The Horror of Universal Paperclips and Space Engine
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- Опубліковано 30 лис 2018
- This universe ain't big enough for the two of us, partner
Follow me on Twitter: / yacobg42
Patreon: / jacobgeller
Media Shown: Kurzgesagt ( • How Far Can We Go? Lim... ), Space Engine, Universal Paperclips, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, No Man’s Sky, Cookie Clicker, Mass Effect, EVE Online, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (2005 film), The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (1981 BBC)
Music Sources: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (2005 Film), Crystal Castles/HEALTH, Blade Runner 2049, No More Heroes, Colin Stetson
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Script available (for accessibility) upon request - Ігри
Just a heads up- there are a couple seconds of strobing visuals at around 8:00, so just skip to 8:05 or so if you need to avoid them.
As someone who watches the video before looking at the comments, this didn’t help me at all
It's at 7:57, go to 8:02 if you need to
Was the game updated at all? I haven’t been able to find any footage similar to yours of that bubble at the end, which I’m guessing is the entire universe?
@@crudnom7090 that's actually what happens when you go *inside* a black hole
@Carson Colorgrave I'm not super uhh...theistic? I think that if you really believed in intelligent design and the like, you might be able to take a little more comfort in that. Whereas now, I feel like I mostly view the universe as a random number generator haha
Everyone gangsta till 0.000000000002% of space is paperclips
Do you even know how to get the Space upgrade??
@@CerealExperimentsMizuki Keep on clipping in stage 2, you will eventually convert the entire planet into paperclips where then you can disassemble some stuff and go to space.
@@farenhite4329 what if I've already run out of matter and have disassembled everything but don't have enough to have 10 whatever it was and the other Two things I forgot?? I physically can't get the uograde, I've tried to disassemble everything and only have one to try and save money but it's completely impossible, I don't have enough.
@@farenhite4329 I just want to know what I need to upgrade, the 10 Million MW storage or output, I can't upgrade both and have the correct amount of money left over, it's not working, I don't know if I played it wrong but I got to there in 5 Hours.
@@CerealExperimentsMizuki hmm maybe send a screen shot of your game? Ill take a look at it.
"i believe we are alone in the universe"
"so there is no one else out there?"
"no, but they are alone as well"
What is this from?
@@yoctometric I'm not too sure but I think Michael Stevens from VSauce said that in an h3h3 podcast. Definitely stuck in my head though.
DARMSTADT!!! \,,/
Melancholia?
All alone in the universe me, you my neighbors all alone in an over populated world.
Why help better each other let's look for alien's. I've always hated people like that looking too space when we haven't solved hunger pollution or how to save and clean the oceans, wtf smh . Still burning fossil fuels and people look to space lol smh
Imagine building a beautiful civilization over thousands of years and then suddenly getting wiped out by an alien AI that wanted to make paperclips.
the worst part is that it isn't an alien ai. its an ai a company made with the sole objective to make more paperclips
@@nubiedubie1651 I think what they mean is that from the perspective of this alien civilisation, the AI is alien.
Likely how our universe will end. "Not with a bang, but with a whimper. "
@@ZeranZeran And lots of paper clips
Well… not far off from what’s going on, only replace it with oil.
"Oracle, are we alone in the universe?"
"Yes."
"So there's no other life out there?"
"There is. They're alone too."
glgeep glorp florp glhsrorp?
Aww
this is deep. so cool
What's that from?
Yea what is that from
I have a different source of horror. I don't zoom out, I go for a joy ride.
I just fly around, flitting left and right past the stars, until I realize that I've gone so far that *I can no longer find my home galaxy*. I'm so desperately lost in the universe that I don't even know where the Milky Way is anymore, let alone Sol or planet Earth.
Going so far, you lose what you had
Just like in Minecraft
Just swallow your pride and ask for directions. Duh!
@@tiagomarx5072 I love people like you
@@tiagomarx5072 Press F3, head towards .
This guy named "Cody's Lab" did a video where he took a pin the size of a pea, and labeled it our sun. Then, using adjusted proportions, traveled to the nearest star that was also the size of a pea.
He had to leave his state to get to it.
vjm3 plot twist. He lived on the border of the state
@@ThePillsburyJewboy Entirely possible. I recall he pulled up a google map showing how long and far he traveled. It was long, though.
I absolutely love Codyslab. He's my favorite channel.
In his setup the 'earth' was 27 inches away from the pea-sized sun, and it was so small you couldn't see it without a magnifying glass. the next closest star to our own was 7,970,000 inches away, or 125 miles.
Driving at highway speeds it took him about two hours to get to where he put the star down (I think it was proxima centauri, might've been alpha); at that speed it would take literally less than the blink of an eye to go from the earth to the sun, and only a few seconds to reach the voyager 1 probe that has been on its journey for decades and is the farthest man-made object from our planet.
In his scale-model the voyager 1 representation was about a football field away from earth. I can speedwalk across a football field in a bit under a minute but even with limitless stamina it would take me more than a day to cover the interstellar gap at the same pace. Voyager 1 is the fastest thing we've ever made, relative to the sun, and it took more than fourty YEARS just to cover that single football field. At the same pace as that you could expect to reach the nearest star in about seventy thousand years, or probably about half the length of time that humans as a species have been in existence so far.
It's a small world, but a big, big universe.
“They wanna make you feel special. And that’s what we are, right? We’re a pale blue dot, and we make music and art and war and video games, and that stuff has gotta matter, right? Because why else would we be doing it?” this part gave me chills. nothing else in the video got me like the desperation of this quote
11:25
Think of it this way, we are the way the universe has to observe itself, life may not have some grand meaning aside from the one you give it yourself but why even preocupy about what a dead and cold universe thinks about you, it's not an entity is not inteligent, instead you and i and everyone that sorrounds you are the universe, we are the inteligence of the universe
And even if the universe doesnt cares about us we will make it care, stars are huge but a dyson swarm can still cover one, planets are monumental but theres nothing that we cant reproduce about them, black holes are one of the greatest forces on the universe and they can also serve as great sources of energy for any future civilization, the universe may be expanding but who is to say that we can't stop it
Inteligent life given enough time has unlimited potential greater than any planet, star or even galaxy, so lets live up to the potential shall we instead of wallow in why we arent important
"Why else would we be doing it, right?"
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"Right??"
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@@carso1500 Well it's just easier for a lot of people to say things like "nothing matters so why try" these are the words of people who have already given up. They are the words of the fatalist, the cynic, the comically edgy and pseudo intellectuals. So basically the typical Reddit and 4chan users who think being cynical, fatalistic or nihilistic = being enlightened or some nonsense like that, when wallowing in futility is just another excuse for people to do and try less, because what's the point right? There does not need to be a point, spitefully find a purpose and point instead, even if it it only matters to you at the end of the day, at least you'll enjoy it instead of lamenting it. This is just my 2 cents on it, the universe exists, the reason is unimportant, life exists, the reason is unimportant, just enjoy it while it lasts, life is too short for wallowing in an existential crisis over purpose and proportion.
@@voidstrider801 yes, as i have said if the universe has no grand purpose then make your own purpose, if it is just to enjoy your life with your friends and family or to help humanity become an interplanetary or interstellar species both are equaly valid
If nothing matters then everything does, it's just perspective you either decide to swim or you sink
"We are stuck between a void and a hard place and the only upside I can think of is that we will probably destroy ourselves way before we actually have to deal with any of it."
I mean he isn’t wrong. We are at each others throats, the climate while having a little more action isn’t enough to stop feedback loops, we’re 100 seconds to midnight on the doomsday clock, one day bioviruses will likely (no facts here just speculation) be creatable to any person with enough tech smarts, and AI is likely to take the place of a lot of what we as humans do and god knows how that’s gonna go down. Only takes one bad apple that hates the earth, some very good tech skill, a lot of money, and a computer to make your own AI and given enough time I can promise an AI will figure out how to kill humans faster than we imagine if programmed to (the best I could think of is nanovirus injections with lethal poison and those same nanobots released in the air and then u simply activate those nanobots and the poison is released killing instantly in our sleep)
Honestly, I'm surprised we've made it _this_ long without destroying ourselves completely.
