"The Jar is rigged to a hydrogen bomb" - this is actually how we were raised in the 80s. Between the constant nuclear threat and BMX bikes, I think we were being trained for the Thunderdome.
@Defective I remember me and my you sisters play with yard dart many times at my Grandparents house in the 70's. I think back on a lot of things I did growing up then and wonder how we survived, but we did. At least most of us did.
I was in a dark movie theater with a bag of jelly belly jellybeans. I was getting only black licorice and cinnamon and it was so unsettling I went out into the lobby to take a look in the light. There were no black licorice or cinnamon ones to be found. I somehow ate them all back to back, up front. It’s always stayed with me after all these years that repeatable results at a large enough scale are important to investigate as chance may skew a low number of observations.
Hopefully humanity can avoid the black licorice and cinnamon jelly beans in our future. I am concerned and excited by AI or GI and 3d printing or it's future iterations.
That actually _happened to you?!_ Like, you're not just being metaphorical? l mean, I know you were just the equivalent of somebody whose lottery numbers have come up - not exactly 'Stop the Presses!' stuff, as much of a surprise as it may have been to them... still, speaking as 'some guy' here, and not as a statistician (which I'm not), but, "Hot Damn! What are the chances!?"
that's insane oh my goodness, the chances of that are crazy and to have it happen to you must've been like a 'holy shit...what the fuck just happened' moment. so interesting!
Just for the record: a lot of Spanish speaking people listen to this inspiring content. We appreciate how you are able to produce an articulated speech, with a clear diction. It makes it easy for us. 😊
English speakers think: "Man; I wish he learned to incorporate some of the Spanish style speaking into his oration, because it is (AWESOME) content, but really drab and monotone!"
Another RUclipsr, John David Ebert, wrote a book about how all new technology changes or undermines traditional culture. Even in world mythologies, he said every society has mythologies to explain this point. He summarized these stories into Farmer God vs. blacksmith god. Very interesting ideas there--and this classic JMG video as well!
First of your Fermi Paradox series that actually scared me a bit. Each new technology we develop have wider ranging unanticipated effects on society. Easy to imagine a new tech that simply renders advanced civilization impossible.
If it hadn’t been for a couple of really tenacious researchers, this planet might not have an ozone layer right now. CFC’s we’re basically invented by one guy, and that technology might’ve been our end or at least set us back centuries. Same man also came up with the formula for leaded gasoline.
@@voEovove Forget about the deaths for a moment, and consider the psychological effects it has had. The tacit neurological damage that low level lead poisoning causes is truly insidious.
Me and a friend were sharing a bag of Jolly Ranchers, saw the notification for this episode and played it. The first 20 seconds or so were kind of intense with jokes of not jostling the bag too hard or claiming lemon flavor will be the downfall of humanity.
I’m concerned about the Peeps population as well, but my mother loves them. I got her Cotton Candy flavor for Easter. It bothers me that they’re no longer just an Easter candy. They sell them for every occasion now. Also, another great science video. Informative and interesting, and allowed me to express my Peeps opinion. I look forward to more Peeps content.
I noted the ominous presence of Halloween themed peeps last October. Peeps expansionism is upon us. I also noted that after making the video, I become hungry for peeps for the first time in my life. Not good.
@@JohnMichaelGodier …you gotta let those Peeps dry out a little…take them out of the package and let ‘em air out for a few hours…totally improves the texture.
I've always struggled with the duel between my urges of anarchistic individual freedom in a sparsely populated, technologically poor world similar to what our stone-age ancestors enjoyed, and the necessity of extreme social conformity in the densely populated, technologically rich world we seem to be inexorably moving into. I want to be a caveman, but I know I will need to be a hivemind. I hope that space travel and offworld colonization will come soon, so that humanity has an empty frontier to move into before the entire species is consumed by the interconnectedness required to ensure continued existence in the presence of world ending technologies. I suspect that we will find ourselves at an existential crisis long before we have the failsafe insurance of physical separation to reliably protect our species. I know that if we don't move aggressively in the right direction we will destroy ourselves and possibly all life on Earth. On the other hand, human existance ultimately means nothing to the universe and in the unimaginably distant future nothing will exist of reality but impossibly lonely photons and an underlying quantum framework. In the face of such a certain fate, only Now matters, and the experiences we have in the brief time we are alive.
We are living in a very interesting century. Thank you, John, for another mind-travelling video which coincides with the beginning of my Spring break holidays. Kalimera from Greece!
Looking around The LGHDTV4K community, Religious zealots, idiocracy How long can we keep this going? Everyone has gone insane since 2012 (Those Mayans might have been onto something)
@@azmanabdula The whole human history is turbulent and full of clashes. We are not that special. Religious zealots and idiots who affected negatively other people always existed. PS What is the LGHDTV4K community?
This is actually my personal intuited solution to the Fermi Paradox, though I wasn't aware of the name of it before! I think the ever-increasing power of miniturisation, extrapolated into the far future, eventually puts world or civilization-ending technology into the hands of individuals. The likely question for me is whether technologies that enable civilisational spread, growth, and resilience will outpace those that are deatruction-centric. The abscence of aliens makes me pessimistic, and leads me to believe that we are probably rapidly approaching some kinds of technology that overwhelmingly result in doomsday scenarios.
Which sort of plays into a simulation type of theory don’t you think? If we blow ourselves up in some fashion well then that sort of concludes the simulation right?
