Michael Stevens: Vsauce | Lex Fridman Podcast #58
the following is a conversation with Michael Stevens the creator of Vsauce one of the most popular educational YouTube channels in the world with over 15 million subscribers and over 1.7 billion views his videos often ask and answer questions that are both profound and entertaining spanning topics from physics to psychology popular questions include what if everyone jumped at once or what if the Sun disappeared or why are things creepy or what if the earth stopped spinning as part of his channel he created three seasons of minefield a series that explored human behavior his curiosity and passion are contagious and inspiring to millions of people and so as an educator has impacted contribution to the world is truly immeasurable this is the artificial intelligence podcast if you enjoy it subscribe I need to give five stars on a podcast support on patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter at lex Friedman's both fri DM aen i recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction i'll do one or two minutes after introducing the episode and never any ads in the middle that break the flow of the conversation I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience this show is presented by cash app the number one finance app in the App Store I personally use cash app to send money to friends but you can also use it to buy sell and deposit Bitcoin in just seconds cash app also has a new investing feature you can buy fractions of a stock say $1 worth no matter what the stock price is brokerage services are provided by cash up investing a subsidiary of square and member CIBC I'm excited to be working with cash app to support one of my favorite organizations called first best known for their first robotics and Lego competitions they educate and inspire hundreds of thousands of students in over 110 countries and have a perfect rating and Charity Navigator which means the donated monies used in maximum effectiveness when you get cash app from the App Store Google Play and use code and Lex podcast you'll get $10 and cash app will also donate $10 to the first which again is an organization that I've personally seen inspired girls and boys to dream of engineering a better world and now here's my conversation with Michael Stevens one of your deeper interests is psychology understanding human behavior you've pointed out how messy studying human behavior is and it's far from the scientific rigor of something like physics for example how do you think who can take psychology from where it's been in the 20th century to something more like what the physicists theoretical physicists are doing something precise something rigorous well we we could do it by finding the physical foundations of psychology right if if all of our emotions and moods and feelings and behaviors are the result of mechanical behaviors of atoms and molecules in our brains then can we find correlations perhaps like chaos makes that really difficult and the uncertainty principle and all these things like we can't know the position and velocity of every single you know quantum state in a brain probably but I think that if we you know can get to that point with psychology then we can start to think about consciousness in a physical and and mathematical way when we ask questions like well what is self reference how can you think about yourself thinking what are some mathematical structures that could bring that about there's ideas of in terms of consciousness and breaking it down into a physics there's ideas of pants like ism where people believe that whatever consciousness is is a fundamental part of reality it's almost like a physics law do you think what's your views on consciousness do you think it has this this deep part of reality or is it something that's deeply human and constructed by us humans start nice and light yeah an easy easy I think I asked you today has actually proven answer so yeah hypothesis so yeah I mean I should clarify this is all speculation yeah and I'm not an expert in any of these talk to topics and I'm not God but I think that consciousness is probably um something that can be fully explained within the laws of physics I think that our you know bodies and brains and and the universe and and at the quantum level is so rich and complex I'd be surprised if we couldn't find a room for consciousness there and why should we be conscious why are we aware of ourselves that is a very strange and interesting and important question and I think for the next few thousand years we're going to have to believe in answers purely on faith but my guess is that we will find that you know within the configuration space of possible arrangements of the universe there are some that contain memories of others literally uh Julian Barbour calls them time capsule states where you're like yeah not only do I have a scratch on my arm but also this state of the universe also contains a memory in my head of being scratched by my cat three days ago and for some reason those kinds of states of the universe are more plentiful or more likely when you say those states the ones would that contain memories of its past or ones that contain memories of its past and have degrees of consciousness just the first part because the I think the consciousness then emerges from the fact that a state of the universe that contains fragments or memories of other states is one where you're going to feel like there's time you're going to feel like yeah things in the happened in the past and I don't know what'll happen in the future because these states don't contain information about the future for some reason those kind of states are either more common more plentiful or you could use the anthropic principle just say well they're extremely rare but until you are in one or if you are in one then you can ask questions like you you're asking me on this podcast slide questions but yeah it's like what why are we conscious well because if we weren't we wouldn't be asking why we were you've kind of implied that you have a sense again hypothesis theorizing that the universe is deterministic what's your thoughts about freewill do you think of the universe is deterministic in a sense that it's unrolling in particular like there's a it's operating under a specific set of physical laws and when you have to set the initial conditions it will unroll