After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up
-
0:01 - 0:05I'm thrilled to be talking to you
by this high-tech method. -
0:06 - 0:08Of all humans who have ever lived,
-
0:08 - 0:13the overwhelming majority
would have found what we are doing here -
0:13 - 0:15incomprehensible, unbelievable.
-
0:16 - 0:19Because, for thousands of centuries,
-
0:19 - 0:22in the dark time
before the scientific revolution -
0:22 - 0:24and the Enlightenment,
-
0:24 - 0:27people had low expectations.
-
0:27 - 0:30For their lives,
for their descendants' lives. -
0:30 - 0:31Typically, they expected
-
0:31 - 0:36nothing significantly new
or better to be achieved, ever. -
0:37 - 0:42This pessimism
famously appears in the Bible, -
0:42 - 0:46in one of the few biblical passages
with a named author. -
0:46 - 0:50He's called Qohelet,
he's an enigmatic chap. -
0:50 - 0:54He wrote, "What has been is what will be,
-
0:55 - 0:58and what has been done
is what will be done; -
0:59 - 1:01there is nothing new under the sun.
-
1:02 - 1:06Is there something of which it is said,
'Look, this is new.' -
1:06 - 1:10No, that thing was already done
in the ages that came before us." -
1:11 - 1:16Qohelet was describing a world
without novelty. -
1:17 - 1:21By novelty I mean something new
in Qohelet's sense, -
1:21 - 1:23not merely something that's changed,
-
1:23 - 1:27but a significant change
with lasting effects, -
1:27 - 1:29where people really would say,
-
1:29 - 1:31"Look, this is new,"
-
1:31 - 1:33and, preferably, "good."
-
1:34 - 1:39So, purely random changes aren't novelty.
-
1:39 - 1:44OK, Heraclitus did say
a man can't step in the same river twice, -
1:44 - 1:47because it's not the same river,
he's not the same man. -
1:47 - 1:51But if the river is changing randomly,
-
1:51 - 1:54it really is the same river.
-
1:54 - 1:56In contrast,
-
1:56 - 2:00if an idea in a mind
spreads to other minds, -
2:00 - 2:03and changes lives for generations,
-
2:03 - 2:05that is novelty.
-
2:05 - 2:08Human life without novelty
-
2:08 - 2:12is life without creativity,
without progress. -
2:12 - 2:16It's a static society, a zero-sum game.
-
2:17 - 2:20That was the living hell
in which Qohelet lived. -
2:20 - 2:24Like everyone, until a few centuries ago.
-
2:24 - 2:29It was hell, because for humans,
-
2:29 - 2:33suffering is intimately
related to staticity. -
2:33 - 2:36Because staticity isn't just frustrating.
-
2:36 - 2:38All sources of suffering --
-
2:38 - 2:43famine, pandemics, incoming asteroids,
-
2:43 - 2:46and things like war and slavery,
-
2:46 - 2:52hurt people only until we have created
the knowledge to prevent them. -
2:53 - 2:57There's a story in Somerset Maugham's
novel "Of Human Bondage" -
2:57 - 2:59about an ancient sage
-
2:59 - 3:04who summarizes the entire
history of mankind as, -
3:05 - 3:06"He was born,
-
3:06 - 3:09he suffered and he died."
-
3:09 - 3:11And it goes on:
-
3:11 - 3:16"Life was insignificant
and death without consequence." -
3:16 - 3:21And indeed, the overwhelming majority
of humans who have ever lived -
3:21 - 3:25had lives of suffering and grueling labor,
-
3:25 - 3:28before dying young and in agony.
-
3:29 - 3:34And yes, in most generations
-
3:34 - 3:38nothing had any novel consequence
for subsequent generations. -
3:39 - 3:45Nevertheless, when ancient people
tried to explain their condition, -
3:46 - 3:50they typically did so
in grandiose cosmic terms. -
3:51 - 3:54Which was the right thing to do,
as it turns out. -
3:54 - 3:57Even though their actual
explanations, their myths, -
3:57 - 3:59were largely false.
