Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Wait But Why?" with Tim Urban

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"Wait But Why?" with Tim Urban · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans and all I can say today is wow. Wow. I've just had the most amazing conversation.
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  This is a good, this is a real good, this is why we're in it. Folks, this is the point of all this.
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  And funnily enough, it's one of the least uncomfortable conversations I've had in a long time,
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  but it touches on things that are deeply uncomfortable and strange and weird,
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  like whether or not human beings will extinguish ourselves off the face of the planet or whether
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  we're alone in the cosmos or why you procrastinate as much as you do or how fleetingly,
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  blindingly close and precious and recent, the evolution of civilization is in the course of human
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  history. I mean, I don't want to say too much about Timmer, but if you've ever seen the blog
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  Wait But Why, then you know this guy writes, he does these sort of cartoon stick figure
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  explanations of some of the most important things in the world. Wait, but why? The subtitle of
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  the blog is new post every sometimes. And he has whimsical, funny mind-expanding explanations
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  or explorations of some of the deepest questions that humankind faces. And he's this, I mean,
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  he really should be a philosopher or a philosopher king, but he's a blogger and a Ted talker. His
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  Ted, his Ted talk about why we procrastinate. It's called inside the mind of a master procrastinator.
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  And on the Ted website, it's got 57 million views. On YouTube, it's got 24 million views. So
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  assuming that people aren't watching multiple times across other platforms, that's at 90 million,
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  almost 100 million views right there. You know, he has almost 400,000 followers on Twitter. And
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  it's so heartening because he doesn't talk about all the same bullshit that everybody's talking
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  about. And he doesn't pander to people's preconceptions. He genuinely challenges you
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  to think outside the box that you currently think in. This is one of those chats where at the end
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  of the conversation, Tim puts his finger on it. He says, man, this is one of those conversations
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  where it's almost like, it's like if I had this conversation over lunch, then I'd say, I wish
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  we'd been recording this and could release it as a podcast. So take some time, pay attention to
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  this. Carve out a little window. And please enjoy my conversation with the one and only,
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  Kim Urban.
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  In Google, Kim Urban, you know, the first Google question that Google suggests you might be
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  searching for, what does Tim Urban do? That is a very fair question. And then what are Tim Urban
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  credentials? And then it gets down to more relevant things. So what does Tim Urban do?
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  Tim Urban, he picks, he picks topics that he is really interested in. And then he tries to,
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  he tries to organize all of his thoughts and maybe do some research to learn more and organize
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  all of that. And then turn that into a some kind of package that he can then publish on the
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  internet. And he battles against himself every day trying to do this and to not procrastinate
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  in doing it. And then the battling against yourself becomes fodder or fuel for yet more of your
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  insights. Correct. There's nothing there's nothing there's no topic that's out of bounds.
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  And anything that is, if I'm struggling with it, I assume a lot of other people are too. So
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  that's a good topic. If I if I'm interested in it, I assume a lot of people are too. If I think
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  something is funny or nonsensical, all of that, you know, and the premise is just that
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  it's a big world out there. And if I compelled by something, probably a few million people
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  at the minimum are also. And so, yes, well, 10 million in the past. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
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  if you think about seven billion people, you know, it's, if you know, in the old days that you
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  lived in your village and there's, you know, I don't know, 2000 people there, there's a good
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  chance that something you're interested in, you're the only one or maybe you find a friend who likes
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  it too. But today, you know, just say, so if I said, you know, there's one person in that 2000
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  person village, because it's one out of a thousand people happen to share your thing. Well,
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  today, that's that's seven million people who are going to be the one person in every village
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  who happens to be just like you. And that's a giant audience, even if you're getting really
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  specific and kind of specific to yourself, which is, which is super fun. That's why the internet
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  is such a fun place to write on, especially if you speak English. It's like the audience is just
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  so, so massive. Yeah. Yes. I sometimes wonder about that. Like it'd be frustrating. If you speak
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  a language that almost nobody speaks, then that's okay, because you just learn English, like, you know,
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  everyone in the Netherlands is going to speak English. But if you speak English or Spanish, I guess,
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  then you're fine or Chinese maybe. But if you're, if you speak, I feel sorry for people who live in like
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  France, where, you know, it's big enough that you don't really have to learn another language
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  apart from French, but you sort of do as well. Totally. I mean, look, Google translate and AI
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  like that are getting better and better. So I feel like this is soon it will not, everyone will
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  speak whatever language they want. That's not a big thing. Until I spoke to a linguist, actually,
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  just about eight months ago about this, who was like, you know what? It's never going to, it's
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  well, long way away from it getting really good. He also happened to be a Japanese Australian guy.
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  He was like, the nuances, like, I just can't, I can't see it becoming frictionless for a long time.
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  Yeah, Japanese, especially would be a tough one. Yeah. And it's just such a small,
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  such a small group outside of Japan, who speaks Japanese. Yeah. And the nuances and the subtleties
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  and the colloquialisms and the, you know, the mannerisms and all the cultural components that go
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  into making, you know, communication, communication, rather than just direct translation.
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  That's so, that's so tricky. Even there though, you've got, you still, because of the internet,
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  you still have, I don't know how many Japanese people, 150 million person audience, you know,
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  it's, it's, yeah, the village in the old days, you know, it's like, it's, it's, it's, I think I,
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  if I could just, if I only could write in Japanese, or if I only had 150 million people out there,
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  I think I would still kind of be able to have fun with this. I mean, I think you, I think you're
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  being a bit bashful or selling yourself a bit short by saying that the, the way that you get,
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  you know, 50 or 60 million views on a video is just because the internet reaches lots of people.
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  So you're no longer the only guy in the village mulling on this stuff, because the reality is
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  that there aren't a lot of people around the world who are already mulling on this stuff. You are
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  bringing out or drawing out or teasing out things that people didn't know that they were interested in
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  by pointing them out in ways that stoke their curiosity. It's not like people are sitting around
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  wondering about, you know, procrastination until you point out the absurdity of the way that
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  procrastination is functioning in, in their minds. So is it just servicing a need or is it
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  creating a new market for, for ideas? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a broad, a kind of, there's a
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  broad concept, which is general interest in a certain brand of curiosity, certain brand of
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  sense of humor, certain brand of the way people like to consume content, you know, written versus
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  audio, whatever. So right there, I can now say that that's a good target audience, people who hit
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  all of those in the same way I do. Then once you have that group, yes, now I agree with you that
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  at that point, you can interest that audience in a lot of ways. You can create, you can, you can show
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  them things they didn't know they were interested in or you can tap into a lot of the psychology that
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  I experience. I mean, so many of us experience. So I do think that if you can kind of learn to
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  communicate well about things you're interested in, then yeah, I think there's a massive
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  massive group of people who will join you on that. And when you say that things,
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  it's things that you're interested in that you pursue, one of the challenges of living in this
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  Internet-y connected world with such a tsunami, a fire hose of information coming out of
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  all the time is it's very easy to find yourself getting interested in things that aren't particularly
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  interesting, but that are present. I mean, I'm struggling against this all the time. There are
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  an infinite number of Twitter fights that I could be getting into, which are mildly interesting
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  or distracting at least, but aren't really the most profound or important things that I should spend
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  my short time on earth focusing on. And you seem to find a way to talk about those things that are
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  the really big things. How do you find, how do you make yourself get interested in those big things
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  and not interested in the more obvious readily available things? Well, I mean, it's my job. So
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  the first bunch of years I was writing, wait, but why? I would go into a list of topics that I
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  had created that was growing every week every time I had a good conversation or read something
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  interesting or thought about something I would just write it into the list. And so I'd have to
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  pick a topic and do it. And then for a while, I was publishing one post a week. And so I had to
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  get it done in a week. And so I would sit there looking at the Twitter arguments and all the other
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  things that you're looking at. And as I said, that's part of the battle against myself. I would be
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  doing that. But then there would be this pressure to, okay, this this thing needs to get done. And
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  then I would, you know, tear myself to it. It's it's like how anyone, you know, we all have
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  those tendencies to waste our time. But then whatever we do for a job will yank us into that instead.
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  And so for me, my job is to be yanked into something usually. Yeah, like you said, bigger or whatever.
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  I mean, sometimes the Twitter fights themselves are actually part, you know, when I read a Twitter
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  fight, I often, you know, just to use that particular example, I happen to like find that to be
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  the tip of an iceberg of a very big topic. A lot of big topics. But I know that wasn't your
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  point. It was just, you know, how do you how do you focus on on kind of step back and zoom out
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  and focus on bigger things when there's all the small distractions? And yeah, it's just it's just
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  kind of my job too. So I have to. That's interesting. Yeah, no, it does. It's interesting that you
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  say that Twitter fights are sometimes touching on bigger topics, because I find myself, I mean,
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  they're often touching on topics that are currently considered very hot button. You know,
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  they're people arguing about whether or not Trump is a fascist or they're people arguing about
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  whether or not the transgender movement is trying to erase gender altogether or there are, you
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  know, or critical race theory or something like that. There's a lot of that going on on Twitter.
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  And as far as I can tell, you don't seem interested in like it's sort of my job as someone who
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  works for a public broadcaster to tease out those things and actually try to find ways for
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  people to talk about them where they're not hunkered down in their own warring factions and they
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  can find some common ground. That's sort of the purpose of this podcast, not really the purpose
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  of your work. So you don't seem interested in those sort of culture war. Yeah, actually what I
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  so what I meant is the fight itself, the fact that they're fighting, the way they're fighting,
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  why are they fighting with strangers? Right. What's the word? What are the fallacies going on?
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  What is the wording going on? What kind of thinking is going on? What are the emotions happening?
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  And why? And why is Twitter bringing this out in us? And what is that? What is that side of us?
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  And why is it seem to be coming out more now than the past? So that's what I was talking
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  and more of the meta sense when I read. Yeah, you've just when I was going deep and you just
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  dug a deep a hole underneath my whole team. Yeah, so it's not that I mean sometimes the arguments
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  themselves are really interesting, but I think there's a couple layers. There's the layer of the
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  fight, the actual fight itself. So for example, I don't know, lab leak versus the kind of COVID
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  natural. So there's the actual topic. Did it come from a lab? Did it come from nature?
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  Or you know, or from animals or what? Okay, then beneath that, there's the topic of
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  there seems to be a pressure on on certain groups to not to to to to only have this view and
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  pressure on another group who identifies with this kind of politics to have this view. What's
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  going on there? And then the even more meta level, you know, people are at hominem attacking each
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  other in the nastiest way and they're like, you know, and they're not being their best selves. And
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  so that's an even more meta thing. What's going on there? What's that's the thing I kind of
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  mentioned before the deepest meta level, like why are we acting like children? You know, and so
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  so I think there's a bunch of layers that are all interesting, including the topic itself is
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  usually based on something important, but I find the two meta levels beneath that I mentioned to be
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  for me more more interesting. Yeah. Well, let's talk about those. Why are we acting like children?
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  Well, so I talked about battling against myself. And I have written about procrastination. And
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  to me, there's a it comes down to there's two voices going on in my head. There's the the
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  rational kind of grown up I call it the rational decision maker rational. That is very aware,
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  could give very good advice to myself on, you know, why I'm in these bad habits and, you know,
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  what what obviously what I should be doing in this moment and what what makes sense, you know,
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  why it makes sense to work now and play later. And why perfectionism makes no sense in all of this.
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  And then there's this other voice that is it's almost not a voice at all. It's almost this
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  primal instinct. The primate I live in is wired for, you know, ancient wiring that is not updated
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  nearly as quickly as civilization has developed. And so that primal instinct is misfiring.
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  It's not bad. It's not it's it's it's just it's it's a machine built for one world. And it's
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  and it's in this doing what a primate brain is programmed to do. Yeah. Doing what, you know,
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  look at most animals that we know are in that world currently, which is you eat when you're
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  hungry, you sleep when you're tired, you try to reproduce before you die, wherever you get the
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  chance, at least. And and and that's it. And if you do those things, you win. You're you're
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  winner, right? And so that voice is the primate in me is has wired that way. But in an advanced
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  civilization, all the rules are different. That doesn't get you by. You have to belong term play
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  it. You have to parse out your energy. You've got to make grown up decisions and do things that
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  suck in the short term for the sake of the long term. And that battle is the at the heart of
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  procrastination. It's the it's at the heart of, I think, overeating or eating unhealthy. I think
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  it's at the heart of a lot of addictions and a lot of other a lot of other things anger issues
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  and, you know, cheating and fidelity. You know, so to to me, that's the cure human struggle.
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  It is the fact that we are a one animal, kidnapped off our home planet and dropped into this
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  different planet. And we are doing our best. And we are above our pay grade here. And we're
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  trying our best and we're we're pretty damn good at it. Given how tall an order it is, but we're
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  not, you know, we're it's not that easy. And we are there's a lot of struggle. So that's the kind
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  of like the general kind of thing I've written about a lot this battle going on. Now
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  more recently, I've looked at politics and and and the way we think the way we, you know,
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  tribalism and and politics and how that affects how we think and how we form our viewpoints and
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  how we treat other people. And I've said, what's going on here? And I didn't even plan to kind of
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  have this be that same kind of framework. But as I dug in, I said, there it is again. This is the
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  same thing. This is one part of our brain is is interpreting all of this as this very ancient
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  life or death, very very specific kind of tribal lens through through that kind of lens. And the
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  other part of our brain knows that makes no sense and is and knows, you know, you know, hating
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  this stranger on Twitter who doesn't even know you and thinking and thinking that half of your
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  country are awful evil idiots. When that's not the kind of person you are normally, you're not a
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  big it. You're not a low petty, small nasty person. But you've suddenly you're acting like that.
