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Speaker 1: mind stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash mind stuff. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and if you're listening to this episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: ideally you're listening to it during a holiday season, when
Speaker 1: this is like a cheerful kind of a thing, like, oh, Santa,
Speaker 1: It's kind of need to do in a Christmas holiday
Speaker 1: kind of episode. That's awesome because if you're listening to
Speaker 1: it in March, you're kind of like, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: Christmas episode. Or maybe maybe you even skipped it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's the danger of of seasonally specific episodes.
Speaker 1: But hang on, don't don't leave us if you are
Speaker 1: listening to this in July or something. Because we're getting
Speaker 1: down to some of the the science or the theoretical
Speaker 1: science of Santa Um. We have a really good UM
Speaker 1: article or two on the How Stuff Works website to
Speaker 1: deal with some of this, like how is Santa Slay
Speaker 1: actually work? And it's kind of fun to to take
Speaker 1: something that's magical like Santa Claus and try and translate
Speaker 1: into the real world. How would Santa Clause travel around
Speaker 1: the world in a single night? How would reindeer pull
Speaker 1: a sway through the air? Um? And one of the
Speaker 1: big ones, how does he make all those toys? Is
Speaker 1: it really dependent on elf labor? Where is there may
Speaker 1: be something a little more science going on. Oh, there's
Speaker 1: something more science going on for sure, something I dare
Speaker 1: say dangerous going on. Actually that could be menacing, right,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it. I mean it depends on how
Speaker 1: do you think Santa Claus is the right person to
Speaker 1: command this technology? Or I mean is it safe? Do
Speaker 1: we need to see about securing it? I see, And
Speaker 1: this is a podcast where we will take you from
Speaker 1: Santa Claus to the singularity. Don't think we could do it,
Speaker 1: but we will from Santa Claus to possibly the end
Speaker 1: of the world in one night. Let's begin. So toys,
Speaker 1: if you've ever watched like an old Timmy Santa Claus
Speaker 1: film that tries to depict a toy manufacturing facility, they're
Speaker 1: generally making really basic toys. Stop animation. Yeah, it's elves
Speaker 1: hammering together some stuff. And sometimes it will be like
Speaker 1: children only get three or four things, like I think
Speaker 1: like in Santa Claus versus the Martians, it's like there's
Speaker 1: the doll, there's the bat, there's the you know, it's
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of variety. And the Martian kids
Speaker 1: did need it, but need a lot of variety and
Speaker 1: their gifts. But but ideally, if you had Santa Claus
Speaker 1: actually bringing gifts to everyone, he would need a universal constructor. Yes,
Speaker 1: he would need a device that's not unlike the technology
Speaker 1: see on Star Trek when they when they go in,
Speaker 1: they push a button and any food comes out of
Speaker 1: their little microwave like device. The idea that you would
Speaker 1: have a machine that could build anything, anything from the
Speaker 1: bottom up. Anything dog food turns into a lovely dress, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: in theory, in theory, yeah, they could build everything and
Speaker 1: everything from an iPhone to um, you know, a wooden
Speaker 1: horse too. I don't even like a puppy or something
Speaker 1: becau Santas to Clus sometimes brings live animals and possibly
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about that. We were talking about stem
Speaker 1: cell generated organs. Why not a dog son out of
Speaker 1: that um So basically, to me, it's like a computer
Speaker 1: version of a golem, a computer that constructs at our bidding,
Speaker 1: but does so autonomously. And this is this is sort
Speaker 1: of a theoretical framework that we're talking about, but this
Speaker 1: is something that people want and actually, Philip might come
Speaker 1: into play some day in the future, right right, We've
Speaker 1: we've spoken a little in the podcast episodes about nano manufacturing.
Speaker 1: The idea of using nanotechnology and building things from the
Speaker 1: bottom up at the smallest level. The idea that if
Speaker 1: you're if you're building something at a molecular level UM
Speaker 1: or an atomic level, the way nature builds things, then
Speaker 1: you can build anything. Right. So the smaller the particle
Speaker 1: of the more you can manipulate it. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: like what can I build out of wood? It's what
Speaker 1: can I build out or even what can I build
Speaker 1: out of some sort of iron um molecules. You're dealing
Speaker 1: in an even lower level, like a base level, to
Speaker 1: where everything is possible. So this is the universal Constructor.
