Ep 001: Ashton Eaton
…begin transmission…
Caitlin McShea: Hi, how are you
Ashton Eaton: Doing good? I have Jupiter in my background. What do you have?
CM: So I think that Stalker takes place in a fictional town in Russia, but it was filmed in Estonia and this is a very scary home from that film.
AE: I love Estonia. I’ve been there for track and field training.
CM: For training? Is it a higher altitude than I would expect?
AE: It’s just close to Russia. There was a competition there, so we just kind of set up a home base.
CM: Cool. And how are you doing during this very weird year.
AE: Yeah. 2020 has been strange, but we are facing challenges and adapting and I think overall we've been good. We have a seventh month old son, he was born in January, on my birthday actually, which is really funny. And then three months later we had all these grand plans for him to go to play dates and learn how to swim, and all this other stuff, and that all got shut down. So, you know, we've been at home with him and adjusting to that life.
Also looking at moving soon and doing some interesting projects at work.
CM: It seems strange, but to have a baby in this time is almost like forced isolation training for future space exploration. Maybe he'll be very well equipped when the time comes.
AE: I was thinking that, too. I was like, you know, in some ways this could be beneficial.
CM: So, let me take a moment to introduce you and the podcast, or whatever this is. This is Alien Crash Site. It is a new InterPlanetary interview series from the Santa Fe Institute. I am Caitlin McShea and you are Ashton Eaton. And for anyone who's listening, who doesn't know Ashton, I'm going to give you the impressive bullet point biography.
AE: Oh no…
CM: And correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but I think I'm close. So, Ashton is a former professional athlete. He retired in 2017. But prior to that, he competed in the Olympics in Beijing in 2012. He competed in the decathlon where he won gold and broke the world record. Or was it London 2012 and not Beijing? Were you not in Beijing?
AE: That was in ’08. London was 2012, and Rio in 2016.
CM: Okay. So 2012 was London. Sorry! See, this is what I need you … Ok, in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Ashton competes again in the decathlon, beats his own world record and gets a second gold medal.
AE: That's right.
CM: As I said, he retired in 2017, and in 2019 Ashton became the first two time, back-to-back InterPlanetary Festival panelist in human history, his crowding achievement.
AE: Yes! It is!
CM: There’s no gold medal associated, but good times.
AE: Yes!
CM: So Ashton has been involved with SFI’s InterPlanetary Project basically since its inception, but you became involved with the Santa Fe Institute before I started working there. Could you give me a little background as to how it is that you found your way into our very strange and wonderful community?
AE: Yes, it is strange and wonderful. So, I was on a plane going to a track meet, I believe in 2016. And at the time, I knew that that was going to be my last year in sport. And so, I had been reading a bunch of things that were just interesting to me and they were on the topics of science and technology, just a bunch of interesting questions about systems. And, I think I read a book called General Systems Theory, and I have no idea why I found it interesting, but I did.
And so, I was listening to this podcast that I had downloaded for this flight, and the person who was getting interviewed was David Krakauer. He started talking about scaling and how if you take something like a mouse and scaled that up to an elephant, there are all of these fractal relationships. And you can kind of extrapolate things from that in any range and really understand what that system is about.
And I was like, “Man, that is super cool!” So I think at the end of this podcast, they said, “Tell us about where you're from, and how can people look at your research,” and that’s when I heard about the Santa Fe Institute. So as soon as I landed, I went to the site and I just cold emailed David. I was like, “You know, I'm an athlete, but I'm going to retire soon. I listened to your podcast. I thought it was really cool and interesting. And I'm interested in that stuff. I'm a gold medalist now, and then that's basically it. But what are you working on, and can I be a part of it? And so, he said, “Absolutely,” and the next thing I knew I was coming to the InterPlanetary Festival.
CM: Perfect. Also, that's so brazen, I think, to cold call David, but you absolutely qualify, that's for sure. Had you had any involvement in our Limits to Human Performance research?
AE: Well, that's actually what he brought up in that initial call. He said, “Look, I think it's really cool that you're calling, and we don't care if people don't have experience with math and science. We just really like this cross pollination od ideas from other folks. We have this program called the Limits of Human Performance, and we want you to be part of that. But unfortunately, every time that has been on offer, I wasn't able to make it because I was doing something in sport. But I’m aware of it, and very much would like to be part of that in the future, for sure.
CM: Yeah. I think that the plan is to continue on, but as with everything, the meeting this year was canceled. Actually, it was probably supposed to be taking place this week or so, and it was displaced, but we'll get back to it. There’s a nice kind of synergy with what we explore with InterPlanetary, too, because if you think about “limits to human performance,” I've come to understand that more when I think about what we've learned in long durational space flight impacts. So, it seems like a perfect little unity and that's why they often interact and overlap. So this interview series is kind of an InterPlanetary proxy, but if we get back to the real world festival iteration, and you inevitably come back for a fourth time, maybe it would take place at the same time as that Limits meeting.
