Ep 017: Ryan McGranaghan
**Please note that this is a robot-generated transcript. A human-edited version will be uploaded shortly
…begin transmission…
Hello, dear listeners. And welcome back to alien press site. This speculative interplanetary podcast from the Santa Fe Institute explores contemporary space science through the lens of science fiction. We invite diversely driven individuals from our broadly distributed community to talk about how their research and interests applied the future of human civilization on earth and beyond. We also ask these brave souls to imagine an alien artifact object or technological device that might change the course of our species evolution, which then allows us to converse a bit about a particular problem that our guests might observe today and potential strategies or methods for resolving that problem. As we continue to express ourselves and send ourselves across space, these speculative conversations become all the more important, and this podcast asserts that along with rigorous and methodical, empirical approaches to furthering our understanding of the universe, our imagination might also be one of the most important tools that we have at our disposal.
0 00:00:52
So in order to best equip ourselves as we stand at advancement's edge, we better get used to employing it. This week. We invite aerospace engineer, Ryan McGranahan into the zone. Ryan currently works at NASA jet propulsion lab as a Jack Eddy postdoctoral research fellow. His work focuses on the application of data, assimilation, complex systems analysis and data science to space science research, specifically work within what he calls the space environment. We spend the majority of this conversation dwelling in what I'm going to call the quote space between quite often on this podcast, we talk about earth and we talk about potential other life hosting planetary bodies, but we rarely consider the dynamics taking place in the space between those bodies, right?
0 00:01:32
And I jumped right into the severity of certain space weather events and how these events and our son's behavior directly impact our own lives and our potential to recognize other life elsewhere. Then we talk about the liminal space between research disciplines, where novel approaches to large looming questions are often hidden in plain sight. And when Ryan finally reveals his ideal alien technology, we discussed the space between intention and expression in works of art or scientific endeavors. The space between interlocutors attempting to communicate and the rich capacity of what exists in the space between in general. So without further delay, let us venture into the zone. My name is Kaitlyn McShea. This is alien crash site. Keep your eyes on the prize and let the sun be your guide.
0 00:02:13
And let us hope that the sun is on our side this time.
1 00:02:16
<inaudible> Hey, good afternoon, Ryan. How are you doing?
2 00:02:46
Hey, Kaitlin. I'm good. Thank
3 00:02:49
You. I am interested in talking to you a little bit about catastrophes as they impact the human spirit. And I want to talk to you about that from the, of your work in space weather, because I think that might align a little bit with what happens when we find alien life on other planets. Perhaps it's scary, perhaps it's lovely. Maybe it relates to a viral component that takes over the world in a really unpredictable way. But I think given your interest in complex systems and the work that you do in space science, I'm hoping you could jump right in to explaining how it is that's based science specifically from a catastrophic capacity might improve a perfect example of complexity for our planet.
2 00:03:31
That's a great question. I said it the space environment and just to kind of give a little background. What I mean by the space environment is the region around our earth. That's created by our magnetic field and it's actually a really complex region. If you look closely, you have this range of scales that is dizzying everything from the solar surface and these massive structures that are emerging from the sun, coronal mass ejections are one that's pretty popular and be known and they're, they're coming towards the earth. In that process. There's actually very important things happening on the kinetic scale, these, these micro scales at the particle level. And so how do you unify radically different scale sizes in space and also in time?
2 00:04:14
So when we're talking about space weather, which is just to kind of colloquially describe it, it's when energy from the sun interacts with our space environment and causes effects that we feel here on earth. And those can be anything from the world, more than lights that you see, and that are, that have captivated our entire history of the human race, but it can be also very dangerous. And those same particles they're saying currents and energies that are creating these beautiful displays also have very problematic effects, particularly now that we're in a highly technologically advanced era and where we rely on space-based technologies. And so the energy from the sun interacts in myriad ways with our environment and has these tangible outcomes, 10 goal things that happen as a result of those interactions.
2 00:05:04
But in terms of kind of the catastrophe, I can kind of paint a picture of what that might have looked like. There was a, there was an event in 2012, it was this massive coronal mass ejection. So imagine this huge cloud of magnetic energy that just erupts from the surface of the sun. So these are like hundreds of hydrogen bonds going off at once. That's kind of the equivalent of the energy that's released and that coronal mass ejection missed the earth by a matter of days. So basically the sun's rotating and the mass injection erupted from the sun and it went off into space just off the limb of yours, but had it hit the earth there's evidence that impacts would have been just enormous.
2 00:05:46
It would have wiped out satellite communications, which in our day and age, everything relies on the, to communicate with our global positioning service satellites. And so our bank accounts and our credit cards, certain transactions, things are in wiped out. We would have lost power because the currents that were induced in our atmosphere would have led to large widespread blackouts for the face of the earth. Basically be current, that would be induced in our ground-based power grid would have been too much for the system to handle. And a lot of those transformers and those other pieces of infrastructure would have actually gone offline. And so without power we saw earlier this year, unfortunately with the Texas outage, how quickly that becomes an emergency.
2 00:06:26
And so that's the kind of thing that would have happened. I guess, that that's eyeopening to me was at the national academy of sciences estimates that the economic impact of this major space with a storm that just missed us would have been $2 trillion, which is 20 hurricane Katrina's to kind of place it in context. And it's just this enormous impact as possible that knowledgeable are typically aware of
3 00:06:49
Were that to occur. It sounds like. So I guess the emission happened just as the earth was rotating a certain way, or I guess the sun was rotating in its way. And as a result that kind of directionally missed us. And goodness, in addition to the electrical problems that you described and how that's so wrapped up in our economy, there's this cost of living thing, like the quality of life thing that we would lose out on, obviously since we're so reliant upon technologies, which sort of ironically mimic the sun, right? Like our use of the electricity and the technology that we build is almost like the same way that plants utilize the sun for their livelihood. Let's say that was eliminated at least temporarily by this mass. That would also, I think, break down all of our communication. It would almost be like we were a disassociated human species.