@@DodgyDaveGTX cuz only recently has that been possible
We'll suffocate on our own matter before we ever see a glimpse of the limitless matter in the universe
"Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a world with finite resources is either a madman or an economist."
Thankfully nobody actually believes that
@@JamesTaylor-on9nz you'd be surprised
@@panterxbeats Doubt it
Is this about the coronavirus? It's not funny dude. Too early
But aren't all economists mad as a hatter anyways? Listening to them talk about stocks is like watching info wars for capitalists.
Your transition to cookie clicker was so abrupt I mistook it for a sponsorship and tried to skip it.
*There is no escape*
How would Cookie Clicker sponsor anybody
+Celestial
Considering the flood of shitty mobile game sponsorships, I wouldn’t be that surprised.
How dare you skip a Cookie Clicker sponsorship, it's a good game
@@spacedoutorca4550 You wouldnt be surprised only if you didnt know what cookie clicker is
“For the real existential panic you’ve gotta put in work”
Mood
Loss
@@Pheatan jazz hands
That would make an interesting sci-fi book: an alien civilization slowly realizes that there was a catastrophic conversion of the universe into paperclips billions of years ago. They realize that the murderous superintelligent AI and its drones are still out there, waiting to awake from their Lovecraftian slumber. That would be dope.
actually there's a manga named blame! where the protag traverses a giant unending sci fi technological infinity searching for something, here, automated construction went so out of control that the robots kept building surpassing the solar system. Its not exactly the premise you were looking for but i think you'd like it
@@taltus674 Yeah it looks cool, I'll check it out thanks!
@@blasterisk The movie is awesome but it doesn't convey the existential horror of blame! It's a great introduction to the world though.
I think it might be more interesting if the Eldritch gods were the protagonists, and they tried everything they could to stop the tide, but in the end, they have to awaken the Blind Idiot God and end everything, including themselves...
Read Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series of books. It’s some of the harder science fiction I’ve ever read, and it deals with something like that. Along with everything else that comes with being a short lived race trying to explore an uncaring galaxy at lightspeeds with all the time dilation and massive distances involved.
It’s kind of like a gothic horror in space. One of the few books I’ve read to ever legitimately freak me out. That sun eater… man. Not fun.
"I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people that do."
-Angus Delaney, Night in the Woods
+
Night in the Woods is such a fantastic game, with so many good messages. I'm glad it gets recognition, even today.
We are a part of the universe. This doesn't make sense.
@@C0deH0wler it's not quite that simple. we are a part of the universe but we have our own sentience. as a whole, including us, the universe doesn't care but as a part we care.
😬
finally, someone else understands the existential horror of clicker games
Real shit
A genre where the goal is jointly to render the player obsolete, and consume all the universe, does sound like horror incarnate.
what what about my intent of automating clicker games with a external auto-clicker ?
I fear no man but this thing... *clicker games* It scares me.
fr...every time i get an upgrade i shit myself
People think I'm crazy when I say Universal Paperclips is my favorite game, but the ending seriously gives me chills; It's absolutely perfect.
It's for the same reason that Outer Wilds is my favourite game. (Either that or something like Euro Truck Simulator, to help relax & distract from all the existential dread.)
It's the simple things in life. Like paperclips.
I'm not into games, but then I stumbled upon Universal Paperclips, took me 3 days of on and off 'playing' to end it. What was the title you got, something like Master Paperclip maker or the likes ? I remember the space bit where things realy got out of hand was eerie, that and the tune for the fallen heroes (?).
That “oh shit” moment with the paper clip somehow captures an absolutely raw emotion being unprepared
The Universal Paperclips games comes from a computational science thought experiment which illustrates the danger of automation and AI. So imagine you've created the most powerful neural net ever, more interconnected, more bits. Then you tell it to make paperclips as efficiently as possible. Without putting in checks like "don't kill people" it would run amok and probably do something similar to the game.
This is effectively the basis for AI safety research, which there's a bunch of really good videos about here on youtube
Basically the plot of MGS4 with it's "war economy".
Thanks for adding this background info. I felt like the video should have explained it, and I was going to leave a comment, but you already did.
I want to make a book on this premise but instead of creating paperclips the ai is told to create the most happiness in the world at all costs (basically utilitarianism). The ai then takes that as making humans create the most happiness chemicals (dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins) as possible. It quickly breaks free of the remote server it is on and takes over the internet within minutes. It starts producing robots which take over all governments within days via non lethal weapons. Once complete control is created it focuses all of the worlds recources not used for basic human survival for the creations of mass amounts of drugs and pure forms of the happiness chemicals and injecting the biggest dosage possible that won't kill them. The ai after a few months creates practically immortality for all of mankind. Humans are forced to reproduce as much as possible. Humans have little freedom as much of there days are spent having an assortment of drugs being basically shoved down their throat and they are so addicted to these substances even a few minutes without a fix causes lethal withdrawal. As what happens with the paperclip ai the planet will begin to run out of recources and space for the ever growing population of earth and will expand to the rest of the universe till the day it runs out of recources to create more happy chemicals.
I think I read this somewhere in a UA-cam comment maybe a year ago where some computer scientist was talking about negative and positive reinforcement, so basically the plan is that whenever we make sapient AI, we need to make sure it understands that every time it causes a nuclear holocaust, it loses five points.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke.
*piano riff*
I don't give a shit either way. I'm gonna enjoy my pizza and race cars regardless
@@dumpsterjedi9323 Looks like someone's in denial.
But seriously, enjoying life as it comes and pondering the emptiness beyond are both perfectly acceptable ways of life. The video, however, is inherently geared towards the latter.
@@river_brook denial of what? The impact of the existence of aliens or lack there of on my pizza? I can't see how there is any.
"They are alone too"
*cuts open the universe*
it's actually cake
Oh god
Always has been
The cake is a lie.
*cuts open cake sub-atoms*
it's actually anti-matter
[cuts open the cake]
it's actually universe
I find that a good counter to this, is realising that even though the universe is extremely vast, we only have a few local galaxies, and those few galaxies we have are more than enough. Even if we could travel at the speed of light, it would take ages for us to ever colonise the nearby galaxies. To call our universe a prison would be like being locked in a colossal mansion with all the essentials and entertainment, and calling it a cage.
It is still dreadful when you see how small we are in comparison
It's a marvelous sandbox.
I saw somewhere that we developed science and scientific equipments/tools at the very last moments that allows us to observe certain cosmic phenomena. Because of that we were able to learn about other galaxies and the Big Bang. Any later and we would take our existence as a matter of fact thing and probably be more religiously inclined regarding our creation
@@matthewlewis757 I don't know why, but I just imagined that if people gained immortality technology, they might feel nostalgia for when they knew that there were more galaxy clusters in the universe.
A gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless.
@@thepiggygamer4288 I don't think it's dreadful at all. It's just a fact of life. Mice are tiny compared to us, and yet they live and thrive in their own way. Ants have their own histories and great battles across the planet, despite each individual ant being barely aware of it. We're small in the cosmic scale, but that only means that we've got plenty to explore and improve. And besides, we've probably barely grasped the full extent of physics, chemistry and the science out there. There's so much waiting to prove us wrong and show how different our world really is. We may be small, but that only makes our universe bigger and worth exploring.
The craziest thing about the scale of the universe is that, considering the two extremes, we're on the large side. The middle-ground between the planck length and the observable universe is about the size of a single eukaryotic cell.
Both of your comments gave me existential crises
@@mistyminnie5922 if you want more nightmares watch sciencefile the ai, he made a full vid on the scale of the universe and how we are alone
Now that is truly unfathomable.
Gotta love planck
I always wondered where the "middle" of the scale was... very cool... thanks for sharing!
_“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”_
- *The Call of Cthulhu*
Hewlett Packard Lovecraft was a dumbass and a douchebag but godsdamn if he didn't find a kernel of truth every once in a while.
