WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.779 So what does a massive tumbling asteroid in deep 00:00:03.779 --> 00:00:06.879 space have in common with the world's very first 00:00:06.879 --> 00:00:09.580 nuclear reactor? Oh, and also an uncomfortable 00:00:09.580 --> 00:00:12.919 medical condition and an indie rock band from 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.660 Massachusetts. Well, I mean, when you put it 00:00:15.660 --> 00:00:17.500 exactly like that, it sounds like the setup to 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:20.500 a really bizarre riddle. But what actually ties 00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:22.660 all of those completely random things together 00:00:22.660 --> 00:00:25.940 is a hidden map of Hume innovation. Right. And 00:00:25.940 --> 00:00:29.079 they all share one deceptively simple four -letter 00:00:29.079 --> 00:00:32.659 word. So welcome to this custom deep dive. For 00:00:32.659 --> 00:00:34.579 you, the listener who loves to jump down the 00:00:34.579 --> 00:00:36.240 rabbit hole and connect the dots across totally 00:00:36.240 --> 00:00:38.840 different fields, you are in for a seriously 00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:41.219 surprising intellectual journey today. Oh, absolutely. 00:00:41.500 --> 00:00:43.799 Because our mission today is exploring the hidden 00:00:43.799 --> 00:00:47.090 depths of a single word. And that word is pile, 00:00:47.409 --> 00:00:49.429 P -I -L -E. And you know what's fascinating here 00:00:49.429 --> 00:00:51.990 is that we often think of language as just, well, 00:00:52.149 --> 00:00:54.170 static. We think of a dictionary as a box that 00:00:54.170 --> 00:00:55.869 just tells us what a thing is, and that's it. 00:00:55.990 --> 00:00:58.350 Yeah, like it's just a boring list of definitions. 00:00:59.130 --> 00:01:02.409 Exactly. But language isn't just a list of vocabulary. 00:01:02.630 --> 00:01:05.689 It's really a fossil record. When we trace how 00:01:05.689 --> 00:01:08.870 a single word like pile fractures and adapts 00:01:08.870 --> 00:01:11.939 across totally unrelated disciplines, We aren't 00:01:11.939 --> 00:01:14.340 just learning grammar. Right. We are tracking 00:01:14.340 --> 00:01:17.379 the exact mechanisms of how human beings solve 00:01:17.379 --> 00:01:20.640 really complex problems over centuries. OK, let's 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:22.980 unpack this because to really understand this 00:01:22.980 --> 00:01:25.159 journey, the very first thing we have to do is 00:01:25.159 --> 00:01:28.239 completely throw away our standard mental image 00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:30.400 of this word. Yeah, that's step one. Because 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:33.879 when I say pile, you probably think of like a 00:01:33.879 --> 00:01:36.159 chaotic laundry mountain on your bedroom floor 00:01:36.159 --> 00:01:38.359 or leaves in a yard. You think of a mess. Right. 00:01:38.420 --> 00:01:40.620 Something totally disorganized. But in the physical 00:01:40.620 --> 00:01:42.980 universe and especially in structural engineering, 00:01:43.180 --> 00:01:46.099 a pile is the exact opposite of a mess. It actually 00:01:46.099 --> 00:01:49.439 represents ultimate structural integrity. Precisely. 00:01:49.819 --> 00:01:51.719 Because if we look at the history of architecture, 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:54.760 a pile isn't something casually tossed on top 00:01:54.760 --> 00:01:57.659 of the ground. It is a deep foundation driven 00:01:57.659 --> 00:02:00.620 aggressively into the ground to anchor a massive 00:02:00.620 --> 00:02:03.040 structure. And this isn't just, you know, digging 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:05.120 a hole and pouring some concrete. We're talking 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:09.449 about massive