Garry Nolan: UFOs and Aliens - Lex Fridman 知识图谱

Lex Fridman (01:23.920)

I mean, if you ever wanted to believe in God,

Garry Nolan (01:26.320)

just look inside the cell.

Lex Fridman (01:28.240)

So DNA is both information and computer.

Garry Nolan (01:30.820)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (01:32.180)

How did that computer come about?

Garry Nolan (01:34.840)

A big continuing on the philosophical question.

Lex Fridman (01:37.280)

Is this both scientific and philosophical?

Lex Fridman (01:39.440)

How did life originate on Earth, do you think?

Lex Fridman (01:42.360)

How did this, at every level, so the very first step

Lex Fridman (01:46.540)

and the fascinating complex computer that is DNA,

Lex Fridman (01:50.920)

that is multicellular organism,

Lex Fridman (01:52.560)

and then maybe the fascinating complex computer

Lex Fridman (01:56.120)

that is the human mind?

Garry Nolan (01:58.740)

Well, I think you have to take just one more step back

Lex Fridman (02:01.040)

to the complex computer that is the universe, right?

Garry Nolan (02:04.360)

All of the so called particles or the waves

Lex Fridman (02:08.320)

that people think the universe is made of

Lex Fridman (02:10.240)

and appears, to me at least, to be a computational process.

Lex Fridman (02:14.560)

And embedded in that is biology, right?

Lex Fridman (02:18.160)

So all the atoms of a protein, et cetera,

Lex Fridman (02:21.060)

sit in that computational matrix.

Garry Nolan (02:23.640)

From my point of view, it's computing something.

Lex Fridman (02:26.160)

It's computing towards something.

Garry Nolan (02:28.300)

It was created, in some ways, if you want to believe in God,

Lex Fridman (02:31.440)

and I don't know that I do,

Lex Fridman (02:32.520)

but if you want to believe in something,

Lex Fridman (02:35.000)

the universe was created or at least enabled

Garry Nolan (02:38.000)

to allow for life to form.

Lex Fridman (02:40.880)

And so the DNA, if you ask, where does DNA come from?

Lex Fridman (02:45.280)

And you can go all the way back to Richard Dawkins

Lex Fridman (02:47.200)

and the selfish gene hypothesis.

Garry Nolan (02:50.720)

The way I look at DNA, though,

Lex Fridman (02:52.640)

is it is not a moment in time.

Garry Nolan (02:56.280)

It assumes the context of the body and the environment

Lex Fridman (02:59.520)

in which it's going to live.

Lex Fridman (03:00.720)

And so if you want to ask a question of where

Lex Fridman (03:04.080)

and how does information get stored,

Garry Nolan (03:07.340)

DNA, although it's only 3 billion base pairs long,

Lex Fridman (03:10.880)

contains more information than, I think,

Garry Nolan (03:14.000)

the entire computational memory resources

Lex Fridman (03:18.200)

of our current technology.

Garry Nolan (03:20.240)

Because who and what you are is both what you were as an egg

Lex Fridman (03:24.440)

all the way through to the day you die,

Lex Fridman (03:27.640)

and it embodies all the different cell types

Lex Fridman (03:29.640)

and organs in your body.

Lex Fridman (03:31.660)

And so it's a computational reservoir

Lex Fridman (03:36.480)

of information and expectation that you will become.

Lex Fridman (03:40.680)

So actually, I would sort of turn it around a different way

Lex Fridman (03:43.720)

and say, if you wanted to create

Garry Nolan (03:46.480)

the best memory storage system possible,

Lex Fridman (03:50.560)

you could reverse engineer what a human is

Lex Fridman (03:53.320)

and create a DNA memory system

Lex Fridman (03:56.520)

that is not just the linear version,

Lex Fridman (03:59.840)

but is also everything that it could become.

Lex Fridman (04:03.320)

When we're talking about DNA,

Garry Nolan (04:04.280)

we're talking about Earth and the environment creating DNA.

Lex Fridman (04:06.960)

So you're talking about trying to come up

Garry Nolan (04:09.840)

with an optimal computer for this particular environment.

Lex Fridman (04:12.860)

Right.

Lex Fridman (04:13.700)

So if you were to reverse engineer that computer,

Lex Fridman (04:19.340)

what do you mean by considering

Lex Fridman (04:21.060)

all the possible things it could become?

Lex Fridman (04:22.940)

So who you are today, right?

Lex Fridman (04:24.780)

So 3 billion bits of information

Lex Fridman (04:27.540)

does not explain Lex Friedman, doesn't explain me, right?

Lex Fridman (04:31.660)

But the DNA embodies the expectation

Lex Fridman (04:35.420)

of the environment in which you will live and grow

Lex Fridman (04:40.040)

and become.

Lex Fridman (04:41.380)

So all the information that is you, right,

Garry Nolan (04:44.660)

is actually not only embedded in the DNA,

Lex Fridman (04:48.460)

but it's embedded in the context

Lex Fridman (04:50.060)

of the world in which you grow into and develop, right?

Lex Fridman (04:55.660)

But so all that information though

Garry Nolan (04:57.500)

is packed in the expectation of what the DNA expects to see.

Lex Fridman (05:01.740)

Interesting.

Lex Fridman (05:02.580)

So like some of the information,

Lex Fridman (05:04.880)

is that accurate to say is stored outside the body?

Garry Nolan (05:08.260)

Exactly, yeah.

Lex Fridman (05:09.860)

The information is stored outside

Garry Nolan (05:11.300)

because there's a context of expectation.

Lex Fridman (05:13.780)

Isn't that interesting?

Garry Nolan (05:14.660)

Yeah, it's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (05:15.740)

I mean, to linger on this point,

Garry Nolan (05:20.380)

if we were to run Earth over again a million times,

Lex Fridman (05:24.460)

how many different versions

Lex Fridman (05:26.100)

of this type of computer would we get?

Lex Fridman (05:28.060)

I think it would be different each time.

Garry Nolan (05:29.860)

I mean, if you assume there's no such thing as fate, right,

Lex Fridman (05:33.100)

and it's not all pre programmed,

Lex Fridman (05:35.340)

and that there is some sort of, let's say,

Lex Fridman (05:37.460)

variation or randomness at the beginning,

Garry Nolan (05:40.340)

you would get as many different versions of life

Lex Fridman (05:43.860)

as you could imagine.

Lex Fridman (05:45.380)

And I don't think it would all be

Lex Fridman (05:46.940)

unless there's something built into the substrate

Garry Nolan (05:50.540)

of the universe.

Lex Fridman (05:51.380)

It wouldn't always be left handed proteins, right?

Lex Fridman (05:55.780)

But I wonder what the flap of a butterfly wing,

Lex Fridman (05:58.420)

what effects it has,

Garry Nolan (06:01.260)

because it's possible that this system

Lex Fridman (06:04.660)

is really good at finding the efficient answer,

Lex Fridman (06:07.220)

and maybe the efficient answer is,

Lex Fridman (06:11.580)

there's only a small finite set of them

Garry Nolan (06:13.460)

for this particular environment.

Lex Fridman (06:14.820)

Exactly, exactly.

Garry Nolan (06:16.020)

That's the kind of, in a way, the anthropomorphic universe

Lex Fridman (06:19.340)

of the multiverse expectations, right?

Garry Nolan (06:21.460)

That there's probably a zillion other kinds of universes

Lex Fridman (06:24.860)

out there if you believe in multiverse theory.

Garry Nolan (06:28.500)

We only live in the ones where the rules are such

Lex Fridman (06:32.500)

that lifelike hours can exist.

Lex Fridman (06:35.900)

So using that logic, how many alien civilizations

Lex Fridman (06:39.220)

do you think are out there?

Garry Nolan (06:40.500)

There's like trillions of environments, aka planets,

Lex Fridman (06:48.340)

or maybe you can think even bigger than planets.

Lex Fridman (06:51.780)

How many lifelike organisms do you think

Lex Fridman (06:55.060)

are out there thriving, and maybe how many

Lex Fridman (06:58.500)

do you think are long gone, but were once here?

Lex Fridman (07:01.860)

I think, well, innumerable, I think in terms

Garry Nolan (07:05.700)

of the present. Greater than zero.

Lex Fridman (07:06.900)

Much greater than zero.

Garry Nolan (07:08.380)

I mean, I would just be surprised.

Lex Fridman (07:09.780)

What a waste, right, of all that space just for us

Garry Nolan (07:12.980)

if we're never gonna get there.

Lex Fridman (07:15.980)

That would be my first way to think about it.

Lex Fridman (07:19.780)

But second, I mean, I remember when I was about

Lex Fridman (07:25.900)

seven or eight years old, and I would love

Garry Nolan (07:27.420)

if any of your listeners could find

Lex Fridman (07:29.420)

this National Geographic.

Garry Nolan (07:31.380)

I remember opening the page of the National Geographic.

Lex Fridman (07:35.340)

I was about, again, seven to 10 years old,

Lex Fridman (07:37.980)

and it was sort of a current picture of the universe.

Lex Fridman (07:42.100)

It was around probably 1968, 1969.

Garry Nolan (07:45.540)

I just remember looking at it and thinking,

Lex Fridman (07:48.340)

what kinds of empires have risen and fallen

Lex Fridman (07:53.100)

across that space that we'll never know about?

Lex Fridman (07:57.980)

And isn't that sad that we know nothing

Lex Fridman (08:01.340)

about something so grand?

Lex Fridman (08:03.620)

And so I've always been a reader of science fiction

Garry Nolan (08:08.060)

because I like the creative ideas

Lex Fridman (08:11.660)

of what people come up with.

Lex Fridman (08:13.580)

And I especially like science fiction writers

Lex Fridman (08:16.260)

that base it in good science,

Lex Fridman (08:18.700)

but base it also in evolution.

Lex Fridman (08:21.300)

That if you evolve a civilization from something

Garry Nolan (08:26.140)

lifelike, right, some sort of biology,

Lex Fridman (08:29.340)

its assumptions about the universe will come

Garry Nolan (08:31.500)

from the environment in which it grew up.

Lex Fridman (08:36.540)

So for instance, Larry Niven is a great writer,

Lex Fridman (08:39.980)

and he imagines different kinds of civilizations.

Lex Fridman (08:43.420)

In some cases, what happens if intelligence

Lex Fridman (08:48.100)

evolved from a herd animal, right?

Lex Fridman (08:50.900)

Would you lead from behind, right?

Garry Nolan (08:53.420)

Would you be, you know, in his case,

Lex Fridman (08:56.660)

one of them were the so called puppeteers.

Lex Fridman (08:59.340)

And to them, the moral imperative is cowardice.

Lex Fridman (09:03.460)

You put other people forward to run the risk for you, right?

Lex Fridman (09:07.500)

And so he writes entire books around that premise.

Lex Fridman (09:11.260)

There's another guy, Brin, David Brin is his name,

Lex Fridman (09:15.220)

and he writes the so called uplift universe books.

Lex Fridman (09:19.820)

And in those, he takes different intelligences,

Garry Nolan (09:24.820)

each from a different evolutionary background.

Lex Fridman (09:28.540)

And then he posits a civilization based around

Garry Nolan (09:33.140)

where and what they came from.

Lex Fridman (09:36.020)

And so to me, I mean, that's just fun.

Lex Fridman (09:39.060)

But I mean, back to your original question is

Lex Fridman (09:42.060)

how many are there?

Garry Nolan (09:43.100)

I think as many stars as we can see.

Lex Fridman (09:47.100)

Now, how many are currently there?

Garry Nolan (09:49.940)

I don't know, I mean, that's the whole question of,

Lex Fridman (09:53.500)

you know, how long can a civilization last

Lex Fridman (09:55.780)

before it runs out of steam?

Lex Fridman (09:58.740)

And you, for instance, does it just get bored

Lex Fridman (10:02.060)

or does it transcend to something else?

Lex Fridman (10:03.900)

Or does it say, I've seen enough and I'm done?

Lex Fridman (10:06.620)

What does running out of steam look like?

Lex Fridman (10:08.260)

It could be destroy itself or get bored.

Garry Nolan (10:10.340)

You know, or we've done everything we can

Lex Fridman (10:13.340)

and they just decide to stop.

Garry Nolan (10:16.100)

I don't know, I just don't know.

Lex Fridman (10:17.940)

It's that you all must worry that we stop reproducing

Garry Nolan (10:21.340)

or we slow down the reproduction rate

Lex Fridman (10:23.260)

to where the population can go to zero.

Garry Nolan (10:25.380)

We can go to zero and we can't and we collapse.

Lex Fridman (10:27.780)

I mean, so the only way to get around that

Garry Nolan (10:30.620)

is perhaps create enough machines with AI

Lex Fridman (10:35.500)

to take care of us.

Lex Fridman (10:38.500)

What could possibly go wrong?

Lex Fridman (10:41.700)

You've talked to people that told stories

Garry Nolan (10:44.940)

of UFO encounters.

Lex Fridman (10:47.300)

What is the most fascinating to you about the stories

Garry Nolan (10:50.060)

of these UFO encounters that you've heard

Lex Fridman (10:53.380)

that people have told you?

Garry Nolan (10:54.500)

The similarity of them, the uniformity of the stories.

Lex Fridman (11:00.940)

Now, I just wanna say upfront,

Garry Nolan (11:04.180)

a lot of people think that when I speculate,

Lex Fridman (11:08.580)

I believe something, that's not true, right?

Garry Nolan (11:11.980)

Speculation is just creativity.

Lex Fridman (11:14.060)

Speculation is the beginning of hypothesis.

Garry Nolan (11:17.540)

None of what I hear in terms of the anecdotes

Lex Fridman (11:21.220)

do I necessarily believe are they true?

Lex Fridman (11:24.380)

But I still find them fascinating to listen to

Lex Fridman (11:26.580)

because at some level they're still raw data

Lex Fridman (11:29.620)

and you have to listen.

Lex Fridman (11:30.740)

And once you start to hear the same story again and again,

Garry Nolan (11:35.820)

then you have to say, well, there might be something to it.

Lex Fridman (11:37.900)

I mean, maybe it's some kind of a Jungian background

Garry Nolan (11:42.620)

in the human mind and human consciousness

Lex Fridman (11:44.500)

that creates these stories again and again

Garry Nolan (11:47.460)

as coming out of the DNA,

Lex Fridman (11:48.900)

it's coming out of that pre programmed something.

Lex Fridman (11:51.700)

And Jung talked quite a bit about this kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (11:54.300)

The collective unconscious.

Lex Fridman (11:56.420)

But actually one of the most interesting ones I find

Lex Fridman (11:58.780)

is this constant message

Garry Nolan (12:03.140)

that you're not taking care of your world.

Lex Fridman (12:07.300)

And this came long before climate change.

Garry Nolan (12:11.580)

It came long before many kinds of,

Lex Fridman (12:15.420)

let's say current day memes around

Garry Nolan (12:19.660)

taking care of our planet, pollution, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (12:25.100)

And so, for instance, perhaps the best example of this,

Garry Nolan (12:28.180)

the one that I find the most fascinating

Lex Fridman (12:30.220)

is a story out of Zimbabwe, 50 or 60 children,

Garry Nolan (12:35.500)

one afternoon in Zimbabwe.

Lex Fridman (12:39.660)

It was a well educated group of white and black children

Garry Nolan (12:43.900)

who had lunchtime in the playground, saw a craft

Lex Fridman (12:49.540)

and they saw little men.

Lex Fridman (12:51.740)

And they all ran into the teachers

Lex Fridman (12:53.580)

and they told the same story and they drew the same pictures.

Lex Fridman (12:56.900)

And the message several of them got was

Lex Fridman (13:00.380)

you are not taking care of your planet.

Lex Fridman (13:03.340)

And it got, you know, there's actually a movie coming out

Lex Fridman (13:06.980)

on this episode and 30 years later now,

Garry Nolan (13:11.300)

the people who were there, the children

Lex Fridman (13:13.020)

who've now grown up say, it happened to us.

Lex Fridman (13:16.220)

Now, did it happen?

Lex Fridman (13:18.260)

Was it some sort of hallucination

Lex Fridman (13:20.780)

or was it an imposed hallucination by something?

Lex Fridman (13:23.820)

Was it material?

