Dr. Brian Keating
speaker
1,291 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Sep 2025
Dr. Brian Keating’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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But they're actually, they have an extra timekeeping device that men, we can't relate to that. Their menstrual cycle. Their menstrual cycle, yeah.
But we'd have to make a real big stretch to then include the effects of the planet Jupiter, which is the biggest planet and is most of the mass of our solar system outside of the sun. Then it would be clear, and you could do this test with identical twins that are identical, fraternal twins, twins that are raised with the same pairing. Some are separated at birth and they turn out
very much more similarly when they're identical twins. So it shows that genetics play more of a role than we like to think. Genes are powerful. They are.
Yeah, why wouldn't they be, right?
So, and I think that gives us hope. People say, well, we should not be so haughty. We should not be so arrogant. We have, what, 50% of the same chromosomes as a fruit fly. Who are you to be? And I say, I'll do you one better. I think some bonobos have 98% similarity, but that should give us more sort of treat ourselves and think of ourselves in a way that's more...
you know, more elevated, I would say, because we're not that. There's many species of chimpanzees and primates. And so there's only one human, you know, homo sapien, which, you know, a lot of people don't know the word, you know, homo sapien, which is our species and our genes. Sapien doesn't mean it doesn't mean knowledge like science. Sciencia means knowledge. Sapience means wisdom.
And I like to look at the etymology. I'm fascinated by it. But it kind of highlights what we should be doing and what is it that we are aware of. And I'm curious, have you ever encountered like why are we called humans that like the wise hominid? And it's because we're the only entity organism that knows it's going to die. Yes, there's some elephants that before one dies and one will take care.
It's not the same. It's like you knew you were going to die when you were a kid, very young. And it's that awareness of death and the awareness of how special we are. I think that's what invests life with a lot more meaning. I don't want to get too philosophical.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
And modeling of time, as you said before. We can forecast. We don't have the strongest muscles, the sharpest claws, the biggest teeth, right? What do we have? We have this prefrontal cortex that allows us to do what are called gedanken or thought experiments, Einstein said, to predict the future, to model the future. Not really predict it. We can't do that.
But we can model likely outcomes, and we can simulate in our minds what those would be like. And we're so dependent on that skill that we sometimes confuse correlation for causation. And as you know, everyone who confuses correlation with causation ends up dying. So it's very dangerous to do that.
But the point is the notion of what's called confirmation bias is prevalent in every human being, scientist or not. And in fact, as scientists, we have to guard against that more than anybody because nothing really feels better than like – Thinking of a hypothesis, modeling the future, and then feeling like you're right. And then you get celebrated and feted.
Maybe you win a golden medallion with Alfred Nobel's image on it or whatever. Those kinds of things are very powerful. And those kinds of things are also very dangerous, which is why it appeals to so many more people to think that the celestial orbs play a role in our lives.
It's almost like we've reverted to a paganistic existence where we want to believe there's some force responsible for our fates when maybe it's random.
Or what's a proprioception or our colleague when you were at San Diego, Ramachandra. Oh, Ramachandra. Yeah, like synesthesia, right?
Now, if that was useful for something, maybe it is useful.
But so could that not be made into an argument? Well, that means that this is a general feature that we just don't know how to access. But maybe like we could go to the gym and – mental gym or do something to enhance that like you said. I don't know. Some people do that with like infrared, near-infrared wavelengths that they – do some kind of training and they claim they can see certain things.
The question is, how useful is it? And then how predictive is it? And I don't think that we can make a case for the predictive elements of the position, as I said, of Mars and Mercury being in retrograde as it is now. But the thing that's shocking is that, look, there's a whole page in almost every newspaper except the excreble New York Times. No, I'm just kidding. The New York Times.
Are they still around? No. It's very interesting. I'll tell you off the air a recent encounter I've had with the New York Times. But most newspapers have more – hundreds of times more ink written about astrology than astronomy. I mean it's barely – it will barely be in there. And why is that? It's capitalistic society.
So people crave this notion that there's some explanation for the random seeming events that occur in their lives. And that's an urge as ancient as human civilization itself.
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