3 00:07:29
And how long do the people behind this investigation think that that would happen?
2 00:07:35
So the estimates range just because it is such an unknown thing, mean we've had many space weather storms, but nothing quite at this level, we see deterioration and kind of societal structures when communication is severed over the map over a matter of hours even, right. But in terms of how long this event could have lasted, the alarming thing is with the power grid. There's not for these huge transformers that we have. They don't really have replacements just sitting around. If those pieces of infrastructure are damaged or destroyed, which would have happened during this event, then it would have taken years to replace all those things. And so obviously other solutions would have had to emerge during that time, but I'm just severing.
2 00:08:16
The communications would have been days, weeks, months, you know, it could have been a very long time, which is a scary thought, but, you know, we, we feel the effects of space weather every day, just on a much more moderate scale. So for instance, if you're, if you're in a, if you're scheduled to fly over the polar caps in a plane, one of the things that happens if we, if we have heightened energy coming from the sun, that actually puts those passengers at a greater risk of radiation. And so those four sites will actually be rerouted. And so Facebook that has all of these tangible impacts that people may not be aware of, but are occurring every day.
3 00:08:48
You think about the scalar question, which is something that SFI talks about a lot and something that you already touched upon. We are impacted every by the meteorological weather that we occupy, right? If, if it rains or all of the flooding that we're seeing in Germany, or even actually here in New Mexico and in Texas, it has a direct impact on, you know, how jobs are performed, how people get around. It's almost a communication breakdown in and of itself. So imagine what is at stake when that comes to a planetary level to a great degree, we're pretty good at predicting our own proximal, planetary meteorology, but now we have to factor in what's happening even beyond ourselves. And 2012 was not very long ago. Our, our, our technology is a little more sophisticated.
3 00:09:29
Now, are we capable of more accurately predicting these things if we are, how does that allow us to intervene?
2 00:09:37
No, it's an amazing question because that's kind of the cutting edge of the research right now. It's we realize that the models we have, we have some capable models that have given us more information and, and they do allow us to kind of understand the system at a different level, but there is a lot missing from that for one, I think the expressive capacity of those models and what I mean by that is how much complexity those models can embody, how much they, how much they can represent. And the system can be quite small. And so there are parts of those models that, that are just not capable of capturing the important dynamics of this system. So for one thing, machine learning and artificial intelligence is a very promising field in terms of trying to apply that to predicting space, weather phenomenon, it's a little different than treasury weather, but the analogy is perfect because it does place it for people in that.
2 00:10:24
A lot of people think about the weather as a chaotic system. There's parallels with how much memory there is in the space weather environment and whether or not that memory is important to future occurrences. And so basically we have to balance this kind of memory versus chaotic component of the system. And so it's an open question of what aspect of this is simply not predictable of the system and what might be able to be described by some higher expressive the past and models. And so you
3 00:10:53
Just brought up machine learning. I know that that's something that you particularly are interested in in terms of bringing complexity, science tools and analyses to the sort of information that we get from wherever we're getting this information. So maybe one, you could tell me how it is that this information downlinks to us who is monitoring the sun and how do we get that info and to how you think something like data driven science or machine learning can effectively allow us to increase our predictive capacity.
2 00:11:18
Yeah. So this is such a brilliant playground for these data science advances in artificial intelligence techniques, because the data are so unique and it is such a challenge. We have this massive area of space that we have to monitor. You know, we have to understand everything from these very small things that are happening on the surface of the sun. You know, there's recent evidence from the Parker, solar probe in a solar orbiter, which are NASA and European space agency missions, respectively that are, there are some Mexicans surprising and exciting new images and information about the sun. Basically these are instruments that go very close to the sun potion you ever been before and observe what's going on there. And they have observed structures on the side, they've called campfires because they're on these micro scales of this activity is having a son.
2 00:12:02
So there's that happening where people need to look at what's actually happening on sun, take images of the sun and interpret those images. But then there's instruments that sit in between us in the sun that monitor the in-situ space environment. And so obviously we have a few satellites that are providing pretty sparse observations of that solar wind energy. So that's basically the solar wind is what carries the energy from the sun to the earth. And so we have a few satellites that are observing that. So we have to stitch that into this picture. And then as we get closer to the earth, we have kind of a fleet of satellites that are orbiting within our magnetosphere. So as this larger area encapsulated by our magnetic field, but also down closer to the earth environment.
2 00:12:45
So no earth orbiting spacecraft, anything that's launched right now is going to be experiencing the effect of space weather. And also there's something that we can use as a potential information source for that. So it's this cool problem of sticking together, these puzzle pieces, trying to create a coherent picture process and this massive system. So we get information from a lot of those areas, but we also have instruments on the ground that observed this on. We have these huge solar observatories that are brilliant and so much fun to look at. Now we have ground-based magnetometers, which kind of sensed the disturbances to our magnetic field. So those add other pieces to the puzzle as well, in terms of where artificial intelligence and machine learning come in and they provide kind of a, a landscape.
2 00:13:26
And in the research into these fields are so exciting that they provide kind of this tool to bring all these different data sets together, allow the complexity that exists within those data to be represented in a way that's true to the system. Machine learning, artificial intelligence are useful for a lot of things, reconstructing phenomena that we know of trying to speed up the process. So we have these very computationally, intensive physical models of this system, but they're not feasible to run at the scales that we need to. And so AI can be something that can help us undercut some of those computational expenses and replace them these high computational loads of models, but it can also be a predictive tool, which is kind of the area that I've been focused on my research.
