The Problem With Uploading Your Consciousness @Cosmic Queries #105 (Transcript)

It breaks apart the quark, it forms two new quarks, and it just keeps doing that all the way down to the singularity. And it seemed to me you would have a quark catastrophe if that kept up.

CHUCK NICE: We took it to Brian Greene.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Brian Greene. Everybody’s scratching their head. This feels like the same kind of question, Charles.

CHARLES LIU: Well, it’s a little bit different, but we’ll address that big rip part first.

GARY O’REILLY: Yeah.

CHARLES LIU: Okay. Remember, this question, which is a great question, by the way, love our Canadian friends who come up with great questions, come up with great answers to the issue, is that the big rip is a scenario of the expanding universe and the end of the universe. That is true only if dark energy has a particular kind of characteristic where it’s kind of negative. Okay. That’s known often as the phantom energy scenario of dark energy.

And for that to be true, then that would mean that when quarks split up because of some sort of internal energy, not, not like what we’re trying to do, but like some sort of a D energy split, they won’t create new quarks.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So why not?

CHARLES LIU: The solution, because of the dark energy characteristic, the phantom dark energy itself basically allows for the creation of negative particles or negative energy particles. And these things don’t exist as far as we have ever found.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Wait, wait. So we split the quark. Then I have an isolated quark sitting out there minding its own business?

CHARLES LIU: No, you split the quark and it becomes something completely different. It doesn’t become quarks anymore. Oh, so it’s with a decay of sorts.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s a different reaction.

CHARLES LIU: Right. So you’re not worried about that aspect of things if it’s not a big rip.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Chuck, I think he’s trying to wiggle out of this one. What do you think? No, just different particles.

CHARLES LIU: If you want me to circle back to what Jana and Brian were trying to talk about, I don’t have any more insight than they do. They are much closer to the forefront of quantum research than I am. But what I would say is that you’re thinking of a quantum particle, like a quark, like a classical particle which feels tidal forces. Right.

If you think of a quark instead of a thing that can be pulled apart like our bodies, like from our noses to our feet or something like that, then you get this weird catastrophe. But if you think of it as a packet of energy or quantum information, then as it falls in, it doesn’t get stretched physically. It gets changed in a way, perhaps because of the tremendous gravitational tides and influences, but it will not actually wind up with more quarks. You’ll wind up with a bundle of energy going to the event horizon and the event horizon growing to encompass it. That’s my intuition. I think I would have to work the math out to make.

GARY O’REILLY: But Morgan’s question is predicated on the fact that there is a Big Rip.

CHARLES LIU: Correct.

GARY O’REILLY: And then it becomes rinse and repeat. But what if there’s no Big Rip?

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. Right now, the odds are there is not going to be a Big Rip based on, really because of the, the necessity, the condition that a Big Rip requires. As far as we know, this idea of phantom energy being the dark energy component of the universe. And that would imply that we should see negative energy particles popping out in the universe like random.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: These generated. Do they have negative gr.

CHARLES LIU: They would have negative gravity. They would be able to. So we can make wormholes space forward. The Alcubierre warp drive, for example, could be found. You know, all those kinds of things.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: We could make wormholes.

CHARLES LIU: That is another possibility. But we don’t see them. We haven’t seen a single wormhole. We haven’t seen a single white hole. So the existence of those things has not yet been confirmed and appears to be contradicted or refuted by the fact that we don’t see these things. That that phantom energy is not what dark energy actually is.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But that’s just the opposite of, in math, the existence.

What Is Dark Energy?

CHUCK NICE: Well, then let, since we don’t know. So then what is dark energy, Chuck?

CHARLES LIU: I don’t know. I have no idea. I have zero idea.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: We’ll cop an attitude while you address my guest here.

CHARLES LIU: It’s okay. It’s okay. Listen, here’s something.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Charles. What is it?

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, I have no idea. But I’ll tell you something else that’s been really interesting. Maybe we can save this for later in the show if there are other questions regarding this, but I was at the American Astronomical Society meeting not too long ago in Phoenix, and I was just so happy. There was just a lovely time. I’m still basking in it, even though it’s been a little while.

But one of the last speeches, one of the last talks in that conference was about the nature of dark energy. The dark energy survey, which has now gathered information about 15 million galaxies and where they’re placed in the universe, seems to show that, that what we have counted as dark energy, the cosmological constant is probably not constant. It looks like it’s actually changing, which is really amazing. Which adds still more speculation as to what this dark energy actually is. Because you have to account for the fact that it looks like the universe doesn’t have a constant, cosmological constant.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And just to be clear, our assumption that it was constant comes directly from Einstein’s equations.

CHARLES LIU: Correct.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: His equations require it be constant. So if it’s not constant, it means Einstein’s general relativity is missing something about it as a model of the universe.

CHUCK NICE: Not so smart, are you now, Einstein? Are you?

CHARLES LIU: No, it just means that, it just means that lambda, the number that he had put as a number, is a function of time. It changes the equations. It means that Albert was just, and he himself admitted it. It was a temporary thing that made the equations work. He had no idea if there was anything physical about it. Right.

And so now we’re actually trying to see whether Albert’s prediction of its existence is leading to something physical. And so the fact that it might be dependent on time or the age of the universe is further evidence that it is something physical and not just mathematical.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, snap.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, Albert was pretty awesome.

CHUCK NICE: Really makes, that makes things super freaky then. Like, if you’re, if you’re factoring in time as part of the equation. That’s insane.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s a whole other. That’s a whole.

CHUCK NICE: I mean, you’ve opened up a whole new world.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right.

CHUCK NICE: You know, that’s crazy.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right.

GARY O’REILLY: It shows you how far away from knowing certainty we are.

CHARLES LIU: Absolutely. 95% of the material in the universe is still wholly unknown to human science.

GARY O’REILLY: Only 95%.

CHARLES LIU: 96. Okay, maybe 96.

CHUCK NICE: We’ll have this figured out in no time. Yeah, we’re almost there. Yeah, we almost there, man. Well, we got 90, 96% more to figure out.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I would have worded that slightly differently. I would say 95% of what is driving the universe is unknown to us rather than 95% of the material. Because I don’t know if it’s material. Knows what it is.

CHARLES LIU: You don’t know.

CHUCK NICE: You don’t even know if it’s material.

CHARLES LIU: You can’t even.

CHUCK NICE: We can’t even say if we can call it material.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Right?

CHARLES LIU: Yeah. I use the term material to be as general as possible. I didn’t call it matter. I didn’t call it energy. I didn’t call it particles. Right, Right. I mean, the even better ambiguous word would be like the stuff of the stuff. Right?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Stuff.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, I kind of like that stuff anyway.

CHARLES LIU: Yep. Lots. Lots in there to unpack for the future.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah. And for those who are, who are ego, who want to be ego stroked. This is the opposite of that. Where, you know, we’re not even the majority of the stuff in the universe. Right, Right. Not by crying your pillow on that one.

