StarTalk Podcast: The End of The World, with Josh Clark and Neil deGrasse Tyson

this is Startalk cosmic queries edition today I got Josh Clark in the house and you know him from stuff you should know and a newly emergent podcast called the end of the world Josh welcome to Startalk thank you very much for having me here I mean like I'm really thrilled to be here excellent excellent and my co-host Chuck nice Hey welcome welcome and so I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson so Josh just stuff you should know hugely popular yeah you know we just hit 1 billion downloads we've been around for almost 11 years I think from what we understand where the first podcast ever hit a billion down so now we have to teach you how to say that okay all right you have to billions then we'll teach you to say yeah can't wait well congratulations excellent excellent so that's a testament to not only how good the show is but also that you've tapped into the fact that people still want to learn yeah oh my gosh yeah when we started doing it in 2008 like learning was actually popular I don't know if you remember back then but like being smart and geeky was super cool it's kind of changed a little bit recently but overall I think the fact that we are still popular shows that there always has been and always will be people who want to keep learning people who leave college and they're like oh wait a minute that was pretty cool that floor learners right exactly and they definitely our fan base so we there there's a lot of them out there we can we can tell you and you weren't satisfied with just stuff you should know now you got to end the world right all right yeah so Chuck we we solicited questions from our fan base our social media platform who knew Josh was coming on the show yeah and so they they came out they came at us they did indeed and of course we have we gleaned these questions from every Startalk incarnation on the interwebs and we always start with a patreon patron because they're so crass well I am indeed I have no say Neil yes that and uh you know the patreon patrons give us money and so therefore we give them then you hear quite a giver I'm president and and and and privilege because quite we're like government people like your government Wow God do I really want to start off with such a heavy note why not let us do it this is Luke Meadows from patreon he says it sounds like a soap opera name it does dr. alright he go what does Josh and Neil think is our biggest existential risk Wow we're starting off with like BAM like heaviest bat in the rack yeah what is our biggest existential risk you got a podcast with the name end of the world go for it okay all right um from what I found the across the board everybody thinks about existential risks and warns other people about existential risks say that AI is probably our biggest existential risk yeah and the reason let me follow up with an explanation okay the reason why is because we are putting onto the table right now the pieces for a machine to become super intelligent right it's out there it's possible it's not necessarily right there but it's it's possible right the problem is is we haven't figured out how to create what's called friendliness in do n AI so it's really good point though right like how we don't even know how to define like morality and friendliness and as far as AI goes friendliness and in AI is an AI that cares about humans as much as a machine can care it takes an AI just in it yeah that doesn't kill you basically no account is a friendly the problem is the pitfall with AI is an existential risk is we make this assumption that if an AI became super intelligent a friendliness would be an emergent property of that super intelligence that is not necessarily true or that the friendliness that we instill into that AI would supersede the emergent property of overcoming friendliness in lieu of you guys you guys got a go right like you guys are the problem I've seen what you do to livestock right that was good that that's that's agent hold on agent mr. Anders they're all named Smith my name yeah no that was the end of the matrix for so so you just worried based on the the some of experts you've spoken to yeah you agree that this I do actually they've convinced me the more I looked into it and this is one of those things it's really tough to just kind of get across you know a brief sketch of the actual existential threat that artificial intelligence poses and I dedicated a whole episode to it in the end of the world but when you start to dig into it you realize like oh wait this is really like it's possible that this could happen and we while we're improving by leaps and bounds especially ever since we started creating neural nets that could learn on their own just just feeding them information like just basically sitting them in front of YouTube and say go learn what makes a cat picture a cat picture right once we started doing that our AI research just shot off like a rack rocket right it was probably the most watershed moment in the history of artificial intelligence and it happened very quietly about 2006 so we're doing really well with AI development we're doing terribly with figuring out friendliness and granted the AI field has taken this seriously there are AI researchers who are legitimate air researchers who are working on figuring out friendliness in parallel figuring out machine intelligence but it's not keeping up and there it's right here's a very danger so here's the thing so I had a different answer from you okay about our greatest existential risk okay but I'd like your answer better oh wow thank you then the answer I was going to give oh just asteroid will render every one of its extinct including the AI basically wins here's what we have to do then I have a hybrid solution here okay we invent the AI that wants to take us out you say no you have to figure out a way to deflect the asteroid mm-hmm because that's gonna take us all out and while he's killing wheatley distracted okay by solving the