3 00:14:12
So if it's possible, maybe you can give me an example of how, what you mean by demonstrating in a model, the complexity of what the data actually possesses, because what you just described to me down like a network of devices that are providing incomplete information and that theoretically, either a human overseeing the model or some algorithm that's well-trained approaching the model can sort of draw the connections and make a prediction based on the best capacity it can with what information it has, but it seems like the complexity speaks to that sort of broken incompleteness of the data, because the number, for instance, it's so much more complex in its source than what we see what gets visualized.
3 00:14:52
So could you give an example perhaps of, I dunno, maybe some such satellite, that's sending a bit of information, what we learned from that information, but what's actually kind of hidden underneath it.
2 00:15:02
A good idea. The sample is this fleet of satellites, the number of instruments that exist in low earth orbit, all of those provide useful pieces of information. But when we do a study in heliophysics or space weather, we often take only a small subset of that. And we me, we often decimate or reduce in some way the data that we do get back due to what our models, what models we use to describe those, those pieces of information are able to capture basically. So we're reducing the complexity of the data that we have available so that it can fit into the models that we've been using. I think AI offers an opportunity to not place their stain strictures on the data that we get back. Okay.
3 00:15:41
All right. That, that is helpful. And as you mentioned, just before, between these two fields, it seems that you're stepping and leaning in a little further into the predictive element of it. Now, what, how did that interest come about? Was that always the case when you sort of discovered space, whether in your physical, I don't know, explorations, or is that something that's evolved as a result of evolving technology?
2 00:16:01
There's been such a close connection between the physics of the space environment and space weather, which is kind of this more, societaly impactful transition of the field. Basically the physics and space environment is kind of a basic science. And then the applied aspect of that would be the space weather environment. And I've kind of oscillated between those two. And I think the whole field is kind of trying to figure out where are you exactly. You need to exist in that kind of spectrum, but I've been really interested in providing actionable decisions based on the race that we collect from space. And that there's, there's so much need for that. And I think it's really important. And so it's really been driven out of a, a perception of a void in the ability to predict space weather and how impactful that could be for society.
2 00:16:46
That's driven my passion in that. And then, so if that's
3 00:16:50
The case, and let's say that we have perfectly functioning tools and we can tell with a great degree of accuracy that some very large solar activity is coming our way. What means do we have to intervene in an effort to protect ourselves and the technology that we have floating about what can we do
2 00:17:08
In a lot of cases, the best we could do right now for some technologies would be to turn them off so we can protect space satellites by, by turning instruments off, there are more susceptible modes if they're observing and a lot of cases. And then for the power grid on the ground, a few hours without power is better than years or months, however long it would be, but just shutting those instruments down is one way, but then also understanding what the possible range of activity is. We could harden our instruments in certain ways. We could actually engineer solutions if we know what is the possible thing to expect. And so those are, those are areas that we can protect ourselves a little more. And so if you ask a power grid operator, for instance, I did a science foundation project where we really engaged with the power grid operators and the people on the ground that are seeing the effects of space weather every day on our human natural systems.
2 00:17:59
And what they'll tell you is that if you can give us a few hours of warning time, we can drastically change the brew configuration, the way that the grid is being operated to protect it. And so I think there are solutions like that. It's really kind of a get the information and we can change how we're using the technologies.
3 00:18:17
Whereas you also just suggested how we can innovate or engineer solutions that are more robust than the ones that we have based on what we learn. And so what I'm hearing you say, and this makes sense, given what I know about you, there is this sort of research detection, prediction element. That's very important. And then there's the applied engineering. That's very important. Now, these things don't often talk to each other, but were they too, it seems that society would be better off. And therefore it seems to me that understanding what's going on just beyond our Magneto sphere, so to speak or what might affect it is necessarily an interdisciplinary investigation. And I wonder if you could speak to that passion of yours,
2 00:18:54
I've always kind of had this fear of pigeonholing myself into one area. I just have such a varied number of curiosities and passions. And so I've always wanted to understand these liminal spaces between fields. I think that this kind of interdisciplinary sciences is where you can go to do that, where you can continue to go to explore and be curious and know just another aspect of space weather that I think really speaks to these other areas. I think you'll be interested in messes. Another thing we were doing now is obviously we're expanding where humans go in space as humans leave lower earth orbit. We leave this environment that's protected by our magnetic fields, and she'll just different amount of radiation.
2 00:19:37
But as we go out in further and space and to the moon, and then afterwards tomorrows, and who knows where else we have to know about the energy from the sun, because you have astronauts on their way to Mars, and there's a massive solar eruption or not coronal mass ejection, or a sort of flare. We have to protect them from that radiation, because that could be the difference between them making tomorrows and having some kind of tragedy along the way. And so being able to break these things is very important to where if we have some kind of additional shielding we could provide to the astronauts, tell them to take shelter, that's something that's based weather, forecasting and prediction could do. And so it reaches into the domain of our own exploration out into the solar system. You can also talk about how it reaches astrophysics and life potentially on other planets.
2 00:20:21
So we're looking at all of these extra stellar systems where we're not sure whether life is possible there, but we have this definition of a Bowlby Blackstone where it's orbiting in the right distance from the star, similar conditions, maybe similar temperatures to what we would expect at earth, but then the space, where is a key part of that. You know, if you look at the history of Mars, which we have a mission, they're now called Maven, and it's studying how, when Mars is magnetic started to weaken and disintegrate the solar energy actually stripped away the atmosphere. And so that actually affects whether life could exist there on, in ways that we know life here on earth. So one of the things that I'm, that I'm trying to drive to is just that I think space weather, and heliophysics really does reach all of these different domains.
2 00:21:05
And it's been a nice springboard for me to kind of explore this interdisciplinary space and also bring the data science and artificial intelligence component to these things, which has always been a passion of mine, SWAT.
