You're So Vain, Earthlings

this earth made to endure high school? Um? Or you know, why am I the daughter or the son of my particular set of parents and so on and so forth. Yeah, yeah, And then the navel makes one think of this because it's like where does it begin? Where does it end? That's right origins, you know, that's that's where we hooked up. If you were willing pull on the navel like this, the person unravel. You know, what does an audi mean? What is any mean? This lint come from without or

from within? Because I always thought it came from within, but I could it comes from a without. I think the lint comes from without. I don't know. I have a self cleaning belly button, so I can't really those are great. I heard those are on the market. Yeah yeah, um,

they're kind of expensive, but they're well worth it. Yeah. Um. But no, I mean I think that when you had proposed doing this podcast, I thought about the navel gazing for sure, But um on a cosmological level, yeah, yeah, I think on like on the individual level, and I'll throughout this podcast, we're gonna start with the individual on sort of you know, span out like powers a tent, you know, until we reach the you know, the boundaries

of of understanding, because we're vinglorious like that. Yes. Um, So it's like on a on a very simple level, it's like, yeah, we all give those moments. It's just this little like generalis like just one little nugget of pure thought, you know, I mean, unformed thought. We we kind of think, you know, here I am, I and I exist. I'm thinking right now. You know, just just stop for a second and do that, gentle listener, Yeah that right there isn't that amazing? Yeah? You know, and

then other stuff comes crashing in. We end up thinking about the grocery list or or you know, or we we throw religion in on top of it and explain everything away to a certain extent. But but for that one moment, for that one moment, for that one brief, glorious moment, you get a sense of the the gravitas of this moment where we're actually existing. And and if

you're an astrophysicist, you have been thinking about this. You're probably your entire life, not just nable gazing about it when you were sixteen, and you're applying it to not just hey, we're sitting here in a podcast booth talking about this. Why are we in particular sitting here on Earth in this solar system? What what makes us so

special or not special? Exactly? Yeah, that's that's that's what people keep discussing time and time and end though there was a time when, in the same way that you know that that we're at the center of any of these questions. You know, why am I here? You know what? How did how did I get to be here? Um? You know people have used to have the sen sort

of models for the cosmos. You had the geocentric model. UM. That was sort of an early scientific way of understanding, um, the visible Solar system and how the planets and everything moved in our relationship to right and so geocentricism is the Earth is the center of the universe and everything else revolves around us. And uh, and that was a

big medicine back in the back in the day. But then you ended up having a new theory come up come along called the heliocentric theory, which said, actually, Earth isn't the center of the universe. The Sun is the center of the universe. I saw I saw something Africa, which which thinker it was? But someone had like, no, no, it was Tico Bray, the guy with the who's amazing we had like the fake nose because he lost a nose in a duel. Yeah, and he had a he had like a pet deer that lived in the in

the mansion with him or the castle with him or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, and he would like feed the deer beer. And then the deer drank itself to death and fell down some stairs. And then someone may or may not have poisoned Tico, or he may have um his bladder may have exploded because he was too drunk to get up from the dinner table. There are different theories. He was a great man, but uh, he kind of had like he was he

wasn't like fully ready to adopt the heliocentric model. At one point he was that he said, you know, okay, the Sun is the center of the universe, and then the Earth revolves around the Sun, but then everything else revolves around here or or it was a variation on that. But so yeah, but one of the early um, uh, you know, one of the early guys that really committed

to this was Nicholas Copernicus. Uh. And to give him more of a frame of reference, this guy lived fourteen seventy three to fifty three, and you know, he's a mathematician astronomer and uh. And yeah, he was cool with the idea that Earth was not the center of everything. And out of a lot of his thinking comes this thing called the Copernican principle. And this just says that there's uh, there's no there are no special observers, there

are no special origins or viewpoints and uh. And so that if you have a theory about about humanity, about humanity's origins or its place in the cosmos, um that you know that that gives you know, humans a privileged position, then from a scientific standpoint at least, that theory is bunk. Okay, Alright, So the really intriguing part of this I think that you had sent me is is something about a little lady named Goldilocks. Yes, uh, and everyone's familiar with the

Goldilocks story. Can you tell us the story? Yeah, yeah, you've got Goldilocks, she of the blonde tresses who breaks in um to this house with three bears are the tenants, right, And it's like a mother and a father and a child bear. Right. Yeah, So I mean, you know she's they're not there, so she can't terrorize them, but she does rifle through their stuff. She eats their food, she tests out their beds um, and she's very particular, this Goldilocks.

