These elements scatter into gas clouds that then collapse and form nextgeneration star systems, one of which was ours. So the very ingredients that comprise life are traceable to stars. So they gave their lives billions of years before we arrived. Rose so we are stars . So we are not only figuratively but quite literally star dust. Let us consider that human beings are above all a biological species in a biological world. We live in a razorthin layer of the atmosphere within which life can exist and to which we as a species are exquisitely welladapted. So if, when we get this understanding of where we are and what we are and where we came from, well be better prepared to decide where were going. Rose Neil Degrasse tyson and e. O. Wilson, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Neil Degrasse tyson is here. Many know him as the most powerful nerd in the universe. He calls himself simply a servant of science. She the long time director of the Hayden Planetarium in new york and host of a new talk show on the National Geographic channel called star talk, it combines science, culture and comedy to help bring the universe down to earth. I am pleased to have Neil Degrasse tyson back at this table. Welcome. Thank you, charlie. Rose when did you know what you wanted to do is be an astrophysicist. At age 9, the first visit to the hand planetarium. Rose that did it for you . That put it in my veins. I think the universe called me and not i that called it. I thought, wow, of course, growing up in the bronx, there arent many stars visible anywhere in new york, especially not the bronx at the the time. So the sky and the planetarium was magical. I thought it was a hoax. Ive seen the sky from the bronx, and this is not it, therefore it must be a hoax, not knowing, of course, its portraying the real sky. By age 11, then i had the answer that i had the answer to that annoying question that adults ask children, what do you want to be when you grow up. Rose and your answer was . Astrophysicist. That ended the conversations pretty quickly. Rose have you ever wanted to write a Science Fiction novel . Yes. However, i dont have talent writing. I wish i did. Rose but off story . I have a story, its ready to go laughter rose it just needs a good writer. Ive got a good story and i could advice on such a story but in terms of Character Development and emotions, i dont have tex persons, t you know a story that would be compelling . I have one in mind right now. Im happy to tell it. Rose okay, tell me. Okay. The world is at war. Rose the world we know is at war . The world we know is at war and, in some very disruptive way, not with large weapons, but regional battles everywhere, and people are choosing sides. Then an astroid is decovered. Rose tell us what an astroid is. An astroid is a craggy chunk of rock varied in sizes, countless tens of thousands of them, probably hundreds of thousands of them. In the orbit between mars and jupiter, most of them, some have wayward orbits, they cross the orbit of the earth, some in thousands. You learn earth and the astroids will collide with one another guaranteed eventually. So we want to keep track of all the earthcrossing objects and monitor them. Ideally, you want to put lojack on them. Its 10 00 p. M. , do you know where your killer astroid is . Once you do that, we learn there is an astroid that could render us all extinct. As that moment, everyone who sees other humans as their enemy come together and see the astroid as their Common Energy and the technology that has been developed around the countries in the world, countries are now technologically able and they have been developpic technology to fight wars rose they develop a common front against the astroid. Not only that but we need different pieces of technology for the deflection device. Rose you could make this as a real possibility. Yes, so the science would not only be in the threat of the astroid and finding and searching it, the Space Mission to deflect it, the tools to use to engage that deflection, if something doesnt exist, you can go into the laboratories, you can see the pressure on them to invent something that works, you find out i have a piece of this but i have to go to my enemy who invented another piece for it to come together and make everything work. So it can be quite dramatic. Maybe we can have a little piece of the astroid to work, you have to flood the city, otherwise hollywood doesnt buy it in. Armageddon, they managed to save earth but pieces hit the earth. The astroids have good aivment one decapitated the chrysler building. They were aiming for human monuments. They will probably hit the ocean. You probably get to destroy the cities with a tsunami. Rose the last big astroid that hit the earth two years ago, one the size of this studio traveling 40,000 miles an hour collided with earths atmosphere above a town in the euro mountains. Rose what happened if it hit the center of Manhattan Island . Well, so that that happened to explode about 20 miles up, okay, 20 or 25 miles up, and thats high enough so that energy gets deposited into the atmosphere and dilutes before it reaches earths surface. But even so, that was enough shock wave to shatter essentially every single window in the city, while