Exactly. Do we want to do this to our own star? And suffer consequences of a mishap.. that might alter this planets fate? Or do we try to do it somewhere else, in a more controlled planet/star system? Oh wait.. we have to get there.. 🤷
Meh, I like Uncle Ben's quote better😁. At least in that universe, good guys prevail and villains don't. ( though that might be a tough sell to Uncle Ben )
I see no reason we can't. Sure a lot of people today still cling to archaic beliefs like conservatism. Which is just aristocracy in a new dress. We can move beyond those ideas.
@NicholasMarshall It's not a matter of possibility in theory, in my opinion. It's the same reason we can't get a global climate agreement to save us all from climate collapse. It's the genocides, the allocation of resources to defense spending rather than education, the glorification of capital and consumption and our collective short term thinking. Humanity's tools evolved without our chemical brains evolving. As long as the population can be ruled by fear of not having enough and told someone else is to blame, we won't be able to advance.
@NicholasMarshall for me I think the clearest example of humanity's repsonse to a universal threat was when that little alien (COVID-19) invaded humanity and then seeing how united the response was in terms of how that threat was tackled. While there was some effort on the part of some humans, by no means was the response united. There were so many anti-this anti-that (anti mask, anti vaccine, etc) that spread the threat to more areas of earth. Even when there is a universal threat to all humans, there will be in-fighting amongst us humans 🤷🏻♂️
This show has been going for ten years and Matt's been the host for nine. Man, all you've done is remind me that I've been watching since Gabe and am also now ten years older...thx.
Life extension is something far more important than some fixation on mythical energy scales. How does anyone think we can become a "space-faring" species with a handful of decades of lifespan? Laughable.
Research itself is still going at an insane rate, it's just that implementation takes a bit longer, so sometimes it seems like we're just crawling along like snails doing nearly nothing, and sometimes we are, but that's not the whole picture I think
@@luniz4209 He mentioned this in the video, but at some point waste heat becomes the limiting factor. If you generate or use the power in space, you'd need a massive radiator to get rid of it there.
@@luniz4209 The forests seemed unlimited until they were all cut down. The oil reserves seemed unlimited until the easy wells were pumped dry. Don't even get me started about how wasteful we are with uranium.
@@JohnSmith-b4w I haven't watched it yet but I figured that would need mentioning. I mean if we used all the energy the Earth received then that's just going to cause global warming even if it's entering our electrical grid. We'd have to manually redirect that heat elsewhere or cook the planet.
"Imagine a world where humanity..." I'm still convinced from that video on why we don't see life elsewhere, where a possibility is that after a certain point, civilizations destroy themselves. Seems like our path.
The great filter could just as easily be behind us. Perhaps life advancing to technology is extremely difficult. We still don't really know how abiogenesis happened exactly.
@@Alec0124 Too many people seem to think that a technological civilization is inevitable once abiogenesis has happened, and this has always seemed to me to be a pathetically naive way to see things. It could be inevitable given enough time, but we see plenty in our planet's past to suggest otherwise.
@@Alec0124 Yeah, people really seem to underestimate what a fluke it was a species evolved the kind of intelligence we have, the combination of different traits that all work together to make us social, inquisitve tool-users. Most likely it only happened once in the planet's history. Similarly, multicellular life very possibly was also a fluke, and the baseline in the universe could be simple microbes.
You should do a video on the long-term technological advances necessary for humanity's future survival. I'm talking tech for escaping the sun going supernova, tech for surviving the Andromeda collision, etc. How far into the heat death of the universe can we survive?
As far as I'm aware, the Andromeda collision poses no threat, as the space between the stars is so vast, no actual collisions of stars should occur. It is my understanding that, even if our star gets jostled around in relation to other stars, the planets will maintain the same orbits around the sun. I'm no expert, so I might be missing something.
The messy geopolitical stuff is the most important part of ever having a chance at getting to 1 and it seems pretty clear we either aren't getting there or if we do it'll cost such monumental wide spread suffering that one should question if it's even worth it.
We can't in any case. This is juvenile fantasies for stunted teenagers. At our peak, our species managed to send three highly trained people to bounce around on the Moon for a few days, and it took a superpower at its peak to do it. And who really cares? And I speak as someone with a Saturn V model rocket in my bedroom.
From a Soviet scientist's eyes, this probably wasn't even a consideration. Because obviously if there's a human obstacle, the Soviets just removed it...
@@8BitNaptimeThere are a lot of minerals and water on the moon. We could mine them there instead of tearing up the Earth for materials. The far side of the moon would be a great place for a telescope because it always faces away from the Earth and can see things not visible (or not as well) from Earth but without having to be an orbital telescope. And doing large scale production and computation won't heat up the Earth (like he mentions, keeping the heat of the planet in balance). The moon has no atmosphere or biosphere to worry about.
My favorite space-time of any day is when this drops.. wish they made more episodes, aired more often. they totally could and I would watch every single one. Thanks for all you guys do!
I honestly think that great filters are a myth. They are not a myth but what I mean is that we are long past any great filters. I think that if there was ever a great filter, it would be the emergence of life or the emergence of eukaryotes.