It's interesting I read that they are older models of the story, because of course all these folk tales are as old as time, and but in some of the older models of it, apparently Goldilocks was like an old woman and the bears like catch her and like try and like drown her and burn her and all these other things. And then I think she still slips out the window. But yeah, so at some point she switched from like horrible old lady burglar to like shift her. Yeah,

she was a shape shifter, that was it. But to this young innocent that we would all be really upset about if the bear's mauld right. Yeah, it becomes more of an innocent thing. And in a way, it's like, if you're thinking of in cosmological terms, it's like, which which model are humans? Are we the innocent child stumbling through the universe or the um the nasty old woman who comes in to steal things? I don't know, or

are we the bears? Maybe we're the bears? Um? Of course, the whole thing is she ends up finding the porridge that's just right, the bed that's just right, the chair that's just right, because the other options are either you know, too big or too small, too cold or too hot. And if you look at our solar system you can identify a similar situation with some of the inner planets. Look at Venus, Earth and Mars. Venus, Uh, the atmosphere is too thick, too dense, it's insane pressure crushed like

a grape, and it's too hot. Go over to Mars. Not enough atmosphere, and you'll freeze to death. If you happen to land on Earth, though, you'll find everything is just right. We have thriving life everywhere because conditions are

fine for that to happen right Florida. It's sunny all year long, right, and and there are a number of different The thing that really gives people thinking is that there are a number of different um situations that line up just so you know, um, it's uh, you know, it's like when when you start thinking about like if my mom and dad hadn't met and you know then

and and hooked up, I wouldn't be here today. And then if you started, you know, uh, pointing out other things about it, like well, if my dad hadn't gone to this school, he wouldn't have met her. And if my mom, you know, had done such and such, then she wouldn't have been you know, they're all these different factors.

You can start laying out right, and you can even kind of go deeper back and say, if my great grandfather hadn't dodged that straight bullet, or you know, his grandfather hadn't done this, and then you can sort of expand out from there and start to apply this to the universe. Right, Like I'm just to run through some of the things about Earth. Uh, the temperature is just right for the to be liquid water. We have a

large enough moon to give us climate stability. The Sun is stable and isn't you know, expanding and destroying us anything. And compared to other suns, it's a pretty stable sun. Um. It's uh, we have just the right core um only of the inner planet's only Mercury and Earth have a liquid solid core that creates this uh this um uh this dynamo effect that produces an electromagnetic shield to that ends up protecting us from a lot of the harmful effects of the Sun and uh and yeah, so we

just happened to have that going for us. Uh. And then we have the right neighbors, Jupiter shields Earth from a lot of the stellar bombardment we'd end up suffering through otherwise and would have very likely um um ended um evolution before it really got rolling at some point, right. So yeah, all these things are you know, situations where it's like, oh, if it wasn't for that, would we

be here? Maybe not? So yeah, you on this that's forty seven billion years in the making, about a couple million years ago we came into existence or evolved in to to what we are today. So it is pretty amazing when you stop and think, um, when you clear that grocery list out of your head or or whatever else is popping up on your computer to distract you to think, again, why am I here? Why I'm Why are we here in this particular universe? Are we unique?

Are there other universes out there? Their other means? How does how is that working? And so I think that's why the Goldilocks principle is so very interesting because it's it's not um. It's not a sort of uh, mathematical proof in the sense that we have a theory um that we can say, Okay, we have this overwhelming theory and it's gonna it's gonna tell us exactly why we exist, but it does lend some credence to the anthropic principle.

And the anthropic principle is basically saying, to paraphrase Stephen Hawking, that things are as they are because we are, which sounds a lot like dey card part of my frolish, which would be I think therefore I am Yeah. So you have this principle which a lot of scientists, astrophysicists, theologians, you name it, have seized on to try to explain why we are able to hang out here in this universe observe the fact that we're here and the fact

that we're supported by it. Yeah, and then you have you have the Commernican principle in the background the whole time, reminding you that there's nothing special about about Earth, nothing special about humanity. So when you look at the at everything being just right on the Earth, you know, it

leads to theories. You know, um that a lot of people hold about there being other planets where life could could potentially evolve because there's nothing nothing special about Earth, then it couldn't be the only one, right, right, right, So the multiple universes, and of course you can get really deep into this and say there are parallel universes, there's another universe where you and I are talking in a completely different place right now, although maybe we're talking backwards,

