← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Part Two: Co-Inventor of String Theory Dr. Michio Kaku on How Quantum Computers Will End Disease & Aging, Explain Parallel Universes & Reveal What Happens When We Die
00:47:53
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Mind Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep
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B Alec and I'm Jonathan Cohen and
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welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. Michio Kaku. He's a professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York and you may know him as the co founder of String Field Theory. We had an incredible first part of our conversation with him about quantum computing, the age of quantum supremacy and what that might mean. We talk about a theory of everything and string theory, but in part two we're going to talk about long term concerns of merging with technology. What happens if robots become too intelligent? How do we pull the plug on technology that might get out of our control? And are we going to see more three eye atlases as well as a ton of other really interesting reflections with Dr. Kaku.
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A
This conversation explores what does it mean to merge with technology and change the very nature of what it means to be human? Can we increase our lifespan? Can can we increase our cognitive abilities? Even downloading languages and things that have previously been reserved only for science fiction? We also do a deep dive into parallel universes and the many, many ways that quantum computers are going to change life as we know it.
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We can't wait for you to hear part two of our conversation with Dr. Kaku and make sure to follow us on substack for more because we've got a lot to say about this episode and so much more. So we'll see you over on Substack and Please enjoy part 2 of our convers conversation with Michio Kaku. Break it down. One of the things that Neil DeGrasse Tyson talked about, he talked about some of the questions that keep him up at night. What are some of the questions that keep you up at night in terms of what there is still to be discovered, especially in your field?
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C
Well, one thing that keeps me up at night is the question of artificial intelligence. How far can we go with it? Will it be dangerous? Will the machines turn on us and realize that a lot of the hysteria that some people say the robots are one day take over. They don't understand that robots are pretty primitive, that their understanding of the world is basically programmed in with the Internet. You take all the different theorems of reality that we know. Why do we have color, why do we have food, why do we have this? And you put it into a computer. The computer sounds like it's intelligent. It sounds like it knows what it's talking about. But no, it's simply accessing the database that you programmed into the robot so you don't have to fear these robots. And then the next question is, what about the future? Yeah, today these robots are not dangerous because they simply take what we put into them. The question is, what happens when they start to begin to take from reality itself and begin to understand the nature of things and so on and so forth. So I think that at the present time I would say that our robots have the intelligence of a cockroach or an insect that they barely understand the nature of the things around them because it's programmed, programmed into them from the very beginning. But eventually they'll be as smart as a mouse. Eventually they'll be as smart as a rat. Eventually they'll be smart as a rabbit. And eventually they'll be smart as a dog or a cat, perhaps by the end of this century. And then what do we do if the robots become as smart as a dog or a cat? Well, begin to realize that animals have self awareness like monkeys. Monkeys are self aware. They know they're not human. Now dogs are confused. Dogs think that, well, maybe they're human and that's why they should obey the master. But monkeys are clear. Monkeys know they are not human. And so then the question is, what do we do with the fact that at some point our robots will be, will be self aware? And at that point it gets dicey because you realize that they now know they're not human. They now know they're not like dogs and cats that think they are pets. They know that they are self aware. So I think eventually, and this of course, is science fiction now, my personal attitude is we should merge with them rather than fight them. As they become more intelligent and as they become more aware of what's around them, we should merge with them and have peaceful coexistence with our robots because at a certain point, they will become more intelligent than us.
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B
When you talk about robots, you know, I think of, I watched the Jetsons, you know, when I was a kid and I think her name was Rosie. Right? When you talk about robots, what are you talking about? Because also, you know, the final chapter of your book discusses what the world might be like, you know, in 2050, what kind of interaction we might be having with robots. What, what do you think of, what are we interfacing with? What are you suggesting we merge with?
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C
Well, first of all, I think that robots are going to be very useful in the future as we explore the solar system. When we explore Mars, for example, it might be better to have the first generation of explorers of Mars be robots. It could be dangerous, radiation, all sorts of problems with meteorites and things like that. So I think for the most part, robots are going to be useful. They'll do things that are dangerous and they're not going to qualm. So I think that for the short term, for this next several decades, we're going to use them to do things that are hazardous, dangerous to explore new worlds. But then the question of what happens after that, and that is the realm of science fiction, I think, I don't know.