3 00:21:19
Huh. It's interesting because obviously I think, you know, the, my interest is alien life. I mean, not just because I read the science fiction and I host this interview series, but the origin of life question would be made a little easier to solve if just an N of two was found just one other form, but it never occurred to me that with certain recognition of the way that heliophysics impacts our own planet, or at least planets where we're sending other tools to observe, we might come to understand some general pattern with which planets lose their atmosphere. And therefore, of course it becomes not impossible necessarily for life to thrive or emerge there, but they would have to be like extreme, extreme of files. And so that's really exciting as we start to look, as you say, beyond our, our own solar system and into interstellar space, what those icy moons around those stars mean every time we find a new star, you know, Drake's equation smiles a little more, there are more exoplanets we're discovering every day, but it never occurred to me.
3 00:22:11
What's happening for instance, right now at Mars is the perseverance Rover is quote seeking signs of past life, which is sort of NASA's admission to the fact that they don't think there's any exit life there. And we just want to figure out whether or not there ever was. And it seems like, again, in terms of pushing two disciplines together towards an effective endeavor, something like a Helio physicist's perspective on how planet's atmospheres change would be very helpful in developing future tools on future rovers. Since that seems like an important thing, but I've never thought about, I don't think about the sun very often. I think about earth and other planets, but I don't think about the sun as a player when it's actually the center of everything. And that's my own, that's my own prejudice, I guess.
2 00:22:52
Yeah. Sold heliophysics a little short maybe, and that it's just thinking of it as the sun's interaction with our earth, through the processes, we're studying, reach extra stellar systems. They reach other planets in our solar system. Sorry. I think it does connect naturally to astrophysics, planetary science. And certainly our science is that there's a lot of connection or science there that, that I think is very exciting. Yeah. And I'll just, I'll just add one other component of heliophysics that I love is when you start to exist in this space between fields and have to coordinate between disciplines is just, how do you bring people together? How do you actually have people speak the same language or even a similar enough language to understand what one other's talking about?
2 00:23:34
And so another really intense passion of mine is just how do we do the collaboration aspect of this? How does an astrophysicist or a planetary biologist speak to a Helio physicist and, and do that in a meaningful way. And so that's, that's a really fun aspect of it as well. So, so
3 00:23:51
This might be, I want to talk about this a little, a little more because I see it happening with the people in various fields that I work with at SFI, but this might be a good segue into this kind of alien human interaction question that the podcast sort of rests upon that quite often, when you're asking a question as large as what is time, what is life and what does it do and where is it from? And can we redo it? You end up finding yourself in a room full of 20 people who have spent their lifetimes doing 20 different things. And the point that these meetings, of course, the point of convening these meetings is so that we can gain perspective across those fields and see where universalities, or generalities might arise. But what I watch all the time, and it's almost, it's almost comedic, but it's definitely tragic. Cause if it was resolved, things would be so much easier.
3 00:24:32
There seems to be the semantic barrier where people are using certain terms. That mean a very specific thing in their discipline, but exist in other disciplines too. And while both might be communicating a really important point about how their research can be applied towards these questions, they're like ships in the night, they're passing right by each other because there are presumptions associated with the language that seems like a hard problem to solve. But that sounds like exactly what you're talking about, fixing the translation problem between disciplines. And I don't know if you have any solutions to that or hypothesis towards solutions to that.
2 00:25:03
Yeah. It's an interesting time to this show though, because I mean, this show focuses on these artifacts. There's this concept of boundary navigating objects. It's from the field of social science research where it's, how do you actually construct these interactions between people who have the semantic differences? You can do that through boundary navigating objects, where in this case objects is, is defined very patiently where it's not necessarily a physical object, but maybe it's a way of thinking together, but it's this approach to taking the mental model that I have map it in some way to a mental model that you have. And I just think that that's such an interesting thing. I mean, having people come together and sit down in the room is one thing.
2 00:25:45
And then obviously over the past 18 months, it's not been possible. And so we found these new ways of connecting with people. One thing that a lot of people are starting to embraces. What if you draw it together, we start to take notes together in this, this new way and how can those be down through navigating objects? And so I think just kind of stepping outside of your comfort zone of, oh, I need to be in the same room as this person, for me to have any kind of relationship and exploring what other modes of connectivity we can create. Something that's really exciting to me. And it's very much something that I'm exploring in my own research very actively. So I mentioned that this national science foundation project that I was working on, we took a unique approach to that where we were not just a team of scientists or businesses studying this problem, but we invited power grid operators and people on the ground effected by this, into our lab to sit down with them and hold what we were user interviews.
2 00:26:44
And so we conducted hundreds of hours of these user interviews were really just wanted to listen. We just wanted to understand what their perspectives were, what was effecting, what was affecting them. And that was eye opening. And I've actually carried that practice over into all of my other research projects. So I think it's so illuminating.
3 00:27:01
It's fresh eyes in a way that you couldn't possibly occupy. So quite often on this, on this podcast, people choose an object that something like an other occupying device, because that's such a huge thing, especially in resolving these problems. I want to stay a little bit with this idea of the boundary navigating object, because, you know, while I was talking to scientists and scientists, and now we're talking, you know, human to human, I almost want to talk medium to medium and how it is that certain truths that science project into the world are in many ways and accessible to individuals who are not initiated into the sciences. And so quite often, creatives kind of grapple with these things in novel ways that seem to be somewhat more accessible than for instance, a white paper.
3 00:27:42
And so I wonder, in addition to the engineers on the ground, are the people impacted by power outages, et cetera? Do you ever, or do you plan to incorporate creatives, artists, Mavericks, weirdos? Expressors
2 00:27:54
I don't really, I mean, I think you're familiar. I actually have a podcast as well, where that's the whole purpose where we try and create this liminal space. And the term we use is anti-disciplinary and it's not against field. It's not negative in any way, but it's this space where it's in between these fields, where they give you these dots on a page, it'd be the space in between all of those dots. And so that's something I'm absolutely passionate about is finding those spaces in between fields and talking, not only with our engineers and scientists, but talking with artists and designers as well. And so the podcast that I work on is called origins and really is trying to take someone from one of these different fields and just explore their trajectory through things and understand their lens on life and see how that ends up affecting all the listeners and myself.
