Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseDoes free will really exist?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield savings account through Apple Card, apply for Applecard in the wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digesters to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit us Dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
Here's a little secret. Most smartphone deals aren't that exciting. To be honest, they're barely worth mentioning. But then there's AT and T and their best deals. Those are quite exciting.
They're the kind of deals that are really worth talking about, like their deal in the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six. With this deal, you can trade in your eligible smartphone, any year, any condition for a new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six.
It's so good, in fact, it will have.
You shouting from the rooftops.
So get yourself down a street level and learn how to snag the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six on AT and T and maybe grab a ladder on the way home. AT and T connecting changes everything requires trade in a Galaxy s Note or Z series smartphone, Limited time offer two hundred and fifty six gigabytes for zero dollars. Additional fees, terms and restrictions apply. See att dot com, slash Samsung, or visit an AT and T store for details.
Hey or hey, do you think science is good at predicting the future.
It doesn't do very well with predicting the weather? Does it well?
Here in California? Just says it's sunny every day?
Yeah, I guess that some states are easier to predict the weather.
All right, but let me try my hand at it. I have a prediction of the future.
Ooh, you're a psychic now and a physicist.
Well, I predict that you cannot go a whole episode without talking about bananas.
What it's bananas?
Boom, there you go. I'm totally psychic.
You know the difference between a psychic and a physicist their salary where you put to h that's the only difference. Hey, im Jorge, I'm my cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics.
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, not a particle psychic, and I'm a co author of our book We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe.
Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we talk about all the amazing, the fascinating, the hot, the nasty, the wet, the bright, the dirty, the soft, the quiet, the loud, the hot, the cold, all the stuff in the universe that's fascinating and beautiful and amazing and explain it to you in a way that we hope you actually understand and hopefully even enjoy.
Yeah, And sometimes on the podcast, we like to talk about predicting the future. What's going to happen, what's going to happen to the universe, what's going to happen to the Earth, what's going to happen to the Solar system, what's going to happen to this podcast?
Where is this podcast going anyway? Thank Yeah, we like to talk about what science does and doesn't know about the future, what we can predict about what's going to happen, and where we are totally clueless.
Yeah. Well, as as we were saying earlier, there's a there's a fine line between being a psychic and being a physicist.
I would say it's a bright but fine line.
It's bright, Okay, it's an impenetrable barrier, quantum barrier.
It's difficult to tunnel between being a physicist and being a psychic. But in some sense we do have the same job. Physics also wants to predict the future.
Yeah, that's kind of I mean, that's kind of why in a way, physics was invented, right, Like, we want to know where this catapult payload is going to land. We want to know how far my car is going to go.
Were you there when physics was invented. I didn't get invited to that meeting.
Oh yeah, you didn't. I think Einstein was there and Newton was there.
And damn I knew I should have checked my email that day.
He missed the calendar invite.
That's right, And all those examples you mentioned are totally valuable, and our examples of why science has an impact on everyday life. You know, is my catapult is going to get over those castle walls and this kind of stuff. But also physics just wants to understand what's going to happen to us, what's our fate? How can we plan to live ahead? And can we understand the mysteries of everything around us so that we can know when lightning is going to strike or when disease is going to wipe out our cattle.
Right, in a way, that's kind of the standard for physics, right, It's like we say we understand something if in a way we can sort of predict what's going to happen.
You want to verify that your theory of physics describes the real universe out there and not just some idea in your mind. You have to make a testable prediction. Einstein, for example, predicted how light was going to be bent during an eclipse, and people measured it and he was right. And that's really when people started to believe his theory or relativity, because if your theory can't predict the future, then what use is it. Right, that's what science does. It predicts the outcome of future experiments.
Yeah, and you know, I think people are comfortable with this idea that physics is able to some degree predict the future. Like if you told somebody, hey, physics predicts that the Earth is going to be around for a very long time, or that the universe will never end, that those are comforting.
Or if you eat that candy you will get fat.
Yeah. I think that's more of a physical education.
There's physics there. You're converting candy energy into squishy stomach energy.
And yeah, So we're comfortable, I think with some physics predicting some things about the future, But I think we're a little bit uncomfortable about physics describing other things about the future, right.
Yeah. We like to use physics and science to explore the universe around us and outside us, But then sometimes we turn that science on ourselves and we seek to gain insight into how we work and then that makes you wonder.
Yeah, it makes you wonder if you are predictable in a way, you know, like could physics potentially, one day, you know, simulate the human mind or simulate your mind and predict what you're going to think and do.
It's a fascinating question because so many things that humans have puzzled over for so many years, how eclipses happen, where lightning strikes, all this stuff, how reproduction works. All of these things have in the end been explained through science. It turns out they are mechanistic. We can understand the microscopically how it works and predict what's going to happen in the future. And so then it's a natural question to wonder how far you can extend that strategy. Can you turn that around and extend it into your own inner life?
Right? Yeah, because you know, like, if physics can predict what, you know, a can of gas particles is going to do, why can't it predict what a brain full of neurons is going to do?
