Kind: captions
Language: en
if you read a half hour a night the
calculation i came to is that you can
read a thousand books in 50 years all of
the components are there to engineer
intimate experiences extraterrestrial
life is a true mystery the most
tantalizing mystery of all how many
humans need to disappear
for us to be completely lost
the following is a conversation with tim
urban author and illustrator of the
amazing blog called wait but why
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's tim
urban
you wrote a wait but why blog post about
the big and the small from the
observable universe to the atom
what world do you find most mysterious
or beautiful the very big or the very
small
the very small seems a lot more
mysterious and i mean they're very big i
feel like we kind of understand i mean
not the very very big not the not the
multiverse if there is a multiverse not
anything outside of the observable
universe
um but the very small we i think we
really have no idea what's going on um
or very you know much less idea but i
find that so i think the smaller more
mysterious but i think the big is
sexier um
i
just cannot
get enough of the bigness of space and
the farness of stars and it just
continually blows my mind i mean we
still the vastness
of the observable universe has the
mystery that we don't know what's out
there we know how it works perhaps like
general relativity can tell us how the
the movement of bodies works how they're
born all that kind of things
but like how many lit how many
civilizations are out there how many
like what are the weird things that are
also yeah life well extraterrestrial
life is a true mystery the most
tantalizing mystery of all um
uh but that that's like our size so
that's maybe it's that the the actual uh
the big and the small are really cool
but it's actually the things that are
potentially our size that are the most
tantalizing potentially our size is
probably the key word yeah i mean i
wonder how small intelligent life could
get probably not that small um and i
assume that there's a limit that you're
not gonna i mean you might have like a
whale blue whale sized intelligent being
that would be kind of cool um but i i
feel like it's we're in the range of
order of magnitude smaller and bigger
than us for life but maybe maybe not
maybe you could have some giant life
form just seems like
i don't know there's a there's got to be
some reason that anything intelligence
between kind of like a little tiny
rodent or finger monkey
up to a blue whale on this planet
i don't know maybe maybe when you change
the gravity you know gravity and other
things
well you could think of life as a thing
of self-assembling
organisms and they just get bigger and
bigger and bigger like there's no such
thing as a human being a human being is
made up of a bunch of tiny organisms
like working together and we somehow
envision that as one
entity because it has consciousness but
maybe it's just organisms on top of
organisms
organisms all the way down turtles all
the way down so like earth can be seen
as an organism for people for um
alien species that's very different
like why is the human the fundamental
entity that is living
and then every everything else is just
either a collection of humans or
components of humans i think if it kind
of is if you think about i think of like
an emergence elevator
and so you've got
an ant is on one floor and then the ant
colonies you know a floor above
or maybe there's even units within the
colony that's one floor above and the
full colonies of two floors above and to
me i think that it's the colony that is
the closest to being the animal uh it's
like the the individual thing where that
competes
with others um while the
the individual ants are like cells in
the animal's body we are more like a
colony in that regard but the the humans
are weird because we kind of we i think
of it if emergence happens in an
emergency tower
where you've got kind of you know as i
said cells and then humans and
communities and societies ants are very
specific you know the individual ants
are always cooperating with each other
uh for the sake of the colony so the
colony is this unit that is that is the
competitive unit
humans can kind of go we take the
elevator up and down emergence tower
psychologically sometimes we are
individuals that are
uh competing with other individuals and
that that's where our mindset is and
then other times we get in this crazy
zone you know a protest or a sporting
event and you're just you know you're
just chanting and screaming and doing
the same hand motions with all these
other people and you feel like one you
feel like one you know and you sacrifice
yourself you know that's what you know
soldiers and so our brains can kind of
psychologically go up and down this
elevator in an interesting way
yeah i wonder how much of that is just a
narrative we tell ourselves maybe it's
we are just like an ant colony we're
just collaborating always even in our
stories of individualism
of like the freedom of the individual
like this kind of
isolation
alone man on an island kind of thing
we're actually all part of this giant
network of maybe one of the things that
makes humans who we are is probably
deeply
social the ability to maintain not just
a single human intelligence but like a
collective intelligence and so this
feeling like individual is just because
we woke up at this level of the
hierarchy
so we make it special but we we very
well could be just part of the ant
colony
this whole conversation i'm either going
to be doing a
shakespearean analysis of your twitter
your writing or uh or very specific
statements that you've made so
you've written answers to uh a mailbag
of questions
the questions are amazing the ones
you've chosen and your answers are
amazing so on this topic of the big and
the small somebody asked are we bigger
than we are small
or smaller than we are big who's asking
these questions this is really good
you have amazing fans okay uh so
where do we sit
um at this level of the very small to
the very big
so are we bigger or are we small are we
bigger than we are small i think it
depends on what we're asking here so if
we're talking about the the the biggest
thing that we
kind of
can talk about without just imagining is
the observable universe the hubble
sphere
and
that's about 10 to the 26th meters in
diameter
the smallest thing we talk about is a
planck length but you could argue that
that's kind of an imaginary thing but
that's 10 to the negative 35. now we're
about conveniently about 10 to the 1.