in the exact same way in our particular line of the universe every time that is a very useful way to think about the universe it's done as well it's brought us to the moon it's brought us to where we are today right I would not say that I believe in determinism in that kind of an absolute form or actually I just don't care maybe it's true but I'm not gonna live my life like it is what in your son's because you've studied kind of how we humans think of the world what's in your view is the difference between our perception like how we think the world is in reality do you think there's a huge gap there like we delude ourselves as the whole thing is an illusion just everything about human psychology the way we see things and how things actually are all the things you've studied what's your sense how big is the gap between reality well sin purely speculative I think that we will never know the answer we cannot know the answer there is no experiment to find an answer to that question everything we experience is an event in our brain when I look at a cat I'm not even I can't prove that there's a cat there all I am experiencing is the perception of a cat inside my own brain I am only a witness to the events of my mind I think it is very useful to infer that if I witness the event of cat in my head it's because I'm looking at a cat that is literally there and has its own feelings and motivations and should be pet and given food and water and love I think that's the way you should live your life but whether or not we live in a simulation I'm a brain-in-a-vat I don't know and do care mmm I don't really well I care because it's a fascinating question and it's a fantastic way to get people excited about all kinds of topics physics psychology consciousness philosophy but at the end of the day what would the difference be if you the cat needs to be fed at the end of the day otherwise it'll be a dead cat right but if it's not even a real cat then it's just like a video game cat and right so what's the difference between killing a a digital cat in a video game because of neglect versus a real cat it seems very different to us psychologically like I don't really feel bad about oh my gosh I forgot to feed my Tamagotchi right but I would feel terrible if I forgot to feed my actual cats so can you just touch on the topic of simulation do you find this thought experiment that we're living in a simulation useful inspiring a constructive in any kind of way do you think it's ridiculous do you think it could be true or is it just a useful thought experiment I think it is extremely useful as a thought experiment because it makes sense to everyone especially as we see virtual reality and computer games getting more and more complex you're not talking to an audience in like Newton's time where you're like imagine a clock that it has mechanics in it that are so complex that it can create love and everyone's like no but today you really start to feel you know man at what point is this little robot friend of mine gonna be like someone I don't want to cancel plans with yeah you know and so it's a great the thought experiment of do we live in a simulation am i a brain and a bat that has just been given electrical impulses from some nefarious other beans so that I believe that I live on earth and that I have a body and all of this and the fact that you can't prove it either way is a fantastic way to introduce people to some of the deepest questions so you mentioned a little buddy that you would want to cancel an appointment with so that's a lot of our conversations that's where my research is artificial intelligence and I apologize but you're such a fun person to ask these big questions with well I hope I could give some answers that are interesting well because because of you've sharpened your brain's ability to explore some of the most some of the questions then many signs is actually afraid of even touching which is fascinating and I think you're in that sense ultimately a great scientist through this process of sharpening your brain well I don't know if I am a scientist I think you know science is a way of knowing and there are a lot of questions I investigate that are not scientific questions on like minefield we have definitely done scientific experiments and studies that had hypotheses and all that but you know not to be too like Precious about what does the word science mean but I think I would just describe myself as curious and I hope that that curiosity is contagious so to you the scientific method is deeply connected to science because your curiosity took you to asking questions to me asking a good question even if you feel society feels that it's not a question within the reach of science currently to me that asking the question is the biggest step of the scientific process the scientific method is the second part and that may be what traditionally is called science but to me asking the questions being brave enough to ask the questions being curious and not constrained by what you're supposed to think is is just true or what it means to be a scientist to me it's certainly a huge part of what it means to be a human if I were to say you know what I don't believe in forces I think that when I push on a massive object a ghost leaves my body and enters the object I'm pushing and these ghosts happen to just get really lazy when they're around massive things and that's why F equals MA oh and by the way the laziness of the ghost is in proportion to the mass of the object so boom prove me wrong every experiment well you can never find the ghost and so none of that theory is scientific but once I start saying can I see the ghost Why should there be a ghost and if there aren't ghosts what might I expect and I start to do different tests to see is this falsifiable are there things that should happen if there are ghosts or things that shouldn't happen and do they you know what do I observe now I'm thinking scientifically I don't think of science as wow a picture of a black hole that's just a photograph that's an image that's data that's a sensory and reception experience science is how we got that and how we understand it and how we believe in it and how we reduce our uncertainty around what it means but I would say I'm deeply within the scientific community and and sometimes disheartened by the elitism of the thinking sort of not allowing yourself to think