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It has been published for a long time. We don't have this power yet. But to make a world in our computer where the characters in that world believe they have free will. And then they conduct themselves and invent computers.
And then they make a world inside of their computer. And where their characters think they have free will. So that's simulated universes all the way down. And close your eyes and throw it dark.
Which are these, are you going to get the first universe that invented the simulating
universe or the zillion ones that followed the darks likely to hit one of the others. But my escape hatch from that is, since we do not yet know or have the power to make a perfectly simulated world. It means we are either the first universe that's real that hasn't created one yet. Or with a last universe that hasn't evolved yet to have created one of its own.
Because all the middle have the power to create one. So that takes it, you know, a zillion to one against us to maybe 50, 50. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I'm a little, I'm a little more comfortable that way.
Comfortable. Yeah. I sleep a little better at night. But I guess it wouldn't matter any way.
“It would actually, it wouldn't matter if we're completely simulated, what do you care?”
You're living your life. You know, we don't want to believe that there are puppet strings on us. I'm part of me thinks that though, you know, just when Earth is kind of everything on Earth is kind of stable, oh, COVID shows up. So this is the programmer saying, you know, the Earth is too boring now.
We got to spice it up a bit. They throw in a pandemic, okay, and once at a century pandemic, now we're entertaining for them. What do we do? Who gets vaccinated?
Who doesn't? Who's going to fight? Who dies? Who lives? Okay.
So then we kind of get through that. We get the vaccine. Okay. We've just common down off of that, and they said, oh, let's make a billionaire real estate
developer from New York City, the most powerful person in the world that stir the pot again.
Edson, now the whole other set of pot stirring that's going on. So that's kind of consistent with a snot-nosed alien kid in the parent's basement, programming our existence. That's what I would do. I would throw in interest.
There's a game. Sim, Sim City. Yeah. I played that. That's all I am.
Sim City. So you were mayor of this city, and people can vote you out of office.
“So you have to do things that make them happy, and there's an opinion poll that's there.”
And if you spend too much money here, you're not spending money on the schools, that's bad. But then there's crime goes up, and you're realizing, oh my gosh, and even this simple simulation, so many interdependent phenomenon are taking place. Then, then things that happen, then Godzilla steps through and plows through the city.
Okay. It was not real, but it kind of is, because that would be a disaster that is at a flood, as it fires, it's a thing that nobody saw coming, okay? We are recording this interview on September 11th. I live four blocks from ground zero.
That's Godzilla walking through the city. How do you respond to that? What? You didn't know that was going to happen the day before. So realizing that in this game, it's only interesting to play when disastrous things happen,
not too many in a row, because you have to be able to recover. So when I look at our world, I'm thinking the best argument I have for being in a simulation is how often some big disaster takes place.
When it was the first World War, and then after that, the piece, oh pandemic, okay?
In 1918, flu pandemic, hey, that we got out of that?
Oh, no, a second World War.
“Okay, we get out of that, it's the Cold War, nuclear Holocaust, okay?”
So, that's my fault. That's me looking over the shoulder of the programmer. Oh, God, I think I prefer the world where I feel like I have free will, and there's no... Does it make a difference? If you believe you have free will, even if you don't?
No, because I'll never know.
And you know, the fun, the fun answer to that, ask me, say, do you have free will, ask me that? Do we have free will, do you have free will? What choice do I have? No, if you don't have free will, then you don't even have an option to say you don't. So, I just live life, just live your life, so that the world is better off for you having
lived in it.
And what does that mean for you?
It remains. People are better off, the institutions are better off. People are happier, healthier, wealthier, safer, better fed, that rationality matters in politics and lawmaking, and that helps to ensure stability of anything you build going forward. But, yeah, that's all I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not complicated.
And you were talking about meaning before, I stopped looking for meaning decades ago. Because I realized, I, we, any of us, has the power to make meaning in life. If you're gonna look for meaning, are you looking under a rock behind a tree? What? It's as though meaning is sending the waiting for you to find it. Oh, I found meaning. There it is. Now my life is complete. That feels so, so powerless on your own destiny. Whereas, I, I, meaning, I want to learn something today that I didn't know yesterday. I want to lessen the suffering of someone today.
Compared with, however, that person was living yesterday. I want to, I want to use what I learned to, well, up within me and manifest as wisdom. Because information is not really useful until it becomes knowledge.
“And then knowledge is good. You can show off if you have a lot of knowledge. That's what these games shows do.”