CHUCK NICE: I got to tell you. Doesn’t. Doesn’t bode well for the creationists.

CHARLES LIU: That’s.

CHUCK NICE: I’m just saying. I’m not trying to start anything. I’m just saying, all right, I’m God and I’m sitting up here, I’m like, I’m going to create a universe and I think I’m going to let you guys have 4% of it. But it’s all for you, the whole thing. No, I love you. I love you, I love you. And it’s all for you. 4%. That’s what you get.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You got another one. Bring it.

Reconciling Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

CHUCK NICE: On we go. This is Raphael who says, Greetings, Dr. Tysons and Lou. And of course, the cosmological constant Lord. Nice. Raphael V. God in Toronto, Canada. Okay, spelling of his name. I still think I got it wrong. The behavior of light seems to be intrinsic to both relativity and quantum mechanics. Yet the two systems cannot be reconciled. At least not so far. Is there a single explanation for this and is the imposition of observation or measurement an obstacle that just can’t be overcome?

CHARLES LIU: Dang.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I like that.

CHUCK NICE: Wow, Chuck.

CHARLES LIU: Okay, the. The answer is the key to the answer, shall we say, Raphael? And again, an excellent question is we have not yet reconciled the situation. You see, general relativity’s mathematical equations operate well down to a particular limit. But at that limit, it stops working in terms of how it explains how the universe works.

CHUCK NICE: Could you just give us a little overview there? Because, like, you say that, but what you’re saying requires a lot of understanding.

CHARLES LIU: Sure. Real basic. Okay. Einstein’s general theory of relativity, in very general terms, talks about space and time and how that interacts with us quantum mechanics. This quantum realm stuff, it deals most with, like, matter and energy on the tiniest scales and how we interact with that. Okay. When they come together, space and time, matter and energy, they seem to have a problem getting through from one to the other.

In other words, the math of quantum physics doesn’t work really well when we’re talking about space and time. And the mathematics of general relativity don’t seem to work very well when we’re trying to talk about little subatomic particles.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So there’s some kind of shotgun wedding waiting to happen with somebody, has a new way to bring them together once.

CHARLES LIU: You can combine them. Right. Then we’re in good shape. Now people are working on this. Light does seem to be a place where you both somehow, for example, have a maximum speed of light. Right. Speed of light is the maximum speed at which any object can move through space and time. Meanwhile, matter and energy. Right. Light is both a particle and a wave, and it’s energy which can be converted into matter, things like that.

So light does seem to be some sort of linchpin in this sort of shotgun wedding that Neil was talking about. But it might not be shotgun. I’ll venture this. Neil, you and I both know a very, very, very good guy named Jacob Berendes. Jacob is a preceptor at Harvard University, and he has recently. Jacob.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: When I was in graduate school, he was in high school, and he programmed my website at the time. That’s the same Jacob Berendes.

CHARLES LIU: It’s that same Jacob Berendes. Yes. Wow. But yes, that Jacob, who is now a preceptor at Harvard. He has written and published some articles just recently. He’s an example of one of the many scientists that’s trying to tie these systems together. And what he is basically saying is that there is actually a mathematical way to bridge general relativity, the macroscopic world with quantum mechanics in the microscopic world.

And it has to do with the math of statistical physics and chaos theory and the ability to take things which are uncertain and make them more certain. Not all the way certain, but more certain. And that, pulled out from the microscopic to the macroscopic, unites the two areas of physics. But we’re not quite there yet. This just one hypothesis that appears to work, sort of. And then there’s going to be a lot more work and a lot more people have to keep working on it.

So in that case, if Jacob and his colleagues are right, then the wave particle duality is only temporary. This, this incompatibility is only there because we’re not advanced enough yet in our mathematical construction of physics to unite them.

CHUCK NICE: Interesting.

GARY O’REILLY: If it were a Venn diagram and you’ve got quantum in one circle and general relativity in another, is there a crossover at all or are they too.

CHARLES LIU: Separate at the moment? They just touch. They do not have any crossover area. If we’re talking about Venn diagrams, for anyone who doesn’t know what a Venn diagram is, it’s a box. And then you’ve got little circles that come overlapping things to sort of show.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Wait, who uses a box in a Venn diagram?

CHARLES LIU: What kind of universal set on the outside. Oh, okay, yeah, right. Otherwise you use little circles, but something.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I’m a circle. Venn diagram.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But if you have GR and quantum just kissing in the middle.

GARY O’REILLY: Yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The way physics has worked historically is somebody’s going to come up with. And maybe it’s this Jacob Baron solution with another circle that encloses both of them within.

CHARLES LIU: Yes, that’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And so it’s not like you shift somewhere else and discard anything that has already been demonstrated to work.

CHARLES LIU: That’s exactly what Einstein did with Newtonian physics.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Exactly.

CHARLES LIU: So we’ll see how that goes.

CHUCK NICE: Excellent. All right, Great question.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Give me some more.

Path Integrals and Retrocausality

GARY O’REILLY: Ready for the next one?

CHARLES LIU: Right.

GARY O’REILLY: This is from Andrew D. Greetings, Drs. Tyson Lu and of course, Lord Nice Andrew Dack from Miriam, Minneapolis. Well, stay safe and stay warm, sir. The question goes as such.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Perfectly safe.

GARY O’REILLY: Yes. The path integral formulation calculates probabilities by summing overall possible paths a particle could take. The two state vector formalism describes quantum systems using both a forward evolving state from the past and a backward evolving state from the future. Both suggest quantum mechanics can be written with boundary conditions at both ends of time, not just initial conditions. It goes on. Sorry about this being as long as it is, but it’s complicated.

CHARLES LIU: This is good that background is good.

GARY O’REILLY: Has this led to experimental predictions that differ from standard quantum mechanics? And do physicists take retrocausality seriously as part of reality’s actual structure? Could retrocausality be evidence of a four dimensional deterministic universe? Whether indeterminacy we observe is just our limited perspective of a structure that is already complete?

CHUCK NICE: All right, so first of all, let me just say this. Let me just say this, Chuck, before you. This is not the place to show off. All right? This is not the place to show off. Mr. Andrew D.

CHARLES LIU: All right.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, before you answer that, Chuck.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah.

CHUCK NICE: There’s so many things that he packed in there. You got to explain them, man.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Let me just, by the way, just, just a shout out to my wife. We met in graduate school. Her, she got her PhD in physics. She specialized. Her PhD thesis was on path intervals and that was her entire. So technically her PhD is in mathematical physics.

CHARLES LIU: Right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So I was like listening in on that as the question unfolded.

CHARLES LIU: Yes.

CHUCK NICE: No, that’s a great point. Isn’t that something that in Neil’s family, he ain’t even the smart one.

CHARLES LIU: It’s true. My family too. I’m a big fan. Yes, I have, I had the pleasure to, to meet all various spouses and like none of us can match up to our spouses in their, in their. It’s so true. Well, okay, yes. We don’t get too deeply into the vocabulary ribbon. I agree. But Andrew, that is a very good question. And let’s just cut to the basic chase.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah.