not not quite 10 to the zero we're about
10 to the zero um meters long so we're
writing so it's easy because you can
just look and say okay well
uh for example uh atoms are like 10 to
the negative 15 or 10 to the negative 16
meters across right
if you go 10 to the 15th or 10 to the
16th which is right that's now so an
atom to us is us to this you get to like
nebulas
smaller than a galaxy and bigger than
the biggest star
so we're right in between nebula and an
atom now if you want to go down to quark
level you might be able to get up to
galaxy level
um
when you go up to the observable
universe you're getting down on the
small side to things that we i think are
mostly theoretically
um imagining are there and and and
hypothesizing are there so i think
um
as far as real world objects that we
really know a lot about i would say we
are smaller than we are big uh but if
you want to go down to the plank length
we're very quickly we're bigger than we
are small if you're if you think about
strings
yeah string exactly with string theory
and so on that's interesting but i think
like you answer no matter what we're
kind of middle-ish yeah i mean
here's something cool if if human is a
neutrino and again neutrino the size
doesn't really make sense it's not
really a size but when we talk about
some of these neutrinos i mean if
neutrinos are human a proton is the sun
so that's like
i mean a proton is real small
like really small um
and uh
and so
yeah the small gets like crazy small
very quickly
let's talk about aliens
we already mentioned it
let's start just by with the basic
what's your intuition as of today this
is a thing that could change day by day
but how many alien civilizations out
there is it zero
is it
a handful is it almost endless like the
the
the you know the observable universe or
the universe is teeming with life
if i had gun to my head i have to take a
guess
i would say it's teaming with life i
would say there is i think uh running a
monte carlo simulation this paper by
ander sandberg and drexler and a few
others um a couple years ago i think you
probably know about it um i think
they're they're
the
mean
um
you know using different
uh
using different you know running through
randomized rake equation uh
multiplication
you ended up with 27 million as the mean
in of intelligent civilizations in the
galaxy in the milky way alone
um and so then if you go outside the
milky way that would turn into trillions
that's the that's the mean now what's
interesting is that there's a long tail
because they believe some of these
multipliers in the drake equation so for
example the
probability that life
starts in the first place
they think that the uh the kind of range
that we use
is for that variable or is way too small
and that's constraining our
possibilities and if you actually extend
it to you know you know some some crazy
number of orders of magnitude like 200
they think should that that variable
should be uh
you get this long tail where
i forget the exact number but it's like
a third or a quarter of the total
outcomes have us alone like so you know
i think it's like i think it's a a
sizable percentage has us as the only
intelligent
life in the galaxy but you can keep
going and i think there's like you know
a non-zero like legitimate amount of
outcomes there that have us as the only
life in the observable universe at all
is on earth i mean it seems incredibly
counter-intuitive it seems like you know
you mentioned that people think um
you're you know you must be an idiot
because um you know if you picked up one
grain of sand on the beach and examined
it and you found all these little things
on it
it's like saying well maybe this is the
only one that has that and it's like
probably not they're probably
most of the sand probably hear a lot of
the sand right
so and then the other hand we don't see
anything we don't see any evidence you
know which of course people would say
that the people who scoff at the concept
that we're potentially alone
um they say well of course there's lots
of reasons we wouldn't have seen
anything and they can go list them
and they're very compelling but
we don't know and the truth is if there
were if this were a freak thing i mean
we don't if this were a completely freak
thing that happened here whether it's
life at all or just getting to this
level intelligence
that species whoever it was would think
there must be lots of us out there and
they'd be wrong
so
just being again using the same
intuition that most people would use i'd
say there's probably lots of other
things out there yeah and you wrote a
great blog post about it but to me the
two interesting
reasons
that uh we haven't been in contact i i
too have an intuition that the universe
is teaming with life
so one interesting is around the great
filter
so we're either the grade filters either
behind us or in front of us so the
reason that's interesting is you get to
think about what kind of things
ensure or
ensure the survival of an intelligent
civilization or lead to the destruction
of intelligent civilization that's a
very pragmatic very important question
to always be asking and we'll talk about
some of those and then um the other one
is
i'm saddened by the possibility that
there could be aliens communicate with
us all the time in fact they may have
visited
and we're just too dumb
to hear it to see it like the
um
the idea that the kind of life that can
