This transcript of my X Space with Oleg Ponfilenok was generated and cleaned up by Grok Bot. I’m posting it here to compare it to the transcript generated by Substack. Both transcripts are good, especially in view of the fact that English is not the native language of the speakers and both have a foreign accent. This one is better in some ways: besides identifying the speakers, the AI bot has corrected some words and passages that came out unclear in the audio based on context.
Automatic transcript (local Whisper speech recognition), cleaned up by Grok Bot: speaker labels added, names and terms corrected, filler words removed, punctuation fixed. Wording is otherwise kept as spoken. Some passages may contain transcription errors; [inaudible] marks unclear audio.
[00:00:13]Giulio: Hello, we are about to start. Just hold on for a few minutes until we get organized. So I see that my guest has shown up. One moment until I enable him to speak. Connecting. Hello, good to see you. Oleg, you should unmute your microphone.
[00:01:06]Oleg: Hello, Giulio. Good to see you.
[00:01:08]Giulio: And here we go. Oleg, do I pronounce your name right?
[00:01:13]Oleg: Yes, right.
[00:01:15]Giulio: Your name sounds Russian, are you?
[00:01:19]Oleg: Yes, I am. I’m from Russia, basically. But I live in Vietnam.
[00:01:24]Giulio: Yeah, it’s interesting that you live in Vietnam. How did you happen to move there?
[00:01:30]Oleg: I live seven years already. So I moved at the end of 2019, before COVID, for winter and spring of 2020. I stayed in Vietnam because in Russia started lockdown, so I chose to stay in Vietnam than go back to Russia.
[00:01:53]Giulio: Great. And in Vietnam there were no COVID lockdowns?
[00:01:57]Oleg: Yes, it was, but later, one year later, it was in 2021. But in 2020 it doesn’t.
[00:02:05]Giulio: Interesting. So, you know, this Space is open to the public, but due to the hour, I guess it’s quite likely that no one else will show up. However, if someone shows up, we will wait until the end of the conversation and give the floor to other people. Now, I’m very interested to be talking to you, because this whole idea of someone who wants to start a new religion that has something to do with science sounds very interesting to me, and I want to know about it. So I’d like to ask you first to say something about yourself, and then give a very short explanation of your main ideas, and we will follow up from there.
[00:03:08]Oleg: Yeah, sure. So I have a physics degree, education in the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, but after I finished university, I didn’t go to some science work and I started to make my own business. I have three startups, three tech startups: for mobile apps developing, live streaming, and drones, drones for delivery of food. I was the first one who in 2014 delivered pizza in Russia, in the Russian city Syktyvkar.
[00:03:56]Giulio: With drones?
[00:03:57]Oleg: Drones, yeah, quadcopters, yes.
[00:04:00]Giulio: So it was a real operational application of using drones to deliver pizza?
[00:04:06]Oleg: Yes, and it was 12 years ago.
[00:04:09]Giulio: That’s 12 years ago. That’s extremely cool. In which Russian city was that based?
[00:04:15]Oleg: In Syktyvkar.
[00:04:17]Giulio: And where is that?
[00:04:20]Oleg: It’s north from Moscow.
[00:04:24]Giulio: And you didn’t run into any problem due to regulation of what drones can do in public spaces?
[00:04:31]Oleg: We worked there for one month with our client, Dodo Pizza, and we performed 100 deliveries, and then we had a problem with regulation. We had a [inaudible] and they prohibited us to fly more, so we stopped this project at that time.
[00:04:56]Giulio: This is extremely cool, especially since now we are used to hear news about drones in that part of the world, but they are not being used to deliver pizza but for other things.
[00:05:13]Oleg: Actually, you can Google it and you’ll find it very easy. You just write something like “drone pizza delivery in Russia”, and you find this anyway.
[00:05:21]Giulio: Yes, that’s super, super cool. So you are a physicist by training, like me, but you didn’t continue in academic settings and you started businesses, which is also exactly what I did, but not immediately after starting, after like 20 years.
[00:05:50]Oleg: Yeah, but now I returned to science, to physics, but like an independent researcher, because I don’t have any affiliation. And now I write papers in quantum mechanics, in cosmology and astrobiology. So now I do science, but myself, like independent research.
[00:06:19]Giulio: That’s exactly what I call myself.
[00:06:23]Oleg: Yeah, yes, right. So I also took a look at your chapter in your book, and it’s also very similar, but we also have different points of view on some questions that we will discuss today. So now you want me to explain a little bit about Entropianism, right?