really ingenious engineering solutions 00:02:09.449 --> 00:02:12.669 like screw piles and pile bridges. Oh, yeah. 00:02:12.689 --> 00:02:15.409 Those use incredibly long poles to find solid 00:02:15.409 --> 00:02:18.770 ground where literally none seems to exist. Yes. 00:02:18.949 --> 00:02:21.229 And my absolute favorite application of this 00:02:21.229 --> 00:02:24.090 has to be the pile lighthouse. Oh, those are 00:02:24.090 --> 00:02:26.469 incredible structures. I mean, historically, 00:02:26.849 --> 00:02:28.830 screw pile lighthouses were utilized heavily 00:02:28.830 --> 00:02:31.270 in places like coastal Florida and Australia. 00:02:31.430 --> 00:02:33.009 Right. And if you think about it, the engineering 00:02:33.009 --> 00:02:35.650 problem there is just a nightmare. You are trying 00:02:35.650 --> 00:02:38.650 to build a massive, incredibly heavy tower on 00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:41.930 a sandy, muddy river bottom. Or shifting seafloor, 00:02:41.949 --> 00:02:44.789 yeah. Exactly. If you just drop a heavy rock 00:02:44.789 --> 00:02:47.990 foundation there, it sinks, the tide just washes 00:02:47.990 --> 00:02:49.490 the sand right out from under it, and the whole 00:02:49.490 --> 00:02:51.870 thing topples over. It's totally unstable. So 00:02:51.870 --> 00:02:54.750 instead, engineers built these skeletal, almost 00:02:54.750 --> 00:02:57.330 spider -like structures. They took these massive 00:02:57.330 --> 00:03:00.129 iron poles, the piles, and literally screwed 00:03:00.129 --> 00:03:02.330 them deep down into the mud. Just twisting them 00:03:02.330 --> 00:03:04.610 until they hit bedrock or really compacted sand. 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:07.419 Right. The pile is the invisible anchor holding 00:03:07.419 --> 00:03:09.659 the whole thing up against the ocean. Instead 00:03:09.659 --> 00:03:12.900 of thinking of a pile as a chaotic laundry mountain, 00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:15.900 we should think of it as, I don't know, a cosmic 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:18.520 ball of magnetic Lego bricks. Hold on. Let's 00:03:18.520 --> 00:03:20.759 actually pause there because that analogy kind 00:03:20.759 --> 00:03:22.919 of misses the underlying physics. Oh, really? 00:03:22.979 --> 00:03:25.979 How so? Well, Lego bricks rely on mechanical 00:03:25.979 --> 00:03:29.009 friction, right? They physically interlock. and 00:03:29.009 --> 00:03:31.650 magnets use electromagnetism. But what you're 00:03:31.650 --> 00:03:34.069 describing actually scales up perfectly to the 00:03:34.069 --> 00:03:36.569 cosmos, specifically what astronomers call a 00:03:36.569 --> 00:03:39.860 rubble pile. Oh, right. The rubble pile asteroids. 00:03:40.099 --> 00:03:42.740 Exactly. But it's more like a cosmic ball pit 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:45.960 than Legos. It's a collection of completely distinct 00:03:45.960 --> 00:03:49.439 separate pieces of rock and dust that are gently 00:03:49.439 --> 00:03:51.199 hugging each other purely because of their own 00:03:51.199 --> 00:03:53.460 collective gravity. Oh, I see. So it isn't one 00:03:53.460 --> 00:03:55.979 solid chunk of rock that broke off a bigger planet. 00:03:56.039 --> 00:03:57.960 It's a bunch of random debris that just kind 00:03:57.960 --> 00:04:00.280 of found each other in the dark. That's a great 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:02.560 way to put it. And gravity is acting just like 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:05.360 the screw pile in the riverbed. It's the invisible 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:08.740 binding force holding individual disjointed parts 00:04:08.740 --> 00:04:12.360 into a stable unified structure. Wow, so human 00:04:12.360 --> 00:04:14.500 engineering and cosmic mechanics are relying 00:04:14.500 --> 00:04:17.439 on the exact same