Speaker 1: John von Neuman, a Hungary Hungarian American mathematician, created a
Speaker 1: proposal centered around the combination of a universal constructor, which
Speaker 1: could make anything it was directed to make, in a
Speaker 1: universal computer which could compute anything it was directed to compute.
Speaker 1: This combination provides immense value because it can be reprogrammed
Speaker 1: to make any of a wide range of things UM.
Speaker 1: So we could do it um at a very low cost, right,
Speaker 1: which would be really important. And the ability of the
Speaker 1: device to make copies of itself, which would just simply
Speaker 1: be a means to achieve low cost, rather than the
Speaker 1: ability to continue to to stamp out versions of itself. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the idea of the self replicating machine especially is
Speaker 1: is kind of like the Holy Grail and the also
Speaker 1: the the ultimate um nightmare, right because but it's like
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail, and that that's what life does. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole point of life as a as a larger
Speaker 1: concept and not just you know, goldfish or humans or cactus. Uh.
Speaker 1: It self replicates, like its whole programming is to make
Speaker 1: more copies of itself and make and make better copies
Speaker 1: of itself that will continue to to copy and copy
Speaker 1: and copy forever. So there's two issues with the universal constructor.
Speaker 1: One is the ability to have this sort of like
Speaker 1: uh Ford assembly line on steroids, right, to continue to
Speaker 1: punch out products. But then there's the other idea where
Speaker 1: it has the self replicating technology that it just begins
Speaker 1: to make copies of itself. Right, So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have a universe that's populated by universal constructors. Yes,
Speaker 1: and my mom jumping ahead of a bit much, but
Speaker 1: just to see where we're going with this idea, right,
Speaker 1: because that's that's the whole thing. It's like, if you
Speaker 1: had a universal constructor, you can make another universal constructor, right,
Speaker 1: and it would be really helpful if you were going
Speaker 1: to construct something like the Dyce and Fear right, like
Speaker 1: we've talked about. Here's this idea about the Dyson Fear
Speaker 1: sphere that you could you know, harness the energy of
Speaker 1: another planet. You could build another habitat. But you have
Speaker 1: to have the technology for obviously, you can't send a
Speaker 1: bunch of people up there to do, you know, to
Speaker 1: Mars for instance, to do this. Yeah, and especially if
Speaker 1: you're talking about building mega structures to be at a
Speaker 1: and a particularly enormous skyscraper, a space elevator, or some
Speaker 1: sort of structure that you know, encloses a star or something.
Speaker 1: You're talking about taking the mass of planets and and
Speaker 1: transforming them into say, you know, carbon nanotubes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And actually the person who termed the Santa Class machine,
Speaker 1: physicist Ted Taylor, said, quote, it is possible to imagine
Speaker 1: a machine that could scoop up material rocks from the
Speaker 1: Moon or rocks from asteroids, process them, process them inside,
Speaker 1: and produce just about any product washing machines or teacups
Speaker 1: or automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists, it
Speaker 1: could gather sunlight and materials that it's sitting on and
Speaker 1: produce on call whatever product anyone wants to name, as
Speaker 1: long as somebody knows how to make it, and those
Speaker 1: instructures can be given to the machine. I think the
Speaker 1: name Santa Class machine for such a device as appropriate.
Speaker 1: Of course you would. So then again we you've got
Speaker 1: the guy John von Newman, and um, he's trying to
Speaker 1: figure out this hypothetical machine, and he succeeds in figuring
Speaker 1: it out, at least theoretically, when he found a mathematical
Speaker 1: model for such a machine with very complicated rules on
Speaker 1: a rectangular grid. So it's based on a cellular automating
Speaker 1: a mathematical grid of cells that exists in a finite
Speaker 1: number of states, such as like an on or off position. Okay,
Speaker 1: And it kind of it comes back to, um, I
Speaker 1: think the whole, the whole thing about nanotechnology. The smaller
Speaker 1: the building blocks that you used to create something, the
Speaker 1: more command you have over the properties of the materials
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the things that those materials composed. Right,
Speaker 1: And I mean this has really taken off, especially in
Speaker 1: the seventies. People took this idea and they sort of
Speaker 1: ran with the cellular automating, and in fact, there's something
Speaker 1: called Conway's Game of Life, and this was created by
Speaker 1: British mathematician John Horton Conway. He created the game of
Speaker 1: Life based on cellular automating and described by John von Newman.