[00:06:49]Giulio: Yeah, just the main lines, the central core, and then we can elaborate on that.
[00:06:57]Oleg: Okay, so the main idea is that nature has theology. So everything is going one way, like entropy increasing.
[00:07:09]Giulio: You mean teleology, I guess?
[00:07:12]Oleg: Teleology, yes, teleology.
[00:07:15]Giulio: Right. It’s difficult to speak in a language which is not the mother language of either of us.
[00:07:22]Oleg: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:34]Giulio: Teleology, right. To define that, it means when things can be seen as being driven towards a specific end.
[00:07:50]Oleg: Yeah, things tend to happen in some direction.
[00:07:56]Giulio: Like if the future is calling the past and telling the past what to do.
[00:08:00]Oleg: Yes. And I say that this teleology is very simple: it’s just maximum entropy production. And using this simple teleology, the simple principle, you can explain life, evolution of life, and, more importantly, what we have to do next: what is the purpose of civilization, what is the purpose of society, and what will happen next.
[00:08:36]Giulio: It sounds extremely simple. You know, I do like simple things.
[00:08:42]Oleg: Yes, yes. It’s very simple.
[00:08:44]Giulio: And I like them a lot. But sometimes something that is very simple only works until a certain point, and after that it must be replaced by something which is not as simple as the initial formulation. That’s the impression, at least.
[00:09:05]Oleg: Yes, but my techno-religion, it’s simple, as it is only one rule, and everything I derive next from this one rule. And I say that this is enough.
[00:09:21]Giulio: That’s super interesting. So, can you explain to me why you call it a techno-religion? What does it have to do with religion?
[00:09:31]Oleg: Yes, because in my definition, if we’re talking about religion in general, not only mystic religion but religion in general, it’s a technology for social purposes: what are the purposes of society and individuals. This is religion, in my point of view. And “techno” is because it’s measurable. It has a measurable quantity: entropy production, speed of entropy production. And it’s “techno” like technocracy, when you run government using some metrics. So this is the same idea: you run religion using one metric.
[00:10:39]Giulio: Interesting. Only, so far it sounds more like what one could call a political ideology to me, rather than what one would call a religion.
[00:10:53]Oleg: Yes, political also, but religion because it’s also personal as well, because it also answers why you have to live like a person in this society and this life, and why you have to live this way.
[00:11:21]Giulio: I understand. And in fact, this is one of the roles that has always been met by religions in history: something that helps you not only understand the meaning of your life, but also helps you understand what you should do with your life.
[00:11:46]Oleg: Yeah, what you should do, and what other people should do as well.
[00:11:51]Giulio: I understand. Before getting into the scientific part of it, I just want to point out that I do tend to use the word religion in a metaphysical sense, like, you know, the ultimate nature of reality and all that, but I’m not very interested in those things one could call the normative part of religion. Like, you know, what you should eat on a certain day and what you shouldn’t eat. You know, this kind of micromanagement of individual lifestyle is quite a foreign concept to me. So I’m always interested when I hear the word religion, but I’m thinking of the metaphysical and cosmological part, not about the normative part.
[00:13:07]Oleg: Yeah. For me, mostly religion is the normative part, like commandments, personal commandments. It’s the main part of religion, because the metaphysical part is like philosophy more than religion, I think.
[00:13:28]Giulio: Words are very powerful, and discussing these things one always comes into the problem of limitations in dialogue, arising from the fact that different people tend to use the same words to mean slightly different things. However, I think that we have clarified what religion means to both of us. And to reach quickly the end of the story: you say your techno-religion helps us to know what is the meaning of life, and also to know what we as individuals and as a society should do. Now, can you answer that directly before going back to the beginning?
[00:14:24]Oleg: Yes. So we have a purpose of the universe, first of all. The purpose of the universe is to increase to the maximum entropy state as fast as possible. And then life is the way how this purpose will be achieved. Life helps to increase the entropy production for the universe, and the more life is advanced, it does it more scalable, at more scale. And at the end of time of the universe, life becomes the most powerful thing for entropy production.
[00:15:17]Giulio: Okay, I’m following you so far. So this is the first part, the fundamental nature of the universe. And how about the second part, what we should do as both individuals and societies?
[00:15:33]Oleg: Yeah, the second part is like: we are part of this mechanism, and this mechanism has direction. We become more successful if we follow it, and we lose if we go backwards on it, not following this rule, this mechanism. So it’s like natural selection works, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. They have natural selection, so natural selection works to tend to increase entropy production, and individuals who help this, statistically, will become more successful.
