Neal Stephenson: Sci-Fi, Space, Aliens, AI, VR & the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #240

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Neal Stephenson, a legendary science fiction writer exploring ideas in mathematics, science, cryptography, money, linguistics, philosophy, and virtual reality, from his early book, Snow Crash, to his new one called Termination Shock. He doesn't just write novels. He worked at the space company Blue Origin for many years, including, technically, being Blue Origin's first employee. He also was the chief futurist at the virtual reality company Magic Leap. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, here's my conversation with Neal Stephenson.

Lex Fridman 0:43 You write both historical fiction, like World War II in Cryptonomicon, and science fiction-

Neal Stephenson 0:50 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 0:50 ... looking both into the past and the future. So let me ask, does history repeat itself? In which way does it repeat itself? In which way does it not?

Neal Stephenson 0:59 I'm afraid it repeats itself a lot. Um, so I, I think human nature kind of is what it is, and so we tend to see similar behavior patterns emerging again and again. And so, uh, it's, it's kind of the, uh, exception rather than the rule when something new happens.

Lex Fridman 1:20 What role does technology play in the suppression or in revealing human nature?

Neal Stephenson 1:26 Well, the standards of living, uh, life expectancy, all that, have gotten incredibly better within the last, particularly the last 100 years. I mean, just antibiotics, um, modern vaccines, electrification, uh, the internet, um, these are all, uh, improvements in most peoples' standard of living and health and longevity that, um, that exceed anything that was seen before in, in human history. Um, so, um, so people are living longer, they're generally healthier, and so on. Uh, but again, um, we still see a lot of the same behavior patterns, some of which are, uh, not very attractive.

Lex Fridman 2:11 So some of it has to do with the constraints on resources. Presumably, with technology, you have less and less constraints on resources, so we get to maybe emphasize the better angels of our nature? And in, in so doing, does that not potentially fundamentally alter the sort of th- the experience that we have of life on Earth?

Neal Stephenson 2:32 Y- you know, until the last 10 or so years, I would've, uh, taken that view, I think, but, um, you know, uh, uh, people w- w- will find ways to be, um, to be divisive and angry, um, if it scratches a kind of psychological itch that they have got. And, um, we used to look at the Weimar Republic, um, what happened in the economic collapse of Germany prior to, um, the, the rise of Hitler, um, World War II, uh, and kind of, uh, explain Hitler, at least partially, by, um, just the, the misery that people were living in at that time. Um-

Lex Fridman 3:17 The economic collapse.

Neal Stephenson 3:18 Yeah. The hyperinflation and unemployment and, um, the, the decline in standard of, of living. And that sounds like a, a plausible, uh, explanation, but there are economic troubles now for sure. We had the bank collapse in 2008, um, and there's stagnation in some peoples' standards of living. But it's hard to explain what we've seen in this country in the last few years just strictly on the basis of, uh, people are poor and angry and sad. I think they wanna be angry.

Lex Fridman 3:50 (laughs) So without being political in a divisive kind of way, can we talk about the lessons you can draw from World War II?

Neal Stephenson 4:01 Sure.

Lex Fridman 4:01 This singular event in human history, it seems like.

Neal Stephenson 4:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:05 And yet, as you say, history rhymes, at the very least.

Neal Stephenson 4:10 Yeah. Being who I am, I tend to focus on the curious technological things that happened in, in conjunction with that war.

Lex Fridman 4:19 Right.

Neal Stephenson 4:19 Um, which may not be where you wanna go. But, uh, the-

Lex Fridman 4:22 Well, there's several things in ... Sorry to interrupt. So one, in Crypto, uh, Nomicon is more like the Alan Turing side of things, right?

Neal Stephenson 4:29 Yeah. Right.

Lex Fridman 4:30 And then, and then there, there's the outside of techno- ... Well, there's, uh, first of all there's the tools of war-

Neal Stephenson 4:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:36 ... which is a kind of technology.

Neal Stephenson 4:37 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 4:38 But then there's just, like, the human nature, the nature of good and evil.

Neal Stephenson 4:41 Yeah. Well, so one of the things that emerges from, uh, from the war and from the, um, the extermination camps is that we were never allowed to have illusions anymore about human nature. So y- you, you have to, to learn that lesson to be a- an educated person, and you have to know that, that even in a supposedly, you know, enlightened, civilized society, people can become monsters quite easily. So that is for sure the big takeaway.

Lex Fridman 5:13 So do you agree with S- Solzhenitsyn about, uh, what is it? Uh, the line between good and evil runs through the h- the heart of every man?

Neal Stephenson 5:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 5:24 That all of us are capable-

Neal Stephenson 5:26 Great line. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 5:27 ... of evil?

Neal Stephenson 5:28 Uh, I, I read a good chunk of The Gulag Archipelago when I was a teenager, um, 'cause my, my grandfather had it in his house 'cause he was one of these Americans who was obsessed with the Soviet Union and the Soviet threat and, and wanted people to, to be aware of some of what, what had happened. Um, and so, so he had those books lying around, and, and, uh, you know, I would, I would read them. And it's a similar kind of parallel story to the-... to what happened in, in, in Germany during the war, you know, this creation of this system of camps and, and op- oppression and, and, uh, lots of, um, troubling behavior.

Lex Fridman 6:13 To me, it's a story of, um, how fear and desperation combined with, uh, a charismatic leader can lead to, uh, to evil. But, uh, it's also a story of, of bravery, of, of love, of brother, uh, brotherhood and sisterhood, and, and f- basically survival. You have like, uh, Man's Search for Meaning-

Neal Stephenson 6:34 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 6:34 ... which is the stories of, uh, the s- the story of a man in a concentration camp basically finding beauty in life even under, uh, most extreme conditions. So t- to me, World War II is not necessarily, um, a bleak view of human nature. It's, it's a, it's a little moment of evil that revealed a much bigger good-

Neal Stephenson 7:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:01 ... in humanity. So I'm not, I'm not so sure that it leads me to pes- a pessimistic view of the world, the fact that, uh, somebody like Hitler could happen. The fact that, uh, a lot of people could follow Hitler and get e- excited and maybe even love the hate of the other-

Neal Stephenson 7:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:19 ... for some moment of time.

Neal Stephenson 7:20 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:20 I think that s- all of us are capable of that, but I think all of us also have a capacity for good. And I think, I don't know what y- what you think, but I think we have a greater desire for good than evil. And that, it seems like that's where technology is very useful, as a guide.

Neal Stephenson 7:42 Hm. Okay.

Lex Fridman 7:43 As, as a helping hand.

Neal Stephenson 7:44 Okay. C- can you give me a- an example, maybe? Uh...

Lex Fridman 7:48 So, I- I give you examples of futuristic technologies and I can give you examples of current technologies.

Neal Stephenson 7:53 Okay.

Lex Fridman 7:54 Current technologies, uh, knowledge, w- uh, in the form of very basic knowledge-

Neal Stephenson 8:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 8:01 ... which is like Wikipedia.

Neal Stephenson 8:03 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 8:04 And search, the original dream of Google-

Neal Stephenson 8:07 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:08 ... that I think is very much a success, which is making the world's information accessible at your fingertips. That kind of technology enables the natural... I- if, if this, uh, axiom, this assumption that people want to do good is, is true-

Neal Stephenson 8:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:26 ... then letting them discover all of the information out there, false information and true information, all of it, and let them explore, that's going to lead to a, to a better world, to, to better people. Uh, futuristic technologies is, uh, I personally, I might shoot you offline, sort of love artificial intelligence.

Neal Stephenson 8:47 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 8:48 And so, AI that's an assistant, that's a guide, like a mentor to you-

Neal Stephenson 8:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:54 ... that you can... in the way that s- this Google search is, but smarter where you can help send it out and say, "This is the direction in which I want to grow." Not, uh, authoritarian lecturing down from the algorithm of telling you-

Neal Stephenson 9:09 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 9:09 ... "This is what, this is how you should grow." But almost, uh, the, the opposite where you use it as, um, an assistant, uh, a, a servant in your journey towards knowledge, so that-

Neal Stephenson 9:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:23 That, that sounds like an easy thing, but it's actually, from an AI perspective-

Neal Stephenson 9:26 No.

Lex Fridman 9:26 ... very difficult.

Neal Stephenson 9:27 I mean,

Neal Stephenson 9:28 th- this is the theme of a book I wrote called The Diamond Age, which, you know, talks about a book that essentially does that. And, um, I've been sort of watching people try to come at the, the problem of building that thing, uh, from different directions for... e- ever since the book came out, basically. Um, and so, uh, the, uh... A- and so I- I kind of have a... although I haven't worked on it myself, I do get a sense of the, the level of difficulty in, in realizing that, that, that goal. Um...

Lex Fridman 10:01 So, that book is in, in the '90s, so as Google is coming to be.

Neal Stephenson 10:07 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:08 It's essentially, uh... Not Google, but the search engine, the initial search engines and then... which gave birth to Google, essentially, in, in contrast.

Neal Stephenson 10:16 Right. Yeah, yeah. That was still in the era of AltaVista and AskJeeves and multiple different, uh, search engines. And yeah, I'm pretty sure I had not heard of Google at that point. That would have been '95, '96. And I think the book came out in '94.

Lex Fridman 10:33 And then, of course, the social networks followed, which is another form of, um, guidance through the space of information.

Neal Stephenson 10:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:41 And-

Neal Stephenson 10:42 Well, what happens is that these things come along and then people find ways to game them. Um, and so, uh, I s- I saw an interesting thread the other day pointing out that, um, you know, uh, 20 years ago, if you had Googled, um, Pythagorean theorem, uh, chances are you would have been taken directly to a page explaining the Pythagorean theorem. If you do it now, you're probably gonna... the top hits are gonna be from somebody who's, who's got an angle, who's got a scheme, right? They're, like, trying to sell you math tutoring or, you know, they're, um, uh, they're working some kind of marketing plan on you. Um, so the, the traditional engines, um, become actually less useful over time for their original educational purpose. That doesn't mean that they can't... they shouldn't be replaced by newer and better ones.

Lex Fridman 11:41 F- first of all, to defend the people with the angle.

Neal Stephenson 11:43 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 11:44 Right? Th- they're trying to find business models-

Neal Stephenson 11:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:47 ... to fund oftentimes... w- which is funny you went with Pythago- (laughs) like, you went at math. (laughs) Those greedy bastards. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 11:56 Yeah, I know.