AE: Yeah. I, I think that's really the benefit of the Santa Fe Institute and what really drew me to it initially. You know, I was at decathlete in this world of sport, and in the decathlete by nature is kind of a generalist. You touch every single kind of movement, if you will, that a body can undergo as an athlete, and that's what I think Santa Fe does. You take ideas from so many different areas in order to fundamentally accomplish your goals of studying complexity and learning more about all of it. And I just think that concept or mindset lends itself to learning so much more.
CM: Yeah. I think that's really well put, I would argue though, I wonder if in the realm of specialists, you are a generalist. Like I think, I think it's quite spectacular for you to find yourself in the professional echelon that you do. It’s not easy. But then you happen to have to do ten diverse things to succeed, whereas this other guy only has to jump high.
AE: I‘ve never thought of it like that.
CM: So you've got a bit of both, and I think that's really good because you apply it, I think, pretty broadly to a variety of things that we discussed in past interviews and meetings. For instance, are you still considering a life in space.
AE: Yeah! So, right now I work at Intel and I'm a product development engineer for whatever that's worth, but I think what's really cool is I'm working on sports performance products, which in some sense are human performance products. And I'm going to school for a form of engineering, I believe right now it will be mechanical engineering and robotic systems. And the reason for that is because my opinion is that the future of us off planet is going to take mechanical and autonomous systems. And so, if I'm not physically going myself, assisting the future people who will by setting up whatever things they need in those extreme environments, you know, that would be cool.
CM: Yeah, totally.
AE: Yeah, and it fills a requirement for being an astronaut, by the way, you have to have an engineering degree. Now they’ve just upped it to a master's I think, to reduce the 18,000 plus applications, they were getting down to like a manageable number.
CM: That's a quick filter. That makes sense. Just one more degree of difficulty. And so, you’re kind of shifting from sport to science interest in this new work in mechanical engineering. I didn't realize you were doing a mechanical engineering degree. Congratulations, that's really cool. Is there something about your athletic past that also primes you towards space exploration? I mean, aside from your physical prowess.
AE: Yeah. I think there's a really strong argument for a sport approach. A sport as the framework, or any kind of situation rally, that requires a human to push themselves or adapt to a challenging situation. So the nature of sports, at least the nature of what I did, was basically trying to push yourself beyond what you think you can do, and how do you go and challenge these limits? There's a certain mental aspect to that. There’s a certain training associated with that. There are a lot of components that lead to success in that venture that I think would lend themselves to leading to success in a similar venture from the humanity perspective. So, if we need to send people to the moon and set up permanent bases there, you have a lot of questions that need answering. But if you've addressed something similar, like you have some kind of framework for approach, I think you'd have a little bit more success or you’d make more progress. But I’m biased…
CM: I think that's great. I mentioned in my email to you, I've been thinking about you because of how world-galvanizing in a positive way something like world sport competitions are, and COVID has done away with everything, including something as robust as the Olympics. I think it's delayed not canceled, but I feel as though there's something like what takes place at the Olympics that builds for everyone this human-planetary spirit that's similar to what occurs when we're watching a man land on the moon, or if aliens do ever contact us. And so those seem connected for me. I wonder if that is the same for you? If that's why it seems like such an easy transition to go from a gold medal world sports competitor to space explorer for our future.
AE: I do…I think you're right on. I think it's very astute because when I was younger, the Olympics was all about just sports and medals. But as I got older, I realized that this thing that we created as a species is about so much more. It's about bringing the world together peacefully to celebrate human performance and human stories. And the beautiful thing about it is, you know, every country and every race is involved. One of my favorite places at the Olympics is the Olympic village, but specifically the dining hall, because isn't that the picture of a peaceful future: where everybody's able to dine under the same roof right together. That's the place that's where it happens. It's like the only event where it happens. Ok, maybe at the UN or maybe something like the world economic forum or something, but it's just awesome! And so I think the Olympics is very much about that, it’s civil like that. To make the connection from that to other things like space exploration and science in general, I just found it very easy because I thought the reason for pursuing these things is for that human connection, togetherness. You know, what is life about? What is it about what we're doing and where we're supposed to be going?
CM: Can I ask a semi-related weirdo question?
AE: Of Course, yes.
CM: What's the weirdest thing you've ever witnessed in the Olympic village.