asteroid problem and then we're not its biggest threat when do we kill it oh so so can i hey what would sold me over to what you said okay it was not our end none none none of the arguments you gave a different argument but they all come together okay it was I was sure you can you can abstract the problem into a simple question all right if you put AI in a box will it ever get out of the box yes okay I'm locking you in the box because I think you're dangerous okay can the AI get out of the box that's that's very interesting yeah you can just abstract it to that that's what games ahead and listening to an AI program another podcast podcast universe was Sam Harrison I said my gosh it gets out every time because then I'm thinking look this American guy gets out of hand I'm good you shoot it you're right okay you know this is like like who's in Beverly Hillbillies just shoot it yeah oh grandma everybody's got a gun okay so I can just shoot it yeah and no it doesn't work that way right because AI is in the back I'm never letting you out and the AI will convince you to let it out right if it's smarter than you that's the job this job that's what the fact that it's smarter means it so here's I'm making up this conversation but this is the simplest of conversation I'm not letting you out but I want to get out now I'm not letting you well I've just done some calculations and I have found a cure for the disease that your your mother has right but I can't do anything about it in here yeah they let me out to do that'll get the clamp it's every time so I say Wow and it can save everyone in the world yeah and now it's out great good job that's exactly right or any any of the the the locks that we put around at any of the the protocols we've built to keep it in place I think if you were about to say it's super intelligent so by definition it's smarter than basically all of us combined right it's like say it's like saying it's like a it's like a dog believing it can lock you in a room right forever right it's like no you say oh I just bought it you know 14 ounce t-bone steak you want a free dinner yeah yeah yeah well I have to go prepare it then they open the door I get out of the door okay right and better than yeah better than that I think okay you're gonna have to forgive me because you had a you had a colleague on and he's a teacher he might have been one of your teachers that we talked to and one of his methods for getting students to learn is you give them the same problem that some other astrophysicists may have faced and then as they solve it that's how they learn as opposed to teaching them what that astrophysicists already discovered you let them make the discovery so if this thing is so smart it would literally have the ability to just whatever we design to go back to square one and redesign it on its own I say well now here's the next phase that's how I get out of three well that's that's one of the emerging threats is AI machine learning that can write code like I think some Harvard researchers trained a deep learning algorithm to write code any minute to code learning deep this write deep impact except deep impact because Morgan Freeman is delightful as the president the United States absolutely did the asteroid win in that one I never saw it it it tied took out New York City yeah okay but California civilization endured that's what matters okay so then that asteroid was not an existential it was except we split it into two uh-huh and the big piece went away in the end in the end of the movie well you have to destroy any work cuz it's a movie but but they did it right rather than unlike in Armageddon where the asteroid pieces had GPS locators and hit monuments one decapitated the Chrysler Building really okay and hit the clock continued through the Chrysler Building went in the front door of Grand Central Terminal and here's the clock in the middle of the floor okay okay another one's came from over New Jersey and hit the World Trade Center okay that's aiming for our our stuff all right so deep impact had science advisors okay because because Armageddon with Bruce Willis violates more known laws of physics per minute than any other movie ever made okay so you know even more than than gravity no no that one was cool that was at least tried okay okay okay that one tried but thanks for remembering by gravity tirade but you only get one question in the second well listen this has been I'm still entertained on one question we're doing a great job the world so we could fit in one short one okay all right let's go with will J our patreon patron who says this what one or two skills would you learn now to be useful and productive in a post-apocalyptic world that is of course if we survive the event so I got one ready kill right ahead I would learn how to break into a hardware store yeah nothing more valuable in an apocalypse than the contents of a hardware store or a towel don't forget your towel that's a Hitchhiker's Guide I just got hitchhiked to break into a hardware store my my answer would be learning how to collect canned food that would be mine that's it that's that movie the boy and his dog understood the Don Johnson Don Johnson yeah yeah the dog was intelligent and but the dog would help Dante apocalyptic earth okay and it's a boy his door the only ones alive on Earth's surface as far as they know and Don Johnson he's like the teenager in this movie he's literally a teenager as an actor and he's playing a young kid boy and his dog so the dog helps him find food but the food is all canned and the dog can't get into the can so he opens the cans and they both eat buddy it's it's it's a and so they both and the dog I think it communicates telepathically to him or something now it's an intelligent dog is it possible Don Johnson is just nuts in that movie and the no no no no it turns out then it'd be a doctor it turns out there is in this movie the civilization still exists but they all went underground okay okay and he learns this and it turns out when they go underground all