Marcelo Gleiser

It’s amazing how our conception of the universe has changed. Whereas we once thought that the earth was the center of all creation, we now know that it is only one among possibly trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and that the Milky Way itself is only one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. To say that our collective sense of cosmic significance took a hit as a result of these discoveries is an understatement.

But maybe there’s a different show more story to tell. Rather than lament our cosmic triviality, maybe we can learn to better appreciate our role as caretaker of all (known) life in the universe. That’s the idea, anyway, behind astronomer and physicist Marcelo Gleiser’s latest book, The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity's Future.

As a physicist and astronomer, Gleiser is not disputing our current scientific understanding of the world; rather, he’s disputing the moral significance (or insignificance) we typically assign to it. He does so by telling the story of the universe, the earth, and the evolution of life in a way that highlights its uniqueness, rather than its potential mediocrity as inhabitants of one among billions of other “typical” planets.

In fact, Gleiser has a big problem with the idea that earth is “typical” in the first place. Noting how the eight planets of our own solar system are all unique, and extrapolating this out to the universe at large, he wonders whether or not the word “typical” can be justifiably used at all. The problem is, of course, that he’s up against very large numbers—including the trillions of planets that exist. Surely, some of them orbit the habitable zones of their own stars in ways conducive to life, right?

Well, there’s a difference between probabilities and actual evidence, which I think Gleiser is correct to point out. While the sheer number of planets suggests that there may be life in the universe, the intricate steps involved toward the development of intelligent life make it anything but inevitable. And the fact remains, despite how intensely we’ve looked, it’s still just us lonely humans gazing out into the silence of an impossibly large cosmos.

But why should this be discouraging? It means that, as far as we know, we—and we alone—are capable of telling the story of the universe; in other words, the universe has achieved a mind and a history solely through us. When we view ourselves as unique in the sense that we are the most intelligent beings, at least in our corner of the universe, then we place ourselves in a unique position that should be revered and protected, not bemoaned or ignored.

And he’s right; unless and until we learn otherwise, life is unique on planet earth, and therefore should be cherished and protected. The earth itself, capable of nourishing the only life we know about, should likewise be respected and safeguarded, and not thought of simply as a mechanical vessel that exists solely to feed our endless and ultimately unsatisfying materialistic pursuits.

So what does this mean in practical terms? Well, this is the weakest part of the book, because Gleiser wants to place the responsibility solely on individuals, rather than on institutions and governments. But we can see why this is a problem: it is very difficult to convince people to make sacrifices in the name of the planet, animals, or future generations when it is abundantly clear that most people will not. You alone cannot save the planet, or even take meaningful steps toward preserving the environment, when there are about 8 billion other people, along with multinational corporations, engaged in continuous polluting and the over-consumption of resources. Global warming, for example, is a global problem, which means it's a political problem, if that even needs to be said.

The other issue is that Gleiser hesitates to call out his real enemies. I don’t think I’m saying anything ground-breaking or controversial by stating the obvious fact that conservatives, in general, represent the political and public relations arm of the business class. And we know what business is after—profits from overconsumption. If this kills the environment, so be it. And so business, and its political representatives, are never going to get behind the idea that the earth and all of life is special and that we should all cut down on or be more “mindful” of our spending habits. To assume this is politically naive.

Additionally, while he calls for secular spirituality, which is a good suggestion, he doesn’t mention the dangers of certain religious inclinations. It is the Bible, after all, that tells us we have “dominion” over the animals, not that we are their interconnected cohabitants that all evolved from the same common ancestor. And let’s not forget that Christianity largely teaches us that this world is a “fallen” world, and that we should all embrace and look forward to its destruction as signs that the second coming is near, where we can all escape and ascend to something better.

Now, if I had to think of an antithesis to the theme of this book, I couldn’t do better than Christian eschatology, with its degradation and active wish for the world’s destruction for entry into some supernatural realm.