What's the difference in the end between a can of gas and a brain of neurons.
Really depends on the person probably, but.
Depends on what that person ate recently.
Yeah, so it's a big question with I think some really deep philosophical implications right about who we are and whether or not we're predictable, or whether or not we have this thing called free will.
Yeah, that's right. Like many the topics we touch on in this podcast, there are deep philosophical implications, and so I think today we should walk carefully and focus on the science and then think about what the philosophical implications are of what we do and do not know.
Yeah, and so today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question can't signs predict what you're going to do? And I predict that there will be a lot of predictions in this episode, but maybe not a lot of answers.
Well that's sort of our specialty, right, opening questions and not really answering them.
Well, I think what you mean is getting people excited about the questions, right, And.
That's right, sparking people's fundamental curiosity. I think it's I think it's wonderful to talk about things that we don't understand very well because hopefully it's a preview for what's going to happen in the future. It's like a fantasy for future science, maybe in five hundred years or in a thousand years, science will have figured out the exact workings of the human brain and can tell you exactly what you're going to do tomorrow. That would be amazing, would totally change the way life operates, what it's like to be a human being.
Right, Yeah, I mean, we wrote a whole book about all the things we don't know, Daniel, I'm sure we can pull off.
A podcast also, I predict we will.
So.
Yeah. So this is an interesting question, and it kind of goes back to a long time ago, when you know, once signs started seeing that the universe was what they call deterministic, meaning like like just a giant machine that follows the laws of physics like a clock, then I think that's when people started to think, like, hey, maybe maybe our humanity is also predictable like a clock.
Yeah. I think that's sort of shocking. I think when people first had that idea, it might have been a terrifying to imagine that this experience they're having might actually just be explainable, that things could be determined from the past.
Yeah. Well, I think if you told my eleven year old self that I was a robot i'd be like cool. Nowadays, though, you know, it's more of an uncomfortable statement.
You're a robot and we gave the remote control to your sister.
Sorry, yeah, no.
I think also it's fun to think even more deeply into sort of the origins of human thought on this question. Is the sort of the hubris that the universe is explainable at any level? I think a thousand years ago or five thousand years ago, people might have been comfortable with the idea that the universe doesn't follow laws, It just sort of is, and maybe there are these omniscient sentient beings out there that are in control of stuff and they can do whatever they like. So the idea that the universe that we could write down rules, we could discover rules that the universe follows and use those to predict what's going to happen. That's an incredible step forward in human intellectual history. But also it's not something we can necessarily explain, like why would the universe be deterministic? Why would the universe even follow laws? Is it true even today, given our amazing success in science, is it true that everything we can discover, every natural phenomenon we discover, will eventually be explained by science or can be explained by science. Those are open questions in philosophy.
Yeah, and so I guess the question then is, you know, how far can we push science? Like if science can predict the future to some degree, like you know, it can predict that the airplane is not going to fall from the sky, or it's going to predict that, you know, if I shoot this laser, this is what's going to happen. You know, how far can we push the science and maybe even predict what your brain is going to do?
Fascina any questions? And I think you'll see from some of these reactions that there's a wide variety of opinions out there. So as usual, I walked around campus that you see Irvine, and I asked folks this question.
Can science predict what you're going to think or do? So think about it for a second. Do you think you're just a big squeishy biological robot machine or do you think you have some sort of free will or some sort of free spirit that nobody can predict what you're going to think or do. Here's what people had to say.
Not precisely to an extent. There's just so many variables.
No, No, because we're humans are unpredictable. I'm a psychology major. So yeah, I don't believe that we can. We can try, but it's not likely.
Yeah, I think so. Do you think so?
Yeah?
So then is there free will in that case? Like are you making decisions?
Yeah, because it's still the person itself, that's still it's just the other person that's predicting correctly, So.
It's not their choice theoretically. I mean, if we did have those capabilities, then that might be possible.
We just need to advance sciences hard enough to be able to figure that out.
No, don't. I don't think so.
So do you think the brain is like not described by physical laws or does something else happening there?
No?
I think strong determinism I think is a very uh optimistic.
Yeah you do?
Yeah?
Why is that?
I don't know.
I just feel like it could And if.
It does, does that mean that you have free will or don't have free will?
Or if you can predict what people are gonna think?
Then probably not?
Yes?
Yes?
Why is that?
I don't know.
I think I saw like a video where they're like trying to map out like a brain or something, and they were talking about like how to recreate it, and that everything we think is just like a series of decisions, and that you can put it in like binary or something so like zero for yes or one for no, and it all leads to what choices you make.
I think that if there were a method for it, it wouldn't be super exact, just because there were so many factors that play into it.
I don't think it's possible to be able to predict every single.
One of them.
Yes, yes, Why is that?
I don't know?
Uh?
No, No, So you don't think the brain follows physical laws.
I think it does, but I think they're chaotic, chaotic.
Or random given enough information. Are you just a complicated mechanical watch.
No, I think I may or may not subscribe to the view that there's some quantum mechanics at play. So maybe maybe you're not.