people were looking out the window to wonder what the light was they had just seen. Light travels father than sound. So they see the bright light, the light of the explosion, look out the window, the shock wave comes, lacerated faces, hands, skin, 1600 people injured. That was a shot across our bow, the universe asking us, hows your Space Program coming . laughter so if that happened over manhattan, it would have, now, in manhattan, you have a different problem when you shatter windows because they fall and become these sabers, sharp sabers descending to the street, possibly hurting or killing people, pedestrians. Rose have the United States or any other country done a lot because theyve learned the lessons from the astroid two years ago . More people are talking about it burks that astrode we didnt know was coming till it was too late. You might have three minutes evacuation time. That one is not large enough to catch it far away. Rose and if we detect one far enough away, we shoot it down or something . No, thats macchio. Are you a macho man . Rose no. Blow theer ou sucker out of the sky laughter rose how do you deflect it . There are interesting plans. Knot hack funded to make it happen. One thing is you take your spaceship, and if thats the astroid, you can bring your spaceship nearby and park it there and theyll feel one another and want to drift towards one another because of mutual gravity but you dont let that happen. You fire retrorockets to prevent that and the act of doing that slowly tugs the astroid out of harms way. Yousdont have to destroy it. Just make sure on its route it doesnt hit earth anymore. Its there to hurt you another day, but if you get good at this, its like shooting pool cues. You knock them out of the way. Rose so thats one of the theory shthetheories . Thats one way. You dont just go and blow things out of the sky. Here in america, were good at blowing stuff up and let good at knowing where the pieces will go when youre done. So its very messy to try to explode the astroid. What you dont know will break into two pieces now you have to evacuate both coasts . Its a challenge. The the engineers have worked this out, but there is no plan in place, no International Collaboration in place to fund. This suppose it head ford the indian ocean. Do you tell all the indian ocean countries, oh, you have to defend yourself . If we have the most advanced Space Program at the time, should we pay for it . Do you tax everyone as part of their gdp, the way the membership at the u. N. Is taxed, and hand the money to the most able country who can deflect it . Heres another one, lets say it heads for the United States and we deflect it, it fails and now its going to hit europe. Now what do you do . So all these problems. Rose we could put this in the movie, couldnt we . Exactly. Youre still thinking hollywood. Rose no laughter whats the most important question thats unanswered glare. Thats a great question, and i have an unorthodox answer for you, okay. For me, the greatest question and it will sound like a copout, but its not. For me, the greatest Unanswered Questions are those questions we dont even yet know to ask because they only manifest upon reaching some next frontier of ignorance. So, yeah, i want to know what dark matter is, its 85 of the gravity of the universe. We have no idea whats causing it. We shouldnt even we dont even have the right to call it a dark matter. We have top people working on this with top equipment. So i get that, but at this moment, we dont know what it is, and it doesnt interact rose and whats the most likely answer . I have a preferred answer. Rose whats the preferred answer . Thats my preferred answer. Particle physicists, they want to say its a particle because the particle physicists if you want to be a particle you grant mass to other particles. I grant the mass you will measure for it. So theres dark energy, the universe is accelerating in expansion against the wishes of gravity, we dont know whats causing that. We dont know how you went from organic molecules in the early earth to animated life. Thats a transition thats on the frontier. Rose say that again. How do you go lifeless organic molecules. Rose which is chemistry . Yeah, organic chemistry, to selfreplicating life, based on the organic molecules. Molecules. Were not there yet and we dont know what was around before the big bang. So we have top people working on it. And ill put you on my speed dial if you want to know the latest. Rose what is dark matter. We dont know. Rose we dont know that. We should call it dark gravity. Rose thats one of the Big Questions, though. Yes, it is. Rose and the other one dark energy, we dont know what that is. Rose okay. It was around before the big bang. Rose what was the big bang . Well, the beginning of the universe. Duh. laughter if you turn the clock back, what you will notice about the universe is that it was smawrnlr and hotter, for every day you turn the clock back. So you run the clock all the way back and you learn that the entire universe was in the same place at the same time, and at extremely high temperatures, in the trillions. You know, trillion is the highest number anyone has any comfort with, but temperatures much hot than that. So when you have