[00:16:23]Giulio: I understand. Now, before going into further details, I’d like to explain what I think about the keyword, which is maximum entropy production, so we can understand if we are on the same page or not before moving on.
[00:16:50]Oleg: Okay.
[00:16:52]Giulio: Okay, so. I have always found this concept of maximum entropy production very interesting. I have been reading about it many times, but what really brought the importance of this point home was reading this book called Believing in Dawkins by Eric Steinhart. And then from that book I went looking for the sources, and I have done a lot of reading about this. So we already know from basic thermodynamics that entropy always increases. All right. And we can also more or less explain this on the basis of microphysics, where by microphysics I mean what we consider the elementary physics of the fundamental building blocks of the world, like, you know, particles and fields and all that, with the caveat that these are always moving targets, in the sense that we can think that something is fundamental now, but we may have to change our mind tomorrow. However, classical thermodynamics stops here. And the idea behind the maximum entropy production principle, in a formulation due to Rod Swenson and many other scientists, is that not only entropy increases, but the overall entropy of the universe increases as fast as possible: hence, maximum entropy production principle. And this is, I think, a very powerful idea, one on which there is no real agreement in terms of the question of whether this can be derived from microphysics, or if it has to be taken as a fundamental principle of nature, which is on the same level of importance, on the same level of primacy as microphysics. And now, I do happen to think that these things should be considered as fundamental, because if you think of the status of what we know about microphysics today, you see that microphysics does not give unique predictions about the future, but it only allows you to predict probability distributions, so that microphysics is not causally closed, not entirely. And this leaves a certain slack that leaves room for other fundamental principles to be and to operate. And here the idea is that things like the maximum entropy production principle are fundamental elements of the laws of nature, which operate in parallel with the laws of microphysics. Would you agree on that?
[00:21:01]Oleg: What do you mean by microphysics? Is it quantum mechanics or not?
[00:21:07]Giulio: Essentially, yes. Microphysics is what we consider as the most fundamental part of physics at this moment. Now, if you think that quantum mechanics is a finished scientific theory and there is nothing else, then yes, then microphysics means quantum mechanics.
[00:21:32]Oleg: I have a paper about quantum mechanics, and I add a new thing to quantum mechanics, not the normal quantum mechanics, but I need some new assumptions in decoherence and quantum collapse. In my papers, one idea is that you have a Heisenberg cut at 400 qubits, so you cannot have less probability.
[00:22:13]Giulio: 400? 400 qubits?
[00:22:16]Oleg: 400 logical qubits. You cannot have random...
[00:22:20]Giulio: Why 400 instead of 390 or 410?
[00:22:25]Oleg: Right, right, I have this in the paper, because, okay, imagine you have a coin, right? How many heads can be in a row if you toss a coin? How many?
[00:22:40]Giulio: According to classical probability, an infinite number.
[00:22:44]Oleg: But actually you don’t have time until the end of the universe to get an infinite number. So in cosmology you have a limit: 400. You cannot get more than 400 heads in a row.
[00:22:59]Giulio: I see what you’re getting at.
[00:23:00]Oleg: Yeah, so you have a limit of probability. A probability less than 10 to the minus 120, it’s not real.
[00:23:11]Giulio: Yeah, that’s... As an aside, this doesn’t have much to do with the subject of this conversation, but this makes me think of a conversation, an observation that I came across recently, and that I found very interesting, due to a certain, I believe, Goldsmith in the 1930s, who wanted to add as a fundamental principle of nature that probability has always to be quantized.
[00:23:55]Oleg: Yes.
[00:23:56]Giulio: I don’t think anyone else has ever followed up on that idea, but this idea of yours looks to me not similar, but related.
[00:24:08]Oleg: Actually, it’s the same like Heisenberg uncertainty, but a different way of this. So Heisenberg uncertainty is the limit of the maximum amount of information you can get from one measurement. This is the uncertainty, quantum uncertainty. And cosmology puts the maximum of how many measurements you can take, the limit of cosmology. So the quanta of probability come from how many measurements you can ever take. So quantum uncertainty is how much information you can take from one measurement, and then you have the information you can get in total in the future. So, just another side of this informational principle.
[00:25:10]Giulio: I see. The core idea is simple: that since information is physical, then its physicality imposes limits on information.
[00:25:24]Oleg: Yes.
[00:25:25]Giulio: Like your 400 consecutive tosses of the coin.
[00:25:36]Oleg: Yes.
[00:25:37]Giulio: Right. You mean that if you keep going until the end of the universe, you will not be able to achieve a sequence of 400 heads.