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  You think that way sometimes when it comes to maybe politics or say in other cases maybe
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  religion or an ethnic divide or a national, you know, national tribalism. And so what's going on?
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  And to me, it's the same part of our brain that procrastinates that eats too much sugar that is,
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  you know, that is unfaithful. That same part of our brain is is just trying to get us to survive
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  and is doing what it's supposed to do this primate. And it's and and and politics, unfortunately,
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  and a lot of their kinds of tribalism are one of the things like a bag of candy, like a
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  like, I don't know, some some fling that's, you know, that's in your life is tempting to the
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  primate and and and wakes it up and wakes up that and I call it the primitive mind. Your, you know,
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  politics is in the category of things that wakes your primitive mind up and makes it suddenly
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  it's in the room and it's trying to grab the wheel and it and it wants to control your thoughts
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  and your behavior. And the other part, the rational grown up in your brain does not want to act that
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  way. It does not is not that that that person in your head is not a bigot. That person doesn't
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  overgeneralize that person isn't racist that person isn't all the, you know, different things that
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  tribalism brings out on us. So to me, that's what I've been digging into is when I look at a
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  Twitter fight, I'm thinking, okay, the primitive minds on Twitter. You know, every if I think I call
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  it again, the higher mind and the primitive mind. I know I'll use different terms, but to me,
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  there's the higher mind and the primitive mind and the higher mind knows what's going on understands
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  the civilization you're in. The primitive mind is why is living in a totally different world.
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  Doesn't know that it's living here. And when I look at Twitter, I see a place where the primitive
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  minds have come out and there and it's like a it's like pheromones. They activate other primitive
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  minds just being on Twitter, especially in like looking at an argument. It's like it wakes up. It's
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  like contagious. It brings us all down into our primitive minds. And I think, yeah, that's really
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  interesting. And one of the things that I think is so insidious about the way that it functions is
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  if it were clear to us when we're having the argument with someone on Twitter that it was our
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  primitive mind operating, I think our higher mind would be better at putting it in a box. But the problem
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  is, and Jonathan Heiter has written beautifully about this with his analogy of like your primitive
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  mind sort of being an elephant that is kind of that the rider on the elephant thinks that he's in
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  control your higher mind. But actually there's this elephant that's galloping around and the rider
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  is sort of retroactively claiming to be directing the elephant, but is frequently out of control
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  of the elephant that the primitive mind it strikes me, at least for my personal experience,
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  can hide itself as the higher mind. And you think that you're making arguments on the basis of
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  pure reason, but actually what you're doing is making ad hoc justifications for what your
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  instinct tells you is probably true. I think I think of it as the primitive mind is when it gets
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  active, it fills your brain with fog is kind of the term I use like, and the fog blocks your
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  consciousness. And so you when you're in the fog, by definition, you don't know you're in the fog.
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  Right, you know, having that realization that I'm in the fog here, I'm down in primitive land
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  can snap you out of it. But when we're in it is specifically when it's very, very hard for us to
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  see that we become we lose our consciousness a little bit. And so yes, I think I think that's
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  there's a lot of you know, there's there's heights elephant in the rider, there's you know,
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  you go back to Freud, this is this is a concept, you know, as old as time. And and to me, yes,
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  there's there's a few states we can be in. We can be totally consumed with our primitive mind
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  and legitimately lose consciousness. You know, for example, sometimes I'll legit open my phone
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  while working to because I realize it to send one text just for logistical reasons. And I open
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  the phone and 20 minutes later, I am somewhere on that phone and I snap out of it and say,
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  hmm, what was I just doing? I like, why am I on my phone? And then I remember and then I put
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  the phone down, I get back to work and then I'm like, oh, I have to send that text. So I never
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  even sent the text. And so the primitive mind woke up and took over the wheel and I filled with fog
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  and I was doing something and just literally lost consciousness in a crazy way. And so obviously
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  you're not losing consciousness like, you know, completely losing, you know, literal consciousness.
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  It's that you're, it's that you're not here. The executive function in the brain, the higher mind
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  has just, just, just been totally clouded out with fog in that moment and just left the building or
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  and so, so, so yeah, so I think I think there's, there's that state. Then there's a state when you
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  know you're in the fog, you know, or you know, the primitive mind is fighting against you. You're
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  aware, you know, when I procrastinating, I'm often thinking to myself, I'm doing this thing.
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  I am, I'm researching way too long. I'm not writing right now. I should be writing. This is not
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  logical. This does not make sense. And so I'm aware that I'm doing it and I still don't have the
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  willpower. You know, just a lot of times when we're eating badly, it's not that we lose consciousness
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  and we realize later, oh my god, fries are bad for you. What do I do? We knew at the time and we had
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  an internal struggle and the primitive mind just won, like literally just was stronger, the stronger
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  character. And then there's the times when the primitive mind is very, we're in control of it.
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  It's like a pet. It's on the leash and we're controlling the leash and we can give it a little snack
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  but then we stop and we all have these moments. Some of us have, you know, our better out of
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  the others, but when we're just being a grown-up and we're very in control and for most of us,
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  I think we can look at parts of our lives where we are really good at controlling the primitive mind.
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  You know, some of us just never drink a soda when it's available even though we would like to,
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  we just don't have that problem. But then we have this different problem. So most of us,
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  I would say, have the places that our primitive mind struggles are very.
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  It's interesting because as you're saying that I'm realizing that yes, sometimes my higher mind
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  is in control of my primitive mind. But more frequently, my higher mind thinks it's in control
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  of my primitive mind, but it's actually the primitive mind that's operating behind the scenes.
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  So, you know, like I don't drink anymore, but when I drank, I wasn't an alcoholic, I would say,
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  but I drank more than I, more than was healthy and more than I was in full control of.
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  And what would often happen would be, like, I probably shouldn't drink in this situation.
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  I'm going to have to work later on the afternoon, but we're at lunch, other people are drinking.
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  Our mind will just have a beer. Now, that thought process feels like my higher mind.
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  Like it feels like there's no harm in having a couple of beers here and it's not going to be
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  that bad in the long run because I know that I'll still be able to work. But I now regard that as
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  being a counterfeit higher mind and the primitive mind actually just camouflaging itself as reasons.
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  When in reality, my lizard brain or reptile brain just wanted alcohol.
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  But how about the times when you want alcohol or you want to have a dessert badly?
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  You desperately want it and you say, no, no, I'm not going to do that. And you resist.
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  I think that one of the common things in the literature today is this idea
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  that the primitive mind is always running the show and that the kind of the higher mind type
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  type part of our brain is always just the illusion of control, right?
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  And so that's kind of what you're saying.
• 24:50
  At least more frequently than we then we then we realize.
• 24:52
  Oh, for sure, for sure, more frequent.
• 24:54
  Does that make sense?
• 24:55
  Does that make sense? It's almost a definition or like linguistic question.
• 25:00
  I mean, it's almost semantics. You say like, what about those occasions when you really,
• 25:04
  really want the chocolate, but you decide not to? I mean, I would sort of argue like the fact
• 25:09
  that you decided not to meant that I didn't really want it. Like if I really wanted it, then
• 25:13
  you know, if my primitive mind really wanted it, it would find a way to cajole my higher mind
• 25:17
  into finding rationalization to have it. And the occasions on which I don't have the
• 25:22
  chocolate that I know I shouldn't have are occasions when my primitive mind just didn't
• 25:26
  seek it so much.
• 25:28
  Well, you can also, yeah, you can argue like there are times when you want the chocolate,
• 25:32
  but you also are vain and don't want to be fat and your primitive mind cares about both of those
• 25:36
  things. Maybe your primitive mind is actually, you know, saying, you know, yes, okay,
• 25:40
  for several reasons, I agree, let's not have the chocolate. But I do think there are times
• 25:44
  when because the thing about the primitive mind is it can't think long term and that's the problem.
• 25:48
  You know, it's it's when you have to sometimes the dopamine hit that you would get from working
• 25:54
  hard, you know, the dopamine hit you would get in a month from the reward that would come then
• 26:01
  is unbelievable. And the primitive mind would want that if it knew it was there, but it can't see
• 26:05
  a month ahead. So it can't. So it will never, it'll always want to just do what's fun that minute
• 26:10
  or that hour because it's too far away for the primitive mind to get excited about. And I think
• 26:15
  that there are really there are times when that that you are making a decision that every part of
• 26:20
  your short term instant gratification brain hates the decision. And you make the decision anyway,
• 26:28
  you make a very grown up decision that goes against everything your primitive mind wants because
• 26:32
  it makes sense in the long term. I do think that is an example of, you know, the the higher mind saying,
• 26:38
  you know, overpowering the primitive mind saying, no, you are, you know, acting like a parent in
• 26:43
  charge and saying, right, no, I know you want it. Yeah, the answer is no. And so to me,
• 26:51
  I think it's a sliding scale. I think that when we are in a, I think of it as a vertical ladder,
• 26:55
  you know, with four rungs is kind of high thing. When we're down in the lower rungs,
• 26:59
  yeah, we're in the fog and the primitive mind is running the show and we often can't see that
• 27:03
  it's even happening. And even when we can, we can't overpower it. And even when we think we have
• 27:06
  control, it's an illusion. And it's really the primitive mind is still running the show. But I do
• 27:10
  think there's a higher part of the ladder that humans can be on, which makes us unbelievable
• 27:14
  creatures. This is part of why we can build such an amazing civilization is that I think we have
• 27:20
  this incredible ability that other animals don't have to truly like really override our primitive
• 27:26
  brain at times. We're not good at it. It's very hard. We're not good at it. And we fail probably
• 27:31
  more often than we succeed. But I do think we can succeed at it. And it sounds like it sounds like
• 27:39
  you are somewhat not on the bandwagon that seems to be popular at the moment, which is,
• 27:46