outside the box so allowing the possibility of going against the conventions asides I think is is a beautiful part some of the greatest scientists in history I don't know I I'm impressed by scientists every day and revolutions in our knowledge of the world occur only under very special circumstances it is very scary to challenge conventional thinking and and and risky because let's go back to elitism and ego right if you just say you know what I believe in the spirits of my body and all forces are actually created by invisible creatures that that that transfer themselves between objects if you ridicule every other theory and say that you're what you're you're correct then ego gets involved and you just don't go anywhere but the fundamentally the question of well what is a force isn't incredibly important we need to have that conversation but it needs to be done in this very political way of like let's be respectful of everyone and let's realize that we're all learning together and not shutting out other people and so when you look at a lot of revolutionary ideas they were not accepted right away and you know Galileo had a couple of problems with the authorities and later thinkers Descartes was like all right look I kind of agree with Galileo but I'm gonna have to not say that I'll have to create and invent and write different things that keep me from being in trouble but we still slowly made progress revolutions are difficult in all forms and certainly in science before we get to AI on topic of revolutionary ideas let me ask on a reddit AMA you said that is the earth flat is one of the favorite questions you've ever answer yeah speaking of revolutionary ideas so your video on that people should definitely watch is really fascinating can you elaborate why you enjoyed answering this question so much yeah well it's a long story I remember a long time ago I was living in New York at the time so had to have been like 2009 or something I visited the Flat Earth forums and this was before the Flat Earth theories became as sort of mainstream as they are I'm sorry to ask the dumb question forums online forums yeah okay the Flat Earth Society I don't know if it's con org but went there and I was reading you know their ideas and how they responded to typical criticisms of well the earth isn't flat because what about this and I could not tell and I mentioned this in my video I couldn't tell how many of these community members actually believed the earth was flat or were just trolling and I realized that the fascinating thing is how do we know anything and what makes for a good belief versus a maybe not so tenable or good belief and so that's really what my video about earth being flat is about it's about look there are a lot of reasons the earth is probably not flat but a Flat Earth believer can respond to every single one of them but it's all in an ad hoc way and all of these all their rebuttals aren't necessarily gonna form a cohesive noncontradictory whole and I believe that's the episode where I talk about Occam's razor and Newton's flaming laser sword and then I say well you know what wait a second we know that space contracts as you move and so to a particle moving near the speed of light towards Earth earth would be flattened in the direction of that particles travel so to them earth is flat like we need to be you know really generous to even wild ideas because they're all thinking they're all the communication of ideas and what else can it mean to be a human yeah and I think I'm a huge fan of the Flat Earth theory quote-unquote in the sense that to me feels harmless to explore some of the questions of what it means to believe something what it means to explore the edge of science and so on it's because it's a harm it's to me nobody gets hurt whether the earth is flat or round not literally but I mean intellectually when we're just having a conversation that said again to elitism I find that scientists roll their eyes way too fast on the Flat Earth the kind of dismissal that I see to this you of an ocean they haven't like sat down and say what are the arguments they're being proposed and this is why these arguments incorrect so this is you know that should be something that scientists should always do even to the most sort of ideas that seem ridiculous so I like this is almost it's almost my test when I ask people what they think about Flat Earth theory to see how quickly they roll their eyes well yeah I mean let me go on record yeah and say that the earth is not flat it is a three-dimensional spheroid however I don't know that and it has not been proven signs doesn't prove anything it just reduces uncertainty could the earth actually be flat extremely unlikely yes extremely unlikely and so it is a ridiculous notion if we care about how probable and certain our ideas might be but I think it's incredibly important to talk about science in that way and to not resort to well it's true it's true in the same way that a mathematical theorem is true and I think we're kind of like being pretty pedantic about defining this stuff but like sure I could take a rocket ship out and I could sorbets earth and look at it and it would look like a ball right but I still can't prove that I'm not living in a simulation that i'm not a brain-in-a-vat that this isn't all an elaborate ruse created by some technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization right so there's always some doubt and that's fine that's exciting and I think that kind of doubt practically speaking is useful when you start talking about quantum mechanics or string theory sort of it helps to me that kind of little adds a little spice into the thinking process of scientists so I mean just I just as a thought experiment your video kind of okay say the earth is flat what would the forces when you walk about this flat or earth feel like - the human that's a really nice thought experiment to think about right cuz what's really nice about it is that it's it's a funny thought experiment but you actually wind up accidentally learning a whole lot about gravity and about relativity and geometry and I think that's really the goal of what I'm doing I'm not trying to like convince people that the earth is round I feel like you either believe that it is or you don't and like that's you know how can I change that yeah what I can do is change how you think and how you are introduced to