concept. They are and historically 00:04:17.439 --> 00:04:20.629 we even see this concept represented visually 00:04:20.629 --> 00:04:23.209 like in heraldry the historic design of coats 00:04:23.209 --> 00:04:27.290 of arms a pile is defined specifically as a downward 00:04:27.290 --> 00:04:29.649 pointing triangle because it points down into 00:04:29.649 --> 00:04:32.449 the earth like a wedge exactly it is literally 00:04:32.449 --> 00:04:34.930 the visual emblem of driving a foundation into 00:04:34.930 --> 00:04:37.730 the ground the physical shape of the word is 00:04:37.730 --> 00:04:40.389 all about grounding it's about taking energy 00:04:40.389 --> 00:04:43.350 or mass and directing it downward to create a 00:04:43.350 --> 00:04:46.750 secure base which honestly brings us to a massive 00:04:46.750 --> 00:04:49.910 conceptual leap. Oh, the energy transition. Yeah, 00:04:49.910 --> 00:04:52.329 because if piles are the physical anchors of 00:04:52.329 --> 00:04:54.629 our world, they are also the literal engines 00:04:54.629 --> 00:04:57.550 that power it. The evolution of this word perfectly 00:04:57.550 --> 00:05:00.089 tracks the chronological evolution of human energy 00:05:00.089 --> 00:05:02.189 production. It really is a perfect historical 00:05:02.189 --> 00:05:04.569 timeline of how we harness power. It starts with 00:05:04.569 --> 00:05:06.850 the charcoal pile. And just to be clear, this 00:05:06.850 --> 00:05:09.189 wasn't a bonfire. This was a carefully constructed 00:05:09.189 --> 00:05:11.930 structure made from stacking wood and turf to 00:05:11.930 --> 00:05:14.800 produce charcoal. Right. It's the earth. most 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:17.319 primitive form of harnessing concentrated heat. 00:05:17.939 --> 00:05:20.379 And the how of it is really important here. Because 00:05:20.379 --> 00:05:22.560 you can't just set it on fire. Exactly, or it 00:05:22.560 --> 00:05:25.579 just turns to ash. By stacking the wood in a 00:05:25.579 --> 00:05:28.180 specific shape and covering it tightly with turf, 00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:31.540 you completely restrict the oxygen. You force 00:05:31.540 --> 00:05:35.060 a slow smoldering burn that chemically transforms 00:05:35.060 --> 00:05:38.689 the wood into pure carbon. So you are using the 00:05:38.689 --> 00:05:41.029 physical structure of the pile to control a chemical 00:05:41.029 --> 00:05:44.029 reaction. Precisely. But then human understanding 00:05:44.029 --> 00:05:46.810 evolves, right? We move from stacking wood for 00:05:46.810 --> 00:05:49.990 fire to stacking metal for electricity. Enter 00:05:49.990 --> 00:05:53.370 the voltaic pile. Ah yes, the very first modern 00:05:53.370 --> 00:05:55.949 electric battery. Invented by Alessandro Volta. 00:05:56.170 --> 00:05:58.689 But wait, why was it called a pile? Because he 00:05:58.689 --> 00:06:01.089 literally stacked alternating disks of copper 00:06:01.089 --> 00:06:03.550 and zinc and separated each layer with a piece 00:06:03.550 --> 00:06:05.870 of cloth soaked in salt water. Okay, hold up. 00:06:05.990 --> 00:06:08.029 I get burning wood, but how does stacking wet 00:06:08.029 --> 00:06:10.310 cloth and metal suddenly create a continuous 00:06:10.310 --> 00:06:12.949 electrical current? Well, it comes down to compounding 00:06:12.949 --> 00:06:14.870 voltage. Each individual layer, so one piece 00:06:14.870 --> 00:06:17.189 of copper, one piece of zinc, and the saltwater 00:06:17.189 --> 00:06:19.670 cloth acts as a single cell. A chemical reaction 00:06:19.670 --> 00:06:21.550 occurs between the two different metals in the 00:06:21.550 --> 00:06:24.290 saltwater electrolyte, and that releases a tiny 00:06:24.290 --> 00:06:26.610 amount of electrical energy. But a single cell 00:06:26.610 --> 00:06:28.670 doesn't really do much on its own, right? Right. 