The Fermi Paradox: Technological Timebombs

We often wonder where all the aliens are out in the galaxy, but could it be that the technologies needed to get to space and travel the stars lead to inevitable catastrophe?
Visit brilliant.org/... to get started learning STEM for free, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription.
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @isaacarthursfia
Visit our Website: www.isaacarthur...
Join Nebula: go.nebula.tv/i...
Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur
Support us on Subscribestar: www.subscribes...
Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
Reddit: / isaacarthur
Twitter: / isaac_a_arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.
SFIA Discord Server: / discord
Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Technological Timebombs
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 355, August 11, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Editors:
David McFarlane
Jason Burbank
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation...
Graphics:
LegionTech Studios
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.c...

[@JoeCensored]

This discussion reminds of several other technologies we didn't fully understand. Xray machines used to be in shoe stores to see how well shoes fit. Radium used to be used for glow in the dark watches. The worst example is CFCs used in a wide variety of common products across the planet, which a half century after their introduction we realized was destroying the ozone layer. Another one of these can easily happen. What matters is the speed at which we detect the problem, and the political will to correct it in time.

[@colinsmith1495]

I was just thinking about the likes of CFCs, carbon emissions (at least as the theory goes), and similar 'pollution' problems. They're perfect Honeypot Technologies. The honey part is that they are all, genuinely, incredibly useful and productive technologies. The pot part is that, fundamentally, the problem doesn't become apparent until they're so incredibly widespread that the 'miniscule' waste output compounds to the point that it's significantly impacting an ecosystem or the entire globe. This fundamentally means they're also so widespread as to be fundamentally ingrained into society. People used to think that dumping human waste right into the nearest river was safe. And for a small village, it was. And then the River Thames running through London literally caught fire because it was more human waste than water. This is also most likely the best Fermi Paradox proposal among them, since there's no need for malicious aliens, the idea is fundamental enough that it's likely to appear in EVERY possible technology ANY race could produce in ANY environment, and solutions to replace X technology with something similar but more environmentally friendly isn't guaranteed. With CFCs we just switched to slightly less efficient fluids. For carbon fuels, we're trying to develop alternative energy sources and storage mechanisms that are comparably effective. For human waste, we bit the bullet and developed wastewater management systems. Those aren't cheap, but given the alternative and how clear it is, there's no real option. But what if the key to space travel slowly warps the space-time fabric, eventually unravelling it and collapsing the whole solar system into a small, unstable black hole, that then slowly burns off. But each engine only makes a tiny, temporary disruption. It smooths out quickly enough. Even disruptions building on themselves decay quickly if they're not sustained. It would take thousands of collective, sustained disruptions throughout the solar system to really be a threat. No worry, right? Until every car to shuttle one person from their home on Venus to their job on a moon of Jupiter uses this technology, and the disruptions, temporary as they are, are EVERYWHERE. And even if we see the risk coming, the only way to avoid it is to SEVERELY restrict all forms of space travel to carefully-managed limitations far short of the break-point, and generally abandon the idea of free and open space travel for humanity at large.

[@jamesjamison3463]

what about global warming we are doing nothing about?

[@spencerevans8719]

“Gain of function” research comes to mind…

[@dansmith1661]

@@jamesjamison3463 Plants feed off CO2. Still waiting for California to sink into the ocean to care.

[@Lusa_Iceheart]

@@spencerevans8719 Yeah, bioweapon research like that is a Pandora's box tech that we all know is being done and any day now a slip up could result in Ultra-Smallpox getting loose and killing off all mammals. It's bad enough we have irresponsible governmental actors dicking around with bioweapons programs, but with modern CRISPR machines and what not, we could see some demented asshole cook up a plague in his home lab. Imagine the Eco-terrorist people who think population growth is killing the planet and global warming is Earths 'immune response' (yeah these people are that nuts) decide a sterility plague is the 'cure'. Hell, people with that rhetoric OWN pharmaceutical companies and labs themselves.

[@7lllll]

awesome, since this is the one scenario in which self-destruction actually works as a fermi paradox solution, it deserves attention

[@Blowfeld20k]

No offence but think harder before reaching for the keyboard, as techno catastrophe is only a fermi paradox explanation if your assertion is that every single technological species in our light cone wipes themselves out with tech!!! Seems kind of unlikely. Did you even watch the video before posting. When will people get it, whenever you think you have a FP solution it just means you DON'T properly understand the FP.

[@johnacott1238]

When I see what is happening in the world today and for the last two decades, I think you are absolutely correct -we should give this particular Fermi paradox solution much attention.

[@jengleheimerschmitt7941]

Uhm... guys, this _is _ the primary motivation for the Paradox in the first place. The hight of the cold war... nuclear annihilation seemed near-inevitable, and as space travel tech seems to come at around that same time as nukes... it seemed that we were soon to join the great silence.

[@JackSparrow-re4ql]

If you built two 'one way' worm holes near one another; you could negate any energy loss problems caused, have a two way transport system, and two sources of virtually infinite energy on both sides. The energy would never run out; it would just get cycled and drawn to two points in spacetime forever.

[@jengleheimerschmitt7941]

@@JackSparrow-re4ql I don't think energy works like that.

[@FearlesSLaughteR1]

2:08 a solid minute of such well written horror. I love it. I'm mid bingewatching your stuff and I jumped at this video with such excitement you just don't find these days and BOY DID YOU DELIVER THE GOODS. Thanks, stay awesome.

[@victoralexandervinkenes9193]

"We are alone and stand at the pinnacle our of world, and will soon claim a galaxy to forge to our purposes and aspirations. And yet, there is that dreadful fear that we are alone: not because the road to technology is hard, but rather, because the destination is easy to reach and claim, but that technology is not simply a knife on which the reckless may cut themselves, but a delicious time bomb that we arm simply by touching, and an addiction that, once tasted, can not be put down, even if you can see the clock counting down. That technology is a ticking time bomb, waiting to get us, or a drug we will almost inevitably overdose on. That the silence we hear when we aim our ears to the heavens is the silence of the grave, the chant of unanswered calls, echoing through the emptiness of a tomb, and that, we too, will almost certainly join that chorus. That, a thousand years from now, the only sign we were ever here in our galaxy, will be our fading radio signals reaching out to ears that cannot hear, as they too, are now long dead." -Isaac Arthur. The Fermi Paradox: Technological Timebombs. 11th of August, 2022.

