Surviving the Next Century

Isaac's been chuckling and smiling a lot more since he got married...
Love this channel. Keep it up man.

"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."
--Iain M. Banks on OCPs

*furiously grabs a drink and a snack*

Now that you mention it, uplifted bears/big cats would likely work wonders in preventing deforestation.

0:53 Isaac your explanation on your reasoned optimism is so good. In a time of increasing cynicism your reasoned and intelligent optimism is the thing I need. What we all need.
The future is bright even despite of the challenges ahead, we need only to grasp the solutions to the challenges ahead.
Saw this episode on Nebula earlier. Such an informative video as always Isaac and team.

I always love these videos for how they describe bizarre, borderline impossible science fiction concepts like "surviving the 21st century"

**Chuckles** "How will we survive it?" -Isaac Arthur

Honestly I'd just like to say that I appreciate how apolitical your channel is, something remarkably rare in the modern political landscape. It prevents echochambers and allows us to all come together, no matter what beliefs you may have.

As long as I have my coffee and a snack I'll survive.

3:50.. that would not only be an OCP..but an fully fledged Keter SCP as well...

"It's always a matter of resources."
_- The Illusive Man_

I think everyone will agree that if you haven't had kids, we certainly hope that plan to do so. More parents with minds like yours is one of the keys to the futures we all dream of seeing come to fruition.

Just barely surviving, but having grabbed a restorative drink and snack to watch another episode of SFIA with, it all seems a little better.

Just a moment, going to add sentient self-propelled mountains to my 2021 bingo card

OCP: an event not predicted accidentally by any fiction.

"Political systems decay" to add to the list at the start

I forgot today was Thursday. What a pleasant surprise!

I always listen to Isaac Arthur on my mp3, which means that I don't help Isaac with the RUclips algorithm. Just know you have a way bigger audience than you think!

Alert! It's Thursday Isaac Arthur is on.....NOW!
Fridge = Raided
TV = Off
Lights = Dimmed
Device = Loud
Me = 🙂

Have a great Christmas and new year Isaac Arthur, and thank you for the amazing content!

The fact that Isaac just promoted my favorite author has me glowing on the inside.

It’s good to hear things OTHER than doom and gloom that still address the issues AND show a way forward. It’s encouragement to keep moving forward, thank you Issac Arthur.

Isaac Arthur: What if all the mountains opened their eyes and started moving around? No one could ever expect that.
Oscar Hammerstein (61 years ago): The hills are alive, with the sound of music.
No one can say that we weren't warned.

Yes! Why I look forward to every Thursday!

Life extension won’t make me any sort of stick-in-the-mud... I want to learn, I want to know, I want to see with my own eyes. I want to watch humanity conquer the stars, and if I can extend my life to see these things, I’ll do it.

Issac, Stop Giving 2020 more ideas, there is still a month left......

Easy there, Isaac. 2020 is not yet finished with us.
Maybe there won't be another century for us to contemplate. Better snack and drink like there's no tomorrow!

Honestly I am betting on being still alive in the 22nd century. 100+ years of age is not unheard of and who knows where the medical science can get us in 100 years.

Adding sleeping mountain kaiju to my doomsday list. 👍🏼

Two ossifying omissions surprised me:
1. if intelligence-boosting treatments are very expensive, it could become impossible for someone born poor to become rich.
2. if complete surveillance becomes possible, governments and corporations could permanently suppress crimethink (i.e. threats to their power).

"You, personally, will not."
Challenge accepted.

this is definitely one of my favorite episodes. It was really fun watching all the different technological progress streams get placed together to show the dynamics among them all :)

2020: You sure about that?

This video is so right on so many points. It's nice to hear someone who isn't bogged down by the idea that we're supposed to be limited and pathetic by some divine decree or whatever. I'm a big fan of yours, Isaac. You're such a sensible man.

Sports leagues when they learn about trans and nonbinary people:
"Ok uh... You go... Here... I think?"
Sports leagues when they learn about GMO people:
"Fine! Let me just throw my category list into the sun and start over?! Is that what you want?!"

I seldom leave a comment on RUclips, but I would just like to say; the four or so years I've watched your videos your speech impediment is virtually undetectable now. I'm very impressed Isaac. It's a serious undertaking to try and drastically alter your speech. I, and I'm sure others feel it was never necessary, but that just speaks to your professionalism, passion and dedication to this channel. I can say without pause that you produce the most in depth, engaging and scientifically grounded content of this type on all of RUclips. Thank you for the outstanding content you've produced over the years, for free. I've learned so much and have been given so many things to contemplate. Here's to the future. Best regards.