@@Mr_Grimbley The Krell were a mighty and noble race of beings, a million years ahead of humankind. For, in unlocking the mysteries of nature, they abolished all sickness and insanity, and turned still, with great benevolence, outward towards space...
Loved it! The one thing you didn't get to that I was hoping you might is the potential for a technological civilization to potentially collapse the universe accidentally. Creating a vacuum decay instability could be within the realm of possibility for a particularly nasty jelly bean from the jar. The vacuum decay bubble would spread across the universe at the speed of light converting matter to a different more stable form, perhaps only to explode outward in a new big bang at some point after. This would be a very strange cycle for the universe to be caught in. The universe would be continuously destroyed by its own abiogenesis.
Thats one of those ends of the universe that could be happening right this moment, and we would never know because even the potential to know about it would arrive at the same moment as death.
That's a good point! Looking in the other direction, I would have liked to have heard an example - even if only speculative - of how more advanced technology (which we currently possess) could be given to a people which would cause them to destroy themselves in the process of attempting to reverse engineer it. I thought maybe he was going to do this when he started talking about blue water ships, but it didn't really apply.
@@808bigisland Two points to refute: 1. It may have already happened. The bubble would spread at the speed of light, an observer wouldn't be able to see the bubble of vacuum decay coming due to it expanding at the same rate as light. The bubble would take billions of years to span the existing universe. It would take longer than the universe has currently existed to destroy it. 2. We don't yet know what the mechanisms are that lead to abiogenesis and civilizations, a few requisite conditions could take ~13 billion years to develop. Humanity may be one of the first examples of technological civilization in the universe. Humanity also could have cropped up as a civilization along with millions of others. Perhaps unknown to us we are in a technological race towards creating vacuum instability.
I’ve always had this thought that maybe just maybe the bootes void was caused by some destructive technology or massive mining operations. I know it’s a long shot but i like to think about that sometimes.
thank you for all of your videos! I've listened to nearly all of them several times and I don't know a better way to enjoy the work day on my farm than listening to the future No Man's Sky 2 narrator JMG! :)
Your warnings and those of other's, suggest humanity needs an intellectual maturity that is far ahead of our technical ability. Pretty scary stuff, some of the scenarios you cite seem inevitable to arrive.
John, what kind of old man horror candy is that? that looks like a peanut m&m from before they had candy or chocolate or even peanuts. What's next black licorice?
I couldn't identify them either, only that when I saw the clip I knew I had to put it in the video. They remind me of something that would prominently feature on one of those ration channels where they open and eat military rations from World War I. Like out of a stained faded waxed paper bag marked "Dessert".
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire." When you mentioned finding some alien tech out in space, I was reminded of this line from Mass Effect 1
It is really hard to say that the sailing ship did not help all of humanity as a whole. People who think that European colonists were the worst form of evil seem to forget that the Aztecs and Comanches existed.
When Carrington 2.0 occurs, it'll be at this time that I reckon I'll feel genuinely closer to some semblance of inner peace and spiritual enlightenment than I'll have ever experienced, up to that point. The 'buzz' - _silenced..._ at last!
On this subject of vulnerable (world ending) tech I like the graphic novel The Electric State, by Simon Stålenhag. In it, there is a confluence of massively interactive media, VR, and its administration by AIs with plans of their own, all channeled through Neurocasters, wearable VR headsets with a retro 1950's design. Humans are consumed by the devices, almost literally. They stop functioning, breeding, eating, and eventually die off. It reminds me of caged animals, exposed to intolerable and un-natural stress, and they also stop functioning, breeding, eating. That humans could do this to themselves does not surprise me, and it portrays us going out not with a bang, but a whimper.
Biological humans are irrelevant as long as the AI inherits and continues our civilization. John's hypothesis is that even the AI civilizations get wiped out by an unforeseen black swan technology, which is the truly terrifying realization.
One Firmi ender is that our society, once free from struggle, do we end up like the Mouse colony experiment? With no wants or needs they began to collapse, into a lethargy and their desire to reproduce waned. Even today in Japan there are similar behaviors.
Actually, the Mouse Utopia scenario was both worse and more predictable than you state. Essentially, what happened was that as the "colony" got bigger and more crowded, significant parts of the mouse population got more and more violent, attacking any other mouse that got close. The mice that remained non-violent weren't much better off, as pocket populations of mice began to randomly act over-sexed, become asexual in other parts of the colony, or just plain do weird random things (self-harm, constant dancing motions, constant vocalization) seemingly out of boredom or over-stimulation or both of these things. The whole study wasn't repeated once peer review revealed how overcrowded (and experiment spoiling) the mouse population had become, and to make things worse, there were malnutrition issues from the beginning (some mice not getting enough niacin in their diets). So there's not much you can separate out from the side-effects of massive over-crowding and dementia from pellagra/niacin deficiency at once.
The part where you mention that a future where a potential doomsday device is in the hands of every average Joe around the world would create the need for the ultimate government surveillance apparatus (imagine 3D printers 25 years from now, nano-3D printing etc.) gave me the chills. Especially since it's there we are heading these days.
There was a Si-Fi book were there was a black swan uncovered. I don't remember the name and all that I was reading 3-5 books a week at the time, but the gist was that a method of travelling instantaneously from point to point had been discovered and mankind hit the stars. Unseen extinction brewing was that each trip left a tear in space and time and that these tears were accumulating. The story gets exciting when the protagonist realize that the tears were amalgamating into a giant rip in the fabric of time and space that would extinguish not just us but our entire universe. The challenge was how to stop all FTL transportation without destroying galactic civilization and all the interests who were taking the Louis XV view of the future that were out to keep the [lethal] status quo.