Garry Nolan (13:24.860)

I don't know, but these kids were seven to 10 years old.

Lex Fridman (13:30.380)

You see them on video.

Garry Nolan (13:32.620)

Seven to 10 year olds can't lie like that.

Lex Fridman (13:35.500)

And so, you know, whether it's real or not, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (13:39.500)

but I find that fascinating data.

Lex Fridman (13:41.580)

And again, it's these unconnected stories

Garry Nolan (13:45.780)

of individuals with the same story.

Lex Fridman (13:50.980)

That is worthy of further inquiry.

Garry Nolan (13:56.700)

Yeah, so here we are humans with limited cognitive capacities

Lex Fridman (14:00.700)

trying to make sense of the world,

Garry Nolan (14:02.020)

trying to understand what is real and not.

Lex Fridman (14:04.260)

We have this DNA that somehow in complex ways

Garry Nolan (14:07.900)

is interacting with the environment.

Lex Fridman (14:09.460)

And then we get these novel ideas

Garry Nolan (14:16.460)

that come from the populace.

Lex Fridman (14:19.860)

And then they make us wonder about what it all means.

Lex Fridman (14:26.060)

And so how to interpret it.

Lex Fridman (14:27.380)

If you think from an alien perspective,

Lex Fridman (14:29.700)

how would you communicate with other lifelike organisms?

Lex Fridman (14:34.540)

You perhaps have to find in points

Garry Nolan (14:38.780)

on this interaction between the DNA and its manifestations

Lex Fridman (14:43.420)

in terms of the human mind

Lex Fridman (14:46.300)

and how it interacts with the environment.

Lex Fridman (14:49.260)

So it gets some kind of, all right, what is this DNA?

Lex Fridman (14:52.540)

What does this environment have to get in somehow

Lex Fridman (14:55.660)

to like interact with it, to perturb the system

Garry Nolan (14:59.300)

to where these little ants, human like ants

Lex Fridman (15:02.660)

get like excited and figures and see stuff out.

Garry Nolan (15:05.660)

Yeah, it has, and then somehow steer them.

Lex Fridman (15:09.740)

First of all, for investigative purposes,

Garry Nolan (15:11.660)

understand like oftentimes to understand a system,

Lex Fridman (15:14.740)

you have to perturb it.

Garry Nolan (15:15.740)

Exactly, yeah.

Lex Fridman (15:16.580)

It's like poke at it to get excited or not.

Lex Fridman (15:19.420)

And then the other ways you want to,

Lex Fridman (15:23.700)

if you worry about them,

Garry Nolan (15:25.460)

you can steer in one direction or another.

Lex Fridman (15:28.380)

And this kind of idea that we're not taking care

Garry Nolan (15:31.140)

of our world, that's interesting.

Lex Fridman (15:34.860)

I mean, that's comforting, that's hopeful

Garry Nolan (15:36.660)

because that means the greater intelligence,

Lex Fridman (15:39.620)

which is what I would hope would want to take care of us.

Garry Nolan (15:42.380)

Like we want to take care of the gorillas

Lex Fridman (15:44.900)

in the national parks in Africa.

Garry Nolan (15:47.140)

Yeah, but we don't want to take care of cockroaches.

Lex Fridman (15:49.780)

So there's a line we draw.

Lex Fridman (15:51.540)

So you have to hope that.

Lex Fridman (15:53.420)

Right now we're a bunch of angry monkeys

Lex Fridman (15:55.660)

and maybe whatever these intelligences are,

Lex Fridman (15:59.420)

are also keeping an eye on us.

Garry Nolan (16:01.860)

That you don't want a bunch of,

Lex Fridman (16:03.620)

you don't want the angry monkey troop

Garry Nolan (16:06.020)

stomping around the local galactic arm.

Lex Fridman (16:08.860)

Do you think these folks are telling the truth?

Lex Fridman (16:11.740)

Do you think they saw what they say they saw?

Lex Fridman (16:15.740)

I think they saw what they said they saw,

Lex Fridman (16:19.140)

but I also think they saw what they were shown.

Lex Fridman (16:22.420)

I mean, if you go back to the whole notion of,

Lex Fridman (16:25.900)

okay, how long has this been around?

Lex Fridman (16:28.380)

It didn't just start showing up in 1947, right?

Garry Nolan (16:31.300)

There are stories going back into the 1800s

Lex Fridman (16:36.140)

of people who saw things in their farming,

Garry Nolan (16:39.020)

in their farm fields in the US.

Lex Fridman (16:40.780)

It's in local newspapers from the 1800s, it's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (16:46.340)

But if you can go even further back,

Lex Fridman (16:48.860)

so to your point of how would you as a higher intelligence

Lex Fridman (16:54.140)

represent yourself to a lesser intelligence?

Lex Fridman (16:58.340)

So let's go back to pre civilization.

Garry Nolan (17:01.980)

Maybe you show yourself as the spirits in the forest

Lex Fridman (17:05.420)

and you give messages through that.

Garry Nolan (17:08.340)

Once you get a little bit more civilized,

Lex Fridman (17:10.860)

then you show yourself as the gods and then you're God.

Garry Nolan (17:13.980)

Well, we don't believe in God anymore necessarily,

Lex Fridman (17:16.140)

not everybody does.

Lex Fridman (17:17.420)

So what do we believe in?

Lex Fridman (17:18.420)

We believe in technology.

Lex Fridman (17:19.380)

So you show yourself as a form of technology, right?

Lex Fridman (17:22.820)

But the common thread is you're not alone

Lex Fridman (17:25.620)

and there's something else here with you.

Lex Fridman (17:28.780)

And there's something that's, as you said, watching you

Lex Fridman (17:31.420)

and at least watching over your shoulder.

Lex Fridman (17:35.780)

But I think that like any good parent,

Garry Nolan (17:38.740)

you don't tell your student everything, you make them learn

Lex Fridman (17:44.380)

and learning requires mistakes

Garry Nolan (17:46.300)

because if you tell them everything, then they get lazy.

Lex Fridman (17:50.060)

You've looked at the brains of, or information coming

Garry Nolan (17:56.500)

from the brain of some of the people

Lex Fridman (17:58.180)

that have had UFO encounters.

Garry Nolan (17:59.860)

What's common about the brain of people

Lex Fridman (18:01.820)

who encounter UFOs?

Lex Fridman (18:04.140)

So the study started with a group of,

Lex Fridman (18:07.940)

let's say a cohort of individuals that were brought to me

Lex Fridman (18:11.460)

and their MRIs to ask about the damage

Lex Fridman (18:16.140)

that had been seen in these individuals.

Garry Nolan (18:19.180)

It turns out that the majority of those patients

Lex Fridman (18:21.220)

ended up being, as far as we can tell, Havana syndrome.

Lex Fridman (18:24.100)

And so for me at least, that part of the story ends

Lex Fridman (18:28.940)

in terms of the injury,

Garry Nolan (18:30.180)

it's likely almost all Havana syndrome.

Lex Fridman (18:33.260)

That's somebody else's problem now, that's not my problem.

Lex Fridman (18:38.740)

But when we were looking at the brains of these individuals,

Lex Fridman (18:41.900)

we noticed something right in the center

Garry Nolan (18:44.140)

of the basal ganglia in many of these individuals

Lex Fridman (18:47.580)

that at first we thought was damage.

Garry Nolan (18:49.300)

It was basically an enriched patch of MRI dense neurons

Lex Fridman (18:56.060)

that we thought was damage,

Lex Fridman (18:57.540)

but then it was showing up in everybody.

Lex Fridman (18:59.140)

And then we looked and we said, oh, it's actually not.

Garry Nolan (19:01.580)

The other readings on these MRIs showed

Lex Fridman (19:04.060)

that actually that's living tissue.

Garry Nolan (19:06.820)

That's actually the head of the caudate in the pitamen.

Lex Fridman (19:10.100)

And at the time, and I remember even asking

Garry Nolan (19:12.100)

a good friend of mine at Stanford, who was a psychiatrist,

Lex Fridman (19:16.660)

what does the basal ganglia do?

Garry Nolan (19:18.380)

He said, oh, the basal ganglia is just about movement

Lex Fridman (19:21.740)

and nerve and motor control.

Garry Nolan (19:24.380)

I said, well, that's odd because these other papers

Lex Fridman (19:27.900)

that we were reading at the time started to suggest

Garry Nolan (19:30.140)

that it was involved with higher intelligence

Lex Fridman (19:34.580)

and is actually downstream of the executive function

Lex Fridman (19:38.340)

and involved with intuition and planning.

Lex Fridman (19:42.780)

And then if you think about it,

Garry Nolan (19:44.380)

if you're gonna have motor control,

Lex Fridman (19:46.700)

which is centralized in one place,

Garry Nolan (19:48.820)

motor control requires knowledge of the environment.

Lex Fridman (19:52.180)

You don't wanna move something and hit the table.

Garry Nolan (19:55.820)

Or if you're walking across a room,

Lex Fridman (19:57.620)

you want to be aware and cognizant

Garry Nolan (1:00:00.540)

we use stable isotopes and money these days

Lex Fridman (1:00:03.700)

as a counterfeiting tool.

Garry Nolan (1:00:04.860)

You basically embed certain ratios of isotopes

Lex Fridman (1:00:08.220)

in to make it harder for counterfeiters to accomplish.

Lex Fridman (1:00:14.140)

But other than that, we don't do anything with that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:16.660)

So why would you make grams of such material in this one case

Lex Fridman (1:00:21.940)

and drop it around on a beach in Brazil?

Lex Fridman (1:00:25.460)

So which case are we talking about?

Garry Nolan (1:00:26.940)

Describe that, because this is the Ubatuba case.

Lex Fridman (1:00:30.620)

Can you describe this case a little bit further,

Garry Nolan (1:00:32.660)

like what material we're talking about, just the full story

Lex Fridman (1:00:35.300)

of the case?

Garry Nolan (1:00:36.580)

It's an interesting one.

Lex Fridman (1:00:37.580)

It's an interesting one.

Lex Fridman (1:00:38.580)

So a fisherman saw an object that released something,

Lex Fridman (1:00:43.420)

or it exploded.

Lex Fridman (1:00:45.860)

And it was this relatively, I've got some big chunks of it,

Lex Fridman (1:00:51.420)

relatively pure magnesium with obviously something else in it

Garry Nolan (1:00:55.260)

because magnesium burns.

Lex Fridman (1:00:56.820)

So it had something in it that would, other metals,

Garry Nolan (1:01:00.660)

simple alloy that would prevent it from basically burning up.

Lex Fridman (1:01:07.900)

And so the question is, and so then we

Garry Nolan (1:01:10.900)

had two pieces that came from two different chains of custody,

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.660)

both claimed to be from the same object.

Garry Nolan (1:01:19.420)

At least physically, when you look at the two things,

Lex Fridman (1:01:23.220)

they look the same.

Lex Fridman (1:01:26.980)

So we took small fragments of each of them.

Lex Fridman (1:01:29.820)

We put them in an instrument called a secondary ion mass

Garry Nolan (1:01:32.260)

spec, which is an extremely sensitive instrument.

Lex Fridman (1:01:35.900)

And it can see down to 0.0001 mass units,

Garry Nolan (1:01:41.740)

which is important for, let's say, more arcane reasons.

Lex Fridman (1:01:46.100)

But it's a sensitive instrument.

Lex Fridman (1:01:48.780)

And so one of the chains of custody,

Lex Fridman (1:01:52.900)

we had two pieces from the same chain of custody,

Lex Fridman (1:01:55.860)

and then two pieces from the other chain of custody.

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.380)

One of them had completely normal magnesium isotope

Garry Nolan (1:02:04.140)

ratios, magnesium 24, 25, 26.

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.540)

And the other was off, not just slightly off, way off.

Lex Fridman (1:02:09.740)

And they were both off to the same extent.

Lex Fridman (1:02:14.860)

I mean, it was sort of like you had an internal control

Garry Nolan (1:02:18.020)

of what was normal.

Lex Fridman (1:02:18.860)

And you had this other one, which was wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.340)

And so you're left with kind of an open question.

Lex Fridman (1:02:28.540)

Was this a hoax?

Garry Nolan (1:02:29.900)

Were these two chains of custody, one of them a hoax,

Lex Fridman (1:02:32.420)

that somebody purposefully introduced those things?

Garry Nolan (1:02:35.100)

Because you could do it.

Lex Fridman (1:02:36.300)

It would cost a lot.

Garry Nolan (1:02:38.420)

I mean, at the time that this was found,

Lex Fridman (1:02:40.780)

I guess the 1970s or so, it might have been earlier,

Garry Nolan (1:02:45.020)

I forget, the amount that I had would

Lex Fridman (1:02:49.260)

have cost several tens of thousands of dollars to make.

Lex Fridman (1:02:53.940)

And again, it's not something you would just throw around.

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.180)

And why would you do it in the hope that some guy 30 years

Lex Fridman (1:02:58.860)

from then would pick it up and study it?

Lex Fridman (1:03:02.500)

Yeah, it's a very subtle, subtle troll.

Garry Nolan (1:03:05.100)

It's a long term plan.

Lex Fridman (1:03:08.140)

So I just don't know what to make of it,

Garry Nolan (1:03:12.340)

except it's interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:03:15.100)

So a different kind of question that you're asking

Lex Fridman (1:03:17.620)

is, what constitutes evidence?

Lex Fridman (1:03:21.500)

So is this sufficient evidence? Absolutely not.

Lex Fridman (1:03:27.700)

But somebody's put it forward.

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.660)

I have the time.

Garry Nolan (1:03:30.460)

It's my time.

Lex Fridman (1:03:33.020)

I'll study it.

Lex Fridman (1:03:33.740)

And my objective is to sort of take

Lex Fridman (1:03:36.140)

those that I think are credible enough

Lex Fridman (1:03:38.460)

and do a reasonable analysis, put it out there.

Lex Fridman (1:03:41.220)

And maybe somebody else will come up with an idea

Garry Nolan (1:03:43.260)

as to what it is.

Lex Fridman (1:03:44.580)

Now, what would be better is some sort of true technology,

Garry Nolan (1:03:51.140)

something that is obviously.

Lex Fridman (1:03:53.100)

We don't have it.

Lex Fridman (1:03:55.020)

And people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Seth Shostak

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.460)

have come out rightfully and have said,

Garry Nolan (1:04:04.020)

when you show up with something really obviously technology

Lex Fridman (1:04:11.780)

that we don't understand, then we'll pay attention.

Garry Nolan (1:04:16.180)

Not just material.

Lex Fridman (1:04:17.260)

Not just material.

Garry Nolan (1:04:18.260)

A piece of metal is interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:04:24.100)

And several of the things that I've looked at

Lex Fridman (1:04:26.020)

and other things that people have come to me with,

Lex Fridman (1:04:29.580)

we've found to be completely banal

Garry Nolan (1:04:32.100)

or were actually pieces of aircraft

Lex Fridman (1:04:35.780)

that were invented back in the 1940s.

Lex Fridman (1:04:38.580)

And so take them off the table.

Lex Fridman (1:04:40.780)

But I think, again, I think showing up

Garry Nolan (1:04:46.740)

with technology that we humans would find completely novel

Lex Fridman (1:04:50.580)

is actually a really difficult task for aliens

Garry Nolan (1:04:53.460)

because it obviously can't be so novel

Lex Fridman (1:04:56.820)

that we don't recognize it for what it is.

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.340)

And I would say most of the technology aliens likely have

Lex Fridman (1:05:04.340)

would be something we don't recognize.

Lex Fridman (1:05:07.500)

So it's actually a hard problem how to convince ants.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.900)

You first have to understand what ants are tweeting about.

Lex Fridman (1:05:16.300)

What they care about in order to inject into their culture.

Lex Fridman (1:05:21.420)

Because that's why I think it would be the technology

Garry Nolan (1:05:26.940)

that you could present is in the space of ideas,

Lex Fridman (1:05:29.660)

is try to influence individual humans with the encounters

Lex Fridman (1:05:35.780)

and try to, with this kind of thing that you mentioned

Lex Fridman (1:05:39.780)

about us not taking messages, about us not taking care of the world.

Garry Nolan (1:05:46.460)

It's difficult. I mean, for them to understand,

Lex Fridman (1:05:49.700)

you have to come up with trinkets that impress us.