[@FearlesSLaughteR1]

@@victoralexandervinkenes9193 thank you

[@victoralexandervinkenes9193]

@@FearlesSLaughteR1 you're welcome

[@asahearts1]

7:15 "...better modeling of fallout and nuclear winter scenarios made it seem unlikely that even a full-scale nuclear exchange would permanently wreck the planet." Finally, someone gets it. Most people I've spoken with about nuclear war have extremely outdated views on the effects of a nuclear war.

[@SteveSmith-wk9dx]

We can perhaps wreck the planet to the extent that it's extremely difficult for humans to survive. We might just do enough damage to remove humans from the equation entirely (unlikely). The chance that humanity can do anything to wreck the planet for life in general seems to be slim to zero. If the Permian extinction couldn't destroy life on Earth, we really don't have the capability.

[@Jacob-pu4zj]

Decades of Hollywood propaganda and clowns like Sagan have a tendency to do that to people.

[@Ahhhhhhchoo]

Stop trying to make nuclear war more acceptable. 🤣 Shit should be a taboo until the end of fucking time.

[@asahearts1]

@@Ahhhhhhchoo This sounds a lot like the way early anti-drug propaganda or sexual repression turned out. Giving inaccurate information to dissuade people always backfires and erodes trust. Ever heard of Reefer Madness? Telling people smoking weed was going to make them go crazy and start killing people didn't turn out well. To this day most people either think weed is the devil or is perfectly safe, when neither is true. And when people found out weed wasn't what they were told it was, they figured other, harder drugs might be okay, too. And just as people gained an irrational fear of drugs which set back their beneficial uses, people now have an irrational fear of nuclear power, which has great consequences.

[@twrecks6279]

@@Ahhhhhhchoo All war should be unacceptable. That doesn't stop dictators and power obsessed politicians sending the young men born of mother's they never met to war and death for them. If we all take the threat of nuclear weapons off the table collectively, make no mistake that the assholes in charge are still just as happy to do conventional warfare lol

[@shanerooney7288]

Honey Trap Tech: There is a 1954 sci-fi story called "Beep" (by James Blish). It is about an instantaneous form of communication. Any distance, zero lag. Before every message that gets send, there is an audible _beep_ (hence the story's name). If you analyse the beep you can decipher ever message that ever has, OR EVER WILL, get sent using this technology. In the story, it is discussed that some of the messages that got sent are in code (to prevent interception by an enemy.) But also there's only a finite number of messages, suggesting the technology was stopped being used for some reason.

[@alexanderalza7964]

Mr. Arthur, I've been watching your videos for quite some time. I really appreciate the effort put in and you sharing your knowledge with us!

[@Grizabeebles]

I remember an episode of the 90s "The Outer Limits" series where a grad student took his university hostage with a pistol and a cold fusion bomb because he believed that every species progressed to the point where single individuals could build weapons of mass destruction which could kill billions. And at that point, one mentally unstable or ostracized individual could exterminate their most or all of their entire species with no warning with relative ease.

[@prolamer7]

Yes that is very fair thought. Only defense would be extensive spending in field of "defense" like force fields. But because best defense is attack it is sadly very unlikely

[@aluisious]

Good. Let the amoebas repopulate and maybe in a billion years there can be another window where animals are smart enough to appreciate the sun and the wind on their skin but not smart enough to blow themselves up. That's probably the sweet spot.

[@dansmith1661]

Like the atom bomb made half a century before it aired?

[@Grizabeebles]

@@dansmith1661 -- or the gatling gun invented in 1862. It really does seem to be true that any device that once required brilliant minds and great time and expense to create eventually becomes something that can be purchased "off the shelf" relatively inexpensively.

[@Chepicoro]

@@aluisious no, for two reasons. First life on Earth has not another billion years, CO2 will be consumed by plants or the sun will become brighter and hotter killing everyone. Second, one species dumber than us probably never will be technological advanced enough to move to another planets and eventually for another star dooming all life.

[@stonedsnakestudios]

Mister Arthur, i can only feel respect for the way youre able to clearly and in lighthearted fashion explain these topics without losing depth. When do they finally give you your medal and tv show? Love from the Netherlands♥️

[@yeager1957]

My favorite concept when it comes to this is FTL; the idea that FTL is possible but doing so causes the universe to write you out of existence in o preserve causality is interesting even if it’s unlikely

[@aluisious]

When a species invents time travel, there's always the asshole who goes back to piss in the primordial ooze.

[@daltongarrett3393]

That’s some disappearance of the dwemer style shit. I love it

[@therealdarklizzy]

I have this idea that maybe through some multidimensional work around, FTL is possible, but only to limited speeds, to prevent any excess travel that might limit causality. Like being able to swing forward on a swing just far enough to move past a certain line, but not far enough to hit the button that destroys the swing.

[@mikicerise6250]

No one's ever seen causality messed with, but we have seen it do some strange things, including appearing to work in reverse (effect therefore cause), so I wouldn't discount anything out of hand. Or as Scotty put it, "who's to say he didn't invent the damned thing?" 😅

[@jeffumbach]

Sounds like you're referring to the novel "Redemption Ark" where such accidents happen twice and both times the person in the room who survived is insisting that they were accompanied by someone who according to records died years ago and nobody outside the chamber remembers. It's left unclear whether the timeline was rewritten or if the person with the scrambled memories got swapped between timelines with one of their alternate selves.