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that you get into the whole area of like it's like a Library of Babbel kind of situation where all possible universes exist with all possible variations and outcomes. Yeah, one way we're having a different conversation, one where like we all ball caps, one where our son was kind of a jerk and blew up before we could evolve, right, Yeah, Yeah, because if we're just gonna be anthropic principle, and again, anthropic means of or relating to human beings or the period of

their existence on Earth. Um, there are several um anthropic coincidences. They're kind of like those the list of things that we lined up for the planet, you can make a similar list for the cosmos itself. They just tend to be a little more complex. Like uh, and I'm not gonna go into too much depth here because he's getting kind of crazy. But when you compare the electromatic force to gravity, we find that electromagnetism is thirty times stronger.

And that's fortunate because if the two powers were more evenly matched, stars wouldn't burn long enough for life to develop on an orbiting planet. So uh, and they're all you know, things of that nature where if like numbers were a little different, if the dye roll you know, from the Big Bang were had come out just just slightly skewed, then nothing might have nothing could exist or or things would exist in a vastly different shape than

they are now. So that's I think why anthropic principle is so intriguing, because it does give us a way to say, okay, we are in this universe, and perhaps everything isn't happening by chance. Right. The problem with this is that when we when we traps out of the area of chance, we start to look for some sort of theory. I'm gonna go ahead and say it's super being God Creator, and that's what the anthropic principles sort

of points to when you think about it. Yeah, and a lot of people end up using it as an argument for um, you know, um, intelligent design and things of that nature and the existence of God and other things that can't actually you know, actually be proved you know, scientifically, um. And a lot of this also, this comes from a guy named brand and Carter was the guy who initially

sort of kicked off out there. Yeah, and he actually I believed that he just put out two of these two variations on the theory, weak anthropic principle and strong anthropic principle. And if the cool kids tend to offense, just call it ap franthropic principle, or if you're talking about weakenthropic principle, you call it like WAP. I guess right, that is so wa yeah, or like they said, like

WAP is lack right. If they don't like it kids these days, But weekend thropic principle is probably my favorite because it's just so simple and it doesn't overthink itself. It's actually kind of elegant. Basically, Carter just pointed out that if our universe weren't hospitable to life, then we wouldn't be here to think about it being hospitable to life. That's right. It's like if your mom and dad hadn't hooked up, Yeah, you wouldn't exist. You wouldn't be here

to think about the fact that you exist. So it's I love it because it's kind of like that. The weekendthropic principle is kind of like an end of the argument, and it's elf it's kind of like, well, stop worrying about it, because it's you know, the answer is in the question. Yeah, yeah, I I think, therefore I am and quit thinking yeah yeah, And it's a it's an unconditional truth. So yeah, you're right. It's it's very simple

in that way, and it's very comforting. And then you have a strong anthropic principle, right, So that's basically saying, because we live in a universe that supports life, only life supporting the universes exists. Essentially, it's creating the observer. Yeah, it's kind of like if you were inside, you know, you're hanging out in your living room. You've never been outside of your living room, and you know, she had a fireplace and you and if you went with the theory,

maybe the world. I guess all houses have fireplaces, you know, because there's nothing unique about this one, because it's the only thing that you know, right, Or on a more like true level, you could be like, this room has a roof. I guess all living rooms have roofs to them,

you know. So I guess that shows where this principle has a bit of weakness is that you can't If you can't observed beyond your own understanding, then how can you presuppose that there are other universes that exist out there? If you can't see it, then how do you know, Because if you could see it, it it would be part

of your universe. Yeah, it's like, on one level, we have to use our our selves in our world and our view of the world as the model upon which to base our theories and all, you know, but that that can also develop certain problems, right, And then the cool thing about science, I think is that we could. We have our five senses and we rely on that, but science sort of uh takes up where our five senses peter out. You know, Um, those are five senses fail us. They do not always um accurate. Um. Our

instinct isn't always accurate. So we have science, you have mathematicians who are creating those models based on what we know and then sort of trying to predict these other um thoughts. Universes constructs that we can try to get our heads around. And so I think that's why this the anthropic principle is so important, because that's the principle that is being used in m theory or string theory,