Speaking quantum mechanics gives us an opening for free will.
No, I don't know if that's true. I'm a pessimist.
I feel like eventually, yes, but I feel like we're not there yet.
So if so, does that mean that your brain is deterministic but you're just just a product of what's happened to in the past and the stimulus it's getting.
Obviously, there's like some varying factors.
But I think there are some things that are like patronistic, like if you're going to wake up and like drink a coffee, or if you're going to wake up and like go for a walk with Those things are patterns.
That like are habitual, but then there's things that aren't.
I feel like you could predict it to an extent, but not like every single action by action, like there might be like faults in the prediction.
But yeah, it's hard to do because it's impossible.
Just I feel like that's probably impossible because your things can.
Change, you know, a very complicated robot.
Does that mean that there is no free will?
I am currently thinking that there's no free will.
Yes, yeah, So maybe that's where it becomes a bit complicated to answer this question, because I do believe that the laws of physics govern everything in the universe, so that would include us.
All right. I feel like these answers were all very yes and no. You know, some people were like no, some people were like yes. Nobody said like maybe I don't know, you know, and like people had very strong opinions.
They certainly did, and I should have taken some data to see if these were like all science majors who had confidence as science would eventually figure it out or not. But the last two were maybe the most fun because they turned out to be a husband and wife and he said, yes, he's a complicated robot and she says, no, we're not robots. And then after I left, I heard them arguing about it in a good natured way. In a good natured way.
Oh oh, I see one of them thought that the other one was predictable and the other one did not like to be predicted.
Yeah.
I thought that was fascinating. Maybe sparked some dinner table conversation, But you're right, And in contrast to some other questions, this is definitely a topic everybody felt comfortable giving an answer to. Sometimes I'll ask people a question and they'll be like, what, I never heard of that before, or I don't know, But here everybody had something thoughtful to say.
Yeah, because I think it touches something very deep within us, you know, just this idea that there's something more to me than just like a big biological clock or a big biological you know, clump of cells doing what there would do without thinking about it.
Yeah, I think most people feel like they are steering, even if your body is a big biological robot. They feel like they're in charge. They're making choices. They decide to eat that cookie, or they decide to step on that crack. They feel like they're making these decisions. And so it doesn't sort of jibe with that experience to imagine that those decisions are just the product of the situation you were in an instant before. It's hard to imagine how you could have such a visceral experience of free will if you don't actually have it.
All right, so let's dig into the question. Here is the question here, which is could science predict what you're going to do? And so let's maybe paint a picture to our listeners about what that might look like, you know, like, how could science, physics, or you know, a combination of biology and computer science possibly predict what a human brain might think or do.
Yeah. So, the typical strategy for understanding something is to think about it in terms of its microscopic bits, like what's going on inside of it? Can we understand those bits and from that build up some sort of understanding, you know, like, if you wanted to say understand how a watch worked, you would take it apart and you would say, oh, there's a gear here, and there's a lever gear, and this lever touches that gear which turns this thing, and that's how this thing works. And if you can make a model of all the things inside of it, and each one of those things is following the laws of physics, then together the whole thing has to follow the laws of physics. Right. If something is made up of pieces which are predictable, then putting them together it should also be predictable.
Right you mean, like, so science, what might be Maybe break down your brain and maybe build like a computer model of each one of your neurons, and that somehow, you know, acts exactly the same way that it's put together, the exact same way that your brain is. And so maybe like if you capture your brain in a computer, could that maybe predict what you're thinking, what you'll think and do.
Yeah, And it doesn't have to be a computer model in the end, it just has to follow the mathematical laws of physics, and you can express those as a computer model. You could also build a mechanical model, right, you can imagine building basically a physical copy of your brain. So that's I think that detail is not critical the concept. The critical concept is understanding what's going on inside the little bits and then putting those together to basically replicate your brain. But replicating is not enough, Like if I had a perfect copy of your brain, Like if I created another Jorge, that wouldn't necessarily help me understand what you're going to do. In order to in order to predict what you're going to do, I need to be able to run experiments. And so yeah, having a simulation of your brain, I could like say, well, what would Jorge do if I offered him a cookie? Would he say yes or no? So if I had a perfect simulation of your brain, I could run those experiments.
Right, Yeah, And I think it goes to the idea that, you know, we're really complicated as human beings, as thinking beings. But you know, if you break down our brain, it's made out of you know, lobes and chunks of brain tissue, and those are made out of neurons connected to each other, and neurons are made out of molecules, and so all of these things down to the molecule level, kind of follow the laws of physics, you know. It is sort of at the end, just a big and very very complicated, but still a big clock.
Yes, And that's a really deeply powerful implication of this discovery that we made a long, long time ago that everything is made out of the same bits. Right, I'm made out of atoms. You're made out of atoms. This chair I'm sitting on is made out of atoms. Things are not made out of their own kind of stuff, which means that in the end, they all follow the same rules. The rules that hold the chair together are the same rules that hold your cat together and your hamster together and you together. So if we can figure out what the rules are that describe how molecules and atoms work, that, in principle, and that's an important distinction principle, we should be able to extrapolate up and understand how you work.