[@hovant6666]

I've sometimes wondered if electric current-based technology is necessarily the best we could have come up with. Alternate histories have been imagined where transistors were never invented (Fallout), or electricity had never been exploited (steam-based flavours substituting), but what if the easy out provided by electricity and its proliferation has blinded us to better alternatives? Consider if fusion was discovered tomorrow, how would it be deployed? Most likely, it would be used to boil water, generate steam, turn a turbine, and generate electricity; but is that only because that that technology chain is the one we've been with longest, having already sunk a great deal of capital into optimising everything for it? Is there some better way of transmitting and using power that we're just not aware of because we have no reason to invest the capital to pursue alternatives when what we've got is 'good enough'? Contemporary analog computers come to mind as one 'missed opportunity' technology.

[@t0neg0d]

Both fission and fusion produce energy in the form of heat. What do you propose doing with it? Anything you think fusion can or will do is currently available via fission. There is no magic in the processes.

[@SmartAss4123]

The problem is we've spent several decades trying to get a form of energy to become as efficient and effective as electricity. Multiple countries in fact have been trying to get alternatives to avoid being dependent on countries that have oil, coal and gas.

[@DicePunk]

I clicked this so fast. Sounds like another good one.

[@Yoel_Mizrachi]

looking nervously at my smartphone battery as I Isaac speaks...

[@thechroniclegamer4285]

Wake up, issac uploaded

[@supsup335]

This reminds me of the wave motion core from Space Battleship Yamato (especialy the 2199 remake). Besides virtually being a perpetual motion machine and infinite energy source and able to fuel a wave motion gun (a weapon so powerfull it casually destroys planets), it is its FTL capabilities that are the most dangerous. As it is stated, it folds space for a moment. But if one fails the timing, you might trigger vacuum decay, andvif you really fuck up, it isn't a localized event, as it races through the universe

[@zeon5323]

Congratulations on 700K subscribers!

[@MrFringehead]

I have this bizarre inkling that the technological timebomb is rather a prerequisite for technology: ontology or the study of semantics. When we can express abstract concepts by way of metaphor, we can also confuse future generations by insisting they abide by symbolic rules for which the rising generation has no context. For example, an old axiom could take the form of "do not linger long in the den of the smiling god"-literally meaning "beware crocodiles" but conveying the message "don't waste your time with toxic people." After a few rounds of generational telephone the elders now recite the same axiom-but now with the mutated meaning, "the spirit of pleasure tempts one to sin." Paradoxically, the most intelligent people tend to be responsible for spreading the most confusion because they're more likely to carry an encyclopedic knowledge of either oral tradition or literature. When global society experiences unprecedented stresses, communities fracture into mutually hostile tribes each of whose members share a mutually intelligible ontology with the others. Buzzwords and dogwhistles become the signals of tribal aggregation. It would sure suck to live in a delicately balanced civilization when events like these unfolded. So, to conclude, the folks most prone to getting hung up on rules and definitions (for example, nerds) may be both the cause and downfall of civilization. Sorry?

[@ianharrison5758]

It is the people like me that want to answer questions I may not really have a reason to ask and that might be a no no i can’t know about. That’s not my fault but it does suck

[@m2heavyindustries378]

...I'm gonna ask you to explain that again, this time coherently. Without using word salad.

[@MrFringehead]

@@m2heavyindustries378Sorry if my language got "Petersonian" in this comment. I'll try to be more clear. In order to accumulate a body of knowledge over time, humans must pass down ideas in some durable form, for the obvious reason that we can't ask the dead to teach us what they know. In order for knowledge to survive, each generation must either preserve the durable form so that future generations can rediscover it, or simply communicate it directly. The traditions that encourage reverence for ancestral thought stand the highest chance of being passed down, because the cultures that practice those traditions dedicate effort toward doing so. However, language drifts and changes with each passing generation, so future generations might have a well-preserved record of the words of their ancestors, but lack the cultural context that leads them to understand precisely what message those ancestors originally conveyed. So as oral tales or written scriptures become more significant and revered due to age, the messages they contain get more unclear and open to interpretation. In the present day, many populations have turned to ancient sources for guidance at a time when the chances of properly understanding them are lower than ever due to the immense amount of change the world has experienced in the last couple centuries. We see factions ranging from Boko Haram to Christian Nationalists make policy based on interpretations of ancient holy books. Members of some political factions seem critically hung up on the definitions and usage of words and the exclusivity of groups and classes of people. We seem to spend an enormous amount of time and effort arguing over meaning instead of demonstrable consequences. Never before have we had such a vast and nuanced understanding of the universe we live in, but a certain commentator has gained undue popularity by shouting "what is a woman?" Language is an imperfect medium, as I demonstrated in my comment above. In some ideologies though, language, not reality, forms the basis for truth. It's hard to imagine that an intelligent species can develop language without also eventually creating a similar crisis of meaning.

[@aldoushuxley5953]

Do you know of the video "Grazed by the apocalypse" by the channel "Lemmino"? It is a good minidoc on many of the extinction scenarios that could have happened in the last century with only minor alterations to our timeline

[@nsmith131]

Hi Isaac. awesome episode. it seems the podcast versions got mixed up with an older episode. The correct audio is up for the narration only podcast version, but not the music+podcast version. At least this seems to be the case on Spotify.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Thanks for the headsup, somehow the original audio itself got overwritten, took some time to recreate and upload it, new version up now.

[@nyrdybyrd1702]

@@isaacarthurSFIA Congratulations on 700K subscribers; bearing witness to your work over these past several years has truly been a treasured pleasure. 🥳

[@sol029]

Love these Fermi paradox videos. Appreciate the work you put in for each and every video. Top notch content every time. Much appreciated.

[@willransier]

Thank you for being... well you! I've been listening for a few years now and your my main source of useless information that I love to absorb. I have a few books that I have been working on and as much as I can find the information to breath life into them. Your content has been a great reference point when thinking about how certain technologies could work for my stories without using tropes like the speedforce for the flash to explain the why and how.

[@elizabethdavis1696]

Please do a video on religious aliens seeking converts! Also ecowarrior aliens and vain or beauty obsessed aliens if you have any additional suggestions list them below maybe he’ll see it

[@dongiovanni4331]

BE NOT AFRAID

[@benrunsacross2935]

What about religious AI?

