WEBVTT
00:00:08.329 --> 00:00:15.048
Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics
00:00:16.237 --> 00:00:20.138
This is episode two of"The Coming Wave" by Mustafa Suleiman
00:00:21.725 --> 00:00:22.896
We'd love to hear from you.
00:00:23.106 --> 00:00:26.975
Send your comments and feedback to team@tkp.co.
00:00:30.672 --> 00:00:31.713
Hey, John.
00:00:31.792 --> 00:00:32.112
How are you doing?
00:00:33.055 --> 00:00:33.816
Hello, Matt.
00:00:34.334 --> 00:00:34.734
Doing good
00:00:35.658 --> 00:00:40.887
So what did you think of the combustion engine?
00:00:41.518 --> 00:00:42.927
You're from around Detroit.
00:00:43.008 --> 00:00:47.997
You, this should've, uh, kind of, uh, got into the cockles of your heart.
00:00:48.658 --> 00:00:49.078
Uh
00:00:49.350 --> 00:00:50.759
It definitely got in my cockles.
00:00:50.810 --> 00:00:53.070
I'm a big, big Detroit fan.
00:00:53.109 --> 00:00:58.090
Uh, I almost said I'm a big Henry Ford fan, but I guess he's kind of like a racist
00:00:58.171 --> 00:00:59.491
Oh, canceled.
00:00:59.502 --> 00:01:00.192
Sorry.
00:01:00.890 --> 00:01:09.400
I like the, uh, I, I think it was"Ragtime" that had this, like, big section about him trying to pursue, uh, immortality.
00:01:09.459 --> 00:01:13.870
Like, he was, like, searching ancient Egyptian ruins trying to find, like, the elixir of life.
00:01:14.579 --> 00:01:21.549
And I don't know how true that is to Henry Ford's actual persona, but it was interesting.
00:01:21.590 --> 00:01:22.299
But anyway, that's...
00:01:22.537 --> 00:01:35.328
Dude, I always, I always love to hear about when, when these, like, very famous people have these, like, insane idea- Like, to hear about Newton and him doing, like, al- alchemy or like,
00:01:36.335 --> 00:01:36.965
Yes.
00:01:37.498 --> 00:01:37.888
uh...
00:01:38.025 --> 00:01:39.046
These are like the,
00:01:39.048 --> 00:01:39.237
is it?
00:01:40.046 --> 00:01:40.676
uh...
00:01:41.006 --> 00:01:47.835
Oh, you're talking about him doing, um, uh, trying to turn stuff into gold.
00:01:47.835 --> 00:01:48.465
Yeah, what do you call
00:01:48.554 --> 00:01:49.243
Into gold.
00:01:49.766 --> 00:01:50.135
Yeah.
00:01:50.146 --> 00:01:51.286
It's not alchemy, right?
00:01:51.286 --> 00:01:52.240
Alchemy.
00:01:52.240 --> 00:01:53.195
Alchemy.
00:01:53.195 --> 00:01:53.706
Alchemy.
00:01:53.715 --> 00:01:54.066
Okay.
00:01:54.245 --> 00:02:01.156
Ben, I-- my brain was telling me that alchemy was, like, a legit science, but yeah, alchemy is where you're trying to, like, turn stuff into gold, right?
00:02:01.195 --> 00:02:01.566
So it's
00:02:02.090 --> 00:02:07.310
Yeah, and just like generally transmogrify matter, I think.
00:02:07.730 --> 00:02:08.300
Um
00:02:08.406 --> 00:02:10.545
But anyway, back to the book.
00:02:10.705 --> 00:02:14.145
My favorite part of this car thing,'cause th- yeah, they're just...
00:02:14.346 --> 00:02:25.406
Basically, this is the chapter that's discussing the endless proliferation of Homo technologicus, which, you know, we are Homo sapiens, but we're also Homo technologicus, evidently.
00:02:25.518 --> 00:02:27.078
Uh, and we endlessly proliferate
00:02:27.465 --> 00:02:42.305
it's setting the, the, I guess the, like, socioeconomic stage of, like, humanity and just how technology proliferates, and apparently it proliferates endlessly,
00:02:42.631 --> 00:02:43.161
Yes.
00:02:43.501 --> 00:02:48.140
And he is building around this example of the combustion engine, which, you know, that is a great example.
00:02:48.151 --> 00:02:50.890
It's like literally everything has combustion engines these days.
00:02:51.860 --> 00:02:53.520
And my favorite...
00:02:53.633 --> 00:02:54.453
for how long?
00:02:54.462 --> 00:02:54.923
Who knows?
00:02:54.923 --> 00:02:55.383
We'll see.
00:02:56.510 --> 00:02:57.110
Exactly.
00:02:57.131 --> 00:03:08.040
My favorite part about this, though,'cause he discusses Otto, Daimler, Maybach, Benz, all these, like, initial, uh, innovative people who were developing these engines.
00:03:08.681 --> 00:03:27.491
But he talks about this section where I wa- I wanna say it was, uh, Benz's wife, or maybe it was Otto's wife, Bertha, stole the car, basically took this prototype without his, you know, permission, and just drove across the countryside.
00:03:28.230 --> 00:03:34.640
And when she needed fuel, she would, like, stop at random apothecaries and just ask for solvent.
00:03:35.420 --> 00:03:44.281
And so she was, like, pouring this random, like, turpentine or something into, you know, her four-stroke engine vehicle.
00:03:44.920 --> 00:03:48.491
And I don't know, I was-- I just kinda found that hilarious and awesome.
00:03:49.681 --> 00:03:51.931
Yeah, it was Benz's, Benz's wife.
00:03:52.061 --> 00:03:54.001
And I think this was a publicity stunt.
00:03:54.050 --> 00:03:57.191
I think this was one of the first publicity stunts.
00:03:57.411 --> 00:04:03.401
You know,'cause he even kind of like, like teases that as a possibility.
00:04:04.241 --> 00:04:08.151
'Cause he says sh- she took it supposedly without his knowledge,
00:04:08.302 --> 00:04:08.582
know.
00:04:08.582 --> 00:04:10.163
It's like, are you kidding me?
00:04:10.432 --> 00:04:11.793
It, it just seems so...
00:04:12.383 --> 00:04:12.723
Yeah.
00:04:13.323 --> 00:04:18.202
But it's amazing as a, as a, um, you know, publicity stunt.
00:04:19.093 --> 00:04:20.973
It's like a, what do you call that type of marketing?
00:04:20.973 --> 00:04:22.882
Guerrilla, guerrilla marketing or...
00:04:23.173 --> 00:04:23.242
It's
00:04:23.288 --> 00:04:24.809
Guerrilla marketing, yeah.
00:04:25.142 --> 00:04:25.452
Yeah.
00:04:26.322 --> 00:04:26.992
But anyway, this whole s-
00:04:27.098 --> 00:04:28.379
1800s, pretty good
00:04:29.478 --> 00:04:46.738
This whole section was sort of a microcosm of how technology works for the human race, which is, you know, these things get created, you know, someone invents them, and no one really knows how useful they're gonna be.
00:04:47.408 --> 00:04:51.689
No one really fully-- Even the inventors don't really know what they're gonna be used for.
00:04:51.689 --> 00:04:56.608
Sometimes inventors have, like, hilarious use cases for their inventions that never really come to pass.
00:04:57.309 --> 00:04:59.899
But then the invention sort of takes on this life of its own.
00:04:59.928 --> 00:05:01.699
Other people figure out how to do it.
00:05:02.298 --> 00:05:18.509
You know, he even discusses these four separate guys, all of whom are household names today, uh, and how they all sort of independently were building these engines and, you know, they all are, like, huge figures in the auto business today.
00:05:19.418 --> 00:05:20.168
But how...
00:05:20.189 --> 00:05:21.649
Yeah, just how this stuff proliferates.
00:05:21.649 --> 00:05:23.718
I mean, it's, goes back to the endless proliferation thing.
00:05:24.793 --> 00:05:39.783
Well, it's interesting because he actually sets up this scene where in the first seven years of, uh, you know, after having built this car, Benz sold 69 cars over seven years.
00:05:39.812 --> 00:05:42.142
You know, he's selling 10 y- 10 cars a year.
00:05:42.783 --> 00:05:44.802
Um, and it was only, like you said, until Henry Ford, who, who kind of had this relentless efficiency.
00:05:44.802 --> 00:06:00.072
You know, he, he said,"For every dollar I take off my car, I get 1,000 new buyers." Which we need more...
00:06:00.112 --> 00:06:02.603
Uh, you know, ag- I fell into the same trap.
00:06:02.692 --> 00:06:17.175
I was gonna be like,"We need more Henry Fords." Like, um, but I'm just saying we, you know, I feel like we've lost a little bit of that Like w I, just ruthless, like making it more affordable.
00:06:17.225 --> 00:06:24.444
It just feels like every business is predicated on just like,"All right, we're gonna, we are going to leech as much money as we possibly can out of people."