Right. It's kind of like saying, like, you know, we are made out of inanimate bids, you know, think we're made out of things that are just plain things which you can maybe predict what they're going to do. And so does that mean that we are also inanimate in a way and.
Predictable imagine you came across a robot, for example, and it was doing weird stuff. You want to understand it. How do you understand it?
What?
You would take it apart and say, oh, it's made out of these pieces, and can I understand each of those pieces, and if so, you could put that together to an understanding of the whole robot. And so the idea is apply that to a person.
Yeah, and you could do things like, you know, if I, you know, if I poke this little bit here in this engine, you know, I predict that the end the car is going to move forward or backwards exactly.
And all of this happening, of course, assumes a few things. It assumes that you can get a picture of what's what's happening inside your brain. The idea you presented requires that we know each and ir on. We know the situation that neuron is in, right, It's like for the watch, it's like that we know where the levers are and where the gears are, and that we can extrapolate up from those levers and gears to the operation of a whole brain. That's not trivial. And then you know, there's questions about like is it actually deterministic or is there like some funky quantum magic going on, or is there something in there that like science can describe. So it's not a trivial thing to say just just because your brain is made of atoms that we could therefore predict what you're.
Going to do.
Right, Yeah, I think that's at the core question here, and so let's get into it. And just to save you some time, Daniel, I will always take the cookie. You don't need a fancy computer simulation to predict that. I will take the cookie.
All right, I'm going to cross that off my Deep Questions of the Universe list.
Yeah, so let's get into it a little bit more deeply and figure out how you might even do this, or whether we can or if there is some kind of quantum magic that might give us a little bit of a loophole to get free will. But first, let's take a quick break.
With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price, your thoughts you were paying magically skyrockets. With Mintmobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan. They really mean it. I've used Mintmobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you. So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot com slash universe. That's mintmobile dot com slash universe. Cut your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month. At mintmobile dot com slash universe, forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only. Speeds slower about forty gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxi spees and restrictions apply. Seement Mobile for details.
AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally, billions of dollars are being invested, so buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power, So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control. It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has forty eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, like Uber eight by eight and Data Bricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at Oracle dis dot com slash strategic. That's Oracle dot com slash Strategic Oracle dot com slash strategic.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield when you open a high yield savings account through Applecard. Apply for Applecard in the wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Applecard owners subject to eligibility, Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC, terms and more at applecard dot com.
All right, we're talking about whether science can predict what you're going to think and do, and we talked about, yeah, that maybe your brain is made out of little bits and pieces which which are sort of little biological machines, and so does that mean that your whole brain is just a machine or like a robot, which anyone could predict what they're going to do. So let's get into it. What are some of the things Daniel, that physicists know or think that might make that picture really difficult or maybe impossible to predict what you're going to do.
The first thing that comes to my mind is just knowing the current status of your brain. Like if I wanted to model the flight of a of a baseball, if I wanted to know exactly where a baseball went, I would need to know its current position and its current direction.
If you wanted to know if you wanted to predict where what's going to land, you would sort of need to know, you know where it is and where it's going at any given time.
Yeah, and any moment, just one moment in time, would determine where it's going to be. So if I knew where that baseball was now and where it was which direction it was going in, I could just apply the law of physics and propagate that information forward. I would say, oh, it's going to move in a certain path under gravity, and I can tell you exactly where it's going to land. That's physics predicting the future and for one little tiny particle or baseball or whatever. But in order to do that for your brain, I would need to know the current situation of your brain, Like, what is the situation of every neuron? Is it about to fire a little pulse? Is it not about to fire a pulse? How strong is this connection between it and the next neuron? And you know there's billions and billions of neurons in your brain, so we're talking about an enormous amount of information you'd need to know.
I think what you mean is that even if I had a giant computer simulation of your brain, I would need to give each of the neurons kind of a starting value, right, or like I would need to know where each neuron was in order to predict what the whole brain was going to do.
Precisely, if I had a computer program that could simulate an arbitrary brain, I would somehow need to configure it to your brain, and that would mean knowing where all the neurons were and how they were connected to each other and all that kind of stuff. Just like if you want to calculate where the baseball is going to go, you need to know the initial conditions. You need to know where it is now and which direction it is going in. Like, even if I had that computer program, and even if it was possible to use that computer program to predict the future, how do I get that information from your brain? Do I have to like scan your brain somehow? Do I have to take your head off and slice it into hyperfine little bits? Like how do you even physically do that?
Right? Because each neuron might be in a different state, you know, like one who might be more excited than others, or you might be you know, you might be in a bad mood, and so there's a general know, dopamine levels that are you know, suppressing some of your neurons, right, now. You need to know that in order to predict what you're going to think and do.