Garry Nolan (1:05:52.420)

I mean, maybe the very technology,

Lex Fridman (1:05:56.020)

the fascination with the development of technology

Lex Fridman (1:05:58.540)

and the development of technology,

Lex Fridman (1:06:00.420)

the actual act of innovation itself

Garry Nolan (1:06:03.140)

is the thing that they're communicating.

Lex Fridman (1:06:05.980)

I mean, this is kind of what Jacques Vallée thinks about, is the role of...

Garry Nolan (1:06:11.380)

The control system, he calls it.

Lex Fridman (1:06:13.220)

The control system. Well, let me ask about Jacques.

Lex Fridman (1:06:16.620)

Who is he? You know him. Who is Jacques Vallée?

Lex Fridman (1:06:22.860)

What have you learned from him about life, about UFOs,

Lex Fridman (1:06:30.220)

about technology, about our role in the universe?

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.500)

Well, I met Jacques actually soon after the whole Atacama thing happened.

Garry Nolan (1:06:40.340)

I was visited by those people associated with the government

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.900)

and whatever around the Havana...

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.580)

What ended up mostly being Havana syndrome patients,

Lex Fridman (1:06:50.220)

but also Jacques at the same time.

Lex Fridman (1:06:51.500)

And they were actually working behind the scenes with each other,

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.500)

that, oh, here's this Stanford professor

Garry Nolan (1:06:57.260)

who is willing to talk about this stuff and investigate things.

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.500)

Maybe we should go talk to him.

Lex Fridman (1:07:03.060)

And he reached out through a colleague

Lex Fridman (1:07:06.060)

and he and I had lunch actually at the Rosewood Inn up on near Sandhill.

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.380)

So Jacques is one of the first openly active scientists,

Lex Fridman (1:07:19.820)

and he's really a scientist, in this area going back to the 1960s.

Lex Fridman (1:07:26.220)

And he's put forward a number of ideas,

Lex Fridman (1:07:31.820)

speculations about what it might be that people are interacting with.

Lex Fridman (1:07:36.060)

And the first thing that I learned from him

Lex Fridman (1:07:38.220)

is this notion of what he called Kabuki theater,

Garry Nolan (1:07:41.620)

that many of the things that people have seen are...

Lex Fridman (1:07:45.180)

I remember reading his books and thinking,

Garry Nolan (1:07:47.180)

he uses this word absurd a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:07:50.580)

He said, the things that people claim they see are absurd, right?

Garry Nolan (1:07:56.500)

A ship doesn't land in a farmer's field

Lex Fridman (1:08:00.820)

and then come up and knock on the door and say,

Lex Fridman (1:08:02.620)

can I have a glass of water?

Lex Fridman (1:08:03.900)

And these are stories literally out of newspapers from the 1930s.

Garry Nolan (1:08:08.100)

It's absurd.

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.660)

And the other thing that people say, ships don't crash.

Garry Nolan (1:08:12.620)

If you're so technologically advanced, you don't crash.

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.740)

It's absurd that they crash.

Lex Fridman (1:08:18.620)

So he says, this is put on as a show.

Lex Fridman (1:08:24.580)

It's an influence campaign, right?

Garry Nolan (1:08:29.420)

It's not meant to influence individuals.

Lex Fridman (1:08:31.860)

It's meant to influence a culture as a whole.

Garry Nolan (1:08:35.700)

Maybe they don't look at us as individuals.

Lex Fridman (1:08:37.620)

Maybe they look at us as an organism that lives on a planet, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.460)

And perhaps rightly so.

Lex Fridman (1:08:45.220)

And so that's how you interact with them.

Garry Nolan (1:08:47.140)

That's how you influence them.

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.860)

So that was one of the first things that kind of took me back

Lex Fridman (1:08:51.420)

and realized, wow, there's actually...

Lex Fridman (1:08:53.780)

maybe there's a puppet master behind the scenes that's doing this influencing

Lex Fridman (1:09:00.580)

and that all this stuff about aliens is just not true, per se.

Lex Fridman (1:09:05.140)

They're just a representation of something that is meant to influence.

Lex Fridman (1:09:09.740)

So that was probably the most interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:09:11.220)

I mean, the man is brilliant.

Garry Nolan (1:09:13.340)

He's also, and I'm sorry, Jacques, he can also be incredibly annoying

Lex Fridman (1:09:18.420)

to have a conversation with because he will pick apart your arguments

Garry Nolan (1:09:23.660)

or anything that you think you know

Lex Fridman (1:09:25.500)

and show you why you don't know what you think you know.

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.900)

And he used the example that, for me, that is all you need

Lex Fridman (1:09:34.980)

is one counter example to any conclusion and you're wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.540)

And so I learned from him...

Lex Fridman (1:09:43.500)

I mean, I'm supposed to be a good scientist, but I learned from him,

Garry Nolan (1:09:47.180)

don't talk about conclusions, just talk about the data

Lex Fridman (1:09:50.820)

because data is not wrong.

Garry Nolan (1:09:52.060)

I mean, convince yourself that the data is not wrong or not an artifact,

Lex Fridman (1:09:55.820)

but be careful about your conclusions because whatever is going on,

Garry Nolan (1:09:58.660)

it's much more complicated than we imagine.

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.980)

Wow, that's powerful.

Garry Nolan (1:10:03.820)

Being able to always step back because we humans get excited.

Lex Fridman (1:10:07.460)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (1:10:07.700)

We start to jump to conclusions from the data, but always step back.

Lex Fridman (1:10:11.500)

Well...

Garry Nolan (1:10:11.700)

Powerful, being able to always step back because we humans get excited.

Lex Fridman (1:10:15.580)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (1:10:15.820)

We start to jump to conclusions from the data, but always step back.

Lex Fridman (1:10:19.620)

Well, in some of my Twitter feeds, when I dare to go on Twitter,

Lex Fridman (1:10:23.420)

are full of, well, when are you going to give us the answer?

Lex Fridman (1:10:27.340)

Science is not immediate.

Garry Nolan (1:10:29.180)

You're going to have to be patient.

Lex Fridman (1:10:31.020)

And even some of my science colleagues have said, well, where's the data?

Lex Fridman (1:10:35.060)

My answer to them has been, where's been your work to try to produce any?

Lex Fridman (1:10:39.940)

I'm not here to give you everything on a silver platter.

Garry Nolan (1:10:43.580)

We talked offline how much I love data and machine learning and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:10:48.260)

And it's been really disheartening to see the U.S.

Garry Nolan (1:10:51.620)

government not invest as much as they possibly could into this whole process.

Lex Fridman (1:10:56.940)

So let's jump to the most recent thing, which is what do you make of the report

Garry Nolan (1:11:01.540)

titled Preliminary Assessment, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena that was released by the

Lex Fridman (1:11:08.260)

Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June 2021.

Lex Fridman (1:11:12.740)

So this is what's like, okay, we're going to step back and we're going to like,

Lex Fridman (1:11:18.980)

where do we stand and where do we hope the future is?

Lex Fridman (1:11:21.500)

What do you make of that report?

Lex Fridman (1:11:22.540)

Is it hopeful?

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.700)

Is it?

Lex Fridman (1:11:24.220)

I see it as very hopeful, very hopeful.

Lex Fridman (1:11:26.860)

I think the adults are finally stepping up and being in charge, right?

Lex Fridman (1:11:31.860)

In the good sense of adult.

Lex Fridman (1:11:33.700)

What's that?

Lex Fridman (1:11:34.300)

In the good sense of adult.

Garry Nolan (1:11:37.580)

This childlike curiosity is a pretty powerful thing.

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.380)

That's true, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:11:42.260)

But it's also, I think, the people who were worried that the populace at large might run

Lex Fridman (1:11:47.580)

screaming into the streets and riot, you know, have, you know, they basically,

Garry Nolan (1:11:53.180)

the empiric evidence is they're wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:11:55.300)

You know, these videos and all these things have been out for now, what, five years?

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.460)

Most people don't even know about it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:02.780)

So as hyped as it's been and all over the newspapers that it's been and et cetera,

Garry Nolan (1:12:08.780)

you know, even Tucker Carlson has talked about it many times on his news program.

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.460)

Joe Rogan has.

Garry Nolan (1:12:15.380)

A lot of people don't know about it.

Lex Fridman (1:12:16.820)

So I think people, if it's not affecting their day to day life,

Garry Nolan (1:12:20.700)

they're going on with their day to day life.

Lex Fridman (1:12:23.220)

So, but that said, I think it was an important sea change in the internal

Garry Nolan (1:12:30.020)

discussions going on in the government because, and the reason being,

Garry Nolan (1:12:35.460)

that I think this is actually partly true with the maturation of human social technology.

Garry Nolan (1:12:43.020)

It was becoming so obvious that this stuff was showing up again and again and again around our ships.

Lex Fridman (1:12:49.060)

They just couldn't keep it quiet anymore, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:51.820)

And so it's like, we need to do something about it.

Lex Fridman (1:12:53.900)

And Lou Elizondo and Chris and others, to their great credit, found the right angle to talk about this.

Garry Nolan (1:13:00.580)

It says, well, okay, let's say it's not out there.

Lex Fridman (1:13:04.220)

Maybe it's the Russians, the Chinese or somebody else.

Garry Nolan (1:13:06.860)

We should know about this because we damn sure know it's not us.

Lex Fridman (1:13:11.380)

So that to me is an important thing to finally be a little bit more open about the matter.

Lex Fridman (1:13:20.660)

But like I often say, I'm not looking for people to give me permission to do anything.

Lex Fridman (1:13:26.140)

I'm just going to do the analysis myself with what I have.

Garry Nolan (1:13:29.180)

Avi Loeb has taken the same approach.

Garry Nolan (1:13:31.900)

He said, I'm not going to wait for the government to give me telescopic information about technologies

Garry Nolan (1:13:38.420)

or things that might be even on our own solar system.

Lex Fridman (1:13:41.940)

I'm just going to collect it myself.

Lex Fridman (1:13:44.140)

And that's the right way to do it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:13:46.420)

Don't wait for somebody else to give it to you.

Garry Nolan (1:13:48.740)

It's also possible to inspire a large number of people to do a wider spread data collection.

Lex Fridman (1:13:55.540)

Yes.

Garry Nolan (1:13:55.900)

I mean, you yourself can't do a large enough data collection that would,

Garry Nolan (1:14:00.700)

if you're talking about anomalous events, you should be collecting high resolution data

Garry Nolan (1:14:08.740)

about everything that's happening on Earth in terms of like, in terms of the kind of things

Lex Fridman (1:14:15.660)

that would indicate to you a strong signal that something weird happened here.

Lex Fridman (1:14:20.100)

And this is why governments can be good at funding large scale efforts.

Lex Fridman (1:14:26.180)

Yes.

Garry Nolan (1:14:26.740)

I mean, you know, NASA and so on, working with SpaceX, with Blue Origin, you know,

Garry Nolan (1:14:33.940)

fund capitalistic sort of fund companies, fund company efforts to do huge moonshot projects.

Garry Nolan (1:14:42.260)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:14:43.060)

And in the same way, do huge moonshot data collection efforts in terms of UFOs.

Garry Nolan (1:14:47.860)

I mean, we're not, it needs to be like 10X, like one or two orders of magnitude more funding.

Lex Fridman (1:14:53.540)

Exactly.

Garry Nolan (1:14:53.860)

To do this kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:14:55.180)

And I understand on the flip side of that, if you make it about what are the Russians,

Garry Nolan (1:14:59.740)

whether the Chinese doing, you know, make it a question of geopolitics, it gets touchy.

Lex Fridman (1:15:06.620)

Because now you're kind of taken away from the realm of science and...

Garry Nolan (1:15:11.660)

Making it military.

Lex Fridman (1:15:12.700)

Making it military.

Garry Nolan (1:15:13.660)

Some of the greatest, this is what makes me as an engineer, makes me truly sad that some

Garry Nolan (1:15:18.620)

of the greatest engineering work ever done is by Lockheed Martin, and we will never know about it.

Garry Nolan (1:15:24.940)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:15:25.420)

I agree.

Garry Nolan (1:15:26.060)

I agree.

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.540)

I wish we were, it was different, but it's the world we live in.

Garry Nolan (1:15:33.340)

You know, but related to that UIP task force announcement that you just said, you know,

Garry Nolan (1:15:39.580)

the bill was passed in the Department of Defense and now it formally establishes an office

Garry Nolan (1:15:44.620)

to collate that information and also to be transparent about it.

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.380)

Money is now set aside, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.780)

What do you think of it, just in case people don't know, the DOD establishing new department

Lex Fridman (1:15:57.580)

to study UFOs called Airborne Naming Command.

Lex Fridman (1:16:02.780)

But yes, Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.

Lex Fridman (1:16:07.980)

Do you know how to pronounce that?

Garry Nolan (1:16:08.940)

No, I do not.

Lex Fridman (1:16:09.740)

No.

Garry Nolan (1:16:09.980)

AOI MSG.

Lex Fridman (1:16:11.980)

It's stupid and needs to be renamed, but...

Garry Nolan (1:16:13.820)

AOI MSG.

Garry Nolan (1:16:15.660)

AO, all right, is directed by the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

Lex Fridman (1:16:22.300)

What do you make of this office?

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.060)

Are you hopeful about this office?

Garry Nolan (1:16:26.460)

I think there's still a tug of war going on behind the scenes as to who's going to control

Lex Fridman (1:16:30.700)

this.

Lex Fridman (1:16:32.220)

But I do know, though, that money has been set aside that will be used to make things

Lex Fridman (1:16:41.020)

more public, right, to start to get others involved.

Garry Nolan (1:16:45.100)

And, you know, I'm involved with an effort to get other academics involved.

Lex Fridman (1:16:51.660)

So you think there might be some of that money could be directed towards funding maybe like

Garry Nolan (1:16:55.820)

groups like yours to do some research here.

Lex Fridman (1:16:59.020)

So they would be open to that, you think?

Garry Nolan (1:17:01.020)

I hope so.

Lex Fridman (1:17:01.740)

I mean, nothing is set in stone yet.

Garry Nolan (1:17:04.060)

So, you know, and I'm not hiding anything because I just don't know anything, right.

Lex Fridman (1:17:08.460)

But I do think that there will be public efforts.

Garry Nolan (1:17:14.700)

Now, there are being set up other private efforts to bring monies involved and to use

Lex Fridman (1:17:21.580)

that to leverage and get access to some of the internal resources as well.

Lex Fridman (1:17:28.140)

So what you're seeing is kind of an ecosystem building up in a positive sense of people

Lex Fridman (1:17:36.140)

who are willing to do the research.

Garry Nolan (1:17:39.420)

So, you know, before it would be you couldn't even go to a scientist and ask them to help.

Garry Nolan (1:17:45.100)

Now, if there's money, as I said before, scientists are essentially capitalists.

Garry Nolan (1:17:50.060)

We go where the money is.

Lex Fridman (1:17:52.220)

I mean, the work that I've done, I did out of my own pocket.

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.980)

And probably about $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 of money went into the paper we published

Lex Fridman (1:18:02.220)

out of my own pocket.

Lex Fridman (1:18:05.580)

But the amount of money that needs to go in is in at least the few millions to do

Lex Fridman (1:18:10.540)

a proper analysis of these materials.

Garry Nolan (1:18:12.940)

The work I know that the Galileo project is involved with, it's probably in the, you

Lex Fridman (1:18:19.580)

know, 5 to 10 million range to get stuff done.

Lex Fridman (1:18:22.620)

But that's actually a relatively modest amount of money to accomplish something that

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.140)

has been in the zeitgeist for decades.

Garry Nolan (1:18:32.940)

I should also push back a little bit on something you probably will agree with.

Lex Fridman (1:18:37.100)

You said scientists are essentially capitalists.

Lex Fridman (1:18:39.180)

What I've noticed is there's certainly an influence of money, but oftentimes when you're

Garry Nolan (1:18:43.820)

talking about basic research and basic science, the money is a little bit ambiguous to what

Garry Nolan (1:18:52.380)

direction you're doing the research in.