AE: Oh, Oh yeah, it's not like one particular moment, but the weirdest thing is…and it makes sense…but at the village there are apartments, right? It's a massive apartment block. And basically every country has its space. If you're a massive country, you take up one apartment building, usually. The whole U.S. team takes up one building. Smaller countries that have like fewer athletes will their apartments, too, but maybe they'll only take up a couple of floors. But long story short is these athletes from these countries make that room or set of rooms, or building, like a mirror image of their country. So, if you go into the building that has a lot of African nations in it, the heaters are all on. It’s like scorching hot in there. You can barely breathe. If you go into the Japanese team’s building, it's like, “Did you guys just to get here?
Did you bring anything with you?” It's spotless, you know, “Where is everything.” And so, it's just like one of those things where the building takes on the character of the culture. The Australian building always has chants and some parties going on. It's really cool.
CM: What's the characteristic that's minimally reproduced for the American building? Is it like grills and burgers?
AE: That's a good question. Well, there are flags everywhere for one. The whole building is basically an American flag. It's a good question. I think, I don’t know, I'd call it a subdued confidence, if you will. Oftentimes, when you're a young athlete you're told, “Hey, look, when you have that American uniform on, you have a target on your back. Everybody's looking up to you,” and that's just the mindset, We don't know if it’s actually true or not, maybe not these days anyways, but yeah, you just try to walk with your chest out, head straight…
CM: Maybe you're just creating a feedback loop, because you're walking with great confidence and posture, so you're even more intimidating as a competitor, especially a country that’s done pretty well, so the target remains. Ok, we are going to jump into the main crux of this conversation, but before we do, can you tell me a little bit about the work that you're doing at Intel? You mentioned it's sports tracking or athlete tracking, but can you give me a little more?
AE: Sure. So, basically the question is how do athletes improve? How do we help humans improve performance? And generally, today, the way that athletes do that is through two methods. One is they'll do an attempt and then they'll get a feeling in their body, right? And then with that attempt, they also have a coach to give them feedback, and then they'll kind of see what the result is. They take these three data points, well, three components: when you do something (1) how did it feel? (2) did the coach say looked good or bad? (2) And what was the result?
If you shoot a basketball and it goes in and you're like, “Oh, I felt pretty good, and the coach is like, “Yeah, that's right,” and that's a strong connection, right? If you shoot and it's bad and it doesn't go in, you kind of get the picture of what's missing. How we improve is basically asking, “Coach, was that good?” “Yeah, that was good.” “Cool.” It went in, let's keep doing that. How athletes get faster is really the same thing. Do a block start and do a run. Here's how it should be, move your arms, this and that. How'd that feel. And so amazingly, we've gotten to this level just by feel and intuition. I think the hypothesis, how do you get to the next level, is by extracting out exactly what the body is doing.
So, we use cameras, we aim them at athletes, and we're able with computer vision and artificial intelligence to pull out exactly what the skeleton is doing. You can know when you're running what was the velocity? What was the angle that my leg made relative to the ground? How are my arms and legs correlated? Each one of these key points, your elbow or shoulder and knee and ankle over time, they're just data points in a spreadsheet. And so you can basically know exactly what you were doing. And now you can say, “I'm going to try to do the run faster. I'll do an attempt, and I'll get the feel of what I actually did. And so if you do a timed one and you run 10 meters a second, and the coach says, “Change your leg pattern that should make you faster,” you can make that adjustment, and now you'll know if you actually made that adjustment? Was it actually faster?
CM: Right. As opposed to what might've been arcane system where you believe that you make an adjustment, perhaps it’s not perceived by the coach, and so no change is actually manifested?
AE: Yeah.
CM: Ok, so it seems like a really clever way for athletes to vary precisely or minutely calibrate for improvement. It's for personal improvement?
AE: It is. It’s like how can we help people, again, answer that question of what are we capable of? And the only way to do that is to keep pushing the limits of what we are capable of. So, if 9.58 is how fast the human can run today, how do we get to 9.57? Helping athletes extract that information on what is contributing to their speed, as a simple example, is what we're trying to do. And I think there are so many subtle things that are happening just in a 100 meter run to an athlete that this could articulate. Nobody really asks about it, but if there's a misstep here, my head's too far back there….you don't see them with the naked eye, but you feel it, and we're hoping that with our accuracy, we can kind of pull some of those points out. So now they can connect the data with what they feel and actually see it on a graph or in some kind of visualization, and be able to make the correction.
CM: And it's continuous visualization? You can see this happening over the course of a hundred-meter dash.
AE: Yeah. I think that's the most intuitive way to visualize it, for sure. Absolutely.
CM: That's really cool. Is it an application? Is it being used?
AE: Hmm. R and D.
CM: Okay.
AE: we're testing in house and yeah, I think we’re close. We're confident that we can create something in short order that would be beneficial, but you have to start somewhere.
