Servers & Souls: Cloud Computing and Personal Identity

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future. I'm Andrew McDermott. Today's episode comes to us from our sister podcast, Mind Matters News, a production of the Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. You can learn more about the show and access other episodes at mindmatters. AI. Greetings and welcome to Mind Matters News. I'm your host in the Cloud, Robert J. Marks, because today we're going to talk about the cloud, where you probably have some of your files and photos stored. The cloud might seem mysterious to the unenlightened, almost magical place. It's almost a magical place where files, photos and programs somehow float in the air instead of being stored on a computer. But where exactly is the cloud? Is it in the sky? How does it store my files if I can't see it? Is it safe? Can I lose my data if the cloud disappears? Do I always need an Internet connection to access my stuff? How is it different from saving files on my computer's hard drive? The idea of files existing somewhere outside of a physical device can be confusing and mysterious, and users might worry about security problems, privacy, and how to retrieve their files if they switch devices. And I'm one of those. I personally use Microsoft OneDrive as my cloud. It's great. I can access my pictures and images from different devices. This is not an endorsement of Microsoft OneDrive. There are many great services out there and I use OneDrive because it was introduced to me by my son Jeremiah, and it works great. And I got to confess, I have not taken the time to shop and compare. But the cloud has become my friend. So to talk about the cloud, our guest today is Walter Myers iii. He is a principal engineering manager leading a team of engineers working with management of the Microsoft Azure cloud. And Azure is a Z U R E. I had to look up how to pronounce it so it is Azure. He's going to educate us about the cloud. He holds a master's degree in philosophy from Biola University's Talbot School of Theology, where he is an adjunct faculty in the Master of Arts in Science and Religion program. He teaches on Darwinian evolution from a design centric perspective. He is a former board member of the Lincoln Club of Orange county, where he served as programs chair from 2015 to 2018. And personally, Walter fights to reduce the power and scope of government. He's a big advocate for free markets, lowering taxes, and more freedom for all. He's a regular contributor to Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views website. He writes on parallels in the design of a computer system and biological organisms. Walter, we got to get you writing for Mind Matters News now, from the technical side, I'd love you, Bob. Okay, that's great. Well, welcome. By the way, this is something interesting, Walter. I am Robert J. Marks ii. You are Walter Myers iii. And just like royalty of old, we place Roman numerals after our names. I've tried to update my name recently by calling myself Robert J. Marks 2.0. I'm just suggesting this to you because you could update your name to Walter Myers 3.0, so you're an advanced version of what came previously. My parents, interestingly, didn't want to name me Robert J. Marks Jr. Like we have in the news today, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Because where I came from, people started calling you Junior. And I had an uncle that died when he was 90 years old. And even when he was in his late 80s, they called him Junior, which seemed kind of strange. So I'm blessed to have the second. So what do you think of Walter Myers 3.0? Do you think that that would update your Persona at all? [00:04:06] Speaker B: Well, actually, I'm thinking about Walter Myers 4.0, which will be an AI, [00:04:13] Speaker A: will [00:04:13] Speaker B: represent me, and actually be perfect. [00:04:16] Speaker A: That's okay. Well, if we repeat a podcast sometimes, maybe we can talk to Walter Myers [00:04:22] Speaker B: 4.0, hopefully in the near future. Well, if Ray Kurzweil is correct, it's going to be in the very near future. [00:04:29] Speaker A: Well, Ray Kurzweil is not correct. It isn't going to happen. What was it, 20 years ago? He wrote a book called the Singularity is Near. That was about 20 years ago. And so last year, nothing happened. It got better. It got better. So he wrote another book called the Singularity is Nearer. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:47] Speaker A: And so in 20 years, he's going to write another book, said the Singularity is just around the corner. It's just almost here. But, no, I don't think it'll ever happen. So let's talk about the cloud. All right, this is interesting. And actually, you and I have chatted at some conferences about this, and I must admit that I was uneducated about the cloud. So, kind of tell us, where exactly is the cloud and how does it physically exist? Where is the cloud? Is it in Detroit or Michigan or where is it at? [00:05:18] Speaker B: The cloud's all over, Bob. All over. [00:05:20] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:21] Speaker B: Well, really, the cloud, it's just a representation of physical resources. In other words, data centers. Big. These huge data centers with literally hundreds or thousands of servers that are accessible through the Internet, which itself is a global system of interconnected computer networks that allows communication between various devices, you know, computers, mobile, mobile phones, whatever, around the world. And sort of that concept of the cloud, why is it called the cloud? It dates back really to early network design. Okay. When engineers would map out various components of their networks. These are early days before the Internet. What they would do is they. What they would do is they. They would communicate with these other things that were sort of outside. But they didn't know what these networks were necessarily that they may be communicating with. Right. So they just kind of made it this sort of rough blob of undefined devices. And it kind of looked like a cloud. So that's where sort of the name was, how the name was adopted. Right. As sort of the standard image for representing computers outside of one's own network. So outside of your home network, outside of a business network, that's the cloud. It's somewhere out there. You don't know where it is, where those data centers may exist, but you can gain access to those through the Internet. So that's where the concept of the cloud comes from. [00:06:40] Speaker A: Okay, so where is the cloud? You say it's distributed. So is it distributed all over the country or are there places where the cloud is kind of concentrated, say in different cities and locales? [00:06:52] Speaker B: The cloud is distributed all over the world. In other words, anything that you're accessing, in other words, some particular service that's out. Some particular. For example, a good example of the cloud of accessing it is you use Microsoft's OneDrive, or if you use Microsoft's Outlook, Right. That is a distributed set of computers around the world. And that's not Azure. Okay. Because Azure is our public cloud, as well as AWS has a public cloud, Google has a public cloud. But other than the public clouds that we'll discuss more is that we have globally distributed systems. For example, when you authenticate into outlook, okay, live.com right. That is a global distributed network of data centers, data centers that coordinate with one another for your authentication purposes. That's not in any particular region or any place, but it's one of those 300 some odd data centers we have around the world for our customers to be able to authenticate and into our, into our software services. So let me maybe just talk a little bit about what that is. [00:08:02] Speaker A: Good. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Yes. In the cloud. So a, when you go to outlook.com or you go to OneDrive, that is software as a service. SaaS. SaaS. Okay, so we have that concept. The other concepts we need to think about as well as on premises so in other words, a customer, instead of having their work on, in other words, start of running their servers on premises. They might say, hey, we want to move to the cloud. What that means is they want to move to the Azure cloud and they want to take advantage of infrastructure as a service. Now, infrastructure as a service means we will. You don't have to worry about the capital costs of setting up servers and all those types of things. We'll do the servers for you and you can access those servers through the Internet. It's a virtual. A virtual machine. It's actually a virtual machine sitting on top of a real machine. Right. But it's virtual, virtualized and protected. That only you can access that infrastructure as a service and you can access that like any other server as if it were just on your premises, but it's not. Then there's platform as a service. PaaS platform is a service goes that sort of extra step where you don't even worry about the hardware. You don't have to patch it. You don't do any of that stuff. Okay. You just basically. But that's where you have to sort of write to a certain programmatic constructs that we've created where you will be able to deploy your application. But all you worry about is your application. That's it. You don't have to worry about any underlying patching or anything of the operating system. And then you have again getting back to SAS on that sort of continuum. So there's a continuum of how much work you have to do with SAS Outlook. You don't have to do anything. It's already there. If you do your email or you, or you upload your files onto OneDrive, that software as a service, you don't even have to worry about it. We handle everything for you. [00:09:55] Speaker A: Okay, So I guess what you're saying is that the. Is that the cloud is in a bunch of different cities all over the place and. Wow, that seems to be very confusing in terms of a traffic jam if you're trying to access what you're doing. But I guess you got these routers that kind of take you to the right place to get your stuff. Is that right? [00:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And that really is the promise of the Internet, Bob, is that the fact is that. And the idea of the Internet came in terms of what would happen originally for the Internet is what would happen if you have different networks that need different networks that need to talk to one another. What would happen if there was a nuclear bomb and it blew up one particular pathway or one, you know, Some wide, Some wire that are running underground. Right. If you, say, have a nuclear blast in Detroit and it blows up basically some data center or it blows up some connection point, well, what happens? Well, that's the whole thing with routing in the Internet is that it will find the. And it will find the closest path, right? So with. You have all of these different interconnected computers with these different. With these, with these, you know, cables running that are connecting all these things up. If one of those paths gets chopped, it'll find some other path. And so that's the wonder and the beauty of the Internet is that it's fully distributed, geographically distributed at that. And so if one or several paths somehow are affected, they will find some other path for your computer to get to the other computer that has the information that you're accessing, that you want to access. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Okay, but what about data? If you have a center blown up where you have all of your files stored, that's not a matter of finding paths. You've destroyed the information that you've had. I kind of assume from talking to you before that there's a redundancy in the storage of your information in the cloud, is that right? [00:11:47] Speaker B: Yes, there is. Now, I know really about the redundancy with respect to Azure, and I'm sure it's very much the same as our distributed networks. But for example, in Azure, in Azure, you select a region is where you deploy your application, your software, and now in store. And that goes into storage. So you have storage and you have compute, you have storage, compute, and you have networking. So in storage, we keep three copies of that in each of our data centers. In each of our data centers. I'll talk a little bit more about regions, but in other words, you select the region, and a region may be made up of a single data center. Those are our older models, but we're changing. And I'll talk a little bit more about how this works. It gets a little complicated. So in our older regions, we had one data center, but we would copy your data. So it would be in triplicate. That way, if a rack went down or a rack went down in that data center, then we could access the other two copies. So if that one goes down and say we pull that rack out and we pop another rack in of servers, we still have those other two, and then it'll replicate. When that rack gets put back in that was damaged, or that damaged rack gets replaced, then we would have already copied it to some other rack. So you always have your data in triplicate and that's the redundancy within that data center. Now we also have the concept of Availability zones. The way that we're building data centers now is there will be three. Three in a region. There will be three actual physical data centers that are connected up. And so it's. So you can basically. And they'll be able to talk to one another within, say, a 10 or 15 milliseconds. So it's physics, right? It's. You have to have them close enough so they can talk fast enough so that if, say, for example, we have. We have a region in San. In the San Francisco area, if there were, say, an earthquake in San Francisco and it damaged one of those data centers, the chances are it's not going to damage all three data centers. So within that region. So if that data center goes down and the customer selects, you don't have to do this, but you can say, I want to be. I want to use the availability zones. I want to be replicated across those three data centers. So if any of those three data centers go down in that particular region, I'm up and running on another one of those regions. So then you'll have two, right? And then if another one goes down, another data center goes down, a second one, the third one will continue running, and you get even lower likelihood that it would be that due to actual data centers or region would go down. So that's typically how it works. And we also have the concept to make it more. A little bit more complicated of pairings. So, for example, we have pairings between regions. So say, for example, so we have a West US 2 region and we have an East US 2 region. Okay, you can actually. The customer can select. I want my data to be replicated across those regions. So if a whole region goes down, I can be up and running in another. In another. In that regional pair. So that's another thing that we have with respect from a disaster recovery perspective is if you go down in a particular region, you can. You have to make it. So you have to select this option, but then you can be running in another region entirely. Now we will remove, shuttle all of your data across, and then you can actually have your application running in both places and replicating data across those regions. Or you can have it sort of cold, where you can say, hey, if I'm down in one region and that region is declared down, I can then deploy my application to that other region. The data is there because I've replicated all the data, and then I can start and I'LL have, I'll have some, some, some, some downtime, obviously, in that case, when you have a disaster. But I can be up in, you know, in a four to six hours, all depending on what my recovery time, objective, my RTO is. So whenever you hear rto, recovery time objective, objective, it says that if there's a disaster, how much time do I have to bring my system back up someplace else so that I can continue running? [00:16:01] Speaker A: So I do have a question. I did an interview with somebody that was talking about EMPs, Sara Siguin. She is an expert on electromagnetic pulses. And there is this idea that if there was a thermonuclear explosion about the elevation of the space station, that it could take out most of the grid, the power grid in North America, which of course would be disastrous for the cloud, but also would it not take out some of the computers on which this stuff was stored? So I'm wondering, do you, are you aware that any of these centers are covered with like, Faraday shields or something which would protect them from an emp? [00:16:46] Speaker B: I'm not aware of that and I don't think our data centers have gone that far with respect to being immune from emp. So, yeah, don't know about that, but I don't suspect. So from what I understand of our data centers now, what I will say about our data centers from a power perspective is we don't deploy data centers where we don't have, where we're not virtually guaranteed that there will always be power. So, for example, typically you want your data center someplace, for example, being powered by hydropower, right? [00:17:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:21] Speaker B: In fact, there's one of our data centers in Quincy, Quincy, Washington, and that's fully, it gets all of its power from a hydroelectric power plant. So the thing is, you know that in this particular case, that, that water is going well, at least the water is going to continue to flow. Right. So we always try to find those places that are geographically stable and have a consistent source of power, hopefully hydropower. And as you've probably seen in the news, there's going to be starting up a new Three Mile Island. They're going to be starting up one of those reactors so it can power, it can power our data, one of our data centers. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that over time because nuclear is nuclear itself. It's, it's clean. Okay. You know, you do have nuclear waste you have to deal with, but it is, it is clean and it's, and it's highly efficient. So so we'll. You'll probably be seeing a lot more of these data centers powered by. Powered by nuclear power over the coming. Over the coming years. [00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I was reading on the web, so it must be true. That must be true. Yeah. So that Google was thinking about acquiring or building a nuclear plant to generate the power for their AI and the other stuff that they're doing that's really amazing, the companies now are actually generating or constructing their own power plants. Let me ask you about, well, let me ask you about your batting average. Are you batting a thousand? Have there ever been files which have been lost in the cloud? [00:18:47] Speaker B: Not to my knowledge. We've had other things happen, but not to my knowledge that we've actually had customers or files lost in either Azure or in our SaaS distributed offerings. With respect to SaaS like Outlook, you know, like Outlook or OneDrive. Not to my knowledge. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Okay, well, yeah, that's good news. And what about security? You talked about natural disasters and protecting from natural disasters. What about cyber attacks and such? I would think that America's adversaries would be very interested in attacking the servers that are in charge of the web. And I'm sure that you, I would assume that you spent a lot of time making sure that that doesn't happen. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we spend a lot of time making sure that doesn't happen. But what we do in the Azure cloud is we have what's called a zero trust model. So the zero trust model strategy, it reduces the risk of data breaches by validating authenticity at every step, believing that every individual, regardless of his or her organization, is a potential threat to security unless they can prove otherwise. So basically to be able to access any data we're authenticating through every step. And we also have this thing called sort of defense in depth, which is sort of A7 layers. There is basically there's a physical security in terms of being able to gain access or biometric access into our data centers. There's identity and access, so Azure Active Directory or now called Entra ID. There are other authentication providers like Auth0 and Okta, where in order to gain access to those resources, you must go through those checks, you must be authenticated and then there'll be authorization terms. Once you're authenticated, what are you authorized to actually to access? On the perimeter we have a DDoS service, denial of service, distributed denial of service DDoS. So that's to basically protect our customers from someone trying, some bad actor trying to just basically wear down their website so that people can access it the other Thing we do is at the network level. So at the network level, there's security that we apply that to be able to only allow people to gain access to certain resources at the network level itself. Also with application, you know, this ssl, TLS encryption. So basically we encrypt, right, that. We encrypt that traffic over HTTPs that's going against that particular data resource. And also your data at rest is encrypted. So we use all the modern constructs, public key security, with respect to making sure that things are, making sure that your data is protected and only you can gain access to it. And one thing, Bob, that people have always been worried about working with the cloud is can someone else access my data? [00:21:44] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:44] Speaker B: The thing is, no. No one else can access your data when a data block is written for you and that's marked as no one else can access your data. Also, no one could walk into a data center, pull out a drive and say, and grab your data because your data is so smeared out across multiple hard drives in any particular data center. No one could pick up that, pick up any particular hard drive and find anyone else's data because it's so smeared out across the, across the drives. In terms of the, in terms, it's a 60s, it's a 1960s technology actually, in terms of how the data is, how the data is written and how the blocks are marked so that once you delete some data, it's, you don't. You're not writing data to the same place. You're. You are continuously writing and then you're marking blocks for deletion and those blocks that are marked for, those blocks that are marked for deletion, some other data gets written over that. So it's very sophisticated in terms of how that, in terms of how that data, data, how that data is written, how it's secured and how it's encrypted, even within Azure storage. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Wow, that's fascinating. I did consulting for Microsoft when I was at the University of Washington. And first thing we did, when we went in the first day, I had to sit down with lawyers, believe it or not, lots of lawyers at Microsoft, as you probably know. But I went into the office of the guy that I was doing the consulting for and he had this little counter, and this counter was doing click, click, click. And I will admit to my age, this was around Y2K when the calendar was turning around to 2000. Everybody was saying that all of the stuff in the universe is going to fall out because the way that we kept track of years before that. And I asked my friend, a guy named Mark Casepolk that worked for Microsoft, I said, what is that clicker? He said, that's the number of times that people are trying to attack and breach and cyber attack Microsoft. And I actually had a little, a little counter up there. They counted all the times that they were being attacked. I found that really, really interesting and kind of a little bit gutsy to actually say, yep, we're being attacked. Nope, didn't work. Yeah, we're being attacked. Again, it didn't work. And while I was there, it went click, click, click, click. I mean, it was kind of a continual thing because all of these hackers wanted to claim coup, if you will, for breaking into Microsoft, but it never worked. So what you guys are doing seems to be working pretty well. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the thing is, software is written by humans and humans, humans are not perfect. So there will always, always, always when you're writing software, there will always be vulnerabilities in software. And we're always finding vulnerabilities in software, in software, in Microsoft. We have whole divisions that are just that. All those divisions do is look at what is risk to our Azure platform. And we try to patch those holes wherever they are. If we find them or someone else finds them, we patch them as quickly as we possibly can. So, yeah, that's their full division. So that's all they do is really manage, in fact, is manage, Manage risk. And so DDoS is really the biggest concern. You know, basically bad actors trying, Trying to get in and poke, poke in and stop people or they're trying to hack in. I mean, whether it be Russia, China, Iran or whatever. So that happens every day. And the thing is you just have to stay. You have to stay a step ahead, you know, and that's why we have the Patch Tuesdays. And we even have internal. We even have internal patching. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Wait, you have Patch Tuesdays? [00:25:15] Speaker B: Yes, the first Tuesday of every month is called Patch Tuesday. [00:25:20] Speaker A: Okay. Wow. Okay. Do you all get together and look for patches? [00:25:23] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, we get together and sometimes we'll patch those ahead of Patch Tuesday. In turn, we'll roll those out to. We'll roll those out to the public. So a lot more is going on under the covers than customers may recognize as far as us keeping our system safe. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Do you ever hire hackers? I'm thinking of this movie, Catch Me if youf can, where Frank Ab. Ab Gindale, I think his name was, went around and pretended he was an airplane pilot. He pretended he was a surgeon. He was. Pretended he. And then once he got caught and served his jail time, the FBI got him out and used him as a consultant for, for minimizing bank fraud because he was an expert in it. It seems like you could do the same thing. I just wonder if that, if you're aware of that ever happening at Microsoft where they hired these hackers that kind of got close but no cigar. And they hired them to come in and look at the vulnerabilities because they looked at it from the other side. [00:26:18] Speaker B: I'm sure we do, but they certainly don't let me know about stuff like that in my picture. [00:26:23] Speaker A: Okay. [00:26:24] Speaker B: Which is good for good reason. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Oh yeah, well, I imagine, I imagine anyway, that's fascinating. One of the things I wonder is about scaling and let me go to an example. Google YouTube. I forget how many uploads they have a day to YouTube. And it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I don't think the rate of increase is decreasing at all. I think it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And I don't know where they're going to find all of the place to store this stuff. And I wonder if that's a problem that you are going to have as you begin to scale up. Where are you going to put all of this stuff? I talked to one guy, he was doing kind of cutting edge think tank sort of things about the future future. And he said one of the things they're looking at right now is storage in DNA, a DNA sort of storage biology sort of storage because that is the most efficient way to store information that mankind knows about. But that aside, how do you keep up with all the storage? Because I know that it's increasing. [00:27:31] Speaker B: Well, yeah, the storage is increasing. But I mean DNA at best would be what we might call cold storage because it can store massive quantities of data. But that data is not readily, it's not readable. [00:27:43] Speaker A: Okay. [00:27:43] Speaker B: I mean readable, but it's not readily accessible. It would take time to write and it would. And the read times will be very slow. So typically what we do is we look at data from the perspective of data being hot, warm and cold. So DNA would be an example of cold data where you're saying you're storing massive quantities of data that aren't accessed very often. Okay, but say if you have a running website, you want it to be fast. So you're probably going to want to run your web now you can run your website on, you can choose different. We have different Types of storage. We have storage that's solid state drives, SSDs. We have hard drive store, we have hard drive storage. And then we have some archive storage also. So you can say, hey, I want this data to be cold because. And we'll charge you less for it because we're used, we're using technologies that are not. In other words, the faster the technology, the more it's going to cost. [00:28:34] Speaker A: And I bet it's probably, it's probably more efficient than those storage mines that Elon Musk just found it, right? [00:28:41] Speaker B: Oh yeah, they do. Well, that's our, that's your government at work, right? [00:28:44] Speaker A: That's your government. That's right. But that's cold storage. [00:28:49] Speaker B: Of definitely cold. That's freezing storage. [00:28:52] Speaker A: Freezing storage. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So basically the hot storage would be ssd and you pay more for that ssd. So then we have other storage that's more. Or your conventional hard drives, which are slower, but it's still pretty fast. And then we'll have other types of storage, just some of the older storage that'll be more. That sort of warmth, that warm storage, if you will. So that's how we, that's how. Now the other thing is storage density is getting greater and greater as we go along. So you need these SSDs are packing more and more data. So I don't think we've gotten to a point yet where we're saying, oh, we're at a crisis of, in terms of how much data we can store. Because, hey, there's lots of silicon, right? So, yes, silicon. So we can, we can definitely scale. In fact, when people think about the cloud, we say that it's infinitely scalable. Well, nothing's infinitely scalable. But from the perspective of the people who are maybe concerned about how are they going to store all this stuff. It is in a sense from, from the, from the perspective of the user is in a sense infinitely, infinitely scalable, even though that's, that's, it's not truly infinite. [00:29:57] Speaker A: Okay, so, so, so the storage is getting better and better. [00:30:01] Speaker B: Okay, Getting better, better and higher and, and higher and greater and greater and greater and greater density. And now that we're with SSDs, you know, you're, there's no moving parts. Right. Whereas hard drives, eventually, they're, eventually they're going to degrade over time. But, but really, but really everything is moving more, moving towards solid state drives now. Ssp. [00:30:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm thinking of the computer I had a few generations ago. I Turned it on and at the end of its life it sounded like a cement mixer with all of these things going on. [00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, the needle moving around on the drive and the scraping. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, exactly. But today it's fast and it's efficient. Really, really amazing. So let's talk about the reliability of storage. I'll tell you something. My wife comes from old school and I, I had the taxes done. She says, well, print out a copy. I said, I don't need to, honey, it's, it's on. I have an electronic version on, on my computer. It's in the cloud. It's fine. She says, yeah, but Bob, what if that goes away? Okay. And so there's this paranoia. So I printed it out and it's sitting over here on my little refrigerator that I have in my office. And she's never looked at it, but nevertheless, I have that in order to give her a degree of security. Let's talk about the reliability of different storage. You have your flash drive sort of storage. You have your CDs and DVDs, the writable read write CDs, and then you have, then you have the cloud and then you have your computer. And I will tell you that I am not a fan of read writable CDs. I stored a bunch of stuff on read writable CDs, and I just went back, you know, like a year later and it was gone. I don't know where it went, but it's just not a reliable place of storage. So can you comment on that, you know, as far as storage on the cloud, on your computer, on flash drives, on hard copy, et cetera? [00:31:53] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we don't use any CDs or DVDs, and I can tell you that now. [00:32:00] Speaker A: For good reason. [00:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah, for good reason. Well, I mean, DVDs are, it's estimated DVDs themselves can store up to 100 years. That's an estimate. CDs, it's typically more like 10 to 20 years that you can trust them. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Really. Why are DVs more reliable? [00:32:18] Speaker B: I don't know. Well, I think it's. Well, it, it's the, I think it has more to do with, with the, with the type of, with the type of materials that are used in the, in the DVD versus, versus a C versus a cd. And I think what happens over time is you get. Oxidation is probably the biggest thing. Right. It's oxygen. Right. Things. Right. And so it all depends on what that storage is actually. What that storage, what elements or molecules that storage is actually made of. Right. So Oxidation is probably the biggest thing. Also, if it's out in the sun, which is not a good idea because then you can get ultraviolet, can actually affect DVDs or CDs. So if you're storing it somewhere in some nice, nice dark place, it still can oxidize over time. So that's probably the biggest enemy of that type of storage. But cloud storage today is its hard disk drives. And every day, and we're moving more and more towards solid state drives, I don't believe 10 years from now there will be any hard disk drives. I believe it'll be all solid state drive drives. And of course, the density, the density of the memory will continue to increase over time. [00:33:24] Speaker A: Now, I believe that there's probably also degradation on the cloud, and I suspect that you probably have some sort of reliability and maintainability sort of program in place to make sure that the electronics don't wear out. Is that something which is addressed at all? [00:33:44] Speaker B: Well, yeah. I mean, the store, the storage. The storage and the computer continue, are continually monitored. And the way it works now is now you do have individual units. So you might, for example, in a rack, right, you might have, say that what we call a 1U, right? So within a CH or within a chassis, okay, so within a chassis, the one u just means one unit. So within a chassis, you might have 12 units. So let's say something goes bad in that chassis, we may just pull the whole chassis out and pop the chassis back in. Then you have a rack, and a rack might have three or four actual chassis with 12 units in it. So that's 12 times 4. 4 times 12. 48. 