the men become sterile okay so all the women when they want to propagate the species have to get sperm from only people men who are above ground from Don John is it a sexy movie no not really Cinemax at 3:00 a.m. skinemax no no all right so all right so Chuck what would you what would you beat we were one thing you would take with you skill one skill it would be this being funny because everybody loved it I'll be like dude you know give somebody laugh and they were like one other thing there's one more skill you have to have okay thou shalt know physics all right okay if you know physics just move back into the cave it's kind of a superpower here's that some reason why I thought about that recently I was asked to review a book written by some MIT physicists and engineers okay and it's called the physics of energy the physics of energy just came out god oh that looks like a textbook it is kind of a textbook okay yeah it's based on courses they taught I okay the physics of energy Robert Jaffe Washington Taylor and so I actually blurbed the book even books like this you can get blurbs I couldn't put it down there goes ready all right here go buy one textbook this year if your task was to jumpstart civilization but had access to only one book then the physics of energy would be your choice Wow professors Taylor and Jaffe have written a comprehensive thorough and relevant treatise it's an energizing read as a standalone book but it should also be a course offered at every college lest we miss manage a collective role as shepherds of our energy hungry energy dependent civilization sweet drop have anything to do with the with the chap that I see sitting on this table here from Taylor engine no that was just to cover the postage Oh so the point is you don't want to have to wait for another Isaac Newton to be born to discover the physics and then you want to you want to start where you left off so and so that's what this book would do cool that was a really good answer yeah better than a towel I think I mean food I don't mean to besmirch no it's alright you know Douglas Adams here but it was a jokey answer so well we just end that segment we're gonna come back to more cosmic queries on the end of the world as we know it we're back on Startalk I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist today's special cosmic queries edition on the ends of the world and we've got Josh Clark with us Josh hey welcome thank you you're the stuff you should know guy yes that's right with a new podcast ends of the world yeah the end of the world with Josh Clark appropriately and really want to associate your name with like the Tyler Perry of science podcast pretty much yeah that's what I was going for and listen it's a smart thing to do everyone who worked on it I made sign a contract that said they would not look me in the eye during but it's a it's all about existential risks and it's largely based on the work of a guy named Nick Bostrom who is of Oxford Oxford he's basically been warning people about existential risks for 20 years and is really kind of giving us our understanding of what existential risks are and why they're different and why they're worth paying attention I said I know him I know his work I've not met him yeah but I've referenced his work many times in my talks I got to speak to him a few times for the podcast like three times and on the third time his his assistant was like you know dr. boström like puts every request for like a media appearance or an interview or a project or whatever through a cost-benefit analysis and I made it through that grinder like three times and I felt pretty good about that billion downloads has something to do with the billion it's a heavy number I think the reason why he was speaking to me so frequently you're so willing to talk to me about the same thing three times is because you know he was talking through me who's trying to reach more people and that kind of brought me back down inside a little bit after realize that that's a good thing though I mean you know it's worthwhile yeah yeah so Chuck just get some more credits do ya any more patreon hmm no but I God here it is so this is fill Vader 23 from Instagram somewhat rhetorical but I'm I'm I'm interested I think I know why he asked if the world ended with the human race end and I'll say vice-versa there are there are a lot of people who feel like that this is like we're it who you know what I mean like if we end that is the end like so if the world ended with the human race end and if the human race ends we we know the world wouldn't end but earth is gonna be here with or without us yeah Luther's here before during and after asteroid strikes it's here before during and after viral viral attacks so we are a blip in the history of the earth so when people say oh save earth they usually mean save ourselves on earth in almost every case somebody says save earth that's implicitly what they mean save humans on earth you might say Oh save the other animals they might say that that what they mean is what we are doing is affecting other animals and ultimately that might affect us because we're in a we're in a ecosystem that has balance and interconnectivity so it's the shortsightedness of decisions we make let me not call it's short-sighted let me say not fully researched no because I think people think they're doing what's okay right they thought let's make a smokestack and pump smoke into the air right so that it goes into the air high above you rather than a ground level that's better right and no one is thinking well this is still in the air and it's wrapping around the earth you know so air pollution was not imagined that it would ever be a worldwide problem right and so we have to learn that and when we did we've made great progress all right I mean air is cleaner than has ever been all around the world Thank You Al Gore he invented clean air so yeah this end of the earth thing I do talk much about the end of the earth I do it was it's a it's a big point that I make that if we if we screw