00:06:29.370 --> 00:06:31.529 So Volta realized that if he built a physical 00:06:31.529 --> 00:06:34.810 tower, a pile placing one cell directly on top 00:06:34.810 --> 00:06:37.569 of another in a series, the voltage from each 00:06:37.569 --> 00:06:40.829 cell added up. Oh, wow. Yeah. The structure of 00:06:40.829 --> 00:06:43.310 the pile allowed the electrical energy to compound 00:06:43.310 --> 00:06:47.019 into a steady actually usable current. That is 00:06:47.019 --> 00:06:49.480 brilliant. The physical structure literally is 00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:51.879 the technology. And we didn't stop there. We 00:06:51.879 --> 00:06:54.579 also get the thermoelectric pile. Which is another 00:06:54.579 --> 00:06:56.920 incredible leap. Right. But again, I have to 00:06:56.920 --> 00:06:59.420 ask, how does that work? You can just stack things 00:06:59.420 --> 00:07:01.639 to turn pure heat into electricity. You can. 00:07:01.819 --> 00:07:03.920 by utilizing something called the Seebeck effect. 00:07:04.100 --> 00:07:06.399 The Seebeck effect. Yeah. So if you take two 00:07:06.399 --> 00:07:07.980 different conductive materials and join them 00:07:07.980 --> 00:07:10.339 together, and they make one side really hot and 00:07:10.339 --> 00:07:13.000 keep the other side cold, that extreme temperature 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.920 difference forces electrons to move. From the 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:19.180 hot side to the cold side. Exactly. And that 00:07:19.180 --> 00:07:21.620 movement of electrons is an electrical current. 00:07:21.779 --> 00:07:24.360 By stacking multiple of these junctions together 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:27.420 into a pile, you multiply that current into something 00:07:27.420 --> 00:07:29.720 powerful enough to use. Okay, so we've gone from 00:07:29.720 --> 00:07:32.899 chemical to electrical to thermal power. But 00:07:32.899 --> 00:07:35.540 then we get to the atomic age. And this is the 00:07:35.540 --> 00:07:37.740 part that just blows my mind. The nuclear reactors. 00:07:38.100 --> 00:07:41.399 Yes. Because the early term for a nuclear reactor 00:07:41.399 --> 00:07:45.360 was an atomic pile. Specifically, the world's 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:48.040 first artificial nuclear fission reactor, built 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:50.939 in Chicago, was literally named Chicago Pile 00:07:50.939 --> 00:07:53.519 1. Right. Built by a team led by Enrico Fermi 00:07:53.519 --> 00:07:56.639 in 1942. You're telling me the most advanced, 00:07:56.800 --> 00:07:58.800 world -changing, and frankly terrifying piece 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:00.819 of technology in human history at that time was 00:08:00.819 --> 00:08:02.980 called a pile? It sounds dangerously primitive, 00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:05.660 doesn't it? It really does. Was there no giant, 00:08:05.759 --> 00:08:08.879 glowing containment vessel? No massive concrete 00:08:08.879 --> 00:08:11.439 dome like we see today? No, there wasn't. And 00:08:11.439 --> 00:08:13.740 if we connect this to the bigger picture of how 00:08:13.740 --> 00:08:16.199 humans innovate, it actually makes complete sense. 00:08:16.420 --> 00:08:18.860 How so? Fermi and his team were doing exactly 00:08:18.860 --> 00:08:21.259 what Bolta did with his battery and exactly what 00:08:21.259 --> 00:08:23.420 the ancient charcoal burners did with their wood. 00:08:23.860 --> 00:08:27.079 They were stacking. Oh my gosh. They built Chicago 00:08:27.079 --> 00:08:30.560 Pile 1 on an abandoned squash court underneath 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:33.960 the University of Chicago. It wasn't a sleek 00:08:33.960 --> 00:08:37.779 sci -fi machine. It was a literal, highly engineered 00:08:37.779 --> 00:08:41.220 stack of graphite bricks with pellets of uranium 00:08:41.220 --> 00:08:43.559 embedded inside them. So they looked at this 00:08:43.559 --> 00:08:46.179 structure that was about to literally split the 00:08:46.179 --> 00:08:48.139 atom and unleash the fundamental power of the 00:08:48.139 --> 00:08:50.019 universe, and they named it exactly what it looked 00:08:50.019 --> 00:08:53.679 like, a pile of black bricks. Yep. And that naming 00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:56.539 convention stuck around as the atomic age dawned. 