48. So that's how we sort of have that sort of density. But they'll be sharing power, and they'll be sharing power, and they'll be sharing the fans, the cooling, right? So that might be. That'll be in the rack or in the chassis itself. So we can pop out, in other words. So we have a rack that has like four chassis in it that has what, 48 units. Sometimes it can be up to 96. You can pull that whole. The whole rack out. So it used to be. It used to be on a rack boundary. So basically when Azure first started, you would say if you wanted to make things sort of your redundancy was say, if I had a piece of your data on rack one, I would copy it to racks two and three, right? So if rack one went down, I would guarantee you that I would keep it, keep it, keep it across those three racks. And there's Lots of racks in the data center. So if it, if one rack went down, right. Well, I got your data in two other racks that have been replicated and I'll pop that rack out and pop another rack in. So yes, things do degrade and when they go down, you know, from the monitoring that we see, we just pop that out and pop something, pop something back in. And because all it's all, all the data centers, everything is pretty much modular there. You pop chassis or pop racks in and as you know, as you, as units, as opposed to going down to an individual hard drive or individual, you know, unit, individual compute and storage unit. You, we don't, you don't have to do that. You can just pull whole, whole sections out because everything is replicated and it knows how to piece those things back together as far as the replication goes, right. A rack goes out that has your data on it. Then when we pull that out, the system understands that and says, oh, we only have two copies now we need to go ahead and replicate on another. On another rack. [00:36:11] Speaker A: That is really interesting, you know. Yeah, it is. I went to a friend's house in Switzerland, Hal Philip, he was, he was a guy that I've worked with in the past, really like. And he's on top of stuff. He's a guy, by the way, that invented the touchscreen and he's, he's doing okay. But he had something in his house called raid. Have you ever heard of that? What you're talking about sounds a lot like raid. It's where you have these different racks and you have different, I'm lost with the terminology, but you have these different inserts and they're redundant and if any one of them fails, you can take it out and you can stick a new one in. And it uses error correction coding in order to restore the, the unit that you, that failed, that you took out and replaced. And I thought that was really fascinating. And it sounds like you're using a lot of the same sort of error correcting code in order to do that. Where you look at the redundancy, there's a redundancy in the code. So that's, that's really good stuff. [00:37:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not, yeah, I'm not sure. Bob, is that quite. Because that's quite how we do it in. [00:37:18] Speaker A: Oh, you don't. Okay. [00:37:19] Speaker B: In data cloud, data centers. But what you're talking about is redundant array of individual, individual drives. I'm not sure if the. But raid. So RAID five, for example, you have to have, you have to have I believe a minimum of four drives. Okay, because there's the three drives that it's striping the data across those three drives and then there's the error correction drive, which is the fourth one. Right. So if one of those drives goes out, the error correction one knows. Oh, this is how I need to reconstitute that data that was lost, that was striped across those three drives. So you know that your data smeared out across those three drives. And the fourth drive is what's, what's mapping and looking at what's going on here. So that if one pops out, it can then you pop another drive in, then it, without you doing anything, will go ahead and reconstitute that data that would that reconstitute that data that was lost. So that's a Raid 5. That's a Raid 5 array. [00:38:12] Speaker A: Okay, so what you're saying is that there's really no error correction code, that the redundancy is real, they're complete copies. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Right. Okay, well it's not three copies in that case. It's, it's all the data is smeared across those three drives. But then there's that fourth drive that you add. That's with respect, that fourth drive that you add, whereas the data strike, it's keeping somehow track of the, somehow it's keeping track of the data so that if you pull one of those drives out, you'll be able to reconst, you'll be able to re, reconstitute what you lost. [00:38:46] Speaker A: Okay. [00:38:47] Speaker B: What you would have lost in that one. I don't know exactly how it works, but I have a RAID 5 array and it's a beautiful thing. [00:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's incredible. Okay, what have we missed? Let me ask you, as we come down to the end here, is there a common misconception about cloud security that you'd like to address in talking to the people that are interested in using the Azure, the Azure cloud? [00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Bob, a common misconception about cloud security is from customers, particularly during the early years of Azure, is if someone can access my data because it is multi tenant, lots of people are gaining, thousands of people are gaining access to this. The answer to that question is no. We're using technology that's been around for decades as far as how we write blocks, how we mark blocks of data, how we mark blocks of data for deletion. For those who are concerned, know your data is not next to someone else's data and then they can go from one block to your block and read your data. It doesn't work that way we have authentication and authorization mechanisms that determine what data can actually who can access what data. And so no. So no one can see your data. And even if your data is deleted, once that is marked for deletion, that data cannot be read until it's actually written to again. So you can rest assured that your Outlook emails or your OneDrive photos and all those things, no one can gain access to those except for you. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Okay, well, great. Well, thank you, Walter. I've learned a lot here and I think people that listening have learned a lot too. So appreciate your time in sharing about the cloud with us. Now it doesn't. So now it isn't so mysterious. Now we're going to talk about something totally different. Walter has a master's degree in philosophy from Biola University's Talbot School of Theology. So we thought we would talk a little bit about philosophy today, specifically about the interesting question of the ship of Theseus. This is interesting history. Now, Walter and I have participated in some of the Bradley Center's COSM conferences, and Walter and I have had reverse roles. He was the one that asked the questions and I responded. And now we get, I get to turn the tables and ask him the questions. And one of the things that he talked about the last COSM conference was the ship of Theseus. And that's what we're going to talk about today. It's very interesting. It has applications to the mind body problem, what constitutes being a person, etc. So, Walter, could you go ahead and just start and briefly explain the ship of Theseus. It's a paradox, and I'm sure that most people are unfamiliar with it, so give them a tutorial. [00:41:43] Speaker B: It is an interesting paradox. So the ship of Theseus, it's a paradox and it's a thought experiment about whether an object is the same object after having all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after another. So to sort of explain, give a little background on it. In Greek mythology, Theseus is the mythical king of the city of Athens. So Theseus rescues the children of Athens from King Minos of Crete after slaying the Minotaur. And then he escapes into a ship and escapes onto a ship going to Delos. So each year the Athenians would commemorate this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. And so the thing is, what would happen was that since this was going on every year, they would have to replace parts of the ship because the ship was going to eventually get old. So those ancient Greek philosophers were asking that question. Well, what if there's no pieces of the original that made up the current ship? Because eventually, over centuries, that they're doing this, it's not the same ship. So is it still the ship of Theseus? And if it was no longer the same, when had it ceased existing as the original ship? So that is sort of the paradox. [00:42:54] Speaker A: So this is something which have been raised by philosophers in ancient something. Something. Who are the people that first posed this question? Do you have any idea? [00:43:03] Speaker B: Well, the people that first. This was Greek philosophers that first posed this question. So we don't know exactly how, but it's been handed down to us from Greek philosophy. But I would say in more recent times, 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes extended sort of this thought experiment by supposing that a ship could, let's say he was