00:06:24.583 --> 00:06:33.833
Dude, uh, i-it's-- I like this sort of thread'cause I was recently looking at, um, all these, like, rich people mansions.
00:06:34.322 --> 00:06:40.023
Like, there's-- I, I don't know, living in New York, there's these, like, tours you can do where you go to, like, the Vanderbilt house, and then you go to, like, John D.
00:06:40.023 --> 00:06:41.353
Rockefeller's house.
00:06:42.002 --> 00:06:52.362
And obviously, these things, uh, they're all, like, trying to make the lore of these people so incredibly positive that it's almost, like, obviously false.
00:06:52.983 --> 00:07:14.892
But in the Rockefeller house, they discussed how, like, you know, he's sort of perceived as this, like, horrible kinda jerk i-in some circles, but their sort of interpretation of him was he was just trying to make gas as cheap as possible, and that's why he was, like, vertically integrating.
00:07:14.932 --> 00:07:29.723
He was, like, you know, buying the mines, buying the pumps, buying everything, and trying to, like, you know, ship things across the country so that he could, like, produce it in a cheap place and then, like, get it to a, a place where he could sell it for more, uh, you know, for more.
00:07:29.723 --> 00:07:43.473
And it's like, sure, you can look at those behaviors as, like, total asshole billionaire behaviors, because they sort of are, but it's also like he's just trying to make a product that everyone wants as cheap as possible.
00:07:44.242 --> 00:07:46.233
And there's-- that's what Henry Ford was trying to do.
00:07:47.369 --> 00:08:01.178
And, and I guess if you think about it through the lens of the people who are charging, like, charging high profits, like charging more, of course they're gonna be salty that this guy came in and undercut their prices.
00:08:01.673 --> 00:08:01.812
Yeah.
00:08:01.949 --> 00:08:02.439
So
00:08:03.052 --> 00:08:03.562
Yeah, it's
00:08:03.588 --> 00:08:06.218
who knows if it was tainted by those people?
00:08:06.572 --> 00:08:24.663
not to get, uh, you know, political or anything, but you look at today's world with medicine, where I feel like the, the institutions in the United States are such that these cartels basically have full control to charge whatever they want for diabetes medicine.
00:08:25.432 --> 00:08:33.822
And in the world of, you know, these cutthroat business tycoons, like, i-if the laws were set up in such a way that a John D.
00:08:33.822 --> 00:08:41.932
Rockefeller could come in and sort of operate in this realm, they would just find a way to produce this medicine so cheaply and undercut the competition.
00:08:41.932 --> 00:08:47.232
And, like, in a way, that's a good-- you know, it's market forces at work.
00:08:47.243 --> 00:08:48.613
It can be a good thing sometimes.
00:08:49.870 --> 00:08:50.370
Yeah.
00:08:50.471 --> 00:08:50.941
Yeah.
00:08:51.365 --> 00:08:53.684
Anyways that's somewhat of a tangent
00:08:55.010 --> 00:09:05.750
so he kind of takes us through a tour of all of human history through the lens of what he says is general purpose technologies.
00:09:06.471 --> 00:09:07.061
Uh,
00:09:07.341 --> 00:09:08.530
And he discusses...
00:09:08.910 --> 00:09:09.541
Yeah, go for it
00:09:10.201 --> 00:09:17.211
I just wanted to throw out, I thought this was a really interesting section where he talks about how general purpose tech becomes invisible.
00:09:17.961 --> 00:09:25.870
You know, it's, it becomes very, very pervasive, and there's these early phases where, you know, everyone is talking about it.
00:09:26.561 --> 00:09:34.620
But then it just becomes this background thing that's sort of like supporting all of humanity, but no one even, you know, thinks about it.
00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:35.561
Like electricity.
00:09:35.850 --> 00:09:40.291
It's like at one point, that was a new invention that people were losing their minds over.
00:09:41.061 --> 00:09:45.020
And obviously today, like no one talks about electricity, like it just is
00:09:46.062 --> 00:09:50.273
Dude, have you heard the, heard the word about this new technology language?
00:09:50.682 --> 00:09:51.783
Dude, it's gonna be big
00:09:52.581 --> 00:09:53.150
yeah.
00:09:53.230 --> 00:10:00.441
actually, that was an interesting section too, where he sort of mentioned language itself as a technology, because it is.
00:10:00.640 --> 00:10:01.260
it very much
00:10:01.455 --> 00:10:04.245
It is 100% a technology, yeah
00:10:04.527 --> 00:10:07.057
I wrote in my notes bicameral mind.
00:10:07.547 --> 00:10:08.667
Have you ever heard of this?
00:10:08.702 --> 00:10:08.722
Whoa
00:10:10.167 --> 00:10:13.167
This is like, it, it's somewhat of a weird...
00:10:13.836 --> 00:10:21.586
Actually, I think I learned about this in a"Stuff You Should Know" episode, which is a podcast that I think you told me about initially.
00:10:22.456 --> 00:10:30.346
But the bicameral mind is basically this hypothesis that conscious thought itself is a technology.
00:10:31.167 --> 00:10:39.317
Like basically, for a long time, humans were just kind of meandering around, more or less acting instinctively.
00:10:39.407 --> 00:10:56.397
You know, like something would happen, you know, they would see a wooly mammoth and they would be like,"I should kill that." And they weren't really, they didn't really have this like thread of conscious thought, like introspection and, you know, sort of thinking outside of themselves.
00:10:57.667 --> 00:11:11.807
And this, this bicameral mind hypothesis is basically this theory that that arose about 3,000 years ago, and it was a technology where it was just a way, a new way of thinking where people could
00:11:11.982 --> 00:11:13.923
Only 3,000 years ago?
00:11:14.236 --> 00:11:14.586
Yeah.
00:11:14.586 --> 00:11:37.586
The-- Well, it might be longer ago than that, but it, I think the example was Thucydides, which is like this ancient Greek historian where in his writings, and also like in Homer's"Odyssey," there's examples where this type of thinking like seems to be arising as these works are happening.
00:11:38.277 --> 00:11:49.307
Like, so as, you know, Homer's"Odyssey" is sort of being created, you know,'cause it w- Homer's"Odyssey" was this story that was like passed down through bardic tradition.
00:11:49.897 --> 00:12:14.136
So as the story is being told from generation to generation, people are starting to refer to like, you know, the gods leaving, which, uh, actually this is this separate thing where before this bicameral mind hypothesis, people would think of these mental interventions as like gods just telling them what to do.
00:12:14.873 --> 00:12:15.342
Mm-hmm.
00:12:15.407 --> 00:12:27.076
You know, like if you're, if, if you're traveling along a road and there's like a huge rock in the road and you end up going around the rock, you wouldn't think of that as you consciously deciding to like go around the rock.
00:12:27.606 --> 00:12:35.197
You would think of it as like an angel sort of intervened and like t-told you about this new, this new way of going around a rock.
00:12:35.317 --> 00:12:41.606
Anyway, it sounds like I'm high, but I wrote it down because it's just this interesting example.
00:12:42.317 --> 00:12:45.557
And for what it's worth, I don't necessarily think this is like a true hypothesis.
00:12:45.557 --> 00:12:49.557
I just think it's like a very interesting, you know, thought exercise.
00:12:49.586 --> 00:12:54.657
I don't think we could ever know if this is true or not, but it feels like it's potentially
00:12:54.855 --> 00:12:57.754
'cause I, I think it's something...
00:12:57.754 --> 00:12:59.154
I, I think it's a continuum.
00:12:59.154 --> 00:13:01.184
Like, and, and I don't...
00:13:01.184 --> 00:13:18.764
Maybe I could be wrong, but I, I feel like I remember someone talking about the idea of, like, people's ability to entertain hypotheticals has kind of, like, actually fairly recently developed, like within the last, like, 200...
00:13:19.004 --> 00:13:37.004
It's like if you were to talk to someone from, like, the 1700s and be like,"Imagine, if you will, that you're a baker." Like, you're talking to a blacksmith, and you're like,"Imagine if you're a baker." And he's like,"I don't know what you mean." Like, it's like you couldn't even imagine the idea, like the idea of considering a hypothetical.
00:13:37.004 --> 00:13:39.384
Like, this didn't even compute.
00:13:39.554 --> 00:13:42.284
And this feels like another extension o-
00:13:42.297 --> 00:13:46.606
it's like the natural extension of that, which I think you're absolutely correct.
00:13:46.636 --> 00:13:56.927
Like, I think that's definitely true, that humans have become very advanced at, like, metaphor and sort of like, I don't know, double entendres.
00:13:56.937 --> 00:14:07.017
Like, things that just if you were to go to, uh, the 15th century and, like, throw random metaphors at people, they'd be like:"What the hell are you talking about?" You know?
00:14:07.017 --> 00:14:09.636
So the, the, the sophistication of our thinking.
00:14:09.767 --> 00:14:13.517
Also, just like the idea of self and sort of like...
00:14:14.706 --> 00:14:20.886
I, I think a lot of these notions have become, like, very sophisticated in modern humans.