Maybe that's why the Fermi paradox is a thing because it's not where they are but when they were since I guess most don't last long enough before they destroy themselves, yeah?
If there are so many of them, some will survive any extinction event and go on to become K2 which is undestroyable and would be detectable from far away distances.
@@GregorBarclay To destroy a K2 civ you need enough energy to destroy an entire star system. That kind of power is only available to a K3 civilisation which would be even more obvious to any observer within a billion ly.
@@volos_olympus "To destroy a super saiyan 2 you need to go super saiyan 3 first which takes several minutes to power up, plus commercial breaks" - exactly as fictional as K2 and 3 civilizations and claims about them
@@volos_olympus An outburst from the galactic core can sterilize entire regions of the galaxy, so even K2 is not necessarily safe😅. But yeah odds still many million X better than K1.
@@beyondfossil There is also the option of doing something like Doctor Who does, with levels 0-11 and a forbidden x level planets. The separation in levels including having life, civilization, space travel and even up to advanced time travel. It allows for a more detailed description of life on said planet, while also giving the life there goals to reach if they want to advance farther.
@@beyondfossil Why is using more energy inherently good or inevitable? The entire premise of the K scale is arbitrary. Why energy? Why not suppose civilizations will inevitably maximize, I don't know, happiness? Efficiency? Cultural achievements? Religious order? Why suppose civilization will maximize anything at all? Why do we think that continuing to collect energy even beyond such ridiculous extremes as the entire output of the sun will continue to have any meaningful utility whatsoever? These questions are not new or difficult to conceive at all. Still all "futurist" discourse is Kardashev scale this, fermi peradox that, simulation hypothesis, the same like 4 shallow concepts regurgitated ad nauseum with the same obvious rebuttals only for it all to repeat in the next round of edutainment slop because science fiction hasn't had new ideas in decades and "futurism" is tech bro nerd bait for people who think anthropology is a fake liberal arts field yet think they can accurately predict the state of human society 30,000 years in the future based on nothing but their engineering undergrad degree and their subscription to Lex Fridman's youtube channel. Oops, I mean something something the Dr. Who universe is way more realistic than The Expanse because of its hard magic system, that's why we haven't seen aliens yet
I think it's a silly, novel and naive scale, for a few reasons. But primarily 2: Least, we've never witnessed any step of that scale being imposed in our universe. It has never needed to occur, and we ourselves don't necessarily fit that prediction. The biggest reason, is it seems far, far more likely that an advanced civilization will find sufficient, independent, "zero point" energy sources, than would ever need to harvest an entire galaxy, or solar system etc, for such raw e=mc^2 energy.
We will survive (somehow) but we won't like it😂. The aliens must think most of humanity is not very smart lol [Honestly these far right movements all over the world are gonna keep hindering humanity's progress🤦🏽♂️]
Great video. What a pre-type 1 civ would have to do politically and economically to advance to type 1 status would make for an interesting part two video. I think such a video would be appropriate because after all politics and economics boils down to resource management of the physical world. So it is suited for scientific analysis.
I know what to do with all the energy:- Use it to mine Bitcoins and then buy every single person on the planet botox and a spray tan. Any leftover energy can be used to power AI to make cat memes for Tik-Tok.
The 2024 US election explains Fermi's Paradox. Every global civilization eventually gets superpower geriatric leader with a talent for corruption, mendacity, ignorance, and bankruptcy.
I'm quite happy to see space-based solar power here. In my prior work I did some research and conferences on it, and absolutely love talking about it. Quick note on your energy quantity issue endpoint with respect to space-based solar power - since we're really only talking about sunlight that would already be hitting the Earth's atmosphere (for type I), we don't need to worry anywhere near as much about added energy. It was always coming here anyway.
@@EffectualPoet Best way to that is to lead by example. Trouble is, the U.S. is the "noisiest" country, drowning out the societies that seem to have their sh*t together, like the Nordic ones. _They're_ a good example to follow.
@@EffectualPoet I disagree. This would be more along the lines of, "If you build it, they will come." Naturally, I want USA to lead the way, but, if we don't, there will be other countries that might want to beat us to the punch, here.
Larry Nivin's Known Space explored the heat issues of Type 1 - the Puppeteers were arguably closing in on type 2, having had to move their planet to a larger orbit due to overheating from industrial energy production, and lowered sea levels due to burning through a bunch of deuterium.
in the netherlands we used windmill power to do the heavy work and we teraformd our land and we make more land so you could say we are a type 1 country XD
It’s not even the waste heat that is the problem even if it was 100 percent efficient all that electricity eventually converts to heat. So you would be at 2 times the sun heat hitting earth.
@@Veramocoreveryone forgets you get heat at every step. And space is a perfect insulator. Oh and to radiate the heat away fast enough…..yea you need to be basically white hot.
I hope we can, humanity can overcome and adapt. But based on current trends, it's not looking good Matt. If only politics and business were based on facts and objective truths instead of lies and greed. One can only dream.
Looking at how the humanity is behaving right now in regards of society, politics and Nature... I would argue that it should never become a Tier 1 civilization. It just doesn't deserve this achievement and just as important, the cosmic environment don't deserve the plaque the humanity is acting like.