important concepts like well how does gravity operate oh it's all about the center of mass of an object so right on a sphere we're all pulled towards the middle essentially the centroid geometrically but on a disk ooh you're gonna be pulled at a weird angle if you're out near the edge and that stuff's fascinating yeah and to me that's that that was that that particular video opened my eyes even more to what gravity is it's just a really nice visualization to love because you always imagine gravity was spheres with masses that are spheres yeah and imagining gravity on masses that are not spherical some some other shape but in here a plate a flat object is really interesting it makes you really kind of visualizing it they're much a way the force yeah even if a disc the size of Earth would be impossible I think anything larger than like the moon basically needs to be a sphere because gravity will round it out so you can't have a teacup the size of Jupiter right there's a great book about a teacup in the universe that highly recommend I don't remember the author I forget her name but it's a wonderful book so look it up I think it's called teacup in the universe still linked on this point briefly your videos are generally super people love them right if you look at the sort of number of likes versus dislikes it's this measure of YouTube right is incredible and as do I but this particular Flat Earth video has more dislikes that than usual what what are you on that topic in general what's your sense how big is the community not just who believes in Flat Earth but sort of the anti scientific community that naturally distrust scientists in a way that's that's not an open-minded way like really just distrust scientists like they're bought by some place they're kind of mechanism of the some kind of bigger system that's trying to manipulate him ins what's your sense of the size of that community you're one of the sort of great educators in the world that educates people on the exciting power of science so you're kind of up against this community what's your sense of it i I really have no idea I haven't looked at the likes and dislikes on the Flat Earth video and so I would wonder if it has a greater percentage of dislikes than usual is that because of people disliking it because they you know think that it's a video about earth being flat and they find that ridiculous and they just like it without even really watching much do they wish that I was more like dismissive of this latter theories yeah that's awesome I know there are a lot of response videos that kind of go through the episode and are pro Flat Earth mm-hmm but I don't know if there's a larger community of unorthodox thinkers today than there have been in the past okay and I just want to not lose them I want them to keep listening and thinking and by calling them all you know idiots or something like that is no good because how idiotic are they really I mean the earth isn't a sphere at all like we know that it's an oblate spheroid and that in and of itself is really interesting and I investigated that in which way is down where I'm like really down does not point towards the center of the earth it's it points in a different direction depending on what's underneath you and what's above you and what's around you the whole universe is is tugging on me and then you also show that gravity is non-uniform work across the globe like if you just gues thought experiment if you build a bridge all the way and all the way across the earth and then just knock out its pillars what would happen yeah and you described how it would be like a very chaotic unstable thing that's happening because gravity is non-uniform all throughout the earth yeah in small spaces like the ones we work in we can essentially assume that gravity is uniform but it's not it is weaker the further you are from the earth and it also is going to be it's it's radially pointed towards the middle of the earth so a really large object will feel tidal forces because of that non-uniform this and we can take advantage of that with satellites right gravitational induced torque it's a great way to align your satellite without having to use fuel or any kind of you know engine so let's jump back to it artificial intelligence what's your thought of the state of where we are at currently with artificial intelligence and what do you think it takes to build human level or superhuman level intelligence I don't know what intelligence means that's my biggest question at the moment and it's I think it's cuz my instinct is always to go well what are the foundations here of our discussion what does it mean to be intelligent how do we measure the intelligence of an artificial machine or a program or something can we say that humans are intelligent because there's also a fascinating field of how do you measure human intelligence of course but if we just take that for granted saying that the whatever this fuzzy intelligence thing we're talking about humans kind of have it what would be a good test for you for touring develop a test that's natural language conversation would that impress you a chatbot that you'd want to hang out and have a beer with of you know for a bunch of hours or have dinner plans with with is that a good test natural energy conversation is there something else that would impress you or is that also to differ yeah I'm pretty much impressed by everything well I think if Roomba if there was a chat bot that was like incredibly and I don't know really had a personality and I if I didn't be the the Turing test right like if I'm unable to tell that it's not another person but then I was shown a bunch of wires and mechanical components and then it was like that's actually what's you're talking to I don't know if I would feel that guilty destroying it I would feel guilty because clearly it's well-made and it's a really cool thing it's like destroying a really cool car or something but I would not feel like I was a murderer so yeah at what point would I start to feel that way and and this is such a subjective psychological question if you give it movement or if you have it mmm act as though or perhaps really feel pain as I destroy it and scream and resist then I'd feel that yeah that's beautifully put and let's just say act like it's in pain so if you just have a robot that it's not screams just like moans in pain if you kick it yeah that