Lex Fridman (1:18:54.380)

And the scientists get really good at telling a narrative of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're

Garry Nolan (1:19:00.220)

fulfilling the purpose of this funding, but we're actually, they end up doing really what

Lex Fridman (1:19:05.740)

they're curious about.

Garry Nolan (1:19:06.700)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:19:07.180)

And of course you cannot deviate like if you're getting funded to study penguins in Antarctica,

Garry Nolan (1:19:11.900)

you can't start building rockets, but probably you can because you will convince some kind,

Garry Nolan (1:19:17.420)

you'll concoct a narrative saying rockets are really important for studying penguins

Garry Nolan (1:19:21.580)

in the Antarctic.

Lex Fridman (1:19:22.380)

Right.

Garry Nolan (1:19:22.940)

I think that's actually, this is one thing I think people don't generally understand

Garry Nolan (1:19:29.980)

about the scientific mind is I don't know how capitalistic it is because if it was,

Garry Nolan (1:19:35.420)

they would start an effing company.

Lex Fridman (1:19:37.500)

No, no, no, no.

Garry Nolan (1:19:38.300)

I mean, when I meant capitalist, I didn't mean in the, they'll start companies per se.

Lex Fridman (1:19:44.140)

I mean, we can only do the research where there's money.

Lex Fridman (1:19:48.060)

And so from, you know, maybe it's a bad use of the term capitalist.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.100)

But we will only do the research where there's money.

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.660)

I mean, why do most people work, many biologists work in cancer?

Lex Fridman (1:20:03.980)

Uh, work in cancer research because there's a lot of money there.

Garry Nolan (1:20:08.140)

It's an important problem, but I might not have ever gotten involved in it if there wasn't

Lex Fridman (1:20:14.620)

money.

Garry Nolan (1:20:14.940)

I might've gone and I was going to be a botanist when I, when I was a kid.

Lex Fridman (1:20:20.620)

That's what I wanted to do.

Garry Nolan (1:20:22.140)

Um, so having money available will bring people to bear.

Garry Nolan (1:20:28.460)

Now, another mistake that's often actually made, I think by the lay public about science

Garry Nolan (1:20:33.420)

is that people think that we're paid to do things.

Garry Nolan (1:20:36.620)

Just as you said, I get a research grant and luckily from the NIH there, they give you

Garry Nolan (1:20:41.260)

a fair amount of latitude.

Lex Fridman (1:20:43.420)

I will go my own way and I'll find something.

Garry Nolan (1:20:45.580)

I might've proposed something, but I'll end up somewhere entirely different by the end

Lex Fridman (1:20:50.380)

of the project.

Lex Fridman (1:20:51.500)

And that's how good science is done.

Lex Fridman (1:20:52.860)

You follow the, you follow the data, you follow the results.

Garry Nolan (1:20:56.700)

Um, and so that's what I'm hoping can be done here.

Garry Nolan (1:21:01.580)

I think the worst kind of thing that could be done with this subject area is to put it

Garry Nolan (1:21:07.500)

inside another company where they have a set plan of what it is they're going to do and

Lex Fridman (1:21:13.180)

the scientists either tell, do what the executives tell them to do or not.

Garry Nolan (1:21:18.300)

That isn't how anything will really get discovered.

Garry Nolan (1:21:21.100)

Put it, get it out into the public, get open minds thinking about it and then publishing

Garry Nolan (1:21:27.820)

on it and doing the right kind of work.

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.900)

That's how real progress will be made with this.

Garry Nolan (1:21:33.740)

Let's again, put our sort of philosophical hats on.

Lex Fridman (1:21:37.340)

Do you think the US government or some other government is in possession of something of

Lex Fridman (1:21:45.660)

extraterrestrial origin that is far more impressive than anything we've seen in the public?

Garry Nolan (1:21:53.980)

If I, I've not seen anything personally, but if I believe the people who I don't think

Garry Nolan (1:21:59.180)

can lie, yes.

Garry Nolan (1:22:02.540)

This is how does that make you feel in terms of the way government works, the way our human

Garry Nolan (1:22:07.580)

civilization works, that there might be things like that and we're not, they're not public.

Lex Fridman (1:22:13.580)

Is, is, is there a hopeful message for transparency that's possible?

Garry Nolan (1:22:17.100)

Like if you were, if you were, uh, in power and I'm not saying president because maybe

Lex Fridman (1:22:22.220)

the president is not the source of power here.

Lex Fridman (1:22:25.020)

Would you release this information in some way or form?

Garry Nolan (1:22:29.100)

Yes, if I were, I think it would, I think it's, I think it's something that can bring

Lex Fridman (1:22:36.060)

humanity together, right?

Garry Nolan (1:22:38.300)

I think that knowledge of this kind of thing to know that we are, you know, we are more

Garry Nolan (1:22:44.940)

alike than we are different in comparison to whatever this is, is, uh, is a positive

Lex Fridman (1:22:53.260)

thing for us.

Garry Nolan (1:22:55.100)

Um, and to know, you know, I don't necessarily care that the government has been hiding it.

Lex Fridman (1:23:01.180)

And I think, you know, people who've been talking about what we should give government

Garry Nolan (1:23:05.740)

officials or whatever amnesty, I think that's probably the right, the right answer.

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.380)

We don't, this isn't a time to look back and say, you did something wrong.

Garry Nolan (1:23:14.140)

You did whatever you did because that was the data you had available to you at the time

Lex Fridman (1:23:17.340)

and those, you had good reasons for doing it.

Garry Nolan (1:23:19.660)

Now, if your reasons were selfish, if your reasons where you wanted to do it because

Garry Nolan (1:23:24.780)

you wanted to monetize it yourself, uh, to the, to your benefit, but against that of

Garry Nolan (1:23:30.940)

others, then I think maybe there's something else that could be said, but you know, an

Lex Fridman (1:23:36.140)

opportunity to get all this information out.

Garry Nolan (1:23:38.220)

If I were in charge, I would, I would try to do it.

Garry Nolan (1:23:41.900)

Now I might be shown something though that says, there's a reason why you don't want

Garry Nolan (1:23:46.300)

to let anybody know this.

Garry Nolan (1:23:47.340)

Maybe you don't want to let anybody know this and maybe you don't want everybody have having

Garry Nolan (1:23:50.940)

access to unlimited, uh, energy because maybe you might turn it into a bomb or something

Garry Nolan (1:23:57.900)

that gives you hints that something like unlimited energy is possible, but you haven't figured

Garry Nolan (1:24:03.820)

it out yet.

Lex Fridman (1:24:04.820)

And if you make it public, maybe some of the other governments you have tensions with we'll

Garry Nolan (1:24:10.220)

figure it out first.

Lex Fridman (1:24:11.220)

Right.

Garry Nolan (1:24:12.220)

I mean, it's kind of an arms race going on, I think in all forms and it's, it makes me

Garry Nolan (1:24:17.180)

truly sad because, uh, it's obvious that, um, for example, the origins of the COVID

Garry Nolan (1:24:25.020)

virus, it's obvious to me that the Chinese government, whatever the origins are, is interested

Garry Nolan (1:24:32.380)

in not releasing information about it because it can only be bad for the Chinese government.

Lex Fridman (1:24:40.940)

And every government thinks like this, like every, actually this has been disappointment

Lex Fridman (1:24:46.300)

to me talking to PR folks at companies, like they're always nervous.

Garry Nolan (1:24:54.460)

They're always like conservative in the sense like, well, if we release more stuff, it can

Lex Fridman (1:25:00.780)

only be bad.

Lex Fridman (1:25:02.320)

And then an Elon Musk character comes along who tweets ridiculous memes and doesn't give

Lex Fridman (1:25:08.540)

a fuck.

Lex Fridman (1:25:10.660)

And I've been encouraging CEOs, I've been encouraging people to be transparent.

Lex Fridman (1:25:15.060)

And of course, government is national security is really like another level as human lives

Garry Nolan (1:25:20.940)

at stake.

Lex Fridman (1:25:22.380)

But let's start at the lighter case of just releasing some of the awesome insides of the

Garry Nolan (1:25:28.460)

tech, how, how the sausages made the technology and being transparent about it because it

Lex Fridman (1:25:34.340)

excites people.

Garry Nolan (1:25:36.060)

It uh, like you said, it, it connects people and inspires them.

Lex Fridman (1:25:42.780)

It's a good for the brand.

Garry Nolan (1:25:44.240)

It's good for everybody.

Garry Nolan (1:25:45.240)

I, I honestly think this kind of idea that people will steal the information and we use

Garry Nolan (1:25:49.940)

it against you is, um, is an idea that's not true in his idea of the 20th century.

Garry Nolan (1:25:56.780)

Like you said, some of the benefits of the social media, uh, our, our social world is

Garry Nolan (1:26:02.100)

that transparency is beneficial and I hope governments will learn that lesson.

Lex Fridman (1:26:06.860)

Of course, they're the, usually the last to learn such lessons.

Lex Fridman (1:26:10.380)

What do you make of Bob Lazar's story in terms of possession of aircraft?

Lex Fridman (1:26:15.340)

Do you believe him?

Garry Nolan (1:26:16.340)

I don't believe in the Bob Lazar story to be quite honest.

Garry Nolan (1:26:19.260)

I mean, I, uh, Jeremy Corbell has done a great job interviewing him and, uh, has done some,

Garry Nolan (1:26:28.460)

you know, beautiful, uh, documentaries.

Lex Fridman (1:26:31.700)

Um, I just don't, I, I don't know how to interpret it.

Lex Fridman (1:26:38.540)

And um, you know, and again, there's some of the people who I fraternize with think

Lex Fridman (1:26:45.100)

it's all rubbish.

Garry Nolan (1:26:46.100)

Uh, yeah, but he, maybe he's right, but I don't know.

Garry Nolan (1:26:49.380)

I mean, the, the problem is, and um, this is a little bit different about how I approach

Garry Nolan (1:26:55.820)

the whole area than a lot of others.

Garry Nolan (1:26:58.620)

I'm less interested in going over old paperwork and all these old histories of who said what,

Garry Nolan (1:27:04.980)

you know, the whole, he said, she said of the history of, of UFOs, I'm a scientist.

Lex Fridman (1:27:13.220)

I worked on the brain area because it's something I can collect data on.

Garry Nolan (1:27:18.740)

I can go back to the same individual, collect their MRI again and redo it.

Lex Fridman (1:27:22.900)

I can hand that MRI to somebody else.

Garry Nolan (1:27:24.620)

They can analyze it.

Lex Fridman (1:27:26.020)

I can get materials, I can analyze them.

Garry Nolan (1:27:28.740)

I can get some of these skeletons.

Garry Nolan (1:27:30.100)

I won't touch any skeletons ever again, but I can analyze it and somebody else can reproduce

Garry Nolan (1:27:34.100)

the data.

Lex Fridman (1:27:35.100)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (1:27:36.100)

I mean, that's what I'm good at.

Lex Fridman (1:27:37.780)

And so, you know, I'm, I, I, I'm not going to go into the whole, I'm not a historian.

Garry Nolan (1:27:43.340)

Yeah, that's true.

Lex Fridman (1:27:44.480)

But there's a human side to it.

Garry Nolan (1:27:48.060)

I want, sometimes I think with these, because again, anomalous, rare events, some of the

Garry Nolan (1:27:54.300)

data is inextricably connected to humans, the observations, I mean, I hope in the future,

Garry Nolan (1:28:02.620)

you know, that, that, that sensory data will not be polluted by human subjectivity.

Lex Fridman (1:28:08.740)

But you know, that's still, that's still powerful data, even direct observations, like if you

Garry Nolan (1:28:14.020)

talk about pilots.

Lex Fridman (1:28:15.020)

And so it's an interesting question to me, whether Babasar is telling the truth, whether

Garry Nolan (1:28:19.140)

he believes he's telling the truth too, and what also, what impact his story and stories

Lex Fridman (1:28:26.300)

like his have on the willingness of governments to be transparent and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:28:32.060)

So you know, you have to credit his story for captivating the imagination of people

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.700)

and getting the conversation going.

Garry Nolan (1:28:41.120)

He's maintained his story for all these years with little to no change that I'm aware of.

Lex Fridman (1:28:46.100)

So but there's so many other people who are, let's say, experts in that story.

Garry Nolan (1:28:52.820)

Their gut, you know, you accumulate a set of sort of circumstantial evidence where your

Lex Fridman (1:29:01.620)

gut will say that somebody is not telling the truth.

Garry Nolan (1:29:04.980)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:29:05.980)

You mentioned Avi Loeb, I forgot to ask you about Oumuamua.

Lex Fridman (1:29:11.860)

You know, because you've analyzed specimens here on Earth, what do you make of that one?

Lex Fridman (1:29:17.860)

And what do you make broadly of our efforts to look, look at rocks, essentially, or look

Lex Fridman (1:29:23.060)

at objects flying around in our solar system?

Garry Nolan (1:29:28.160)

Is that a valuable pursuit or maybe most of the stories can be, most of the fascinating

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.020)

things could be discovered here on Earth or on other nearby planets?

Garry Nolan (1:29:37.980)

Just going to Oumuamua, you know, I think Avi's insight is an interesting speculation,

Lex Fridman (1:29:46.980)

right?

Garry Nolan (1:29:48.540)

Like I was saying before, people can sometimes look at something and not see it for what

Garry Nolan (1:29:51.680)

it is.

Lex Fridman (1:29:53.860)

Somebody would just look at that and say, oh, it's an asteroid and dismiss it.

Garry Nolan (1:29:58.220)

There was something odd about the data that Avi picked up on and said, well, here's an

Garry Nolan (1:30:03.500)

alternative explanation that doesn't fit, that actually better fits the models than

Garry Nolan (1:30:08.220)

it just being a rock, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.380)

And to his credit, he just has ignored the critics because he believes the data is real

Lex Fridman (1:30:17.460)

and is using that then as a battering ram to go after other things.

Lex Fridman (1:30:22.240)

And I think that's, I think that's great.

Lex Fridman (1:30:24.660)

You know?

Lex Fridman (1:30:25.660)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:30:26.660)

What, what is his main conclusion?

Lex Fridman (1:30:27.660)

Does he say it could be of alien extraterrestrial origin?

Lex Fridman (1:30:31.900)

Is that his?

Lex Fridman (1:30:32.900)

Well, that's one of the things.

Garry Nolan (1:30:33.900)

I mean, he, you know, he's explained how it could be a light sale.

Lex Fridman (1:30:38.500)

And a light sale is certainly within near human capabilities to make such a thing.

Garry Nolan (1:30:44.380)

I think Yuri Milner, he's a Russian billionaire.

Garry Nolan (1:30:49.060)

He's involved, I think, in a project to make light sales with laser, you know, to, to launch

Lex Fridman (1:30:56.700)

them with laser power, essentially, towards Alpha Centauri, right?

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.140)

So it's something that humans could make.

Garry Nolan (1:31:07.700)

I think Avi's proposal is perfectly within the realm of possibility.

Lex Fridman (1:31:11.180)

I mean, sadly, the thing is, you know, now nearly out of our solar system.

Garry Nolan (1:31:15.700)

Yes, I mean, to me, that's inspiring to do greater levels of data collection in our solar

Lex Fridman (1:31:21.980)

system, but also here on Earth.

Lex Fridman (1:31:23.580)

And it just seems like we should be constantly collecting, collecting data because the tools

Garry Nolan (1:31:28.020)

of software that we're developing get better and better at dealing with huge amounts of

Garry Nolan (1:31:31.620)

data.

Lex Fridman (1:31:32.620)

It's changing the nature of science, I mean, collect all of the data, right?

Garry Nolan (1:31:37.020)

Collect the data.

Lex Fridman (1:31:38.020)

I mean, I, I, the Galileo project asked me over the weekend to join and I did.

Lex Fridman (1:31:43.340)

So you know, I'm not a specialist in any of the stuff that they're doing.

Lex Fridman (1:31:48.720)

But you know, in looking at the list of people who are on there, there are really no biologists

Garry Nolan (1:31:54.020)

on there.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.020)

So at, at some point, if my expertise is required for something.

Lex Fridman (1:31:59.140)

What's the goal and the vision of the Galileo project?

Garry Nolan (1:32:01.600)

Better talk to Avi, but my understanding and just actually looking at the, at the sort

Garry Nolan (1:32:06.840)

of the bylaws this morning, literally just got them, is number one, collect the data

Lex Fridman (1:32:12.980)

on UAP.

