Transcript for Leonard Mlodinow — Randomness and Choice 
Ms. Tippett: I find a bit of an opening, also, in the way you think about this and the way you write about randomness. So here's something you wrote and I think these two things went together. I mean, you write about your father's — a story he told you about how he got the job in the bakery at Buchenwald, the concentration camp. His sense that this is just random but tell that story.
Dr. Mlodinow: Oh, that was in The Drunkard's Walk.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: And the book is about randomness and life. And to me, you know, when I was thinking about writing that book, I was almost shaken by the realization that I'm, you know, a random effect of something very bad. And I hope that for me, I'm glad I'm here, but I'm only here because Hitler or the Nazis killed my father's previous family. And that led to my being here.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: And that was a very hard to thing to face, in a way, that — what's the meaning of my life, when it arose from something like that? And in that story, he was in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and he had stole — he stole a loaf of bread from the bakery. And, the baker, I guess there were a certain number of people who had access. They lined them all up and brought the guys with the guns. And they said who stole the bread? And my father didn't say anything. And then they said, okay, we're going to start at this end of the line, and we're going to shoot everybody, until either you're all dead or the thief steps forward. And so he puts the gun to the head of the first person. So my father, at that point, steps forward, and admitted that he stole the bread. And, he told me that it wasn't a heroic thing that — he didn't do it out of heroism, he did it surely practical that these guys are all going to die, and I'm going to die, too, or I'll just be the only one. So he stepped forward. And instead of killing him, though, the baker acted like God, and somewhat arbitrarily took him under his wing and gave him a job as his assistant in the bakery. And so, he had a much better job after that, based on that incident. And it just shows you that even in the midst of all this cruelty, there's randomness, or I don't know what, whim? I don't know if the guy — I don't know if he was being human and let some of his humanity peek out, or he wanted to play like God, I don't really know what was the person's motive, but that's one of many things that happened to my father. If it had happened differently, I wouldn't be here, and my kids wouldn't be here. And everything would be different in, you know, that lineage.
Ms. Tippett: You know, one of the things that's so fascinating is how quantum physics has presented a picture of the world that is so much more of reality, the way things work — that is so much less ordered, more — there's chaos, there's randomization, and it wasn't there for Newton or even for Einstein or they didn't want — you know, Einstein didn't want those things to be there. And, you know, one of the things you say is anything that is possible eventually will occur. [Laughs]. Just wait long enough and strange things will happen. But still, there's an order to it.
Dr. Mlodinow: Doesn't your life work that way? [Laughs].
Ms. Tippett: Yeah. [Laughs]. But here's the out I — here's the opening I feel you give. Here's something else you wrote. "The outline of our lives, like the candle's flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate." You know, you say that we are driven to see patterns and create patterns where the patterns aren't there, but essentially there's so much randomness. But, you — seems to me that you're also presenting our responses as mattering. There is randomness, and then you talk about that even though that is true, you know, the number of at-bats, the number of chances taken, number of opportunities seized does make a difference. It does shift things. Can you explain that in scientific terms?
Dr. Mlodinow: [Laughs]. Yeah, I was thinking about Brownian motion, so that says it all.
Ms. Tippett: [Laughs].
Dr. Mlodinow: No, I'm just kidding [laughs]. The — so The Drunkard's Walk, which is the title of that book, is sometimes called The Random Walk and it comes from a jagged path that particles in Brownian motion seem to take for no apparent reason. In Brownian motion, people look at — this in the 19th century, they noticed that little grains of pieces of pollen would jiggle around for no apparent reason in liquid. And they thought at first maybe that was a life force, because there was no force on it. Maybe that's what was jiggling, because it's pollen. But they eventually figured out, and Einstein actually is the one who explained it, that this jiggling comes from the impact of the molecules on the pollen, pushing it this way and that way. And I saw a parallel with our lives, because when you look at your life, if you had to sit down and think about, and I'm talking about in detail, not just the headlines, if you think about all the details of what happened to you, you will find that there was a time where you had the extra cup of coffee, where if you hadn't, you wouldn't have met Person A.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: Or you probably don't realize that if you hadn't done this, you would have gotten into crash which you — car crash but you didn't, because you were a little bit later than and the guy — the drunk guy hit someone else or whatever. When I look back in my life, or I looked at the life of certain celebrities, I could find so many instances like that. And I had fun tracing some of them. How little things make a big difference, and — but the little thing that happens to you, other than if it's something random like getting hit by a car, but in other ways, the little things that — what they really do is they raise opportunities for you. Or they raise challenges. And the course of your life depends on how you react to those opportunities and challenges that the randomness presents to you. So that's what I meant by that. That if you're awake and paying attention, you will find that things happen. They might seem good, they might seem bad at first, you don't even know. Or you're wrong about whether it's good or bad. But, in time, it becomes clear whether the thing was good or bad, but the important thing is how you reacted to it.
