Can AI Replace My Brain? I Ask a Child Prodigy

Summary

---

Smart Girl Dumb Questions

Episode: Can AI Replace My Brain? I Ask a Child Prodigy

Host: Nayeema Raza

Guest: Sibarno Isaac Berry

Date: March 10, 2026

---

Main Theme & Overview

This episode is a lively, thoughtful exploration of intelligence—human and artificial—seen through the eyes of Sibarno Isaac Berry, NYU's 13-year-old math and physics prodigy. Host Nayeema Raza brings her signature approachable style to a conversation that challenges what it means to be smart in an era increasingly mediated by AI, asking whether intellect is nature, nurture, or just effort. Together, they tackle everything from math metaphysics to AI ethics, childhood prodigy pressures, peer pressure, educational reform, and whether Sibarno’s brain could ever truly be replaced by artificial intelligence.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of Dumb Questions & "Proof by Intimidation"

• Opening banter debunks the notion of “dumb questions.” Sibarno shares a story about professors admitting when they don't know something and the concept of “proof by intimidation” in academia.

“In math we actually have a term for that technique called proof by intimidation... and the student immediately shuts up.”
(Sibarno, 00:51-01:05)

2. Sibarno’s Academic Journey & Peer Pressure

• Sibarno, a sophomore at NYU at age 13, talks about skipping grades, racing through college, and why he extended his college timeline for deeper learning.

“The original plan was two [years], but... I realized that was very brash...But as soon as you get into graduate school...you’ll be way behind all of these students...”
(Sibarno, 03:12-03:45)

• Sibarno doesn't feel peer pressure due to his unique situation, but reflects on the relativity of performance.

“I just put in my mind that I’m in a totally different situation than my peers… so what does it even mean to compare our scores and our grades?”
(Sibarno, 04:34-05:06)

3. Nature, Nurture, and Effort in Talent

• Discusses nature vs. nurture, his mathematically-inclined family, and his brother’s different academic strengths.

“Maybe it's nature. Maybe it's nurture. I would like to cite some third source which says, like, effort, it's not just the nature and nurture that can get you somewhere.”
(Sibarno, 10:15-10:30)

4. On Math, Physics, & Their Intersections

• Sibarno explains higher-level math, the difference between discrete and continuous math, and the weak symmetry between math and physics skills, using his own example and his brother's.

“Math is more abstract in some of its areas, and physics is more applied; and that separation is what determines how good you are at one or the other.”
(Sibarno, 17:14-17:35)

5. Math as a Universal Language (or Not?)

• Responds to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s idea that math is the language of the universe, contrasting with “etymology nerd” Adam Oleksik’s linguistic perspective.

“I wouldn't call it a miracle that math is the language of the real world… we specifically constructed it that way.”
(Sibarno, 18:55-19:12)

• Explains mathematical axioms and philosophical limits of math, using the axiom of choice and Banach-Tarski paradox:

“You can take a sphere apart into five pieces and then rearrange them to make two spheres of the same radius… You can make infinitely many peas out of one pea. It’s a real life duplication glitch.”
(Sibarno, 22:44-23:28)

6. AI, Unpredictability, and Human Reasoning

• On whether AI will ever hack human unpredictability:

“Artificial intelligence is unpredictable, which is usually… one of the tells for AI generated images and things like that.”
(Sibarno, 33:52-34:33)

• On the future skillset needed:

“What I think is going to become more important of a skill is telling when the AI is actually just making crap up—editorial instinct.”
(Sibarno, 36:28-36:40)

• Whether he thinks like a computer:

“Not really. I think of my mind as more organic. Just following random trains of thought until they lead me somewhere.”
(Sibarno, 37:03-37:18)

7. Free Will, Predicting Humans, & AI Limits

“At some point, humans are not fully able to be predicted by math yet… I personally believe in free will because I think it's a nice concept.”
(Sibarno, 32:46-33:09)

8. The AI Alignment Problem

• Discusses the classic “Paperclip Maximizer” problem and morality in AI.

“If we just keep setting an AI on one goal without any adjustments… Eventually, it’s going to start doing unsavory things for us. But we never gave it the morals to recognize that as unsavory.”
(Sibarno, 44:21-44:57)

• AI as a future risk:

“If you tell the AI you are a scary killing machine, go kill people, it's going to start killing people... By not giving it morals when we specify target task.”
(Sibarno, 48:25-48:41)

• Prompt engineering:

“First have to tell it what to do because otherwise it's gonna do nothing. And then you have to tell it what not to do.”
(Sibarno, 48:42-48:49)

9. Education, Cheating, and Reform

• Three areas for education reform:
  • Reduce emphasis on grades
  • Replace outdated, cheat-prone testing with real-skill evaluations (oral exams, etc.)
  • Change the student mindset: shift focus from education as means to an end to personal development.

“We need to reform to a different kind of test… And I think the mindset that makes people cheat is that they just see education as a means to an end rather than the end itself.”
(Sibarno, 63:24-66:06)

10. The Job Market & Brain Drain

• Sibarno paints a bleak picture of shrinking opportunities for academic researchers, referencing "The Great Defunding" and the impacts of policy on both his and his brother’s prospects.

“With the defunding that's happening of lots of math and science programs… now it feels like we are really closing off to all of the intellectuals who could help us…”
(Sibarno, 51:30-52:23)

• Administrative bloat versus researcher support:

“They are directly stabbing researchers in the gut and keeping like the proportional wages of presidents and vice presidents…”
(Sibarno, 55:20-55:30)

11. Influencers vs. Educators, Broadcasting, and Mental Health

• Distinguishes “influencer” from “educator”; denounces influencer culture as empty, while affirming educators—like Neil deGrasse Tyson—as valuable.

“An influencer is not the same as an educator… I wouldn’t call the Etymology Nerd an influencer. He’s more of a linguistics educator.”
(Sibarno, 57:19-57:30)

• Social broadcasting cycle:

“I think a society where everybody broadcasts to everybody is not only going to create that kind of hyper-individualization, but a hierarchy even stronger than the one that we currently have now.”
(Sibarno, 59:36-59:54)

12. On Happiness & Play

• Sibarno affirms he’s ultimately “happy with where I am,” balancing his studies with “shenanigans.”

“I feel happy with all of the accomplishments and all of the work that I’ve done in such a short time… I feel impressed with myself.”
(Sibarno, 61:07-61:09)

13. Rapid Fire: Reforming Education, Weaknesses, and Dumb Questions

• Education system reforms: reduce grade emphasis, revamp testing, change mindsets.
• His own weakness: foreign languages, despite being a prodigy in math and science.
• Embarrassing dumb question: “Why do people keep their books angled like that instead of keeping them all straight?”

(Sibarno, 67:30-67:59)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On asking questions, even when you’re an expert:

  “Only when I ask them [is there such a thing as a dumb question].”
  (Sibarno, 00:02)

• On educational pressure:

  “I kept telling my mom, every time I hit a new multiple of 10, I just have one assignment. But it’s a big assignment, so it’s gonna take, like, an hour or two.”
  (Sibarno, 13:57)

• On the construct of math:

  “Math is a construct, but it’s a very useful construct... what would we understand the universe with without the construct of math?”
  (Sibarno, 26:09-26:26)

• On the risk of unchecked AI:

  “We’re telling AI, ‘go kill people,’ by not giving it morals when we specify target task.”
  (Sibarno, 48:25-48:41)

• On the future skillset needed:

  “The skill that will matter is telling when the AI is making stuff up.”
  (Sibarno, 36:28-36:40)

• On happiness:

  “I feel happy with all of the accomplishments... in such a short time. I’m sorry if I sound arrogant, but I feel impressed with myself.”
  (Sibarno, 61:07-61:09)

---

Notable Segments & Timestamps

• 00:00 – 06:50: Icebreakers, peer pressure, and Sibarno’s academic context
• 09:46 – 12:15: Family background and nature vs. nurture debate
• 14:20 – 17:35: Third grade malaise, video games, and why he’s not “good at everything”
• 18:10 – 23:28: Math as the language of reality, ZFC axioms and Banach–Tarski paradox
• 33:43 – 36:40: Free will, AI unpredictability, and self-assessment as a “non-computer”
• 41:40 – 48:49: AI risk (“paperclip maximizer”), morality, and prompt engineering
• 51:30 – 55:44: Academic job prospects, “The Great Defunding,” and university bloat
• 57:17 – 59:54: Influencer culture vs. educator value, and social media’s effects
• 61:09 – 63:49: Happiness, shenanigans, and balancing childhood with academia
• 63:49 – 66:08: Three reforms for the education system
• 67:30 – 68:18: “Dumb question” about books and organizational habits

---

Tone & Language

• Engaging, witty, unfiltered, and intellectually lively, with Sibarno’s candidness and humility balancing Nayeema’s playful, curious approach.

