WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.660 You know, when we look at a modern city, our 00:00:04.660 --> 00:00:07.679 eyes naturally kind of drift up to the skyline. 00:00:07.679 --> 00:00:10.179 Right. We look at the glass penthouses, the gleaming 00:00:10.179 --> 00:00:12.800 antennas, the things that catch the light. But 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.099 we almost never think about the foundation. Yeah, 00:00:15.199 --> 00:00:17.199 the stuff underground. Exactly. We don't think 00:00:17.199 --> 00:00:19.460 about the rebar and the concrete sunk deep into 00:00:19.460 --> 00:00:22.239 the bedrock that actually, you know, keeps the 00:00:22.239 --> 00:00:25.100 whole thing from just collapsing. It's the invisible 00:00:25.100 --> 00:00:27.480 scaffolding. It's like absolutely essential, 00:00:27.839 --> 00:00:31.489 but entirely out of sight. Right. And today we 00:00:31.489 --> 00:00:33.570 are going underground to look at the invisible 00:00:33.570 --> 00:00:36.270 scaffolding of our modern tech driven world. 00:00:37.170 --> 00:00:40.049 So welcome to today's deep dive. We're talking 00:00:40.049 --> 00:00:42.869 about a man whose name isn't plastered on the 00:00:42.869 --> 00:00:45.090 side of Silicon Valley headquarters, but who 00:00:45.090 --> 00:00:46.829 essentially built the intellectual foundation 00:00:46.829 --> 00:00:49.869 for the entire information age, which is a massive 00:00:49.869 --> 00:00:52.170 claim. But yeah, it is. But we're pulling this 00:00:52.170 --> 00:00:54.429 from his Wikipedia article. And it's wild. We're 00:00:54.429 --> 00:00:56.869 talking about Norbert Wiener. He lived from 1894 00:00:56.869 --> 00:01:00.770 to 1964 and he was this child prodigy and eccentric 00:01:00.770 --> 00:01:03.929 mathematician and I mean the absolute originator 00:01:03.929 --> 00:01:07.659 of a field called cybernetics In this deep dive, 00:01:07.719 --> 00:01:10.680 we are going to track how his mind went from 00:01:10.680 --> 00:01:14.019 exploring the most abstract mathematical concepts 00:01:14.019 --> 00:01:17.099 of random noise to predicting the flight paths 00:01:17.099 --> 00:01:19.739 of enemy bombers. Yeah, during World War II. 00:01:19.859 --> 00:01:22.540 Right, and then eventually to literally planting 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:24.819 the seeds for modern artificial intelligence 00:01:24.819 --> 00:01:27.739 and machine learning. And if you are sitting 00:01:27.739 --> 00:01:30.379 there right now wondering why this specific historical 00:01:30.379 --> 00:01:32.099 figure matters to you, just think about this. 00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:35.590 If you want to understand... why our algorithms, 00:01:35.810 --> 00:01:37.569 our smart thermostats, or even, you know, our 00:01:37.569 --> 00:01:39.849 massive AI models behave the way they do, you 00:01:39.849 --> 00:01:42.390 have to understand Norbert Wiener's core revelation. 00:01:42.489 --> 00:01:44.689 Which is? It all comes down to feedback loops. 00:01:45.090 --> 00:01:47.489 The fundamental rules that govern how a machine, 00:01:47.489 --> 00:01:50.450 quote -unquote, learns are the rules that Wiener 00:01:50.450 --> 00:01:54.310 formalized. Okay, so let's unpack this, because 00:01:54.310 --> 00:01:56.010 to understand how Wiener eventually saw these 00:01:56.010 --> 00:01:58.510 profound connections between human biology and 00:01:58.510 --> 00:02:00.769 machine circuitry, we first have to look at the 00:02:00.769 --> 00:02:03.150 system that produced him, which was his childhood. 00:02:03.359 --> 00:02:06.939 It was, to put it mildly, an intense pressure 00:02:06.939 --> 00:02:10.039 cooker. That is a massive understatement, actually. 00:02:10.219 --> 00:02:12.460 The pace of his early intellectual development 00:02:12.460 --> 00:02:14.719 is just staggering, and it was entirely engineered 00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:16.580 by his father. Yeah, let's look at the timeline 00:02:16.580 --> 00:02:19.000 here, because it's crazy. He graduates from high 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:22.960 school at 11 years old. Eleven. Eleven? I mean, 00:02:23.319 --> 00:02:24.819 most kids are just trying to figure out middle 00:02:24.819 --> 00:02:27.460 school lockers at that age. Yeah, and maybe playing 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:30.909 video games. Exactly. Then he gets his Bachelor 00:02:30.909 --> 00:02:33.469 of Arts in Mathematics from Tufts College at 00:02:33.469 --> 00:02:36.669 14. And then, because apparently that wasn't 00:02:36.669 --> 00:02:39.229 fast enough, he earns a PhD from Harvard at the 00:02:39.229 --> 00:02:42.770 age of 19. Right. And it wasn't just like a standard 00:02:42.770 --> 00:02:45.250 box checking dissertation either. He wrote it 00:02:45.250 --> 00:02:47.610 on mathematical logic. Specifically, the source 00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:49.830 notes, he was the first to publicly state that 