2 00:28:43
And I think it's just such a, an important thing is to sit and sit together with someone and actually just listen to their perspective and not place our constraint on who that person is or what they study or what they build their life around. There's so much importance in just listening. That's something I've learned a great deal about for our audience.
3 00:29:01
I just want to be clear when Ryan says listening, he doesn't necessarily mean agree, right? Like the point is it's not kumbaya. I think that there's something about the discourse that you host with your guests and the discourse that I think most other civil individuals should also express it's it's listening and actually hearing, but also recognizing that that doesn't necessarily create this contract of agreement that sometimes in the liminal space, it's the disagreement that the total rift in perspective that creates this emergent phenomenon of something like a solution.
2 00:29:32
Yeah. That's well put that's what, but we often I say we just, I mean the Royal we, and I'll just kind of own it. I often look for these comfortable places that are in agreement with the way that I see the world, because those places are easy to exist in. They already agree with me. I have systems for them. That's low energy for me to find my route through those. But I think what you're talking about with these talking or stumbling over the word, whether it's disagreement or not, I think it's really contradiction and contradiction just means that there's something there that doesn't match between the mental models. And I think that that is such an exciting place to be. It's so full of information and those contradictions in those seeming paradoxes.
2 00:30:16
I love that. I think exploring when you look at something and it seems to contradict something within your own mind, why that is, I was other people too. And I think that really is just one of the most exciting things that you can do. And it's about being inherently curious of that, because I think that that's what allows you to sit with that contradiction long enough and really mustered the energy to think a new in that space to develop some new systems around that and you're thinking about it.
3 00:30:44
So my question was, what do you think is the solution to getting people to enter into these uncomfortable situations? Because I feel the same way. And so does everyone, first of all, it's easy to walk through the door when you can read the sign on it. So when it says something that you agree with, like, let's imagine this is an idea door, easier to walk through it. If you already have a stake in it, that seems similar to the group, but your answer it seems is like to maintain curiosity. And I'm wondering if you would be willing to spit about how we might reinvent, devise an individual, to be more curious than like self conscience. I don't know. I find that there is this, unfortunately for me, I don't want to say it's universal, but I know I'm not alone. A sort of seeming self-consciousness that makes me more easily complacent with something that I know, because I don't want to betray some ignorance by encountering something that I don't, but of course it's impossible for everyone in the world for every models to align.
3 00:31:33
It's impossible for everyone to know everything. So how can we incentivize the way that human beings, curiously approach the world? If you have
2 00:31:41
No question. Well, my favorite things to talk about, and I do have a lot of thoughts on this and I'll just speak from my own personal experience. About one way that's helped me is the concept of complexity and the idea of complexity science. When you start to learn about these things, it's impossible not to see complexity everywhere. And, and when you start to think about your own complexity and then you look at another person, it just opens a world. If you, if you see this person as another complex individual, it's just opens this whole nother world and allows you, the patients that you need to kind of cultivate the curiosity to say, wait, okay, this is someone else who has a whole different world.
2 00:32:24
And I can kind of listen for a moment and try and understand that a little better, but I really think that it begins with complexity. And there's actually this really cool project, I guess, was just a website, but it's called the dictionary of obscure sorrows. And he put together these terms to describe ideas that he didn't really see represented awards elsewhere. I'm just going to have to look up the one that I'm trying to remember in a dictionary of obscure sorrows. And it's the word Saunder, and it's the realization that each random Passerbuys living a world in a life as vivid and complex as your own, which I just absolutely love. I read that. And I remember seeing that across books that I was reading afterwards, and it's just kind of come back to me.
2 00:33:05
And so trying to hold the complexity of the other in this kind of position of not knowing has been one way that I have tried to cultivate that Sandra of course
3 00:33:14
Means the passer-by right. The pastor is five. And so a somewhat clumsy transition to the conceit of this podcast. I wonder if we should consider the stalkers or the institutes Sonder as they attempt to understand the complexity of the alien species that didn't even notice them before they littered all over the planet and left us with a lot of civilization changing impactful technologies. So let's talk a little bit about what that means. I don't know if you've occupied the position of Sonder outside of this way that you just described it, which is the truth of the matter. But I wonder if we could talk about how it might sort of speculatively be applied towards an extra terrestrial species.
2 00:33:53
Yeah, absolutely.
3 00:33:55
You know, it's funny when you think of Saunder human to human is that there's at least a shared scale of complexity. There's a recognition there. So how do you begin to conceive of how complex something unseen could be? There's
2 00:34:06
A step we can use to get into that? I think because there are so many other forms of intelligence on our own planet that, you know, it's eye opening when you first realized, oh, that's another form of intelligence that I didn't consider before. And I think that topical example right now is a lot of people are looking at octopi differently because there's a lot of documentaries and, and really wonderful books coming out about how intelligent and just remarkable these creatures are. It's amazing because we're never learning that the animals or the trees around us are less intelligent or they're less well-functioning than we thought they were. We're always learning that they're more complex. And I think just starting to pay attention to those other intelligence on our planet, it's not that far leap to think about what life, what another intelligence might be life on another planet.
2 00:34:53
And, you know, it's easy to fall into the trap of saying, okay, well, this intelligence needs to look like I do. And that's my interpretation of what intelligence is, needs to speak. It needs to do these different activities, but no intelligence can be defined soca patiently. And that's really exciting thing. And we can kind of ease into that by just looking at all of the creatures around us, on this planet as intelligent beings as well. And just studying that, there's just so exciting.