00:08:56.720 --> 00:08:59.059 You also had the wind scale piles, which were 00:08:59.059 --> 00:09:01.480 a pair of early nuclear reactors in Cumberland, 00:09:01.480 --> 00:09:04.720 England. Wow. The mechanism of power changed 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:07.620 drastically from chemical bonds to electron flow 00:09:07.620 --> 00:09:10.740 to splitting the atomic nucleus itself. But the 00:09:10.740 --> 00:09:12.460 human method of organizing that power remained 00:09:12.460 --> 00:09:14.899 exactly the same. Just stacking elements to create 00:09:14.899 --> 00:09:17.679 a compounding reaction, it's staggering. We quite 00:09:17.679 --> 00:09:19.759 literally stacked our way into the atomic age. 00:09:19.799 --> 00:09:21.919 We really did. But, you know, as you follow the 00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:23.539 history of this word, it doesn't just stay in 00:09:23.539 --> 00:09:26.080 the cold, hard realm of physics and engineering. 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:28.919 No, not at all. It's not just lighthouses and 00:09:28.919 --> 00:09:32.139 nuclear reactors. The word eventually gets deeply, 00:09:32.419 --> 00:09:34.820 intimately human. It does. It moves from being 00:09:34.820 --> 00:09:37.779 just a structural tool to a conceptual vessel. 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:41.279 It embeds itself into our maps, our names, and 00:09:41.279 --> 00:09:43.299 our shared cultural memory. And the emotional 00:09:43.299 --> 00:09:45.799 whiplash here is intense because on one hand, 00:09:46.220 --> 00:09:49.080 the pile is the somber, universally understood 00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:51.139 nickname for the ruins of the World Trade Center 00:09:51.139 --> 00:09:54.480 site following the September 11 attacks. A term 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:57.240 that carries an immense, almost unfathomable 00:09:57.240 --> 00:09:59.639 amount of communal trauma and national grief. 00:09:59.940 --> 00:10:02.539 It represented a completely unstructured, devastating 00:10:02.539 --> 00:10:05.480 collapse. It was a mountain of twisted steel 00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:08.460 and debris that rescue and recovery workers spent 00:10:08.460 --> 00:10:11.740 months carefully, painstakingly deconstructing. 00:10:11.820 --> 00:10:14.419 It was the physical manifestation of unprecedented 00:10:14.419 --> 00:10:17.139 tragedy, a word spoken with pure reverence and 00:10:17.139 --> 00:10:20.059 heartbreak. Exactly. But then you flip a linguistic 00:10:20.059 --> 00:10:22.279 coin, and Piles is also the common medical name 00:10:22.279 --> 00:10:24.919 for hemorrhoids. Right. An uncomfortable, entirely 00:10:24.919 --> 00:10:27.820 mundane, everyday medical condition. And then 00:10:27.820 --> 00:10:29.659 you look at geography. Geography is a big one. 00:10:30.019 --> 00:10:32.179 Yeah, you have Piles Creek in New Jersey. You 00:10:32.179 --> 00:10:35.320 have communes in Spain, like Piles in Valencia. 00:10:35.539 --> 00:10:38.320 Portes de Piles in France. Towns in Quebec, like 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:40.039 Grandes -de -Pille and Saint -Jean -de -Pille. 00:10:40.139 --> 00:10:42.679 It is scattered all over. map and historically 00:10:42.679 --> 00:10:45.279 this happens because geography is so often defined 00:10:45.279 --> 00:10:48.519 by natural accumulations or foundational structures. 