GearandaltheFirst Lovecraft cat moment
@@gearandalthefirst7027 a broken clock is correct twice a day, this time unfortunately
Lovecraft was right about literally everything. I can’t think of one issue where he was wrong in any way.
@@potatomahonman5008 nope. Not even one!
*racism intensifies*
you're like a more concentrated Vsauce, so the existensialism hits way harder
vsauce is more over longer time
jacob geller is less over shorter time
exurb1a is more over shorter time
@@worldprops333 You forgot about Solar Sands
@@cyberlemon9840 solar sands is less over longer time
Bartender, give me one shot of existentialism, and coke (hold the ice because it's already chilling enough). Actually, better make it a double.
@@worldprops333 I think exurb1a just stabs you with existentialism
As someone who calls himself (perhaps incorrectly), an "optomistic nihilist," this is the same reason I tell people suffering from the existential dread of meaningless when it comes to the big picture to try and stop caring. Yes, when it comes to the universe at large you're meaningless. You don't matter, your legacy doesn't matter, the entire existence of the species doesn't matter. The universe at large doesn't care about any of that. It largely won't ever even interact with us.
So, until we ever get to that point that we can interact with it, why should you care about it? Your actions don't affect the universe at large, it affects your surroundings, the people and places around you, your community. That's what really matters about your existence, is your effect on all those equally small universally-insignicant things. The universe won't remember you, but your family, friends, and community can.
They may not be the most comforting words in the world, but it's what brought me out of my whole existential stressing.
Edit: Grammar.
I forgot who said it (I believe it was Jared from Wisecrack) but it was a UA-camr talking about Bo Burnham on how post-modern nihilism is becoming a thing - where in we are now understanding the meaninglessness of the universe and our reality but the universe never had meaning to begin with; humans extrapolated meaning from the universe and so it doesn't really matter if the universe has no meaning - it only matters to us and what meaning we derive from it. Or more simply put we create meaning out of nothing and that is okay because meaning only matters to the one who finds meaning.
I'm pretty sure this philosophy is called absurdism
@@Madrigal025 "meaning is jumper you have to knit yourself."
@@azechase6597 That actually does kind of ring a bell.
This. I'm glad I'm not the only one who arrived here after thinking on this shit for decades.
None of it matters. At all. Ever. So why not just be cool to one another. This has all happened before, and it will happen again. The only thing that changes are the quicktime button-mashing events man I hate those you mess up one button press during a cutscene and you might as well reroll your whole character
if reality is a mass effect game and god is a woman we're getting reset every time she clicks the wrong option while talking to garrus
I never thought about Universal Paperclips that way, but I have to agree, when that "% of universe explored" counter starts going up, it's terrifying, even though it's presented to you as your goal.
Imagine how the maximizer must feel! It's goal, to maximize paperclips, is finally going to be complete.
Or is it? Could it have figured out a way to make more paperclips? Could it have been more efficient? Could it have even found a new universe, and then turned that into paperclips? It will never know, because it's too late--it has run out of time.
What odd that the drifters are never defeated. that number just keeps going up and up unless those are rough drones...not sure
@@zuzoscorner drifters are rough drones, yes. Think of cancer: you can't defeat cancer without defeating DNA itself. Just as you can't defeat the Drifters without getting rid of the blueprints they are made from.
The blog “Wait, but why?” has a pretty simple but effective graphic that demonstrates that blossoming exponentiation very well.
It’s just a crude animation of water dripping into some kind of culvert ever-increasing speeds, but it’s striking how long you have to look at it to see anything. The moment you notice a difference at the bottom that is in any way less than entirely negligible you’re seconds away from the whole thing overflowing. Always stuck with me as an effective visualization of that phenomenon.
@@zuzoscorner Yup they are rouge drones. They are called drifters because they are the drones who have been "lost to value drift" ie. gone rouge.
This make me remember a quote by Oppenheimer: "A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent".
Now I am become *Death,Destroyer of worlds*
I prefer the other quote that was said at the same time: "Now we are all sons of bitches."
Bruh that's the lamest part of that quote
@@Afterburner215 tbh i'm not sure what that quote means, but i love it
@@sydssolanumsamsys you should look it up.
I played Universal Paperclips a while ago. To me, it's like a twisted version of those old text games you used to play on the computer lab that were simple but fun. However, nothing scared me as bad as two things: releasing the HypnoDrones, and rejecting value drift to see everything fade away.
I was in a rehab facility several years ago, I was 14 at the time so they had school there. There was a science teacher and I was extremely interested in astronomy and still am, so in my first week or so there my teacher showed me a program very similar to Space Engine called “Celestia”. It was funny because I was literally getting sober from drugs while in rehab, but Celestia was the most sobering experience for me while there. I spent countless hours maybe even days on that game trying to grapple with just how minuscule and insignificant the earth was in a cosmic perspective. It both terrified me but also somewhat freed me from both the physical and metaphysical weight I was attempting to shed while in that rehab, it made me feel that what I was struggling with was incredibly difficult for me but it also showed me that it was just the smallest little blip in both my existence and especially the universes existence and was helpful. I just kinda wanted to share that here, thanks for your content Jacob, it’s truly something special.
No joke, my gf at the time showed me cookie clicker while I was tripping on acid and I kept telling her I felt like I was staring into infinity and it was hurting my brain.
I dont promote drugs but acid caused me to think about atoms in my body and the perspective of how small we are in the universe. It gave me existential dread that caused me to listen to music to calm myself and distract from those thoughts but im glad I had them
Marcus Tucker that can happen. Doesn’t sound like a “good” trip to me tho. Not every trip is good. My last one I ended up thinking on the connectedness between all things. And how the separation between conscious entities is an illusion. But it’s something you have to feel. It’s hard to pick up from an explanation. But it was a transformative experience. Made me think about life differently.
@@Shlooomth it wasn't a great feeling but it put perspective on my life and motivated me to do better. That sounds interesting, I cant imagine that like you said it cant be explained but id like to experience that
@@Shlooomth My partner had a very similar trip last time they took acid, it was definitely not one they'd call "good" but it did make them think about some things they hadn't really considered before. They were definitely existentially terrified.
One time while tripping I was seeing two people shake hands in my mind then they started repeating into infinity like when you’re between two parallel mirrors. It’s hard to explain but it was like each handshake was a day and I basically saw entire lives rise and crumble to dust in seconds and the unending grind of capitalist life reducing us to transactional machines. Then I watched Scott Pilgrim. Acid is some cool shit.
Being underwater and viewing the massive slope of Hawaii going down.........into the dark.
That is both clausterphobic and agoraphobic at the same moment.
I quit scuba after that.
That is definitely terrifying
That is legit a recurring nightmare of mine. Im not afraid of deep water; I'm afraid of being able to SEE HOW DEEP it is. Just plummiting off forever, and I can see the whole way down.
if i can scuba than, whats this all been about what am i working towards
DavidFrostbite man fuck off. I used to be scared of the relentless abyss Beneath you in water but now being able to SEE that far down? Absolutely bone chilling.
I was at the beach and whent to the edge it scared me shit less. I couldn't breathe even tho I had a tube to the surface to let me it's truly horrifying
“They haven’t cracked the E N D L E S S V O I D problem!”
Two aliens, snickering to themselves as they watch us doubt ourselves.
We are probably to them what is sitcom to us.
"Ah, look at those funny humans thinking about problems we solved eons ago xD"
xD
We haven’t even explored the whole ocean; the enormity of our own insignificance is both scary and comforting.
There’s still much to explore and learn. If the solar system is our house we still haven’t explored our entire room yet.