[@greggweber9967]

A religious alien with the technology of Interstellar travel would've had to grow morally sufficient to get through the technology that we now have. How did they do that? Force or convince everyone? IMHO force doesn't work in the long-term. It just delays rebellious teenagers until they can drive a car and have the ability to do really bad things.

[@Shinzon23]

So, The Covenant...?

[@stefanr8232]

The Sexy Aliens episode series might include beauty obsession.

[@intothevoid4518]

Ironically paranoia of technology and forcing a civilization to become “primitive” is in a way its own solution. And if it doesn’t go well, a doomsday situation in its own right

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

My guess is that this only really can work long term in a digital era where its much easier to ensure massive amounts of data are backed up all over the place, so that might be the floor on multi-millennial primitivism, whatever is needed to maintain modern communication bandwidths and harddrives.

[@69Kazeshini]

The reapers leaving behind technology that is easily found and used by primitives or the brother moons from dead space.

[@greggweber9967]

2:01 I think it was G'Kar in Babylon 5 who said that the thought that there are others both frighten and fill me with awe. I'm probably wrong about that quote.

[@cannonfodder4376]

Brutal but informative. Wonderful as always Isaac.

[@Lukegear]

When a doomsday clock can actually be a literal thing lol

[@FunnCubes]

It shows the time precisely to the planck time... but over time it loads to quantum tunneling in it's mechanism increasing in likelihood exponentially, until at a point where the critical threshold is crossed, the whole solar system tunnels into the clock instantly and becomes a black hole.

[@xavier84623]

The next two episodes are going to be fun ones!

[@maltheopia]

The flip side of this is that a civilization that did manage to avoid the 'human' element of technological time bombs would be incredibly authoritarian by necessity. As in, 1984 doesn't have a sufficient level of oppression to prevent individuals killing themselves with technology. However: a government that authoritarian would never allow interstellar colonization to happen in the first place. Maybe between close planets, but definitely not when it takes years to receive orders from your home system. They would never allow something like a Dyson Swarm to be built because it would be too difficult to keep all the platforms under government control. The government may even decide to automate everything and keep all but a handful of nobles (which will by necessity include every scientist and engineer) intentionally uneducated.

[@jackhand4073]

Turn key totalitarianism

[@StarlightSocialist]

Address 100 leads to a black hole? Sounds like the perfect gift to reciprocate when an alien civilization offers an amazing medicine to prolong life but fails to mention a side effect is sterility.

[@Lusa_Iceheart]

Hehe, SG-1 was a great show.

[@reallyryan_]

Congratulations on 700K 🤯well deserved!

[@andrewgraziani4331]

Ewww scary stuff. You know the Japanese have a saying it goes something like "it's never the one you see coming that gets you "

[@JCdental]

I think the galactic civ bottle neck might be in metallurgy You need to have a planet with metals, the metals must be accessible (in the upper crust) in quantities that make them a non luxury commodity so that people may experiment with them, there must be no better alternative(the biosphere might produce easier to use and more common ironwood type material) Another thing- could all the Fermi paradox solutions be correct? At least one of the proposed solution applies to at least one civilization? They might even overlap e.g. they ruined the biosphere and haven't made a leap of logic that the other planets might be habitable, they got a death hand tech and there is no access to space(opaque upper atmosphere) , never discover a key tech and kestlered themselves

[@shanerooney7288]

Yes, all the filters can overlap ... Sort of. Some are mutually exclusive and don't stack. For example, one filter is that we can't understand the signals that reach us. Another is that there are signals, but they don't reach us. And another is that there are no aliens to send signals. These three can't stack. But where they logically can stack, we can and should assume they do. That's exactly what the drake equation does. It multiplies the individual filters together.

[@JCdental]

@@shanerooney7288 I think you mixed up "Filters" and "Solutions" But thank you for clarifying

[@RogalDorn01]

The latest episode of the Orville Tackled this concept beautifully with their explanation that your society won't develop the technology to create a utopia until your society is ready for it. Societal and Technological progress must develop together or your civilization will collapse.

[@chriscooke109]

Thought I would just once again express my deep appreciation for your incredibly high quality content. The high volume, and corresponding consistency of all videos since the first video is amazing. I really have a lot of admiration for you; the work you put into the channel helps a lot of people, with no ulterior motive. Your kindness gives me a bit of optimism for the future of humanity (one of very few that do unfortunately). Thank you very much and take care Isaac!

[@rileynicholson2322]

The big problem with this solution to the Fermi paradox is that after a civilization gets space travel, which we already have, and spreads out to a few planets or star systems, the disaster required to wipe us out has grown to be so huge we would likely see evidence of it happening to other civilizations. Like sure, perhaps every civilization can trigger some essentially inescapable catastrophe, like vacuum decay, but then they must be far enough away for the catastrophe to not have gotten us yet, which means we can't see them, which really just puts us back to square one of the Fermi paradox. It's sort of like how cities rarely die entirely, they just slowly move around or their population flees to other cities, because there's just so much redundancy. We already have so much redundancy that a catastrophe would have to destroy most our planet or biosphere to wipe us out, and possibly not even succeed at that point if we had warning. As soon as we start building self contained space habitats outside of earth orbit, the chances of even an intentional attack getting us all becomes really low.

[@Lord-Inquisitor]

I could totally see a species testing a nuke for the first time and burning up all the atmosphere of their particularly volatile planet.

[@Raye938]

My favorite technological time bomb is the idea that we might make a tech that resets the universe's background energy level and initiates false vacuum decay. Best part about it is we wouldn't know it happened. We'd just be gone. Probably.

[@therealdarklizzy]

Horray! A new thing to have anxiety about as I lay in bed trying to sleep! (Lol)

[@dokenboken5542]

Leaded gasoline is an example of accepting and using something very harmful. Also the heavy use of asbestos in the past. Something far worse could be developed and used before anything is done about it.

[@fubaralakbar6800]

I like the idea in Dune, that after tens of thousands of years, we never did find any aliens--we created them instead. That is, human expansion to other worlds resulted in humans evolving to survive other-worldly environments, and as a result becoming something that no human today would recognize as one of our species.