immediately just puts it in a class that we humans it becomes it we anthropomorphize it almost immediately it becomes human yeah that psychology question as opposed to sort of a physics question right I think that's a really good instinct to have you know if the robot screams screams and and and moans even if you don't believe that it has the mental experience the qualia of pain and suffering I think it's still a good instinct to say you know what I'd rather not hurt it the problem is that instant can get us in trouble because then robots can manipulate that and you know there's different kinds of robots as robots like the Facebook and the YouTube algorithm that recommends the video and they can manipulate in the same kind of way well let me ask you just to stick on artificial intelligence for a second do you have worries about existential threats from AI or extension tests from other technologies like nuclear weapons that could potentially destroy life on Earth or damage it to a very significant degree yeah of course I do especially the weapons that we create there's all kinds of famous ways to think about this and one is that Wow what if we don't see advanced alien civilizations because of the danger of Technology what if we reach a point and I think there's a channel-body to cheese I wish I remember the name of the channel but he delves into this this kind of limit of maybe once you discover radioactivity and its power you've reached this important hurdle and the reason that the skies are so empty is that no one's ever like managed to survive as a civilization once they have that destructive power and when it comes to AI I'm not really very worried because I think that there are plenty of other people that are already worried enough and oftentimes these worries are just they just get in the way of progress and they're there questions that we should address later and you know I think I talked about this in my interview with the self-driving autonomous vehicle guy as I think it was a bonus scene from the trolley problem episode and I'm like wow what should a car do if like this really weird contrived scenario happens where it has to like swerve and like save the driver but kill a kid and he's like well you know what would a human do and if we resist technological progress because we're worried about all of these little issues then it gets in the way and we shouldn't avoid those problems but we shouldn't allow them to be stumbling blocks - advancement so the you know folks like Sam Harris or Elon Musk are saying that we're not worried enough so worried should not paralyze technological progress but we're sort of marching technologies marching forward without the key scientists the developing and technology worrying about the overnight having some effects that would be very detrimental to society so the push back on your thought of the idea that there's enough people worrying about it Elon Musk says there's not enough people worrying about it I think that's the kind of balances you know it's like folks to who really focused on nuclear deterrence are saying there's not enough people worried about nuclear deterrence right so it's an interesting question of what is a good threshold of people to worry about these and if it's too many people that are worried you're right it'll be like the the press would over report on it and there'll be technological halt technology progress if not enough then we can march straight ahead into that abyss that human beings might be destined for with the progress of technology yeah I don't know what the right balance is of how many people should be worried and how worried should they be but we're always worried about new technology you know we know that Plato was worried about the written word he's like we shouldn't teach people to write because then they won't use their minds to remember things there there have been concerns over technology and its advancement since the beginning of recorded history and so you know I think however these conversations are really important to have because again we learn a lot about ourselves if we're really scared of some kind of AI like coming into being that is conscious or whatever and and can self-replicate we already do that every day it's called humans being born they're not artificial they're they're they're humans but they're intelligent and I don't want to live in a world where we're worried about babies being born because what if they become evil right what if they become mean people what if they what if they're thieves maybe we should just like what not have babies born like maybe we shouldn't create AI it's like you know we will want to have safeguards in place yeah in the same way that we know look a kid could be born that becomes some kind of evil person but we have loss right and it's possible that with advantage in etics and general be able to you know it's a scary thought to say that you know the this my child if born would be would have an 83% chance of being a psychopath right like being able to if it's something genetic if there's some sort of and what to use that information what to do with that information is a difficult ethical yeah I'd like to find an answer that isn't well let's not have them live you know I'd like to find an answer that is well all human life is worthy and if you have an 83% chance of becoming a psychopath well you still deserve dignity yeah and you still deserve to be treated well and a you still have rights at least at this part of the world at least in America there's a respect for individual life in that way that's well to me but again I'm in this bubble is a beautiful thing but there's other cultures or individual human life is not that important that we're a society so I was born in Soviet Union where the strength of nation and society together is more important than the any one particular individual there's an interesting also notion the stories we tell ourselves I like the one where individuals matter but it's unclear that that was what the future holds well yeah and I mean let me even throw this out like what is artificial intelligence how can it be artificial I really think that we get pretty obsessed and stuck on the idea that there is some thing that is a wild human a pure human organism without technology but I don't think that's a real thing I think that humans and human technology are one or Gizem look at my glasses