Lex Fridman (1:32:13.980)

And number two, collect data on local, potentially local technological artifacts.

Lex Fridman (1:32:21.660)

I need to look into this.

Garry Nolan (1:32:23.460)

This is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:32:24.760)

And Avi is heading the Galileo project.

Garry Nolan (1:32:27.020)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:32:28.020)

Have you spoken to him?

Lex Fridman (1:32:29.020)

On this podcast?

Lex Fridman (1:32:30.020)

Yes.

Garry Nolan (1:32:31.020)

That was before, I believe it was before he was headed.

Lex Fridman (1:32:32.020)

Oh.

Lex Fridman (1:32:33.020)

Is this a new creation?

Lex Fridman (1:32:34.020)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (1:32:35.020)

The Galileo project was, I think it's about six or seven months old now.

Lex Fridman (1:32:37.700)

Okay.

Garry Nolan (1:32:38.700)

You know.

Lex Fridman (1:32:39.700)

That's amazing.

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.700)

And he's getting a group of scientists together.

Lex Fridman (1:32:41.700)

Oh yeah.

Garry Nolan (1:32:42.700)

That's awesome.

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.700)

Actually, I am, I was looking at some of their stuff over the weekend.

Garry Nolan (1:32:47.740)

I'm shocked at the level of organization that they've already got put together.

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.940)

That's amazing.

Garry Nolan (1:32:51.940)

It looks like a moonshot project.

Garry Nolan (1:32:53.620)

I mean, I've been involved with a lot of NIH, large NIH projects, which involve a lot of

Garry Nolan (1:32:59.040)

people in coordination and they're putting it together.

Lex Fridman (1:33:06.120)

So you're extremely well published in a lot of the fields we began this conversation with.

Lex Fridman (1:33:17.100)

So you're a legit scientist, but yet you're keeping an open mind to a lot of ideas that

Lex Fridman (1:33:27.820)

maybe require you to take a leap outside of the conventional.

Lex Fridman (1:33:33.160)

So what advice would you give to young people today that are in high school or in college

Garry Nolan (1:33:40.420)

that are dreaming of having impact in science or maybe in whatever career path that goes

Lex Fridman (1:33:47.720)

outside of the conventional that really does something new?

Garry Nolan (1:33:53.560)

If you believe in something, you believe that an idea is valuable or you haven't approached

Garry Nolan (1:34:01.620)

something, don't let others shame you into not doing it.

Garry Nolan (1:34:06.740)

As I've said, shame is a societal control device to get other people to do what they

Garry Nolan (1:34:12.840)

want you to do rather than what you want to do.

Lex Fridman (1:34:16.620)

So shame sometimes is good to stop you from doing something unethical or wrong, but shame

Garry Nolan (1:34:21.660)

also is something that is circumscribing your environment.

Garry Nolan (1:34:27.100)

I've never let people who've told me, you shouldn't do that line of science, you should

Garry Nolan (1:34:33.220)

be ashamed of yourself for even thinking that, give me a break.

Lex Fridman (1:34:38.020)

Why is it wrong to ask questions about this area?

Lex Fridman (1:34:41.340)

What's wrong with asking the question?

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.380)

Frankly, you're the person who's wrong for trying to stop these questions.

Garry Nolan (1:34:48.940)

You're the person who's almost acting like a cultist.

Garry Nolan (1:34:53.080)

You basically have closed your mind to what the possibilities are, and if I'm not hurting

Lex Fridman (1:34:58.580)

anybody, and if it could lead to an advance, and if it's my time, why does it bother you?

Garry Nolan (1:35:04.900)

I had a very well known scientist once tell me that I was going to hurt my career talking

Garry Nolan (1:35:10.000)

about this.

Lex Fridman (1:35:11.260)

If anything, it's enhanced my career.

Garry Nolan (1:35:13.220)

I have a couple of questions on this.

Lex Fridman (1:35:15.160)

So first of all, just a small comment on that.

Garry Nolan (1:35:18.400)

I've realized that it feels like a lot of the progress in science is done by people

Garry Nolan (1:35:24.700)

pursuing an idea that another senior faculty would probably say, this is going to hurt

Garry Nolan (1:35:29.900)

your career.

Garry Nolan (1:35:30.900)

I think it's actually a pretty good indicator that there's something interesting when a

Garry Nolan (1:35:36.100)

senior wise person tells you this is going to hurt your career.

Garry Nolan (1:35:40.620)

I think that's just the one, as a small, if I were to give advice to young people, if

Garry Nolan (1:35:45.420)

somebody senior tells you this is going to hurt your career, think twice about taking

Lex Fridman (1:35:49.580)

their advice.

Garry Nolan (1:35:50.580)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:35:51.580)

I mean, I think that's the primary thing.

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.580)

And the other, I tell my own students, I have a lab of about 20, 30 people and it's been

Lex Fridman (1:36:00.140)

that big since 1992.

Garry Nolan (1:36:03.500)

People come and go.

Lex Fridman (1:36:06.660)

It's not the data that falls in line that's so interesting.

Garry Nolan (1:36:14.020)

It's the spot off the graph that you want to understand.

Garry Nolan (1:36:21.580)

When something is way off the graph, that's the interesting thing because that's usually

Garry Nolan (1:36:26.060)

where discovery is.

Lex Fridman (1:36:28.500)

And the number of times that I've stopped people in my lab and said, wait a second,

Garry Nolan (1:36:32.220)

go back a few slides.

Lex Fridman (1:36:34.000)

What was that?

Lex Fridman (1:36:35.820)

And then it ended up being something interesting that made their careers, I could count on

Lex Fridman (1:36:42.580)

a few hands.

Garry Nolan (1:36:44.140)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (1:36:45.140)

Get excited by the extraordinary that's outside of the thing that you've done in the past.

Garry Nolan (1:36:53.060)

Just on a personal psychological level, is there, I'm sure at Stanford, I'm sure in you

Lex Fridman (1:37:01.780)

exploring some of these ideas, there's pressure.

Lex Fridman (1:37:05.020)

How do you not give in to the pressure?

Lex Fridman (1:37:09.820)

How do you not give in to the people that push you away from these topics?

Lex Fridman (1:37:17.980)

What would you say is shame?

Lex Fridman (1:37:19.460)

I just point to my successes.

Garry Nolan (1:37:22.060)

I say, you're the ones who told me not to start companies all this time ago.

Lex Fridman (1:37:28.520)

And now you're the one coming to me for advice for how to start a company.

Lex Fridman (1:37:34.900)

But from the scientific area, it's you're wanting to take something off the table that

Lex Fridman (1:37:43.000)

might be an explanation.

Lex Fridman (1:37:47.740)

How is that the scientific method?

Lex Fridman (1:37:50.860)

I reverse shame them.

Lex Fridman (1:37:54.220)

So purely with reason through conversation, you're able to do that.

Lex Fridman (1:37:56.860)

So it doesn't feel, because to me it would just feel lonely.

Garry Nolan (1:37:59.700)

There's a community.

Garry Nolan (1:38:01.540)

There's a community of science, and when you're working on something that's outside a particular

Garry Nolan (1:38:08.700)

conventional way of thinking, it can be lonely.

Garry Nolan (1:38:12.180)

There's in the AI field, if you were working on neural networks in the 90s, it could be

Garry Nolan (1:38:17.620)

lonely.

Garry Nolan (1:38:18.700)

I have met some of the most fascinating people ever that had I stayed the conventional track,

Garry Nolan (1:38:23.820)

I would never have met.

Lex Fridman (1:38:26.260)

Truly brilliant people because of this.

Lex Fridman (1:38:31.160)

So it is for those worried about, well, should I step outside of my comfort zone?

Lex Fridman (1:38:40.460)

You're going to meet some really interesting people.

Lex Fridman (1:38:42.900)

And because I'm open about this area, I'll go and give a talk in Boston, Harvard or MIT.

Lex Fridman (1:38:51.860)

And at dinner, inevitably, this subject comes up.

Lex Fridman (1:38:57.140)

And inevitably somebody else at the table will admit both that they're interested or

Lex Fridman (1:39:01.460)

that they've seen something.

Lex Fridman (1:39:03.520)

And suddenly the whole tone of the conversation changes.

Garry Nolan (1:39:07.020)

It's kind of like there's safety in numbers and then, or I've had people come to me afterwards

Garry Nolan (1:39:13.380)

after dinner and say, Hey, I don't talk about this openly, but.

Lex Fridman (1:39:19.420)

So the number of scientists who know that there's something else going on is much larger

Garry Nolan (1:39:27.660)

than the scientific community would like to think.

Garry Nolan (1:39:32.220)

That's a really powerful one, which is, I don't talk about this openly, but here's what

Garry Nolan (1:39:38.220)

I believe.

Lex Fridman (1:39:40.240)

And you'd be surprised how many people speak like this and hold those beliefs.

Lex Fridman (1:39:44.780)

And I am optimistic about social media and a more connected world to reveal more and

Garry Nolan (1:39:50.260)

more, like us not to have these two personalities, we're like this public and private one.

Garry Nolan (1:39:56.100)

We've mentioned the big questions of the origins of the universe.

Lex Fridman (1:39:59.140)

What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing for us humans, our human existence here

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.700)

on earth, or just at the individual level of a human life?

Lex Fridman (1:40:10.940)

What Gary is the meaning of life.

Garry Nolan (1:40:15.820)

I think that what we're going through today with this realization, it's kind of like you've

Garry Nolan (1:40:25.300)

lived on an island your whole life and you've looked across the ocean and you've never imagined

Garry Nolan (1:40:32.420)

there was another island with anybody else on it.

Lex Fridman (1:40:35.380)

And then suddenly a ship with sails shows up.

Garry Nolan (1:40:39.980)

You don't understand it, but you realize that suddenly your world just got a lot bigger.

Garry Nolan (1:40:45.740)

I think we're in one of those moments right now that our world view, our galactic view

Garry Nolan (1:40:52.960)

is opening to something a little bit bigger.

Lex Fridman (1:40:55.940)

And not just that there might be somebody else, but that there's something else.

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.760)

And what it is, is yet to be understood.

Lex Fridman (1:41:06.940)

And the fact that it isn't understood to me is what's exciting because I can fill it with

Garry Nolan (1:41:13.660)

my dreams.

Lex Fridman (1:41:16.300)

And this discovery our world might is about to get a lot more humbling and a lot more

Garry Nolan (1:41:25.580)

fascinating once we look out and realize we were on an island all along.

Lex Fridman (1:41:30.620)

It makes us both smaller but larger at the same time to me.

Garry Nolan (1:41:34.780)

You know, I can look outside at the stars and think and imagine what else might be out

Lex Fridman (1:41:42.140)

there.

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.140)

And although I know that I will never see it all, it excites me to know that it's there.

Garry Nolan (1:41:50.300)

Well Gary, both to respect your time and also because at 12 I turned into a princess, let

Garry Nolan (1:41:58.740)

me just say thank you for doing everything you're doing as a great scientist, as a person

Garry Nolan (1:42:05.700)

willing to reject the conventional, and thank you for spending your extremely valuable time

Garry Nolan (1:42:10.780)

with me today.

Lex Fridman (1:42:11.780)

Thanks for talking.

Garry Nolan (1:42:12.780)

Thanks so much.

Lex Fridman (1:42:13.780)

It was great talking.

Garry Nolan (1:42:15.060)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Gary Nolan.

Lex Fridman (1:42:17.300)

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (1:42:21.620)

And now let me leave you with some words from Stanislav Lem in Solaris.

Lex Fridman (1:42:27.460)

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean when we can't even understand one another?

Garry Nolan (1:42:34.860)

Thanks for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (20:01.660)

of what you might bump into.

Lex Fridman (20:03.660)

So obviously all of that planning

Lex Fridman (20:08.940)

requires access to all the senses.

Garry Nolan (20:11.380)

It requires access to your desires, memory,

Lex Fridman (20:14.460)

knowledge of where and what you want

Lex Fridman (20:16.380)

and desire to walk nearby.

Lex Fridman (20:18.540)

Like I used the example of if you're at a party,

Garry Nolan (20:20.780)

you wanna avoid that person, you like that person,

Lex Fridman (20:22.940)

the waiter is about to drop something.

Garry Nolan (20:25.220)

All without thinking, you maneuver.

Lex Fridman (20:28.500)

So that actually, all that planning is done

Garry Nolan (20:31.020)

in the basal ganglia.

Lex Fridman (20:33.580)

And it's actually now called the brain within the brain.

Garry Nolan (20:36.620)

It's a goal processing system.

Lex Fridman (20:40.540)

Subservient to executive function.

Lex Fridman (20:43.380)

So what we think we found there was not something

Lex Fridman (20:48.460)

which allows people to talk to UFOs.

Garry Nolan (20:50.380)

I mean, I think the UFO community took it a step too far.

Lex Fridman (20:55.420)

What I think we found was a form of higher

Garry Nolan (21:00.020)

functioning and processing.

Lex Fridman (21:01.980)

So what we then looked at,

Lex Fridman (21:03.620)

and this was the most fascinating part of it,

Lex Fridman (21:05.700)

we looked then at individuals in the families

Garry Nolan (21:09.580)

or those, let's say the index case individuals.

Lex Fridman (21:14.220)

And we found that it was actually in families.

Lex Fridman (21:16.620)

And more so, this is the most fascinating part.

Lex Fridman (21:20.140)

We've probably looked now at about 200 just random cases

Garry Nolan (21:24.260)

that you can download off of databases online.

Lex Fridman (21:27.540)

You don't see this higher connectivity.

Garry Nolan (21:31.020)

You only find it in what Kit Green would have called

Lex Fridman (21:34.580)

or has called higher functioning individuals.

Garry Nolan (21:37.100)

People who are, I mean, he called them savants.

Lex Fridman (21:42.980)

I don't have the means to, we haven't done the testing.

Lex Fridman (21:47.100)

But it turns out my family has it, right?

Lex Fridman (21:49.980)

We found it in me, my brother, my sister, my mother.

Garry Nolan (21:55.100)

We found it as well in other individuals,

Lex Fridman (21:57.900)

husband and wife pairs.

Lex Fridman (21:59.980)

So statistically, if you had a group of 20 individuals

Lex Fridman (22:03.580)

and you found two husband wife pairs, both of whom had it,

Lex Fridman (22:06.260)

and yet it's only found at about, we think,

Lex Fridman (22:08.740)

one in 200, one in 300 individuals.

Garry Nolan (22:11.020)

The fact that two individuals came together,

Lex Fridman (22:14.220)

two sets of individuals came together,

Garry Nolan (22:15.820)

both of whom had it, implied either

Lex Fridman (22:18.900)

a restricted breeding group or attraction.

Garry Nolan (22:25.460)

The reason why it seems to be in, let's say,

Lex Fridman (22:29.620)

so called experiencers or people who claim,

Garry Nolan (22:33.180)

if intuition is the ability to see something

Lex Fridman (22:36.020)

that other people don't,

Lex Fridman (22:36.860)

and I don't mean that in a paranormal sense,

Lex Fridman (22:40.260)

but being able to see something just in front of you

Garry Nolan (22:42.700)

that other people might just dismiss,

Lex Fridman (22:45.540)

well, maybe that's a function of a higher kind

Garry Nolan (22:48.220)

of intelligence to say, well, I'm not looking at an artifact.

Lex Fridman (22:55.180)

I'm not looking at something that I should just ignore.

Garry Nolan (22:58.020)

I'm seeing something and I recognize it for,

Lex Fridman (23:00.420)

not what it is, but that it is something

Garry Nolan (23:02.620)

different than what is normally found in my environment.

Lex Fridman (23:06.660)

Yeah, you know, I have a little bit of that.

Garry Nolan (23:09.700)

I seem to see the magic in a lot of moments.

Lex Fridman (23:13.700)

I have a deep, it's obviously, not obviously,

Lex Fridman (23:16.540)

but it seems to be chemical in nature

Lex Fridman (23:19.860)

that I just am excited about life.

Garry Nolan (23:23.460)

I love life.

Lex Fridman (23:25.220)

I love stupid things.