CHARLES LIU: Andrew is basically asking, with the way that we’re trying to figure out how the universe works on the quantum level, is it true that that time could be considered as running backwards and forwards at the same time? And therefore the entire universe is filled not just in space, but also in time. In other words, the past, the present, the future, all already exist and all we’re doing is either moving forward into it or standing still. We’re not moving backwards. Right. That’s basically what he’s asking.

And then the corollary, which means all trajectories are predetermined. That’s right. So if that’s true. Right. Then should we do physics backwards as well as forwards? Can something happening in the past cause what’s happening or predict what’s happening in.

CHUCK NICE: The future and vice versa, hence the retro causality?

CHARLES LIU: Retro causality, right. Fancy word, but just time running backwards.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Great word though, if you think about it.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Pretty clear what it means.

CHARLES LIU: So here’s the bottom line. In my opinion, on that one, which is, again, a great question. Thank you, Andrew. The idea is, does time already fill all of the dimension, the fourth dimension, or does it not? Right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: What do you mean by fill it? What do you mean by fill it?

The Nature of Time and Block Universe Theory

CHARLES LIU: Well, okay. Think of the universe as a big, tall glass of water. Okay. And time zero is the bottom of the glass. As you’re filling the glass, you’re basically adding more and more content in the vertical dimension of the glass until it’s full and then it’s full. But if we are right at the surface of where the water is now. Right. Is the glass already full?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, that’s what you mean. Has time already timed out?

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. Has already ticked, and we’re just experiencing it. This has been explored in several science fiction stories. For example, Ted Chiang’s excellent story called “Story of Your Life,” which became adapted into the movie “Arrival” that starred Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It was also in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five.”

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. That’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah. Where the main character, who’s loosely autobiographical from his time as a prisoner of war cleaning up Dresden after the bombings, he’s abducted by an alien and put in an alien zoo. So that doesn’t sound very free. Except they grant him access to his entire timeline.

CHARLES LIU: Right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Oh, so don’t spoil it for those people who haven’t read it yet. It’s worth reading once. But, yes.

CHARLES LIU: Don’t spoil it for those people who haven’t read it yet. It’s worth reading once. But, yes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And of course, there’s a movie. There’s a movie of it, too.

CHARLES LIU: There’s also a movie. That’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: For me, the fun part is it changes how you even speak of things. So you don’t say, well, when were you born? Well, I was always being born. When did you die? I’m always dying. I’m always. Because that timeline is just always filled out.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. So this is sometimes referred to as what’s called block time or a block universe, where there are four dimensions of space and time and it’s already filled. It’s a block that’s already filled, and we just happen to be moving through it. And because of our physical limitations, we can only move it in one direction.

Okay, but that is only one possible solution to the mathematical equations. Right. Andrew invoked quite a bit of advanced mathematics, but that math has yet to be borne out in experiment. And so his asking, you know, has an experiment been born out? The answer is no. Experiment has yet shown that the universe is, in fact, a full block. So we will see.

CHUCK NICE: I’m trying to figure out what experiment? Would you? How would you?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, that’s a good point.

CHUCK NICE: What experiment could you concoct that would actually show that?

Testing Block Time Through Quantum Experiments

CHARLES LIU: One thing that people think might help is if we could somehow send information faster than light through perhaps quantum entanglement or some quantum teleportation. It is, at the moment, absolutely technically impossible. But some people have thought, imagine if we could create an experiment between here and the moon where somehow we could send a signal and see if we could get a different signal before the light from the Earth would get to the moon.

That’s a really cool idea. Some people think that we could get that experiment off the ground in half a century or so. I am less optimistic, but it’s a possibility.

CHUCK NICE: Interesting. Wow.

GARY O’REILLY: It would have to be through quantum entanglement.

CHARLES LIU: Well, that’s one way to do it. You have to get rid of what we call local hidden variables in order to be able to do that. But that’s, again, a deep conversation for another time. That’s a lot of Bell’s theorem stuff to unpack in quantum.

CHUCK NICE: All right, all right. Okay. This is Janata. No, Jayanta. Jayanta. Jayanta Banik. I like Janata better.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You’re going to…

CHARLES LIU: It’s not your choice, Chuck.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I know. It’s not up to you.

CHUCK NICE: Okay.

Quantum Entanglement and Higher Dimensions

CHUCK NICE: This is Jayanta Banik who says, “Dear Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, warm greetings. My name is Jayanta Banik from California. I’d love to get your take on quantum entanglement exhibiting instantaneous correlations even though no information can travel faster than light. Could this apparent non-locality be explained by particles being adjacent in a higher spatial dimension, appearing distant only in 3D? Where is the institution fundamentally incompatible with quantum field theory?

My intuition is further supported by the recently measured speed of quantum entanglement formation of 232 attoseconds.” There’s a new one on me. So, like, the whole deal is happens in another dimension, which doesn’t make a difference what time it takes in if you’re outside the dimension and then back here in 3D. Instantaneous, faster than light. So what do you think, Chuck?

CHARLES LIU: First of all, did you pick that question just because we started talking about quantum, or was that question predetermined, in which case it might have been leading back to the mention we had about quantum entanglement in a sort of block time kind of way. What a coincidence. That’s really cool.

CHUCK NICE: I see what you did there.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah.

CHUCK NICE: It’s not what you did there.

CHARLES LIU: I know. Well, it’s not what I did. It’s what the universe has done because of its strange structure. I don’t know. So to answer this very good question, what I would say is that if you invoke an additional dimension to move through literally anything, right, then you don’t have to follow the rules of physics as they currently exist. You just add. As long as you can make the math work, you just add a loop or a different travel time of that information.

Okay, so your suggestion that quantum entanglement just merely means that there’s actually an entanglement that’s physical, but it goes through a different dimension. To get from one part of the entangled pair to the other part of the entangled pair is a mathematical strategy that can explain a bunch of things. The only thing is, if you’re doing that, then you have to explain what that other dimension is doing. Right. Where is it affecting the rest of the universe in other ways? Is it true for every entangled particle that they go through the same dimension? Does it go through a different dimension?

Also, philosophically, does that mean that there is actually a hidden local thing going on? Right. The idea of quantum entanglement, fundamentally, is that once you have these two particles or two parts of a pair of an entangled pair separated, or once they’ve created, it doesn’t matter if there’s a physical space in between them. There’s nothing connecting them at that moment other than the fact that they were entangled at one point in the past.

And so there is no real way that we can show that that extra dimension is necessary or even effective. The time, the 223 attoseconds in which quantum entanglement occurs that you quoted is a very cool experimental result. It needs to be further confirmed and things like that. But the idea is that it doesn’t give us a lot of insight as to whether or not another dimension is necessary at the moment. We probably don’t want to go in that direction yet. We don’t have enough information to know whether or not that’s a fruitful path, so to speak, for entanglement.

GARY O’REILLY: So it’s a known unknown.