I much more deeply suspect that the important question is: Do we have the wisdom and foresight to not ever create AGI in the first place. The problem therein being that the answer is: No.
I suspect that every species has a limit to how much technology they can handle, socially and psychologically. Look how the human birthrate consistently drops when a society advances beyond a certain level. Look how popular low-tech social movements keep popping up -- the "back to nature" of the 70's and the "off-grid" of today, plus long-runners like the Amish philosophy. Look how much discussion there is of the downsides of technology -- the effect of social-media on people's psychological health and social cohesion, the drop in male testosterone levels over the past several decades, the accumulation of lead and micro-plastics and such in our bodies, the loss of a sense of purpose when a population begins to really internalize the nihilistic implications of the mechanistic worldview that science leads to, the obesity that results from processed foods and desk jobs... even the environmental-protection movement. It's easy to imagine that such "advancement-damping" influences could grow in strength as technology becomes more advanced, to the point that the social backlash or "dropout" rate stifles or even temporarily reverses the technological progress of the civilization. No collapse or SkyNet or basement bio-engineering screw-ups needed -- just people slowly, collectively coming to the mindset of "far enough, no farther -- this isn't fun anymore". The galaxy could be littered with societies that just sort of settled at their version of the 1950's, or the Old West, or the 2040's, and have simply stayed there for centuries, because the socio-economic downsides of advancement kept turning out to be higher than the benefits. Space travel could easily be beyond that threshold for most species -- technically possible, but requiring an infrastructure that's too much social, cultural, and even health-related hassle to build and maintain, so it never happens.
Does anyone remember the episode of Farscape where the nimbari created I believe essentially it was like a wormhole or some type of technology that ended up destroying an entire solar system
It’s almost like “the future don’t need us”. Given this, it’s not far fetched to think a small group of people may decide to thin the herd a bit, maybe a lot. Imagine the paradise they would have after the “useless eaters” have been relegated to history.
John have you ever made a video on cosmic life forms? If life can be carried on a comet or a frozen rogue planet could their be life to evolve out into the vacuum maybe closer to the center of the galaxy where maybe there are space whales or something out there. I just been doing a lot of wandering I understand it’s probably science fiction but is there any truth to this? Futurama has be hopeful
“Think bitter poisonous mushroom flavored with a good dose of metallic taste and too much chili powder, and no sweeteners of any kind” so like Mexican candy?
This reminds to me to a thought that I was having some months ago If we are currently able of making homemade weapons like bombs or guns, what will society be like if our technological advancement goes to a point that we are able of making homemade Nuclear bombs (For example) Will we be able of living in populated areas? What will we do to prevent that from happening? We will go full Authoritarian and prohibit the access of technology and information to the overall public causing a new obscurantism? Or we will learn to cooperate we everyone under some kind of nuclear "peace" (Let's remember that in this world nuclear conflicts wouldn't be disputes between Pakistan and India. But instead disputes between two neighbors for their lawn for example )
Bioengineering bacteria to eat plastic to get rid of all the garbage. They are working on this now. Imagine a bacteria that can eat hydrocarbon polymers. What will it do to things made out of easier to digest hydrocarbons, or carbohydrates.
That made me remember about 2 things, John... One is the Omega Directive, from Star Trek Voyager and the second is something Eric Weinstein has been saying lately in many interviews... The discovery of the neutron and so on. Anyway, thanks for the video!!! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
I just thought of a great sci Fi premise where Sentinel Island repopulates the earth after we wipe ourselves out with a bioweapon, and thus are bred with a "dark forest" gene, given the Sentinelese disposition. This allows us to survive the galactic dark forest scenario, being always wary as we develop.
If there was something to give the island a land bridge like back in the ice age. I could see that happening and it would also have the implication that the Americas would remain unpopulated for a very long time
I mean understand this very clearly, automation is only a problem if the machines are owned by private enterprise. The machines can me our slaves or we will be slaves to the machine, but these outcomes are mutually exclusive and dependent entirely on who owns those means of production as you put it.
There's an episode of " Voyager" where a civilization destroys itself with the power source it used to power its society.. The movie " Supernova" features a " black swan" of sorts. There's Peeps Jousting ( involves Peeps, toothpicks, and a microwave)...
I disagree- i think panic would ensue quickly - there would immediately be a run on the banks and food hoarding would begin much faster than you think. And that would be the least of our concerns. If you think boredom would set in first, you’re underestimating how this would play out.
An aside to the candy analogy in case anyone is interested. J's example is closely tied to Bayes theorem. IMO it's the most meaningful in all of statistics in terms of a framework for understanding reality. It basically says that the probability of an even is proportional to the chance of observing some data *given* your prior assumption of how things should be. I've always wondered how astronomers apply this in practice
The astronomer to check out regarding Bayes Theorem work would be Dr. David Kipping at Columbia through his Cool Worlds channel and papers. He works with it extensively and covers some of his work on his channel. It's very cool and shows how astronomers are applying it.
Our current technology is limited when it comes to directly observing exoplanets, and we are still in the early stages of understanding the myriad possible biosignatures/technosignatures that could be present. As our observational capabilities improve, we may be able to detect these signatures more effectively and gain a better understanding of the distribution of advanced life in the universe. The fermi paradox is simply to antropocentric to consider as we are practically blind.