But in the end, the best use of knowledge is when it becomes wisdom. And wisdom, people say, "I don't like getting older. I want to be young. I don't want to be young again." Well, it was 30, I was an idiot. Even when I was 30, I thought I was brilliant, right? So, don't get older unless you have wisdom to show for it. It's when you don't have something to show for your age, you want to be younger. You're just getting old with nothing to show for it. But I continue to learn things every day, passively and actively. Passively is you just notice, you know, open your eyes sometimes and see what's happening, where things are headed, what they're doing.
You learn, not all things you learn are good. And if they're bad, we're need adjustment, we're need help, do something about it if you can. So, that's how I derive meaning. Hence, my tombstone, be ashamed to die unless you've scored some victory for humanity. There's the meaning for you.
“There's a whole class of billionaires that are trying to live forever now. And I think we are on the verge of being able to extend life potentially indefinitely.”
Yeah, we're looking for the date, it's called the escape velocity. You know about that phrase? It exists in astrophysics, of course. But escape velocity for earth, for example, is seven miles per second. So escape velocity in astrophysics is the speed that you launch something so that it never comes back, no matter how hard the gravity tries. Okay, so every object has an escape velocity. The escape velocity in aging is the idea is there is a generation yet to be born, but in the very near future who will not not only live longer than the previous generation.
So, so here's a cleaner way to say this. Every year, you can expect to live one month longer, because knowledge about human physiology has gotten better.
Okay, okay, just think about it that way.
All right, they will come a day where every year that you're alive, medicine has figured out a way for you to live an extra year.
“That's the escape velocity. So every year you live another year and after that it could be every year you live two years. So that's the escape velocity.”
So it's not just everybody lists forever today. It sort of works its way into the population. And yeah, I don't want to live forever. I don't take me off this earth.
I mean, I mean, I still have more to give more books to write that in my judgment would make the world better than it currently is. So I don't want to die before I get as much of that done as I can.
But he's good of death. No, although that's easy to say, because I'm not at death store. And I had someone rationalized with me, which they made a potent argument, it's I can say now with another 20 years life expectancy 15 20 years that I don't fear death, but if I'm on my deathbed and someone says,
“"If I can wave my hand and you can live another year, would you?" The answer is probably going to be yes. And at the end of that year, if so, I don't know if my sentiments about life and death will change on my deathbed.”
I know my mother, that there's a point where she couldn't swallow, and she didn't want to feed tube, and she said, "My time has come." I put me in palliative care and then hospice, and she was dead 10 days later. So she was in charge of her. She could have fed her with a tube, and she would have been completely healthy for another, you know, five years perhaps. But you know, she raised two kids, three kids, you know, 50 year marriage, happy life, stable life.
And yeah, I'm good with that. So the billionaires, you know, that's ego, for sure. If you live forever, there are other people who you're taking resources from, who would come behind you, that's one.
But two, are you still contributing to the world? Should you give another person a chance, who's in school now, who might be the next genius, that'll figure out the energy problem, the poverty problem, the pollution problem, the, are you figuring that out? No, you're in the last, you're 90 years old, and you're just living on your yacht. So there's the problem that the last years of your life are not the most creative, the most ambitious, the most irreverent as a reverence that we're new ideas come.
“You know, you've, you've, perhaps, scenes episodes of Shark Shark Tank, you know, half or more of those people, the 30 and under, they got ideas, fresh ideas, everyone else is entrenched. So if people start living forever,”
they're living forever in the part of their life that is least useful to the progress and advance of culture and civilization. And so all of civilization will stagnate. Did you think of it in your lifetime, you said you've got a 20-year life expectancy? Well, 15 to 20 years. 20-year life expectancy. They stuck my age now in the age where my parents died. Yeah. But I mean, you've done a lot of neurological work and lay down a lot of good foundations with all these books you've written, so maybe it'll be the upper end of that.
It's food for AI. It's food for chat GP too. What do you make of AI? What's your, what do you, I love it. Yeah, I love it. But I'm, it's, by the way, it's been here for a while. It really spooked people when it started writing your term paper and composing your, your painting. And your set design. All right. That, the whole other category of people got spooked by that. Meanwhile, AI has been harnessed and being fully used in my field and in most of the physical sciences. It's doing work. If you can do the work on, and I can go to the Bahamas, let it do the work.
We have telescopes coming online that could not exist without the intervention of AI to access the data, reduce the data, analyze the data, make a decision about whether she go back to the thing that it just observed because that was weird compared to the last time it was observed. This is the very Rubin telescope that I'm literally describing now.
So we're, we're living with it.
And what I mean by that is, I can say chat GPT, take this picture of us and say chat GPT. A paint this scene in the style of vango. It'll come back to colors. It'll be just right. It'll have this really lines.
“It'll be perfect if vango was standing there. That's what vango would have painted.”
If I say chat GPT paint us in the style of no artist who has ever lived. I don't know what it's going to give us, but it'll probably suck. And so true creativity is not aping what has happened before and making adjustments.
True creativity. Yes, you always build on others. I'm not in denial of that.
But true creativity takes leaps that most people don't even know can be taken. And so the artist, so that gap, I think, is what check what AI in the arts world is going to force creative people to reach for. Otherwise, you replaced by a simple request in the input line of a large language model or an orphan art. I was just wondering then, if I watched Cosmos in 30, 40 years time, let's say 100 years time. I was wondering if this is the moment where humans and computers in the story of humanity become one and in the twine.
If you think about things like Neuralink, which Elon's working on to me, when he first made that company, all of the narrative that he put out there was about us being able to interface with AI. So we'd need like a brain chip computer interface. More recently, it's been about people that are paraplegic and disabled and helping people see, but I think that's a socially acceptable way to advance the technology. But in his early work, he said, "Super intelligence is going to arrive and we're going to need a way to basically keep up where we have better sort of latency with the technology."
And I'm wondering if that's like what we're seeing now.
Yeah, super intelligence.
You know, if that happens, then it becomes our overlord and we become its pet. Okay.
“No, that sounds pretty scary, but don't we treat our pets better than we treat other humans in the world?”
Think about it. The pet is kept warm and fed and happy. And would you do that for a homeless person in the street, a person of your own species? Probably not. So if we're the pet for the super intelligence? We're not the chicken.
How bad could it be? Well, you stuff chickens when we're young, and I watch my Nigerian mother chase that chicken around the garden.
Grab it, pull it's head off.
Okay. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Oh, you worried that it's going to do that for us?
No, my pet's made it. And snap, not all the pets survive. Yeah, it depends on whether it needs us to be alive or dead. We have to be relevant to it in some way. Maybe it will be court gestures, really, entertainment.
Until then, I don't know that this is some special moment. I do it a lot of reading of history and throughout history. Most occasions, especially in the era of the Industrial Revolution, people think they're living in a special moment. So I'm not going to be that guy who says today is special. Because everyone has thought they were in a special moment.
“And what you think is the probability of me getting to another planet in my lifetime?”
Zero. Zero? Really? Yeah. You run away.
Yes. Yes, it's just zero. I thought SpaceX is going to get to Mars. I have an unorthodox view on this, so you don't have to believe me. You know, but my read of history tells me that we only do big expensive things.
If there's a geopolitical reason for it, either an economic reason or a defense reason. Not just because it's the next thing to do. And when we went to the moon, we realized in 1961, May 25th, President Kennedy, it's a six weeks after Yuri Gagarin flew around the earth in orbit. And we didn't have a ship that wouldn't blow up on the launch pad that could carry humans yet.
He called a joint session of Congress and says, "If the events of recent weeks couldn't even utter the man's name, the events of recent weeks, and I paraphrase, are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, then we need to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny." It's a battle cry against communism, the godless Russians.
Everything in the whole Soviet Union.
We were losing a technological race.
“And that was the battle cry that prompted Congress to write the check.”
Later, Ronnie says, "Oh, it'll be put a man on the moon, and return him to safely earth, and oh, that's so beautiful. That's so beautiful." No one ever spent scads of money, just because it was a cool thing to do.
It has never happened ever.
So, we go to the moon. People forgetting why we went to the moon. Say, while we're on the moon, at this rate, we'll be on Mars at by 1985. That'll be the next ambitious goal we'll take on. No.
Because we didn't just go to the moon because that was the next thing to do. We went to the moon to beat the Russians. And when we got to the moon, and we looked over our shoulder and the Russians weren't there, we canceled the Apollo program. Nineteen said, "We haven't been back to the moon for 53 years."
We canceled it. Apollo 18 was ready to fly. It's now in captivity in Huntsville, Alabama in a museum.
“On its side, it's fascinating to walk the full length of it.”
All rocket-wet flight ready parts, it never flew. We ended at Apollo 17.
No, we didn't go to Mars because we didn't have geopolitical reasons to do so.
Neither economic nor for defense reasons. Historically, people explored, did expensive things for the glory of God and royalty. Very expensive, the pyramids, the honor of royalty. The church building, cathedral building, all of these activities were in the glory of power, deity, and royalty.
None of that happens today. We're past that. The power of kings and gods that doesn't happen. Nobody dislodges major resources, capital resources, of a nation, in the interest of a God or a king anymore.
It's secular. And to secular means it's money, or it's war, because you feel threatened. So, you know, we're going back to the moon now. Project Artemis. Did you ever think to stop and ask why?
Why did we stay on the moon in 1972?
“When we go back in 1980 or 1990, 2000, 2010.”
Oh, all of a sudden, let's go back to the moon. Wouldn't that be cool? Do you know when Artemis began in the late teens? Right about when China says, we're going to put pecanots on the moon. Tecanots.
Not yet, Chinese astronaut. Tecanot. All right. That's when we saw us go back to the moon. What a good idea.
Let's do that. Really? Because it's just a good idea. Because we're a little bit spooked by a friendly foe across the around the world. Might get the glory of that exercise.
And once again, it's a godless country. Okay? Communism is godless by design, by construct. So, here we are going back to the moon. All right.
What motivation do we have to go to Mars? Are there oil wells there? Is there, you know, diamond mines? We're not going to Mars. We're just not.
Unless China says they want to put military bases on Mars. We're going to be a Mars in 10 months. One month design build and find the thing. And nine months to get to Mars. A geopolitical force operating.
By the way, NASA doesn't have a rocket that will get us to Mars. They think they do, but they don't really have one yet. Time to do that. They say, well, do anybody have a rocket? Elon says, I have a rocket.
So if Elon rocket goes to Mars, it's not because he sends it there. It's because taxpayers sent it there. By the way, he could go there on a vanity project. But there's no business case. He can fly to Mars, team up with Jeff Bezos.
They can send people to Mars. It's not a business case. And if you are an investor in his company, you would not agree to do that. You wouldn't.
But he doesn't need investors because he's very wealthy. You could do it on his own. Are you going to Mars as a tourist? Is that, is that a business case? It's a trillion dollars to get to Mars.
First, second will be a little less.
I don't see that happening. A trillion dollars. About that. Yeah. If Earth were a school room globe.
With your fist, show me where you think the moon is.
This is Earth.
“Take your fist and put it at the distance the moon is.”
Your fist is about the right size compared.
Put it in right there. Yeah. Okay, not too bad. It's 30 feet away. It's in the next room.
Okay. 30 feet away. Okay. That's the moon. Let's keep going.
How far away from Earth did the Bezos Branson rockets go? I don't know.
The thickness of two dimes above the surface of the Earth.
How far away is Mars to mile away from here? Yes. From this Earth to mile away. It's the central point. The moon 30 feet away?
Mars a mile away. Yeah. It's a trillion dollars to Mars. Yes. How long?
Nine months.
“If you have to wait till the planets are configured so that when you travel, you”
arrive where Mars will be when you get there. And that's a minimum energy orbit. If you have filling stations along the way, you can just fill up with fuel and get there as fast as you want. But minimum energy orbit takes about nine months. And then to come back, you have to wait till it's configured again a few years later.
So a round trip to Mars is three to five years easily. So there's not an economic case. I'm not saying we don't know how to get to Mars. We have an SUV sized rover there now. All right, discovering potential life from a billion years ago.
So I'm like, we don't know how to get to Mars. This is not a technological statement I'm making. I'm talking about a practical statement. So no. My read of history tells me no.
I thought you were going to also add to that. That even if you long wanted to do it as a vanity project because he makes all this money and manages to use Stalin because the way to fund it, whatever.
That the problem is Elon's going to die.
He's going to die and then, you know, the next couple of decades, which means the vanity element that comes from his childhood situation where he wanted to get out there and explore the stars because he read that book has got 30 years, 40, 50 years left on it. Well, that would make him want to hurry wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah, and plus he said, I don't want to die on Earth.
I want to die on Mars. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the idea. So that's a goal. Sure. But don't tell me it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a business case.
I can see a tourist case going into orbit and even possibly visiting the moon. It's three days there, three days back. That's a week's vacation that you would take. And I would save up five years, ten years of vacation money. If that was the amount that it would take to go to the moon for one week, that would be really fun bucket list item.
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