00:02:49.830 --> 00:02:52.629 ordered pairs can be defined in terms of elementary 00:02:52.629 --> 00:02:54.949 set theory. OK. I'm going to need you to pause 00:02:54.949 --> 00:02:57.689 right there. Sure. Ordered pairs in elementary 00:02:57.689 --> 00:03:00.449 set theory. For those of us who haven't taken 00:03:00.449 --> 00:03:02.669 a high -level math class recently, what does 00:03:02.669 --> 00:03:05.330 that actually mean? That's a fair question. So 00:03:05.330 --> 00:03:07.370 think of set theory as the most basic foundation 00:03:07.370 --> 00:03:10.330 of math. It's just sorting objects into buckets 00:03:10.330 --> 00:03:13.189 or sets. Okay, buckets got it. Right. And an 00:03:13.189 --> 00:03:15.789 ordered pair is a way to link two things together 00:03:15.789 --> 00:03:18.229 in a specific sequence, like coordinates on a 00:03:18.229 --> 00:03:21.000 map, You know, where an x and a y value give 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:23.719 you an exact location. Like longitude and latitude. 00:03:24.060 --> 00:03:27.199 Exactly. Now before Wiener, mathematicians just 00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:29.580 accepted ordered pairs as a given. They just 00:03:29.580 --> 00:03:32.039 existed. But Wiener came along and proved that 00:03:32.039 --> 00:03:34.280 you don't need to just accept them. You can actually 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:36.819 build them from scratch using only the basic 00:03:36.819 --> 00:03:39.250 buckets of set theory. So he's essentially writing 00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:42.289 the foundational code for how math maps relationships 00:03:42.289 --> 00:03:45.169 using just the simplest building blocks available. 00:03:45.389 --> 00:03:48.469 Exactly. He is reshaping how we understand mathematical 00:03:48.469 --> 00:03:50.710 logic itself. And he did all this before he was 00:03:50.710 --> 00:03:53.550 even old enough to buy a drink. Wow. But this 00:03:53.550 --> 00:03:56.090 genius didn't just emerge in a vacuum. You know, 00:03:56.090 --> 00:03:59.289 it was forged. Forged is the perfect word by 00:03:59.289 --> 00:04:03.569 his father, Leo Wiener. And my first instinct 00:04:03.569 --> 00:04:06.789 reading this was to picture a classic historical 00:04:06.789 --> 00:04:09.879 tiger parent. a drill sergeant of a dad. Right, 00:04:09.960 --> 00:04:12.659 the strict disciplinarian. Exactly. But I want 00:04:12.659 --> 00:04:14.659 to push back on that narrative a bit, based on 00:04:14.659 --> 00:04:16.939 the source, because if you look at Leo's background, 00:04:17.139 --> 00:04:20.040 it's kind of bizarre. Leo was a vegetarian, a 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:23.259 Tolstoy -loving, Esperanto -translating pacifist, 00:04:23.259 --> 00:04:25.560 who at one point actually wanted to set up a 00:04:25.560 --> 00:04:28.000 utopian commune in Central America. Right, in 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:30.800 Honduras, I think. Yeah. So how does a guy with 00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:34.120 those ideals become a ruthless taskmaster? It's 00:04:34.120 --> 00:04:37.050 a really fascinating contradiction. Leo decided 00:04:37.050 --> 00:04:39.829 to educate Norbert entirely at home using his 00:04:39.829 --> 00:04:42.689 own invented teaching methods. Naturally. Yeah. 00:04:43.149 --> 00:04:45.250 And according to Norbert's own autobiography, 00:04:45.470 --> 00:04:48.269 Leo was actually quite calm and patient right 00:04:48.269 --> 00:04:50.649 up until the exact moment Norbert gave a wrong 00:04:50.649 --> 00:04:54.329 answer. Ah. So it was a trap. Exactly. A single 00:04:54.329 --> 00:04:56.920 mistake. a slight hesitation, and his father 00:04:56.920 --> 00:04:59.480 would completely lose his temper. The intellectual 00:04:59.480 --> 00:05:02.519 demand was just absolute. Wow. And that utopian 00:05:02.519 --> 00:05:05.680 idealism you mentioned, it manifested in incredibly 00:05:05.680 --> 00:05:08.560 rigid, almost tyrannical ways at home. Really? 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:11.360 How so? Well, Norbert later wrote very specifically 00:05:11.360 --> 00:05:13.579 about the emotional abuse he suffered regarding 00:05:13.579 --> 00:05:16.959 his father's dogmatic vegetarianism. Wait, over 00:05:16.959 --> 00:05:20.240 vegetarianism? Yes. Literally. The source mentions 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:22.300 he talked about growing up surrounded by quote, 00:05:22.680 --> 00:05:25.740 horrible and hair raising vegetarian tracks concerning 00:05:25.740 --> 00:05:29.060 cruelty to animals. Oh my God. Yeah. And he was 00:05:29.060 --> 00:05:31.800 subjected to his father's overwhelming moral 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:34.399 precepts. It wasn't just physical discipline. 00:05:34.779 --> 00:05:37.939 It was this intense psychological and moral pressure. 