What doesn't make sense about the whole "extinction event" solution is, technological civilizations would still potentially be capable of EM broadcasts and other technosignatures perhaps 100s of years before such an event happens, so why don't we see any of these pre-extinction signatures?
That legit sounds like something my mom would have said....'touch that candy jar and a nuclear bomb will go off killing everyone in town.' No wonder I"m in therapy now.
Thought I read something recently a bunch of researchers had developed a basic AI fed it with it information on antibiotics, basically looking for new potential drugs. I believe there has been some success, then it was pointed out by feeding the same model information on say nerve gases it could in a similar manner find more effective poisons.
I worry that a "Great Filter" exists for wolds, such as a limited ability to even manage simple interactions among ourselves, leading to local and international conflict of a self-destructive nature. Perhaps this more than anything else explains the Fermi Paradox.
I'm thinking the filter just might be our digital tech, combined with our species penchant for blindly following the loudest and least reasonable person in the room off of cliffs. The latter seems to just be baked into our nature and the former is making us dumber by the day as we rely on it more than our own wetware
the anime "Turn A Gundam" had this kind of world ending situation, where humanity found a humanoid machine at the edge of the solar system, with nanotechnology capabilities and specifications far superior to anything they had, even though it was a mere construction tool and not even meant for war, Fearing an encounter with such a civilization, they decided to reverse engineer and mass-produced it, but that resulted in a war that caused the reset of all technology back to the stone age through the use of nanotechnology.
This is a nicely put-together argument, nicely presented. It occurs to me that, in the 2-edged sword category, we have the internet, which has been used and abused to tilt in the direction of democracy being superseded by authoritarianism because the nasty actors go for the jugular. To do without it is unthinkable. But it could lead to a catastrophe in which encryption can no longer be relied on, and the onslaught of state and criminal actors brings us all down, unable to run our production and transport systems, starving due to resulting agricultural failure. Or a flare, as you say, could have the same effect. One can imagine that many alien civilisations would hit this exact same great filter.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
"The Jar is rigged to a hydrogen bomb" - this is actually how we were raised in the 80s. Between the constant nuclear threat and BMX bikes, I think we were being trained for the Thunderdome.
Except the BMX idiocy was completely optional.
Let us not forget lawn darts
@@nicholashodges201 what's wrong with BMX bikes?
@@FoxtrotYouniform If ever there was a monument to Darwin, the lawn dart playing field is it.
@Defective I remember me and my you sisters play with yard dart many times at my Grandparents house in the 70's.
I think back on a lot of things I did growing up then and wonder how we survived, but we did. At least most of us did.
I was in a dark movie theater with a bag of jelly belly jellybeans.
I was getting only black licorice and cinnamon and it was so unsettling I went out into the lobby to take a look in the light.
There were no black licorice or cinnamon ones to be found. I somehow ate them all back to back, up front.
It’s always stayed with me after all these years that repeatable results at a large enough scale are important to investigate as chance may skew a low number of observations.
"One in a million chance events happen a million times a day"
Hopefully humanity can avoid the black licorice and cinnamon jelly beans in our future. I am concerned and excited by AI or GI and 3d printing or it's future iterations.
That actually _happened to you?!_ Like, you're not just being metaphorical? l mean, I know you were just the equivalent of somebody whose lottery numbers have come up - not exactly 'Stop the Presses!' stuff, as much of a surprise as it may have been to them... still, speaking as 'some guy' here, and not as a statistician (which I'm not), but, "Hot Damn! What are the chances!?"
that's insane oh my goodness, the chances of that are crazy and to have it happen to you must've been like a 'holy shit...what the fuck just happened' moment. so interesting!
That's really wise of you to be aware of that. Statistical anomalies are everywhere, we are just selectively aware because of recency bias.
"The Jar is rigged to a Hydrogen Bomb"
Boy that escalated quickly.
lol
Indeed. Here I was imagining a jar of candy with my favorite flavours, then it's like whoa, wait, what ?
Typically here in America our jars of candy are rigged to AR-15s
Thats how my mom raised us ( o.o)
You’ve been pumping out some great content lately John. Really appreciate it - one of the bests out there right now for space related content. Cheers
This times infinity ∞
John Michael Godier and Wonderful Person are essential subscriptions if you're interested in dissecting news about the Cosmos.
JMG is my favorite scifi author
Quit saying content. They're videos.
edgar irl: 🤓
Just for the record: a lot of Spanish speaking people listen to this inspiring content.
We appreciate how you are able to produce an articulated speech, with a clear diction. It makes it easy for us. 😊
Thats awesome! Im sure he will see this and appreciate it too!
I agree. I'm one of them :p
That sounded like a slight against Isaac arthur... one I agree with
English speakers think: "Man; I wish he learned to incorporate some of the Spanish style speaking into his oration, because it is (AWESOME) content, but really drab and monotone!"
Another RUclipsr, John David Ebert, wrote a book about how all new technology changes or undermines traditional culture. Even in world mythologies, he said every society has mythologies to explain this point. He summarized these stories into Farmer God vs. blacksmith god. Very interesting ideas there--and this classic JMG video as well!
So far, I'm old enough to agree with Arthur C. Clarke. The Universe is teeming with life, or we're it.
Why would we be it
@@danisouris3429 that went over your head
We kick ass! That's why!
Teeming with life; intelligent life is rare. Shit, it’s rare on THIS planet.
Sadly , extremely rare .
First of your Fermi Paradox series that actually scared me a bit. Each new technology we develop have wider ranging unanticipated effects on society. Easy to imagine a new tech that simply renders advanced civilization impossible.