[@Reddotzebra]

They did find aliens pretty quickly in the Dune universe though, they just were not especially intelligent or space faring.

[@theFLCLguy]

I actually researched and designed a nuclear bomb that could be made from stuff you could buy from hardware stores. It would cost millions and the main issue is time. You got to process enough material before it decays. The bomb itself isn't hard, a lot of the information needed is out there. It wouldn't be a big boom but it would be a nuclear explosion.

[@Thomas5937]

Americium from smoke detectors?

[@dansmith1661]

Weaponized solar energy.

[@muninrob]

@@Thomas5937 bad idea - good fissionable, bad physical properties. look up "nuclear boyscout" for cautionary tale. If you can source metallic Americium, it should work for low to mid end RTG's without having to jump through the uranium/plutonium hoops. (Not that hard for a decent university, surprisingly)

[@Thomas5937]

@@muninrob I’m struggling to think of what other fissile material the OP could get from a hardware store

[@muninrob]

@@Thomas5937 there's a few others but none of them come from a hardware store in a form that is particularly workable. Most of them have the same issue - low density & a very fine powder that's a literal nightmare to contain

[@rockrancher4004]

I know it's stock video only loosely related to topic, but why were the android robots typing on the laptops? Don't they have Wi-Fi and ssh?

[@virutech32]

🤣👌🏼

[@PaulPaulPaulson]

Congratulations on 700k happy subscribers!

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Thank you so much 😀

[@acarrillo8277]

Thinking back to the Samsung Note 7 catastrophe, I think it is fair to deduce that people would notice if batteries started exploding more than they should.

[@charlesjmouse]

I like the idea that life is incredibly rare and maybe even unique to this planet - admittedly for no better reason than that is reassuring for us! The alternate is what I like to call "The game of Jenga": The 'higher' you build the more unstable your tower, inevitable collapse is built in. More, building higher requires you rob resources from your own foundations so promoting collapse. Worse, the further the 'fall' the greater the devastation and the fewer resources are left for rebuilding. By it's very nature a stone age world is more robust and easier to rebuild than one based on medieval populations and technology. For our 'fragile heights' the slightest breath of wind will inevitably bring the whole thing down, likely killing everybody in the wreckage. "When?" is the only question, not "If?" Should anyone survive easier to gather resources required to begin rebuilding will be gone and so even in the unlikely event knowledge survives the means to rebuild will be absent. At very best a world gets one shot at the stars and when it almost certainly fails the very most any survivors can hope for is to be trapped in a medieval existence bereft of the resources to rebuild. PS For anyone who reads this and thinks "No, no, you haven't considered " I bet I have, I've just not included it for the sake of brevity. Just think a little harder and I suspect you'll find is an illusion. Also the above is a tremendous simplification, again for the sake of some brevity. I really don't want the above conclusions to be true and so have spent a long time in careful thought doing my level best to pick holes. The very best I can come up with is "hope". Hope to be wrong and use these unhappy thoughts to spur us all on to greater efforts rather than giving up, the latter will only bring us the inevitable that much sooner.

[@bravadita]

Would be interested in a Red King/ Black Queen etc. ecological theory episode

[@rylayizsik]

That was brutal and I loved it

[@UrdnotChuckles]

I remember a lot of old sci-fi stories & games were clearly implying that nuclear power could or would eventually destroy us all, either directly or via nuclear war. Who knows, maybe splitting the atom and not self annihilating is a great filter. :)

[@IsaacKuo]

It's always trendy to think that something we are messing with and/or noticing RIGHT NOW is the thing that's going to end it all. Makes for a punchier story, after all.

[@UrdnotChuckles]

@@IsaacKuo Ain't that the truth! Likely why there's so much more focus on things like AI these days.

[@garyfreeman7122]

This episode provoked images of aliens, helicoptering their penises to indicate scepticism

[@johnjonestheman]

Dr. Arthur! Glad to see you pop up in reddit, in a definitive and assertive and polite way... keep on truckin', good Doctor...

[@808bigisland]

Lead poisoning in the US is a good example of a 80 year duration timebomb. The roman mistake is repeated. The outcome is clear

[@TraditionalAnglican]

Isaac - Some caveats - The idea that a “Rogue State” could make a nuclear bomb until the 1970’s and 80’s (that’s a huge reason the Israeli Raid on the Osirak Nuclear Reactor in June, 1981 was controversial). That’s when anti-nuclear activists began equating nuclear power with nuclear weapons (See APOCALYPSE NEVER, by Michael Shellenberger). Before then (and until the fall of the Berlin Wall & the USSR), the main fear was a thermonuclear war between the USSR (and it’s allies) and the USA (and our allies) - See the movies War Games & The Day After for portrayals.

[@adrienanderson7439]

Reminds me of the vacuum decay explanation, maybe in researching a technology vacuum decay or some other thing would cause the entire universe to collapse. In this explanation of the fermi paradox we are the only ones because there is only one unlucky winner that gets to discover the universe ending tech, no one else exists yet because if they did they would be the ones to end the universe.

[@blahthebiste7924]

Doesn't this basically just boil down to the anthropic principle again? As in, it asserts that we must be the first because we don't see anyone else, and just accepts that this is how the probabilities happened to work out, without delving into what those probabilities actually are, which is usually the focus of the Fermi Paradox

[@adrienanderson7439]

@@blahthebiste7924 You are right that it doesn't really consider the probabilities. But if it is true that there is something that destroys reality when discovered, then if civilizations that do research are likely the universe would also likely end quickly, possibly before civilizations see each other. So if we arent one the first, we shouldn't exist if that kind of also technology exists. So we either are one of the first or universe ending research doesn't exists or both. But Im not disagreeing with you, I think it would be helpful to look at the statistics associated with the different situations to see if it actually makes sense.