They've come along a long way from the first episodes. I've learnt so much from this channel and feel really greatful that we have this information taught by a fantastic teacher.
What is the point of a civilization having so much energy generating capacity as to be a type 1, type 2 civilization ? What would that energy be for? I ask because most our economic way of life, even if it were powered cleanly, is centered around consumption and waste. I just don’t know what this future society prioritizes with its energy abundance
What do we do with all this energy? Pump it into lasers obviously. Lasers literally do everything. How far is that thing? Laser Can I heat that thing? Laser Can I cool that thing? Lasers Can I accelerate that thing? Lasers Can I slow that thing? Lasers Can I calibrate my sensors to see through the atmosphere? Lasers Can I figure out where I am without using GPS? Lasers Can I make rocks think? Lasers Can I? Yes, use a laser.
Space based solar is the way to go, along with space based everything else. We do want to be a space based species for our next step off this speck of dirt, plasma, air and water after all. We do need to master our own fusion eventually though since solar can only get us so far.
Matt, you totally forgot to mention the Earth's core! We could easily power a Type I civilization if we figure out how to convert that heat into electricity easily! But of course, that would have the downside of cooling the Earth's core much faster, and killing the magnetic field with it. But it would certainly offer us plenty of time to become a Type II civilization!
I'm very critical of discussions about the Kardashev scale for many reasons, especially when taken beyond the realm of speculative fiction and entertainment and presented as relevant to science beyond searching for aliens. I love this channel and I do appreciate this video's avoidance of the worst pitfalls by limiting itself more strictly to technical physical questions than others would, but I still have some serious problems with it: I don't understand why he mentions the quantitative thermodynamic problem of energy while entirely ignoring the qualitative distribution and organization of energ. The latter is necessary to be able to examine the economic and ecological feasibility of managing and directing such astronomical amounts of energy. For example would powerful AI be enough to figure it all out somehow, and just how would that actually work? Would it scale up smoothly, or would the requirements of energy management skyrocket past the powers of AI management? What kind of political and social organization would all of this require, and how could we achieve it? Can we even imagine such a thing? Can the ecology of earth sustain ANY method of harnessing and transferring this amount of energy, and whatever production processes are necessary to achieve it (how can you casually mention depleting the ocean of deuterium without stopping to question this aspect)? All of these questions must be answered in their full complexity on the way to a Type 1 civilization (let alone higher Types) if we are to avoid destroying ourselves. Furthermore, how do all of these systems and processes potentially feed back into and transform themselves and the others? How can we even begin to track and manipulate such endless complexity? How much of this stuff can we even know about at all, let alone understand? Again I'm a big fan of the channel and I think there's some fun speculative value here, but it seems the video lacks a clear purpose besides entertainment. It also still contributes to common cultural myths of unbounded technological production and energy consumption, which is a huge part of how our planet got to be in the mess it is in today. I believe it's a subtly but deeply irresponsible way of handling this topic that is unfortunately far too commonly accepted. But props for treating the subject better than most anyway.
I can pretty confidently say 'No' unless we manage to make ourselves a good bit smarter and more coolheaded. The more energy you give to a bunch of barely civilized simians, the faster they will use it to obliterate themselves. Turns out that fire is indeed hot. Go figure.
Remember how Nobel created dynamite and it was so powerful he claimed it would end wars because people would be afraid of it? I think that's the case with nukes unless we make bigger bomb and more energy available means better weapons
How ironic that this releases the day after we discover that we will NEVER become this advanced and probably will blow ourselves back to the stonge age within a decade or two at this point.
Humanity hinders its own progress; it seems were not that smart as a species yet. History does repeat itself. If far right movements are on the rise, it's everywhere in the world (see India) then good luck to all of us 👍🏽
I think more time should have been spent on the waste heat issue. Assuming we still allow an ecosystem to exist we'd need nearly all that waste heat pumped out. Meaning we pretty much have to be multi-planetary to be K1
Using fossil fuels allows us to have energy now. Reducing the majority of Earth’s population to energy scarcity by demanding fully renewable energy before we have the technology to make it work in the real world is not a viable path forward. It’s a way to usher in a dark age where no technological progress occurs. When renewable energy technology becomes mature enough, people will be eager to use it, because it’s better and cheaper. If you have to try to coerce people into using it, that an admission that the renewable energy tech is not yet good enough.
yeah, I just feel like this alone will cost us like a decade of reaction time, which we didn't have a lot of already. We totally do with the right policies btw, but I don't think ppl are prepared for the change that entails.
@@KirssarGames it's part of the process. Having energy independency lowers costs, meaning you can spend it on better things like nuclear energy, which would bring even cheaper energy and more independency. It's a snowball effect. I don't expect most people to see things that far, but it's a start.
Thanks for mentioning the heat burden of fusion. Many scifi discussions imagine that heat is 100% converted to electricity and pretend that doesn't cause heat when used.
About fusion reactions, there are others that emits charged particles (D-He3) that, if captured, can allow greater efficiencies (+90%, no heat to electricity conversion needed). The problem with that are the high energies required to make them happen, but if we become a type 1 civilization, we can assume that we will be able to overcome that issue. That should drastically reduce the number of Tokamaks (or any other alternative) required Ref: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#/media/File:Fusion_rxnrate.svg
17:06 - "We could turn the Earth into a paradise of abundance... assuming we solve all world conflicts, which energy cannot do directly although surely eliminating scarcity helps" We as a species will never reach a stage of post-scarcity as long as the dominant political-economic paradigm relies on, and thus perpetuates, artificial scarcity.