saying that what if, say a ship custodian was gathering up all those decayed parts, in other words, as they replaced parts, he was taking those decayed parts and he was hiding them somewhere. Right? So those decayed parts are replaced by the Athenians. Okay. And he built a second shot and he would build a second ship that had all the old parts. So Hobbes posed the question of which of the two resulting ships, the custodians, you know, hidden away, that's the actual original, at some point becomes the actual original ship was the same as the original ship. So that's sort of how it's been extended over time. And so this really is applications, as you had mentioned earlier, is that is a philosophical study of identity over time. Right. As you perdure. So there's been variety of different proposed solutions to this in contemporary philosophy, philosophy of mind, with respect to personal identity. [00:44:19] Speaker A: Okay. I think there's a similar question as to your identity. This goes a little bit in the opposite direction. But if you had your legs cut off, would you still be you? If you had your legs and your arms cut off, could you still be you? If you could have your head transplanted on a little plate and you could still have all your sensors, would you still be you? When do you stop being you? I think that that's a question in the opposite direction, isn't it? [00:44:47] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I don't think I'd ever stop being me. But Bob, I personally ascribe to the philosophy of Aristotle's philosophy of hylomorphic dualism. [00:45:01] Speaker A: Okay, define that. [00:45:03] Speaker B: Okay, all right. [00:45:05] Speaker A: Those are really big words. [00:45:08] Speaker B: Let's see, how do I define hylomorphic dualism? So it, it's dualist only in the sense that the soul, okay? Or we call. The intellect and the body are mutually irreducible. So but the soul itself is considered immaterial. Okay? Now, but body and soul, they're not substances on their own. On their own, right? The soul is. It's the substantial form of the body that by virtue of which the substance, it informs. In other words, the soul informs the body. So in the case of human beings, the body carries out the distinctive activities of the soul, and the body is what provides the potential for those activities to actually occur. So human beings are conceived as a unified whole. So the Aristotelian view is that we are unified whole as rational animals, not sort of this composite of two different substances as in Descartes does. Substance dualism. So we actually. And the soul itself is. It's just not a complete substance. So. And I think that's even. It's even consistent with Christian theology of that when your body is dead, when you die, your soul goes on. Goes on to heaven, right? But the thing is, your soul can't do anything because it doesn't have a body to actualize it. So the idea. And that's even consistent with the idea of a new heaven and a new earth in the Bible, that basically you need that body. Body, right? Because it's that soul that informs the body. Because even though it can subsist from the matter, okay, it's not complete in the sense that when the body dies, that soul, it needs that body, okay? So the essence of the human being is that soul and that body that does all the thinking and the feeling and activities that the soul wants it to do. But that soul can be separable from the body, even though it's in an unnatural state as a soul only. So that sort of explains hylomorphic dualism. [00:47:11] Speaker A: So I know you're a fan of Star Trek. In the original Star Trek, there was an interesting story where Captain Kirk was beamed and the beam got scrambled and two different versions of them emerged. So one was a totally duplicate of the other. But the duplicate was. The only way you could tell the duplicate is that the duplicate was evil, okay? It didn't do nice things. I'm wondering if that is a explanation of what you were talking about. Maybe the evil one was separated from his soul. Are you familiar with that episode, by the way? [00:47:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm very familiar with that, with that episode. And, you know, from what I understand of the way that transporter might work, is that what you had. In fact, there was another science science fiction show I saw where the person who was Being replicated was left there. And then their body. They had their body on the planet where they're being transported to. But the problem was they were supposed to be killed. Right. So that you wouldn't have two of the same person. And so this person was trying to live knowing that they had been replicated. Replicated on the planet. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's a real. That's a. That's a really tough one because I would presume that if you're basically going to clone someone, my question would be, would that even. That question, would that be even work? Are we actually really looking at something that's pretty much an impossible thing where you can basically clone someone at every single level, at the cellular level, and it would be some other person. Right. So I think that'd be very difficult, and I think that probably is just more science fiction than anything. [00:48:48] Speaker A: You know, I think it always occurred to me that if you were to clone yourself, that your clone would be like your twin brother. [00:48:57] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:48:58] Speaker A: That was very young. And. Yeah. The question is, would they have a soul if they cloned it? I believe they probably would. [00:49:05] Speaker B: I believe they'd have a soul, yes. [00:49:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So the big thing about the Ship of Theseus, of course, is how it relates to human identity. We replace some of our cells, not all of our cells, everyone, once in a while. And, you know, when we're. When we're 80, we're not the same person that we were when we were 10. All of our cells have been replaced or most of our cells have been replaced. So are we still the same person? I think that that's the. That's the core philosophical question that the Ship of Theseus raises for me. What do you think? [00:49:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, from a physical perspective, for example, most of the skin and gut, or replaced in just a matter of months. I think the liver is like every three years, and the skeleton is every 10 years. And something like 40% of the heart's contracting muscles are every few years or so. But there are other cells that remain since birth, and then there are certain neurons in the brain that are never replaced. But much of you, to your point, is actually replaced. So there's something called the continued identity theory, that identity that says basically, as long as you are continuously and metaphysically exist under the same identity without being fully transformed at one time, then you will perdure in that sense that you will continue to be that something that you are. So like, for example, let's say you had a house that was, you know, we just recently had these wildfires. You had a house that was destroyed by a fire, right? Completely destroyed. But you rebuilt it, right? That's going to be a new house. But what if you had a house that say, for year one, you replaced the front of the house. Year two, you replaced the ceiling and so on. You replace different parts of the house. Well, that still continues to be the same house even though parts have been replaced over time. So what we're really looking at is that we're looking at this from a temporal perspective, right. And that this. Something that continuously and metaphysically exists, even though its parts may be replaced, placed in and out. Now, home, a house is not the same as a human being because it doesn't have. I mean, from my view, hylomorphic view is that that soul is what informs. Is what informs that body and that even though. And it's separable from it. So that would be, say, for example, that's why animals, for example, don't have a soul like humans do, right? We have a soul that's actually separable. They don't have a soul in the sense that we do, where they have this, this immaterial aspect of them. If, if you, if you. If you will. So it really is, how does this particular object or, or. Or person or this, or this or thing produce over time and how much in terms of things being replaced? But again, it's, It's a. With humans, it's that aspect of the soul that informs that body, that act that activates it and actuates it. [00:52:03] Speaker A: You know, it occurs to me that the degree and the granularity of replacement comes into play here too. For example, I forget who said it, but it struck me when I heard it for the first time that this was remarkable, that every electron in the universe is identical. Every proton, every neutron is identical. So if you replace things at this granular