This is a clip from a conversation with Sean Carroll on the Artificial Intelligence podcast from Jul 2019. You can watch the full conversation here: http://bit.ly/315QhfC or listen to it here: https://lexfridman.com/sean-carroll/ and subscribe on your podcast app. You can watch other clips on the clips playlist: http://bit.ly/2JYkbfZ or full episodes on the full episode playlist: http://bit.ly/2EcbaKf Please note, I select clips with insights from these much longer conversation with the hope of helping make ideas from the podcast more accessible and discoverable. Ultimately, this podcast is a small side hobby for me with the goal of sharing and discussing ideas. For now, I post a clip every day when there is not a full length video. I did a poll and 92% of people either liked or loved the posting of daily clips, 2% were indifferent, and 6% hated it, some suggesting that I post them on a separate YouTube channel. I hear the 6% and partially agree, so am torn about the whole thing. I tried creating a separate clips channel but the YouTube algorithm makes it very difficult for that channel to grow unless the main channel is already very popular. So for a little while, I'll keep posting clips on the main channel. I ask for your patience and to see these clips as supporting the dissemination of knowledge contained in nuanced discussion. If you enjoy it, consider subscribing, sharing, and commenting.

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Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech, specializing in quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology. He is the author of several popular books: one on the arrow of time called From Eternity to Here, one on the Higgs boson called The Particle at the End of the Universe, and one on science and philosophy called The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. He has an upcoming book on Quantum Mechanics that you can preorder now called Something Deeply Hidden. He writes one of my favorite blogs on his website preposterousuniverse.com. I recommend clicking on the Greatest Hits link that lists accessible, interesting posts on the arrow of time, dark matter, dark energy, the Big Bang, general relativity, string theory, quantum mechanics, and meta questions about the philosophy of science, God, Ethics, Politics, Academia, and much much more. Finally, and perhaps most famously, he is the host of a podcast called Mindscape that you should subscribe to and support on Patreon.

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Are you excited by the thing that Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX in general, space, but the idea of space exploration, even though you're, or your species is young and impatient?

Yeah, no, I do think that space travel is crucially important, long-term, even to other star systems.

And I think that many people overestimate the difficulty because they say, look, if you travel 1% the speed of light to another star system, we'll be dead before we get there, right?

And therefore, when they write their science fiction stories, they imagine we go faster than the speed of light because otherwise they're too impatient, right?

We're not going to go faster than the speed of light, but we could easily imagine that the human lifespan gets extended to thousands of years.

And once you do that, then the stars are much closer, effectively, right?

So I think that that's gonna be the future, the far future, not my lifetime once again, but baby steps.

Well, it's in a race against time, right?

A friend of mine who actually thinks about these things said, you know, you and I are gonna die, but I don't know about our grandchildren.

That's a very, I don't know, predicting the future is hard, but that's at least a plausible scenario.

And so, yeah, no, I think that, as we discussed earlier, there are threats to the Earth, known and unknown, right?

Having spread humanity and biology elsewhere is a really important long-term goal.


Speaker 0: Are you excited by the thing that Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX in general, space, but the idea of space exploration, even though you're, or your species is young and impatient?

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I do think that space travel is crucially important, long-term, even to other star systems. And I think that many people overestimate the difficulty because they say, look, if you travel 1% the speed of light to another star system, we'll be dead before we get there, right? And I think that it's much easier. And therefore, when they write their science fiction stories, they imagine we go faster than the speed of light because otherwise they're too impatient, right? We're not going to go faster than the speed of light, but we could easily imagine that the human lifespan gets extended to thousands of years.

And once you do that, then the stars are much closer, effectively, right? And what's a hundred year trip, right? So I think that that's gonna be the future, the far future, not my lifetime once again, but baby steps.

Speaker 0: Unless your lifetime gets extended.

Speaker 1: Well, it's in a race against time, right? A friend of mine who actually thinks about these things said, you know, you and I are gonna die, but I don't know about our grandchildren. That's a very, I don't know, predicting the future is hard, but that's at least a plausible scenario. And so, yeah, no, I think that, as we discussed earlier, there are threats to the Earth, known and unknown, right? Having spread humanity and biology elsewhere is a really important long-term goal.

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Sean Carroll: Space Travel is Crucially Important Long-Term | AI Podcast Clips