble pretty

38:52

quickly. What's that

38:54

cost level where you get very, very nervous? So

38:57

if it's $10 billion, maybe things are

38:59

fairly safe. If it's $50,000, we're

39:02

done for. What's the

39:04

threshold? It's a cost and expertise,

39:06

but let's say the expertise is comparable. So somebody

39:09

who has $50,000 is probably able to get the

39:11

expertise as well. Right. Yeah,

39:13

that's not great. That's my fundamental

39:15

worry. With or without AI, that

39:17

just that cost becomes low. Honestly, I mean,

39:19

there's some question about what exactly you mean

39:22

by nuclear weapon. Is it portable? Is it

39:24

... It would render a mid-sized city uninhabitable.

39:27

Okay. For a few decades, at the

39:29

very least. It's sort of a multi-megaton, but not

39:31

... It would make the headlines. It would make the headlines.

39:34

Very small nuclear bomb will make the headlines if

39:36

detonated. Yeah, I mean, if we're

39:38

getting down to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The

39:40

thing is ... The issue is ... Nuclear

39:43

weapons are terrible, but they're not

39:46

civilization threatening directly. Sure, but enough

39:48

of these go off. Life as

39:50

we know it is over. They can be destabilizing.

39:52

They can certainly be destabilizing. That's ... It would

39:54

be like the fall of the Roman Empire, maybe

39:56

worse. Yeah, that's what it starts to

39:58

seem like. But

40:00

in what year do you think that the cost will

40:02

be low enough that that happens? I

40:05

mean at this point I don't have a good

40:07

sense. I suppose I'm actually more concerned about other

40:10

threats. But if this is a- Fire

40:12

safety is the obvious thing. I wouldn't call it

40:14

a certain threat, but if you simply think technology

40:16

will advance. Here's the thing, like

40:18

the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty means that we actually

40:20

have a lot of controls of the ability

40:23

to produce fissile material. But that's like League

40:25

of Nations, right? Ultimately? Yeah.

40:28

It's really coming out of that same sort of-

40:30

Yeah. We have this cartel of

40:33

whatever it is, 10 countries or something. It'll

40:35

fail when the cost is low. It will

40:37

eventually fail, but that's many decades away. But

40:39

you have reason to think we're going to last a thousand years

40:42

in a civilized state. Not every

40:45

person dead, but- I think getting

40:47

off planet Earth and establishing a

40:49

civilization elsewhere is very, very important.

40:53

Very hard for economic reasons. Yes. But

40:56

utterly crucial. Robots in

40:58

a sense make it harder because you could send

41:00

robots to Mars to do whatever might be economically

41:02

useful there. It means you never work hard on

41:04

having humans do it. Yeah,

41:07

that's true. I mean, we're pretty curious.

41:09

But the robot will take perfect footage.

41:13

Whatever is there, the robot will send back

41:15

to us. You'll have your- whatever is the

41:17

current version of Apple Vision Pro on. Okay.

41:19

Right? It will seem very realistic.

41:22

You're an economist. I'm a romantic, I think. It might

41:24

be the difference. But we'd have to settle them at

41:27

scale. 20 people on Mars limping

41:29

along. Oh, we're talking about like a million

41:31

people, not 20 people. You want- But

41:34

if we can do a million, we can do a billion, I would think. Sure, sure, sure.

