ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのDr. Michio Kaku — Exploring Time Travel, the Beauty of Physics, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss: Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Dr. Michio Kaku. You can find him on Twitter @michiokaku. He is a professor of theoretical physics at The City College of New York co-founder of string field theory and the author of several widely claimed science books, including Beyond Einstein, The Future of Humanity, The Future of the Mind, Hyperspace, Physics of the Future, Physics of the Impossible, and his latest bestseller, The God Equation, subtitle The Quest for a Theory of Everything.

So we will have no shortage of things to discuss. He is the science correspondent for CBS this morning, the host of the radio programs Science Fantastic and Exploration, and the host of several science TV specials for the BBC and the Discovery and Science Channels. We will link to all of his social, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter in the show notes, but you can find it quite easily @michiokaku in most cases. And Dr. Kaku, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking the time.

Michio Kaku: Yeah, glad to be on.

Tim Ferriss: I thought I would start by rolling the clock back to your childhood. And my understanding is you did not come from a wealthy family — far from it — but that you certainly found time to build things. And I was wondering if there were any notable examples that come to mind that you could share with the audience?

Michio Kaku: Well, you’re right. Ever since I was a child, I knew that my parents were locked up during World War II in a relocation camp in California, their assets were frozen. They were penniless when they were released from jail. And just because they were Japanese Americans, even though they were citizens, they were both citizens of the United States. They were both born in California, for God’s sake. So when I was a child, I realized that if I was to do anything in this world, I would have to do it myself. So when I was eight years old, something happened which completely changed my life. I still remember everyone was talking about the fact that a great scientist had just died. And on the evening paper, all they showed was a picture of his desk. That’s it. Just a picture of his desk with an open book.

And the caption said: “The greatest scientist of our time could not finish this book.” Wow. I was fascinated by this story. Why couldn’t he finish it? I mean, he could ask his mother, right? He could go to the library. He could just look it up. What was so hard that a great scientist could not finish that book? Well, I waited in the library and over the years I began to find out this man’s name was Albert Einstein. And that book was to be the theory of everything, the God equation, an equation, perhaps no more than one inch long that would allow us to, quote, “read the mind of God.” Well, I was hooked. I had to know what was this unified field theory, The theory of everything that was supposed to summarize all the laws of nature into such a compact form. So when I was in high school, I said to myself, “This is it. I want to be part of this great search for the theory of everything.”

So I went to my mom. And I said, “Mom, can I have permission to build an atom smasher in the garage? A 2.3 million electron volt particle electron accelerator in the garage?” And she kind of stared at me and said, “Sure, why not? And don’t forget to take out the garbage.” Well, I took out the garbage and I got 400 pounds of transformer steel, 22 miles of copper wire, so much wire that we had to wind it on the football field, in my high school. And the atom smasher consumed six kilowatts of power, all the energy that my house had. Finally, it was ready. I plugged it in. I heard this huge crackling sound of six kilowatts of energy surge through my capacitor bank. And then I heard this pop, pop, pop sound.

As I blew out all the fuses in the house, the whole house had plunged into darkness. My poor mom, she came home from a hard day’s work, and then she’d say to herself, “Why couldn’t I have a son who plays baseball? Why can’t he play basketball? And for God’s sake, why can’t he find a nice Japanese girlfriend? Why does he build these machines in the garage?” Well, yeah, because of these machines, I went to the national science fair. I won the grand prize and I met the physicist who built the atomic bomb. I met Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and he offered me a scholarship that if I could get into Harvard, he would fund it. Well, I got into Harvard, and yes, true to form, he financed a scholarship so I could go and fulfill my dream. Well, when I graduated from Harvard, he offered me a job, a job at Los Alamos Labs, Livermore Labs, designing hydrogen warheads.

But you see, I had a different finished scenario. You see, for me, the hydrogen bomb was puny. It was not powerful enough. I wanted to work on the biggest explosion in the universe: The Big Bang. That is, the God equation set into motion the expansion of the universe itself. Now that’s for me. So I respectfully declined this very generous offer, but I said to myself, “I want to work on the theory of everything, an equation no more than one inch long that will allow us to summarize all the laws of the universe into one compact form.” I said to myself, “That’s for me.”

Tim Ferriss: I must ask, how did your patron, this person who paid your way through Harvard, respond when you declined his job offer?

Michio Kaku: Well, the war in Vietnam was going full blast. He knew that a lot of his young recruits could not get a job because they were going to go into the military. And that’s what I did. My draft board pretty much told me that I would go to Vietnam. And so I basically volunteered to go into the military, hoping to be part of Signal Corps as I figured I could use some of my physics education in order to the support telecommunication of our troops. Unfortunately, they put me in infantry. So I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, where I learned how to go through machine gunfire. I went to Fort Lewis, Washington, where I learned to fire machine guns. In fact, I fired the entire United States Army’s infantry’s — the whole slew of weapons fielded by the United States infantry. I fired them all. So I said to myself, “Yeah, I had to serve my country. What can I do?”