evolve
is just the range of life that can
evolve is so large that our narrow view
of what is life
and what is intelligent life is
preventing us from having communication
with them but that then they don't seem
very smart because if they were trying
to communicate with us they would surely
if they were super intelligent they
would be very
i'm sure if there's lots of life we're
not that rare we're not some crazy weird
species that hears and
you know has different kinds of ways of
of
perceiving signals so they would
probably be able to see you know if you
really wanted to communicate with an
earth-like species
with a human-like species um you would
send out all kinds of things you'd send
out you know radio
radio waves and and you send out gravity
waves and and lots of things so if
they're communicating in a way they're
trying to communicate with us and it's
just we're too dumb to perceive the
signals it's like well they're not doing
a great job
of uh considering the primitive
species we might be so i i don't know i
think i think if a super intelligent
species wanted to get in touch with us
um
uh and had the capability of i think
probably
they would
well that
they may be getting in touch with us
they're just getting in touch with the
thing that we humans are not
understanding that they're getting in
touch with us with that i guess that's
what i was trying to say is
there could be something about earth
that's much more special than us humans
like the nature of the intelligence
that's on earth
or
the thing that's of value and that's
curious and that's complicated and
fascinating and beautiful
might be something that's not just like
uh tweets
okay like english language that's
interpretable or any kind of language or
any kind of signal whether it's uh
gravity or radio signal that humans seem
to appreciate
what why not the actual
it could be the process of evolution
itself there could be something about
the way that earth is breathing
essentially through the creation of life
and this
complex growth of light there's like
it's a whole different way to view
organisms and view life that could be
getting communicated with and we humans
are just a tiny fingertip on top of that
intelligence and the communication is
happening with
with the main mothership
of earth versus us humans that seem to
treat ourselves as super important
and we're missing the big picture i mean
it sounds crazy but
our understanding of what is intelligent
of what is life what is consciousness is
very limited and it seems to be
and just being very suspicious it seems
to be awfully human-centric
like this story it seems like the
progress of science is
you know um constantly
putting humans down on the importance
like on the cosmic importance the
ranking of how big we are how important
we are
that that seems to be the more we
discover that's what's happening and i
think science is very young
and so i think eventually we might
figure out that there's something much
much bigger going on that humans are
just a curious little side effect of the
much bigger thing that's what i mean
that as i'm saying it just sounds insane
but well it just it sounds a little um
like religious it sounds like a
spiritual um
you know it gets to that realm where
there's something that more than meets
the eye
well
yeah
but not so religious
and spiritual often of this kind of
woo characteristic like and people write
books about them then go to wars over
whatever the heck is written in those
books
i
i mean more like it's possible that
collective intelligence is more
important than individual intelligence
right it's the ant colony what's the
primal organism is it the ant colony or
is it the ant
yeah i mean i mean humans just like you
know any individual ant can't do shit
but the colony can do make this
incredible structures and and has this
intelligence and we're exactly the same
i mean yeah you know you know the famous
thing that you know no one no human
knows how to make a pencil
uh have you heard this
basically i mean this is great
there's not
a single human out there has absolutely
no idea how to make a pencil so you have
to think about you have to get the wood
that the paint the the the different
chemicals that make up the yellow paint
the eraser is a whole other thing the
metal has to be mined from somewhere and
and and
then the graphite whatever that is and
there's not one person on earth who
knows how to kind of collect all those
materials
uh and create a pencil but but together
that's one of the that's that's child's
play it's one of the easiest things so
um you know the the other thing i like
to think about i actually put this as a
question on the on the blog once um
there's a thought experiment um and i
actually want to hear what you think so
if a witch kind of a dickish
witch comes around and she says i'm
gonna cast a spell on all of humanity
and all material things that you've
invented
are gonna disappear all at once so
suddenly we're all standing there naked
there's no buildings
there's there's there's no cars and
boats and ships and no mines nothing
right it's just the stone age earth and
a bunch of naked humans but we're all
the same we have the same brain so we
all know what's going on and we all got
a note from her so we understand the
deal and she says
um she communicated to every human
here's the deal you lost all your stuff
you guys need to make one working iphone
13.