00:14:21.697 --> 00:14:25.626
Um, and yeah, so in a way, bicameral mind is just a logical extension of that.
00:14:26.808 --> 00:14:27.899
Right, right, right.
00:14:28.259 --> 00:14:35.448
Um, well, we talk about one, one point which is, uh, you have strong opinions about agricultural revolution.
00:14:35.678 --> 00:14:40.178
You wanna tell us about, uh, thoughts about the agricultural rev- revolution?
00:14:40.432 --> 00:14:40.952
I hate it.
00:14:41.682 --> 00:14:43.092
It's the worst thing that ever happened.
00:14:43.123 --> 00:14:43.773
No, I, uh
00:14:43.900 --> 00:14:44.701
big mistake.
00:14:45.201 --> 00:14:46.951
But s- but the pro- see, this is the problem.
00:14:47.410 --> 00:14:53.721
Someone, one asshole was like,"Hey, maybe we should plant something," and you couldn't contain it after that
00:14:54.023 --> 00:14:54.363
Yeah.
00:14:55.182 --> 00:15:03.352
You know, it's funny because in 100 years when we are all slaves to AIs, and, you know, we're, we'll be slaves in a good way.
00:15:03.352 --> 00:15:07.533
I don't think they'll, like, whip us on a daily basis or anything like that.
00:15:07.543 --> 00:15:10.283
Like, I think they'll just give us mangoes and stuff.
00:15:11.462 --> 00:15:19.373
But we will probably speak fondly of the AI revolution, because I've always thought that humans are...
00:15:20.923 --> 00:15:33.133
We always view change as, as positive, or at least, like, there's a certain way of thinking that's very prevalent that just views cha- change itself as, as positive.
00:15:34.322 --> 00:15:43.283
And so I think in a lot of ways, I think that's sort of how a lot of people view the agricultural revolution, where it was obviously this huge change in the human race.
00:15:43.312 --> 00:15:46.893
Like, people were able to sit around and think for long periods of time.
00:15:47.783 --> 00:16:01.842
But they don't really discuss, like, all the negatives that came about, like the loss of sort of a lot of human inge- ingenuity, a lot of, like, individual, uh, sort of, I don't know.
00:16:02.623 --> 00:16:03.363
I don't know what to call it.
00:16:03.383 --> 00:16:06.423
But y- y- like, there's a lo- a lot of people theorize that before the...
00:16:06.586 --> 00:16:06.917
or?
00:16:07.863 --> 00:16:08.753
W- sorry, what was it?
00:16:08.873 --> 00:16:09.442
What would you say?
00:16:10.602 --> 00:16:10.673
Autonomy.
00:16:10.763 --> 00:16:11.482
Autonomy.
00:16:11.482 --> 00:16:12.052
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:12.052 --> 00:16:30.753
Just, you know, before the agricultural revolution when humans were, uh, more of a hunter-gatherer type species, every individual in the tribe was, like, this awesome, you know, everyone could hunt, everyone could forage, everyone had all these abilities.
00:16:31.602 --> 00:16:41.033
And with the agricultural revolution, there came about this need for people who just, like, worked the field all day, and it was kind of...
00:16:41.469 --> 00:16:41.889
yeah
00:16:42.043 --> 00:16:42.822
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:42.822 --> 00:16:44.712
Now, I can't remember what the theory is called.
00:16:44.712 --> 00:16:45.822
I wanna say it's like the...
00:16:46.822 --> 00:16:53.033
I almost wanna, I think it's called the village idiot theory, but, but maybe, maybe I'm misremembering.
00:16:53.033 --> 00:17:06.843
But anyway, it's this idea that with the agricultural revolution came this ability for soci- societies to kind of support all, you know...
00:17:06.903 --> 00:17:09.893
Like, in the hunter-gatherer society, like, the village idiot would just die.
00:17:10.173 --> 00:17:13.732
Like, they just wouldn't be able to hack it, and they would just get killed by something.
00:17:14.502 --> 00:17:15.772
Which I'm not saying that's a good thing.
00:17:16.833 --> 00:17:25.242
But I'm just saying society completely changes, and you sort of have these different, like, factions that are able to arise, some good, some bad.
00:17:26.510 --> 00:17:33.250
So, but it sounds like what you're saying is now the village idiot can exist.
00:17:33.260 --> 00:17:46.780
Like, it, this, uh, this almost heralds the creation of the v- village idiot because it's like, well now he can just like, I guess gnaw on some like stalk of corn in the corner without needing to like
00:17:47.494 --> 00:17:52.835
Yeah, which I feel like, uh, I feel like I'm implying that that's a bad thing, which I don't think it's a bad thing.
00:17:52.845 --> 00:18:04.375
Like, I think, you know, I'm a big believer in societies that sort of take care of themselves and are able to support, you know, any, all the various needs of all the various individuals.
00:18:05.085 --> 00:18:11.984
I think the primary point is just that with these revolutions, things have a tendency to drastically change.
00:18:11.984 --> 00:18:24.964
Like, I, I actually think with the AI revolution, this notion of, like, a human thinker, you know, like these high-powered humans who are, like, just geniuses, like, really good at thinking.
00:18:24.974 --> 00:18:38.894
Like, I think that that's gonna become less prevalent because I think people are gonna do less thinking, and that's just an example of how our societies might change and how some humans might end up actually living worse lives.
00:18:39.555 --> 00:18:52.914
You know, maybe, maybe most humans will live better lives because AI will bring this infinite wealth or whatever, but some humans will live less fulfilling lives and, and they're-- they won't be able to sort of lean on the strengths that they have.
00:18:54.040 --> 00:18:55.671
I think I see, I think I see what you're saying.
00:18:55.681 --> 00:19:21.724
Like, and like if you'll allow me to reframe and like check if this, this is what your point is, but it's like In a world where AI can think better than 99% of humans, like humans are just gonna think less and they're gonna atrophy in that ability, and that is gonna be a loss on a personal level and on a societal level
00:19:22.058 --> 00:19:22.259
Yeah.
00:19:22.358 --> 00:19:22.568
Yeah.
00:19:22.568 --> 00:19:27.068
We go from the village idiot theorem to the village of idiots theorem,
00:19:27.214 --> 00:19:27.865
Yes.
00:19:27.954 --> 00:19:28.545
Yes
00:19:29.169 --> 00:19:35.358
where literally everyone will just be these kind of like autonomous drones, which maybe that's fine, maybe that's okay.
00:19:35.358 --> 00:19:36.578
But I, I just...
00:19:37.308 --> 00:19:40.088
This goes back to just viewing change as progress.
00:19:40.148 --> 00:19:42.778
It's change is change.
00:19:42.788 --> 00:19:44.088
Like, it brings new things.
00:19:44.088 --> 00:19:45.689
It, it gets rid of old things.
00:19:45.689 --> 00:19:50.019
It change-- It, you know, makes it so some things suck.
00:19:51.439 --> 00:19:51.929
Yeah.
00:19:52.489 --> 00:20:02.638
Well, I, you know, my, my opinion is that the scope of humans' ambitions are just gonna expand.
00:20:02.959 --> 00:20:16.108
Like,'cause n- a-and I watched actually a really good talk at IO about the ch- the changes in engineering, and the guy was talking about, uh, the fact that, like, when you...
00:20:17.048 --> 00:20:20.838
He made an analogy to, like, trees and forests.
00:20:21.169 --> 00:20:26.429
It's like, if you're building a tree, maybe you have time to, like, inspect every leaf.
00:20:26.868 --> 00:20:30.409
But like, if you're building a forest, like, you don't...
00:20:30.409 --> 00:20:32.538
And I'm definitely, like, messing up this.
00:20:32.848 --> 00:20:45.388
But like, if you're, like, the, the s-sh-steward of a forest, you're not gonna have time to, like, in, like, in detail inspect every single leaf in the forest.
00:20:45.398 --> 00:20:48.048
So like, you need to kind of think about...
00:20:48.048 --> 00:20:57.229
And'cause,'cause what he's saying is, like, now the cost to generate code is so much lower, like, reviewing code becomes the bottleneck.
00:20:57.499 --> 00:21:08.108
And, and he didn't, he didn't have answers for all of these problems, but, like, essentially he, he was saying, like,"Well, this is gonna be the scaling limit, reviewing every single line of code.
00:21:08.108 --> 00:21:18.959
And now, like, maybe we need to come up with a, with techniques that don't require human review of every single line of code." Um, and it's an interesting question
00:21:19.744 --> 00:21:32.924
Yeah, no, it really is, and it's kind of-- it is a testament to, you know, to how these industries can just be, like, completely altered with one stroke of, of technological innovation.
00:21:34.214 --> 00:21:35.585
And I'm definitely feeling that.
00:21:35.585 --> 00:21:36.744
I mean, man, I review...
00:21:37.474 --> 00:21:40.154
I feel like my life is just reviewing code these days.
00:21:40.154 --> 00:21:41.075
It's kind of frustrating.