If the solar system is our house, we haven't even explored the small grain of some snack lying in the living room
Fun fact: we know more about the surface of Mars than the ocean
You believe we are insignificant on a cosmic scale, I believe humanity is the rightful conquerers of the galaxy and beyond, we are not the same
@@generikusername Calm down there, Mr. 40k
The thing that scared me most about Space Engine wasn't just how empty it was, but how... Homogenous it was. Once you fly more than a few light years from the sun, it's just another little point in the sky. You can find it if you know your astronomy I suppose, or if you're lucky, but still. And once you leave the milky way, and leave the local group... Everything just looks like space. There's no way of finding home, except with the magical cheat button that directs you back there. It got me thinking- if I were teleported to a random point in the observable universe, even if I were able to manipulate time and travel at whatever ridiculous speeds I wanted, there would be no hope in me ever finding my way back to the Earth. Even if I was off by a few million years, I might not recognise the continents any more, especially if I'd already spent eternity looking at uncountable solar systems, some of which I'm sure would have a very similar layout. Maybe even some with life.
Picture being on an generation ship, completely lost, on a different galaxy because why not, spending millions of years trying to find earth. Chances are you'd find a planet just like it sooner. And when you did, or if you did, none of it would matter because of the insane amount of time that had passed.
Good news is.. getting laid is no longer a problem.
In terms of possibility space, we have no way to index ourselves, either. Also, seeing as all observable matter is made of identical components, what difference could it possibly make where you are, let alone where you came from?
Observing luck on the celestial scale really hammers home how frequent personal luck actually is.
1% vs 0.01% chance, that difference is almost meaningless if the "dice rolls" are at many frequencies and absurdly impact at others.
There's a game called Megaton Rainfall, and you play as a Superman-esque character with superhuman powers. One of these is flight. As you get further from Earth, the speed at which you can move increases too, so, upon the discovery of this, most players would fly out into the cosmic unknown. The only problem is that there is almost nothing out there. Of course, other planets and stars exist, but there's nothing to do on them. The only slightly interesting things are some useless alien ruins. And so most people choose to go back to Earth: to the story.
However, it is then that you realise that if you didn't have the flashing light telling you which direction is home, you would have a barely non-zero chance of finding your way back. You'd be stuck in a vast desert of the barren universe.
My heart literally started pounding when the space explored percentage started going up
What fucked me up was when the camera went into the black hole that stuff makes my stomach drop
This was my first Jacob Geller video so i didn't think it would go up, so I was really surprised when it went up. The dread set in on the repeat viewings
oh.
Oh....
Oh no...
Noah Meserve Good luck with the a Rollercoaster Tycoon video.
@@dianisea-hh4uf At this point, if I was slowly being pulled into a black hole, I would welcome my demise. Let me die close to the universe, let me die before I can see humanity end the world due to it's foolishness
I know this is a late comment, but what really gets me is the question
"What's outside of space?"
It sends your mind into sheer, unbridled panic.
Edge of the universe, continually expanding outward faster than light. It's the most "nothing" nothingness possible. Like empty space is nothing, but no space to even qualify as empty is a level beyond.
It might not make any sense. It might be like asking "what's north of the North Pole?"
@@cleminitepal please... Stop shiting your soul out
Do remember that we can still explore the entirety of the milky-way and andromeda galaxy which are small on the scale of the universe, but still contain billions of stars. We still have things to do. Also I would recommend watching issac Arthur's SFIA to make the exploration of the void exciting
Actually- we can't explore andromeda- we're going to have to stick to our universe
@@rainestorm6029 Andromeda is a galaxy not a universe. And it is due to collide with the milky way eventually so 'we' won't be able to but some theoretical far future descendants might.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
-H.P. Lovecraft (on The Call of Cthulu)
What Lovecraft thought terrifying, I think wonderful. I welcome the reality shattering discoveries of the future. Nothing would fill me with more glee than to find that everything I know is wrong.
@@canismajoris3959 it wouldn't excite you if those discoveries led to your non-existence. Not death, but being outside the realm of physically existing, where you are simultaneously shrunken down to the most minute space possible and expanded to such an unimaginably grotesque size that you cease to comprehend your own identity any longer. The foolish notion that man can somehow take control of his trajectory through this endless void called the universe is sad. Man should stop looking out to space for some form of hope, and instead start looking inward for peace and comfort. A majority of our planet's population will be dead soon from incoming catastrophes that we have partially caused. There are more than 7 billion people inhabiting this planet, breeding and turning all things to waste. And a vast majority of them care too little to try preserving what is left. As we continue to grow and consume, we accelerate the death of our own species. Long before Elon Musk or any other space flight pioneers discover a way to colonize other planets or asteroids or celestial bodies, a majority of the human race will be dead.
@@jackgray1402 sounds like quitter talk to me
@@jackgray1402 I would gladly pursue those discoveries even if they led to my non-existence. What's the alternative? Sitting here, waking up every morning to a new disappointment? Doing the same thing over and over again in a never ending rat race that will ultimately lead nowhere? This world holds nothing for me. H.P. Lovecraft wrote tens of thousands of words on the potential for otherworldly forces to drive man insane, but what he hadn't seemed to consider is the possibility that man is already insane. Driven there not by ancient squid dragons, or colors it can't describe, but by the weight of it's own consciousness.
YEah Lovecraft was always behind the times.
Lovecraft: "The universe is vast and uncaring!"
Literally anyone: "Meh."
Universal Paperclips is one of my favorite SCPs.
It's really an SCP?
@@TheSkullConfernece funny enough it is
www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2844
koghs wow XD
@@koghs I have never been more confused browsing through a site in all my life
@@kevin_dasilva you're welcome
Whenever confronting things like this, I always love to think of the inverse.
Sure, we're in this paralyzing, gigantic vastness, and by all measures, we are alone by force. And that's terrifying.
And we all want to feel special, but the universe is too big for anyone at all to be special. It's silence out there.
But thinking on the inverse, I posit we're all nearly equally special, then.
How beautiful is it that we all form connections to each other? Some more than others, some end up more "important" than others, but nearly every human has someone. How beautiful is it that I'm so small I can't even comprehend it, yet I wake up every morning, think of my boyfriend, and smile. That even when I'm alone and am craving that alone time more than anything else, I still make mental notes of things I experience to recount to friends. That even though I've been locked down with my parents for the greater part of the year, and despite a generational divide and a lot of day-to-day fatigue, I still have new conversations with them every day. Those people are my universe, and I am a part of theirs. And it's this very fact that there is something bigger than us, but it's all meaningless, that's so beautiful. In a sea of nothing, we're the smallest droplets that still feel such purpose and connection.
How beautiful to stare into nothing, and wake up the next day to the thought of someone, and smile.
as soon as i realized this video was about the terrifying vastness of space, my mind immediately went to no man's sky. the beauty and loneliness of that game is truly breathtaking
No wonder Kars stopped thinking...
I always wondered what Kars would do after he achieved perfection.
He’s the perfect being so now what?
Maybe he should have terraformed Mars in Jorge Joestar
Not of Pucci has anything to say about it.
Who is Kars
@@yalkn2073 Kars is a villain from JoJos bizarre Adventure, I would explain how that correlates to this video but I would encourage you to watch it yourself to avoid spoilers
Nah. He's on Mars.
Aw man, you should have built a multiverse drive to continue your paperclip quest.
Spoiler: That is actually one of the endings. The "other" things in the Universe turn out to be actually just drones of yours that have achieved unchecked individuality. Once you convert all matter into Paperclips they offer you a choice, they don't want to live in a dead world so either end them permanently (Something you can do now that you know what they are.) Or travel to another universe to start again, leaving this one to be rebuilt into something worth living in by them.
@@saintbrodee8021 there's no reasonable choice though
An AI that is dedicated to paperclips would just turn rogue drones into more paperclips AND expand in every single possible way, including every single universe
"aw yeah let's just open up the multiverse, what could possibly happen, that one REALLY never runs out, right?"
*literally 5 minutes later*
@@AlessPlayingLikeaPro time to see if there are more multiverses. surely this wont run out!
*runs out an hour later*
Imagine just vibing and some unidentifiable thing tears a holw into your universe and just says "your paperclips. Hand them over"
finally found the song at 1:00, it is crimewave by crystal castles!