  I suppose there's a kind of consensus among very smart people with capital S, capital P,
• 27:51
  especially in Silicon Valley, that free will is an illusion that we are ultimately just kind of
• 27:58
  constantly making post-hoc rationalizations for everything and that we are driven by our passions
• 28:05
  as much as anything. Do you think that's that's thinking fast and slow Daniel Kahneman? I know
• 28:09
  that's kind of a bible and so looking valley. And I think the truth is I'm not so I'm not you know
• 28:14
  actually I think Danny Kahneman's closer to what you're saying, which is that there is a slow
• 28:19
  mode and there is a fast mode and you can toggle between the two. I guess I'm talking about
• 28:23
  there being a bias in Silicon Valley that goes even further than that and says there actually
• 28:27
  is no escape from the the elephant. Yeah, you know, I look I'm not going to you know I haven't
• 28:32
  done hard research on this. I've read a ton of research on it and and the fact that the research
• 28:36
  is conflicting a lot of the time makes me feel confident that I can you know sometimes when I have
• 28:41
  an intuition and it's based on my own experience then I'll test it with research and if the research
• 28:46
  all says something else then I will usually say okay this is one of those times an intuition is
• 28:50
  just wrong which is very common but sometimes that the research is all over the place and some of it
• 28:55
  you know some great thinkers seem to agree with my intuition and others don't. Then I start to
• 29:00
  say okay you know what then I'm going to run with my intuition here because it seems like we don't
• 29:02
  know either way and so my intuition seems as good a place to anchor to is anywhere and to me
• 29:08
  I think it's regardless of what's actually going on in the brain. I think it's more useful
• 29:13
  if we're trying to self-improve and understand our own behavior. I think it's more useful to think
• 29:18
  of it as a sliding scale that that that that go that that ranges from the different mindsets and
• 29:24
  art we can be in a headspace up at the top of the ladder at times when we we do have some kind of
• 29:30
  will over our actions and and can make decisions that conflict with our nature and can do
• 29:34
  things that our rational brain knows is correct and then other times when when when that's not true
• 29:39
  so I've read it all I've read those things and I it's to me it's yet to click yet to click this
• 29:45
  concept that that that there's that the primitive mind is always the one in charge because I think
• 29:50
  the primitive mind is quite dumb and yeah well Tim let's assume there's this ladder let's
• 29:58
  take your your worldview as a as a given or your view of humanity as a given and there's this
• 30:03
  ladder on the bottom the the primitive mind is in charge and at the top we're in some kind of a
• 30:07
  state where the higher mind is in in charge where does the ladder come from like why are people
• 30:13
  why are why are homo sapiens in possession of this higher mind or consciousness you know
• 30:19
  way that most other mammals don't seem to be you know I don't know I mean the physiological
• 30:25
  definition I think is would be that we have a very very impressive neocortex that is you know
• 30:32
  the the part of the brain where more this kind of more a long term thinking big picture thinking
• 30:39
  you know you know visualizing the future and it's not just that I think it's elected for by
• 30:46
  natural selection yeah I think so I think I think that it's a quint you know I don't think it
• 30:51
  yeah I think it happened to happen that way and it's obviously not a very common thing because
• 30:57
  it's very very it's it's humans are the only species who have gotten to this place
• 31:03
  at least out of those alive I don't know about the other humans but
• 31:09
  and and so we uh so I you know I couldn't tell you exactly why but if the if fact is it it
• 31:17
  happened and so we have this um this executive function this this it's this ability to know to
• 31:24
  really make long term plans and to just to understand that they're to see the long term picture
• 31:29
  and be able to kind of not only understand that certain behavior will should make sense now to
• 31:36
  prepare for later or to plan something for later but to actually act on that in the face of our
• 31:41
  primitive instincts and override that and do you know hard work that seems to make no sense for any
• 31:47
  immediate thing to our primitive mind because our higher mind makes so to me that is incredible and
• 31:51
  that's you know it's it's a it's a combination of the two because you have those abilities now
• 31:55
  combined with the same exact kind of selfish you know primitive animal that wants to uh that wants
• 32:03
  to acquire resources and reproduce and be safe and conserve energy and so when you you know a system
• 32:09
  like a you know the kind of the the thing with you know a capitalist system is you can harness
• 32:16
  the primitive mind but instead of having it run wild you can actually build a system where primitive
• 32:21
  minds running wild turns into productivity turns into progress um uh so it's not that you know it's
• 32:28
  not that our civilization was built by a bunch of higher minds no there it was built by mostly primitive
• 32:33
  minds but there were there were some very smart higher minds along the way that were able to kind of
• 32:38
  um construct a system that uh that that that harness the primitive mind and then you know and then
• 32:46
  there's enough higher mind going on in the individuals to to to control their primitive minds instincts
• 32:52
  to just go for immediate gratification and and kind of force some long term uh long term development
• 32:58
  of projects and ideas in it so it's some kind of dance between the two yeah that has created this
• 33:02
  incredible civilization but it's also it means that we're not so great at living in it either
• 33:06
  because it's really out of our we're out of our element well it's so new as I mean it what it
• 33:10
  it measures me is how sort of non-linear the the like the advance of our species is in comparison
• 33:17
  to others it maybe it's just my bias but I don't think it is like we've clearly transformed the
• 33:22
  world and like going to the moon and stuff like that is something that is of a different magnitude
• 33:25
  than the difference between dogs and cats or rats and and mice even though we're equally close
• 33:30
  to chimps as you know or closer than those animals are to each other we are clearly doing something
• 33:35
  we're up to something different than chimps are and maybe that's a combination of discovering fire
• 33:41
  and just having the right tongues so that we can talk to each other and make plans and hold
• 33:45
  each other to account and have conversations like this one but it's there seems to be some sort of
• 33:49
  tipping point that you know religious people would regard as being the injection of a soul and I'm
• 33:53
  not and as a secular person I'm not quite I'm never quite sure what to make of that that disjoint
• 33:59
  well I think if you if you took a human baby and you you know raise them in the woods with no
• 34:08
  knowledge or anything I don't think they'd even be able to make a decent spear you know let alone
• 34:11
  fire let alone make an iPhone right like right and so and I think probably if you went back
• 34:19
  I don't know 50,000 years 100,000 years and and you you know an alien we're observing
• 34:26
  uh life here they they might notice that something is special about these humans but I'm not sure
• 34:33
  it would seem that special I think that the the actual human individual human and the individual
• 34:37
  chimps aren't that different aren't nearly as different as we think they are right um the thing
• 34:42
  that is it's it's it's the ability to yes language like you said and the ability to um accumulate
• 34:51
  knowledge so one person think about you know navigating the stars you know navigating using the
• 34:56
  stars uh one person discovered something about the weird about the north star at some point uh and
• 35:04
  and that was obviously a very smart early human and who had time and and maybe got lucky a little
• 35:09
  bit um but then you know or or you know another human ate a berry and it made them sick um they
• 35:16
  can now teach their kids about you know navigating using the north star and um and not eating this
• 35:24
  berry and then the next generation uh you know maybe maybe 10 generations just just retain that info
• 35:31
  but maybe at the 11th there's one person who figures out something new about the north star and how
• 35:35
  actually it can show you latitude based on how high it is in the sky um but also it can show you
• 35:41
  um you know there's ways to you know understand which is ways east and west but also latitude okay
• 35:46
  and then someone else discovers you know something new with um something kind of a crop and you can
• 35:50
  just see how what I think of it is a knowledge tower is that every individual humans you know knowledge
• 35:56
  that tribe can develop a knowledge tie a tower like a pile in the middle of their camp next you
• 36:01
  know there's the campfire and then there's this pile of knowledge and that knowledge can grow and grow
• 36:04
  and grow and grow and that tribe over time can become um way smarter as a as a group than any individual
• 36:12
  human because that because that knowledge tower can now be installed into everyone's brain upon
• 36:17
  birth and they can that's their starting point now they can develop upon that and eventually
• 36:22
  you start having the agriculture revolution you have the tribes moving in together and now
• 36:26
  there can compare notes amongst thousands of people and now that they all the knowledge pile you
• 36:31
  know piles can can move together and then eventually you start writing and now you have even more
• 36:35
  you know better at retaining these things uh and you can go from there and soon you have a tower that
• 36:40
  is like the largest skyscraper in the world of knowledge and when you have someone like Einstein
• 36:44
  he's born on top of that tower so he's he's born he's he first can go and learn all the things he
• 36:50
  needs to learn from that tower and then develop uh and then from there can spring the theory of
• 36:54
  relativity um where there's no way he's coming up with that on his own not even close right so it's
• 37:00
  this is apes can't do this they can't there's there's there's nothing uh a tribe of apes a tribe of
• 37:07
  chimps knows that a hundred generations ago one of them figured out i mean maybe i don't know i don't
• 37:13
  know sometimes there's certain things that can be passed along and but very very low res
• 37:17
  very vague information very you know there's there's no you know you can stick to get the ants out
• 37:22
  of a tree or something yeah the complexity of the info they can be passed on the learnings
• 37:27
  that can then accumulate and build and i call this thing the human colossus it's this this vast
• 37:33
  power of knowledge that that we that's this whole species now has and that of course now you get
• 37:39
  to the modern times you have you know right you have uh the printing press and then you've got um the
• 37:43
  you know eventually you get to the internet you know and and um and it's just this this tower is
• 37:49
  so vast and so we are just primate species but we have unbelievable superpowers not because we are
• 37:57
  orders of magnitude smarter than an ape another another ape but because because we can
• 38:04
  our knowledge can accumulate and i guess writing comes in there because as you're talking i'm
• 38:09
  thinking about like the oldest continuous civilizations in the world uh the first nations
• 38:14
  here in Australia and they've been around for whatever you know i mean it keeps moving but 60
• 38:18
  80 hundred thousand years something like that but without writing and they find a form of
• 38:22
  stasis they find a sustainable way of existing uh but they don't require increasing expansion they're
• 38:29
  not averageous they kind of just they're just rocking along for tens of thousands of tens of thousands
• 38:35
  of tens of thousands of years and maybe maybe writing is maybe writing stuff down it makes the
• 38:40
  difference between that stasis and the kind of explosion that happens elsewhere on the planet well
• 38:46
  think about hard drives like um the the original hard drive uh for humans uh collecting knowledge
• 38:54
  was brains it was stored is you know stored in uh and backed up in a bunch of brains and that's
• 39:00
  lossy and there's a limit on how much information can be collected um and it requires a lot of you
• 39:07
  know you know telling the stories and telling explaining things you know it's just it's it's
• 39:12
  it's it's it's it's still incredible technology if you compare it to what else is around unbelievably
• 39:17
  magical technology but when you start writing now i can store info on on a piece of paper that's
• 39:23
  incredible i can store it from a piece of paper in that paper when we when we having you know you
• 39:28
  know so that paper can be handed around and i don't have to be there so now instead of having to come
• 39:31
  out of my mouth that one piece of paper can travel and anyone who sees it it's as if i'm they're
• 39:37
  telling it to them and then they can travel after i'm dead that piece of paper can still continue
• 39:41
  telling the message that paper contains that info forever now you get to the printing press
• 39:46
  and i can just say something or i can have an idea and it can be printed and now it can be copied
• 39:51
  into thousand different versions and those can all go out and that it's like as if i'm in a thousand
• 39:56
  different rooms at once explaining this to a thousand people at once you can just see the exponential
• 40:01
  effects of this uh and then of course don't you know forget about it when we get to tv and the internet
• 40:06
  i mean it's just it's just it's just it's it's crazy exponential effects you see having which is
• 40:11
  why you're talking about non-linear this is not linear stuff going on this is you know that the
• 40:16
  real world you know nature is pretty linear you know that's why we're not good at understanding
• 40:22
  compound growth because it's actually really counterintuitive there's not much compound growth that
• 40:27
  goes on uh for if we're a group of chimps um and and uh but the but the way our brains are these
• 40:35
  accumulation has created a ton of different kinds of exponential curves and um and and the effects
• 40:41
  are crazy and it doesn't mean that just because we can make these exponential curves doesn't mean
• 40:46
  we know what to do with them or we're good at them or it's not going to be a disaster for us it
• 40:49
  might be or it might be great but um that there it's just it just it's it is a fact that a
• 40:54
  much of primates thinking linearly have created a world of exponential curves for better
• 40:59
  worse and that's just what's going on it's unbelievable and you mentioned if aliens came down to
• 41:04
  earth and they looked at uh a civilization well if they looked at human beings without civilization
• 41:09
  without the benefit of passing down all that knowledge that you're talking about since you
• 41:13
  mentioned aliens let's talk about alien life one of your most popular posts is about the Fermi
• 41:18
  paradox and the question of where is everybody in the universe why aren't we why aren't we
• 41:23
  looking at a cosmos that's teaming with intelligent life why aren't we yeah so the uh i
• 41:30
  i bet this is one where i just read as much as i could i read anyone who any scientist who had
• 41:35
  an opinion who had written a paper about it um and they're fascinating fascinating explanations
• 41:43
  potential explanations you know no one is claiming to know i mean no one who that takes
• 41:47
  seriously but they they there's all these in fascinating hypotheses and i tried to make sense of