41:37

I'm saying you want to get- it's still not going to be

41:39

self- What's the right term? It's not

41:41

going to be an autarky or whatever the right term

41:43

is. It's not going to be completely self-

41:45

Sustaining, yeah. Sustaining, but at a million people,

41:47

it's doing a lot of the-

41:49

it has a lot of the civilizational infrastructure. And so

41:51

I think that's the right sort of scale. Casey Hanmer

41:53

has a nice book. I think it's, you know, How

41:55

to Build a City of a Million People on Mars

41:58

or something like that. It's

42:00

way too optimistic in many of its assumptions,

42:02

but he's got the right scale. Economics

42:05

aside, what's the main scientific constraint that has to

42:07

be overcome? Is it gravity? Is it effective radiation

42:09

on the human body? Is it water? I mean,

42:11

to some extent, we're not going to know until

42:14

we go. There was this great experiment done a

42:16

few years ago where there was a pair of

42:18

twins. One went up

42:20

into space for a year. The other one stayed

42:22

on Earth. So that was the first time we

42:24

actually got to do a controlled, somewhat

42:26

controlled study where we see what the impact of being

42:28

in space for a long period of time does to

42:31

a human body. I mean, they

42:33

just discovered so many things. This is still

42:35

below the Van Allen belts as well. So

42:37

we don't know the answer to those questions. There's

42:41

a whole bunch of problems. The regolith on

42:43

Mars is terrible for human beings. I'm sure

42:45

that the low gravity is going to be

42:48

bad for them. What else

42:50

is this? There's shortages of nitrogen, fortunately, which

42:52

we don't really have on the moon. So

42:54

you're making me think civilization as

42:56

we know it won't last a thousand years. No,

42:59

I also have a lot of faith

43:02

in long run economic growth. Basically

43:04

at the moment for us to go to Mars is very,

43:07

very, very expensive given the return or

43:09

to establish a permanent human presence in

43:11

space. If we continue to have economic

43:14

growth, the relative cost is just going to keep going

43:16

down. At some point, it's actually not

43:18

going to be that difficult. Does

43:20

a vulnerable world mean near universal

43:22

surveillance? Unfortunately,

43:24

I think probably yes. Doesn't

43:28

that then become the great point of vulnerability? Oh,

43:31

absolutely. Yeah. It's

43:33

how you could ban universal surveillance from here

43:35

on out forever. Would you press that button?

43:37

No, I mean, I think, you know, the

43:39

history of justice to some extent, the

43:42

term surveillance, it's funny, you know, it's, it

43:44

has negative connotations. People, you know, they

43:47

think of Bentham and the Panopticon and

43:50

the archipelago and the Stasi

43:53

and all these things. But in fact,

43:55

our ability to supply justice is dependent

43:57

upon having a good understanding

44:00

of what has occurred in the present and in the

44:02

past. Maybe it

44:04

needs opaqueness as well. It's this optimal mix

44:06

of surveillance and opaqueness that

44:09

you actually have some latitude to break

44:11

certain laws, to misbehave, that keeps the

44:13

system stable, limits the abuses

44:15

of power, limits

44:17

how much power the powerful have over us.

44:23

There has to be some sort of

44:25

Madisonian point of view

44:27

where you're bringing the powerful

44:29

institutions into conflict with each other.

44:31

We do that very imperfectly at

44:34

the moment. Ideas like search warrants

44:36

and things like this. There's supposed to be checks and

44:38

balances. It seems like the

44:41

organizations which do the surveillance are too

44:43

powerful. They don't have a

44:46

strong enough checks on them. I

44:48

don't know whether, just as a practical

44:50

matter, the United States is capable of doing this

44:52

well. I'd be much more comfortable if it was

44:54

certain other countries. In a

44:57

strong AI future, where do the

44:59

economies of scale lie? Say

45:03

within your lifetime, not 500 years from now.

45:06

I'm not even going to point to what you're pointing to. Well,

45:10

we're all trying to figure out how AI will shape

45:13

the future, right? One model

45:15

is everything is supplied competitively, maybe

45:17

a bit like fast food today. I

45:19

suspect that's not true, but it could be true. There's

45:22

the oligopoly model. There's the one company races

45:24

ahead of the others, and then its own

45:26

AI does R&D at an accelerated pace, and

45:29

they stay ahead forever. Or

45:31

there's one country, one company, one

45:33

something, controls all the chips. Where

45:36

do you see the monopoly power evolving? Because it's

45:38

essential, I think, to predictions of the model. When

45:42

I talk to people who know much more than I do,

45:44

they all point at ASML as having been surprisingly

45:47

hard to duplicate. It's

45:49

the ability to sometimes do the lithography, but

45:51

do the lithography at scale, which seems to

45:53

be very, very hard. So we should be

45:55

long Netherlands? Probably. Yeah,

45:57

yeah. That would be an amazing conclusion. and

46:00

return to the Dutch Renaissance. So

46:03

it's like agriculture and lithography. And

46:07

drawing on 17- Human service things maybe.

46:09

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. This

46:12

is a return of the myth. Yeah, yeah. What

46:14

do you think of the Netherlands as a country? Oh,

46:17

I love it. I've never spent a- well,

46:19

actually, I spent a month there once. Who am

46:21

I kidding? That's a lot of time. That's

46:23

a fair amount of time in Leiden, actually. It's

46:26

a lovely place. It has many problems, of

46:28

course. I mean, their altitude is

46:30

not great. In some ways, actually, in some

46:32

ways, it's good. Yeah, an interesting sort of

46:34

a test case. They show

46:36

what a strong, determined civilization can do

46:38

in response to nature. Yeah, I like

46:40

the flatness of it. I like the

46:43

water being everywhere. Not everywhere, but most

46:45

parts, at least, of Western Netherlands. I

46:48

find that very attractive. This

46:50

is- stereotype I sometimes encounter people sort of

46:52

view it as being a little orderly.