CHARLES LIU: It’s an unknown unknown. Right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But it would allow us to accept, yeah, this faster than light communication because it’s happening in another dimension.

CHARLES LIU: Precisely.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s not actually moving faster than light.

CHARLES LIU: Right, right.

CHUCK NICE: That’s the thing. It’s still not moving faster than light. It’s just, well, isn’t that what subspace would be?

Star Trek, Star Wars, and Subspace

CHARLES LIU: Well, subspace is only vaguely decided or defined in Star Trek. Right, right.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah.

CHARLES LIU: But, yes, if you’re in a cube warp drive or something like that. Right. And you are in subspace as a result of being in a warp bubble. Right. That could be considered a dimension or it could be considered something that is in the existing spatial dimensions that just happens to be temporarily not accessible. And yet you have subspace communications in Star Trek, so it is accessible and it’s just all kinds of weirdness.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But also thought about it and try to come up with a solution to it. Yes, unlike Star Wars, that doesn’t try to find solutions to anything.

CHARLES LIU: Correct. Well, that’s one of the interesting things between Star Trek and Star Wars. Right. I love them both. But even though Star Trek has tried to be much more scientific, Star Wars just gave up on being scientific. Star Wars is just a space opera. And so in that sense it’s actually still kind of fun.

Although things like the Mandalorian and so forth, they still have a little bit of science thrown in there. Right. The ideas in general of things like the Force and whatnot in Star Wars. Eh, not so much.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Nope. That’s lame. Ready? Do you harbor questions about the universe? Some long held bit of cosmic curiosity lingering within you or questions about anything at all? You can become a Patreon supporter of StarTalk. You have access to our exclusive question line on our website. Those are where we draw our questions for our cosmic…

CHUCK NICE: Some of the most extreme objects in the universe.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: StarTalk is a work in progress where we every month come up with some new way, some new idea, some new understanding of how to bring the universe down to Earth. We could not do that without your support. Thank you. And as always, keep looking up.

Consciousness and Quantum Physics

GARY O’REILLY: All right, are we ready for another question?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, bring it on.

GARY O’REILLY: All right. This time we are Cindy Brell eyes. “Dr. Tyson, Lu and Lord Nice, Cindy from Tua, Latin, Oregon. My question.” Oh, I like this. “My question is consciousness. Is consciousness the result of quantum physics?”

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I like what people. Because we don’t really understand consciousness and no one understands quantum physics. So you just get one of those to explain the other and we’re all fine.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, this is another great question. Thank you, Cindy. And in fact, this is a question that I was asked like exactly word for word when I was at the American Astronomical Society meeting back in January. Yeah, I know, I like I said earlier, I’m still feeling really good about that meeting. I really was. I mean, you know, the world is on fire. I mean, things. Well, it’s also in ice. Things are just messed up. But when I went there, see what he did there.

CHUCK NICE: The world is on fire and it’s also in ice.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah.

CHARLES LIU: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I, that was Robert Frost, everybody. I didn’t invent that. But when I was there, and I was just with all the wonderful young people at the American Astronomical Society meeting, presenting their research, asking questions, talking, being together, it just felt so good. It felt like the future is what matters. You know, we, not things, can suck, but that’s only now, and the world is in good hands. I felt so good about that.

CHUCK NICE: Not if I can help it.

CHARLES LIU: But anyway. Yes, this was asked a student of mine. Now, Neil, you, of course, were even a trustee, a counselor of the American Astronomical Society. So you’re deeply into this society.

CHUCK NICE: As were you.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I mean, you were on the board as well, for a while.

CHARLES LIU: That is correct, yes. It’s the…

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So people know the American Astronomical Society is the organizing group of professional astrophysicists in the country.

The American Astronomical Society

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. And in fact, all of North America, there are more members of it than the International Astronomical Union, which was the organization that, amongst other things, helped you demote Pluto.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Neil, don’t blame that on me.

CHUCK NICE: Pluto had it coming.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Pluto so had it coming. But that the official vote was the IAU.

CHARLES LIU: IAU, right. So the AAS is a great organization. And…

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And how many? What?

CHARLES LIU: How many is it up to 8,000 members.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: 8,000 members, and there’s 8 billion people in the world.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. So that makes us one in a million.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: If you do the math, that’s one in a million.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. So it’s very cool. And so many people there. There were about 3,000 people there overall. And so many of them were students, younger people. And one of those folks had come up to me and said, hey, you know, I remember hearing you guys talking about free will. And that made me wonder, is consciousness quantum? Is it quantum consciousness? And is that why there’s free will? Because there’s uncertainty in the quantum realm that we can’t pin down. And so we can’t determine what we’re going to do at any given moment.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So we interpret that uncertainty as free will, possibly.

CHARLES LIU: Right. Yeah. When we talked way back in the day. Right. Wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like a long time ago about free will. We were actually asking ourselves, right. At what point do we say we don’t know what’s coming next? Right. And if we. The more and more science we’ve done about human behavior and physics, and so forth, the more we think we know how determined the system is and we just have reached a boundary where we don’t know.

It could be all the way down at the quantum level. Now, there have been ideas about quantum consciousness for a long time, tying to physics. In fact, Nobel laureate Roger Penrose had come up with a hypothesis with some of his colleagues decades ago, suggesting that consciousness is sort of like the quantum spaces in between our synapses.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And that is not why he got his Nobel Prize.

CHARLES LIU: That is not why.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Clear.

CHARLES LIU: No, that’s a different thing.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: He got it for black holes.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right. But nevertheless, he very creative guy. He did all kinds of stuff about tessellations, mathematics and things like that as well. And so he gave this particular hypothesis about how we store information. Right. The bottom line is, in my opinion, and I use that term a lot because I like putting things down to the bottom, we haven’t yet defined consciousness. Right.

Philosophers will, and I know you love philosophers, Neil. I mean, you embrace them and you think that they’re awesome. So I’ll quote philosophers as much as I can here, that everything is conscious. It’s just the different levels of consciousness that matter. Right. Gary, let me ask you. When you played soccer, did you sometimes feel like the ball had a mind of its own?

GARY O’REILLY: Yeah, there were days, but basically I worked out that it was mainly user error on my behalf.

CHUCK NICE: Nice, nice.

Consciousness and Free Will

CHARLES LIU: Right? Yeah. So philosophers of consciousness sometimes do argue that the soccer ball does have its own consciousness, but it’s at such a low level, right. Such a level that we cannot understand that the how hard it’s kicked, whether the valve was affected or not, whether the wind is blowing, whether there’s a spin, things like that, that fully explains how it moves and that its own free will or its own consciousness has no effect?

CHUCK NICE: Well, then what good is it? The soccer ball. What good is it to have consciousness if it’s of no effect? Zero agency and zero influence on outcomes? The whole idea of consciousness is that you somehow can influence an outcome. Other than that, what good is it really?

CHARLES LIU: Well, I don’t know. That’s really a great point. If you have this kind of consciousness, if even exists. Right. Think we humans, I don’t know what is something that we have that serves no purpose, and yet we have it, and therefore it is part of who we are.