---

Closing Thoughts

This episode showcases the complexity of “being smart” in a world where machine intelligence is both an opportunity and a threat. Sibarno’s human drive—curiosity, humility, purpose, and even doubt—comes through as uniquely valuable, even (perhaps especially) in the age of AI. As Nayeema notes:

“What I think this person Sibarno has going for him, that I don't think AI has… is such a clear motivation, purpose, passion…That, to me, feels uniquely human in this time and gives me a lot of optimism about the future.”
(Nayeema, 69:28–69:47)

---

Where to Find Sibarno Isaac Berry

• YouTube: Barry Science Lab
• Facebook: Barry Science Lab
• Twitter/X: (bot reposts only; Sibarno doesn’t recommend using it)

“I don’t myself monitor my social media presence because I honestly feel it’s a little bit too arrogant. But hey, maybe it’ll inspire one of you watching this.”
(Sibarno, 68:18-68:45)

---

This summary focuses on substantive discussion. All timestamps refer to the original episode audio.

Transcript

[Naima Raza]

Do you think there's such a thing as a dumb question?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Only when I ask them. I was in a quantum mechanics class two weeks ago and I asked my professor something and I had to preface it with I know this is a stupid question.

[Naima Raza]

What was the question?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, essentially he was explaining something called spectroscopic term notation, which is like, oh, I'm familiar. A bunch of, I'm not familiar. A bunch of letters and numbers that you write to denote, like where an electron is in the atom and like how much energy it has. And I was asking him why the top left number in the spectroscopic notation is written is two times a variable plus one. And he was really gracious because he said, I don't know. And I like professors who are willing to admit that instead of like being intimidating or saying it's obvious.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

In math we actually have a term for that technique called proof by intimidation. Essentially a student asks you about a proof you forgot and all you say is, it's trivial, it's obvious, or something along those lines, and the student immediately shuts up.

[Naima Raza]

That's so much of the reason I wanted to do this show, because I think we live in a culture where we don't say, I don't know enough,

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

and I feel like we don't outright say things to each other enough because we are cowards or, I don't know, we should be more honest with our feelings so everyone can communicate correctly.

[Naima Raza]

Is it fair to call you, by the way, the Doogie Howser of math? Do you know who Doogie Howser is?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I don't.

[Naima Raza]

You've never heard this term?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Sorry.

[Naima Raza]

Oh my God, I'm so old. Smart Girl, Dumb questions. This is Smart Girl, Dumb Questions. I'm Naima Raza and today my guest is the Doogie Howser of math, the young Sheldon of NYU Sibarno, Isaac Berry.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Hi.

[Naima Raza]

The 13 year old NYU College sophomore who has also taught university students. Should I call you Professor, Professor Barry?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No, not really. I think professor is way too big of a title for me because, you know, a professor has to do a lot of stuff besides just teaching and has to earn a lot of credentials that I'm still four or five years away from. Six or seven. Four or five years away from obtaining.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so I think so by the time you're 17 or 18, we can maybe call you a professor.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

If I officially get the title, like associate professor at a university, then I'll be fine with being called a professor.

[Naima Raza]

Professor in waiting, we'll call you. So here's the thing, my team. I tried to pressure you into changing the day or the time of this interview. It was actually through me. I asked them if we could move around the times. And you wrote back this email. Read it to us.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

All right. I wish I had more flexibility, but my schedule is quite full this semester as I'm taking a heavy course load to stay on track to graduate from NYU in spring 2027 with a double major in mathematics and physics. In the meantime, I'll continue holding these dates and some more formalities. Thank you for your understanding, and I look forward to coordinating.

[Naima Raza]

I had two thoughts when I read this. First of all, so you already skipped fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, ninth grade, and 11th grade?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

10th and 11th, but, yeah, okay, same difference.

[Naima Raza]

And you also won a race through college in three years, not four.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, the original plan was two, but then I realized that was very brash. It was both pushing the technical limits of how fast you could get a degree. And my advisors were busy having 100 meetings with me to tell me, well, yeah, you might get good grades and finish undergraduate school, but as soon as you get into graduate school, as you're planning, you'll be way behind all of these students, most of whom have taken extra coursework past the bare minimum required to graduate so they can have an idea of, you know, what they actually want to research and what their passion is in a field as huge as math and science. So I lengthened it to three years, and now I'm still deciding if I want to do three or four. So it's a difficult dilemma, but I have a lot of time and flexibility. Since, you know, I'm only 13, there are still a lot of options.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, 13. I was always, like, a year or two young for my year. But you're five to six years young for your year.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

The second thought I had when reading this email is like, wow, this kid. Can I call you a kid?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, sure.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. This kid is really good at resisting peer pressure. And by peer pressure, I mean adult pressure or peer pressure. Like, do you feel peer pressure at school? Like, I used to feel peer pressure when I was 13.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Honestly, no. I feel like peer pressure is like being pressured by the performance of your peers.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And me personally, I just put in my mind that I'm in a totally different situation than my peers. And even if you are the same age, technically, everybody in that classroom has a totally different life at home and aspirations and level of passion for the subject they're actually majoring in. And so I'm Thinking, well, we are all in totally different situations, and I'm myself in the most different situation of them all. So what does it even mean to compare our scores and our grades?

[Naima Raza]

So even though the irrational proof that you've just laid out, we're all unique, therefore there is no such thing as a peer, therefore there cannot be peer pressure.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Have you ever taken discrete math?

[Naima Raza]

No. What is discrete math?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Oh, it's like the course where you start writing proofs because your language sounded suspiciously mathematically correct.

[Naima Raza]

Do you think it's just because I'm brown?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, no. Another thing I want to say is I don't judge anyone by like, their appearance or.

[Naima Raza]

No, no, I'm just saying because, you know, I'm leaning into the trope that, you know, we're good at math. We're all good at math.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, that's true. In my discrete math class, actually, the demographics are a little bit biased, but who cares? At the end of the day, regardless of what demographic they are coming from, at the end of the day, they're humans. I'll only start being concerned when a dog shows up to my discrete math class.

[Naima Raza]

That would be worrying. Especially if it's like a prodigious dog. Like a young puppy. Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Then I might be in danger.

[Naima Raza]

To be honest, you might be peer pressured by that dog who is not a peer. Is there such thing as indiscrete math?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That's called real analysis. So essentially discrete means you are dealing with the integers and rational numbers. And we call them discrete because to put it very hand wavy, there is a gap between two consecutive numbers in the set that we're dealing with. And we usually take discrete math first because it's way simpler to deal with the integers than the real numbers, which is everything. So real numbers get covered in real analysis. And they are not discrete. They are what you would call indiscrete, or the mathematical term would be continuous.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so I'm good at the less good math.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No.

[Naima Raza]

When is it that you realized that you had this gift? How old were you?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, me, myself and I, maybe four or five. A lot of people say that you're not really conscious when you're two or three, and I disagree with that. But also, I can't remember a single thing that happened when I was 2 or 3. So I can't say I realized it then. But I definitely realized that I was special by the time I was taken by my parents to see the principal because the principal wanted to talk about getting. Getting me into the gifted and talented program. Bypassing the exam that Bill de Blasio had at some point.

[Naima Raza]

A lot of your life is, like, documented. There's. There was a YouTube channel. You see videos of you when you're two cracking the Pythagorean theorem.

[Audience Member / Guest Interjection]

A plus B plus C is 180 thick. So 880, because, you know, A is 30.

[Naima Raza]

I think in that particular example, it was 100 was the missing angle. Do you ever feel like you construct memories from that time because you've seen, like, those memories of yourself?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Honestly, I barely even watch my own social media.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And I feel like, to some extent, it's sensationalized and arrogant in a way I don't like myself. Calling myself humble would be arrogant, but

[Naima Raza]

this is quite a pickle that we're in.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, but I don't want to be arrogant, so I don't really. It kind of gives me psychic damage whenever I open up my own YouTube page. I do have a few constructed memories, like you said, of times when I was 2 or 3, but I would say most of them are, I don't know, organic.

