THC 42: Professor Jim Stein | The Paranormal Equation

00:04 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times. But what 30 and I do are different kind of far. For a new era of worldly freshness we offer a fresh conversation! I'm Greg Kurls on The Fireside Chat Welcome to the show, Irish Ed Chatters. Drinking a little drink, smoking a little smoke from San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood. I'd like to welcome back my good friend and occasional co-host Kyle Pruneville. Kyle let him hear you Hey everybody how's it going? I am pumped that we're doing this co-host thing now Kyle is gonna be the co-host every third show of the month and will release a weekly entry in his column conversations with The Other. I appreciate the commitment man I know it's not always easy to add something like this to a schedule so thanks

01:02 Yeah, I'm super excited about it too man. I've been following your show since the beginning Glad that in the adolescent stage. I was able to help you out early on but I just think the quality of what the show has become is a Really nice and I hope to contribute something a little more occult a little more Kind of like as what the title Conversations with The Other for the blog, I'm trying to reach something that is not typically considered part of the evidence that's thrown out. I'm going to be looking at that stuff a little bit more. Nice! So what else has been peaking your interest lately?

01:40 I'm reading a book called Secret History of the World. Very excited about this book, it is trying to kind of break free some of the secrets of what in ancient Greece and in ancient past was called The Mystery Schools which existed before Christianity kinda came and erased all the information and some would claim took it for themselves and hid it in Vatican vaults But, it's basically about why astrology actually matters. It's not about things outside of you in the celestial bodies necessarily as much as it has to do with how these forces play on the human consciousness on an individual level and so its kind of taken everything from the cosmos

02:23 and bringing it in, and how it relates to consciousness itself. So that's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah that's funny because today the guy we're talking to James Stein he does not he thinks that astrology is bullshit so yeah we'll see. Yeah I mean for me the big interest honestly is the Dark Knight connection to Aurora and Sandy Hook, I see the facts that both Aurora and Sandy Hook are in The Dark Knight as our references to the old Batman comic where a guy with orange hair opens fire on the theater and James Holt James Holmes dyed his hair red in the Aurora shootings. It's all very strange and the symbolism here seems too overt, like it's almost like they overstepped but man the question for me with these types of subtle reveals is why? I just don't understand why especially in the internet age because you know it highlights that fact that was a false flag attack if we didn't have all this symbolism within The Dark Knight I mean it would've been a little tougher to piece together

03:22 Yeah, and Hollywood is known for having a history of hiding subliminal symbolism within the movies and things. You know even kids' movies, Rugrats and stuff you would never expect but there is some methodology to putting it in plain sight and playing on your subconscious mind where you consciously think nothing about it, you don't even notice and then maybe its embedding something in there or maybe tugging on something inside you Yeah, there's that. There is also the idea that our subconscious, our collective unconscious mind is timeless and so when a huge event happens that everyone knows about it sends reverberations through that subconscious

04:05 in a timeless way so that you'll see things come out in media. The guy who's drawing the Rugrats will have the idea of putting a plane behind the Twin Towers because it is something that just in the back his mind and he doesn't even realize, kind like being inspired by the Muse in a way that is kinda negative but Don't know to be it to me some of it seems so weird and so like the foresight is just immense Like there's some stuff in X-Files episodes. Like that's ten years Previous like sure, it could be but also it couldn't be something else too It could be some kind of weird mechanism with the subconscious that we don't understand too Yeah I totally believe a lot of it could be unexpected none unexplainable And then there's also the live or connection to the two

04:54 a somebody posted from an anonymous username, bury it or something right along the lines of like bury this page and then all of a sudden it was flooded with all kinds of porn. And when a page like that gets flooded with porn it gets taken down. It's weird that that was the method they used to get it taken down but yeah you can see little snippets of like an authoritative figure directing people to be like, alright destroy it. And it's kind of weird but yeah goes up the day before

05:40 They're getting sloppy man. They're really getting fucking sloppy I think it's a combination of them getting sloppy because they must be rushed or something and in conjunction with there is some level of people who are having an awakening, and i think with Facebook and social media like connecting everybody who is a truther? I think when they try to pull off the Psy-Op like uh The Colorado Shooter especially Or the Sandy Hook which is just totally mysterious I think that more people are awake, more people know which questions to ask. I think people on the internet do an incredible amount of journalism that you would never see in mainstream media

06:17 They're pulling at threads and they uncover a lot of things. A lot of weird, like the Sandy Hook actors is what really just creeps me out you know see these guys laughing and then two seconds later he's like oh my daughter died blah blah blah her favorite thing was painting and he can't even cry. One second earlier he was laughing and be like okay are we ready? And then take us couple deep breaths in character and he's like okay here we go right yeah that Guess some people have a hard time. I've shown that to a lot of people and some really have a tough time Seeing that as evidence, but to me it's pretty fucking clear I'm like you got to remember like this guy's daughter died That day or maybe it was the day previous. I think is that day Is the official story and his daughter would be in in elementary school? Like that's gotta be fucking shocking How are you laughing about anything you know and that's that's fucked up The coroner is kind of fucked up

07:14 The guy's doing the autopsies and they're questioning him about what bullets were used. And he's just naming bullets, but that gun was in the car! He says something like if you have good photographers you can make a story whatever you want it to be and I have great photographers Yeah, that's the most cryptic thing he says but he literally has no answers for any of the questions nor does it in any way remotely seem like he actually went in there and saw anything. You know they ask him did you see the shooter? Oh I'll get to that tomorrow. Like did you see the bodies? How many boys, how many girls? I don't know. And he's laughing cracking jokes you know...I can understand a lot of people say that he is under an incredible amount of stress this guy has never seen anything like this in his life Of course he is shell shocked This coroner isn't the kind of guy who talks to media typically anyways

08:06 All that being said, what he actually says is very weird and cryptic. It's all Mr. X. You can't really pin down what happened but it is very strange the way it all played out. That seems to be another aspect to it as someone who doesn't like these type of conspiracies will look to me and be like, okay well then what happened dude? Then what happened. I'm like look i can't tell you what happened but i can tell you that it looks pretty good that what the media is telling you happened didn't and that should be... That's the story! Like you don't really need know exactly what happen to believe that your being lied too And I hate that false premise because its like oh just cause I cant explain it being some fucking stupid

08:53 stoner in California who's just looking stuff up on the internet, you can see that things don't make sense. But that doesn't mean I can tell you that it was an Israeli black ops project which is one of the ideas." Right and a classic difficulty with 9-11 is you get into such strange things when you're actually trying to formulate The one unifying theory how it did actually play out you just become victim to intentional misdirects. I think it's disinfo agents put out things like, oh it was mini nukes or it was a particle weapon from the sky or it was a hologram and things never actually hit etc etc...I mean any one of these you would actually support your going to discredit yourself so they do

09:41 This kind of stuff so that anybody who does try to track down the truth always, you know everybody just as you said it's like puts the burden of proof on them rather than putting it on the media. It's a fucked up world and I actually think we're gonna still- We're gonna see shootings happen until... Public really lets them take guns away in a big way. Hmm I mean that's just an opinion But I feel like if you see that happening and that kind of validates the theory that people are saying which is this is To get guns taken away or I mean, a lot of people think it's even simpler And then it's just to keep the heat off of the financial sector

10:18 If we're paying attention to something bigger and scarier and more in your face, you don't have time to look at the live or scandal. You don't have time to look at financial corruption. Yeah, where the fact that HSBC laundered billions of dollars in drug money from Mexican cartels and were found guilty and no one was prosecuted... But we've really gotta talk about gun laws! That's a primary urgent concern here. Of course. Man they say in The Age of Enlightenment the lies seem more transparent and I think it's kind of convenient that the lies do seem more transparent.

