0:00

Hello, fellow conspiracy realists. In today's

0:02

classic episode, we are lucky

0:05

enough to sit down with one

0:07

of the smartest guys we know, a

0:10

guy who uh is directly

0:12

responsible for our

0:14

day jobs. Uh. We got to speak

0:16

with the founder of How Stuff Works, Mr

0:19

Marshall Brain. He's not a doctor, which

0:21

is a shame because always wanting to call him Dr. Brain. He

0:24

does have brain in his name, though, this

0:26

is this a pen name, real

0:29

name. Talk about nominative determinism.

0:31

It is fine. It is funny though, because when

0:33

we sit and record this today, we are on

0:35

the cusp of three and

0:38

this episode was recorded way back

0:40

in the Before times in twenty seventeen,

0:42

just a year after Elon Musk laid out plans

0:44

to build a colony on Mars. How's that going

0:46

for you? Elon? Uh? I think he think

0:49

he's a little too tied up in that bird website

0:51

to worry about any martian

0:53

Um colony plans. But Marshall

0:56

does unpack some of the fact

0:58

and fiction behind the uh seeming

1:01

pipe train. I absolutely love

1:03

Marshall's attitude towards

1:05

some of these things. We get into it in the

1:07

episode. It's so funny to me. We

1:10

hope it is for you too. From UFOs

1:12

to psychic powers and government conspiracies,

1:15

history is riddled with unexplained events.

1:18

You can turn back now or

1:20

learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

1:35

Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My

1:37

name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call

1:39

me Ben. You are you that makes

1:41

this stuff they don't want

1:43

you to know? And as always, it feels

1:45

great to be back in the booth with you guys. Absolutely,

1:48

And that is the sweetest thing you said to me all week. That

1:50

is the only nice thing I think I've ever said

1:53

in my life. You do one nice thing a year.

1:55

I tried to. I tried to to make it count.

1:57

And of course shout out to our super producer Alex

2:00

on the ones and twos. What

2:03

a time to be alive. Right

2:05

as we record this, this is uh

2:07

let's see towards the end of June,

2:11

and we are in a renaissance

2:14

of technology. You know what I mean? Uh

2:17

inn right right now,

2:19

it's so weird to think that. Um.

2:21

Nowadays, we are closer

2:24

than ever before to the idea

2:26

of not only bringing

2:29

the human species to Mars,

2:31

but maybe actually staying there.

2:34

It's so cool. I mean in the same way that you

2:36

know people are able to make movies and

2:39

records because the technology has gotten

2:41

so much more affordable and accessible. This is

2:43

obviously on a higher level, but now we have private

2:46

companies like SpaceX that are developing

2:48

stuff that you know before could have only

2:50

even been conceived by government

2:53

programs, and they're doing

2:55

it with such attention to detail, with such

2:57

a kind of a niche approach, that they're

2:59

making leaps and bound strides in

3:01

this kind of technology that could do exactly what

3:03

you just described, Ben. And then last year

3:05

Elon Musk, the person who heads

3:07

SpaceX, got up in front of a

3:09

crowd at the sixty

3:12

seven International Astronautical

3:14

Congress and he made the announcement that

3:17

he and SpaceX want to achieve

3:20

a million person Mars colony,

3:23

and he outlined

3:25

all of the different rockets and the spacecraft

3:28

that they are trying to design and build

3:30

to achieve this. And then

3:33

someone that we know personally wrote

3:35

up a very long thought

3:38

experiment about what this colony

3:40

might actually look like. I would

3:43

say yeah, I would, I would say, uh thorough.

3:46

And it really makes you think,

3:48

because look, this is a

3:50

huge and uh increasingly

3:53

crucial step in the expansion

3:55

of the human species. And

3:58

we didn't want it just to be the

4:00

three of us digging through

4:03

stuff and and telling you just our

4:05

opinions. So we went directly

4:07

to one of the most intelligent

4:10

men we have ever met, and that is

4:12

the man who literally founded how

4:15

stuff works, Marshall Brain, and

4:17

we have him here today to help

4:19

us explore what a colony on Mars would

4:22

actually look like. Thank you so much for coming

4:24

today, Marshall. Hey, it's great to be here, and

4:27

it's great to talk about Mars, because

4:30

that is one of those things that, uh,

4:32

was just mind blowing when he announced

4:34

it. You you, you were talking about technology

4:37

and all this stuff's happened,

4:39

and this is an example, and

4:42

it's mind blowing that we could

4:44

even conceive of getting a million people

4:46

onto another planet. Now, I guess first

4:48

things first, the big question that a lot of

4:50

people would have is we know that,

4:53

uh, scientific progress often

4:56

gets exaggerated in the mainstream,

4:58

you know, when it becomes like a a

5:00

share able article on social media.

5:03

So we wanted to ask you, you know,

5:07

how, like, is this definitely

5:09

a real thing? That's going to be the first question.

5:11

A lot of our audience members have. So

5:14

there are a lot of, um,

5:17

the problems that have kind of been swept

5:20

under the rug. And that is

5:22

a little bit like

5:24

Elon Musk sometimes does

5:26

that. He'll put something out there. It's

5:30

seemingly just to make us think

5:32

or to imagine or to wonder,

5:36

um, you know, like he proposed

5:38

this idea of digging tunnels under Los Angeles.

5:41

I don't know that that's practical, but

5:44

it definitely is a different way to think

5:46

about the traffic problem in Los Angeles.

5:48

So with Mars, I

5:51

think the technology side of it,

5:53

him making the rockets and moving

5:56

the people, that is all fathomable.

5:59

The thing I think people are unsure

6:01

of is once they get there, could they actually

6:04

live on a planet that's

6:06

bombarded with radiation and that has

6:10

much weaker gravity, Like we

6:12

just don't know if you have a kid on

6:15

a planet with gravity that's

6:17

significantly different from Earth, Like can

6:19

you even have a pregnancy in that situation?

6:22

And does it work and does the kid

6:24

come out normal? And you know, there's a whole

6:26

bunch of stuff like that

6:28

that in this discussion, we're just going to kind

6:31

of leave under the rug and

6:33

assume that you know that it works

6:35

out now, martialist science fiction has taught

6:37

me anything. We would obviously be living in some sort of gravity

6:40

controlled biodome. Well,

6:42

I don't know that we can control gravity

6:44

yet. Like I would assume that too,

6:47

because that's what Star Wars says, right,

6:49

like that all this stuff is easy

6:52

and straightforward. But I

6:56

I I'm not sure that

6:58

humans on Mars is even

7:01

a possible thing from

7:04

a long term

7:06

standpoint. We don't know. Well, let's talk

7:08

about some of the problems then. I mean, you addressed gravity

7:10

right up front. That's obviously a biggie. But what

7:12

are some of the other issues that you kind

7:15

of tackled in putting together this thought experiment

7:17

about what it would take to actually accomplish

7:19

such a you know, seemingly insurmountable

7:22

task. Well,

7:24

so Elon Musk

7:26

has said, you

7:29

know, and as and as articulated pretty

7:31

clearly that the transit problem,

7:35

uh is solvable, and he's

7:37

implied that the money problem is

7:39

solvable. So we would

7:42

have assumed that it would be so

7:44

ridiculously expensive to move a million

7:46

people to Mars that you could never consider it.

7:49

But he's he's put down

7:51

a stake and said, I'm

7:53

going to solve the money problem as well. I'm

7:55

going to make it cheap to get people to

7:57

Mars. So now they land there.

8:00

And we don't know a lot

8:03

about this planet. We you know, we know some

8:05

things, but a million

8:07

people is a lot of people.

8:10

And uh, you have

8:12

the gravity thing, you have radiation,

8:15

which you could probably solve by shoving

8:17

everybody underground. But then

8:19

the question is a million

8:22

people living underground? Does that work?

8:24

Like? Do people function

8:27

okay living underground for long periods

8:29

of time? We don't, you know, as sunlight important,

8:32

I guess would be another way to phrase that question. You

8:35

have the whole climate thing, the temperature

8:37

problem, which means you've got to

8:39

enclose this whole structure. And

8:43

as you start to think about that, um

8:47

just it becomes a materials problem.

8:50

You have logistics. You know, as

8:52

we get into this conversation, one

8:55

of the most interesting things

8:57

about it is how

8:59

do you move of all the technology

9:01

to make all the stuff that humans

9:03

have today to Mars.

9:06

Like that doesn't have anything to do with the geophysics

9:09

of it or anything like that. It's just when

9:13

you when you think about all

9:15

the stuff that we consider

9:18

normal today and that

9:20

you know is everything from scotch tape to microprocessors

9:24

to move all that manufacturing

9:26

capability and knowledge to Mars.

9:30

That's chapter thirteen in the book.

9:32

That that one problem alone,

9:36

UH is just mind boggling

9:38

to think about. Yeah, when you start breaking

9:40

that stuff down in the book and just showing

9:43

the list, I think you put a list in there of

9:45

how it's made episodes where

9:48

it just shows you all the different factories

9:50

and things you and different

9:52

resources you would need to make structure,

9:54

right, I mean even get that in place in such a way

9:56

where you could have factories that could produce

9:58

that kind of stuff and the weight of

10:01

the stuff you need to build a factory. And I

10:03

think there's a I think there's a a

10:05

brilliant point here. Uh.

10:08

One of the one of the headings for that chapter is

10:10

how will we make chips on Mars or pharmaceuticals

10:13

medical devices? Uh? In will

10:16

Mars be able to be a viable backup

10:18

plan for humanity? It reminds

10:20

me in a way of that old time

10:23

travel question where people say, you

10:25

know, I would love to travel back in time

10:27

to you know, the thirteen hundreds,

10:29

and I would be like, as this um

10:31

intellectual giant and this DEMI God,

10:34

But the average person

10:36

does not have the knowledge,

10:39

much less the means to create so

10:41

many of these common things, you know, probably

10:44

including to your early example Marshall

10:46

Scotch tape. So yeah,

10:50

so how would we how like, how

10:52

would wets an Old's point, uh,

10:54

make this infrastructure? And it would almost

10:57

would it almost certainly have to be something

10:59

where we severely limit

11:02

the kind of products that we would have.

11:04

Would this be like the the effect of

11:06

living on a remote island times of a

11:08

billion. That's

11:10

a great question, and

11:12

and that's one of the things that makes it such a

11:15

great thought experiment is you

11:17

know, Elon Musk has said, Okay, I

11:19

can get the people there, and I can get

11:21

them there cheap enough for us to imagine it. But

11:24

as soon as you open your

11:26

mind to well what are they going

11:28

to do once they land? And the

11:31

desert island thing is really a funny way

11:33

to think about it, then the number of

11:35

questions is gigantic,

11:38

thousands and thousands of questions you

11:40

have to start going through. So you

11:43

mentioned this, this notion that

11:45

Mars could be a backup plan

11:48

for humanity, meaning that

11:51

we have a second civilization

11:54

that's on a different planet. So if planet

11:56

Earth gets struck by an

11:58

asteroid, or it gets lown up by nukes,

12:01

or some other catastrophe

12:03

happens, there's a whole another instantiation

12:06

of humanity somewhere else that could carry

12:08

on without Earth anymore. And

12:11

that makes you wonder,

12:13

what could you take everything

12:17

that's happening on Earth today

12:19

and and actually bring

12:22

it up like booted up on another

12:24

planet. And if

12:27

you if you drill down into it, that

12:30

just it seems

12:34

incredibly difficult. It's

12:36

imaginable, but it definitely

12:39

would require a huge amount

12:41

of thought and logistics

12:44

and training. I like I

12:46

came up with a rough estimate that you might have

12:48

to have two thousand people trained

12:52

in all these different disciplines to

12:55

make Scotch tape and to make

12:57

aluminum oil, and to make chips

12:59

and to make fires, and like, there's

13:01

just all these things we make that

13:03

are all so specialized. The

13:06

amount of knowledge you'd have to send there

13:09

and skill and practice and stuff,

13:11

it's just it's fascinating to think

13:13

about it, especially when you think that you

13:15

can't you can't have a

13:17

wood making facility that just procures

13:21

would or something like that. It's something as

13:23

simple as that, you know you have to

13:25

manufacture a lot of these different elements

13:27

essentially that then go into the product.

13:31

Yeah, we take carbon really for granted

13:34

planet. Yeah, and would

13:36

is a great example because you aren't gonna

13:38

have any wood for like thirty years

13:41

if you want real wood, you know, because it

13:43

takes time for the tree to grow. Well,

13:46

thankfully i Kea has those flat packs,

13:48

which surely would and

13:52

so one of these landers. Um no,

13:54

but seriously, like who's gonna build this stuff?

13:56

Like? Is it like this is a volunteer situation. I

13:58

mean, obviously this is part of the thoughts perament, is

14:00

the fact that this stuff it hasn't been discussed and it's

14:02

also amorphous at this point.

14:05

But you sort of lay out and make a case for

14:08

how will people contribute once

14:10

they get there? Can you talk a little bit about that? So

14:13

if you're gonna if you're going to create a

14:16

complete backup of human activity

14:18

on Mars, if you're going to try to do

14:21

that, then uh,

14:23

you mentioned chip making as an example.

14:26

Chip making is probably the most

14:28

advanced thing humans

14:31

are doing right now. I guess we could

14:33

argue there's other you

14:35

know, there's competitors, but chip making is

14:37

really hard at the at the

14:40

scale we're doing it at, and at the precision

14:42

we're doing it at. So if you wanted

14:44

to bring that whole industry

14:46

up on Mars, you

14:49

start, you know, you asked about what are the roles

14:51

of different people, Well, there

14:54

is a crazy amount of

14:57

really esoteric expertise

15:00

east that would have to be trained

15:02

into the passengers

15:04

that go to Mars so that they know how to

15:06

land on the planet, build

15:09

the different parts of the chip making you

15:12

know activity,

15:14

get it all up running, uh

15:18

like have it produced its first product,

15:21

and then they would have to start moving

15:23

it forward on the research side like we do

15:25

on Earth as well, or they're going to get

15:27

behind very quickly. So

15:31

yeah, when you think about the

15:33

roles people would have, um,

15:36

you know, like one of the one of the little

15:40

riffs in chapter thirteen is that

15:44

there are people on this planet

15:46

inside of Apple and Intel and

15:48

other chip making companies that their whole

15:51

specialty might be, you

15:53

know, the floating point multiplier

15:56

of a CPU or the

15:59

branch prediction part

16:01

of the CPU, or you

16:04

know these really esoteric memory features

16:06

of a CPU or something. There's

16:09

like thousands of those little specialties

16:12

just to make CPUs and

16:14

that doesn't have to do with the manufacture of it. That

16:16

just has to do with a layout and design of it

16:19

and the improvement of it. So you're

16:21

talking hundreds of thousands

16:23

of people who know such

16:26

amazingly esoteric things

16:30

so that all this stuff can actually start working

16:32

on Mars. And then you can't

16:34

just send one of them, right because what if that

16:36

guy gets hit by a meteor or is ship

16:39

crashes on landing or so you have to send enough

16:42

redundancy, and then

16:44

you have to send an education system

16:46

so that you can train up new

16:48

people so when those people die, they're

16:50

replaced. And just

16:53

it's like this huge rabbit hole

16:55

if you actually start to think about what

16:57

Elon Musk is proposing, what are you incentivized

17:00

seing these people to get the best in the brightest?

17:02

Are we talking about like only the

17:04

super elite are even going to be

17:06

considered for this? Like like yeah, I mean,

17:08

is it like Australia and a prison colony.

17:12

Maybe they're the first round that go and they do all

17:14

the work and then we ship them back to the States.

17:16

It's a great question, though, I just wonder. I mean, there's us

17:18

Like you said, it's like each question begets like

17:20

fifty other questions and that's that's why

17:22

it's so much fun to talk about. But no, but really,

17:25

like, I mean, who, how do you incentivize

17:27

people that even have these skill sets to

17:29

go like on this dangerous,

17:32

you know, dicey expedition. I would say being

17:34

part of history is a huge argument,

17:37

right, being on the

17:40

the backup planet that might be an

17:43

incentive, I think

17:45

if we're just honest about it. And one of the

17:47

things that the book starts with is

17:49

that there are like pick a number,

17:52

two billion, three billion, four billion

17:54

people on planet Earth who are living

17:57

in misery, Like just to put

18:00

that succinctly, they are

18:02

getting the raw end of the economic

18:04

deal on this planet. Like there's this fun

18:06

statistic of the people on

18:08

planet Earth make less than ten dollars

18:11

a day that like, that's impossible

18:13

to imagine, but nonetheless that's

18:15

a fact. And there are lots of people, like billions

18:18

who make less than five dollars a day, and they're

18:20

a billion that make less than two dollars a day.

18:24

There are plenty of people whose

18:26

lives would be radically like

18:28

a hundred times better if they had the

18:30

opportunity to do something like this. They

18:33

don't necessarily have anything

18:35

right now. But if they could be trained

18:39

and brought up to speed and

18:41

then sent to a place like Mars, the

18:43

incentives for them are

18:45

far different from the incentives

18:48

that you know, someone living in

18:50

America or Germany or Canada

18:53

might have. That it's a whole different world

18:55

for them. So then it leads us

18:58

to a really big question in

19:00

um. For us, the three of us

19:02

in the studio, for many of you listening, not

19:05

all of you, we are familiar with

19:07

a capitalist economic

19:09

system, especially if you live

19:12

in the West, and one of the huge questions

19:14

asked are proposed by you, and here is why not

19:16

export the American economic

19:19

system to Mars. And we're going

19:21

to get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor,

19:34

and we're back. We have returned

19:36

not from Mars, but from an ad break, not

19:38

from Mars. Yet we left

19:40

on one of the biggest questions and

19:43

a singular thing explored in

19:45

the book, which is not not just

19:47

the technology, but beyond the technology.