CM: Right, and it seems like there are some good athletes to test it on in house…no so bad. That's great. That's really cool.
AE: Thank you.
CM: Yeah. Okay. Are you ready for THE hard question?
AE: Sure.
CM: I should give some context to our audience, since this is all so new and weird for SFI.. So, the premise of Alien Crash Site, not surprisingly, was David Krakauer’s idea, and it borrows from this plot of a Soviet science fiction book called Roadside Picnic. That is set post-visitation.
There was an alien visitation that leaves the areas where the aliens ones crashed very strange, protected, and full…like littered with new objects, unearthly, non-human-made, weird objects. And there are these “Stalkers” that invade--
--I might edit all of this out and just like write it up in the podcast site. I wrote a better version of it in an email that I sent to you, that I should probably be reading, but, theoretically---
--there are “Stalkers” that enter into these zones, either illegally for sale of these objects to the black market, or surreptitiously for the Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures that's examining them. And the reason is because some have been decoded or decrypted by humans for the betterment of society, whether that's for perpetual motion or just a new technological advancement. BUT, all of the individuals who spend prolonged time in the Zone suffer dramatically, whether it's physical impairment, imprisonment or, even death. So Alien Crash Site asks all of our favorite people the following question…ready?
At the risk of imprisonment, great personal harm or death, what object would you, Ashton Eaton, hope to discover in the zone and why?
AE: The thing I would hope discover, straight up, straight out, is a device called the Ansible. Now I actually did not have to think hard about this, it just came to my mind as soon as the question was posed. So, to give some context and background, the Ansible itself was a term that was coined by a science fiction writer, Ursula LeGuin, and it's a play on the word
“answerable.”
And basically, it's not necessarily a new concept, but this word is the new kind of version, if you will. The idea is instantaneous communication all over the universe. It's sometimes called super-liminal or hyper wave communication, which basically just means faster than light. And the, the reason I would want to risk everything to get this sucker is, well, for a few reasons. One is from a practical standpoint, if we are expanding into space, communication is obviously fundamental to our way of life for many reasons, not just on earth.
We can already see little instances where when something takes too long, we get frustrated, you know? Dial up was only 25 years ago, or 20 years ago, and here we are at a moment where you can get speed-of-light communication. But if for some reason, something takes a little longer, you're like, “Oh, this thing is so ancient, why can't we have 5G, or whatever it is, already?!” But more than that, if we're going to expand beyond earth, it takes information.
If you're going to send a message to Jupiter, let's say we have some outpost on a moon out there, it will take you basically an hour+ round trip to talk to somebody, and so forth. What happens when you have to do that is you basically have to divulge everything. You want to send one communique and then wait to get back your answer. I feel like if you keep extrapolating outward, like us expanding our species into the universe, what eventually happens is, if you can't communicate with somebody right away, eventually the cord is severed. You lose touch. There will be totally new cultures, totally new knowledge, totally new everything that we on earth might not know anything about, or learn about much later, it'd be like old news, right? And I don't understand how we could actually have some kind of a galactic civilization without this instant communication device, because even to get across the nearest exoplanet…what's it like Proxima Centauri or something…it would take like 27 years to send a message at light speed. And that's just to send it there, that's not counting back. And so just in order to do this, I think we need instant communication and an Ansible is the thing that would drive that home.
CM: See, that's a funny answer because if there were an Ansible in the zone, and we could communicate with anything in the universe, it would almost under value the plot, right? The mystery of the visit. If there was some miscommunication between these aliens who had nothing but a complete lack of interest in humans, and were littering the planet, suddenly the Ansible would relate the human to that visit, and we would know for sure that the aliens didn't care about us. At least we would understand that…
AE: The reason I think this Ansible would actually even be at this crash site is because if they are that advanced, how are they sending the information back to wherever they're from, in any kind of timely fashion? You know, if they're just kind of like out exploring in the universe, I feel like they would actually have to have some device like this in order to communicate. Unless it's just like, “Look, they've got their own little world or their own little solar system that they chill in, and everything outside is that it’s like ‘we don't care,” and therefore they don't need it, but that would mean they'd have to be close to us.
CM: And it doesn't seem like they are if Earth was just a stopping point to a much more sophisticated location. But so, it would also sort of imply that this Ansible, which is the greatest thing that could happen to us humans who seek to communicate instantaneously across the universe, would be multiple and expendable, if aliens are just like leaving them behind.
