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

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. You write both historical fiction, like World War II in Cryptonomicon, and science fiction-

Mm-hmm.

... 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?

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.

What role does technology play in the suppression or in revealing human nature?

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.

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?

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-

The economic collapse.

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.