• 41:53
  this is this is again you ask me what i do well for something like this i will read all the hypotheses
• 41:57
  but just listing them out okay that's some kind of like interesting service i can provide to people but
• 42:02
  what's more interesting is what's is there a pattern here is there is there and what i discovered
• 42:08
  kind of analyzing these different hypotheses is there are two broad camps um of of researchers
• 42:16
  and philosophers on this topic and camp one says so the paradox which everyone agrees on is
• 42:23
  you know why do we look up in the night sky it's vast why do we see no evidence of other life
• 42:32
  it doesn't make sense and evidence could be a lot of things we're pretty good these days at looking
• 42:37
  at you know we can understand we can see the the makeup of the atmosphere of exoplanets by looking
• 42:42
  at the kind of lightweight lengths that they give off you know so we can understand if there's
• 42:46
  oh there's certain percentage of of oxygen and nitrogen that you know and and other gases that
• 42:52
  might that that would save this they think there's life on that planet um you know we also can take
• 42:58
  we have rovers on Mars they can look at the finest particles there and you know look for signs
• 43:02
  we we have some interest in yet nothing no evidence and of course the the other the other part of
• 43:07
  the paradox is that um we so if the uh we our earth life earth in general earth in the sun
• 43:17
  if the if the big bang started at the beginning of the baseball game the our earth our solar system
• 43:23
  was born in about the seventh inning and you're talking to someone who has no idea about
• 43:28
  based okay sorry i was i was i forgot i'm right okay you know you know i take five days so i have no
• 43:33
  idea i got a single match of cricket can take five days so yes sorry um so uh okay so so
• 43:40
  you're about football right right no let let let me actually let me actually just think for a second
• 43:45
  here so we have like um we so our our our sun is about five billion years old right as around that
• 43:51
  right and same with our earth and you know in the ballpark and um and the you go with the ballpark
• 43:58
  happened 13 billion years ago and so even if you say you know you know okay even if maybe oh
• 44:03
  there were reasons that you know the things were too hectic for a bunch of those billions for any
• 44:07
  life anywhere to develop and okay but even if just say you know our solar system was around five
• 44:14
  billion years ago just say one was around 5.1 billion years ago okay 100 million year difference
• 44:21
  and say that it was on a similar timeline to ours you know it took about the same amount of time
• 44:26
  to develop life and about the same amount of time to develop intelligent life they are a hundred
• 44:31
  million years ahead we're talking about non-linear here you think about how much progress has happened
• 44:35
  for humans in in 50,000 years in in in really in 10,000 years yeah but just say you just go like
• 44:41
  a hundred thousand years right we've gone from a bunch of not even fully cognitive cognitively
• 44:46
  developed primates to what we have today in in under a hundred thousand years now we're talking
• 44:52
  about a hundred million so if humans somehow could stick around and we don't extinct ourselves what
• 44:57
  could happen in a hundred million years that is a that is a a thousand times the length of our whole
• 45:05
  species so far so if if there should be species out there that's happened to just start earlier
• 45:12
  and they are so advanced right now that they're doing things like they have a you know what type
• 45:18
  of the size is a Dyson sphere where they they actually can cover their whole star with a certain kind
• 45:24
  of you know sphere that collects all of the stars energy and siphons it into the for those species
• 45:31
  to use you know so this vast amount of energy you talk about like the ultimate kind of energy source
• 45:35
  we we we siphoned this tiniest amount of sun who needs new energy when you've got a nuclear reactor
• 45:41
  in the sky yeah yeah well so well so so he's just talking about trying to capture the sunlight that
• 45:47
  happens to fall on our tiny little planet and we we know we capture only a tiny fraction of that
• 45:52
  but a Dyson sphere captures all of the energy that's going out from all directions of the star at
• 45:57
  all times right so this is the kind of you know this is the kind of thing that seems crazy to us but
• 46:01
  a species a hundred million years ahead that should be child's play for it right and even if that's
• 46:06
  a rare thing to do someone probably is doing it out there if there's a lot of species we would see
• 46:11
  evidence of stuff like that if there were if there's there's actually you know a species advanced
• 46:17
  enough we would be able to that they'd be making such a major impact out there that we would see
• 46:22
  some weird evidence we hear some some signals of some kind anyways I mean even if they were only
• 46:27
  as sophisticated as us a long time ago we would still presumably see evidence of a civilization
• 46:32
  like us maybe maybe it's yes it's the signals that we send out might be too weak or maybe they're
• 46:38
  maybe those signals are but yes you're right even something like us we're not out of the realm
• 46:42
  of possibility of of of being able to be detected and again look how much has happened in the last
• 46:47
  200 years since the industrial revolution since the power went on for the first time just give
• 46:53
  200 years from now so just add just give that species 200 extra years and they should have crazy
• 46:59
  broadcasting abilities out into space so the paradox is what the hell right and so now there's
• 47:05
  what I realized looking at the hypothesis there's two camps the first says
• 47:10
  there's there we don't see any evidence of super intelligent of intelligent life out there
• 47:17
  because there is no intelligent life out there the second camp says of course there's intelligent life
• 47:23
  out there we there there's there's we don't see evidence of it for many other potential reasons
• 47:28
  there's a lot of reasons that we could be out there but we wouldn't see it and and I find really
• 47:34
  smart people in both camps the instinct most people have is to be in the second camp most people
• 47:38
  say of course there's life out there other life and other intelligent life and anyone who says
• 47:42
  there's not is being you know oh you're thinking oh just because we haven't seen it we're the only
• 47:46
  one but actually there's really smart people who say that we might be the only one so I'll start here
• 47:53
  with the second camp because it's more intuitive what if assuming their the second camp assumes
• 47:58
  there is life out there intelligent life and that that and that we're of course not the only one
• 48:03
  and so why wouldn't we have seen it and so there there's all kinds of hypotheses one is
• 48:08
  you know we we're listening for the wrong signals like we are listening for like radio
• 48:15
  signals stuff which is like a little like having a walkie-talkie today walking around turning it
• 48:19
  on hearing no one on it anywhere and saying that I guess there's no people around there's no
• 48:22
  people on this planet yeah but no one's using walkie-talkies right so there could be that no one
• 48:26
  who has the capability of broadcasting really far and you know really strongly is using any kind
• 48:31
  of signals that we're using I mean we're not using broadcast anymore in a hundred years we
• 48:35
  won't be using broadcast exactly exactly and and and we don't even know to begin to understand
• 48:41
  the way it's like you know if you asked someone from the 1300s how future people might broadcast
• 48:46
  they're not even going to be in the ballpark of what we actually do because it's just so far
• 48:50
  and so whatever they do might be carrying things around and yeah exactly not for the carrier pigeon
• 48:56
  right they might be in you know in some crazy quantum dimension broadcasting through dark matter
• 49:01
  and it's some you know is again I'm using human words that you know we have no idea okay so
• 49:07
  that then there's okay well maybe they're out there and their species that are for for
• 49:14
  species that are far more intelligent than we are we are like little you know animals maybe
• 49:22
  we're rodents maybe we're ants in terms of intelligence and they know all about us of course and
• 49:27
  we're in some vast protected national park because of course you never reveal yourself to primitive
• 49:32
  species this is the Star Trek thing you know and you never reveal yourself and they have easy ways
• 49:36
  of concealing themselves from us because we're simple creatures we're ants or something is no
• 49:40
  you know very easy to to do that and they don't want us to because they know we'd freak out
• 49:44
  and they're very altruistic and they understand you know they they want us to develop naturally
• 49:48
  and and and and and and and and and and even if they wanted to talk to us or even if they
• 49:53
  didn't care about us they wouldn't bother you know and this is an example I think Michio Kako gives
• 49:59
  if if you arrived at an island you know if if if you know when he says Pizarro arrived in South
• 50:05
  America and did he you know get on land and start walking through the forest and he sees an
• 50:09
  ant hill and he says ah life and he gets down in his knees and he says ants you know I I'm here
• 50:14
  in peace show me your leader you know bring me to your whatever no he walks by the ant hill and
• 50:18
  ignores it so there might be some giant super highway going by us and obviously no one's stopping
• 50:21
  to talk to the primates on this planet that is a well below them right I like the idea that the
• 50:26
  whole cosmos is just is just manufactured for us and that at some point the voyage of spacecraft
• 50:31
  is just going to crash into a like a Truman show style wall on which I painted lots of stars and
• 50:36
  beyond it is something that's another one that we might be in a simulation and the simulators might
• 50:41
  have just created one species and some basic bits universe that they put out there they say okay
• 50:46
  yeah just like throw out you know throw a universe in there that's a standard and there's the
• 50:50
  no they're not putting other life in there because it's literally just they're testing they're
• 50:53
  they're looking they're they're testing a million primate civilizations and we're one of them
• 50:57
  and they just throw a universe out there and they didn't bother putting other life in there in
• 51:00
  which case that's a little bit kind of in a way fun because then we get to be kind of like that's
• 51:04
  like we get to be you know religious people who believe that we are the only life and there's a
• 51:10
  creator that is looking at us and cares about us and maybe that's true that could be true we could
• 51:14
  be the creation of a creator and we are the only life in it and then it's looking at us and you
• 51:21
  know but so so that's but that but that doesn't but that wouldn't mean there's no other life it
• 51:24
  means that there's no other life in this universe and we're we're a simulation universe that has
• 51:29
  other ideas or computer program yeah all right then there's some the scary ones you know there's the
• 51:36
  um there's the idea that there's one super predator species that got their first the whoever
• 51:42
  we've got their super intelligence first was able to easily survey their rest of the galaxy their
• 51:47
  rest of the you know their observable universe and they know about us they they're very clear on
• 51:54
  the other kind of simple species being developed and most of them kill themselves off and if anyone
• 51:58
  gets too too fancy and they start colonizing other planets maybe or maybe they start they get to
• 52:03
  a certain level that seems threatening okay then they just go wipe it out it's pretty easy for them
• 52:08
  and so we haven't gotten there yet and if we get to a certain level the wipe us out of if we're
• 52:12
  any kind of threat or there's another scary thing the dark forest um which is a term from the
• 52:18
  trilogy uh the three-body problem trilogy which is the best sci-fi trilogy ever um and it basically
• 52:23
  says a picture or dark forest you know with um all these kind of you know you know the little
• 52:30
  tribes camping out uh in different little parts and um and there's thousands of them
• 52:36
  but it's they don't know what the other ones are and they're all hiding you know and then someone
• 52:40
  is dumb enough to light a fire and um and you know broadcast their location to all the others
• 52:46
  even if 99% of the others would say oh well there's someone else they're not going to do anything
• 52:51
  about it and they have no ill will all takes is one to just have this philosophy that oh you know
• 52:57
  kick you know that could be a threat out there kill it and and wipe us out so anyone who
• 53:03
  if you know that anyone who that the basically the more advanced species we don't see evidence
• 53:07
  to them because none of them are dumb enough to broadcast their location it's become it's an
• 53:11
  extremely dangerous thing to do maybe and we just have an oxygen world of uh of fear yes
• 53:17
  a cosmic sociology right you know the cosmic socially but the point is you don't need them all to
• 53:22
  be that way it could just be a rare one percent of species are like that and you know in in the
• 53:28
  super advanced species world and we don't even have the tools to broadcast far enough yet but if
• 53:33
  we develop them and we did it now all it takes is one species out there who has the that instinct
• 53:39
  and we're right and anywhere they don't don't don't thrash around because even though it's a
• 53:44
  nice the great wide and all the species who could be you know broadcasting their they have the
• 53:48
  power to show themselves none of them are dumb enough to do so right that's a little scary there's
• 53:53
  a lot of these you know there's there's I listed 10 of them you know one is legitimately that we
• 53:57
  have seen evidence in the government's hiding it when I wrote the post I actually disregarded
• 54:00
  that is like an idiot thing but honestly I I'm humbled up today and I don't know I don't know
• 54:05
  how would I know it could be exactly the kind of thing that that government covers up because
• 54:09
  they know it could produce mass chaos I mean look it can the the arrival of of alien aircraft on
• 54:15
  out planet could be covered up but you can't cover up the kind of dyson sphere type civilization
• 54:20
  that's in the sky because anyone can look at it true yes that's that's true I don't think this one
• 54:25
  is plausible but you know it's it's in there as a potential way so the so anyway this is the kind
• 54:30
  of stuff that you get into with camp two camp two is you know they say you know that's this is
• 54:36
  what's happening now camp one notes first of all that if that you have to acknowledge that there
• 54:42
  is a possibility that we're alone because why you know of course there's a possibility even if
• 54:46
  it's unlikely and if that were true we would assume we were not we would assume it's of course
• 54:52
  if there were just one species in it in a universe you know once it got to a certain level of kind
• 54:57
  of logic it would assume of course there's a lot of else out there and they'd be wrong so like we
• 55:02
  could be wrong and and so those people they they worry that there's something called a great filter
• 55:11
  which is a Robin Hansen term yeah and and it's this concept that may be the way things are when
• 55:21
  species get to a certain level or there's something along the way that that wipes out basically
• 55:29
  every species who tries to cross that point in in in advancement and it's just too smart for
• 55:35