AE: Yeah, absolutely. I think Ursula's use of the Ansible required that one system, the broadcasting system, had to be connected to a large mass like a planet, but that any receiving system could be anywhere else in the universe. And so, how the broadcasting and receiving works is all sci-fi lingo, but this notion of, again, I don't know, I think it's kind of interesting and important because when you think about, it takes eight minutes or maybe 10 minutes to get a message to Mars, and it just seems unreasonable to think that we would know anything about any other people that we send further out.
CM: Does Ursula describe the actual object of an Ansible? Does it have an appearance, or a form? Would you recognize it?
AE: That's actually a good question. I didn't read Ursula's book in which she introduced the Ansible, but I read another novel that used her Ansible as that device. That book was actually the Ender's Game series, think it was actually Shadow Saga, but basically, we're on earth and we had some spaceships way out into somewhere to do a pre-entry attack on this alien species. And in order to control those ships that were light years away, the only thing that made it possible to do that was this Ansible that we had found from the initial first invasion of these aliens. They had it on their ship, and that was the only thing that allowed us to even leave earth to do anything practical outside of our own solar system. And so, they didn't really say what it looked like, but it was key to this mission.
CM: So, there are two challenges that I can imagine. One is, let's say, let's say you survive your journey, and you bring this to the Institute (perhaps the Santa Fe Institute), and suddenly we have an Ansible in our clutches. One: we have to figure out how to activate it with the assumption that we would be able to immediately utilize whatever receivers there are out there, science fiction technology aside, right? But that means that there's almost this unseen other half of the device that we would have to understand. I think I'd be curious to know…it seems like such a beautiful and efficient form of technology for this sophisticated alien species. I really do want to try to imagine what it would look like, such that if you found it, would you even know what it was, or would you mistake it for a javelin, you know?
AE: Yeah. I think some of the premise of this too, is that to us this is the biggest deal of all time. And for them, it's like that's just a cell phone. But the cool thing is we would have this one. And, it would presumably communicate with whatever other one was out there, right? So, I feel like we'd have it in this room, and the first thing to do would be to say, like “Hello, is anyone there?” But I don't know, for some reason, in my mind I imagined something that basically looks like a quantum computer with a shell over it. And it's kind of the size of a speaker, you know?
CM: Yes, it has to be portable for your picnic.
AE: Yeah. And I don't know why, but for some reason my mind, I envisioned that it's thinner at the top and almost has a cone-like structure, just to make it more of a solid base to maybe connect with whatever it needs to connect with. And, in general, to me, it would be some kind of interactive port, or screen, or what have you, where you could send voice messages, you could send a text if you will, maybe images as well. But if they're so advanced, what would that actually look like? I don't think it would be the same screen structure that we're looking at, but yeah, I'm not a deep sci-fi thinker. I think it'd just be this little thing that looks like a speaker and that's somewhat luminous. Maybe it takes like a lot of power, or some kind of interesting power form. I don't know…
CM: Exactly, how is it powered? What if Earth doesn’t have the mineral to power it, and we just have this kind of trophy, or whatever.
AE: I have to kind of think about this, but you know, faster-than-light communication is basically, as far as we know, impossible, right? But maybe there’s something else, you know, we don't know everything. If you're looking at atoms and protons and then the finer elements of these things, what's after that? What are strings and quarks and that made up of? Maybe nothing, but maybe this taps into that point, that it has to be connected to something, some kind of mass entity, or an energy prone entity in the universe.
CM: Yeah. And, it seems like the Ansible would solve two problems. So, there's the squishing of time, the elimination of the time delay in messaging, which could maybe be exploited for travel, as well. Like, it'd be wonderful if there was suddenly some hack to this Ansible that would allow for instantaneous travel of physical matter, who knows?
AE: That would be insane! Teleportation is basically what we're talking about. Worth heading back in to find that.
CM: Right, exactly! “If I had two trips without being caught…” but then the other thing that I guess is more foundational, it’s hubristic to think that you'd find this thing, and we'd figure it out. And suddenly we were getting instantaneous communication. But let's say we did. We'll pretend like we're not yet transporting things, because that’s very unlikely, but it seems to me that this might act as a sort of a Rosetta stone. If it’s from another alien civilization, it seems like it would be a huge challenge, like an Arrival style challenge to communicate with that civilization, if that's where the receptors are, if we're tethered to the other half of that device without knowing how it is that they communicate. So hopefully it would sort of recognize us and do something nice for us, but there would be a lot of work that would come with that.
AE: I think you're right about that. But the main “translation” work with this is like, “okay, we have this one. How do we reverse engineer this thing without breaking it?”
CM: Ooh, Exactly!
AE: As soon as we break it, we're screwed, right? So, we were communicating with aliens, or we have this device that as far as we could tell…wait, actually, how did we even find out how faster-than-light communication worked? I don't know. Maybe there's a big sticker on it, “Faster-than-light communication device,” haha, but if we can reverse engineer it, that's huge.