00:21:42.318 --> 00:21:42.719
Yeah.
00:21:43.615 --> 00:21:50.085
But one important point in this chapter, uh, you know, he discusses how ge- general-purpose tech becomes invisible.
00:21:50.744 --> 00:21:57.204
Uh, but the other important point he makes is that general-purpose tech, the development of general-purpose tech is accelerating.
00:21:57.585 --> 00:22:04.775
Like, it just-- It used to be that, you know, every thousand years, humans would come up with general-purpose tech.
00:22:05.005 --> 00:22:09.255
You know, agricultural revolution, writing, language.
00:22:09.494 --> 00:22:11.204
You know, these are-- mathematics.
00:22:11.204 --> 00:22:15.924
Like, these are technologies that humans developed, but over the course of thousands of years.
00:22:16.555 --> 00:22:25.305
Today, it's like, you know, combustion engine or electricity, combustion engine, flight, internet, AI.
00:22:25.335 --> 00:22:29.515
You know, it's just like, it's happening every 10, five to 10 years.
00:22:30.134 --> 00:22:38.815
And, uh, it's, it's, it's at a rate that I feel no one can really fully grapple with it.
00:22:39.644 --> 00:22:46.755
Because as he's, as, uh, Mustafa's pointing out, like, these general-purpose technologies completely reshape society, every single one of them.
00:22:47.255 --> 00:22:58.805
And so, in a world where every five years you have another general-purpose tech, and then with AI working on the Erdos problems, you know, it's gonna be like every two years we have a general-purpose tech.
00:22:59.474 --> 00:23:02.964
All of those technologies completely reshaping society.
00:23:03.335 --> 00:23:05.075
Like, what is that gonna look like?
00:23:05.075 --> 00:23:06.015
It's gonna be insane
00:23:07.471 --> 00:23:15.211
Well, and, and this is I think why he wanted to draw the car as a, as like, as an example.
00:23:15.351 --> 00:23:20.871
Because everything is being adopt-- like it took, it took decades for the car to actually catch on.
00:23:21.151 --> 00:23:25.381
But now, yes, there's more, there's more, uh, general purpose technologies.
00:23:25.611 --> 00:23:29.790
But-- and they're being adopted at a much more rapid pace.
00:23:30.020 --> 00:23:36.191
You know, it's-- if you think about ChatGPT, like, it's like 100 million users over the course of like a month or whatever.
00:23:36.250 --> 00:23:40.361
I forget what the numbers are, but, um, it's something insane like that.
00:23:40.871 --> 00:23:50.941
And actually, it's kind of interesting to think about, like, what does it mean when it's actually agents that are adopting technologies as opposed to humans?
00:23:51.290 --> 00:24:03.250
'Cause that will just like, that will amplify, that will magnify our ability to adopt these new technol-- like they're gonna be created faster, and then AIs are gonna be able to adopt them faster
00:24:03.664 --> 00:24:04.005
Right.
00:24:04.174 --> 00:24:12.375
And find really cool use cases for them, and just immediately, like, implement them within the fabric of our society.
00:24:13.194 --> 00:24:17.295
Um, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a really wild world moving forward.
00:24:17.434 --> 00:24:19.434
Like, I think we truly are entering the future.
00:24:20.845 --> 00:24:46.115
Uh, the, the fact of this chapter though, at least for me, I'm just gonna read this off:"Transistors are now produced in the tens of trillions per second at billionths of a dollar per transistor." He talks about how when the transistor was first developed, one single transistor was, like, huge.
00:24:46.664 --> 00:24:55.765
You know, it was, like, maybe the size of, like, like, six inches long, like, kind of a capsule shape, and it cost, like, hundreds of dollars.
00:24:56.535 --> 00:25:04.684
And now they're being produced tens of trillions per second at billionths of a dollar per transistor, and they're absolutely microscopic.
00:25:04.755 --> 00:25:06.355
They're, like, atoms wide.
00:25:07.325 --> 00:25:08.974
And I just wanted to say-
00:25:09.320 --> 00:25:16.530
kind of the limit of like, they're getting to like, you know, the, the scaling limit of the universe in terms of like how big these are.
00:25:16.840 --> 00:25:19.601
Like, they can't be that many atoms wide at this point
00:25:20.159 --> 00:25:20.578
Exactly.
00:25:20.578 --> 00:25:25.638
Like they put more transistors on a chip and it'll immediately become a black hole,'cause there's just too much crap there.
00:25:25.999 --> 00:25:46.019
There's a, uh, YouTube channel that I really like called Epic Spaceman, and he did a video where he, like, shrunk himself down to the size of a chip, like a, you know, GPU or whatever, and he was, like, flying around on the chip, and it was awesome.
00:25:46.028 --> 00:25:46.578
Like, it was...
00:25:46.588 --> 00:25:53.689
I- it's such a good video to kinda show, like, how fucking crazy this technology
00:25:53.817 --> 00:25:56.547
Was that the collab with, uh, Marquez Brownlee?
00:25:58.340 --> 00:26:09.260
Maybe, but I, I probably just completely forgot about Marcus Brownlee'cause I was, like, so just enraptured with this, like, just description of these chips.
00:26:09.510 --> 00:26:12.171
Th- there was actually a series of videos which I think I've mentioned.
00:26:12.191 --> 00:26:14.961
I feel like I'm just, like, shilling, you know, YouTube videos now.
00:26:14.961 --> 00:26:19.631
But there was that other Veritasium one about ASML, the, you
00:26:19.671 --> 00:26:20.090
Mm-hmm.
00:26:20.191 --> 00:26:20.810
Yes
00:26:20.901 --> 00:26:27.411
country that, like, drops, like, blobs of, like, I don't know, like, tin.
00:26:27.431 --> 00:26:27.820
Yeah.
00:26:28.181 --> 00:26:29.951
I almost said tungsten, but I knew that was wrong.
00:26:30.181 --> 00:26:39.310
And then, like, zaps them with a laser at, like, four billion degrees so that they explode and, like, create this weird wavelength of light so that they can etch chips.
00:26:39.711 --> 00:26:42.631
Like, it-- The technology is utterly insane.
00:26:42.760 --> 00:26:43.221
Like, it's...
00:26:43.240 --> 00:26:52.361
When you hear about it, you're like,"No, that's, like, something fucking Jules Verne is writing about." Like, it just does not compute that there is an actual factory doing this.
00:26:53.330 --> 00:26:54.030
And, and it's with the
00:26:54.126 --> 00:27:04.826
they need to create this, like, extremely powerful photons of, of ultra UV light, high, you know, high energy UV light.
00:27:04.967 --> 00:27:05.517
Exactly.
00:27:05.517 --> 00:27:08.547
An exploding tin is like the one process
00:27:08.974 --> 00:27:10.934
That's the easiest way to do it apparently.
00:27:11.085 --> 00:27:13.234
And then you had two, said about something about the precision?
00:27:13.990 --> 00:27:14.471
Oh, yeah.
00:27:14.471 --> 00:27:24.191
Just the, you know,'cause they're exploding this tin, just like you're saying, to produce this light so that they can etch a chip, and these chips are etched, just like we mentioned, atoms thick.
00:27:24.631 --> 00:27:37.020
So you need to explode this tin, which is a very chaotic process, but then you need to focus the light that's produced from exploding the tin down into this absolutely precise thing.
00:27:37.090 --> 00:27:45.711
You know, we're talking like the width of a human hair, like on the moon, you know, uh, viewed from Earth or whatever.
00:27:45.711 --> 00:27:52.941
And it's, it's just like, uh, it's just completely unimaginable, like what humans have achieved.
00:27:54.191 --> 00:27:55.310
And, uh, yeah, it's amazing.
00:27:56.527 --> 00:27:57.007
Yeah.
00:27:57.326 --> 00:27:59.757
No, dude, uh, that is, that is true.
00:27:59.896 --> 00:28:01.027
It is, it is incredible.
00:28:01.047 --> 00:28:02.787
But like they keep on, they keep on doing it.
00:28:02.807 --> 00:28:09.426
Like, uh, and this is the thing, like they've got new technologies that they're, that they're proliferating all over us
00:28:09.830 --> 00:28:10.090
Yeah.
00:28:11.121 --> 00:28:12.530
But maybe that's a good place to end.
00:28:12.540 --> 00:28:23.330
I mean, this, this chapter was just a good kind of reminder as to how amazing humans are at developing these innovations and then proliferating them across society.
00:28:23.901 --> 00:28:24.211
Yeah.
00:28:24.211 --> 00:28:29.671
And then, uh, in the next chapter we'll talk about, uh, can we, can we actually contain them?
00:28:29.681 --> 00:28:33.040
Like, is there a way to stop the endless proli- proliferation?
00:28:33.451 --> 00:28:35.351
Well, we'll talk about that next time.
00:28:36.285 --> 00:28:36.494
All right.
