so there's the past let's say that stretches back billions of years but it is finite it began somewh probably and there's the future ahead of us unfortunately let's say billions of years at least but it's also finite it will end somewh probably but what about the present how long is now think about it is the present infinitely thin this moment we find ourselves in now can't be infinite shortly infinite things would occupy everywhere and every when simultaneously so couldn't move but the present is moving well is the present a finite duration then M maybe but if it was then couldn't we exactly isolate the moment the present gives way to the past the nanosecond that events get crystallized and start trailing behind us couldn't we zoom in and in until we could see the Border point the threshold of time itself as now becomes was and if we could would that be the present no idea not like there's an answer anyway but if you've ever thought about this stuff you may be glad to hear it's not just the kind of obligatory small talk you have to make at the local Opium Den but a branch of philosophy Millennia old called metaphysics so philosophy is where questions go that science can't answer metaphysics is where questions go that science tried to answer dropped out for a semester moved to Sardinia spent several months on a beach doing Molly with malaca salesman called Federico said eh screw it became a database admin adopted a Sheba enu and lived contentedly never thinking about that nonsense again metaphysics meta from the Greek for Beyond or after and physics from the Greek for lifelong Chastity asking questions about the fundamental nature of reality yes not where does the time go but why does time move at all not what particles are there but why are there particles in the first place ah sure but this stuff doesn't apply to anything in the real world is just pompous horseshit you might say uh yeah probably is I might reply how is it going to help with world peace or space exploration you might say h yeah that's true I might reply oh where's the toilet by the way you might say I down the corridor to the right I might reply cheers you might say then a few moments later ah I've fallen into a pit of snakes ouch ooch my eyes my spleen ha I might reply it was deception the toilet is in fact upstairs I actually directed you into the snake area where the snakes are kept perpetually oiled and slippery so you can't tie them together and a make shift ladder and Escape so take that for shitalking philosophy a oof you might say and so forth to be honest there's no real danger actually the snakes are all vegetarians I mean except for Cerberus Devourer of Flesh King of the blood drinking hell spawn he's vegan but metaphysics does matter you despicable jellied eel like if you want to build a sweet ass bridge then that's an engineering problem but you'll need some good materials and calculations and whatnot so then that's a physics problem but you'll need to trust the matter the bridges made of will actually keep existing and the laws of nature will keep applying to it which then that's a metaphysical problem talking of which hey what's this oh it's a refreshing jug of angria which is prepared the same way as sangria but with a few drops of Tobasco and you drink it while thinking of all the disparaging things your father said to you on the way home from Orchestra practice that you certainly don't vividly remember 20 years later yes yes but what is it fermented fruit carbon atoms that sort of stuff and down again sub atomically electrons protons spin networks who knows at this point and under that no idea but something is keeping the liquid being something is making it so electrons don't spiral into Atomic nuclei so chemical bonds don't suddenly blow up there is a force or habit maintaining things the universe remembers where all of its molecules are at any one time and applies consistent laws to them but why why do we trust that reality and everything inside it will stay consistent that the sun will still come up tomorrow just because it's done it before why would that mean it happens in the future this is called the problem of induction no one solved it probably no one ever will hey ho and the same goes for our modern concept of causality and freedom how is a decision possible you're watching this video now because you made a choice to be here because of your awful taste and that began in your mind the space where you weigh things rationally and make decisions sure but your mind runs on language and history all the stuff we've inherited from deados and pastos who we're soon to become ourselves of course the 21st century paradigms we can't but help thinking and all that runs on biology copses and neurons and oxytocin and [ __ ] the Machinery of you and under that is matter the particles and interactions that everything is made out of and where is a decision in that isn't it all a deterministic causal Network that got rolling billions of years ago anyway one that we're not just a part of but made of and doesn't that make decisions and Free Will impossible that from the moment we were born from the moment everything was born you and I have been destined to arrive at this exact moment here and now because our minds and bodies are just as bound up in the unfolding of events as every other blob of matter in the universe and free as we may feel we've never truly made a single choice about anything and if Free Will was possible somehow is that to say that we could step outside of the scripted drama of matter playing out across the Great and ancient stage of SpaceTime and imagine that we bipedal meat units could make a decision somehow miraculously undetermined by everything around us that led up to this exact moment that just for a second we could unprecedented undetermined stand outside of Ultimate [Music] Reality talking of which what is Apple how to describe Apple crunchy you yeah green sometimes quite liquidy but those are just adjectives those are just appearances doesn't there have to be something behind the adjectives that makes an apple real can we have no can we ever know stuff Beyond appearances cuz until 150 years ago no one knew a thing about radio waves then we learned how to produce them and receive them and suddenly they were everywhere but they were everywhere long before that stars are bombarding us with radio all the time that's how radio telescopes work we just can't see that type of em radiation with our eyes and suddenly we discovered it technologically and yeah and next came X-rays and gamma rays and T on and toaster fetishes and whatever else and it turned out there's a whole bunch more phenomena we didn't know have been there all along so it might be reasonable to assume that there's the world of appearances where we live where apples are green and crunchy and then presumably there's the world of Ultimate Reality where everything you know actually really is where there live apples Beyond adjectives the things in themselves as they are objects in their fullness Beyond just appearance