Thanks for letting me know that brandon sanderson released the next edition in the stormlight archive

If I remember correctly, technically the Guild Navigators don't use their powers to fold space. The Holtzmann engines do that. What the Navigators do is use their foresight to plot a space fold that doesn't end up in the heart of a sun or other bad outcome. The folding space thing comes from the movie.

I for one welcome our lion tiger and bear robot overlords

I don't know how people can say teaching isn't an incredibly difficult job to do well. Any person who chooses that as their profession has my respect and gratitude.

Lets get through 2020 first ;)
Love your work!

That's a cool line up of video topics for December. Something to look forward to. 👍

Great video. I hope Aphophis don't hit us :S

You have touched on the number 1 problem facing humanity, that of structuring society so that everyone has a place and is included and allowed to provide a useful and meaningful function. As you point out this is a 'tricky' problem to solve. Currently we are failing miserably at solving this, and its becoming a bigger and bigger problem and if left unchecked, will ultimately be the failure of humanity.
It is sad that we are so focused on the technological problems, like rising CO2 levels, when in the end this problem (which can be solved by technology) won't matter to the survival of humanity.

"...something that makes Heroin, Cocaine, or LSD look tame...."
Stop teasing the teanagers and college students Isaac!

I just started Building Harlequin’s Moon by Larry Niven which explores colonists who leave Sol system to escape dependance on AI and nanotech, yet still find themselves having to use it with heavy restrictions.

What! No Gamma Ray Burst? That's good.

Once again you blow my mind for the afternoon. I'm gonna have to spend at least a week computing this. Thank you

The future’s so bright, I got to wear shades.

The scenario of people living in squalor while experiencing virtual reality paradise reminds me of the Jack Vance novel Eyes of the Overworld.

OCP = “Omni Consumer Products”

Isaac Arthur spent the first 30 seconds struggling not to laugh and I lost that same struggle in the process 🤣

I love how you can barely conceal your laughter 'undertones' in parts of this video!

One more OCP is the question, what if virtual items are usable and effective in all realities and timelines? Such an OCP would be revolutionary to even physics itself, because you could ignore a lot of laws of physics. Great examples:
1st law of thermodynamics could be circumvented by making a reality where it didn't matter, thus energy and matter can be created and destroyed permanently and potentially without ever generating any heat. You could then transport it to our reality by any means you think.
The second law is broken for free, as you could force a system out of equilibrium permanently, thus violating the second law.
The third law can be broken by avoiding adding quantum mechanics to it and allowing position and momentum to be 100% known, which is essentially absolute zero.
Lightspeed can be circumvented by either having an item which changes it's speed to whatever value we want, or by allowing negative mass to be generated for free (which also allows wormholes too).
Many more laws can be broken, but these are the big 4.
This would solve a lot of intractable problems. Stealth in space is a good one where you can't hide thanks to the fact you emit heat, which is detectable. But if you can create a virtual reality where it's ignored, suddenly it is much simpler.

22:00 “Custodians would like to know your location”

There's a quote from a churchill I think you would like : "I'm an optimist, I don't find much use in being anything else"

"Sooner or later they swing back round to the idea they can make people better"

you can tell he really cares about genetic engineering its such a big part of this video

Everyone: lets hope 2021 is better than 2020
Update log 2021: 0:18

So happy to see Brandon Sanderson getting shared around!

Coffee. Forewarned. Fourarmed. Four is an odd number of arms for someone to have.

this channel is awesome! only excellent and interesting contents. I could pass the entire quarantine watching the videos of this channel haha.

I've grabbed too many drinks and snacks... going to have to build a gym

Less than 60 seconds in and I’m already in the grips of severe existential dread. Well played sir.

Frank Zappa gave us Billy the Mountain and his wife Ethel, a tree growing out of his side , who decides to visit Los Vegas.

Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy is a perfect example of an OCP and it is a series I highly recommend as well as anything else written by him he is just an amazing sci fi author.

Before watching my reaction to the title is: Well, very few, if any, of the people watching it will survive the next century. Now on to Isaac!

Gene altering does never only concern one single individual, but society as a whole. Main reasoning here in this Video is that people act reasonable, but if 2020 has taught us anything, it is that way too many people are too stupid and ignorant to behave reasonable.