CHUCK NICE: An appendix.

CHARLES LIU: Ah, there you go. There you go. The fact that you have an appendix, does that make you different from when you have your appendix removed because it got infected? Are you the same as you were before? And if you are, aren’t, what is it about? Removing that particular part of you, is it that part’s consciousness, that part’s quantum effects, that parts physical effects that make you a different person.

CHUCK NICE: Now, do I have insurance or not? Because I live in America.

CHARLES LIU: You know, that is.

CHUCK NICE: Well, that’s a good point. You can have. There is obsolescence that is a part of us. So, you know, and I’m sure it served a purpose at some point and now it doesn’t.

CHARLES LIU: Right. You know, consider it on an even deeper level. Right. Surgery isn’t necessary. Our skin cells completely cycle through every month or so. Right. It used to be the dermis, epidermis, and then it flakes off.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, they slough off.

CHARLES LIU: And it is completely true that none of us here at this meeting have the same skin cells that we did.

CHUCK NICE: When we were a month ago.

CHARLES LIU: Maybe not even. Yeah, might be not even same muscle cells. We have a lot of the same bone cells, a lot of the same brain cells, but a lot of them are gone now. Right. But our consciousness continues. And in fact our consciousness continues to grow because we continue to experience things, you and I. I think my consciousness is enriched and improved because I’m hanging out with you guys today. Right?

CHUCK NICE: Give it time. Give it time.

CHARLES LIU: How does our consciousness continue even though our physical characteristics have discontinued?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You know, the best evidence that nobody understands consciousness is how many books are written on the subject.

CHARLES LIU: Yes, that’s true for consciousness.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Book that says consciousness explains means no one really understands it.

CHARLES LIU: But it’s worth thinking about, isn’t it?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Definitely. Just for context, that’s on the consciousness shelf of the library in the bookstore. There’s no end of consciousness books, but you go to the gravity section, there’s like two books.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, but one of them is big.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Thorn like another book. Right. So. But I’m just saying we’re not continuing to rewrite a book on gravity because gravity is understood. So don’t confuse the existence of a book that says something is explained as a statement of the state of the science behind it.

Quantum Consciousness

CHARLES LIU: I think that’s a very good point. And so this question that Cindy has about quantum consciousness, right. Is that point, can the quantum properties that are inherent in our brains or in our overall physical systems allow us to hold together something, what we’re calling consciousness, that persists despite our physical changes being so radical.

CHUCK NICE: I hope so. That’s all I can say is because that, that is the greatest possibility, that our consciousness will extend beyond our so called life, you know, our physical life. That is the greatest case to make that we could in some way go on.

Especially when you think about the fact that. Well, the question before that, when we talk about entanglement and different dimensions, that maybe we could actually exist on a higher plane of being in another dimension because of quantum consciousness. And the only way we could find out people is go ahead and die.

CHARLES LIU: No, thanks. Great advice there.

GARY O’REILLY: I love the fact you end it with a laugh.

CHARLES LIU: Actually. That’s the point. Right. Right. Now, research in things like consciousness and quantum awareness and things like that are dependent on the fact that we don’t want people to die as a result of that. And people have tried to make these experiments. More than a hundred years ago, for example, there were some experiments about people who were about to die and they were willing to be subjects of an experiment that were carefully weighed. Neil, you know this better than I do.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it started out with, you know, after the X rays were invented, they said, let’s X ray dying people. See if there’s a soul that comes out. And, you know, in retrospect, it’s like, what were you doing? But at the time, that’s a completely sensible experiment.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Religion makes a prediction. And now you have a means of probing what’s inside the body. If the soul is inside the body, maybe the X rays will find it. Nothing wrong with that. As a. As an attempt to gather evidence for those whose faith is challenged. That’s right.

Living in the Present

CHUCK NICE: All right, so let me ask you this, then. Oh, okay. This is a philosophical question. Do you think that perhaps we do a disservice by looking for something like that? And after an after nest, I will call it an afterwards. I will call it. Because it robs us of the urgency and importance of being here now.

So here’s the deal. If I understand the urgency and importance of being here now, and that is always top of mind and at the forefront of my consciousness, then it allows me to live to the fullest. Whereas if I retreat to this sense of there’s going to be something after, I’m waiting for the after, then I am robbing myself of the fullness of life in the here and now.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Well, Chuck, the President.

CHARLES LIU: I’ll just say one thing about that night. I’d love to hear everybody else’s opinions on this, but here’s my take on that.

CHUCK NICE: Chuck, go ahead.

CHARLES LIU: Your idea of that sort of thing, talking about afterlife and things like that, has been the basis of just about every apocalyptic culture or evangelical religion where you are going to be saved or that you are heading on to bigger, better things.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Each one of them requires an end of the world scenario for you to then in your lifetime.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The world might end in a thousand years. You’re not getting anybody in that cult.

CHARLES LIU: Something like that. Right. So the idea for that one is that if current life is worth living, if you feel good about your life right now, then looking for an afterlife is kind of like a bummer. But if current life sucks, in your personal opinion, maybe you want to be delivered somewhere else. Right.

This has become in so many different religions. I’m not actually the religion expert in my family. My eldest daughter actually studied religion in school. But the bottom line. Oh again the bottom line thing there for there is that this idea of the afterlife has been used by organized religions.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Co opted I would say.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah. To do anything. Right. The caste system that is part of some religions. Well you, you may be really bad right now, but that’s okay. You, you do the thing that we ask you to do and maybe you’ll be born again as a higher caste individual, you know, or you that. So that’s a way to sort of make people not worry about their current lives.

But it can bring hope. If your life currently sucks. But you’re like, you know, if I keep working, I’ll do better and life will become better. But you’re not looking at the present as much as you’re looking at the long game.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And by the way. And reincarnation in that flavor also gets you the other way.

CHARLES LIU: That’s right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: If you misbehave, you’ll come back as something maybe not even human.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, right, right.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, you come back as a soccer ball getting kicked around by Gary and his friends.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And that little bit of consciousness that’s in the ball.

CHUCK NICE: I’m really f*ed up.

CHARLES LIU: It’s a tough call, right? Yeah, it’s a great question. In the end we know that we human consciousness, we’re no longer to able to communicate our consciousness once we have expired.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Except I don’t want to upload it into software.

Uploading Consciousness

CHARLES LIU: Software we can’t tell people if we’re still alive or not. But there’s been some really neat fiction these days right. Where people have uploaded themselves into some sort of an AI system or.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, I think there’s a. There’s a great show. I think it’s called Altered Carbon if anybody wants to check it out. Where the idea of your consciousness can be downloaded into a little disk and then the corporeal body is called the skin. It’s just skins and you can put it in whatever skins you would like to put it in and. Yeah, and so you could go from being, you know, a really attractive woman to a fat stubby guy to.

It doesn’t make a difference because it’s just your consciousness that gets loaded into another body, including bodies that can be especially made just to hold your consciousness. Wow.