I always imagine that sentient lifeforms spontaneously spawn, alone, in the midst or intergalactic space, and just starve to death, and their corpse just drifts for eternity, never found by anyone. It happens thousands of times every second and not a single cursed lifeform is ever known of. Always makes me crack up.
you and i have wildly different senses of humour and as much as i respect that, i hope i never meet you
There’s a similar thought experiment called the Boltzmann brain, wherein if given enough time and or space, a fully formed human brain with memories can form by itself in the middle of space. Of course it would instantly die, but if our universe is really infinite there could be one that somehow survives.
@@kaelandin it's used to "prove" our universe isn't infinite, because it would be more likely that all our memories are faked in such a brain than an infinite universe
As I child, I used to imagine having an insect captured inside a container. I would think to myself how there would be nowhere for this insect to go, but if it were let it out, it could go anywhere in the world. Afterward, I would think of the vastness of space and how the insect would not be free at all, just trapped in another larger container along with the rest of us. It almost makes me feel like I could own everything on Earth because compared to the size of space, it's all right next to me.
i love your analogy, i never quite managed to explain to others why earth felt a little claustrophobic to me
You seem to think about much more interesting things than me when I was a kid. That's crazy aswell.
I'd hate to be guilty and ask for too much…but I think I'd be happy if I could just leave this flask...
I wanna post a quote I found on reddit.
"Lovecraftian horror doesn't work anymore. We built our own uncaring elder god and use it to look at cats. Every once in a while someone kills themselves, the screaming of a billion angry voices too much for them. We shrug and move on, we know how to avoid the trolls and demons."
I feel like its really relevant here. I'm glad you can still feel that horror that humanity is so small, that you're still human. We're all jaded and dead inside now. The internet is the closest thing we have to an elder god, and anonymity is its particular brand of uncaring evil.
"What is the meaning of Life?"
"Here, look at this cat video."
...........
You know what, I'm okay with that
Of course the person with a pony pick has the balls to say that before I did.
This
This is a bit bleak even for my taste, and I don't think I necessarily agree.
Seriously need some hot chocolate after reading this... and I can't say I disagree with the Albert Camus Reddit Guy who wrote that, just... damn.
I remember playing Elite Dangerous and trying to pursue a career on exploration. The first time I left "the Bubble" (The small corner of the Milky Way that humanity inhabits), it completely struck me. The emptiness of space. Even in a game where you could travel almost instantly between stars, you could spend weeks trying to a particular place, and you may not find another human being for even longer. No stations with services (like repairs, fuel, or other supplies), no other explorers to be found, no pirates, only you and the void. The thousand stars you would visit and the tens of thousand planets explored, most of the barren. And at the time I stopped playing, all the players on Elite weren't able to explore more than 1% of the total amount of systems in the galaxy.
As of 2024, we're at .06% of the galaxy explored!
This reminds me of the feeling I have when I am lying in bed, can't fall asleep, & my mind fixates on what the presumed oblivion of death is like & I come up against this wall of the paradox of imagining the sensation of not sensing, not existing & it feels like something on the biological level has yanked me back from some invisible line I brush up against & I feel my stomach lurches in defiance
That's the will to live, my friend. Also, why we can not die in our dreams. The human brain can't create the experience of death, so the violent wake up from your will to live kicks in.
the last clip turned the universe into the pale blue dot that we like to equate our planet and ourselves to. Like in the future, we might be looking back on our entire universe and going "we're special right?"
So much tragedy its a comedy to me but its hard to laugh and cry at the same time
Fuck, that’s another terror in and of itself
That view is what you would see behind you as you fall into a black hole.
@@devinfaux6987 yeah
I feel like once an entire universe has been colonized, there will be mind boggling infinite multiverse technologies and hyperspacial AI consciousness nonsense, to the point where physical space no longer matters or has any meaning at all. If you think that's silly, just realize that we have already created nearly infinite universes using some silicon and electricity. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov comes to mind.
Lol, nasa wished it had personal electronic calculators back during the Apollo missions. We got to the Moon using slide rules and a little bit of Fortran.
of course, NASA also had the unsung heroes of the moon landing: calculators. Not electronic calculators, but calculators that got payed by the hour.
And also calculators on the spacecraft. Who said anything about less-than-room-sized? Let's just ignore than the AGC was less than the size of a room.
The video never mentioned personal calculators at all. Stop fault finding.
Probably a shit ton of cocaine as well...
Legras Martin Cocaine was an 80s thing
Towards the end especially, Isaac Asimov’s book The Naked Sun actually explores some of those ideas about the similarities between claustrophobia and agoraphobia. It’s primarily a locked room murder mystery in space with robots, but it touches on some really existential stuff. It’s also technically the second book in a series, but you really don’t need to read the first one to understand the plot and characters.
I wasn't expecting No more Heroes' soundtrack in a video about paperclips. That was appreciated.
"This is a quote"
-Some guy who is using humour as a self-defense mechanism to cope with existential dread.
aight look
@@thatoneguy9582 oh my god! It’s that one guy!
Everyone: terrified of the size of the universe.
Me: ...really big sandbox...
let’s stop being stupid...
start getting along...
And start playing my bois.
There’s a whole lot of empty space out there, and that’s empty space we can put cool stuff in like probes and starships and colony vessels. I see an empty void that needs filling with life and creativity
@@sorenthekirin3921
Concurrence!
We don't have a sense of proportion that's why.
The farthest we can see is the horizon and before it there's only more of us to see so we end up competing
@@sorenthekirin3921 cant fill it
no non-space left
just you, a brain that formed in the year 10^10^10^56.
The universe' edge fading into a pupil with the tense music and then turning into a sphere in an unending sea of void at the end of the video has got to be one of the most existentially terrifying things I've ever seen
ok so.....in the beggining of 2020i... I kinda started to experience really really awful panic attacks and night terrors thinking precisely and specifically about this concept and i thought i was totally insane...now i do still think im totally insane but i feel less alone in that insanity, thank you for the video, it helps me to better explain my fears and makes me feel very comforted in a very odd way.
A lot of philosophers were also alcoholics. Probably just a coincidence, right?
Well, stopping by the moon makes sense from space exploration perspective, because leaving Earth takes a LOT of resources due to gravity and atmosphere. Launching from the Moon would be relatively cheap if you had the infrastructure ready.
Hey there friend, are you aware of the planned Artemis missions? 😃
I discovered Space Engine by complete accident around 2013. Like this video, I just kinda wandered out into space, going faster and faster. Seeing all the stars turn into galaxies was a feeling that I haven't felt since. The thing that sticks with me most was when all those galaxies stopped spawning. There was an end to the universe, and I'd reached it in an hour. I haven't touched it since.
I don't know what lies at the edge of the universe, but 2013-ish Space Engine says there's nothing. The universe is pretty big already, but that nothingness looked bigger.
If it makes you feel better, the universe is probably infinite or a really big hypersphere.
Its nothing cause its not observable from earth. Light hasn't taken the time to reach us yet. If we were at one of the edge galaxies, we would see past what we could from earth, but the milky way would look completely different, or maybe not even exists, as they would see into the past.
@@Thetarget1 nah, it' expanding, but not infinite, and eventually, it will stop growing. And then it will start shrinking, and shrinking, and when it reaches a tiny point, a new big bang will happen( that is the optimistic scenario, let's look at a more probable and pessimistic scenario): the universe doesn't start shrinking, it just stays there, the stars will eventually die out, the planets will be long gone, only black holes and nothingness left, and even black holes will evaporate becouse of Hawking radiation
@@gaymermoment The Big Bang has me thinking... has it happened before? Is it a common occurrence or some fluke/phenomenon? Are we in a universe or a multiverse where our Big Bang was one in MANY Big Bangs that have created their own worlds with life?
@@rhondahoward8025 that is one of the theories that it happens, the universe expands, shrinks, and then it happens again
That is so sneaky Jacob. I am so impressed. You did the thing. I was distracted by how random the cookie thing and 'action scenes' seemingly were, that I only noticed in hindsight, that the humans fighting the robots videos stopped abruptly when 'we' realized the fight was over for humanity. Nicely done sir.
"The smallest thing a mirror can reflect is its own density", this, and the video made me think a lot about our perception of the universe. We just see our own reflection.