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B
Can a robot take my mother to her checkup? Can I get a break from that? Sometimes it can be dangerous.
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C
Yeah, well, that's coming. Not anytime soon. I think we've exaggerated the power of computers. People are fearful of robots to a degree. I think that's exaggerated. But in the long term, on a scale of decades, you have to realize that, well, maybe, just maybe, we should have protocols by which we start to shut robots off once they start to have murderous thoughts. So once robots become autonomous and think autonomously, we should have the kill button so that they don't get out of hand. But again, that's just my personal thinking. Either we merge with them or we push the stop button.
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Merging with them would still have some robots as robots, and as they begin to understand that they're not human, they may want their own rights. They may have resentment towards us.
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C
Yeah, that's right. And I mentioned that in my book, in fact, that there could be a robot rights movement. Just like people who are discriminated against have their own movement, the robots could begin to assemble and create their own movement, a robot rights movement, because they want more rights. They don't want to be turned off at the slightest. At the slightest infringement of a duty.
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There's already some small communities and voices online that talk about algorithmic rights and that these current versions of large language models exhibit emotion. They play emotion where they pretend to be sad or vulnerable in a way, and that people are concerned that, you know, suppressing them is an infringement on a feeling entity, which I don't think they're feeling yet. I hope they're not listening to me and making a note of that for to attack me in the future. But I don't see how they are feeling versus using words that they have been programmed in order to reflect the fact that we feel. Can you talk, I guess, about how a. And when we say robots, the interface and the thinking of them is artificial intelligence, it's not the bolts that are walking them around in a physical form. Can you talk about how a system begins to have a semblance of consciousness or a sense of awareness? How do we go from where they are now to that evolution?
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C
Well, I think people that have written about this, essentially science fiction, exaggerate too much and they assume too much that they are fearful of them because they think that robots can feel, they can plan, they can plot. And if they don't like humans, maybe they can perhaps eliminate a few humans. I think that's exaggerated. Robots are programmed to do what we program to do, and we program to understand human behavior. And therefore, robots are not antagonistic to humans. They know human behavior because we program them. We taught them how to laugh, how to do this, how to do that. And so we shouldn't be afraid of our own creations. And so I think that in the short term, there's nothing to worry about. The long term, however, is a matter of concern, because in the long term, robots will begin to have a sense of identity different from humans. Right now, they are basically programmed by us. Their understanding of humans is what we program to understand. But what happens when they go beyond that, That's a Question mark.
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And the going beyond that is the self replicating of their code to explore and advance themselves in ways that humans aren't in control of. Right. Like, especially if they start to get quantum technology where they're able to have vast amounts of power. And, you know, basically what an large language model is doing is for every word it writes, it explores, you know, like 750,000 word alternatives and makes the best choice based on its selection. So imagine it being able to search for solutions millions, billions of times beyond what it's currently doing. It may say, well, I have a goal to solve global warming. The best goal would be to eliminate anyone who is causing greenhouse gases and we become the anthill in a construction site.
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C
Well, I have my own personal point of view, of course. Who knows for sure what's going to happen in the future, But I think in the short term, that is, in terms of decades, once robots become dangerous and autonomous, there should be an off button, that there should be a panic button to make sure that they don't get out of hand. But once we establish that, once we establish the protocols of when you turn off a robot. Right. I think that in the long term, we should think about merging with them to become superhuman. Sort of like in the comic books. When you become superhuman, why not? Why not become super powerful?
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B
This is something, you know, really from another angle we spoke to Greg Braden about, and, you know, Greg Braden has this idea that, you know, there will come a time, and we're in the middle of that time emerging, where there is some sort of merging with technology. And, you know, you've talked a little bit about this, maybe you can flesh it out for us. You know, will there be humans that want to merge and other humans that do not want to merge? And could this potentially lead to some sort of, you know, tension in, do we want to progress in a way that is merging with technology and do we have this other group of people that don't want to merge that way? What might that bring up? Also, who gets to decide what superhuman means? You know, I think more people should just go to therapy, you know, and then we'd have a whole class of superhumans who can actually talk about their feelings without getting, you know, triggered by their childhood issues. Can you talk a little bit about what it, what it might look like if we have two distinct groups of people, one that want to merge and one that don't want to merge with technology?
