Guillaume Verdon: evaluation

Transcript context

…So the second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy is always increasing in the universe that’s tending towards an equilibrium. And you’re saying there’s these pockets that have complexity and are out of equilibrium. You said that thermodynamics favors the creation of complex life that increases its capability to use energy to offload entropy. To offload entropy. So you have pockets of non-entropy that tend the opposite direction. Why is that intuitive to you that it’s natural for such pockets to emerge? Well, we’re far more efficient at producing heat than let’s say just a rock with a similar mass as ourselves. We acquire free energy, we acquire food, and we’re using all this electricity for our operation. And so the universe wants to produce more entropy and by having life go on and grow, it’s actually more optimal at producing entropy because it will seek out pockets of free energy and burn it for its sustenance and further growth. And that’s sort of the basis of life. And I mean, there’s Jeremy England at MIT who has this theory that I’m a proponent of, that life emerged because of this sort of property. And to me, this physics is what governs the meso scales. And so it’s the missing piece between the quantum and the cosmos. It’s the middle part. Thermodynamics rules the meso scales. And to me, both from a point of view of designing or engineering devices that harness that physics and trying to understand the world through the lens of thermodynamics has been sort of a synergy between my two identities over the past year and a half now. And so that’s really how the two identities emerged. One was kind of, I’m a decently respected scientist, and I was going towards doing a startup in the space and trying to be a pioneer of a new kind of physics-based AI. And as a dual to that, I was sort of experimenting with philosophical thoughts from a physicist standpoint. And ultimately I think that around that time, it was like late 2021, early 2022, I think there was just a lot of pessimism about the future in general and pessimism about tech. And that pessimism was sort of virally spreading because it was getting algorithmically amplified and people just felt like the future is going to be worse than the present. And to me, that is a very fundamentally destructive force in the universe is this sort of doom mindset because it is hyperstitious, which means that if you believe it, you’re increasing the likelihood of it happening. And so felt a responsibility to some extent to make people aware of the trajectory of civilization and the natural tendency of the system to adapt towards its growth. And that actually the laws of physics say that the future is going to be better and grander statistically, and we can make it so. on and the natural tendency of the system to adapt towards its growth. And that actually the laws of physics say that the future is going to be better and grander statistically, and we can make it so. And if you believe in it, if you believe that the future would be better and you believe you have agency to make it happen, you’re actually increasing the likelihood of that better future happening. And so I sort of felt a responsibility to sort of engineer a movement of viral optimism about the future, and build a community of people supporting each other to build and do hard things, do the things that need to be done for us to scale up civilization. Because at least to me, I don’t think stagnation or slowing down is actually an option. Fundamentally life and the whole system, our whole civilization wants to grow. And there’s just far more cooperation when the system is growing rather than when it’s declining and you have to decide how to split the pie. And so I’ve balanced both identities so far, but I guess recently the two have been merged more or less without my consent.…

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