Ms. Tippett: And, how is that acceptable for you as a physicist in a way that the notion of free will is less convincing? I'm just trying to figure out what the distinction is.
Dr. Mlodinow: Well, if I were to describe your every atom, then there wouldn't be this randomness. I mean, there is still quantum randomness, which I don't — I think just as a red herring here, but randomness is really a context-dependent term. So imagine you're flipping a coin. That's one of the archetypical random event in our culture. We always flip a coin. And it comes out, if it's a fair coin, 50/50. But actually if you control very carefully how you put the coin on your thumb, and how you flip it, and where it's going to land, you can — it's not really random. It's going to come out heads every time, or tails every time. So, whether it's — the coin flip is random or not really depends on what you know and how much control you have. And so what I'm saying about life is you don't know a lot, even if you think you do [laughs] and you don't have a lot of control, even if you're a control freak. So a lot of things that happen to you in that sense are random and the same thing with your reaction to it. Yes, maybe a god-like person who knew what the state of all the atoms in your body could tell how you're going to react, but since none of us are that, it really does matter, and you do have a choice. And that determines your life.
Ms. Tippett: Okay.
Dr. Mlodinow: It doesn't sound like you're very satisfied, though, I think.
Ms. Tippett: No, no. I just wonder, I mean...
Dr. Mlodinow: Hmm, another scientist answer, ha. [Laughs].
Ms. Tippett: [Laughs] Well, I feel like this could be a few hours, but I mean, I do hear, I mean, the words...
Dr. Mlodinow: So, the quality of your voice tells a lot, doesn't it. [Laughs]
Ms. Tippett: [Laughs] Yes, it does. It does. I just wonder if there's a vocabulary thing here. Do you know what I mean? Like that the notion of free will doesn't work for science, but, I mean, you used the word choice, and I suppose that would be subject to some debate, but I feel like there's a way in which you're saying, you know, that what we do matters. Although you might say it, and describe it, and see it in a very different way that humanity has said that kind of thing up to now. Knowing what we know now about the universe. Is that fair?
Dr. Mlodinow: Yeah. I definitely think that my decisions matter.
Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mlodinow: Now, it's more of a philosophical question, I guess, whether I was destined to make that decision.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: In my life, that question doesn't — is something to ponder at times, but the effective theory is that yes, if I step off the building, I'm going to fall off the roof, and bad things will happen. And I don't know whether I was destined to decide not to step off or not, but I take the decision as if I have a choice.
Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mlodinow: And I think you have to live your life that way. And no one — whether or not you can argue that theoretically there's a choice or not, no one knows enough to tell you what choice you're going to make.
Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.
Dr. Mlodinow: Not even yourself, I think.
[Music: “Halcyon” by Jon Hopkins]
Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today: physicist and writer Leonard Mlodinow.
Ms. Tippett: There's a way in which this thing that physics is pointing out and that you point out in your books and on — they subliminal, the way our subconscious is kind of influencing us in ways we aren't aware of and randomness. I mean, you — there's a way in which that pointing out how little control we actually have over so much of what happens to us is a piece of truth that the spiritual traditions have carried forward in time. And that philosophy has known for a long time. I also sense that there's — the way you take that in, even the science of it is that's real power in that knowledge. Does it change the way you kind of move through your everyday life knowing about your lack of control? I mean, how does that — how do you work with that as a human being?
Dr. Mlodinow: Well, certainly it does change, I certainly don't mean to say that the unconscious is not you and there's someone else [laughs] pulling the strings.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: But what we don't realize is how much of our feelings, our actions, our beliefs, are coming from our unconscious mind. And I think that when we raise our consciousness about our unconscious, you're knowing yourself better and to know yourself better, I think, is a good thing. You understand how you're going to react, and you understand why you did things. And you just have more understanding for yourself. So it not only helps you make in a way better decisions, economically, but it helps you make better decisions, I think spiritually, because you have, in a way, more tolerance for yourself, as well as more understanding.
Ms. Tippett: And you write interestingly and very poignantly about your mother also in this regard? I mean, you know, you talk about how the extreme horrible experiences she had of losing just everyone she loved meant that she totally had to relinquish the illusion of control that most of us walk around with, you know, some sense of control. But you talk about how, you know, one of the things you say about her is that current events don't get to her. Right?