these temperatures, the thing is unstable and it explodes, so you have the birth of our universe. We dont know what was around before that. Rose so from the university we have to know what happened in chemistry to make dna. Yeah, because im an astrophysicist. I know we have life and ive got that but all those are very real questions we ask today. If you can answer that, dish out the nobel prizes. I want to know what questions were not even intellectually ma chiewf enough to ask yet. They will reveal themselves after weve answered the questions we put on the table. Rose has a new question revealed itself in the last 15 years . Yeah, dark energy was discovered in 1998, 17 years ago burks its still a big mystery. Rose who discovered it . Two teams. Theyre measuring super novae. A particular species of super novanova, theyre potent to meae the expansion and size of the universe. Two teams, one in california and one on both coasts were working on the answer and shared the nobel prize for that recently. Rose are we alone . My best guest is the universe is teaming with life, and our galaxy, in particular. Our galaxy is sort of proxy for other galaxies, is teaming with life, but that complex life might be much rarer. Rose why is that . Well, heres the argument. You have the time line of the earth. Earth is born. This is today. Thats 4. 5 billion years. Put this planet out there, some are born yesterday, some at the beginning of the universe. You dont know when in the time line of the planet you will land there. Heres earth. Throw a dart at the time line. Most the time the dart hits earth, there is only singlecelled life. Then we have the cam bringian explosion of life. Oxygen is rocket fuel for complex life and life now has the Carte Blanche to become complex because the system can support it, and you get limbs and detecters like, and sensors and its a Stunning Development in the fossil record of life on earth. Then you have complex life. So thats a smaller piece of the title timeline. You ask when do you find intelligent life . Thats this last little bit that we define as intelligent. So if earth is any measure of anything, throwing darts at planets that we might land on, who is to say that were going to land right at that moment where what we call intelligence has arise noon whats on mars . The rover is on mars, im happy to report. The curiosity rover is the size of an suv. Rose so whats up there . Well, mars is curious rose water . Well, the martian surface has rampant evidence of there once having been running water. Rose so that says something. Yes. What i mean by evidence, i mean really awesome evidence. Like there are river beds that meet dried, meandering river beds. The things, if you fly over the midwest and you look at the things that flood waters have done and longtime rivers have done, cut into the landscape, the grand canyon kind of things you see all the telltale features. Rose when do we see them . Anytime we take a photograph of its surface. Rose we could have known that without going there . Uh. The resolution is very hard to pick up. Thats hard. You want to get close, then you can see ridges and valleys and mountains rose so that tells you water was there . Yes, or a liquid. Were pretty sure it was water, but it certainly was a liquid. To meander a river means the river was there a long time. You dont meander overnight. And dry lake beds with salt deposits at the bottom. How do you get salt deposits . From standing water that had minerals in it. When theres no water left, youve got a salt lake. You fly over utah, thats what Salt Lake City is sitting next to. Rose should we go to as far as. Yeah, why not . Rose if its feasible and doable. People say, oh, the radiation we have clever engineers. I have no doubt theyll figure out all the technological problems. Its just money. Rose really . Its only ever money at all times. Rose are you extremely disappointed we dont donor in space . The curiosity part of me is disappointed, but the politically astute side of me fully understands why thats the case. Rose because we have other priorities . No. Weve always had other priorities. Thats a false excuse. When we went to the moon, we had plenty of other priorities. There was a civil rights movement. There was the hot war in southeast asia. The cold war with the soviet union. The campus unrest rose we did it for p. R. We did it because we were at war with the soviets. That was an act of war, essentially, without the weapons, and if we were not at war, the motivation to go to the moon, we would tell ourselves, oh, we went to the moon because were americans and were explorers and its in our dna okay, that might be true but the people who write the checks dont care about any of this lofty speech. Its is your security at risk . We will spend any amount of money to protect that, and thats when money flows like rivers and we went to the moon in that climate. Rose but should we create that urgency again for Something Like going to the moon . You know what i joke about . Rose no. I say, let me go visit china and whisper to the head of china, pssst u want to put military basess on mars . Dont tell anybody then that memo shows up in the pentagon, we will be on mars in ten months, one month to design, build and fund