when you make one working iphoto 13 that
could pass in the apple store today you
know in your previous world for an
iphone 13 then i will restore everything
how long do you think and so everyone
knows this is this is the mission we're
all aware of the mission everyone all
humans
how long would it take us that's a
really interesting question so obviously
if you do a random selection of 100 or a
thousand humans within the population i
think you're screwed
to make that iphone
i tend to believe that there's
fascinating specialization
among the human civilization like
there's a few hackers out there
that can like solo build an iphone
but with what materials
so no materials whatsoever
it has to i mean it's it's virtually i
mean okay you have to build factories i
mean two right and to fabricate
okay
and how are you going to mine them you
know you got to mine the materials where
you know how many cranes you know how
many you know okay you 100 have to have
the this everybody's naked everyone's
naked and everyone's where they are so
you and i would currently be naked uh
it's on the ground in what used to be
manhattan
buildings no grassy island yeah um so
you need a a naked elon musk type
character to then start building a
company yes you have to have a large
company then right and he doesn't even
know where he you know where is everyone
you know shit how am i going to find
other people well we have all the
knowledge of yeah everyone has the
knowledge that's in their current brains
yeah
i've met some legit
engineers great crazy polymath people
yeah
but the actual labor of me because you
said it's like the the original
mac like the apple ii
that could be built
but
even that you know even that's gonna be
tough well i think part of it is a
communication problem if you could
suddenly have you know someone if
everyone had a walkie-talkie and there
was you know a couple you know ten
really smart people were designated the
leaders they could say okay i want you
know everyone who can do this to to walk
west you know until you get to this this
little hub and everyone else you know
and they could they could actually
coordinate but we don't have that so
it's like people just you know and then
what i think about is so you've got some
people that are like trying to organize
and you'll have a little community where
a couple hundred people have come
together and maybe a couple thousand
have organized and they designated one
person you know as the leader and then
they have sub leaders and okay
we have a start here we have some
organization you're also going to have
some people that say good
humans were a scourge upon the earth and
this is good and they're going to try to
sabotage they're trying to murder the
people with the and who know what
they're talking about
the elite that yeah that possess the
knowledge well and so everyone maybe
everyone's hopeful for you know we're
all civilized and hopeful for the first
30 days or something and then things
start to fall off you know people get
start to lose hope and there's new kinds
of you know new kinds of governments
popping up you know new kinds of
societies and they're they're they're
they're you know
they don't play nicely with the other
ones and and i think very quickly i
think a lot of people just give up and
say you know what this is it we're back
in the stone age let's just create you
know agrarian we don't also don't know
how to farm no one knows how to farm
there's like the even the even the
farmers you know a lot of them are
relying on their machines um
and uh so we also usually a mass
starvation and that you know when you're
trying to organize a lot of people are
you know coming in with you know spears
they've fashioned and trying to murder
everyone who has an interesting question
given today's society how much violence
would that be we've gotten softer or
less violent and we don't have weapons
we have really primitive weapons now but
we have a and also we have a kind of
ethics where murder is bad
we used to be less like human life was
less valued
murder was more okay like ethically but
in the past they also were really good
at figuring out how to have sustenance
they knew how to get food and water
because they they
so we have no idea like the ancient
hunter gatherer societies would laugh at
what's going on here they say you guys
know you don't know what you're none of
you know what you're doing yeah and also
the amount of people feeding this amount
of people uh in in a very in a stone age
you know civilization that's not going
to happen so new york and san francisco
are screwed well whoever's not near
water is really screwed so that's
something you're near a river freshwater
river and you know anyways it's a very
interesting question and what it does
this and the pencil
it makes me
um
feel so grateful and like excited about
like man our civilization is so
cool and this is talk about collective
intelligence
humans did not
build any of this it's collective
human super collective humans is a super
intelligent you know uh being that is
that can do absolutely especially over a
long period of time can do such magical
things and we just get to be born when i
go out when i'm working and i'm hungry i
just go click click click and like a
salad is coming
the salad arrives if you think about the
incredible infrastructure that's in
place for that's for that quickly ages
the internet to you know the electricity
first of all that's just powering the
things you know how the h where the the
amount of structures that have to be
created and for that electricity to be
there and then you've got the of course
the internet and then you have this
system um where delivery drivers and
they have they're running bikes that
were made by someone else and they're
going to get the salad and all those
ingredients came from all over the place
i mean it's just so i think it's like i
i like thinking about these things
because it um it makes me feel like
just so grateful i'm like man it would
be so awful if we didn't have this and
people people who didn't have it would
think this was such magic we live in and
we do and like cool that's
fun yeah one of the most amazing things
when i showed up i i came here at 13
from the soviet union and the
supermarket
was
people don't really realize that but the
the abundance of food it's not even
uh so bananas was the thing i was
obsessed about i just ate bananas every
day for many many months because i
haven't had bananas in russia and the
fact you can have as many bananas as you
want plus they were
like somewhat inexpensive relative to
the other food and
the fact that you can somehow have a
system that brings bananas to you
without having to wait in a long line
all of those things that's it's magic i
mean also imagine
so first of all the ancient hunter
gatherers you know you picture the