The new greatest quote of all time: with great power comes.... great need for storage and distribution of that power
☭
Existing lines
Exactly. Do we want to do this to our own star? And suffer consequences of a mishap.. that might alter this planets fate? Or do we try to do it somewhere else, in a more controlled planet/star system? Oh wait.. we have to get there..
🤷
Meh, I like Uncle Ben's quote better😁. At least in that universe, good guys prevail and villains don't. ( though that might be a tough sell to Uncle Ben )
@@jamessean6541 yeah and doctor octopus tried to create a contained star and that didn't work either. 🫣. Idk if I wanna be in that universe. 😂
Mankind: "That's a lot of energy. We could make a bomb out of it!"
a cabin in the woods is sounding nice.
It is a good movie.
This is timely. I was looking for commentary on the Kardashev scale at lunch time.
Well first step would be trying to not go extinct
Ah... about that... 😅
We've done a bang up job so far.
You might as well give up and clear the way for the cockroaches.
I absolutely love this show, just letting you and the team know
Type-1? Half of us still think the Earth is flat.
What, harness all the energy of both sides of the flat world, lol? I have a feeling flat earthers are not watching this channel...
Bot comment and votes.
Wait. It's not flat???
Half?
You don't need all people to advance the scale.
I think fundamentally, humans cannot cooperate on a large enough scale to achieve this.
I see no reason we can't.
Sure a lot of people today still cling to archaic beliefs like conservatism. Which is just aristocracy in a new dress.
We can move beyond those ideas.
@NicholasMarshall It's not a matter of possibility in theory, in my opinion. It's the same reason we can't get a global climate agreement to save us all from climate collapse. It's the genocides, the allocation of resources to defense spending rather than education, the glorification of capital and consumption and our collective short term thinking. Humanity's tools evolved without our chemical brains evolving. As long as the population can be ruled by fear of not having enough and told someone else is to blame, we won't be able to advance.
@@mcmahian I agree
@NicholasMarshall for me I think the clearest example of humanity's repsonse to a universal threat was when that little alien (COVID-19) invaded humanity and then seeing how united the response was in terms of how that threat was tackled. While there was some effort on the part of some humans, by no means was the response united. There were so many anti-this anti-that (anti mask, anti vaccine, etc) that spread the threat to more areas of earth. Even when there is a universal threat to all humans, there will be in-fighting amongst us humans 🤷🏻♂️
This is why you need Bene Gesserit.
😂😂😂 who vetted that T-shirt design . Tell me I’m not the only one to see it
👀
I looks like crappy AI designed it.
You see what you want to see!
Yes I mentioned this on a previous video. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
Going to say no atm...😢
Holy crap! This guy is 51 years old. Wow!
no way
This show has been going for ten years and Matt's been the host for nine. Man, all you've done is remind me that I've been watching since Gabe and am also now ten years older...thx.
I'd say I hope I look that good at 51 but I already look older lmao
Matt definitely has escape velocity.
Life extension is something far more important than some fixation on mythical energy scales. How does anyone think we can become a "space-faring" species with a handful of decades of lifespan? Laughable.
I admire your hope for the future, but I do not share it.
Type-1?? I’m hoping we get through the next 4 years.
Given how wasteful we are with our limited resources, it is hard to see how we'll become a type 1 civilization anytime soon.
I think that's the point, it doesn't matter how much you waste when it's virtually unlimited
Research itself is still going at an insane rate, it's just that implementation takes a bit longer, so sometimes it seems like we're just crawling along like snails doing nearly nothing, and sometimes we are, but that's not the whole picture I think
@@luniz4209 He mentioned this in the video, but at some point waste heat becomes the limiting factor. If you generate or use the power in space, you'd need a massive radiator to get rid of it there.
@@luniz4209 The forests seemed unlimited until they were all cut down. The oil reserves seemed unlimited until the easy wells were pumped dry. Don't even get me started about how wasteful we are with uranium.
@@JohnSmith-b4w I haven't watched it yet but I figured that would need mentioning. I mean if we used all the energy the Earth received then that's just going to cause global warming even if it's entering our electrical grid.
We'd have to manually redirect that heat elsewhere or cook the planet.
"Imagine a world where humanity..."
I'm still convinced from that video on why we don't see life elsewhere, where a possibility is that after a certain point, civilizations destroy themselves. Seems like our path.
... or they are all smart enough to ignore us...
The great filter could just as easily be behind us. Perhaps life advancing to technology is extremely difficult. We still don't really know how abiogenesis happened exactly.
It's also possible we're the first and the rate civilizations advanced as us destroy themselves is 0%
@@Alec0124 Too many people seem to think that a technological civilization is inevitable once abiogenesis has happened, and this has always seemed to me to be a pathetically naive way to see things.
It could be inevitable given enough time, but we see plenty in our planet's past to suggest otherwise.