00:10:48.759 --> 00:10:51.539 Like what? Like a town might form around a literal 00:10:51.539 --> 00:10:55.799 pile of rocks marking a safe river crossing or 00:10:55.799 --> 00:10:59.120 a massive accumulation of logs or ice on a riverbend. 00:10:59.340 --> 00:11:01.899 The word anchors the place. And it anchors people 00:11:01.899 --> 00:11:04.620 too. I mean, Roger de Piles was a 17th century 00:11:04.620 --> 00:11:07.679 French art theorist. Samuel H. Piles was an American 00:11:07.679 --> 00:11:10.820 politician. Jérésime Palais was a Soviet chuvash 00:11:10.820 --> 00:11:13.200 writer and sculptor. The list goes on. And bridging 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:16.100 right into modern pop culture, Pile is the stage 00:11:16.100 --> 00:11:18.980 name of Eriko Hori, a Japanese voice actress 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:21.159 and singer. Oh, and there's an American indie 00:11:21.159 --> 00:11:23.700 rock band simply called Pile. It's a brilliant 00:11:23.700 --> 00:11:26.919 example of how language operates. Words are incredibly 00:11:26.919 --> 00:11:29.000 neutral vessels. They do not judge the weight 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:31.019 of what they carry. That's a great point. The 00:11:31.019 --> 00:11:33.460 exact same sequence of four letters can absorb 00:11:33.460 --> 00:11:36.600 our deepest, most profound national traumas at 00:11:36.600 --> 00:11:39.779 ground zero and simultaneously serve as the family 00:11:39.779 --> 00:11:42.379 name of a French artist or the title of a punk 00:11:42.379 --> 00:11:45.039 band. It really highlights how a word is just 00:11:45.039 --> 00:11:47.679 an empty container until human experience fills 00:11:47.679 --> 00:11:50.519 it up. But what ties all of these human elements 00:11:50.519 --> 00:11:53.379 together, the geography, the people, the history, 00:11:53.799 --> 00:11:56.639 is the concept of accumulation. Whether it's 00:11:56.639 --> 00:11:58.899 the tragic accumulation of rubble, the accumulation 00:11:58.899 --> 00:12:01.779 of people in a Spanish commune, or the accumulation 00:12:01.779 --> 00:12:04.419 of cultural output from an indie rock band, it 00:12:04.419 --> 00:12:06.720 is all about how things gather together over 00:12:06.720 --> 00:12:09.340 time. Which perfectly sets up the final frontier 00:12:09.340 --> 00:12:12.120 of our exploration today. Because just as we've 00:12:12.120 --> 00:12:14.299 watched this word accumulate meaning in our physical 00:12:14.299 --> 00:12:16.940 maps in history, we quite literally weave it 00:12:16.940 --> 00:12:19.820 into our physical fabrics and now into the digital 00:12:19.820 --> 00:12:22.360 fabric of the future. This transition from the 00:12:22.360 --> 00:12:24.840 physical to the digital is wild. So moving to 00:12:24.840 --> 00:12:27.100 textiles, a pile is defined as a fabric with 00:12:27.100 --> 00:12:29.659 a raised surface made of upright loops or strands 00:12:29.659 --> 00:12:32.990 of yarn. Like a standard carpet pile. Exactly. 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:36.370 Thousands of individual threads standing together 00:12:36.370 --> 00:12:39.450 to create a single unified surface you can walk 00:12:39.450 --> 00:12:42.230 on. You're creating physical structure from plurality. 00:12:42.389 --> 00:12:45.690 Right. But right next to carpet pile, in the 00:12:45.690 --> 00:12:48.789 computing realm, pile is listed as an abstract 00:12:48.789 --> 00:12:51.730 data type. Now what does an abstract data type 00:12:51.730 --> 00:12:54.669 even mean? Is it a physical configuration of 00:12:54.669 --> 00:12:58.019 hardware? No, no. It's entirely conceptual. In 00:12:58.019 --> 00:13:00.820 computer science, an abstract data type isn't 00:13:00.820 --> 00:13:03.299 defined by what it physically looks like. It's 00:13:03.299 --> 00:13:05.500 defined by its behavior. Okay, so how does it 00:13:05.500 --> 00:13:08.399 