Yeah, and you need to know it all at the same moment, right I don't want to know what the left half of your brain is doing right now and the right half of your brain is doing two seconds ago. I need a complete picture of your brain at one moment, so that I know how what direction everything is moving in. I'm just thinking of your brain as like a lot of tiny little baseballs, and so I need to know where all those baseballs are at the same time. So even slicing your brain like a ham sandwich or whatever wouldn't work. I need to somehow instantly scan everything in your brain.
And that just seems almost impossible, right.
It seems almost impossible. I mean I read a lot of science fiction, and there's some good stuff where the people are uploading brains into the cloud, and sometimes they talk about how scanning the brain is a destructive process, but they never talk about how fast it has to be. Like, if you want to scan the brain, it's got to be a snapshot. You got to know where everything is in an instant or it's all averaged like over the last five minutes or ten minutes or twenty minutes or however long it takes to scan the brain, and that's going to be a disaster. So this is a technological issue, not philosophical. But I don't know if that's even possible.
Oh I see, Okay, so that's kind of the first barrier that might prevent you from predicting somebody's brain is getting a snapshot of it. And it sounds impossible, but I think technically you can't rule it out, right, Like, it's not technically or theore ratically impossible that maybe one day people will come up with a brain scan that can somehow capture all of your brain in one instant.
That's right, unless you need to know it's sort of at the level of quantum mechanical objects, like if you need to know the exact location of every electron, then it's theoretically impossible because you can't measure the perfect quantum state of the entire brain all at the same time. I think that's theoretically impossible, But as long as it's you know, not necessarily sensitive to quantum effects in theory, it's possible, but technologically way out of our grasp today today. Yeah, let's assume that that's possible, and then think about what the other problems would be.
Yeah, yeah, because that's that's not the only problem with scanning your brain.
There are no first we have to achieve this almost impossible sounding technological feat then we've got the real problem.
Yeah. Well, you know that's what they said about the iPhone. And look where we are now, is that.
What they said about the iPhone was that this was that at the physics meeting you had with Einstein and Newton and all those guys.
Well it was science fiction fifty years ago, right, like this device that fit in your pocket and you can talk video with people and play addictive video games on for hours. I mean, that was like a Star trek.
You know, that's true, And it'd be folly to say this kind of technology will never be developed or would take years or centuries or whatever, because those kind of predictions are always people always look silly five years later after making those predictions. So we should avoid that. And maybe technology will progress rapidly and they'll invent the brain scan next week and they'll have a brain scan app that you can put on your phone.
Maybe, But then there are other things that would make this really difficult or that kind of make your brain almost pretty much unpredictable.
Right, Yeah, there are a lot of practical issues in actually accomplishing predicting what your brain is going to do. Say we had a snapshot of your brain, we knew the current status of every neuron. We could load that into the computer, and we wanted to run that forward. We wanted to say, all right, well, what's this person going to do in five minutes. That's not always easy. Some systems, even if they're made of atoms which follow physical laws, and even if you knew where all those atoms were, are hard to describe.
Yeah, because they're you were telling me earlier, they're not easy systems to kind of simulate, or they're not easy systems to kind of predict what they're going to do.
Yeah, and this is again a technological problem, but it's a real problem. Like why can't we predict the weather In theory, weather follows rules that we understand water droplets and air resistance and wind and all that stuff. That's not complicated physics.
They're just atoms.
Yeah, they're just atoms. And we don't even need to worry about the atoms. We can think about the water droplets and the temperature and stuff. So why is it so hard to predict when it's going to rain or when a hurricane is going to come. If it's following the laws of physics, and we have amazing satellites that are like gathering all this data about what the temperature is everywhere, it's a very similar problem. The reason that weather is hard to predict is not because because it doesn't follow the laws of physics. It's because it's very, very sensitive to the exact tiny details of the situation. A small change in temperature over here leads to a big change over there. That's something we call chaos.
Right. It's this idea that kind of goes back to that whole butterfly idea, right, Like they say that if a butterfly flaps its wing in one part of the world, it can actually affect the weather in another part of the world, just because it's so sensitive to even small things like a butterfly flapping its wing.
That's right, and not every system is chaotics. Some things are not right. Some things. For example, when you throw a ball, you throw a ball, if you change the angle you're throwing it at by a tiny bit, then the outcome is changed by a tiny bit, right, you throw it a tiny bit harder, it lands, it goes a tiny bit further. But other things, if you change how you do them by a tiny bit, you get a very different outcome, Like rolling a dye. If you roll a dice slightly differently, you spin your hand a tiny bit differently, you get a four instead of a two, or a five instead of a one. So the outcome depends very very sensitively and exactly how you did it. It's not random, it's following the laws of physics. In theory, it's predictable, but in practice it's very difficult because the outcome depends very sensitively on how you flap those butterfly wings.
Yeah, or how you throw the die. Like to predict a die roll, you would need to really kind of like pay attention to the exact angle that the each die is at when it leaves your hand, and you have to predict also or simulate how like when the corners hit the ground, how that's going to affect the spin of the die. And so it's a really it's just a much more complicated system to simulate and predict than like just throwing a baseball.