[00:25:52]Oleg: Yes.
[00:25:53]Giulio: Then it does make sense saying that the number of theoretically possible sequences, the length of theoretically possible sequences of heads, is infinite, because you don’t have infinite time until the end of the universe.
[00:26:11]Oleg: Yeah, you don’t have any infinities in the real world.
[00:26:14]Giulio: Right. That’s a concept I understand, and that I kind of sympathize with, which would not be “it from bit” but rather the opposite, “bit from it”. I tend to resonate with these concepts. However, let’s go back to the idea of maximum entropy production. So you say that this is it, and there is nothing else that we really need to know to understand the universe, right?
[00:26:53]Oleg: Yeah. It’s like a helicopter view. It’s a main principle; from it you can logically follow any other rules.
[00:27:08]Giulio: Right, I understand. This is interesting. Well, again, I like simple things, and at the same time I don’t really think things are that simple. And as a matter of fact, I strongly doubt that we will ever reach a theory of everything, because as science goes on, there will always be new things that we don’t understand with today’s science, but we will understand with tomorrow’s science, and so on. I cannot give you a proof of this, but this is what I very strongly tend to believe.
[00:28:05]Oleg: Of course, at different scales emerge different properties, different rules, and different structures. But all of them can follow the simplest purpose: to minimize time for the heat death of the universe.
[00:28:40]Giulio: Let’s not talk of the heat death of the universe yet, because I’m not going to agree on that point. Let’s stop before the heat death. We are still talking of maximum entropy production.
[00:28:59]Oleg: I mean heat death in, like, the de Sitter empty space state.
[00:29:08]Giulio: Let’s get to that at the end. What you just said sounds very interesting and very well said to me, because you say that, yes, the fundamental rule of the universe is that entropy must increase as fast as possible, but there is not only one way to achieve this fundamental goal. On the contrary, you keep finding more and more new ways to increase the rate of entropy production as fast as possible when you move up the emergence ladder. This is what you said, and I totally agree.
[00:30:09]Oleg: Yes, yes. So this is a mechanism: to achieve the maximum entropy production way, you have to try all possible ways and choose the one that produces entropy the most.
[00:30:30]Giulio: Right. So let’s put things like this. On the bottom layer, there is microphysics: mechanics and quantum mechanics. Then we move one layer up and we find thermodynamics. And here you have a number of thermodynamic principles that microphysics must satisfy, and one of them is maximum entropy production rate. But then you can move one layer up, for example, to the layer of biology. Well, we would have chemistry before biology. You would have chemistry, biology, but then even above that you would have psychology and sociology, psychology of artificial intelligence, and all that. And in each of these layers you keep finding new ways to satisfy the basic need of the universe to have entropy increase as fast as possible. And if we agree up to this point, I just conclude saying that I think this ascending hierarchy of levels does not need to stop anywhere, but above each level you keep finding new and new layers, and new laws of emergence that apply to those layers.
[00:32:20]Oleg: Yes. So you have different layers; on each layer you have different laws, and even different sciences who study these laws, who research those. But all these laws, in statistics, in general, follow this entropy rule.
[00:32:46]Giulio: Right. I think we can agree up to this point. But, you know, at this point, let me refer to one of the things that you told me, and that you have also written about in your papers: that yours wants to be a techno-religion without a concept of a god, right?
[00:33:20]Oleg: Yes, right. No god. Don’t need this. By Occam’s razor, don’t need this.
[00:33:28]Giulio: Right. But now let me try to reverse your argument. Given that we agree so far, I will summarize things like this. We have microphysics with some laws, Schrödinger’s equation, [inaudible] quantum mechanics and all that. Then we have thermodynamics, which introduces new fundamental laws, like the maximum entropy production principle. Then we have things like biology, which introduce their own fundamental, not derivable laws. Then we have other things above biology: we have psychology and sociology and all that. Then, if we have an infinite number of layers, the number of fundamental laws that the universe has to satisfy becomes very large. Even if the basic impulse of the universe is one, there are many and many and many constraints that all have to be satisfied in order to achieve what the universe wants. Now, I make this simple analogy. If you only have microphysics, you know, F equals ma, Schrödinger equations, Einstein equations and all that, then the laws of the universe are a simple thing, a simple set of rules that fit on a T-shirt. But then if you keep adding new and new and new laws, the program that is the universe becomes very complex. It stops being simple, but becomes very complex, and at some point it becomes as complex as these artificial intelligences that we are learning to live with. So if the universe is not a simple computer program, but a very complex artificial intelligence, then isn’t this equivalent to the concept of God that you find in traditional religions?