-
4:00 - 4:02Some tried to explain
-
4:02 - 4:05the grimness and monotony of their world
-
4:05 - 4:10in terms of an endless cosmic war
between good and evil, -
4:10 - 4:13in which humans were the battleground.
-
4:14 - 4:18Which neatly explained why their own
experience was full of suffering, -
4:18 - 4:20and why progress never happened.
-
4:21 - 4:23But it wasn't true.
-
4:24 - 4:26Amazingly enough,
-
4:26 - 4:29all their conflict and suffering
-
4:29 - 4:35were just due to the way
they processed ideas. -
4:35 - 4:39Being satisfied with dogma,
and just-so stories, -
4:39 - 4:42rather than criticizing them
-
4:42 - 4:48and trying to guess better explanations
of the world and of their own condition. -
4:49 - 4:53Twentieth-century physics
did create better explanations, -
4:53 - 4:56but still in terms of a cosmic war.
-
4:56 - 5:01This time, the combatants
were order and chaos, or entropy. -
5:01 - 5:06That story does allow
for hope for the future. -
5:07 - 5:08But in another way,
-
5:08 - 5:11it's even bleaker than the ancient myths,
-
5:11 - 5:15because the villain, entropy,
-
5:15 - 5:18is preordained to have the final victory,
-
5:18 - 5:23when the inexorable laws of thermodynamics
shut down all novelty -
5:23 - 5:26with the so-called
heat death of the universe. -
5:27 - 5:31Currently, there's a story
of a local battle in that war, -
5:31 - 5:35between sustainability, which is order,
-
5:35 - 5:38and wastefulness, which is chaos --
-
5:38 - 5:42that's the contemporary take
on good and evil, -
5:42 - 5:45often with the added twist
that humans are the evil, -
5:45 - 5:47so we shouldn't even try to win.
-
5:48 - 5:49And recently,
-
5:49 - 5:51there have been tales
of another cosmic war, -
5:51 - 5:55between gravity,
which collapses the universe, -
5:55 - 5:58and dark energy, which finally shreds it.
-
5:59 - 6:00So this time,
-
6:00 - 6:03whichever of those cosmic forces wins,
-
6:03 - 6:04we lose.
-
6:05 - 6:10All those pessimistic accounts
of the human condition -
6:10 - 6:12contain some truth,
-
6:12 - 6:14but as prophecies,
-
6:14 - 6:18they're all misleading,
and all for the same reason. -
6:18 - 6:22None of them portrays humans
as what we really are. -
6:23 - 6:25As Jacob Bronowski said,
-
6:25 - 6:29"Man is not a figure in the landscape --
-
6:29 - 6:32he is the shaper of the landscape."
-
6:32 - 6:33In other words,
-
6:33 - 6:37humans are not playthings
of cosmic forces, -
6:38 - 6:41we are users of cosmic forces.
-
6:41 - 6:43I'll say more about that in a moment,
-
6:43 - 6:47but first, what sorts
of thing create novelty? -
6:48 - 6:51Well, the beginning
of the universe surely did. -
6:51 - 6:54The big bang, nearly 14 billion years ago,
-
6:54 - 6:58created space, time and energy,
-
6:58 - 6:59everything physical.
-
7:00 - 7:02And then, immediately,
-
7:02 - 7:05what I call the first era of novelty,
-
7:05 - 7:08with the first atom, the first star,
-
7:08 - 7:10the first black hole,
-
7:10 - 7:11the first galaxy.
-
7:12 - 7:15But then, at some point,
-
7:15 - 7:18novelty vanished from the universe.
-
7:18 - 7:22Perhaps from as early
as 12 or 13 billion years ago, -
7:22 - 7:25right up to the present day,
-
7:25 - 7:30there's never been any new kind
of astronomical object. -
7:30 - 7:34There's only been what I call
the great monotony. -
7:35 - 7:40So, Qohelet was accidentally
even more right -
7:40 - 7:42about the universe beyond the Sun
-
7:42 - 7:45than he was about under the Sun.