So then the question is is your brain like a big bag of dice where each one very difficult to predict and bouncing off the other one it's a very complex thing. Or is it made out of things which are easy to predict? And if you knew pretty much the current situation that you could predict how it's going to come about? You know, is your brain a hurricane or is it just a baseball right?
Or you know, if I have butterflies in my stomach and those they flap, how is it going to affect my decision to eat a cookier or not exactly.
So the point is that even if you knew exactly the current situation of the brain, could you have a powerful enough computer to predict what's going to happen going forward? And in the end, that's really the limitation. For example, for hurricanes, if we knew the location of every drop of water on Earth and its current position and velocity, and we had a super duper powerful computer, then yeah, we could probably predict the weather very accurately. But we don't have those computers right.
Well, I feel like we're getting better, though, you know, like sometimes I'm really impressed by how far ahead we can predict the weather and how somewhat accurately we can.
This is just a hurdle of technology. Something like eighty percent of the fastest computers in the world, like the supercomputers, are all devoted to this problem, predicting the future of the weather, understanding the atmosphere and all of its chaos, and so it's really just like throwing more computational power at the problem.
Well, and that's because weather is a chaotic system.
Right, Definitely, weather, it's very chaotic. It's very difficult to predict the outcome, even if you know the current conditions.
But do we know if the brain is chaotic or humans or chaotic?
Humans seem chaotic to me, I mean some of them I've known for decades, and I still don't understand why the neto decisions they do and not just your children, not just my children. No, we don't know for sure, but it seems to me very likely. I mean, it's a hyper connected, very sensitive set of neurons. It seems to me very unlikely that it wouldn't be a chaotic, But we don't know. It might be that there are sort of emergent phenomenon that you're not really sensitive to. All those little details, and that you could build a model that predicts roughly where things are going. If you don't care about the details, you can tell whether somebody's going to have a cookie and who they're going to vote for the next election. It's possible that you could build those models. That requires a sort of another layer of insight. Right. Imagine you only knew the baseball in terms of little particles inside of it, and you're like, oh, there's no way I could predict the way this baseball is going to move. It's ten to the twenty three particles. It's impossible. But if you understand, if you took a step back and saw the flight of it, you could say, oh, actually, I can describe this and ignore all the particles. I can ignore all those details they're not relevant, and I can just describe this in terms of simple motion. So it's possible that there's an emergent theory of psychology mathematical psychology that could describe the motion of the brain.
We just don't know, or I wonder if it might vary with people. You know, some people might be more predictable than others.
Yeah, I certainly know some people who seem pretty chaotic.
All right, Well, those are two pretty big hurdles, But then there's another hurdle coming up and or possibly a loophole that might still let us have some free will in this deterministic machine like universe. So let's get into that first. Let's take a quick break.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite. But the people in the dairy industry are. US Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times. The same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneuver into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient deents dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit usdairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
With the United Explorer Card, earn fifty thousand bonus miles, then head for places unseen and destinations unknown. Wherever your journey takes you, you'll enjoy remarkable rewards, including a free checked bag and two times the miles on every United purchase. You'll also receive two times the miles on dining and at hotels, so every experience is even more rewarding. Plus, when you fly United, you can look forward to United Club access with two United Club one time passes per year. Become a United Explorer Card member today and take off on more trips so you can take in once in a lifetime experiences everywhere you travel. Visit the Explorer Card dot com to apply today. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC subject to credit approval offer subject to change terms apply.
This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Buying a home in today's market can be overwhelming. Luckily, Navy Federal Credit Union's new Home Buying Center is everything you need to keep you sane while you shop. With services like Verified Preapproval, which show sellers your serious buyer, you have a competitive advantage when making an offer, and Lock and Shop lets you lock in your interest rate for up to sixty days while you hunt for a home. From start to finish. Navy Federal's new Home Buying Center has everything you'll need to buy a home. Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Learn more at Navy Federal dot org. Navy Federal is ensured by NCUA Equal Housing Lender Membership Required terms in conditions apply loan subject to approval. Call one eight eight eight eight four two sixty three two eight for details about credit costs.
All right, Daniel, The last topic here is about randomness and whether randomness at the quantum level can maybe effect what we see as free will, or whether it can affect whether or not we can predict what people will think or do.
The premise here, the assumption we're making is that the brain should be predictable if it's various bits are predictable, if it's made out of predictable bits, then you should be able to put those predictable bits together into a predictable brain. But listeners of the podcast are probably wondering, are those bits predictable? The brain is made of atoms, and atoms are made of protons and electrons and all this stuff, and we know that those things are quantum mechanical. And we talked on the podcast recently about the crazy probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, that things are not determined until they're measures, that there is really true randomness at the quantum scale. So you might be wondering, how can you build determinism on top of this fuzzy quantum randomness.
Yeah, because we talked about some of the challenges, right, We talked about scanning your brain and about chaos, but those are technical problems. You're saying that maybe just in the bits themselves of the brain, there is some inherent randomness that might make it impossible to predict absolutely.