If there’s going to be any sort of genetic engineering available it seems like there should be a public option for it, like with other kinds of healthcare. The public option should be available to all through subsidy, and it should be relentlessly improved whenever possible.
There could still be a private version of it available to people who wanted access to more experimental techniques or streamlined experiences. It should operate like private and public education. Nobody will stop you from opening a private school, but a private school that performs worse than the public option won’t stay open long and when the public option is improved, all of the private options must also improve to stay ahead.
Also, pour money into this. Make the public option actually good, and genuinely keep improving it. Don’t just leave it to wither on the vine.

3:04 FYI Somebody got the dice wrong. The 5 and the 2 are ALWAYS on opposite sides. Opposite sides will ALWAYS add up to 7.

You left out the greatest threat of all... government.

What about the Murder Hornets, Isaac? You left them out! LOL Thanks for another great episode, Sir!

I think my drink is going to be bourbon this time

Very helpful summary of both the pending scientific and thus sociological issues of our age--and the important and inevitable ethical terrain we will need to be up to helping illumine , rather than impoverish, this "bare forked wretch" that is humanity.

I don't want to survive, I want to live.

i dont trust my cup now.... please dont bite me. i like coffee.

It doesn’t feel like there is a lot done to create life extending technologies.

you probably already seen this, but nature.com has an article out about manually resetting old age cells in rats with visual problems and were able to essential reverse the age of specific nerves allowing the rats to see again, not really transferable to a whole ass human, but it shows it is definitely able to be done.

living mountains? Thats not a OCP, thats a SCP :)

Nice Hyperion bit in the intro with the lions, tigers and bears. And another great episode, thanks!

The biggest thread i see for mankind in this century is the combination of nihilism, relativism and hedonism that makes one antinatalist.
It allects mostly a-religious first world countries, which are major drivers in the progress of mankind.
Just going back to religion against ones knowledge of the universe is not an option.
So realizing that conciousness, without any higher arbiter existing, is the highest authority on value, and that conciousness needs continued life and freedom to optimaly produce the maximum amount of differentiable values, is a necessary thing.
Only values that promote conciousness can exist long term. So a conciousness promoting value can accumulate more effectively created value over time and space than a conciousness hampering value. This solves the subjectivity issue.
Being so greedy that you deplete your own civilisation or so altruistic that you rip appart yourself limits value too. Absurd greed may bring you temporary value, but it limits how far your influence can spread by limiting the vectors. Being certain that your action will make your influence immortal by furthering conciousness can bring you more pleasure than having the most now but limiting your future reach. Nothing is as narcist as knowing things will move to your will, even long after your death. And that only works optimaly when benefiting a society.
Collectivism removes free will and therefore the expression of conciousness. This effectively cuts short values by removing the value creating process of choice.
The existance of conciousness necessary for values puts boundaries on values. Only a value of continued and spread existance can have maximum value, if all starting value is truely subjective and therefore equal.
If the question for value is asked, the necessity of conciousness is clear. If it is not asked, survival instinct propell one in the same direction. An unconcious perspective can ligicaly not be taken. From a concious perspective the end of value has no value, as the question of value necessitates a concept of value, which requires conciousness and therefore existing values.
Value and conciousness can't be seperated.

Great and thoughtful as always Arthur! One thing I hear very few people discussing is resource depletion. For all the talk of "post scarcity", any nation much less a civilization that is entirely dependent on a rapidly diminishing resource it has no real plan to replace once it runs out can hardly call itself post-scarce. Despite the supposed advances of solar and wind-power, human civilization is STILL almost entirely dependent upon coal, oil and natural gas. What if fusion never materializes, superconductors never make it off the drawing board and solar continues to vastly underperform? What if NOTHING comes along to save us from ourselves?
By 2120, our world could be in crisis not from run away AI or even climate change but from empty gas tanks and shuttered power plants. The assumption that engineers will figure out solutions to all our problems overlooks the fact that applied science has limitations, the low hanging fruits of discovery have largely all been picked, our politicians are as obtuse as our increasingly alienated and delusional citizens and colleges are better at producing higher expectations than higher learning.In short, the industrial age, being only 200 years old may only have another century before it figuratively and literally runs out of gas.

2020 was so bad, it answered the Fermi paradox

wow this is a perfectly timed episode. More like this please Isaac! Near future FTW!

"You elites like to imagine the end of the world.
We that struggle can only think of the end of the month"
- Gilet Jaunes

Dmt is like the spice melange. It is the most amazing feeling of pure love but totally non addictive. It increases psychic ability and is combined with harmaline, known as telapathine, when taken orally.
It sends you to a dimension where you have access to limitless knowledge.
It is an effective treatment for depression and ptsd. It literally changed my life and gave me the inner strength to overcome my depression.