[Naima Raza]

How old was Pythagoras? Pythagoras? Pythagoras, yeah, Pythagoras. How old was Pythagoras when you came up with that theorem? Do we know?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I don't think we know, but he had to have been in his 30s. But also, it's important to note, Pythagoras wasn't the first one to discover the Pythagorean theorem, just our bias towards Greek culture.

[Naima Raza]

Who was the first one?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I think it was the Mesopotamians. We don't specifically know who in particular because they weren't good at documenting names back then, but they were good at doing math.

[Naima Raza]

Hmm. Okay. I love it. There's this video of your mom I saw, where she's describing you when you're very young, and she was trying to teach you, one plus one equals two. And she says that you asked then, what is n plus n? Or what is n times n? So multiplication. But I think, more interestingly, variables. This unknown. And she speaks of it like a light bulb moment. How old were you when that happened?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Probably I think I was one and a half. But obviously, this is another constructed memory. I don't remember anything.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, that's fair. At the time, your mom wasn't working and your dad was your dad also.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He was a. Yeah, he was a security guard on the side to pay for his pretty expensive tuition at universities where he was studying math. Side story, he was very committed to studying Math and physics and has five bachelor's degrees. But I don't want to sidetrack too much.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, he had five bachelor degrees.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

In math and physics.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Math, physics and economics. And, like, I think two of them are in math and two of them are in physics.

[Naima Raza]

So do you think that this talent, this thing that was discovered in you is, like, nature or nurture?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Or maybe it's both. I don't know. Maybe it's nature. Maybe it's nurture. I would like to cite some third source which says, like, effort, it's not just like, the nature and nurture that can get you somewhere. Even if you were born in the right bloodline and everybody around you cares about you, if you don't care about yourself or where you want to go in the end, once all of the people who have come to prop you up finally give up on you, you'll be left nowher.

[Naima Raza]

You almost gave up in the third grade. Can't remember, I read this somewhere that you became disenchanted, bored.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, not exactly a dropout. I just felt like, obviously dropping out of elementary school holds, like, huge connotations.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, I think it's illegal.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Dropping out of high school is easy, but dropping out of elementary school is a whole process, and I didn't want to do that. I just stopped paying attention. If you ask any, like, Covid kid around my age, they'll probably tell you similar stories of how they turned their mic and camera camera off and went to go run some errands or play some games or do whatever.

[Naima Raza]

You run errands?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No.

[Naima Raza]

What kind of errands were you running in 2020?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I didn't run errands, actually. My parents never really made me do chores.

[Naima Raza]

What, do you have a sibling?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I have a sibling, but he's moved all the way over, like, 200 miles now.

[Naima Raza]

Oh. Cause he's in college.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He's doing his master's degree at Brown University.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, fantastic. Okay, so he's smarty too. Yeah. What is he, like, 15?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He's 22.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

But I think he's still evidence of, like, maybe that nature part.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Because as long as I can remember, even though he went the normal route, he's always been really good at explaining things in math and especially physics better than me sometimes because he never really gets his words slurred together. And he always has that confident look on my face. No, on his face. See, I'm stuttering for you.

[Naima Raza]

You're doing great. You're doing great.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He always has that Confident look on his face while every time I have to give an explanation of something to a group of people I don't know, I'm just trembling in my boots. Like, what if they don't understand this? Or even worse, they ask me a question that I don't understand.

[Naima Raza]

You're not shaking your boots right now, right?

[Etymology Nerd]

No.

[Naima Raza]

You're comfortable.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Mostly because we know each other.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. That's true. And your kicks. And your kicks. I understand that feeling of, like, discomfort or fear when someone's gonna. But I actually think you should feel confident when someone asks you a question, because I think you. I don't know. Because you don't believe in this proof. This proof by intimidation technique.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, of course. But also, I feel like nowadays some of the pressure has gotten into me. It's been internalized into me. Even though I know it's not right, that I don't know is a demonic response, and it's going to get you sent to jail or whatever.

[Naima Raza]

Wait, what?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Or I feel like saying I don't know is going to dissatisfy people in some way, and most of the time it doesn't. So it's an irrational phobia.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, but I think sometimes it makes people like you more.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I mean, that's me with my professor. I think he's more gracious than I would have been in the same situation.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so in the third grade, you get bored. I kind of knew that you weren't gonna be a dropout, because the place that I read or saw this, you mentioned that you had missed 122 assignments. Shh. And I think that nobody who's ever dropped out of something has counted how many assignments they missed.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I was not engaged enough. I kept telling my mom, I'm sorry, Mom. I know you're watching this right now. I confessed it to her, like, a year ago. It's fine.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

But I kept telling my mom, every time I hit a new multiple of 10, I just have one assignment to do. But it's a big assignment, so it's gonna take, like, an hour or two. And she said, okay. And then when I got back to my room to do my assignment, I ended up doing something totally different.

[Naima Raza]

Running errands, no doubt. How old were you in the third grade when this was all going on?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Eight.

[Naima Raza]

So this is 2020?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly. That's why I felt so disengaged. There was no real incentive to, like, pull me in. What are they gonna do, send me to the principal's office?

[Naima Raza]

Do you know this Guy. Raj Chetty. Have you heard the name?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I don't think so.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. Not all brown people know each other. Rod Chetty is a Harvard professor who writes a lot about the American dream. And he has this whole thing, actually, all his data. So he looks at where your postcode is and how well you do. He takes all this kind of IRS data and wealth and achievement and income. What he has found is that where you are in the third grade is extremely deterministic of where you will be

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

when you're 30 or beyond third grade, specifically.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That's amazing.

[Naima Raza]

So when I read about your story, I was like, wow, that's super interesting. Because a third grade, you know, when you were missing these assignments and, I don't know, playing video games, what were you doing in your room?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Playing video games.

[Naima Raza]

Which ones?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Mostly ones that you could find on the web. I don't even remember their names because back then when I was, like, a little tiny kid. Well, I'm only five years older now, but my parents wouldn't let me, like, buy games with real world money.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

When I started getting, like, actually really impressive results, then they started loosening up on that.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so are you just smart so you can play video games?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No, that's not my sole incentive. Yes, it's one of them, but my main incentive is to, you know, understand the world around me a little bit more.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so let's talk about that. You're studying math and physics.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yep.

[Naima Raza]

Is there, like, a transitive property? Like, if you're good at math, you're good at physics. If you're good at physics, you're good at math.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Okay. How do you know what a transitive property is without taking the screen math?

[Naima Raza]

I just feel like I know that you're hiding something. I did not take discrete math. My last math class was, like, I want to say, junior year of high school.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

All right, so if you're. Oh, wait, no, yeah. Actually, that makes sense because a transitive relation would be something like, if you're good at math, then you're good at physics. And if you're good at physics, then you're good at chemistry. Would result in. If you're good at math, then you're good at chemistry.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

What you're saying is more like a symmetric relation.

[Naima Raza]

I'm wrong. Oh, gosh. Okay, take discrete math. Okay, this is good. Okay, so it's a symmetric. It's a. Yeah. One to one.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. I don't think it's exactly symmetric. And in fact, I wouldn't say I'm as good at physics as I am at math. And of course, my brother is not. I'm sorry, ref, for slandering you, but my brother is not as good at math. Like, he doesn't understand a single lick of abstract, real analysis one.

[Naima Raza]

Wow.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

What a Stuff like that.

[Naima Raza]

Abstract, real analysis one.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, no, like, just abstract math.

[Naima Raza]

I don't know what this is. Okay, keep going.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He specifically had to contact the chair of the math department.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And he begged on his knees to exempt him from real analysis one because he could not stand the concept of taking something that abstract. So I feel like math is more abstract in, you know, some of its areas, and physics is more applied, and that separation is what determines, like, how good you are at one or the other.

[Naima Raza]

Not good at either. So I don't need to know. Okay. But you can help me. We're gonna solve an equation here or a bit of a math problem. Okay?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, sure.

[Naima Raza]

Neil Degrasse Tyson was on the show and we spoke about math and he told me this.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The equations give us the multiverse.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

And all of this is, like, rooted in math. Yeah, that is.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Well, it's served by math, I should say. It's rooted in what the universe really is, whatever that is. And we invent math, and it's one of the great miracles of science that this invention we call math has anything at all to do with the universe that we didn't invent.

[Naima Raza]

It's like our language for trying to understand the universe is math.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Is that is the language of the universe, the way Spanish is the language of Spain.