We know that there's inherent randomness. Everything, as we say, made of atoms, and those things are governed by fundamentally quantum mechanical properties. What we don't know is if that matters, right, It certainly doesn't matter for predicting the motion of a mechanical watch. People can build mechanical watches that are super accurate for years at a time. We can predict the flight of a baseball without even knowing that quantum mechanics was a thing. I remember, quantum mechanics affects things only on super duper tiny scales. The uncertainty principle delta x delta P the relationship between the uncertainty and motion and position. The uncertainty there is is related to this Plank's constant hbar, which is like the fundamental unit of the universe. But this is a super tiny number. It's ten to the minus thirty four jewels. And so it might be that on top of the quantum randomness we do have a layer of physics which is deterministic. Or it could be that you know that the quantum randomness sort of seeps up from below and affects the working of the brain.
Okay, so you're saying that there is a fundamental randomness in the universe and in my brain cells, like, at to the smallest level, I can't possibly predict my brain. But maybe if I go up a few levels, then the brain starts to be more predictable.
We see this in physics. We see at the very smallest levels you cannot predict what's going to happen. You shoot the same photon into the same experiment twice, you get two different outcomes. There's really true randomness there, and that breaks determinism. So photons not deterministic, electrons not deterministic. Protons not deterministic. But somehow, when you put these things together, you put enough of them together, all those random fluctuations average out that basically cancel each other. It's a deep theorem in physics. It's called the air infest theorem. That you have enough of these things and it doesn't matter anymore as long as you're measuring things on the sort of classical scale and sizes that we care about centimeters, millimeters. Even then the quantum mechanic effects average out, which which is why we didn't notice quantum mechanics for thousands of years.
It's hidden inside the summation of all of these quantum little events.
Yeah, which is why it was so hard to accept. Right, we had just accepted the mind boggling consequences of a deterministic universe, like, Wow, the universe seems to follow rules and we can predict it. And then we discovered, oh, actually no, at its deepest level, it seems weirdly random. And that was totally in contradiction with everything we thought we understood, which is why quantum mechanics were so counterintuitive and so fuzzy. But still, it didn't mean that all those things we'd learned were wrong. It just meant that they applied a sort of the larger scales that those same rules can't be applied to electrons and protons, but they can still be applied to baseballs and watches. So then the question is is your brain a baseball and watch or is it an electron.
Yeah, it's kind of like if I said, hey, Danie, I'm going to flip this coin, and if it's had, I'm going to take your cookie, and if it's tails, I'm not going to take your cookie. Then then it's kind of like you might say, it's unpredictable, what am I going to do? Right, because you don't know.
Except that a coin is deterministic. A coin is a classical object. If I knew exactly how you were going to flip it, I could predict exactly how that coin was going to land, and I would know that you were going to take the cookie no matter how the coin flipped, actually, because I know you as a person. But yeah, exactly the coin flip is not written. But if you, for example, had a radioactive particle and you said, I'm going to wait one minute. If the particle decays within this minute, I'm eating the cookie, and if it doesn't decay within this minute, I'm not eating the cookie, then I can't predict whether or not you're going to eat the cookie. That's because you've linked a macroscopic action eating the cookie to a quantum mechanical thing. That's rare, right, that's a whole Schrodinger's box argument. It's very difficult to find quantum mechanic effects that you can see on the macroscopic scale.
Oh, I see, Like, if I made my cookie eating dependent on whether this particle decays or not, then it's unpredictable. But if I make my eating cookie depending on whether the particle will decay over a minute, then we know a lot more. Right, it's less unpredictable because you know that on average, most of these particles. Let's say like ninety percent of these particles decay within a minute.
Yeah, that's true. And if you want to make statements about averages, then you're a rock solid footing even quant mechanically, because quant mechanics doesn't mean things don't follow laws. It just means those laws are probabilistic. So you can say, on average, this is going to happen. On average, that's going to happen for one particular particle. You can't make any predictions on a quantum mechanical scale, But you know what quantum mechanical effects do you observe as a person, Like, for something to affect your life that's really random, it has to have an impact like that somebody's measuring this quantum mechanical thing and making a decision based on it. It's really pretty rare for quantum mechanical randomness to affect the macroscopic world. People do really complicated experiments to try to set this kind of thing up, Like Bose Einstein condensate is like a macroscopic quantum state that you can see that actually behaves quantum mechanically. It's really weird and amazing. People win the Nobel Prize for that. So for the brain to be dependent on quantum mechanical randomness, you'd have to show somehow that like the motion of these electrons, this weird quantum mechanical effect was triggering neurons, and neurons were somehow sensitive to these things.
Yeah, so it's fundamentally random. But the question, it seems like the core and the key question here is whether that randomness at the quantum level really affects whether I'm going to eat my cookie or not, or whether that all gets drowned out by the bazillion electrons that I have in my brain.
And there are some folks who've made that argument, and I think that that argument is largely in response to fear of determinism. They don't want to think that the brain is just a mechanical watch that can be predicted. So they're sort of striving for some way to leave a window open for free will. And they say, oh, well, if we can connect it to quantum randomness, and you know, you can't be predicted and therefore there might be room for free will. And famous people like Roger Penrose make this argument, but it's just a it's more like an outline of an argument there's no evidence that the brain is dependent on quantum mechanics. It's just like, can we find some path maybe go down that leads us to a non deterministic brain. There's no real evidence or argument there. It's just like a suggestion.