00:28:36.525 --> 00:28:36.924
See you, Matt
00:28:37.903 --> 00:28:38.643
See you, John
00:00:08.329 --> 00:00:15.048
Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics
00:00:16.237 --> 00:00:20.138
This is episode two of"The Coming Wave" by Mustafa Suleiman
00:00:21.725 --> 00:00:22.896
We'd love to hear from you.
00:00:23.106 --> 00:00:26.975
Send your comments and feedback to team@tkp.co.
00:00:30.672 --> 00:00:31.713
Hey, John.
00:00:31.792 --> 00:00:32.112
How are you doing?
00:00:33.055 --> 00:00:33.816
Hello, Matt.
00:00:34.334 --> 00:00:34.734
Doing good
00:00:35.658 --> 00:00:40.887
So what did you think of the combustion engine?
00:00:41.518 --> 00:00:42.927
You're from around Detroit.
00:00:43.008 --> 00:00:47.997
You, this should've, uh, kind of, uh, got into the cockles of your heart.
00:00:48.658 --> 00:00:49.078
Uh
00:00:49.350 --> 00:00:50.759
It definitely got in my cockles.
00:00:50.810 --> 00:00:53.070
I'm a big, big Detroit fan.
00:00:53.109 --> 00:00:58.090
Uh, I almost said I'm a big Henry Ford fan, but I guess he's kind of like a racist
00:00:58.171 --> 00:00:59.491
Oh, canceled.
00:00:59.502 --> 00:01:00.192
Sorry.
00:01:00.890 --> 00:01:09.400
I like the, uh, I, I think it was"Ragtime" that had this, like, big section about him trying to pursue, uh, immortality.
00:01:09.459 --> 00:01:13.870
Like, he was, like, searching ancient Egyptian ruins trying to find, like, the elixir of life.
00:01:14.579 --> 00:01:21.549
And I don't know how true that is to Henry Ford's actual persona, but it was interesting.
00:01:21.590 --> 00:01:22.299
But anyway, that's...
00:01:22.537 --> 00:01:35.328
Dude, I always, I always love to hear about when, when these, like, very famous people have these, like, insane idea- Like, to hear about Newton and him doing, like, al- alchemy or like,
00:01:36.335 --> 00:01:36.965
Yes.
00:01:37.498 --> 00:01:37.888
uh...
00:01:38.025 --> 00:01:39.046
These are like the,
00:01:39.048 --> 00:01:39.237
is it?
00:01:40.046 --> 00:01:40.676
uh...
00:01:41.006 --> 00:01:47.835
Oh, you're talking about him doing, um, uh, trying to turn stuff into gold.
00:01:47.835 --> 00:01:48.465
Yeah, what do you call
00:01:48.554 --> 00:01:49.243
Into gold.
00:01:49.766 --> 00:01:50.135
Yeah.
00:01:50.146 --> 00:01:51.286
It's not alchemy, right?
00:01:51.286 --> 00:01:52.240
Alchemy.
00:01:52.240 --> 00:01:53.195
Alchemy.
00:01:53.195 --> 00:01:53.706
Alchemy.
00:01:53.715 --> 00:01:54.066
Okay.
00:01:54.245 --> 00:02:01.156
Ben, I-- my brain was telling me that alchemy was, like, a legit science, but yeah, alchemy is where you're trying to, like, turn stuff into gold, right?
00:02:01.195 --> 00:02:01.566
So it's
00:02:02.090 --> 00:02:07.310
Yeah, and just like generally transmogrify matter, I think.
00:02:07.730 --> 00:02:08.300
Um
00:02:08.406 --> 00:02:10.545
But anyway, back to the book.
00:02:10.705 --> 00:02:14.145
My favorite part of this car thing,'cause th- yeah, they're just...
00:02:14.346 --> 00:02:25.406
Basically, this is the chapter that's discussing the endless proliferation of Homo technologicus, which, you know, we are Homo sapiens, but we're also Homo technologicus, evidently.
00:02:25.518 --> 00:02:27.078
Uh, and we endlessly proliferate
00:02:27.465 --> 00:02:42.305
it's setting the, the, I guess the, like, socioeconomic stage of, like, humanity and just how technology proliferates, and apparently it proliferates endlessly,
00:02:42.631 --> 00:02:43.161
Yes.
00:02:43.501 --> 00:02:48.140
And he is building around this example of the combustion engine, which, you know, that is a great example.
00:02:48.151 --> 00:02:50.890
It's like literally everything has combustion engines these days.
00:02:51.860 --> 00:02:53.520
And my favorite...
00:02:53.633 --> 00:02:54.453
for how long?
00:02:54.462 --> 00:02:54.923
Who knows?
00:02:54.923 --> 00:02:55.383
We'll see.
00:02:56.510 --> 00:02:57.110
Exactly.
00:02:57.131 --> 00:03:08.040
My favorite part about this, though,'cause he discusses Otto, Daimler, Maybach, Benz, all these, like, initial, uh, innovative people who were developing these engines.
00:03:08.681 --> 00:03:27.491
But he talks about this section where I wa- I wanna say it was, uh, Benz's wife, or maybe it was Otto's wife, Bertha, stole the car, basically took this prototype without his, you know, permission, and just drove across the countryside.
00:03:28.230 --> 00:03:34.640
And when she needed fuel, she would, like, stop at random apothecaries and just ask for solvent.
00:03:35.420 --> 00:03:44.281
And so she was, like, pouring this random, like, turpentine or something into, you know, her four-stroke engine vehicle.
00:03:44.920 --> 00:03:48.491
And I don't know, I was-- I just kinda found that hilarious and awesome.
00:03:49.681 --> 00:03:51.931
Yeah, it was Benz's, Benz's wife.
00:03:52.061 --> 00:03:54.001
And I think this was a publicity stunt.
00:03:54.050 --> 00:03:57.191
I think this was one of the first publicity stunts.
00:03:57.411 --> 00:04:03.401
You know,'cause he even kind of like, like teases that as a possibility.
00:04:04.241 --> 00:04:08.151
'Cause he says sh- she took it supposedly without his knowledge,
00:04:08.302 --> 00:04:08.582
know.
00:04:08.582 --> 00:04:10.163
It's like, are you kidding me?
00:04:10.432 --> 00:04:11.793
It, it just seems so...
00:04:12.383 --> 00:04:12.723
Yeah.
00:04:13.323 --> 00:04:18.202
But it's amazing as a, as a, um, you know, publicity stunt.
00:04:19.093 --> 00:04:20.973
It's like a, what do you call that type of marketing?
00:04:20.973 --> 00:04:22.882
Guerrilla, guerrilla marketing or...
00:04:23.173 --> 00:04:23.242
It's
00:04:23.288 --> 00:04:24.809
Guerrilla marketing, yeah.
00:04:25.142 --> 00:04:25.452
Yeah.
00:04:26.322 --> 00:04:26.992
But anyway, this whole s-
00:04:27.098 --> 00:04:28.379
1800s, pretty good
00:04:29.478 --> 00:04:46.738
This whole section was sort of a microcosm of how technology works for the human race, which is, you know, these things get created, you know, someone invents them, and no one really knows how useful they're gonna be.
00:04:47.408 --> 00:04:51.689
No one really fully-- Even the inventors don't really know what they're gonna be used for.
00:04:51.689 --> 00:04:56.608
Sometimes inventors have, like, hilarious use cases for their inventions that never really come to pass.
00:04:57.309 --> 00:04:59.899
But then the invention sort of takes on this life of its own.
00:04:59.928 --> 00:05:01.699
Other people figure out how to do it.
00:05:02.298 --> 00:05:18.509
You know, he even discusses these four separate guys, all of whom are household names today, uh, and how they all sort of independently were building these engines and, you know, they all are, like, huge figures in the auto business today.
00:05:19.418 --> 00:05:20.168
But how...
00:05:20.189 --> 00:05:21.649
Yeah, just how this stuff proliferates.
00:05:21.649 --> 00:05:23.718
I mean, it's, goes back to the endless proliferation thing.
00:05:24.793 --> 00:05:39.783
Well, it's interesting because he actually sets up this scene where in the first seven years of, uh, you know, after having built this car, Benz sold 69 cars over seven years.
00:05:39.812 --> 00:05:42.142
You know, he's selling 10 y- 10 cars a year.
00:05:42.783 --> 00:05:44.802
Um, and it was only, like you said, until Henry Ford, who, who kind of had this relentless efficiency.
00:05:44.802 --> 00:06:00.072
You know, he, he said,"For every dollar I take off my car, I get 1,000 new buyers." Which we need more...
00:06:00.112 --> 00:06:02.603
Uh, you know, ag- I fell into the same trap.
00:06:02.692 --> 00:06:17.175
I was gonna be like,"We need more Henry Fords." Like, um, but I'm just saying we, you know, I feel like we've lost a little bit of that Like w I, just ruthless, like making it more affordable.
00:06:17.225 --> 00:06:24.444
It just feels like every business is predicated on just like,"All right, we're gonna, we are going to leech as much money as we possibly can out of people."