3 00:35:23
You bring up a good point and this is something that FSI specifically, David Krakauer is very interested in and something like diverse intelligences. And so how can you re recognize the diversity of intelligent life on our own planet without immediately becoming comparable? Because that comparison is not helpful. It's not an advantageous practice. And so the octopus is a perfect example. It's neurons are distributed all over its body. It's tentacle as a smart as its mouth is as smart as his brain. And it's quite often thought of as like a proxy for alien intelligence, but then you think of collectives. For instance, you think about the way that individuals can almost sacrifice their bounded individuality towards a larger meaning of what individual can be in terms of what they produce.
3 00:36:04
And it's wild to see how much exists on this planet alone. Like this planet is full of alien.
2 00:36:10
You brought up collective intelligence too, because I mean, we're talking about how groups come together and speak and think together essentially, that's really where it is and where you have to think about the collective intelligence. Another way that complexity gives us kind of a weight into that field. I love the way David Krakauer talks about this. It's been so expanding for me to listen to his lectures on it. One more trying to engender that ability to work together and think together studying collective systems or groups of individuals is such an important thing to be able to apply to this. And I, you know, I think that's where a lot of sorts of science and in different collective dynamics studies are actually looking right now. There's no definitive answer for that, but I think just everyone navigating this and trying to suspend these ingrained kind of images of progress, where it's very self centered and opening it up to how does the group progress is just a different way of thinking.
2 00:37:06
That's so important when you get into these groups?
3 00:37:08
No, that's true. Kind of removing this unfortunate, but natural. I mean, I, you know, I want to give the human race a bit of a break. Like we've done a lot of extraordinary things and we can't help. A lot of that comes from a long practice of separating ourselves or placing ourselves a little on top of the planet that we occupy. Now. I think we're kind of coming back around and seeing the difference. We have this vanity, we have this anthropomorphism that prevents us or blinds us from recognizing that. And I see that dissolving every day. And I think that's really, really helpful. I'll link it in the show notes. I'm not sure if you've read this, but rack hour at all last year, put out a really interesting paper. That's redefining what the individual is. And among the variety of examples that he presents there is conversation about the apparent evidence that spider is used their webs quite often for computation.
3 00:37:51
So they will outsource memory to various parts of their webs. And then later they encounter a knot and it's like, oh, that's right. I have an insect on this other web. That's like two bushes down. And what that actually opens up is the idea that it's not even an individual on a piece of technology that it's created for its own survival. The web itself almost represents something like an ecosystem that the spider occupies as all the bushes that it connects to. And suddenly that becomes the individual. And I like that from this perspective of like a planetary galvanization funding, the proper science that give us a better understanding of the world that we occupied the universe that we occupy recognizing different forms of intelligence. If we consider ourselves back in the ecosystem, as opposed to over and above it and the big pony and way that we started.
3 00:38:34
But anyway, I think that you would find a lot of interest in that paper. It's very, it's very fun.
2 00:38:38
Yeah. I'm excited about that. I, one of the thing about this that you sparked when you, when you're talking about the covers work is the network itself is this way of representing information that it can hold so much more than the way that we typically do. So I mean, the example that I like is we like to operate in spreadsheets and you know, these, these neatly defined categories and columns, but that's not really the way that the world is. And it's not the way that we can apprehend the world. The more appropriate way would be through a network where you define things, relationally, you have these nodes and these connections between different nodes. When you talk about constructing things as a network that kind of takes on a life of its own.
2 00:39:19
When you look at the network, it has this dynamical evolution, and that happens with social networks. And we see that very clearly with the way that we interact with people studying these networks as kind of almost living intelligent organisms. It's such a interesting thing. And I think that that's a really exciting trend in science right now is moving towards a graph or a network based representation of things.
3 00:39:41
Yeah. I like that a lot. I think it graphical three-dimensional versus one dimensional, as you say, I think it's sort of the edge of the way that a lot of these disciplines are getting together right now. It's a very exciting time to be. Yeah. So maybe it's something like the physical representation of a network, visualizes, the importance of something like interdisciplinary collaboration. It's the perfect icon.
2 00:40:01
Yeah. Yeah. And allows you to see it. I see. In quotes, I guess, just because it allows you to witness it or observe or sense it in a different way, how that system moves and evolves.
3 00:40:10
Right. I think you're right. I see that. We're kind of, we're running out of time because I've been so curious about a lot of us. So, you know, I'm just going to kind of move us along and get to the question because I'm curious to see based on what we've discussed, maybe I can predict something. Maybe you have something coming totally from left field, but so I want to ask you Ryan at the risk of great personal injury, imprisonment, even death, what boundary navigating object do you hope to encounter from a zone?
2 00:40:36
I have been giving this a lot of, I'm a huge fan of the show. Thank you. It's such a great premise. And you did such a nice job with it. I've been giving this a lot of thought. And even before I was scheduled to be on the show, I was kind of taking notes about what I wanted to find the zone or what I wanted to talk about finding the zone that's evolved, and I'm going to hopefully help enlist you to help me kind of flesh this out a little bit. Let's do it. What I would love to find is something that relates to kind of a lot of traditions of, of mindfulness, where the quality of your attention kind of dictates the quality of your experience. And so I started to think about how do we apprehend someone else's attention or that, you know, the trace of that, what they were focused on, what they saw, what they were, what they wanted, what they feared while they were developing something.
