Fu*k Shakespeare
ET: Is There Anybody Out There?
Is There Anybody Out There?
My latest podcast guest was the astrophysicist Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute, which stands for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.
Seth believes that there’s intelligent life in the cosmos, and that we are likely to find it in the next few decades.
I found my way to Seth through my previous guest Peter Ward, a paleontologist who studies life at time scales of millions and billions of years. Peter considers life on Earth to be special, and a complete fluke. Seth challenges Peter’s view that life on earth is unique.
During our conversation about life on earth, Peter had mentioned the famous Drake Equation, which I went deeper into with Seth. The equation, which I explain below, provides a basis for estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the cosmos, and looks like this:
Number of civilizations = Number Of Habitable Planets × f(life) × f(civ) × f(now)
The first part of the equation, the number of habitable planets, is the easiest part of the equation to estimate. The other components – the fraction that could support life, the fraction that could have developed civilizations, and the fraction of them still in existence – are harder to estimate
While coming up with the estimates is difficult, Seth’s position, that the number of civilizations out there is not zero, is based on what he calls “the principle of mediocrity,” which says that if you think you’re special, you’re probably wrong. He points to several examples in the history of science where this principle has proved to be true. Prior to the Copernican revolution, for example, we believed that Earth was special, that it was immobile, at the center of the universe and all celestial bodies revolved around it. As another recent example, Chomsky’s assertion that language is what makes humans special and different from other animals seems similarly questionable.
One of the questions I often ask my guests is their advice to young people, and especially, whether they’d recommend their area of study to them. Is it taking off or ready to take off? Seth is hugely optimistic about astrophysics and astrobiology, an area that is drawing increasing interest. My sense is that with advances in instrumentation, data collection, and Artificial Intelligence, this could be a golden age for these domains. I wouldn’t be surprised to see doctoral dissertations in the near future trying to put AI to use in order to find aliens. Indeed, this seems to be a golden age for science in general, especially at the intersection of the biological and information sciences.
One of the things I really enjoy in doing these podcasts is getting to the know the personality of my guests. I begin to get a sense of it during correspondence prior to the recording where we plan the agenda, but the conversation itself is where I feel I get to know the human side of these very accomplished people. With Seth, I couldn’t but feel that he would have had a good shot at a career in comedy. One of his lines that gave me a big chuckle was:
Most stars get brighter as they get older, but very few humans seem to share that path.
Truedat. His humor is so dry it could start a fire.
So, check out my conversation with Seth at:
https://bravenewpodcast.com/episodes/2024/07/11/episode-85-seth-shostak-on-extraterrestrial-life/
Home, Home Again, I Like to Be Here When I Can
I was back in Kashmir for an annual family ritual started by an ancestor in 1836 who found a “Shiv Ling” – (a massive stone phallus which is the symbol of Shiva) at the bottom of its main river. He erected a temple around the phallus, and ever since, on a specific full moon during the year, family members get together and celebrate their ancestors and some of the major Hindu deities. We’ve been gathering in this way every year since I can remember. Even as Islamic militancy smoked my community out of Kashmir in 1990, our ritual has gone on uninterrupted, including its worst years in the mid-90s.
For the last twelve years, we’ve been inviting a delightful and exuberant Kashmiri pandit to fly in from Delhi to perform the ritual. He usually brings along his Sanskrit tomes from which he recites singsong verses as we toss ghee, dry fruits, paddy, and flower petals into a big fire. But this year, as you can see in the picture, he had the verses on his iPhone! Tech meets ritual. Pandits are going high tech.
Talking about tech, business leaders clearly need to get their act together when it comes to AI. I’m seeing mostly confusion and inaction. There are so many areas that are screaming for attention. Here’s an example. My niece came to Kashmir from Delhi for the family ritual and soon realized that she was missing her wallet. She figured she must have dropped it on the plane. She spent two frustrating days trying to chase it down. All she wanted to know was the airline’s process for dealing with such cases, for which she spent a whole nervous day trying countless menu options to reach a human being on the line, and when she finally did, the agent was of little help.
This is a no-brainer problem for AI. All one should have to do is ask an interface like GPT for the ‘lost-and-found’ policy, and how to return home without requiring physical ID when one loses it. How hard is that? I can imagine GPT responding to my niece’s question with something like “the policy of Indigo Airlines is to keep items at their lost and found counter at the airport of origin. Oh, by the way, I’ve found your wallet. It’s in Delhi. Collect it on your way back. In the meantime, copies of the following IDs will suffice for travel without requiring physical documentation.”
CEOs, get your AI act together.
Shakespeare and The Odd Couple
My brothers and I have maintained my father’s home in Kashmir since he passed away ten years ago, specifically for continuing our yearly tradition. I stay in my father’s room while I’m there, and even though I don’t believe in spirts, I continue to feel his presence there, and I remember all the jokes and laughter we shared. He was my sole parent for 42 years, during which time we became extremely close and engaged in a lot of humor and word play, and developed our own unique language. “Monkey,” for example, came to mean “two” and “marshal” meant “ten”, so “monkey marshal” meant “ten past two.” No one else could understand us.
Roughly twenty years ago, my two brothers, who live mostly in Delhi, informed me that an urgent and sensitive family situation had developed about which they had strong emotions. They suggested that I fly over and discuss it with him since they weren’t sure they could control their emotions and might say the wrong thing. So, I flew to Delhi. One of my brothers decided to accompany me to Kashmir, but I was concerned that he might derail the conversation by intervening. So, I suggested a strategy based on one of my favorite episodes of the old comedy series, “The Odd Couple.”
In the show, Tony Randall plays a neat freak called Felix Unger, and Jack Klugman plays a messy slob called Oscar Madison. In one episode, Oscar meets a woman he becomes crazy about. Felix tells him that he will surely lose her once she sees how messy he is. “I’ll do anything to keep her,” says Oscar, and pleads with Felix to help him figure out a way. Felix suggests hypnosis as his only hope. So, Oscar agrees to try hypnosis, where the following line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves” makes Oscar say “Shakespeare,” and snaps him into a hypnotic state where he becomes an uber neat freak. Another snap of the fingers returns him into his normal messy state. You’ve got to watch the episode.
On my arrival in India, my brother and I agreed that I would do all the talking, and that he would remain silent. If he did say anything, I would say “Shakespeare” and he would shut up. He agreed.
Sure enough, five minutes into the conversation, my brother, unable to control himself, interrupted. Before he could complete his sentence, I said “Shakespeare,” and he shut up.
“What was that?”, asked my father, somewhat puzzled. “Nothing,” I said, and we carried on.
A few minutes later, the conversation became a little emotional. Again, my brother couldn’t contain himself. But before he could even speak, I said “Shakespeare!”, and he stayed silent. My father was puzzled by this cryptic exchange, but I coaxed him to continue our conversation.
This time we talked for a good ten minutes, and some disagreements arose. Once again, my brother couldn’t contain himself and interrupted. So once again, I used the code word.
“Fuck Shakespeare!”, he blurted. That was the end of his silence. So much for the best laid plans.
Later, when I shared the code word with my father, he was highly amused, and Shakespeare became an important addition to our family lexicon. It’s so much better than telling someone to shut up. I can think of many times when the word became handy. In recent times, the scope of the word has expanded to other situations where a code is more effective than the real words. For example, if my fly is ever down, my partner says “Shakespeare.” Her daughter has also adopted it recently, as in, “we have a Shakespeare situation!”
If enough people adopt it, maybe it will make its way into the English dictionary, as in, a code word used in conversations to replace less desirable phrases, such as shut up, or your fly is open.
Until next month.
V.