00:05:38.110 --> 00:05:40.389 So he was essentially programmed to believe that 00:05:40.389 --> 00:05:42.889 a single error wasn't just a math mistake. It 00:05:42.889 --> 00:05:45.709 was like a fundamental failure of character. 00:05:45.889 --> 00:05:47.970 Presensely. It's like Leo was trying to write 00:05:47.970 --> 00:05:50.949 a perfect error -free computer program, but he 00:05:50.949 --> 00:05:53.329 was using his son's mind as the hardware. That 00:05:53.329 --> 00:05:56.449 is heavy. But there's also a deep cultural context 00:05:56.449 --> 00:05:58.689 to this drive that we need to touch on, right? 00:05:58.709 --> 00:06:01.629 They had a rich Jewish ancestry. Yes. And Wiener 00:06:01.629 --> 00:06:04.149 himself reflected deeply on this. Through his 00:06:04.149 --> 00:06:06.490 father, he was descended from incredibly prominent 00:06:06.490 --> 00:06:09.439 figures. Like who? Like Moses Maimonides, the 00:06:09.439 --> 00:06:12.199 famous medieval philosopher and physician, and 00:06:12.199 --> 00:06:15.079 Akiva Eger, who was a highly influential chief 00:06:15.079 --> 00:06:18.000 rabbi. Right. But neither Norbert nor his father 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.720 were religious in a traditional observant sense, 00:06:20.939 --> 00:06:24.300 were they? No, not at all. But Wiener credited 00:06:24.300 --> 00:06:27.319 the Jewish cultural emphasis on scholarship for 00:06:27.319 --> 00:06:30.199 shaping his family's intense drive. So he viewed 00:06:30.199 --> 00:06:33.579 Judaism more as a community and a social entity 00:06:33.579 --> 00:06:36.910 that valued intellect. over almost anything else. 00:06:37.329 --> 00:06:39.949 Yeah, exactly. The article notes that historically 00:06:39.949 --> 00:06:42.870 in Jewish culture, an immense premium was placed 00:06:42.870 --> 00:06:46.220 on learning. Wiener even pointed out that a young, 00:06:46.779 --> 00:06:49.079 highly intelligent, even if practically useless 00:06:49.079 --> 00:06:51.579 scholar was considered a highly desirable match 00:06:51.579 --> 00:06:53.860 for marriage. Right. And because of that cultural 00:06:53.860 --> 00:06:56.560 standard, he believed scholarly traits were biologically 00:06:56.560 --> 00:06:58.920 and culturally amplified over generations. Like 00:06:58.920 --> 00:07:01.379 a selective breeding for genius. Basically, yeah. 00:07:01.519 --> 00:07:04.060 He saw his own intellect and the intense family 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:06.339 structure that nurtured it as a direct product 00:07:06.339 --> 00:07:09.420 of that long cultural history. So you have this 00:07:09.420 --> 00:07:12.579 mind that is culturally primed. intensely trained, 00:07:13.259 --> 00:07:15.240 and just absolutely terrified of making a mistake. 00:07:15.740 --> 00:07:17.699 Which brings us to adulthood, and this is the 00:07:17.699 --> 00:07:19.339 part of the story I love, because we move from 00:07:19.339 --> 00:07:21.560 how Wiener's mind was built to how it actually 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:23.459 functioned out in the real world. Which was poorly. 00:07:24.199 --> 00:07:27.100 Spectactually poorly. The irony is, for a guy 00:07:27.100 --> 00:07:29.040 who could see the fundamental logic of the universe, 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:32.639 he was so bad at navigating everyday life. He 00:07:32.639 --> 00:07:35.160 was the archetypal, absent -minded professor. 00:07:35.379 --> 00:07:37.800 He just didn't fit into normal systems at all. 00:07:38.079 --> 00:07:41.000 Look at his path after the PhD. He goes to Europe 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:43.879 to study philosophy. He comes back and works 00:07:43.879 --> 00:07:46.060 briefly as a journalist. Right. But he gets fired 00:07:46.060 --> 00:07:51.000 for the Boston Herald. And why? Because the rigidity 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:54.459 his father beat into him, this absolute uncompromising 00:07:54.459 --> 00:07:57.300 demand for correct answers, made him completely 00:07:57.300 --> 00:07:59.779 incapable of writing political spin. Yeah, he 00:07:59.779 --> 00:08:01.959 just couldn't do it. His bosses wanted favorable 00:08:01.959 --> 00:08:05.240 PR for a politician, and Wiener essentially refused 00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:07.540 to bend the objective truth. So he's out. And 00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:09.560 he gets rejected for a permanent role at Harvard. 