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Michael Stevens: Vsauce | Lex Fridman Podcast #58

Lex Fridman and Michael Stevens on michael Stevens and Lex Fridman Explore Curiosity, Reality, and Responsibility.

Lex FridmanhostMichael Stevensguest
Dec 17, 201958mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    The following is a…

    1. LF

      The following is a conversation with Michael Stevens, the creator of Vsauce, one of the most popular educational YouTube channels in the world with over 15 million subscribers and over 1.7 billion views. His videos often ask and answer questions that are both profound and entertaining, spanning topics from physics to psychology. Popular questions include: What if everyone jumped at once? Or what if the Sun disappeared? Or why are things creepy? Or what if the Earth stopped spinning? As part of his channel, he created three seasons of Mind Field, a series that explored human behavior. His curiosity and passion are contagious and inspiring to millions of people. And so as an educator, his impact and contribution to the world is truly immeasurable. This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter @lexfridman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. I recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction. I'll do one or two minutes after introducing the episode and never any ads in the middle that break the flow of the conversation. I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience. This show is presented by Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store. I personally use Cash App to send money to friends, but you can also use it to buy, sell, and deposit Bitcoin in just seconds. Cash App also has a new investing feature. You can buy fractions of a stock, say $1 worth, no matter what the stock price is. Broker services are provided by Cash App Investing, a subsidiary of Square and member SIPC. I'm excited to be working with Cash App to support one of my favorite organizations called FIRST, best known for their FIRST Robotics and Lego competitions. They educate and inspire hundreds of thousands of students in over 110 countries, and have a perfect rating on Charity Navigator, which means the donated money is used in maximum effectiveness. When you get Cash App from the App Store or Google Play and use code LEXPODCAST, you'll get $10 and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, which, again, is an organization that I've personally seen inspire girls and boys to dream of engineering a better world. And now, here's my conversation with Michael Stevens. One of your deeper interests is psychology-

    2. MS

      Yeah.

    3. LF

      ... understanding human behavior. You've pointed out how messy studying human behavior is and that it's far from the scientific rigor of something like, uh, physics, for example. How do you think we can take psychology from where it's been in the 20th century to something more like what the physicists, theoretical physicists are doing, something precise, something rigorous?

    4. MS

      Well, we, we could do it by finding the physical foundations of psychology, right? If, if all of our emotions and moods and feelings and behaviors are the result of mechanical behaviors of atoms and molecules in our brains, then can we find correlations? Perhaps, like, chaos makes that really difficult and the uncertainty principle and all these things. Like, we can't know the position and, uh, velocity of every single, you know, quantum state in a brain probably, but I think that if we, you know, can get to that point with psychology, then we can start to think about consciousness in a physical and, and mathematical way. When we ask questions like, "Well, what is self-reference? How can you think about yourself thinking?" What are some mathematical structures that could bring that about?

    5. LF

      There's ideas of, in terms of consciousness and, uh, breaking it down into physics, there's the ideas of panpsychism where people believe that, uh, whatever consciousness is, is a fundamental part of reality. It's almost like a physics law. Do you think... What's your views on consciousness? Do you think it has this, this deep, uh, part of reality or is it something that's deeply human and constructed by us humans?

    6. MS

      (laughs) Uh, start nice and light-

    7. LF

      Yeah.

    8. MS

      ... and, and easy.

    9. LF

      Easy.

    10. MS

      I, um-

    11. LF

      Nothing I ask you today has a actually proven answer so-

    12. MS

      Yeah. Right.

    13. LF

      ... we would just hypothesize.

    14. MS

      So, yeah, I mean, I should clarify r- this is all speculation.

    15. LF

      Yeah. You're not a doctor.

    16. MS

      And I'm not an expert in any of these toc-topics and I'm not God.

    17. LF

      Yeah.