mother gathering and eating for all this
fresh fruit no so you know what an
avocado used to look like it was a
little like a sphere yeah
and the fruit of it the actual avocado
part was like a little tiny layer around
this big pit that took up almost the
whole volume
we've this we've made crazy like robot
avocados today that are they have
nothing to do with like what they so
same with bananas these big sweet yeah
uh you know um you know and not infested
with bugs and grow you know they used to
eat the shittiest food
um and they're eating and they're eating
you know uncooked meat or maybe they
cook it and they're just it's gross and
it's um things rot so you go to the
supermarket and it's just it's just a
it's like crazy super engineered cartoon
food fruit and food and then it's all
this processed food which you know we
complain about in our setting oh you
know we complain about you know we need
too much process
that's some this is a good problem
if you imagine what they would think oh
my god a cracker you know how delicious
a cracker would taste to them um
you know candy uh you know uh pasta and
spaghetti they never had anything like
this and then you have from all over the
world i mean things that are grown all
over the place all here in nice little
racks organized and on a you know middle
class salary you can afford
anything you want i mean it's
again just like incredible gratitude
like ah uh yeah and the question is how
resilient is this whole thing i mean
this is
another darker version of your question
is
if we keep all the material possessions
we have but we start
knocking out some percent of the
population
how resilient is the system that we
built up or if we rely on other humans
and the knowledge that built up on the
past the distribute
the distributed nature of knowledge
how um
how much does it take how many humans
need to disappear
for us to be completely lost
well i'm trying to go off one thing
which is um elon musk says that he has
this number a million in mind as the
order of ma right or magnitude of people
you need to
be on mars to truly be multi-planetary
yeah multi-planetary doesn't mean you
know
uh
like
when when neil armstrong you know goes
to the moon that's they call it a great
leap for mankind yeah it's not a great
leap for anything it is a great
achievement for mankind and i always
like think about
if the first fish to kind of
go on land just kind of went up and gave
the shore high five and goes back into
the water that's not a great leap for
life that's a great achievement for that
fish and there should be a little statue
of that fish and it's you know in the
water and everyone should celebrate the
fish but it's um
but we talk about a great leap for life
it's permanent it's something that now
from now on this is how things are so
this is part of why i get so excited
about mars by the way is because
you can count on one hand like the
number of great leaps that we've had you
know like
no life to life and single cell or
simple cell to complex cell and
single cell organisms to animals to come
you know multi-cell animals um
and then ocean to land and then
one planet to two planets anyway
diversion but the point is that
um
we are officially that leap for all of
life you know has happened
once
the ships could stop coming from earth
because there's some horrible
catastrophic world war three and
everyone dies on earth and they're fine
and they can turn that certain x number
of people into seven billion
you know population that's thriving just
like earth they can build ships that can
come back and recolonize earth because
now we are officially multi-planetary
where it's it's a self-sustaining he
says a million people is about what he
thinks now that might be a specialized
group that's that's a very specifically
you know selected million that
um has
very skilled million people not just
maybe the average million on earth but i
think it depends what you're talking
about but i don't think you know so one
million is one seven thousand one eight
thousandth of the current population i
think you need a very very very small
fraction of humans on earth to get by
obviously you're not going to have the
same thriving civilization if you get to
a too small a number but it depends who
you're killing off i guess is part of
the question yeah
if you killed all half of the people
just randomly right now i think we'd be
fine it would be obviously a great awful
tragedy um i think if you killed off
three quarters of all people randomly
just three out of every four people
dropped dead i think we'd have obviously
the stock market would crash uh we'd
have a a rough patch but um i almost can
assure you that the species would be
fine well because the million number you
like you said it is specialized
so
i i think um
because you have to do this you have to
basically do the iphone experiment like
literally you have to be able to
be able to manufacture computers yeah
everything if you're going to have the
self-sustaining means you can you can
you know any major important skill any
important piece of inverse you know kind
of infrastructure on earth can be built
there in this you know just as well
it'd be interesting to uh
list out what are the important things
what are the important skills yeah i
mean if you have to feed everyone so you
know mass farming things like that um
you have to um
you have to you have mining these
questions it's like
the materials might be i don't know i
don't know five mile two miles
underground i don't know with the actual
but like
it's amazing to me just that these
things got built in the first place and
you know they never got no one built the
first the mine that we're getting uh
stuff for the iphone for probably wasn't
built for the iphone you know
or in general early mining you know was
for you know i think obviously i assume
the industrial revolution when we
realized oh fossil fuels we want to
extract this magical energy source i
assume that like manny took a huge leap
without knowing very much about this i
think you know you're gonna need you
need
mining you're gonna need like heart a
lot of electrical engineers if you're
gonna have a civilization like ours and
of course you could have oil and
lanterns we could go way back but if
you're trying to build our today thing
you're gonna need
uh you know energy and electricity and
then and mines that can bring materials
and then you're gonna need a ton of
plumbing and everything that entails
yeah
and like i said food but also the
manufacturer so like turning raw
materials into something useful yeah
that whole thing like factories
some supply chain transportation
right you know i mean you think about
when we talk about world hunger one of
the major problems is
you know there's plenty of food and by
the time it arrives most of it's gone