  itself well that's one but it could go go back earlier it might be that the great filter is the
• 55:40
  creation is the the first life itself we have no idea if that's something that just naturally
• 55:45
  would happen you know you have a planet with water in the right kind of chemicals and just you
• 55:50
  know that's something that happens a third of the time or half the time or 99% of the time or
• 55:54
  even 1% of the time which is a lot or maybe it's a complete and utter freak incident that is
• 56:01
  that is so mind-bogglingly miraculous that like we can't even conceive of it and that could
• 56:07
  happen that could be true and that's the great filter no other planet just gets life in the first
• 56:11
  place except just to pause on that one for a second Tim I mean the size of the cosmos is so far
• 56:16
  beyond what most people can conceive with trillions of stars that even if life only emerged out
• 56:23
  primordial soup every zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent of the time the
• 56:30
  universe would still be teaming with life wouldn't yes but think about it this way what if
• 56:37
  if you have a cosmos with like literally trillions of planets there's something that happens
• 56:44
  from time to time that is truly a one in a trillion a one in a one in a quintillion
• 56:50
  incident they're all right the cosmos is big enough one in a quintillion things that have a one
• 56:56
  in a quintillion chance will happen right somewhere here and there and so there's some stuff going
• 57:02
  on in the cosmos that was such a freak thing that it has happened only once that's for sure
• 57:07
  and the question is is life one of those it seems unlikely but you but you can't rule it out
• 57:13
  and also we don't because we don't know if we could replicate it if we understood how life started
• 57:17
  how life can spontaneously start that would be a huge clue but we don't have that yet now another
• 57:22
  kind of a lab count don't they put put gases in high pressure things and like little things just
• 57:28
  stop wiggling no I don't think they have not I don't think you know it has generated from nothing I
• 57:34
  don't think we've ever done that but that's just the compounds just the compounds of life
• 57:41
  right it's um yeah yeah we don't know that we don't know how it could have happened because you have
• 57:48
  to have the first thing has to have kind of like some kind of DNA like the replicable particle
• 57:52
  yeah I think it's up with RNA breaking up but yeah yeah but even the okay yeah so anyway so
• 57:59
  then you get to just say okay no life isn't the thing isn't the great filter that's happened in
• 58:03
  many places this very primordial single cell life now the one other candidate is the jump from
• 58:13
  simple cell to complex cell with a nucleus there's with as far as we know that is that that
• 58:19
  has only happened you know once you know that that happened once and we don't we don't we don't
• 58:24
  know anymore times than that on this planet so if it happened only once we can't rule out that
• 58:28
  it's outrageously rare it might again it might be or it might not but we don't really know how
• 58:33
  a simple cell organism mutates into a complex cell now single cell to multi-cell that's not a
• 58:40
  candidate going from saying oh you know maybe where the maybe there's lots of single cell planets
• 58:45
  out there but but we're the only one where the freak incident of multi-cell organisms started that's
• 58:50
  not true because it's happened over 70 times in isolation on this planet alone it's it's it's
• 58:55
  clearly very common and don't we also know that some of these extremophiles that live in volcanoes
• 59:00
  at the bottom of the ocean are a different life source than ours I can't I don't know how far
• 59:06
  back that goes I actually don't think we know that I think I think it would be it's so I thought
• 59:10
  about this before that if we could get evidence that there's something on the there's some life
• 59:14
  on the planet that doesn't share a common ancestor with the other life of the rest of us it's an
• 59:19
  alien species on earth because what they were I thought they were but I
• 59:24
  you know if it is I missed that I don't know but um that would be look if there's an alien species
• 59:30
  on earth you know if that would mean that would rule out the starting of life because it would
• 59:35
  mean it happened twice here so as far as I know we haven't discovered that yet or it's just
• 59:39
  not hypothesis but maybe maybe I'm wrong and then I've also heard maybe you know the jump from
• 59:44
  the jump to human level intelligence once you have animals is rare but it just intuitively
• 59:49
  seems crazy to me because it seems like you know chimps aren't that far away like it's like some
• 59:53
  point it was gonna happen but maybe it's just such an evolutionary bad idea to use so much energy
• 59:58
  on the brain and so unusually like such but maybe that's a very rare thing to get to this level
• 1:00:03
  but I don't know now the if there's a great filter there's three possibilities because we're here
• 1:00:10
  so I call it we're rare we're first or we're fucked so we're rare means there's a great filter
• 1:00:17
  behind us maybe it was going to complex cell from simple cell and we are the once the one
• 1:00:23
  place or one of the very few places where it happened we crossed the great filter we are the
• 1:00:28
  the freak thing that crossed the great filter uh that's we're rare we're first means no there's no
• 1:00:35
  we don't know if there's a great filter it could be ahead of us or maybe there's none but we
• 1:00:38
  it just at life the conditions in the universe weren't such that life could start until recently uh
• 1:00:44
  you know and we are actually the first we're first or very much among the first to get to this
• 1:00:49
  level so there will be a lot more but they're just not here yet and we happen to be ahead of the game
• 1:00:54
  which is which will be great I would love that the first two are both great if we pass the great
• 1:00:57
  filter or if we're not sure there is one but we're just ahead of everyone those are both great
• 1:01:01
  the bad one is the third one we're fucked and that one is that there's a great filter
• 1:01:06
  and it's ahead of us there's a lot of species out there who get to our level
• 1:01:10
  um and then we our primitive minds you know we develop social media and we develop nation states
• 1:01:17
  and there's and and there's you know mass scale racism and other things uh and uh and there's
• 1:01:23
  ends up being you know uh but enough weapons uh you could have biological weapons that suddenly
• 1:01:28
  you know any any uh crazy person could make and the weapons get so scary so much we have so much
• 1:01:36
  power as a species that just all it takes is just 0.01 percent of people crazy enough to want to
• 1:01:41
  you know do the ultimate mass shooting and and take down the whole country or whole species and they
• 1:01:45
  can do that and once you have that tech it's only a matter of time before the whole thing is
• 1:01:49
  goes back to the stone age or is uh totally extinct and so that would be unfortunate that would
• 1:01:54
  mean that we are in big trouble and we are about to have the fate that many others have run into and
• 1:01:58
  maybe it's in the next hundred years maybe it's in the next five thousand years you know maybe
• 1:02:03
  it's AI that gets to a certain level and who knows but these people are a bit grim now I
• 1:02:09
  I was in camp to myself because just because intuitively again you know okay I acknowledge that camp
• 1:02:14
  one isn't technically wrong but it just seems crazy you know what's one of the chances I wouldn't
• 1:02:20
  bet on until I read a paper pretty recently by um Anders Sandberg and um and uh Drexler and a
• 1:02:27
  couple others um and it is a paper that um that is as a camp one paper and it basically ran the
• 1:02:36
  semi so there's giving you a very long answer to your question because I like this topic but
• 1:02:41
  anyway I'm almost done it's great no no yeah so there's something called the Drake equation which
• 1:02:45
  is how we kind of calculate the odds of uh it's it's the way to calculate the estimated number of
• 1:02:52
  species in the galaxy alone the Milky Way just as a as a number actually envelope simple thing
• 1:03:00
  do you want to explain what the sure it's just a multiplying a bunch of variables so it is what's
• 1:03:08
  the probability of life developing well first of all no it starts off with what you know uh how many
• 1:03:16
  habitable planets are there in the galaxy so we actually have a decent estimate of that um you
• 1:03:23
  know it doesn't have to be quite like earth but it's in the habitable zone around a play a star
• 1:03:28
  that could be you know a habitable place you start with that number and now you multiply that
• 1:03:35
  by the probability of life beginning you know over any long period of time on
• 1:03:42
  a habitable planet so this is when you get to wild estimates you could say 1% you could say
• 1:03:49
  1% of 1% you could say 50% so there's a range usually that you know it's like anywhere from this
• 1:03:57
  to this then you multiply that so that number brings obviously you have the number of habitable
• 1:04:01
  planets x now you're down to a tiny fraction of x right because it's the the ones that develop life
• 1:04:05
  now we have this many instances of that now how many of those get to um you know uh
• 1:04:12
  multicellular life and you know you multiply it again and how many of those get to eventually
• 1:04:17
  intelligent life i'm skipping a few steps here but it's it's basically like um you by the time you've
• 1:04:22
  multiplied down down down you know you get to depending on your estimates this is again this
• 1:04:28
  guesswork but and then eventually you get to intelligent life in the last step is you don't just
• 1:04:32
  need intelligent life but you need life that is capable of broadcasting in a way that we would
• 1:04:37
  be able to see so they're that level and they have that kind of tech and they want to they actually
• 1:04:41
  broadcast they choose to broadcast you know so now you get to a level where even if your numbers
• 1:04:47
  are pretty small you know you know pretty small meaning you know i don't know one thousandth and
• 1:04:51
  then one ten thousandth and then one the number of habitable planets in the Milky Way so large
• 1:04:54
  that you still usually end up with thousands of of species we should see which is again this is
• 1:04:59
  where the Fermi paradox comes in now with that with these with this paper did is they they um they
• 1:05:06
  decided that the uh that the ranges we were using that people typically use for these variables
• 1:05:13
  were way too small that because it wasn't giving enough credence to the to the crazy uncertainty
• 1:05:20
  we have so for example one one of the major ones they talk about is the percentage that life
• 1:05:25
  begins on a habitable planet they think that it's like many orders of magnitude like we should be
• 1:05:31
  like you know i forget the numbers but it's something like it should be somewhere from i don't know
• 1:05:36
  one percent to down to like one over one to the ten to the hundredth like the you know and if you
• 1:05:43
  if you created giant what right is that and if the if the planet is habitable then by definition
• 1:05:47
  isn't it one like if the if life emerges then the planet is habitable otherwise life wouldn't emerge
• 1:05:52
  would it yeah yeah sorry so they're saying on a given habitable planet what's the chance
• 1:05:56
  that life emerges they think they think the upper bound the lower bound on those percentages
• 1:06:03
  is way too high in typical things and when you lower it down to where they think the genuine the
• 1:06:07
  reasonable um uncertainty would say so that it's so that it's like you know that you have to account
• 1:06:14
  for it's that it's exceedingly rare right and people don't tend to do that so it so they make these
• 1:06:18
  ranges that are just it's not that they say it's necessarily rare so they're at the top of their
• 1:06:22
  range is that it might be very common but the ranges themselves are quite large so they make each
• 1:06:27
  of these variables and they just expand the range um in in many in a few of the cases and now they
• 1:06:32
  run it run it through a Monte Carlo simulation where you basically can run you know run the simulation
• 1:06:37
  at you know millions of times yeah uh with you know rolling the dice within each range um uh and you
• 1:06:44
  get outcomes now what happens is the mean outcome they got suggests the mean outcome is that there's
• 1:06:51
  27 million intelligent species in the Milky Way alone so there are not people that say I'm definitely
• 1:06:57
  in camp one there's not life out there they say wow I mean the mean says there's 27 million so
• 1:07:01
  they're definitely not just could be light but the universe the galaxy has a very good chance of
• 1:07:06
  completely teaming with life like you said but the thing is if you graph this out um with like the
• 1:07:13
  x-axis being the the num the estimated the final estimate for the number that the simulation pumps
• 1:07:18
  out each time you have a very long tail which means that the number that that that that there's kind
• 1:07:24
  of a bell curve that peaks at 27 million around there uh and that but then the the there's uh
• 1:07:32
  the tail of the curve then it doesn't just go down uh to the kind of the the bottom it extends
• 1:07:38
  out and kind of hovers a little bit above the x-axis all the way down you know to zero um right uh
• 1:07:46
  and the you know the the the end result here is that though if you take the mean that looks really
• 1:07:53
  good for the camp two them the but the median or it's it's that 20 it's something like 30 something
• 1:07:59
  percent of their of the simulations outputs suggest we're alone in the Milky Way and there's
• 1:08:06
  some percentage I think it might be 25 I need to look at my numbers but I think it's a pretty high
• 1:08:10
  percentage a quarter of the simulations outputs put us as the only forget intelligent life the only
• 1:08:15
  life in the entire observable universe forget the Milky Way wow so it's all about yes right and
• 1:08:23
  if people want I'll read this because it sounds fascinating if we've wanted to find it it's called
• 1:08:26
  dissolving the Fermi paradox I've just googled it uh by Anders Semberg Eric Drexler and Toby
• 1:08:31
  Ward uh it's only 16 pages long so you should be able to read it uh in one sitting that I mean
• 1:08:36
  that sounds whilst fascinating Tim that also sounds like a little bit of kind of I mean it's no
• 1:08:43
  less speculative than everything that anyone has to say about this which is that of course if
• 1:08:47
  you put in the numbers such that it's incredibly incredibly vanishingly rare that life is going to
• 1:08:52
  emerge on a habitable planet and incredibly vanishingly rare that a habitable that a planet is
• 1:08:58
  going to be habitable uh then yeah if you turn everything down to 0.001 and multiply it there will be
• 1:09:04
  some cohort of outcomes which are where where alone I mean but their point is we just don't know
• 1:09:11
  what the inputs are their point is they they feel like they are the only ones who are acknowledging
• 1:09:17
  the true uncertainty they're just saying this is the fact the reality is that that we are this
• 1:09:22
  uncertain about how likely and so all these other estimates that are higher they think that those
• 1:09:27
  estimates are BS because they're assuming something they they have no right to assume and so
• 1:09:31
  again they're not saying aha see they're we're alone they're saying there's no evidence
• 1:09:38
  that should suggest that the 25% chance that this suggests that we're alone is too hot
• 1:09:44
  right that until new information comes out we should acknowledge that there is a genuine 25%
• 1:09:49
  or whatever chance and again I'm not sure that they would word the conclusion that way