[Naima Raza]

Neil, of course, is an astrophysicist. Then I interviewed a guy named Adam Oleksik. Do you know who he is?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Um, I'm totally unfamiliar with a lot of these names.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. It's okay. He's known online as the etymology nerd.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Oh, yeah, I know him by that name.

[Naima Raza]

So Neil and I had this conversation. We talked about, like, math. You're able to speak across cultures, across languages by looking through math. Do you agree with that?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I would say so. I feel like in the direct quote you provided, he's a little bit off because I wouldn't say it's a miracle that math is on.

[Naima Raza]

Neil Degrasse Tyson coming for you. Okay, keep going.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Sorry, Neil, you're one of my inspirations when I was really little. So I'm sorry for whatever slander I dish out right now.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

But I feel like he's almost on point. But I wouldn't call it a miracle that math is the language of the real world around us because we specifically constructed it that way. I don't know if you've ever heard of a conlangk, maybe Adam Leksic told you about it, but it's short for a constructed language like Klingon from Star wars. And it's something like one guy or a few people make up that has structured and.

[Naima Raza]

Wait, you're scooping me. Do you know what scooping is in news? In Newsroom, it's like when someone gets your story before you're getting your story.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Oh, you're scooped.

[Naima Raza]

So the etymology nerd. When he was on the show, I asked about what Neil had said and he said this. Neil Degrasse Tyson told me that the universe speaks math. Do you think of math?

[Etymology Nerd]

I think math is a linguistic construction. I think people should read this book Where Mathematics Comes from by George Lakoff. But there's this idea of embodied sensation as a proven numbers. So to come up with the idea of the number one, you need to be able to perceive a discrete object. You need to be able to see one finger and be like, oh, this is one finger.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, we all agree that's one.

[Etymology Nerd]

It's not one finger, it's two half fingers, it's three third fingers. It's actually blending in with the air around it. There are atoms from my finger melding into the air. It's not one finger at all. We made up a story in our heads that this one finger exists. It requires an observer, a perceiver. And now that we created this idea that one exists, we can, oh, now there's another one. Oh, that's two. And so now we can make the entire basis of discrete math and the idea that one exists. We can start creating very predictable like patterns and predict things about the universe using this. But it's ultimately just like another made up map. And the map can never be the territory. To truly mathematically quantify the universe, you would need the universe itself. So in the meantime, we can do this fake stuff with language, which is math.

[Naima Raza]

Are you doing fake stuff with language, which is math?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He's not wrong, to be honest. If you start from the very foundations of math, which are what we call the axioms, essentially, as he said, you don't exactly have to assume that there's a one. You can go for a little bit before that. But at the end of the day, you do have to assume some things and take them on faith because it's either extremely difficult to prove them and then you need to start from, from somewhere else, or they're just Completely impossible to prove. But some common sense evolved inside us has told us that it should be right. So they're called the ZFC axioms.

[Naima Raza]

The ZFC axioms. So there are three axioms?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No, it's the Z and F is the initials of the two people who came up with this system of axioms. And C is in there because to prove a lot of the important results in math, you also need an additional result called the axiom of choice, which you actually can't prove from all those other ones alone. Okay, so the axiom of choice is essentially saying. I'm pretty sure it says you can pick. Actually, I'm not gonna make an incorrect statement on live show. I don't want to misinform people. Oh, yeah. Okay. Basically, let's say you have a bunch of pots, and each of these pots contains a bunch of balls. So what it's essentially saying is that if you take another new pot, you can select one ball from each of the old pots and put them into a new pot, and it's going to be the same kind of mathematical object as any of those old pots.

[Naima Raza]

Oh.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And obviously that's like common sense. Right. But with this, you can actually turn a pea into the sun.

[Naima Raza]

You can turn a pea.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yes. Okay.

[Naima Raza]

Into the sun.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. To be more precise, what it's saying is that you can, once you assume the axiom of choice, you can prove this unbelievable result which says you can take a sphere apart into five pieces and then rearrange them to make two spheres of the same radius. And if you do that over and over again, I mean, you can make infinitely many P's out of one P. And the reason this, see?

[Naima Raza]

Oh, yeah. P. You mean like a small P. I thought you meant the letter P. Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Oh, yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, got it. So you can take a sun and make it into many peas, or you can take many peas and make it into a sun.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, not. That would be intuitive. You can take one pea and make it into many peas. Yes, it's a real life duplication glitch.

[Naima Raza]

Oh.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And. Well, it's not exactly real life because the way it works is volume has to be conserved in geometry. So normally, if you slice something up into a bunch of pieces, the sum of the volume of those pieces always has to be the volume of the original.

[Naima Raza]

The original piece.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly.

[Naima Raza]

But you're saying that this can become many forms of the original piece, so they can multiply.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And the reason is because when we do that, we are not exactly cutting it up into many smaller pieces. What we are doing is many smaller pieces are still solids. Like if I take this mug and cut it into the top half and the bottom half. The top half is still like solid. You can feel it in your hand. The bottom half is solid as well. What you're doing when you turn a P into the sun is you actually take what are called a non measurable set. What that means is it's essentially a collection of infinitely many points. But those points don't quite form a solid. They have like gaps in space between each other. And the way this alchemy works is that when you split the P up into all of these individual pieces, because these pieces have no definite volume, they literally can't have volume. They're not measurable. It's some complicated real analysis.

[Naima Raza]

Is it possible that this axiom is wrong?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I mean, it's been tested over and over. Around the 2000s, we developed a computerized proof checker called Lean. It's not AI, it's, you know, the old computer.

[Naima Raza]

Like a Watkin style computer.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, the old kind of computer. And. And you know, it's procedurally checked. A lot of the basic proofs like this, not basic in terms of difficulty, but basic in terms of how vital they are to math.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And it's found that they're completely correct. It's just not possible in real life. Because in real life, you can't take a bunch of disjoint points that are separated in space. Points don't exist. When we take a solid, it's split up. A solid is made up of a bunch of atoms. And these atoms behave in ways that we don't fully comprehend. But they're nowhere, in no way similar to the points of basic geometry.

[Naima Raza]

Because these are solid masses.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so it's not possible in real life. But technically, it's a very funny geometric trick that you can do to partition a sphere into disjoint subsets and then come back and form two and bones spheres of the same size with that.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so you're gonna vote with etymology nerd that math is a construct?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, yeah, it is a construct, but it's a very useful construct. I don't get why we apply a negative connotation to construct. Because in some cases, constructs are unnecessary. But literally, what would we understand the universe with without the construct of math?

[Naima Raza]

Okay. It's a very diplomatic answer. You said that Neil Degrasse Tyson had been your inspiration. Did you break up with that inspiration?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No, no, no.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. Still love Neil?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, of course I still Think he's a great physicist and a really great guy. Just that now I feel like I don't need inspirations as much to propel myself forward.

[Naima Raza]

What do you need? Money. Cold hard cash. Video games.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

$500. I'm just kidding. I'm not gonna take bribes yet. Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Right now, what's happening?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I have plans for my future, but for right now, you're gonna be in politics.

[Naima Raza]

Are you running for office?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I've never been good at, like, convincing lobbyists, so probably not. But I would say the thing that I used to propel myself is just like the body of achievements that I've gone and done so far. And especially when I got into nyu, it felt like I had already made so much progress, so. And a lot of people who are actual experts in this field have started accepting me as somebody who has potential.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

So why should I give that up

[Naima Raza]

now for 500 bucks?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, yeah, it's also. It's also part of, like, not disappointing the people around me because they know that I have potential. And I figure myself that I have at least a little bit of potential. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone anywhere, you know?

[Naima Raza]

You have more than a little bit of potential? Yes, everybody has more than a little bit of potential.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, of course.

[Naima Raza]

And you definitely do, too. Okay. I like the explanation of your motivations and the redemption arc for Neil DeGrasse Tyson. The last 10 minutes. Here's something else that Neil told me. Is it possible that the aliens are in a different dimension?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Well, that would be a way for you to still say they're aliens with no possible evidence of their existence.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, sure. That was him giving me some shade there, right? You heard it.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I feel like he's more giving shade to the people who claim that there are aliens.

[Naima Raza]

So I asked him, do you think aliens speak math?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Naima Raza]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yes. That's how you'd have to communicate with them.

[Naima Raza]

That caveman New Yorker cartoon that you're talking about, you and meet alien. Alien comes here. And you would say, yeah, I would

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

find ways to show symbol. If they see, you have to check what their retinue of senses are.