Because then we would know why, or excuse me, how they did it, how it's done, which I think would be really important because that would allow us to unlock all kinds of things. You know, we could get deeper insight into physics and time and a lot of other stuff.
CM: Well, to put it in context with Roadside Picnic, it's funny, actually, the things that the Institute or the Stalkers have been able to retrofit to their cars, or have been able to figure out at least some new function for, are things that exist in multiples. So there is this item at the end of the book that the protagonist, Red, is after that's called the Golden Sphere. I imagine it's golden and spherical. And it's thought to grant the finder of it any one wish.
AE: Wow.
CM: Who knows if that's the case, but it's a similar to this project. Instead of having to come up with or invent the object itself, you could say, “bring me an Ansible,” or something like that. There's only one, and it's through a very dangerous route. You almost have to sacrifice a partner in order to satisfy the Zone and to get to it. But these “bracelets” and the “black sparks,” and the “empties” or all of these other things which we're closer to understanding, we're able to because we have multiples, so we can risk the reverse engineering. When there’s only one golden sphere, there's this fragility, like a bomb. Would you want to try it? If you got the golden sphere, you'd almost never want to touch it. And, I feel like that's what you're kind of talking about now.
AE: Yeah. It's true. I mean, I would be super scared to screw it up. I feel like people would just kind of stare at it. And then at some point it's like, “Well, we gotta take the shell off and then look at the inside.” But yeah, I mean, there are so many risks with all of this. It's almost like when we go back in the past and we find fossils, right? There's so much information there that you don't want to lose, even in the slight brushing of something, you could lose, you know, the whole history really.
CM: But then there's a huge tradeoff, because there's so much to be gained if you're capable of getting beyond that first layer and learning something that would have been unseen, otherwise.
AE: Yeah. I think that's our kind of modus operandi, you know, risk/reward for the human species.
CM: Yeah. That's about it. That's how it is with humans, tradeoffs, and never knowing which is the right one, or where the limitation lies, and hoping that you're making the right decisions when you do. Yeah. I wish it was easier…
AE: Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think for this kind of item, in this context, it would be super important to figure out how to make that other one, because you just had the one and you're kind of communicating with the other receivers, if you will, you just want to know how to make your own, so you can kind of use it as you wish and make others, etc. Because, what if what’s on the other side is side just wants to turn us off.
CM: Right. Let's say we do crack through, and suddenly they hear communication, but to them it’s that DSL dial-up noise. And they’re just like, “off! Ignore!”
AE: Yeah. Oh, the other thing too is maybe this Ansible, if we were able to kind of make one up, we could make one that also does translation for you, in some way, shape or form.
CM: I would hope so, but of course…ok, I'm really trying to recalibrate – especially now that I'm at part of the Interplanetary Project and at SFI – I'm really trying to recalibrate what I picture when I picture an extraterrestrial species, because I basically picture green men, you know?
AE: For sure.
CM: I got a little closer when Arrival came out with those kinds of Octopod things, but who knows, it could be inorganic, it could be organic in a totally strange form. Maybe their perception apparatus is completely distinct from ours. So, you mentioned sending images and sound, but who knows? I don't know. It makes me worried that I'm going to miss the opportunity.
AE: No, it's just very cool because I think the one thing that we can do…well is we have to work on what we know. And right now, we know that there are elements right in the universe. And so we can, I mean, as far as my imagination could go, maybe they've found clever ways to fashion the abundant elements in their region to do stuff. And so, you know, what's a planet made out of? What can you mine from these planetary bodies?
And I don't know, did they find clever ways to capture the gasses of a planet like Jupiter, or something, for example? Can you harness that, or condense it into something that's like totally unique? I don't know.
CM: That's actually, I like that. It’s a positive spin on it, I think because even if it's an unrecognizable arrangement of these things we know to exist, there are individuals on this planet who recognize those qualities, the physical properties of these certain material things. And hopefully that gets us one step closer to translating the actual material thing of it, the object of it. That’s really good. Do you think if you entered the Zone, you would do so as a criminal Stalker or on behalf of the Institute?
AE: Ooh, I would, okay, I think I would want to do it as a criminal stalker for the reasons of having a little bit more freedom, and not necessarily having to report what I find. But I think I would practically, like actually do it for the Institute, and put it through the right path.
I think it would just be the right thing to do, you know, and I kind of always try to err on that side, but I mean, I don't know. I think it depends. There's always this interplay between institutions, you know? I mean, not to throw anything at the Santa Fe Institute, because I actually don't think they hold to this, but institutions in general are typically slower than the fast individual, and are less risk averse to thing.