• 1:09:53
  but when we read this it made me think that like they're uncertainty things don't seem too uncertain
• 1:10:00
  like their ranges don't seem well that ranges ridiculous it doesn't see there's no reason to believe
• 1:10:04
  it's ridiculous and they didn't just make the range huge for no reason they actually each one
• 1:10:09
  they kind of said what do we think is the true uncertainty here so the point is you know obviously
• 1:10:14
  their paper is not something that a lot of scientists would scoff at it but it just gave me more
• 1:10:18
  respect for the camp one right I said you know there's there is a very legitimate chance that a it's
• 1:10:23
  the galaxy is teaming with life and b that not only are we maybe the only intelligent species but
• 1:10:28
  we could we could be the only life and it's like it to me that is I mean they're obviously this is
• 1:10:36
  you know the the famous course a conclusion with the Fermi paradoxes that whatever the answer is
• 1:10:40
  it's mind blowing if there's 27 million intelligent species in the Milky Way holy shit who are they
• 1:10:44
  what are they doing like that's riveting like what and then you know is there a cosmos is there a
• 1:10:49
  cosmic society you know and what's going on and if we're alone that we are the most rare and magical
• 1:10:56
  like unbelievable freak creatures like it doesn't make any sense that we exist and I don't have a good
• 1:11:04
  reason to to to say that that's definitely not true and yeah I think that was even more mind blown
• 1:11:10
  to me if we're if we're alone how does that make you fail if that's true okay so I I if we're
• 1:11:17
  alone on one hand I'm like wow wow like we are so cool like a human is the coolest object like
• 1:11:22
  we are in a mix me feel very special I'm like you know this this universe is this dead universe
• 1:11:29
  and that this weird thing happened in this one place and it just makes makes us feel magical
• 1:11:34
  and it's just kind of awesome but it's also super depressing and scary and lonely and I'd rather
• 1:11:40
  feel like there's a vast cosmos out there maybe someone will save us you know I don't know or maybe
• 1:11:44
  we have a chance to you know it makes me feel scarier about the great filter for alone that you
• 1:11:48
  know oh god like you know I we why would we stick around we don't make any sense in this universe
• 1:11:53
  also if we're in a simulation there's a chance that they just started the simulation without
• 1:11:57
  planting any life anywhere and we happen to if we're alone we might be the the thing the simulator
• 1:12:03
  was waiting for and they're they're so excited that it happened here oh my god look life happened
• 1:12:07
  somewhere you know so I don't know I have a lot of weird thoughts about it I mean what do you think
• 1:12:11
  it makes me feel empty and sad to imagine that we're alone it makes it in some ways I think it's
• 1:12:21
  almost more depressing than the great filter like you know I'd rather go out with a bang than a
• 1:12:27
  whimper in a sense so you know I kind of feel like the the the consolation of this paper this
• 1:12:34
  dissolving the Fermi paradox paper which suggests that there's some non-trivial likelihood that we
• 1:12:39
  we were just the only ones to ever evolve that world is the benefit is that there's no great filter
• 1:12:45
  we don't have to worry about crashing into the great filter necessarily because that is not the
• 1:12:49
  thing that has weeded out intelligent life that's not the explanation for why we're not seeing a
• 1:12:54
  cosmos teaming with life on the other hand the the idea that the universe like I'm reminded of
• 1:13:02
  I think it was Carl Sagan saying that if we're the only ones then it is an awfully large backdrop
• 1:13:08
  the universe like the idea that the universe is chugging along and intelligence and intelligence
• 1:13:15
  that can come together from the substance of the stars and aggregate itself into a kind of physiology
• 1:13:21
  that is so sophisticated that it can reflect back on itself and ask the question the kinds of
• 1:13:25
  questions that you spend your life addressing the idea that that is just a an artifact that is
• 1:13:32
  just a it's just kind of noise in the system rather than a signal I find incredibly depressing
• 1:13:40
  about what the nature of the cosmos is you know I don't know because if we're alone it means that
• 1:13:49
  I mean a it means that there's no dark forest no no scary things in the come kills which sounds
• 1:13:54
  like oh well that's just sci-fi anyway until it happens right like the people who were colonized
• 1:13:59
  in in history they probably didn't have colonization as one of their great fears until it happened
• 1:14:06
  and then it was the most awful thing ever and and so like you know a there's some incredibly
• 1:14:13
  dystopian awful scary thing that could happen that means now it won't for sure first of all secondly
• 1:14:19
  it means that there's a chance we could go on you know this is you know this is kind of how
• 1:14:26
  a lot of people like Elon Musk think you know is colonized different planets and expand outward and
• 1:14:30
  our technology grows and we end up in different solar systems and you know maybe eventually
• 1:14:35
  different galaxies and we create and as did now there's all kinds of different species that are
• 1:14:39
  are you know descendants and we are like the the create the earth is the cradle of of vast cosmic
• 1:14:46
  civilization that's like this legendary place where where the where all life started and like
• 1:14:51
  it's cool we get to be those those like great ancestors of the future cosmos like that could be
• 1:14:57
  that could be true too and then there'll be a populated non-depressing cosmos full of life
• 1:15:02
  and we are their their their their ancestors you know maybe and also just it just means like we're
• 1:15:09
  the most special things ever and the most down the middle definition of like crazy special which is
• 1:15:15
  just a nice humans like to feel that way so I think I agree with you that overall I'd prefer
• 1:15:19
  to know that it's a teaming cosmos out there but yeah like what's it all doing like what why
• 1:15:23
  why is it all there so so big if if the purpose is not to construct some kind of self-awareness but
• 1:15:28
  as you say maybe the self-awareness is outside like so what do you make of the simulation you mentioned
• 1:15:32
  Elon Musk you know this is another another idea that's very fashionable in Silicon Valley
• 1:15:36
  but you know at each point in in at each state well I should explain the idea the idea being
• 1:15:42
  that if at any point in the future computing becomes sophisticated enough to create computer
• 1:15:48
  programs with all avatars that are actually that have an experience of life and that you know you
• 1:15:54
  can run code that is so complicated that it actually feels like something to be it then the argument
• 1:16:00
  goes in the future there will be so many different versions of these virtual intelligences that the
• 1:16:10
  odds are we are already them because they were so greatly so vastly outnumber the actual human beings
• 1:16:16
  who ever existed so that's the argument for the idea that we are actually yeah the two end
• 1:16:20
  in a similar if if a and if b then it's it's almost for sure that we're in a simulation yeah the a
• 1:16:27
  being the creation of well no I think it feels like something if there are it's if there are
• 1:16:35
  other intelligent species out there like much more intelligent than us is a and b if one of the
• 1:16:41
  things they turns out that they like to do is make simulations yeah that like like you're talking
• 1:16:47
  about yeah it's like he's muggling in a third one which I think that the simulation argument over
• 1:16:50
  looks too much which is is it possible to actually create a computer code that's so so sophisticated
• 1:16:55
  that it feels like something to be it because we don't actually understand what consciousness is or
• 1:16:58
  what maybe that's wrapped in a it's like a is if there are species out there that are intelligent enough
• 1:17:05
  to I guess yeah I guess it's it's one a and one b you know are they out there there's a metaphysical
• 1:17:10
  question that I think this whole thing aligns which is sort of a spiritual question about like we
• 1:17:15
  don't actually understand how compounds come together to form brains that have experiences yet so
• 1:17:20
  there's a I think there's a bias in Silicon Valley and among tech bros to to assume that it's just
• 1:17:26
  a matter of information processing that creates the experience of being alive and so you could
• 1:17:30
  obviously replicate that using silicon in microchips if you wanted to but for me that's still
• 1:17:35
  an open question about exactly how how an organism comes to feel like it is something to be it
• 1:17:42
  if you can put that in a computer then sure we might be simulations this is a my suspicion my
• 1:17:48
  sort of skepticism towards this is that it sounds a bit too clever by half and in each era there is
• 1:17:54
  a long history of tech dudes sort of analogizing the cosmos to whatever the technology is that
• 1:18:01
  most excites them like during the era of steam engines and so on they thought the universe
• 1:18:06
  would you know functioned like a giant steam engine with pistons and things and like we will
• 1:18:11
  always grow for analogies that are closest to hand but who knows it could be right and I might
• 1:18:15
  just be a simulation talking I would go farther and I'd say there's a long history of humans coming up
• 1:18:22
  with theories that suggest there is a creator that's created us that's watching over us that
• 1:18:30
  that that that can they can save us you know if if they created us here there's no reason they
• 1:18:35
  that our consciousness each consciousness here doesn't end up somewhere else and this you know
• 1:18:39
  in their world and to me it is a very it is a way for atheists to who you know or it's a way for
• 1:18:50
  people who refuse to believe something that conflicts with what they know about science it's a
• 1:18:59
  it's we have a long history of doing this and this is one where there's no it's it seems plausible
• 1:19:07
  in a way that there are other religious books the other religious books you know probably seemed
• 1:19:11
  when they were written and maybe seemed to at least certain people less so today but the fact is
• 1:19:19
  I will say that it seems plausible it doesn't it's not that it seems I agree with you that I would
• 1:19:23
  say like it seems a little like one of those things where it's like the the the Nick Bostroms like
• 1:19:29
  we'll say that if AFB and like have you all mind fuck thinking like I holy shit and then you step
• 1:19:34
  back and you're like what it just doesn't make sense but but I mean it does seem it's interesting
• 1:19:40
  that you inject a theological component here because we started out talking about the primitive
• 1:19:44
  mind versus the higher mind and this might be another example of where the primitive mind's craving
• 1:19:49
  for religion is co-opting the higher mind's rational faculty yeah I think they're like without
• 1:19:55
  believing in God I think like when you first think about simulation it's like the first instinct
• 1:19:59
  might be like oh that would be so depressing oh we're not even real we're just in like a but I
• 1:20:03
  think actually it probably makes most people feel pretty comforted because and the truth is
• 1:20:09
  honestly like I used to say I'm an atheist but like an atheist is someone who's if you're you know
• 1:20:14
  depends how you define it like do I believe in any of the world's religious texts
• 1:20:19
  you know I think a lot of them have great philosophy do I believe in their their creation stories
• 1:20:23
  no um but it do I think there is no creator no that to me is is there no evidence for that so
• 1:20:32
  if you take a big if you step back then I'm totally agnostic like we yeah absolutely
• 1:20:37
  it not not even be a simulation by the way there might be a super intelligent species and we're
• 1:20:41
  they farm they were you know we're we're one of their farms and they planted
• 1:20:44
  life seeds here and a lot of other places we could have a creator in our own universe we could
• 1:20:48
  have a creator outside of our universe um it's all completely plausible and I hope it's true
• 1:20:54
  because that it what depresses me the most is if it's just a vast uh wilderness of nothingness
• 1:21:01
  that I don't know why it would be at all I don't know why there would be a vast wilderness
• 1:21:07
  I mean it's it's just that just doesn't pass the bullshit test for me I mean it like you know
• 1:21:12
  we know that entropy exists we know that things tend towards chaos and decay and the universe
• 1:21:18
  is not does not exhibit that characteristic there is something else going on that to me just
• 1:21:23
  on a on a pure common sense level has to be I'm not saying that I mean I'm not a religious
• 1:21:28
  person like you I'm an atheist towards formal religions but I'm I say I'm agnostic towards
• 1:21:33
  the constant towards what the whole what it what the comp the purpose of the cosmos is or whether
• 1:21:36
  someone someone is up to something here but clearly something something weird has happened
• 1:21:42
  that we're here having this conversation at all and I'm not saying that that demands an explanation
• 1:21:47
  that comes from texts that were written thousands of years ago but it just doesn't pass past the
• 1:21:52
  the as we say in Australia the pub test to say oh well it's probably just nothing
• 1:21:56
  well but I'm not sure I think that it has to be something it could just be that they're like
• 1:22:04
  because I mean it doesn't have to be like but I have to be something but even if we're in a
• 1:22:09
  simulation like that world is somewhere so it's like some for some reason there is something I mean
• 1:22:14
  this you get to the really bottom of this it's it's there has to be either something or nothing
• 1:22:18
  and officially there's something right there's officially something and right at the current of
• 1:22:22
  the kind of something is not a vast miasma the kind of something is a something with black holes
• 1:22:27
  and swirling galaxies and and the settings of that emerges just from the fact that can emerge and
• 1:22:33
  with consciousness and self-awareness and like trees and same monsters like it's a it is a
• 1:22:39
  it's a something that's different from a gaseous blob but well yeah well because but that's
• 1:22:45
  what would happen if you had a big bang with a certain kind of quarks there and a certain energy
• 1:22:50
  level and then you had gravity as the the fabric of space time with the properties that it has
• 1:22:54
  you would end up with trees sometimes or you'd end up at least you'd definitely end up with
• 1:22:58
  galaxies and stars and planets and you know sometimes we see these things as more meaningful when
• 1:23:02
  it just might be a bunch of atoms bouncing around doing what atoms do when they bounce around and
• 1:23:07
  and this is what always looks like I don't know like but but again it's it's why is there something
• 1:23:13
  at all that that to me to me this is like the create the the ultimate like mind blowing if you do
• 1:23:19
  or if you don't situation like if there were nothing that's weird if there were nothing at all
• 1:23:27
  and I can't even say you can't say more than that if you say if you say they're well if there
• 1:23:30
  were nothing here well here implies like no no here is part of something if you say there's nothing
• 1:23:35
  ever that's time that time is part so there's just nothing that's weird but the fact that there
• 1:23:41
  is something at all is very I think nothing doesn't strike me as that weird and something
• 1:23:48
  at all doesn't strike me as that weird the universe that we live in with all of its complexity
• 1:23:54