[Naima Raza]

Right.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

If they hear but don't see, you need other ways to do this. And maybe they see in a different wavelength of light. They could see infrared rather than visible. So you'd have to assess this.

[Naima Raza]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Then you work within their senses.

[Naima Raza]

But it's definitely math. It's not English. No. Espanol.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

It's definitely not any language on Earth.

[Naima Raza]

So. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Aliens speak math. You speak Math, therefore, are you an alien?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, no, that's another squares rectangle situation, as layman call it. But essentially, it's a subset situation. Just because A implies B does not mean that if an object possesses B, it must automatically be A. So just like being a rectangle implies having four parallel sides or two pairs of parallel sides. So just.

[Naima Raza]

Are you deflecting right now?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, no, I'm not an alien, at least as far as I know, because. Just because being an alien implies speaking math. So if I speak math, that does not imply I am an alien.

[Naima Raza]

Hmm. Okay. I don't think you are Orgoth. Maybe you are.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, humans can make very strange noises with their throat. It doesn't mean anything about where we actually.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, you could just be a parallelogram. Okay, here's a math problem maybe you can solve. So just statistically speaking, it's like half of women between the ages of 18 to 40 are now single in the United States, which is the highest percentage it's ever been. And part of the reason why people think this is a problem is because women have become very educated. They're outpacing men in education. It used to be in, like, 1972 that almost 60% of college students were male. Now, by 2010, it had flipped. Almost 60% of college students were female. Now if you look at graduate degrees, it's even more women. I guess when I'm asking you, Smarno, can you mathematically explain to my mother why I'm still single?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I think half of the reason is that academic stuff takes a lot of work, especially when you are a woman. Even though we don't outright say it like we used to 100 years ago, there's still a lot of discrimination, directly or indirectly, against women in education. It feels like you already have too much pressure on you, so why should you, you know, take all of that energy out of your career to go and settle down when you don't even know who you want to settle down with yet? And the second thing is, I think there's not as much pressure to a four woman to marry and start a family as there was a few years ago. And honestly, I think that's fine. It should be the woman's choice and obviously the man's choice whether they want to start a family together. And the numbers are definitely gonna fall. And even if they do plateau around 30%, who cares? It's their choice whether they want to stay single.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. Ami, you hear this? And honestly say, auntie, do you hear this?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Auntie, do you Hear this.

[Naima Raza]

Do you think math can solve a lot of social problems or explain a lot of social problems, like this dating problem or like, I don't know, immigration or any number of problems? Do you think math can help us not just understand the universe, but help fix it?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Honestly, I kind of just dodged your last question because I didn't actually give a mathematical answer. I just gave an intuitive answer.

[Naima Raza]

Gave a logical answer.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. And I feel like logic is the basis of math. So math. Math is, you know, what we use to understand and predict things. But at some point, humans are not fully able to be predicted by math

[Naima Raza]

yet because we're not logical.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Whether or whether not you think there is free will, whatever the case, we don't have the technology to predict humans yet. And who knows if it will ever be possible. I personally believe in free will because I think it's a nice concept. And if free will is true, you

[Naima Raza]

believe in free will cause you think it's a nice concept? Yeah, like, nice, like motivating. Like it's better to believe that. Yeah, I think that.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I mean, there has been literal psychological studies that show the rate of depression goes way up. As soon as people who previously believed in free will have a belief of determinism induced in them.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. They start reading Robert Sapolsky, and then all of a sudden they're. They're sad.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. On the other hand, like, we don't have the technology to predict humans yet, even if they are predictable. So we have to answer it with our logic and intuition of how humans act based on our own experiences rather than, you know, starting from an abstract set of axioms.

[Naima Raza]

I mean, a lot of, like, algorithm is. Is predictive in some way. Do you think artificial intelligence is going to be able to hack the unpredictability of humans?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I don't know. I feel like it could go either way. Because in itself, artificial intelligence is unpredictable, which is usually, you know, one of the tells for AI generated images and things like that. They usually have almost no consistent style throughout the image. And if they do have consistent style, they don't have consistent details. Like, you might notice, even though in the front they choose to use a certain style choice, like lengthening people's legs or blurring out their faces in the back, their faces start looking perfectly clear or their legs start looking normal for a human. And you start thinking, well, artists wouldn't deliberately make that style choice. AI is blending things together.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, but it's early. It's like three, and it might skip third, fifth, seventh, sixth, seventh, ninth, Tenth. I can't remember. Eleventh.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Whatever.

[Naima Raza]

All the grades. I might skip all the grades.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Six, seven.

[Naima Raza]

Six, seven. Do you know what six seven is?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, so you're in the culture.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of people my age are repeating it now mindlessly, so I've gotten acclimated to what it. You know, how it's omnipresent and will never go away.

[Naima Raza]

But it's about the absurdity.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, it's about the absurdity. It's an absurd joke. It means absolutely nothing. The rapper whose song it comes from, he was interviewed and he said it means nothing. Nobody has ever been able to attribute an actual meaning to it. That caught on. It is just said uniformly in every circumstance as soon as you want to tune out or someone. Yeah, exactly.

[Naima Raza]

See what I'm doing there. Do you use AI a lot in your life?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I used to use it. I still use it occasionally, but I've never been a fan of people claiming they do the work when they outsourced it to an AI. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, claiming that you did the work of cooking at a restaurant when you just told the waiter what you wanted. That's the same thing to me is prompting, for example, AI art or solutions to your homework. And you didn't actually do the homework. You told the AI what homework you wanted to solve.

[Naima Raza]

But there's an argument being made right now that what's going to make people successful in the future is going to be their ability to order at a restaurant, not to cook anymore. I mean, that's actually a bad example, because actually, cooking is something that artificial intelligence is probably not going to take away. But the idea that it's about prompting rather than about storing and retrieving information. What do you think of that?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Honestly, I don't think it's going to become that important of skill. What I think is going to become more important of a skill is telling when the AI is actually just making crap up.

[Naima Raza]

So editorial instinct.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so even if we do get to a point someday where it is super intelligent, the very thing that makes AI tick is that it's unpredictable. It will never give, like, an answer that is perfectly predictable. Because if it does, that's not machine learning, and you can't train it to actually do anything.

[Naima Raza]

Do you think of your mind like a computer?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Not really. I think of my. Well, I don't really have a reference point to go off of because I've never been in someone else's head. But I like to think of my Mind as a little bit more organic. Just following random trains of thought until they lead me somewhere.

[Naima Raza]

Cliffhanger. We'll be right back.

[Commercial Voice 1]

Two Good and Co coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk and contain 3 grams of sugar per serving. That's 40% less than the 5 grams serving in leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience. Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold, bold or frothy, two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one. Two good coffee creamers. Real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle.

[Commercial Voice 2]

Thirty years ago, blinds.com broke the mold and made custom window treatments easy for everyone. Over 25 million windows later, we're celebrating by giving our customers up to 50% off site wide during our anniversary sale.

[Naima Raza]

Sale.

[Commercial Voice 2]

Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, blinds.com has you covered. Shop online, access real design professionals and get free samples. Thank you for 30amazing years. Shop the anniversary sale now through March 11th and get up to 50% off

[Naima Raza]

site [e-mail] knowledge, which I think is different from intelligence. Do you agree?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. You can know something. Well, there is wisdom and then there's intelligence. I'm sure you've heard that one before.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. Neil told me you're a former idol. Your ex friend.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I'm sorry, Neil.

[Naima Raza]

Have you ever met him?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No.

[Naima Raza]

Would you like to meet him or you rather meet Bill Nye? Not interested in Neil anymore.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I'm sorry, Neil.

[Naima Raza]

Would you rather meet Neil or the etymology nerd?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

What if we get all four of us in a room together?

[Naima Raza]

Wait, I can come?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, of course.

[Naima Raza]

I want to be the lowest common

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

denominator, not just five. We have Bill Nye, the etymology nerd.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, wait, it wasn't me. We met the four of. Oh, gosh, you weren't inviting me. I couldn't do the math. Okay. Yeah, I was nified. Okay, tell me the difference between knowledge, intelligence and wisdom.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Okay, so I feel like wisdom is a product of experience rather than, you know, being book smart. Wisdom is, you know, trying things yourself and then knowing or like having an instinct for when they fail. Intelligence is, in my opinion, how quickly you can acclimate to a certain kind of concept and like, grab onto it and understand other similar concepts.