Love your videos. I get so excited when I see a new one. Thank you!
"My two favorite candy flavors are Green Apple and Watermelon" this man is clearly insane
I wonder if there is any correlation between flavor preferences and personality
Add in cherry and you have the medal podium of jolly ranchers.
Watermelon Jolly Ranchers are better than you realize
@@jonnyguitar747...you might want to mention that next time you see a doctor
Obviously blue raspberry
If it hadn’t been for a couple of really tenacious researchers, this planet might not have an ozone layer right now. CFC’s we’re basically invented by one guy, and that technology might’ve been our end or at least set us back centuries. Same man also came up with the formula for leaded gasoline.
It is estimated that leaded gasoline has killed tens of millions and to this day continues to kill hundreds of thousands every year.
@@voEovove Forget about the deaths for a moment, and consider the psychological effects it has had. The tacit neurological damage that low level lead poisoning causes is truly insidious.
Me and a friend were sharing a bag of Jolly Ranchers, saw the notification for this episode and played it. The first 20 seconds or so were kind of intense with jokes of not jostling the bag too hard or claiming lemon flavor will be the downfall of humanity.
You make me think about things that scare me sometimes but your voice makes it so smooth and soothing.
I’m concerned about the Peeps population as well, but my mother loves them. I got her Cotton Candy flavor for Easter. It bothers me that they’re no longer just an Easter candy. They sell them for every occasion now.
Also, another great science video. Informative and interesting, and allowed me to express my Peeps opinion. I look forward to more Peeps content.
I noted the ominous presence of Halloween themed peeps last October. Peeps expansionism is upon us. I also noted that after making the video, I become hungry for peeps for the first time in my life. Not good.
@@JohnMichaelGodier …you gotta let those Peeps dry out a little…take them out of the package and let ‘em air out for a few hours…totally improves the texture.
@@JohnMichaelGodier Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated into the Peep Collective! mwahaha!
@@JohnMichaelGodier The Peeps are definitely up to something. *Very* not good.
@@squirlmy peeps are now in the pepsi supply. I call the Peepsis
Edit peeps sees?
I've always struggled with the duel between my urges of anarchistic individual freedom in a sparsely populated, technologically poor world similar to what our stone-age ancestors enjoyed, and the necessity of extreme social conformity in the densely populated, technologically rich world we seem to be inexorably moving into. I want to be a caveman, but I know I will need to be a hivemind. I hope that space travel and offworld colonization will come soon, so that humanity has an empty frontier to move into before the entire species is consumed by the interconnectedness required to ensure continued existence in the presence of world ending technologies. I suspect that we will find ourselves at an existential crisis long before we have the failsafe insurance of physical separation to reliably protect our species. I know that if we don't move aggressively in the right direction we will destroy ourselves and possibly all life on Earth.
On the other hand, human existance ultimately means nothing to the universe and in the unimaginably distant future nothing will exist of reality but impossibly lonely photons and an underlying quantum framework. In the face of such a certain fate, only Now matters, and the experiences we have in the brief time we are alive.
We are living in a very interesting century. Thank you, John, for another mind-travelling video which coincides with the beginning of my Spring break holidays. Kalimera from Greece!
Looking around
The LGHDTV4K community, Religious zealots, idiocracy
How long can we keep this going?
Everyone has gone insane since 2012 (Those Mayans might have been onto something)
@@azmanabdula The whole human history is turbulent and full of clashes. We are not that special. Religious zealots and idiots who affected negatively other people always existed. PS What is the LGHDTV4K community?
I love your videos, John.
I'm fascinated by every science topic you discuss with that wonderful soothing voice.
This is actually my personal intuited solution to the Fermi Paradox, though I wasn't aware of the name of it before! I think the ever-increasing power of miniturisation, extrapolated into the far future, eventually puts world or civilization-ending technology into the hands of individuals. The likely question for me is whether technologies that enable civilisational spread, growth, and resilience will outpace those that are deatruction-centric. The abscence of aliens makes me pessimistic, and leads me to believe that we are probably rapidly approaching some kinds of technology that overwhelmingly result in doomsday scenarios.
Which sort of plays into a simulation type of theory don’t you think? If we blow ourselves up in some fashion well then that sort of concludes the simulation right?
The "God Solution" is simply too imalatable, I guess.
@@Mr_Grimbley The Krell were a mighty and noble race of beings, a million years ahead of humankind. For, in unlocking the mysteries of nature, they abolished all sickness and insanity, and turned still, with great benevolence, outward towards space...
What’s with the “intrusive thoughts“ trope I keep seeing people using?
What’s that all about?
I feel like it should annoy me for some reason.
@@joeshumo9457 Sorry, not sure what you mean?
Your videos are getting better and better. Great work .
Loved it! The one thing you didn't get to that I was hoping you might is the potential for a technological civilization to potentially collapse the universe accidentally. Creating a vacuum decay instability could be within the realm of possibility for a particularly nasty jelly bean from the jar. The vacuum decay bubble would spread across the universe at the speed of light converting matter to a different more stable form, perhaps only to explode outward in a new big bang at some point after. This would be a very strange cycle for the universe to be caught in. The universe would be continuously destroyed by its own abiogenesis.
Thats one of those ends of the universe that could be happening right this moment, and we would never know because even the potential to know about it would arrive at the same moment as death.
That's a good point!
Looking in the other direction, I would have liked to have heard an example - even if only speculative - of how more advanced technology (which we currently possess) could be given to a people which would cause them to destroy themselves in the process of attempting to reverse engineer it. I thought maybe he was going to do this when he started talking about blue water ships, but it didn't really apply.