bad in the truck you know in in a kind
of an impoverished place so it's like
you know we take again we take it so for
granted all the food in the in the
supermarket is fresh it's all there and
which always stresses me if i were
running a supermarket i would always be
so like miserable about like
things going bad on the shelves um or if
you don't have enough that's not good
but if you have too much it goes bad
anyway of course there would be
entertainers too
like somebody would uh have a youtube
channel that's running on mars
i there is something
different about a civilization on mars
and earth
existing versus like a civilization in
the united states versus russia and
china like that that's a different
fundamentally different distance
like yeah philosophically will it be
like fuzzy we know there'll be like a
reality show on mars that everyone on
earth is obsessed with and you know if i
think if people are going back and forth
enough then it becomes fuzzy it becomes
like oh our friend's on mars and there's
like this mars versus earth you know
like you know and it become like fun
tribalism uh i think if people don't
rarely go back and forth and it really
they're there for i think it could get
kind of like oh we hate you know a lot
of like us versus them stuff going on
there could be also war and space for
territory
as uh first colony happens
china russia or whoever the european
different european nations switzerland
finally gets their act together and
starts wars this is supposed to be
staying up
all kinds of crazy geopolitical things
that like we have not even
no one's really even thought about too
much yet that like it could get weird
think about the 1500s
when it was suddenly like a race to like
you know colonize or capture or land or
discover new land that hasn't been you
know so it was like this this new
frontiers and there's not really you
know the land is not you know the thing
about crimea was like this huge thing
because this tiny peninsula switched
that's how like
optimized everything has become
everything is just like really stuck
mars is a whole new world of like you
know territory funding for naming things
and you know
um
and it's a chance for new kind of
governments maybe or maybe it's just the
colonies of these governments so we
don't get that opportunity i think it'd
be cool if there's new countries being
you know totally new experiments yeah
and that's fascinating because elon
talks exactly about that and i i believe
that very much like that should be
like from from the start they should
determine their own
sovereignty like they
they should determine their own thing
there was one modern democracy in the
late 1700s the u.s i mean it was the
only
modern democracy and now
of course that's there's there's
hundreds or doesn't many dozens but i
think part of the reason that was able
to start i mean it's not the people
didn't have the idea people had the idea
it was that it was uh they had of clean
slate new place
you know and they suddenly were you know
so i think it's it would be a great
opportunity to have there's a lot of
people have done that you know oh if i
had my own government on an island my
own country what would i do and it's the
the us founders actually
had the opportunity that fantasy they
were like we can do it let's make okay
what's the perfect country and they
tried to make something um sometimes
progress is
it's not held up by our imagination it's
held up by just there's no
you know blank canvas to try something
on
yeah it's an opportunity for fresh start
you know the funny thing about the
conversation we're having is not often
had
i mean even by elon he's so focused on
starship and actually putting the first
human on mars
i think
thinking about this kind of stuff
is um inspiring
it makes us dream it makes us hope for
the future so
and it makes us somehow like thinking
about civilization on mars is um
helping us think about the civilization
here on earth yeah how we should run it
what do you think are like in our
lifetime are we gonna i think any effort
that goes to mars
the goal is in this decade do you think
uh that's actually gonna be achieved i
have a big bet ten thousand dollars with
a friend uh when i was drunk uh okay in
an argument um this is great that the
neil armstrong of mars whoever he or she
may be will set foot
by the end of 2030.
now this was probably 2018 when i had
this argument so like what a human has
to touch mars by 20 and by the end of
30. oh by the year 30 yeah by january
1st 2031. yeah so um did you agree on
the time zone or whatever no no yeah
it's coming on that exact day that's
going to be really stressful but um
but anyway i i think that there will be
that was 2018 i was more confident then
um i think it's going to be around this
time i mean i still won the general bet
because his point was you are crazy this
is not going to happen in our lifetimes
or not for many many decades and i said
you're wrong you don't know what's going
on in spacex i think if the world
depended on it
i think probably spacex could probably i
mean i don't know this but
i think the tech is almost there like i
don't think of course it's it's delayed
many years by safety so they first want
to send a ship you know around mars and
they want to land a cargo ship on mars
and there's the moon on the way too yeah
there's there's but i think the moon
a decade before seemed like magical tech
that we that humans didn't have this is
like no we we can
it's it's it is it's totally conceivable
that this you've seen starship like it's
um
it is a
interplanetary colonial or
interplanetary transport like system
that's what they used to call it
the spacex the way they do it is every
time they do a launch
something fails usually you know uh when
they're testing and they learn a
thousand things the amount of data they
get and they improve so each one has is
you know it's like they've moved up like
eight generations in each one anyway so
it's not inconceivable that pretty soon
they could send a starship to mars and
land it uh there's just no good reason i
don't think that they couldn't do that
and so if they could do that they could
in theory send a person to mars pretty
soon now taking off from mars and coming
back again i think i don't think anyone
wants to be on that voyage today because
there's just you know there's still it's
still amateur hour here i mean getting
that perfect
i don't think we're too far away now the
question is
so every so every 26
months earth laps mars right it's like
the sinocidal soil or orbit or whatever
it's called the period 26 months
so it's right now like in the evens like
2022 is gonna have one of these 20 20
late 2024 so people could this was the
earliest estimate i heard elon said
maybe we can send people to mars in 2024
you know to land in 2020 early 2025.