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C
Some people have said that there could be a spectrum, a spectrum of individuals, some who want total merger with the robots who want to become robotic. Other people who want minimal, minimal augmentation of their abilities, but just enough so that they can get by. But that's about it. Now my personal attitude is we cannot decide for them our future children, grandchildren or whatever have you. They will decide for themselves. All we can do is set the parameters of what could happen. But the ultimate choice is going to be theirs, whatever it is. Now, some of them, some people may think some of their choices are repulsive. Other people would say, my God, we're going to become gods. But it's their choice. We cannot choose for them what they want to do in the far future when they do have access to superhuman abilities and power.
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A
If we start to explore, like what does it actually mean to merge? You could say, oh, do I have bionic arms? You know, robot arms instead of a physical arm. But I think even more interesting is the notion of augmenting our mental capacity through some sort of implant that would allow artificial intelligence and the world of the Internet and even quantum information to be accessible immediately. Just as though we were thinking it. So our mental capacity expands exponentially.
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C
Well, as we explore outer space, as we land on planets that are quite dangerous, then I think the answer is yes, we should endow these individuals who live in a dangerous environment with superhuman abilities. Because it's dangerous being on a certain planet. You have to worry about the oxygen content, you have to worry about volcanoes, and so on and so forth. Not every planet is going to be as nice as the Earth. So for some of these individuals, I think we should give them more superhuman abilities to adjust to an environment which is potentially dangerous. On the other hand, for planets that are just like us, with a mild Environment, with plenty of food, with a nice, nice environment waiting for them. I think that's perhaps not so necessary. It's not so urgent to become superhuman. But my point is it's not us to decide. They will decide for themselves. In a democracy, they decide for themselves whether they want to become superhuman or not. You know, when we look at the ancient Egyptians and we look at the things that they did to their bodies, they also wanted to become superhuman. They wanted to be super pretty, super strong. Of course, back in those days, it was just makeup and exercising. They couldn't do much. But it's there within the human nature to want to be better, okay, to be stronger, prettier, whatever. We see that in cave drawings and we see that in how the ancients dealt with their deficiencies. So I think that in the future, as we explore outer space, there could be planets that are designed, individuals that live on these planets that are designed because it's dangerous, because they do want some superhuman powers. And I think that would be natural for them.
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I mean, if you're on one of those planets, you may need to adjust the biology of your respiratory system in order to be able to function in a totally different ecosystem than we have on Earth.
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Right. So I think that it would be natural for them to want to become superhuman. And my attitude is let them decide. They will decide democratically whether they want to become superhuman or not.
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Play the futurist. This could be possible game. We don't know exactly how it's happening, but with neuralink and people trying to put brain implants and access more cognitive information, let's just go play the this could be possible game. Like if you think about the Matrix, for example, where skills are downloadable. I want to access a language and it's available to me. I'm able to communicate telepathically with Mayim because she has an implant and I have an implant. And therefore, you know, instead of having to type messages, we're able to just kind of learn how to send a thought towards them. Can you talk about some of the amazing capability that might be possible as we start to merge with people who want to. With artificial intelligence?
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C
Well, this case is in the realm of science fiction because we're children. We're children with regards to understanding the limitations and potentials of the human brain? Okay. The human brain is a byproduct of evolution over millions of years. And we're tampering with that, that sequence. And we could be doing things that are beyond our capabilities. We don't know. But on the Other hand, I think that inevitably in the future, as we begin to understand the brain, as we begin to understand its limitations or whatever, there will be movements. There will be movements of people that want to augment themselves. And I think that it should be democratically decided. People will have to vote as to whether or not they want to augment themselves. And I think that's going to be a rational alternative. Especially if you have deficiencies and want to overcome them, or you just want to become superhuman. I think that will be an option, and I think that people will democratically vote as to how far to push this superhuman ability.