00:08:09.639 --> 00:08:11.819 Which he largely attributed to institutional 00:08:11.819 --> 00:08:13.920 anti -Semitism. Right. And eventually he finds 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:16.879 a home at MIT. And MIT is where the legend of 00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:19.439 his absent -mindedness really takes off. The 00:08:19.439 --> 00:08:21.600 stories from MIT are legendary. There's this 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:23.379 one anecdote in the source that just perfectly 00:08:23.379 --> 00:08:25.420 captures it. So Wiener comes home from work one 00:08:25.420 --> 00:08:28.240 day to find his house completely empty. No furniture, 00:08:28.339 --> 00:08:30.860 no family, nothing. It's an empty house. Yeah. 00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:34.120 He has no idea what's going on. He steps outside, 00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:36.899 sees a neighborhood girl on the sidewalk, and 00:08:36.899 --> 00:08:39.379 asks her where his family went. And she looks 00:08:39.379 --> 00:08:41.980 at him and says, it's OK, Daddy. Mommy sent me 00:08:41.980 --> 00:08:44.799 to get you. They had moved that day. They had 00:08:44.799 --> 00:08:47.179 moved that day. Yeah. And he'd just wandered 00:08:47.179 --> 00:08:49.980 back to the old house, completely oblivious to 00:08:49.980 --> 00:08:51.820 his physical surroundings. And I mean, while 00:08:51.820 --> 00:08:54.240 his daughter later clarified that he never actually 00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:56.899 forgot who his children were, she admitted the 00:08:56.899 --> 00:08:59.419 rest of the story was pretty close to the truth. 00:08:59.720 --> 00:09:02.539 That is hilarious. It is, but what's crucial 00:09:02.539 --> 00:09:04.600 for you to understand is why he was so distracted. 00:09:05.340 --> 00:09:07.860 His mind was utterly consumed by a mathematical 00:09:07.860 --> 00:09:10.820 concept called Brownian motion. Okay, Brownian 00:09:10.820 --> 00:09:14.269 motion. That's, um... the random chaotic movement 00:09:14.269 --> 00:09:17.129 of particles, right? Exactly. Imagine a tiny 00:09:17.129 --> 00:09:19.629 grain of pollen suspended in a drop of water. 00:09:19.929 --> 00:09:21.870 If you look at it under a microscope, it's just 00:09:21.870 --> 00:09:24.370 jiggling around erratically as invisible water 00:09:24.370 --> 00:09:26.970 molecules constantly crash into it. It's totally 00:09:26.970 --> 00:09:29.190 random. It looks completely unpredictable. It 00:09:29.190 --> 00:09:33.049 is pure, unfiltered chaos. But Wiener was determined 00:09:33.049 --> 00:09:35.370 to find the mathematical structure hidden within 00:09:35.370 --> 00:09:37.970 that chaos. Of course he was. Yeah, he was so 00:09:37.970 --> 00:09:41.250 obsessed, he developed what mathematicians affectionately 00:09:41.250 --> 00:09:44.750 call the wiener sausage. Okay, the wiener sausage. 00:09:45.590 --> 00:09:47.629 You're gonna have to explain that visually. The 00:09:47.629 --> 00:09:50.049 name is great. It's a mathematical visualization 00:09:50.049 --> 00:09:53.889 of this randomness. Imagine the erratic wandering 00:09:53.889 --> 00:09:56.529 path of that pollen green over a set amount of 00:09:56.529 --> 00:09:59.769 time. Okay. Now imagine drawing a circle around 00:09:59.769 --> 00:10:02.809 that particle, and as the particle wanders, that 00:10:02.809 --> 00:10:05.269 circle sweeps out a three -dimensional volume. 00:10:05.389 --> 00:10:08.210 Like a tube. Yeah, but it looks like a twisted, 00:10:08.409 --> 00:10:11.429 bumpy, completely irregular cylinder, a sausage. 00:10:12.070 --> 00:10:14.710 He was using this shape to calculate the probability 00:10:14.710 --> 00:10:17.009 of where that random particle might end up. Okay. 00:10:17.210 --> 00:10:19.830 And through this, he formally proved the non 00:10:19.830 --> 00:10:22.149 -differentiability of these paths. Wait, non 00:10:22.149 --> 00:10:23.769 -differentiability? I know we're dealing with 00:10:23.769 --> 00:10:25.809 calculus here, but what does that actually mean 00:10:25.809 --> 00:10:27.889 for the physical particle floating in the water? 00:10:28.129 --> 00:10:30.730 It essentially means the path is so jagged and 00:10:30.730 --> 00:10:33.129 erratic that if you zoom in infinitely, there 00:10:33.129 --> 00:10:37.080 are no smooth curves. Ever. In traditional physics, 00:10:37.419 --> 00:10:39.759 you know, if you track a thrown baseball you 00:10:39.759 --> 00:10:42.860 can find a smooth curve to predict its path. 00:10:43.519 --> 00:10:46.519 With Brownian Motion, Wiener proved mathematically 00:10:46.519 --> 00:10:49.720 that the path is infinitely sharp and completely 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:52.700 lacks smoothness. It's just pure mathematical 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:56.700 randomness. Yes. And he turned that total randomness 00:10:56.700 --> 00:11:00.159 into a formalized, measurable concept known today 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:04.480 as the Wiener Process. But here is where it gets 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:06.360 really interesting. Let me try an analogy here 00:11:06.360 --> 00:11:08.500 to ground this for you. Go for it. Imagine you're 00:11:08.500 --> 00:11:11.360 in a crowded, clinking, incredibly loud restaurant. 