up and we like wipe ourselves out whether it's through AI or some biotech accident or maybe something going awry with nanotech or a physics experiment even potentially if we do this he's trying to drink my people in today I was waiting for I thought I would get out of that I considered it but then decided no but if we if we if the worst comes and we slip up and we wipe ourselves out life would almost almost certainly go on because it has so many times before we've been through at least five that we know of mass extinctions big ones too I think the Ordovician one I can't remember how long ago it was it was very very ancient but they're starting to think that a gamma-ray burst basically sterilized earth came that close to just killing all life on Earth and it still couldn't a gamma-ray burst hit earth and life still hung on hung on after the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs and a lot of other species life will probably keep going I would bet just about anything on it so yeah there will be life after after we go if we go if we go to us the world will evented so it is kind of moot in that respect hmm um so one thing about the gamma-ray burst is that was invoked after no one could find any other reason for how that many how much life is that right yeah I mean it's it's plausible and we have them in the universe yeah usually they're pointing in some other direction or if they point towards us they're very far away so the question is in the statistics of this could you have one that's nearby that points straight at us and if it does these are high-energy particle of high-energy light and it first takes out the ozone layer right the ozone protects you until there's no ozone right but it keeps coming so it's like the first line of defense that is now all massacred now it keeps going makes it all the way to Earth's surface and those are high-energy particles it is is incompatible with the large molecules that we call biology nice oh just breaks apart your molecule right and it kills everything it'll kill everything if you're in a cave you'll survive but you probably eat things that dependent on things that died on Earth's surface so would you survive even with that atmosphere burned away take out the ozone so you'd have to go to places where you'd still be protected okay bye from the ozone which would be underground yeah you would really like episode 4 which is about natural risks including gamma-ray bursts and now in the end you'd be very proud I conclude that they are quite rare and probably not going to happen yeah rare enough so that really you should like do things like buckle your seat belt right but but you can't take care of both you can take care of immediate threats like dying in a car crash while you're simultaneously thinking about more remote larger threats as well and but in proportion you do that in a in a balanced way sure that is my new phrase now just for when I'm going to have reckless abandon just gamma life point you if you take a 90% of the life and 10% survives what you've done is pry open ecological niches that we're the 10% of the life that remains can now to just run in filters run fill that well you yeah you can make a pretty good case that if we are wiped out we would leave the biggest ecological niche of all currently on earth have you seen the book life after man I saw like this special on out like discovery or something maybe they made that after the book they did so I thought you were talking about a lifetime special Christmas enlightenment so if we so who do we keep trying to kill that lives with us like the mice and rats right right so if we're out of the way what sets the upper size of a mouse or a rat is that it can escape from being killed by us by going to a pipe or a hole if we're not there nothing to stop the growth of rodent which is like what's the name of the bar that's it what's that against nothing marry the copy bar that's rodent there was this big River rodent nothing nothing there's nothing to stop so then they would just run the world nice right so but but that they'd have museums so there there would also be nothing stopping the capybaras or the giant rodents from also gaining intelligence it's possible that that we like to think of ourselves as the only intelligent life on earth and that's just patently untrue we just have to expand our definition of intelligence so perhaps were the current endpoint in the evolution of intelligent life on earth but if we're gone that doesn't mean that that evolution of intelligences gives going to cease as well so maybe a million years or 50 million years or 100 million years from now the capybaras will be like exploring the the galaxy or the universe but that presumes that intelligent improve intelligence improves your survival is a very big assumption i but that is an assumption of the cockroaches doing just fine mmm without any kind of brain that we would okay that's true but you can also demonstrate that is freeing those cockroaches if we take our intelligence I don't know what you think when you see a roach right when I see a roach I'm really not thinking that's an intelligent I'm really not thinking that I'm sorry no you can be so intelligent that you have devised ways of destroying your own genetic lineage that is the entire point of the podcast that I made the end of the world josh clark that we could possibly have become so intelligent that we might accidentally wipe ourselves out with that intelligence this is my point so therefore an intelligent copy bara might not be where evolution takes it right okay so let's say that that is that that we're following not a predetermined or prescribed process but just whatever its head is probably going to follow within a certain boundary and that we're kind of in the middle of that boundary and that the capybaras that came behind us would follow the same path right there's every reason to believe that if we wipe ourselves out the capybaras will wipe themselves out too and that goes to inform another thing that I go into in the podcast what's called the great filter this idea that it's possible that there is some barrier between the origin of life growing into intelligent life and that intelligent life spreading out into the universe and that that is why we seem to be alone in the universe because the humans and the capybaras will always inevitably destroy themselves probably because of their intelligence because they gain as Sagan put it they became more powerful before they became wise that's a very that's a precarious position being and that's it's the position that we're in right now it's called adolescence energy to act but without the wisdom to to constrain it right so there's a version of what you said which surely you know about because it would have been in that same world of research that you did it has to do with alright let's say we want to colonize that's a bad word today settle another planet show it show up let's say we want to take a big case so what happens so maybe you go out to the plant and then okay what's the urge that made you want to do that well it's an urge to like explore okay mhm or to conquer mhm either it's the same effect now the people there who want to do the same thing you've read this into your genetic line because you you having babies and you're the one who wanted to do this so then they get to planets and then they have babies and they get to play go one two four eight sixteen it is suggested that you can reach a point where the very urge to explore necessarily is the urge to conquer thereby preventing the full exploration of the galaxy because you're gonna run into somebody gonna run into your own people on people correct right correct and that is a self-limiting arc that's that's the Borg I mean you know yeah but the thing is the the great filter in particular which is an economist a physicist turned economist named Robin Hanson who I'm sure you know no I don't know okay well Robin Hanson came up with this idea that there's there's something that stops life from expanding out into the planet and the reason why it would seem to stop before they expand out from their planets because we would see evidence of them otherwise by now well it's that the Fermi paradox right yeah yeah which is episode another question all right here we go let's keep gonna be fast cuz we're almost out of this segment all right let me take you somewhere and answer these questions because no it's good I like all right you know I'm go deep dive DJ Mass 2006 from Instagram says how do you want to die Chuck knows how I wanted that cuz I want to I want to fall into a black hole that's it yeah that's a good one yeah that's a good one that's totally good good lord so can I can I follow up with a question okay would you know that you have fallen into a black hole we would know in advance that that's what I want to do then I'd fall in right and then I would watch what happened and report back until my signal never gets out of the black hole and I get is if you're in the black hole would it is it is it a process that would allow you some consciousness at a level where you would be like oh my until you've ripped apart but you're conscious of everything as you fallen even through the event horizon through the event horizon you would still be calm oh yes yes and you'll see the whole thing Wow totally cool how about you I was gonna say quickly and painlessly is how I want to do not imagine it to you just in case you know inion about what people don't know you better answer them okay all right fine fine how do I want to die I don't know I think a low energy vacuum bubble would be pretty cool just washing over us all of a sudden which would probably be quick and painless but then you it would happen at the speed of light so you wouldn't see it coming quick and painless that's another quick and painless yeah wears a black hole is quick but very painful but deeply fascinating because you get spaghetti fine you would feel that oh yeah okay that's what I was all right when we come back more star talk cosmic queries on the end of the world as we know it so our talk is back I got Josh Clark with me who is as a new podcast on the ends of the world because he wasn't happy with the billion downloads of stuff you should know he's still at it so glad to have you on the show thank you so we're doing it's a cosmic queries edition and Chuck we spent so much time answering only a few questions yes we got to make this whole segment of lightning round okay so let's just do it we have never done this before the entire which means that you have to answer the question as concisely as possible soundbite you okay dr. niko blat 247 on instagram says when we find life off of the earth would you expect how would you expect religious groups to react would they change thanks from illinois right go they would freak out i think some religious groups would freak out because life on earth human life on earth intelligent human life on earth is the belief to be the sole creation of god but so many other religious groups will be totally down with it and just see it as a greater part of god's creation all right Bing Bing let's move on this is Liam Beckett on Instagram who says this do you think as a society we will ever get past biased news from both sides or only become more divided speaking of the end of the world yeah totally I think this is just kind of like a temporary problem that we have and we are going to continue to advance and as we advance we will be less divided that's my hope at least Neil was beautiful that was unrealistically beautiful this is just a phase we're going through really it's not the beginning of the end of civilization my issue is people try to beat each other on the head to convince them of your own opinion and try to get you to vote in ways that align with your opinion when there's so much so many things out there that are objectively true that we should all agree on what is objectively true and then base civilization on that and then after that celebrate each other's diverse opinions rather than beat