CHARLES LIU: Wow.

CHARLES LIU: Altered carbon. The altered carbon. Now the problem with that, and just to wrap up quantum consciousness on this idea, is that if we are thinking that consciousness is quantum in nature, we can’t digitize it. Because digitizing would mean that you could get every single bit of information correct and properly reproduced.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Interesting.

CHARLES LIU: But if you’re in a quantum system, right, right.

CHUCK NICE: You only have like in a quantum ability.

CHARLES LIU: Right. Your qubits, you settle right. Only when they are red and then they’re destroyed. That’s right. So you can never actually get a perfect copy of your brain. You only get an imperfect copy every time you try to retrieve that information. So in the altered carbon situation, every time you’re put into a new body, you could be fundamentally different in your consciousness.

CHUCK NICE: Interesting.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Damn.

CHUCK NICE: You just ruined their whole show, Charles.

CHARLES LIU: Ruined everything. Don’t tell them, Charles.

GARY O’REILLY: To that point, if you were to upload, download whichever load of your consciousness, all you would be doing is taking a snapshot of your consciousness at that moment.

CHARLES LIU: 100%.

GARY O’REILLY: You keep existing. Your consciousness, as we just discussed, grows, even though you will lose cells. Consciousness is there and continues to grow. So you’ll only have a snapshot if you’re able to capture it.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: What’s wrong with the snapshot? Because every neurosynaptic connection with the bio, the chemistry, the electromagnetic fields. If I get a snapshot of that and put that in a jar and then re-engage it later.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Why isn’t that an exact copy of where I am the moment that copy was taken?

CHUCK NICE: Like Apple Time machine.

CHARLES LIU: It is an exact copy as well as it can be digitized. But then once you start running it, if you’re a quantum consciousness, then all the decisions start changing again. Right. So everything is different the moment you turn it back on.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: No, no, no. Okay, I think you missed something there. Okay, okay. So what I said is not even possible. That’s the point.

CHARLES LIU: Yes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You cannot know the state of every particle down to the last particle that’s running your brain because quantum physics prevents that knowledge. So to say I have an exact copy of it cannot be a real statement.

CHARLES LIU: Excellent way to put it. Excellent.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And that front ends what you just said about trying to recover what your thoughts were.

CHARLES LIU: Right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Right. Okay.

CHUCK NICE: Interesting. Wow.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: God, that put a kibosh on all uploading consciousness.

The Holographic Doctor and Digital Consciousness

CHARLES LIU: Absolutely. Well, yes. And if you’re talking about, like, fictional characters which are digital, like the holographic doctor in the Star Trek Enterprise.

CHUCK NICE: Right.

CHARLES LIU: What you’re doing is that you’re assuming that consciousness can be digitized at least to a facsimile to where a starting point can be produced that is reproducible. Right. In other words, every time you turn on the doctors, please state the nature of the medical emergency. Right. And if you can get to that point, and then the future time evolution is also digital. Right. And not quantum, then maybe you can get some semblance of consciousness. But if it’s quantum. No chance.

CHUCK NICE: No chance. Now, how about this? Suppose I’m able. Suppose I’m able to run subroutines in a program that is everything about me, every single thing. So I have the main program, which is Chuck, and then I have, like, just almost. It can’t be infinite, but, like, I got one.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You need a whole subroutine that has you put on lip balm 20 times a day.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, absolutely.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That’s the lip balm subroutine.

CHARLES LIU: That’s good.

GARY O’REILLY: You’ve reminded him now you just reminded me.

CHARLES LIU: So the subroutine would be called Chuck. Chuck. And then the sub subroutine would be Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

CHUCK NICE: Right, exactly.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah. So.

CHUCK NICE: So there’s this kind of replication of everything that I am. That I am all the way down, turtles, all the way down.

CHARLES LIU: Okay.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That’s just a map. That’s not consciousness.

CHUCK NICE: That’s my point. But everything about that is me. And when you run that program, you’re talking to me. And then let’s put an AI element, we’ll call it, that allows that same program to grow and flourish mentally the same way I would so be able to take in information, process it the way Chuck would, and do every. So it’s me on every single level.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You’re describing Chuck.

CHUCK NICE: But digitized.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, Chuck, what you’re describing is the last chapter, if memory serves, of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach, written by Douglas Hofstadter.

CHUCK NICE: It’s called what? God bless you. What’s it called?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Gödel. Gödel. Escher Bach. Gödel.

CHARLES LIU: Escher Bach.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Gödel is a philosopher, mathematician, who did some important contributions in the early 20th century.

CHUCK NICE: Okay.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But point is, it’s a philosopher wrote the book. And it’s quite the meandering of ideas inspired by these brilliant three people in our history. Point is the last chapter he reserves. If that’s the book I’m remembering, it might have been one of his other books. I think it’s in that book where he has a conversation with Einstein’s brain. So you take Einstein’s brain, like, right when he dies, and then you map everything that’s there. Okay. And then it has an auditory capacity, so you ask it a question, and you watch the sound waves trigger neurosynaptic connections, and then it goes through, and then it triggers a connection back because it knows it’s a question. And then Einstein’s brain speaks back to you. And he made a very convincing account of how and why that could should work, at least in principle. But no mention of quantum uncertainty was given. Right.

CHARLES LIU: So the principle is good. I mean, we humans don’t interact with one another on the quantum level, so it’s certainly possible that we could get to a point where we humans could not tell the difference between Chuck and Chuck 2. Right. But that doesn’t mean that they’re the same. Right? True. And this is, you know, we don’t even have to go to, you know, 20th century nonfiction to think about this. On Broadway, there is actually a pretty acclaimed play recently. It was called Marjorie Prime, if you guys are familiar with that, where a character is speaking to a deceased spouse via artificial intelligence.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s really a very Black Mirror.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, but it wasn’t dark or anything. It was just a kind of a plot device to have someone try to think about. What does it mean to be alive? Or is it better to have yourself alive in some way, even if you actually aren’t alive? Is it worth it, or is it better that you just not? And you know, things like that.

CHUCK NICE: Well, it’s not worth it to me. But it may be worth it to, like, you know, maybe my children, who could benefit from my life experience even though I’m not there, and my spouse, who could be comforted by the fact that, you know, I know them better than anybody else, and so they can talk to me the way they can’t talk to anyone else. There are benefits to that. They’re just not benefits to me.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Chuck, I met your kids. They ain’t coming to you for advice. Oh, they were done with you years ago. Cold.

CHUCK NICE: Cold.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Tell me I’m wrong.

CHUCK NICE: I was going to say that would hurt if it weren’t true.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Oh, especially that daughter of yours.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, well, that’s so true.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah.

CHUCK NICE: I go to Charlie for advice.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That’s what I’m saying.

CHARLES LIU: That’s what I’m saying.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: All right, let’s get to the next question. We luxuriated on that one.

CHUCK NICE: We did. We took a bath in that one.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Wow. Okay.