At this point, you may be wondering if I simply have some deep antipathy toward traditional religious and conservative thinking. Well, the answer is basically yes, but that’s besides the point. The fact of the matter is, if Gleiser wants his vision executed on a large enough scale to matter, these are the precise barriers standing in his way, in addition to the global political systems that hold tight to the status quo—a status quo that places profit over planet. Until we start penalizing politicians and businesses for these types of behaviors, and until we reinstate proper environmental regulations, nothing is going to change.

At any rate, this is an interesting retelling of the history of the universe and humanity; a fascinating exploration of astrophysics and the search for extraterrestrial life; and a moving manifesto for humans to better appreciate the uniqueness and interconnectedness of the only life we know for sure exists in the entire cosmos. show less

It is difficult for me, having reviewed over a thousand works of nonfiction, to simply trust what I read. For me to give a book carte blanche to take me wherever it wants to go, is, to be polite, rare. But Great Minds Don't Think Alike achieves it with ease. It is a delight, an education, an intellectual theme park where ideas come at the reader out of nowhere, challenging, affirming and inspiring new thoughts. It is a grand experience rolled into eight evenings of pairing off acknowledged show more experts in seemingly unrelated fields, and letting them go at it.

A philosopher debates an astronomer. A physicist debates an Eastern religions expert. The host (and author), physicist Marcelo Gleiser, is no lightweight either. His own questions and answers are right up to snuff, pushing the conversation to new heights, and getting involved and intertwined in three way conversations. Unlike so many moderators who just show up and read questions off index cards, Gleiser becomes more and more active as the debates roll on (although there are two or three core ideas he keeps repeating everywhere he goes).

It was not obvious how to review a book with eight different debates. To give readers a proper flavor, I decided to provide highlights from each one. So imagine some mind-bending from the people who do it for a living:

1. Consciousness

Philosopher David Chalmers grabs the high road right out of the box, claiming philosophy, the original science, nurtured and spun off all the other sciences: "The physics startup is really quite successful," he beams. Before that it was psychology, linguistics, and economics. Now he hopes to do it for consciousness, which still seems hooked up to philosophy. (Readers will soon understand why.)

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio takes the conversation directly into consciousness, and how science is nowhere close to mastering its basic functionality, let alone nuances. The two spend a lot time on reductionism, which in some uses, tries to explain the complex in a simple sentence. Here, they agree we cannot reduce consciousness to just neurons. Living organisms have far more to account for than that.

Chalmers goes further, saying "Reductionism is of course one of these very ambiguous terms that people mostly use to define views that they are opposed to." To which Damasio simply says "Right." So that's the view from the scientist side.

But from the layman's side, reductionism is also highly damaging, reducing complexity to incorrect simplicity. We see this in healthcare, where simplistic diagnoses lead to negligent, damaging outcomes. It can be a hugely negative force when scientists don't have all the facts, connections and side effects mastered. And they don't. At all (as readers will soon see as well).

This debate gets hung up in the very definition of consciousness, proving how infirm and insecure our grasp of the whole concept is. What is it that defines consciousness? Is it self awareness? Or subjective experience? How many other species can be said to have it? All or most mammals? Fish?

How can we hope to replicate consciousness when we can't even define it? Can Artificial intelligence (AI) replicate it, even just in theory? Damasio says that AI and human intelligence are different things, and "Only by chance will the natural and artificial coincide in terms of structure, design, or operating capacity." AI is not a replacement for consciousness. This comes up in most of the debates.

Both men agree on most issues in this debate, which is a little disappointing. They know each other's work and each other's fields, and acknowledge the same strengths and weaknesses. Philosophy and neuroscience appear to be on close wavelengths.

If I had to rank them, this debate would be my favorite of the eight.

2. Reality

Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace quickly turns the "other intelligence life in the universe" trope into a local problem: "Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? My answer is yeah - Asia! With our ethnocentric biases, we in the West have been overlooking discoveries made in the East over the entire course of recorded human history...But now, in the twenty-first century, it is inexcusable to ignore the wisdom of whole civilizations."

In the course of the conversation, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll contributes out of left field that all mammals produce one and a half billion heartbeats in their lifetimes. For those with really fast heartbeats (eg. mice), their lifespan is shorter. For those with leisurely rates (eg. elephants), it is longer. Man, of course has taken himself out of the system, by employing medicines, focused diets and a variety of surgeries and therapies to double his total number of heartbeats. So instead of living for 40 years as he used to, the current number is about 80, COVID-19 notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, Wallace contributes that despite the certainties of astrophysics, numerous physicists have continued to posit a greater force that designed it all. Right up to Einstein.

He also says "We are more ignorant about consciousness than about distant galaxies that formed ten billion years ago, more ignorant about consciousness than we are about the inner nucleus of an atom. Why? Because we're not looking."

He then claims "the notion that consciousness emerges from the chemicals and electricity in the brain is an expression of neuro-mythology...It's magical thinking, really." Them's fightin' words.

Sean Carroll doesn't take the bait, but calmly responds that of course it is difficult to understand, but "That doesn't seem to me to mean that we need to invoke new stuff, outside the laws of physics." He then proposes a totally different concept: What if the brain isn't a hard drive, but a keyboard, accessing data from the mind? That explains nothing, and a lot.

One last shot at science comes from Carroll who admits "Neuroscientists don't care about behavior, they look at signalling and its effect." That will come as a surprise, and raise a lot of questions about science itself. And why it understands so little about consciousness.

3. Intelligence

Put an astronomer, Jill Tarter, together with a philosopher, Patricia Churchland, and the discussion ranges far and wide - but gravitates to AI. They both agree we know essentially nothing about neural networks, that the most sophisticated AI system is less capable of problem solving than a raven is, and that we keep learning that neurons are more complex and sophisticated than the simple switches we have always taken them to be. Building AI systems to mimic the brain must therefore fail, as we still have no idea how human minds do something as simple as pulling up a memory. Remembering your first kiss - comes right back when you want it, and we have no idea how, Churchland says.

Meanwhile, science's gargantuan efforts to find intelligent life in the universe is all but laughable. Astronomers and physicists work at different projects, to say, detect laser beams (which do not occur in nature) or examine the skies for evidence of manipulation. But, Tarter says: "If you take the nine-dimensional volume that we need to search for signals and you set that volume equal to the volume of the earth's oceans, to date we have sampled one glass, one twelve ounce glass, of the earth's oceans."

4. Spirituality

Rebecca Goldstein is a philosopher and a novelist. Among other works, she has written a book with the delightful title: Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

Alan Lightman is a physicist and also a novelist. He was the first person to receive dual appointments in both the sciences and the humanities at MIT.

The conversation drifted towards a unified theory of everything and whether anything like that is even possible. That's when Gleiser got really involved.

Gleiser "wrote a whole book called The Island of Knowledge, which is exactly about this. The fact is that there is no way you can actually get to a final theory of everything because you'll never know where you are in the big scheme of things." There's always something more to discover and the discovery of a new particle would throw the whole thing off.

This debate moved as well as any of them, but it was disappointing to me because of its treatment of religion. It's fine and even desirable to contrast science and religion (and spirituality) and how God fits in. The problem is it only uses God and not god. There are numerous religions, and most have origin myths that are totally believed by followers, as well as gods that have more or less to do with nature, daily life, the universe and everything. But Goldstein and Lightman seem to be stuck with their god, the one they were raised on. Their answers were therefore tainted and of little value, unless of course, like them, you only consider the Abrahamic god to be the true and only God. The only one worth arguing about. That the previous debate railed against precisely this prejudice is not raised here.

5. Time

The debate over time featured science historian Jimena Canales and physicist Paul Davies. Canales focused on the infamous meeting where Bergson confronted Einstein (The philosopher Bergson had such renown he was holding up a Nobel prize for relativity because he didn't believe it). This was where the sciences and the humanities parted ways, and there has been little to bridge the gap since.

Time is what we make it into. Leo Buscaglia said "Man invented time, and now he runs by it." Our time began at the big bang, when there there was something measurable. Asking about time before the big bang is, according to Stephen Hawking, like asking what is north of the North Pole. The answer is nothing. Time does not flow, it just is.

You can travel into the future by moving faster than life on Earth, but you can't travel back in time to when you left or before. We are always changing, not time. Our core personalities are changing, not static, but we foist the changes onto time. But time is just an innocent bystander in our changes. In Davies' terms: "The times at each point in space are relative to a unique reference frame, but it's different from the reference frame at another cosmic location over there. But wherever the observers are located, as long as they are in the reference frame for which the cosmic microwave background is isotropic in that frame at that location, they will agree with other cosmic observers on statements like 'the big bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago.'"

He also cites John Wheeler, saying "If you ask an atom the direction of time, it will laugh in your face." It's not about time, its about behavior. Our solar-based time is meaningless to the universe.

6. Transhumanism

Ed Boyden, a neuroscientist says "To map one human brain would require a stack of hard drives reaching into outer space." Consciousness remains a mystery. How can we talk of transhumanism - preserving our minds and personalities in some AI system - when we know nearly nothing about how a personality even works?

Journalist and author Mark O'Connell quotes St. Augustine in 500 AD, describing how Christians would merge with God and be far more than mere humans, living forever: "Think how beautiful, how certain, how unerring, how easily acquired this knowledge and what a body too we shall have. A body utterly subject to our spirit and one kept alive by Spirit that there will be no need of any other food." (City of God) This is a very old idea then, making tech seem an extension of religion.

St Augustine's promise matches almost exactly to what Ray Kurzweil promises with The Singularity. It is due in 2045, he predicts (and is actively working towards). The differences are that in The Singularity, you will upload the data from your brain to some massive AI system that will somehow allow you to continue "living" through it. The other difference is that The Singularity is at least possible, O'Connell says. Religious promises of eternal life, merging wth a god and living in paradise forever have failed to produce every time, as religions have disappeared, and their gods with them.

Interestingly, Kurzweil does not appreciate or countenance the religious connection at all (and thereby agreeing with most transhumanists, apparently), and O'Connell doesn't insist on it either. He merely points it out.

Far too briefly, the three participants touched on the issue of who gets to do this, to transcend the human body and live forever. The answer of course, is billionaires, currently signing up for for-profit space tourism that no one else can afford. What the debaters didn't get to was what a horrible place Earth would be if only annoying billionaires could live forever. The world would never be rid of the Koch Brothers, Mark Zuckerberg, Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, and Peter Thiel, who when asked about rising inequality, answered that the greatest inequality is between living people and dead people, according to O'Connell. To which Gleiser, who is never at a loss for words, could only respond: "Wow." Before we head much farther towards The Singularity, this issue needs to be considered.

But we are probably backing into transhumanism regardless. Boyden points to replacement parts like cochlear implants and pacemakers, while Gleiser repeats his story of the cellphone being a critical extension of Man. Leaving it home by mistake is (emotionally) disastrous for many. And science has never backed away from any challenge, no matter how destructive it was.

7. Longevity

In another interesting matchup, bestselling environmentalist author Elizabeth Kolbert sat in conversation with medical research Doctor Siddhartha (Sid) Mukerjee.

The conversation quickly fell to why individuals will not take any steps to save the planet, despite knowing with certainty they can help. Kolbert cited things like shorter showers, fewer single serving food purchases, and less meat. But people just won't do it. And yet even giant corporations are starting to come around to reducing waste, practically shaming their customers. It is bizarre.

Then it's quickly back to gene manipulation, where it turns out that human cells do not like it when someone tries to edit DNA. "When that happens, the consequences are usually quite severe. Cancer is one of the major consequences - a mutation that eventually causes cancer," Mukerjee says. Nonetheless, it is full speed ahead, as scientists employ basic human bacteria, which are already equipped with gene editing capabilities (for self defense), to make the changes they want in stem cells that produce sperm and eggs. This is known as CRISPR. It has the potential to produce disease-immune babies. But also cause them cancer.

On cloning as a solution, Mukerjee's main contribution is a thought experiment, or nightmare depending on your temperament, that goes: what if we could clone a person, and give them a Go Pro of all the important events in the sponsor's life? They could watch and absorb the memories, carrying them forward.

To which Kolbert replies, she has clones at home: twins. They are completely different personalities and totally independent beings. If you gave them a Go Pro to study the important events in their sponsor's life, they couldn't be bothered. They have their own lives to live.

But Mukerjee, while admitting this view is dystopic, adds that yesterday's dystopia is tomorrow's old news.

8. Being Human

This debate featured three scientists: Tasneem Husain, who specializes in mathematics and the history of science, Jerry DeSilva, a paleoanthropologist, and David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist.

DeSilva describes the missing link as a nonissue; he says they have many links and a good picture of Man's evolution and development. The first ape to walk upright was Ardipithecus, who lived 4-7 million years ago. "What differs are our smile and the way we walk. It really boils down to that," he says.

It was two million years before the various homo species started appearing. DeSilva noted that as Man develops, brains have been getting smaller, not larger.

He lectures at length on bipedalism, the rare (among mammals) ability to live upright (as opposed just standing tall on occasion). It gives Man the ability use his arms and hands like no other mammal, to use tools and weapons, carry things, and so on. What it has taken from Man is speed and agility. People are slow. He says Husain Bolt couldn't catch a rabbit. Bolt's top speed is all of 28 miles per hour.

And people fall. They stumble, they trip and they fall - a lot. Little holes can do them in. Balance is an issue for people and it grows worse with age. Everything has a cost and bipedalism is no exception.

Grinspoon takes a more galactic view: "What we see here is an example of a species that's really good at solving local survival problems and using it to extend its ability to do so, but in so doing has inadvertently created a global change that they've sort of stumbled into. That's what I call the Anthropocene dilemma, where our influence exceeds the scale of our agency, our sense of control." This is a very generous (and naive ) assessment to me. I think it's actually more like what Oxford economist Paul Collier said: "We are not here to serve nature. Nature is here to serve us." And therein lies the problem.

Grinspoon later says about the same thing, he has a wish for the "ceasing our vandalism of the climate," which is a nice turn of phrase.

Tasneem Husain exhibited the biggest epic fail of all the debates. She spent her presentation segment extolling the virtues of storytelling throughout history. It's a unique human trait to pass on important data by incorporating it in a story. Yet when an audience questioner asked about employing storytelling to better communicate the climate emergency, her longwinded answer ignored storytelling and focused on science communication, whatever that means. If it's anything like what we have seen to date, don't waste your time.

Overall, aside from the general level of thoughtfulness and ideas, what strikes me most about Great Minds Don't Think Alike is the appreciation for the connectivity of everything. While each guest has focused expertise, many of them have thoroughly subsumed the state of the art in other disciplines and can debate other experts at their level. It is refreshing to see they are not one-trick ponies, so immersed in their own specialized fields that they know nothing else and cannot see the effects and consequences elsewhere. Quite the opposite. Numerous times, they cite their "opponent's" work, not to criticize, but to build their own case. They are open, activist experts, and that's how it should be if we are ever to get anywhere.

So I learned. And I liked it.

David Wineberg show less

Ostensibly and at its best a dive into epistemology and the limits of frontier science, but all too often just another mediocre recap of the history of scientific developments.
If you're interested enough to be pursuing this book you are almost certainly already familiar with the majority of content it's seen fit to recapitulate. A book like The Golem (What You Should Know About Science) though more dated serves the purpose of questioning the limits of science much better by a series of case show more studies of less well known hypotheses and how they played out in academia; a "how the sausage is made" type insight into the practical problems of knowing.
What seems to be the ultimate point of this book is some epistemological pondering and some second rate philosophical arguments about platonic idealism when it comes to the question of scientific models approximating something that's fundamentally real or not (our author thinks not). show less

Physicist Gleiser draws upon the history of his subject, especially quantum mechanics, (and a little astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and neuroscience), to make a case for the position that not everything about the universe can be known. He opposes the multiverse concept, the anthropic principle, supernatural "explanations", mathematical platonism (where he badly fails to distinguish between abstraction and supernaturalism), and the idea that conscious machines are possible. show more Occasionally aggravating but generally very absorbing. show less