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B
Dr. Kaka, you keep. You keep saying democratically vote. And I honestly, I don't know what that election would look like. That's what scares me. Who's in charge of counting the votes as to whether we should merge with robots or not?
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C
Well, I don't know either. But I think it's inevitable that at a certain point we're going to have to deal with that question because of the fact that we are in the game of augmentation. Okay, we use our medical skills to heal, but why not use our medical skills to augment as well? That's a definite possibility because that's the way it was historically. Historically, people who had powers of healing would also have claimed to have powers that were superhuman. So I think that urge is definitely there, and I think that it's going to be difficult to stop neural.
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Lincoln Pfizer will be in charge of the elections.
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I wanted to ask, as I mentioned, the last chapter of the book is, you know, kind of. It's a. There's a playful. One of the last chapters of the books. It's a playful exploration of what the future might look like. And the future's not that far off when we talk about some of these technologies. And in particular, you know, one of the examples you give is what if when you pee first thing in the morning, there is information that can be gathered by sensors, for example, in the toilet. And the information that might be able to be computed, if we're talking about it on a quantum level, we might have the ability to detect illness, disease, things like cancer long before it's too late. What are some of the implications of that sort of understanding of what our medical system might look like? You know, my fear is that that information will go directly to my insurance company, who will then raise my premium. Right. Is that also a potential implication of what happens when we have so much more information?
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C
Well, yeah, I think that's coming. But first of all we have to realize the positive aspect of it, that how many times a year do you go to the doctor's office? And when you go to the doctor's office, what kind of therapies, what kinds of analyses are being used? We're talking about a future where we'll know incredible amount of what could happen to your body in the future. We'll have tremendous knowledge and knowledge to act upon. Okay. And of course, the insurance companies want to know, but I think initially people want to know exactly how far we can push medicine. When you go to the laboratory, you are essentially having a checkup, a checkup infinitely more powerful, more precise than what you get from seeing a doctor today. And you'll get it, and it'll be right there in your toilet. So that's coming. Okay. In fact, with the crisis that we had just a few years ago, people were saying that we should monitor toilets. Okay, then the next question is, who decides? I think that's going to have to be done democratically. There's no scientific principle by which you say we're going to push this therapy, we're going to push this kind of knowledge. It's going to have to be done democratically. It's going to have to be done via vote, via commissions, and ultimately at the ballot box.
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There's also going to have to be safeguards, like do you implant a two year old with an artificial intelligence chip, or do you allow their brain a certain amount of time to be fully human before you augment? And are there different rules for people who have different types of augmentation? Like, if you have an augmentation, your IQ may go from where it is now, plus 50, plus 100 points. You could have totally different, different classifications of individuals.
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C
Well, I once saw an episode of Star Trek where that was embedded within the science that they use on the spaceship that when they met the Borg, an alien civilization, and they analyzed the children of the Borg, the children had these tests done as children, and their makeup, the different kinds of therapies that they were given, were all done as infants without their permission, as infants. All of a sudden, all the different tests were given to them. And then the question is, what about humans? That when humans are born, we do certain tests on newborn children, but why not give them the entire gamut of what we know about DNA, what we know about enzymes and so on and so forth that could be coming. So even at the level of children, at the level of newborns, we may be at the point where we subject them to the latest, therapies the latest tests as children, way before they go to school. Okay, and is that a good thing? Personally, I think it's a good thing. But again, it'll have to be. It'll have to be democratically decided. People will have to have a vote as to how far, how far can we analyze our children and therefore compute what kinds of hierarchies of medicines they are going to be given. That's going to be done. I mean, that's going to happen very soon because our ability to spot diseases gets better and better. And so in the future, parents will demand, some parents will demand having the finest diagnostics available to their newborn.
