Vsauce: Mortality and the Meaning of Life | AI Podcast Clip with Michael Stevens
00:00:00.000 | - So a quick and impossibly deep question,
00:00:05.000 | last question, about mortality.
00:00:09.200 | You've spoken about death as an interesting topic.
00:00:12.820 | Do you think about your own mortality?
00:00:16.180 | - Yeah, every day.
00:00:18.000 | It's really scary.
00:00:19.960 | - So what do you think is the meaning of life
00:00:24.240 | that mortality makes very explicit?
00:00:27.560 | So why are you here on earth, Michael?
00:00:32.560 | What's the point of this whole thing?
00:00:34.780 | What does mortality in the context of the whole universe
00:00:45.200 | make you realize about yourself?
00:00:46.640 | Just you, Michael Stevens.
00:00:48.300 | - Well, it makes me realize that I am
00:00:53.200 | destined to become an ocean.
00:00:55.860 | I'm destined to become a memory and we can extend life.
00:00:59.840 | I think there's really exciting things being done
00:01:03.120 | to extend life, but we still don't know how to like,
00:01:06.520 | you know, protect you from some accident that could happen,
00:01:08.880 | you know, some unforeseen thing.
00:01:10.520 | Maybe we could like save my connectome
00:01:14.360 | and like recreate my consciousness digitally.
00:01:16.800 | But even that could be lost
00:01:19.640 | if it's stored on a physical medium or something.
00:01:22.800 | So basically I just think that embracing
00:01:27.800 | and realizing how cool it is that like someday
00:01:30.200 | I will just be an idea and there won't be a Michael anymore
00:01:33.600 | that can be like, no, that's not what I meant.
00:01:36.400 | It'll just be what people like,
00:01:37.740 | they have to guess what I meant and they'll remember me
00:01:41.960 | and how I live on as that memory
00:01:46.040 | will maybe not even be who I want it to be.
00:01:49.820 | But there's something powerful about that
00:01:52.160 | and there's something powerful about letting
00:01:54.480 | future people run the show themselves.
00:01:59.200 | I think I'm glad to get out of their way at some point
00:02:02.200 | and say, all right, it's your world now.
00:02:03.920 | - So you, the physical entity, Michael,
00:02:06.960 | has have ripple effects in the space of ideas
00:02:10.560 | that far outlives you in ways that you can't control,
00:02:14.520 | but it's nevertheless fascinating to think,
00:02:16.360 | I mean, especially with you,
00:02:17.840 | you can imagine an alien species when they finally arrive
00:02:20.760 | and destroy all of us would watch your videos
00:02:23.880 | to try to figure out what were the questions.
00:02:26.200 | - But even if they didn't,
00:02:27.680 | I still think that there will be ripples.
00:02:31.640 | Like when I say memory,
00:02:33.680 | I don't specifically mean people remember my name
00:02:36.840 | and my birth date and have like,
00:02:38.320 | there's a photo of me on Wikipedia,
00:02:39.840 | like all that can be lost,
00:02:41.100 | but I still would hope that people ask questions
00:02:44.200 | and teach concepts in some of the ways
00:02:46.680 | that I have found useful and satisfying.
00:02:48.560 | Even if they don't know that I was the one
00:02:50.000 | who tried to popularize it, that's fine.
00:02:52.000 | But if earth was completely destroyed,
00:02:55.520 | like burnt to a crisp, everything on it today,
00:02:58.960 | the universe wouldn't care.
00:03:02.960 | Like Jupiter is not gonna go, oh no.
00:03:05.740 | And that could happen.
00:03:09.920 | - That could happen.
00:03:10.760 | - So we do however, have the power to launch things
00:03:15.360 | into space to try to extend how long our memory exists.
00:03:20.360 | And what I mean by that is,
00:03:24.880 | we are recording things about the world
00:03:27.160 | and we're learning things and writing stories
00:03:28.680 | and all of this and preserving that is truly what I think
00:03:33.680 | is the essence of being a human.
00:03:36.820 | We are autobiographers of the universe
00:03:40.840 | and we're really good at it.
00:03:41.900 | We're better than fossils.
00:03:43.200 | We're better than light spectrum.
00:03:45.800 | We're better than any of that.
00:03:47.040 | We collect much more detailed memories of what's happening,
00:03:51.720 | much better data.
00:03:53.120 | And so that should be our legacy.
00:03:57.600 | And I hope that that's kind of mine too,
00:04:00.440 | in terms of people remembering something
00:04:02.720 | or me having some kind of effect.
00:04:05.080 | But even if I don't, you can't not have an effect.
00:04:07.840 | That's the thing, this is not me feeling like,
00:04:09.480 | I hope that I have this powerful legacy.
00:04:11.120 | It's like, no matter who you are, you will.
00:04:13.320 | But you also have to embrace the fact
00:04:18.000 | that that impact might look really small and that's okay.
00:04:21.640 | One of my favorite quotes is from Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
00:04:24.760 | And it's along the lines of the measure of your life
00:04:28.480 | depends on not your external displacement,
00:04:31.200 | but your subjective experience.
00:04:33.360 | If I am happy and those that I love are happy,
00:04:36.040 | can that be enough?
00:04:37.980 | Because if so, excellent.
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