Beyond just what we can pick up with our senses trans ental idealism is what we would call this position if we're being pretentious actually we'd say the same if we're not being pretentious cuz that's its [ __ ] name to think that a toothbrush a paperclip a sock has a hidden nature beyond our senses the secret life of dull objects and for that matter what's a human life since we were children almost every cell in our bodies has been replaced and each memory is now a memory of a memory what makes us the same person as when we were 3 years old can't be the hardware because most of the hardware has been swapped out it must be the pattern of us that's been repeated with copy DNA and replaced cells calling us back into being over and over and at the end of the day aren't we just patterns anyway pumpkin potion cat snake pumpkin potion cat snake what are his intentions who can say they are surely dastardly judging by that face but hopefully the phrase pumpkin potion cat snake is now firmly lodged in your mental ears and has become a small part of the pattern of you your current mind State anyway but in a few minutes you'll forget it and the phrase will be out of your mind again pumpkin potion cat snake and when that happens will that be a different you will your current mind State have been obliterated and replaced until the next time you think about the words pumpkin potion cat snake blessed is he in the highest won't that be a new person then a new incarnation of you and where does that logic end are we a long succession of uses Through Time divided minute by minute year by year as the pattern of changes thousands of versions of ourselves across our lifespans the broomstick has a little saddle on it anyway let's talk about death Christmas years ago at my parents' place my grandmother's there and she's asking about the internet so my dad and I give her the tablet and tell her in your hands right now is almost all of modern human knowledge ask it anything anything you've ever wanted to know I can ask it anything she said anything I said she she squinted shrewdly cocked her head and with a tart smile asked what are next week's lottery numbers it doesn't do the future I said you said anything she replied gave the tablet back and hobbled off to mix another gin tonic and never asked about the internet again she died a while back now but whenever I find myself in a conversation I would prefer not to be part of ah yes Homeopathy I am sure that has any clinical benefit whatsoever I catch myself adopting exactly her same tones of cynical exhaustion her physical patterns have ceased but her mental patterns persist I carry them with me I wish to keep them safe from time which of her patterns was more real the physical one or the mental one both neither isn't it the same for all of us as though we were all ripples in a pond and even when our bodies fail our thoughts and our actions can go on indefinitely what is a human really as the thing in itself in Ultimate Reality a splodge of atoms with eyebrows on top a temporary assemblage of food that thinks a matter pattern that mattered hopefully to someone somewh whenever so that's metaphysics kind of the Bedrock of reality where we understand virtually nothing and it's strange to think that you can peer down into it for free at any moment the Beauty and the horror of the thing Sunday morning if You' slept well those first few moments of waking up when you're not even sure of your own name and suddenly you think huh I get another day on Earth right on and I can move my limbs just by thinking about them neat and what is all this surreal dream [ __ ] my subconscious dumped on me during the night wouldn't Waking Life seem just as weird if it wasn't so familiar none of this is normal is it did we invent numbers or discover them does the set of all sets contain itself why do I have a mind's eye but not a mind's nose I wonder if other people [ __ ] hate themselves are we supposed to be doing something meaningful with our time meaningful to who strange to come across old photos of long Dead faces all their rituals and seriousness did they worry that everything was for nothing they must have their sand castles washed away as we build ours now is that why we have etiquette and politeness why we sign emails kind regards just so no one start screaming in the middle of the street that we're lost in space that there's no Center to anything all those people on the subway you briefly make eye contact with and without warning you suddenly think Jesus of the thousands of species we could have been what are the odds that we'd all be humans of the eras we could have been born into the millions of years behind perhaps the thousands ahead what were the odds we'd all end up in this Century in this decade in this train carriage together now and to think that shortly those doors will open and one by one we'll all trudge off into time where will we go to think that if we only knew somewhere already out in the world right now maybe there's the tree that'll become the desk that someone will use to design the first engine to push humans out to the Stars and to think somewhere already out in the world right now there's a patch of ground where the next generation of Doomsday weapons will detonate for the first time where machines will be built in the service of Hades and we will outwit our Guardian Angels what is it for anything to have a nature atoms or arars and why is our nature so predictably violent and shortsighted maybe we're incapable of seeing Beyond it the way an ant could never fathom a written word was our nature built in or do we decide it and if we do decide it then wasn't it built in that we would decide the randomness of it that on Monday you can hold your hand to your face and almost fall over at the sheer complexity of the structure of your skin at the idea you even have a body and then on Tuesday the best you can do is get out of bed and even that hurts spiritually is life just really anti-entropy with stars burning out and galaxies scheduled to collide but Meanwhile we're creating all these new forms down on Earth writing stuff building stuff mathematizing stuff where did the original novelty come from and why does anything change and why does entropy he go in this direction I am something everything is doing huh that's weird to think that one part of me is myself my name my shoes my doubts but somehow I'm everything too matter that thinks is a person or a person that thinks they're matter either way it's quite nice to know there's always metaphysics that however bored we get however sad or lost there's forever a crack in the fog the constant reminder that we live in a mystery bigger than we can ever understand and it isn't esoteric it requires no telescope or lasers to reveal it's available every second of the day wrapped in the strange Anarchy of how weird being is where answers are hard to come by but at least the questions are ours do dogs go to heaven what's reality for how long is now the dogs go to heaven what's reality for how long is now [Music]