2 00:41:24
And so the thing that kind of comes to mind for me is a very tangible example is just what people write in the margins of a book. So what if you came along to a book after someone else, I'd put it down and you started to read it and you had your own experience with it, but then you started these marginal notes, the marginalia, and that's such a, that's always been such a fascinating thing for me, for how people take notes and how they organize their thoughts. And so I would love to find some object that you could shine on something, and it would take you into that context. And it will kind of show you the marginalia of the creation of that object. You signed it on. So you could kind of see the process or the trace that was gone through by the creator of that object and empathetic way where it would allow you to draw, be drawn into the context and, you know, more accurately or more meaningfully connect with their, their mindset and creating them
3 00:42:19
Talk about that. Because when you first started describing it, I almost thought that it would be like a lineage of the marginalia over a single object, but then you said the creator. And so it almost seems, you know, obviously as you write drafts of things, as you create a piece of art, there are sketches that you make notes upon, or you edit things out, or you add things into the marginalia. It seems like you're looking for the creator's perspective on the piece of work itself. Like what motivates the final product? Is that a fair representation?
2 00:42:49
Yeah, I think so. What do you
3 00:42:52
Gain from seeing that sort of behind the scenes thought process instead of just encountering the intended object?
2 00:43:00
I think it's more about the intention of it and it's not about the finished product. I think it's more about the pathway towards that finished product and seeing all of the scratches out, the ways that it didn't end up being, which are, is so important. I feel like to understanding the creation of that, that object that eventually. And so I think it really is about holding together that history of the creation of it and all of the avenues that were not, that did not end up manifesting.
3 00:43:34
So can you imagine it's easy for me to, because you used the word marginalia or like, I use the word painting, it's easy for me to imagine something that's like a cultural item of art, but are there other things for which we don't usually think about creation? Like, could you point this either pointed at a life and you can see, I don't know, but that that's maybe too wiggly. Where else do you think you would gain information? You would you, for instance, I don't know, point that's at a piece of technology that's out in the, in the space and the ether between the sun and the earth. Where, where would you find effective use of this shining device?
2 00:44:07
Yeah. What if you pointed to that, I mean, an alien spacecraft, for instance, and saw all of the designs they went through before, that was the object that came out. I mean, it's almost like the reverse engineer of that laid out for you all the ways that were unsuccessful in designing that object and, and learning from those mistakes prior to making them well, I guess would be one way, but yeah, that's an interesting question. I haven't given that a ton of thought to that.
3 00:44:37
It's not even, you would find the mistake so to speak, it's almost, you would find these temporal what, what's the opposite of optimal, like suboptimal, like south optimality, that seemed to be reflection of the time, right? Because we can see youth that spaceships. So now I'm thinking about like the Apollo project and the elimination of shuttles altogether, and the way that our spaceships that are sending people into space now today, the way they look compared to what we started with, which was like a canvas, a ridiculous canvas, but you might get to see what the context of the time was in an effort to sort of get your head around what, why that suboptimality existed. So I like that. And then the other thing I really like about this device is that the thing about the zone is that it's not like only one type of device exists within it.
3 00:45:23
There are hoops, there's slime, there's the empties. I'm hoping that this is one of many devices because it almost seems like you could shine this on the devices that all of our past guests have brought and we'd get a better sense of its intended application.
2 00:45:37
Yeah. It's also kind of this reverse process too. Whereas when you create these counterexamples for yourself, it teaches you so much about your thought process and things. And so this device could be something that kind of reflects back in a way on ourselves and helps us understand better our own thought processes. And so that's why I like the relationship to writing because I believe it was Joan Didion or, I mean, there's so many excellent quotes about writing, but she wrote that she writes entirely to understand what she was thinking. And so partially this object could be, I want to see the thought process and the construction and pathway process of this thing. So I can better understand my own evolution to that,
3 00:46:16
Right. Or if you could see the sort of intended development or how, you know, there's this intended final product, you start with something and all the changes that get you to the thing that's published for consumption. If you know the item, let's say before you shine this object on it, you would eliminate, if anything, your own prejudice is your own limitations and blind misses. I don't mean prejudice in the, in the very heavily connote of way, but just literally the way that we pre-judge our world based on our existence and our a priori knowledge, you would learn a lot about yourself in the same way that Joan suggests in the writing process.
2 00:46:47
There's a cool parallel. Just bringing it back to kind of the academic literature field, where any person who publishes a paper will tell you that what is actually on the page there for people to discover, it's just this tiny fraction of what they learned, what they did, where they thought during this process. For me, it's always almost been this kind of painful process of publishing. And how can you provide more information, more insight into that process and enter into a conversation with the audience over this research artifact. And so that was another route that calls me thinking about this a little bit and in a way I think that is really exciting right now that's changing is the idea of open science, where we're just presenting so much more of what we do to the audience and allowing to be this ongoing conversation.
2 00:47:30
So I do see this as an object that is conducive to creating better connection, better conversation around it. Well,
3 00:47:37
I'm so glad you brought up up in science because I was about to bring up this desire that I have for science. And so I was thinking, you were saying, this is a shining device. And I was thinking about when I was a kid, how exciting it was when you, your parents took you to a magic shop and you got invisible ink and you could write secret messages and then you shine the UV light on it. And you could see only the, you see what I mean? So this feels to me like there's the object that can be sensed by anyone who doesn't have this device, but then the holder of the device sees the marginalia and gets to put together it's sort of evolution over time to be what it turns out to be. And I was thinking about, I think about this constantly, what's missing from scientific publication. What I would love to see what I would like to shine my device on. And it's something that is a jokey term, but I call it something like hypothesis instead of the hypothesis.
3 00:48:21
So it's like, you're doing an experiment and you have this foundational knowledge from all of your past work and all of the work of your predecessors. And so you expect that this is going to happen. You expect that these chemicals are going to behave in predictable and boring ways. And so you write that in your hypothesis, but then the invisible hypothesis is like, but it would be so cool if it was totally anomalous and I could repeat it over and over again, it would be so cool if the last thing I ever expected came to be, or I'm hoping my hypothesis is correct because of this particular impact I'd like to see out in the world, right? The motivated intention that drives scientists to continue to investigate specifically what they intend to investigate. I want that I want the soul behind the human, you know?