46:55

I've heard people say it's dull. I

46:58

think some of the most interesting experiences of my

47:00

life were there. I

47:03

went to a- it was like a jamboree

47:05

in the field a

47:08

week- what was it? Five days long called Hacking

47:10

at Random in 2011, where

47:12

some people from Anonymous spoke, a whole bunch

47:14

of cryptographers spoke. It was really sort of

47:16

hacker culture. It was just intellectually

47:19

wild in the most interesting way.

47:21

It grew out of Dutch hacker

47:23

culture. I think there's a lot of- that

47:27

spirit of the Dutch Renaissance is

47:29

still visible. How

47:31

would you describe the quality of those conversations?

47:33

What were they like? Different than

47:35

what's in San Francisco? Oh, yeah. How are

47:37

they different? They're

47:41

not captured by capital to the same extent. The

47:43

conversations in San Francisco, particularly with younger people,

47:46

tend to be extremely idealistic and

47:48

often very pro-social. But

47:51

then later, there's this sort of negotiation that goes on where

47:53

they need access to capital. They need capital to make their

47:55

dreams come true. A certain amount

47:57

of compromise is made, although they also offer

47:59

it. and keep a lot of their original

48:01

sort of pro-social and idealistic character. In

48:04

the Netherlands, in those particular events, there

48:07

have been less of that. They also have less access to capital.

48:10

Yeah. If someone's going

48:12

to travel to the Netherlands, they have a tech background.

48:15

Like what should they do or what advice do

48:17

you have for them? How should they try to

48:19

learn more from the Netherlands? It's been years since

48:21

I've been there. So I'm not the right person.

48:23

But since you have good memory through spaced repetition.

48:25

Yeah, maybe. I mean, yeah,

48:28

I love going to the museums

48:30

in Amsterdam, just partially. Rembrandt is

48:33

maybe my favorite painter. That's a...

48:36

Yeah. It's hard actually to think of

48:38

anything else but I think of the Netherlands. Yeah. Other

48:41

than Rembrandt's late self-portraits, which I think are some

48:44

of the most extraordinary things I've ever done. Let's

48:46

say we all had better memories. How

48:49

big is the social gain there? Is there

48:52

any social gain at all? So you've been

48:54

an advocate of spaced repetition for improving your

48:56

memory. It works for medical students. It probably

48:58

works for languages. But are there

49:00

social gains, especially with AI coming?

49:03

I'm not actually... I wouldn't say I was an advocate. But

49:05

you do it. I do it. And

49:07

you teach other people how to do it. I get

49:09

benefits from it and some other people get benefits from

49:11

it. And I'm very enthusiastic if they do. And

49:14

if they don't, lots of people try it and are like,

49:16

this isn't working for me. And I'm like, well, stop doing

49:18

it. Same as if you listen to Bach and don't like

49:20

it, stop listening to Bach. To what

49:22

extent do I think... Yeah, there are these

49:24

interesting... There's a long sequence of

49:27

papers sort of trying to elucidate the

49:29

connection between deep sort of

49:31

practical expertise and the role of

49:33

memory, I suppose most famously. People

49:36

like Herb Simon and Andrew

49:38

Zarek and people like this have tried

49:41

to understand what relationship, if any. It's

49:43

a little bit murky. They all make

49:45

very strong claims about an

49:47

expert is somebody who's acquired sort of 50,000

49:49

chunks of information and things like this. They're

49:52

nice stories. They certainly seem to be born out, but

49:54

I don't know what the causal thing is. If I

49:56

talk to you about economics, you can tell me why

49:58

she's Not.... The getting number things

50:01

about economics but about a lot of different

50:03

things. but I don't know. Are you an

50:05

expert because you know those things are as

50:07

a downstream a something at a young. Is

50:09

it really downstream of something else? I'm sure

50:11

it's part of it. If you had a

50:13

magic memory, it might might help you. A

50:15

little bit but I suspect exceeds

50:17

downstream a something Else you determination

50:19

curiosity. Something like that to some

50:22

evidence that students learn better when

50:24

they take notes of what's being

50:26

said. Do. Field or something

50:28

for some people with memory bit similar

50:30

but until they have memorized it. It's.