which presupposes that these other universes exist um. And that's also it's Achilles heal, because well, hey, you've got this sort of stand in theory the anthropic principles saying well, if we can observe this, then we know we're in it, and there's the possibility of other universes just like ourselves existing. And yet we cannot bear this out. We cannot, we can we can't ring up the little large Hadron collider

and say hey, can you bear this out first? Simply because we don't have the technology yet to prove it out. And that's not true of other theories that we have been able to use technology to to bear out the results and say, ah, yes, this, this, um, this mathematic prediction was correct. Yeah. I think the other day when we're talking about this, you you pointed out that some of these things are just kind of a kind of like place holders for actual answers. They're like scientific placeholders

for you know. Um. And the other interesting thing about anthropic principle is that people kind of take take it and spin off their own like variation of the anthropic principle, and sometimes uh, you know, mind blowing or just crazy directions, you know. Um, there are like thirty album I think based on one estimate I read, but like the participatory anthropic principles pretty wild, did you? Is that the quantum

space one? Yeah, well this is the one that spins off from some some stuff like the the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the whole idea of like things not being actualized until they're observed and measured, you know, yeah, right, and not and not actually even acting like we think they act simply because at this one state it happened to be here. In other words, you can't predict the results every single time, and you know, not to get

into quarks. Um, I don't think anybody wants us to go that deep, but sorry, go ahead. No, it's just like, basically, the the idea is that only universes that have an observers in them to observe it exists. It's kind of like, you know, kind of a tree falls in the forest kind of thing. In a weird way. It's like like the universe. The universe can only exist if there's somebody there to observe it and give it form. In a way, it's kind of crazy right without the observer. Yeah, well

I was thinking about this too. Um, you've got Stephen Hawking, who obviously some people think he is God and has created the universes and that maybe we don't know. Um, we don't have a mathematical constructor hear that up. But we do have John Horgan, who was the former Scientific American editor who actually took him to task. I thought that was, Um, he has some big spheres for doing that. Yeah, it's kind of it's always a brave move when you go after go after Hawking or or you know, pick

at something. He said, yeah, yeah. I was like, wow, dude, I hope that you have bulletproof glass there. Um, well, not really, I don't think that astrophysists are gonna Hawking was packing. I was thinking more of his followers, but but now I think they're probably kind and gentle souls. But basically what he said is, Okay, you've got Hawking wanting to forward this idea of a theory of everything too for short and uh in particular m theory, which is an extension of string theory. Just if you look

at them, it's membranes instead of strings. And Hawking is actually saying, you know what, we need to use the anthropic principle in order to help bear this theory out. And Horgan's basically saying, hey, there's there's a real problem with us. We can't that the anthropic is something that we can't actually um say that there's any data to to bear it out, but we don't have the technology and to to do this. And essentially, and here's where the it's kind of the beach slap. It's cosmology's version

of creationism. And he's loving that against Hawking and I think you know, you know, this is not my wheelhouse, but do you have to say, I think that there's a point with us and you can't help but see where you'd want to have a theory of everything, where you want to have something unifying saying finally, we have reached the end of meaning. We understand exactly why we're all hanging out here in this podcast booth at this very moment um. But we just we're limited where you know,

language fails us as well. We can't actually describe where we're at at this point of revolution cognitive closure at some point, and it's just only so much we can do. Yeah, yeah, cogniti closure. I like that. Yeah. And then there's another

aspect of this UM which is called carbon chauvinism. Yeah, this one is really cool, and it's just basically the idea that we are we are carbon based life forms UM, and we often find it hard to imagine that there are other UM that they're biochemical forms out there that are based on other recipes, if you will, right right, So that and in fact, I think they've used the

example before of silicon. That's something that UM that you can get actually some complex results from and they're even saying that, um, it's molecular chauvinism, that we just don't understand that there are other ways maybe to come to the table as a being, which makes me wonder about extraterrestrials because they're you know, in all that there's really no discussion. Yeah. I mean like if you look into

science fiction, and there's plenty of examples. I know, I've read things with with silicon based life forms in them, and of course you're always encountering like energy beings and things of that nature. Um. So, so yeah, it's like, you know, if we we we put the carbon chauvinism the side would be able to you know, potentially imagine um or not imagine, but you know receival world where a universe where there are other very forms of life out there. I have to ask you a really personal question.

Where are you on the ET scale? Um? I don't know. Well, the ET scale has been interesting throughout my life because I used to be terrified of being abducted by aliens when I was in like junior high and before that I kind of got out of it in high school, so that that was a time where it's like I was really terrified of them, and then I decided that I was going to make a conscious effort just not to believe in aliens. So I was really against the idea of them for a while. And uh, I don't know.