Has not occurred in a 70 bn light year wide bubble for 13 bn years. So the answer is no.
We can hope inflation prevents that from ever affecting us in this part of the universe.
@@808bigisland
Two points to refute:
1. It may have already happened. The bubble would spread at the speed of light, an observer wouldn't be able to see the bubble of vacuum decay coming due to it expanding at the same rate as light. The bubble would take billions of years to span the existing universe. It would take longer than the universe has currently existed to destroy it.
2. We don't yet know what the mechanisms are that lead to abiogenesis and civilizations, a few requisite conditions could take ~13 billion years to develop. Humanity may be one of the first examples of technological civilization in the universe. Humanity also could have cropped up as a civilization along with millions of others. Perhaps unknown to us we are in a technological race towards creating vacuum instability.
Always a pleasure thank you JMG!
Real food for thought. As is most of your content on this channel and Event Horizon. Tell Anna hi!
I’ve said similar before,but only JMG can deliver our annihilation in such a mellow and calm manner,that i for one would be ok with it!
I’ve always had this thought that maybe just maybe the bootes void was caused by some destructive technology or massive mining operations. I know it’s a long shot but i like to think about that sometimes.
thank you for all of your videos! I've listened to nearly all of them several times and I don't know a better way to enjoy the work day on my farm than listening to the future No Man's Sky 2 narrator JMG! :)
It's always a pleasure to watch your superb content. Thanks for your videos.
Always thoughtful and great content on this channel. Thanks
Love these videos they help me sleep and that’s not a bad thing haha. I rewatch them over And over again while I sleep
Your warnings and those of other's, suggest humanity needs an intellectual maturity that is far ahead of our technical ability. Pretty scary stuff, some of the scenarios you cite seem inevitable to arrive.
John, what kind of old man horror candy is that? that looks like a peanut m&m from before they had candy or chocolate or even peanuts. What's next black licorice?
I couldn't identify them either, only that when I saw the clip I knew I had to put it in the video. They remind me of something that would prominently feature on one of those ration channels where they open and eat military rations from World War I. Like out of a stained faded waxed paper bag marked "Dessert".
These days I've been wondering if the internet itself is gonna end up being our black swan
Well yea look at social media
Given the state of our world and society today, the internet probably is already our black swan
Great video once again John. It reminded me of David Hahn the "Radioactive Boy Scout".
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire."
When you mentioned finding some alien tech out in space, I was reminded of this line from Mass Effect 1
I gave this channel and the topic as a whole a good break…now I have a few happy weeks of binging ahead of me :)
It is really hard to say that the sailing ship did not help all of humanity as a whole. People who think that European colonists were the worst form of evil seem to forget that the Aztecs and Comanches existed.
When Carrington 2.0 occurs, it'll be at this time that I reckon I'll feel genuinely closer to some semblance of inner peace and spiritual enlightenment than I'll have ever experienced, up to that point. The 'buzz' - _silenced..._ at last!
Fantastic video as always, John! Thanks!
2:26 YES, THIS! I've been saying we are embroiled in Cold War II! It's so refreshing to hear the sentiment echoed by another voice.
Peeps are E Tier Candy, great stuff John, always well thought out and insightful vids my man!
9:28 you are exactly describing what happened in 1947 with the Roswell crash, and the recovered craft.
On this subject of vulnerable (world ending) tech I like the graphic novel The Electric State, by Simon Stålenhag. In it, there is a confluence of massively interactive media, VR, and its administration by AIs with plans of their own, all channeled through Neurocasters, wearable VR headsets with a retro 1950's design. Humans are consumed by the devices, almost literally. They stop functioning, breeding, eating, and eventually die off. It reminds me of caged animals, exposed to intolerable and un-natural stress, and they also stop functioning, breeding, eating. That humans could do this to themselves does not surprise me, and it portrays us going out not with a bang, but a whimper.
Essentially like alcohol with no hangover.
Biological humans are irrelevant as long as the AI inherits and continues our civilization. John's hypothesis is that even the AI civilizations get wiped out by an unforeseen black swan technology, which is the truly terrifying realization.
Thanks John. Another insightful video. 👍🏽
I don't need to imagine anything my friend,... This is how my Saturday night!
Yer videos always remind me why humanity is awesome. Thank you.
Very thought-provoking! Great stuff!
One Firmi ender is that our society, once free from struggle, do we end up like the Mouse colony experiment? With no wants or needs they began to collapse, into a lethargy and their desire to reproduce waned. Even today in Japan there are similar behaviors.
Actually, the Mouse Utopia scenario was both worse and more predictable than you state.
Essentially, what happened was that as the "colony" got bigger and more crowded, significant parts of the mouse population got more and more violent, attacking any other mouse that got close. The mice that remained non-violent weren't much better off, as pocket populations of mice began to randomly act over-sexed, become asexual in other parts of the colony, or just plain do weird random things (self-harm, constant dancing motions, constant vocalization) seemingly out of boredom or over-stimulation or both of these things.
The whole study wasn't repeated once peer review revealed how overcrowded (and experiment spoiling) the mouse population had become, and to make things worse, there were malnutrition issues from the beginning (some mice not getting enough niacin in their diets). So there's not much you can separate out from the side-effects of massive over-crowding and dementia from pellagra/niacin deficiency at once.