okay if an alien came down and saw me would they necessarily know that this is an invention that I don't grow these organically from my body they wouldn't know that right away and the written word and spoons and cups these are all pieces of technology we are not alone as an organism and so the technology we create whether it be video games or artificial intelligence that can self-replicate and hate us it's actually all the same organism I when you're in a car where do you end in the car begin it seems like a really easy question to answer but the more you think about it the more you realize wow we are in this symbiotic relationship with our inventions and there are plenty of people who are worried about it and there should be but it's it's inevitable and I think the even just us think of ourselves as individual intelligences maybe silly notion because you know it's much better to think of the entirety of human civilization living all living organs on earth as a single living organism right as a single intelligent creature because you're right everything's intertwined everything is deeply connected so we mention Elon Musk see you're a curious lover of science what do you think of the efforts that Elon Musk is doing with space exploration with electric vehicles with autopilot sort of getting into the space of autonomous vehicles was boring under la and neural link trying to communicate brain machine interfaces communicate between machines and human brains well it's really inspiring I mean look at the fandom that he's amassed it's it's not common for someone like that to have such a following until you're a nerd yeah so it's really it's really exciting but I also think that a lot of responsibility comes with that kind of power so like if I met him I would love to hear how he feels about the responsibility he has when when there our people who are such a fan of your ideas and your dreams and share them so closely with you you have a lot of power and he didn't always have that you know he wasn't born as Elon Musk's well he was but well he was named that later but the point is that that that I I want to know the psychology of becoming a figure like him well I don't even know how to phrase the question right but it's a question about what do you do when you were you're following your fans become so you know large that it's almost bigger than you and how do you how do you responsibly manage that and maybe it doesn't worry him at all and that's fine too but I'd be really curious and I think there are a lot of people that go through this when they realize whoa there are a lot of eyes on me there are a lot of people who really take what I say very earnestly and and take it to heart and will defend me and who that's that's some that that can be dangerous and and you have to be responsible with it both in terms of impact in society and psychologically for the individual just just the the burden psychologically Annie on yeah yeah how does he how does he think about that part of his persona well let me throw that right back at you because in some ways you're just a funny guy that gotten a humongous following a funny guy with a curiosity mm-hmm you've got a huge following how do you psychologically deal with the responsibility in many ways you ever reach in many ways bigger than you are musk what is your what is the burden that you feel in educating being one of the biggest educators in the world where everybody's listening to you and actually everybody like that most of the world that uses YouTube for educational material trust you as a source of good strong scientific thinking it's a burden and I try to approach it with a lot of humility and sharing like I'm not out there doing a lot of scientific experiments I am sharing the work of real scientists and I'm celebrating their work and the way that they think and the power of curiosity but I want to make it clear at all times that like look you know we don't know all the answers and I don't think we're ever going to reach a point where we're like wow and there you go that's the universe it's this equation you plug in some conditions or whatever and you do the math and you know what's gonna happen tomorrow I don't think we're gonna reach that point but I I think that there is a tendency to sometimes believe in science and become elitist and become I don't know hard when in reality it should humble you and make you feel smaller I think there's something very beautiful about feeling very very small and very weak and to feel that you need other people hmm so I try to keep that in mind and say look thanks for watching Vsauce is not I'm not Vsauce you are when I start the episodes I say hey Vsauce Michael here Vsauce and Michaels are actually a different thing in my mind I don't know if that's always clear but yeah I have to approach it that way because it's not about me yeah so it's not even you're not feeling the responsibility you're just sort of plugging into this big thing that is scientific exploration of our reality and you're a voice that represents a bunch but you're just plugging into this big Vsauce ball that others millions of others have plugged into yeah I'm just hoping to encourage curiosity and you know we're responsible thinking and an embracement of doubt and being okay with that so next week talking to Chris Osgood row I'm not sure if you familiar who he is but he's the VP of engineering head of the quote unquote YouTube algorithm this search and Discovery's yeah let me ask first high level do you have do you have a question for him that if you can get an ounce honest answer that you would ask but more generally how do you think about the YouTube algorithm that drives some of the motivation behind not know some of the design decisions you make as you ask and answer some of the questions you do how would you improve this algorithm in your mind in general so just the what would you ask him and outside of that how would you like to see the algorithm improve well I think of the algorithm as a mirror it reflects what people put in and we don't always like what we see in that mirror from the individual mirror to the individual Meritor of the society both in the aggregate it's reflecting back what people on average want to watch and when you see things being recommended to you it's reflecting back what it thinks you want to see and specifically I would guess that it's not just what you