  and and swirling galaxies strikes me as the weirder of the three options you're you're telling me
• 1:24:01
  nothing doesn't picture nothing you can't do it so it's weird because I'm a I'm a creature of
• 1:24:06
  something because when you picture when you picture nothing you picture oh vast empty black space
• 1:24:11
  no no that's something space and time like literally there there is nothing and never was or again
• 1:24:16
  like it's yeah no I mean this reminds me a little bit of the meta conversation that you were
• 1:24:20
  having earlier about Twitter within the like inside the right inside the Twitter argument I find it
• 1:24:26
  really weird I mean obviously I can't imagine nothing because you're right there is something so I
• 1:24:31
  can't as a as an evolved primate who lives in a world where things exist I can't get my head
• 1:24:37
  around nothing but there were lots of things I can't get ahead of my head around like quantum
• 1:24:41
  physics and so on and they they seem to be real but I if you if you elevate me out of the Twitter
• 1:24:48
  argument and take a meta kind of brain you know global universal worldview I don't think there's
• 1:24:54
  anything fundamentally absurd about the cosmos never having happened at all it's not that it's
• 1:25:00
  absurd it's not like oh that could never happen it's just that it's so weird that concept and
• 1:25:05
  and then of course that's not what happened we that is something we know we know there is something
• 1:25:09
  and then that's weird like it doesn't have to be something like and and and again it's like you
• 1:25:15
  think oh well was there always but then now you're getting into time time is part of the something
• 1:25:19
  which is just yeah this is what I feel like this is what it must be like for like a chimp to try to
• 1:25:26
  understand I don't like I mean I think I think the something of the something of 10 billion years ago
• 1:25:32
  was less weird than the something of now why because it didn't have just because of life on earth
• 1:25:39
  because of life on earth because of intelligent life on earth and because of the kind of complexity
• 1:25:46
  of the way that stars and planets and black holes have aggregated themselves together from the
• 1:25:51
  kind of generic super hydrogen that kick things off that that second part doesn't boggle me because
• 1:25:57
  it's just that's what would happen if you have gravity and you have this matter and you have energy
• 1:26:00
  you're gonna have what you end up to mean you're sort of smuggling in some things that were not
• 1:26:05
  afraid of complete like there was no it was there's no reason you can always retroactively say well
• 1:26:11
  you know nothing is particularly weird because all you need are the ingredients for it to come about
• 1:26:16
  and then it will come about and that's true because we're naturalists and we're not going to
• 1:26:19
  invoke a supernatural deity to explain it all but I also think it's a little bit cute to sort of say
• 1:26:25
  well if all you needed were all of these ingredients to to get the cake yeah but I know but that's
• 1:26:29
  still really incredible there's a cake so what you're saying is that the is that the physical laws
• 1:26:35
  and the physical material yeah that is here is is weird itself yes that there are physical laws
• 1:26:41
  that tend towards complexity and tend to what the incredible kind of majesty and delicate dance
• 1:26:48
  that we see going on in the natural world in life in in the way that the the cosmos exists like
• 1:26:55
  it all just seems well one other way to think about it is if there's a multiverse if there's if
• 1:26:59
  there's you know trillions or infinite number of frothing you know universes then the only ones
• 1:27:06
  where life could develop are ones that happen to have laws like ours hats yes that's a good
• 1:27:11
  a good way of pouring cold water on my my sense of majesty and that's a common a common refrain
• 1:27:17
  yeah if you've got an infinite number of universes then of course the one that we are in and
• 1:27:21
  capable of of observing is going to be one that is tailor made to encourage our life because if
• 1:27:25
  we've apparently that if you if you forget who said this but it's if you altered the like
• 1:27:35
  original conditions or like the laws and like the certain amount of matter or whatever if you
• 1:27:41
  alter it by some crazy amount like like like forget it's like one it's like like 10 one over 10
• 1:27:48
  to the 50th percent from insanely small number then then then then there could be no life because
• 1:27:52
  there's a right like if gravity was just yeah it was just a fraction of a percentage point different
• 1:27:57
  in different in power then style it could be infinite universes there's all kinds of yeah like
• 1:28:04
  there's all kinds of different laws and and tweekings and each one develops some you know
• 1:28:08
  but some some cool shit that only could be developed in that one and this one you know yeah
• 1:28:12
  this one happens yes happens to be you and me sitting here why why why were you not a philosopher
• 1:28:17
  Tim what did you want to do when you were young I wanted to do something create I wanted to make
• 1:28:24
  things you know out of you know create things and so specifically like in the arts more than in
• 1:28:30
  I wanted to you know either write music or write books or write you know or you know writing
• 1:28:36
  your music something like that I wanted to make stuff and beyond that I didn't know if I wanted to
• 1:28:39
  be doing comedy or you know fiction serious stuff or you know then I started blogging and
• 1:28:45
  that realized that was fun so I don't know I didn't have a very specific direction other than I knew
• 1:28:52
  I wanted some kind of job making something in the arts it's amazing that we live in a world where
• 1:28:59
  you're able to and and congratulations for having found the niche where you can actually express
• 1:29:03
  this like kind of you know all the stuff that that I remember talking about lying on my back
• 1:29:09
  smoking a joint at the age of 15 gazing at the stars like is basically your job well total I
• 1:29:14
  should think of it is like there's there's a couple categories that's one and then the other one
• 1:29:20
  that is like it's like why we procrastinate it's like it's like it's like observing humans and
• 1:29:26
  what the hell I guess which is also maybe part of that that also maybe comes out the two a I think
• 1:29:30
  yeah it does it does come out there as well it doesn't have to be about the stars I mean another
• 1:29:35
  the other thing that I've wanted to touch on with you which which I love is is the the weird way
• 1:29:40
  in which we see ourselves situated in history you had a blog post at the beginning of this decade
• 1:29:46
  on the 1st of January 2020 where you were talking about like we basically now live in the future
• 1:29:50
  because we're in the 2020s and you know we are now we are now further away from world war two
• 1:29:58
  than world war two was from the civil war and how counterintuitive that is and you go through a bunch
• 1:30:05
  of these like that you know when if world war two was starting today then world war one would feel
• 1:30:13
  as long ago as 9 11 does so not that not that long ago and yeah the the world war two people
• 1:30:20
  must have been like no fucking way really absolutely it's again really recent yeah exactly we're going
• 1:30:25
  and I mean that's why some historians argue that they were essentially one giant war what
• 1:30:29
  were one and what were two with an interlude in in the middle and the idea that the war two was
• 1:30:34
  kind of like revenge of like you know revenge yeah and power straight the empire strikes back exactly
• 1:30:39
  it was settling settling scores that that that that I failed to resolve and then and you also
• 1:30:46
  point out that like in 2020 why 2k was closer to the 1970s than to today and or another one is
• 1:30:56
  the like all these 1994 movies Jurassic Park and the Lion King the you know these movies were
• 1:31:04
  they came out closer to the moon landing than they did to today oh my god yeah yeah yeah
• 1:31:09
  because we all remember that those don't seem that long ago but it's especially that one's
• 1:31:13
  especially for people who were born you know after the moon landing so the moon landing feels
• 1:31:17
  ancient history to them and but they were they clearly remember those 90s movies in their childhood
• 1:31:23
  you know and and if you're if you were 35 in 2020 you were born closer to the 1940s than to today
• 1:31:32
  you were born in 1985 so 1985 35 years before that was the 40s 35 years after that 2020 and another
• 1:31:41
  amazing one you point out is 60 years if you're 60 or older then you were born closer to the
• 1:31:46
  1800s than to today yeah also the oldest people in the world were born closer to the George
• 1:31:54
  Washington administration than they were to today um and so that one was true let me think of
• 1:32:01
  it still true I guess it's he he finished in 97 but we can listen to ourselves in the shoes of
• 1:32:07
  your 2020 blog yeah no it is it's like the oldest Americans were we're born closer to the
• 1:32:11
  Washington administration than to the Biden administration the the reason I like these is because
• 1:32:15
  each one is a little mind blowing for whatever reason but it also just puts you're like okay US
• 1:32:20
  history is not that old you know absolutely not I mean my I'm one thing that got more of a
• 1:32:28
  reaction on Twitter than almost anything I've ever said was when I pointed out I was on Joe
• 1:32:33
  Aster to Joe Rogan's show I did about six times when I was living in the States and needless to say
• 1:32:38
  that has a huge audience so anything you say you know rails people up in one way or another but what
• 1:32:42
  was gratifying was not that everybody was jumping down my throat for saying something they'd
• 1:32:46
  disagreed with but that I was honest show shortly after my grandmother died and she died
• 1:32:51
  on the eve of her 100th birthday in New Zealand and shortly afterwards I was in Athens visiting a
• 1:32:58
  mate of mine a buddy who lives in who lives in Athens and I was wandering around the the
• 1:33:02
  Agora and like the you know the Colosseum and all this stuff and I thought this stuff is 4,000
• 1:33:10
  years old my grandma was a hundred it's only 40 nanars that democracy and like modern
• 1:33:20
  civilization was born in ancient Greece like I think if you sort of shook me awake in the middle
• 1:33:27
  of the night and was like like how old is democracy like how how many of your grandmother's life
• 1:33:31
  spans were there I'd be like a few thousand yeah I wouldn't think it was 40 of my grandmother's life
• 1:33:38
  spans and that takes you all the way back back there I mean it comes back to what you was saying
• 1:33:43
  earlier about I love that one writing and stuff like it's really recent you could also say that
• 1:33:50
  it's about your 500th great-grandparent that your 500th great-grandparent lived in a world with
• 1:33:59
  only hunter-gatherers anywhere so that's not full that's not what you mean 500 greats yes that's
• 1:34:09
  yes for your great-great-great-to-the-500th grandmother lived in a world where she was for sure
• 1:34:14
  a gatherer because every single woman on the world or every single person in the world was a hunter
• 1:34:17
  gatherer and and yeah so that's not full nanars that's 25-year generation so that's actually you
• 1:34:27
  can divide that by four to get the number of full nanas but but that's so if you it's you know
• 1:34:33
  it seems like a lot but it's like you go back there and those and so every single thing that we
• 1:34:37
  call civilization has just happened in 500 generations and and you know and again we're under
• 1:34:44
  the bananas bananas lifespans okay I have a I have a crazier one which is that if you because
• 1:34:53
  okay so this is there's two things going on what we're doing here is showing how recent
• 1:34:58
  how not you know humans are pretty new pretty damn new and civilization is really new but I
• 1:35:04
  but you can get way more mind blown when you think about I like to think about if you if you made
• 1:35:12
  a wrote a book detailing the history of humanity and you made every page 200 years so just say
• 1:35:21
  it's an 800 page book you know and give or take that that would take us to 160,000 years back
• 1:35:26
  something like that which is about the length of human history depending on which person you
• 1:35:31
  talk to so 800 pages takes us from then to today every page is 200 years you're reading that book
• 1:35:39
  and it's almost all the same you are bored for almost that entire book reading about hunter-gatherers
• 1:35:44
  it's only the last you know um the last hundred pages uh sorry the last like uh 50 pages that
• 1:35:54
  you get to anything beyond hunter-gatherers and it's only the last uh it's it's if you think about
• 1:36:02
  uh hold on let me just pull up I actually have uh I have this take you to somewhere where I can
• 1:36:10
  make it I can get I can be totally accurate here okay all right so um it is uh what do we got
• 1:36:19
  200 200 years per page did you say 200 years per page okay so so it's right here is settled
• 1:36:25
  is settled on the final page yeah well oh yes exactly so now but but just go back to 50 pages
• 1:36:33
  out of the eight 50 so you get to page 750 you're super bored right because you've just been
• 1:36:37
  literally read about hunter-gatherers and you're holding what it's like it's like the the
• 1:36:40
  the what all this left is basically like the epilogue the last chapter and you're you finally
• 1:36:46
  get to early cities and agriculture that goes on for 25 pages until page 750 75 so now you're
• 1:36:53
  really at the end here and you get to recorded history it's like epilogue colon recorded history
• 1:36:58
  you know and say so now you're in the last 25 pages you're you know you can feel like oh just
• 1:37:02
  about that with this book you're at recorded history um you you go back uh uh 12 pages and
• 1:37:10
  your Buddha is 12 pages ago it's page it's page uh uh 788 you know uh Jesus is like page 791
• 1:37:20
  and and so you know AD is only 10 pages of the book but the crazy thing to me is the last page
• 1:37:27
  so the US by the way is only is only is only about a page old it got it got started at the end
• 1:37:32
  of page 790 yeah about the same same same same page you know Australia was settled because the
• 1:37:38
  the Brits could no longer send their their their their chattel human beings to North America because
• 1:37:43
  of North the North American because of the revolution so then they they sent out expeditions to find
• 1:37:48
  another spot to send uh to send undesirables that's why the United States and Australia were about
• 1:37:53
  the same age you don't hear the word Australia till page 800 um and um yeah and so at so so so
• 1:38:01
  actually um just one correction is I was doing the the thing I the the thing I laid out is 250 years
• 1:38:06
  per page okay so anyway so anyway the last page goes back to 770 if you think about the first
• 1:38:12
  799 pages of that book um the power was out there was no electricity at all that electricity was an
• 1:38:21
  is a page 800 phenomena the first 799 pages of that book um we don't use any fossil fuels we just
• 1:38:29
  you know have wind and water and things like that and fossil fuel era is an entirely 800 page 800
• 1:38:35
  for the first 799 pages we get around with horse and sailboat um in page 800 we have cars and
• 1:38:41
  airplanes and rockets uh for communication the first 799 pages we have for most of it just oral
• 1:38:47
  and then eventually you have you know writing and letters you can write a letter to someone uh the
• 1:38:51
  television phone all of this is a page 800 phenomenon so when you you think about um how many
• 1:38:57
  things came out on page 800 that are truly nothing like the rest of the book it makes you it so
• 1:39:03