Maybe you're the weirdo for putting a ton of rats in a box with no where to go
The part where you mention that a future where a potential doomsday device is in the hands of every average Joe around the world would create the need for the ultimate government surveillance apparatus (imagine 3D printers 25 years from now, nano-3D printing etc.) gave me the chills. Especially since it's there we are heading these days.
The idea of any government having that power is a million times scarier than the average person having it.
Aliens dropping in dangerous tech to lesser developed civilizations. See 'The Hercules Text' by jack mcdevitt. Great episode!
There was a Si-Fi book were there was a black swan uncovered. I don't remember the name and all that I was reading 3-5 books a week at the time, but the gist was that a method of travelling instantaneously from point to point had been discovered and mankind hit the stars. Unseen extinction brewing was that each trip left a tear in space and time and that these tears were accumulating. The story gets exciting when the protagonist realize that the tears were amalgamating into a giant rip in the fabric of time and space that would extinguish not just us but our entire universe. The challenge was how to stop all FTL transportation without destroying galactic civilization and all the interests who were taking the Louis XV view of the future that were out to keep the [lethal] status quo.
Question is can we overcome the infancy of artificial intelligence?
Or AI soldiers - the early years. I see trouble ahead.
You'd enjoy Lex Fridman's RUclips channel
I much more deeply suspect that the important question is: Do we have the wisdom and foresight to not ever create AGI in the first place.
The problem therein being that the answer is: No.
YES! We like the same flavors of Jolly Ranchers!
The green apple ones make me cough, but I still like them.
I remember Ice-9 from Cat's Cradle, freaked me out long before I'd learned about the idea of black swan technologies
One of the greatest authors of our time!
The “liiiiive” gets me every time.
What if particle accelerators eventually get big enough to destroy the planet via some unknown or exceptionally rare means?
Like the large hard on colluder?
Sorry, auto correct.
The large hadron collider?
Large hard on 🎉
I suspect that every species has a limit to how much technology they can handle, socially and psychologically.
Look how the human birthrate consistently drops when a society advances beyond a certain level. Look how popular low-tech social movements keep popping up -- the "back to nature" of the 70's and the "off-grid" of today, plus long-runners like the Amish philosophy.
Look how much discussion there is of the downsides of technology -- the effect of social-media on people's psychological health and social cohesion, the drop in male testosterone levels over the past several decades, the accumulation of lead and micro-plastics and such in our bodies, the loss of a sense of purpose when a population begins to really internalize the nihilistic implications of the mechanistic worldview that science leads to, the obesity that results from processed foods and desk jobs... even the environmental-protection movement.
It's easy to imagine that such "advancement-damping" influences could grow in strength as technology becomes more advanced, to the point that the social backlash or "dropout" rate stifles or even temporarily reverses the technological progress of the civilization.
No collapse or SkyNet or basement bio-engineering screw-ups needed -- just people slowly, collectively coming to the mindset of "far enough, no farther -- this isn't fun anymore".
The galaxy could be littered with societies that just sort of settled at their version of the 1950's, or the Old West, or the 2040's, and have simply stayed there for centuries, because the socio-economic downsides of advancement kept turning out to be higher than the benefits.
Space travel could easily be beyond that threshold for most species -- technically possible, but requiring an infrastructure that's too much social, cultural, and even health-related hassle to build and maintain, so it never happens.
I hate it when someone rigs my candy jar to a hydrogen bomb. It really puts a dampener on my day
Brilliant as Always👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽 keep em coming John 😁😁😁
Does anyone remember the episode of Farscape where the nimbari created I believe essentially it was like a wormhole or some type of technology that ended up destroying an entire solar system
It’s almost like “the future don’t need us”. Given this, it’s not far fetched to think a small group of people may decide to thin the herd a bit, maybe a lot. Imagine the paradise they would have after the “useless eaters” have been relegated to history.
Thanks!
Has anybody ever considered that the search for purpose could be futile, because there is no purpose?
If there's no purpose and nothing matters then what I want to matter is all that matters.
John have you ever made a video on cosmic life forms? If life can be carried on a comet or a frozen rogue planet could their be life to evolve out into the vacuum maybe closer to the center of the galaxy where maybe there are space whales or something out there. I just been doing a lot of wandering I understand it’s probably science fiction but is there any truth to this? Futurama has be hopeful
“Think bitter poisonous mushroom flavored with a good dose of metallic taste and too much chili powder, and no sweeteners of any kind” so like Mexican candy?
I love seeing a video about the Fermi paradox from JMG in my notifications
This reminds to me to a thought that I was having some months ago
If we are currently able of making homemade weapons like bombs or guns, what will society be like if our technological advancement goes to a point that we are able of making homemade Nuclear bombs (For example) Will we be able of living in populated areas?
What will we do to prevent that from happening? We will go full Authoritarian and prohibit the access of technology and information to the overall public causing a new obscurantism? Or we will learn to cooperate we everyone under some kind of nuclear "peace" (Let's remember that in this world nuclear conflicts wouldn't be disputes between Pakistan and India. But instead disputes between two neighbors for their lawn for example )
The candy peep remarks at the end were fantastic lol 🐦
If Robert Lazar is speaking true, that you nailed it
Bioengineering bacteria to eat plastic to get rid of all the garbage. They are working on this now. Imagine a bacteria that can eat hydrocarbon polymers. What will it do to things made out of easier to digest hydrocarbons, or carbohydrates.
That made me remember about 2 things, John... One is the Omega Directive, from Star Trek Voyager and the second is something Eric Weinstein has been saying lately in many interviews... The discovery of the neutron and so on.