Speaker 1: A person essentially interact with a model by creating an
Speaker 1: initial configuration and then observes how it evolves. So this
Speaker 1: isn't a mathematical model, right, we're talking about computer science here,
Speaker 1: and it's really cool because it's a it's been a
Speaker 1: crowdsourcing sort of event, and people have created some really
Speaker 1: amazing theoretical models based on this. And what he did
Speaker 1: is he took of this idea that von Newman had
Speaker 1: and he created simple rules rather than complex rules. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he made sort of a miniature version of this
Speaker 1: um and the simple rules lead to emergence or self
Speaker 1: organized structures. And current developments have gone so far as
Speaker 1: to create theoretic emulations of computer systems within the confines
Speaker 1: of a life board. And Conway chose his rules really carefully.
Speaker 1: He said, one, there should be no explosive growth in
Speaker 1: these models. Okay, there should exist small initial patterns with
Speaker 1: chaotic unpredictable outcomes, there should be potential for a von
Speaker 1: Newman universal constructor constructor, right, because that's really the that
Speaker 1: the end all of what we want to get to here.
Speaker 1: The rules should be as simple as possible whilst adhering
Speaker 1: to all the above constraints. Okay, this is a gigantic
Speaker 1: thought experiment that eventually could get us to a place
Speaker 1: where it would have real world applications, right if that.
Speaker 1: Cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has used the analog of Conway's
Speaker 1: life universe extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex
Speaker 1: philosophical constructs such as consciousness and free will from um
Speaker 1: this sort of simple set of deterministic physical laws that
Speaker 1: govern our own universe. So there's this idea that that
Speaker 1: free will consciousness was is a self organizing principle based
Speaker 1: on simple rules. Yeah, which means that I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, to when we talked about this all the time,
Speaker 1: but you know whether or not free will really exists?
Speaker 1: You know, if there's uh these simple rules and only
Speaker 1: certain amount of outcomes are possible, then is it really
Speaker 1: free will? So again, this whole idea of universal constructor
Speaker 1: heavily theoretical, not experiment, but what if it actually did exist? Right,
Speaker 1: what we actually were able to create a machine, not
Speaker 1: in our lifetime. But let's not yet, not even not
Speaker 1: creating this little thing. But uh, but yeah, let's say
Speaker 1: nano technology really takes off next hundred two hundred, three
Speaker 1: hundred years, right, we end up the amount of freedom
Speaker 1: that we have over what we can do at the
Speaker 1: nano scale, the things that we can make eventually reaches
Speaker 1: the point where we can make virtually anything out of anything,
Speaker 1: out of anything. I mean it all comes to you
Speaker 1: cannot matter, Energy cannot be created or destroyed, be transferred,
Speaker 1: So you would have to have matter to transform into
Speaker 1: more matter. It's kind of like your your dog has
Speaker 1: to eat something if it's gonna go to the bathroom, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just transfer right. Uh. The an atomic
Speaker 1: explosion is is matter becoming energy and all this. So
Speaker 1: for this machine to work, you would have to say,
Speaker 1: all right, Santa, Santa has this right, he needs to
Speaker 1: make toys, So he as the elves bring in, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a mountain top that they've harvested, and
Speaker 1: they put the mountain top in a machine, and now
Speaker 1: he can transfer x amount of mass into x amount
Speaker 1: of presence the mass, it's the same. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He might lose or gain some energy in there somewhere,
Speaker 1: but I mean, he could even throw an elf in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not trying to get dark, but that's
Speaker 1: that's really what we're talking about, a society where every
Speaker 1: raw material could be repurposed to make a finished good
Speaker 1: with this universal constructor. Um, so what happens to big
Speaker 1: box retailers, right, Um? Presumably they become extinct, they become
Speaker 1: a small box, they become right that sits right next
Speaker 1: to you, and there's only one small box. Yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And so it also kind of makes a question about
Speaker 1: what happens to original design or even intellectual property, right
Speaker 1: because what we're talking about here again is a mass production,
Speaker 1: the ability to to take almost anything and not not
Speaker 1: only just feed it to a machine and and get
Speaker 1: something on the other side, but the design elements would
Speaker 1: have to be in there. I can't help but think
Speaker 1: about my Space in this. Remember how I don't know
Speaker 1: if you were ever on on the my Space back
Speaker 1: in the day. Uh No, I wasn't, but I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with it, and I I know that sort of um, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like the web ridden cave that it is now.