a spacecraft, and nine months to get there with the astronauts. Thats how motivated we will be because i think thats how note violated we were in the 60s. I want to go to mars for military reasons. Its more subtle and takes slightly long than the proverbial elevator ride you have to save up for your member of congress. This takes maybe twice as long as an elevator ride, and im thinking i voted for my representation in congress, i want them to listen to me for longer than an elevator ride. So its simple if youre going into space in a big way, visiting astroids, mining astroids, tourist jaunts to the moon, science on mars, youre doing all these activities, might be military activities, all of this, to accomplish this will require advancing a space frontier. You will be inventing, innovating, patents will be granted and you will have these discoveries weekly if not daily in your newspapers that that infuse as culture of inquiry, of exploration, of innovation, and when you come from a culture of innovation, stuff gets solved because your whole mindset is different. Rose do you believe weve lost the culture of innovation . Yes, its been gone since we stopped going to the move. Rose Silicon Valley is a great culture of innovation. Yes, it is a great culture of innovation burks i was misrepresented in headlines when i said i gave a talk and in response to a question, someone says what do you think of them . And i said the world has problems that are bigger than can be solved than waiting just for your next app. We have problems in transportation, housing, poverty, disease, energy, climate, and, so, these are huge problems, and if we all sit down and play with our apps, theyre not going to get solved. Thats what i head. The headline was tyson attacks entrepreneurs saying theyre like cave men. Rose what did you mean . What i mean is, to bask in the measures of your next app will hide from you the fact that there are larger problems that need to be solved. Rose which raises the question of all these people like jeff basos and elonmusk and Sir Richard Branson that want to create some kind of vehicles in space dont laugh at me. No, no, im not. Somebody has to do that. Whether or not they will succeed you want somebody there doing that, and they affect how other people i think. Ive had students in my classes saying one day i want to work for spacex not wall street and get rich. They say, i want to explore what hes doing. I want to invent the new car, the new transportation system, the next rocket. That is the influence that im telling you infuses into a culture when you go into space in a big way. The space sets the carrot and Everything Else comes in after that. Rose is that part of your mission . I dont have a mission. I would rather stay home. Rose when you get up in the morning when i get up in the morning, i hope the phone doesnt ring. Rose why are you going to work . I want to play with my kids, have a play date with my wife, thats all i want to do, then i want to go to my lab. Rose are you serious . What happens in there is i get a phone call because iverse and they want a sound byte on the evening news or a documentarian has an idea they want to explore and i get a phone call, i serve those interests, i am a servant for the public appetite for the universe. Thats whats i do. I dont go door to door. You dont see me marching with placards. I will never tell someone who to vote for. Thats not what i do. Im an educator. Rose but are we losing the race, you know, to develop the brice mines in sufficient quality that we serve science as other people may come to serve science . A lot of focus is on who are the brightest students, can we get them interested in science and can they invent something to save the world . There will always be the smartest kids in the class, so im not really worried about them. Im worried about the rest of everyone else who is given the freedom to say to themselves and to others, i was never good at math ha ha ha or, science, thats not for me, im into this other stuff, and somehow be okay with that. Suppose i said to any other person, you know, i dont read because i was never good at nouns and verbs, i stick with science, you would laugh me out of the room. These are fundamental parts of civilization, the arts and the sciences, have defined civilization ever since there has been civilization. To separate yourself from one or the other and claim to be informed, as the good dr. Sagan said, that is a combustible mixture, especially if that kind of ignorance is in is wielded by people in power. So, for me, its sufficient to say let us spread an appreciation of science to everyone, if the people understand what science is, how it works and why it works, then you can vote intelligently on issues that involve scientific principals, on issues and you can tell who is telling truth and who is not and analyze it. Rose do we have too many scientific deniers and give too much prominence to those who wants to look the other way than science. There are some of those and dare i implicate some elements of journalism in this, because there is a journalistic ethos not to tell you what your ethos is, but as i understand it, and its been told to me, the journalist obligation while writing a story is to give