Scientific Ignorance in Public Opinion

GARY O’REILLY: All right, so let’s have a little run and a jump at this particular contributor’s name. Magarikana. Yes. Doctors Loot America. Sorry if. I apologize if I’ve missed.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You sounded like Chuck Gary. I thought you were better than that.

GARY O’REILLY: I don’t speak Danish very well.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay.

CHARLES LIU: Danish. Oh, okay.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yes.

GARY O’REILLY: So Doctors Lou Tyson and. Oh, Chuck, you’ll love this. Just smart enough. Lord. Nice. Hello from Copenhagen.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Smart enough. Wait, wait, Chuck, that’s the name of your comedy special?

CHUCK NICE: It’s the comedy special which, by the way, you can watch on the YouTube.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Let me say that. You can watch on the StarTalk YouTube.

CHUCK NICE: Yes, Ken.

GARY O’REILLY: All right, here we go. We’ve recently seen people that believe there are penguins in Greenland. Yeah. What are other. Please hold that thought.

CHARLES LIU: What.

GARY O’REILLY: What are other glaring examples of scientific ignorance you have witnessed in the realm of public opinion which make your collective drawers jaws drop? Please. And he says, tuck, which is. I know. Thank you. In danger.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: We’ll just go round robin. I got one. You ready? Not only penguins in the Arctic, bears in the Antarctic. The very word Arctic means bear. So Antarctic should tell you there are no bears there.

CHARLES LIU: That’s true.

CHUCK NICE: That’s true. All right.

CHARLES LIU: All right. Well, I would say, because you said tak. I would say. Welcome. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. That’s a great question. And there are a lot of misconceptions, but the one that I find probably the most saddening for me is the idea that vaccines are dangerous. That one is the problem that bothers me a lot because there’s probably no science that has been better tested, and when mistakes have been made, they have been corrected faster than good vaccine science. And the attempt of a lot of people to prey on the fears and the insecurities of parents or just people in general, that bothers me a lot. I think that’s the thing that drops my jaw the most.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And, Charles, it’s deep. You know, I’m just going to say flat Earth, but after that, you know.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, man.

CHARLES LIU: Flat Earth ain’t great either.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, we’ll say that’s never killed anybody, I think is the thing. Well, actually killed one person.

CHUCK NICE: Killed one guy.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It killed a guy who built his own rocket.

CHUCK NICE: Built his rocket to go up supposedly to prove that the earth was flat.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Right. But he didn’t get the Darwin Award. You know why?

CHUCK NICE: Why?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You already had kids. The Darwin Award. You can’t have kids.

CHUCK NICE: Right? Can’t have kids. Because the whole idea is that.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The whole idea is, you know, you removed from.

CHARLES LIU: I don’t want to, you know, disparage anybody who falls for the pseudoscience. Right. I mean, these are not necessarily dumb people. These are not necessarily.

CHUCK NICE: No, because it’s kind of an emotional decision that is made in ignorance. And I say, I use the word ignorant there in its most technical sense. And people think that they are protecting a child, their child, but their ignorance unfortunately puts the child in peril because many, many needless deaths happen because people do not vaccinate their children.

And we have probably the most tragic account of that was in Samoa when RFK Jr, God only knows how he became in charge of our country’s health. He says he did not encourage anyone to steer away from vaccines, but the truth is he went there, he preached against it, people stopped vaccinating, they had a measles outbreak and many children died. So it’s just that simple.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, it’s true. We don’t remember anymore how you would come back to school after summer vacation and look around and see who amongst your friends from last year aren’t there anymore because they died of polio during the summer.

GARY O’REILLY: Right.

CHARLES LIU: Or because they had some sort of childhood disease. We don’t remember that. And so it’s a victim of its own success. Yeah, it’s easy for us to think it’s all fake, but it absolutely is not. And the reason that we are so luxuriously comfortable in our public health department these days, as bad as, you know, some healthcare issues are, we don’t get those kinds of diseases anymore is because of the success of the scientific vaccination that we have been fortunate.

CHUCK NICE: Absolutely.

CHARLES LIU: That we have been fortunate.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s the victim of its own success. It’s the same thing as in the simplest example, why are you using dandruff shampoo? You don’t have dandruff.

CHUCK NICE: Right, that. There you go. No, it’s.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Stop using the dandruff and you will.

CHUCK NICE: And you will have dandruff. It’s that simple.

Evidence of a Round Earth

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And another thing, we’re recording this in January 2026. It’s still football season. And I will highlight for people on the east coast because the sun sets early, so it gets dark around five or six o’clock when you are watching a football game on the west coast and the sun is still up. This is evidence. Earth is round.

CHUCK NICE: Round.

CHARLES LIU: Okay.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I don’t know how else. That’s the simplest evidence I can give you.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, yeah. It’s unfortunate the sun has not yet.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Set in the west for the people three time zones away from.

CHUCK NICE: It’s, you know, windmills are a hoax.

CHARLES LIU: Right. Well, look, I, to me, you know, and this is such a good question. And of course it comes not from the United States. So it’s not at all anything about our country or any individual society or country, but when there is the origin.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Of the question, the person who asked the question.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The question. Thank you. We have to remember that everybody is subject to ignorance. There are things that each one of us does not know. It may be different depending on where we are. So instead of like forgetting about it and just being angry about it, we got to reach out and continue to convince folks and help them understand that whatever you think you may know, please be sure to check it with as many people as possible and as many different reliable sources as you can so that you can really get it done right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: All you need to do is look at a 20 minute YouTube video and then you become the expert.

CHARLES LIU: Thanks, Neil.

CHUCK NICE: Especially if that video is hosted by Joe Rogan.

CHARLES LIU: Oh, my goodness.

The Power of Saying “I Don’t Know”

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So what you’re missing there, Charles, I think is, you know, we’re all educators here and the word ignorance, as Chuck accurately described in its formal definition, it just means you don’t know something.

CHARLES LIU: Right.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So we thrive in the space of where others are ignorant because we teach them. That is what we do as educators. The problem is not when people are ignorant of a truth. The problem is when they are ignorant of a truth and don’t know they’re ignorant of the truth and assert that they know what they’re talking about, then it’s a battle.

They’re not just a student in your class eager to learn what is true from an expert. It’s some other construct in society where people are rejecting the advice of experts on the basis of what someone who’s not an expert told them. Or like I said, or they did their own research spending 20 minutes on YouTube.

CHARLES LIU: So what we need to do is just remind, remind ourselves that too. Right?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yes.

CHARLES LIU: Our greatest.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Tactically, it’s different. Two different things.

CHARLES LIU: Right. As scientists, our greatest power is to be able to say, I don’t know, and not feel bad about ourselves about it. Right. And what we want to do is to help other people do that.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Scientists were the, it was the first branch of human inquiry where, I don’t know, became a fundamental part of discovery.

CHUCK NICE: And something good. It’s something good. And you know what? That’s, I hate to, I don’t hate to say this. I’m happy to say that it’s the number one thing that I have learned from scientists. And hanging out with scientists for all these years now is one, I celebrate my own ignorance.