Now I try and keep an open mind, so I feel like they could be out there. I don't So there's a whole separate podcast to be done on this. But I mean, I think that a lot of what we end up perceiving in this world that we think are aliens, it's actually there are actually a lot of really good explanations, logical explanations for what those uh events are, or what those experiences are. But but no, I think there could be There could be life in this year. No, yeah,

my my intelligent maybe more intelligent. Yeah, And that's what I think is interesting. It could be Yeah, it could be a very super intelligent being or not so much. I don't know, just hanging out at the bowling alley. Nothing that there's nothing about the warning alleast by the way, I love bowling. I have to say, um, but yeah,

I just had to throw that out there. It's just because my own world view was tinged by this by my grandmother, who you know, I grew up hearing about how she and my grandfather on a lonely country road came across which she called little green men. So I always grew up with this idea of, well, cool, maybe these little green men do exist, and so, well, yeah, we'll definitely have to get into this in a later

to say yeah, we did, definitely. But looking at the inn profit principle and looking at ourselves in the universe, you gotta wonder why that isn't a larger part of it, particularly since Stephen Hawking has you know, pulled the trigger around the warning shots to say, hey, guys, don't talk to the aliens, don't let them know we're here, because if there anything like us, then they're they're probably really they're really jerks. Yeah, they're going to colonize this um.

So I think that's why this, this theory or this principle really is interesting, because again we get down to this individual level of you know, scrapping all of our grocery list and everything else and wondering why in the world and this carbon based life form and allowed to exist. And I think the bigger problem here, um is that

we're mortal. We know that we're going to die, And so I think this is why we're grappling with this so much as scientists, as human beings, um, because we know that this universe forty seven billion years in the making is not essentially for us, or if we do think it's for us, then we think, well, why does it all have to end? And so on and so forth. So then you begin to reach beyond that, and you can see how the polled toward of this sort of all unifying and or creation myth, this god like super

being is so enticing. Yeah, I mean there's some really kind of out there ones to like finally, unthropic principle, it's a variation that says that once intelligence, um, not intelligent beings, but actual intelligence like pops up in the universe, then it's never going out that it's gonna pretty much thrive and eventually become God. It's gonna propagate itself. Yeah and and yeah, so you know take that and run with it with your imagination, because that's pretty out there.

Well that always makes me think of the computer simulation, Like, are we just hanging out in a computer computer simulated program right now? All of the matrix, um, you know, is this is this even real. Is this a virtual existence, which is of course in another one of the anthropic principles people explored. I love thinking about that kind of stuff.

I just finished reading a book called The Disciple of the Dog, in which there is a cult um that believes it's it's it's members believe that the Earth is actually fifty billion years older than we think it is, and that the life in the world that we perceive is actually um it's actually the dream. We're actually the dreams of quantum computers in the far, far distant future that I guess got really bored and you know, end up dreaming of this this you know, past life for

them to wander through. And so if we could see through the illusion, we'd see that the sun fills up the entire sky and we'll uh, you know, consume the earth at any moment. Wow. So our existence is just fodder for computers to to sort of work through their boredom issues. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. The authors are Scott Baker, and he's he's like a philosophy dude. So he's always all of his books end up like bringing all these like philosophical questions about who we are and what makes

you know, our heads work. Yeah, well, I don't know. I think obviously in this podcast we're not going to reach the end of meaning. But I do feel that we have reached perhaps the end of the podcast, end of the podcast, so which actually makes me think of another philosophy Wabi Sabby, which I think most people think of as embracing in perfection. But another and more nuanced reading is that you're either emerging of nothingness or you're

essentially returning to nothingness, which I don't know. That's that's maybe more comforting to me, um, And at least it's a it's a way to say, I think that we are now entering into nothingness. Yes, yes, so hey, if you listeners have any thoughts on some of this heavy material, um, then feel free to shoot them to us. Yeah. Yeah, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com, and you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter, where you can also find us

as blow the Mind. Yeah, and please, if your grandmother told you stories about aliens, we want to hear about them. Yes, we also want to hear about your own cosmological navel gazing. Yes, tell us about your navels. Well, not too much, but just enough for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com, The House stuff works dot com. My phone app is coming soon. Get access to our content in a new way, articles, videos,

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