00:11:11.500 --> 00:11:13.240 You're trying to listen to your friend across 00:11:13.240 --> 00:11:15.940 the table, but there's this wall of chaotic noise 00:11:15.940 --> 00:11:17.799 between you. Yeah, that happens all the time. 00:11:17.980 --> 00:11:20.360 Right. And most people just hear a roar and tune 00:11:20.360 --> 00:11:22.639 it out. Wiener was the guy sitting there figuring 00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:24.759 out the exact mathematical rules that govern 00:11:24.759 --> 00:11:27.379 the roar. He was finding the mathematical signal 00:11:27.379 --> 00:11:29.879 hidden inside the noise. That is a perfect analogy. 00:11:29.980 --> 00:11:32.240 He was quantifying the unquantifiable, and that 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:34.519 actually transitions us perfectly to the next 00:11:34.519 --> 00:11:37.309 phase of his life. Because that abstract academic 00:11:37.309 --> 00:11:39.330 obsession with noise was about to become a matter 00:11:39.330 --> 00:11:42.210 of literal life and death. Exactly. World War 00:11:42.210 --> 00:11:45.149 II breaks out. Right. And suddenly, being able 00:11:45.149 --> 00:11:47.950 to find the signal in the chaos isn't just a 00:11:47.950 --> 00:11:50.590 fun math problem for the faculty lounge. It is 00:11:50.590 --> 00:11:53.830 how you win a global war. Right. During the war, 00:11:54.009 --> 00:11:56.149 Wiener joined the National Defense Research Committee. 00:11:56.830 --> 00:11:59.549 His specific assignment was working on the automatic 00:11:59.549 --> 00:12:03.190 aiming and firing of anti -aircraft guns. Because... 00:12:03.159 --> 00:12:06.240 Airplanes, specifically German bombers, had gotten 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:09.080 significantly faster and higher. Yeah, exactly. 00:12:09.159 --> 00:12:11.179 By the time a gunner on the ground calculates 00:12:11.179 --> 00:12:13.740 where the plane is and fires a bullet, the bullet 00:12:13.740 --> 00:12:16.179 takes time to travel and the plane is long gone. 00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:18.440 You can't shoot where the bomber is. You have 00:12:18.440 --> 00:12:20.620 to shoot where it will be. And to do that, you 00:12:20.620 --> 00:12:23.980 have to predict the pilot's behavior. But, you 00:12:23.980 --> 00:12:26.220 know, a pilot flying through anti -aircraft flak 00:12:26.220 --> 00:12:28.399 isn't flying in a straight, predictable line. 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:30.679 Obviously not. They are taking evasive maneuvers. 00:12:30.879 --> 00:12:33.440 They are darting left, dropping altitudes, zigzagging 00:12:33.440 --> 00:12:36.159 to stay alive. To a gunner on the ground, those 00:12:36.159 --> 00:12:38.740 maneuvers look completely random. They look like 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:41.580 chaos. Like pollen jiggling in water. Exactly. 00:12:42.139 --> 00:12:44.539 Wiener looked at the erratic flight path of a 00:12:44.539 --> 00:12:47.379 terrified human pilot. and realized he could 00:12:47.379 --> 00:12:50.100 treat those evasive maneuvers at an exotic type 00:12:50.100 --> 00:12:53.059 of random noise. Oh, wow. Yeah. He took the math 00:12:53.059 --> 00:12:55.679 he developed for Brownian motion, for the Wiener 00:12:55.679 --> 00:12:58.700 sausage, and applied it to analog radar signals. 00:12:59.139 --> 00:13:01.799 And he invented what is now called the Wiener 00:13:01.799 --> 00:13:04.059 filter. So how does the filter actually work? 00:13:04.279 --> 00:13:07.399 Its entire purpose is to strip away the noise. 00:13:07.500 --> 00:13:09.720 The evasive maneuvers. Right, the random jukes 00:13:09.720 --> 00:13:12.200 and drives of the plane or even just the static 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:15.019 on the radar. It strips that away and predicts 00:13:15.019 --> 00:13:17.740 the future path of the target based on incomplete 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:20.340 information from the past. So it mathematically 00:13:20.340 --> 00:13:24.059 guesses the most probable true trajectory by 00:13:24.059 --> 00:13:27.679 filtering out the randomness. Yes. He's mathematically 00:13:27.679 --> 00:13:30.460 predicting human behavior in real time to shoot 00:13:30.460 --> 00:13:32.620 them out of the sky. That is incredible. And 00:13:32.620 --> 00:13:34.820 the process of building the filter led to an 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:37.600 absolute intellectual earthquake. What's fascinating 00:13:37.600 --> 00:13:40.139 here is the conceptual leap Wiener made. What 00:13:40.139 --> 00:13:42.740 do you mean? He didn't just solve the anti -aircraft 00:13:42.740 --> 00:13:45.179 problem, he noticed how the problem had to be 00:13:45.179 --> 00:13:47.980 solved. To predict the plane, he had to study 00:13:47.980 --> 00:13:50.519 how the human pilot reacts to their environment. 00:13:50.740 --> 00:13:53.460 Okay. The pilot sees a cloud of flak, adjusts 00:13:53.460 --> 00:13:56.399 their course, observes the result of that aggressment, 00:13:56.799 --> 00:13:59.580 realizes they overcorrected, and adjusts again. 