level of electrons and protons, it looks like you would. It looks like the ship of Theseus would sail. It looks like that you would still be the same exact person because you're replacing it with an exact duplicate of that Planck. But the plank now is an electron or a proton. When you get to a higher level, say the neurons, if you replaced one neuron with another neuron, and you did this gradually over time. Yeah. Would you still be you? I think that. Are you familiar with transhumanism? That's kind of what they would like to do. They would like to go so that they're totally silicon, so that they're totally artificial, so that they can achieve Immortality. Any thoughts on that? [00:53:12] Speaker B: That's an interesting thing. If you were to say, at an atomic level, replacement all of the. All of the components of the human. I think one thing with, with respect to being human, Bob, is that what is it? What is the identity of a human? A human is someone who has memories, they have a certain personality, have a certain way that the activity that they are in the world. So I think. I think as I. And I think as long as. As long as you're human and you have those things that, that will. That even if those components are replaced, I would say they're doing the exact same thing, presuming that at this atomic level you're replacing them and that they're doing the exact same thing. But when you think about that, if you replace something, are you replacing it with something that's identical? In other words, you have a neuron that has. Or you have a set of neurons that have some sort of memory. Right. Well, if you were to replace it, would you be able to actually replace the memory that's stored inside of that? Well, if you could, yes. But if you could not actually replace that memory. Okay. Because how would you even know what's in it? We don't even. We wouldn't even know what's in it. Potentially at the. At the molecular level, you could figure out, oh, well, this is the actual data that's being stored in this. In these. In this set of. In this individual neuron or set of. Or set of neurons that rise up to. But to become that, you know, that entity, if you will. So I think you'd think as long as you had the memories, personality activity, that person, as long as that will continue. Right. You still have that immaterial part that's informing it, right? [00:54:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:54:46] Speaker B: Now, if you were to inform it, if you were to do it with, say, something that's inorganic versus something organic, I think that's another question. It's like if I did it with a piece of something that's organic, can the soul interact with something that's inorganic as opposed to something that's. Or that's organic? So I think that's. That would be really the difficulty of that. [00:55:05] Speaker A: I also think that even if you assume that you. Well, the Ship of Theseus, if you were to replace, like every atom in your body, that assumes that we are materialistic people and that our brains are. And that we are computers, if you will, made out of meat. [00:55:20] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:55:21] Speaker A: And there is more than just the meat. I mean, that was the purpose of the book, minding the brain is to push back on a materialist idea that we are computers made out of meat and we do things that material things will never do. We love, we have compassion. Even deeper, we understand we are creative, we have a spirit, we're spiritual beings. [00:55:43] Speaker B: Yes. [00:55:44] Speaker A: And that Ship of Theseus question doesn't address that aspect which is non material. And I think this is kind of what you're saying. Is that right? Which I agree with, by the way. [00:55:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's why. I think. That's why I think hylomorphic dualism works better than, say, substance dualism. Because what substance dualism says that these are two distinct substances. What hylomorphic says is that, no, they're not two distinct substances. They become a specific substance when they are together because they are actually a unity. Even though they are separable, they're still a. They're. They're still a unity. And you need to have that body to activate and actuate that soul. And so, yeah, so that's why I just found that Aristotle's view on this was brilliant. And again, highly consistent with orthodox Christian theology. [00:56:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. That's great. You know, getting back to kind of a less philosophical viewpoint and talking about reality, it seems to me there have been real world legal cases with the Ship of Theseus paradox and been applied. Do you ever watch the television series Pawn Stars? [00:56:54] Speaker B: No, I can't. [00:56:55] Speaker A: Okay, you haven't watched Pawn Stars? Well, it's about a pawn shop and they bring stuff in. And sometimes when people bring stuff in and it has been an antique which has been touched up, it totally loses its value. Sometimes, on the other hand, they'll bring in an old car, they'll take it to a place that refurbishes the old car, but makes it into a new car, and all of a sudden that change increases the value. And I'm just wondering about the impact, for example, of touching up great artworks. I believe that they went into the Sistine Chapel and they began to touch up the works of Michelangelo. So if you go in and you kind of apply a little bit of dab of paint here and a little bit of dab of paint here to cover up the faded pigments that. Well, you know, is that kind of a Ship of Theseus sort of thing? And is the end result exactly the same? And I think that the answer is. Well, it depends on your definition of what the exact replica is and what the Ship of Theseus is. I think a lot of this actually boils down to definition. What do you mean by the Same thing? Is the ship the same thing? I think if you dug down into the definition of what the same thing means, you could actually find the answer in the definition. But I don't think anybody does. I think everybody talks about something being the same thing and everybody thinks that they know what the same thing is, but really doesn't take the time to define it. [00:58:20] Speaker B: In the case of the ship of Theseus, I don't think it's so much. It's not so much a matter of what is. Matter of what is the actual matter. What's important is that this is the ship that we're taking. We get on this ship. It doesn't matter if there's a new plank where an old plank was. This is a ship we've been sailing for centuries to. To. To Delos, you know, as a. As a, you know, to. To celebrate Apollo. I think that's what that was the reason for it was to celebrate Apollo and the victory of. Of. Of Theseus. And so it's the fact that I think, like I was talking about the sort of the home before, even if you're replacing parts of your home, you replace your roof, you replace the front, you know, you replace the, you know, you change bedrooms or anything, it's still the same. It's still the same home in terms of what you have in your heart applied to it, right? As far as it being your home, it hasn't moved. It's just changed some. It's changed some. But it's still your home and state. And it's still that even though some of the matter itself has changed, it's not really so much about the matter, okay. It's about the home itself, the location of the home. And same with Theseus, the we're sailing on this ship. We've designated the ship as Theseus. We don't really care about what is the matter of it. What is the matter of what happened to its old matter. What we. What matters to us is actually that this is the ship that we continue to sail for centuries to Delos. Right? So I think it's to your point in terms of how it actually. It's more about how it actually is viewed as opposed to what is the specific matter that it is that matter matter that it is made of. [01:00:01] Speaker A: I think the ship of Theseus also applies to organizations. If a company slowly replaces its employees and policies and buildings over time, is it still the same company? Very, very similar. And I think the answer is an obvious no. And I think of Disney when I was a Boy, Disney celebrated family. They celebrate celebrated wholesomeness. And now they've kind of degraded themselves into a totally different company. So this is an example of things which change over time, but which maintain their identity in this case as the Disney company. And they've changed quite substantially. So that's another example of things changing a little bit. The other thing, I think there's a psychological aspect to this too, too. Consider, for example, the Mona Lisa. I just read somewhere that it was insured for $630 million. The Mona Lisa. Wow. Imagine making an exact duplicate of the Mona Lisa and down, down to the molecule. And on back of the original, you had a little plaque that said original. On back of the copy, you had a little