Garry Nolan (23:26.620)

It feels like I'm high a lot,

Lex Fridman (23:28.380)

on mushrooms or something like that,

Garry Nolan (23:30.860)

where you'd really appreciate that.

Lex Fridman (23:32.660)

So I'm able to detect something about the environment

Garry Nolan (23:38.140)

that maybe others don't, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (23:40.460)

but I seem to be over the top grateful to be alive

Garry Nolan (23:45.460)

for a lot of stupid reasons, and that's in there somewhere.

Lex Fridman (23:49.540)

I mean, it's kind of interesting

Garry Nolan (23:50.980)

because it really is true that our brains,

Lex Fridman (23:56.620)

the way we're brought up, but also the genetics

Garry Nolan (23:59.820)

enables us to see certain slices of the world,

Lex Fridman (24:03.780)

and some people are probably more receptive

Garry Nolan (24:08.940)

to anomalous information.

Lex Fridman (24:12.420)

They see the magic, the possibility in the novel thing

Garry Nolan (24:18.700)

as opposed to kind of finding the pattern

Lex Fridman (24:21.980)

of the common, of the regular.

Garry Nolan (24:24.340)

Some people are more, wait a minute, this is kind of weird.

Lex Fridman (24:27.380)

I mean, a lot of those people would probably

Garry Nolan (24:28.740)

become scientists too.

Lex Fridman (24:30.020)

Like, huh, there's this pattern happening

Garry Nolan (24:34.300)

over and over and over, and then something weird

Lex Fridman (24:36.060)

just happened, and then you get excited by that weirdness

Lex Fridman (24:41.020)

and start to pull the string and discover

Lex Fridman (24:44.260)

what is at the core of that weirdness.

Garry Nolan (24:46.220)

Perhaps, is that, maybe by way of question,

Lex Fridman (24:53.060)

how does the human perception system deal

Lex Fridman (24:55.420)

with anomalous information, do you think?

Lex Fridman (24:57.740)

Well, it first tries to classify it

Lex Fridman (24:59.300)

and get it out of the way.

Lex Fridman (25:00.940)

If it's not food, if it's not sex, right?

Garry Nolan (25:04.340)

If it's not in the way of my desires,

Lex Fridman (25:08.380)

or if it is in the way of my desires,

Garry Nolan (25:10.700)

then you focus on it.

Lex Fridman (25:13.660)

And so I think the question is

Lex Fridman (25:16.820)

how much spare processing power,

Lex Fridman (25:19.260)

how much CPU cycles do we spend

Lex Fridman (25:22.620)

on things that are not those core desires?

Lex Fridman (25:28.260)

What is the most kind of memorable, powerful

Lex Fridman (25:35.180)

UFO encounter report you ever heard?

Lex Fridman (25:38.660)

Just to you, on a personal level,

Garry Nolan (25:40.460)

like something that was really powerful.

Lex Fridman (25:42.820)

Well, I mentioned the Zimbabwe one.

Garry Nolan (25:45.060)

That's particularly interesting.

Lex Fridman (25:47.380)

And one that actually most people don't know about,

Lex Fridman (25:50.620)

but family driving down the highway,

Lex Fridman (25:54.860)

two little girls in the back, open glass topped car,

Lex Fridman (26:00.740)

and the little girls see a craft right over their car.

Lex Fridman (26:06.380)

This is in the middle of the day on a busy highway.

Garry Nolan (26:10.140)

The mother sees it.

Lex Fridman (26:12.580)

Nobody can, they look around, nobody else seems to see it.

Lex Fridman (26:16.380)

So the girls take out their camera, take a picture of it,

Lex Fridman (26:19.900)

and then they get home.

Garry Nolan (26:22.140)

They look at the picture.

Lex Fridman (26:24.500)

There's no craft, but there's a little object

Garry Nolan (26:28.220)

about 30 feet above their car or so,

Lex Fridman (26:31.980)

probably about three feet across, kind of star shaped.

Garry Nolan (26:36.340)

It's not the craft, but it's something else.

Lex Fridman (26:39.300)

Obviously there was something there.

Lex Fridman (26:41.300)

And so what were they seeing?

Lex Fridman (26:42.780)

Were they seeing a projection?

Lex Fridman (26:44.060)

Were they seeing, and why were only they seeing it?

Lex Fridman (26:46.900)

And the photograph was capturing something very different

Garry Nolan (26:52.460)

than what we're seeing, but they're still an object.

Lex Fridman (26:55.460)

Can you give a little bit of context?

Lex Fridman (26:58.220)

Is this from modern day?

Lex Fridman (26:59.700)

It's modern day.

Garry Nolan (27:00.540)

Oh yeah, they had a camera.

Lex Fridman (27:01.380)

I mean, they had a cell phone camera.

Lex Fridman (27:02.460)

And this is like a report provided.

Lex Fridman (27:06.020)

By the way, where is a central place to provide a report?

Lex Fridman (27:08.540)

Is this?

Lex Fridman (27:09.380)

Oh, there's a move on, but this isn't public.

Garry Nolan (27:11.020)

I've seen the picture.

Lex Fridman (27:12.660)

Oh, this is something you've directly interacted with.

Garry Nolan (27:14.540)

Yeah, yeah, I've seen the picture.

Lex Fridman (27:16.780)

So those moments like that, they captivate your mind.

Garry Nolan (27:23.220)

It's so different,

Lex Fridman (27:24.060)

and it doesn't fall into the standard story at all.

Lex Fridman (27:26.900)

But it also, but in another way, it's kind of a,

Lex Fridman (27:31.060)

it's a clear enunciation of this notion

Garry Nolan (27:33.780)

that when people see events,

Lex Fridman (27:36.300)

they don't all see the same thing.

Garry Nolan (27:37.900)

Now, we've heard this about traffic accidents.

Lex Fridman (27:40.380)

Different people will see the color of the car differently

Garry Nolan (27:42.860)

or the chain of events differently.

Lex Fridman (27:44.500)

And this tells you that memory isn't anywhere near

Lex Fridman (27:47.100)

what we think it is.

Lex Fridman (27:48.740)

But the issue around these so called UFO reports

Garry Nolan (27:52.380)

is that the same people will see a very different thing,

Lex Fridman (27:56.420)

almost as if whatever it is is projecting a,

Garry Nolan (28:01.660)

is projecting something into the mind

Lex Fridman (28:04.260)

rather than it being real, right?

Garry Nolan (28:06.980)

Rather than it being a real manifestation,

Lex Fridman (28:09.820)

material in front of you,

Garry Nolan (28:11.460)

it's actually almost some sort of an altered virtual reality

Lex Fridman (28:16.340)

that is imposed on you.

Garry Nolan (28:18.020)

I mean, I think the company Meta

Lex Fridman (28:21.860)

and all the virtual reality companies

Lex Fridman (28:23.820)

would love to have something like that, right?

Lex Fridman (28:26.500)

Where you don't have to actually wear something

Garry Nolan (28:27.820)

on your face to experience a virtual reality.

Lex Fridman (28:31.500)

What happens if you could just project it?

Garry Nolan (28:33.900)

Well, that's the fundamental question

Lex Fridman (28:35.180)

from an alien perspective.

Garry Nolan (28:37.140)

When you look at it, or as we humans look at ants,

Lex Fridman (28:40.180)

how does its perception system operate?

Lex Fridman (28:43.340)

So not only how does this thing's mind operate,

Lex Fridman (28:45.700)

how does the human mind operate,

Lex Fridman (28:47.740)

but how does their perception system operate

Lex Fridman (28:50.580)

so that we can stimulate the perception system properly

Garry Nolan (28:55.500)

to get them to think certain things.

Lex Fridman (28:57.460)

And so, that's a really important question.

Garry Nolan (29:02.540)

Humans think that the only way to communicate

Lex Fridman (29:06.940)

is in 3D or 4D space time, there's physical objects,

Garry Nolan (29:12.140)

or maybe you write things into some kind of language.

Lex Fridman (29:15.300)

But there could be just so much more richness

Garry Nolan (29:22.340)

in how you can communicate.

Lex Fridman (29:23.700)

And so, from an alien perspective,

Garry Nolan (29:25.300)

where somebody has much greater technological capabilities,

Lex Fridman (29:28.020)

you have to figure out how do I use the skills I have

Garry Nolan (29:31.540)

to stimulate the limited humans.

Lex Fridman (29:35.500)

Right, well, I mean, let's take the ants exam

Garry Nolan (29:37.940)

again as an example.

Lex Fridman (29:38.940)

Let's say that you wanted to make ants practical.

Lex Fridman (29:43.220)

You wanted to use them for something, right?

Lex Fridman (29:45.260)

You wanted to use them as a form of biological robot.

Garry Nolan (29:47.580)

Now, DARPA and other people have been trying

Lex Fridman (29:50.900)

to use insects for, turn them into biological robots.

Lex Fridman (29:56.060)

But if you wanted to, you would have to interact

Lex Fridman (29:58.700)

with their sense of smell, right?

Garry Nolan (30:02.180)

Their pheromone system that they use to interact

Lex Fridman (30:05.540)

with each other.

Lex Fridman (30:06.620)

So you would either create those molecules

Lex Fridman (30:10.580)

to talk to them, to make them do,

Garry Nolan (30:12.020)

I'm not saying talk to them as if they're intelligent,

Lex Fridman (30:13.700)

but talk to them to manipulate them in ways that you want.

Garry Nolan (30:16.860)

Or if you were advanced enough,

Lex Fridman (30:19.420)

you would use some sort of electromagnetic or other means

Garry Nolan (30:24.460)

to stimulate their neurons in ways

Lex Fridman (30:26.820)

that would accomplish the same goal as the pheromones,

Lex Fridman (30:30.380)

but by doing it in a sort of a telefactoring way.

Lex Fridman (30:34.180)

So let's say you wanted to telefactor with humans.

Garry Nolan (30:37.900)

You would interact with them.

Lex Fridman (30:40.860)

And this is, again, this is a technology

Garry Nolan (30:42.580)

which you could imagine possible.

Lex Fridman (30:45.380)

You could telefactor information

Lex Fridman (30:47.380)

into the sensory system of a human, right?

Lex Fridman (30:50.540)

But then each human is a little bit different.

Lex Fridman (30:53.220)

So either you know enough about them to tailor it

Lex Fridman (30:56.020)

to that individual, or you just basically take advantage

Garry Nolan (30:58.780)

of whatever the sensory net is that that individual has.

Lex Fridman (31:02.180)

So if you happen to be good at sound,

Garry Nolan (31:05.300)

or you happen to be a very visually inclined individual,

Lex Fridman (31:08.260)

then maybe the sensory information that you get

Garry Nolan (31:11.260)

that's most effective in terms of transmitting information

Lex Fridman (31:15.140)

would come through that portal.

Garry Nolan (31:17.180)

I think the aliens would need to figure out

Lex Fridman (31:19.780)

that humans value physical consistency.

Lex Fridman (31:22.700)

So we've discovered physics.

Lex Fridman (31:25.140)

So we want our perception to make sense.

Garry Nolan (31:28.420)

Maybe they don't, you know,

Lex Fridman (31:30.580)

that's not an obvious fact of perception,

Garry Nolan (31:32.900)

that you have to figure out what kind of things

Lex Fridman (31:37.140)

are humans used to observing

Garry Nolan (31:39.140)

in this particular environment of Earth,

Lex Fridman (31:41.500)

and how do we stimulate the perception system

Garry Nolan (31:44.860)

in a way that's not anomalous,

Lex Fridman (31:47.980)

or not too, it doesn't cross that threshold

Garry Nolan (31:50.620)

of just like, well, that's way too weird.

Lex Fridman (31:53.540)

So they have to, I mean, that's not obvious

Garry Nolan (31:56.040)

that that should be important.

Lex Fridman (31:58.420)

Maybe you wanna err on the side of anomaly,

Garry Nolan (32:02.380)

like lean into the weirdness.

Lex Fridman (32:04.020)

So communication is complicated.

Garry Nolan (32:06.780)

Well, that's why I always find this issue

Lex Fridman (32:09.620)

of people talking about the so called grays as interesting,

Garry Nolan (32:13.820)

because it is related to what you're saying.

Lex Fridman (32:17.300)

They're different enough,

Lex Fridman (32:19.460)

but they're not so different as to be scary, right?

Lex Fridman (32:22.380)

They're not venom dripping fangs, right?

Garry Nolan (32:25.540)

They're different enough,

Lex Fridman (32:27.860)

but it's also like they're what you could imagine

Garry Nolan (32:32.220)

us becoming in some distant future.

Lex Fridman (32:34.060)

So is that a purposeful representation?

Garry Nolan (32:37.920)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (32:38.760)

I mean, I don't believe in the grays, for instance,

Lex Fridman (32:41.260)

but I believe that people think that they see it.

Lex Fridman (32:44.580)

So if we're talking about a communication strategy

Garry Nolan (32:47.160)

that says, you know, we're like you,

Lex Fridman (32:50.320)

but not the same as you,

Garry Nolan (32:53.320)

this might be a manifestation that you represent

Lex Fridman (32:57.660)

in terms of a communication strategy.

Lex Fridman (33:00.660)

What do you make of David's favorite sighting

Lex Fridman (33:04.060)

of the Tic Tac UFO,

Lex Fridman (33:06.300)

and other pilots who have seen these objects

Lex Fridman (33:09.540)

that seem to defy the laws of physics?

Garry Nolan (33:12.540)

Well, I think you have to take them at their word.

Lex Fridman (33:17.060)

Are they fascinating to you?

Garry Nolan (33:18.140)

Oh, absolutely.

Lex Fridman (33:18.980)

No, I know a lot of these people, right?

Lex Fridman (33:20.940)

So I know Lou Elizondo, Chris Mellon,

Lex Fridman (33:24.620)

the whole crowd I've been,

Garry Nolan (33:26.340)

I saw the videos about three weeks or so

Lex Fridman (33:30.500)

before they went public.

Garry Nolan (33:33.340)

I was at a bar with Lou overlooking the Pentagon

Lex Fridman (33:38.220)

in Crystal City, and they showed them to me,

Lex Fridman (33:40.160)

and my hair stood on end.

Lex Fridman (33:42.020)

And he said, this is coming out soon.

Lex Fridman (33:45.360)

And I know one of the guys on the inside

Lex Fridman (33:49.340)

who was the Naval Intelligence

Garry Nolan (33:51.380)

who had interviewed all of these pilots again

Lex Fridman (33:53.860)

before this came out.

Lex Fridman (33:55.540)

And it was hair raising to hear this,

Lex Fridman (33:58.780)

but also exciting that here's not just people's testimony,

Garry Nolan (34:04.460)

these are credible individuals.

Lex Fridman (34:05.860)

And if you've seen the 60 minute episode

Garry Nolan (34:08.300)

with some of the pilots,

Lex Fridman (34:11.620)

they have no monetary gain.

Garry Nolan (34:13.180)

If anything, they've got negative gain from coming out.

Lex Fridman (34:16.960)

But then you also have all of those simultaneous

Garry Nolan (34:21.060)

ship analysis from the USS Princeton

Lex Fridman (34:23.820)

and the radar analysis, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (34:26.260)

So at the end of the day, it's just data.

Lex Fridman (34:32.320)

It's not a conclusion.

Garry Nolan (34:35.300)

I'd be perfectly happy, honestly, perfectly happy

Lex Fridman (34:38.660)

if somebody showed that it was all a hoax.

Lex Fridman (34:41.300)

I can go back to my day job, right?

Lex Fridman (34:44.140)

That could be a hoax, but other things might not be.

Garry Nolan (34:47.820)

This is the point.

Lex Fridman (34:49.620)

This is why it's nice to remove some of the stigma

Garry Nolan (34:53.060)

about this topic because it's all just data

Lex Fridman (34:55.540)

and anomalous events are such that they're going to be rare

Garry Nolan (35:03.660)

in terms of how much data they represent.

Lex Fridman (35:05.860)

But we have to consider the full range of data

Garry Nolan (35:08.380)

to discover the things that actually represent something

Lex Fridman (35:11.540)

that's, if we pull at it, we'll discover something

Garry Nolan (35:14.740)

that's extraterrestrial or something deep

Lex Fridman (35:18.100)

about the phenomena on Earth that we don't yet understand.