00:13:59.759 --> 00:14:02.480 The pilot corrects their course based on continuous 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:05.879 new information. Right. And Wiener realized that 00:14:05.879 --> 00:14:08.299 the radar tracking the plane, the mechanical 00:14:08.299 --> 00:14:11.659 gun adjusting its aim, and the human pilot flying 00:14:11.659 --> 00:14:15.139 the plane were all operating on the exact same 00:14:15.139 --> 00:14:17.419 underlying principle. Which is? They were all 00:14:17.419 --> 00:14:20.389 systems that took in information, acted on it, 00:14:20.750 --> 00:14:23.210 measured the error of their action, and fed that 00:14:23.210 --> 00:14:25.250 error back into the system to correct the next 00:14:25.250 --> 00:14:28.409 action. Hold on. That feels almost productive. 00:14:28.870 --> 00:14:31.230 Is he really saying that a human pilot with all 00:14:31.230 --> 00:14:33.509 their training, fear, and instinct is operating 00:14:33.509 --> 00:14:36.250 on the exact same mechanical principle as a metal 00:14:36.250 --> 00:14:38.809 radar dish? Yeah. Or that me reaching across 00:14:38.809 --> 00:14:40.809 my desk for a cup of coffee is the same as my 00:14:40.809 --> 00:14:43.200 thermostat turning on the heat? It is reductive, 00:14:43.240 --> 00:14:46.080 but that is the absolute genius of it. He's stripping 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:49.200 away the biology, the metal, the flesh to look 00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:51.899 at the pure information flow. OK, explain the 00:14:51.899 --> 00:14:53.659 coffee cup thing. Sure. When you reach for your 00:14:53.659 --> 00:14:56.200 coffee, your eyes constantly measure the distance 00:14:56.200 --> 00:14:58.799 between your hand and the mug. If your hand drifts 00:14:58.799 --> 00:15:01.759 too far left, your brain sends a signal to correct 00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:04.559 it right. Right. That is a feedback loop. When 00:15:04.559 --> 00:15:06.940 your thermostat senses the room is too cold, 00:15:07.220 --> 00:15:09.240 it turns on the heat until the target temperature 00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:12.360 is reached, then shuts off. That is also a feedback 00:15:12.360 --> 00:15:15.120 loop. So a feedback loop is just a system measuring 00:15:15.120 --> 00:15:18.100 its own errors to reach a goal. Yes, and this 00:15:18.100 --> 00:15:21.820 is the birth of cybernetics. In 1948, he publishes 00:15:21.820 --> 00:15:26.139 a book literally titled Cybernetics or Control 00:15:26.139 --> 00:15:29.100 and Communication in the Animal and the machine. 00:15:29.340 --> 00:15:31.159 Wow, so he put it right there in the title. He 00:15:31.159 --> 00:15:33.580 did. He formalized the theory that there is no 00:15:33.580 --> 00:15:35.860 fundamental difference between how a biological 00:15:35.860 --> 00:15:38.639 organism maintains its balance and how a machine 00:15:38.639 --> 00:15:41.440 corrects its output. It's all just communication 00:15:41.440 --> 00:15:43.299 and control. And if we connect this to the bigger 00:15:43.299 --> 00:15:46.960 picture, this is the exact moment modern AI was 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:49.039 conceptualized. Oh, absolutely. Because if all 00:15:49.039 --> 00:15:52.039 intelligent behavior whether it's a pilot dodging 00:15:52.039 --> 00:15:55.519 flak, a person grabbing a mug, or a brain solving 00:15:55.519 --> 00:15:58.539 a puzzle, it's just a complex series of feedback 00:15:58.539 --> 00:16:02.179 mechanisms. Then you could theoretically simulate 00:16:02.179 --> 00:16:04.500 that intelligence in a machine. It was a revolutionary 00:16:04.500 --> 00:16:07.259 insight. But for Wiener, it carried a very heavy 00:16:07.259 --> 00:16:09.759 price. Yeah, I bet. Because if humans and machines 00:16:09.759 --> 00:16:12.039 are essentially the same communicative systems, 00:16:12.679 --> 00:16:15.200 what happens to humanity when the machines become 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:18.850 advanced enough to take over? Man. And this triggers 00:16:18.850 --> 00:16:22.070 a massive fundamental ethical shift in Wiener. 00:16:22.429 --> 00:16:24.870 To understand the contrast, look at his attitude 00:16:24.870 --> 00:16:26.789 during World War I. Right, totally different. 00:16:26.850 --> 00:16:29.169 He was desperate to serve. The source says he 00:16:29.169 --> 00:16:31.169 tried to get an officer's commission, failed, 00:16:31.509 --> 00:16:34.649 tried again, got rejected for bad eyesight, and 00:16:34.649 --> 00:16:36.470 finally managed to enlist as a common soldier. 