equal column space to all size or half to one of each side. And if someone says the earth is round and someone says the earth is flat, at some point you will make the judgment that the flat idea is flatout wrong, im not giving them attention, were wages time and im not doing a service in my role of informing the public. So i think journalists are really smart people and theyre highly educated and curious, they have the curiosity that kids have that they still have as adults that the others branch of curiosity manifest in society, scientists and journalists, and thats a great thing to have, but at some point invest your brain energy to recognize when something is friend. Rose im sorry to have to tell you this, but you are a journalist. You are a journalist. You dont have to apologize. Rose no, im not. I host a talk show, so i cant say im not a journal snies not only that, youre in pursuit of questions. Yes, i agree im a journalist as a scientist who asks questions. The only part of the question we dont ask is the who. Were good at the when, where, what, how. But who moved the black hole, theres not an answer to that who. Rose do we know whats at the bottom of the black hole . No, but if you do a scientific equation rose some have no idea what that. Its a region of space where matter collapsed is such density that the gravity as matter collapses and gets dearns and denser the surface gravity gets hiring and higher, so if you stand there, you will weigh more and more, it will be hard for you to escape. At some point this blob of matter condensed so significantly that, for you to escape, you have to travel faster than the speed of light, which means light cant escape. If light cant escape, youre not getting out of this place. So its not only dark, its a hole. Its a hole in every direction you fall in, a threedimensional hole, its a black hole. One syllable, black hole, thats what it is. Rose how long have we known about the black hole . Einstein could have predicted their existence with his own equations but didnt, interestingly enough. Rose interestingly enough, why . Because he wasnt interested enough . No, no, no. To quote Stephen Hawken because i asked him directly over dinner, why didnt isaac newton maketies coffers with his own mathematics and equation that he invented . His response is einstein didnt come up with black holes you cant think of everything. laughter rose explain to me time travel. Its been suggested there might be some law of physics weve yet to discover that will prevent you from going backwards in time. Because think about it rose its been said maybe theres a law of physics that we have yet to discover that will declare without hesitation that thou shalt not go backwards in time because, if you do and you prevent your parents from meeting one another, unlike the terminator series where you have to kill people so that they dont mate, all you have to do is prevent them from having sex, and then whoever started the revolution is not there. Have them have sex ten minutes later than they would have, you give birth to a different person than who led the revolution burks then it wouldnt be the gorefest it turned out to be. Off paradox. A causality paradox. So that being said, we have no shortage of interesting ways to go forward in time. We can speed you up, send you on a spaceship you go very fast, your time ticks more slowly, not just your clock, and then the electronics in your digital watch i see you have, your physiology, everything about you will tick more slowly. You will age more slowly than your twin here on earth. You come back, you will be younger than your twin so you have effectively gone into the future. Thats one way to do it. You can also do it by in gravitational fields they portrayed this in interteller, the film gravitational fields have an effect on how your time ticks. The satellites farther away from the earths center than we are, their time ticks at a different rate than ours. Their time ticks the clocks on g. P. S. Satellites tick faster than clocks on rt but they send you the correct time. How do they do that . We knew advance about einsteins theory of relativity, so the g. P. S. Clocks are precorrected for the time change because of einsteins theory of general relativity and sends the correct time us to, other wise the times would separate from one other and you couldnt use g. P. S. Salts to tell you anything about where you are on teeter. Its not something we cherry pick by people who have political philosophies that differ from the truth. Rose tell me this thing about dust. You remember you told me on the 60 minutes profile about dust and energy not everyone collins out of 60 minutes not everyone comes out of 60 minutes profile better than when they went in laughter but thanks for your interest in my life and work. Rose but dust to dust, a composition of teeter an the eae dust in the human body. I want to leave america with a sense of basic, fundamental things that are the essence of science and your work and others. I think the single greatest gift that astrophysics has brought civilization is the discovery back in 1957 by four authors. No movies are made about them because its four of them, not just one, and we romanticize the lone researcher burning the