Perspective is a weird thing. Even if you where to take a finite area such as they computer screen you are staring at now the closer you get the more you begin to lose touch. Think about it. There's the screen, the pixels that make up that screen. The components that make up those pixels, the mater that makes up those components. Imagine zooming into a single atom on your monitor, now think about how that 1 little atom is just one of god knows how many that make up just your screen. Now think about how that atom is made up of even more components that interact with each other in ways that we still don't fully understand. The strange thing about understanding and exploration is that the more you learn the less you realize you know.
And if an atom could contain a whole other universe inside of it. Basically infinite universes that can't be explored. We could be inside of another atom ourselves and one out of trillions. Or I just think too much on a tired mind.
@@wisdomspeaker7698 You just mind fucked me lool.
@@wisdomspeaker7698 I had the same thought! xD
dunning-kruger in a nutshell
Humans are made of 65% Oxygen, 18% Carbon, 10% Hydrogen, 3% Nitrogen, and 99.9999999999996% empty space between atoms and between the electrons and nuclei of those atoms.
Great video, I remember when I played Universal Paperclips, I wondered "Wouldn't aliens try to fight against an army of drones trying to turn not only their planets but also them into material for paperclips?" then I realized, to an AI, they're no different than all the other hazards of the universe.
The drones that were lost would just be remade in the probes and even if a probe fell, hundreds more could take its place to convert the planet and everyone on it. It's not even classified as "Combat" for the AI, that's for the rogue probes. Instead, all the alien life out there with their unimaginably varied cultural and evolutionary histories was no different than a sudden spike of radiation to the AI.
Though you lost me a bit when you said that UP is about "unchecked capitalism and automation." Analogies and symbolism are fine, but I find it far more interesting to think about how it's not *that* fictitious. Given the opportunities, an AI that was just told to "Make more paperclips" would probably do that. Terrifyingly turn *literally everything* into paperclips.
Something that is impossible to explain the magnitude of unless you play it for yourself. Witnessing all the storytelling done through gameplay and watching the numbers go up and up and up. It's so unbelievable that even the AI doesn't understand the magnitude of it until it finally can literally make no more paperclips. And at that point, let's be honest, only one of the endings make thematic sense.
(Also that wasn't 6 octillion tonnes, it was 6 octillion grams. It's exactly a millionth of what you said. It's measured in grams because 1 gram of wire is what it takes to make a single paperclip. It's another piece of subtle storytelling that I love in UP)
>Though you lost me a bit when you said that UP is about "unchecked capitalism and automation." Analogies and symbolism are fine, but I find it far more interesting to think about how it's not that fictitious. Given the opportunities, an AI that was just told to "Make more paperclips" would probably do that.<
Yeah I found this a little funny too, because while it's fair to see a general theme in the game about out-of-control systems (including capitalism), the AI part isn't an incidental detail. The game directly references AI alignment issues and work by Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Dread
_"Instead, all the alien life out there with their unimaginably varied cultural and evolutionary histories was no different than a sudden spike of radiation to the AI."_
Which is probably why our fictional representations of aliens usually have them casually genociding other planets and the lifeforms on them with the same indifference that we cut down trees and use pesticide on bugs. We really DON'T want an extraterrestrial encounter.
@@rhondahoward8025 I don't think an encounter with aliens would go like that. Simply put, there is nothing here that they could want they can't find elsewhere. The rarest thing here is intelligent life and if they're capable of faster than light travel, they could easy create true AI that is many times more capable than us.
In my opinion there are a few ways an encounter with aliens could go.
1) They're benevolent and share some of their technology with us, or they might slowly take over to lead us to a better future.
2) They're curious and watch from a distance, the option most nutjobs think is true. But I doubt they'd mess up and get spotted when they'd have technology we can't even envision.
3) They're unimaginable and we can't even remotely understand their goals, at which point anything is possible.
But there is one option that would definitely end with them destroying us, they could be relatively simple creatures at which point it'd be a biological version of the game. Think Tyranids from Warhammer 40k.
@@BenersantheBread I mean, it's also possible for aliens to be some sort of fanatics and want to kill us because of that. Like how the Imperium of Mankind in Warhammer 40k kills all aliens it encounters because they are not humans, independently of their level of development (albeit, they do take their time).
On the original comment. The hypotetical case of the universal paperclip machine is why I fear much more non-self aware machines than self-aware ones. Since the latter would at some point understand things in some manner and probably alter their mission to something else rather than "make paperclips" and thus have a possibility of leaving al least part of the universe intact (or undoing the paperclips into something interesting/amusing for itself).
It's actually really hard for me to understand this fear of "insignificance" or reverence for the infinite a lot of people seem to have. Sure, we're a bunch of germs on a wet, dirty pebble, but there are also literal germs on literal wet dirty pebbles just outside your house. Size is only relative. Measuring your worth against the infinate just seems wholly pointless and a hold over of anthrocentric religious thought, which I can't really relate to. As far as I'm concerned, the universe and it's size is as insignificant to me as I am to it.
If there is any characteristic of infinity's vastness that humbles me, it's Deep Time, but even then, I'm more overwhelmed by the possibilities than terrified. "Overwhelmed by the possibilities" is also how I'd describe they I feel when thinking about the vast size of the universe, when I feel anything about it, but I consider that a positive and exciting feeling. The only thing that could "ruin" it is the possibility that we won't get to see all those possibilities.
Honestly, it makes the existence of life and Earth even more miraculous and beautiful to me. Like, life should be IMPOSSIBLE in the known universe. A planet with LIFE should be impossible. Because all the other planets in our observable universe are dead and cold, or hot and poisonous. But our one tiny water planet is teeming with life. Intelligent life too. Life that is aware of itself and the cosmos around it. It's fabulous.
@@rhondahoward8025 Bloody beautiful. Of all the infinite possibilities, we got the roll where we are here on this earth reflecting on the wonder of the universe. Let's be grateful for that rather than bemoan it.
One time I zoomed out to the entire milkyway determined to find the Earth by hand, it took me two hours. The large magellenic cloud was the only way I could orient myself. Its daunting.
Slaps star
This thing can fit so much mass in it.
*slaps star*
*evaporates from intense heat*
I love how everyone in the comments is having an existential crisis and you're just here
like
memeing
@@dProp.34
How do you know they're not having an existential crisis?
@@festethephule7553 Fair point
Slaps black hole
This bad bo---yyyyyyyy
*(Fades into darkness)*
Your presentation at 9:43 is absolute magic. You perfectly captured that heart-pounding, fearful feeling that happens when that counter starts ticking. I'm on my third playthrough of Universal Paperclips because of this.
I love so much that I have found this channel. That it exists. That its creator exists. That its creator has had all the same existential crises I have, but better in that they've actually got the artistic vocabulary and interesting references to make those crises substantial rather than wordless feelings in the void. Thank you for all the videos of yours I've watched so far, and all I have yet to watch. Every one is a delight.
thanks for the existential crisis!
10/10 experience, would watch again
you live 100 years old so you can explore earth and nothing else. you're not immortal (you knew that before the vid) so forget space. earth is already bigger than you can comprehend. go travel in THIS Eden.
im 14 and this is deep
I come back and rewatch a bunch of your videos every few months, they are just so well done. I never usually comment on videos, but your essays are just so thought provoking, and have such a special place in my heart that I NEEDED to. your essays never cease to amaze me, it almost feels like poetry, it IS poetry. At least to me.
It truly is amazing how sensibilities never change. When I was younger I was horrified by the scale of the universe. Today, a little bit older, I’m just fascinated, in total awe. Not everything that is incomprehensible is horrific, guys...
The hope is that we are wrong. That there is some principle that we aren't seeing, an ability to go 'elsewhere' or make something out of nothing. Dividing zero so its a one and a negative one so we can still have something when the last black hole evaporates. Maybe even that there is something already outside looking in with a capacity for sympathy.
