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in principle, leaving any of the details to
be filled in.

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It's the kind of belief system of people who
say, "I don't believe in God, I believe

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in science."

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It's a belief system which has now been
spread to the entire world.

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But there's a conflict in the heart of
science between science as a method of

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on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and
collective investigation, and science as a

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And unfortunately, the worldview aspect of
science has come to inhibit and constrict

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the free inquiry which is the very lifeblood
of the scientific endeavor.

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Since the late 19th century, science has been
conducted under the aspect of a belief system

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or worldview which is essentially that of
materialism, philosophical materialism.

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I think that as we break out of it, the
sciences will be regenerated.

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What I do in my book, The Science Delusion,
which is called Science Set Free in the

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States, is take the 10 dogmas or assumptions
of science and turn them into questions,

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None of them stand up very well.

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What I'm going to do is first run through
what these 10 dogmas are and then I'll only

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have time to discuss one or two of them in a
bit more detail.

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But essentially the 10 dogmas which are the
default worldview of most educated people all

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over the world are first the nature's
mechanical or machine-like.

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Animals and plants are like machines.

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We're like machines.

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In fact, we are machines.

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We're lumbering robots in Richard Dawkins'
vivid phrase with brains that are genetically

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programmed computers.

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Second, matter is unconscious.

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The whole universe is made up of unconscious
matter.

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There's no consciousness in stars, in
galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants.

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So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the
last 100 years is being trying to prove that

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we're not really conscious at all.

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So the matter's unconscious, then the laws of
nature are fixed.

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This is dogma three.

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The laws of nature are the same now as they
were at the time of the Big Bang and they'll

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be the same forever.

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Not just the laws, but the constants of
nature are fixed, which is why they are

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It never changes in total quantity except at
the moment of the Big Bang when it all sprang

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into existence from nowhere in a single
instant.

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The fifth dogma is that nature's purposeless.

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There are no purposes in all nature and the
evolutionary process has no purpose or

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in epigenetic modifications of the genes or
in cytoplasmic inheritance.

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It's material.

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Dogma seven, memories are stored inside your
brain as material traces.

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Somehow, everything you remember is in your
brain in modified nerve endings,

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proteins.

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it must be in the brain.

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Dogma eight, your mind is inside your head.

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All your consciousness is the activity of
your brain and nothing more.

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Dogma nine, which follows from dogma eight,
psychic phenomena like telepathy are

47
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Your thoughts and intentions cannot have any
effect at a distance because your mind's

48
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your head.

49
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People believe these things happen, but it's
just because they don't know enough about

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statistics or they're deceived by
coincidences or it's wishful thinking.

51
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And dogma ten, mechanistic medicine is the
only kind that really works.

52
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That's why governments only fund research
into mechanistic medicine and ignore

53
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Those can't possibly really work because
they're not mechanistic.

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They may appear to work because people would
have got better anyway or because of the

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effect.

56
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But the only kind that really works is
mechanistic medicine.

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Well, this is the default world view, which
is held by almost all educated people all

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over the world.

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It's the basis of the educational system, the
National Health Service, the medical

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But I think every one of these dogmas is
very, very questionable.

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And when you look at it, they fall apart.

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I'm going to take first the idea that the
laws of nature are fixed.

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This is a hangover from an older world view
before the 1960s when the Big Bang Theory

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People thought that the whole universe was
eternal governed by eternal mathematical

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When the Big Bang came in, then that
assumption continued, even though the Big

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a universe that's radically evolutionary,
about 14 billion years old, growing and

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and evolving for 14 billion years, growing
and cooling and more structures and patterns

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appear within it.

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Bang like a cosmic Napoleonic Code.

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As my friend Terence McKenna used to say,
modern science is based on the principle,

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us one free miracle and we'll explain the
rest."

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And the one free miracle is the appearance of
all the matter and energy in the universe

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and all the laws that govern it from nothing
in a single instant.

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After all, human laws do, and the idea of
laws of nature is based on a metaphor with

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human laws.

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It's a very anthropocentric metaphor.