Dr. Mlodinow: Yeah. But she has her own context for everything. That was a big thing I noticed growing up, for instance, we used to talk every Thursday when I was in graduate school. Every Thursday night I would call her. And then one Thursday I don't call her, so she calls and talks to my roommate. And my roommate said, oh, Len is out. And my mother, okay, fine, okay. My mother calls back in half hour. Where's Len? Len is out. And she just starts calling back. He's still out? How could he still be out? Something happened.
Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.
Dr. Mlodinow: Why don't you tell me what happened? And the reason she saw it that way I think had to do with the fact that she had everything suddenly taken from her. Her friends were killed. Her parents, her siblings died, and she had — that was her — part of her context, and from then on, she would think of possibilities when she'd see something happen, that you and I would not think of.
Ms. Tippett: Right, right.
Dr. Mlodinow: And that's in her unconscious. She didn't want to think that way, but that was — to her, that was very real. I remember telling her, mom you should go see a psychologist or a psychiatrist, because you have this weird way of interpreting everything. And you're always fearful. And she thought she was normal. She said, no that's crazy. I'm just — I'm normal. I said don't you think that your Holocaust experiences affects you? No. No, I've gotten past that. And then I don't call her, and she thinks I'm dead, so...
Ms. Tippett: Right. There's a sense in which her reactions were rational, given the context in which she was reacting.
Dr. Mlodinow: Yeah, and we all have our context, so...
Ms. Tippett: That makes our reactions rational, yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: ...we all approach the world — we all think we're rational, we all have our past history that we're, you know, maybe some of us are trying to get past or not, but this colors the way we interpret everything that happens around us. So, it's — to me, it was a very interesting lesson.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: To learn that the reality that I see is biased, and it's biased by however I grew up and whatever has happened to me.
Ms. Tippett: So you mentioned the dialogue with Deepak Chopra and I took a look at that, and I guess I'll just maybe ask you was there anything that came out of that that, did it affect your thinking — did it invite you to articulate some things, maybe, that you hadn't quite articulated in that way before?
Dr. Mlodinow: Oh, definitely. It focused me on purely spiritual issues for the time that we were writing the book. And I have to say he is a zealot. I mean, he is so passionate about his beliefs that we did a book tour after the book came out. We were together for six weeks. And he didn't stop trying to convert me in taxi cabs [laughs], Grand Central Station, and you know, he converted me in some ways. I had meditated before I met him, but through knowing him, he taught me really how to meditate and it, that really seemed to be a great thing in my life. And we sat on an airplane and meditated together, we sat in Penn Station, New York, and mediated. And at the same time, we would be arguing about physics, so so what it did was it really focused me on spiritual issues for that time and it caused me to think about questions that I often, in the science, didn't stop and take time to think about. So, for me as a person, that was good. And in writing the book, I think I spent a lot of time trying to criticize the way that he was using science. But I also spent time expressing that science can be spiritual, and that it doesn't have to be — really, the War of the Worldviews title was really a bad title...
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: ...that it doesn't have to be a war. And we both regretted the title afterwards. But, so, I think that was a good experience.
Ms. Tippett: When you say science can be spiritual, you know, what is that sentence mean for you? Like, break that up — open for me.
Dr. Mlodinow: Well, it means that we can think of who we are as human beings. We can value the emotional part of life. We can value the looking inward at who we are, how we fit in to our community and also to the universe as a whole. And I think that knowing science just adds to that. To me, trying to figure out my place in the world without science would have been very difficult and, in a way, empty. To me, the way I view myself as a natural phenomenon, is a comfort at times. Certainly it's a comfort at times of grief and death. And it's also, you know, inspiration at times that atoms within me that are interacting based on these simple laws, and then you throw in zillions of them and they are jiggling around together and interacting with each other, create my thoughts. That is amazing. And, you know, only someone who studied science can really appreciate how amazing and how wonderful that is. And it means how wonderful I am, which is always a good thing to realize.
Ms. Tippett: [Laughs]. You had an intriguing sentence in your — in the dialogue with Deepak Chopra. You wrote "Belief, too, can be a working hypothesis." Do you remember that?
Dr. Mlodinow: I do. I'm trying to remember now what the context was.
Ms. Tippett: Well, the context was you were kind of wrapping up and you were talking about how you had been in a sense arguing against this proposition, or certain proposition of belief. But you described a friend, someone I think you respected, who talked about what her faith, her belief, you know, what — the positive function that it served in her life. I felt like you were saying, this is a way that you as a physicist could frame the notion of belief as something that you leave on the table. That belief, too, can be a working hypothesis.