-
7:45 - 7:49So long as the great monotony lasts,
-
7:49 - 7:51what has been out there
-
7:51 - 7:53really is what will be.
-
7:53 - 7:55And there is nothing out there
-
7:55 - 7:59of which it can truly be said,
"Look, this is new." -
8:00 - 8:02Nevertheless,
-
8:02 - 8:06at some point during the great monotony,
-
8:06 - 8:10there was an event --
inconsequential at the time, -
8:10 - 8:12and even billions of years later,
-
8:12 - 8:15it had affected nothing
beyond its home planet -- -
8:15 - 8:21yet eventually, it could cause
cosmically momentous novelty. -
8:21 - 8:25That event was the origin of life:
-
8:25 - 8:28creating the first genetic knowledge,
-
8:28 - 8:31coding for biological adaptations,
-
8:31 - 8:33coding for novelty.
-
8:34 - 8:38On Earth, it utterly
transformed the surface. -
8:38 - 8:41Genes in the DNA
of single-celled organisms -
8:42 - 8:43put oxygen in the air,
-
8:43 - 8:45extracted CO2,
-
8:45 - 8:48put chalk and iron ore into the ground,
-
8:48 - 8:54hardly a cubic inch of the surface
to some depth has remained unaffected -
8:54 - 8:56by those genes.
-
8:57 - 9:02The Earth became,
if not a novel place on the cosmic scale, -
9:02 - 9:04certainly a weird one.
-
9:04 - 9:07Just as an example, beyond Earth,
-
9:07 - 9:12only a few hundred different
chemical substances have been detected. -
9:12 - 9:16Presumably, there are some more
in lifeless locations, -
9:16 - 9:18but on Earth,
-
9:18 - 9:21evolution created billions
of different chemicals. -
9:22 - 9:25And then the first plants, animals,
-
9:25 - 9:30and then, in some ancestor
species of ours, -
9:30 - 9:32explanatory knowledge.
-
9:32 - 9:35For the first time in the universe,
for all we know. -
9:35 - 9:41Explanatory knowledge
is the defining adaptation of our species. -
9:41 - 9:44It differs from
the nonexplanatory knowledge -
9:44 - 9:47in DNA, for instance,
-
9:47 - 9:48by being universal.
-
9:48 - 9:52That is to say,
whatever can be understood, -
9:52 - 9:55can be understood
through explanatory knowledge. -
9:55 - 9:59And more, any physical process
-
9:59 - 10:02can be controlled by such knowledge,
-
10:02 - 10:05limited only by the laws of physics.
-
10:05 - 10:09And so, explanatory knowledge, too,
-
10:09 - 10:12has begun to transform
the Earth's surface. -
10:13 - 10:18And soon, the Earth will become
the only known object in the universe -
10:18 - 10:24that turns aside incoming asteroids
instead of attracting them. -
10:24 - 10:28Qohelet was understandably misled
-
10:28 - 10:32by the painful slowness
of progress in his day. -
10:32 - 10:36Novelty in human life
was still too rare, too gradual, -
10:36 - 10:39to be noticed in one generation.
-
10:39 - 10:41And in the biosphere,
-
10:41 - 10:45the evolution of novel species
was even slower. -
10:45 - 10:48But both things were happening.
-
10:48 - 10:54Now, why is there a great monotony
in the universe at large, -
10:54 - 10:58and what makes our planet buck that trend?
-
10:59 - 11:04Well, the universe at large
is relatively simple. -
11:04 - 11:06Stars are so simple
-
11:06 - 11:10that we can predict their behavior
billions of years into the future, -
11:10 - 11:13and retrodict how they formed
billions of years ago. -
11:14 - 11:16So why is the universe simple?
-
11:17 - 11:23Basically, it's because big,
massive, powerful things -
11:23 - 11:27strongly affect lesser things,
and not vice versa. -
11:28 - 11:30I call that the hierarchy rule.