[@blahthebiste7924]

@@adrienanderson7439 Yeah that's why I said this basically another layer of the Anthropic Principle

[@adrienanderson7439]

@@blahthebiste7924 Yeah it basically is, it uses the same assumption as the anthropic principle which is that there are many to infinite universes. It also has almost the same result as the anthropic principle. The only difference is that this line of reasoning removes universes that have both a lot of life and the ability for that life to easily destroy the universe. Which I guess is just a way to say the universe would not be stable enough to support life, aka anthropic principle.

[@blahthebiste7924]

@@adrienanderson7439 Right. Certainly an interesting idea

[@Pheonix1328]

Makes me think of "The End of the Whole Mess" where the technology seems to have so much promise but has serious consequences.

[@CrankCraven]

May I ask where you are from @isaac Arthur? You have a unique accent, I can't figure it out, driving me nuts. I listen to your content on car rides and to go to sleep, lol. Not saying you are boring! This kind of stuff just makes good background noise for sleep. I'll watch it 4 or 5 times to get it all

[@hunam1464]

The game Star Control 2 explores this in a scenario where Honey-trap technology was found in a derelict ship, and this colony of humans were hoping to create superfast propulsion and communication, and instead made contact with an alien in another dimension which promptly wiped them all out. So such honey trap technology doesn’t have to be explicitly hostile in order to destroy you, but you do have to know what it does so you’re not inadvertently creating a catastrophe. Isaac really presented this well.

[@Empmortakaten]

That was one of the things that made Star Control 2 such a great game, how thought out so many of the scenarios were in it and especially in regards to Fermi Paradox solutions. The Ur-Quan and Kor-Ah being such excellent examples of the "Dark Forest" scenario, as well as the Dnyarri before them, horrors just waiting to be found in the dark. The Mycon being sort of a "Grey Goo" scenario, where terraformers turn on their creators and destroy them, threatening all life in the galaxy. The Slylandro also accidentally stumble into such a scenario as well. The Umgah destroying other worlds and civilizations for sport and a giggle (wrecking the life or cultures of the Illrath, Spathi, and Thraddash civilizations well before the game takes place). The Shofixti self destruction too, a people not ready for the technology they found and employed... The thought behind all of these scenarios was spectacular for the time and continues to be one of few examples in gaming of such a broad array of such concepts crammed into one 'worldspace'.

[@ctakitimu]

@@Empmortakaten Didn't the Syreen make everyone 'space' themselves out the airlock in the hopes of joining the Syreen? Drawing on old memories now

[@Deridus]

*longing for juffowup intensifies*

[@Empmortakaten]

@@ctakitimu Something like that. They'd get opponents to vac-suit out, attempting to join up. Drain the enemy crew to supplement their own.

[@hunam1464]

@@Deridus As creepy as the Orz were, extradimensional bogeymen and childish translation and all, I think the Mycon were creepier for their long-term approach to homeworld destruction, similar to a low-technology Borg. Of course, they did get utterly curb-stomped by the Kohr-Ah, because plot dictated an enemy so powerful that Cthulhu had no chance against it..

[@Hunterxii]

Woot woot 700k plus good job bro can't wait to see you in the millions

[@roadkillanonymous4807]

At around 2:50 - “…the silence we hear…is the silence of the grave.” Dang it Isaac, goosebumps!

[@billybeck8169]

Don’t know what i would do without your channel. I’ve been watching every night for weeks now 😂

[@kayseek1248]

I see Isaac Arthur… I click.

[@bmpixy]

my personal favorite timebomb, even if it is implausible, is ftl being the trap. any technologic civilization with an interest in the stars will try to acquire ftl technology, because if you're already inclined to explore and colonize, it's natural to want to do that faster. and if a path to supposedly getting that capability arises, someone is going to try to take it. but say there's something about that technology that makes it incredibly dangerous in hindsight - for example, shooting out to the nearest star, jumping on back, and crashing into your pre-launch ship and creating a time paradox that deletes your home system, backwards and forwards in time. or, alternatively, widespread adoption of ftl bends and twists the arrow of time enough that it crosses some energy barrier and forcibly snaps back into shape, wiping out your entire civilization in something akin to a false vacuum decay, save that it spreads faster than light. of course, this is very unlikely to be the case, but i do enjoy thinking about it.

[@高若嵩-t6r]

Event Horizon moment lol

[@bobinthewest8559]

The problem with FTL travel, isn’t that it’s impossible to cross that threshold. Indeed, it is quite possible to break the light speed barrier. The actual problem, in point of fact, is that once you accelerate beyond the speed of light... it is impossible to ever STOP.

[@Shamelesscritique1]

Reminds of an episode of outer limits or maybe it was the twilight zone...some psycho monologues about why there's no sign of intelligent life in the universe...he argued that they all inevitably arrive at the exact same point...where they destroy themselves...extinction being the rule of law and the inevitable conclusion of all life. If I recall the story was about how knowledge and information is impossible to stop, it will always grow and eventually snowball towards a dangerous direction...the psycho in the story asked someone..."do you think fire or the wheel only occurred to one person?"...do you think you can actually stop "progress" keep technology a secret or prevent the spread of knowledge...he described "ideas" and "technology" as a sort of virus...a contagious plague that effects the brains and minds of sentient beings. The psycho invented a new power source or something and was going to use it create a bomb to destroy the world...he didn't care about taking credit for his invention or discovery...he believed he was just lucky or rather really unlucky to have come up with it first...he believed the knowledge and information itself was going to inevitably wipe us out anyway and this moment, this extinction point was unavoidable...destiny.

[@prolamer7]

And that is always THE challenge - CHOICE. We all have choice to do such bad action... If one person in future go with "probability" and for whatever reason chose to destroy everyone it be stupidest thing ever. Because he/she will behave just like some silly cog in "random" machine despite having choice to resist the wrong step. And there IS NO EXCUSE!

[@LaserGuidedLoogie]

Dumbest Alien Invasions Scenarios: They want our water. There you go Issac, that covers it. You can do another topic for SciFi Sunday. :)

[@captainanopheles4307]

The Fermi Paradox is much like the Bumblebee paradox where scientists couldnt understand how bumblebees could fly. Hint: it wasn't a bumblebee problem.