00:16:36.529 --> 00:16:38.629 He really wanted to go. He even wrote to his 00:16:38.629 --> 00:16:42.230 parents that he'd be a, quote, swine if he wasn't 00:16:42.230 --> 00:16:44.990 willing to be a regular soldier. He was incredibly 00:16:44.990 --> 00:16:48.070 eager to fight. But after World War II, after 00:16:48.070 --> 00:16:50.470 seeing what science had unleashed specifically 00:16:50.470 --> 00:16:53.490 the devastation of the atomic bomb and the creeping 00:16:53.490 --> 00:16:56.269 militarization of academic research, he did a 00:16:56.269 --> 00:16:59.669 complete 180. Yeah. The creator of the targeting 00:16:59.669 --> 00:17:04.509 systems became a staunch pacifist. In 1947, he 00:17:04.509 --> 00:17:06.809 publishes an article in the Atlantic Monthly 00:17:06.809 --> 00:17:10.309 titled, A Scientist Rebels. And he doesn't just 00:17:10.309 --> 00:17:13.470 talk the talk, he outright refuses to accept 00:17:13.470 --> 00:17:16.400 any more government funding. Which was huge for 00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:19.440 an MIT professor. Yeah. He refuses to work on 00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:22.400 any military projects. He urges all scientists 00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:24.920 to seriously consider the ethical implications 00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:28.019 of their work. He even starts sharing his cybernetics 00:17:28.019 --> 00:17:30.420 findings with Soviet researchers. Which, as you 00:17:30.420 --> 00:17:32.420 can imagine during the dawn of the Cold War and 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:34.980 the Red Scare, made him highly suspicious to 00:17:34.980 --> 00:17:37.099 the U .S. government and the FBI. Obviously. 00:17:37.779 --> 00:17:39.259 We should note we're just reporting what the 00:17:39.259 --> 00:17:40.839 sources say here, but you can see how that would 00:17:40.839 --> 00:17:43.380 ruffle feathers. Oh, definitely. But Wiener believed 00:17:43.380 --> 00:17:46.299 that information was universal. He was an advocate 00:17:46.299 --> 00:17:49.220 for using automation to end economic underdevelopment 00:17:49.220 --> 00:17:51.839 and poverty, not to build better, faster weapons. 00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:54.579 But his moral and interpersonal struggles weren't 00:17:54.579 --> 00:17:57.019 just geopolitical, they were deeply personal. 00:17:57.519 --> 00:17:59.759 And this brings us to one of the most bizarre 00:17:59.759 --> 00:18:02.740 and tragic mysteries in his life. It really is 00:18:02.740 --> 00:18:07.250 sad. After the war, Wiener's fame helps MIT recruit 00:18:07.250 --> 00:18:10.170 this absolute dream team of cognitive scientists. 00:18:10.710 --> 00:18:13.329 We're talking brilliant minds like Warren McCulloch 00:18:13.329 --> 00:18:16.569 and a young prodigy named Walter Pitts who were 00:18:16.569 --> 00:18:18.529 exploring the mathematics of the nervous system. 00:18:18.630 --> 00:18:21.509 Yeah, they were poised to take Wiener's cybernetics 00:18:21.509 --> 00:18:23.809 to the next level. They were making foundational 00:18:23.809 --> 00:18:25.990 leaps toward what would become computer science 00:18:25.990 --> 00:18:28.210 and artificial intelligence. They were his intellectual 00:18:28.210 --> 00:18:30.930 disciples. Basically, yeah. And then Wiener just 00:18:30.930 --> 00:18:34.119 snaps. Yeah. Suddenly, completely inexplicably, 00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:37.059 he cuts off all contact with his entire team 00:18:37.059 --> 00:18:39.619 forever. He completely ghosted them. Just completely 00:18:39.619 --> 00:18:41.779 cuts them off. And this emotionally traumatized 00:18:41.779 --> 00:18:44.519 Walter Pitts so deeply that it led to severe 00:18:44.519 --> 00:18:47.380 depression, a slide into alcoholism, and the 00:18:47.380 --> 00:18:50.240 ultimate decline of his entire career. He destroyed 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:52.039 this young man. And this raises an important 00:18:52.039 --> 00:18:54.500 question, right? Yeah. How does the man who literally 00:18:54.500 --> 00:18:57.319 invented the science of communication fail so 00:18:57.319 --> 00:18:59.220 spectacularly at communicating with his closest 00:18:59.220 --> 00:19:02.089 peers? Right. What actually happened? Well, the 00:19:02.089 --> 00:19:03.849 historical record is fragmented, but there are 00:19:03.849 --> 00:19:06.450 two dominant theories for this betrayal outlined 00:19:06.450 --> 00:19:08.849 in the text. Okay, what's the first one? The 00:19:08.849 --> 00:19:11.549 first is what we might call the wife theory. 00:19:12.509 --> 00:19:15.349 Biographers suggest that Wiener's wife, Margaret, 00:19:15.970 --> 00:19:19.670 deeply detested Warren McCulloch. Why? She apparently 00:19:19.670 --> 00:19:22.769 hated his bohemian lifestyle, his late -night 00:19:22.769 --> 00:19:25.720 habits, and his influence over the group. According 00:19:25.720 --> 00:19:28.539 to this theory, she essentially engineered the 00:19:28.539 --> 00:19:31.339 breach, manipulating Wiener with false stories 00:19:31.339 --> 00:19:34.539 to force him to cut ties. Okay, the wife theory 00:19:34.539 --> 00:19:37.079 sounds a bit too much like a convenient soap 00:19:37.079 --> 00:19:39.640 opera scapegoat to me. Was there a professional 00:19:39.640 --> 00:19:41.500 reason this team fell apart? Well, that leads 00:19:41.500 --> 00:19:43.680 us to the second theory, the setup theory, which 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:45.799 was proposed by a colleague named Patrick Wall. 00:19:45.960 --> 00:19:48.240 The speculation is that Wiener asked McCulloch 00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:50.559 for some specific physiological data about the 00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:53.019 brain to build a brand new mathematical theory. 