that is not going to happen because that
included 2022 sending a cargo ship to
mars uh maybe even a one in 2020 and so
i think they're not quite on that
schedule but to win my bet uh 2027 i
have a chance in 2029 i have another
chance nice we're not very good at like
backing up and seeing the big picture
we're very distracted by what's going on
today and what's what we can believe
because it's happening in front of our
face there's no way that humans gonna be
landing on mars and it's not gonna be
the only thing everyone is talking about
right i mean it's gonna it's it's gonna
be the moon landing but even bigger deal
going to another planet right and and
for to start a colony not just again
high five and come back
so this is like
the 2020s maybe the 2030s
is gonna be the new 1960s we're gonna
have a space decade i'm so excited about
it yeah uh and it's again it's one of
the great leaps for all of life
happening in our lifetimes like that's
wild to paint
a slightly cynical possibility which i
don't see happening
but i just want to put sort of value
into leadership
i think um
it wasn't obvious that the moon landing
would be so exciting for all of human
civilization some of that have to do
with the right speeches with a space
race
like space
depending on how it's presented can be
boring
i don't i don't
i i don't think it's been that so far
but i've actually i i think space is
quite boring right now
not not no spacex is super but like 10
years ago space yeah some writer i
forget who wrote um it's like the best
magic trick in the show happened at the
beginning and now they're starting to do
this like easy hazard you know it's like
you can't go in that direction and the
line that this writer said is like
watching uh
astronauts go up to the space station
after watching the moon is like watching
columbus sail to ibiza it's just like
you know it's everything is so um
practical you're going up to the space
station not to explore but to do science
experiments in microgravity and you're
sending rockets up you know you know
mostly here and there there's a probe
but mostly you're sending enough to put
satellites to you know for for directv
you know an eye or whatever it is um
it's kind of like lame earth industry
you know usage
so i agree with you space is boring
there
the the the first human
um setting foot on mars that's got to be
a crazy global event i can't imagine it
not being maybe you're right maybe i'm
taking for granted of the speeches and
the space race and then
i think the value of i guess what i'm
pushing
is the value of people like elon musk
and potentially other leaders that
hopefully step up it's extremely
important here like i would argue
without the publicity of spacex it's not
just the ingenuity of spacex but like
what they've done publicly by having a
figure that tweets and all that kind of
stuff like that
that that's a source of inspiration
totally nasa wasn't able to quite pull
off with the shuttle that's one of his
two reasons for doing this spacex exists
for two reasons
one
life insurance for the species if we're
on you know if you're if you're i always
think about this way if you're an alien
on some far away planet and you're
rooting against humanity and you win the
bet if humanity goes extinct
you do not like spacex you do not want
them to have their eggs in two baskets
now yeah um
you know
sure it's like obviously this you know
you could have some you know something
that kills everyone on both planets some
ai war or something but um
but the point is obviously it's good for
our chances our long-term chances to be
having you know two self-sustaining
civilizations going on
the second reason he's he's he values
this i think just as high is it's the
greatest adventure in history you know
going multi-planetary and that you know
it's you know people need some reason to
wake up in the morning and and um
and it'll it'll just be this hopefully
great uniting event too i mean i'm sure
in today's nasty awful political
environment which is like a whirlpool of
that sucks everything into it so it
doesn't you name a thing and it's become
a nasty political topic so i hope i hope
that um space can you know mars can just
bring everyone together but you know it
could become this hideous thing where
it's you know oh you know billionaire or
something annoying story line gets built
so half the people think that anyone
who's excited about mars is an evil you
know something yeah anyway i hope it it
it is super exciting so far space has
been a uniting inspired yes
thing and in fact especially during this
time of pandemic has been
just
a commercial entity putting out humans
into space for the first time
was just
one of the only big sources of hope
totally and awe just like watching this
huge skyscraper go up in the air flip
over get back down and land i mean it
just makes everyone just want to sit
back and clap and kind of like the way i
look at something like spacex is it
makes me proud to be a human and i think
it makes a lot of people feel that way
it's like good for our self-esteem it's
like you know what we're pretty you know
we we have a lot of problems but like
we're kind of awesome yeah
if we can put people on mars you know
sticking up an earth flag on mars like
damn you know we should be so proud of
our like little family here like we did
something cool and by the way i've made
it clear to spacex
people including elon many times and i
just like once a year reminder that
if they want to make this more exciting
they send the writer
to mars on you know other things i'll
i'll blog about it so i'm just you know
continuing to throw this out
which i'm trying to get them to send me
to mars now i understand that um so i
just want to clarify on which trip does
the the writer want to go i think my
dream one to be honest would be like the
you know like the the apollo 8 where
they just looped around the moon and
came back because landing on mars
um give you a lot of good content to
write about
great content right i mean the amount of