    18. MS

      But I think that consciousness is probably, um, something that can be fully explained within the laws of physics. I think that our, you know, bodies and brains and, and the universe and, and at the quantum level is so rich and complex, I'd be surprised if we couldn't find a room for consciousness there. And why should we be conscious? (laughs) Why are we aware of ourselves? That is a very strange and interesting and important question. And I think for the next few thousand years, we're going to have to believe in answers purely on faith. But my guess is that we will find that, you know, within the configuration space of possible arrangements of the universe, there are some that contain memories of others. Literally, um, uh, Julian Barber calls them time capsule states, where you're like, "Yeah, not only do I have a scratch on my arm, but also this state of the universe also contains a memory in my head of being scratched by my cat three days ago." And for some reason, those kinds of states of the universe are more plentiful or more likely.

    19. LF

      When you say those states, uh, the ones with, that contain memories of its past or ones that contain memories of its past and have degrees of consciousness?

    20. MS

      Ju- just the first part.... because the, I think the consciousness then emerges from the fact that a state of the universe that contains fragments or memories of other states is one where you're going to feel like there's time. You're going to feel like, "Yeah, things in the- happened in the past." And I don't know what'll happen in the future because these states don't contain information about the future. For some reason, those kind of states are either more common, more plentiful, or you could use the anthropic principle and just say, "Well, they're extremely rare." But until you are in one or if you are in one, then you can ask questions like you- you're asking me on this podcast. (laughs)

    21. LF

      The why questions.

    22. MS

      The, yeah, it's like, "W- why are we conscious?" Well, because if we weren't, we wouldn't be asking why we were.

    23. LF

      You've kind of implied that you have a sense, again, hypothesis, theorizing that the u- universe is deterministic. What- what's your thoughts about free will? Do you think of the universe as deterministic in a sense that it's unrolling a particular, like there's a- it's operating under a specific set of physical laws, and when you have the- set the initial conditions, it will unroll in the exact same way in our particular line of the universe, uh, every time?

    24. MS

      That is a very useful way to think about the universe. It's done us well. It's brought us to the moon. It's brought us to where we are today, right?

    25. LF

      Yeah.

    26. MS

      I would not say that I believe in determinism in that kind of an absolute form. Or actually, I just don't care. Maybe it's true, but I'm not gonna live my life like it is.

    27. LF

      What in your sense, 'cause you've studied kind of how we humans think of the world, what's in your view is the difference between our perception, like how we think the world is, and reality? Do you think there's a huge gap there? Like we delude ourselves that the whole thing is an illusion, but just e- everything about human psychology, the way we see things, and how things actually are. In all of the things you've studied, what's your sense? How big is the gap between reality and perception?

    28. MS

      Well, again, purely speculative. I think that we will never know the answer. We cannot know the answer. There is no experiment to find an answer to that question. Everything we experience is an event in our brain. When I look at a cat, I'm not even... (laughs) I can't prove that there's a cat there.

    29. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. MS

      All I am experiencing is the perception of a cat inside my own brain. I am only a witness to the events of my mind. I think it is very useful to infer that if I witness the event of cat in my head, it's because I'm looking at a cat that is literally there-

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    Yeah. …

    1. MS

      It is very scary to challenge conventional thinking, and, and, and risky because... Let's go back to elitism and ego, right? If you just say, "You know what? I believe in the spirits of my body, and all forces are actually created by invisible, uh, creatures that, that, that transfer themselves between objects." If you (laughs) ridicule every other theory and say that you're w- you're, you're correct, then ego gets involved, and you just don't go anywhere. But the- Fundamentally, the question of, well, what is a force, um, is in- incredibly important. We need to have that conversation, but it needs to be done in this very political way of like, let's be respectful of everyone and let's realize that we're all learning together and not shutting out other people. And so when you look at a lot of revolutionary ideas, um, they were not accepted right away. And, you know, Galileo had a couple of problems with the authorities and later thinkers. Descartes was like, "All right, look, I kind of agree with Galileo, but I'm gonna have to not say that."

    2. LF

      Yeah.

    3. MS

      "I'll have to create and invent and write different things that keep me from being in trouble." But we still slowly made progress.

    4. LF

      Revolutions are difficult in all forms and certainly in science. Before we get to AI, on topic of revolutionary ideas, let me ask on a Reddit AMA, you said that is the Earth flat is one of the favorite questions you've ever answered.

    5. MS

      Yeah.