Tim Ferriss: Was there a conflict in your heart or mind having seen how your parents were treated in internment camps in serving this country? Was there any upset or any hesitation? I’m just wondering emotionally if there was anything there that’s worth discussing.

Michio Kaku: Not really, because I realized that what had happened during the war, well, let’s face it. The United States was at war. And as a consequence in wartime, people do strange things. And however, my parents’ attitude was that, well, first of all, we have to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, that if the war clouds start to rise again, we have to make sure that the locking up huge sectors of the population, 100,000 Japanese Americans were locked up, that it wouldn’t happen again. But my parents also believed that you shouldn’t have a chip on your shoulder. You shouldn’t hold it against the country because the country was very kind and generous and made my education possible. And so you shouldn’t hold a grudge. And the thing to do is to contribute to society. And that’s what I decided to do to contribute to society, not have a chip on my shoulder and do good.

Tim Ferriss: You’ve really, in some respects, you’ve created many careers for yourself, but you’ve combined technical skill and fluency with communication. And I want to focus for a second on the technical side of things because you mentioned that you asked your mom if you could build an atom smasher. And I think a lot of people listening, they wouldn’t immediately know what an atom smasher is. Were your parents technical? Did they have technical backgrounds?

Michio Kaku: No, they barely got out of grade school with an education and as a consequence, they didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. They just knew that it sounded very scientific and it sounded important. And so they said, “Go for it.” They were very encouraging. They said, “Go for it, go as far as you can go.”

Tim Ferriss: Was there anything that sparked that initial curiosity in the sciences?

Michio Kaku: Well, there was this mystery, curiosity is one of the great drivers of human behavior. Curiosity, coupled with passion. Those, I think, are the two great ingredients that allow people to rise above poverty and rise above hardship: curiosity and passion. So I had a curiosity. I had to know what was in that book. Now today, of course, I can read that book. I know exactly all the different incorrect avenues that Einstein was looking at in a desperate search, which he failed ultimately to create a theory of everything. So curiosity is one thing that drove me, but also you have to have a passion. Curiosity by itself is not enough. You have to be able to pay your dues. You have to be able to sit down, learn the math, learn the physics, get up to a PhD so that you could become a professor. And so you have to have a passion that takes you all the way to the top.

Tim Ferriss: I’ve read in preparation for this conversation that you were fascinated with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy as a child. I don’t know if that’s true. Please fact, check me if that’s if that’s incorrect. Did any particular sci-fi stand out to you as impactful or cultivating that passion and curiosity?

Michio Kaku: Well, yes. You see, when I was eight years old, I wanted to be like Einstein, but on Saturday mornings I used to watch TV and I used to watch Flash Gordon on TV. And once again I was hooked, I mean, starships, I mean rocket ships, invisibility shields, cities underwater, cities in the sky. What’s there not to love with Flash Gordon? But then over the years, I began to realize that the two passions of my life — that is physics on one hand and the future on the other — were more or less the same thing. That if you understood physics, you understood what is possible, what is plausible, and what is simply impossible. So when I read science fiction, I began to realize that if you have a background in physics, you can sort of put things into place. When certain technologies are going to go to fruition, when certain technologies will never happen, and it allows you to see into the future.

So those are the two things that I do. One hand, I work on the unified field theory, the God equation, the theory of everything, but I’m also a futurist. That as I look to see what trends will take us into the next five, 10, 100 years, 1,000 years into the future. And so watching Flash Gordon really impressed upon me that if you know physics, you know the outlines of the future, not totally of course, because we make mistakes, but you know what is possible, what is plausible, and what is impossible.

Tim Ferriss: I have many questions to follow up that answer, and we’re going to also veer into trends and a few related questions. And I’ll ask you about physics of the future. But first I wanted to go back to Harvard for a moment. And to ask you if it’s true that for a stint at least you studied philosophy, and if so, if you could describe that experience?

Michio Kaku: Well, I was very practical. I knew that you had to have plan B. If plan A doesn’t work out, what are you going to do for plan B? You see, for Einstein, and I studied his life very carefully — in fact, I even wrote a biography of Einstein — I realized that, well, he made enemies of his faculty. He would cut classes a lot because he knew the material already. He was way ahead of everyone, but he cut class; the professors hated that. So he got horrible letters of recommendation. So he had to go to plan B, which is become a menial worker. He applied for a job selling life insurance. Can you imagine opening the door one day and there’s Albert Einstein trying to sell you life insurance?

And he finally got a job as a low-level clerk at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, from which he could launch the greatest revolution of modern times, relativity, which gives us the atomic bomb, gives us computer technology, lasers, gives us the power of the sun, in fact. And so he had plan B and took a low-level clerical job. Well, I had to have plan B too. So I said to myself, “Why not learn computer technology?” Computers were just beginning to surface. And Stanford University was not too far away when I grew up there, it was all apple, orchards, and alfalfa fields and farm workers, but yeah, Stanford was slowly rising and you could learn how to program computers.

And so I said to myself, “That’s what I’m going to do for plan B.” But I was also interested in philosophy, but I still remember a quote from Einstein, and that philosophy, he said, “It’s sort of like honey, that at first is delicious and tastes great. But then you realize there’s nothing really there. It’s not going to show you the future. It just tastes good.” And so he decided that, well, yes, he will learn philosophy. It’ll guide him to a degree, but it’s not going to pioneer new branches of science. Philosophy is how you sort of look at the entire terrain of physics. So yeah, Einstein was a philosopher, but he realized he could not make a living doing philosophy.

Tim Ferriss: Now, do you think that there are certain branches of philosophy or types of philosophical questioning or thought exercises that will become more practical in the sense that, for instance, if you look at the trolley problem and autonomous cars to programming machines to behave in certain ways if they have to choose between hitting say four people in their eighties versus two schoolchildren on the other side of the road or something like that, are there types of philosophy or branches of philosophy that one might view as more practical or interesting than others at least from your perspective?

Michio Kaku: Well, there are two areas of philosophy that I found interesting. One is epistemology. That is the theory of knowledge. What is true, what is false, and what is knowable? And that gets us into the question of God. That is God knowable, can you prove the existence of God? So I was fascinated by that question. Can you prove or disprove the existence of God? And then he began to realize that there are certain things outside of science. Science is what is testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. But certain things are beyond that cannot be tested, that cannot be reproduced, for example, the existence of God. So I think that a thousand years from now, people will still be debating whether or not God exists because it’s not a provable statement. For example, the unicorn, can you prove or disprove the existence of unicorns? And the answer is no because if you say “Unicorns, they don’t exist,” maybe somewhere in a cave someplace where we’ve never explored before, there’s a unicorn.

So it is impossible to disprove the non-existence of unicorns and the same thing with God. God is also not a provable statement. So a thousand years from now, we’ll still be debating the existence of God because there’s no proof, no definitive proof, one way or the other that can prove or disprove the existence of God. Another example, I was at a party once where somebody came up to me and said that she was Cleopatra. She was the reincarnation of Cleopatra. Well, I got into a conversation, asked her some simple questions about the history of Cleopatra. And she got all the answers wrong. And I said to myself, “Aha, she is not really Cleopatra at all.” But then she came back at me and left me floored. She said, “The history books are wrong. Why do I know that? Because I am the reincarnation of Cleopatra. You can’t believe the history books.”

And I was stumped. At that point I realized that’s a statement that’s not provable. Therefore it is outside the boundary of science. Do angels exist? Well, maybe, maybe not, but it’s outside the boundaries of what science can test. Because if you say there are no such things as angels, maybe they just are in a place that you haven’t looked. So that was one area that I find interesting — epistemology, the limits of what is testable, what is reproducible, and what is falsifiable. The other thing that was interesting to me was the question of human thought. Is it possible to build a robot that can think like a human? And then I read about the work of Alan Turing, the founder of artificial intelligence theory, the guy who helped to win World War II by breaking the German code.

And sadly enough, even though he was a hero, it was top secret because the British had to keep code-breaking secret and he basically committed suicide. But at the end of his life, there was a police raid and the founder of artificial intelligence theory turned out to be gay. And he was put on trial. He was forced to take hormones and he went crazy and he committed suicide. But anyway, the point I’m raising is if you have a robot that acts like a human, talks like a human, then for all intents and purposes, it is indistinguishable from a human. And therefore is a human. Now that really sent me into motion because here was a very concrete test that you could make as to whether or not something is human. In other words, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, maybe it is a duck.

Maybe it is indistinguishable from a duck. If you hold that philosophy, then you come to the realization that one day we will create humans out of the laboratory because it’ll be as synthetically indistinguishable from a human. Now, right now, it’s pretty easy to tell that something is a robot. You ask it a simple question, gets the answer wrong. So bingo, you know that it’s fake, but one day it will be so close to us that it will be indistinguishable from us. In which case maybe artificial intelligence is really possible. Here’s another example. Science is getting to the point where we can digitize everything known about you. For example, all of Einstein’s papers, lectures, notes can be digitized. And I would love to talk to Einstein. I’d love to sit down and talk to a robot that has digitized all of Einstein’s memoirs and videotapes and what have you, everything that’s known.

And so then that becomes at some point indistinguishable from Einstein himself. And so, in other words, it may be possible that the soul of a human might be digitized because we’re getting closer and closer to creating things that are indistinguishable from people. In other words, this gives us digital immortality. You can live forever, of course, as a computer program, but you can live forever because your memories, your personalities will allow you to talk to your great, great, great, great grandkids and your great, great, great grandkids will be able to talk to you because your computer program is indistinguishable from who you are. So these are philosophical questions that I think are actually quite interesting.