00:06:24.583 --> 00:06:33.833
Dude, uh, i-it's-- I like this sort of thread'cause I was recently looking at, um, all these, like, rich people mansions.
00:06:34.322 --> 00:06:40.023
Like, there's-- I, I don't know, living in New York, there's these, like, tours you can do where you go to, like, the Vanderbilt house, and then you go to, like, John D.
00:06:40.023 --> 00:06:41.353
Rockefeller's house.
00:06:42.002 --> 00:06:52.362
And obviously, these things, uh, they're all, like, trying to make the lore of these people so incredibly positive that it's almost, like, obviously false.
00:06:52.983 --> 00:07:14.892
But in the Rockefeller house, they discussed how, like, you know, he's sort of perceived as this, like, horrible kinda jerk i-in some circles, but their sort of interpretation of him was he was just trying to make gas as cheap as possible, and that's why he was, like, vertically integrating.
00:07:14.932 --> 00:07:29.723
He was, like, you know, buying the mines, buying the pumps, buying everything, and trying to, like, you know, ship things across the country so that he could, like, produce it in a cheap place and then, like, get it to a, a place where he could sell it for more, uh, you know, for more.
00:07:29.723 --> 00:07:43.473
And it's like, sure, you can look at those behaviors as, like, total asshole billionaire behaviors, because they sort of are, but it's also like he's just trying to make a product that everyone wants as cheap as possible.
00:07:44.242 --> 00:07:46.233
And there's-- that's what Henry Ford was trying to do.
00:07:47.369 --> 00:08:01.178
And, and I guess if you think about it through the lens of the people who are charging, like, charging high profits, like charging more, of course they're gonna be salty that this guy came in and undercut their prices.
00:08:01.673 --> 00:08:01.812
Yeah.
00:08:01.949 --> 00:08:02.439
So
00:08:03.052 --> 00:08:03.562
Yeah, it's
00:08:03.588 --> 00:08:06.218
who knows if it was tainted by those people?
00:08:06.572 --> 00:08:24.663
not to get, uh, you know, political or anything, but you look at today's world with medicine, where I feel like the, the institutions in the United States are such that these cartels basically have full control to charge whatever they want for diabetes medicine.
00:08:25.432 --> 00:08:33.822
And in the world of, you know, these cutthroat business tycoons, like, i-if the laws were set up in such a way that a John D.
00:08:33.822 --> 00:08:41.932
Rockefeller could come in and sort of operate in this realm, they would just find a way to produce this medicine so cheaply and undercut the competition.
00:08:41.932 --> 00:08:47.232
And, like, in a way, that's a good-- you know, it's market forces at work.
00:08:47.243 --> 00:08:48.613
It can be a good thing sometimes.
00:08:49.870 --> 00:08:50.370
Yeah.
00:08:50.471 --> 00:08:50.941
Yeah.
00:08:51.365 --> 00:08:53.684
Anyways that's somewhat of a tangent
00:08:55.010 --> 00:09:05.750
so he kind of takes us through a tour of all of human history through the lens of what he says is general purpose technologies.
00:09:06.471 --> 00:09:07.061
Uh,
00:09:07.341 --> 00:09:08.530
And he discusses...
00:09:08.910 --> 00:09:09.541
Yeah, go for it
00:09:10.201 --> 00:09:17.211
I just wanted to throw out, I thought this was a really interesting section where he talks about how general purpose tech becomes invisible.
00:09:17.961 --> 00:09:25.870
You know, it's, it becomes very, very pervasive, and there's these early phases where, you know, everyone is talking about it.
00:09:26.561 --> 00:09:34.620
But then it just becomes this background thing that's sort of like supporting all of humanity, but no one even, you know, thinks about it.
00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:35.561
Like electricity.
00:09:35.850 --> 00:09:40.291
It's like at one point, that was a new invention that people were losing their minds over.
00:09:41.061 --> 00:09:45.020
And obviously today, like no one talks about electricity, like it just is
00:09:46.062 --> 00:09:50.273
Dude, have you heard the, heard the word about this new technology language?
00:09:50.682 --> 00:09:51.783
Dude, it's gonna be big
00:09:52.581 --> 00:09:53.150
yeah.
00:09:53.230 --> 00:10:00.441
actually, that was an interesting section too, where he sort of mentioned language itself as a technology, because it is.
00:10:00.640 --> 00:10:01.260
it very much
00:10:01.455 --> 00:10:04.245
It is 100% a technology, yeah
00:10:04.527 --> 00:10:07.057
I wrote in my notes bicameral mind.
00:10:07.547 --> 00:10:08.667
Have you ever heard of this?
00:10:08.702 --> 00:10:08.722
Whoa
00:10:10.167 --> 00:10:13.167
This is like, it, it's somewhat of a weird...
00:10:13.836 --> 00:10:21.586
Actually, I think I learned about this in a"Stuff You Should Know" episode, which is a podcast that I think you told me about initially.
00:10:22.456 --> 00:10:30.346
But the bicameral mind is basically this hypothesis that conscious thought itself is a technology.
00:10:31.167 --> 00:10:39.317
Like basically, for a long time, humans were just kind of meandering around, more or less acting instinctively.
00:10:39.407 --> 00:10:56.397
You know, like something would happen, you know, they would see a wooly mammoth and they would be like,"I should kill that." And they weren't really, they didn't really have this like thread of conscious thought, like introspection and, you know, sort of thinking outside of themselves.
00:10:57.667 --> 00:11:11.807
And this, this bicameral mind hypothesis is basically this theory that that arose about 3,000 years ago, and it was a technology where it was just a way, a new way of thinking where people could
00:11:11.982 --> 00:11:13.923
Only 3,000 years ago?
00:11:14.236 --> 00:11:14.586
Yeah.
00:11:14.586 --> 00:11:37.586
The-- Well, it might be longer ago than that, but it, I think the example was Thucydides, which is like this ancient Greek historian where in his writings, and also like in Homer's"Odyssey," there's examples where this type of thinking like seems to be arising as these works are happening.
00:11:38.277 --> 00:11:49.307
Like, so as, you know, Homer's"Odyssey" is sort of being created, you know,'cause it w- Homer's"Odyssey" was this story that was like passed down through bardic tradition.
00:11:49.897 --> 00:12:14.136
So as the story is being told from generation to generation, people are starting to refer to like, you know, the gods leaving, which, uh, actually this is this separate thing where before this bicameral mind hypothesis, people would think of these mental interventions as like gods just telling them what to do.
00:12:14.873 --> 00:12:15.342
Mm-hmm.
00:12:15.407 --> 00:12:27.076
You know, like if you're, if, if you're traveling along a road and there's like a huge rock in the road and you end up going around the rock, you wouldn't think of that as you consciously deciding to like go around the rock.
00:12:27.606 --> 00:12:35.197
You would think of it as like an angel sort of intervened and like t-told you about this new, this new way of going around a rock.
00:12:35.317 --> 00:12:41.606
Anyway, it sounds like I'm high, but I wrote it down because it's just this interesting example.
00:12:42.317 --> 00:12:45.557
And for what it's worth, I don't necessarily think this is like a true hypothesis.
00:12:45.557 --> 00:12:49.557
I just think it's like a very interesting, you know, thought exercise.
00:12:49.586 --> 00:12:54.657
I don't think we could ever know if this is true or not, but it feels like it's potentially
00:12:54.855 --> 00:12:57.754
'cause I, I think it's something...
00:12:57.754 --> 00:12:59.154
I, I think it's a continuum.
00:12:59.154 --> 00:13:01.184
Like, and, and I don't...
00:13:01.184 --> 00:13:18.764
Maybe I could be wrong, but I, I feel like I remember someone talking about the idea of, like, people's ability to entertain hypotheticals has kind of, like, actually fairly recently developed, like within the last, like, 200...
00:13:19.004 --> 00:13:37.004
It's like if you were to talk to someone from, like, the 1700s and be like,"Imagine, if you will, that you're a baker." Like, you're talking to a blacksmith, and you're like,"Imagine if you're a baker." And he's like,"I don't know what you mean." Like, it's like you couldn't even imagine the idea, like the idea of considering a hypothetical.
00:13:37.004 --> 00:13:39.384
Like, this didn't even compute.
00:13:39.554 --> 00:13:42.284
And this feels like another extension o-
00:13:42.297 --> 00:13:46.606
it's like the natural extension of that, which I think you're absolutely correct.
00:13:46.636 --> 00:13:56.927
Like, I think that's definitely true, that humans have become very advanced at, like, metaphor and sort of like, I don't know, double entendres.
00:13:56.937 --> 00:14:07.017
Like, things that just if you were to go to, uh, the 15th century and, like, throw random metaphors at people, they'd be like:"What the hell are you talking about?" You know?
00:14:07.017 --> 00:14:09.636
So the, the, the sophistication of our thinking.
00:14:09.767 --> 00:14:13.517
Also, just like the idea of self and sort of like...
00:14:14.706 --> 00:14:20.886
I, I think a lot of these notions have become, like, very sophisticated in modern humans.