Speaker 1: Well you remember how some of you may remember how
Speaker 1: it started off. It seems like all the profiles were
Speaker 1: pretty clean, and I don't know if people were I
Speaker 1: don't remember if people were were given the power to
Speaker 1: change and customize their profiles over time, or if they
Speaker 1: merely learned how to do it, or probably a mix
Speaker 1: of column A and column B. But emergence, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: got to the point where people's profiles were just unreadable
Speaker 1: because they were they were adding like glitter script and
Speaker 1: changing the fonts in the background, and adding animations and
Speaker 1: video and sound, and it just became a nightmare where
Speaker 1: you'd like go to somebody's profile and it would like
Speaker 1: crash the computer or or your brain just trying to
Speaker 1: look at it. So, you know, in Facebook has been
Speaker 1: pretty ingenious and is avoided a lot of that by
Speaker 1: limiting what you can do to the profile. It's the
Speaker 1: Conway game of life. Yeah, yeah, I mean simple rules rights,
Speaker 1: the constraints are pretty yeah. Yeah. You give people enough
Speaker 1: creative rope there, they are going to hang themselves and
Speaker 1: create an unreadable profile. So the idea of a universal
Speaker 1: constructor where there there is no big box, there's no
Speaker 1: there's basically no mass production anymore. Do people end up
Speaker 1: just having horrible things that they've customed to. You're talking
Speaker 1: about like the Etsy of of I don't mean to
Speaker 1: say that a lot of Etsy is good, but if
Speaker 1: anybody has ever gone to regrets dot com, you know
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm talking about, the regret c flacation of
Speaker 1: life itself exactly. It's possible there could be like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pink boa is coming. I don't know where
Speaker 1: pink Boas came from, but generally they're not I think
Speaker 1: that they were Jesse Ventura. Yeah, yeah, nice, you get
Speaker 1: your wrestling thing in there. But so anyway, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there's this idea that there could be a lot
Speaker 1: of bad design, and only that that you would spend
Speaker 1: your life feeding the machine with whatever resource you had.
Speaker 1: And then here's where things get particularly dark. If the
Speaker 1: machines start to self replicate, which at point, at that
Speaker 1: point they'd be able to write, okay, because we're talking
Speaker 1: in the far far away land. The mission of a
Speaker 1: self replicating robot would be, you know, to continue to
Speaker 1: create versions of itself, and then you need more energy
Speaker 1: and matter to do this because we end up in
Speaker 1: like a matter economy or a mass economy. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, currency is now dirt or or
Speaker 1: whatever material you can find. And not only that, you
Speaker 1: have a population that could be, you know, much more
Speaker 1: machine dominated than human dominated. And that's where the singularity
Speaker 1: always comes in. Right, So I mean basically, what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here is the armageddon that could be ushered
Speaker 1: in by machines that are just gobbling up all the resources,
Speaker 1: including us. Right, So let's go back to the North Pole.
Speaker 1: You're at Senta's. You're trying to take it to the
Speaker 1: nice place again. No, well we're gonna We're gonna go
Speaker 1: through the nice place to the darkness. That's all right.
Speaker 1: So it's Santa's laboratory, his workshop. However, you want to
Speaker 1: look at it, because all it has in it is
Speaker 1: that universal manufacturing device. So this nano manufacturing wonder machine.
Speaker 1: And Santa has taken off early because he's a little tired,
Speaker 1: and he's left one elf in charge. And the elf
Speaker 1: h does something wrong with the settings, like he he
Speaker 1: accidentally flips it over, or he spills a little eggnog
Speaker 1: on the keyboard and it goes hey wire. So suddenly
Speaker 1: it's making a copy of itself. That is, that suddenly
Speaker 1: makes a copy of itself, and it's making a copy
Speaker 1: of itself, and it's self replicating without end. It's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a cancer cell, except it's transferring matter.
Speaker 1: And suddenly elves are disappearing right and left is they're
Speaker 1: sucked into the machine. Then the then it's like ice
Speaker 1: and polar bears, and then where does it end. We
Speaker 1: end up with this gray goose scenario. Right, this is
Speaker 1: the nano apocalypse, the idea that you could create nano
Speaker 1: machines or some sort of nano manufacturing device that ends
Speaker 1: up transforming all available matter into itself to where it's
Speaker 1: just a nothing but nano machines everywhere. It's just at
Speaker 1: what looks like gray goo covering the entire earth, and
Speaker 1: eventually is the earth well. And that's the interesting part
Speaker 1: of it, that's right, is that there's this ability to imitate.