They have processes and forms to sign and risks to consider, for people who are involved in blah, blah, blah. Whereas somebody else can just get in out, you know, it's like guerrilla warfare. So, I think that'd be the only downside to an Institute. Like, “Look, there's treasure down there, we have to go get it!” And the Institute is like, “Well, yeah, but we have to catalog it, and this and that.” No! Forget all that protocol.
CM: Yeah. Actually, I think that's a really good point. If you think about institutions in terms of what they're after, especially if it was this Institute that might be able to decode the Ansible, you essentially want to take in the greatest minds, the most capable of doing so. But then you bind them with bureaucracy and protocol and whatnot. Meanwhile, it's the Mavericks and the rogues and the renegades that are running around doing the scary work, but who might accidentally sell this Ansible for $300 to a bartender, you know? And there's, there's no middle, there's no compromise.
AE: Examples of that throughout history. Haven't we?
CM: Yeah, of course. I mean, it has its tradeoffs, but that's the kind of tragic possibility in all of this. I think that it would most deftly be found by an independent stalker, the criminal kind, but you know, without that institutional exchange, who knows?
AE: Yeah. I think about the movie Contact, it comes to mind. So basically, they get these plans to build a time machine or wormhole thing, right?
CM: Yes, I believe that’s the technical term…
AE: Yeah, exactly. But government or whatever gets their hands on it and it's like, “We shouldn't do this.” And then Jodie foster is like, “No, we need to do it,” and so eventually they do it then there's a whole long process. And you're like getting over the human inertia of the system to do it. And then I guess it fails. But then it's a private person who builds their own, like “screw it.” And that was the one that ended up working and doing the whole deal. So, I think that's a good example of how we might get something from beyond and just really hamstring ourselves in terms of knowledge advancement.
CM: Totally. I think that's a really good example too, of the care we have to take in the way we approach totally unfamiliar things. So we got these plans, and I think it was exactly like you said, some private Japanese company or something duplicated the plans. And in the US, someone who was afraid of change literally sabotages the whole mission, they like threw a flag or something at it.
AE: That's right. That's right. It was sabotaged.
CM: Yes, it was sabotaged by someone who was afraid of the unfamiliarity. So, to maybe harness ourselves a little further in protection against that would be good in this endeavor. I take it, you're not afraid of the unfamiliar…
AE: No, I think, I mean the unfamiliar is like the spice of life. If things are familiar all the time, it just gets kind of stagnant and boring, if you will. Imagine if we never learned anything new, didn't try to go anyplace new, didn't break any barriers. And it was just Pleasantville every day, which just seems like blah to me. Because the universe is massive, I mean the universe is so old and massive and we are relatively young and have gone not very far, like only 300,000 miles off of our planet, personally.
We've sent other probes. You know, it's like when you ask how much more is there, it's almost a staggering question. If one of the fundamental questions is what's it all about? Why are we here? This and that, to me, the only way to answer that is by expanding our experience and knowledge. You know what I use? I use the video game analogy. I think that's the best analogy for this.
CM: I think that's great. I think that's a perfect analogy for our audience. I get it, yeah.
AE: Maybe I’ve said this once before, but imagine you are set as a character into an open world video game and all you know is you get a life and there's stuff around, but you have no idea what the objective is. What do you do? Well, initially you're going to say, “ok, I need to survive.” And so, you're going to kind of explore your immediate environment, maybe learn what's dangerous and what's helpful. Eventually, you learn enough to start building some tools, set up some shelter and take care of yourself. Once you have that down, you expand your boundaries a little bit and you say, “okay, I'm going to go explore and see what else there is.”
Can’t stay here forever. And so you're exploring the land, you learn a little bit more, you see some creatures as you're doing this. You're gaining skills and knowledge that are giving you the capability to go even further beyond your boundary. And what eventually happens as you go along over time, as you keep expanding your boundaries and learning and building is that at some point you're in this open game and you still have no idea what the objective of the game is. You're like, “okay, well maybe I'm going to go into the sky, and see there are answers there.
So, you advance your capabilities to explore even that. And you just take this as far as you can go. At some point you have to figure out that this may go on, indefinitely. This, learning the objective of this game, could be a never ending pursuit. However, that might actually be the point, because if you did explore everything in the game, every little plant and rock and thing that was there, and you knew the whole boundary, it’s game over…back to Pleasantville.
It's like, “okay, well, nothing new.” And, this is like a closed environment situation. So to me, the objective, again, is to explore right now.
CM: I think that makes you unique, though. I know that there are people, maybe I'm one of them, who in an open world environment would learn how to chop down the trees to survive, get really good and comfortable at doing that, and kind of exploit that skillset, proximally. So that’s a misinterpretation of the objective, I think, which is clever in what you just said…how individuals might do so, misunderstand.