50:32

Less real for them. I don't just mean that they

50:34

remember it more. But. The initial impact

50:37

somehow. Is created are defined

50:39

by the later act of memorization. Like.

50:41

People who take trips and until they photographed something

50:43

that I'm feel they seen it. Net.

50:46

Effect they probably didn't stamp named very likely. didn't

50:48

say it brass Yes. And he's part of a

50:50

reason why I take photos. I will look more

50:52

closely. That seems to be. Others I

50:54

will take notes, it's about. It is part of

50:56

the reason why I I despise repetitions. I it

50:58

provides me with another way of paying attention to

51:00

the world. I. Think the very

51:02

valuable rights like any any general purpose

51:04

strategy has which will cause you to

51:06

pay attention to the world. Is

51:09

incredibly valuable. When. So I

51:11

collect things like that I will be a white.

51:13

Why did I say yes to coming on the

51:15

podcast? A huge part of it is because I

51:17

know it's gonna make me pay attention in different

51:20

ways to I know you're going to ask me

51:22

questions that nobody else is gonna ask me. And

51:25

so for me, like the reason I despise repetition

51:27

and the reason I I will will come on

51:29

up a podcast with somebody like you who are

51:31

scary. Interesting questions? stick. It's kind of the same.

51:34

But in some other ways you're a fan

51:36

of non legibility has am I had other

51:38

margins and there's some tension. Because.

51:41

When you take the photo, when you remember

51:43

something, when you write it down. There's.

51:45

Less legibility and have. That

51:47

that there's no tension and all that you're

51:49

constantly expanding the legible. And and when you

51:52

do that, this is sort of penumbra of

51:54

eligibility that surround that moves. but it gives

51:56

you access to those other spices in it.

51:59

I got it. You travel in in

52:01

general, you make more of of the world's

52:03

culture. Your makes people much more legible to

52:05

yourself, but that and that expands what you're

52:07

able to to see as well. At the

52:09

at the edge of that. That's part of

52:11

the reason for doing it, but kind of.

52:13

the recent vote for wanting to make things

52:15

legible. What's. Underrated about travel. Other

52:17

than that, my god. almost different things. You

52:19

deny it's a saying this, but it's better

52:22

that somebody once said to me that travel

52:24

is the only education and it's really stayed

52:26

with me as expressing some deep trace, setting

52:29

mostly to the devoted, some credibly deep. absolutely.

52:31

What about his eight Billion People is the

52:33

only way to see that? Depth and breadth?

52:35

Yes, and it's just unbelievable. I mean, you'd

52:38

pick almost a random person. Anywhere you could

52:40

spend a great you with them is learning

52:42

things and that is can't and puts a

52:45

d that eight billion times. Yes,

52:47

it's very, very underrated. It's been very underrated

52:49

in my life. I haven't traveled nearly as

52:51

much as I said. Why? Is

52:54

that was at the Midway Aircraft

52:56

Carrier. Why is that so interesting?

52:58

There are many reasons. that and

53:00

San Diego right? it is. Yeah,

53:02

so for about ten years it

53:04

was probably the most dangerous object

53:06

in the world. A card. Nuclear

53:08

Weapons. I believe having five thousand

53:10

people on a specific you have

53:12

opened yet. people have been making

53:14

objects like that for centuries. many

53:16

centuries. The keep getting better at

53:18

it. So much Sir Bill knowledge

53:20

built into that environment is expresses

53:22

so much. Very. Deep expertise and then

53:24

you have for for a half thousand

53:27

people or completely dedicated to a single

53:29

purpose, they will care an enormous amount

53:31

about this purpose. They don't suffer like

53:33

a large organizations have all kinds of

53:35

blows and all kinds of problems. So

53:37

many of those problems are gone away.

53:39

Their that passionate because yeah we are

53:41

in a boat. It's not so easy

53:43

to empire builds like this. Real reasons

53:45

to trim Fab: You have amazing sort

53:47

of unity of purpose. What the captain

53:49

or what the admiral there has both

53:51

on on the boat say is that.

53:53

That goes, yeah, you're not arguing about

53:55

what the right corporate strategy is to

53:57

have incredible power. To you have incredible.

54:00

Relief In this purpose, it actually is

54:02

a high purpose in their case. you're

54:04

talking to some of the sailors, yet

54:06

they felt very strongly that as I'm

54:08

protecting our civilization that they cared about

54:10

a great deal the At Eight they

54:12

speak with so much pride about it.