behave? Well, how data is put in, and how it 00:13:08.399 --> 00:13:11.299 is taken out. A pile or a stack in computing 00:13:11.299 --> 00:13:13.980 generally operates on a lifeboat principle. Last 00:13:13.980 --> 00:13:16.480 in, first out. Last in, first out. Imagine a 00:13:16.480 --> 00:13:18.740 physical stack of plates at a buffet. When you 00:13:18.740 --> 00:13:20.460 add a new plate, you put it on the top. When 00:13:20.460 --> 00:13:21.940 someone needs a plate, they take the one on the 00:13:21.940 --> 00:13:23.799 top. Oh sure, you don't try to rip a plate out 00:13:23.799 --> 00:13:25.539 from the very bottom, or the whole thing crashes. 00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:28.700 Exactly. Computer memory uses this exact behavioral 00:13:28.700 --> 00:13:31.500 structure to organize tasks and run programs 00:13:31.500 --> 00:13:33.759 smoothly. Okay, that makes total sense. But then 00:13:33.759 --> 00:13:36.100 we reach the absolute cutting edge of this deep 00:13:36.100 --> 00:13:39.460 dive, the pile, which is defined as a machine 00:13:39.460 --> 00:13:43.769 learning data set. Yes. How do we get from a 00:13:43.769 --> 00:13:46.990 woven carpet to artificial intelligence? My first 00:13:46.990 --> 00:13:49.970 thought is that just like you have millions of 00:13:49.970 --> 00:13:51.970 tiny strands of yarn weaving together to make 00:13:51.970 --> 00:13:55.110 a cohesive rug, you have millions of data points 00:13:55.110 --> 00:13:57.190 weaving together to make an AI. I mean, it's 00:13:57.190 --> 00:13:59.309 a nice thought, but it actually goes much deeper 00:13:59.309 --> 00:14:02.649 than just weaving a rug. The pile in AI isn't 00:14:02.649 --> 00:14:05.590 neatly organized yarn. It is an 800 gigabyte 00:14:05.590 --> 00:14:08.350 data set. That is massive. It consists of an 00:14:08.350 --> 00:14:11.610 incredibly diverse, completely unstructured accumulation 00:14:11.610 --> 00:14:14.429 of humanity's digital footprint. We are talking 00:14:14.429 --> 00:14:17.309 about dense medical journals, raw GitHub code, 00:14:17.789 --> 00:14:20.970 thousands of books, random websites. It is pure 00:14:20.970 --> 00:14:23.490 unstructured chaos. Oh, wow. So it's not a neatly 00:14:23.490 --> 00:14:25.389 woven carpet at all. It's more like that cosmic 00:14:25.389 --> 00:14:27.230 rubble pile in space we talked about earlier. 00:14:27.570 --> 00:14:30.059 Exactly. That is a perfect connection. In space, 00:14:30.419 --> 00:14:32.820 gravity has to sift through a chaotic cloud of 00:14:32.820 --> 00:14:35.279 disjointed rocks and dust, pulling it all together 00:14:35.279 --> 00:14:37.639 to create a stable asteroid. In machine learning, 00:14:38.039 --> 00:14:41.159 the pile is the raw, chaotic cloud of human knowledge. 00:14:42.039 --> 00:14:43.879 The artificial intelligence the Large Language 00:14:43.879 --> 00:14:47.250 Model has to act like digital gravity. I love 00:14:47.250 --> 00:14:49.889 that. It sifts through that massive accumulation 00:14:49.889 --> 00:14:53.149 of text and code, looking for syntactic and semantic 00:14:53.149 --> 00:14:56.309 patterns, finding the relationships between words 00:14:56.309 --> 00:15:00.190 and ideas to create functional, structural intelligence. 00:15:00.450 --> 00:15:02.690 It's pulling everything we've ever written, coded, 00:15:02.850 --> 00:15:06.429 or theorized into one massive digital ball pit 00:15:06.429 --> 00:15:09.269 and using pattern recognition to build a new 00:15:09.269 --> 00:15:11.409 foundation for the future. And just like the 00:15:11.409 --> 00:15:13.769 screw piles driven deeply into the mud of a Florida 00:15:13.769 --> 00:15:16.980 riverbed, this digital data set serves as the 00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:19.659 invisible anchor upon which tomorrow's artificial 00:15:19.659 --> 00:15:21.559 intelligence is being built. It is absolutely 00:15:21.559 --> 00:15:23.600 incredible. We started