Speaker 1: So it's very possible that all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have machines that are able to imitate us, imitate uh, flora, fauna.
Speaker 1: And you know what I'm saying, it's not just replacing
Speaker 1: of the human being or even using humans as um
Speaker 1: as fuel, but but just sort of taking over the
Speaker 1: earth and in as many ways as possible. Well, indeed,
Speaker 1: you can go crazy on this and say that this
Speaker 1: apocalyptic Christmas that we're describing actually happened millions of years ago,
Speaker 1: and then after the gray goose scenario occurred, the gray
Speaker 1: go like reformed itself into some approximation of century life. Alright, kids,
Speaker 1: I know you're you're shaking your heads. Gonna happen, But
Speaker 1: we were talking about, you know, nanotechnology. We're talking about
Speaker 1: nano carbon tubes that are a hundred times stronger than
Speaker 1: steel and just tinier than a thread of hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the seeds have already been planted. It's just a question
Speaker 1: of how big will the nano tree grow and will
Speaker 1: it consume her happy holidays? All right, well, let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's call the robot over here. Surely we have time
Speaker 1: for a quick quick listener mail from the mail folder.
Speaker 1: You won't call the robot, Arnie William I'm still warming
Speaker 1: up to the idea that this robot as a person.
Speaker 1: So this one says, dear Santa. Oh, this is a
Speaker 1: Santa letter. I mean, these are all Santa letters. Wait
Speaker 1: and take this back, Arnie. All right, now, okay, now
Speaker 1: I have the right folder. Here's one from Robert different
Speaker 1: Robert Obviously it's not not me, Um, Robert him, hear me, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert new Julie. I'm sitting in my car right now.
Speaker 1: Don't panic. I got to work early. I love the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm currently listening to the Quest for Cyber Immortality.
Speaker 1: And I want to let you know that I have
Speaker 1: seen this concept twice in fiction, both times to very
Speaker 1: creepy effect. The first example is in the Orson Scott
Speaker 1: Card novel Speaker of the Debt, which I actually just
Speaker 1: finally bought that the other day for like a nickel.
Speaker 1: I love used bookstores. Um. In this story, the protagonist
Speaker 1: goes through the universe, effectively living hundreds of years via
Speaker 1: relativistic travel, and seeks out the dead whose memory is
Speaker 1: being perverted. He does he does extensive research with the
Speaker 1: help of a galaxy spanning AI, and then performs the
Speaker 1: ceremony in which he represents the dead person as accurately
Speaker 1: and fairly as possible. The second example is from Doctor Who,
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, what haven't they done anyway? In the
Speaker 1: episode Forest of the Dead, astronauts consciousnesses are briefly preserved
Speaker 1: in their communications equipment, a phenomenon called ghosting. I find
Speaker 1: it interesting that there are these two opposite ideas about memory,
Speaker 1: the terrifyingly tragic ghosting and the catharsis of speaking for
Speaker 1: the debt. They make me wonder whether any middle ground
Speaker 1: is possible there. Thanks for reading, and if you use
Speaker 1: this in the show, give a shout out to my
Speaker 1: friend Matt for recommending the podcast. Thanks, and indeed thanks
Speaker 1: Matt for turning your friends onto our podcast. So word
Speaker 1: of mouth, that's the big way it spreads, like like nanoparticles,
Speaker 1: self replicating or viruses. Yeah. So if you have some
Speaker 1: holiday cheer you would like to share with us, or
Speaker 1: something about the end of the world, or just do
Speaker 1: some general ramblings about I mean with the big thing
Speaker 1: about our I love about our podcast is the idea
Speaker 1: that gets people's brains moving and gets people thinking about
Speaker 1: the philosophical or futuristic implications on the subject. So which
Speaker 1: gets us percolating. Yeah, yeah, so share it with us.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind, and our handle on Twitter is blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: And you can always write a letter to Santa, send
Speaker 1: it to us and we'll afford it on And you
Speaker 1: can do that at below the Mind at how staf
Speaker 1: works dot com. This podcast is brought to you by
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