54:14

So to my sort of the perfect

54:16

floating civilization in some regards is just

54:18

immensely interesting. If you something you

54:20

on throat and I quote. The. Great talent.

54:23

identifiers I know or know of

54:25

all seem very own idiosyncratic. the

54:27

rather like Missile and chefs. This.

54:30

Is getting a fact? the tension between the opaque

54:32

and the legible? What? Why do you think that's

54:34

true? that their idiosyncratic. Precise

54:38

because the boundaries of knowledge at any given

54:40

time tend to be idiosyncratic almost by definition,

54:42

but they haven't been commodities yet. There is

54:44

a best person at making superconducting circuits in

54:46

the world. There is a best person. You're

54:48

young, you're at a good Thomas showing. I

54:50

think what you're pissed a similar yes, yeah,

54:52

you and you read shelling. He realized that

54:54

that some of the things he did he

54:56

did fairly well, and he must have been

54:58

remarkable to talk to him, but he's a

55:00

little bit illegible. That's right. even though it's

55:02

a very very he was when you would

55:04

speak to him as well. I'll bet he

55:06

was sent. That's devout part of the value,

55:08

right? You're You're like oh yeah, this business

55:10

actually out on the edge of civilization and

55:12

and I think that that that people who

55:14

are good at identifying people who are able

55:16

to expand boundaries like that's like that they

55:19

they need to have some sense of of

55:21

of that edge. And. Here's a

55:23

question you wanted me to ask. You quote:

55:25

You initially were skeptical of Emerge and Ventures,

55:27

but you've changed your mind and become enthusiastic

55:29

about it. What caused the switch, and what

55:31

would you change about Emerge and Ventures? with

55:35

biggest single thing is just empirical i've made

55:37

a bunch of he be grantees of him

55:39

as encouraged a bunch of people to apply

55:42

some seem use is given grants to integrate

55:44

also we haven't funded in the way i

55:46

might have expected or something or some to

55:48

somebody i have actually forgotten who it is

55:50

and yet they clearly had some sort of

55:52

socialists lose quite anti libertarian ideas as we've

55:54

given them eg a grant and i thought

55:56

that might have been a mistake of course

55:58

typically toilets like these He's trying to figure

56:01

out, do they actually believe in this idea?

56:03

Do they actually really care? Then

56:07

you don't mind. They're certainly

56:09

not coming to the MacCadis Center to

56:11

carry forward the libertarian flag. Somehow,

56:14

I think seeing so many people

56:16

who are

56:19

doing very worthwhile things, which

56:21

have very

56:23

little institutional chance of support being

56:27

amplified, that I

56:30

care about a great deal. It

56:32

seems like EV is one of the places

56:34

that is doing the best. What

56:37

do you think we can do to attract more

56:39

non-legible but excellent people? Find

56:43

other people like yourself. They're going to be

56:46

like you in this abstract way, but actually

56:48

very unlike you in other ways. I

56:51

think it's about people like Stuart Brand and

56:53

people like that in the past who've just

56:56

been wonderful at talent identification, but they're not identifying

56:58

the same kind of talent as you. To

57:01

some extent, they become human marketplaces as well.

57:04

They're actually at a crossroads.

57:06

They're connecting people to opportunity. That's

57:09

a very special type of a person. Maybe

57:13

five to ten people in my life who seem

57:15

like that. Well, really strongly. Here's

57:17

something else you wrote in my quote. I

57:19

internalized a lot of Ivan Ilyich,

57:21

John Holt, A.S. Neil, and Paulo

57:24

Freire as a kid. What

57:27

did you mean? You were talking, I think, in the context

57:29

of agency, but how did that shape you? At

57:31

the time, as a 12 or 13-year-old, it mostly

57:33

probably made me insufferable to my parents because I

57:35

hated school already. That's

57:38

a good thing, right? It gave me a real

57:40

way of expressing that, and they dealt

57:42

with me very patiently. I

57:44

think over the long term, the most

57:47

important of those was, for

57:50

many years I would have said Ilyich. I'd

57:53

maybe still say Ilyich. Basically,

57:55

his point is about the question, It's

57:57

about the question of what's the relationship? Between.

58:01

The human beings and institutions and

58:03

help paternalistic or those institutions towards

58:05

for humans to indy schooling society.