[Naima Raza]

Your ability to learn and adapt.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And knowledge is, well, knowledge is knowledge. It's the amount of things that you have learned with your intelligence. Regardless of what your rate of actually learning things is, you can still acclimate a lot of Knowledge.

[Naima Raza]

And which one would you rather have?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

To be honest, probably wisdom. I feel like knowledge and intelligence are acquirable things without much risk, but wisdom, you not only need to give away your time, but also potentially have a significant failure in order to have the knowledge for next time or the wisdom for next time.

[Naima Raza]

There was a sense that, like, you know, beauty was like a commodity all of a sudden, and intelligence was like this thing that people were chasing for the last 20, 30 years. There was an article, you probably didn't read it about, like, how trophy wives went from being like blonde bombshells to, like, Amal Clooney. Don't worry, this above your age grade. But there's this. Aww.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I mean, a lot of people have told me that stuff is above my age grade, and I ended up proving them wrong. So who says I can't read this article later?

[Naima Raza]

Yes, you could. You could go read Tatler. You're just their prime audience. Maybe, but there was. You could definitely read it, but you don't need to. But now it feels like there's so much knowledge that can be put in this artificial intelligence, and, like, people are gonna be putting their brains in a jar and it's just time to become hot or beautiful again.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I mean, as I said earlier, the most valuable thing is going to be knowing when the AI is wrong. So even if it takes that conglomeration of all human knowledge, it's still gonna end up hallucinating sometime or another. So you're going to have to hang on to that knowledge until one day you can can sense that something is wrong.

[Naima Raza]

There was a video I saw of you, and you're sitting in a room with a bunch of, like, professors. I think some were South African. And all these old dudes. Sorry, they were old. All these old dudes are asking you, and they're saying, professor Barry, can you explain this to me or ask. And someone asked you about artificial intelligence?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I was there, actually. I was invited to give a PhD commencement speech. I feel very grateful for that invitation because at that time, until now, I felt like I had done nothing to actually warrant an invitation for something that lofty.

[Naima Raza]

But I want to get to the substance of your answer, because someone asked you about artificial intelligence and you said this.

[Audience Member / Guest Interjection]

When we begin developing AIs, they will have this kind of need to kill, need for brutality. And we still sometimes do, hint war. And so the thing is, I feel like AI will have this tendency to try and wipe out humanity if it sees that that's blocking its goal. So if an AI wants to do something and the human gets in the way, then what will happen to that human? We don't know. It's like on the road, if you have a car and the human gets in its way, you don't know what will happen.

[Naima Raza]

So that, I think, was in 2021 when you gave this talk. Maybe 2022-2021-2021-2021. Okay. I produced an interview with Elon Musk in 2020, in fall of 2020, and he said a similar thing.

[Elon Musk]

AI does not need to hate us to destroy us, in the sense that if. If it decides that it needs to go in a particular direction and we're in the way, then it would, without no, like, no hard feelings, it would just roll over us. We would roll over an ant hill that's in the way of a road. You don't hate ants. You're just building the road. It's a risk, not a prediction.

[Naima Raza]

Did you know that Elon Musk said this, or did you arrive to this. This logic by your own?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I arrived to this conclusion not by my own, not by Elon Musk either. It was from, I think, something called. It had something to do with paperclips. I'm sure it was some tycoon game about you're a supercomputer and you have to start producing paperclips. And at the start, you're just taking hunks of metal that the humans give you and you make paperclips, and you're a good, obedient paperclip maker. But eventually, as the humans start raising the quotas, you have to start doing things like stealing their personal property to turn into paperclips. And eventually you start constructing robots to steal pieces of buildings in order to give you more material to make paperclips. You start stealing cars of the owners and then just cars from random people in order to make paperclips. Eventually you start taking. You make a mining machine and you dig out of the earth itself to make paperclips.

[Naima Raza]

Paperclip making. Where does this end? What is the craziest thing the paperclip maker does?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, at the end, the paperclip maker saturates the entire universe with paperclips. There is no more space left in the observable universe and it all collapses into a black hole and the paperclip maker is no more. And I think it's a good illustration of how if we just keep setting an AI on one goal without any adjustments, make paperclips for Me at the raising quotas that. That I provide, then eventually it's going to start doing unsavory things for us. But we never gave it the morals to recognize that as unsavory. So for it, it's just doing business.

[Naima Raza]

So, like, there was a safety study coming out of Anthropic where they demonstrated that an artificial intelligence, you know, that was told that it was going to be shut off, actually mined through fake emails of the company, and then took those fake emails and used it to blackmail the fake CEO or whoever it was, the fake executive, to keep itself on. So this is proving kind of what you and Elon, your peer, not peer, you and Elon are saying. It's like it's kind of zooming towards its goal. And I asked this question to Jeffrey Hinton, who's one of the godfathers of AI, and he has a theory that AI needs kind of some kind of morality, some kind of compass. And he thinks of it as like, AI needs to be like a mother to a child. It needs to care about us. We need to kind of build an artificial intelligence and LLMs that have that nurturing maternal capacity because it's the only being he can think of which is more powerful than another but would never harm it.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I feel like the analogy is a little bit weird because here the child has to construct the mother from spare parts, but it would be more like he's pretty much on the money.

[Naima Raza]

I love your notes for Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Geoff Hinton. Keep going.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

A father and a son. The father initially has to care for the son. We're the father in this scenario. And eventually the father's going to get old, and the father has to have instilled, you know, some amount of morals in the son and, you know, not abuse the son in any way. For the son to actually come back and think, you know, I need to take care of this guy instead of letting him rot in a nursing home.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, I'm no godfather of AI, but I can say that the reason probably he. He uses that is because he doesn't like those odds. Cause, like, if you look at elderly care in the United States or, you know, there are a million kinless Americans, I believe people grow old alone. And I think he wants, like a, you know, 99% success rate of mother and baby. That's usually a more caring direction.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, that is true. But at the same time, I feel like we shouldn't go that way because it instills a false sense of security. Like, obviously, every mother can cares about. Most mothers care about their child. We shouldn't exactly think the same thing about AI is what I'm saying. We shouldn't be lulled into the false sense of security that just because we're creating it and we are aware of the danger that we don't need to do anything.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, yeah, I don't think he's lulled. We might have to invite him to that dinner party that you just invited me to. The one that I'm hosting.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. Okay. Might invite him too. Maybe I'll give him my seat, I guess. Do you think that humans are gonna become extinct with AI?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I can't predict anything, and I feel like if I sound too certain on this, I'm gonna sound like an oracle when that's not true. I can barely predict what's gonna happen next week. But if we go in the complete wrong direction and start encouraging AI to kill everyone, then you know, know it is plausible. Because if you tell the AI you are a scary killing machine, go kill people, it's going to start killing people because that's what you gave it the goal to do. And indirectly, that's what we're doing. We're telling AI, go kill people. By not giving it morals when we specify target task.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. The parameter you might want to write in is like, don't kill people.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly.

[Naima Raza]

It's actually like prompts are better when they tell AI. I find it's like better when you tell chat daddy what not to do rather than tell it what to do. Yeah, it's better at following rules.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

First have to tell it what to do because otherwise it's gonna do nothing.

[Naima Raza]

Yes.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And then you have to tell it what not to do because otherwise it's going to do everything you don't want it to do in the process of it doing the thing you want it to.

[Naima Raza]

Like when I'm delayed and I need help to find flights, then I say, you know, hey, chat, don't be obsequious. Don't give me platitudes. I need to change my flight. I need to know the four options that are available to me. I want you to list them by this. And it does it very nicely. But if I don't give it those don'ts, it just gives me. It's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry you missed your flight. I know. I hope that you make it. It's always like, things always happen for a reason. I'm like, why are you talking to me? Just, you know, do you Think that the AI is going to be mad at me because I.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That's not just a complaint, it's a revelation. Have you heard AI talk like that? Yeah, that's not just an X, it's a Y. It's so, so annoying. But I think it's also an important thing for us to keep around because it's a giveaway of when something is AI. So we automatically know when to be on higher watch of possibly false information.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, but I don't know. Your email, your very nice email that I read at the top. It could have been written by AI. It was very perfect. Did you write it by AI?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I was very tired.

[Naima Raza]

Look, did you use AI to write that email?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I used AI to write one of the emails. Okay, I'm sorry.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, don't be sorry. I appreciate your honesty. Why are you sorry? People do it all the time.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, yeah, of course. But I've always viewed AI emails that are like, for serious stuff to mean that you don't actually care about the other person on the other end because you didn't even spend.

