Being and Nothingness

and and and i want to thank everyone for

being here because i’m excited

in these trying times where everything

seems to be contentious

i think there are two fundamental truths

to which we can agree upon

uh you are living the person watching

and i am living

and and these are things we can all

agree upon right and

and i actually think maybe not and so in

the next

20 minutes i’m going to talk about being

in nothingness what it means to be

and what it means to be nothing at all

and um

the people at ted unionville have told

me to stay away from anything divisive

and i’ve given them my word

but i want to warn you in advance that

some of the topics we’re going to be

talking about aren’t easy

uh they’re not simple and they are in my

opinion the most important questions we

can ask ourselves as humans

and the most important questions that

have and ever will exist and uh with

this

um there’s several sides in which you

can see this so i’m really looking

forward to this discussion and debate

so for the philosophically astute you

may have realized that i’ve just stolen

something

now these words being in nothingness

they they aren’t mine

they belong to this guy french

philosopher and writer john paul

and in his book being in nothingness he

talks about existentialism

now fortunately for all of you we won’t

be talking about that i just like

the the choice this this binary decision

to exist or not to exist

to live or not to live and to be or not

to be

and i want you to keep this question in

your mind throughout the next 20 minutes

what does it mean to be alive i think

it’s pretty evident uh when if you’re

watching this that

you know you are living but why

and in order to answer this question and

evaluate the ramifications it has

and in order to answer the question of

how we know that humans are living right

now

i actually think we have to ask another

question first

why were viruses not living 100 years

ago and

so obviously we’re in the middle of a

pandemic which is why i’m not in

unionville right now and the last time

we had a pandemic of this magnitude

it was in 1918. and actually if you

think it’s confusing right now and we

don’t know a lot about

uh diseases you have no idea how poor

the knowledge of infectious diseases was

back then

for years it was hypothesized that the

so-called spanish flu was actually a

bacteria

and with the discovery of viruses

another monumental question came up

what are these things and are they

living and this is actually a debate

that’s been roaring on for decades in

the scientific community so in trying to

define

what exactly life is i reckoned i had to

ask myself this question too

so i picked up this book off my desk

vulcan wheeler’s basic microbiology’s

fourth edition of 1973

and i flipped a section about viruses

and fair warning

um i’ll actually admit that i’m in a

select minority people

who believe that viruses are living and

it’s not because they

define the criteria of livelihood it’s

because

other organisms including ourselves do

not

now please allow me to explain one of

the first criteria that vulcan wheeler

site and a lot of people cite is that

viruses aren’t self-sustaining without a

host they simply can’t survive and

replicate

so here we have a virus the coronavirus

and without a host of viruses just

nothing it needs us now please get

acquainted with this picture of me at

yellowstone because i’ll be using it a

lot

but i ask you this i mean really think

about it right now

could you live without a host i mean

take everything

every single thing you know away from

you and ask yourself

could you live and this might seem sort

of a silly question of course not

but we sort of trick ourselves and

here’s how i view it there’s sort of two

relationships here

first there’s humans and viruses viruses

need humans to survive and reproduce

we know this and in return what does the

human get

well nothing really and then the second

dynamic is of humans in our hosts the

planet

and we need the planet in order to

survive and reproduce and in return

we don’t really provide much i mean

entire states are burning right now

the result of subterraneous uh

bombardment and superterraneous

emissions

so this self-sustenance argument it’s

sort of malarkey to me because if

viruses are not self-sustaining

then neither are we and the second line

of defense for vulcan wheeler and a ton

of other people is energy and

temperature

well they can’t regulate how they use

their energy or even if they make energy

and they can’t regulate their

temperature

and my answer to that is what about

these guys

who spend entire months not using their

energy

or these guys cyclophilic bacteria that

can live under permafrost

for millennia and then just activate in

any given second

and as for temperature they don’t

regulate their temperature well

neither does this lizard or this fish in

lake tanganyika which has to live in

certain currents

in order to regulate its internal ac and

then the final line of defense and the

one i’m most vehemently opposed to

is of waste and stimuli viruses don’t

produce waste and they don’t respond to

stimuli

viruses produce a lot of waste in every

single cell they destroy and

not to be morbid in the victims that

they take

and as for stimuli viruses can stay in

genomes

for millennia or generations and

while this isn’t like swerving the car

at the last second i think it’s much

much cooler

they’re actually able to sense when a

bacteria undergoes something called an

sos or save our ship response

that’s when the bacteria freaks out

because it’s not really living in a

suitable place

and then immediately the virus can just

emerge and say well i’m out of here

that’s some stimulus and you’ll actually

notice a trend going on here every time

we’re bringing up

a reason for something to be living it’s

immediately shot down

and that’s because living is a human

concept now this might seem obvious to

you but every single way in which we

define life

is based on humans we’re self-sustained

because as

of now we have the blessing of being on

a habitable host

we consume energy by eating

cheeseburgers we regulate our

temperature internally but also

outwardly through our innervations

we emit waste through removing of those

cheeseburgers

and we respond to stimuli by say putting

up an umbrella

and quite frankly i could care less if

we define cheeseburgers or

umbrellas or viruses as living i don’t

care i’m here to talk about us

but here’s my problem essentially what

we’re doing is we’re standing in front

of a mirror

and we’re only seeing ourselves and

instead of saying oh so this is what it

means to be human we’re saying

so this is what it means to be living

and that is something that i care about

because i think by promoting ourselves

to this position of decision we actually

exclude ourselves from the fundamental

laws of existence

and what are these fundamental laws well

here’s a way to think about it

i’ve made here a venn diagram of life

and on the left we have the living and

on the right we have the non-living

and you’ll notice that i’ve actually put

humans on the outside

because if you’ll remember we’re the

ones making the rules and so

as for living we’ll put this fish from

lake tanganyika

and non-living this cheeseburger that is

no longer living

and you know what just for vulcan

wheeler and if you’re still not

convinced

we’ll put viruses in the middle because

it’s sort of an a so we’ve

we’ve solved existence right we’ve

solved livelihood we know it’s living we

know it’s not living we know

where we stand in all of this except not

really

because there’s something missing here

there’s a bigger ring

and it’s existence and we can’t see it

because we are inside it

it’s bigger than our arbitrary notions

of life and non-life it’s bigger than us

actually

it’s everything we know every thought

every every discovery because it’s

existence and we cannot see beyond it

now you might say something well like

unicorns don’t exist but strictly

speaking they do

though they’re fictive they belong to a

realm of existence

just as you can’t imagine a new color

you can’t imagine something that doesn’t

exist

now you might be saying well alex you’ve

changed the definitions of what it means

to be living or existing

what are the definitions and i actually

think we can define

existence and we can define livelihood

and i’m calling the rules by which we do

so the undeniable lemmas

now i want to warn you that i’m going to

use some terms in the next slide which

we typically don’t assign to non-living

things

and some people might be uh very opposed

to this

or i’m sort of personifying things that

i can’t really personify

and that’s intentional all right here we

go we’re about to define life

number one existing things want to be

stable

and number two living things will go out

of their way

to do so in other words they’re selfish

and the descent to chaos and loss of

entropy that we call the universe i

proclaim that every single existing

thing

is just trying to return to stability

now at this point you’re probably not

even listening what i’m saying

that’s the automatic response right you

want to think of a counter example to

this well what about what about

hurricanes or earthquakes those don’t

seem very stable to me

and i want to make the point here that i

didn’t say that existing things are

stable

existing things want to be stable and

life

what i think is living is just the

endless pursuit to those means

so if i put this pin down it’s just

going to stay there

because this is the most stable it can

be in its given environment

this might not be the most stable it can

be anywhere but this is where it’s at

right now as for me i’m constantly

readjusting myself wanting to maximize

my stability at

any given state but i can do so actively

because i’m living

now i’m not just going to suggest these

rules without any logical grounding in

order for these rules to be true

a universal constant must exist and

luckily i think you’ve already heard of

it

you’ve probably heard of this constant

in a high school chemistry class

it’s the atom now i know we have string

theory and i know it gets smaller

but never mind that string corks atoms

onion rings mix mix and match whatever

you want it’s all the same for our

purposes

atoms will bind twist exist in multiple

states fuse

fizz do basically anything to ensure

stability

and it shouldn’t be a revelation to you

this is actually pretty easy for most

people to understand these bundles of

chargers are forever wanting to remain

intact and in the most stable state

and when these things assemble and do

all sorts of wacky things which makes

even more wacky things and even more

wacky things until we get

until we get what we can eventually

consider the boundary of life and

non-life

the cell we’ve done something remarkable

we have made

something living out of entirely

non-living things

that is absolutely insane but really

that living breathing cell is

nothing more than an unfathomable amount

of atoms

and since we know how atoms behave we

know how cells behave

and this just continues onwards because

beyond cells we have tissues

and organs and organ systems and

organisms

and the issue is still the same and

above organisms we have ecosystems and

planets and solar systems and galaxies

and eventually the universe

but still the story is the same

everything is made up of these little

guys and so in principle everything

behaves like these little guys

wanting to be stable and if you’re still

unsure

consider these delicious looking baked

goods a sponge cake and a baguette

now if you’ve only ever had one of these

in your life shame on you but

if you’ve had one of these you can

probably predict what the other one

tastes like

that’s because they’re essentially made

up of the same things you might not get

it perfectly

but you definitely know what it doesn’t

taste like you’re right you’re not going

to buy into that sponge cake into taste

prime rib

and this is because the universe

operates in the same way these two baked

goods do

the behavior of entities is predictable

because these entities are composed in a

similar fashion

you know just because i’m made up of the

same atoms as this computer

doesn’t mean i’m going to be exactly

like it but there are some fundamental

rules which we seem to neglect because

we

think we are defined by certain criteria

and so everything i’ve been saying so

far sort of abstract and i get that you

might be wondering what exactly are the

applications of all of this

if you haven’t been paying closely now’s

the time because if things

are predictable if what i’m saying is

true if every entity just abides by

these rules of maximum stability

then this is also true that when i have

a thought any thought

that when i say i want a bad debt that

in everything i do

that decision isn’t in the conventional

sense mine

and this is what we call determinism

that every decision is made of the

coordination of an infinite amount of

proceeding decisions

each out of our control and this usually

offends a lot of people because we want

to

think we are in control i want to make a

distinction here

this isn’t the same as fatalism fatalism

is the notion that something is going to

happen and what happens in the middle

doesn’t matter

and i’m really opposed to that what

happens in the middle does matter

because it’s delicious

it’s life and we can’t just put our

hands in there and say well it doesn’t

matter if it’s destined there are too

many variables

because that’s precisely the point there

are too many variables

so i want to dive just a little bit

deeper in order to emphasize this point

whether or not you’re a determinist

which is unlikely you’re probably not

what i am

which is an absolute determinist now

conventional determinism is based on the

principle that voluntary actions

particularly monumental ones are

scripted bound to the conglomeration of

antecedent occurrence

so what that means is when you think

you’re making a decision

there really was no alternative so say i

make the decision to move my knee here

it’s just the confluence of past

decisions

past things that have made me do this

but nonetheless

i’m moving my knee i was always going to

pick move right

what if this happens what if i’m just

standing there and my knee twitches

now this is entirely different right

that or i didn’t make that decision for

my knee to twitch

and so if i didn’t make a decision how

can it be scripted

well i actually argue that they’re the

exact same that the cause and the effect

are the same so the phenomenon is the

same

a perturbation in balance resulting in

an action

so whether you’re thinking about it or

not the choice isn’t

yours and you might be realizing that

there’s a problem here

because if every choice or every

decision

was based on previous decisions where

does it end

if everything was done in the

jurisdiction of the previous thing what

was the first

thing right we can keep going back but

there’s a certain point it’s a sort of

mental big bang there’s this event

horizon

can’t trace all the way up to the origin

this is a problem

i call it the originator problem but it

doesn’t have to be a problem

and here’s why it doesn’t actually

matter if we need to know the originator

for some it’s god for some it’s a big

bang maybe it’s a combination of both

no matter what your revolution is it

really doesn’t matter

because the what follows is the exact

same

this quote from philosopher daniel

didn’t i think sums it up perfectly a

process with no intelligent designer

in this case it means it doesn’t matter

who it is or what you believe in

can create intelligent designers who can

then design

things that permit us to understand

how a process with no intelligent

designers can create intelligent

designers

who can design things what does this

mean

it means the origin does not have to

control what happens

afterwards we don’t need know something

at the onset

to know its final result and for me this

means one last thing

everything simple or complex is made up

of the same self-interested stable

craving things and if that’s the case is

there such thing as altruism

that is is there such thing as not being

selfish now for the one person still

holding onto my case and believing what

i’m saying

i might turn you off here because i say

no instead

i think existence has triple

egocentricism and i’m going to show you

with a colony of ants

so the first selfishness i call

pronounced and this is when people do

things for their own benefit

so in this case the ant is saying i want

this food the motivation is the self and

the recipient is the self

this isn’t hard for us to understand

because this is what we conventionally

call

selfishness the second kind which i’m

calling mast

is what we typically think of when we

think of altruism of helping others

and this is how this works basically an

ant says i want to work for someone else

and get them food

and that’s great they’re working for

others but the motivation here whether

consciously or not is societal return

because biologically these organisms and

all entities

are programmed to work for themselves

the recipient of course is others but

they’re still the self

and usually when i have these

conversations with people and they’re

really against this notion of their only

being ecocentricism

they push it to the extreme and that’s

led me to make a third group of

egocentricism

what i call rebuke egocentricism and the

idea here is basically people say well

what about the most extreme case

sacrifice how can that be

not selfish

and i actually think that it’s no

different than mass

of course sacrifice is an immeasurable

action i and many others will never

understand

but there’s still an inherent

evolutionary societal obligation the

pressure

of resolve is at once beneficial to the

self and the other

and this is sort of depressing right if

we think we don’t decide our outcomes

and we act in our own interests

i mean this ted talk is about together

we stand what are you doing alex

you know if we don’t decide our outcome

and we act in our own interest are we

not what the french flawless for rene

descartes

suggested animal or human machines

and i say no and i say no because of

this guy

because of daniel didn’t it because all

of the brilliance and comprehension in

the world arises ultimately out of the

uncomprehending competences compounded

over time into ever more competent

and hence comprehending systems what

does that mean

it means it’s okay to not be in control

to be an assemblage of self-interested

particle physics miracles

we are humans we are the product of an

infinitely unlikely process that has

yielded agents capable of

introspectively analyzing our origins

that is so cool and obviously there are

implications to what i’m saying

if we really only act in our own

interests and we can’t decide how we act

what does that mean for things like

liability if someone commits a crime

was there any alternative or heroism

what does it mean to be a hero

or faith or love and what i find most

interesting

death how do we define death if life is

simply a pursuit

of stability and these are scary issues

but i think it’s okay for them to be

scary because as sartre told us in being

in nothingness

it is therefore senseless to think of

complaining since nothing foreign has

decided what we feel what we live

or what we are you should not be

offended by the fact

that our outcomes aren’t really our own

or that any of them are intended to

serve our own

you know whether or not you agree with

me these are not things that should

offend you

and here’s why because no matter how or

why

or when you’re listening to this as you

look into your screen of nothingness

knowing that you are made up of the

exact same things at the core

and you know that you are being that

alone

should be more than enough thank you