midnight oil. This is four scientists working for a decade to get this result. They realized tell meant on the periodic they realized the elements on the periodic table owe their origin to thermonuclear fusion in the cores of stars, fusion, light elements under high temperatures coming together to make heavy elements. If they only stayed in stars, that would not be interesting, but these stars explode and scatter enrichment across the galaxy and this enrichment carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon all these elements scatter into gas clouds that then collapse and form nextgeneration star systems, one of which was ours. So the very ingredients that comprise life are traceable to stars. So they gave their lives billions of years before we. Rose so we are stars . So we are not only figuratively but quite literally tion of you, do you havee things you want to accomplish beyond being at the end of a phone where somebody has to ask a question and you give credibility to whatever their project is by giving them direction . Quickly, people have seen me on tv in so many ways, shapes and sizes, someone came up and said to me, whos your agent who puts you on tv . I said, my agent must be the universe because there is no human being thats doing this. One of my favorite quotes was uttered by horace mann, the educator, who said, be ashamed to die until you have scored some victory for humanity. And i want that on my epitaph. I want to be purr idea and i want that on my tombstone. Rose by ashamed to die unless you have scored some victory for humanity. That could be at any level. It could be raising kids that are responsible. That is a very broadlydefined victory. So i think you im not the first to say this at least leave the world a little better off for you having lived in it. Why not . Just its like, clean up your mess laughter and as youve cleaned up the room you just lived in, maybe leave a flower behind, something where people can come in and say, this is a slightly better place, and then we could all celebrate each of our existence in this world and not lament it or regret it. There is so much in the world that regresses civilization. Its sad. I wonder how far we would be, were it not for such forces that operate in this world. Rose thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Rose e. O. Wilson is here, one to have the worlds most distinguished natural lists and biologist, wrote two books, Pulitzer Prize winner and professor at harvard university. His new book grapples with fundamental questions the meaning of human existence. I am pleased to have e. O. Wilson back at this table as i always am. Welcome. Thank you. Rose tell me how you came to the meaning of human existence. Over a long, long route. I started my career as an evolutionary biologist. I actually invented that term. That makes another story, very interesting. But in the course of studying every aspect of the biology of ants, i became interested in the broad subject of social behavior, the biological origin of social behavior. I wrote a book entitled sociobiology and so on and other related books. Rose that became a bit continue versal . It did. That was in the 70s, though, and now its not controversial. But this led me to human behavior, inevitably. After all, we are social animals. Rose right. Eventually, you know, it just seemed logical where i found myself positioned to think about some of these Big Questions that philosophers and even religious scholars have largely abandoned, which are where do we come from, what are we and where are we going. Rose what does it mean to be human thats correct. Rose which is the meaning of human existence. Exactly. The point of view of combined science and humanities, were approaching the time now where the appropriate disciplines of science have learned enough and are moving enough in the right direction so they can connect with the best of the humanities to create a much better picture of who we are and where we came from than we ever had before. In fact, i would like to refer to it p whats happening or will happen shortly as the new enlightenment. Rose really . The time has come for us to renew. Rose find the new enlightenment in life. Yes, i think we are ready now. Rose help me define what it might be. The original period was primarily in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century in which philosophers and scientists, they didnt call them that at that time, but those who were called natural philosophers and the first scientists were in agreement that they were learning so much so fast that in sort order we would be able to combine all that knowledge and come to understand humanity in the light of the knowledge that we could acquire ourselves and not just rely on rose so much has come in so fast that it was time to step back and say what if we learned and what do we make of it . What happened was the old enlightenment failed away because of two developments. One was the romantic period of literature. Rose right. That came to dominate a lot of the english language. But also it was that signs could not deliver, not in the early 1800s, so its promise of actually contributing something fundamental to the question of what is the meaning of human existence, that faded away, and we had to wait for two centuries. Now, after a two centuries, i think were ready to ask those questions again with a lot more confidence. Rose also much more challenging because science has roared ahead and challenged traditional definitions of what it means to be human. Thats exactly right. Let me just say about this, too, it isnt just science thats the promise of connecting the humanities and renewing the quest, i think were close to finding the trail, but not just any science. For example, youre going to get nowhere if you ask an astrophysicist, an astronomer, youre going to get nowhere on this question if you ask a chest. Even me colleagues in molecular biology, were too far removed about what we need to know about where humans came from was a fit in the earths form and flora as a species that involved from something less human and prehuman into our present selfglorified form. Rose so where do we find the answers . Where do we find the answers . Let me list five disciplines where we are finding the answers and a couple may surprise you. We are finding them in evolutionary biology, which is advancing with the help of molecular genetics and other disciplines advance itself very quickly. The next one thats contributing and will contribute big time is brain science. Of course, that is now the subject of immense interest and intensity of research. But a third one, of course, as anyone would want to list, would be paleontology and archeology. You know, sort of segueing into each other. But then now comes the two surprises, would surprise people, i think, pretty much. Artificial intelligence and robotics. These are the branches of science and technology which are attempting, actually, to understand how the human brain works and, thereby, just what evolution has produced. Rose there are very wise people who are scared about the consequences of. This does it bother you . Not in the least. I just had the opportunity of meeting with six of the key figures in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. They had gathered to receive a prize, and i was there, and we arranged for a roundtable discussion on the present status of those subjects and, in my case, we were bringing in biological diversity, how is this going to affect the Living Environment of the world when we fill it with robots and changing our Consumption Patterns and so on. Rose and . And the answer is, this became an ancillary subject, are the robots going to take over . Thats a great story, and hollywood loves a great story, and they tell the story over and over again and the short answer is no n. Rose because . Because we have control. We are not going to allow even humanoid robots to rose well control it because we make sure we understand the danger of it and, therefore, we will put a barrier. Well bring it short. We havent begun to understand how the emotional centers, the core of our human nature, how they work. Were just locating them. Now the brain mappers rose in the last ten years, weve had progress. Rapid progress. But that being the case and we have an understanding that were just beginning to find where the subconscious centers are and how they feed into the white hot sense areas we call the conscious mind, we are not likely to try to duplicate that in robots, but if we were, were certainly not going to give the robots the chance to evolve. Rose if we could, were not giving it to them . Yeah. Rose thats very nice to say, but there is probably somebody out there somewhere who says, i dont want particularly want to follow e. O. Wilsons definition of where we should let the robots evolve to. I want to see how far we can take it. Well, you know, youre right. Thats the mantra of the tech no scientific a. J age. There will be no halting of any Scientific Investigation or potentially useful techology te, because it is the core of our human nature to want to explore and keep exploring, always, but there is a difference between the Mad Scientist whos invented a great neutron bomb on his own in his private laboratory and teams of scientists working that are needed to produce the ability of robots or art initial intelligence of any kind to mutate and to go through Natural Selection. I think those who make up the good stories for us in hollywood dont appreciate exactly what Natural Selection and artificial selection is. Rose i thought, here we go with the revered e. O. Wilson decided to say we are trying to create human life in too many ways in which we are trying to design human life. Thats what i thought you were going to say. So thats not an issue for you . No. Im glad you brought that up because this raises tissue of the humanities. I touch on a chapter called the allimportance of the rt of the reason i do that is consider that rational abilities and rational process in the engineering and the technology that emerges from that nevertheless is not human a fundamental human quality. The degree of capacity as unique to humans, but what is fund meant toll human polls fundamental to human policy, what makes us distinctive and gives humanity to us, may i use memetaphorically, our soul is in the emotions and were not going to tinker with those. Thats the core were trying to save. Rose do you avoid tinkering with that or do you say its impossible, the idea of the soul. No, i dont mean its impossible. Im just saying, when we finally settle down, if we do finally settle down before we wreck this planet, were going to come to understand that its the conglomerate and the complex intersection o interaction of our emotional process that makes us distinctive and is the core of our humanity. Rose our emotional process . Yes. Rose and what advancements are we making in terms of that emotional process . Just study. Rose just study . Just studying. Rose there are no landmark cases . Well, theyre landmark in the sense neurobiologists, you cant tell where they are from one month to the next, theyre moving so rapidly burks right at the moment, they have succeeded in locating quite a few centers for emotion and also centers for subconscious decisionmaking, and the idea is to learn about this as thorough learning process and what centers that is. But center by center, linkage by linkage, we are beginning to get a map of the earth, and then we will be able to map the emotions and move to testif the next pha. There is a nice term being used, and that is whole brain emulation. Emulate the whole brain but not exactly duplicate it . Whats the difference if we emulate it . We would we go if we emulate the human brain that would be different if we try to duplicate it . Well, thats a very good question, sir. But the emulation means the cog that depends on the decisionmaking that has emotionlike components to it is one of the goals of Artificial Intelligence. There is a kind of technology thats being developed, its secondary in importance to digital, you know, binary models, and that is called neuromorphics, that is computers actually designed to be analog and work a bit like the brain. So i suspect, in time, neuromorphic that is, Analog Computers to imitate the brain will come by and we will get the robots. Now i amway out beyond rose i like it. Good, fine. This is a good conversation. But the goal, i believe, is that we will have Computers Smart enough to perform the obvious task we want them to perform on the surface of mars and the middle of volcanos and so on. But we want them also to be able to make judgments that are appropriate for human need. So thats as far as we would want to take it. Rose lets assume you were thinking of doomsday yes. Rose is it more likely to have come often somehow what we do to the planet, or are we going to unleash something beyond our comprehension which will have a velocity of change that we never imagined . Both. Its a race amongst doomsdayers as to which will come first. Now we are above critical level in the concentration of the Climate Change components of the atmosphere, and scientists who are expert on these subjects, the real scientists, wonder and worry that there is some kind of a tripping, turning point rose a Tipping Point . A Tipping Point that could be catastrophic in nature and they can imagine scenarios. So we could do massive or catastrophic damage with the Tipping Point we didnt anticipate well enough, and were allowing the essential cause of that to go on and on, but we should be careful about Climate Change because that could create a catastrophe. But the other way is by the means of whimper, and that is what im beginning to concentrate all my energies on, and thats conservation of the biosphere, and not let these fishes become extinct a thousand times faster than before humans came because we dont know what happened with the biosphere if we destroy it. It could mean we wind down to a less controllable, less interesting and less productive planet, and that would be just kind of a dark age we could never emerge from. Rose okay, dr. Wilson. At is the meaning of human. Existence . Ill have to just because i know our time is limited just answer with a couple of general statements which i think carry the meaning of the meaning. Rose right. First is that history makes no sense without prehistory. Prehistory makes no sense without biology. Human existence is the result of a long series of evolutionnary and culture events, the cultural starting primarily when agriculture was discovered that led up to what we are today, and the meaning oork, then, is the c that goes back to the origin of our biological imperatives. Then i would say let us consider that human beings are, above all, a biological species in a biological world, that we live in a razorthin layer of the atmosphere within which life can exist and to which we, as a species, are exquisitely welladapted. So if when we get this understanding of where we are and what we are and where we came from, that well be better prepared to decide where were going. Rose e. O. Wilson, thank you. Thank you. Rose pleasure. Great to see you. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and other episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Man its like holy mother of comfort food. Ion. Woman throw it down. Its noodle crack. Woman you have to be ready for the heart attack on a platter. Man okay, im the bacon guy. Man oh, i just did a jig every time i dipped into it. Man 2 it just completely blew my mind. Woman it felt like i had a mouthful of raw vegetables and dry dough. Sbrocco oh, please. I want the Dessert First [ laughs ] i told him he had to wait