Garry Nolan (35:21.980)

Right.

Lex Fridman (35:22.820)

Well, if it only stimulates people, for instance,

Garry Nolan (35:26.400)

to think, okay, well, what happens if we could move

Lex Fridman (35:29.380)

like that with momentumless movement?

Lex Fridman (35:32.240)

And it stimulates young individuals to go into the sciences

Lex Fridman (35:38.540)

to ask those questions.

Garry Nolan (35:40.940)

That to me is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (35:41.980)

I mean, after I've been openly talking about this

Garry Nolan (35:44.580)

in the last year, especially, I've had a number

Lex Fridman (35:47.420)

of students from top schools who aren't my students

Garry Nolan (35:52.500)

come to me and say, if I can help, let me.

Lex Fridman (35:57.300)

How can I help?

Garry Nolan (35:58.180)

I never had thought about this before,

Lex Fridman (35:59.620)

but you opened, you and others, not just you and others,

Garry Nolan (36:02.940)

have opened my mind to thinking about this matter.

Lex Fridman (36:06.260)

Yeah, that's why it's actually funny

Garry Nolan (36:07.620)

that Elon Musk doesn't think too much about this,

Lex Fridman (36:13.380)

these kinds of propulsion systems that could defy

Garry Nolan (36:15.540)

the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

Lex Fridman (36:18.700)

To me, it's a powerful way to think what is possible.

Garry Nolan (36:23.660)

It's inspiring, even if some of the data

Lex Fridman (36:26.660)

doesn't represent extraterrestrial vehicles.

Garry Nolan (36:30.260)

I think the observation itself,

Lex Fridman (36:32.940)

it's like something you mentioned,

Garry Nolan (36:35.020)

which is hypothesizing, imagining these things,

Lex Fridman (36:40.540)

considering the possibility of these things,

Garry Nolan (36:43.360)

I think opens up your mind in a way

Lex Fridman (36:45.780)

that ultimately can create the technology.

Garry Nolan (36:49.420)

First, you have to believe the technology is possible

Lex Fridman (36:52.140)

before you can create it.

Garry Nolan (36:54.060)

In my own lab, we always look for,

Lex Fridman (36:58.020)

as I've said before, what is inevitable,

Lex Fridman (37:00.880)

and saying inevitably this is the kind of data we need,

Lex Fridman (37:05.220)

but if we need that kind of data,

Garry Nolan (37:06.540)

the instrument we want doesn't exist.

Lex Fridman (37:10.780)

Okay, so I imagine the perfect instrument, I can't make it,

Lex Fridman (37:14.980)

and you back into something which is practical,

Lex Fridman (37:18.300)

and then you, in a sense, reverse engineer the future

Garry Nolan (37:22.500)

of what it is that you wanna make.

Lex Fridman (37:24.580)

And I've started and sold at least half a dozen

Garry Nolan (37:28.540)

or more companies using that basic premise.

Lex Fridman (37:32.420)

And so it was always something that didn't exist today,

Lex Fridman (37:35.940)

but we imagined what we wanted.

Lex Fridman (37:38.740)

And at the time, many people said it couldn't be done.

Garry Nolan (37:41.980)

I mean, for instance, all the gene therapy

Lex Fridman (37:43.720)

that's done today with retroviruses

Garry Nolan (37:46.200)

came from a group meeting in David Baltimore's lab.

Lex Fridman (37:49.980)

I was a postdoc with him, and one of the other postdocs

Garry Nolan (37:54.860)

wasn't able to make retroviruses in a way

Lex Fridman (37:58.060)

that he wanted to, and I realized I had a cell line

Garry Nolan (38:00.700)

that would allow us to make retroviruses

Lex Fridman (38:02.820)

in two days rather than two months.

Lex Fridman (38:05.620)

And so he and I then worked together to make that system,

Lex Fridman (38:09.600)

and now all gene therapy with retroviruses

Garry Nolan (38:11.580)

is done using this basic approach around the whole world,

Lex Fridman (38:14.700)

because something couldn't be done,

Lex Fridman (38:17.300)

and we wanted to do it better, and we imagined the future.

Lex Fridman (38:22.100)

And so that's, I think, what the whole UFO phenomenon

Garry Nolan (38:27.100)

is doing for people.

Lex Fridman (38:28.100)

It's like, well, let's imagine a future

Garry Nolan (38:30.940)

where these kinds of technologies are,

Lex Fridman (38:33.060)

but also let's imagine a future

Lex Fridman (38:34.260)

where we don't blow ourselves up, right?

Lex Fridman (38:36.140)

So if these things are there,

Garry Nolan (38:37.580)

they manage to not blow themselves up.

Lex Fridman (38:40.420)

So it means that at least one other civilization

Garry Nolan (38:44.740)

got past the inflection point.

Lex Fridman (38:47.160)

So if some of the encounters are actually representing

Garry Nolan (38:50.220)

alien civilizations visiting us,

Lex Fridman (38:52.560)

why do you think they're doing so?

Garry Nolan (38:57.400)

You suggested that perhaps it's the study

Lex Fridman (39:00.100)

understand their own past, right?

Lex Fridman (39:02.900)

What are some of the motivations, do you think?

Lex Fridman (39:05.340)

And again, from our perspective, us as humans,

Lex Fridman (39:09.240)

what motivations would we have

Lex Fridman (39:11.060)

when we approach other civilizations

Lex Fridman (39:12.960)

we might discover in the future?

Lex Fridman (39:15.140)

Well, I think one motivation might be

Lex Fridman (39:17.620)

to steer us away from the precipice, right?

Lex Fridman (39:22.340)

Or on the assumption that,

Garry Nolan (39:25.420)

even if we make it past the precipice,

Lex Fridman (39:27.580)

at least we're not a bunch of psychopaths running around.

Lex Fridman (39:32.540)

So maybe there's a little bit of motivation there

Lex Fridman (39:35.300)

to make sure that the neighbor that's growing up next to you

Garry Nolan (39:38.140)

is not unruly.

Lex Fridman (39:42.900)

But I mean, maybe it's sort of a moral imperative,

Garry Nolan (39:46.460)

like what we have with creating national parks

Lex Fridman (39:52.900)

where animals can continue to live out their lives

Garry Nolan (39:56.620)

in a natural way.

Lex Fridman (39:58.980)

I don't know.

Garry Nolan (39:59.900)

I mean, that would be, I mean, the problem is

Lex Fridman (40:02.420)

we're imagining from a anthropomorphic viewpoint

Lex Fridman (40:08.540)

what an alien might think.

Lex Fridman (40:10.260)

And as I've said before, alien means alien, right?

Garry Nolan (40:14.740)

I mean, not Hollywood aliens,

Lex Fridman (40:17.580)

but a whole different way of thinking

Lex Fridman (40:21.300)

and a whole different level of experience

Lex Fridman (40:23.620)

and let's say wisdom, hopefully,

Garry Nolan (40:27.020)

that we could only hope to understand.

Lex Fridman (40:30.220)

Now, but if we ever get out there,

Garry Nolan (40:32.220)

if we ever make it past our current problems,

Lex Fridman (40:37.100)

and even if we don't have faster than light travel,

Lex Fridman (40:39.060)

and even if we're only using ram scoops

Lex Fridman (40:43.020)

or light sails to get where we wanna go,

Lex Fridman (40:46.820)

and it takes us 10,000 years to get somewhere

Lex Fridman (40:50.620)

or to spread out, we might encounter such things.

Lex Fridman (40:53.980)

And are we just gonna stomp all over it

Lex Fridman (40:56.360)

like we did in colonial South America or Africa

Lex Fridman (41:00.500)

or all the rest on our current path, likely?

Lex Fridman (41:04.860)

And so what are we gonna learn?

Garry Nolan (41:06.580)

Well, we're getting better and better

Lex Fridman (41:08.500)

at understanding what is life.

Lex Fridman (41:10.580)

And I think we're getting better and better

Lex Fridman (41:13.820)

at being careful, not to step on it when we see it.

Lex Fridman (41:17.460)

And this is one of the nice things

Lex Fridman (41:19.740)

about talking about UFOs is it expands the Overton window.

Garry Nolan (41:24.420)

It expands our understanding of what possibly could be life.

Lex Fridman (41:28.500)

It gets us to think.

Garry Nolan (41:29.740)

It gets the scientific community to think.

Lex Fridman (41:32.060)

When we go to Mars, when we go to these different moons

Garry Nolan (41:34.860)

that possibly have life,

Lex Fridman (41:37.140)

we're not looking at legged organisms.

Garry Nolan (41:40.280)

We're looking at some kind of complexity

Lex Fridman (41:45.340)

that arises in resistance to the natural world.

Lex Fridman (41:51.860)

And there's a lot of interesting.

Lex Fridman (41:54.100)

I like that, resistance to the natural world, yeah.

Lex Fridman (41:57.300)

So somehow there's a rebellious process,

Lex Fridman (42:01.020)

complex system going on here.

Lex Fridman (42:03.380)

And I don't know the many ways it could take form.

Lex Fridman (42:06.820)

There's a sense for aliens that as the technology develops,

Garry Nolan (42:12.780)

they take form more and more as information,

Lex Fridman (42:16.820)

as something that can influence the space of ideas,

Garry Nolan (42:21.420)

of the processing of data itself.

Lex Fridman (42:24.840)

So I just, this idea of embodiment that we humans so admire,

Garry Nolan (42:30.180)

physically visible, perceivable embodiment

Lex Fridman (42:34.380)

may be a very inefficient thing, right?

Garry Nolan (42:39.700)

If you think just about your area, AI,

Lex Fridman (42:43.660)

we're trying to make smaller and smaller and smaller

Garry Nolan (42:49.140)

circuitry that is basically closer and closer

Lex Fridman (42:55.780)

to the physics of how the universe operates, right?

Garry Nolan (43:00.440)

Right down at the level of, I mean, quantum computers

Lex Fridman (43:02.700)

are basically right down about quantum information storage.

Lex Fridman (43:05.800)

So fast forward 10,000, 100,000 years,

Lex Fridman (43:10.540)

maybe somebody found a way to embody AI directly

Lex Fridman (43:13.540)

into the physics of the universe, right?

Lex Fridman (43:16.420)

And it doesn't require a physical manifestation.

Garry Nolan (43:19.620)

It just sits in space time.

Lex Fridman (43:22.820)

It's just a locally ordered space.

Lex Fridman (43:25.260)

We're just locally ordered space time, right?

Lex Fridman (43:28.780)

You know, I mean, but maybe they just,

Garry Nolan (43:31.140)

they found a way to embody it there.

Lex Fridman (43:33.820)

They probably have to get really good

Garry Nolan (43:35.380)

at not, you know, trampling on the ants.

Lex Fridman (43:38.860)

The better your technology gets,

Garry Nolan (43:40.360)

the easier it is to accidentally like, oops,

Lex Fridman (43:44.340)

just destroy these simpleton biological systems.

Garry Nolan (43:48.000)

We constantly think about whatever these things might be.

Lex Fridman (43:50.600)

We think that they are some sort of a unified force.

Garry Nolan (43:56.140)

Well, maybe they're not unified.

Lex Fridman (43:58.840)

Maybe they are as disparate as you and I are.

Lex Fridman (44:03.020)

And maybe what keeps them from stomping all over the ants

Lex Fridman (44:06.620)

is each other, right?

Garry Nolan (44:09.140)

That they are in a self tension

Lex Fridman (44:11.620)

to prevent one or more of them from running amok.

Garry Nolan (44:17.940)

Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman (44:18.780)

I mean, that's kind of the anarchy of nations

Garry Nolan (44:21.020)

that we have on earth.

Lex Fridman (44:21.840)

So there's always going to be this.

Garry Nolan (44:27.320)

There's a hierarchy.

Lex Fridman (44:28.160)

This hierarchy that's formed

Garry Nolan (44:29.620)

of greater and greater intelligences.

Lex Fridman (44:31.700)

And they're all probably also wondering,

Lex Fridman (44:34.500)

wait, what's bigger than me?

Lex Fridman (44:36.100)

Exactly.

Garry Nolan (44:36.940)

That's what I always wonder is that maybe that they're,

Lex Fridman (44:39.340)

what keeps them in line is something that is beyond them.

Garry Nolan (44:43.740)

Like what created the universe.

Lex Fridman (44:45.240)

I mean, that's probably a question that bothers them too.

Lex Fridman (44:50.360)

What about the communication task itself?

Lex Fridman (44:53.000)

How hard do you think it is for aliens

Lex Fridman (44:54.780)

to communicate with humans?

Lex Fridman (44:56.280)

So is this something you think about

Garry Nolan (45:00.340)

about this barrier of communication

Lex Fridman (45:02.060)

between biological systems and something else?

Lex Fridman (45:04.980)

How difficult is it to find a common language?

Lex Fridman (45:08.660)

Well, I think if you're smart enough

Garry Nolan (45:11.220)

or technologically enabled enough,

Lex Fridman (45:13.780)

it's relatively straightforward.

Garry Nolan (45:18.420)

Now, whether your concepts

Lex Fridman (45:21.740)

can ever be dumbed down to us,

Garry Nolan (45:27.240)

that might be hard.

Lex Fridman (45:30.120)

I mean.

Garry Nolan (45:30.960)

Again, talking to the ants.

Lex Fridman (45:32.280)

Talking to the ants.

Garry Nolan (45:33.260)

I mean, they don't.

Lex Fridman (45:34.100)

On Instagram.

Garry Nolan (45:35.240)

So.

Lex Fridman (45:38.320)

You want to look good in this picture.

Garry Nolan (45:39.800)

Let me explain to you.

Lex Fridman (45:40.640)

Let me explain to you why.

Garry Nolan (45:41.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:44.200)

So that's the essential problem of,

Garry Nolan (45:46.920)

you know, perhaps they realize

Lex Fridman (45:51.680)

who it is that they're talking to.

Lex Fridman (45:54.260)

And they say, rather than muddy the picture,

Lex Fridman (45:57.920)

we're only going to give them limited information.

Garry Nolan (46:00.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (46:01.800)

Right?

Lex Fridman (46:02.620)

And yeah, maybe we could sit down,

Lex Fridman (46:04.380)

like you and I, and have a conversation.

Lex Fridman (46:06.600)

But then they would make assumptions.

Lex Fridman (46:09.080)

The humans would then make assumptions about us

Garry Nolan (46:10.800)

that aren't true.

Lex Fridman (46:12.020)

Because we're not humans, right?

Lex Fridman (46:13.920)

So let's stay at arm's length.

Lex Fridman (46:17.360)

Let's just let them know that we're here, right?

Lex Fridman (46:21.760)

And here's the limited amount of communication.

Lex Fridman (46:23.780)

Again, this notion that

Garry Nolan (46:26.640)

if you give somebody everything, they'll get lazy.

Lex Fridman (46:30.520)

And, you know, if they've been around as long as they have,

Garry Nolan (46:34.120)

they've seen every kind of thing that can go wrong.

Lex Fridman (46:37.660)

And so they know as much as they might want to step in,

Garry Nolan (46:42.660)

that that would be a wrong thing.

Lex Fridman (46:45.660)

Yeah, you have to also understand

Garry Nolan (46:47.180)

the amount of wisdom they carry.

Lex Fridman (46:50.300)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (46:52.340)

You know, and so it's very easy as well for religions to,

Lex Fridman (46:56.540)

I don't want to get into a whole religious conversation,

Lex Fridman (46:58.780)

but it's very easy for,

Lex Fridman (47:00.780)

you could see how religions could call them angels

Garry Nolan (47:04.220)

or devils or what have you.

Lex Fridman (47:06.780)

Because, again, if you're trying to fit it

Garry Nolan (47:08.980)

into a framework of cultural understanding,

Lex Fridman (47:12.240)

the first thing you reach for is God.

Lex Fridman (47:16.040)

And so when you look at what these things are,

Lex Fridman (47:21.300)

and again, with the angels and the devils,

Garry Nolan (47:24.380)

in a similar sort of way, their communication is limited.

Lex Fridman (47:29.460)

They just kind of give little, what's the oracle of Delphi?

Garry Nolan (47:33.300)

They kind of give these Delphic pronouncements,

Lex Fridman (47:36.620)

and then it's up to you to figure out

Lex Fridman (47:37.860)

what it is that they really mean.