kind of high-minded you know and and so
i would go into the thing and i would
blog about it uh and i and i and i'd be
in microgravity so i'd be bouncing
around my little space i get a little
they can just send me in a dragon they
don't need to do a whole starship and um
and i would bounce around and i would
get to my i've always had a dream of
going to like
one of those nice jails for a year yes
because i just have nothing to do
besides like read books and no
responsibilities no social plans so this
is the ultimate version of that and
anyway it's a side topic but i think it
would be but also a few i mean to be
honest if you land on mars
it's epic and then if you die there
of like finishing your writing it will
be just even that much more powerful for
the
for the impact yeah but then but then
i'm gone and i don't even get to like
experience the publication of it which
is the whole point well some of the
greatest writers in history didn't get a
chance to experience the publication of
their i know i don't really think i
think like i think back to jesus and i'm
like oh man that guy really like crushed
it you know but then if you think about
it
um it doesn't like you could literally
die today and then become the next jesus
like 2000 years from now and this
civilization that's like they're you
know they're like in magical in the
clouds
and they're worshiping you they're
worshiping lex like and like that sounds
like your ego probably would be like wow
that's pretty cool except irrelevant to
you because you never even knew what
happened this feels like a rick and
morty episode
it does it does
okay you've uh you've talked to elon
quite a bit you've written the bottom
quite a bit just
it'd be cool to to hear you
talk about what are your ideas of what
you know the magic sauces you've written
about about with elon what what makes
him so successful
his style of thinking his ambition his
dreams his um the people he connects
with the kind of problems he tackles is
there a kind of comments you can make
about what makes him special i think
that obviously there's a lot of things
that he's very good at he has um he's he
has
he's obviously super intelligent his
heart is very much in like i think the
right place like and you know i really
really believe that like
and i think people can sense that you
know he just doesn't
seem like a grifter of any kind he's
truly trying to do these big things for
the right reasons and he's obviously
crazy ambitious and hard working right
not everyone is some people are as
talented and have cool visions but they
just don't want to spend their life that
way
so but that's none of those alone
is what makes elon elon i mean if it
were there'd be more of him because
there's a lot of people that are very
smart and smart enough to accumulate a
lot of money and influence and they have
great ambition and they have you know
their hearts in the right place
um to me it is the very unusual quality
he has is that he's sane in a way that
almost every human is crazy
what i mean by that is we are programmed
to
trust
conventional wisdom over our own
reasoning
for good reason
if you go back 50 000 years
uh and conventional wisdom says you know
don't eat that berry you know or this is
the way you tire tie a spearhead to a
spear
uh and you're thinking i'm smarter than
that like you're not you know that that
comes from the accumulation of life
experience accumulation of observation
and experience over many generations and
that's a little mini version of the
collective super intelligence it's like
you know it's equivalent of like making
a pencil today like
um
people back then like the the
conventional wisdom like had this super
this this knowledge that no human could
ever accumulate so we're very wired to
trust it plus the secondary thing is
that the people who you know just say
that they believe the mountain is they
worship the mountain is their god right
and they go and the mountain determines
their fate that's not true right and the
conventional wisdom is wrong there but
um believing it was helpful to survival
because you were one you you you were
part of the crowd and you stayed in the
tribe and if you started to you know you
know insult their the mountain god and
say that's just a mountain it's not you
know you didn't fare very well right so
it would for a lot of reasons it was a
great survival trait to just trust what
other people said uh and believe it and
truly obviously you know the more you
really believed it the better
today
um conventional wisdom
in a rapidly changing world
um and a huge
giant society our brains are not built
to understand that they have a few
settings you know and none of them is uh
you know 300 million person society so
they're so your brain is basically
um
uh
is treating a lot of things like a small
tribe even though they're not they're tr
and and they're treating conventional
wisdom as as you know very wise
in a way that it's not you think about
it this way it's like a picture a like a
bucket that's not moving very much
moving like a millimeter a year and so
it has time to collect a lot of water
and it that's like conventional wisdom
in the old days when very few things
change like your your ten your
great-great-great-grandmother probably
lived a similar life to you maybe on the
same piece of land
and so old people really knew what they
were talking about today the bucket's
moving really quickly
and so you know the wisdom doesn't
accumulate but we think it does because
our brain settings doesn't have the oh
move you know quickly moving bucket uh
setting on it so um my grandmother
gives me advice all the time and
i have to decide is this so there are
certain things that are not changing
like relationships and love and loyalty
and things like this
her advice on those things i'll listen
to it all day she's one of the people
who said you got to live near you people
you love live near your family right i
think that is like tremendous wisdom
right that is wisdom because that
h