10:58 Yeah, one of the more strange things I read recently too is scientists have made a couple different claims such as that DNA might actually be four-stranded. Yeah They've documented that there's at least one child who has three strand DNA man And so this whole idea of like genetic manipulation, I mean like transformation or Ascension whatever you know There's a lot of these strange words for it that are essentially You know, it could mean all sorts of things. But maybe there's some scientific evidence that some strange stuff is going on with the DNA? I saw that and I was like man there are thousands of new agers hard as a rock right now at this information because that's what they've been talking about! They've been talking about a real biological transformation and evolution

11:49 It seems silly because you're like this is something we should just clearly be able to see or not see and then all of a sudden boom Story comes up, and it's like there. It is but anyway all that stuff is fucking fascinating But today about time we patch in this new guest today We got James Stein he is the author of the paranormal equation pretty interesting book I know you didn't get a chance to read it but You know, he's basically a really established mathematician who takes a look at the paranormal and tries to determine if there is unseen forces that we just can't detect yet or if maybe the whole

14:01 Well, Higher Side Chatters it's a real honor to have Jim Stein on the show today. He graduated from Yale University with a major in mathematics and minor in physics then went onto receive a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California Berkeley he has written several books including How Math Explains The World how math can save your life and his most recent book The Reason He Landed On THC the Paranormal Equation A New Scientific Perspective on Remote Viewing Clairvoyance And Other Unexplicable Phenomenon Jim say hello to the people Hello, and I'll also say hello to you Greg. Thanks for inviting me on your show of course man We also have Kyle here a longtime friend an occasional co-host Kyle say hello to the people will say hello to Kyle Well welcome to the show I'm psyched to have you here usually people like me have to pay good money to speak to someone with your credentials So I appreciate that

14:56 Well, actually that's not the case. We don't generally charge consulting fees like doctors or lawyers. You can walk into any university and find a professor and talk to him for absolutely nothing. True but it's just about getting on that campus. College itself is pretty expensive! Oh, well college itself is pretty expensive but a lot of teachers just leave their door open because they figure if somebody comes in and wants to ask them a question. Their function in life has to answer questions now admittedly most of the people who walk in my door are my students right It makes sense. Well, Jim you wrote a fascinating book it's really awesome The Paranormal Equation I had a lot of fun with it but I gotta ask you about something that was in your bio You know sometimes the publishers will include little a little about the author sheet when they send me out media copies and usually they're pretty predictable But out of nowhere yours says that in college you and your roommates owned a lion

15:51 Honest to God. That's pretty insane. Yes, it is very true and I don't know how deeply you want to go into this but what happened was that ... Yeah, what's the story? Okay, okay. I had a bunch of very interesting roommates. One ended up on the front page of The LA Times about 20 years ago because he was the president of the firm that froze Ted Williams. You know who Ted Williams was? Baseball, right? Baseball player. Yeah. Baseball player, teddy ball game. Anyway one of my roommates was the head of the firm that did that but anyway we had a house in a suburb of Oakland and all of sudden they come up to me one day and they say Jim how would you feel about having a lion? Well I'd had a lot of ridiculous ideas so

16:40 Usually, nothing generally came to pass because one of my roommates had very low metabolism and slept a lot. I figured this was just another abstract question and then few weeks later there was this 20-pound lion on our carpet because it turns out lions breed very well in captivity and they got baby lion from the Los Angeles Zoo. We had the lion for about a year, then we moved to Berkeley. By this time my roommates were very big guys and they were in the habit of roughhousing with the lion which was okay when the lion was fairly small but when the lion reached about 150-200 pounds it was a lot more than they could handle so they boarded the lion on an

17:27 at an animal ranch or something like that on the Russian River in Northern California, and they would go visit it. But the lion's claws got very large and they still wanted to roughhouse with a lion so they decided to have the lion declawed and unfortunately the lion went into anaphylactic shock during the operation and died. Oh my God I was not expecting that M. Nightshine twist right there! Yeah. I mean that's… But it was an interesting experience, and if you doubt it there are at least two proofs of this that I know of. A picture of the lion was on the front page of The Oakland Tribune.

18:10 I think one day in 1966, and also one of the three major networks at that time came and visited us because the city of Oakland wanted to kick us out. The ACLU defended us so one of the three networks came around doing a news show on it. The new show got broadcast because they were really short of news, so it's there somewhere in cyberspace. Wow, what an awesome little piece of life. I wish I had a lot more time. It was entertaining! It was entertaining and could tell you a lot more stories but this is not the time nor the place. Right? Your accomplishments in mathematics are obviously great and with spending so much time in traditional left brain thinking patterns it's interesting how did you keep from just writing off all paranormal activity as nonsense like so many others in your field

19:05 That's an extremely good question and it came about through a bunch of different circumstances. The first was that I like to read about history of science, and I also have a lot of friends artists people like that who are interested in the paranormal but what was really surprising to me is that i have friends who are just as left-brained as I am believes that, to my normal way of thinking, stretch credibility a little. For instance the brightest mathematician I know believes in reincarnation and not only that he thinks he can demonstrate it scientifically and logically. And I have a very good friend who's a doctor who has had the same experience a number of times. He told me he walked

19:56 into rooms and known exactly what was going to be in the room even before he walked into it. And these are people that I've known for a long period of time, they're very bright, they're established in their fields and they have had these experiences which lead them to believe that there are things which are beyond the power of science, at least sciences we currently know it to explain. And they're not the only ones. There have been some truly brilliant scientists who have believed in the paranormal and the supernatural. Probably the leading individual at that moment who fits into that category is a guy named Brian Josephson, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics and he's written papers on the connection between telepathy and quantum mechanics and things like that. My feeling is no matter what you feel

20:51 if somebody is demonstrably bright as a Brian Josephson says that he thinks that there's merit in this, you gotta take it more seriously than if just some individual with no technical training does. So that was one of the things that got me interested in it and another thing was that it strikes me that even if you don't believe at all on it, it still a very interesting subject for possible speculation i remember when i was about eleven or twelve years old the new york herald tribune ran a series of articles on an individual named bridey murphy this is probably earlier than uh... you know that most of the uh... with most of your listeners are familiar with but there was a

21:37 psychologist in Colorado who subjected one of his patients to hypnosis and past life regression. During the hypnotic sessions, this individual started speaking in an Irish accent and described her life as Bridie Murphy, a woman who lived in 18th century Ireland. I mean, this is something that just makes you blink. This was obviously fascinating not only to me because I was 11 or 12 years old at the time – something in that range – but it was obviously fascinating for a lot of people because it was a continuing story in the newspaper for a number of days possibly even weeks.

22:25 Somebody did some digging around and they found that the woman who'd been the subject of the past life regression Had a long-forgotten neighbor named Bridie Murphy Corkle who had possibly told her some stories and maybe the hypnotic patient had Also read something about that era And so even though this wasn't something that was fraudulent in any way shape or form there was at least possible rational explanation for it. So I sort of had that on the back burner and then what happened is my doctor friend who's had the deja vu experiences,

23:06 And I were once discussing things and he said, you know Jim there are three types of facts in the universe. There are the known fact, the unknown fact and the unknowable facts. And I sort of puzzled over this one because I mean things like there's lots of known facts floating around like hydrogen is the lightest atom it says that's a known fact we've measured all the atoms thats it. There also unknown facts such as whether or not there has ever been life on Mars We don't know at the moment. It's a matter of conjecture, but... I'm hoping we get to Mars and find out, preferably within my lifetime because if not it's not going to do me any good. Unless somebody decides to clone me later on but that's another story. Even so it is an unknown fact because either there has been life on Mars or there has not been life on Mars. It's decided that if we could get to Mars then we'd find out.

24:06 But even if we don't find out, it's still a fact one way or the other. So that comes under the heading of unknown fact at the moment but the question might be what an unknowable fact and this one had me puzzled for awhile until a few years ago when I started to write another book since you mentioned the title like don't feel any shame in giving it a plug, namely how math explains the world. In the 1930s, a mathematician by the name of Kurt Gödel discovered something that absolutely blew mathematics away at that time. He discovered there were unknowable facts in mathematics and

24:46 One thing that I've discovered about mathematics is that people generally love it if you talk about it. For instance, that would make the television show Numbers so popular but they're not so wild about it if you actually get down and dirty and do mathematics. And so I promise your listeners that I won't do mathematics but I do have to discuss a couple of things in conjunction with this if its okay with you? Of course! Okay... At some stage, most of your listeners will have taken a course in geometry. They'll have seen something called the Pythagorean theorem which was discovered 2500 years ago It isn't even necessary that you remember what the Pythagorean theorem was except that it said something about right triangles

25:32 Now, there are an infinite number of right triangles. And in order to establish the truth of what the Pythagorean theorem says about right triangles you obviously can't go around and measure every right triangle. There are an infinite number of them and you just don't have time So what you have to do is you have to prove the Pythagorean Theorem logically from the hypotheses or axioms of geometry. That's one way that you can deal with an infinite collection of possible truths by proving them logically The other way is that you can actually discard a possible infinite collection of possible truths by showing that there's one which isn't. For instance, suppose I were to say to you Greg the sum of two odd numbers is odd You'd think for awhile on this probably not a very long while and you'd say Jim 3 is odd 5 is odd 3 plus 5 is 8 That's not odd so that's false So you can

26:31 You can either prove that a collection of information an infinite collection of statements is true via proof, or you can establish that it's false by finding a single example which demonstrates that its false. And up until the 1930s mathematicians thought this was all you could do when faced with a statement about an infinite number of possibilities You could either prove that it was true Or you could find a particular example to demonstrate that it was false What Gödel did, which was absolutely incredible at the time and is still in my opinion the most exciting mathematical discovery of the 20th century. He proved that there were true facts that could not be proven via mathematics.

27:23 That's the type of thing which is almost philosophical in nature, and as a matter of fact it has prompted a whole lot of debate on what the nature of truth is as well as what the nature of mathematical proof is. which I included this result of Gerdel, it's known as the Gerdel incompleteness theorem. I realized that I hadn't seen anywhere where people had taken the results of this and looked at the possible ramifications of it in an infinite universe because

28:01 In an infinite universe, there's the possibility that there are true relationships between the physical parameters of the universe. By that I mean things like mass length time force energy information – the stuff out which the universe is built. the stuff that we see for instance you know probably the most famous equation in math and physics is e equals mc squared you know einstein's famous equation and even if you don't know exactly what it means you know it's a great truth and Einstein established it logically but we've done a bunch of experiments which have confirmed that this is true at least within our ability to confirm them

28:45 Physics and science are one step short of mathematical proof because you can deduce whatever you want, but the universe decides whether or not it's true. You do a lot of experiments and eventually you never really prove that it's true. What you do is show its incredibly, incredibly, incredibly unlikely that it's false. And that's where we stand with Einstein's E equals MC squared. It's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly unlikely that its false and that the best we can ever do but it may very well be if Gerdell result about mathematics can be applied to an infinite universe that there is some relationship

29:29 between the physical parameters of the universe, like an equation you know maybe an equation like equals mc squared which control the physical parameters of the universe but which we'll never be able to establish that it's true and we may never even get a hint of what it is. And if you're willing to stretch this a little It's possible that this could be an explanation for some of the phenomena that we've yet to be able to pin down in our universe. Now, if you were to ask me about it I think it's a long shot but it is very possible and stranger things have happened

30:12 I don't know, are you familiar with a phenomenon called entanglement? Yes that was actually one of my questions. There seems to be a lot of things at the quantum level that new agers point to validate their theories or their ideas about consciousness and reality and it really throws me for a loop when you get down into the quantum level It seems like there's teleportation of atoms, atoms need a conscious observer and then the entanglement issue...there is a lot going on there There's a whole lot and one of the things that I worry about is when you visit a website or read a book and a new ager says quantum mechanics supports this, then makes a statement about consciousness or belief or paranormal phenomena.

31:02 As far as we know, at the moment quantum mechanics says nothing about this stuff. Now I'm not saying that if you see on a website that quantum mechanics supports whatever it is that somebody's trying to pitch. I'm not saying that its outright fraud because a lot of people do... they read something and they accept it second hand or third hand They don't bother digging into it That's not really fraud. It's just on the nature of sloppy behavior, which everybody is a victim of at some time or another and I'm no exception.

31:44 Quantum mechanics is essentially a computational procedure for dealing with subatomic particles and particles at the atomic level. That's all that we've been able to do at the moment, We've been able to do anything in the way of confirmation. I'll discuss entanglement in a moment, but here's my feeling about it if you were to look at the various sciences, if you were to look at certainly mathematics, if you're willing to consider it as science is the most most evolved of the sciences because we've been doing it for twenty five hundred years and it doesn't require complicated lab experiments to substantiate. You do it logically, and even though in the European world we sort of took a pause from doing it during the Middle Ages from about 500-1500 AD nonetheless its been an ongoing procedure if you look at

32:41 Look at physics. Physics started with Isaac Newton, that's about 1650 and that is the most highly developed of our formal subjects. Chemistry started with Lavoisier and John Dalton in the 18th century. That's the next most developed. Biology and anything related to life is a much more recent phenomenon up until the early portion of the 19th century, they believed in a theory called vitalism in which somehow

33:18 Processes involving life were mechanically and physically different from processes that did not involve life. There was something called a vital spark, which animated living things. It wasn't until the early portion of the 19th century that we started discovering that there was such a thing as biochemistry. The processes of life are really, at a deeper level, physical and chemical processes. The mathematics that underpins the study of physics or chemistry is much more highly developed than the mathematics that underpins the study of living things. If you were to ask me, and I'm not an expert on this but my guess is that the interactions

34:07 goes on in a single cell is more, is much more complex and much less well understood phenomenon than the gravitational and electromagnetic interactions in a galaxy filled with stars. And as a result in order to say that quantum mechanics support our ideas on consciousness or new age philosophy uh... i'm not going to pay it complete nonsense because it's possible with something like that may come to pass but at the moment today something like that is just taking a giant leap where no man has gone yet and shouldn't be going at this moment because we're not get ready for there are some things that quantum mechanics had looked at over

34:53 over the last century, which is about how long quantum mechanics has been in existence that completely puzzle them. And they are known phenomena at the subatomic level and they don't understand it and one of the things is called entanglement And when we look at the universe that we know, it's impossible for information to be transmitted from one place to another at anything faster than the speed of light. That is just what we know about the universe but nonetheless there's something called entanglement as a way that two different particles can relate to each other. Entangled particles, we have not yet produced entangled cells or entangled fish or entangled people but we've produced things like entangled photons and entangled electrons and entangled calcium atoms. And what we have discovered and also by experiment is that

35:54 if you have entangled particles that are separated and a measurement is made on one of them the other particle knows exactly what the result of that measurement was. And we've confirmed in the laboratory, this knowledge as it were takes place faster than at the speed of light I think they've done it something like a distance of forty miles or something like that but there's There's nothing in what we know about physics that says that if you've got two entangled particle universe That are separated by billions of light-years A measurement made on one of them will be instantaneously known

36:37 to the other one. At the moment, there have been a lot of ingenious methods that have been proposed for explaining why this should be true. They've all they've all been shot down in one way or another at the moment we cannot explain entanglement um We know that it's a real phenomenon now in that instant in that sense It sort of differs from paranormal phenomena such as clairvoyance or remote viewing or telepathy which we're not really sure whether or not they are real phenomena. My feeling about that is that it's pretty much

37:19 It's sort of like how we feel about UFOs. When you look at UFO sightings, the vast majority of them can be discarded but there are a few of them which nobody has yet been able to explain. Now that doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation lurking around somewhere but it is also possible when I say an explanation whether balloons fog or what have you something that explains the other ones but at the moment we can't uh... we can't type those who's actually being legitimate explanations for the ufo phenomena that we can explain and therefore you have to allow for the possibility yet that yes little green men are visiting our planet i think that that a very remote possibility but it still on the table hasn't been ruled out um... and as far as entangled

38:08 I'm sorry. I was going to say, I am very interested in the connection between entanglement and remote viewing specifically because it seems to me that if you accept like a neo-Platonist view where there's such an information field that connects everything underlying matter then perhaps when someone is engaging in remote viewing has a personal subjective experience in a way contact information and become entangled with information, and they haven't traveled any distance. I think there's some similarities there maybe some overlap not necessarily that the consciousness is one particle, the entangling with one piece of information as a particle but similarities in a lot of ways

38:56 That's, I think a very reasonable possibility. In fact it is one of the possibilities for this that I would certainly accept. I don't think we're at the point yet where we can say yes this is the way it is. One of the reasons that I'd like to live for longer than I'm going to live is that given The pace of our learning stuff accelerates. I think that something like that may well be discovered maybe within the next 20 years, maybe within the next 50 or 100, maybe even 1,000 years. But I think we'll know something along that line. On the other hand, I think there is a possibility and I don't know. Again it's a function of the hypothesis that the universe is infinite. If the universe is infinite and Gerdell results do apply to the physical parameters of the universe

39:57 There may be a governing principle which is an unknowable fact, and even though we might suspect it, we'll never be able to establish it the way that we could establish E equals MC squared. If you were to ask me I think that your explanation in mine are two of the leading contenders at the moment, and I don't know which I would say is the favorite. Look at that! But before that, you actually have to establish. You see one of the difficulties in this area and it's a great difficulty is that

40:34 If you look at things like remote viewing or you look at things like clairvoyance, it�s very difficult to say yes here we have a cut and dried example of it that we can reproduce in the laboratory because what science is about is objective phenomena. If you stick a thermometer in my living room at the moment where I'm talking to you, you'd probably see that it reads 72 degrees and anybody else who looks at it would say yeah, it reads 72 degrees. Conclusion? It's 72 degrees in the room. That's objective but when you're talking about phenomena that are as subtle as remote viewing or telepathy

41:25 It's very hard to get your hands on what would be definitive experiment to confirm it. As a result, science tends to...and I talk from the standpoint of a scientist. I don't think science should be in the business of dismissing possible explanations. For instance, Einstein said something that is very reasonable with regard to telepathy. He was asked by a psychologist friend of his what he thought about telepathy and what the physics that Einstein knew had to say about it.

42:02 Einstein said, ìIt seems to me at any rate that we have no right from a physical standpoint to deny a priori the possibility of telepathy. For that sort of denial of foundations of our science are too unsure and too incomplete He said that 80 years ago, and he died in 1955. My guess is that if he were alive today – I don't want to put words in Einstein's mouth so this is just a conjecture on my part – but If he were alive today, he'd look at where physics is and say you've made a lot of progress. I'm really impressed but i still stand by what I said when I first discussed the possibility of telepathy. I don't think you can rule it out and what you have in physics at the moment is two schools. You have the Brian Josephson school who believes that it's a real phenomenon and is investigating it and trying to explain

43:01 You also have some of Josephson's colleagues at the same universities. Josephson is either at Oxford or Cambridge, I can't remember which and one of his colleagues at either Oxford or Cambridge came right out when Josephson made a statement about the relationship about telepathy and physical exploration of it said but i a rubbish telepathy does not exist you have to decidedly different views on it by too decidedly bright people and um... i think that you know the person said telepathy doesn't exist i think that's the wrong thing for science today i think what he could certainly say is that as of this moment we have no evidence for it week devise experiments which either prove it or disprove it

43:53 As Einstein said, the foundations of our science are too unsure and too incomplete. Even at the moment I feel it's extremely unlikely that it is a phenomenon you can't roll out because one of things that continually happens in science is what you think now may be overturned shortly. I tell people that science isn't the last word, it's just the latest word." Yeah, I like that you have that in the book too! I think that is a good way to approach it because so many people they spend so much time in universities and they kind of come out with almost stagnant education to that this as far we got if hasn't been discovered by now doesn't exist and that's not really the best attitude

44:38 Oh, I agree with you. But I think they're not just saying if it hasn't been discovered by now it doesn't exist. I think what they're saying is that there has been some work on it and certainly there's been work on ESP and I've had communications recently with somebody who's done a bunch of work in this area and believes that it's a real phenomenon and is encountering the difficulty scientific establishment simply won't look at what he considers to be evidence. This is a story about science that has been basically ongoing because science as human

45:24 And that means that you have – the results of science are essentially what human beings discover. I mean admittedly you could have a discussion here about what is abstract truth and why we discovered that we think it's true, but I'm not a philosopher and I'm not going there. But what you have is something very important to govern science, and that's called money. Yeah, it governs everything. As a result, if you take a look, scientific investigations are generally underwritten by one of two types of agencies. They're underwritten by governments which give money to colleges and they're underwritten

46:11 by corporations or companies. In both instances, the people who give money to science are looking at science to produce something. They're willing to settle for some sort of abstract knowledge in some area but they'd like something with potential bottom line payoff especially a corporation because a corporation has to deliver it to its stockholders and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm a big fan of capitalism and certainly one of the things that I like about science is science has demonstrably made my life more comfortable. While that's not the goal of science, it's certainly a side effect and it's extremely beneficial one and boy do I applaud that! Just say you're a corporation

47:02 Who are you going to give money to? Are you going to give money to somebody who's investigating the possibility of finding a cure for cancer which you can translate into lots of money and a better standard of life for people or are you going to give it to somebody who is investigating telepathy, which so far most of the people you ask would say this hasn't really gotten anywhere. Even if you demonstrate it well it's remotely possible at some state that we might be so telepathically competent that it will replace the internet but not in the near future uh... the payoff would you would you have is you know i in um... if i were awarding money or if i were investing money what i'd look at as i'd look at a combination of the possibility that you'll get something good out of it plus the value of what you get out of it

47:55 And on that scale, investigations into the paranormal and the supernatural rank pretty low. Let me ask you another question in regards to the paranormal. What are your thoughts on the idea of a collective unconscious or higher self? Or a hive mind? Is there any scientific basis for any of that? This isn't my area of expertise, because what you're talking about now is psychology and biology. This is just something in the way of personal belief, and maybe it's a hangover from the 1960s and 1970s when I was a graduate student starting out on my career. But for instance, life is more than the sum of species that make up. The universe is greater than the stuff that actually makes it up.

48:54 I think that things like this are possible. My belief is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and I think I can't substantiate that scientifically, but there is a branch of mathematics called complexity theory. In complexity theory what you discover is that even the most apparently simple systems have unbelievably complex outcomes associated with them. That's an overstatement and much more qualitative than the subject actually is, but it is surprising how often simple systems give rise to complex behavior. This happens in physics, it happens in chemistry, it certainly

49:50 happens in biology. I'm not ruling that out and if you were to ask me, it's certainly possible maybe not at our level of evolution but Homo sapiens isn't going to be around forever. Evolution dictates that something else is going to replace us and that something else is going to be better suited to deal because that's what natural selection is, and possibly what replaces us next has capabilities our species does not, that may very well fall into the area of the paranormal. You can't say that they... I mean if you were to look at what we do as Homo sapiens using the capabilities that we have they greatly transcend what Neanderthal man had and Neanderthal man greatly transcends with chimpanzees could do and so on down the evolutionary scale

50:53 One thing I want to say is you take issue in the book with numerology and astrology, of course I would expect you too. But when I think about numerology, I think about it sort of in the way Native American cultures attributed certain traits to different animals based on how they were perceived and their general personality of the species. I could kind of see numbers representing certain traits based on how they act in mathematics and geometry And a more advanced application of that being an understanding that certain numbers mean inherent... Certain numbers, they inherently allow you to have a language in which to communicate with the universe. I mean that's a lot of new agey kind of stuff but you give an interesting example in the book about the number 8

51:33 And that it was always looked at as a positive lucky number. And now science knows the atomic number of oxygen is eight, it's also the sign for infinity but to me that is numerology could be coincidence or you know if you want to get weird with the collective unconscious then It could reveal something about the nature time and mind and our knowledge of periodic table elements now could have affected our feelings about the number 8 in subconscious thousands years earlier It's a far stretch, but what are your thoughts on that? I'm with you. That is an impossible stretch and although the explanation that you give is possibly a better explanation for the

52:20 possible validity of something like that than anything I've heard from some other people. The reason that I doubt stuff such as numerology and astrology, and when I say I doubt them, I doubt them as explanations for phenomena because they don't know how much has been done with respect to I certainly know it's been done with respect to astrology. When astrology has been examined for the predictions that it makes, such and such things are a leadership sign. Maybe Aries is a sign of leadership

53:01 They've done analyses like this and they've come out no better than chance. They've taken a whole bunch of leaders or a whole bunch of Aries, and they've done statistical analysis that comes out no bigger than chance. But I look at it as where is this stuff coming from? Admittedly, that's sort of an odd homonym argument. The explanation you propose, something like a collective unconsciousness twigged into this, that's not an odd homonym argument. You look at people who say, ìThis is the wisdom of the ancients.î Well I think the ancients had a lot of wisdom. I think they were very wise when it came to interpersonal relationships and how people fit in with other people and how people fit into societies. If you read some of this stuff in the religious and philosophical tracts

53:56 that were written thousands of years ago. You read something like Oedipus Rex or the great plays of the Greek playwrights, and these people really understood, really had wisdom with regard to how people react with each other. On the other hand if you look at what they actually knew about the physical universe damn little If you look at, they had nothing resembling – they could build stuff. They could do a whole bunch of ad hoc things without – they could build pyramids. The Egyptians built the pyramids. The Greeks built the Parthenon and people on Easter Island built those huge heads so you can do a lot of building on the basis of trial-and-error learning of stuff

54:46 In terms of having some sort of great basis, understanding the way the universe works. My feeling is it doesn't have a snowball chance in hell because these were people who thought that when they saw lightning in the sky, the gods were throwing thunderbolts at each other They thought that disease was the result of the anger of the gods, things like this. Stuff that we explain on a routine basis they were totally and completely off base on so to me it's to think that they could simultaneously think that the gods are throwing thunderbolts at each other

55:33 and simultaneously come up with an explanation of the fact that Ada's lucky. Ada is lucky for Oriental cultures, I'm not sure it's lucky for every culture. If you take a look at astrology, for instance, astrology was devised by Ptolemy who lived a few centuries after Christ. Ptolemy was an incredibly brilliant guy for his time, and he knew a lot. He had some very reasonable theories. For instance, Ptolemy devised the theory of planetary motion which was superseded by Kepler and Newton but only when they had much better observations

56:14 He had to just look at the sky and see what was happening. And he came up with a brilliant possible explanation for it, which was wrong but nonetheless an intelligent explanation based on what he knew. Linus Pauling who is a very brilliant scientist from the 20th century who won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry and also a Nobel Peace Prize was once giving a lecture on a college campus – I saw this on a Nova TV show – and Linus He was always one of my heroes for a number of reasons. We were on the same side in the political sense, number one. Number two is I have a lot of respect for anybody who wins a Nobel Prize and number three was he had an endearing quality that I've never seen in virtually anyone and that I wish I had. When he would ask a question, he would pause for five seconds while collecting his thoughts and then articulate the answer in complete sentences.

57:10 You'd never hear him say, you know etc. while his brain is spinning around trying to find an answer. Just uncommon and I wish I had that. But anyway he was asked during the video that I saw He was asked by a college student what he thought of astrology, and he thought about it for the five seconds. And he said exactly what I said—that Ptolemy was the person responsible for it. Ptolemy was a very brilliant scientist from about the second or third century after Christ, and he said that if Ptolemy were alive today…

57:50 He, Pauling was virtually certain that Ptolemy was a good enough scientist to look at what had happened and said, ìYou know so much more is known today that I totally reject astrology as a possible explanation for the way things are.î I'm in total agreement with that. One of the things that always amuses me, and I do mention this in the book is that for instance if you are into numerology, a

58:25 A core concept of numerology is something called the life path number. Are you familiar with this? Yeah, I think Kyle's probably a little more familiar but yeah... What you do is express your birthday in terms of month day and year for instance well In case somebody wants to send me a birthday present that was born on August 29 1941 That's 8-29-1941 So you add 8291941, you get the number 34. You then add 3 and 4 that gives you 7. That's your life path number. And so these life path numbers are supposed to be indicative of certain

59:09 People who have life path numbers of seven exhibit one set of traits. People who have life path numbers of two exhibit another set of traits, etc., etc., etc." There are several things that I find really confusing about this. Numerology was presumably devised about 2500 years ago. At that time, the decimal system wasn't even in existence. So how can this possibly be right? That's number one. Number two and what I think is even more interesting is that

59:47 In about the year 1572, they noticed that what was happening is because they had not computed the length of the year properly. The seasons were slipping from where they thought they were. What I mean by that is, winter's always in October-November, December-January period and summer is in the other at least if you're in the Northern Hemisphere and this was taking place in the Northern Hemisphere. They noticed that things were getting out of sync

1:00:25 So what they did is, they recalculated what the length of the year was supposed to be. In order to get things right, they skipped a period. What they did was I think it would have been day after October 4th 1572 which mandated to be October 15th. 1572 in other words they cut ten days out now what that does is it totally screws up life path calculations I could see that. I mean, yeah Kyle's looked into numerology and astrology a little more than I have and we've been friends for 20 years of he was always the more left brain He almost was close to his minor in mathematics But you've gone the other way man

1:01:13 What do you think about numerology and astrology? Well, I just wanted to... an interesting point is that when we talk about astrology and numerology We are looking at it within the context of our scientific era. So we look at it in a very mechanistic way We think your life number is supposed to determine something about the way The mechanism is supposed to flow in your life but in the past I would believe that the ancients actually had a much different context, much of an understanding about the nature of the universe and how the mechanisms worked. And I think if you reread Homer's classics like The Iliad when he says something like that gods intervened and did something they say it in almost a matter-of-fact way that they thought this was literally true—that this wasn't the allegory that its taken to be today where we dismiss it because it doesn't make sense

1:02:05 to our current understanding. I think conversely, if you had Socrates here joining our conversation he may not agree with their current day understanding of the mechanistic universe even though we say that science has evolved so much and we've learned so much more. It really is based in the context of our understanding and thats why numerology seems so strange nowadays where it may no have been in I think that's sort of a reasonable way of looking at it because culture determines a lot about the way you think. There is no question that if you were to look at the way different cultures view certain things,

1:02:55 I know that the Eastern culture looks at the universe and the process of living in a very different way than Western cultures look at it. In a lot of instances, these are adaptive to making your life better. If something helps you � what was that song? � whatever gets you through the night and it makes life better and more comfortable for you. That has value in itself, and that value to some extent transcends science and is not so much about what science is about. I mentioned that I have

1:03:46 I have no problem whatsoever with astrology or numerology. The problem with astrology is if somebody wants to look at it for fun, by all means. And I don't see any problem with that at all. It's entertainment and one of the things that I say in the book is soccer is entertainment for a lot of people. Soccer riots have killed hundreds or perhaps thousands of people. I'm betting on thousands, considering that they happen frequently. I've never heard of astrology riots or numerology riots. Good point! But there is an indirect harm from things like this and the indirect harm is that if you believe in something that counteracts known knowledge and you exercise your belief to

1:04:38 uh... exert control over someone else's life for instance i'm very much opposed to faith healing when it interferes with western medicine if the faith healer tells you he's going to put his hands on your child and cure your child illness and somebody said here child need blood transfusion desperately in the faith healers says no let me handle that Trust the faith healer to do this rather. I have a lot of problems with this because they think you're doing something that is morally wrong." On the other hand, if you want to ... If you're 21 years old and you want to follow the dictates of the faith healer rather than the dictate for the doctor, that's perfectly fine with me and my objection to numerology is that numbers as you mentioned

1:05:28 They do have a connection to the universe because they're quantitative and what we do is our objective universe is best understood from our standpoint if we measure stuff. Most of our great theories involve measuring things and predicting things like electromagnetism or radioactivity, gravity or things like that. There are probably hundreds of millions of people on this planet who are fascinated by numbers as manifested through numerology. I'm guessing hundreds of millions because when you go into less westernized civilizations, you find it appealing to more people and if you were to take those people who are fascinated by numbers and instead

1:06:17 If you have them actually study mathematics and science and engineering, you could get a cure for cancer out of these people. fascination for numbers and let them start studying math, science and engineering. It's going to make a significant difference to the planet as a whole and maybe you want me. Maybe they'll discover something really worthwhile for us whereas I can absolutely guarantee that they aren't doing anyone any good by studying neurology." That's a fair point. And speaking of potential discoveries, something else I wanted to ask you about before we reach the end of the show was what do you think about the study of dark energy and dark matter? Do you think that those things will help us uncover a little mystery about the universe? They already are a mystery about the universe! Right... Well, do you think they'll help us uncover some kind of mechanism that is beyond us right now?

1:07:17 What dark matter consists of and what dark energy is are mysteries that are at the moment beyond us. We know they exist, we're absolutely certain dark matter exists I think that with the awarding of the 1911 Nobel Physics Prize, I'm sorry, the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize for Basically, the discovery of dark energy. We're pretty much certain that there is such a thing as dark energy and here was one of the points I made in my book. We know that 95% of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy and we have not the foggiest idea what they are.

1:08:01 predict what they might possibly be, none of them have been confirmed at the moment. So that's another reason I'm with Einstein here 95% of the universe is stuff we can't explain and yet were going to rule out telepathy? Uh...I am not in favor of that now if you were just say to me do you think dark matter and dark energy will explain telepathy or precognition i'd have to say no I think that the betting would be against that. On the other hand, if telepathy becomes a confirmed phenomenon there is a possibility

1:08:44 um... dark matter or dark energy may possibly have something to do with it but this much i do know at the moment when we discover what they are will know a lot more about the universe will hopefully be able to take this knowledge and do something that can in some way benefit our species That's fair. One other thing I wanted to ask you about, because it really threw my college dropout stoner mind for a loop—it's something that you put in the book—towards the end there is this section on normal numbers and you say if you're a numerologist what could be more wonderful than knowing that complete history of the universe is told in the digits of every single normal number past and future? Of course we'll never be able to interpret it! Can you elaborate on that? That blew my mind

1:13:14 Well, what will happen is everything happens over and over again in an infinite universe. That to an essence is the idea of parallel universes. If you look at the idea of parallel universes � which I strongly believe and a lot of other scientists believe If you take a look at – there's a wonderful article by a guy named Max Tegmark, and he says that the following idea is absolutely consistent with what we know at the moment. If you were to start reading this article, at this moment you continue reading in another universe somebody else exactly like you living in exactly your house wearing exactly the clothes that you're wearing puts the article down and goes for a cup of coffee.

1:14:06 That's basically the same idea. Our universe only has a finite amount of space and we've only got a finite number of different types of atoms to play with in order to fill that space, if you've got it. It's the monkeys and typewriters all over again." Do you think there's anything to the idea, it is kind of a new age idea they talk about intention and manifest in your reality. And sometimes they try to make it scientific by tying into the idea parallel universes do you feel like we'll ever get to a point where we could harness the idea of the infinite number of universes to walk the path of our most ideal life. Like, do you feel like it's totally different people or can we jump into different timelines based on choice? Or what we want to happen

1:14:57 Well, you have... there are a couple of different explanations for that at the moment. I don't know that these are the only explanations but one of them is the idea that this other parallel universe is so far from you that unless if you figure out a way to supersede the limitations of the speed of light traveling which might be possible by some sort of extra-dimensional interconnection which is mathematically allowable and what they're looking at, then that's one way to do it. But if you look at it from the probabilistic standpoint of quantum mechanics – there's something called the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics which says that when something happens with possibilities

1:15:45 Both possibilities happen, but they happen in different separate universes that will never meet. For instance if afterwards you're going out for a hot dog and you have the choice between putting mustard on it and pickle relish And in one set of universes you put mustard on it, and another set of universes you put pickle relish on it. But these two sets of universes never intersect and there's no way to go from one to the other. Right-on! Yeah I mean Jim, It has been a fascinating conversation. I could just bounce off random ideas all day and have you tell me how ridiculous or plausible they possibly could be

1:16:29 Lot of fun, but Kyle was there anything you wanted to throw in before we before we wrap this up with Jim? No, I just think it's a great interview. I really like talking to Jim about mathematics and I think you know in general when we think about mathematics We have this very you know lineary? We have these childhood memories of being in a classroom and memorizing basic equations But when you're talking about something like Kurt Gerdell what you're really talking about is a form of formal logic And it really blurs the line between philosophy and mathematics can be

1:17:04 you know, not so limited like we currently think of it. There's a lot of applications for it that we've yet to uncover. Kyle, you're absolutely right in fact what most people think of as mathematics is really arithmetic. It's balancing your checkbook What many people think mathematics is capable of its some sort of omniscient god-like discipline and it's not that either. But, it is somewhere in between and at its best does exactly the type of thing you talk about. It blurs the line between logic philosophy etc., and has something constructive to say about it. Also what I like about mathematics is that it is great for designing cars and things like that. Things that make my life better!

1:17:57 I'm very much into, even though I was not an applied mathematician. I love the fact that what mathematics does is it explains how things are and when used in the proper framework allows us to make a better life for ourselves. That's its beauty and its glory as far as I can see. Yeah, that wasn't half bad. Did you have a website or anything else you're working on that you'd like to clue people in on? No if people would like to get in touch with me personally I teach mathematics at California State University Long Beach and I'm in the mathematics department they'll find an email address for me they can get in touch with me and I'm a public...I am employee of the state of California

1:18:45 If somebody writes and asks me a question, I'll answer to the best of my abilities. And Iím always willing to discuss these things if you want to get back with me at some stage and do another interview, Iím fine with that but thereís a limit to whatÖI try and limit what I say to what I know or what other people think. If something is an opinion of mine, I try and clearly state that it's an opinion." For instance on another show somebody asked me does science have anything to say about spirits? At the moment nada because you

1:19:23 You can't even really define it. If you look at what the idea of a spirit is, you can't come up with a definition that everybody agrees on and all scientists agree on what say for instance Mercury is either the planet or the element and all mathematicians agree on what a right triangle is so we can get somewhere but unless you can come up with a really good description of spirit and show me how to do something involving tests or something that I can measure, or something that I can describe about it that will be the same for objective observers. Can't do anything with it! Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist… Beauty exists but I can't you know… Hard to define? Yeah exactly. You can't really prove something is beautiful. You couldn't really prove somebody is happy internally if you don't know what's going on

1:20:19 Sure, and as a matter of fact there's Justice John Paul Stevens I think that was his name once said when confronted with pornography. I can't define it but i know what when I see it Yeah that's a great quote Thanks again for being here I guess we'll just keep waiting for the big breakthrough and hopefully we'll talk again Okay take care Wow, that was pretty fun. Yeah it was cool He said a lot of interesting stuff I mean...I just think he's cool for being so...he has such a long career in mathematics and then to not dismiss paranormal phenomena is kind of rarity yeah that is In a lot ways I think he's totally deterministic mechanistic like so many scientists that I take issue with but he's a lot more open-minded in other regards

1:21:12 I mean, what did you think was the most interesting? Was there anything you didn't get to comment on that you thought was worth commenting on. It's hard to say like he comes out pretty hard on numerology but i think it's because he doesn't really understand it and you know he's talking about this ACII program mapping out pi and how it eventually spells the story of everything that exists and that's a really cool concept but he leaves out is that there are only the numerals 0 through 9. No other numerals exist and we don't know if we invented the numeral or if were given the numerals I dont know that theres a real history of that account because they are so distinct from one another

1:22:03 As he says, you know math is the language of everything. Well if everything can be reduced to these specific ten symbols and they are all independent of each other then they all have very occult meanings And relate to a whole bunch of stuff that I think he's kind of leaving out well That's what I was getting at with the the example of the number eight because that stuff is super fascinating me whether it means anything or not You know is yet to be determined, but the idea that a number that people once viewed as though you know a lucky number or a Number that was really important to them the atomic number oxygen, which is clearly very important. It kind of matches up and it's kind of interesting

1:22:49 Yeah, and I mean there's really easy ones to grasp like the number two has to do clearly with duality You know there's up and down. There's good and evil There's light and dark the number four has to do more with like this seasons And it is traditionally in all sorts of ancient cultures from the Mayans too you know all over the globe these people who never talked to each other understood that the quaternity of a circle means you make two intersecting lines inside of a circle and you have four equal sections, each with the right triangle in it. And that represents the seasons, the elements, uh, the directions etc., etc. So like... so each number is a division of a subset of reality and that's why they each have distinct meaning from each other

1:23:41 Well, I'm glad that you were on this show particularly just because like I said You always were more left brain in school than I was and you know now. I think you've gone the other way proven Surpassed me by far. I haven't really gone anywhere. I mean what would you say was a catalyst for you breaking the? The rigid structure of the left brain other than I would say mushrooms would be your answer But there's probably more to it Yeah, definitely mushrooms would be the initial catalyst I would say and it's been since then you know just a path of revealing. For me personally you know i feel like we were raised- We were brought up in this culture like we were taught this specific mindset that's very scientific and very dismissive of the occult or spiritual or dismissive as he was- As James was or Jim about whether

1:24:35 lightning striking has to do with the gods or not, he seems pretty defiant. I had to say well that's ridiculous people in the past were just crazy to believe that but um...that is has to do with context of what he was raised in and I read a really good quote I think this has a lot to do with my own awakening instead you go through a process of unlearning what we've all inherited and then you rediscover what is real and true for yourself. And so the imagery of this is

1:25:11 You don't leave any rock unturned. So you go back through your whole life and look at what has happened, and you flip over the rocks and say do I really think that's true? Is it really true that drinking 7-Up and having chicken noodle soup is going to cure the flu? I was told this was true! Yeah yeah. Well not long ago I had gotten sick I've been trying to not drink soda and when i wanted a Sprite, you know what? I know that a Sprite is just fucking sugar and high fructose corn syrup in water. And I don't know what it is but It makes me feel better and to me that's the power of the placebo effect. You know...it's just a way to take The idea of feeling better and manifest into some physical thing that I can ingest

1:26:01 I think it's the same idea with crystals. People are like, oh, I got this crystal because it gets me high energy and you just want high energy and it is kind of a placebo effect by taking this tool and putting in your pocket and feeling now that I have this I have high energy. And I really think it's all power of mind. Yeah, I think the placebo effect definitely has something to do with it because the way this actually works is you set up a symbol and you say, if I hold this specific crystal it's going to give me intuition or if I drink Sprite it's going to help me cure my illness. And if you believe it, if you add your own subjective truth to it—and this is what science can't really measure as subject of experience—but if you put belief into this symbol

1:26:55 then when you drink Sprite, it might have the placebo effect of actually working. Same about numerology too if you are attributing a lot of meaning to the number four or the number eight and then you see that it's going to trigger subjectively not something that can be measured but its gonna trigger subjectively meaning within you maybe it's gonna remind you certain things That kind of stuff. You can get meaning, if you put meaning into it you can get meaning back out of it It is a kind of chicken and the egg thing Like Is there meaning in the numbers that your recognizing or are you putting that meaning in the numbers? And If its the latter I mean to some extent it just seems like silliness

1:27:39 Yeah, it does. I mean and definitely to the scientist It seems like silliness because to someone who doesn't feel it to someone who doesn't Actually do it to them they're gonna say well this is an objective You know that's ridiculous you think about numbers And somethings get your gonna feel something but to the person who feels something when they see a number? It can't really be explained. Do you know I've used as real as anything oh to explain the color green to somebody who's color blind or something like that. They just don't, there is a blockage there they're not going understand it and it has to do with what you're open to accepting as the big thing with I guess my whole path into more of a right-brained existence trying to get in touch with my creativity is to just try to have an open mind let go

1:28:27 of, you know... people are so goddamn sure of everything in this world. When people say it's cold they're fucking sure that it is in fact cold whatever that means and that it is not possibly not cold right? There's no way somebody's comfortable yeah there's no way and this is not just me saying I'm cold your saying IT! This god damn thing all around us I'm this fucking thing is cold. I'm so sure of it So I am a big, you know, i'm not so sure of a lot of things right when you it's like tell that to A penguin or a polar bear that it's cold You know It's just your subjective experience and everybody's so confident to project that out And take it as You know written in stone

1:29:14 Yeah, I was excited too about this interview. Just to kind of change it up just a minute because he is mentioning Kurt Gerdel that I took...I accidentally took this course when I was finishing up my philosophy major that was meant for philosophy graduate students and it was like you know I don't know 7000 level course whatever the hell that means yeah we it was called formal logic and we learned about Gerdel Gordel's incompleteness theorem and at the time I was like what the hell am i learning? I have no idea. Like it was overwhelming in a lot of ways when you really break down, when you're reading the texts It almost makes no sense at all but when you kind of explain it colloquially You understand what he was getting at but yeah, it was exciting that this guy is talking about girdles incompleteness theorem

1:30:00 And how that validates what the mystics had been saying all along is that there is unknowability. There's something you can't even know, that's present! And when I say people are so goddamn sure of everything, they have forgotten mystery. They have forgotten having wonder like a child has Like they don't know what's gonna happen or what reality even is They're just like whoa this is kind of a lucid dream experience? I'm just gonna interact with whatever comes my way and I think it has so much to do with wonder Or with you know accepting that there is mystery and unknowable things and you got to be open to that shit

1:30:43 here, here. Great conversation I'm really glad you could be here this is going to be fun this co-hosting thing we also have Jake Bender and Adam Garitely but Kyle will be here on the third week of every month and you're gonna be writing that column, conversations with the other. Very cool everybody thanks for listening please review the show share the show favorite the show donate if you can If every THC listener donated $1 a year I'd be able to surpass what I make at my store manager's job in a year That's kind of crazy not that your going to get that happen it would be pretty insane but its crowdsourcing though

1:31:26 And if half of you donated $2, we'd get there even faster. Right... Anything else you want to add? Nah that's it man Cool Thank you for the opportunity It was a lot of fun Of course man I'll talk to ya in a month! I declare this meeting of the Midnight Society closed! Takes three legs to make those averages again. Multiply that with 3 times 10. 3 times 6 is 8, 3 times 5 is 15. It's 9 and 3 times 2 is 6. Now dig the pattern once more! 6 times 10 is 3 times 6, 3 times 5 is 50, 3 times 4 is 12 it's 9 and 3 times 2 is 6. We're three in the... And that's a magic number