Lex Fridman 11:57 But it's gr- it's great because-

Neal Stephenson 11:58 How can we monetize the Pythagorean theorem? Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:02 (laughs) Well, I mean, e- education, right?

Neal Stephenson 12:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:04 It's to figure out, like, w-... people who love math education, for example, love it purely, not purely, but very often love it for itself, for j- just teaching math.

Neal Stephenson 12:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:17 But then they start, you know, when coming face to face with, for example, like, the YouTube algorithm, they start to try to figure out, "Okay, how can I make money off of this?" The, the primary goal is still that love of education, but they also want to, to make that love of education a f- their full-time job. But, I, I see that, sort of that dance of humanity with the algorithms as, uh, it finds this kind of local pocket of optimality that's ... Or sub-optimality, whatever.

Neal Stephenson 12:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:50 It's, gets stuck in it.

Neal Stephenson 12:51 Pocket, anyway.

Lex Fridman 12:51 Well, it's a pocket of some sort. And, but I see that pocket as way better than what we had before-

Neal Stephenson 12:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 12:57 ... in the '80s, right?

Neal Stephenson 12:58 Okay.

Lex Fridman 12:58 Or '90s, before the internet. But like, and now we're now, this is, this is also human nature, we start, uh, writing very eloquent articles about how this pocket is clearly a pocket, it's not very good, and we can imagine much better lands far beyond. And, but the reality is, it's better than before-

Neal Stephenson 13:16 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 13:17 ... and now we're waiting for-

Neal Stephenson 13:18 We have to escape from a local-

Lex Fridman 13:20 ... like, a new bo- Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 13:20 ... minimum.

Lex Fridman 13:21 And you have to wait either for lone geniuses or for some kind of momentum of a group of geniuses that just say, "Enough is enough. I have an idea."

Neal Stephenson 13:29 Yup.

Lex Fridman 13:29 "This, this is how we get out." And it's too easy to be sort of, I think, uh, partially because you can get a lot of clicks on your articles, being cynical about being in this pocket and we are forever stuck in this pocket and then, like, coming up with this grandiose theory that humanity has finally, like, it's collapsing, stuck forever like a prison in this pocket.

Neal Stephenson 13:52 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 13:53 But in reality, there's just, it's like, it's just clickbait articles and, and books until we, uh, w- one curious ant comes up with a next pocket.

Neal Stephenson 14:02 Yeah, tunnels through the barrier or gets enough energy to jump over the,

Neal Stephenson 14:06 the barrier.

Lex Fridman 14:06 And eventually we'll be, uh, as you've talked about, I mean, we'll be ... We'll colonize the solar system and then, uh, well, we'll be stuck in the solar system and then, uh, people will say, "Well, we're screwed when, 'cause when the sun energy runs out, there's no way to get to the, the next solar system," and then th- and so on, it goes on until we colonize the entirety of the observable universe.

Neal Stephenson 14:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 14:29 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 14:29 I, I think, I think getting out of the solar system is going to be a hard one, but, uh ...

Lex Fridman 14:33 So can you, you mentioned this, can you elaborate why you think, back to sort of a serious question, why do you think it's hard to get outside of our solar system?

Neal Stephenson 14:43 It's just a energy calcul- I mean, you, you can do it slowly, m- uh, whenever you want, um, but, uh, the idea of getting there in, you know, uh, one lifetime or multiple, a few lifetimes is, uh, requires huge amounts of energy to, to accelerate. Um, and then you, as s- soon as you get halfway there, you need to expend an equal amount of energy to decelerate, or you'll just go shooting by. Um, and so, um, that means carrying a lot of energy, and there's, there's, uh, ideas, like Yuri Milner c- I, I think is still funding the, the idea to use laser propulsion to send something, uh, to another star system, a small object. Um, but it'll have no way to slow down, as far as I know.

Lex Fridman 15:35 Right. They never talk about that part.

Neal Stephenson 15:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:37 Like, how do we slow down?

Neal Stephenson 15:38 Yeah. Um, (laughs) so-

Lex Fridman 15:40 It's a quick flyby. You take a good picture, I guess.

Neal Stephenson 15:43 Yeah, you better take some good pictures on your way by. So, and that's great if it happens, I'm not knocking it, um, but the amount of energy is, is, uh, that's needed is just staggering, and there's, there's other issues like just how do you maintain, uh, uh, uh, an ecosystem for that long in isolation? Uh, how do you prevent people from going crazy? What happens if you hit something while traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light?

Lex Fridman 16:10 What about sort of, um, some combination of expanding human lifespan, but also just good old-fashioned stable society on a spaceship?

Neal Stephenson 16:21 Yeah, yeah, the, the generation-

Lex Fridman 16:23 Noah's Ark.

Neal Stephenson 16:23 ... ship, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:24 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 16:24 No, I think that's the only way. It would, it would have to keep going for a long time. Um, and they might get to where they're going and find, uh, a, a shitty, um, solar system. Like, w- we can try to-

Lex Fridman 16:40 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 16:40 We can try to do some advanced survey, but, I mean, if, if you get there and all the planets in that solar system are just garbage planets, then it's kind of a big letdown for, for this, like, thousand-year voyage that you've just, uh, you've just been on.

Lex Fridman 16:56 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 16:57 Right? So, I mean, we have a pretty narrow range of, of parameters w- that we need to stay, uh, between in order to survive, um, in terms of the, the gravitational, uh, field that we can deal with, um, so that such a, sets a bound on the size of the, the planet, and, um, what we need in the way of temperature and atmosphere and so on. So, when you look at all those complications, then, um, basically building a, uh, sort of, uh, exactly the environment we want out of available materials in this solar system starts to look a hell of a lot better. Um, as, it's hard to make, uh, um, an economic argument, let's say, for, for, for making that journey. Uh, one of the things I like about The Expanse is the fact that the people who are trying to build the starship to go to the other solar system are doing it for religious reasons, and I think that's the only reason that you would do it, um, 'cause economically, it just makes more sense to build rotating cylindrical space habitats and make them perfect.

Lex Fridman 18:10 Well, is-isn't everything done for religious reasons? Like why do we... Exploration?

Neal Stephenson 18:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:15 Like what, why- why did we go to the moon again?

Neal Stephenson 18:17 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 18:18 And do the other things? Uh, what has JFK said? It's because, not because they're easy but because they're hard.

Neal Stephenson 18:24 I knew a-

Lex Fridman 18:24 Isn't that kind of a religious reason?

Neal Stephenson 18:26 ... I knew a veteran of the Apollo program who once said that the Apollo moon landings were communism's greatest achievement.

Lex Fridman 18:33 (laughs) Yeah, so the conflict between nations is a kind of, um, there's a kind of str-

Neal Stephenson 18:41 Not exactly a religion, but it's what you're talking about.

Lex Fridman 18:43 Well, it's a struggle for meaning.

Neal Stephenson 18:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:45 I mean, uh, and that meaning isn't found in some kind of, it's, it's hard to find meaning in mathematics.

Neal Stephenson 18:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:51 It's- it's found in some kind of, in music, in religion, whatever, art.

Neal Stephenson 18:56 I mean some people do, but those are probably not enough of them to... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 19:01 Well they, uh, people that find bea- uh, meaning in mathematics?

Neal Stephenson 19:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 19:05 They usually find meaning between the lines nevertheless, not in the actual, uh, form of like the proving, (laughs) prov- proving some kind of thing.

Neal Stephenson 19:14 Fair enough, yeah.

Lex Fridman 19:15 So, from a cost perspective do you actually see a possible future where we're be- buil- building these kind of generation ships and just why not launch them one a year?

Neal Stephenson 19:27 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 19:28 Out like, uh, like wandering ants out into the-

Neal Stephenson 19:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 19:34 ... into the galaxy?

Neal Stephenson 19:36 I have nothing against it, uh, it's just like I said, it's got a- a, the motivation to do it has to come from, um, some kind of spiritual or- or kind of non-tangible, uh, calculus.

Lex Fridman 19:51 So from a business model perspective you don't think there's a business model there?

Neal Stephenson 19:54 No. No way.

Lex Fridman 19:56 One of the many fascinating things you've done in your life, you were, at the very beginning, you were the person that conve- convinced Jeff Bezos (laughs) to start a (laughs) , uh, a spaceship company, a space company. Uh, you were there at Blue Origin, uh, for a few years in the beginning, uh, working on alternate propulsion systems, and, at least according to Wikipedia, uh, alternate business models.

Neal Stephenson 20:22 Yeah, I mean to go back to the first thing you said, uh, Jeff Bezos is not a guy who required a lot of convincing.

Lex Fridman 20:29 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 20:30 Um, he'd been thinking about it since he was five years old and it was an inevitability. But, um, the- the idea, um, that- that kind of got hatched in 1999 was to, um, just do some, uh, advance kind of scouting work, you know, explore the corners of the- the space of- of possibilities. And so that's what, uh, that was Blue Operations LLC, which was the precursor to- to Blue Origin. And, um, so it was a small staff of people that- that did that for a few years, and I- I think it was about 2003, 2004, that, uh, it swung decisively towards the direction it's- it's been following ever since, which is, you know, using basically existing aerospace technologies and models to make chemical fueled rockets, um, for space tourism. Uh, I believe and I continue to believe that the- the fact that we use chemical rockets is just an accident of history that comes out of World War II. So, until World War II, rockets are, uh, being built on a small scale by people like Robert Goddard, um, but then Hitler desperately wants to bomb London, um, but he can't quite reach it and the Luftwaffe, uh, I- has been kind of neutralized. So he- he decides he's gonna lob warheads into it with- with rockets. Um, which is a terrible a- misallocation of resources, it was a terrible idea. But, uh, so it only could have happened in a dictatorship controlled by a- a lunatic. Um, but that's- that's the situation that existed so they built these rockets, they, you know, got the V2. Um, and then it's just a- a complete coincidence that that war ends with, um, atomic bombs being developed in a completely separate super weapon program. And so suddenly the- the existence of the bombs creates a demand for rockets that didn't exist before 'cause if you've got atomic bombs you need a way to deliver them. You can do it with bombers but, uh, it's a lot better to just hurl them to the other side of the world on the top of a rocket. So, um, so suddenly rockets which had gotten a boost because of Hitler's V2 program got a much bigger boost during the- the '50s and '60s.