00:14:21.697 --> 00:14:25.626
Um, and yeah, so in a way, bicameral mind is just a logical extension of that.
00:14:26.808 --> 00:14:27.899
Right, right, right.
00:14:28.259 --> 00:14:35.448
Um, well, we talk about one, one point which is, uh, you have strong opinions about agricultural revolution.
00:14:35.678 --> 00:14:40.178
You wanna tell us about, uh, thoughts about the agricultural rev- revolution?
00:14:40.432 --> 00:14:40.952
I hate it.
00:14:41.682 --> 00:14:43.092
It's the worst thing that ever happened.
00:14:43.123 --> 00:14:43.773
No, I, uh
00:14:43.900 --> 00:14:44.701
big mistake.
00:14:45.201 --> 00:14:46.951
But s- but the pro- see, this is the problem.
00:14:47.410 --> 00:14:53.721
Someone, one asshole was like,"Hey, maybe we should plant something," and you couldn't contain it after that
00:14:54.023 --> 00:14:54.363
Yeah.
00:14:55.182 --> 00:15:03.352
You know, it's funny because in 100 years when we are all slaves to AIs, and, you know, we're, we'll be slaves in a good way.
00:15:03.352 --> 00:15:07.533
I don't think they'll, like, whip us on a daily basis or anything like that.
00:15:07.543 --> 00:15:10.283
Like, I think they'll just give us mangoes and stuff.
00:15:11.462 --> 00:15:19.373
But we will probably speak fondly of the AI revolution, because I've always thought that humans are...
00:15:20.923 --> 00:15:33.133
We always view change as, as positive, or at least, like, there's a certain way of thinking that's very prevalent that just views cha- change itself as, as positive.
00:15:34.322 --> 00:15:43.283
And so I think in a lot of ways, I think that's sort of how a lot of people view the agricultural revolution, where it was obviously this huge change in the human race.
00:15:43.312 --> 00:15:46.893
Like, people were able to sit around and think for long periods of time.
00:15:47.783 --> 00:16:01.842
But they don't really discuss, like, all the negatives that came about, like the loss of sort of a lot of human inge- ingenuity, a lot of, like, individual, uh, sort of, I don't know.
00:16:02.623 --> 00:16:03.363
I don't know what to call it.
00:16:03.383 --> 00:16:06.423
But y- y- like, there's a lo- a lot of people theorize that before the...
00:16:06.586 --> 00:16:06.917
or?
00:16:07.863 --> 00:16:08.753
W- sorry, what was it?
00:16:08.873 --> 00:16:09.442
What would you say?
00:16:10.602 --> 00:16:10.673
Autonomy.
00:16:10.763 --> 00:16:11.482
Autonomy.
00:16:11.482 --> 00:16:12.052
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:12.052 --> 00:16:30.753
Just, you know, before the agricultural revolution when humans were, uh, more of a hunter-gatherer type species, every individual in the tribe was, like, this awesome, you know, everyone could hunt, everyone could forage, everyone had all these abilities.
00:16:31.602 --> 00:16:41.033
And with the agricultural revolution, there came about this need for people who just, like, worked the field all day, and it was kind of...
00:16:41.469 --> 00:16:41.889
yeah
00:16:42.043 --> 00:16:42.822
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:42.822 --> 00:16:44.712
Now, I can't remember what the theory is called.
00:16:44.712 --> 00:16:45.822
I wanna say it's like the...
00:16:46.822 --> 00:16:53.033
I almost wanna, I think it's called the village idiot theory, but, but maybe, maybe I'm misremembering.
00:16:53.033 --> 00:17:06.843
But anyway, it's this idea that with the agricultural revolution came this ability for soci- societies to kind of support all, you know...
00:17:06.903 --> 00:17:09.893
Like, in the hunter-gatherer society, like, the village idiot would just die.
00:17:10.173 --> 00:17:13.732
Like, they just wouldn't be able to hack it, and they would just get killed by something.
00:17:14.502 --> 00:17:15.772
Which I'm not saying that's a good thing.
00:17:16.833 --> 00:17:25.242
But I'm just saying society completely changes, and you sort of have these different, like, factions that are able to arise, some good, some bad.
00:17:26.510 --> 00:17:33.250
So, but it sounds like what you're saying is now the village idiot can exist.
00:17:33.260 --> 00:17:46.780
Like, it, this, uh, this almost heralds the creation of the v- village idiot because it's like, well now he can just like, I guess gnaw on some like stalk of corn in the corner without needing to like
00:17:47.494 --> 00:17:52.835
Yeah, which I feel like, uh, I feel like I'm implying that that's a bad thing, which I don't think it's a bad thing.
00:17:52.845 --> 00:18:04.375
Like, I think, you know, I'm a big believer in societies that sort of take care of themselves and are able to support, you know, any, all the various needs of all the various individuals.
00:18:05.085 --> 00:18:11.984
I think the primary point is just that with these revolutions, things have a tendency to drastically change.
00:18:11.984 --> 00:18:24.964
Like, I, I actually think with the AI revolution, this notion of, like, a human thinker, you know, like these high-powered humans who are, like, just geniuses, like, really good at thinking.
00:18:24.974 --> 00:18:38.894
Like, I think that that's gonna become less prevalent because I think people are gonna do less thinking, and that's just an example of how our societies might change and how some humans might end up actually living worse lives.
00:18:39.555 --> 00:18:52.914
You know, maybe, maybe most humans will live better lives because AI will bring this infinite wealth or whatever, but some humans will live less fulfilling lives and, and they're-- they won't be able to sort of lean on the strengths that they have.
00:18:54.040 --> 00:18:55.671
I think I see, I think I see what you're saying.
00:18:55.681 --> 00:19:21.724
Like, and like if you'll allow me to reframe and like check if this, this is what your point is, but it's like In a world where AI can think better than 99% of humans, like humans are just gonna think less and they're gonna atrophy in that ability, and that is gonna be a loss on a personal level and on a societal level
00:19:22.058 --> 00:19:22.259
Yeah.
00:19:22.358 --> 00:19:22.568
Yeah.
00:19:22.568 --> 00:19:27.068
We go from the village idiot theorem to the village of idiots theorem,
00:19:27.214 --> 00:19:27.865
Yes.
00:19:27.954 --> 00:19:28.545
Yes
00:19:29.169 --> 00:19:35.358
where literally everyone will just be these kind of like autonomous drones, which maybe that's fine, maybe that's okay.
00:19:35.358 --> 00:19:36.578
But I, I just...
00:19:37.308 --> 00:19:40.088
This goes back to just viewing change as progress.
00:19:40.148 --> 00:19:42.778
It's change is change.
00:19:42.788 --> 00:19:44.088
Like, it brings new things.
00:19:44.088 --> 00:19:45.689
It, it gets rid of old things.
00:19:45.689 --> 00:19:50.019
It change-- It, you know, makes it so some things suck.
00:19:51.439 --> 00:19:51.929
Yeah.
00:19:52.489 --> 00:20:02.638
Well, I, you know, my, my opinion is that the scope of humans' ambitions are just gonna expand.
00:20:02.959 --> 00:20:16.108
Like,'cause n- a-and I watched actually a really good talk at IO about the ch- the changes in engineering, and the guy was talking about, uh, the fact that, like, when you...
00:20:17.048 --> 00:20:20.838
He made an analogy to, like, trees and forests.
00:20:21.169 --> 00:20:26.429
It's like, if you're building a tree, maybe you have time to, like, inspect every leaf.
00:20:26.868 --> 00:20:30.409
But like, if you're building a forest, like, you don't...
00:20:30.409 --> 00:20:32.538
And I'm definitely, like, messing up this.
00:20:32.848 --> 00:20:45.388
But like, if you're, like, the, the s-sh-steward of a forest, you're not gonna have time to, like, in, like, in detail inspect every single leaf in the forest.
00:20:45.398 --> 00:20:48.048
So like, you need to kind of think about...
00:20:48.048 --> 00:20:57.229
And'cause,'cause what he's saying is, like, now the cost to generate code is so much lower, like, reviewing code becomes the bottleneck.
00:20:57.499 --> 00:21:08.108
And, and he didn't, he didn't have answers for all of these problems, but, like, essentially he, he was saying, like,"Well, this is gonna be the scaling limit, reviewing every single line of code.
00:21:08.108 --> 00:21:18.959
And now, like, maybe we need to come up with a, with techniques that don't require human review of every single line of code." Um, and it's an interesting question
00:21:19.744 --> 00:21:32.924
Yeah, no, it really is, and it's kind of-- it is a testament to, you know, to how these industries can just be, like, completely altered with one stroke of, of technological innovation.
00:21:34.214 --> 00:21:35.585
And I'm definitely feeling that.
00:21:35.585 --> 00:21:36.744
I mean, man, I review...
00:21:37.474 --> 00:21:40.154
I feel like my life is just reviewing code these days.
00:21:40.154 --> 00:21:41.075
It's kind of frustrating.