    6. LF

      Speaking of revolutionary ideas. So your video on that people should definitely watch is really fascinating. Can you elaborate why you enjoyed answering this question so much?

    7. MS

      Yeah. Well, it's a long story. I remember a long time ago, uh, I was living in New York at the time, so it had to have been like 2009 or something. I visited the flat Earth forums, and this was before flat Earth theories became as sort of mainstream as they are.

    8. LF

      Sorry to, uh, to ask the dumb question. Forums, online forums?

    9. MS

      Yeah.

    10. LF

      Okay.

    11. MS

      The Flat Earth Society, I don't know if it's .com or .org, but I went there and I was reading, you know, their ideas and how they, uh, responded to typical criticisms of, "Well, the Earth isn't flat because what about this?" And I could not tell, and I mentioned this in my video, I couldn't tell how many of these, uh, community members actually believed the Earth was flat or were just trolling.

    12. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. MS

      And I realized that the fascinating thing is how do we know anything and what makes for a good belief, uh, versus a maybe not so tenable or good belief? And so that's really what my video about Earth being flat is about. It's about, look, there are a lot of reasons, uh, (laughs) th- the Earth is probably not flat, um, but a flat Earth believer can respond to every single one of them. But it's all in an ad hoc way, and all of these- all of their rebuttals aren't necessarily gonna form a cohesive, non-contradictory whole.

    14. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. MS

      And I believe that's the episode where I talk about Occam's razor and Newton's flaming laser sword.

    16. LF

      (laughs)

    17. MS

      And then I say, "Well, you know what? Wait a second. We know that..."... space contracts as you move. And so to a particle moving near the speed of light towards Earth, Earth would be flattened in the direction of that particle's travel. So, to them, Earth is flat. (laughs) Like, we need to be in a really generous to even wild ideas, because they're all thinking, they're all the communication of ideas, and what else can it mean to be a human?

    18. LF

      Yeah, and I think I'm, I'm a huge fan of the Flat Earth theory, quote unquote, in the sense that, to me, it feels harmless to explore some of the questions of what it means to believe something, what it means to explore the edge of science and so on. It's ... 'cause it's a harm- it's a, to me, nobody gets hurt whether the Earth is flat or round, not literally, but I mean intellectually when we're just having a conversation. That said, again, to elitism, uh, I find that scientists roll their eyes way too fast on the Flat Earth. The kind of dismissal that I see to this even notion, they haven't like sat down and said, "What are the arguments that are being proposed? And this is why these arguments are incorrect." So this is, you know, that should be something that scientists should always do even to the most sort of ideas that seem ridiculous. So I like this. This is almost ... it's almost my test when I a- ask people what they think about Flat Earth theory-

    19. MS

      (laughs)

    20. LF

      ... to see how quickly they roll their eyes. Uh-

    21. MS

      Well, yeah, I mean, let me go on record-

    22. LF

      Yeah.

    23. MS

      ... and say that the Earth is not flat. It is a three-dimensional spheroid. However, I don't know that and it has not been proven. Science doesn't prove anything.

    24. LF

      Right.

    25. MS

      It just reduces uncertainty.

    26. LF

      Yes.

    27. MS

      Could the Earth actually be flat? Mm, extremely unlikely.

    28. LF

      Yes.

    29. MS

      Extremely unlikely. And so it is a ridiculous notion if we care about how po- probable and certain our ideas might be.

    30. LF

      That's right.

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    The problem is that…

    1. MS

    2. LF

      The problem is that instinct can get us in trouble because then robots can manipulate that, uh, and, uh, you know, there's different kinds of robots. There's robots like the Facebook and the YouTube algorithm that recommends-

    3. MS

      Yeah.

    4. LF

      ... a video, and they can manipulate in the same kind of way. Well, let me ask you, just to stick on artificial intelligence for a second, do you have worries about existential threats from AI or existential threats from other technologies like nuclear weapons that could potentially destroy life on Earth or damage it to a very significant degree?

    5. MS

      Yeah, of course I do, especially the weapons that we create.There's all kinds of famous ways to think about this, and one is that, wow, what if we don't see advanced alien civilizations because of the danger of (laughs) uh, technology? What if we reach a point... And I think there's a, a channel, Thoughty 2? Ah, geez, I wish I remembered the name of the channel. But he delves into this, this kind of limit of, maybe once you discover radioactivity-

    6. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. MS

      ... and its power, you've reached this important hurdle, and the reason that the skies are so empty is that no one's ever, (laughs) like, managed to survive as a civilization once they have that destructive power. And, uh, when it comes to AI, uh, I, I'm not really very worried, because I think that there are plenty of other people that are already worried enough, and oftentimes, these worries are just- they just get in the way of progress, and they're, they're questions that we should address later. And, you know, I, I think I talk about this in, uh, my interview with, um, the self-driving autonomous vehicle guy, um, as, I think it was a bonus scene from the trolley problem episode.

    8. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. MS

      And I'm like, "Wow, what should a car do if, like, this really weird contrived scenario happens where it has to, like, swerve and, like, save the driver but kill a kid?" And he's like, "Well, you know, what would a human do?" And if we resist technological progress because we're worried about all of these little issues, then it gets in the way, and we sh- we shouldn't avoid those problems, but we shouldn't allow them to be stumbling blocks to advancement.

    10. LF

      So the, you know, folks like, uh, Sam Harris or Elon Musk are saying that we're not worried enough, so worry should not paralyze technological progress, but we're sort of marching... Technology is marching forward without the s- the key scientists, the developing of technology, worrying about the overnight having some effects that would be very detrimental to society. So, so to, to push back on your thought of the idea that there's enough people worrying about it, Elon Musk says there's not enough people worrying about it.

    11. MS

      Okay.

    12. LF

      So that's the kind of balance, is, um... Y- you know, it's like folks who, who really focus on, on nuclear deterrents are saying there's not enough people worried about nuclear deterrents, right? So, it's an interesting question of what is a good threshold of people to worry about these, and if it's too many people that are worried, you're right, it'll be, like, uh, the, the press would over-report on it and it'll be technological, halt technological progress. If not enough, then we can march straight ahead into that, uh, abyss that human beings might be, uh, destined for with the progress of technology.

    13. MS

      Yeah. I don't know what the right balance is of how many people should be worried and how worried should they be, but we're always worried about new technology, you know? Uh, we know that Plato was worried about the written word. He's like, "We shouldn't teach people to write, because then they won't use their minds to remember things." There, there have been concerns over technology and its advancement since the beginning of recorded history.

    14. LF

      Right.

    15. MS

      And so, you know, I think, however, these conversations are really important to have, because again, we learn a lot about ourselves. If we're really scared of some kind of AI, like, coming into being that is conscious or whatever and, and can self-replicate, we already do that every day. It's called humans being born. They're not artificial. They're, they're, they're humans, but they're intelligent, and I don't want to live in a world where we're worried about babies being born, because what if they become evil?

    16. LF

      (laughs) Right.

    17. MS

      What if they become mean people? What if they, what if they're thieves?

    18. LF

      Yeah.

    19. MS

      Maybe we should just, like, what, not have babies born? Like, maybe we shouldn't create AI? It's like, you know, we, w- we'll want to have safeguards in place-

    20. LF

      Yeah.

    21. MS

      ... in the same way that we know... Look, a kid could be born that becomes some kind of evil person. But we have, um, laws, right?

    22. LF

      And it's possible that with advanced genetics in general would be able to, you know... It's a scary w- thought to say that, you know, th- this, my child, if born, would be, would have an 83% chance of, uh, being a psychopath, right? Like, b- being able to, if it's a g- something genetic, if there's some sort of... And what, to use that information, what to do with that information is a difficult ethical thought.

    23. MS

      Yeah, and I'd like to find an answer that isn't, "Well, let's not have them live." (laughs)

    24. LF

      Right.

    25. MS

      You know? I'd like to find an answer-

    26. LF

      Yeah.

    27. MS

      ... that is, well, all human life is worthy, and if you have an 83% chance of becoming a psychopath, well, y- you still deserve dignity.

    28. LF

      Yeah.

    29. MS

      And you still deserve to be treated well.

    30. LF

      And I l-

  4. 45:00 – 58:32

    So one- one of…

    1. MS

      and spend time there and see ads.

    2. LF

      So one- one of the things I'm curious about, whether they do consider longer term sort of devel- you- your longer term development as a human being, which I think ultimately will make you feel better about using YouTube in the long term and allowing you to stick with it for longer. Because even if you feel the dopamine rush in the short term and you keep clicking on- on cat videos, the- eventually you sort of wake up like from a drug and say, "I need to quit this." So I wonder how much they're trying to optimize for the long term, because when I look at the... You know, your videos aren't exactly, sort of... No offense, but they're not the most clickable. They're both the most clickable and I feel... I watch the entire thing and I feel a better human after I watched it, right? So like-

    3. MS

      Appreciate it.

    4. LF

      ... they're not just optimizing for the clickability, 'cause th- this is... So I- I... So m- my thought is, how do you think of it and does it affect your own content? Like how deep you go, how profound you explore, the directions and so on?

    5. MS

      I- I've been really lucky in that I don't worry too much about the algorithm. I mean, look at my thumbnails. I don't really-

    6. LF

      Right.

    7. MS

      ... go too wild with them, and with Mindfield where I'm in partnership with YouTube on the thumbnails, I'm often like, "Let's pull this back. Let's be mysterious." Uh, usually I'm just trying to do what everyone else is not doing.

    8. LF

      Right.

    9. MS

      So if everyone's doing crazy Photoshop, wah, kind of thumbnails-

    10. LF

      Yeah, yeah, exactly.

    11. MS

      ... I'm like, "What if the thumbnails just align?"

    12. LF

      Yeah.

    13. MS

      "And what if the title is just a word?"

    14. LF

      (laughs) Yeah.

    15. MS

      And I- I kind of feel like all of the Vsauce channels have cultivated an audience that expects that, and so they would rather Jake make a video that's just called Stains-

    16. LF

      Yeah.

    17. MS

      ... than one called I Explored Stains, Shocking!

    18. LF

      Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

    19. MS

      But there are other audiences out there that want that, and you know, I think most people kind of, you know, want what you see the algorithm favoring, which is mainstream traditional celebrity and news kind of information. I mean, that's what makes YouTube really different than other streaming platforms. No one's like, "What's going on in the world? I'll open up Netflix to find out." But you do open up Twitter to find that out. You open up Facebook and you can open up YouTube, 'cause you'll see that the trending videos are like what happened amongst the traditional mainstream people in different industries. That's what's being shown, and it's- it's not necessarily YouTube saying, "We want that to be what you see," it's that that's what people click on. When they see Ariana Grande, you know, reads a love letter from s- like her high school sweetheart, they're like, "I wanna see that." And when they see a video from me that's got some lines in math and it's called Law and Causes, they're like, "Well... (laughs) I mean, that... I- I'm just on the bus. Like, I don't have time to dive into a whole lesson." So you know, before you get super mad at YouTube, you should say, "Really, they're just reflecting back human behavior."

    20. LF

      Is there something you would improve about the algorithm, knowing of course that, uh, as far as we're concerned it's a black box so we don't know how it works?

    21. MS

      Right, and I don't think that even anyone at YouTube really knows what it's doing.

    22. LF

      That's right.

    23. MS

      They know what they've tweaked, but then it learns. I think that it learns and it decides how to behave, and sometimes their, uh, the YouTube employees are left going, "I don't know. Maybe we should, like, change the value of how much it, you know-"

    24. LF

      Right.

    25. MS

      "... worries about watch time and maybe it should worry more about something else." I don't know, but I mean, I would like to see... I don't know what they're doing and not doing.

    26. LF

      Well, is there a conversation that you think they should be having, just in- internally, whether they're having it or not? Is there something... Should they be thinking about the long term future? Should they be thinking about educational content and, uh, whether that's educating about what just happened in the world today, news, or educational content like what you're providing which is asking big sort of timeless questions about how the way the world works?

    27. MS

      Well, it- it's interesting. Like, what should they think about?

    28. LF

      Right.

    29. MS

      Because it's called YouTube, not OurTube.

    30. LF

      (laughs)

Episode duration: 58:32

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