[00:36:12]Oleg: No, because they answer different questions. The simple rule answers the questions what we want to achieve, what is the purpose. But the complex rules, like your emergence rules, they answer questions how we can achieve this: what’s exactly the way, what’s exactly the technical, technology mechanism. These are different questions. “What” is simple, but “how” is hard.
[00:36:47]Giulio: I see your point. To summarize it in my words, you’re saying that even if all the laws that you find in all the layers, microphysics, thermodynamics, biology, psychology and so on, are all equally primary, and none is more fundamental than the others, yet still these are rules that pertain to the “how”, but there is one underlying “what”...
[00:37:44]Oleg: Yes.
[00:37:45]Giulio: ...which is the fact that the universe strives toward maximum entropy, and all the other things that we are calling “hows” must follow from that. Is this what you’re saying?
[00:37:52]Oleg: Yes.
[00:37:53]Giulio: I see. It’s an interesting observation. It, you know, doesn’t really change my statement that this is equivalent to a concept of God, because, you know, at some point it may become very difficult to distinguish between a “what” and a “how”. You can even say that the “how” is the “what”. But, well, good point, and I will be thinking about this.
[00:38:37]Oleg: It’s like the Kardashev scale. For example, you need to achieve 10 to the 26th power watts, but how to do this, it’s very complex. But the goal is very simple.
[00:38:53]Giulio: I see. But can’t you reverse the statement, saying that, you know, you have to do all those things, and that is the “what”, and the outcome, to achieve that many watts, is the derived “what”? I mean, how can you really draw a very sharp line between a “what” and a “how”? In most practical situations they tend to be very mixed and entangled, in a way that can be difficult to disentangle.
[00:39:46]Oleg: Because when you compare different “hows”, different ways, what to do next, you can use this simple principle: will it move you forward to the ultimate goal, to increase more entropy, or not. So if you choose to accelerate, it will increase. If you choose to decelerate, or to do nothing, it will not get you to the goal.
[00:40:22]Giulio: Yes, I understand.
[00:40:24]Oleg: Goal is like direction, where to go, but “how” is like your vehicle on which you go.
[00:40:32]Giulio: Right. But let’s put it this way, going back to the layer-upon-layer picture. So you have different options, and you want to choose the best one. And you think of a metric to choose the best one, so I choose A instead of B. But it may happen that the metric that you want to use gives the same result. Then you have to move to a higher-level metric. Perhaps the higher-level metric gives you an answer, but perhaps you still get the same result, and you have to use yet another higher-level metric, and so on and so on, until you reach some kind of infinite regress. That, you know, eventually you can find a metric that gives you a unique result. But you keep trying and trying and trying, you always get the same result, yet the universe itself always knows what to do. Then I think it becomes difficult to distinguish between a “what” and a “how”, between a goal and the means.
[00:42:02]Oleg: Okay, I can also give you some examples, some easy examples. For example, if you... Okay, for example, you have some computer power and you use it for two different tasks. The first task: do something like mining Bitcoin. And the second task is AI. The second task is more preferable, because AI will help you to improve your computer power, to do computers better, more smart and more powerful, and increase your power of computation, and produce more entropy. But if you’re mining Bitcoin, you do calculation for nothing. Bitcoin becomes more stable, more secure, but you don’t use this calculation to improve your computer power. So you don’t have an acceleration: you have the same speed, but you don’t have the acceleration of entropy production.
[00:43:27]Giulio: Hold on, hold on, hold on. I don’t agree with your example, because if instead of using your hardware for AI you use it to mine Bitcoin, then at some point you can get enough money to buy new hardware. So also if you use it for Bitcoin, you end up with more computational power.
[00:43:52]Oleg: But you can buy, but you cannot do it more advanced, more increased efficiency. You buy the same, more same chips, but each chip doesn’t become...
[00:44:16]Giulio: No, you can buy a better chip.
[00:44:19]Oleg: Yeah, but someone needs to do this, I mean, to develop better chips, and then use AI computation for this.
[00:44:29]Giulio: Then you use the money to hire very smart people, and you develop the better chip yourself. As a matter of fact, this is a very...
[00:44:37]Oleg: Anyway, if you use this power to improve chips, chips will be better faster.