[@KingKoopa0331]

Keep up the content, you're the man

[@dirkbruere]

"The people here had no appreciation of the side effects of technologies and the Confluence had six thousand years of analysis behind them across trillions of histories. Every apple had a worm, every gift would keep on giving and all it took was one bite."

[@CartoonHero1986]

Isaac I think this video is such a great example of "Chaos theory" regarding advanced technology and risks of creating our own extinction events increasing with how powerful and how cavalier we are with new technologies; it would make Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park) wish it was his material lol. The video kept reminding me of the part of the book where Ian calls Hammond out for claiming Ian was saying humans will destroy the planet and he was like "No you arrogant ass; the planet doesn't care... it's US that would and SHOULD care about the crap you and people like you are doing with this technology. It's us that will not adapt fast enough to survive an extinction event we make, and what YOU are doing is introducing humans to other dominate apex predatory species that will replace us when they hunt us to extinction or cause a zooilogical pandemic."

[@ianharrison5758]

Any Pandora’s box type technology where can’t know the end result but it will be catastrophic,’ if it were me developing the technology, I’d ask one question and one question only. Am I giving my people the tool to forge our greatest dreams? Or the tool to make us kill ourselves slowly enough not to notice until we rely on it to exist at all. It could be neither, it could be both depending on point of introduction. If I can’t answer anything with logical, well substantiated arguments for it, I don’t open the box and I don’t let others do it either, or let enough people be aware of the danger to fuck off from the ones who want to risk a little bit too much to quickly

[@tommiest3769]

The technological timebomb will occur when our ability to manipulate matter reaches the same easy with which we can currently manipulate information.

[@exginto8053]

>Wormhole to another dimmention providing unlimited energy DOOM Vibes incoming

[@bobinthewest8559]

I once fell for one of those “one way ticket/trap technology” scams... That’s how I wound up here 🙄🤷‍♂️

[@Jacstaoisitio]

That is one hell of a ominous and foreboding cautionary message for the moth that is humanity being forever drawn to the light of the fire, the innovation and technology from the less than 1% of the brains pursue. At least when not under the heel of dogma.

[@Yora21]

I like Arthur and Godier, but aren't there more space topics than the Fermi Paradox?

[@Korgmeister]

The trouble is, there's quite a number of technologies we already posses and deploy routinely which are candidates for suicide pact technologies. The trouble is that they provide quality of life benefits which many people consider so essential, that to even name them as a suicide pact technology, is considered offensive to a lot of people. Which is, paradoxically, a clear indicator you have a suicide pact technology on your hands.

[@CrossoverManiac]

The technological timebomb solution violates the non-exclusivity principle. I was going to say it came close but not quite since it's so broad in scope but then I thought about the argument for non-exclusivity. As long as one extraterrestrial civilization avoids it, it has the potential to spread out to the rest of the universe, thus not being a solution. Question: has Isaac Arthur ever done a show specifically on the non-exclusivity principle in the Fermi paradox?

[@Enourmousletters]

That would only guarantee a civilization exists *somewhere*. If the probability is low enough, it guarantees at a chance arbitrarily close to 100% that all other life is a distance beyond the observable universe away from us.

[@DH-nq1mu]

That intro was absolutely beautifully articulated. Wow.

[@alliciayork2815]

What about HBTs? Honey badger technologies?

[@konnor9577]

Another filter is probably super volcanos or events that activate a big amount of volcanos at the same time. I Guess an asteroid will have this power and most of the distraction will be due to indirect events like Tsunamis volcanos and earthquakes rather than the impact of the asteroid alone

[@Vjx-d7c]

Happy Artrhursday❤💚🇯🇲

[@alderwolf7687]

I think the biggest nastiest ticking technological timebomb has nothing to do with self destruction, it has to do with dependency. Even today we are extremely reliant upon our technology to the point that people quickly start dying whenever there's just minor blackout and disruption to supply chains. Without our technology, 1/2 of Earth population would very quickly starve and it's only going to become worse as we become even more reliant upon technology. A massive EMP pulse or something similar like a little micronova burb from the sun today would have devastating results on our civilization blasting us strait back 200 years at the very least. The more technologically advanced, the further back the loss of technology sends you because people have forgotten how to create and survive with lower levels of technology.

[@Lusa_Iceheart]

A sizable solar flare or some intentional EMP detonations in orbit wouldn't just send us back 200 years, it'd send us back to the stone age. I think the whole "it'd send us back to the 1800s" concept really got popular with that show 'Revolution' a few years back. Really did a disservice to the magnitudes of damage such an event would actually have. It's really a lot worse of a threat than even Hollywood dreamed up. Two hundred years ago, there were a lot more horses, horse stables, breeders, blacksmiths who could shoe them, ect. That infrastructure does not exist today. The skill sets and human resources are not there in necessary quantities either. We'd never be able to provide hay for all those horses either, not without pesticides and fertilizers (which rely on petro-chemicals) or water (no power, no water pumps). We're so dependent on electricity that we could not function without it anymore, or at least would have to relearn how to. And if the study DARPA and the US military did on such a scenario is correct, we'd be doing it with just 2% of the population. The study found that if an EMP wiped out the power grid in North America, and it took longer than 2 years to restore power, the continent would have a 98% population collapse. We can't rebuild the highly specialized parts in our power grid without, well, power. As we've seen with the supply chain disruptions, a single disruption in the intricate network grinds the whole thing to a halt, we're talking about taking a wrecking ball to the network and burning the whole thing down. We really lucked out with such a quite star like Sol, a slightly less stable star and we'd be getting technology smasher solar flares regularly. Compared to other G-types, Sol is unusually quite. A Mellow Yellow star, as it were. Sol, as mild as it is still puts out extremely destructive flares about once every 150ish years, the Carrington event and it's repeat in December of 2012. NASA didn't talk about the miss we had until 2014. The Aztecs might have actually been onto something, too bad they didn't know the Sun has a 'day' cycle too. First time we noticed this event in the 1850s, it fried lots of telegraph lines, including the first Trans-Atlantic cable (which had to be replaced). Second time, we missed it by nine days thanks to Sol facing the wrong (or rather 'Right') direction at the time. These big flares vary in size of course, and we could get a big one in the mid 2100s that'd cook half the planets surface and most stuff in orbit... which by then might include power collection satellites that the remaining half of the planet can't live without. So... this is certainly still a big threat for the next few centuries while the vast majority of humanity is on Earth. A slightly less tolerant star or just plain shitty timing qualifies this as a pretty steep filter and isn't a filter you'd notice until you had electricity.