Dr. Mlodinow: Right, so a working hypothesis is something that you — that may or may not eventually prove true, but it's useful to you at the time, and it's just as well be true.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: And what struck me about that person at dinner was that she was someone that I really respected, and respected as being very rational, and even scientific. And then I was surprised when she talked about believing in God and the soul and this spiritual part of religion that seems outside science. And, then as she told me, though, how it helped her in life, and I think also brought up a story about a person in the Holocaust who was facing death, and how the people among the people facing death, those who had faith fared better.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: And then I realized that religion can be a working hypothesis, so whether or not I believe eventually, ultimately, that it's true, I realize that if people feel that it's true, then it can be a good thing to believe in. And you know, related to that, I also had a revelation — I shouldn't use the word revelation [laughs] but an insight...
Ms. Tippett: [Laughs] A miracle?
Dr. Mlodinow: No, no, I didn't have a revelation, please. I had an insight that I have beliefs that are not scientifically-based, too, and I believe them. And I can't help but believe them. And they're totally irrational and I admit that I have that and it helps me understand other people's thinking, as well.
Ms. Tippett: You also said to me at the very beginning that Judaism was important to you. That, I don't know if you meant Jewish identity, Jewish tradition, ritual.
Dr. Mlodinow: Yeah, all of that.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Mlodinow: The values, the emphasis on education, the culture, the history, and I think I don't want to speak for everybody, but for me, having a thousands of years history and knowing something about it, helps me know — understand my place and who I am.
Ms. Tippett: So, my last question, I want to ask you a question that you describe asking Richard Feynman. And it was who are you as a person, and how has being a scientist influenced your character?
Dr. Mlodinow: Oh, wow, yeah, I remember that.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah? Your turn. [Laughs].
Dr. Mlodinow: [Laughs]. I don't remember his exact answer...
Ms. Tippett: No, no, you're answer. I don't want to know what...
Dr. Mlodinow: Oh, my answer.
Ms. Tippett: You're answer.
Dr. Mlodinow: Yeah, because he asked me. I was going to say, he asked me that. I don't think — did I answer it in the book? Because I remember not answering him right away.
Ms. Tippett: No, no, I think you asked him the question...
Dr. Mlodinow: And he told me I should answer the question.
Ms. Tippett: Oh, okay. So now, I am coming back...
Dr. Mlodinow: Typical of — my answer...
Ms. Tippett: I'm channeling Richard Feynman here in 2014...
Dr. Mlodinow: The channeling Richard Feynman to me.
Ms. Tippett: ...who are you as a person and how has being a scientist influenced your character?
Dr. Mlodinow: I think that I am a person who believes in passion, and believes that we have a limited time here, and we should all try to make the best of it. And, do the best for ourselves while not hurting other people. And that it's good to, despite having a spiritual side, it's good to understand rationally everything that's going on around you, both in the interaction of human beings, and the structure and the evolution of the universe. That I think that having the scientific knowledge of where the universe came from and who people are only helps you to appreciate who you are and who we are as human beings and how we should act.
[Music: “Hope Valley Hill” by Helios]
Ms. Tippett: Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist and the author of several books including The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives and Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life.
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[Music: “Hollisday” by Shawn Lee’s Ping Orchestra]
Ms. Tippett: On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Chris Jones, and Joshua Rae.
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What Dr. Mlodinow says 'random' is what Carl Jung and many others said 'synchronicity'. The difference is that latter attaches meaningfulness to seemingly unrelated events. Physics considers 4 main fields: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces and all large bodies follow them and therefore everything is deterministic. When Heisenberg introduced uncertainty at atomic and quantum level the world became probabilistic and Schrodinger made it set of potentials. Philosophies and spirituality believe in many more fields than the above mentioned, such as cosmic, morphic etc. Causal became acausal, temporal became non-temporal and spatial became non-spatial!. When one believes in destiny and inevitable, deterministic world, the question of 'free will' does not arise. Our choices are not all conscious but many are unconscious but still just because we choose we call it 'free will'. Christof Koch says that wherever there is processing of information, even by any hardware let alone human brain, it is consciousness and therefore in case of humans unconscious becomes conscious as brain processes at least some information. Dr. says that if we know behavior of each atom and have control over it then everything will become deterministic until then it is considered random. As everything is not knowable and controllable, events seem mysterious, miraculous, acts of God and unexplained.
[Hide Full Comment]This is one of the best interviews I have read. Congrats ON BEING.
I enjoyed it, too, despite it's length. I've ordered 'The Drunkard's Walk' from my local library and am looking forward to reading it. The best part of it, for me, is that science and spirituality (religion) don't HAVE to be at odds. They can complement each other.
Wow, this is such a great article. My favorite part - "...we all approach the world — we all think we're rational, we all have our past history that we're, you know, maybe some of us are trying to get past or not, but this colors the way we interpret everything that happens around us. So, it's — to me, it was a very interesting lesson."
Thank you.