@@Alec0124 Yeah, people really seem to underestimate what a fluke it was a species evolved the kind of intelligence we have, the combination of different traits that all work together to make us social, inquisitve tool-users. Most likely it only happened once in the planet's history. Similarly, multicellular life very possibly was also a fluke, and the baseline in the universe could be simple microbes.
You should do a video on the long-term technological advances necessary for humanity's future survival. I'm talking tech for escaping the sun going supernova, tech for surviving the Andromeda collision, etc. How far into the heat death of the universe can we survive?
As far as I'm aware, the Andromeda collision poses no threat, as the space between the stars is so vast, no actual collisions of stars should occur. It is my understanding that, even if our star gets jostled around in relation to other stars, the planets will maintain the same orbits around the sun. I'm no expert, so I might be missing something.
By the way things are going the only type 1 we'll be achieving is diabetes;)
hahahahaha
The messy geopolitical stuff is the most important part of ever having a chance at getting to 1 and it seems pretty clear we either aren't getting there or if we do it'll cost such monumental wide spread suffering that one should question if it's even worth it.
We can't in any case. This is juvenile fantasies for stunted teenagers. At our peak, our species managed to send three highly trained people to bounce around on the Moon for a few days, and it took a superpower at its peak to do it. And who really cares? And I speak as someone with a Saturn V model rocket in my bedroom.
From a Soviet scientist's eyes, this probably wasn't even a consideration. Because obviously if there's a human obstacle, the Soviets just removed it...
The fact that doing it would exterminate all life on the planet is the bigger issue.
Honestly, building a moon base and super computer on the far side of the moon seems like a legitimately good idea.
once again Dr Evil has been decades ahead of us.
Why?
@@8BitNaptimeBecause he thinks it's cool. There is currently no benefit.
@@8BitNaptimeThere are a lot of minerals and water on the moon. We could mine them there instead of tearing up the Earth for materials. The far side of the moon would be a great place for a telescope because it always faces away from the Earth and can see things not visible (or not as well) from Earth but without having to be an orbital telescope. And doing large scale production and computation won't heat up the Earth (like he mentions, keeping the heat of the planet in balance). The moon has no atmosphere or biosphere to worry about.
My favorite space-time of any day is when this drops.. wish they made more episodes, aired more often. they totally could and I would watch every single one. Thanks for all you guys do!
Is it just me that finds your voice really soothing, sometimes what you say goes straight over my head but that’s okay
It's just you. I guess other male nerds are a turn on.
We're a type 0 now
dont worry kamala will be out of office soon
I was going to push our science and technology to the edge and finally make Earth a Type 1 Civilization...but then things got really busy at work.
Probably the simplest reason as to why we wont…
Lock in man i want it done soon
@@homiealladin7340 I would! I really would! But I've just been assigned the Henderson Account. It's a nightmare I tell you!
Time to start edging the technology
Oh, I dunno, I can think of a few ways a huge amount of energy could solve geopolitical issues..
we are fast approaching the great filter.
I'm guessing next four years...
I honestly think that great filters are a myth. They are not a myth but what I mean is that we are long past any great filters. I think that if there was ever a great filter, it would be the emergence of life or the emergence of eukaryotes.
question is at what point can you safely say "I'm totally past the technology singularity a la Kurzweil et al."
@@nonyobiz-recordsonly by looking back. The threshold won’t be visible until we pass it. Like most big things really.
Fascinating episode, Matt!
It's about half as likely as it was a few days ago. ☹️
We're frightening close to never getting there
Unlocking bottomless sources of energy just means unlocking bottomless sources of destruction for us to fling at each other.....
This is my favorite video you’ve ever made… very inspiring!
This is pure fantasy now.
Always was
wonderful addition to your videos! Thanks as always!
Dude the thumbnail picture is so scary. Can you imagine looking up in the sky at night and not being able to see the stars?
Light pollution drowns out the stars in NYC.. so.. imagine what? 😂😂😂😂
Most people on earth can't see the stars.
The first step is to avoid the dark side of the Fermi paradox
Start as Type 2.
rofl
Diabetes?
Underrated comment
Maybe that's why the Fermi paradox is a thing because it's not where they are but when they were since I guess most don't last long enough before they destroy themselves, yeah?
If there are so many of them, some will survive any extinction event and go on to become K2 which is undestroyable and would be detectable from far away distances.
@@volos_olympushow is K2 undestroyable? Surely another, bigger K2 could have a decent go at it
@@GregorBarclay To destroy a K2 civ you need enough energy to destroy an entire star system. That kind of power is only available to a K3 civilisation which would be even more obvious to any observer within a billion ly.
@@volos_olympus "To destroy a super saiyan 2 you need to go super saiyan 3 first which takes several minutes to power up, plus commercial breaks" - exactly as fictional as K2 and 3 civilizations and claims about them
@@volos_olympus An outburst from the galactic core can sterilize entire regions of the galaxy, so even K2 is not necessarily safe😅. But yeah odds still many million X better than K1.
I think the K-scale might be a bit outdated.
The problem is the Kardashev levels are so huge. I think the K-scale is still very useful to provide big goals that civilizations can work towards.
The beauty of the scale is that the levels are conceptually easy to understand.