want to see but what you will click on and what you will watch some of and stay on YouTube because of I don't think that is all me guessing but I don't think that YouTube cares if you only watch like a second of a video as long as the next thing you do is open another video if you close the app or close the site that's a problem for them because they're not a subscription platform they're not like look you're giving us 20 bucks a month no matter what so who cares they need you to watch and spend time there and see ads so what one of the things I'm curious about whether they do consider longer term sort of develop you your longer-term development as a human being which I think ultimately will make you feel better about using YouTube in the long term and allowing you to stick with it for longer because even if you feed the dopamine rush in the short-term and you keep clicking on cat videos the eventually you sort of wake up like from a drug and say I need to quit this so I wonder how much they're trying to optimize for the long term because when I look at the you know your videos aren't and sort of no offense but they're not the most clickable they're both the most clickable and I feel I watch the entire thing and I feel a better human after I watch it right so like they're not for just optimizing for the click ability is I hope so my thought is how do you think of it and this would affect your own content like how deep you go how profound you explore the directions and so on I I've been really lucky in that I don't worry too much about the algorithm I mean look at my thumbnails I don't really go too wild with them and with minefield where I'm in partnership with YouTube on the thumbnails I'm often like let's pull this back let's be mysterious but usually I'm just trying to do what everyone else is not doing so if everyone's doing crazy Photoshop kind of thumbnails I'm like what if the thumbnails just align yeah and what if the title is just a word yeah and I I kind of feel like all of the Vsauce channels of cultivating an audience that expects that and so they would rather Jake make a video that's just called stains then one called I explored stains is shocking yeah but there are other audiences out there that want that and you know I think most people kind of we don't want what you see the algorithm favoring which is mainstream traditional celebrity and news kind of information I mean that's what makes YouTube really different than other streaming platforms no one's like what's going on in the world I'll open up Netflix to find out but you do open up Twitter to find that out you open up Facebook you can open up YouTube because you'll see that the trending videos are like what happened amongst the traditional mainstream people in different industries and that's what's being shown and it's it's not necessarily YouTube saying we want that to be what you see it's that that's what people click on when they see ariana grande you know reads a love letter from like her high school sweetheart they're like I want to see that and when they see a video from me that's got some lines in math and it's called law and causes they're like well I mean that I'm just on the bus like I don't have time to dive into a whole lesson so you know before get super mad at YouTube you should say really they're just reflecting back human behavior is there something you would improve about the algorithm knowing of course that as far as we're concerned it's a black box or don't know how it works right and I don't think that even anyone at YouTube really knows what it's doing they know what they've tweaked but then it learns I think that it learns and it decides how to behave and sometimes there the YouTube employees are left going I don't know maybe we should like change the value of how much it you know worries about watch time and maybe it should worry more about something I don't know but I mean I would like to see I don't know what they're doing and not doing well is there a conversation that you think they should be having just internally whether they're having it or not is there something should they be thinking about the long-term future should they be thinking about educational content and whether that's educating about what just happened in the world today news or educational content like what you're providing which is asking big to have timeless questions about how the way the world works well it's interesting like what should they think about because it's called YouTube not our tube and if that's why I think they have so many phenomenal educational creators yes you don't have shows like three blue one brown or physics girl or Looking Glass universe or up an atom or brain scoop or I mean I could go on and on they aren't on amazon prime and netflix and and they don't have Commission shows from those platforms it's all organically happening because there are people out there that want to share their passion for learning that want to share their curiosity and YouTube could you know promote those kinds of shows more but like first of all they probably wouldn't get as many clicks and YouTube needs to make sure that the average user is always clicking and staying on the site they could still promote it more for the good of society but then we're making some really weird claims about what's good for society because I think that cat videos are also an incredibly important part of what it means to be a human I mentioned this quote before from unamuno about look I've seen a cat estimate distances and calculate a jump you know more often and I've seen a cat cry and so things that that play with our emotions and make us feel things can be cheesy and can feel cheap but like man that's very human and so even the dumbest vlog is still so important that I don't think it I have a better claim to take its spot than it has to have that spot so it puts a mirror to us the beautiful parts the ugly parts the shallow parts the Jeep ours you're right what I would like to see is you know I miss the days when engaging with content on YouTube helped push it into my subscribers timelines it used to be that when I liked a video say from veritasium it would show up in the feed on the front page of the app or the website of my subscribers and I knew that if I liked a video I could send it a hundred thousand views or more that no longer is true but I think that was a good user experience