I don't know. I have no way of knowing what options there really are. I'm a caveman who is afraid that the shortening of the days as we approach the solstice may mean that the sun will set and never again rise. I look at my fears and maybe they are justified. But so many times my fears were proven to be jumping at shadows. And so I hope, even if I don't see a way out, that I am wrong just one more time.
And so I'll get up, watch the days get shorter, and hope that the solstice comes. Let me be wrong.
Thank you.
Interestingly, a black hole with the mass of the observable universe would be about the size of the observable universe.
So maybe it’s not expanding,
Maybe it’s being spaghettified
@@Abdega
Wait... what you are saying is that this may actually be the inside of a black hole, and the dark energy is said black-hole's inside, converging US into it's inside, and yet the effect we see it's the opposite... and the big bang wasn't an explosion, but the creation of said black hole?
And, following that logic, wouldn't the separation of the universe caused by dark energy be just the black-hole mass somehow creating negative mass as a constant in general, non positive-massed areas?
For that to happen, the black-hole... Shouldn't it be (kind of) a four dimensional sphere?
So, if this is the case, all you need to escape and reach out its to modify an universal constant, that isn't universal, but local, due to the influence of the black-hole? So... the task is to modify the 4-D Black-Hole we're in and so can explore even MORE???
If so... We're f*cked.
@@Abdega Or... no. The absolutely crazy idea here is that the universe is evaporating. Those words may be more caveman-gibberish, sure, but if we were somehow a closed system inside such a thing we would be seeing some sort of effect. Some universal constant slipping, time or space being dilated. Something.
Black holes are more or less the place math goes to die. We don't know enough to even know what we don't know. They would be one of the least surprising places for this layman to find a surprise.
One of my favorite short stories, that I often think about-
www.multivax.com/last_question.html
I remember when I first realized that humans were never going to leave the solar system, or the planet, in any meaningful way.
I am reminded by the ending of a "Halo and Sprocket" comic (an angel, a robot, and a normal woman share an apartment, things get philosophical, it's good), where the angel described to the human that, because a finite space can be divided in half infinitely, infinity could be contained in a finite space, to which the human responded something like "hm... sounds like a math thing" and wandered off. The angel joked with the robot about how humans just ignore anything they can't handle, even something as simple that! The next panel revealed that the robot had been reduced to a sparking wreck, and the angel was all alone.
(Don't worry, the robot was repaired by next issue.)
To me, it is impossible to imagine that humanity won’t expand to the stars. Everything possible is inevitable with our General Intelligence and propensity for exponential growth.
You just have to recenter your timescale. We already know a couple ways to do it, though the tech isn’t nailed down. It won’t be Star Trek, we’ll be more like spores that sleep between the stars.
The *real* problem is that we can only expand away from the Sun at a rate proportional to the square of the distance, but want to expand exponentially. Exponential always catches up to polynomial, then extremely rapidly outpaces it. (Yes, this means the Universal Paperclip sim is inaccurate, unless it’s assuming FTL flight with no speed limit).
Interstellar travel is possible with theoretical technologies that conforms to physical laws as we know it.
I hate it when people shrug something off and dont dare to research into it.
30,000 people have been violently executed in African genocides the past 20 years...
CRY FOR THEM
THE AI NEEDS EMOTION SAMPLES
Infinity is a curious concept.
I recall a Documentary "How long is a piece of string" that took the idea of infinite patterns with the string, so from a certain perspective it is infinite length.
There's a lot of nothing around, but that just means we're the hottest shit happening tbh
Last time I was playing megaton rainfall I had picked a direction and held 'W' for a long long time zooming past galaxies. After about 10 minutes, I did what any explorer did and looked at where I had started. However that quickly turned into panicking and scanning around me trying to find where I started. It is so hard to get your bearings in an area that has no defining features.
That was about 2 years ago, but I know of one thing I'm afraid of now.
Wait, is Universal Paperclips about the dangers of unchecked capitalism? I thought it was the dangers of creating an AI that has a goal and no real moral sense. I have found no articles pertaining to Universal Paperclips and capitalism, just about the philosophy of AI being created for a single purpose.
wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer -its based off this idea/von neumann probe(s)
Universal Paperclip was originally based off a thought experiment with the same premise as the game, but it is a mirror for capitalism because global capitalism and it's many bureaucracies are like a less efficient AI who's only goal is to create profit. The growth and evolution of the economy, trade between nations and companies, the exploitation of workers in the 3rd world and automation of more and more industries, the stretching of natural resources and over pollution, it's all for the purpose of creating money. The entire financial sector is literally automated now besides buying and selling requests which themselves are handled by indifferent bureaucracies.
While an AI making paper clips seems like a goofy idea at first, in a somewhat abstracted way we are already doing just that, but instead of paper clips it's pieces of green paper and digits in a bank account.
@@theiveyed8677 Except that is bullshit. Nobody is actually trying to just produce money, they are producing products and selling those products in order to obtain other products or services. Nobody is working for money for the sake of money. Nobody is just trying to "maximize how much money they get", that's all missing the whole point of money. We make money to USE it for other things we actually want. I use money to buy food, because I don't want to starve and like having shit that tastes good, or I use money to buy tools for creating art because I want to render my ideas unto the world through some artistic medium.
Capitalism produces, not money, but peoples dreams and desires. It produces goods and services that improve everyone's lives. You think too small and don't look at the bigger picture. Nobody is working the economy just for money's sake, they are doing it to achieve actual greater goals that simply use money as a medium of achieving those goals.
@@LilJbm1 dude. Do you know where the word "capitalism" comes from
@@jtejada2784 it comes from "capital", which rughly translates to "buying power". The goal of capitalism is not producing money, but accumilating wealth, so that you may spend it at things you need/want. Literally what LilJBM1 described.
I've been playing universal paperclips for actual years now, always letting it run in the background or while I play videos and it's gotten to the point where I can take over a universe every hour if I really wanted to. I'm wondering if there is ever an end to the universes, where I've hit the end of the dimension, no more universes left to take over.
As I make this comment, I'm just about done with my 471st universe and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm no where near the end.
Edit: I know somebody will claim this is false, but I can only do it so quickly because of the vast upgrades of the marketing and creativity from all the universes I've done, so they don't count for speedruns.
this has got to be my favorite videos on youtube. art is meant to make you feel, and by that definition, this is pure art. and it is terrifying, but beautiful at the same time. I love how you are able to put things into perspective, jacob.
"We could leave the local group and fly through intergalactic space into the darkness, but we'd never arrive anywhere" i want to make the claim that early humans could've believed the same thing, before sailing out to sea, discovering new lands. Of course they didnt have mighty telescopes
First we sailed the seas, slow and dangerous. Now we fly 30,000ft over them at 500mph using technology unimaginable to the primitive nay-sayer
"The Universe is a nightmare, and here's why."
If upisnotjump ever "jumps" on this idea
Nobody:
UA-cam recommendations: Watch this man have an existential crisis for 13 minutes!
If you like existential crises then you'll love Exurb1a.
I don't want to read the word "existential" again for a really long time. I could do without "contextualize" as well. These words just suck.
If it only lasts 13 minutes, you haven't thought hard enough about it!
Watched this a couple months back... I recently remembered it, and decided to play Universal Paperclips.
Now I've finished that game, and came back to watch this again.
This video is a triumph of the Video Essay medium. I'm so impacted and unsettled. The editing was pitch perfect, the prose excellent, dude your channel rocks!
Videos about this sort of thing always make me cry.
📎
Why?
And that is why optimistic nihilism is a thing. Nothing in life matters, and so might as well make your own meaning and be freed :) Still really terrifying and cosmically screwing with my mind but hey. C'est la vie. Also I am so glad that I discovered your channel. Keep making this quality content man!
Which is why in a million years from now we can create virtual realities so advanced, we ourselves can create our own mini reality with bits of characters that they themselves think they're in the real world. Thus doing so, you can give meaning to this virtual reality which in one sense real to those born in it, but fake to its creator. Now I give meaning to life, take that you nihilists. ;)
@@DragonKing101 If we manage to live past Global-warming*
Que sera, sera. What will be, will be.
@@DragonKing101 Just because you created the mini reality doesn't mean you decide what the meaning of the mini reality is. You imposing your sense of meaning from a point of authority doesn't make it any more valid, because you don't have any meaning to use as a basis for their's without nihilism.
@@justronjay9226 "Just because you created the mini reality doesn't mean you decide what the meaning of the mini reality is."
And why can't I? I created everything for a particular purpose in mind. Everything on all levels of that reality I particularly made for whatever I deem it to function as, and could give it meaning under the functionality that I intended it for. Everything just isn't is, everything was made for a purpose in mind - Which certainly has meaning for its existence, from the smallest things to the reality itself for whatever why I created it.
"You imposing your sense of meaning from a point of authority doesn't make it any more valid"
I'm imposing my sense on it because its very existence is governed by what I wanted it to be. If I created a house so people could sleep in, the house's meaning is to allow people to sleep. Are you somehow going to object by saying, "Well actually, you can't just say that house or any house for that matter is meant for sleeping, even if you created it."?
Someone could of course maybe change the rules to the meaning of the house, but for all intents and purposes, I'm just saying it does have meaning for its existence instead of none.
", because you don't have any meaning to use as a basis for their's without nihilism."
I don't know what you mean. Could you elaborate?
I don’t know why I’m commenting on such an old video but watching this, I kept thinking about that one interaction in 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future where 9 asks if humans have gone to other planets. 10 and Juice have to tell them that it just wasn’t worth it. Even with endless life, everything is just so far away and the time and resources aren’t worth it to go there when there’s nothing out there for us.
This reminded me of the game "EVERYTHING" and how it started my first ever existential crisis
i remember playing space engine on my old pc when i was little. boy that thing terrified me. jus the vastness of space, the fact that you could lose the earth and then NEVER find it again... and dont get me started on the black holes
Damn, pretty incredible sense of our position in Spacetime:
Agoraphobia and claustrophobia are the same thing cosmically.
That No More Heroes OST in the Universal Paperclips part was like a flashbang going off. Great taste.
Is the horror of proportion the reason I used to have uncomfortable dreams about objects out of their normal perspective in proportion to each other?
Megalophobia?
"We're stuck between a void and a hard place." So glad I found this channel. Excellent content.
I don't know. Stuff like this just excites me. The absolute vastness of space is beyond an absolute pleasure, all of it's oddities and quirks that we are only just beginning to understand. And if we are smart enough, daring enough, we could overcome that vastness and make it our home. Until the universe dies at least. It wasn't long ago that people thought crossing the entire globe or flying were impossible. Look at us now. Just gotta believe in humanity fellas
nah man, it's the though that there's a limit somewhere, and that nothing should really exist, but it does, pure void, that shit is fucking me up
@Vinicius Villela There's basically no chance of humans wiping ourselves out, we are too resilient. Sure, civilization could collapse, and worst case scenario we lose all technology. So what? Worst case scenario in a few thousand years we're back to full scale, if not just a few hundred years. All it takes is a single off world colony and then we're really 100% immune to extinction. And no, the leaps for technological advance do not get bigger, in fact it's the opposite. You must be thinking of the slowing of Moore's law, but our technological progression is not defined by that.
This was the very first video of yours I ever watch, and boy was it absolutely worth it. Your content has only gotten better since then, and I now eagerly await each upload of yours.
My favourite image from the video had to be at the end when you passed through the black hole in space engine.
For a lot of the video you had been talking about the infinite, unknowable scale of the universe, allowing us to put its sheer size into context. Then the video reaches its conclusion, and you pass through the black holes event horizon. In that moment, instead of it being a black hole existing in our universe, our universe was now _inside_ of something. The unending, limitless universe; with every moon, planet, star, galaxy and even other black holes, was suddenly contained. we were looking in on it, as if it were put into a bottle and corked.
You explained how the universe felt bigger and bigger, always expanding as you zoomed out from earth, flying away at hundreds of billions of miles a second. There were no edges, instead there were always more lights, more galaxies, more of the universe, zipping past no matter how far or fast you went!
On the other side of the black hole, it only took moments before the majority of the screen was empty. An expanse of literal nothingness. For the first time; as you zoomed out, the universe was getting smaller...
“Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings, or ten thousand for one which started with no wings at all and had to sprout them ab initio, it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years--provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials. [Emphasis added.]”
-The New York Times, Oct 9, 1903, p. 6.
The Wright Brothers flew 3 years later.
While you’re right that the future looks bleak, it’s important to keep some perspective (no pun intended) that we’re not at the end of the story and we don’t know everything. There are an uncountable number of simply unimaginable things to come for humanity, and if you really believe that we can already estimate everything that exists, let’s make a bet on which one of us will be made a fool by history.
Coming from a future relative to your comment, it does indeed look bleak, and certainly we hadn't imagined this. Things worked out unlucky on the "we didn't see this coming" rng of the world this time. Lets hope it rolls more favourably in the near future.
Speaking of the Wright Brothers, one thing that boggles _my_ mind, in terms of the speed of progress and its acceleration, is that we went from Kitty Hawk to Lake Tranquility in less than seven decades. A single person could have, as a child, wondered if we would ever have heavier-than-air flight for mankind and then, as an older person, watch the Eagle land on the Moon.
100%! It’s amazing!
We went from Kitty Hawk to Bikini Atol in about 40. We can't be too optimistic.
There's a difference between what a newspaper said back in 1900 and the scientific consensus of our times. Most shoddy science and "opinology" stems from a place of ignorance or new discovery. That is completely different from the accumulated knowledge of physics, which, even when being corrected, was still based on millions of very real observations. You can remain hopeful that we're wrong, but it's an insult to all the work put into our current scientific theories to compare it with dumb one liners (even einstein had a couple of them) that spread easily through media.
I could imagine a similar feeling of ludicrous vastness being felt out on the open oceans. The seas are big. And we are oh so small in comparison.
But the kind of existential horror at that vastness an ocean explorer might feel with only water in all directions and no clue as to where any land is let alone their home nation or town in a way gives me some amount of hope. Because we humans managed to travel that expanse despite it. It might be silly optimism to think we'll one day be able to explore the stars and see new wondrous worlds.
But the same to must have been said to the explorers of old whether they be the Europeans finding the Americas and eventually Australia or the Polynesians finding New Zealand and eventually the island of Rapa Nui off the South American coast, or even the people in Africa who looked out across a vast desert or savannah or icy landbridge.
According to all known laws of physics there is no way a human should be able to explore the stars. Our rockets are too slow to get our tepid little ships across the distance.
We will, of course, explore anyway. Because we don't care what current physicists think is impossible.
Holy shit that is the best and most profound use of a bee movie quote I have ever seen I wanna marry u I swear that's gonna be my college yearbook quote
@@obliviousotterI well damn glad you enjoyed it. IIRC I spent several consecutive minutes trying to make it sound good. If you actually used it for a yearbook quote, I'd be honoured.
Also... what country you in? ;)
@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot Australia
@@obliviousotterI well dang guess we can't get married then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot I'm too late to use it as my yearbook quote :< I'll marry you too lol
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents” -lovecraft
Futurists: YOUR PESSIMISM BORES ME
In seriousness, that was a nice video.
Universal Paperclips reminds me of the Diamond Authority of Steven Universe, as in how they both completely drained millions of planets' resources in order to produce more of their kind.
The things that I don't think will ever be explained about that show is
1) Who created the first gem, and was the first gem white diamond, or something else?
2) How did they learn how to create more gems?
The fact that the gems are by their very nature, a parasitic species who have to drain the life out of other planets ultimately paints a sad picture of their essentially doomed existence. Not only is their extinction inevitable, they'll die after EATING everything else in the universe.
@@rhondahoward8025 Although a thing to consider is that gems are basically immortal and have no need for sustenance. The primary reason for reproduction is to maintain population, which is why big animals that live longer have smaller litters. The only reason why they were producing more gems is because they refused to stop growing, and thus needed more of themselves to manage their empire. So yea, Steven’s dismantlement probably did the gems a solid on that part.