[@alderwolf7687]

@@Lusa_Iceheart No, if we lost our technology today, it would not send us back to the stone age. The reason I said 200 years is because we still have enough people knowledgeable in things like blacksmithing and enough horses to quickly recover at that level after in initial die off. Also much of the world would continue business as usual because it doesn't rely on much technology. That all changes as technology advances and old ways forgotten like I said. As for our sun, yes it's a quiet humble star that only occasionally has an outburst. Unfortunately that doesn't mean it will always remain quiet and that is fact. It will have a micronova burp to blow off the dust building up in its atmosphere and that will be a full 360 shell event. The sun likes to do that every 12,000 years or so while other stars do more frequently. Some as frequent as every few years.

[@andrewgraziani4331]

Drink and snack, and don't forget to turn on that caption. Ahh the good old days.

[@acaryadasa]

A Haiku: (some slight editing to get the syllables right) Silence of the grave, The chant of unanswered calls, Empty as a tomb.

[@spectralvalkyrie]

Congrats on 700k subs! 🔥🙌

[@catalin633]

Dear Isaac, could you explore a Fermi Paradox based on the possibility of when a civilization reaches a certain level it does not need to travel the expanse of the Universe as it can exist and expand inside a simulation powered by its Star. I believe that the amount of resources needed to colonize a galaxy is too great. Maybe it is far easier to just build a simulation and exist inside it.

[@uafc1]

If a species can comfortable expand, it will expand. This is true for fishes in the ocean, for ants in the land and for us as soon as we have the technology to travel through space. Even if it's more efficient to live in a simulation, it only takes one member of the species to say: "You go ahead and live there, I will claim the entire galaxy for myself and my future generations"

[@michaelking9818]

Stop reading some much science fiction

[@clementvining2487]

You wouldn't exist in a simulation but a copy of you. It would do you no good.

[@michaelking9818]

@@clementvining2487 and where would my soul be ?

[@clementvining2487]

@@michaelking9818 What does that have to do with it. Copying our brain to a simulation is still a copy it is not you.

[@jeromebarry1741]

Isaac, my wife passed away last month. When I first introduced her to your videos, she remarked that your lisp was "adorable".

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

My condolences Jerome, thank you for sharing that with me.

[@MrGeocidal]

Hi from the future. I am a historian examining the history of videos uploaded 2 hours ago.

[@MrStoker101]

How would a non predatory intelligence evolve, pros and cons?

[@4kays160]

Pro, intelligence Con, ??? How, sometimes intelligence is needed to escape a predator, not be be a good one..

[@kingmasterlord]

the bigger question would be how would predator intelligence evolve. prey species working together and refining their communication techniques over time makes perfect sense to me

[@CheeseWheelEnthusiast]

@@kingmasterlord I'd argue us, the Human species, are predators. But with the intelligences to mostly work with others in our species like prey would. But who knows if we'll truly be predator or prey when Alien life emerges in whatever way or form.

[@4kays160]

@@kingmasterlord the biggest questions are never answerd simply by looking in the mirror..

[@BrunoViniciusCampestrini]

@@kingmasterlord humans evolved as predators, so we have a good idea of how that would look like.

[@emmettobrian1874]

There's a new study that shows planets only form in the proportion of heavy elements in the forming host star. This means that most of the history of the universe did not have many planets. We really might be an early world.

[@Reddotzebra]

Firstborn! That's a good one. For us, anyway.

[@randar1969]

I think we need to get better in detecting. We just need more data to make a prediction right now we couldn't even detect an civilization at our level of technology if it was next to proxima centauri the closest star to us. We need stronger signals then even humanity can create to hope to detect something at this time.

[@johnfelps2573]

I'm sure someone has mentioned this before, but it occurred to me - with nomadic star frequency being higher than the time to reach stellar travel, solar system instability may be a plausible reason civilizations do not reach stellar travel before destruction. Thanks for the great content!

[@creemoon9546]

fire? > tool making? > irrigation? > overpopulation?> resource depletion?> war?> rapid weapon development?> self destruction?= fermi paradox? soooo i blame oxygen lol

[@SlimeUwU]

Congrats on 700k subs!

[@aceundead4750]

I kinda hope to live long enough to say darn kids and their fancy world ending technologies, back in my day we had to burn an atmosphere not just shoot gammar rays out of our heads"

[@bakerpete2527]

Beauracratic over complexity is what will do a civilization in.

[@africash0cks]

Neal Asher's 'Rise ofthe Jain' series is a great example of a technological 'Honey-pot' trap.

[@Phuqem]

Keep up the great work Isaac

[@michaelbrantley6039]

Your speech has come a long way your presentation is beautiful I can't even tell you have a speech impediment anymore Arthur

[@cheesesniper473]

Once i got over you sounding like elmer fudd, gotta say i love your channel. Keep it up mate.

[@rom26ik]

I'd love to see an episode about making earth into a sanctuary planet

[@AndrewManook]

We would make it a sanctuary planet once we venture out to the rest of the galaxy.

[@lonjohnson5161]

I am reminded of Larry Niven's short story The Locusts. This is not a technological timebomb story, but rather a story where intelligence itself is the problem.

[@daedalusexomnius6176]

I am much more surprised that we haven't suffered devastating consequences of our technology so far. I live in a country where the reservoir species of pestis is the prairie dog and chipmunk, animal traps are $25, and the process that makes antibiotic resistance is so well documented

[@jimster1111]

A couple of examples i can think of in pop culture are the mass effect relays and the dwemer in the elder scrolls series