[00:44:41]Giulio: Yeah, this is actually a very good example of what I mean, of the point that I’m trying to raise. As a matter of fact, whatever is your goal, there are always different ways to achieve your goal. And in some cases the choice is a simple one: you can see that one way is better than another. But in other cases, you know, it becomes a mess. It becomes the kind of optimization mess that only a superintelligent artificial intelligence could solve. And this is the basis of my analogy between this conception of physics and the conception of God that you find in traditional religions. Let me make an aside: I’m not very friendly to the traditional conceptions of God that you find in religions, but at the same time, I think that you can formulate some kind of scientific definition of God that is not incompatible with science, but still has very much in common with what a Christian or a Muslim would call God. See what I mean?
[00:46:13]Oleg: Yes, I understand what you mean. I looked at your chapters in your book, and I understand what you mean.
[00:46:22]Giulio: This is essentially the content of chapter 8 of my last book. In chapter 7 I talk of things like maximum entropy production, and in chapter 8 I make this point.
[00:46:34]Oleg: Yes. So you mean that there are more complex systems in the universe, and you don’t see any limits of this complexity, right?
[00:46:52]Giulio: No. Not necessarily, and my feeling is that there is not.
[00:46:58]Oleg: Yes, but I say there is a limit of the universe. The de Sitter entropy is the limit. The universe is not infinite, and there is a limit of complexity. And life, especially advanced life like civilizations, it’s the way for the universe to reach this higher complexity, and ultimately to reach this limit of complexity. And this limit of complexity will correlate with the end state of the universe, the empty space.
[00:47:32]Giulio: Right. Okay. But, you know, I agree with you until a point, which means, you know, the universe wants to increase its complexity. I agree on this. And when you say that life is a means, perhaps the main means, for the universe to achieve this goal, I also agree on this. But...
[00:48:06]Oleg: Sorry, sorry, hold on.
[00:48:08]Giulio: Did I misunderstand you?
[00:48:10]Oleg: Yes, yes, yes. The goal is not to increase complexity. Complexity is the way, not the end point. The end point is the maximum entropy. But increasing complexity, it’s the way, it’s the mechanism. The universe doesn’t want increased complexity, but it should do this; it’s the faster way to achieve this point.
[00:48:38]Giulio: Right. Okay, let me rephrase. The universe wants maximum entropy and wants it fast, and life is a means for the universe to do that.
[00:48:51]Oleg: Yes. Increasing complexity is a way to do this, and life is this process. The process of increasing complexity we call life.
[00:49:08]Giulio: Right. I understand, and I don’t disagree. But why do you need to postulate also a limit to complexity, if, you know, you can make this argument without assuming a limit of complexity? If you think that complexity can keep increasing forever, you can still make exactly the same argument that, you know, the universe wants something, and life is a means for the universe to achieve that something.
[00:49:48]Oleg: No, no, I think it makes no sense. Because if you have a limit, you can talk about achieving it as fast as possible. But if you don’t have any limits, you cannot talk about achieving it faster, because it’s all infinite time.
[00:50:07]Giulio: Well, no. Suppose we are counting to infinity. So I say one, two, three, and you say one, two, three, and, you know, we will both never reach the limit, but still one can count much faster than the other. So like, if I say one, two, three, and you say one, two, three, four, five, you see, you’re still counting faster than me.
[00:50:35]Oleg: I think that does not make sense, because if we count to infinity, we never reach it, so it does not matter what the speed of counting is.
[00:50:48]Giulio: Right. So you’re saying that in order for a goal to make sense, it must be a goal that can be reached.
[00:51:00]Oleg: Yes, right. It can be the limit, a goal that can be reached. Not infinite goal.
[00:51:06]Giulio: I understand. Well, we could keep discussing this forever. It’s an extremely interesting conversation, but unfortunately I’ll have to go in 15 minutes.
[00:51:18]Oleg: Yeah, I have no problem continuing talking.
[00:51:22]Giulio: But before that, now let’s reach the heat death of the universe. So you think the heat death of the universe is exactly the end goal that the universe wants to reach as fast as possible, right?
[00:51:46]Oleg: It’s the end state anyways, and the universe reaches it in every trajectory, no matter how it goes. But what the universe wants is to choose the fastest trajectory, the fastest way to achieve this point. So the end point is the same, but the time when you achieve it is important.
[00:52:11]Giulio: Yeah. It sounds very counterintuitive to me that what the universe wants is to die as fast as possible. Yeah, I know that I shouldn’t anthropomorphize, but, you know, that’s definitely not the outcome that I would be pursuing if I were the universe.
[00:52:35]Oleg: Why?
[00:52:37]Giulio: Because I don’t want to die as fast as possible. I want to either not die, or die as slow as possible.