Anyway, thanks for the video!!! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
The transition should be pretty obvious, remove money from the equation. That also deals with scum up top.
Great vid man, hope you have a good one
I just thought of a great sci Fi premise where Sentinel Island repopulates the earth after we wipe ourselves out with a bioweapon, and thus are bred with a "dark forest" gene, given the Sentinelese disposition. This allows us to survive the galactic dark forest scenario, being always wary as we develop.
If there was something to give the island a land bridge like back in the ice age. I could see that happening and it would also have the implication that the Americas would remain unpopulated for a very long time
Good insightful views and perspectives.
Love you John, goodnight!
I mean understand this very clearly, automation is only a problem if the machines are owned by private enterprise. The machines can me our slaves or we will be slaves to the machine, but these outcomes are mutually exclusive and dependent entirely on who owns those means of production as you put it.
Hard Science Fiction writers have been foreseeing and warning about all these dangers for many decades with pretty solid arguments
There's an episode of " Voyager" where a civilization destroys itself with the power source it used to power its society..
The movie " Supernova" features a " black swan" of sorts.
There's Peeps Jousting ( involves Peeps, toothpicks, and a microwave)...
I disagree- i think panic would ensue quickly - there would immediately be a run on the banks and food hoarding would begin much faster than you think. And that would be the least of our concerns. If you think boredom would set in first, you’re underestimating how this would play out.
An aside to the candy analogy in case anyone is interested. J's example is closely tied to Bayes theorem. IMO it's the most meaningful in all of statistics in terms of a framework for understanding reality. It basically says that the probability of an even is proportional to the chance of observing some data *given* your prior assumption of how things should be. I've always wondered how astronomers apply this in practice
The astronomer to check out regarding Bayes Theorem work would be Dr. David Kipping at Columbia through his Cool Worlds channel and papers. He works with it extensively and covers some of his work on his channel. It's very cool and shows how astronomers are applying it.
Happy Egg laying monster Bunny Day John!
thank you John Michael!!!
Our current technology is limited when it comes to directly observing exoplanets, and we are still in the early stages of understanding the myriad possible biosignatures/technosignatures that could be present. As our observational capabilities improve, we may be able to detect these signatures more effectively and gain a better understanding of the distribution of advanced life in the universe. The fermi paradox is simply to antropocentric to consider as we are practically blind.
Extinction level devices becoming attainable by the individual. Good and also scary way of putting it.
The Nick Bostrom surveillance stuff makes me think of the secret police and assassins of Crimes of Humanity by Cronenberg.
How do you keep the boys on the farm, once they've seen Paris?
A candy jar combined with hyrdogenbomb... John? Are you oke? Is ANNA still under control? Do we need to worry? JOHN!?
What doesn't make sense about the whole "extinction event" solution is, technological civilizations would still potentially be capable of EM broadcasts and other technosignatures perhaps 100s of years before such an event happens, so why don't we see any of these pre-extinction signatures?
That legit sounds like something my mom would have said....'touch that candy jar and a nuclear bomb will go off killing everyone in town.' No wonder I"m in therapy now.
Thought I read something recently a bunch of researchers had developed a basic AI fed it with it information on antibiotics, basically looking for new potential drugs. I believe there has been some success, then it was pointed out by feeding the same model information on say nerve gases it could in a similar manner find more effective poisons.
JMG got that dawg in em
I guess this could apply to any past civilizations that might have rose before us. We don't see them?
I worry that a "Great Filter" exists for wolds, such as a limited ability to even manage simple interactions among ourselves, leading to local and international conflict of a self-destructive nature. Perhaps this more than anything else explains the Fermi Paradox.
I'm thinking the filter just might be our digital tech, combined with our species penchant for blindly following the loudest and least reasonable person in the room off of cliffs.
The latter seems to just be baked into our nature and the former is making us dumber by the day as we rely on it more than our own wetware
Wow what an original and insightful take
the anime "Turn A Gundam" had this kind of world ending situation, where humanity found a humanoid machine at the edge of the solar system, with nanotechnology capabilities and specifications far superior to anything they had, even though it was a mere construction tool and not even meant for war,
Fearing an encounter with such a civilization, they decided to reverse engineer and mass-produced it, but that resulted in a war that caused the reset of all technology back to the stone age through the use of nanotechnology.
News Flash: Alien invasion thwarted after millions of children eat all of the secret alien scouting force disguised as blue peeps
Here before 1 minute! 🙋♀️🙋♂️. All this talk of candy 🍬 😋!
I thought you said there was going to be a link to the paper you cited in the video down in the description? I don't see it! :(
It's there now, forgot to link it. Here it is:
nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
@@JohnMichaelGodier Thanks sir!
Bill Watterson put it best -- "The best sign that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
“The atmosphere might ignite”. “I’ll see for myself,thanks.”
This is a nicely put-together argument, nicely presented. It occurs to me that, in the 2-edged sword category, we have the internet, which has been used and abused to tilt in the direction of democracy being superseded by authoritarianism because the nasty actors go for the jugular. To do without it is unthinkable. But it could lead to a catastrophe in which encryption can no longer be relied on, and the onslaught of state and criminal actors brings us all down, unable to run our production and transport systems, starving due to resulting agricultural failure. Or a flare, as you say, could have the same effect. One can imagine that many alien civilisations would hit this exact same great filter.
_"Sir, our statistical models show the only flavors left in the jar are green apple and watermelon."_
_"Nuke the jar."_ ( -.-)