-
11:30 - 11:33For example, when a comet hits the Sun,
-
11:33 - 11:36the Sun carries on just as before,
-
11:36 - 11:38but the comet is vaporized.
-
11:39 - 11:41For the same reason,
-
11:41 - 11:47big things are not much affected
by small parts of themselves, -
11:47 - 11:49i.e., by details.
-
11:50 - 11:53Which means that their overall behavior
-
11:53 - 11:54is simple.
-
11:54 - 11:58And since nothing very new
can happen to things -
11:58 - 11:59that remain simple,
-
11:59 - 12:05the hierarchy rule,
by causing large-scale simplicity, -
12:05 - 12:07has caused the great monotony.
-
12:08 - 12:12But, the saving grace is
-
12:12 - 12:15the hierarchy rule is not a law of nature.
-
12:16 - 12:19It just happens to have held
so far in the universe, -
12:19 - 12:20except here.
-
12:20 - 12:25In our biosphere,
molecule-sized objects, genes, -
12:25 - 12:28control vastly disproportionate resources.
-
12:29 - 12:32The first genes for photosynthesis,
-
12:32 - 12:34by causing their own proliferation,
-
12:34 - 12:38and then transforming
the surface of the planet, -
12:38 - 12:42have violated or reversed
the hierarchy rule -
12:42 - 12:46by the mind-blowing factor
of 10 to the power 40. -
12:47 - 12:52Explanatory knowledge
is potentially far more powerful -
12:52 - 12:53because of universality,
-
12:53 - 12:56and more rapidly created.
-
12:56 - 13:01When human knowledge
has achieved a factor 10 to the 40, -
13:01 - 13:04it will pretty much control
the entire galaxy, -
13:04 - 13:06and will be looking beyond.
-
13:06 - 13:08So humans,
-
13:08 - 13:13and any other explanation creators
who may exist out there, -
13:13 - 13:18are the ultimate agents
of novelty for the universe. -
13:18 - 13:21We are the reason and the means
-
13:21 - 13:27by which novelty and creativity,
knowledge, progress, -
13:27 - 13:33can have objective,
large-scale physical effects. -
13:34 - 13:36From the human perspective,
-
13:36 - 13:41the only alternative
to that living hell of static societies -
13:41 - 13:45is continual creation of new ideas,
-
13:45 - 13:48behaviors, new kinds of objects.
-
13:49 - 13:51This robot will soon be obsolete,
-
13:51 - 13:55because of new explanatory
knowledge, progress. -
13:56 - 13:59But from the cosmic perspective,
-
13:59 - 14:04explanatory knowledge
is the nemesis of the hierarchy rule. -
14:05 - 14:07It's the destroyer of the great monotony.
-
14:08 - 14:14So it's the creator
of the next cosmological era, -
14:14 - 14:15the Anthropocene.
-
14:16 - 14:19If one can speak of a cosmic war,
-
14:19 - 14:23it's not the one portrayed
in those pessimistic stories. -
14:23 - 14:28It's a war between monotony and novelty,
-
14:28 - 14:31between stasis and creativity.
-
14:32 - 14:34And in this war,
-
14:34 - 14:38our side is not destined to lose.
-
14:39 - 14:45If we choose to apply our unique
capacity to create explanatory knowledge, -
14:45 - 14:47we could win.
-
14:48 - 14:49Thanks.
-
14:50 - 14:57(Applause)
- Title:
- After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up
- Speaker:
- David Deutsch
- Description:
-
Theoretical physicist David Deutsch delivers a mind-bending meditation on the "great monotony" -- the idea that nothing novel has appeared in the universe for billions of years -- and shows how humanity's capacity to create explanatory knowledge could be the thing that bucks this trend. "Humans are not playthings of cosmic forces," he says. "We are users of cosmic forces."
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 15:10
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Oliver Friedman approved English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Krystian Aparta accepted English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up |