13:03: We have access to such techniques-they're called "Providing food, education, etc to children". Sure, you probably probably got at least the basics, but billions of kids around the world _don't._ The global community would undeniably be more prosperous if the wealth currently hoarded by billionaires was instead used to provide the necessities of modern life to people in need...but as a rule, the wealthy would rather have a billion dollars in a world where most people don't have a thousand than live in a world where everyone has a hundred thousand dollars.
The Iron Law of Institutions applies to societies, too. The wealthy will not consent to losing their privileged perch within society, no matter how much society might benefit. That's my greatest (and, within a rounding error, only) concern with transhumanism-it's another thing the wealthy will have and be able to deny the poor, another obstacle in the way of anyone trying to improve their lot in life.
Scientists love knowledge, and know it's more valuable when everyone knows it. Athletes love sports, and know they're more valuable when everyone plays them. Billionaires love wealth, and know it's only valuable when most people don't have it.
P.S. Yes, we grow enough food to feed everyone on the planet. It's just not distributed efficiently, because selling more food (that goes bad) to people in wealthy nations is more profitable than selling that food to people who are starving but poor.

If coronavirus is what convinced many of you that the future is scary, then you've never been through any adversity to speak of, and have apparently lived very soft, sheltered lives.
Sorry for the curmudgeonly comment on this fantastic channel; I'm just sick of the coronavirus fear mongering and more than anything, the rediculous lockdowns.

When you said OCP I thought you ment the company from RoboCop

I think VR will become a productivity boost in many fields, and partially or completely mitigate it's potential downside itself. But that's just speculation.

Let's hope to avoid any Outside Context Problems™ this century at least!

Have you read "We are Legion (We are Bob)"? Every time i watch your episodes, i keep thinking of that series!

You don’t see the issue with only the wealthy having access to this tech to create designer babies? We already see MASSIVE disparities in healthcare based on income in the US.

Don't uplift animals, uplift stupid people (most of us).

We didn't start the fire, 2020 version

Guys, you should see how coordinators are treated in gundam seed. Basically, coordinators are babies that are genetically modified to be more athletic and more intelligent. Once the populace learned of it, it started an outstreched war.

I'll have to disagree with your predictions on gene editing, they seem almost hopelessly optimistic to me. If gene editing is introduced that is capable of meaningfully improving the physical or mental capabilities of a person it could have horrifying consequences if not handled very carefully indeed.
Just as a hypothetical imagine that tomorrow a technique was invented in the USA that allowed you to increase your babies IQ by 10 points.
Wealthier Americans would be able to afford this treatment for their children whilst the less wealthy would not. The children of the wealthy would grow up to be far more likely to be successful than the children of the poor, not just due to a more stable home life, better food, private education etc but due to being fundamentally more capable.
This would lead to a widening of the wealth gap between the haves and have-nots as the children of the rich accrued even more wealth and power. The next edition of the IQ increasing technology could perhaps offer a 20 point gain for your child, the rich could once again afford this opportunity for their children whilst the poor could not.
The gap between the rich and the poor would grow ever larger and more entrenched with each generation until we had created a dystopian reality of a genetically/technologically enhanced aristocracy that rules over an inferior race of unedited humans.
Given that the average wealth of a Black American family is ~15% that of a White family you could also predict that the gene editing would be far more utilised by particular races leading to (after several generations) the creation of substantial mental and physical superiority of certain races/groups (on average, their are of course some very wealthy black Americans and poor white ones).
www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm
Even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that the US offered this technique for free to all its citizens it would still create a country of Übermensch that would have a terrifying advantage over, for example, Zimbabweans whose government could not afford to freely hand out such a breakthrough.
Lest anyone think I exaggerate;
www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
shows that there has been an increase in wealth inequality over that last few decades even without gene editing. The ability too genetically improve a child's potential capabilities will only hasten this stratification of humanity.
Crucially none of this requires any malice on the part of any individual. Scientists would create such a technology with purely beneficent goals and users would merely wish the best for their children, the road to a dystopian nightmare would be paved with good intentions.
This is not to say that we should abandon genetic engineering, its potential benefits for humanity are nigh limitless, but we must be aware of the pitfalls if such a technology is poorly implemented and consider very carefully how to utilise its awe inspiring potential.

This is exactly the video I needed from you right now.

12:25 homeschooled kids unite!!!

first 45 seconds had me laughing like a nihilistic maniac
"but wait, THERE'S MORE!"