00:21:42.318 --> 00:21:42.719
Yeah.
00:21:43.615 --> 00:21:50.085
But one important point in this chapter, uh, you know, he discusses how ge- general-purpose tech becomes invisible.
00:21:50.744 --> 00:21:57.204
Uh, but the other important point he makes is that general-purpose tech, the development of general-purpose tech is accelerating.
00:21:57.585 --> 00:22:04.775
Like, it just-- It used to be that, you know, every thousand years, humans would come up with general-purpose tech.
00:22:05.005 --> 00:22:09.255
You know, agricultural revolution, writing, language.
00:22:09.494 --> 00:22:11.204
You know, these are-- mathematics.
00:22:11.204 --> 00:22:15.924
Like, these are technologies that humans developed, but over the course of thousands of years.
00:22:16.555 --> 00:22:25.305
Today, it's like, you know, combustion engine or electricity, combustion engine, flight, internet, AI.
00:22:25.335 --> 00:22:29.515
You know, it's just like, it's happening every 10, five to 10 years.
00:22:30.134 --> 00:22:38.815
And, uh, it's, it's, it's at a rate that I feel no one can really fully grapple with it.
00:22:39.644 --> 00:22:46.755
Because as he's, as, uh, Mustafa's pointing out, like, these general-purpose technologies completely reshape society, every single one of them.
00:22:47.255 --> 00:22:58.805
And so, in a world where every five years you have another general-purpose tech, and then with AI working on the Erdos problems, you know, it's gonna be like every two years we have a general-purpose tech.
00:22:59.474 --> 00:23:02.964
All of those technologies completely reshaping society.
00:23:03.335 --> 00:23:05.075
Like, what is that gonna look like?
00:23:05.075 --> 00:23:06.015
It's gonna be insane
00:23:07.471 --> 00:23:15.211
Well, and, and this is I think why he wanted to draw the car as a, as like, as an example.
00:23:15.351 --> 00:23:20.871
Because everything is being adopt-- like it took, it took decades for the car to actually catch on.
00:23:21.151 --> 00:23:25.381
But now, yes, there's more, there's more, uh, general purpose technologies.
00:23:25.611 --> 00:23:29.790
But-- and they're being adopted at a much more rapid pace.
00:23:30.020 --> 00:23:36.191
You know, it's-- if you think about ChatGPT, like, it's like 100 million users over the course of like a month or whatever.
00:23:36.250 --> 00:23:40.361
I forget what the numbers are, but, um, it's something insane like that.
00:23:40.871 --> 00:23:50.941
And actually, it's kind of interesting to think about, like, what does it mean when it's actually agents that are adopting technologies as opposed to humans?
00:23:51.290 --> 00:24:03.250
'Cause that will just like, that will amplify, that will magnify our ability to adopt these new technol-- like they're gonna be created faster, and then AIs are gonna be able to adopt them faster
00:24:03.664 --> 00:24:04.005
Right.
00:24:04.174 --> 00:24:12.375
And find really cool use cases for them, and just immediately, like, implement them within the fabric of our society.
00:24:13.194 --> 00:24:17.295
Um, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a really wild world moving forward.
00:24:17.434 --> 00:24:19.434
Like, I think we truly are entering the future.
00:24:20.845 --> 00:24:46.115
Uh, the, the fact of this chapter though, at least for me, I'm just gonna read this off:"Transistors are now produced in the tens of trillions per second at billionths of a dollar per transistor." He talks about how when the transistor was first developed, one single transistor was, like, huge.
00:24:46.664 --> 00:24:55.765
You know, it was, like, maybe the size of, like, like, six inches long, like, kind of a capsule shape, and it cost, like, hundreds of dollars.
00:24:56.535 --> 00:25:04.684
And now they're being produced tens of trillions per second at billionths of a dollar per transistor, and they're absolutely microscopic.
00:25:04.755 --> 00:25:06.355
They're, like, atoms wide.
00:25:07.325 --> 00:25:08.974
And I just wanted to say-
00:25:09.320 --> 00:25:16.530
kind of the limit of like, they're getting to like, you know, the, the scaling limit of the universe in terms of like how big these are.
00:25:16.840 --> 00:25:19.601
Like, they can't be that many atoms wide at this point
00:25:20.159 --> 00:25:20.578
Exactly.
00:25:20.578 --> 00:25:25.638
Like they put more transistors on a chip and it'll immediately become a black hole,'cause there's just too much crap there.
00:25:25.999 --> 00:25:46.019
There's a, uh, YouTube channel that I really like called Epic Spaceman, and he did a video where he, like, shrunk himself down to the size of a chip, like a, you know, GPU or whatever, and he was, like, flying around on the chip, and it was awesome.
00:25:46.028 --> 00:25:46.578
Like, it was...
00:25:46.588 --> 00:25:53.689
I- it's such a good video to kinda show, like, how fucking crazy this technology
00:25:53.817 --> 00:25:56.547
Was that the collab with, uh, Marquez Brownlee?
00:25:58.340 --> 00:26:09.260
Maybe, but I, I probably just completely forgot about Marcus Brownlee'cause I was, like, so just enraptured with this, like, just description of these chips.
00:26:09.510 --> 00:26:12.171
Th- there was actually a series of videos which I think I've mentioned.
00:26:12.191 --> 00:26:14.961
I feel like I'm just, like, shilling, you know, YouTube videos now.
00:26:14.961 --> 00:26:19.631
But there was that other Veritasium one about ASML, the, you
00:26:19.671 --> 00:26:20.090
Mm-hmm.
00:26:20.191 --> 00:26:20.810
Yes
00:26:20.901 --> 00:26:27.411
country that, like, drops, like, blobs of, like, I don't know, like, tin.
00:26:27.431 --> 00:26:27.820
Yeah.
00:26:28.181 --> 00:26:29.951
I almost said tungsten, but I knew that was wrong.
00:26:30.181 --> 00:26:39.310
And then, like, zaps them with a laser at, like, four billion degrees so that they explode and, like, create this weird wavelength of light so that they can etch chips.
00:26:39.711 --> 00:26:42.631
Like, it-- The technology is utterly insane.
00:26:42.760 --> 00:26:43.221
Like, it's...
00:26:43.240 --> 00:26:52.361
When you hear about it, you're like,"No, that's, like, something fucking Jules Verne is writing about." Like, it just does not compute that there is an actual factory doing this.
00:26:53.330 --> 00:26:54.030
And, and it's with the
00:26:54.126 --> 00:27:04.826
they need to create this, like, extremely powerful photons of, of ultra UV light, high, you know, high energy UV light.
00:27:04.967 --> 00:27:05.517
Exactly.
00:27:05.517 --> 00:27:08.547
An exploding tin is like the one process
00:27:08.974 --> 00:27:10.934
That's the easiest way to do it apparently.
00:27:11.085 --> 00:27:13.234
And then you had two, said about something about the precision?
00:27:13.990 --> 00:27:14.471
Oh, yeah.
00:27:14.471 --> 00:27:24.191
Just the, you know,'cause they're exploding this tin, just like you're saying, to produce this light so that they can etch a chip, and these chips are etched, just like we mentioned, atoms thick.
00:27:24.631 --> 00:27:37.020
So you need to explode this tin, which is a very chaotic process, but then you need to focus the light that's produced from exploding the tin down into this absolutely precise thing.
00:27:37.090 --> 00:27:45.711
You know, we're talking like the width of a human hair, like on the moon, you know, uh, viewed from Earth or whatever.
00:27:45.711 --> 00:27:52.941
And it's, it's just like, uh, it's just completely unimaginable, like what humans have achieved.
00:27:54.191 --> 00:27:55.310
And, uh, yeah, it's amazing.
00:27:56.527 --> 00:27:57.007
Yeah.
00:27:57.326 --> 00:27:59.757
No, dude, uh, that is, that is true.
00:27:59.896 --> 00:28:01.027
It is, it is incredible.
00:28:01.047 --> 00:28:02.787
But like they keep on, they keep on doing it.
00:28:02.807 --> 00:28:09.426
Like, uh, and this is the thing, like they've got new technologies that they're, that they're proliferating all over us
00:28:09.830 --> 00:28:10.090
Yeah.
00:28:11.121 --> 00:28:12.530
But maybe that's a good place to end.
00:28:12.540 --> 00:28:23.330
I mean, this, this chapter was just a good kind of reminder as to how amazing humans are at developing these innovations and then proliferating them across society.
00:28:23.901 --> 00:28:24.211
Yeah.
00:28:24.211 --> 00:28:29.671
And then, uh, in the next chapter we'll talk about, uh, can we, can we actually contain them?
00:28:29.681 --> 00:28:33.040
Like, is there a way to stop the endless proli- proliferation?
00:28:33.451 --> 00:28:35.351
Well, we'll talk about that next time.
00:28:36.285 --> 00:28:36.494
All right.
00:28:36.525 --> 00:28:36.924
See you, Matt
00:28:37.903 --> 00:28:38.643
See you, John