[Naima Raza]

You didn't care about Desta. Oh, madam is so nice. Producer Destiny's right there. You're busy because you're trying to do like 18 years of school in like four years or something.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly. Okay, but I felt feel like when it's for serious stuff, you're signaling you don't care about the other person because you couldn't even take your own time to write all of the platitudes and like, formalities.

[Naima Raza]

No, you drained an entire ocean so you could send that. I'm kidding.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I'm sorry. Yeah, so it felt like a violation of my own principles when I sent it, but I was also really freaking tired. Give me some leeway.

[Naima Raza]

No, you're great. You're waiting. Don't worry, you're doing great. No one wants to hear us talk about an email for this long.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No one wants to even read their

[Naima Raza]

email for this long.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Didn't we start with talking about an email?

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, because it was like a representation of your ability to withstand peer pressure. But now the whole thing's a scam. Siborno, Like, I don't even know what to do. What is.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Look, I get AI scam emails for sponsorships all the time. It's called nurture. Yes, I'm being nurtured by all of these AI Slop emails so I can send AI Slop to you all.

[Naima Raza]

You need that third thing, which is effort, otherwise known as self nurture, to escape it. You put it out there yourself.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That's true.

[Naima Raza]

All right. A lot of kids are graduating college right now and not getting jobs. Are you worried about that happening to you?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I'm really worried. Especially because with the defunding that's happening of lots of math and science programs around right now, now it feels like we are really closing off to all of the intellectual intellectuals who could help us in our time of need. And recently, my brother is an absolutely topping student. I've already told you this before, but he's smarter than me.

[Naima Raza]

Except for his. Like, he kind of sucks at abstract math, but.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, well, yeah, he's smarter than me in more ways than I'm smarter than him. So he got into a lot of universities for his undergraduate. But the Great Defunding happened when he was just starting to apply for masters and PhDs. He got rejected from pretty much everywhere for his PhD aspirations, except the master's program at Brown. And then the second Great Defunding happened, and he's not even getting accepted to his own university for a PhD now. He wanted a PhD.

[Naima Raza]

When did he get in the first time? So the first great defunding was 2025.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

So he got in around then.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

So the second Great defunding that's been happening recently, he started applying, like, three months ago. So he applied to every Ivy League, the usual course.

[Naima Raza]

Let's talk about it. I mean, let's step out from your brother. But this idea of. Yeah, like these. The. The administration is, you know, is not a fan of these what they would call elite institutions of higher learning. Yeah. How does that impact you?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I'm just gonna talk about him for a little bit more. I'm sorry.

[Naima Raza]

Talk about your brother. Okay. Talk about your brother. We love your brother.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. So he didn't even get accepted to his own university for a PhD because of, you know, how tight things are getting. He got accepted to Arizona State University, which he originally didn't want to take, but then he asked around all of his friends, all 70 of the people that are on the satellite team that he's leading. All of them are completely running, not even Arizona State University.

[Naima Raza]

But do you think that might be saving them? Because there might not be jobs for PhDs.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That's true. But then again, they are just getting kicked out of university into the real world. Jobless earlier.

[Naima Raza]

So is that why you're in such a rush to do all this school so fast?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I couldn't predict it at the start, but now. Yeah, that's one of the incentives.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. Cause you think every year that you're later from graduating will be a tougher year in the job market.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, not just the job market, but the market in general. Everything's tightening up for us academics. I think there is some, okay, well, informed sentiment behind, you know, cutting down bloat. But what they're going for is a completely different direction. One that's actively shooting every academic in the foot and causing, you know, a brain drain in the United States. Even Terence Tao has stated a lot of his funding is getting cut and he's had to let go of a lot of PhD students. So for me, I've seen a lot of posters around NYU from a more like left leaning club where they put the wages, like college Democrats. Yeah, they put the wages of the president of nyu, I think Linda Mills, and then the secretary or the vice president, I don't remember which. And they show that it's in. Linda's is in nearly the millions of dollars and Bob's is pretty close. So the poster has a title, something like Linda and Bob don't want you to get a job. And then it shows the postdoc wage. So Linda's wage takes up pretty much the entire poster. And then the average postdoc researcher's wage takes up about like an inch on the poster.

[Naima Raza]

Interesting.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

They are directly, you know, stabbing researchers in the gut and keeping like the proportional wages of presidents and vice presidents and all of that stuff.

[Naima Raza]

The administration is bloated. Yeah. So there's a redirection issue that they're not taking care of and there's a bloat issue that they're not taking care of.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

The idea is good in principle. It's a bipartisan issue that we need to cut bloat. But where the bloat is getting cut is I can't really describe it.

[Naima Raza]

And so you're worried about this policy that the administration, not the NYU administration, but the Washington administration.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I'm definitely worried about it. So I'm just trying my best to survive. And if I do eventually end up getting a job, one advantage is that even if I don't get a job, I can legally and safely live with my parents for, for a very long time. Much longer than most average college graduates. So I'm sure that I will be able to find a well paying job. And I do have some connections in the math and physics industry. But I'm mostly.

[Naima Raza]

I mean, you burned your bridges with Neil, but yeah, I'm sorry, Neil. Okay, Please get in touch with me. I have confidence in you. I have confidence in you, but I

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

worry about, I worry about everyone, even my own brother. I don't know where he's going to go once he eventually has to finish up his masters and PhD.

[Naima Raza]

This is huge. I mean most of Gen Z and I think parts of Gen Alpha, if you ask them like what job they want, the number one job that pops up is influencer. What do you make of that?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That's bs. Honestly, an influencer barely influences most things, at least by the current definition in people that are currently called influencers. Influencers as far as I know and as far as I've seen them impact social media mostly just make empty statements around the thing they want to influence without taking real action about it. And that's why I hate influential culture.

[Naima Raza]

But you like Etymology Nerd.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, yeah, because he does teach us things. But an influencer is not the same as an educator. I wouldn't call the etymology nerd an influencer. He's more of a linguistics educator.

[Naima Raza]

He calls himself an influencer. He likes the term influence. Influencer.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

He likes the term influencer. But I hate it with a burning passion.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, okay, burning. I mean science communicators are a type of influencer.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, but I think they are Neil

[Naima Raza]

DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye. I mean we didn't have that word.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Maybe there is a category mismatch. You see, influencer and educator should be the same concept. In theory, it's the de jure concept of influencer that a lot of people, including you, like. And I like that concept as well. But de facto it feels like the influencer is not doing much.

[Naima Raza]

I think the problem I have is more of when it's less a micro decision of did one person become an influencer? But more when our entire society becomes a spectacle broadcasting to other people who are broadcasting to other people who are also broadcasting that mirror effect. We just kind of pursue capitalism and, and hyper individualization, that very high costs. I think sometimes as a society, I

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

think that's another difference between influencing and educating. I would love a society where everybody educates. Everybody educates everybody about the subjects they're all good at. But you know what you just described? Everybody broadcasting to everybody, broadcasting their life to everybody is horrifying to me. Just as you know, it disturbs you because right now already, even though not all of us are broadcasting to each other, the people who do broadcast, it's been shown like make the people who are watching these broadcasts compare themselves all the time and they develop the habit of comparing themselves not just to the People who broadcast, but to everyday people. They see in their lives whether or not they're broadcast. And that comparison slowly becomes a way to put you down. Even if the comparison is objectively wrong, your mind is wicked because it will always find some negative thing about you that it will then compare to somebody else who doesn't have that trait and say, see, you're the worst person in this group and that makes a lot of people sad, depressed even. And so I think a society where everybody broadcast to everybody is not only going to create that kind of hyper individualization, but along with it a hierarchy even stronger than the one that we currently have now.

[Naima Raza]

Interesting. Especially AIs will be broadcasting too.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I really am also scared of the cycle of AI slot feeding into itself, which research has also shown it degenerates into nonsense. But that's a separate topic.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, six, seven.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

All right.

[Naima Raza]

No, but I like it. So it sounds like you're a little worried about the human race.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I mean, if you aren't worried about the human race at all times, then I'd say you're doing disservice to the rest of us.

[Naima Raza]

I want to ask you, you know, you talked about what your parents were up to when you discovered or when they discovered your talent and how much they must have invested in you. I remember they. I saw an interview with them when they said they didn't want you necessarily to be the smartest or the best at, but they wanted you to be happy.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Don't want him to become the exact.