plaque that said copy. And. And you put them on sale at Sotheby's. Which one would sell for the most? The original one. And that's because of the psychological interpretation of the Mona Lisa, the connection of it with the original painter, Leonardo da Vinci. There would be that connection there, whereas the new one, well, it would sell for probably quite a bit. But not as much as the Mona Lisa. Not the 630 billion million. [01:01:41] Speaker B: No, not as. Not as much. Because what's. What's unique about the Mona Lisa is that Leonardo. The original is that Leonardo da Vinci painted that one. The other one that you've. That you've replicated, you know, and you can rep. Obviously, you can do it once. You can do it a thousand times. [01:01:55] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:01:56] Speaker B: That was not painted by Leonardo da Vinci. That was not his handiwork. That's you replicating. That's someone replicating that work. Replicating that work. Work. That true gene. In other words, what informed, when you think about it, what informed the original Mona Lisa was Leonardo da Vinci. That's where he put his heart and soul into that and he informed and infused himself into that original. Any of the copies were not from a teleological perspective in terms of the purpose of those, because teleology is about what is the purpose of why something is actually. Why something is actually made. There was purpose in the original Mona Lisa. There's no purpose in the others. That comes from Leonardo da Vinci himself. That purpose was from people who wanted to copy it and make some money off of it. But that purpose, that original purpose, is what we're after and what Leonardo da Vinci himself infused into that painting. [01:02:53] Speaker A: Exactly. And I think that's the interpretation of all art, that it has to relate to the creator of the art. [01:03:00] Speaker B: The creator. [01:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the reason that we have all of these Promoters and all of these tours where you have all of this publicity, they're trying to create this expectation and the substitute just doesn't. Doesn't matter. So a couple final questions. Are you aware of any way that the Ship of Theseus relates to, like Buddhist or Eastern philosophies? They emphasize, as I understand in permanence, that there is kind of a fading in some sort of sense. Are you aware of any relationship that there would be here? [01:03:34] Speaker B: I'm not, no. I'm not aware of any relationship in Buddhism, no. [01:03:38] Speaker A: Okay. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Were some thoughts you had, Bob? I mean. [01:03:42] Speaker A: No, no, I just. I'm the one that's asking the questions here. [01:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, I'm not sure how it applies in that sense. [01:03:50] Speaker A: Okay, no, yeah, I have no idea. I have no idea. I'm wondering, does the Ship of Theseus have a definitive answer? And I would again say that it goes back to the definition of what you mean by is the Ship of Theseus still the Ship of Theseus? I think you have to drill down and actually define what you mean by that before you answer the question. And I think in the definition maybe the solution will come out. Do you have an opinion on this? [01:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think in that and probably any other controversial terms topic, it really comes down to what is your depth, what is your definition of terms? What do you actually. What do you actually mean by those things? And so, yeah, meaning and definitions in terms of having common definitions or vocabularies with respect to controversial subjects such as this, or philosophical subjects like this really comes to us really just sort of grappling, you know, with a human condition. And as you talked about, we talked, been talking about the mind, brain. That's some really difficult stuff. What you know, Dave Chalmers called David Philosopher, David Chalmers calls the hard problem. [01:04:56] Speaker A: Right, the hard problem. [01:04:57] Speaker B: It is the hard problem. So I think that, yeah, it's really a matter. It really is a matter of terms and how you understand these more than anything. How you understand these more than anything else. And I don't think there's any type of clear and crystal explanation of the Ship of Theseus. And that's why it's a philosophical, I would say a philosophical paradox and a problem. But it's something that just us as humans in human activity, those are things we like to do. That's what part of being a human is being curious about the world, being curious about what does it mean to be human. What is the difference between us and animals? What is the difference between us and a rock? That's out in front of our house. Right. Why do we have brains and the rock just kind of situation sits there and does. And does nothing? So I. I think that's. That's just. That's just a human condition, and I think. I think it's just a wonderful. And love talking about things like this, actually, more than I like talking about the cloud. [01:05:57] Speaker A: Okay. That's the reason you got your degree, Your graduate degree in philosophy. Right. Just because this is so fun. [01:06:02] Speaker B: It is so fun. I love philosophy of mine. I think it's the most. To me, it's the most interesting thing in the world. [01:06:07] Speaker A: Okay, so at Biola, did you have JP Borland as a professor or. [01:06:13] Speaker B: Oh, I have to admit. Where do you think I got some of these ideas from? [01:06:16] Speaker A: Is that right? Okay. [01:06:18] Speaker B: Oh, there is J.P. moreland in everything I speak of. J.P. moreland is infused. Is infused in that. And. And there was also Gary deweese there. Gary deweese is very much. I don't know about JP I think JP Is Aristotelian. But I know Gary deweese, who is another amazing and brilliant professor at Talbot. I think he's retired now, but he is Aristotelian. And so both he and JP Very deeply influenced me in terms of where I sort of gone, you know, from. From a philosophical perspective. And I. I mean, I just owe a debt of gratitude to. To JP and deweese and all the other great professors that I had at Talbot. It really is an amazing. It really is an amazing school. In fact, I just. I just got a newsletter from Talbot saying they had the largest entering class this past year. So it just really. That little. That little school turns out some. Because it has such a great faculty, it turns out some really great philosophers, really great Christian philosophers. [01:07:14] Speaker A: That is really exciting. That really is. And I think, actually I wrote a column about how the web is driving people to faith, especially Christian faith, because what happens is, if you spend your time on social media, you think that the whole world is having a great time except for you, and therefore, you're a loser. And you contrast this, for example, to the Christian faith, which says, look, just as you are, you can be a son or daughter of God Almighty and join in that family. If you recognize that you're fallen, you're sinful, you need a savior, and Christ is your savior, and boom, you're in the family and just as you are. So I think that that's being used to actually usher people from. That are addicted to the web into the Christian faith. And we're seeing evidence of it in these revivals. And I mentioned at my church, we had between services, we had, I think it was 22k. No, 42. 42 kids which were baptized between services. [01:08:13] Speaker B: Amen. [01:08:13] Speaker A: That were in junior high and high school. And just recognizing that the path that they were going down on, all the social media and stuff wasn't. Wasn't working. And the Christianity was working. So I'm wondering if this is working at Talbot, too. That would be really, really great if it were. Well, Walter, thank you. This was a lot of fun. I've learned a lot. [01:08:34] Speaker B: Likewise, Bob. Hey, and I look forward to having a conversation with you in the future. Thank you so much. [01:08:38] Speaker A: Okay, that's great. We've been talking to Walter Myers. He's a principal engineering manager leading a team of engineers working with management of the Microsoft Azure cloud. By the way, there was a. There was a place in KM where, as I mentioned before, our roles were reversed and he was asking me the question. So on the podcast notes, we'll put a link to that interview so you can see what happens when the roles are reversed. So until next time, be of good cheer. This has been Mind Matters News with your host, Robert J. [01:09:20] Speaker B: Marks. [01:09:21] Speaker A: Explore more at MindMatters AI. That's MindMatters AI. Mind Matters News is directed and edited by Austin Egbert. The opinions expressed on this program are solely those of the speakers. Mind Matters Matters News is produced and copyrighted by the Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute.