The following is a conversation with Michael Stevens, the creator of Vsauce, 1 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?

As part of his channel, he created 3 seasons of Mind Field, a series that explored human behavior.

His curiosity and passion are contagious and inspiring to millions of people.

And so as an educator, his impact and contribution to the world is truly immeasurable.

This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.

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And now, here's my conversation with Michael Stevens.

1 of your deeper interests is psychology, understanding human behavior.

You've pointed out how messy studying human behavior is and that it's far from the scientific rigor of something like physics, for example.

How do you think we 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 could do it by finding the physical foundations of psychology, right?

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 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 mathematical way.

When we ask questions like, well, what is self-reference?

How can you think about your self-thinking?

What are some mathematical structures that could bring that about?

There's ideas of, in terms of consciousness and breaking it down into physics, there's ideas of panpsychism where people believe that whatever consciousness is is a fundamental part of reality.

Do you think, what's your views on consciousness?

Do you think it has this deep part of reality or is it something that's deeply human and constructed by us humans?

Nothing I ask you today has actually proven answer, so we're just hypothesizing.

mean I should clarify, this is all speculation and I'm not an expert in any of these topics and I'm not God.

probably something that can be fully explained within the laws of physics.

I think that our bodies and brains and the universe and at the quantum level is so rich and complex, I'd be surprised if we couldn't find a room for consciousness there.

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 Julian Barber 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 3 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 that contain memories of its past or ones that contain memories of its past and have degrees of consciousness?

Just the first part, because I think the consciousness then emerges from the fact that a state of the universe that contains fragments or memories of other states is 1 where you're going to feel like there's time.

You're going to feel like, yeah, things happened in the past and I don't know what will 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 and just say, well, they're extremely rare.

But until you are in 1, or if you are in 1, then you can ask questions like you're asking me on this podcast.

But yeah, it's like, 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.

Do you think of the universe as deterministic in a sense that it's unrolling a particular, like there's a, It's operating under a specific set of physical laws.

And when you have the 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 us 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.

Maybe it's true, but I'm not gonna live my life like it is.

What in your sense, 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 and reality.

Like we delude ourselves that 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?

I think that we will never 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 on the brain in a vat, I don't know.

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 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, or constructive in any kind of way?

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 has mechanics in it that are so complex that it can create love.

But today, you really start to feel, man, at what point is this little robot friend of mine going to be like someone I don't want to cancel plans with?

And so it's a great thought experiment of do we live in a simulation?

Am I a brain in a vat that is just being given electrical impulses from some nefarious other beings 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, it's artificial intelligence.

And I apologize, but you're such a fun person to ask these big questions with.

Well, I hope I can give some answers that are interesting.

Well, because of you've sharpened your brain's ability to explore some of the most, some of the questions that many scientists are actually afraid of even touching, which is fascinating.

I think you're in that sense, ultimately a great scientist through this process of sharpening your brain.

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 of that.

But not to be too 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, 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 just true, what it means to be

It's certainly a huge part of what it means to be a human.

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.

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 are there things that shouldn't happen?

And do they, you know, what do I observe?

I don't think of science as, wow, a picture of a black hole.

That's a sensory and perception 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 I'm 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 of science, I think, is a beautiful part of some of the greatest scientists in history.

And revolutions in our knowledge of the world occur only under very special circumstances.

It is very scary to challenge conventional thinking and risky because let's go back to elitism and ego, right?

I believe in the spirits of my body and all forces are actually created by invisible creatures that transfer themselves between objects.

If you ridicule every other theory and say that you're correct, then ego gets involved and you just don't go anywhere.

But fundamentally, the question of, well, what is a force is 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 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.

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 1 of the favorite questions you've ever answered.

So your video on that, people should definitely watch, is really fascinating.

Can you elaborate why you enjoyed answering this question so much?

I remember a long time ago, I was living in New York at the time so it had to have been like

I visited the Flat Earth forums and this was before the Flat Earth theories became as sort of mainstream as they are.

Sorry to ask the dumb question, forums, online forums?

Yeah, the Flat Earth Society, I don't know if it's .com or .org, but I went there and I was reading 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 believe 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.

But a flat Earth believer can respond to every single 1 of them.

And all of their rebuttals aren't necessarily going to form a cohesive, non-contradictory 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 particle's travel.

Like we need to be 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, it 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 cause 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 even notion, they haven't like sat down and say, what are the arguments that are being proposed?

And this is why these arguments are 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, 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.

I mean let me go on record and say that the earth is not flat.

However, I don't know that and it has not been proven.

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 orbit 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.

So there's always some doubt, and that's fine.

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 as a thought experiment, your video kind of, okay, say the earth is flat, what would the forces when you walk about this flat earth feel like to the human?

That's a really nice thought experiment to think about.

Right, because what's really nice about it is that 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?

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 disc, ooh, you're gonna be pulled at a weird angle if you're out near the edge.

Yeah, and to me, that particular video opened my eyes even more to what gravity is.

It's just a really nice visualization tool of, because you always imagine gravity with spheres, with masses that are spheres.

And imagining gravity on masses that are not spherical, some other shape, but in here a plate, a flat object is really interesting.

It makes you really kind of visualize in a three-dimensional way the force of gravity.

Yeah, even if a disk 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 I highly recommend.

I forget her name, but it's a wonderful book.

I think it's called Teacup in the Universe.

Just to link 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, this measure of YouTube, right, is incredible, and as do I.

But this particular flat earth video has more dislikes than usual.

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 not an open-minded way, like really just distrust scientists like they're bought by some, they're kind of mechanism of some kind of bigger system that's trying to manipulate human beings.

What's your sense of the size of that community?

You're 1 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.

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 dislike it without even really watching much?

Do they wish that I was more dismissive of flat earth theories?

I know there are a lot of response videos that kind of go through the episode and are pro flat earth, But I don't know if there's a larger community of unorthodox thinkers today than there have been in the past.

I want them to keep listening and thinking.

And by calling them all idiots or something, that does no good.

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 points in a different direction depending on what's underneath you.

And then you also show that gravity is non-uniform across the globe.

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Michael Stevens: Vsauce | Lex Fridman Podcast #58