00:19:53.140 --> 00:19:55.759 Makes sense. Pollack allegedly gave him a mix 00:19:55.759 --> 00:19:57.700 of proven facts and things he merely thought 00:19:57.700 --> 00:20:00.660 should be true. Essentially, bad data. Oh, do 00:20:00.660 --> 00:20:03.940 you? Yes. Wiener built a massive complex theory 00:20:03.940 --> 00:20:07.039 on the shaky data, presented it at a major physiology 00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:10.039 congress, and was publicly humiliated and shot 00:20:10.039 --> 00:20:11.960 down by the experts in the room. Oh, and remember 00:20:11.960 --> 00:20:15.460 how he was raised. Exactly. A mistake is a failure 00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:18.509 of character. According to this theory, Wiener 00:20:18.509 --> 00:20:20.950 became convinced McCulloch had intentionally 00:20:20.950 --> 00:20:23.450 set him up to fail, and he never spoke to any 00:20:23.450 --> 00:20:26.609 of them again. That is tragic either way. The 00:20:26.609 --> 00:20:29.130 father of cybernetics, whose entire legacy is 00:20:29.130 --> 00:20:32.109 built on error correction and clear communication 00:20:32.109 --> 00:20:35.390 destroyed by either a toxic domestic feedback 00:20:35.390 --> 00:20:38.750 loop or just bad data. It perfectly highlights 00:20:38.750 --> 00:20:41.990 the deeply flawed, messy human element behind 00:20:41.990 --> 00:20:44.450 all this cold mathematical logic. So what does 00:20:44.450 --> 00:20:46.950 this all mean? We followed Norbert Wiener on 00:20:46.950 --> 00:20:49.769 this incredible arc. He goes from this high -pressure, 00:20:50.009 --> 00:20:52.089 mistake -free childhood environment to finding 00:20:52.089 --> 00:20:54.750 the hidden mathematical order inside pure chaos. 00:20:54.829 --> 00:20:57.549 He uses that math to shoot down planes, and in 00:20:57.549 --> 00:20:59.750 doing so, invents the feedback loops that run 00:20:59.750 --> 00:21:02.829 our modern algorithms. He realizes the terrifying 00:21:02.829 --> 00:21:05.549 potential of his own creations, rebels against 00:21:05.549 --> 00:21:08.089 the military -industrial complex, and ends up 00:21:08.089 --> 00:21:10.009 alienated from his own intellectual disciples. 00:21:10.230 --> 00:21:12.730 Yeah, and he pushed himself so hard that he even 00:21:12.730 --> 00:21:15.299 admitted in his autobiography to abuse Benzedrine 00:21:15.299 --> 00:21:17.519 and amphetamine throughout his life just to keep 00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:19.839 his mind running at that relentless pace. He 00:21:19.839 --> 00:21:23.359 was a man who burned incredibly bright, sacrificing 00:21:23.359 --> 00:21:26.019 his own peace to map the boundaries of what machines 00:21:26.019 --> 00:21:29.579 and humans could know. He really did. And that 00:21:29.579 --> 00:21:31.299 brings me to the final nugget I want to pull 00:21:31.299 --> 00:21:34.480 from this deep dive. We talked about how at 19 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:37.559 he wrote a groundbreaking PhD dissertation reshaping 00:21:37.559 --> 00:21:39.900 logic. Right. But let's rewind even further. 00:21:40.089 --> 00:21:42.890 At just 10 years old, the boy genius wrote a 00:21:42.890 --> 00:21:46.450 paper with a profoundly revealing title. It was 00:21:46.450 --> 00:21:50.289 called The Theory of Ignorance. At 10 years old? 00:21:50.430 --> 00:21:54.049 That's wild. In it, this 10 -year -old kid disputed 00:21:54.049 --> 00:21:56.269 man's presumption that human knowledge has no 00:21:56.269 --> 00:21:58.690 limits. He argued that all human knowledge is 00:21:58.690 --> 00:22:01.289 just an approximation. Wow. He acknowledged the 00:22:01.289 --> 00:22:03.329 impossibility of ever being completely certain 00:22:03.329 --> 00:22:05.170 of anything. And he carried that fundamental 00:22:05.170 --> 00:22:08.019 belief to the grave. He did. So next time you 00:22:08.019 --> 00:22:10.140 are relying on an algorithm or looking at the 00:22:10.140 --> 00:22:12.480 invisible scaffolding of our tech world, hoping 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:15.140 for absolute precision, I want you to think about 00:22:15.140 --> 00:22:17.779 Norbert Wiener. Yeah. The man who gave us the 00:22:17.779 --> 00:22:20.720 information age, big data, and the seeds of artificial 00:22:20.720 --> 00:22:23.460 intelligence believed fundamentally the true 00:22:23.460 --> 00:22:27.000 certainty is an illusion. We are all just approximating 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:28.339 the signal in the noise.