I think it’s a great thing because when I don’t know something, guess what? I do? It’s that simple. And so there’s no shame in not knowing. And it’s a wonderful thing. You’re just ever growing. Not knowing is ever growing. That’s what I, that’s the way I look at.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Nice little phrase. Oh, yeah, catchy. Not knowing plus curiosity is ever growing.

CHUCK NICE: Yes, yes, exactly right.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah.

CHUCK NICE: You can’t just stop with not knowing.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: All right, Gary, what do you have on that list?

GARY O’REILLY: Not much, really. I think it’s in the UK.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Was there anything specific when you were growing up that was particularly anti science or science? No, ignorant.

GARY O’REILLY: I remember, you know, get vaccinated, get there, do this, do that. My father, my father was chief technician in the physics lab at East London Polytechnic, which is now.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You never told us that.

CHARLES LIU: Oh, cool.

GARY O’REILLY: Yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And you’re the son, the soccer player. Okay.

GARY O’REILLY: Yes. The fruit fell off the tree and.

CHARLES LIU: Rolled a long way.

CHUCK NICE: The only professional footballer in the UK whose father is, like, such a disappointment.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Where did we go wrong?

CHUCK NICE: Our son, that professional footballer. Life that everybody wants to live.

GARY O’REILLY: I’d walk in the room and you just see his head go.

CHUCK NICE: Hilarious. Hilarious.

Are We All One Being?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: All right, I think we got time for one last question. If we do it quick.

CHARLES LIU: All right.

GARY O’REILLY: Margo Lane. Osages on the cosmic mountain. As I watch the Monks for Peace walk from Texas to D.C., I’m sure struck by the constancy of their energy, how they all seem like one on some molecular level. Are we all one being?

CHARLES LIU: Wow.

GARY O’REILLY: Deep into the swimming pool, guys.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Starter there. But it’s not the answer, but it’s a starter information. We walked out of Africa, into Europe, Asia, across the Bering Strait, North America, into South America. We walked that. So human beings and walking is something we genetically know how to do. I just want to put that on the table right now.

CHARLES LIU: So if they’re constantly moving and so forth, I don’t know that they’re one single organism. But what they are is they’re communicating really well. They’re able to listen to each other or see each other, and they can synchronize their steps and their pace and their speed and things like that. So in a sense, although we are many, or although they are many, they are able to put themselves together and move as one.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And clearly being a monk is not the prerequisite for that because soldiers do that as well, who are marching somewhere to do harm. Okay. And so that’s, it’s a human thing, not so much that they are monks in the interest of peace.

CHUCK NICE: That is why we have the Department of War and no DEI.

CHARLES LIU: Well, I think the monks have something to say about that.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, exactly.

CHARLES LIU: There you go.

CHUCK NICE: I love it.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But Chuck, you did ayahuasca at one point. Did you find yourself resonating spiritually with others on the same wavelength kind of thing?

CHUCK NICE: I know we don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to make this quick. The oneness you feel is not just with person kind, you actually feel connected to like everyone who’s in the Malacca with you, which is the sacred place where the rituals. But you also feel like all the other people out there, like everywhere, all at once. And then, I can’t explain this, you feel a oneness with all that is the universe itself.

CHARLES LIU: Wow.

CHUCK NICE: And this is all happening inside of your head, outside of your being, all at once.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So monks are trained. I mean, I don’t know if this is the meditative branch of monks, but presumably, Chuck, one might be able to reach that state of consciousness without drugs.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, without a doubt.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, just. And so. And you feel that connectivity just as the questioner was inquiring.

CHUCK NICE: You know, I don’t have time for that. So I went to a place called Rythmia in Costa Rica and I spent a week.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You don’t have time to learn any.

CHUCK NICE: Mental tricks to learn it. And they did it for me and it was amazing.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Well, plus, we all like choruses when they sing together and you know, we highly value coordinated efforts in our culture and our society. And Charles, you sang, you sang.

CHARLES LIU: Solo or chorus, everything. And whether it was solo and you were connecting with an audience or whether it was in a choir, when you’re with a whole bunch of like minded people trying to produce one single piece of music, it was a connection that really transcends the individual.

There was no need for any kind of external, you know, drugs or whatever, nor years of training. It was just listening, watching, following and everybody together somehow trying to get something more than themselves coming of the common mind. Yeah. And if the monks were able to.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Achieve mind, body, spirit.

CHARLES LIU: Yeah, exactly what we’re doing.

CHUCK NICE: I would love to see these monks singing on ayahuasca.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, on that note.

CHARLES LIU: Exactly.

Wrapping Up

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I think that’s all the time we have. Okay, so, Charles Liu, you’ve got, you’ve got the quantum physics handy answer thing.

CHARLES LIU: The quantum physics answer book.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I’m not in my office right now, but I have two copies on my shelf, just so you know.

CHARLES LIU: That’s very sweet of you.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That makes you just a little wealthier because I bought an extra copy.

CHARLES LIU: Oh, thank you.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: There. That is. No, it’s quite the complete because there’s so many dangling bits that people, they get, they hear bits and pieces of quantum. They don’t put it all together. And that book.

CHARLES LIU: Well, in the year or so since that book came out, there’s been all kinds of new stuff. So there’s going to have to be another edition soon because it just keeps going.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And Chuck, we posted your, your comedy special. Just smart enough. It was New Year’s Eve eve, I think we posted it correct on our main channel, wasn’t it?

CHUCK NICE: That’s correct.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And so this is a, it dropped then. Check it out. It’s all there and it’s free.

GARY O’REILLY: Yep.

CHUCK NICE: Go watch it. Apparently, it’s been well received. The people are loving it, and I’m very, very happy about that. It’s very satisfying to see the StarTalk audience supporting the show that much.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s very cool. You know the most evil thing someone said in the comments? What they said, you know, I used to come to StarTalk to hear Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but now I do it to your church.

CHUCK NICE: Yeah, that was my brother who wrote that. Tony. Tony, I owe you $20.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It’s coming soon, Gary.

GARY O’REILLY: Yes, Neil?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Got to get a gig for announcing for the World Cup. And we’ll all come listen.

GARY O’REILLY: All right, let’s see what I can do. Just before we go, I’d like to say thank you to all our Patreon group that supplied questions here today. There were so many, and we just only have time for so many, but.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And we luxuriate occasionally on one versus the other.

GARY O’REILLY: There were 35 pages of questions.

CHUCK NICE: Oh, thank you.

GARY O’REILLY: Thank you so much to the good guys at Patreon.

Closing Remarks

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: All right, well, that’s been yet another installment of StarTalk Special Edition. This one was a grab bag. A good one too, with our geek in chief, Charles Liu. Guys, always good to have you here.

CHUCK NICE: Always a pleasure.

GARY O’REILLY: Thank you, Neil.

CHARLES LIU: What a joy. Thank you.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up.

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