Lex Fridman 23:10 And it is a complete, you're right, uh, for some reason never thought of this, it is an accident of history that nuclear weapons are developed at a similar time.

Neal Stephenson 23:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:20 First of all, it, nuclear weapons didn't have to be developed at the same time as World War II.

Neal Stephenson 23:26 Right.

Lex Fridman 23:26 That's an accident in history.

Neal Stephenson 23:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:27 And then the fact that, okay, so then Hitler started using rockets, that's an accident of... (laughs) Okay, that's fascinating. That's a fascinating, uh, set of coincidences.

Neal Stephenson 23:38 Yeah, and which is true of a lot of technologies, by the way. By- by the time these rockets are kind of working, um, we've got hydrogen bombs that, um, are so big and so devastating that, um, nobody really wants to use them. But it turns out you can fit a capsule with a couple of people in it into the- the socket on the end of a r- uh, of a- of a missile that was made to hold a hydrogen bomb. (clears throat) So, um, uh, so we start doing that instead-

Lex Fridman 24:10 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 24:10 ... uh, as a proxy for- for having a war. Um-... and, um-

Lex Fridman 24:16 I'd love to be in the meeting where the first guy brought that up as an idea. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 24:20 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:21 (laughs) It's probably a Russian, "Why don't we strap a person to the rocket?"

Neal Stephenson 24:25 Yeah. Yeah. Well, it probably was 'cause they did it first, right? Uh, the Russians did it first.

Lex Fridman 24:30 And they had perhaps less respect for sort of safety protocols.

Neal Stephenson 24:34 Could be.

Lex Fridman 24:35 They're a little bit more, uh, willing to sacrifice the life of an astronaut, or to risk the life of an astronaut. So...

Neal Stephenson 24:41 Could be, yeah, yeah. This is basically the story of how through all of this competition, and 'cause of these historical accidents, you know, trillions of R&D dollars and rubles were put into, um, development of chemical rocket technology, which is, you know, now advanced to an incredibly high degree. But there's other ways to make things go really fast, which is li- all that rockets do. It's all orbit is, it's just going really fast. Um, and, uh, uh, because so many nerds are obsessed with space, people have been, uh, thinking about alternate schemes for as long as they've been thinking about rockets. Um, and so one of the first things that you, that I learned, kind of trying to explore new possibilities, uh, was that I could put all of my brain power to work and, and be creative as I could and, and invent some idea that I thought was new for making things go fast, and I would always find out that some guy in Russia or somewhere had, had thought the same idea up 50 years ago-

Lex Fridman 25:53 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 25:54 ... and figured out all the math-

Lex Fridman 25:56 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 25:56 ... you know? And so-

Lex Fridman 25:58 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 25:59 ... at a, at a certain point, you give up on trying to invent completely new ideas and just go poking around trying to find those guys. Um, so there's a number of, uh, of ideas that we looked at, y- you know, some are crazier, some are less crazy, but, um, the direction that that company eventually took was, was chemical rockets.

Lex Fridman 26:23 Is there something you can comment on possible ideas? Like, so first of all, like, uh, I mean, uh, uh, like, you could use nuclear, so nuclear puls- propulsion.

Neal Stephenson 26:35 Yeah, so that's, I mean, you've probably heard of Project Orion, which, um, was the i- Freeman Dyson, uh, and s- and h- some of his collaborators had a scheme to, um, to power a large space vehicle by detonating atomic bombs behind it. Um, and so one of the other people who was working at Blue Operations during this time was George Dyson, the son of Freeman. And so we knew all about Project Orion, and he found an old film that they'd shot on a beach in La Jolla of a prototype of this that was powered by, uh, like, uh, lumps of C4. So that was an idea, but for a private company, obtaining a large number of atomic bombs was probably out of scope. So, it was more of a theoretical thing. There's a conceptually similar approach using lasers that, uh, that Freeman worked on, uh, with Arthur Kantrowitz and some others, where you take a pulsed laser, and you fire it at a vehicle that has a block of ice on the back. And the pulse hits the, uh, ice and f- flashes off a layer of steam that becomes plasma, and plasma is opaque because it conducts, and so being opaque, it then absorbs all of the energy from the laser pulse and gets really hot, and just pushes on the, the back of the, the block of ice. And then you wait a moment for that to dissipate and then you do it again. So, it would just kind of, uh, vibrate its way ... Like it sounds really violent, but Freeman said that if you were wearing, like, rubber-soled tennis shoes standing in this vehicle, you would just feel a mild vibration. Um, so there your source of energy is on the ground, and you're getting higher specific impulse than you could get by burning chemicals. Um, Jordan Kaer and others worked on another laser system, uh, the late Dr. Jordan Kaer, um, that just would heat up a heat exchanger by converging, many converging solid state lasers from the ground. And Kevin Parkin, um, uh, worked on a similar scheme that just uses, uh, microwaves, uh, to do that. Uh, we looked at, um, tall towers. Uh, I spent a while looking kind of semi-seriously at giant bullwhips. Um-

Lex Fridman 29:13 What's a bullwhip?

Neal Stephenson 29:15 Just a whip. Just a ... You have them here in Texas, right? It's just-

Lex Fridman 29:20 Yeah, I, uh, yeah, I understand. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 29:21 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 29:21 But how does that have to do with propulsion?

Neal Stephenson 29:23 If you think about it, a whip is an incredibly simple primitive object-

Lex Fridman 29:28 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 29:28 ... that can break the speed of sound. So it's unbelievable in a way that for thousands of years, people with no technology have been able to, to accelerate objects through the speed of sound-

Lex Fridman 29:44 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 29:44 ... just through an architectural trick. Just, just, you know, just the physics of a moving bend of material in a medium-

Lex Fridman 29:53 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 29:55 ... um, can do this. So, um, so that's a thing I still think about from time to time. You can use the same physics to make freestanding loops of chain or, or other flexible materials, um, that just kind of stand up under their own physics. Um ...

Lex Fridman 30:17 I mean, it's kinda awesome to imagine. So imagine using the same kind of physics of a whip-... but have at the end of it a spaceship.

Neal Stephenson 30:27 Yeah, that would detach at the moment of maximum velocity.

Lex Fridman 30:34 Why, why not? (laughs) Why wouldn't that...

Neal Stephenson 30:37 So part of my motivation in studying that was to ask that, that question.

Lex Fridman 30:42 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 30:43 It was, it was more, uh, almost a symbolic way of saying, "Look, there's all kinds of physics we haven't explored yet. Um, that's n- it's no more crazy than the idea of chemical rockets. Um, it's just that, uh, more money's gone into chemical rockets, right?"

Lex Fridman 31:07 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 31:07 But...

Lex Fridman 31:08 Can I ask you, um, a question on propulsion that's a little bit more out there? So, I don't know if you've, uh, seen quite, uh, a lot of recent articles and reports and so on about, uh, UFOs.

Neal Stephenson 31:23 Mm.

Lex Fridman 31:24 Like the Tic Tac aircraft.

Neal Stephenson 31:26 I keep seeing a lot of chatter about it, but I haven't gone deep into it.

Lex Fridman 31:32 So the DoD released footage filmed by, um, pilots, and there's a lot of reports about objects that moved in ways they haven't seen before that seemed to, uh, defy the laws of physics if we consider the aircraft that we have today. And so, the, the reason I ask you that is because it kind of, um... To, to me, whatever the heck it is, it's inspiring for the possibilities of i- ideas for propulsion.

Neal Stephenson 32:07 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 32:08 If it's like, um, secret projects from foreign nations or it's physical phenomena that we don't yet understand, like ball lightning, all those kinds of things-

Neal Stephenson 32:18 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 32:18 ... or if it is aliens or objects from an alien civilization, I most likely believe it's fr- if it's an object from an alien civilization, it's gotta be like a really dumb drone that just like-

Neal Stephenson 32:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:31 ... got lost.

Neal Stephenson 32:32 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:32 It's, it's definitely not-

Neal Stephenson 32:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:34 ... like the pinnacle (laughs) of intelligence. It's like, some like teenager's like, uh-

Neal Stephenson 32:41 Science fair experiment.

Lex Fridman 32:42 Yeah, it just flew for-

Neal Stephenson 32:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:43 ... for a few centuries out and just landed, and then we humans are all like really excited about this.

Neal Stephenson 32:49 (laughing) Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:50 (chuckles) This, uh, this wild thing. I mean, what do you, what do you think about those, um... First of all, like the millions of reports of UFOs, right? There's some psychology there that's deeply cultural, uh, but also the possibility of aliens having visited Earth.

Neal Stephenson 33:05 Yeah, I mean, I'd like to see some better pictures. Uh, for the reason I mentioned earlier, having to do with the difficulty of traveling between star systems, it's really hard for me to believe it's aliens. Uh, I, I just can't understand why you would, um, go to all that trouble to transport something across light years and then do what these UFOs are allegedly doing. Like, how is that interesting? How, how does that justify the trip?

Lex Fridman 33:36 So, if you travel across, you know, those kinds of distances, you would make a bigger splash?

Neal Stephenson 33:45 Th- first of all, I, I would expect that the, the arrival of these things would be something we'd notice. It's gotta, you know, decelerate into, into our solar system by... Un- unless it got here really, really, really slowly, so I guess that's a-

Lex Fridman 34:00 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 34:01 ... that's a possibility, and just kind of snuck in.

Lex Fridman 34:04 So at the end, we would detect some kind of footprint in terms of energy?

Neal Stephenson 34:08 You would think. So, I actually think your idea of a science fair project gone, gone bad, you know, it makes more sense in, in, in that it would explain why these, if these things are alien technologies, they're just kind of hanging around our aircraft carriers for no particular reason, like doing, doing... not trying to communicate-

Lex Fridman 34:30 (laughs) Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 34:31 ... you know?

Lex Fridman 34:31 Is it, can you imagine a scenario where aliens have visited Earth, or are visiting Earth, and we wouldn't notice it at all?

Neal Stephenson 34:41 Oh, sure. I mean, if they've got technology to, to get here, they've probably got technology to conceal the, the fact that they're here.

Lex Fridman 34:49 Or they're trying to conceal themselves. I meant more like they're not trying to conceal themselves, but we're just-

Neal Stephenson 34:54 Oh.

Lex Fridman 34:54 ... our cognitive capabilities are se- like too limited and we are not thinking big enough.

Neal Stephenson 35:00 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 35:00 We're, we're looking for little green men.

Neal Stephenson 35:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:03 We're looking for things that operate at a timescale that's humanlike. Uh, you know, it's...

Neal Stephenson 35:10 Yeah, no, I, yeah, I love thinking about ideas like that. That's great science fiction novel fodder, you know? Uh, that the aliens are, are so different, uh, that we simply don't, don't see them.

Lex Fridman 35:22 I mean, is there, um, you know, in terms of language, do you think it wo- it would be difficult, not aliens visiting us but traveling to other places to, to find a common language? You, you've written about the importance (laughs) of language in intelligent civilizations.

Neal Stephenson 35:39 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 35:40 Um, how difficult is the problem to bridge the gap between aliens and humans-

Neal Stephenson 35:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:46 ... in terms of language, so we're not lost in translation?

Neal Stephenson 35:50 Yeah, I mean, there is different takes on that depending on how biologically similar they are to us, you know? I mean, there is a school of thought that says basically, uh, advanced life has to be carbon-based for just reasons of chemistry. So right away, if you impose that limitation, then you're, you're kind of assuming a, uh, something that's starting to be biologically similar to us. So, if they're about as big as we are and, uh, you know, they, um, they, they kind of move around in, in space, you know, in a physical body the way we do, then, then there's probably a way to, to solve that communication problem.... uh, if they're, you know, like beings of pure energy from Star Trek or-

Lex Fridman 36:37 Right.

Neal Stephenson 36:37 ... something like that, then it's a different story.

Lex Fridman 36:40 Well, I love thinking about that kind of stuff too. I mean, there's the, you know ... Consciousness itself may be, may be ali... I mean, it, it could be, uh, like you said, (laughs) beings of pure energy. Um, I, I think, I think of life as just complex systems and th- the kind of forms those complex systems can take seems to be much larger than the particular biological systems we see here on Earth. Um, I have to ask a Twitter question-

Neal Stephenson 37:09 Okay.

Lex Fridman 37:10 ... about aliens.

Neal Stephenson 37:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:11 R- are you ready? This is for Twitter.

Neal Stephenson 37:13 I'm ready.

Lex Fridman 37:13 Wha- what would you expect from Twitter?

Neal Stephenson 37:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:15 Can humans have sex with aliens? Neil Stevenson.

Neal Stephenson 37:20 (laughs) Um-

Lex Fridman 37:22 You can pass. (laughs) I asked a language question, can they commu- communicate?

Neal Stephenson 37:27 Yeah. Uh-

Lex Fridman 37:28 Uh, can they fall in love? Befo- before sex? That's how it works.

Neal Stephenson 37:33 So which question, uh, am I answering? The sex or the, the love?

Lex Fridman 37:37 Um, I mean, (sighs) it depends what is more fundamental to relations across-

Neal Stephenson 37:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:43 ... across intelligent species.

Neal Stephenson 37:45 Yeah, I mean, um, you know, sex can mean a lot of things. Um-

Lex Fridman 37:49 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 37:49 ... so I mean, uh, if you're-

Lex Fridman 37:52 Reproduction, right?

Neal Stephenson 37:53 Y- you know, the, the ... In, in Star Trek, in classic Star Trek you had to, to really suspend your disbelief to, to think that, um, Spock was half Vulcan and half human, right? 'Cause that's just not gonna, not gonna work DNA-wise. Um, so, um, so if by sex you mean reproductive sex, then, um, uh, I would say no unless, uh, you, unless you go to a panspermia, um, kind of theory which is that, uh, you know, humans were seeded onto the planet as part of a galactic, uh, you know, uh, uh, program of some, of some sort.

Lex Fridman 38:39 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 38:39 Uh-

Lex Fridman 38:40 And then we're just returning home-

Neal Stephenson 38:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:41 ... and hanging out with our-

Neal Stephenson 38:43 With our-

Lex Fridman 38:43 ... old relatives.

Neal Stephenson 38:44 ... distant cousins, yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:45 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 38:45 Yeah. Um, but that, that doesn't seem, you know, it doesn't seem, seem plausible. We, we know that, we know that humans had sex with Neanderthals, with Denisovans, Denisovans.

Lex Fridman 38:58 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 38:59 Um, so you could think of them as aliens-

Lex Fridman 39:01 Mm.

Neal Stephenson 39:01 ... that, that came from our planet, um, so, um, so that's a s- kind of data point, I guess. Um, but, um, (clears throat) you know, if you broaden your definition of sex to mean any kind of, uh, gratifying physical interaction, then sure.

Lex Fridman 39:21 Right. (laughs) Dancing. And that's, that's how we get to love.

Neal Stephenson 39:26 Okay.

Lex Fridman 39:27 And love can take many forms.

Neal Stephenson 39:28 Love can (laughs) certainly take many

Neal Stephenson 39:30 forms.

Lex Fridman 39:30 I have to ask you, um, in terms of space, just looking at where Blue Origin is, looking at where SpaceX is today-

Neal Stephenson 39:37 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 39:39 ... and maybe looking out 10, 20 years out from now, are you impressed with what's happening? We just saw William Shatner go up to space.

Neal Stephenson 39:47 Yeah, I was ju- I was just watching his video th- this morning before I came here.

Lex Fridman 39:51 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 39:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:52 Are you impressed at where things stand today?

Neal Stephenson 39:54 Yeah. I mean, uh, I mean, SpaceX in particular is, has d- done things that are just unbelievable. Um, and, um, uh, uh, I don't think anyone was anticipating, um, 20 years ago, let's say, when this all started, just the, uh, the speed with which they'd be able to, um, rack up these incredible achievements. I- if you've kind of, uh, even seen a little bit of how the sausage is made and, and sort of the, the, the difficulty of, of doing any kind of space travel, um, what they've achieved is, uh, is just, uh, is, is unbelievable.

Lex Fridman 40:36 What about, uh, maybe a question about Elon Musk? Um, even more than Jeff Bezos, he has a very kind of ambitious vision-

Neal Stephenson 40:46 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 40:47 ... of, um, this project that we're on as a species-

Neal Stephenson 40:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 40:51 ... of becoming a multiplanetary species, and becoming that quickly, like-

Neal Stephenson 40:57 Yeah, I-

Lex Fridman 40:57 ... as soon as possible. Landing on Mars, colonizing Mars.

Neal Stephenson 41:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:01 What do you think of that project? There's two questions to ask. First, the question is what, wha- what do you think about the project of colonizing Mars?

Neal Stephenson 41:08 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 41:09 And second, what do you think about a human being who is so unapologetically ambitious at achieving the impossible, at what a lot of people would say is impossible?

Neal Stephenson 41:23 I think that colonizing Mars is the kind of, of goal that's, uh, it's easily stated, uh, it's, um, it's catchy, it's, it's, it's the kind of thing that it can inspire people to get involved in a way that some other programs might not. Um, so I think it's well-chosen in that way. Um, I have technical questions about, um ...

Lex Fridman 41:49 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 41:50 You know, there's, there's a, a problem of perchlorates, uh, on the surface of Mars that, that's gonna be big trouble. Um, and there's, there's radiation, so, and it ... peop- this is known, I'm, uh, b- but, um-

Lex Fridman 42:04 What about business questions?

Neal Stephenson 42:06 Mm.

Lex Fridman 42:06 Do you think, 'cause you mentioned sort of, uh, going outside of the solar system would, would best be done for religious reasons. Um, what about colonizing Mars? Can you spin it into a business proposition?

Neal Stephenson 42:20 It's hard to think of a resource that's on Mars that could be brought back here cheaply enough to compete with, um, uh, with stuff we could just dig out of the ground here or grow here.... um, so I- I don't know if there is a business plan for that or if it's just strictly we're gonna go there and, and see what happens, um, you know.

Lex Fridman 42:48 (sighs) Maybe again we need communism to kinda-

Neal Stephenson 42:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:51 ... to get us going. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 42:53 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:53 To give us a reason, a little bit of the competition.

Neal Stephenson 42:55 Well, there's plenty of people who are sufficiently excited by the colonize Mars vision that they're willing to, to just go all in on it, um, even if there's not a, a business plan behind it. Um, so, so I think it's well-chosen. It's just, uh, um, uh, I think it's probably the only, um, the only approach to take. Um, you know, a- a- a lot of the... When, when white people came to this continent and, and started colonizing it, you know, uh, there was not a lot of coherent planning. Like, what, what plans they did have turned out to be terrible plans. Um, you know, trying to come up with plans that extend decades into the future is, uh, is a waste of time.

Lex Fridman 43:48 So do it for the kind of, uh, like unexplainable love of the unknown. Like, like, the, the, uh, the journey towards exploring the unknown.

Neal Stephenson 43:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:00 And just kinda keep going.

Neal Stephenson 44:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:02 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 44:03 Well, you saw it with Shatner and his, uh, reaction to the, the flight, uh, yesterday. Um, he, uh, um, th- for him that trip was more than worth it just for these intangible reasons.

Lex Fridman 44:19 What did he say? I haven't watched the video yet.

Neal Stephenson 44:22 He was trying to express the, the, uh, talking a lot about the moment where suddenly you kind of rise above the, the thin blue blanket of, uh, of the atmosphere and you're up into the blackness. Um, and, uh, that had a huge impact on him. So he was kind of, uh, I wouldn't say groping for words 'cause he was pretty eloquent, but he was trying to express his feelings about that, um, in, in a way that, uh, is, is pretty, pretty gripping to watch.

Lex Fridman 44:55 So, y- you've worked on this kind of stuff. We can go back 10 years ago you wrote an essay, uh, called Innovation Starvation. You worked on this kind of idea, uh, since then. Kind of looking at, um, maybe a little bit cynically about our age today and our unwillingness to take on big risky projects. So in the face of that, what do you think of, uh, people like Elon Musk? 'Cause to me, people like that are inspiring and gives you hope in the face of, a more kind of, um, pessimistic perspective o- of our age.

Neal Stephenson 45:37 Yeah, well he's clearly willing to tackle, um, big ambitious, uh, projects, uh, without a lot of, um, kind of soul searching or, uh, or, or sort of trying to make up his mind, right? (laughs) It's like, um-

Lex Fridman 45:54 Just go and do it.

Neal Stephenson 45:55 ... "Let's dig tunnels under cities. Go." You know? Let's, uh-

Lex Fridman 45:59 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 45:59 ... um-

Lex Fridman 46:00 Step one, make a joke about it on Twitter. Step two, actually do it.

Neal Stephenson 46:03 (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:06 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 46:06 Yeah. And, uh, I mean things have slowed down, uh, quite... Our ability to, um, to build things, uh, uh, at pace, um, is, is a lot less than it was, and there's, there's reasons for that, you know? We're more concerned with safety and environmental impacts than, um, than people were when they were building, uh, some of the great public works projects of the mid-20th century. Um, but even... We're at the point now where even just maintaining the stuff that we've got is such a huge project, um, that we need to put big resources into it and good minds into it, um, or else we're gonna be, we're gonna be losing, uh, things that, that we take for granted.

Lex Fridman 46:52 Do you think that there's a lot to be done in the digital space? That's, uh, we mentioned sort of Wikipedia and knowledge. Don't you think there could be a lot of flourishing in the space of innovation, in terms of innovation in the digital space?

Neal Stephenson 47:07 Yeah, I mean, I'd like to see that. I think it's where a lot of the brain power went during the last couple of generations, um, because people who might previously have been building rockets or other kinds of sort of hard technologies, uh, ended up instead going into programming, computer science, uh, which is understandable and great. Um, we've got structural problems right now in the way social media works that are pretty severe, and so I certainly hope that we're not... You know, 10 years from now that we're not exactly where we are today when it comes to that stuff. We need to move on.

Lex Fridman 47:51 The beautiful thing about problems is they show you how not to do things.

Neal Stephenson 47:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:57 And they, uh, give you, give opportunity to, uh, new ideas to flourish and to beat out the ideas of the old.

Neal Stephenson 48:06 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:06 Which is, uh, a dream for me in, in... To see, um, new social media.

Neal Stephenson 48:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 48:13 That beats out the ways of the old. So I, I tend to... You perhaps agree that it's not... That it's impossible to do social media well.

Neal Stephenson 48:22 Oh, not at all. I mean, I listened to your, uh, interview with Jaron a couple weeks ago and I, I know Jaron and we've, you know, we've talked about this and-

Lex Fridman 48:31 He went, he went hard on me. He basically said, like-

Neal Stephenson 48:34 In his very-

Lex Fridman 48:34 ... "It's impossible." (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 48:35 ... in his very nice way... Well, the last time I kind of paid attention to Jaron's thoughts on it, he was thinking in terms of...... that basically there should be, you know, micropayments, uh, such that if I, by clicking the like button on something, I am essentially giving, um, valuable intellectual property to Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Uh, it's not a very large amount of IP, but it's definitely a transfer of information that, that when they aggregate it, it is beneficial to them. So, and now I, now I do remember that he, uh, on, on his interview with you was talking about what data unions or-

Lex Fridman 49:21 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 49:21 ... yeah.

Lex Fridman 49:22 Those are a lot of interesting ideas, but for me, the biggest disagreement was in the level of cynicism. He has a distrust and cynicism towards people in Silicon Valley being able to do these kinds of things. And I'm really ... Okay, when you have a large crowd of people who are doing things the wrong way-

Neal Stephenson 49:44 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 49:45 ... you should nevertheless maintain optimism because what's important is to find the one person in that room that's going to do things the right way. Cynicism is going to completely silence out the whole room. So, he was saying, "I've, I've been here a long time."

Neal Stephenson 50:00 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 50:01 "I, I've known, you know, I, I under- like how these folks work. They think they're gods and they know the right way to do things and they will tell you how to do those things. And that kind of hubris is going to always lead you astray when you are the one who is engineering the algorithms." And there's a lot of deep truth to that because algorithms are powerful and, uh, many people when given power do not do the best of things. I mean, most, w- what is it, uh, the old Lincoln line, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power."

Neal Stephenson 50:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 50:40 Yes, but that doesn't mean that some people are not able to handle the power, that some people are not able to come up with good, uh, ideas that create better social media.

Neal Stephenson 50:51 Yeah, I didn't interpret Jaron's statements as, as being entirely cynical and hopeless. I mean, he's, he's definitely raising, you know, issues of concern, um, but he wouldn't be out, you know, writing the books that he's written and talking about this stuff if he didn't think there was a way.

Lex Fridman 51:09 If, if he didn't think there was hope, yeah. And part of it, as you probably know with Jaron, he just loves a good argument. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 51:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:16 (laughs) He just loves to have a little bit of fun.

Lex Fridman 51:19 Well, I have to ask you about, uh, I mean we talked about taking all big bold risky ideas. So, in your new book, Termination Shock, it's set here in Texas.

Neal Stephenson 51:32 Part, part of it is, yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:34 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 51:34 Most, most of it.

Lex Fridman 51:35 Yeah, it's a great place to set it. So, in it, the main character, T.R. McCulligan, a Texas billionaire oil man and truck stop magnate decides to solve climate change, take on climate change by himself. So, this is an interesting philosophical exploration of how to solve climate change from a perspective that's perhaps different than we've been thinking about. So-

Neal Stephenson 51:57 Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't use the word solve, but let's say ameliorate-

Lex Fridman 52:02 Ameliorate.

Neal Stephenson 52:02 ... the temporary effects. But please.

Lex Fridman 52:05 Take on.

Neal Stephenson 52:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:07 Take on the challenge. So, it's, it's very interesting but as, s- so there's a gradual nature to this process.

Neal Stephenson 52:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:15 And I mean just like in, in your book, um, the power of innovation is something that has, uh, saved us quite a few times in history. So, what role does that play as, in this gradual process?

Neal Stephenson 52:34 Right. So ultimately, we don't solve the problem until we get the CO2 out of the atmosphere, um, but that is going to take a while. Um, we're still adding more, uh, we haven't even started to, to reduce the amount. So, um-

Lex Fridman 52:54 So there's two possibilities, and sorry to interrupt, is reduce the amount that we're putting in the atmosphere and two is removing what we got in the atmosphere.

Neal Stephenson 53:03 We have to do both.

Lex Fridman 53:04 Right. And th- those are two different kind of, uh-

Neal Stephenson 53:07 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:08 ... efforts in terms of like what's involved.

Neal Stephenson 53:10 Because it stays up there. So I think just last week China announced that they're going to try to level off their CO2 emissions in like 2030. So 2031 they'll only put as much CO2 into the atmosphere as they did in 2030, which is still a lot of CO2. In 2060 they're saying we'll be net zero. So, if everyone in the world does that and the PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere by then is, say, 450 parts per million, it will stay at 450 parts per million until we take it out. And taking it out, um, is hard, it's a, you know, it's a big... We, we, it took us a long time. We had to empty out huge coal mines and oil reservoirs and burn all that stuff. We had to chop down forests and dig up peat bogs, um, in order to create all of that CO2. And so, we have to reverse all of those processes, uh, somehow in order to remove the CO2 and get it back down hopefully into the 200 and some parts per million range where it used to be.

Lex Fridman 54:26 So, how about you get a, a single Texas billionaire to have a massive gun that blasts huge quantities of sulfur into the up- upper atmosphere?

Neal Stephenson 54:35 So this is-

Lex Fridman 54:35 Like that's idea number one.

Neal Stephenson 54:37 That's, uh, this is called solar geoengineering and it's, uh, we know that it's a possibility on a technical level because volcanoes have been doing it forever. Um, so many times in human history we've seen a volcanic eruption that was followed by a global cooling trend that lasted for a couple of years. And, uh, one of these things happened, I think in the '60s or '70s in Indonesia and, um, and Australians sent a, a plane up into the stratosphere to take some samples of the plume, and when it came back down, the windscreen of the plane had sort of a deposit on it. So one of the Australian scientists licked it (clears throat) and reported that it was painfully acid.

Lex Fridman 55:25 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 55:26 So that was our first kind of clue that what was being injected into the stratosphere was sulfur dioxide. Um, so, um, and, and so we know b- then, well, Pinatubo came along in the '90s and, and did this experiment for us. So we know that sulfur in the, uh, in the stratosphere, it forms little, uh, spherical droplets of sulfuric acid after it combines with water, and those bounce back some of the sun's rays and, um, reduce the amount of, of solar energy entering the troposphere, which is where we live. So, um, so we know that it works and we f- we also know that the stuff goes away after a couple of years, so it gradually washes out, and so it's not a permanent thing. You have to c- uh, the, it's, uh, the good news, bad news is, um... Good news is, it's not permanent so if you don't like what's happening, you can just stop and wait a couple of years and you'll get back to where you started. And the, the, the bad news, if, if you're in favor of this kind of thing is that you have to keep doing it forever.

Lex Fridman 56:37 Right.

Neal Stephenson 56:37 Or, um... So, so this guy's one of those... he, he's read these papers, he, he under- the TR, the character in the book, he knows all this. And all, all people who, uh, are familiar with climate science are, kind of know this. It's a pretty well-established fact. And so, um, he just decides he's gonna take action unilaterally and, and do this. Um, and so, uh, there's different ways to get the sulfur up there but because it's Texas, he builds the biggest gun in the world.

Lex Fridman 57:12 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 57:13 Uh, it's just six barrels pointed straight up and he begins firing shells loaded with sulfur into the stratosphere. And so the book is about not so much that as how people react to his doing that, uh, what the political ramifications are around the world, 'cause, you know, this is a extremely controversial idea and not everyone's on board with it. And even if you are willing to consider using a technological intervention, the, the fact is that it's gonna have different effects on different parts of the world. So some areas may suffer, um, negative, uh, even more negatives than positives, uh, and they're not gonna be happy.

Lex Fridman 57:59 So what do you think? Uh, so in, in, in his case, in TR's case, he can get around, you know, getting permission from governments. If we were to look at our, us facing, um, outside of the story, us facing climate change, where do you think the solution will come from? Governments working together or from, uh, bold billionaire Texans?

Neal Stephenson 58:29 I'm pretty sure that this kind of intervention is never gonna emerge from Western democracies. Um-

Lex Fridman 58:38 Uh, this kind of, sorry, government-coordinated? Uh, uh, which, which, option one or option-

Neal Stephenson 58:42 S- s- solar geoengineering.

Lex Fridman 58:44 Solar geoengineering.

Neal Stephenson 58:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 58:45 Uh, from a government or from a, uh, from a, like those are... I, I, I wanna sort of the distinction, one is the idea, the technological idea you're talking about-

Neal Stephenson 58:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 58:54 ... but two, uh, two is like who comes up with the idea and agrees on it?

Neal Stephenson 58:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 58:59 Governments or individuals?

Neal Stephenson 59:00 Yeah. If this were to happen, I think it would be either an individual or more likely just a, a, some government somewhere that just decides it's in their interests to, to unilaterally do this. And, you know, that's not me advocating it, it's just, uh, it's so... It would be comparatively so cheap and easy to implement a, a solar geoengineering scheme that, um, someone is probably gonna do it once things get, get bad enough. But I don't think that the governments will, I th- or w- Western governments, just because they're not, um... Well, we, we've seen what happened with, with vaccines, right? So, um, g- you know, getting, getting people to, to take vaccinations or wear masks, you know, has turned out to be incredibly hard even though it might, it might save those people's lives.

Lex Fridman 1:00:00 See, I blame, that's not Western, that's, I blame failure of leadership there.

Neal Stephenson 1:00:06 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:00:06 Of leaders being, not coming off as authentic, not being inspiring, uniting, all those kinds of things. I think that's possible. I th- I think it's, it's just that we've gotten, the leaders we have right now-

Neal Stephenson 1:00:18 Aren't the, the right people.

Lex Fridman 1:00:19 ... aren't the right people 'cause we've lived through kind of a long stretch of relatively comfortable times.

Neal Stephenson 1:00:24 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:00:25 And if, it feels like unfortunate if you just look at history, that hard times make great leaders and easy times make, uh, like bureaucrats that are egotistical and greedy and not very interesting and not very bold.

Neal Stephenson 1:00:42 Yeah. No, I think that's fair. So, you know, we may be entering one of those interesting times, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:00:47 (laughs) Of hardship? (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:00:48 ... in the Chinese curse sense, yeah. So, um-... um, so I could be wrong but, I mean, there have been some efforts to, uh, explore solar geoengineering. Uh, there was a, uh, a plan to send up some balloons, high altitude balloons, to take some measurements, uh, in Scandinavia. That got, um, squashed by, uh, objections from people who lived up there, uh, uh, who, uh, who were just opposed to the whole program on, on principle. Um, so, we'll, we'll see a lot more of that and, uh, it's gonna be a hard program to advocate for just because I think people don't quite understand how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and, uh, how far we are from, from even slowing down the rate that we're adding more, to say nothing of bringing that number down. We're a long way out from, from that.

Lex Fridman 1:01:50 Do you see, in terms of portfolio of solutions, us becoming a multi-planetary species as part of that? As a, as this also being a motivator for investing some percent of, uh, GDP into becoming a multi-planetary species? And what percent should that be, do you think?

Neal Stephenson 1:02:09 You know, in a indirect way, maybe. I mean, you, you know what people will say which is, is the same argument that has been leveled against space exploration since the Apollo program which is, "Why don't we solve our problems here on Earth before we, uh, spend money going into space?" So I've never been a believer in that, that argument. Um, I think, um, there could be a, a sense in which the new perspective that could be obtained by, uh, you thinking about, like if we're thinking about terraforming Mars, changing its atmosphere, making it more amenable to, to life and survival, um, y- you could see that maybe changing peoples' opinions about terraforming the Earth.

Lex Fridman 1:02:59 Yeah. There are some dangerous consequences to this particular, uh, idea of blasting off (laughs) for, uh, of geoengineering.

Lex Fridman 1:03:09 Um, what do you make of sort of big bold ideas that have, uh, a, that are a double-edged sword? Are all ideas like this, a- all big ideas like this, they have, uh, they have the potential to have, um, highly beneficial consequences and a potential to have highly destructive consequences?

Neal Stephenson 1:03:34 I wouldn't say all. I think, you know, going back to the, what we were talking about earlier, you know, how technology developed in the 50s and 60s, there was a, a period of time there when, um, people maybe had unrealistic ideas about new technology and weren't sufficiently attentive to the possible downsides. So, um, so we got, um, and, and there's a reason why. I mean, uh, the, the, there's th- uh, uh, you know, in, in the mid-20th century we saw, you know, antibiotics, we saw the polio vaccine, we saw, um, just simple things like refrigerators in the home, you know. Um, my, my grandmother, to her dying day, called the refrigerator the ice box because when she grew up it was a box with ice in it. So, you see all that change and it's largely for the benefit of people, and so if somebody comes along and says, "Hey, we're gonna build nuclear reactors to, to make energy," or, um, "Here's a new, um, chemical called DDT that's gonna kill, uh, mosquitoes," then, um, it's easy to, uh, to just buy into that and not be alert to the possible downsides. And, of course we know that, um, the, the way that those r- early reactors were built and the way that the, the supply chain, uh, was built to, to g- to create the fuel, um, and deal with the, the waste, um, was, was poorly thought out and, uh, and, and we're still dealing with the, uh, the, the resulting problems at places like Hanford in, in the state of Washington. And we know that, uh, DDT, although it did kill a lot of insects, um, also had terrible effects on bird populations. Um, so the, the kind of backlash that happened in the 70s that's, is still kind of going on, is, is to sort of assume that everything is a double-edged sword and always to look for the, the, you know, we have to absolutely convince ourselves that the, the downside, uh, isn't gonna come back and, and bite us, uh, before we can adopt any new technology. And I, I think the, the, people, um, people are overly sensitized to that now.

Lex Fridman 1:06:10 (laughs) Yeah, i- it's just funny, depending on the technology people are a little bit too terrified of certain technologies, like artificial intelligence is one. My sense is, that the things that they're afraid of aren't the things that are likely going to happen in terms of negative things. It's probably impossible to predict exactly the unintended negative consequences. But what's also interesting is for AI as an example, not, people don't think enough about the positive things. I mean, the same is true with social media. It's very popular now, for some reason, to talk about all the negative effects of social media. We've immediately forgotten ...... how incredible it is to connect-

Neal Stephenson 1:06:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:06:57 ... across the world. How, there's a, there's a deep loneliness within all of us. We long to connect, and social media, at least in part, enables that, even in its current state.

Neal Stephenson 1:07:07 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:07:08 And the, all the negative things we see with social media currently are also in part just revealing the basics of human nature. It didn't make us worse, it's just reve- it's bringing it to the surface. And step one of solving a problem is bringing it to the surface. The fact that we are divis- there's a division, the fact that there, we're easily angered and upset and all, all of that, the witch hunts, all of those kinds of things-

Neal Stephenson 1:07:33 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:07:34 ... that's human nature, and it just reveals that, allowing us to now work on it. It's therapy. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:07:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:40 And so, th- that's another example of a technology that's just, w- we're, we're not considering the sort of, the pos- positive effects now and in the future enough of.

Lex Fridman 1:07:51 I have to ask you about, um ... There's a million things I can ask you about, but virtual reality, I got- gotta ask you. Uh, you've thought about virtual reality, mixed reality, uh, quite a bit. W- what are the, uh, interesting trajectories do you see for the proliferation of virtual reality or mixed reality in the next few years?

Neal Stephenson 1:08:13 Yeah, so I was, um, I was at Magic Leap for, what, five years? Um-

Lex Fridman 1:08:19 With the best title of all time.

Neal Stephenson 1:08:21 Oh, thanks. Ch- chief futurist?

Lex Fridman 1:08:24 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:08:24 Yeah. And so I sort of had a, a little squad of people in, in Seattle doing what you might call content R&D. So, we were trying to make content for AR, but, um, (sighs) because it's such a new medium, uh, w- there's l- it's more of an engineering R&D project almost than a, than a creative project. So-

Lex Fridman 1:08:49 (sniffs)

Neal Stephenson 1:08:49 ... it was fascinating to see, um, everything that goes into m- making, uh, an AR system that runs. Um, so AR, um, an AR device, if it's really gonna do AR, needs to be running SLAM in real time, and that alone is a big...

Lex Fridman 1:09:11 And s- so for people who don't know, first of all, virtual reality is creating a- almost fully artificial world and putting you inside it. Augmented reality, AR, is taking the, the real world and putting top on top ... putting stuff on top of that real world. And when you say SLAM, that means in real time, the device needs to be able to sense, accurately detect everything about that world sufficiently to be able to reconstruct it, the, the 3D, uh, structure of it so you can put stuff on top of it. And doing that in real time, presumably not just real time, but in a way that's creates a pleasant experience for the human perception system is, uh, yeah, that's a, that's an engineering project.

Neal Stephenson 1:10:01 Right. Yeah, well said, and it's just one of the things that the system has to do. It's also tracking your eyes so it knows what you're looking at, uh, how far away what you're looking at is. Um, i- it's, uh, um, it's performing all those functions, um, and it's gotta, uh, keep doing that without, you know, burning up the, the CPU or, or, or, uh, depleting the battery, uh, unreasonably fast. And that's, that's just table stakes, it's just the basic functions of the, the operating system. And then any content that you wanna add has to sit on top of that. It's gotta be rendered by the optics, um, at a sufficiently low latency that, um, it looks real and you don't get sick. So, it's an amazing thing, and, um, you know, Magic Leap shipped a device that can do that in 2019. Um, and they're about to ship the ML2.

Lex Fridman 1:11:04 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:11:05 Um, but I don't know any more about that than anyone else 'cause I d- don't work there anymore.

Lex Fridman 1:11:11 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:11:11 Um...

Lex Fridman 1:11:12 W- does it still in s- to some degree boil down to a killer app? A c- a content question? L- like you said, it's kind of a wide open space. Nobody knows exactly what's going to be the compelling thing.

Neal Stephenson 1:11:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:11:25 So, doesn't a super compelling experience of some sort alleviate some of the need for engineering perfection?

Neal Stephenson 1:11:36 Well, there's a, a base layer of engineering that you have to have no matter what, um, but you're certainly right that people, like in the early days of video games, put up with kind of low frame rate and, and what we would now call crappy graphics because they were having so much fun playing Doom or, or whatever.

Lex Fridman 1:11:55 Right. Even Tetris.

Neal Stephenson 1:11:57 Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so for sure that's true, and so, um, you know, uh, uh, I was, uh, working on consumer-facing content. Um, th- there was a great team in Wellington, New Zealand that, that made a game, uh, called, uh, Dr. Groybrot's, uh, Invaders that, um, that, uh, r- realized the, the potential of, uh, of AR gaming in a way that I don't think anything else has, uh, before or since. Um, and, um, so that was definitely the strategy, um, (clears throat) until, uh, what, April 2020, which is when the company decided to, uh, pivot to commercial industrial applications instead. Um, so, um, and...... you know, I- I- I haven't seen their, their, their financial projections, but I assumed they had good reasons for, for making that strategic decision. Um, it just means that it's no longer, uh, necessarily targeted at, at just end users who want to play a game or, or be entertained. But it's, you know ...

Lex Fridman 1:13:16 That, to me, from a sort of a, a dreamer, futurist perspective is heartbreaking 'cause I, I, I don't know necessarily from in the VR space, but I see this kind of thing with, uh, with robotics where, to me, the future of robotics is consumer-facing. Uh, and a lot of great roboticists, Boston Dynamics and, uh, companies like that are focused on sort of industrial applications.

Neal Stephenson 1:13:47 Yeah. Yeah, it's-

Lex Fridman 1:13:48 Because for financial business reasons.

Neal Stephenson 1:13:50 Yeah. No, I can see the parallels for sure. You know, we'll see. It was a fun project, you know. We, uh, uh, we worked on um, an app for example called Baby Goats which just populated your room with, with baby goats.

Lex Fridman 1:14:07 That seems like a killer app right there.

Neal Stephenson 1:14:09 Well, we thought highly of the, of the idea for sure.

Lex Fridman 1:14:13 Yes.

Neal Stephenson 1:14:13 Um, so but because of the SLAM, uh, the, the, um, the system knew, for example, here's a table, here's a little end table. We know the heights, uh, we know how high our animated baby goat can jump. Um, and so, um, so our engineers had to, to build a system for converting the SLAM primitives into, um, game engine objects, um, that, that the, uh, the game... Uh, the AIs in the game could navigate around.

Lex Fridman 1:14:49 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:14:49 Um, so, um, and that ended up shipping as more of a dev kit or a sort of how to, a sample app-

Lex Fridman 1:14:55 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:14:55 ... than as a, a finished consumer-facing ...

Lex Fridman 1:15:00 You mean the baby goat AI ... Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:15:03 I, that seems to me like a world I could en- entertain myself for hours just every day coming home to, to, to see if baby goats ...

Neal Stephenson 1:15:13 Yeah. I mean, it was an ambient kind of-

Lex Fridman 1:15:16 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:17 It's not, it's not a thing that you would sit there and play like a, a video game.

Lex Fridman 1:15:21 Just life.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:21 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:15:22 But now (laughs) there's baby goats and... I mean, what's the purpose of having dogs and cats-

Neal Stephenson 1:15:27 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:15:27 ... in your life? Exactly. It's kind of ambient.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:15:30 They're not really helping you do anything, but it's enriching your life.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:34 And you can go and play fetch or something-

Lex Fridman 1:15:36 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:36 ... for a while if you want, but you don't have to.

Lex Fridman 1:15:38 Right.

Neal Stephenson 1:15:39 Yeah. So, uh, so we worked on that and a bigger project that was more of a storytelling in a fictional, uh, universe. Um, the hardware is worth a look. There's still a belief, I just saw it this morning looking at Twitter, that the Magic Leap never shipped anything. Uh, but they've been... Since 2019, you can go to their website and buy one of these devices anytime you want to spend the money.

Lex Fridman 1:16:10 Yeah. Uh, and the new one is coming out I think in 2022, so in, in, in a few months. What do you think, lo- looking out 50 years from now, what wins? Virtual reality, augmented reality, or physical reality?

Neal Stephenson 1:16:30 What wins?

Lex Fridman 1:16:32 Meaning like what's uh-

Neal Stephenson 1:16:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:16:34 ... what do people of... that have financial resources enjoy spending most of their time in?

Neal Stephenson 1:16:42 Mm-hmm. I've always been a fan of, of, of AR and it's kind of an easy answer because if you- if you're wearing an AR device and you put a bag over your head, it becomes a VR device, you know? It just... If you block out the what's really there, then all you're seeing is, is, is a VR.

Lex Fridman 1:17:03 But you are with AR constrained to, to kind of operate in something that's similar to physical reality.

Neal Stephenson 1:17:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:17:12 With VR, you can go into fantastical worlds.

Neal Stephenson 1:17:15 True. True. So, there are still issues in, in th- those fantastical worlds with, um, with, uh, motion sickness, right? So, um, if, if you're, uh, body is experiencing acceleration, your inner ear, um, tha- that differs from what your eye thinks it's seeing, then you'll get sick, uh, unless you're a very unusual person. So, it doesn't mean you can't do it, it just... It's a constraint that VR designers have to, uh, to learn to work with.

Lex Fridman 1:17:53 So, do you think it's possible that in the future we're living mostly in a virtual reality world? Like, we become more and more detached from physical reality?

Neal Stephenson 1:18:04 For entertainment, maybe. For certain applications. Um, I'm personally more... Uh, I mean, the... We have to make a distinction between what I would personally find interesting and, you know, what might win in, in the market. So, maybe some people, maybe lots of people would like to spend a huge amount of time in, in VR. Um, I'm personally more interested in, um, enhancing the experience that I have of the p- the physical world 'cause the physical world is pretty cool, right? There's a lot, a lot to be said for, uh, for moving around in the real world and...

Lex Fridman 1:18:42 Can I ask you, for you personally-

Neal Stephenson 1:18:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:18:45 ... to try to play devil's advocate or to try to construct... To imagine a VR world where you and Neal Stephenson would want to stay.... uh, not because the physical world all of a sudden became really bad (laughs) -

Neal Stephenson 1:19:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:03 ... for some reason, like you're trying to escape it.

Neal Stephenson 1:19:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:06 But, like, literally it's just more enriching, in the same way, like, there's a glimmer in your eye when you said you enjoy the physical world. Like, uh, double up on that glimmer for the-

Neal Stephenson 1:19:19 Okay. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:20 ... for the, for the virtual reality. Can you imagine-

Neal Stephenson 1:19:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:22 ... such a world?

Neal Stephenson 1:19:23 Well, like, I'll give maybe an example that's a bridge, which is that I've been, um, I like making things. Um, so I like working in a machine shop and, and, and making objects with 3D printers or machines or whatever, and so I've had to learn how to get good at, um, using a CAD program. Uh, you know, there's many to choose from. I use one called Fusion 360. Um, and, uh, I can spend hours in that, um, trying to create, imagine and create the things I want to create. And it's a, um, it's not virtual reality e- exactly, but that whole time I'm, you know, my whole field of view is occupied by, uh, by this monitor that's showing me a f- window into a three-dimensional space, I'm rotating things around, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm imagining things, I'm making things. And so that is, um, you know, pretty close to, um, uh, to, to being in virtual reality.

Lex Fridman 1:20:31 Does that thing have to exist for you to experience true joy? Can you stay in Fusion 360 the whole time? Do you have to 3D print it and touch it?

Neal Stephenson 1:20:41 Yeah, I mean, uh, that's my game, that's, that's what I'm up to. But, you know, it happens that, um, if you're building a virtual environment, if you're, uh, making a game level or creating a virtual set for a film or a TV production, the thing that you're designing in the program may never physically exist. Uh, and in fact, it's preferable that it doesn't because you, the whole point of that is to, um, is to, to make imaginary things that, uh, that you couldn't, couldn't build otherwise. So, I think lots of people spend a good chunk of their working hours in something that's pretty close to, to VR, it's just that currently the output device happens to be a rectangular object-

Lex Fridman 1:21:29 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:21:30 ... in front of them. Uh, you could replace that with, uh, a VR headset and they'd be doing the same stuff.

Lex Fridman 1:21:38 Th- there's all kinds of interfaces. For example, I enjoy listening to podcasts or audiobooks, but let's say actually podcasts, 'cause there's, uh, intimate human connection in a podcast. It's one way, but you get to learn about the person you're listening to and that's a real connection, and that's just audio.

Neal Stephenson 1:21:55 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:21:55 For a lot of people, that's just audio.

Neal Stephenson 1:21:57 True.

Lex Fridman 1:21:58 I think for me the, that's just audio, as, as a fan of people, uh, and you kind of a little bit are friends with those people. (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:22:07 Yeah. You know, they're in your life, you're listening-

Lex Fridman 1:22:09 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:22:09 ... to them, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:22:10 And, I mean, they're not, they're as far away from real (laughs) as it gets. There's not even a-

Neal Stephenson 1:22:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:22:18 ... there's not even a visual component, it's just audio, but they're as real ... Like, if I was on a desert island, like, my imagination, like, this thing works pretty good in terms of imagination. Like, that, it creates a very m- m- beautiful world with, uh, with just audio. So, I, I mean-

Neal Stephenson 1:22:40 Or even just reading books.

Lex Fridman 1:22:41 Just read- (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:22:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:22:43 Exactly. Reading books.

Neal Stephenson 1:22:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:22:45 Even more so with reading books, 'cause, uh, there, there's certain mediums which stimulate the imagination more.

Neal Stephenson 1:22:51 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:22:52 The ... Yeah. The, when, when you present less, the imagination works more.

Neal Stephenson 1:22:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:22:57 And that can create really enriching experiences. So, I mean, t- to me the question is can you do some of the amazing ... Things that make life amazing in virtual worlds. It seems to me the answer there is obviously yes. Even if I, like you, am attached to a lot of stuff in the physical world, I think I can very readily imagine coming up with some of the same magical experiences in the virtual world, where you f- make friends and you can fall in love, where the source of love in your life is, uh, to a much greater degree inside a v- a virtual world. And, like, and then love means fulfillment, that means happiness, that's the thing you look forward to. And not some kind of dopamine rush type of love, but like-

Neal Stephenson 1:23:50 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:23:51 ... long, long-lasting, like-

Neal Stephenson 1:23:53 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:23:53 ... friendship.

Neal Stephenson 1:23:54 The real deal. Yeah. Yeah. It just depends on, um, what is there in the way of, of applications, the content, and can it feed you those things? Can it give you ... Like in my example of, of using the CAD program, uh, it gives me the ability to do something I enjoy, uh, which is making, you know, imagining things and making things in a particular way.

Lex Fridman 1:24:17 But c- can we psychoanalyze you for a second?

Neal Stephenson 1:24:19 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:24:21 What exactly do you enjoy? Is there some component of you building the thing where you get to at least a little bit share with others? Like, w- is there human in the loop outside of you in that picture?

Neal Stephenson 1:24:37 Will anyone ever see it?

Lex Fridman 1:24:40 Right. The, m-

Neal Stephenson 1:24:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:24:41 Like, does the source of your enjoyment ... Because I would argue that perhaps at, when, like, the, the, you get turtles all the way down, when you get to the bottom turtle, it has to do with other, sharing with other humans.

Neal Stephenson 1:24:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:24:53 And if you can then put those humans inside the VR world, then, then you start to, th- th- then, then you can ... Okay. For example, you could do it in the physical world-... the, the, the 3D printing-

Neal Stephenson 1:25:07 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:25:07 ... but you share it in, in, in the virtual world and that's where the source of happiness is.

Neal Stephenson 1:25:12 I think, at least speaking for myself, I'm always thinking in terms of an audience and, um, at some level I feel like I'm, I'm doing this for someone or communicating to someone, even if there's not a specific someone in mind.

Lex Fridman 1:25:27 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:25:28 It could just be an abstract, theoretical someone. Um, and it's like another app I spend a lot of time is ma- Mathematica, okay? And when I do ma-

Lex Fridman 1:25:38 Yeah, incredible app.

Neal Stephenson 1:25:39 Yeah, yeah. And when I do a Mathematica notebook, if I'm trying to figure something out, I spend a lot of time typing, just m- my stuff is just huge blocks of, of text, it's me thinking out loud, and then some graphs and calculations and stuff. Um, because to me, um, that act of, of explaining things and commenting, um, helps me understand what I'm doing.

Lex Fridman 1:26:07 And there's kind of an audience, uh, amorphous audience in mind?

Neal Stephenson 1:26:12 Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean most of this stuff nobody will ever see and yet I'm creating it as if there were an audience that might read this stuff, because tha- I have to, that's a, a necessary constraint that helps me, um, do a better job.

Lex Fridman 1:26:29 What's the, uh, this might be a tricky question to answer, wha- what's, uh, comes to mind as a particularly beautiful thing that you're proud of that you created inside Mathematica? Visualization-wise or, uh, something that just comes to memory, if, if it's-

Neal Stephenson 1:26:44 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:26:44 ... possible to retrieve.

Neal Stephenson 1:26:47 So, the, the thing I've spent the most amount of time on is, I got obsessed, um, a long time ago, was trying to tile the globe with hexagons.

Lex Fridman 1:27:01 Yes.

Neal Stephenson 1:27:02 And, um-

Lex Fridman 1:27:04 A actual globe?

Neal Stephenson 1:27:05 Well, any spherical-

Lex Fridman 1:27:07 Any, any spherical, okay.

Neal Stephenson 1:27:08 ... object, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:27:08 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:27:08 But, but with an eye towards, uh, putting it on the earth. And so, uh, and have it be recursive so you can have hexagons within hexagons, which is hard because, and probably a bad idea, because you can't tile a hexagon with smaller hexagons. They don't, they stick out. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:27:30 Got it. So th- they're, oh, they stick out, so there's a, can, can you do some kind of fractal hexagon situation?

Neal Stephenson 1:27:37 Yeah, yeah. So-

Lex Fridman 1:27:39 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:27:39 ... so it's that and people who, who know me, um, are always, uh, uh, now, now make fun of me for this, so they'll send me, if they, if they see a picture with hexagons in it, they'll, like, send me a link, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:27:53 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:27:53 ... to, to, to, to make fun of me. Um, so at some, some-

Lex Fridman 1:27:57 Is one of those people Roger Penrose, or? (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:28:00 I, I think Roger's a little above my, my level, um.

Lex Fridman 1:28:05 (laughs) But he's into pa- (laughs) hexagons as well-

Neal Stephenson 1:28:07 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:28:07 ... and tiling.

Neal Stephenson 1:28:08 Yeah, yeah. So, um, so I did a lot of that and I thought, you know, it was pretty cool, but, um, it, there's some, like, surprisingly intractable problems that keep coming up like you, you've always got to have some pentagons. Like, if you start with an icosahedron, which is equilateral triangles, just a logical place to start, you can cover those with hexagons but every vertex where, uh, where the, the triangles come together is a pentagon, has to be a pentagon.

Lex Fridman 1:28:46 Oh, interesting. So it's all hexagons and then there's a pentagon at the intersections?

Neal Stephenson 1:28:50 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:28:50 Cool. How'd you figure that out? Is that a known fact?

Neal Stephenson 1:28:53 Well, it's just if you look at a-

Lex Fridman 1:28:54 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:28:55 ... like, just by inspection.

Lex Fridman 1:28:56 It's an obvious thing, got it.

Neal Stephenson 1:28:57 Yeah, yeah. So, so you, and you can't make that go away, so any system that you come up with to do this has got to have this e- exceptions built into it for, for those 12. You could have quintillions of, of hexagons, but, uh, you've still got to have 12 pentagons somewhere.

Lex Fridman 1:29:18 Hm.

Neal Stephenson 1:29:19 Um, so, um, so I've, I've blown a, a hell of a lot of time on, on that over the years.

Lex Fridman 1:29:26 By the way, a lot of those k- kind of, uh, problems are very difficult to prove something about.

Neal Stephenson 1:29:32 Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, yeah. And I think Uber did it 'cause someone, one of my friends who, uh, uh, who, who knows of my, my interest in this and who likes to, to give me a hard time, sent me a link, this is a couple of years ago, to some code base that I think came out of Uber where they had done this. You know, you break, break down the whole surface of the earth into, into little hexagons. So, um, that was a real knife through the heart, um, but I'll probably come back to it someday.

Lex Fridman 1:30:14 Is there something special t- about hexagons, or are you interested in all, all kinds of tiling?

Neal Stephenson 1:30:19 Uh, well, uh, I'm interested in all kinds of tiling, but I'm, I'm not... I know my limitations, like, as a, as a math guy, um, so hexagons are about my speed.

Lex Fridman 1:30:32 (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:30:32 Um, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:30:34 Just sufficient amount of complexity-

Neal Stephenson 1:30:36 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:30:37 ... uh, it's, it's-

Neal Stephenson 1:30:38 So, but, no, tiling is a really interesting problem both two and three-dimensional tiling problems are fascinating and they're one of those ancient puzzles that has, um, uh, attracted brainiacs for, for centuries, uh, yes.

Lex Fridman 1:30:58 Let me ask you a little bit about AI.

Neal Stephenson 1:31:01 Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:31:01 Uh, what are some likely interesting trajectories for the proliferation of AI in society over the next couple of decades? Do you think about this kind of stuff?

Neal Stephenson 1:31:15 ... do not think about it a lot 'cause it's a deep topic and I'm not, I don't consider myself super well-informed ab- about it. And AI seems to be a term that is applied to a lot of different things. So, I've messed around just a tiny little bit with, with neural nets, with, uh, what's it called? PCA, Principal Component Analysis. So, I, I guess I tend to think in terms of sort of granular bottom-up, um, ideas, rather than big picture top-down, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:31:49 Oh, got it. So, like, very specific algorithms, like, how are they going to... W- what problem are they, are they going to solve in society such that, that has, like, a lot of big ripple effects? See, I, I mean, we could talk a, a, a particular successful AI systems and success defined in different ways of recent years. So, one is language models with GPT-3. Uh, most importantly, they're self-supervised, meaning they don't require much supervision from humans, which means they can learn by just reading a huge amount of content created by humans. So, read the internet, and from that, be able to generate text and do all kinds of things like that.

Neal Stephenson 1:32:31 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:32:31 It's possible they have a big enough neural network that's going to be able to have conversations with humans based on just reading human language. That's an interesting idea.

Neal Stephenson 1:32:43 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:32:43 To me, the very interesting idea that people don't think about it as AI because it's, they're kind of dumb currently, is actual embodied robots. So, robotics-

Neal Stephenson 1:32:54 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:32:54 ... like Boston Dynamics. I have downstairs and upstairs, uh, legged robots.

Neal Stephenson 1:32:59 Oh.

Lex Fridman 1:33:00 Uh, you know, uh, the currently Boston Dynamics robots and most legged robots, most robots period, are pretty dumb. So, s- most of the challenges have to do with the actual, first of all, the engineering of making the thing work.

Neal Stephenson 1:33:17 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:33:17 Getting, uh, a sensor suite that allows you to do, it's the same thing as with Magic Leap-

Neal Stephenson 1:33:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:33:21 ... that base layer of, like-

Neal Stephenson 1:33:22 Where is it stuff.

Lex Fridman 1:33:23 ... where am I-

Neal Stephenson 1:33:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:33:25 ... and, uh, what, what am I looking at? (laughs)

Neal Stephenson 1:33:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:33:29 I don't need to deeply understand, uh, my surroundings at a level of, like, like, uh, at a level beyond of what will hurt if I run into it?

Neal Stephenson 1:33:40 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:33:41 Yeah.

Neal Stephenson 1:33:41 But even that is hard.

Lex Fridman 1:33:43 That's, that's hard, but the thing that I think people don't, uh, in, in the robotics base explore enough is the human/robot interaction part of the, of the picture, which is how it makes humans feel, how robots make humans feel.

Neal Stephenson 1:34:01 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:34:01 And I think that's going to have a very significant impact in, uh, in the near future in society, which is wh- the more you integrate AI systems of whatever form into society where humans are, uh, in contact with them regularly, so that could be embodied robotics or that could be social media algorithms, I think that has a very significant impact. And people often think, like, AI needs to be super smart to have an impact. I think it needs to be super integrated with society to have an impact. And more and more, that's happening, even if they're dumb.

Neal Stephenson 1:34:40 Yeah. Yeah, no, the, um, I mean, a- a lot of my exposure to robots is, is that, uh, I'm, uh, associated with a, a combat robotics team, and I've been to a few BattleBots competitions, and that's not e- like, in a lot of ways, that's pretty far from the kind of robotics you're talking about, um, because the- these robots are remote controlled. They're, they're not autonomous. Um, and so, um, they're, they're pretty simple. But, um, it's interesting to watch people's emotional reactions to different robots. So, there was one that was in the last year's season, the 2020 season, called Rusty, that, uh, was just, uh, like, put together out of spare parts, and it looked kind of cute.

Lex Fridman 1:35:32 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:35:32 And it became this huge crowd favorite because you could see it was made of, like, salad bowls and, you know, random pieces of hardware that this guy had, like, scavenged from his farm. And so, immediately, people kind of fell in love with this one particular robot, whereas they might, uh, other robots might be like the bad guy in a-

Lex Fridman 1:35:53 Mm-hmm.

Neal Stephenson 1:35:53 ... uh, in a, if you think of professional wrestling, you know, the