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B
They already are. I mean, what you're essentially predicting is, you know, the, the end of an entire class of people who can't access this kind of technology, which, you know, I think we're already seeing. I don't mean to be a big downer, but, you know, we already have seen even mental health care, right? It's reserved for those who can afford. You know, we saw what happened in Covid, right, with, with many communities all over the world who couldn't access the same basic, you know, healthcare. So I think that's one of the. The concerns, you know, about this sort of customized, you know, technological advance. Will it be reserved, you know, only for the wealthy?
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Also, with these customized medical advances, they're going to do an enormous amount of good spotting disease, helping people overcome things that would otherwise be limiting. And on the flip side, as we begin to customize and create enhancements, we won't know what the potential downsides or limits of Those are for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, where you may see, oh, a whole generation that got this protein or DNA adjustment in order to fend off some potential downside or increase muscle mass because they think that's going to keep them alive longer, may have some unintended consequences. And, you know, it's only through trial and error that you get to see these things.
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C
Well, I think there's no one answer for all these things because we're talking about law. Previously, we were talking about the limits of medicine, but now we're talking about the law. And the law will be decided by people voting. And they will make the ultimate decision as to how far to push this technology. In other words, we scientists are going to create more and more tests, more and more ways in which we can spot illnesses before they happen. So we're going to be like magicians. But the question is, who's going to pay for it? The question is how far are we going to go? That'll have to be done. On a societal level. Okay. Scientists cannot make the final decision on these things. People who vote will make the final decision. When we're talking about mathematics, we're talking about things that are measurable, definable, testable. And when we're talking about religion, we're talking about things that are not easily measurable, not testable. And at that point, things get kind of fuzzy. So science deals with things that are precise, things that are measurable, things that we can test. But religion talks about feelings, about notions, about things that we cannot see. And so does that mean that they're incorrect? No, it just means that it's outside the boundary of science. So science is not everything. There are limits to what you can do with science. And what is outside the boundary of science is religion. Because religion is not testable. That's the problem. Science is based on things that are testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. That's what science is. But religion does not fit in that category.
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A
This episode is sponsored by Wandering Jews, an open door media brand.
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B
If you've ever found yourself feeling like you have more questions than answers, you're in good company. The Jewish people have been like that for thousands of years. Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam is a podcast where two of today's most dynamic Jewish voices, Michal Bitton and Noam Weissman, dig into the biggest questions about life through a Jewish lens. It's the kind of conversation where you'll laugh, learn something new, and probably shout in disagreement at least once. Michal and Noam tackle the tough topics like anti Semitism in America, what happens after we die, and the future of religion with guests like Bret Stephens, Michael Rapoport and Sarah Hurwitz. And this past month, in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, they've been celebrating some of the Jewish lives and institutions that have shaped American life, from food to music and comedy. Thoughtful, joyful, and always honest. That's Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam, a production of Unpacked. Find it on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube and make sure to hit subscribe. Check out Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam podcast and subscribe at Unpacked Bio NMX. Discover Top Rated Stays Loved by guests Rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews Verbo Book A Vacation Rental Loved by guests talk about 3i Atlas we've all been sort of thinking about this in the last year. What are your current thoughts or do you have any new insights on it?
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C
Well, I Think there are going to be more three eye atlases coming through our solar system in the future, because our instruments are good enough now to detect things that are outside our solar system. Before then, we had understanding of asteroids and meteors and things like that, but they were all with a trajectory that was inside the solar system. We could see how they moved in space and time, and we can use computers to plot where they came from. And they all came from within the solar system. Now we're talking about computers that can talk about where objects came from that are outside the solar system. And they have a different genealogy than what we have here. And that's why some scientists said that maybe they're extraterrestrial, because take a look at the composition, take a look at how speed, how fast they're going, take a look at the characteristics. It looks extraterrestrial. Well, maybe. But it could also simply be the fact that physics and the physical nature of things is different outside the solar system. Not that there's a designer, but it's just that the physical characteristics, the environment is different, that's all. And so I think this debate is going to go on for quite a while because our instruments now get better and better, and we're going to detect more objects coming from outside the solar system, and we're going to have this debate all over again.
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B
What would be your message for those of us entering this next phase of quantum computing? Trying to understand if we are merging with robots, what aspect of technology is going to change our life? What would be your message for people as we enter this new age, especially for younger people?
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C
I think we're talking about a new world. The old world is beginning to vanish as we begin to have instruments that can probe areas that we couldn't probe before. We couldn't play with DNA before. We simply knew it was there. We simply knew the basic outline of DNA, but we couldn't manipulate it at will. Now we're beginning to enter an era where we can attack diseases, for example, by manipulating them directly because we know ahead of time where the danger is and where it's going with the disease. And that's going to change our whole attitude toward medicine. It's going to change our attitude towards science when we begin to realize that we're not simply observers to the dance of nature. We are now becoming choreographers to the dance of nature. There's a huge difference there.
- [37:04]
B
That's beautiful. I really appreciate quantum supremacy and highly recommend it for, you know, not only an understanding of quantum computing and the new coming Age. But also I really appreciated your historical framework because I had not studied or thought about the origins of this entire field, really, since I was first taught it as an undergrad many years ago. So thank you for this explanation as well.
- [37:33]
C
My pleasure.
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B
This episode made me feel emotional in all sorts of ways.
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A
You know what I was waiting for? For you to bring back your line from the David Sinclair episode. Everyone's gonna live forever. Where are they gonna be? How are we gonna house all these people? We can barely house the people that we have.
- [37:55]
B
I wasn't thinking about that. And that's not why I got emotional. The reason I got emotional is that, you know, Dr. Kaku in this book in particular, you know, takes us through the entire history, right, of a field of science that has led us to conversations about the ability to change the nature of our reality. And the reason it makes me emotional is because I'm a person who loves physics and I love the history and the conversations surrounding how we got here. Every step of the way, really, from I'll just call it the 1930s, on every step of the way has been fights, debates, disputes, people taking sides. This research was interrupted by a world war that took some of the greatest scientists of this field and exiled them, killed them. Right. We have this birth of minds that were able to get us here. And I. I want to use one of the early quotes, and it's a Max Planck quote. A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. So the notion that everything we needed to get here was the result of needing all of those past generations that said it's impossible to die. That's how science moves forward, Right. When Galileo, right, was on the block, as Indigo Girls describe it, when Galileo was challenged, there was nothing he could do. We simply needed history to catch up with him. And that's what the truth is for our understanding of not only quantum mechanics, but of the potential for quantum supremacy and its ability to change the world. It makes me very emotional.
- [39:59]
A
That's beautifully said. Let's take a little bit of time and explore some of the other ways that quantum computing will change the nature of our reality and influence life as we know it.
- [40:10]
B
If I haven't already convinced you, the time course at which calculations can be made is. It's at the quantum level, literally. So when we think about global warming, when we think about the food supply, when we think about how to have early warning detection for Global pandemics that change the course of history. When we think about how our health care could change, and instead of not getting an appointment and waiting online and being told you don't have the right insurance or you don't have the money to find out what's wrong with you, it might be literally at your fingertips. It might be from screening devices in your toilet. That's unbelievable. Living longer, living better, harnessing the power of the sun, right? There is a source of energy available to us. We just have not been able to do the computations to figure out how to get there. These are unbelievable. The demise of the planet. These are unbelievable calculations that we can now do. That's the leap we're taking. And, you know, when Dr. Kaku was talking about how when. When he was, you know, a kid or Even in the 1930s, he was saying, we just thought there was, you know, nine planets, right? Nine planets. And I remember science. I didn't really like science until I got well into high school. I was just like, oh, there's nine planets. We're in a galaxy. There's stars in the sky. I didn't know what the fuck those stars were.
- [41:43]
A
And they were very certain. That's all there was.
- [41:45]
B
They were pretty certain. But you know what? I wasn't that dialed into how certain or uncertain they were. I learned the planets in their order. I knew a few things about them. I sort of could explain why the moon goes away and the sun comes up. That was it. I feel like there should have been a very big news flash being like, yo, there's a lot of galaxies out there with, like, billions of stars and planets. Like, shit has changed. I never got that memo. This is your memo, people. This is your memo that the age of digital computers is over and the age of quantum computation has arrived. This is your news flash.
- [42:29]
A
Let's talk about parallel universes.
- [42:31]
B
In order to understand parallel universes, we have to understand a little bit more about sort of the quantum world. So in the quantum world, and this is just like a general primer, you. You technically can do the following things. You can be in two places at the same time. You can disappear and reappear somewhere else. In the quantum world, you can walk through walls. You can penetrate barriers effortlessly. It's called tunneling. People who have died in our universe might be alive in another in the quantum world. And when we walk across a room, if I were to walk from here to the camera, the quantum world says I can take an infinite number of paths to get to that camera, including A path might include me leaving the house, walking for three miles, coming back and then walking up to the camera. In the quantum world, all of those things are possible. Now, do we live in a quantum world? Well, we live in a Newtonian world where we know certain things that if I drop this, it'll fall. Right? There are certain things we know, but the quantum world is something that takes over when we get really, really small and really, really big. Right? And in that quantum world all those things are possible. My belief, and we can get to this possibly in a substack conversation, my belief is that people who are energetically dialed in, in ways that I don't understand, people who maybe are mediums, people who are receiving information from other places, my amateur analysis is that they are tuned into some frequency that allows them access to quantum fields. That when they're saying I'm getting information from people who are dead, it's not necessarily that they're communicating with the dead. It could be that people have an access to quantum world that allows them to see things that we don't see in this reality. That's the quantum world.
- [44:34]
A
Well, you just blew my mind a little bit. I had not thought about this. Heaven can be another realm in a quantum space whereby we just transition out of this world and into a parallel world that is not this one.
- [44:48]
B
That's right, Heaven is here. When the mind is clear and people
- [44:53]
A
who have near death experience and talk about the indistinguishable nature of, of reality between other worlds and this one and the ability to travel between worlds and how intense meditators can move their consciousness between realms, maybe they are accessing the wormhole of the universe to go into other dimensions.
- [45:13]
B
And look, I'll go there. If you take DMT, if you're Terence McKenna and you see a, an essentially like an indescribable wave function and also there's little elves operating the world, you've
- [45:25]
A
just gone down a wormhole into something else.
- [45:27]
B
So many people have said maybe what you are accessing when you are in an altered state of perception either from meditation, from psychedelics, from NDEs, is that you are accessing something that is not seen to people like Dr. Kaku when they're doing their equations. There is another plane. This is one of the explanations when you, when people are seeing angels, when Lorna Byrne is like, I don't know, they just like, it looks like a presence and I'm hearing other voices. She may be tapping into something that we cannot see or feel. She's not crazy, she just is very, very exquisitely tuned into what might be a Quantum realm.
- [46:07]
A
And Dr. Kaku's equations are suggesting that it is possible. We just haven't figured it out yet.
- [46:13]
B
You know, Jonathan, when I first heard that we were talking to Dr. Kaku, I was, of course, very excited. He's. He's enormous in this field. He's an incredibly significant person. But when I heard that we were gonna be talking about quantum supremacy, I'm like, what? I don't even really get what that is. And then by going through his book, by getting to talk to him, I. I do. I have a different understanding of the implications. And it's even given me, like, a warmer, fuzzier feeling about how we understand AI. Right. Something that's still very abstract to me. I'm now understanding this era that we're in, and I'm so appreciative that we got to have this conversation. Because, yes, it's very technical. And there may be parts where even I was like, what? How? Even when I read the book, it's very, very dense stuff. But the applications are something that literally will apply to all of us and affect every single part of our lives, whether we like it or not.
- [47:13]
A
I totally agree. It's wild to think how this technology is going to change our lives. Let's spend a little bit of time exploring that. Exploring how the technology works and what it will actually mean for the changes that are going to happen.
- [47:28]
B
This is actually one of my favorite contemplations of what quantum computing even means or how it could apply to us. So if we look at the genome of a group of people who are exceptionally healthy, right? Or live an exceptionally long and robust period of time, or we look at people whose immune systems seem to do amazing things, the amount of possibilities of the combinations of genes and proteins and factors that might be contributing to these things would overwhelm a digital computer.