58:08

He really makes the point that

58:10

effect schools do not treat children

58:12

as as human and to some

58:14

extent adult denies from the most

58:16

basic points of agency and just

58:18

thinking about that kind of a

58:20

relationship What what relationship Trudeau institutions

58:22

have to individuals was very very

58:24

important to me As a. Teenager.

58:27

And and sort of I mean through my entire

58:29

life is at why you didn't join Open a

58:31

I and Twenty sixty. Six

58:34

assists and you regret that decision. As

58:36

such, as a hub the Isis, I

58:39

did consider going as they were getting

58:41

started. It would have been an an

58:43

interesting life choice and a lot of

58:45

doubts about the wisdom of pursuing artificial

58:47

general intelligence which wouldn't are not at

58:49

all resolved then though it just feels

58:51

yes time as part of the reasons.

58:54

Honestly, really the main reason at that

58:56

point though? it's. It's this point about comparative

58:58

advantage. It was like oh I oh it's happening.

59:00

It's become very fashionable year if you gonna wake

59:02

up in the morning and it turns out that

59:04

some institution is could mad team to pay you

59:06

to do whatever it is he doing. you should

59:08

actually think about whether or not you're in the

59:10

right one. a business, a synth think unfortunately for

59:13

creative work disk and eighty correlation between have able

59:15

you doing is and and and what you've been

59:17

paid often. but it's kind of it. It's the

59:19

the anti economist point of. yeah it's not, it's

59:21

not right, but I like this a simple model

59:23

in which that is right. Actually of the simple

59:25

him that very much kind of an economist. Model

59:27

so I have felt for more than a

59:29

decade that I was he had spit it

59:31

become sort of a rant to doesn't Live

59:34

in two Thousand and twelve When I decided

59:36

to write said writing my book of at

59:38

Noon as they become sort of this unstoppable

59:40

force in the world or very difficult to

59:42

say to stop it was clear was gonna

59:44

attract more and more capital, more and more

59:46

people and Minnesota also to some extent I

59:48

just filled with i i should go do

59:50

something else if that's the case. And.

59:52

The next twenty years, where do you think you're

59:54

comparative advantage will be? Such

59:56

as tell you after twenty years a separate

59:58

you face the year at something Up at

1:00:01

Now writes that the probably a step over

1:00:03

for you have a problem is of course

1:00:05

it is very helpful for motivational reasons to

1:00:07

have answers to that but your answers never

1:00:09

turn out to what did the correct answer

1:00:11

was probably my ability to write and your

1:00:13

twitter biographies says and I quote searching for

1:00:15

the new minister. What? Does that mean

1:00:17

with suspect you. Just.

1:00:20

Trying to find the deepest possible experiences

1:00:22

in the world, in people and things

1:00:24

and ideas and places. And.

1:00:27

Final Question: What do you think it is that you

1:00:29

will learn about next? City

1:00:32

love to ask us questions I've had

1:00:34

you asked for all. Learn more. it

1:00:36

much more deeply about religion. Than

1:00:39

I have been the past and that involves.

1:00:41

Travel. Going to church, reading books, talking

1:00:43

to people. All of this thing involves all

1:00:45

of those things here. I'm gonna see that

1:00:48

the highest of here in Istanbul and in

1:00:50

the near future that's gorgeous. I wanted to

1:00:52

see so almost all my adult life and

1:00:54

I have never been. Have you been to

1:00:56

Amritsar? know? That to

1:00:58

me is the most religious feelings site

1:01:00

I've ever visited, so I would recommend

1:01:03

going there. And. It's not a

1:01:05

hard trip in any way, and I have never

1:01:07

been to India. You Must go To Amritsar. And

1:01:09

and the old cliche, something like when it comes

1:01:11

to religion, every Indians a millionaire. It's not really

1:01:13

true. But. I still think

1:01:15

India is the best place to go to think about

1:01:18

religion. Death? That makes a lot

1:01:20

of sense there. I'd love to go to

1:01:22

Jerusalem as well. I think the somewhat similar

1:01:24

reasons. But. They are. You Think about tension.

1:01:27

The. Religious aspects of tension. But you sigma

1:01:29

I think more about tension, that about religion

1:01:32

per se. And

1:01:34

it's very useful for that. That. Michael Nielsen.

1:01:36

Thank you very much for thanks so much Tyler. Thanks

1:01:41

for listening to Conversations with Tyler!

1:01:43

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1:01:46

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1:01:58

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1:02:00

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1:02:02

next time. Please keep listening and

1:02:05

learning.