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Only humans have laws, in fact, only
civilized societies have laws.

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As C.S. Lewis once said, "To say that a stone
falls to earth because it's obeying a law

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makes it a man and even a citizen."

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In an evolving universe, I think a much
better idea is the idea of habits.

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I think the habits of nature evolve.

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The regularities of nature are essentially
habitual.

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This was an idea put forward at the beginning
of the 20th century by the American

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C.S.

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Purse.

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And it's an idea which various other
philosophers have entertained, and it's on...

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is the basis of these evolving habits.

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According to this hypothesis, everything in
nature has a kind of collective memory.

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Resonance occurs on the basis of similarity.

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As a young giraffe, embryo grows in its
mother's womb, it tunes in to the morphic

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of previous giraffes.

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because it's drawing on this collective
memory.

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It has to have the right genes to make the
right proteins, but genes in my view are

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overrated.

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They only account for the proteins that the
organism can make, not the shape or the form

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or the behavior.

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Every species has a kind of collective
memory, even crystals do.

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first time you make it, it won't have an
existing habit, but once it crystallizes,

99
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next time you make it, there'll be an
influence from the first crystals to the

100
00:09:06,279 --> 00:09:09,080
all over the world by morphic resonance.

101
00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:11,080
It'll crystallize a bit easier.

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The third time, there'll be an influence from
the first and second crystals.

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the world, just as this theory would predict.

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It also predicts that if you train animals to
learn a new trick, for example, rats learn

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a new trick in London, then all around the
world, rats of the same breed should learn

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the same trick quicker just because the rats
have landed here.

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And surprisingly, there's already evidence
that this actually happens.

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Everything depends on evolving habits, not on
fixed laws.

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But I want to spend a few moments on the
constants of nature, too, because these,

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to be constant.

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Things like the gravitational constant, the
speed of light, are called the fundamental

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constants.

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Are they really constant?

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They're given in physics handbooks.

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Handbooks of physics list the existing
fundamental constants to tell you their

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But I wanted to see if they'd change.

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So I got the old volumes of physical
handbooks.

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I went to the Patent Office Library here in
London, and they're the only place I could

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find that kept the old volumes.

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Normally people throw them away when the new
values come out.

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They throw away the old ones.

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20 kilometers per second.

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It's a huge drop, because they're given with
errors of any fractions, decimal points of

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error.

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And yet, all over the world, it dropped.

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And they were all getting values very similar
to each other with tiny errors.

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Then in 1945, it went up, '48, it went up
again.

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I was very intrigued by this, and I couldn't
make sense of it.

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So I went to see the head of metrology at the
National Physical Laboratory in Teddington.

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Metrology is the science in which people
measure constants.

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And I asked him about this.

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I said, 'What do you make of this drop in the
speed of light between 1928 and 1945?'

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He said, 'You've uncovered the most
embarrassing episode in the history of our

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So I said, 'Well, could the speed of light
have actually dropped?'

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And that would have amazing implications if
so.

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He said, 'No, no, of course it couldn't have
actually dropped.

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It's a constant.'

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So, 'Oh, well then, how do you explain the
fact everyone was finding it going much

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during that period?

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Is it because they were fudging their results
to get what they thought other people should

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And the whole thing was just produced by, in
the minds of physicists.

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We don't like to use the word 'fudge.'

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I said, 'Well, what do you prefer?'

144
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He said, 'Well, we prefer to call it
intellectual phase locking.'

145
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So I said, 'Well, if it was going on then,
how can we be so sure it's not going on

146
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And he said, 'Oh, we know that's not the
case.'

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I said, 'How do we know?'

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He said, 'Well, we've solved the problem.'

149
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I said, 'Well, how?'

150
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He said, 'Well, we fixed the speed of light
by definition in 1972.'

151
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So I said, 'But it might still change.'

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He said, 'Yes, but we'd never know it because
we've defined the meter in terms of the speed

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of light.'

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So the units had changed with it.

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They'd fixed that problem.

156
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But I said, 'Well, then what about big G, the
gravitational constant known in the trade

157
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as big G, as written with a capital G,
Newton's universal gravitational constant?'