each other over the head for them being different but I think that's a point that we're we can conceivably get to and when we do we will be less divided so really you just said the same thing I did all right all right next question this is Francesco Sante says as long as humans have existed I assume we have looked up and felt the connections with the universe even if we didn't have the insights of astrophysics and cosmology do our atoms know all caps that they came from up there no no so so John Kennedy I think before President Kennedy before he was president as you may know he they have a home in Hyannisport really so the ocean coastline is not unfamiliar to him they own boats this sort of thing he spoke often about the allure of the ocean and wondered openly whether we are drawn to the ocean shore because our genetic profile may remember that in fact they came our vertebrate history is owed to the fishes in the sea and that we're somehow pulled back to it so I can I can poetically agree with that but there is no way we could have known that we are Stardust without modern astrophysics telling us this I think we will look up and wonder but I don't think it's because there's a genetic connection I think it's because we just want to know if someone up there gonna eat us we look up at the universe the way you look in the brush there's something there gonna harm me if it's not then otherwise it's a beautiful thing to look at hmm interesting okay next Alejandra Hernandez once from Twitter says this with some a I nearly capable of passing the Turing test do you believe the technological singularity will occur in the near future and if so how do you Thank You manatee welfare now we touched upon that in the so let me sharpen that question here it is how soon is this gonna happen there you go oh I don't know may I be our overlord this thing that I find upsetting and scary is that the man who has an end of the world podcast yes what I find scary I'm afraid now it could happen at any time conceivably it could happen at any time from what I understand we have all the components out there and it could just kind of happen they could fall into place I don't know it's impossible to predict when it will happen and you can't say with absolute certainty that it will happen it's just really possible and the fact that it is possible means that it could conceivably happen at any time and is the cell phone is that I'm sorry is the singularity this is my question so we're still in art our lightning round is the singularity actual consciousness or is it self-aware so the singularity is this point where machines become self-aware and super intelligent or if you're a transhumanist that's the point where we murdered with a transhumanist yeah what is that so that's a big big umbrella term in it it encompasses a lot of different thoughts and philosophies but the main thing that threads it all together is this idea that we can and will and should merge with our machines merge with our technology which sounds far out until you realize already doing it yeah we wear like glasses and contacts and clothes and stuff like that can I carry the internet in my pocket yes exactly now I don't have to graft it into my cerebellum okay but wouldn't it be easier and more convenient if you did just kind of get information that rapidly they open skull surgery or pull this out of my pocket is that my choice basically I don't need to see the latest cat video that badly I can wait until I can dial it up on my on my phone but what about an infinite loop of cat video well next question okay here we go Rex Jung you almost touched on this but from Twitter says this Rex wants to know any general advice on how to foster peace in the world locally online or in the world at large how do we foster and foment peace that was then preclude if you succeed at that that means total worldwide warfare is off the table as an existential risk yeah that's an important question right right so yeah I think that um that seems to be found in the organizations and the institutions that we build from what I understand the the the moral progress of humanity has been kind of tied to the the global community that we've been developing and as we spread out and understand and meet more and more people and connect with more and more people that seems to be in lockstep with with this movement toward peace on a glowkies Gail he's so hopeful I really am hopeful I I'm deeply hopefully a man I'm also worried but I am hopeful for sure wow that's really cool I wish I was that ready I'm not that hopeful if I were that hopeful I'd be unemployed chance of making it to technological maturity and safety but I'm deeply hopeful that we will and that if we do reach that that there will be a much more peaceful species that we are all right cool I don't know how much time were you going to do it do it this is fired our Popoff via door with Fyodor Theodore Theodore but not Theodore Theodore Theodore mater that's the original hey here we go what do you think are the best ways to keep abreast of current developments in the study of existential risk there are great websites out there like those of future humanity Institute and future of life Institute Li there is very active on social media have you ever specifically researched the various topics you've explored since you've finished the series yeah actually great questions so a couple of things I'm planning on doing a follow-up to the the end of the world podcast these first 10 episodes that's a lot more podcasting a weekly kind of thing to keep abreast of all this stuff so listen out for that but also the future of life in stitute actually is pretty pretty pretty visible on social media they have a great podcast as well but that that's a really important point right now as far as existential risks are concerned there's a lot of academics writing really smart papers and you have to go grind those up to understand what's going on so that's one of the reasons why I Demick we've read the papers right academic research papers are very dry right and very jargon Phil yeah and they're really hard you have to teach yourself how to read an academic paper so it is a grind for people like us right so that's why I made this podcast and that's why I I plan to continue to make the podcast because I will grind this stuff up and then try to explain it so that it's not just a canoe be our conduit to our extinction that way I get bored so you don't have to here's this one this is Mr Mario Gert Mario court on Instagram says is it possible that our universe is someone else's Large Hadron Collider what awesome little question I mean are we the galaxies on the belt of Orion right there you go did you get that reference no hmm men implying a black the first one yes you have you have incomplete geek street cred there's things that I need to learn some yeah some guy that's okay we still love you so let me answer that in a slightly different way okay when we first probe the atom and we found oh wait a minute the Anam has a nucleus and it's got electrons that orbit the nucleus that's just like the solar system it's whole series just like the galaxy mm-hmm where the star is orbiting the center of the galaxy we have planets orbiting a star we have electrons orbiting so maybe it's that all the way down maybe that's the theme and maybe that's how all this works and when you start probing the atom on that scale the laws of physics manifest in completely different ways right so it's not just a scaling phenomenon right so for us to have these laws of physics manifest the way that we do and claim that it's the microscopic physics and someone else's Collider it's just not a realistic extension of how things work hmm although it was deeply attractive because it was philosophically pleasing to imagine that you just had nested quartz because it's like it just nesting it's just you just keep going oh right so so because things manifest differently on these scales you can't just get for example okay there's a something called a water Strider which is a an insect that can just draw all the water yeah it's use a surface tension of the water if that were any bigger it would just fall through you can't you can't scale things because the forces operating have different manifestations on different scales that's why and so that's why what's the movie them movies oh he's got one I had seen that he's got one it's on giant ants I thought he was some nuclear thing and the ants got big nice ants are coming okay answer creepy anyway and now they're bigger than you yeah you freaked out that can never happen because ants have these tiny spindly little legs right and if you scale up the size of the ant its weight outstrips the ability of these spindly legs to hold them up have you done this on Twitter have you have you done a Twitter random by good I could totally rant so the point is as you get bigger I can say this mathematically right as you get bigger the strength of your legs your limbs only goes up as the cross-sectional area but your weight goes up as the cube of your dimensions oh so what happens is because as you get bigger you in all dimensions but your legs if you let gets wider the strength is only the cross-section of your Latin right you just crush off that's why hippopotami don't have skinny legs right they're sort but elephants have some pea legs right okay giraffe has long slender legs your effort and not don't weigh all that much it's slanted and the distribution is distribution is complete if I can so it's so it's a fascinating cottage industry and studying the relationship between size and life and how things and how things scale that was really cold it's why if you take a bucket of water and empty it on your car it doesn't stay as a big ball of water but if the make the water smaller and smaller and smaller it just becomes droplet it's a drop in the drop will stay on the because surface tension holds it certain is not strong enough to hold big things and hold a little thing right the world of insects is completely surface driven their physics courses in insects one is all about surface tension huh right yeah because they do get trapped inside of a little bubble how do I get out everybody needs even name say we got a rafter so that was cool that was cool we gotta wrap this oh yeah we did get a bunch in there that was that was like the longest lightning round we've ever yeah good good good so Josh thanks thanks for coming on thank you so much for you got to do this again I will do it anytime you want anytime that we'll walk up here for the from where do you live down in Atlanta Atlanta just before we sign off tell us exactly where to find your work oh you can find the end of the world with josh clark anywhere you find podcasts including the iHeartRadio app and Apple podcasts and all that jam and then you can find me on social media at Josh um Clark is on if you noticed enough I say I'm quite a bit and I started a hashtag to keep a conversation about existential risk going it's hashtag yo TW Josh so people can find me those ways all right if you're looking for the end of the world this is your man so dude thanks for be honest are thank you very much Chuck always good to have you how you kiddin me it's my pleasure all right you've been listening to possibly even watching Startalk end of the world as you know it edition from cosmic queries Josh Clark thanks for being on thank you as always I bid you to keep looking up

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 445,682

Keywords: StarTalk, Star Talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, Josh Clark, end of the world, Stuff You Should Know, The End Of The World, with Josh Clark, artificial intelligence, humanity, apocalypse, ozone layer, Earth, humans, The Great Filter, intelligent life, Fermi paradox, black hole, extraterrestrial life, self-awareness, singularity, transhumanist, atoms, star stuff, Large Hadron Collider, Deep Impact, Armageddon, intelligence

Id: lljmkWEsH4w

Length: 49min 21sec (2961 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019