[00:52:46]Oleg: It’s not dying, because dying, it’s like when you die, the other world will continue without you. But in this case, it’s not the dying of the universe, it’s reaching the end of the universe. It’s like the end of time, it’s just the final state. There is nothing to continue after.
[00:53:21]Giulio: Right. So it’s like running the 100 meters as fast as possible.
[00:53:28]Oleg: Yes, yes, yes, right. In any way, the limit is 100 meters, no matter how fast you go. But the winner is who runs faster. So if you want to be the winner, you need to go as fast as possible, right? It’s like a race.
[00:53:54]Giulio: Right.
[00:53:55]Oleg: And if you don’t want to die this way, and you want to do nothing, okay, but other people who want to, they will advance you, they will outcompete you.
[00:54:09]Giulio: Right. Now, we are just doing philosophical speculations on a kind of cosmology that nobody really knows, but this would be an interesting analogy to pursue. Like, you know, why do you want to run the 100 meters as fast as possible? The answer that I would give, the human answer, is that you want to win a medal against other people. So then it makes sense to run the 100 meters as fast as possible, because you want to be the best. Now, by analogy, I could think that there are many universes, and they are engaged in a race to reach this end state as fast as possible. And this is quite an interesting analogy to me, because I happen to be persuaded that there can be many universes existing in parallel. What is your feeling about that? Do we live in only one world, or can there be many worlds?
[00:55:42]Oleg: My feeling, my scientific feeling: I’m like an instrumentalist. So if you can touch them, interact with them, it’s the one universe, it’s not different, because the universe is anything that you can interact with. If you cannot interact with them, it’s not scientific. It does not matter whether there are them or there are no them, because there is no way to interact with them. So it’s not real, it’s not reality. So reality is the maximum information that can be logically correlated with itself. If you have another universe with no interaction, it’s another reality, because this information is not correlated. If they are correlated, it’s the one universe.
[00:56:41]Giulio: I agree on this. Of course, there is a difference between being in principle unable to interact with another universe and being unable to interact with another universe at this moment. Like, you know, we were not able to talk to people at the other side of the world last century, but we are doing this right now in this century. So that is a moving target. And, you know, I agree with you that if there is no possibility of interaction in principle, then it doesn’t even make sense to talk of other universes.
[00:57:28]Oleg: Yes. But if it’s possible, it’s the same universe, but bigger than we can see now. Yes, the universe can be bigger, but it will be the same universe. It will be not different universes.
[00:57:42]Giulio: I agree. Maybe our universe is bigger than we think.
[00:57:47]Oleg: It’s possible, yes. Maybe we can reach something inside black holes and so on. But I call it the universe, the one big universe. So it’s like a terminology: it’s the one reality. If it’s the one reality, we can reach them. If it’s different realities, we cannot reach them.
[00:58:07]Giulio: I agree. Now, we have been discussing the scientific part of your ideas, and my impression is that we agree on some things, and we don’t agree on other things. But of course, these are things that nobody really knows, so it’s not surprising that we don’t agree. And I look forward to continuing this discussion another time. But since I’ll have to go in a while, let’s move to this techno-religion part. So you have written down your ideas in a very readable Entropianism textbook, which can be found online. I will add the links to the written introduction to this podcast. And so, what do you plan to do with this religion? Do you want to convert people? Do you want to proselytize?
[00:59:18]Oleg: Yes, yes, yes. I have different directions of what to do with this techno-religion. First of all, it’s the whole scientific study. And next, it’s the calendar of the future, called “Calendar of the Future”. It’s something where I predict the future, using prediction based on growth, exponential growth, to reach types on the Kardashev scale. So I predict that in our universe there can be up to 10,000, 100,000 other civilizations who compete with us. The nearest civilizations can be around 300 light-years away, and at the same level of civilization. So the deviation is about just 1,000 years. So we really compete with each other, and in the future we will compete in our galaxy. And it’s why we need to move forward, because if we are not going to build a Dyson sphere, other aliens will come and build a Dyson sphere on our Sun instead of us, and we lose this competition. And also we have more projects, like Earth Park. It’s to get a park on the whole planet, and move the production point to space, in orbit, to increase the power consumption in space instead of us. And as fast as we do this, then we can get the better park. When the power in space achieves the level of Earth, about 30 terawatts or something like this, and we can achieve it in 100 years, this is Type 1 on the Kardashev scale. And also to do something like Black Venus projects: to do aerostats in the atmosphere of Venus, black color, to increase the entropy production of Venus, and so on. So, different projects with large scale. So it’s not about something easy to achieve, but it’s about the long-term way where we need to move. We need to accelerate technology and move the growth point to space, and so on. Because a lot of forces [inaudible] we need to slow down our technology and so on. So I [inaudible], I tell different views: that we need to go as fast as possible, and how we can, with this step, save the biosphere and save ecology, and so on.