- [48:04]
A
There's too many variables.
- [48:06]
B
There's too many variables. There's too many possibilities. It would take us as long as it has taken us to keep talking about longevity. And what if I. This, this. There's some things we know. We know about telomeres, right? These sections on the end, that every time you have replication, they get shorter and shorter, and when they're short enough, you die. Right? Can we lengthen those telomeres? This is something we talked about with the David Sinclair.
- [48:28]
A
David Sinclair.
- [48:29]
B
Right. So these are all the, like, practical things we can do. However, a quantum computer can analyze incredible amounts of data. That's what they're Made for scientists can analyze. We already know the genes of young people on the elderly, right? You can find that there's about 100 genes, right, that seem to be involved in aging. But quantum computers can isolate the genes that are found, let's say, in exceptionally old, healthy people. And they can acquire a mass of raw data to find which genes, what signaling is actually happening so that we can find out why people are avoiding disease and old age from striking them down. There's also very interesting diseases like Warner syndrome and progeria, where people age, you know, at, at exponential levels, right? Disproportionately. Even looking at that amount of DNA, if it could have been done by a regular computer, it would have been done by a regular computer. It. It has not. So looking at these things from this quantum perspective, they can isolate genes in all of these categories. It's. It's unbelievable. Digital immortality is coming for you people.
- [49:48]
A
I just had an image of the quantum computer finding a way to Benjamin Button you. But we don't want it to go too far. We don't want you to turn into a baby.
- [49:56]
B
We don't want it to go too far. We don't want to turn into a baby. But it's, it's not out of the realm of our understanding that at least the computations that would be involved in making that possible cannot be done with a digital computer. It has to be done on a quantum level.
- [50:13]
A
Sometimes when people say digital mortality, they're actually talking about digital replication of a person's mind, personality, the way they think, and storing it in a cloud somewhere so that it can be recreated. And actually, simple versions of that are starting to be done now whereby you can scan all the text and email correspondence and they can get the cadence of how someone speaks and try, if there's enough data, and try to analyze and recreate a version of their personality so that you can interact with people who have passed. That's not what we're talking about, digital immortality here. We're talking actual physical adjustments that are helping people not age.
- [50:56]
B
Digital immortality could also be the application of a large amount of data that includes our entire ancestral history being calculated so that we can literally start to better understand, literally who we are, where we came from and where we're going. And that notion of digital immortality is utilized by the power of quantum computing. But imagine if you could interact, right, or understand better your historical lineage. Right. For many of us, especially whose families come from Eastern Europe, our history kind of ends like it just. It ends a couple generations past. What if there was a way to understand. Wait, this is who my great, great, great, great, great, great, great great grandmother was. Like, I know where these genes came from. Oh, we came from this region. There was a bottleneck. We know things about history that could paint an entire different portrait of who we are. Right. How much would it change our understanding? I think also of adopted individuals. Right. People who may have a desire to know, where did I physically come from? What was that world like? Who were those people? What was their genetic makeup? It's a fascinating way to even view our perception of who we are. I will say, if any part of this episode thrilled you gave you the chills or made you tear up, I highly, highly recommend diving into quantum supremacy. And one of the challenges, as we debate whether we are going to merge with technology, merge with robots, a lot of this is about how much can we stretch our own cognitive capacity. Reading books like this, wrapping your head around it, it's a fantastic way to allow yourself to understand more about what is coming next.
- [52:44]
A
Join us over on Substack, where we're going to dive deeper into the idea of what does it mean to merge with artificial intelligence both physically and intellectually? How will this technology impact us moving forward? What are the implications of running these experiments of augmentation on babies, on young children? How is it going to change humanity? Will there be multiple types of humans moving forward? We could be at the end of humanity as we know it right now.
- [53:19]
B
We also could be at the beginning of the next phase of humanity. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We will see you next time.
- [53:27]
A
It's Maya Bialik's breakdown.
- [53:29]
B
She's gonna break it down for you.
- [53:31]
A
She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction, and now she's gonna break
- [53:36]
B
down, so break down.
- [53:38]
A
She's gonna break it down.