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That's varied by more than 1.3% in recent
years.

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And it seems to vary from place to place and
from time to time.

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And he said, 'Oh, well, those are just
errors.'

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So I said, 'Well, what if it's really
changing?'

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I mean, perhaps it is really changing.

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And then I looked at how they do it.

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What happens is they measure it in different
labs.

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They get different values on different days,
and then they average them.

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And then other labs around the world do the
same, and they come out usually with a rather

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different average.

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And then the International Committee on
Metronomy.

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labs around the world do the same and they
come out usually with a rather

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different average and then the International
Committee on Metrology

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00:13:44,640 --> 00:13:49,200
meets every 10 years or so and average the
ones from labs around the world to

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come up with the value of big G. But what if
G were actually fluctuating? What if

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it changed? It does already evidence actually
that it changes throughout the

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environment went through patches of dark
matter or other environmental factors

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that could alter it? Maybe they all change
together. What if these errors are

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going up together and down together? For more
than 10 years I've been trying to

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persuade metrologists to look at the raw
data. In fact I'm now trying to

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persuade them to put it online on the
internet with the dates and the actual

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one time all down at another. If so they
might be fluctuating together and that

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would tell us something very very
interesting. But no one has done this

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they haven't done it because G is a constant.
There's no point looking for

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changes. You see here's a very simple example
of where a dogmatic assumption

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actually inhibits inquiry. I myself think
that the constants may vary quite

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the day will come when scientific journals
like Nature have a weekly report

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on the constants like stock market reports
and newspapers you know. This week

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Big G was slightly up the speed on the charge
on the electron was down the

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speed of light held steady and so on. So
that's one area just one of one area

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biggest areas is the nature of the mind. This
is the most unsolved problem as

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Graham just said that science simply can't
deal with the fact we're

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conscious and it can't deal with the fact
that our thoughts don't seem to be

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00:15:40,160 --> 00:15:46,680
inside our brains. Our experiences don't all
seem to be inside our brain. Your

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00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:55,360
there's a little rupert somewhere inside your
head and everything else in this

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00:15:55,360 --> 00:16:01,160
room is inside your head. Your experience is
inside your brain. I'm suggesting

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00:16:01,160 --> 00:16:04,720
actually that vision involves an outward
projection of images what you're

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00:16:04,720 --> 00:16:09,480
seeing is in your mind but not inside your
head. Our minds are extended beyond

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00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:14,400
our brains in the simplest act of perception.
I think that we project out

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look at you from behind you don't know I'm
there could I affect you? Could you

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00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:29,360
feel my gaze? There's a great deal of
evidence that people can. The sense of

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00:16:29,360 --> 00:16:34,040
being stared at is an extremely common
experience and recent experimental

200
00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:39,240
research suggests it's real. Animals seem to
have it too. I think it probably

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00:16:39,240 --> 00:16:43,600
evolved in the context of predator-prey
relationships. Prey animals that could

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00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:51,600
would lead to a whole new way of thinking
about ecological relationships

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00:16:51,600 --> 00:16:56,640
between predators and prey also about the
extent of our minds. If we look at

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distant stars I think our minds reach out in
a sense to touch those stars and

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00:17:01,400 --> 00:17:06,200
literally extend out over astronomical
different distances. They're not just

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inside our heads. Now it may seem astonishing
that this is a topic of

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00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:22,079
images are is a hot topic of debate within
consciousness studies right now. I

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00:17:22,079 --> 00:17:27,200
don't have time to deal with any more of
these dogmas but every single one of

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00:17:27,200 --> 00:17:32,160
them is questionable. If one questions it new
forms of research, new possibilities

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open up and I think as we question these
dogmas that have held back science so

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00:17:43,480 --> 00:17:47,559
believer in the importance of science. I've
spent my whole life as a research

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00:17:47,559 --> 00:17:53,820
scientist, my whole career. But I think by
moving beyond these dogmas it can be

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00:17:53,820 --> 00:17:59,000
regenerated once again and become interesting
and I hope life affirming.

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Thank you.