2 00:49:02
Yeah, yeah. I love the idea of that hypothesis. I mean, it's like a, it's a good dream journal for your science. That would be, yeah, that'd be fantastic to have that written down somewhere
3 00:49:13
And it wouldn't necessarily come at the cost of the rigor of the scientific method. I don't think it should be held against you. I mean, unless it let them for evil purposes, which I don't think would ever be honestly revealed, but I just think that it's in terms of open scientists, this sort of like emotive, empathic capacity to recognize what's actually inspiring individuals to spend their lives doing these things.
2 00:49:35
Yeah. And we talked earlier about how do you cultivate curiosity? You have to get rid of some of the constraints that are the normal way of interacting and being vulnerable with what you hope to find would be one way of doing that, stepping outside of these strictures of the scientific publication and saying, okay, so I'm a human being. And I love this research for these reasons. And that's kind of the hopes of this. And I think so many people will relate to that. It can make scientific research, more of a meeting place rather than kind of an adversarial environment and that it sometimes becomes over publications, at least.
3 00:50:09
Yeah. That's funny. It's like the Coliseum, you know, I totally agree. So then let me ask, I sort of asked a, a worst version of this question earlier, but just given your interests, what you read, what you listened to, what you watch, what you engage with animals and the ecosystem, et cetera, you have this device. If you could shine it at anything, what you most like to know, like what would you most like to have revealed to you?
2 00:50:31
That's a big question right now. I would love to shine it at one of the books that I cherish. So I love Jorge Luis Borges, just unraveling his mindset and writing some of these stories would be incredible. And, and there's, there's so many examples of books that, that I would love to shine this at. And just, I wonder what kind of pre of people will be brought into that. It wouldn't just be the author of course, but it would be the author and all the books, the author read and the books that they wrote into the margins of it would just be so interesting to try and trace that. So I guess I'll leave it at that. And I'll, I'll be thinking about that. I think,
3 00:51:07
No, I think that's fantastic. I think blur has, is. I mean, I don't know an amazing first choice, like given just how that man is a mystery. And yet I keep attempting with every reading to find meaning or new meaning, et cetera. And also he's a big inspiration for one of my favorite, my very favorite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So I can imagine trying to navigate the Macondo family history with this would be very helpful and then seeing where the bore heads came in and where others. So I think borderlands is a brilliant choice. I can't imagine a better first choice. So really well done. Okay, cool. So we're getting towards the end of time, you know, that I've introduced a new question through this podcast, largely inspired by your five cuts Fridays.
3 00:51:48
So actually if you want to talk a little bit at five o'clock Fridays before I asked you this question, that way our audience knows where they can find it.
2 00:51:54
Yeah, sure. I've usually posted to Instagram and Twitter. My Twitter is aerospace engineer, and I think within those in the show notes, but then also I posted on Spotify under our McGranahan as the username. And basically faculty Fridays is just something that started with my brother a decade ago, where we were just, we took every Tuesday and we called it Tuesday at the time where we would just share a new artist that we had discovered this was in the area where we were actually UCDS. We would send CDs to just like a physical CD talking about an alien object. Yeah, exactly. It makes no sense anymore, but we would share CDs with each other. And so now it's kind of evolved to this thing where I just do a non committal five song playlist that I curated every week that's been going on for the past two and a half years or so.
2 00:52:38
And so you can actually get all the past five to five hours, you can just pay attention to the ones that come out each Friday, but it's just a way of sharing music and a different way of connecting with people.
3 00:52:46
Yeah. And it would be curious if we had this device to shine it on this five cup Friday and try to figure out what you're thinking about this week. That is the like tethering theme. Sometimes you give the theme away. Sometimes it's a little bit of a mystery.
2 00:52:55
It's like an Easter, right. I'm glad you picked up on it.
3 00:52:58
Yeah, no, I think it's great. And so, as a result of us conversing about five cup writers, and I think what it reveals about the people that you converse with, because constantly you want to talk about art and film and science and, and, and cultural artifacts that are meaningful to you in a way to get your models to match. I've been trying to ask our guests if I recall too, if I remember to, to think about two songs that might motivate them in their pursuit of an object in the zone, and you can approach it any way you want. I always thought it would be a very focused entry and a very like motivated exit, but you have an entry song and you have an exit song. That's going to get you to the object that you desire, but it's also going to get you out of the zone safely. What do you think at least today those two songs would be?
2 00:53:40
Yeah. Yeah. It's just something that would change every day. I think with the pump up song one, that one song that's always pumping out has been taught on indolence by the of brothers. I don't know why it's just got such a, such a movement to it. So that might be my pump-up song. Okay. In terms of the focused song, this is something that has been kind of changing nonstop. I want to say that it would be a Jimmy Hendrix song from kind of one of the longer blues albums, like band of gypsies or machine gun comes to mind as the specific song kind of as long, but not necessarily calm song kind of has this energy to it, which I think would be important as you enter and exit the zone.
2 00:54:26
So, so maybe that would be my choice today. Yeah. That's a tough one to limit down to though.
3 00:54:31
No, I know it's like the desert island tracks. If you ask me any given day, my five albums switch up occasionally, I mean more or less there's one, but five is a lot. Two is not very many. So I think this is appropriate too well. Okay. So great. It sounds like Jimmy Hendrix got you out of the zone with your device, which I would use in implication for the same piece of art. So thank you. Finally allowing me to wrap my head around the labyrinthian consciousness that is foreheads. And thank you so much for taking an hour of your time to view in the alien crash site.
2 00:55:00
No, I thank you. And thanks for doing this podcast. I'd love it every week. It's such a cool premise and you do a good job with it. So thanks.
3 00:55:06
Thank you so much. Okay, great. So you and I are obviously going to remain in touch. I will be talking to you shortly, so until then have a lovely week. And thank you again.
2 00:55:14
All right. Thanks so much. Okay. Bye. You too.