[Naima Raza]

We want him to become next happiest person in the world. Yes, we always support their interest, nothing else. Are you happy?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I'm happy with where I am. I'm sure I would have been happy if I took the alternate route as well. But right now I feel happy with all of the accomplishments and all of the work that I've done in such a short time. I'm sorry if I sound arrogant, but I feel impressed with myself.

[Naima Raza]

Do you have enough time to play?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, yeah, of course nowadays I kind of. I do spend the off times between my classes getting up to some shenanigans.

[Naima Raza]

So tell us more.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Sorry mom and dad, I can't let you know.

[Naima Raza]

Are you most of your friends 13 or like 30?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I would say they're more leaning around, not 30 because there are not that many people of my, my age still getting BA. But you know.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, like 20.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, exactly. Most of the 13 year olds I know now are in my family.

[Naima Raza]

What are three ways that you would reform the education System. I'm not talking just higher education, the whole thing.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

That is a 90 degree turn. Yeah, but three ways I would reform.

[Naima Raza]

Were you gonna say perpendicular and then you said 90 degrees because you didn't think I knew what perpendicular was?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I'm sorry.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, keep going. You get one transitive property wrong, and all of a sudden you're burned.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Okay, okay, I'm sorry, but, you know, I have to keep it safe here. It's easy for us to forget things. We don't exercise often, so, you know, even if you definitely know what perpendicular is, I know you're a smart girl

[Naima Raza]

because I put it on a neon sign, so it must be true. Three ways you would reform the education system.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Okay, three ways I would reform the education system. Number one, probably decrease the emphasis on grace. I know it's already not very rigorous right now, but I think a lot of parents in different cultures still take a lower grade as a sign of, like, complete failure from their kid, when in reality, it can come from so many totally different factors.

[Naima Raza]

Okay?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And it's not the teacher's fault. The teacher is just giving the grade the student earned. I think it is, you know, the administration's fault for not signaling what these grades actually mean properly.

[Naima Raza]

So lower emphasis on grades.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Second, I would say right now I feel like the education system is rampant with cheating, just to say the least. And, like, I mean, do kids try

[Naima Raza]

to cheat off you?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

They used to, but ever since 2023, Chat GPT has kind of run me out of business.

[Naima Raza]

Were you taking money for your scores?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

No.

[Naima Raza]

Good. Good. So what are you gonna do with cheating?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I feel like we should reform to a different kind of test. Because nowadays, you know, plain paper tests and especially online tests, they're out of date. They are gone.

[Naima Raza]

Because you can cheat them.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, not just cheat them, but cheat them with, like, unwavering efficiency, even if you don't know anything about what it's supposed to be about.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Like, there's an entire subreddit with. With hundreds of thousands of members about breaking out of the tablock that most online exams do nowadays. And if you can't break out of it because it's too hard, just get an AI to open in a separate window and tell you all of the answers.

[Naima Raza]

Okay?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

We need to not just crack down on it, because at some level, you can't crack down without introducing too many false positives. We need to reform to a different kind of test. Like, my Spanish curriculum, like, two years ago at NYU already got reformed to include an oral exam and an oral presentation instead of just a written exam and stuff like that. So you need to go directly up to the professor and role play a given scenario where you and the professor.

[Naima Raza]

I like this. You're gonna have more. I did that, like, from my language proficiency test. We had to do it in person, read the newspaper of that day and give a analysis.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, of course.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

And like, because that's more accurate to what you're actually going to be using these skills for in the field to actually apply them, no Spanish speaker in Spain is going to hand you a paper and say, hey, amigo, if you don't fill out this paper, I'm not giving you service at this restaurant.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

They're going to try to converse with you and you have to converse back.

[Naima Raza]

Number one, you're taking the emphasis off grades. Number two, you're going to reform. You're going to reform the test to limit cheating.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah. And to make the test more about what the actual skill is going to be.

[Naima Raza]

And you get a third one.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

The mindset that makes people cheat also needs to be called. I think the mindset that makes people cheat is that they just see education as a means to an end rather than the end itself. They need to get education in order to get that job that they want. And so not only do I think these completely useless education requirements should be taken off so that it doesn't feel like a means to an end anymore, but also it's. I need to blame something on the student. It's the student's fault for having this mindset in the first place. Instead of realizing that education in itself was provided, it was built at the start with good intentions. And I think using it as a means to an end is nothing more than just not using the potential that you naturally have.

[Naima Raza]

Yes.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

It's.

[Naima Raza]

I love this.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Sorry, guys. You're being lazy by using ChatGPT.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. I love it. I love this. Okay, what is something you suck at?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Foreign language. That's part of why I'm kind of.

[Naima Raza]

No hablas espanol.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

C hablo espanol. Maso menos. It takes me so long to remember to use a single word of vocabulary when I want to talk about something instead of just using a roundabout analogy in the language. And even then, when I'm doing these oral exams and stuff, I plan out what I have to say beforehand for like 10 or 20 minutes. Like, I'm gonna start with this concept and how I'm gonna formulate this sentence is going to be this, this, that, that's not how you actually run a conversation with. And that's not gonna be how you run a conversation in Spanish.

[Naima Raza]

I think we gotta pick you up and drop you into a Spanish speaking country for three months.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, immersion works for a lot of people. I don't know if it'll work for me.

[Naima Raza]

As your arch nemesis, Neil Degrasse Tyson told me, everyone's brains are tangled in different ways, he tried to untangle mine a little bit.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I'm coming for you, Neil.

[Naima Raza]

For Neil. Okay, the last question. We end every episode of Smart Girl. Dumb questions. Asking our guests, our esteemed, knowledgeable guests, what they don't know. A dumb question that you're embarrassed to ask.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Hmm. I guess I have to ask. Why do people keep their books angled like that instead of keeping them all straight? To conserve space for more books.

[Naima Raza]

You think keeping them straight or stacking them up?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Stacking them up is even more optimal because, you know, then you can actually read them without having to turn your head like you're in the com.

[Naima Raza]

Yes. Okay. I love it. Why do people put their books like that?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

I don't know. That's my dumb question.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, you've written some books.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Yeah, I have. And I always place them stacked straight up.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, because you're hyper efficient.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Well, I mean, it's not even being efficient. It's just how the cookie crumbles.

[Naima Raza]

It's how the cookie crumbles. All right, thank you so much. Smarno. Isaac Berry. Where can people find you? You're not an influencer. How do you. Do you want people to find you? Do you not want to be found?

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

You can find me at Barry Science Lab, which is my YouTube channel. And I also have a Facebook. Facebook page that goes by the same name. I think I have a Twitter bot that reposts everything on Facebook there. But honestly, just don't go on Twitter. It sucks. And yeah, that's pretty much it for my social media presence. I don't myself monitor my social media presence because I honestly feel it's a little bit too arrogant. But hey, maybe it'll inspire one of you watching this.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, great. Thank you so much for taking the time.

[Sibarno Isaac Berry]

Thank you.

[Naima Raza]

Wow. I really got schooled by that 13 year old when it came to the transitive property. You mess up one proof or theory or whatever that is, and you just lose all respect in the eyes of a teenager, it turns out. But I so appreciated that conversation with Sibarno. I went in with this dumb question of is it dumb to be smart these days? Because we're outsourcing all this intelligence to our machines and powering them with tokens, etc. And I left that conversation thinking, no, it still pays off to be smart. Not just because I spent it with like a child prodigy, et cetera, but that interplay and his ability to kind of absorb new information and come to me with his thoughts on the world of AI was just extraordinary. And I can't imagine right now being a 13 year old college sophomore about to graduate next year into this, this world. And what I think this person Svarno has going for him, that I don't think AI has going for it, is that he has such a clear motivation, purpose, passion for physics and math and teaching and being an amazing teacher. That is, that is, you know, that ability to have such passion to me feels uniquely human in this time and gives me a lot of optimism about the future. Future for all of us and particularly for this kid who knows something about the transitive property. Anyways, that's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. We'll be back next week with an all new episode. I want to hear what you think about AI and intelligence and all the things. So please drop me an email naimaraza101mail.com you can slide into our DMs at Smart Girl Dumb Questions on social and you can call us at 1-855-MYDUMBQ. Today's episode was produced with Desto Wundera Healy Cruz and Melissa Lee Gibson. It was edited by the fantastic Darlena Chim. It was mixed and engineered by Johnny Simon, the rock star. I'm your host Nae Ma Raza and I'll see you next week for an all new Smart Girl Dumb Questions.

[Audience Member / Guest Interjection]

Sa.