  this is again like a little bit like how it's um it's an instinct to say we must not be the only life
• 1:39:07
  because that seems arrogant it's also an instinct to think our time is spent it's an instinct to
• 1:39:11
  think it's arrogant to say our time is special it feels naive to say oh our time is special because
• 1:39:16
  it feels like everyone must say that but actually when you think of it this way page 800 is truly
• 1:39:22
  special and so many metrics it is truly unlike anything before it would blow the minds of someone
• 1:39:27
  on any page before in a way that no other page would would blow anyone's mind nearly as much
• 1:39:33
  so if you think about what that means but again we're talking about you you mentioned nonlinear
• 1:39:37
  we are crazy exponential situation going on here what the hell is going on in page 801
• 1:39:42
  and i'll tell you why this scares me is that page 800 was better than all the other pages in so
• 1:39:48
  many ways it was more prosperous in so many ways there was infant mortality was the lowest ever
• 1:39:52
  life expectancy was the highest ever um just if you think about the humanity the you know that
• 1:39:57
  came out after the enlightenment the page 800 on an aggregate was you know medicine antibiotics
• 1:40:03
  you know crazy amazing progress cars and planes and um and and all of this it was better the good
• 1:40:11
  was better than all the other goods but the bad of paid age 800 was arguably worse than any bad
• 1:40:17
  before we had the largest genocide the biggest wars we have something like climate change there's
• 1:40:22
  never been any kind of existential threat like on that level and any other page so the bad is
• 1:40:27
  getting worse and that and the good is getting better so the amplitude of this kind of signgraph
• 1:40:32
  is getting higher on the top and the bottom and the problem with that is the good can get as good
• 1:40:37
  as you so the page 801 you can just imagine the kind of good we can get to the kind of unbelievable
• 1:40:43
  magical utopia progress we can get to but if the bad gets too low this is what i was talking about
• 1:40:48
  at the great filter the bad gets too low and suddenly now any one person can create a holocaust
• 1:40:55
  level genocide with you know with the chemicals in their fridge and you know you know then it's over
• 1:41:01
  you know the bad hits the certain level hits the tripwire and the whole experiments over so
• 1:41:06
  this is scary not only i'm just thinking through the the that final page that final 250 years out
• 1:41:13
  of that 200,000 year book i mean you mentioned the holocaust that's in the final third of the
• 1:41:19
  page the the base age is the final quarter of the page and the internet is the bot like 25 years
• 1:41:26
  is one tenth so like the final the bottom 10% of the part of the final page of the 800 page book
• 1:41:33
  is the internet era yeah i mean click climate change you really only got bad in the last few lines
• 1:41:38
  of the book the last few lines of the page right yes because exponential progress is nuts
• 1:41:43
  if you if you transported someone from any page to the next page i mean if the the later in the
• 1:41:49
  book you are the more mind blown maybe so you transport someone from page 232 to 233 maybe that
• 1:41:54
  tree that they're used to is a little taller you know maybe someone developed a new way to tie the
• 1:41:59
  the arrow to your spear to tie that the spearhead i mean barely anything is different right but if
• 1:42:05
  you get to you know if you get to you know someone in the year two you know if you get to
• 1:42:09
  Alexander the great you transport him to the Roman Empire he'd be pretty mind blown but nothing
• 1:42:15
  is like transporting someone from page 799 to page 800 and even within page yeah yeah so page 743
• 1:42:22
  is basically the same as page 347 is basically exactly i have a metric called a die progress unit
• 1:42:30
  because if you if you brought i always think if you brought George Washington to today the show
• 1:42:34
  him everything he would die out of shock and so the question is how far do you have to go in the
• 1:42:38
  future to die out of shock that's a die progress unit to dpu and so the quit the dpu used used to
• 1:42:44
  take forever you could transport someone to 100 pages from page 200 to 300 and you're not going to
• 1:42:48
  kill them yeah no that that's right wow that ship is that that's exactly exactly there might be a new
• 1:42:54
  kind of flower that that's developed in this area right so but but as you go through the book the
• 1:42:59
  dpu's get shorter and shorter until you get to just one page and so the question is for us the dpu
• 1:43:04
  might be only a few lines right 2060 might legit kill us from shock the way that today would kill
• 1:43:10
  George Washington from shock maybe or maybe this all sorry yeah i mean i'm just thinking like
• 1:43:15
  to people like Tyler Cowan also i have this idea that like there was a lot of low hanging fruit
• 1:43:19
  that got that exploded in the past century and we're kind of where we're basically benefiting from
• 1:43:26
  the enormous productivity gains not just economically but in terms of health outcomes and
• 1:43:30
  technology that took us from the way we lived in the 1880s to the way we live in the 1980s but after
• 1:43:36
  that you know with the exception of the internet there's not a lot left do you think that's a
• 1:43:42
  fallacious end of history you know my my uninformed intuition is that no it's going to keep
• 1:43:49
  no there's s curves you know so like it goes it's progress isn't just go straight up in an
• 1:43:54
  exponential curve it it goes up in like s's where it kind of shoots up and then when there's a new
• 1:43:58
  paradigm like you know the iPhone comes out and the internet and there's all this crazy progress and
• 1:44:02
  then it kind of matures and i feel like we're in one of those now where you know it used to be
• 1:44:06
  every year there was something new there was the iFacebook and then the iPhone and then you know
• 1:44:09
  these revolutionary things and i think that the s curve is kind of you know it's now getting flatter
• 1:44:14
  but then there's another s curve coming and i don't know what it is it can be there's so many
• 1:44:18
  you need an it's an s on its side right yeah i mean no i mean it's like an s it's it's it's it's uh
• 1:44:24
  it's basically picture the curve is um you know going up but not at huge slope and then it starts
• 1:44:29
  getting super steep right and then it kind of levels out right so that's one s and then picture now
• 1:44:35
  it starts getting steep again now you're in another s you see that so it kind of goes up in waves
• 1:44:40
  and and if you step back and zoom out it looks like one big exponential curve but if you zoom in
• 1:44:45
  at any given point you might be on one part of the s and it might feel like things are slowing down
• 1:44:49
  but the reason i i disagree with cow in this i see his i see his points and i'm sure if you take a
• 1:44:55
  step back there's some ways to look at it and say i know this is you know maybe there's a big s that
• 1:44:59
  we just got to the top of and now it's going to be a while but there's so many candidates for
• 1:45:04
  things that would just dramatically that would be as big a deal of the internet if not bigger there's
• 1:45:09
  brain machine interfaces we might all have a machine you know a bmi in our heads in 20 30 50 years
• 1:45:17
  that we can think to each other i mean that's that's like the last update there was language
• 1:45:23
  then the next you know if you brought a caveman here from a hundred thousand years ago he'd be
• 1:45:28
  blown away by everything except the way we talk he'd be like you know you two people in a field
• 1:45:32
  are just with no technology on them just having a chat he'd be like wait that's how we do it
• 1:45:36
  you're just talking and you think that you do that the way we do it right so this could be an
• 1:45:40
  update to that where you now you think to each other right so that's crazy i mean even before
• 1:45:46
  you get artificial intelligence in computers exactly that revolution is in robotics then it's
• 1:45:50
  energy like the cars we mastered fusion and if energy was just as effectively unlimited we
• 1:45:56
  didn't have to worry about conserving energy that would be equally transformative there's a lot
• 1:46:00
  or have a cryonics where you can pause someone and and and basically transport them to a
• 1:46:05
  hospital in the future so you pause someone before they die and you they retain their right after
• 1:46:10
  they they they quote die by our standards but they're saveable for by future standards and then
• 1:46:16
  you in the future you revive them and you can totally fix them give them you know an artificial
• 1:46:21
  organs and so to me you know life extension stuff some of these if you listen to this podcast
• 1:46:28
  in 50 years will be laughable because nothing will have changed but okay here's one i mean
• 1:46:33
  how many great leaps for all of life can you count on one hand like you know you could say like
• 1:46:38
  i said beginning of life simple cell to single complex cell complex cell to multi cell to you know
• 1:46:44
  you have a you know ocean animal to land animal on that same list has to be one planet to to to
• 1:46:53
  multi planets for not just for humans for the whole species that is a massive like leap that's
• 1:47:00
  just a crazy leap that can happen in the 2020's like we we in the 2030's like we are going to
• 1:47:06
  witness one of the great leaps for all of life so there's too many of those things for me to say
• 1:47:11
  yeah i think like 2050 will be totally normal to us maybe just a little cooler the phones will be
• 1:47:16
  cooler no 2050 to me i think will be utterly mind blowing if you just what's amazing yeah what's
• 1:47:22
  amazing is we'll probably be there touch wood like you know we'll probably see it and my
• 1:47:26
  i think we're going to have lots of we're going to the 22nd century there's kids today
• 1:47:33
  uh even without life extension technology they will experience the 22nd century and we might too
• 1:47:38
  i mean the human body is just uh is just a physical object made of atoms and and it's a certain
• 1:47:43
  arrangement of atoms that makes you you and your brain there's no it's no reason that advanced
• 1:47:48
  enough AI can't figure out how to kind of preserve that to back it up sure i mean that's uh that's
• 1:47:53
  a yeah that's a possibility but it's not likely but what is certain is that the kids who are being born
• 1:47:58
  the babies who are being born today the vast majority of them will see the 22nd century
• 1:48:03
  yeah even if we don't do anything amazing i by which i would just mean we'll survive past 2100
• 1:48:09
  right exactly unless it's this awful dystopian thing where the bads get worse and the
• 1:48:14
  we we survive the bads on page 800 but we will not survive the bads on page 801 if that's
• 1:48:20
  that's one storyline that would be unfortunate and it's totally plausible what storyline do you
• 1:48:25
  uh i want to uh you've given me lots of your time so i'll wrap it up here but let's wrap up with
• 1:48:29
  your sort of big picture prognostication like if you are a betting man what what what what will become
• 1:48:34
  of us Tim uh man see i on one hand i want to feel optimistic because we are a survival species
• 1:48:43
  you know and we we have a good track record of survival even if it's you know a lot of catastrophes
• 1:48:48
  along the way but the question is at some point you know as we said the US isn't that old it's a new
• 1:48:53
  experiment uh humanity is a civilization isn't that old especially the rate things were going
• 1:48:59
  so it also feels like looking at the past and saying hey we've always been okay so we should be
• 1:49:04
  okay in the future that might not be good logic it might be when you're on an exponential curve
• 1:49:09
  the future might not resemble the past at all so honestly i i i can't say i feel confidently
• 1:49:16
  optimistic or pessimistic i i will say that that means that i also don't feel confidently pessimistic
• 1:49:21
  i i feel um truly on i i feel like a huge question mark about what's going to happen um i think if
• 1:49:28
  i had to lean i would say optimism because i just am an optimist as a human but i don't have really
• 1:49:35
  i couldn't argue i couldn't debate someone and feel like i won that one if they were a pessimist i
• 1:49:40
  i think uh the problem for us is that our exponent our technology is exponential but our wisdom is
• 1:49:44
  cyclical you know if you look back um you know like oh the uh there were sail and witches we're so much
• 1:49:49
  smart of them it's like well we know more than them but the way they're behaving is a lot of what i
• 1:49:53
  see on twitter and and and that was also a downswing maybe and then there was an era you know an
• 1:49:58
  ancient Greece when they were more humane than people 800 years later and it seems like we
• 1:50:03
  unfortunately wisdom does not going up exponentially and that's a problem because the more technology
• 1:50:10
  gives us you know exponentially more power but if we're not getting wiser then that's the species
• 1:50:16
  that is in i'm scared of that species having too much power and that's interesting yeah so yeah
• 1:50:22
  i'm scared if you go through periods where your wisdom peaks and then your wisdom troughs
• 1:50:28
  and there's a kind of a sine curve of wisdom over civilisations over history then as the technology
• 1:50:34
  gets bigger and bigger the peaks become more uh the stecks get higher and the troughs get more
• 1:50:40
  damaging and maybe there comes a point at which your technology is is so powerful that you can't
• 1:50:45
  survive one of the troughs yeah yeah exactly the big troughs are i think the the the deal breaker
• 1:50:52
  here so the the question is you know look we built we had the the enlightenment and and built
• 1:50:58
  laws and and liberal values and stuff which is a way of containing our worst nature we have a history
• 1:51:03
  of being very clever recently especially at at at at at kind of outsmarting the primates right and
• 1:51:12
  the question is can we continue to do it you know maybe as we get the as the goods get better we get
• 1:51:17
  really powerful ways about smarting the primates and keeping ourselves safe from from ourselves
• 1:51:21
  i'm certainly not scared of asteroids or other animals or you know the moment aliens scared of us
• 1:51:27
  and um and so you know can we uh can we can yeah can can can we do what we did with like
• 1:51:35
  kind of the enlightenment on a much more intense scale you know from for whatever the future is
• 1:51:39
  going to bring and i hope we do i hope we do the utopia honestly if we can you know this world
• 1:51:46
  would seem like a utopia to someone from the year 200 and yeah i think i mean in our lives we're
• 1:51:51
  headed for what would seem like a utopia for us if we don't fuck it up i i wish more of us could
• 1:51:56
  bear that in mind more frequently and and express some gratitude for the bounty that civilization
• 1:52:01
  and our our forefathers have have bequeathed us Tim good on you you should feel proud of the fact
• 1:52:06
  that you're wrestling with ideas that so few people take the time to wrestle with and that you
• 1:52:10
  disseminating them to people and having a good impact on people's outlook and the and the the level
• 1:52:16
  of uh of conversation that people are having so thanks for everything you do and thanks for
• 1:52:20
  for your time here yeah thanks this is one of those combos i would have had it lunch with someone
• 1:52:24
  and said damn no that would have been such a good podcast so i'm glad we had this chat uh me too
• 1:52:30
  thanks mate uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan post humor follow me Josh leps on
• 1:52:39
  twitter and instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful your mind humble your enemies
• 1:52:46
  generous and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable