Lex Fridman PodcastTim Urban: Elon Musk, Neuralink, AI, Aliens, and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #264
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,035 words- 0:00 – 0:38
Introduction
- TUTim Urban
If you read a half hour a night, uh, the, the calculation I came to is that you can read a thousand books in 50 years.
- LFLex Fridman
All of the components are there to engineer intimate experiences.
- TUTim Urban
Extraterrestrial life is a true mystery, probably the most tantalizing mystery of all.
- LFLex Fridman
How many humans need to disappear for us to be completely lost? The following is a conversation with Tim Urban, author and illustrator of the amazing blog called Wait But Why? This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Tim Urban.
- 0:38 – 8:28
The big and the small
- LFLex Fridman
You wrote a Wait But Why? blog post about the big and the small, from the observable universe to the atom. What world do you find most mysterious or beautiful, the very big or the very small?
- TUTim Urban
The very small seems a lot more mysterious. And I mean, the very big, I feel like we kind of understand. I mean, not the very, very big, not the, not the multiverse, if there is a multiverse, uh, not anything outside of the observable universe. Um, but the very small, yeah, I think we really have no idea what's going on, um, or very, you know, much less idea. But I find the... So I think the small is more mysterious but I think the big is sexier. Um, I just cannot get enough of the bigness of space and the farness of stars, and it just continually blows my mind.
- LFLex Fridman
I mean, we still... The, the vastness of the observable universe has the mystery that we don't know what's out there. We know how it works perhaps, like general relativity can tell us how the, the movement of bodies works, how they're born, all that kinda things, but, like, how many li- how many civilizations are out there? How many... Like, what are the weird things that are out there?
- TUTim Urban
Oh, yeah, life, well, extraterrestrial life is a true mystery, prob- the most tantalizing mystery of all. Um, uh, but th- that's, like, our size, so that's maybe it's... That the actual, um... The big and the small are really cool, but it's actually the things that are potentially our size that are the most tantalizing.
- LFLex Fridman
Potentially our size is probably the key word there.
- TUTim Urban
Yeah, I mean, I wonder how small intelligent life could get.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- TUTim Urban
Probably not that small, um, and I assume that it... That there's a limit, that you're not gonna... I mean, you might have, like, an, a whale, blue whale-sized intelligent being, that would be kinda cool, um, but I, I, um, feel like it's in... We're in the range of order of magnitude smaller and bigger than us for life. But maybe, maybe not. Maybe you could have some giant life form, just seems like... I don't know, there's got to be some reason that anything intelligent between kind of like a little tiny rodent or finger monkey up to a blue whale on this planet... I don't know, maybe, maybe when you change the gravit- you know, gravity and other things.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, you could think of life as a thing of self-assembling organisms and they just get bigger and bigger and bigger, like there's no such thing as a human being. A human being is made up of a bunch of tiny organisms all working together, and we somehow envision that as one entity because it has consciousness, but maybe it's just organisms on top of organisms. Organisms all the way down, turtles all the way down.
- TUTim Urban
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
So like, Earth can be seen as an organism for people, for, um, alien species that's very different. Like, why is the human the fundamental entity that is living and then every- everything else is just either a collection of humans or components of humans?
- TUTim Urban
I think of it kind of as... If you think about... Uh, I think of like an emergence elevator, and so you've got... An ant is on one floor and then the ant colony is, uh, you know, a floor above.
- LFLex Fridman
Okay.
- TUTim Urban
Or maybe there's even units within the colony that's one floor above and the full colony is up two floors above. And to me, I think that it's the colony that is the closest to being the animal. Uh, it's like the, the, the individual thing where that competes with others, um, while the, the in- individual ants are like cells in the animal's body. We are more like a, a colony in that regard, but the, the, the humans are weird because we kind of... We... I think of it if, if emergence happens in an emergence tower, um, when you've got kind of, you know, as I said, cells and then humans and communities and societies. Ants are very specific, you know, the, the individual ants are always cooperating with each other, uh, for the sake of the colony. So the colony is this unit that is, that is the competitive unit. Humans can kind of go... We take the elevator up and down Emergence Tower psychologically. Sometimes we are individuals that are, uh, competing with other individuals and that- that's where our mindset is, and then other times, we get in this crazy zone, you know, a protest or a sporting event and you're just, you know, you're just chanting and screaming and doing the same hand motions with all these other people and you feel like one. You feel like one, you know, and you would sacrifice yourself. I know that's with, you know, soldiers, and so our, our brains can kind of psychologically go up and down this elevator in a, in an interesting way.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, I wonder how much of that is just a narrative we tell ourselves. Maybe it's... We are just like an ant colony, we're just collaborating always, even in our stories of individualism, of, like, the freedom of the individual, like, this kind of, uh, isolation, lone man on an island kind of thing. We're actually all part of this giant network of... Maybe one of the things that makes humans who we are is probably deeply social, the ability to maintain not just a single human intelligence, but like a collective intelligence. And so this feeling like individual is just 'cause we woke up at this level of the hierarchy, so, (laughs) so we make it special, but we m- we very well could be just part of the ant colony. This whole conversation, I'm either going to be doing a Shakespearean analysis of your Twitter, your writing, (laughs) or, uh, or very specific statements that you've made. So, uh, you've written answers to a mailbag of questions. The questions were amazing, the ones you've chosen, and your answers were amazing. So on this topic of the big and the small, somebody asked, "Are we bigger than we are small or smaller than we are big?" Who's asking these questions? This is really good.... you have amazing fans. Okay. Uh, so where do we sit, um, at this level of the very small to the very big?
- TUTim Urban
So are we bigger or are we small? Are we bigger than we are small? I think it depends on what we're asking here. So if you're talking about the, the, the biggest thing that we kind of can talk about without just imagining is the observable universe, the Hubble sphere. Um, and that's about 10 to the 26th meters in diameter. The smallest thing we talk about is a Planck length, but you could argue that that's kind of an imaginary thing. But that's 10 to the negative 35. Now, we're about, conveniently, about 10 to the one.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
Not, not quite. 10 to the zero. We're about 10 to the zero, um, meters long. So we're right... So it's easy because you can just look and say, "Okay, well..." For example, uh, atoms are, like, 10 to the negative 15th or 10 to the negative 16th meters across, right? If you go 10 to the 15th or 10 to the 16th, which is right... That's... Now, so an atom to us is us to this. You get to, like, nebulas.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
Smaller than a galaxy and bigger than the biggest star. So we're right in between nebula and an atom. Now, if you wanna go down to quark level, you might be able to get up to galaxy level.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
Um, when you go up to the observable universe, you're getting down on the small side to things that we, I think, are mostly theoretically, um, imagining are there and, and, and hypothesizing are there.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
So I think, um, w- as far as real world objects that we really know a lot about, I would say we are smaller than we are big. Uh, but if you wanna go down to the Planck length, we're very quickly we're bigger than we are small, if you think about strings.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. String... Exactly, with string theory and so on. That's interesting. But I think, like, you answer n- no matter what, we're kind of middle-ish.
- TUTim Urban
Yeah. I mean, here's something cool. If, if human is a neutrino... And again, neutrino, the size doesn't really make sense. It's not really a size. But when we talk about some of these neutrinos, I mean, if a neutrino's a human, a proton is the sun.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
So that's, like... I mean, a proton's real small. Like, really small. (laughs) Um, and, uh, and so yeah. The small gets, like, crazy small very quickly.
- 8:28 – 16:42
Aliens
- LFLex Fridman
Let's talk about aliens. We already mentioned that... Let's start just by, with the basic. What's your intuition as of today? This is a thing that could change day by day. About how many alien civilizations are out there? Is it zero? Is it a handful? Is it almost endless like the, the, the uni- the observable universe or the universe is teeming with life?
- TUTim Urban
If I had gun to my head, I have to take a guess, I would say it's teeming with life. I would say there is. Um, I think, uh, running a Monte Carlo simulation, this paper by, uh, Anders Sandberg and Drexler and a few others, um, a couple years ago, I think you probably know about it. Um, I think their, their, their... The mean, um, you know, using different, uh, using dif- you know, running through a randomized Drake equation, um, multiplication, you ended up with 27 million as the mean in, of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, in the Milky Way alone.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
Um, so then if you go outside the Milky Way, that would turn into trillions. That's the me- that's the mean. Now, what's interesting is that there's a long tail because they believe some of these multipliers in the Drake equation, so for example, the pre- the probability that life starts in the first place, they think that the, uh, the kind of range that we use is, for that variable, are, is way too small, and that's constraining our possibilities. And if you actually extend it to, you know, you know, some, some crazy number of orders of magnitude, like 200 they think should, that that variable should be. Uh, you get this long tail where, I forget the exact number, but it's, like, a third or a quarter-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
... of the total outcomes have us alone. Like-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
... you know, I think it's, like, I think it's a, a, a sizeable percentage has us as the only intelligent life in the galaxy, but you can keep going and I think there's, like, you know, a, a nonzero, like, legitimate amount of outcomes there that have us as the only life in the observable universe at all is on Earth. I mean, seems incredibly counterintuitive. It seem- it seems like, you know, when you mention that, people think, um, you're, you know, you must be an idiot because, um, you know, if you picked up one grain of sand on the beach and examined it and you found all these little things on it, it's like saying, "Well, maybe this is the only one that has them."
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Right.
- TUTim Urban
And it's like, probably not.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
They're probably... Uh, most of the sand probably, or a lot of the sand, right? So un- and then on the other hand, we don't see anything. We don't see any evidence, you know, which of course people would say that, that the people who s- scoff at the concept that we're potentially alone, um, they say, "Well, of course there's lots of reasons we wouldn't have seen anything." And, and they can go list them. Um-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
... and they're very compelling. But we don't know. And the truth is, if there were, if this were a freak thing, I mean, we don't... If, if this were-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
... a completely freak thing that happened here, whether it's life at all or just getting to this level of intelligence-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
... that species, whoever it was, would think there must be lots of us out there and they'd be wrong. So just being, again, using the same intuition that most people would use, I'd say there's probably lots of other things out there.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, and you w- wrote a great blog post about it, but to me, the two interesting, um, reasons that, uh, we haven't been in contact, I, I too have an intuition that the universe is teeming with life. So one interesting is around the great filter, so we're either... The great filter's either behind us or, or in front of us. So the, the reason that's interesting is you get to think about what kind of things e- ensure or, um, ensure the survival of an intelligent civilization or lead to the destruction of intelligent civilization. That's a very pragmatic, very important question to always be asking, and we'll talk about some of those. And then, um, the other one is...... I'm saddened by the possibility that there could be aliens communicating with us all the time. In fact, they, they may have visited and we're just too dumb to hear it, to see it. Like the, um, the idea that the kind of life that can evolve is just, the range of life that can evolve is so large that our narrow view of what is life, uh, and what is intelligent life is preventing us from having communication with them.
- TUTim Urban
But that, then they don't seem very smart because if they were trying to communicate with us, they would surely, if they were super intelligent, they would be very... Um, I'm, I'm sure if there's lots of life, we're not that rare, we're not some crazy weird species that hears and, and, you know, has different kinds of ways of, of, uh, perceiving signals. So they would probably be able to, you know, if you really wanted to communicate with an Earth-like species, with a humanlike species, um, you would send out all kinds of things. You'd send out, you know, radio ra- uh, radio waves and, and you'd send out gravity waves and, and lots of things. So if they're communicating in a way, they're trying to communicate with us and it's just we're too dumb to perceive the signals, it's like, well, they're not doing a great job of, uh, considering the primitive species we might be. So I, uh, I don't know. I think, I think if a super intelligent species wanted to get in touch with us, um, uh, and had the capability of, I th- I think probably they would.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, the... They may be getting in touch with us. They're just getting in touch with the thing that we humans are not understanding that they're getting in touch with us with. That's, I guess that's what I was trying to say is there could be something about Earth that's much more special than us humans. Like the nature of the intelligence that's on Earth or, or the thing that's of value and that's curious and that's complicated and fascinating and beautiful might be something that's not just like, uh, tweets. Okay? Like English language that's interpretable or any kind of language or any kind of signal, whether it's, uh, gravity or radio signal that humans seem to appreciate. What, why not the actual... It could be the process of evolution itself. There could be something about the way that Earth is breathing essentially through the creation of life and this complex growth of life. There's like, it, it's a whole different way to view organisms and view life that could be getting communicated with, and we humans are just a tiny fingertip on top of that intelligence and the communication is happening with, with, with the main mothership of, of Earth versus us humans that seem to treat ourselves as super important and we're missing the big picture. I mean, it sounds crazy but our understanding of what is intelligence, of what is life, what is consciousness is very limited and it's, it seems to be, I'm just being very suspicious, it seems to be awfully human-centric.
- TUTim Urban
Mm.
- LFLex Fridman
Like this story, it seems like the progress of science is, you know, um, constantly putting, uh, humans down on the importance, like on the cosmic importance, the ranking of how big we are, how important we are. That, that, that seems to be the more we discover that's what's happening and I think science is very young, and so I think eventually we might figure out that there's something much, much bigger going on, that humans are just a curious little side effect of the much bigger thing. That's what, I mean, that, as I'm saying it just sounds insane but-
- TUTim Urban
Well, it just, it sounds a little, um, like religious. It sounds like a spiritual, um... It, you know, it gets to that realm where there's something that more than meets the eye.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, yeah but not... So religious and spiritual often have this kind of woo-woo characteristic, like, and people write books about them then go to wars over whatever the heck is written in those books. I, I mean more like it's possible that collective intelligence is more important than individual intelligence, right? It's the ant colony. What's the primal organism? Is it the ant colony or is it the ant?
- TUTim Urban
Yeah, I mean, I mean humans, just like, you know, any individual ant can't do shit, but the colony can do th- make these incredible structures and, and has this intelligence, and we're exactly the same. I mean-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... you know, you know the famous thing that, you know, no one, no human knows how to make a pencil.
- 16:42 – 23:27
The pencil problem
- TUTim Urban
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
Uh, have you heard this?
- LFLex Fridman
No.
- TUTim Urban
Basically, I mean-
- LFLex Fridman
This is great. (laughs)
- TUTim Urban
There's not a, if a single human out there has absolutely no idea how to make a pencil, so you have to think about you have to get the wood-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... the, the paint, the, the, the different chemicals that make up the yellow paint. The eraser is a whole other thing. The metal has to be mined from somewhere and, and, and, and then the graphite, whatever that is, and there's not one person on Earth who knows how to kind of collect all those materials, uh, and create a pencil but t- but together, that's one of the, that's, that's child's play. It's, it's one of the easiest things. So, um, you know, the, the other thing I like to think about, I actually put this as a question on the, on the blog once. Um, there's a thought experiment, um, and I actually want to hear what you think. So if a witch, kind of a dickish (laughs) witch comes around and she says, "I'm gonna cast a spell on all of humanity and all material things that you've invented are gonna disappear all at once." So suddenly we're all standing there naked. There's no buildings. There's, there's, there's no cars and boats and ships and no minds. Nothing, right? It's just the Stone Age Earth and a bunch of naked humans but we're all the same, we have the same brain so we, we all know what's going on and we all got a note from her so we understand the deal and she says, um, she communicated to every human, "Here's the deal. You lost all your stuff. You guys need to make one working iPhone 13 and you make one working iPhone 13 that could pass in the Apple Store today, you know, c- in, in your previous world for an iPhone 13, then I will restore everything." How long do you think... And so everyone knows this is, this is the mission. We're all aware of the mission. Everyone, all humans.... how long would it take us?
- LFLex Fridman
That's a really interesting question. So obviously, if you do a random selection of 100 or 1,000 humans within the population, I think you're screwed to make that iPhone. I tend to believe that there's fascinating specialization among the human civilization. There's a few hackers out there that can solo build an iPhone.
- TUTim Urban
But with what materials?
- LFLex Fridman
So no materials whatsoever. It has to... I mean, it's, it's virtually... I mean... Okay, you have to build factories. I mean, to-
- TUTim Urban
Right. And-
- LFLex Fridman
... to fabricate... (laughs) Okay.
- TUTim Urban
And how are you gonna mine them? You know, you've got to mine the materials. Where... You don't have any cranes. You don't have any... You know. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Okay, you 100% have to have the- this- everybody's naked.
- TUTim Urban
Everyone's naked, and everyone's where they are. So you and I would currently be naked. Uh, on the ground-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... in what used to be Manhattan.
- LFLex Fridman
So no buildings.
- TUTim Urban
Grassy... No, grassy island.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. So you need a naked Elon Musk type character to then start building a company. So you have to have a large company then.
- TUTim Urban
Right. He doesn't even know where he... You know, where is everyone? You know, "Oh, shit, how am I going to find other people I need to talk to?"
- LFLex Fridman
But we have all the knowledge of-
- TUTim Urban
Yeah, everyone has the knowledge that's in their current brains.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. I've met some legit engineers.
- TUTim Urban
Cra- crazy polymath people.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, but the actual labor of... 'Cause you said... 'Cause, like, the original Mac, like, the Apple II, that can be built. But... (sighs)
- TUTim Urban
Even that, you know-
- LFLex Fridman
Even that's gonna be tough.
- 23:27 – 25:31
Food abundance
- TUTim Urban
fun.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, one of the most amazing things when I showed up, I, I came here at 13 from the Soviet Union and the supermarket-
- TUTim Urban
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... was... People don't really realize that but the, the abundance of food. It's not even... Uh, so bananas was the thing I was obsessed about. I just ate bananas every day for many, many months 'cause I haven't had bananas in Russia and the fact that you can have as many bananas as you want plus they were, like, somewhat inexpensive relative to the other food. And the fact that you can somehow have a system that brings bananas to you without having to wait in a long line, all of those things. That's... It's magic.
- TUTim Urban
I mean, also imagine... So first of all, the ancient hunter-gatherers. You know, you picture the mother gathering and eating all this fresh food. No. So do you know what an avocado used to look like? It was a little, like, sphere-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... and the, the fruit of it, the actual avocado part was, like, a little tiny layer around this big pit that took up almost the whole volume. We've... The- this- we've made a crazy-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
... like, robot avocados today that are-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... they have nothing to do with, like, what- what they... So same with bananas. These big sweet-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... uh, you know, um, you know, and not infested with bugs and- and grow...
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
You know, they used to eat the shittiest food.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
Um, and they're eating... And they're eating, you know, uncooked meat or maybe they cook it and they're just... It's- it's gross and it's, um, things rot. So you go to the supermarket and it's just, it's just, A, it's like crazy super engineered cartoon food, fruit and- and food, and then it's all this processed food which, you know, we complain about. In- in our setting, oh, you know, we complain about, you know, we eat too much process. That's a... The- th- this is a good pro- I mean, if you... It's... If you imagine what they would think, "Oh my god, a cracker." You know how delicious a cracker would taste to them. Um, you know, candy, uh, you know, uh, pasta, and spaghetti sau- they never had anything like this. And then you have from all over the world, I mean, things that are grown all over the place, all here in nice little racks organized and on a, you know, middle class salary you can afford anything you want. I mean that's, again, just like incredible gratitude. Like, ah, uh, yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
And the question is how resilient is this whole thing? I mean this is... Another darker version of your question is
- 25:31 – 30:49
Extinction of human civilization
- LFLex Fridman
if we keep ev- all the material possessions we have but we start knocking out some percent of the population, how resilient is the system that we built up where we rely on other humans and the knowledge built upon the past, the distribu- the- the distributed nature of knowledge? How, um, how much does it take? How many humans need to disappear for us to be completely lost?
- TUTim Urban
Well, I'm trying to go off one thing which is, um, Elon Musk says that he has this number a million in mind as the order of ma- rough or- order of magnitude of people you need to be on Mars to truly be multi-planetary.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
Multi-planetary doesn't mean, you know, uh, like, when- when- when Neil Armstrong, you know, goes to the moon. That's... They call it a great leap for mankind.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
It's not a great leap for anything. It is a great achievement for mankind.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
And I always, like, think about if the first fish to kind of go on land just kind of went up and gave the shore a high five and goes back into the water, that's not a great leap for life. That's a great achievement for that fish and there should be a little statue of that fish and his- you know, in the water and everyone should celebrate the fish. But it's, um... But when we talk about a great leap for life, it's permanent. It's something that now from now on this is how things are so-
- LFLex Fridman
Yes.
- TUTim Urban
... and this is part of why I get so excited about Mars by the way is because you can count on one hand, like, the number of great leaps that we've had, you know, like no life to life and sis- single cell or simple cell to complex cell and s- single cell organisms to animals to com- you know, multi-cell animals, um, and then ocean to land and then one planet to two planets. Anyway, diversion. But the point is that, um, we are officially... That leap for all of life, you know, has happened once the ships could stop coming from Earth because there's some horrible catastrophic World War III and everyone dies on Earth and they're fine and they can turn that certain x number of people into seven billion, you know, population that's thriving just like Earth. They can build ships that can come back and recolonize Earth 'cause now we are officially multi-planetary where it's- it's just self-sustaining. He says a million people is about what he thinks. Now that might be a specialized group. That's gre- that's- that's very specifically, you know, selected million that has, um, very, very skilled million people, not just maybe the average million on Earth. But I think it depends what you're talking about but I th- I don't think... You know, so one million is one seven thousandth, one eight thousandth of the current population. I think you need a very, very, very small fraction of humans on Earth to get by. Obviously, you're not gonna have the same thriving civilization if you get to a- too small a number, but depends who you're killing off I guess is part of the question. Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah, I guess-
- TUTim Urban
If you killed off half of the people just randomly right now I think we'd be fine. It would be obv- obviously a great awful tragedy. Um, I think if you killed off three quarters of all people randomly, just three out of every four people drops dead-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... I think we'd have... Obviously, the stock market would crash. Uh, we'd have a va- a rough patch, but, um, I- I almost can assure you that the species would be fine.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, 'cause the million number you- like you said, it is specialized. So I- I think, um, 'cause you have to do this... The... You have to basically do the iPhone experiment, like, literally. You have to be able to, be able to manufacture computers.
- TUTim Urban
Yeah, everything.
- LFLex Fridman
And-
- TUTim Urban
If you're gonna have the- the self-sustaining means you can, you can, you know... Any major important skill, any important piece of infra- you know, kind of infrastructure on Earth can be built there in this, you know, just as well.
- LFLex Fridman
It'd be interesting to, um, list out what are the important things, what are the important skills for-
- TUTim Urban
Yeah. I- I mean, f- you have to feed everyone so, you know, mass farming, things like that. Um, you have to, um... You have to... You have mining. The- these questions it's like the materials might be, I don't know, no... I don't know, five mile or f- two miles underground. I don't know what the actual... But, like, h- i- it's amazing to me just that these things got built in the first place and, you know, they never got... No one built the first... The mine that we're getting, uh, stuff for the iPhone 4 probably wasn't built for the iPhone-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... you know? Or, or in general early mining, you know, was for... You know, I think obviously I'm- I assume the Industrial Revolution when we realized, "Oh, fossil fuels. We wanna extract this magical energy source." I assume that, like, mining took a huge leap without knowing very much about this. 'cause I think, you know, you're gonna need, you're gonna need mining. You're gonna need, like, a har- a lot of electrical engineers if you're gonna have a civilization like ours. And of course you could have oil and lanterns. We could go way back. But if you're trying to build our today thing, you're gonna need, uh, you know, energy and electricity and then and mines that can bring materials and then you're gonna need, um, a ton of plumbing and everything that entails.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. And like you said food but also the manufacturers so, like, turning raw materials into something useful.
- TUTim Urban
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
That whole thing like factories, some supply chain transportation.
- TUTim Urban
... right. You know what I mean? You think about- so how, the- when we talk about, like, world hunger, one of the major problems is, you know, there's plenty of food and by the time it arrives, most of it's gone bad in the truck, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a kind of an impoverished place. So it's like, you know, we take for, again, we take it so for granted. All the food in the, in the supermarket is fresh. It's all there and which always stresses me out. If I were running a supermarket, I would always be so, like, miserable about, like, things going bad on the shelves. Um, or if you don't have enough, that's not good but if you have too much, it goes bad anyway.
- LFLex Fridman
Of course, there would be entertainers too. Like, somebody would, uh, have a YouTube channel that's
- 30:49 – 37:49
Future politics of Mars
- LFLex Fridman
running on Mars. I, there is something different about a civilization on Mars and Earth existing versus, like, a civilization in the United States versus Russia and China. Like, that, that's a different, fundamentally different distance. Like-
- TUTim Urban
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... philosophically.
- TUTim Urban
The que- will it be, like, fuzzy? We know there'll be, like, a reality show on Mars that everyone on Earth is obsessed with and-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... you know, if, I think if people are going back and forth enough, then it becomes fuzzy. It becomes like, "Oh, our friend's on Mars," and there's, like, this Mars versus Earth, you know, like, you know, and it become, like, fun tribalism. Uh, I think if people don't r- rarely go back and forth and it really, they're there for, I think it could get kinda like, "Ooh, we hate..." you know, a lot of, like, us versus them stuff going on.
- LFLex Fridman
There could be also war in space for territory as, as a first colony happens. China, Russia, or whoever, the European, different European nations, Switzerland finally gets their act together and starts wars. This is supposed to... (laughs) staying out of all of them-
- TUTim Urban
Yeah, there's all kinds of crazy geopolitical things-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... that, like, we have not even, uh, no one's really even thought about too much yet that, that's like-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... it could get weird. Think about the 1500s when it was suddenly, like, a race to, like, you know, colonize or capture land or discover new land that hasn't been, you know, so it was like this, this, this new frontiers. And there's not really, you know, the land is not, you know, the Cri- like, the thing about Crimea was like this huge thing 'cause this tiny peninsula switched. That's how, like, optimized everything has become, everything has just like really stuck.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
Mars is a whole new world of, like, fu- you know, territory, fighting for na- naming things and, you know, with the... um, and it's a chance for new kind of governments maybe or maybe it's just the, the colonies of these governments that we don't get that opportunity. I think it would be cool if there's new countries being, you know, totally new experiments.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. And, and, and that's fascinating 'cause Elon talks e- exactly about that and I, I believe that very much. Like, that should be, like, from, from the start, they should determine their own sovereignty. Like, they, they should determine their own thing.
- TUTim Urban
There was one modern democracy in late 1700s, the US. I mean, it was the only, you know, modern democracy and now, of course, that's, there's hun- there's hundreds or dozen, many dozens. But I think part of the reason that was able to start, I mean, it's not that... people didn't have the idea. People had the idea. It was that, it was that they had a clean slate, new place.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
You know, and they, they suddenly were... you know, so I think it's, it would be a great opportunity to have... 'cause a lot of people who've done that, you know, "Oh, if I had my own government on an island, my own country, what would I do?" And it's, they, the, the US founders actually had the opportunity, that fantasy. They were like, "We can do it. Let's make... okay, what, what's the perfect country?"
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
And they tried to make something. Um, sometimes progress is, it's not held up by our imagination. It's held up by just there's no, you know, blank canvas to try something on.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, it's an opportunity for a fresh start. You know, the funny thing about the conversation we're having is not often had, I mean, even by Elon. He's so focused on Starship and actually g- putting the first human on Mars. I think thinking about this kind of stuff is, um, inspiring. It, uh, makes us dream, it makes us hope for the future. So and it makes us, somehow, like, thinking about a civilization on Mars is, um, helping us think about the civilization here on Earth-
- TUTim Urban
Yeah, totally.
- LFLex Fridman
... and how we should run it. Well, what do you think our, like, in our lifetime, are we gonna... I think any effort that goes to Mars, the goal is in this decade. Do you think, uh, that's actually gonna be achieved over-
- TUTim Urban
I have a big bet, $10,000 with s- a friend, uh, when I was drunk, uh-
- LFLex Fridman
Okay.
- TUTim Urban
... in an argument, um-
- LFLex Fridman
This is great.
- TUTim Urban
... that, that the ne- the Neil Armstrong of Mars, whoever he or she may be, will step foot by the end of 2030. Now this was probably in 2018 when I had this argument.
- LFLex Fridman
So like what if it-
- TUTim Urban
S- a human has to touch Mars by 20, end, by the end of-
- 37:49 – 43:49
SpaceX
- LFLex Fridman
I think, um, it wasn't obvious that the moon landing would be so exciting for all of human civilization. Some of that had to do with the right speeches, with the space race. Like space, depending on how it's presented, could be boring. I don't, I don't, I, I don't think it's been that so far but I've actually-
- TUTim Urban
I, I agree. I think space is quite boring right now. Not, not, not, you know, SpaceX is super all right, but like 10 years ago space.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
Some writer, I forget who, wrote, um, it's like the best magic trick in the show happened at the beginning and now they're starting to do these, like, easy passes.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
You know, it's like you can't go in that direction and the line that, that this writer said is, like, "Watching, uh, astronauts go up to the space station after watching the moon is like watching Columbus sail to Ibiza."
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
It's just like, you know, it's everything is so unpractical. You're going up to the space station not to explore but to do science experiments in microgravity.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
And you're sending rockets up, you know, not, you know, mostly here and there as a probe but mostly you're sending them up to put satellites to, you know, for, for, for DirecTV, you know, now or whatever it is. Um, it's kind of like lame Earth industry s- you know, usage.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
So I agree with you. Space is boring there. The, the, uh, the first human, um, setting foot on Mars, that's gotta be a crazy global event. I can't imagine it not being. Maybe you're right, maybe I'm taking for granted, uh, the speeches and the space race and then, th-
- LFLex Fridman
Y- I, I think the value of, I guess what I'm pushing, uh, is the value of people like Elon Musk and potentially other leaders that hopefully step up is extremely important here. Like I, I would argue without the, the publicity of SpaceX, it's not just the ingenuity of SpaceX but, like, what they've done publicly by having a, a figure that tweets and all that kind of stuff like that, that, that's a source of inspiration.
- TUTim Urban
Totally.
- LFLex Fridman
That NASA wasn't able to quite pull off with the shuttle.
- TUTim Urban
That's one of his two reasons for doing this. It's basically it exists for two reasons. One, life insurance for the species. If we're on, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're... I always think about it this way. If you're an alien on some far away planet and you're rooting against humanity and you win the bet if humanity goes extinct, you do not like SpaceX. You do not want them to have their eggs in two baskets now.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. (laughs)
- TUTim Urban
Um, you know, it's, yeah, sure, it's like obviously this, you know, you could have some, you know, something that kills everyone on both planets, some AI war or something. But, um, but the point is obviously it's good for our chances, our long-term chances to be having, you know, two s- self-sustaining civilizations going on. The second reason he's, and he's, he values this, I think, just as high is it's the greatest adventure in history, you know, going multi-planetary and that, you know, it's, you know, people need some reason to wake up in the morning and, and, um, and it'll, it'll just be this hopefully great uniting event too. I mean, I'm sure in today's nasty awful political environment which is like a whirlpool of- that sucks everything into it. So it doesn't, you name a thing and it's become a nasty political topic. So I hope, I hope that, um, space can, you know, Mars can just bring everyone together. But, you know, i- it could become this hideous thing where it's, you know, oh, you know, billionaire or some annoying s- storyline gets built so half the people think that anyone who's excited about Mars is an evil, you know, something.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
Anyway, I hope it, it, it, it is super exciting.
- LFLex Fridman
So far space has been a, a uniting, inspiring-
- TUTim Urban
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... um, thing. And in fact especially during this time of pandemic has been just, uh, commercial entity putting out humans into space for the first time was just a, one of the only big sources of hope.
- TUTim Urban
Totally and awe just like watching this huge skyscraper go up in the air-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
... flip over-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... come back down and land. I mean, it just makes everyone just wanna sit back and clap and kinda like...
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
You know, the way I look at something like SpaceX is it makes me proud to be a human.
- 43:49 – 1:09:17
Elon Musk
- LFLex Fridman
you've talked to Elon quite a bit. You've written about him quite a bit. Just i-i-it'd be cool to- to hear you talk about what are your ideas of what, what, you know, the magic sauce as you've written about- about with Elon. What- what makes him so successful? His style of thinking, his ambition, his dreams, his, um, the people he connects with, the kind of problems he tackles? Is there a kind of comments you can make about what makes him special?
- TUTim Urban
I think that obviously there's a lot of things that he's very good at. He is, um, he's- he has... He's obviously super intelligent. His heart is very much in like I think the right place, like, and you know, I really, really believe that like... And I think people can sense that, you know? He just doesn't seem like a grifter of any kind. He's truly trying to do these big things for the right reasons, and he's obviously crazy ambitious and hardworking, right? Not everyone is. Some people are as talented and have cool visions, but they just don't wanna spend their life that way.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
So but that's... None of those alone is what makes Elon, Elon. I mean if- if it were, there'd be more of him because there's a lot of people that are very smart and smart enough to accumulate a lot of money and influence, and they have great ambition, and they have a, you know, their heart's in the right place. Um, to me, it is, uh, the very unusual quality he has is that he's sane in a way that almost every human is crazy. What I mean by that is we are programmed to trust conventional wisdom over our own reasoning, um, for good reason. If you go back 50,000 years, uh, and conventional wisdom says, you know, don't eat that berry, you know, or this is the way you tie a- tie a spearhead to a spear-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
... uh, and- and you're thinking, "I'm smarter than that," like you're not, you know? That- that- that- that comes from the accumulation of life experience, accumulation of observation and experience over many generations, and that's little mini version of the collective superintelligence. It's like, you know, it's the equivalent of like making a pencil today. Like, um, people back then, like the- the- the conventional wisdom like had this super... The- the- this- this knowledge that no human could ever accumulate. So we're very wired to trust it. Plus, the secondary thing is that the people who, you know, just say that they believe the mountain is- is... They worship the mountain as their god, right? And the god... And the mountain determines their fate. That's not true, right? And the conventional wisdom is wrong there, but, um, believing it was helpful to survival because you were one... You- you- you were part of the crowd, and you stayed in the tribe, and if you started to, you know, you know, insult their- the mountain god and say, "That's just a mountain, it's not," you know, you didn't fare very well, right? So it w- for a lot of reasons, it was a great survival trait to just trust what other people said, uh, and believe it. And truly, you know, obviously, you know, the more you b- really believed it, the better. Today, um, conventional wisdom in- in a rapidly changing world, um, and a huge giant society, our brains are not built to understand that. They have a few settings, you know, and none of them is, uh, you know, 300 million person society. So their... So your- your brain is basically, um, uh, is treating a lot of things like a small tribe, even though they're not. And they're tr- and- and- and they're treating conventional wisdom as- as, you know, very wise in a way that it's not. If you think about it this way, it's like picture a... Like a bucket that's not moving very much, ver- moving like a millimeter a year, and so it has time to collect a lot of water, and that's like conventional wisdom in the old days when very few things change. Like your- your ten, you know, great, great, great grandmother probably lived a similar life to you maybe on the same piece of land. And so old people really knew what they were talking about. Today, the bucket's moving really quickly. And so, you know, the wisdom doesn't accumulate, but we think it does 'cause our brain settings doesn't have the, oh, move, you know, quickly moving bucket, uh, setting on it. So, um, my grandmother gives me advice all the time, and I have to decide is this... So there are certain things that are not changing like relationships and love and, you know, loyalty and things like this. Her advice on those things, I'll listen to it all day. She's one of the people who said, "You gotta live near your people you love. Live near your family," right? I- I think that is like tremendous wisdom, right? That is wisdom 'cause that's happens to be something that hasn't... Doesn't change from generation to generation.
- LFLex Fridman
For now.
- TUTim Urban
Right. She... Oh, right.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
For now. She's also telling... Right. So I'll be the idiot telling my grandparents that-
- LFLex Fridman
Exactly.
- TUTim Urban
... and they'll actually be in some metaverse like-
- LFLex Fridman
Exactly.
- TUTim Urban
... doesn't matter. And I'm like, "It's not the same when you're not in person." They're gonna say, "It's exactly the same."
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- TUTim Urban
And they'll also be thinking to me with their-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... Neuralink, and I'm gonna be like-
- LFLex Fridman
Exactly.
- TUTim Urban
... "Slow down. I don't understand what you're saying. Can you just talk like a normal..." Anyway, so- so my grandmother then... But then she says, "You know, you're... I don't know about this writing you're doing. You should go to law school, and you know, you know, you wanna be secure."... and that's not good advice for me, you know, given the world I'm in and what I like to do and what I'm good at, uh, that's not the right advice. But, eh, because the w- the world is totally... She's in a different world, so she became wise for a world that's no longer here, right? Now if you think about that, so then when we think about conventional wisdom, it's a little like my grandmother and, and, um, there's a lot of t- no, it's not maybe, you know, 60 years outdated like her software, it's maybe 10 years outdated conventional wisdom, sometimes 20. So anyway, I think that we all continually don't have the, the confidence in our own reasoning when it conflicts with what everyone else thinks, when with what seems right. Uh, we don't have the, um, the guts to act on that reasoning for that reason, right? You know, um, we, we, we... and so, the, you know, so many Elon examples. I mean, just from the beginning, building Zip2 was, uh, his first company and, um, it was internet advertising at the time when people said, you know, this internet was brand new, like kind of like kind of thinking of like the Metaverse, VR Metaverse today and people being like, "Oh, we're se- you know, we, you know, we s- still facilitate internet advertising." People were saying, "Yeah, people are gonna advertise on the internet, yeah, right." No, but actually, it wasn't that he's magical and saw the future, it's that he looked at the present, looked at what the internet was, thought about, you know, the obvious, like, advertising opportunity this was gonna be. Uh, it wasn't rocket science, it wasn't genius, I don't believe. I think it was just seeing the truth, and when everyone else is laughing saying, "Well, you're w- you're wrong." I mean, my... I did the, the math and here it is, right? Next company, you know, X.com which m- became eventually PayPal, um, people say, "Oh yeah, people are gonna put their financial information on the internet." No way. I- it get... to us it seems so obvious. If you went back then you would probably feel the same where you'd think this is that is a, that is a fake company that no... it's just obviously not a good idea. He looked around and said, you know, "I see where this is going." And so again, he could see where it was going 'cause he could see what it was that day and not what it, you know, not people... Conventional wisdom was still a bunch of years earlier. Uh, SpaceX is the ultimate example. Uh, a friend of his apparently bought, actually compiled a montage, video montage of rockets blowing up to show him this is not a good idea and if... but just even the bigger picture, the amount of billionaires who have like thought this was, "I'm gonna start launching rockets" and, you know, the amount that failed, I mean, uh, i- i- it's n- it's not... Conventional wisdom said this isn't a bad endeavor, he was putting all of his money into it.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
Landing rockets was another thing, you know, well if, uh, you know, here's the classic kind of way we are rereason which is if this could be done, NASA would've done it a long time ago 'cause of the money it would save. If this could be done, the Soviet Union would've done it back in the '60s. Uh, it's- it's obviously something that can't be done and the math on his envelope said, "Well, I think it can be done," and so he just did it. So in each of these cases, I think actually in some ways Elon gets too much credit as, you know, people think it's, it's that he's, you know, it's that his Einstein intelligence or his, he can see the future or he has incredible, uh, he has incredible guts, he's so, you know, courageous. I think if you actually are looking at reality, uh, and you're just assessing probabilities and you're ignoring all the noise which is wrong, so wrong, right? And you just, then you just have to be, you know, pretty smart and, you know, pr- pretty courageous, um, and you have to have this magical ability to be sane and trust your reasoning over conventional wisdom because your individual reasoning, you know, part of it is that w- we see that we can't build a pencil, we can't build, you know, this civilization on our own, right? We, and so, so we, we, we, we kind of count, you know, tout to the, um, to the collective bec- for lo- for good reason but this is different when it comes to kind of what's possible. You know, The Beatles were doing their kind of Motown-y chord patterns in the early 60s and they, they, they were doing what was normal, they were doing what was clearly this kind of s- sound is a hit.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- TUTim Urban
Then they started getting weird because they had, they were so popular they had this confidence to say, "Let's just, we're gonna start just experimenting," and it turns out that like if you, s- all these people are in this like one groove together doing music and it's just like there's a lot of land over there and it seems like, you know, I'm sure the managers would say and the, the, the, the, all the record execs would say, "No, you have to be here. This is what sells." And it's just not true. So I think that Elon is why, but so I w- the, the term for this that e- actually Elon likes to use is reasoning from first principles, a physics term. Uh, first principles are your axioms and physicists they don't say, "Well, what's, you know, what, what's, what, what do people think?" No, they say, "What are the axioms? Those are the puzzle pieces, let's use those to m- build a conclusion. That's our hypothesis. Now let's test it," right? And, and they, they come up with all kinds of new things constantly by doing that. If, if Einstein was, was assuming conventional wisdom was right he never would've even tried to create something that really disproved Newton's Laws. And the other way to reason is reasoning by analogy which is a, uh, great shortcut. It's, it's when we look at other people's reasoning and we kind of c- photocopy it into our head, we steal it. So, uh, reasoning by analogy we do all the time and it's usually a good thing. I mean, we don't, if you, it's, it takes a lot of mental energy and time to reason from first principles. It's actually, you know, you don't want to reinvent the wheel every time, right? You want to often copy, uh, other people's reasoning most of the time, and I, you know, most of us do it most of the time and that's good but there's certain moments when you're... Forget just for a second like succeeding in like the world of like Elon, just who you're gonna marry. Where are you gonna settle down? How are you gonna raise your kids? How are you gonna educate your kids? Uh, how you should educate yourself? What kind of career paths in terms... These moments, this is what on your deathbed like you look back on and that's w- these are the f- few number of choices that really define your life. Those should not be reason by analogy. You, you should absolutely try to reason from first principles. And Elon, not just by the way in his work but in his personal life. I mean, if you just look at the way he's on Twitter. He's not h- it's not how you're supposed to be when you're a, a, a super famous, uh, you know, you know, industry titan. You're not supposed to just be silly on Twitter and do memes and, and get in little, little quibbles with people. He just does things his own way regardless of what you're supposed to do which sometimes serves him and sometimes doesn't, but I think, uh, it has taken him where it has taken him.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, I mean, I, I probably wouldn't describe his approach to Twitter as first ch- (laughs) first principles, but I guess it has the same elements.
- TUTim Urban
I kind of think it is. Well, first of all, I, I will say that a lot of tweets people think, "Oh, like, he's gonna be done after that."... he's fine. He's on, you know-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- TUTim Urban
... he's just, he's just won Man, you know, Time Man of the Year. Like, c- it's something is, it's, it's not sinking him. And I think, you know, it's not that I, it's not that I think this is like super reasoned out. I think that, you know, Twitter is his silly side. But I think that he s- d- he would, his reasoning did not feel like there was a giant risk in just being his silly self on Twitter, when a lot of billionaires would say, "Well, no one else is doing that-"
- LFLex Fridman
Yes.
- TUTim Urban
"... so it must be a good reason, right?" You know?
- 1:09:17 – 1:13:43
Nuclear power
- TUTim Urban
Episode duration: 2:37:02
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