when I subscribe to someone when I'm following them I want to see more of what they like I want them to also curate the feed for me and I think that Twitter and Facebook are doing that and also some ways that are kind of annoying but I would like that to happen more and I think we would see communities being stronger on YouTube if it was that way instead of YouTube going well technically Michael like this veritasium video but people are way more likely to click on carpool karaoke so I don't even care who they are just given that not saying anything against carpool karaoke that is a extremely important part of our society what it means to be a human on earth you know but I'll say it sucks but uh yeah but a lot of people would disagree with you and they should be able to see as much of that as they want yes and even people who don't think they like it should still be really aware of it because it's such an important thing and such an influential thing but yeah I just wish that like new channels I discover and that I subscribe to I wish that my subscribers found out about that because especially in the education community a rising tide floats all boats if you watch a video from number file you're just more likely to want to watch an episode from me whether it be on Vsauce one or ding it's not it's not competitive in the way that traditional TV was where it's like well if you tuned in to that show it means you're not watching mine because they both air at the same time so helping each other out through collaborations takes a lot of work but just through engaging commenting on their videos liking their videos subscribing to them whatever that I would love to see become easier and more powerful so a quick and impossibly deep question last question about mortality you've spoken about death as an interesting topic do you think about your own mortality yeah every day it's really scary so what do you think is the meaning of life that mortality makes very explicit so why are you here on earth Michael what's the point of this whole thing what you know what does mortality in the context of the whole universe make you realize about yourself just you Michael Stevens well it makes me realize that I am destined to become an ocean I'm destined to become a memory and we can extend life I think there's really exciting things being done to extend life but we still don't know how to like you know protect you from some accident that could happen you know some unforeseen thing maybe we could like save my connectome and like recreate my consciousness digitally but even that is could it could be lost if it's stored on a physical medium or something so basically I just think that embracing and realizing how cool it is that like some day I will just be an idea and there won't be a Michael anymore that can be like no that's not what I meant it'll just be what people like they have to guess what I meant and they'll remember me and how I live on and as that memory you will will maybe not even be who I wanted to be but there's something powerful about that and there's something powerful about letting future people run the show themselves I think I I'm glad to get out of their way at some point and say all right it's your world now so you the physical entity michael has have ripple effects in the space of ideas that far out lives you yeah in ways you can't control but it's nevertheless fascinating to think I mean especially with you you can imagine an alien species when they finally arrive and destroy all of us would watch your videos to try to figure out what what were the questions but even if they didn't you know I still think that there will be ripples like when I say memory I don't specifically mean people remember my name and my birthdate and have like there's a photo of me on Wikipedia like all that can be lost but I still would hope that people ask questions and and and teach concepts in some of the ways that I have found useful and satisfying even they don't know that I was the one who tried to popularize it that's fine but if Earth was completely destroyed like burnt to a crisp everything on it today what would the universe wouldn't care like Jupiter's not gonna go oh no and that could happen because so we do however have the power to you know launch things into space to try to extend how long our memory exists and what I mean by that is you know we are recording things about the world and we're learning things and writing stories and all of this and preserving that is truly what I think is the essence of being a human we are Auto biographers of the universe and we're really good at it we're better than fossils were better than light spectrum we're better than any of that we collect much more detailed memories of what's happening much better data and so that should be our legacy and I hope that that's that's kind of mine too in terms of people remembering something or having some kind of effect but even if I don't you can't not have an effect right that's the thing this is not me feeling like I hope that I have this powerful legacy it's like no matter who you are you will but you also have to embrace the fact that that impact might look really small and that's okay one of my favorite quotes is from Tess of the d'Urbervilles and it's along the lines of the the measure of your life depends on not your external displacement but your subjective experience if I am happy and those that I love are happy can that be enough because if so excellent I think there's no better place to end it Michael thank you so much there's an honor meet you thanks for talking thank you it was a pleasure thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Stevens and thank you to a presenting sponsor cash app downloaded use code let's podcast you'll get ten dollars and ten dollars will go to first a stem education nonprofit that inspires hundreds of thousands of young minds to learn to dream of engineering our future if you enjoy this podcast subscribe on youtube give it five stars an apple podcast supported on patreon or connect with me on Twitter and now let me leave you with some words of wisdom from Albert Einstein the important thing is not to stop questioning curiosity has its own reason for existence one cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity of life the marvelous structure of reality it is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you