Well, I think the thing is that it's a it's a yes or no decision, right, whether I eat the cookie, it's either yes or no. So I'm kind of like sitting on the edge of a really thin knife, right, and you know who knows? Are you can you really rule out that, you know, how one particular electron behaved was resultant in pushing me one way or the other? Or are you saying that pretty much that's unlikely.
No, I'm not saying that we can rule it out at all. You're totally right, and it could be that there are quantum mechanic effects that determine whether or not you make that decision. It's possible, but I'm saying we have no evidence for that. Nobody has shown that we don't even understand the mechanism of it. That doesn't mean it's not happening. It just means that it's more of a suggestion, an open door than an actual idea.
All right, Well, I feel pretty good. I feel like we am We're right where we predicted we would be. I think you deserve a cookie or a banana at the very list. Oh no, wait, do you said I wouldn't say, there.
You go, there you go. But I think that there's some fascinating questions there, Like, even if you knew the answer to this question, even if you showed that the brain was deterministic or wasn't that the brain was quantum mechanically random, what would that mean for this experience of free will?
Let me see if I can reac out what we learned. We learned that it's predicting what people are going to do is super technically hard with the scanning all of the neurons in your brain and chaos maybe playing a larch part and making it unpredictable. But let's say like we invented technology to take care of that. There's still sort of the question of whether randomness trickles up to influence decisions, you know, randomness at the quantum level, whether that trickles up to influence decisions. And it sounds like we don't know. It sounds like we can't say either way.
That's right, quantum mechanics might make it theoretically impossible to predict the brain. We don't know, and if it doesn't, if it doesn't make it impossible, and we know, it's still super duper hard because you need to know the exact state of the brain and you need to overcome the potential overwhelming chaos of your billions and billions of neurons. So even if it's not impossible, it's definitely very, very tricky.
Right, And then we could probably have a whole podcast just on the implications on how we feel about free will and whether it would still exist even if it was governed by quantum randomness.
That's right, And this is an area of philosophy, And neither you nor I have formal training in philosophy.
What do you mean? I have a doctorate in philosophy in engineering.
So then let me ask Jorge, if I could prove that you were deterministic, does that mean you don't have free will? Does being a big mechanical robot mean you're not making choices? Or is that just describe the choices you are you are making?
Mmm? I think that would be bananas.
No.
I think for me it doesn't matter. I feel like it doesn't matter. I'm not someone who sweats free will too much to be honest, like, I feel like I might be a robot. That's fine, And you know, currently it's almost like who would want to predict what I'm going to do? Do you know what I mean?
Like it's such like why is this problem even interesting?
Who would take the time to care about what I'm going to think and do?
So?
As long as nobody else can think or would want to know what I think and do? Then to me like, okay, I could be a robot or I could not be a robot.
Well, I think there's an implication of moral responsibility. We've been talking about you eating a cookie. What if that was somebody else's cookie, right, and you ate that person's cookie, then could you say, Hey, I didn't make that choice. I have no free will, and therefore I can't be morally culpable. If everybody's deterministic and people aren't making choices, then our sort of whole theory of morality kind of falls apart, and we can't really punish anybody for anything, all right.
We'll say that. For our other podcast, Daniel and Jorge explain the moral.
Universe Daniel and Jorge blather on about philosophy. They don't really know what they're talking about.
I would listen to that, and I predict that a lot of people will probably not.
No, but I think these are like many of the things that we talk about on the show, there are deep implications for just what it means to be human being. Often we talk about how the universe was created and how it came to be in its future, and that has deep importance for people. What people think about their place and the cosmos and how they should live their lives, and this is similar. It's a question, you know, is this the threshold that science will ever cross? And if so, what does it mean? And so I love the fact that science is so relevant sometimes that it really touches the deep core of how you're going to live your life and what it means to be human.
Yeah, it's amazing to think that physics can have such an impact in who we are, as in our souls, in our conception of who we are.
Well, physics is deep in my soul and now maybe you're discovering it's actually deep in your soul as well.
We got you, We infected your soul to your audience physics. All right, well, thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that, and we hope that meant all of your expectations about what this podcast was going to be.
That's right. Thanks for tuning in. And for those of you who wonder whether science can actually explain the universe, remember that we don't know. Science has worked pretty well so far and been able to explain a lot of what we've seen, but there might be some day in the future where we find some phenomenon that can't be explained by science, or by our current visioning of science or our mathematical rules. So we are continuing on this journey of trying to explore and explain the universe we find around us.
Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
Before we still have a question after listening to all all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can powerful arms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
As a United Explorer card member, you can earn fifty thousand bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an Explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC subject to credit approval offer subject to change. Terms apply. There are children, friends and families walking riding on paths and roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too. Go safely, California From the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans
