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1. 00:00 No text
2. 00:16 sam we're getting to the close of the cycle first of all compliments you're getting my name right finally quite an accomplishment why what did I do in the past i don't know i never said on these shows did I now um we are talking today about No text
3. 00:38 are science and technology related and there are two alternative introductions that I can suggest one is about the juxiposition between Lewis Carol and Jul and one is uh fondly remembering Alibaba el so which one do you prefer well uh the four thieves they sound very the 40
4. 01:03 thieves okay 47 okay i was very small the movie came out in 1954 i'm talking about a French-speaking movie about Alibaba Alibaba in French El Karant Voler and the 40 thieves and I was a child in Romania and I went to see the movie many many times until I knew
5. 01:28 it by heart and what fascinated me most was the fact that Alibaba at a certain point uh came up to those heavy doors that hid the treasures inside the cave and he knew that was what he was supposed to say was No text sesame open thyself and he did and lo
6. 01:54 and behold the doors opened now whenever I go through sliding doors in any supermarket or any super farm I'm thinking to myself Sam Vaknin or Vaknin was the one who told me 30 years ago that technology is here for us to realize uh miracles for humanity
7. 02:19 actually I was quoting a much u another another intellectual giant to be on the modest side arthur Clark arthur Clark says "When science is sufficiently advanced it's indistinguishable from magic." Okay but at least you were the one who brought this citation to my ears
8. 02:38 i I popularized it among among the Okay but now what's with Luis Carol and Jul No text okay Luis you you at a certain stage I remember you poo pooing uh Jul because he said it's not it's not a big deal you know when you're in the 19th century you
9. 02:56 can extrapolate what might happen what can happen what may happen in technology whereas to take a person like Charles Lutwitch uh Dodson known as Lewis Carol and implant in his um Alice and Wonderland and Alice and the Looking Glass hypotheses that flourished and
10. 03:20 developed at the beginning of the 20th century 60 years later 50 60 years later is is quite quite impressive yes so here we are here we are okay i don't underestimate Juul Vern as a writer yes it's it's fun it's adventurous you know great fun actually
11. 03:39 and he was a gifted writer but as far as technology his extrapolations were not even that far out everything he had written about in his books was already in existence just not that developed but it was there never mind that's not the topic of today so the topic of today is
12. 03:55 science and technology and the reason we are discussing this is that people often confuse the two when you when you say people science they think about technology right and so they think that science is their smartphones exactly that's that's a child of science yes and
13. 04:11 not only a child of science but the thing this is the reification the embodiment of science brought about by science brought about by science this is what was enabled by science yes but also that science is in that box that that is science when you ask what is science
14. 04:24 that is science just it's the physical manifestation of science but it's science they don't make the distinction between science and technology and the difference is immense immense let's start with the fact that science is value neutral it's neutral it it makes
15. 04:40 no judgments it has no opinions the scientist proceeds with the data and the evidence where it takes him he does or her or her or her thank you the scientist never uh prejudges or directs his his efforts to yield the outcome that he wants i once said um one
16. 05:00 of my lawyers was Ramy Kaspi and Ramy Kaspi told me I've made up my mind don't confuse me with the facts that's not a scientist yes technology of course is value laden technology uh starts with values and then tries to realize them for example the value of freedom as
17. 05:22 embedded in the internet the internet is a technology it raifies freedom the value of making money it's a value in capitalism so technology has to do with values science has to do with discovery i if I may there is this there is there No text
18. 05:39 this teacher who told his students uh to create to to design uh a channel that would carry blood from khifa to a lot um I come from Israel as you do but so this my examples are are uh are Israeli so uh they they started working on the project and I don't know if anybody asked
19. 06:01 whether uh it was a good idea to do such a thing because where where would the blood come from at any rate the person who initiated the technology thought it was a good idea and reflected his values for example trying to help people in distress far away these are values he
20. 06:20 may have hit upon the wrong technology or technology that could go could go all right technology But definitely had values the values could be negative values like for example the cyclone cichl in azitz that was a technology and it served a negative value a value of
21. 06:36 extermination so when you say values you mean either positive or negative well negative in our eyes of course people Nazis didn't consider Nazis considered them positive so it's in any at any rate technology is responsive to values and that's why we ban certain technologies
22. 06:54 for example human cloning it's possible it's been done but it's it's forbidden and people are sitting in prison for having engaged in this okay that's the first difference the second difference is that science is the pursuit of knowledge while technology is definitely
23. 07:11 the pursuit of profits all technology is a pursuit of profits ultimately even if you start as an altruist or NGO or I don't know what ultimately you reach the point of money how much does it cost the suppliers you pay to they make profit ultimately it's reducible to profit
24. 07:29 while science is about knowledge not No text about profit and still it costs money it costs money but it's not about the money it's not about the money and there are many many scientists who conduct experiments at home alone in a room and it cost them almost nothing actually
25. 07:41 some major discoveries were like that including for example what causes gastritis and ulcerative colitis it was conducted in a small room in a in a godforsaken laboratory in Australia and the guy injected himself he he experimented on himself so he didn't
26. 07:58 have to pay any he didn't have to pay anything or anyone and he won the Nobel Prize volunteers and he won the Nobel Prize the third difference and there are quite a few so bear with me the third difference is that science is analytical and reductionist
27. 08:13 the very few times that scientists try to create an overview a synopsis they a synoptic view they failed that's why we don't have a theory of everything yet yet yet yet and it's been 140 years so maybe we will never have one yeah it doesn't look good because all attempts
28. 08:37 in all fields of science to create theories of everything failed and they failed because science is about analysis it's about reduction to elements reduction to ingredients and components while technology is exactly the opposite technology is synthetic technology takes
29. 08:58 elements and puts them together to create a new hole so it's a major difference in thinking people experimental scientists applied scientists uh people who engage in technology they think synthetically they say "Wait a minute if I take this element and this element and this
30. 09:15 element I put them together combine them I get I get an iPhone you know while a scientist would take an iPhone and he would say "Okay let's break it down and and see what happens." See how what happens how it works the next thing is that science is always
31. 09:31 useful there is no science that is not useful ultimately sometimes it's very difficult to see how a specific theory could be useful at at the time in its initial context but there hasn't been a single case in the history of science where a theory or a work in science
32. 09:50 scientific theory scientific theory hasn't proven itself beneficial yes not one okay or or not beneficial harmful but with outcomes without with outcomes while technology is sometimes harmful and very frequently useless actually of 10 inventions only one survives so
33. 10:11 technology is mostly useless any over No text the span of time we have to see almost immediately because if cassette cassettes for instance were a very wonderful technological invention but they lasted like 20 years or 30 years no but I'm talking about inventions that never made
34. 10:29 it to the market any venture capitalist will tell you and I used to be a venture capitalist any venture capitalist will tell you that of 10 companies that come with ideas and ask for money nine fail and they fail within 5 years technology is about failure mostly vast majority of
35. 10:47 technology never makes it to the market at all and even technologies that make it to the market they survive they have a very short shelf life so cryptocology is about failure and replacement while science has enduring value and there is no such thing as as failed science
36. 11:04 because science is not about truth is not about is not about uh something that is uh longstanding science is about is the process technology is the product or the outcome science is the process and it's an ever ever perpetuating process yes never ending never crowned never
37. 11:25 ending there's no goal no end result no it's just about the process the journey the journey yes in this sense science is much closer to eastern eastern religions and eastern mysticism because science is definitely about the path it's about the
38. 11:40 path not about the goal okay and science is supposed to be egoless very much like well it's not it's not because we're human but it's supposed to be egoless and you know what when push comes to shove it is egoless egoless when you when you talk about the
39. 11:57 scientist dealing in it in it or or the institution propagating it a scientist can be very vanglorious and very narcissistic and very grandios but when confronted with evidence he will relent and concede and walk away and admit his mistake i am hardpressed to
40. 12:16 remember another example i am hardressed to remember the opposite example that the scientists insisted in the face of evidence no I'm right the evidence is wrong einstein once joked edington asked him "What if the light passes near the sun next to the sun and it doesn't bend
41. 12:32 doesn't bend." Einstein said "Well the sun has a problem then." But he was joking of course he was joking he was joking of course einstein though is an example of a bad scientist because Einstein did have an ego and he was highly narcissistic and he wouldn't
42. 12:48 accept progress in physics he kept rejecting every progress in physics the amazing and ironic thing is that most of this progress was first initiated by Einstein himself are we talking about the dice playing God playing when he said that God isn't
43. 13:06 playing dice quantum mechanics the man who the man who codified and first described quant the man who invented quantum mechanics was Albert Einstein but he didn't like it when other scientists took his work and ran with it and took it to its logical conclusion he
44. 13:23 didn't like that he didn't like also losing control over the theory he invented it it's mine I mean who are you to he was very ego laden it's not a good trait in a scientist and indeed in the last 30 or 40 years of his life he was largely shunned by the scientific
45. 13:38 community they ignored him they they left him aside they they did not involve him I didn't know that yeah so the next No text we'll recap right at a certain stage if you wanted the end the next thing is that science can yield technology but not always science is not about
46. 13:56 technology is not technology oriented if it yields technology great if it doesn't also great so it's it's can yield while technologies similarly can yield science but that's much more rare much more rare I can think of telescopes for instance yes so technology can yield
47. 14:17 science of course it's a rare occurrence that's why you are able to think of an example because it's so rare that we have like I don't know 10 cases five cases it's rare techn for example your smartphone is not likely to yield new signs you know so but it does happen so
48. 14:32 in both cases one can lead to the other but there is no necessary connection as people Um there are also technologies that when they were invented were not grounded in any science actually people make the mistake to think that technology is impossible if there's no
49. 14:50 backup of some science but it's not true what are you thinking of for example solid solid state transistors we didn't know what is solid state and we had to develop the theory later in view of what the transistors were doing so there were situations where the technology was
50. 15:07 invented but there was no science there you mentioned the telescope it's an excellent example there was no science there galileo had no idea what he's going to see it's not that he came with a theory and said I'm going to see this and this but didn't he know that he No text
51. 15:20 wanted to improve a certain lens and make it better so he could see better but there was no science behind it uhhuh no science there was a lot of technology yes yes but no science he didn't say "I have a theory that the moon has craters and now I'm going to point my telescope
52. 15:36 to see if he didn't know what he was." He was shocked actually he was so shocked that he wrote you know the famous book that got him in trouble he was utterly shocked by what he discovered he had no idea he's going to see this leven Hook when he used the
53. 15:49 microscope for the first time was equally shocked and he wrote the book um microraphia micrography micro microraphia it was in Latin because he when he pointed the telescope at a drop of water he didn't he didn't imagine in his wildest dreams that he
54. 16:08 will see microbes oh he didn't know no of course not no one heard of microbes no he didn't know so there was no science there didn't know what to expect no not at all wow there was no science there it's not that he had a theory that said well in drops of waters there there
55. 16:22 must be small animals that are flying he didn't know this he was shocked so it's not true that most technology is driven by science some of it is some of it isn't and actually technology sometimes gets divorced from science for example take your smartphone uh don't take my
56. 16:41 smartphone take your smartphone please take your smartphone and if you have a look at it all the technologies in your smartphone and there is not a single exception all the technologies in your latest model of smartphone are 60 years old you don't have a single technology in
57. 16:58 your smartphone that is younger than 60 years older or younger the all these technologies are old they're old they're old 60 years old oh I have I have a compass you have GPS which is 60 years old i have GPS you have chips which are 60 years old i have a magnifying glass
58. 17:15 whatever you have i have no no these are the applications i'm talking about the technology all the technology technology so the technology is 60 years old there's nothing new there so there's been a divorce between technology and science science advanced you know well
59. 17:28 ahead but the technologists the people who are putting the iPhone together they are probably not up to date with science so they're using old proven No text science also you know mechanisms factories organizations need time need time and sometimes decades so there is a
60. 17:48 divorce between science and technology people think that the iPhone represents the latest in technology no it's it doesn't it doesn't represent the latest it represents my grandfather's physics more or less and I'm not exaggerating so you know next thing is that science is
61. 18:06 directed by theories and paradigms so when you work in science you work according to a paradigm that was a discovery of Fireband and and Thomas you work inside a paradigm a paradigm is a story and you conform to the story even if you don't want to
62. 18:26 conform the story to the story you're a rebel it's very difficult for you to rebel against the prevailing ethos the you know like the founding fathers in the United States or or the constitution of the United States it's an ethos is it perfectly suited the constitution is it
63. 18:44 perfectly suited for the 21st century allow me to doubt this but no one dares to confront it it wasn't even suited for for the time when people were held as slaves yes so you know so allow me to doubt this that's why it's amended 40 30 times almost okay but there's a
64. 19:00 constitution in science and there are the founding fathers and this is the ethos this is the paradigm and you're working inside it and you are driven by theory your experiments are not just all over the place but you have theories dominant theories and you construct
65. 19:17 experiments to prove or disprove these theories so you're totally driven by this this is a major shift in science major shift because in the time of Galileo and Kepler and Copernicus and even Madame Curi and up and even Madame Cury no Madame Cury was more No Madame
66. 19:35 Curi was more of a modern scientist newton liinets le these people didn't have they had to invent science they didn't have theories to guide them they created the paradigm they created the theory so we have protocience protocience which is this early science
67. 19:52 and then we have today's science in today's science there's paradigms and theories and they tell you what to do what to experiment what to to to check what to and if you have a anibla No text who uh who doss the theories and the paradigms and goes astray there's never
68. 20:11 been such a case this is this is where people misunderstand Thomas there's never been someone who who exited science even what what he calls a paradigm shift and what Fireband described he he described stages of like jumps non-evolution but revolution in science
69. 20:35 even what they described is in my view just another use of the same language simply writing another novel with the same language einstein take Einstein mhm when Einstein created his theories which are considered the paradigm shift in physics the the mother
70. 20:53 of the 20th century of no never before never after at this stage they are the mother of the paradigm shift because he also invented quantum mechanics right as you said okay so this is the paradigm but if you look at it just look at the theory it has mass it has motion it has
71. 21:10 momentum energy it has energy these are all things he is using the same language he didn't come and say listen forget the language i'm going to invent a new language so there are no such things in science you are trapped you're trapped in in in the language you are trapped in
72. 21:27 the framework you're trapped in the So this is true for science yes and technology technology is driven by trial and error ah okay which is a totally different concept technology is never driven by a theory or a paradigm because that would be bad technology technology
73. 21:43 simply says okay let's put these two together see if it works no it's not working let's put these three oh oh it's working yeah that's technology and so technology is trial and error even medicine for example uh penicellin and the class of antibiotics was a mistake
74. 21:59 an error as we know an error in experiment it was an error the minute you make an error in an experiment you are liable to create a new technology that's what people that's again a common mistake of people they think that if the experiment succeeds Mhm you create a new technology
75. 22:18 yes okay no it's when the experiment breaks down not always but sometimes almost always the same with VR almost always the same with VR if you look at at the history of technology almost you can almost generalize and say that only unexpected outcomes drive technology
76. 22:38 and so in all fields medicine and so on so this is trial and error very different to science I mean nothing to do with science next thing is that No text science is driven by measurements and observations these are the twin tools measurement and observation while
77. 22:54 technology is driven by by engineering and design so in in uh in science we are
78. 23:02 we say that we are naive we come to the world and we are like naive children and so we observing we're measuring what will be will be we we cannot uh predict or control the outcomes but of course that's not the way in technology technologies there's a cons concerned
79. 23:18 attempt to design and control the outcome to design the process and control the outcome luckily I mean the luck is when it fails and then you have a new technology but if it succeeding technology so energy and and design but the process of exists and here we come to the last
80. 23:43 point which is I think a fascinating point physical reality falsifies mental activity mental reality falsifies physical activity now I'll try to explain okay physical reality falsifies mental activity science is a mental activity but physical reality tells me if I'm
81. 24:09 right so as a scientist I live in my head i put pen to paper these are all mental things those mental psychological activities we are not sure what's the connection to the brain or to the body or even if the brain is the main seat of of the mind of
82. 24:26 the mind we are discussing we are beginning to discover that probably uh cognition and so on which were hitherto attributed only to the brain and probably distributed throughout the body but we leave it aside for sure uh engaging in science the practice of
83. 24:44 science is mental so it's psychological but I test it against physical reality technology is the opposite i engage in physical activity not mental but physical i put things together with your hands with your my hands or robots or factories it's all physical i mean
84. 25:03 ultimately you have to touch technology it's physical activity but you test it against in a mental environment known as the marketplace the market ah so it's the common the common knowledge or the common marketplace is a mental construct mental
85. 25:20 Did you ever meet a marketplace did you ever interview a marketplace you ever talk to a it's a mental thing it's a mental sphere so when I engage in mental activity known as science I test it against physical reality and when I engage in physical activity of putting
86. 25:37 you test it against a mental reality mental reality which is the marketplace so this and now if you want me to Yes please let's let's go back science is has is value neutral you go with the evidence technology is driven by values value the second thing is that science
87. 25:55 pursues knowledge and technology pursues profits in a sense next is that science is analytical and reductionist while technology is synthetic science is always useful even if it's useful decades later or centuries later it's always useful technology is
88. 26:14 sometimes harmful and the vast majority of technology is not useful actually contrary to what people think next thing is that science can yield technology and technology can yield science that that much is true no no can come again the there was a problem with your can can't
89. 26:30 can't techn science can yield technology can yield can and technology cannot no technology can yield science yes both of them can yield each other okay so what you what they're both compatible both can can lead to each other next is that science is driven by theories directed
90. 26:49 by theories and paradigms while technology is directed by markets the next thing is that science um provides uh um predictions um is is driven more by predictions and hypothesis while uh no technology technology is driven by engineering and design and finally which is perhaps the
91. 27:14 the innovative point because until now everything I said is well known but the innovative point is that I think I'm I'm sure I'm demonstrating that mental activity known as science is tested against physical reality and physical activity is t tested against a mental
92. 27:30 construct known as the market as the market Okay so how can we uh summarize No text the the subject are science and technology related of course they are related they are definitely not one and the same they behave very in very diff different manners uh as you have pointed
93. 27:50 out true very true but they are I think sufficiently different to qualify as two totally separate human activities because listen uh I don't know science also informs what Elvis is doing here with the cameras of course there's a lot of science in this camera but no one
94. 28:08 would say that Elvis is a scientist or even a technologist elvis is a wizard with with camera work i mean so the interface between science and technology is sufficiently tenuous to actually consider them two utterly separate activities and as I mentioned
95. 28:27 during the the talk very often people start with technology and have no idea where it's going to take them like Galileo like Leven hook they start with the technology but then they are totally shocked by their own discoveries and so so these are two separate human activities