@@beyondfossil since that is more or less logarithmic, then lets put a d in front like in dB.
@@beyondfossil There is also the option of doing something like Doctor Who does, with levels 0-11 and a forbidden x level planets. The separation in levels including having life, civilization, space travel and even up to advanced time travel. It allows for a more detailed description of life on said planet, while also giving the life there goals to reach if they want to advance farther.
@@beyondfossil Why is using more energy inherently good or inevitable? The entire premise of the K scale is arbitrary. Why energy? Why not suppose civilizations will inevitably maximize, I don't know, happiness? Efficiency? Cultural achievements? Religious order? Why suppose civilization will maximize anything at all? Why do we think that continuing to collect energy even beyond such ridiculous extremes as the entire output of the sun will continue to have any meaningful utility whatsoever? These questions are not new or difficult to conceive at all. Still all "futurist" discourse is Kardashev scale this, fermi peradox that, simulation hypothesis, the same like 4 shallow concepts regurgitated ad nauseum with the same obvious rebuttals only for it all to repeat in the next round of edutainment slop because science fiction hasn't had new ideas in decades and "futurism" is tech bro nerd bait for people who think anthropology is a fake liberal arts field yet think they can accurately predict the state of human society 30,000 years in the future based on nothing but their engineering undergrad degree and their subscription to Lex Fridman's youtube channel. Oops, I mean something something the Dr. Who universe is way more realistic than The Expanse because of its hard magic system, that's why we haven't seen aliens yet
15:36 that's the plot of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I think it's a silly, novel and naive scale, for a few reasons. But primarily 2:
Least, we've never witnessed any step of that scale being imposed in our universe. It has never needed to occur, and we ourselves don't necessarily fit that prediction.
The biggest reason, is it seems far, far more likely that an advanced civilization will find sufficient, independent, "zero point" energy sources, than would ever need to harvest an entire galaxy, or solar system etc, for such raw e=mc^2 energy.
It's like extrapolating measurements and then saying "well SOMEONE has to use this measurement eventually"
It's not that hard, we're already a Kardashian civilization.
And we spend a lot of energy on that.
And way too much money…
Take my r/Angryupvote and go.
Haha
I hate people like you BTW. It doesn't add anything.
We will all be lucky to survive the next four years…..
HA!
We will survive (somehow) but we won't like it😂. The aliens must think most of humanity is not very smart lol
[Honestly these far right movements all over the world are gonna keep hindering humanity's progress🤦🏽♂️]
One step forward then 5 steps back. Merica
@@mh6276I know that Ha
What a funny time to upload this
Why?
Knowing if we can, is a great first step
Great video. What a pre-type 1 civ would have to do politically and economically to advance to type 1 status would make for an interesting part two video. I think such a video would be appropriate because after all politics and economics boils down to resource management of the physical world. So it is suited for scientific analysis.
We wont last long enough
10:56 It's funny to see how incoming becomes ingoing when Matt says it 😂
Lol, not when all the scientist are about to be round up. You'll be lucky to survive the inquisitor
I haven't watched the video yet but one answer to the title question is: "By learning how to peacefully cooperate"....
With great difficulty
Comes great responsibility
The odds are not good.
@@orbislame If responsibility is needed then we're doomed
I know what to do with all the energy:-
Use it to mine Bitcoins and then buy every single person on the planet botox and a spray tan.
Any leftover energy can be used to power AI to make cat memes for Tik-Tok.
Earth just went type negative 1 type civilization
True. At least we have kittens on the internet... for now.
The 2024 US election explains Fermi's Paradox. Every global civilization eventually gets superpower geriatric leader with a talent for corruption, mendacity, ignorance, and bankruptcy.
I'm quite happy to see space-based solar power here. In my prior work I did some research and conferences on it, and absolutely love talking about it.
Quick note on your energy quantity issue endpoint with respect to space-based solar power - since we're really only talking about sunlight that would already be hitting the Earth's atmosphere (for type I), we don't need to worry anywhere near as much about added energy. It was always coming here anyway.
In the end, it's all about infrastructure. You want a type 1 civilization, you better start building the infrastructure for it, now!
That's not the first step. The first step is collective harmony.
@@EffectualPoet Best way to that is to lead by example. Trouble is, the U.S. is the "noisiest" country, drowning out the societies that seem to have their sh*t together, like the Nordic ones. _They're_ a good example to follow.
@@EffectualPoet I disagree. This would be more along the lines of, "If you build it, they will come." Naturally, I want USA to lead the way, but, if we don't, there will be other countries that might want to beat us to the punch, here.
With what mass?
@@AlbertaGeekThe Nordic countries are all going extinct.
Great Work!
There's folks around that think a flu shot makes you wifi enabled... I'm not optimistic.
I mean, they say that like it would be bad.
Larry Nivin's Known Space explored the heat issues of Type 1 - the Puppeteers were arguably closing in on type 2, having had to move their planet to a larger orbit due to overheating from industrial energy production, and lowered sea levels due to burning through a bunch of deuterium.
That solves nothing. K1 can’t ablate heat fast enough to maintain itself. Even in empty space they’d be a dark venus in no time.
in the netherlands we used windmill power to do the heavy work and we teraformd our land and we make more land so you could say we are a type 1 country XD
The land that you made is sinking. Netherlands needs to build the dams higher.
And then came the steam engine, coal mines and a huge gas bubble…
But then we elected the PVV, BBB, VVD and NSC.
@@hevado01, yup. The Dutch Disease.
15:48 Exactly the question I was asking myself!
In Larry Niven Ringworld waste heat from fusion was so high for the Puppeteer aliens they had to move their planet farther from their sun
It’s not even the waste heat that is the problem even if it was 100 percent efficient all that electricity eventually converts to heat. So you would be at 2 times the sun heat hitting earth.
@@Veramocoreveryone forgets you get heat at every step. And space is a perfect insulator.
Oh and to radiate the heat away fast enough…..yea you need to be basically white hot.
I hope we can, humanity can overcome and adapt. But based on current trends, it's not looking good Matt. If only politics and business were based on facts and objective truths instead of lies and greed. One can only dream.
Looking at how the humanity is behaving right now in regards of society, politics and Nature...
I would argue that it should never become a Tier 1 civilization.
It just doesn't deserve this achievement and just as important, the cosmic environment don't deserve the plaque the humanity is acting like.
More like Kalashnikova 7.62 Civilization
Meet the Kardashevs.
Fascinating!
I was just finishing watching an old PBSST video when this notification popped up, great timing 😅
Same.
They've come along a long way from the first episodes. I've learnt so much from this channel and feel really greatful that we have this information taught by a fantastic teacher.
What is the point of a civilization having so much energy generating capacity as to be a type 1, type 2 civilization ? What would that energy be for? I ask because most our economic way of life, even if it were powered cleanly, is centered around consumption and waste. I just don’t know what this future society prioritizes with its energy abundance
What have we done with our energy abundance in comparison to folks in the 1800s? The answer is we can't know.
To simulate brains and new worlds in computers, that's where it's at in the future, the real world is only the infrastructure for that.
_"They say that if you have a hammer, every problem is a nail."_
This is quote is hitting hard.
What do we do with all this energy? Pump it into lasers obviously. Lasers literally do everything.
How far is that thing? Laser
Can I heat that thing? Laser
Can I cool that thing? Lasers
Can I accelerate that thing? Lasers
Can I slow that thing? Lasers
Can I calibrate my sensors to see through the atmosphere? Lasers
Can I figure out where I am without using GPS? Lasers
Can I make rocks think? Lasers
Can I? Yes, use a laser.
@@Hector-bj3ls best comment
Sadly, one of the best fixes to your heat problem is to shade the earth entirely from the sun with...more solar panels. Maybe Mr. Burns was right?
We're not going to do this now -- or ever. We have chosen our own well-deserved extinction.
Yeah, hope is dead.
cynics like you are so goddamn frustrating.
Space based solar is the way to go, along with space based everything else.
We do want to be a space based species for our next step off this speck of dirt, plasma, air and water after all.
We do need to master our own fusion eventually though since solar can only get us so far.
Lol. There's no way we reach type 1. We'll have destroyed ourselves before then
I didn’t know you guys wanted this so much. I got you.
But we need to change that evolution direction to normal in first place, nowadays humankind is going back to banana trees
Matt, you totally forgot to mention the Earth's core! We could easily power a Type I civilization if we figure out how to convert that heat into electricity easily! But of course, that would have the downside of cooling the Earth's core much faster, and killing the magnetic field with it. But it would certainly offer us plenty of time to become a Type II civilization!
Shhh. The flat earthers would disagree with you that earth even has a core. We do have turtles, all the way down, I'm told.
@@JaleneR Even better, that would mean basically infinite energy! We'll become Type 15 civilization in no time! 😂
@@DanielDogeanu We're jumping to type 15 already? Okay, you go then.
Apparently US solar panel manufacturering increased 4 fold in the last year
Oh nice, looking for the cost to start coming down
@@MarsStarcruiser Global solar module manufacturing costs are around $0.07 / watt. Panels are dirt cheap at the moment.
@@AndyFletcherX31 Glad to hear👍
China is the world's leader in solar panel manufacturing manufacturing
Perfect timing for the “Take Me With You” shirt
The 800lb gorilla in the room: Civilization has to survive the next 100 years first... not looking good right now.
Gotta survive the next 4.
@@JaleneR True.
Type one civilization does look to be in the distant future.
easy: "Fortschritt durch Forschung & Frieden"! (progress through science & peace!)
Easy for hypothetical non-humans. When have we ever had peace?
Doesn't Frieden means freedom?
@@oleksandrbyelyenko435 freedom is freiheit!
@@oleksandrbyelyenko435 You are thinking of Freiheit. We need some joy as well - Freude.
This is a roadmap for humanity ❤
I've never been this early, so excited for this one!
Let me know when we become a type- 0.1
I'm very critical of discussions about the Kardashev scale for many reasons, especially when taken beyond the realm of speculative fiction and entertainment and presented as relevant to science beyond searching for aliens. I love this channel and I do appreciate this video's avoidance of the worst pitfalls by limiting itself more strictly to technical physical questions than others would, but I still have some serious problems with it:
I don't understand why he mentions the quantitative thermodynamic problem of energy while entirely ignoring the qualitative distribution and organization of energ. The latter is necessary to be able to examine the economic and ecological feasibility of managing and directing such astronomical amounts of energy. For example would powerful AI be enough to figure it all out somehow, and just how would that actually work? Would it scale up smoothly, or would the requirements of energy management skyrocket past the powers of AI management? What kind of political and social organization would all of this require, and how could we achieve it? Can we even imagine such a thing? Can the ecology of earth sustain ANY method of harnessing and transferring this amount of energy, and whatever production processes are necessary to achieve it (how can you casually mention depleting the ocean of deuterium without stopping to question this aspect)? All of these questions must be answered in their full complexity on the way to a Type 1 civilization (let alone higher Types) if we are to avoid destroying ourselves.
Furthermore, how do all of these systems and processes potentially feed back into and transform themselves and the others? How can we even begin to track and manipulate such endless complexity? How much of this stuff can we even know about at all, let alone understand? Again I'm a big fan of the channel and I think there's some fun speculative value here, but it seems the video lacks a clear purpose besides entertainment. It also still contributes to common cultural myths of unbounded technological production and energy consumption, which is a huge part of how our planet got to be in the mess it is in today. I believe it's a subtly but deeply irresponsible way of handling this topic that is unfortunately far too commonly accepted. But props for treating the subject better than most anyway.
The factory must grow
Numbers at this scale are so hard to grasp. Trying to imagine 1 trillion KG of something is 🤯
That equals 1 yourmom.
Imagine 1 KG less than a trillion; now add 1KG to that. Ta dah!
@@DeathlyTired woah
@@SylveonSimp Stop being so annoying, also it's urmom if you want to sound Gen-Z.
I about died laughing when you said "remember E=MC^2 and the squared does some "heavy lifting"
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
-Dr. Ian Malcolm
No, they about it and they decided that they should because it would be cool. That's usually why lots of effort is put into excessive seeming things.
I love the new merch! I'll be there on black hole Friday
I can pretty confidently say 'No' unless we manage to make ourselves a good bit smarter and more coolheaded.
The more energy you give to a bunch of barely civilized simians, the faster they will use it to obliterate themselves.
Turns out that fire is indeed hot. Go figure.
Remember how Nobel created dynamite and it was so powerful he claimed it would end wars because people would be afraid of it? I think that's the case with nukes unless we make bigger bomb and more energy available means better weapons
Shakes Magic 8-ball: "Outlook does not look good."
How ironic that this releases the day after we discover that we will NEVER become this advanced and probably will blow ourselves back to the stonge age within a decade or two at this point.
What are you referring to?
Calm down, US elections are a performance for the masses, nothing world-shattering is going to happen. We'll persevere
Humanity hinders its own progress; it seems were not that smart as a species yet. History does repeat itself. If far right movements are on the rise, it's everywhere in the world (see India) then good luck to all of us 👍🏽
@@josephgauthier5018I'm guessing recent USA election results?
@@josephgauthier5018 I would imagine certain events in the US.
I think more time should have been spent on the waste heat issue. Assuming we still allow an ecosystem to exist we'd need nearly all that waste heat pumped out. Meaning we pretty much have to be multi-planetary to be K1
not sure if us going drill baby drill was part of the equation to become any sort of long lasting civilization tbh
Using fossil fuels allows us to have energy now. Reducing the majority of Earth’s population to energy scarcity by demanding fully renewable energy before we have the technology to make it work in the real world is not a viable path forward. It’s a way to usher in a dark age where no technological progress occurs. When renewable energy technology becomes mature enough, people will be eager to use it, because it’s better and cheaper. If you have to try to coerce people into using it, that an admission that the renewable energy tech is not yet good enough.
yeah, I just feel like this alone will cost us like a decade of reaction time, which we didn't have a lot of already.
We totally do with the right policies btw, but I don't think ppl are prepared for the change that entails.
@@KirssarGames it's part of the process. Having energy independency lowers costs, meaning you can spend it on better things like nuclear energy, which would bring even cheaper energy and more independency. It's a snowball effect.
I don't expect most people to see things that far, but it's a start.
@@sparking023 yea I'm sure that was the plan
Thanks for mentioning the heat burden of fusion. Many scifi discussions imagine that heat is 100% converted to electricity and pretend that doesn't cause heat when used.
Smexy scmience boy is smexy 11/10
About fusion reactions, there are others that emits charged particles (D-He3) that, if captured, can allow greater efficiencies (+90%, no heat to electricity conversion needed). The problem with that are the high energies required to make them happen, but if we become a type 1 civilization, we can assume that we will be able to overcome that issue. That should drastically reduce the number of Tokamaks (or any other alternative) required
Ref: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#/media/File:Fusion_rxnrate.svg
After the last election, I'd say no.
Great video. I'm going to go take a nap, in another room, in space time.
Not a chance considering recent examples of our stupidity.
17:06 - "We could turn the Earth into a paradise of abundance... assuming we solve all world conflicts, which energy cannot do directly although surely eliminating scarcity helps"
We as a species will never reach a stage of post-scarcity as long as the dominant political-economic paradigm relies on, and thus perpetuates, artificial scarcity.