AE: I think that's true for a lot of people. I think that's not good or bad, but what makes it interesting is even though that exists, I think what happens is because we reproduce a new person or entity is brought into the environment. And we started here and then we learned about the tree and the building and such and such, so we're like, “Wow, look at all that progress!” But when somebody comes in and is born here…that that is their floor, to them it’s not new. This is old and familiar.
And so, I just feel like people naturally have this tendency to want to explore themselves, and kind of push that level up. And again, for them, they do that. And they look back on all the years of accomplishment and they're able to understand and encapsulate all the work that went into that. But for somebody that's born in 2020, they have no context of what took place from the 1600s all the way up to now, or even from 2000 to 2020, the progress that was made. You know, phones, internet, 5g, we've always had this, so what's next?
CM: So true. There is this comfort of inheritance that we maybe take for granted. And you must, you must progress past that. you bring that up in, in light of Ander? Like, are you more aware of that kind of gradated incremental progress?
AE: Sure…
CM: …because you're seeing someone observe things and eat different things, and express themselves.
AE: When I look at my son, I think about that for sure. Bur I also think it's kind of like this magic thing where even when I'm gone, there's a bit of me that will carry on. And hopefully, you know, I guess from a track standpoint, you can think of it like a relay race. You just want to, in your leg of the race, set them up for having a good race themselves and really put them in the lead against whatever competition we could talk about. But so, when I see him, yeah, I see the potential, the hopeful future, and I’m really trying to make as much progress as possible for his sake, because I want his floor to be like as far as we can push our own ceiling. If there is an objective, if there is an end, that's less work that the next generation has to do, right?
CM: Right! And wouldn't it be nice if between now and his kind of motor-utility phase an Ansible made itself available to us?
AE: Oh my gosh. That'd be fantastic.
CM: It's funny that you thought that up, the Ansible I mean, because – and I don't know if this is across all versions – but the version of Roadside Picnic that I have is introduced by Ursula LeGuin…
AE: No way!
CM: Yeah. So it's quite a poignant reach. I wonder if the Ansible is maybe her answer to this question too, and you just kind of groked it.
AE: Absolutely.
CM: I think that's a really good stopping point, just imagining what's possible for our future. If we think about pushing ourselves beyond our ceiling…
AE: That's the way that I look at it. It's just a philosophy. When you try to make sense of life in the world, it's like, “Okay, well there's so much out there, but in order to get questions answered, you have to pursue them. And to me, it just seems like there are so many unanswered things that can only be answered by going out there.
CM: And, again, thinking about the Ansible, I think if you look at our human history, too, you see these episodes. And quite often those like ceiling-breaking jumps have to do with communication.
AE: Absolutely.
CM: Well, thank you very much, Ashton.
AE: No, thank you. It's always a pleasure to be part of anything SFI is doing, and exploring the boundaries, you know, of our thoughts and creativity, and possible futures.
CM: Well thank you for saying so! It's always a pleasure to include you in our machinations and speculations. I think that you are very thoughtful in the way that you approach human future. And, I'm under strict directive to tell you that David says hello and that he misses you…
AE: Yes. Thank you. I was just going to give a shout out to David and the whole SFI team. I'm looking forward to the day when we're back at the Railyard and enjoying the sun and the company.
CM: Definitely. I really felt it's loss this year. Well have a lovely rest of your week or year, until I see you next. And keep your fingers crossed for the Ansible.
AE: I will. Absolutely. Thanks, again.
***
CM: Ok, I should take a moment to do some housekeeping. So that was Ashton Eaton. As was mentioned in our conversation, ashton has taken part in both of the InterPlanetary Festivals that precede the year 2020. If you would like to get a little more perspective on his insights on things like team building, psychological control before doing the impossible, what it feels like to prepare yourself for something that has never happened before in human history – whether it's a manned mission to an exoplanet or breaking the world record in the Olympics – you can enjoy those through the panels that he participated in, which we have published through the Santa Fe Institute press. We have to keep a record, since it's not possible for everyone in the human world to attend the festival in real time.
So, for those of you who would like to kind of continue this thought conversation with Ashton, I would recommend that you visit SFIpress.org, to enjoy these very recently published proceedings from our second festival. Ashton, of course, makes an appearance in the first volume, too.. And lastly, if you haven't read Roadside Picnic ,and you want to continue enjoying on the journey that is this interview series, it's almost mandatory reading.
So with that, I want to say thank you all for tuning in. This was Alien Crash Site, I'm Caitlin McShea, and I will leave you with Red's final hope, until we see each other again, which is:
Happiness free for everybody. And let no one be forgotten.
Bye, you guys!