Lex Fridman (47:39.500)

Yeah.

Garry Nolan (47:41.100)

Steven Greer claimed that a skeleton discovered

Lex Fridman (47:45.220)

in Atacama region of Chile might be an alien.

Garry Nolan (47:50.100)

You reached out to him and took on the task

Lex Fridman (47:53.740)

of proving or disproving that with the rigor of science.

Garry Nolan (47:57.180)

The result is a paper titled

Lex Fridman (47:59.340)

Whole Genome Sequencing of Atacama Skeleton

Garry Nolan (48:02.100)

Shows Novel Mutations Linked with Dysplasia.

Lex Fridman (48:06.320)

Can you tell this full story?

Garry Nolan (48:07.820)

Well, the story was, as you put it right there, correct.

Lex Fridman (48:13.980)

Reached out, got a sample of the body,

Garry Nolan (48:18.500)

did the DNA sequencing, then worked with a team

Lex Fridman (48:22.440)

of two other Stanford scientists

Lex Fridman (48:25.080)

and Roche sequencing group, Roche Diagnostics,

Lex Fridman (48:30.940)

and probably a total team of about 11 or so people.

Lex Fridman (48:33.580)

And as is standard in these kinds of things,

Lex Fridman (48:38.220)

the professors actually don't do the work.

Garry Nolan (48:40.500)

The students do the work and figured out the answer.

Lex Fridman (48:44.220)

And then we helped them put together the story.

Lex Fridman (48:48.560)

And the story was simply that it was human, 100%.

Lex Fridman (48:54.300)

I went into it thinking it was originally a monkey

Garry Nolan (48:57.300)

of some sort.

Lex Fridman (48:59.800)

I got kind of excited a few months into the process,

Lex Fridman (49:02.700)

thinking, well, what happens if it is an alien, right?

Lex Fridman (49:06.300)

Can you describe some of the characteristics

Lex Fridman (49:08.180)

of the skeleton that makes it unique and interesting?

Lex Fridman (49:10.420)

Primarily, it had dysmorphias of the brain.

Lex Fridman (49:13.960)

And so the first thing I did actually,

Lex Fridman (49:15.440)

when I got pictures of it,

Garry Nolan (49:17.040)

I took it to a local expert at Stanford

Lex Fridman (49:21.340)

and he was on the paper.

Lex Fridman (49:24.320)

And he was the world expert in pediatric bone dysmorphias.

Lex Fridman (49:29.320)

He literally wrote the book on this,

Garry Nolan (49:33.060)

because that's what you do.

Lex Fridman (49:33.900)

You go to an expert when it's outside

Garry Nolan (49:35.540)

of your field of interest.

Lex Fridman (49:36.980)

And he said, well, I haven't seen this particular collection

Garry Nolan (49:40.860)

of mutations before or this physiology before,

Lex Fridman (49:46.420)

but here's what I think it might be.

Lex Fridman (49:49.540)

And he said, but based on the size of the thing

Lex Fridman (49:53.540)

and the bone density, it would appear to be like six

Garry Nolan (49:59.540)

or seven years old.

Lex Fridman (50:01.020)

Now, again, that's the thing where I think the lay public

Garry Nolan (50:06.940)

doesn't understand or takes a speculation like that

Lex Fridman (50:11.380)

and turns it into a fact.

Garry Nolan (50:13.500)

No one ever said that it was that age.

Lex Fridman (50:15.900)

We only said that the bones made it look like it was

Garry Nolan (50:18.420)

that age, but then we went back and looked for,

Lex Fridman (50:22.100)

we went back and looked for genetic explanations

Garry Nolan (50:26.660)

of why things might look the way they did.

Lex Fridman (50:29.060)

And if you, again, read the paper is very carefully

Garry Nolan (50:32.580)

caveated to say that these mutations might result in this.

Lex Fridman (50:38.380)

But what we did find was an unexpectedly large number

Garry Nolan (50:43.460)

of mutations associated with bone growth in this individual.

Lex Fridman (50:48.140)

And it was just a bad roll of the dice, right?

Garry Nolan (50:52.180)

You roll the dice enough times

Lex Fridman (50:53.620)

with enough people born every year

Lex Fridman (50:56.460)

and someone will roll the wrong dice all at once.

Lex Fridman (51:02.740)

So the sad part about it was individuals

Garry Nolan (51:06.180)

in the UFO community who wanted to think

Lex Fridman (51:09.540)

that there was some sort of conspiracy around it, right?

Garry Nolan (51:14.020)

That somebody had somehow convinced all of my students to lie.

Lex Fridman (51:20.500)

I mean, come on, you know, I would lose my job,

Garry Nolan (51:24.340)

first of all, and they would all be in trouble forever.

Lex Fridman (51:31.340)

Yeah, but also it's just projecting malevolence

Garry Nolan (51:34.100)

onto people that doesn't, I don't think exists

Lex Fridman (51:37.820)

in normal populace and especially doesn't exist

Garry Nolan (51:40.740)

in the scientific community.

Lex Fridman (51:42.220)

The kind of people that go into science,

Garry Nolan (51:43.740)

I mean, this is what bothers me

Lex Fridman (51:44.900)

with the current distrust of science,

Garry Nolan (51:47.460)

is they might be naive, they might not,

Lex Fridman (51:51.780)

especially in modern science, look at the big picture,

Garry Nolan (51:54.500)

philosophical, ethical questions, all that kind of stuff,

Lex Fridman (51:57.420)

but ultimately they're people with integrity

Lex Fridman (52:02.020)

and just a deep curiosity

Lex Fridman (52:04.180)

for the discovery of cool little things.

Lex Fridman (52:06.820)

And there's no malevolence, broadly speaking,

Lex Fridman (52:14.060)

in the scientific community.

Garry Nolan (52:15.820)

So, I mean, there's a bigger story here,

Lex Fridman (52:17.660)

which is, you know, there's a hunger in the populace

Garry Nolan (52:22.300)

to discover something anomalous, something new.

Lex Fridman (52:25.700)

And, you know, science has to be both open to the anomalous,

Lex Fridman (52:31.780)

but also to reject the anomalous

Lex Fridman (52:35.340)

when the data doesn't support it.

Lex Fridman (52:37.460)

What do you make of that, you know,

Lex Fridman (52:39.460)

walking that line for you?

Garry Nolan (52:40.780)

Because you're dealing with UFO encounters,

Lex Fridman (52:42.820)

you're dealing with the anomalous.

Garry Nolan (52:45.700)

Well, people have said, let's go back to the Atacama case

Lex Fridman (52:49.980)

that I was debunking it.

Garry Nolan (52:52.100)

Well, debunking is a loaded term.

Lex Fridman (52:54.300)

Sort of assumes that you were going in purposefully

Garry Nolan (52:57.700)

to prove something is wrong.

Lex Fridman (53:00.580)

I wasn't, I was just going in to collect the data.

Garry Nolan (53:03.940)

And, you know, I showed that this one was human.

Lex Fridman (53:08.140)

There was another skull that somebody had at one point.

Garry Nolan (53:11.220)

It was called the star child.

Lex Fridman (53:12.300)

They called it the star child skull.

Garry Nolan (53:14.140)

I said, you know, I looked at it.

Lex Fridman (53:15.780)

I looked at the DNA sequencing that they had done.

Garry Nolan (53:18.020)

I said, this is human.

Lex Fridman (53:19.900)

End of story.

Garry Nolan (53:22.420)

The people who owned the thing at the time disagreed with me,

Lex Fridman (53:26.340)

and then eventually another group came in

Lex Fridman (53:28.540)

and proved that I was right.

Lex Fridman (53:30.700)

And it's not about debunking.

Garry Nolan (53:32.380)

It's about getting the more spectacular and hyped cases

Lex Fridman (53:36.740)

off the table.

Garry Nolan (53:37.580)

I mean, the reason I got interested in it

Lex Fridman (53:39.300)

is because somebody was hyping it.

Lex Fridman (53:41.100)

And not because I wanted to disprove it,

Lex Fridman (53:42.780)

but because I just wanted to know.

Lex Fridman (53:44.620)

And thus, get it off the table, because it's usually

Lex Fridman (53:46.860)

the most extravagant things that are most likely to be wrong.

Garry Nolan (53:52.620)

Somewhere in the rubble will be something interesting.

Lex Fridman (53:57.380)

And so that's what you do.

Garry Nolan (53:58.660)

You get the dross off the table.

Lex Fridman (54:02.340)

And then somewhere in the data will

Garry Nolan (54:04.940)

be something worth real inquiry.

Lex Fridman (54:09.580)

And that, if you inquire deeply enough,

Garry Nolan (54:12.420)

will be extravagant as well.

Lex Fridman (54:13.820)

Yes, exactly.

Lex Fridman (54:15.060)

And that's what actually excites scientists is to, I mean,

Lex Fridman (54:18.340)

you want, with the rigor of science,

Garry Nolan (54:21.100)

to actually reveal the extravagant.

Lex Fridman (54:24.140)

And so look at CRISPR as probably the most perfect

Garry Nolan (54:26.740)

example of that.

Lex Fridman (54:27.940)

These weird sequences in bacterial genomes,

Garry Nolan (54:32.780)

all arrayed one after the other with these strange sequences

Lex Fridman (54:36.540)

around them, but when you looked at the sequences,

Garry Nolan (54:38.620)

they looked like viruses.

Lex Fridman (54:41.140)

And so how did they get there?

Lex Fridman (54:42.820)

And lo and behold, after a lot of effort and work,

Lex Fridman (54:46.100)

well, a couple of Nobel Prizes went out the door.

Lex Fridman (54:48.900)

But these strange things ended up

Lex Fridman (54:52.780)

having extraordinarily extravagant possibilities.

Garry Nolan (54:57.920)

You've also looked at UFO materials.

Lex Fridman (55:00.100)

You are in possession of UFO materials yourself.

Garry Nolan (55:03.820)

Claimed UFO materials, alleged.

Lex Fridman (55:07.100)

Alleged UFO materials, that's right.

Lex Fridman (55:08.940)

So what's another term?

Lex Fridman (55:11.580)

Weird materials that don't seem to have a story.

Garry Nolan (55:17.500)

They have a story that doesn't seem to be of natural origins,

Lex Fridman (55:20.140)

but it's not, you know, there's a process to proving that.

Lex Fridman (55:25.980)

And that process may take decades, if not centuries,

Lex Fridman (55:30.660)

because you have to keep pulling at the string

Lex Fridman (55:33.300)

and discover where they could possibly come from.

Lex Fridman (55:35.820)

But anyway, you're in a possession

Garry Nolan (55:37.660)

of some materials of this kind.

Lex Fridman (55:41.540)

Can you describe some of them and maybe also

Garry Nolan (55:45.780)

talk to the process of how you investigate them,

Lex Fridman (55:48.540)

how do you analyze them?

Garry Nolan (55:50.100)

Right, so let's say that there's two classes of materials

Lex Fridman (55:53.900)

that I've been given by people.

Lex Fridman (55:56.380)

And they're not given by the government or anything,

Lex Fridman (55:58.380)

just given people who've collected them,

Lex Fridman (56:00.220)

and there's a reasonable chain of evidence associated

Lex Fridman (56:03.140)

with them that you believe is not just a pebble somebody

Garry Nolan (56:05.900)

picked up off a road.

Lex Fridman (56:09.500)

There are almost always things that people have claimed

Garry Nolan (56:12.020)

have either been dropped off as like some sort

Lex Fridman (56:15.500)

of a leftover material, molten metals,

Garry Nolan (56:19.280)

or they are from an object that was released from this

Lex Fridman (56:26.580)

or that kind of exploded.

Garry Nolan (56:29.500)

They're almost always metals.

Lex Fridman (56:31.040)

I have some couple of things that

Garry Nolan (56:32.460)

might be biological that are interesting that I haven't

Lex Fridman (56:34.780)

really spent a lot of time on yet.

Garry Nolan (56:36.500)

When you look at a metal, you basically, well, OK,

Lex Fridman (56:39.920)

what are the elements in it?

Lex Fridman (56:42.260)

And what's it made of?

Lex Fridman (56:44.460)

And so there's pretty standard approaches to doing that.

Garry Nolan (56:47.840)

Most of them involve a technology

Lex Fridman (56:49.540)

called mass spectrometry, and there's probably

Garry Nolan (56:52.180)

about five or six different kinds of mass spectrometry

Lex Fridman (56:54.300)

that you could bring to bear on answering it.

Lex Fridman (56:57.620)

And they either tell you, depending

Lex Fridman (56:59.500)

upon the limit of the resolution of the instrument,

Garry Nolan (57:02.260)

they either tell you the elements that are there,

Lex Fridman (57:05.220)

or they tell you the isotopes that are there.

Lex Fridman (57:07.140)

And you're interested not just in knowing whether something

Lex Fridman (57:09.680)

is there or not, you're interested in knowing

Garry Nolan (57:12.620)

whether there are the amounts of it,

Lex Fridman (57:17.740)

and in the case of elements, how many different isotopes

Garry Nolan (57:22.300)

are there.

Lex Fridman (57:23.540)

And that's kind of where, in some of these cases,

Garry Nolan (57:25.900)

it gets interesting.

Lex Fridman (57:27.580)

Because in at least one of the materials,

Garry Nolan (57:30.620)

as we first studied it, the isotope ratios of, in this case,

Lex Fridman (57:34.500)

it was magnesium, are way off normal.

Lex Fridman (57:37.380)

And I just don't know why.

Lex Fridman (57:40.060)

It doesn't prove anything.

Garry Nolan (57:43.260)

All it proves is that it was probably accomplished

Lex Fridman (57:48.500)

by some kind of an industrial process.

Garry Nolan (57:51.300)

Whether it's the result of a process,

Lex Fridman (57:55.140)

and this is sort of the leftover,

Garry Nolan (57:57.420)

or whether it was made that way for a particular purpose,

Lex Fridman (58:01.740)

I don't know.

Garry Nolan (58:02.740)

All I know is that it was engineered.

Lex Fridman (58:09.860)

That's it.

Lex Fridman (58:11.540)

But then the question is, sort of you go one step deeper,

Lex Fridman (58:16.980)

why would you engineer it?

Garry Nolan (58:20.340)

Right.

Lex Fridman (58:21.380)

Why engineer it, and what does engineered means?

Garry Nolan (58:24.260)

There's all kinds of, it could be a byproduct,

Lex Fridman (58:27.260)

it could be the main result of an engineering process,

Garry Nolan (58:34.220)

it would be a small part of the engineering process that

Lex Fridman (58:37.580)

is the main part.

Garry Nolan (58:39.140)

Well, so the ratios of isotopes for any given element

Lex Fridman (58:43.860)

are basically the result of stellar processes.

Garry Nolan (58:48.540)

Supernova blew up sometime several billion years ago.

Lex Fridman (58:55.620)

That became a cloud.

Garry Nolan (58:56.940)

Those atoms coalesced gravitationally

Lex Fridman (59:00.660)

to form another sun, and a ring that became a rocky planet.

Lex Fridman (59:07.100)

And the ratios of the isotopes were determined

Lex Fridman (59:11.100)

at the time of that explosion.

Lex Fridman (59:14.500)

And so everything in the local solar system

Lex Fridman (59:17.260)

is more or less of that ratio, depending

Garry Nolan (59:20.180)

upon certain gravitational difference.

Lex Fridman (59:22.260)

But by fragments of a percent, not whole tens of percent

Garry Nolan (59:28.500)

difference.

Lex Fridman (59:29.700)

So what do humans use isotopes for?

Garry Nolan (59:32.580)

Mostly to blow stuff up.

Lex Fridman (59:34.220)

I mean, the vast majority of the isotopes

Garry Nolan (59:36.500)

that have been made in the per pound or ton

Lex Fridman (59:40.700)

are things like certain ratios of plutonium and uranium

Garry Nolan (59:44.540)

to blow stuff up.

Lex Fridman (59:45.780)

We don't make or engineer isotopes, which today

Garry Nolan (59:51.180)

is relatively easy to do, but it's still expensive.

Lex Fridman (59:54.100)

For any other reason, apart from, let's say, anti cancer,