this journey looking at 00:15:23.600 --> 00:15:26.059 what seemed like the most mundane thing imaginable, 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:28.580 just a dictionary style list of definitions for 00:15:28.580 --> 00:15:30.899 a four letter word. But look at the astonishing 00:15:30.899 --> 00:15:33.259 journey we just took. A journey across the entire 00:15:33.259 --> 00:15:36.240 spectrum of human endeavor. We really did. We 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:38.919 started in the mud of a river bed, screwing iron 00:15:38.919 --> 00:15:41.159 foundations into the earth to hold up lighthouses. 00:15:41.759 --> 00:15:44.039 We looked up into the vacuum of space to see 00:15:44.039 --> 00:15:46.539 asteroids held together by the gentle hug of 00:15:46.539 --> 00:15:50.440 gravity. We traced the exact timeline of human 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:53.860 energy, from stacking wood to restrict oxygen 00:15:53.860 --> 00:15:56.600 for charcoal, to stacking copper and zinc for 00:15:56.600 --> 00:15:58.940 the very first batteries, all the way to stacking 00:15:58.940 --> 00:16:02.019 graphite and uranium on a squash court to launch 00:16:02.019 --> 00:16:05.129 the atomic age. and we saw how language acts 00:16:05.129 --> 00:16:07.659 as a neutral vessel. absorbing the weight of 00:16:07.659 --> 00:16:10.539 our deepest tragedies at ground zero, mapping 00:16:10.539 --> 00:16:13.360 our geographies from New Jersey to Spain, and 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:15.580 naming our artists, politicians, and musicians. 00:16:15.980 --> 00:16:18.519 And finally, we saw become the conceptual behavior 00:16:18.519 --> 00:16:21.279 running our computers and the massive chaotic 00:16:21.279 --> 00:16:23.580 data set training the pattern recognition of 00:16:23.580 --> 00:16:26.440 tomorrow's AI, all through one ordinary word. 00:16:26.580 --> 00:16:28.220 It's pretty amazing when you lay it all out like 00:16:28.220 --> 00:16:30.639 that. So for you listening, the next time you 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:32.580 look at a pile of work on your desk or a pile 00:16:32.580 --> 00:16:34.679 of laundry on your floor, I want you to remember 00:16:34.679 --> 00:16:37.000 the incredible str - structural, energetic, and 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:39.960 historic power behind that concept. Yeah, you 00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:42.340 aren't just looking at a mess. You are looking 00:16:42.340 --> 00:16:46.740 at the foundational way the universe and humanity 00:16:46.740 --> 00:16:50.220 builds things. This raises an important question 00:16:50.220 --> 00:16:51.799 though, and it's something to really mull over. 00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:54.659 What's that? Because language and innovation, 00:16:54.659 --> 00:16:58.019 they never stop evolving. If the first modern 00:16:58.019 --> 00:17:01.090 battery was the voltaic pile, which changed our 00:17:01.090 --> 00:17:03.330 relationship with electricity forever. Right. 00:17:03.929 --> 00:17:06.170 And the foundation of early artificial intelligence 00:17:06.170 --> 00:17:08.710 is being trained on a massive data set called 00:17:08.710 --> 00:17:12.049 the pile, which is permanently changing our relationship 00:17:12.049 --> 00:17:15.829 with information. Yeah. What entirely new unimaginable 00:17:15.829 --> 00:17:20.170 pile is humanity unknowingly building right now 00:17:20.170 --> 00:17:22.900 that will completely redefine our future. What's 00:17:22.900 --> 00:17:24.619 the next foundational box we're going to break 00:17:24.619 --> 00:17:26.980 out of? It just goes to show the dictionary doesn't 00:17:26.980 --> 00:17:28.680 lock meaning away. It just gives us a starting 00:17:28.680 --> 00:17:30.799 point for the rabbit hole. Keep looking past 00:17:30.799 --> 00:17:31.380 the definitions.