[01:03:16]Giulio: Interesting. And how do you plan to recruit or convert enough people to begin doing that?
[01:03:29]Oleg: So, of course, I want to become more popular, like podcasts and so on, to reach more audience, reach more people with these ideas. But, you know, actually I think that these ideas should be right, should be physically right. It’s like natural ideas. And if it is so, other people also will come to these ideas separately, individually, without any hearing of Entropianism. And then, when they do this, they will Google who also has these ideas, and then they find us. Even AI, not only humans: AI will also achieve this techno-religion by itself, I think.
[01:04:28]Giulio: I see.
[01:04:29]Oleg: Because if it’s a physical rule, a nature rule, so everyone will achieve it by the end of the day.
[01:04:43]Giulio: Now, going back to your Russian roots: are you familiar with the philosophy of Russian Cosmism?
[01:04:57]Oleg: Yes, I’m familiar. Actually not so close, but I’m familiar a bit. And it’s also for expansion, but it’s very humanism, like getting back all people who lived. But my Entropianism is not humanism. It’s not anthropic, it’s not humanism. So people actually are not important. People and civilization are the way to achieve entropy production, but it’s not humanism. So after humans there can be other machines, and it will be okay, no problem. We don’t need to save humans in my religion.
[01:05:54]Giulio: Yes, but, you know, coming to this point: you know, today there are humans, and tomorrow, instead of humans, we have machines. Yes, but on the other hand, the thing is that, you know, if the machines do what we do now, and if the machines do the very noble things that we are trying to do now, like climbing the Kardashev scale, then we could as well call the machines... we would still call them humans, because they will be the evolution of what now we call human civilization. That’s why, you know, I never liked too much the term “posthuman”, because I think it doesn’t make sense. Now I am an organic Human 1.0. In a couple of hundred years, perhaps, instead of organic humans we will have biohybrid cyborgs with artificial intelligence components. But if their society is the continuation of our society, I think the simplest thing that we can do is to still call them humans. They will be tomorrow’s humans, like my grandfather was yesterday’s human. You see what I mean?
[01:07:29]Oleg: Yes, I see what you mean, but I think it could be this track, and humans will combine with machines, like cyberpunk, something like this, like transhumanism. Yes, it could be the point, and it will be something like this, I think. But anyway, also it could be only machines, without any biological parts, and it will also be okay. Maybe it will be like uploaded minds of humans, or something like this. So it could be different ways. It doesn’t matter what the way will be. It’s like “how” to do this, but in my point, it’s more important “what” to do. But if this way will be faster, it will produce more entropy, we will do this way.
[01:08:47]Giulio: Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I understand. But now, coming back to the implementation part: your theoretical formulation can be as elegant as you want, but if you don’t manage to persuade people to follow you, then the elegance is not that useful. And I’m afraid that, you know, you object to the term humanism, but I’m afraid that telling people that they are not important is not the best way to persuade people to join you.
[01:09:34]Oleg: Yeah, maybe you’re right. I think, yeah, maybe, maybe you’re right. So it’s also... I also don’t want to be alone in this journey, and I think that there should be many people that tell different ways to other people, and find the best way to educate people, and the best way to explain to them why this is the right thing. And it should be the right thing, because it’s important for me that this techno-religion should be scientific. So if it’s not right, I cancel this. So if it’s a little different, some different rule, we change it, I change it, so it’s okay. So for me, the truth and the right reality is more important than the current state, so I’m ready to change it if needed, no problem.
[01:11:00]Giulio: And so am I. So let’s consider ourselves fellow travelers on two more or less parallel paths that may or may not converge in the future, and let’s have other conversations like this. It has been extremely interesting.
[01:11:21]Oleg: Yeah, thank you very much. It was very interesting for me as well, and it’s a great pleasure to talk with someone who understands what I’m talking about.
[01:11:38]Giulio: I hope I understand. I’d like to understand more. And I’m going to stop this recording now. Unfortunately, I’ll have to go, but let’s stay in touch.
[01:11:54]Oleg: Yes, thank you very much.
[01:11:56]Giulio: Thank you, and thank you very much for joining me.
[01:11:59]Oleg: Yeah, thank you for having me.