19:50

Um. You know, you could argue that one

19:53

of the most intangible and important

19:55

technologies that humanity has evolved,

19:58

our socioeconomic syste them

20:00

right. So one of the questions is if we're making

20:02

a backup planet. Not

20:05

only what should we bring from

20:08

Earth, but are there improvements

20:10

or are their superior approaches

20:12

that we would want to institute on

20:14

this you know, Earth two point oh,

20:17

or do we just think about it in a completely

20:20

new light right and m

20:23

The the socio

20:25

economic part of it is

20:28

absolutely fascinating to think about

20:30

because there

20:33

are a number of different systems

20:36

that are like in place on planet

20:38

Earth. But if we look across the whole

20:41

planet at the effects those systems

20:43

are having on people, we

20:46

have not figured out the socioeconomic

20:48

part to any degree on

20:51

planet Earth yet. So before the break,

20:54

there was this fund statistic that of

20:57

the planet makes less than ten dollars

20:59

a so you know,

21:02

that would be less than dollars

21:05

a year, and of

21:09

the planet would be something like five

21:13

five and a half billion people, maybe billions

21:16

and billions of people are really

21:19

getting shafted by the economic

21:22

systems that we're using today.

21:25

So it forces

21:27

us to ask, if we're going to create this whole

21:29

new colony, what kind

21:32

of economic system do we want to put

21:34

there? And if we're starting with a

21:36

blank sheet of paper, which we are, why

21:39

not come up with something much much

21:41

much better for everyone who's going to live

21:44

on that planet. Why don't we come up with a set

21:46

of goals for the whole society

21:49

and then figure out how to make an economic

21:51

system that delivers on those

21:54

goals. And ay, those goals

21:56

are easy to figure out, Like all we have to

21:58

do is think about what we want in our own lives

22:00

and be the

22:03

the goals that we set, we

22:06

want them to apply to everyone.

22:08

We like, when we think about

22:11

put bringing up this whole new thing on

22:13

on Mars, we expect it

22:15

to be cool and shiny and

22:18

new and wonderful, you know, kind

22:20

of the word utopia's

22:22

way overused. We would like it

22:24

to be good for the people

22:26

who go there. And we know

22:28

from looking at Earth that if we take what we're

22:31

doing on Earth now, it's

22:33

gonna be just as bad on

22:35

Mars. So how do we conceive

22:37

of a new economic system? How do we think

22:40

about that? And there's a number

22:42

of chapters in the book that tries to lay

22:44

out this whole new economic way of

22:46

thinking that benefits everyone and that

22:48

delivers on all the goals

22:50

we would have for a Martian

22:52

society, things like everybody gets food,

22:55

and everybody gets clean water, and

22:57

everybody gets housing and everybody gets

22:59

healthcare. I mean, those are so obvious

23:02

that they don't even bear you

23:05

know, thought, really, except that on planet

23:07

Earth, billions and billions of people

23:09

don't even have those essentials. It's

23:12

like, it's crazy when you think about Earth and then

23:14

you think, well, what what will we do to make it

23:16

better on Mars? You know, I had kind of a freudy

23:18

and listening arret as a a second ago when you said a Martian

23:21

society, I heard Marxist society.

23:23

And I can't help but think that that plays

23:26

into this a little bit. I mean, you know

23:28

what I mean, like just the idea of putting everyone

23:30

on equal playing field, making where

23:32

everyone works together towards a common goal.

23:35

And this is a system that we've seen, you know,

23:37

fail time and again. How do you

23:39

feel like it would be I'm not saying this is straight up communism,

23:41

but it has the feel of that

23:43

in certain ways. How do you feel like that would

23:46

work from a you know, setting up

23:48

a brand new society when it hasn't worked,

23:50

you know, in in the planet we have Well,

23:54

so the first thing I

23:56

think we could ask is does

23:59

the system have now worked?

24:02

Like we like to say that

24:05

it works, but if we were to

24:07

really look at it and

24:09

no things like that. There's

24:11

a billion people living in slums,

24:13

and there's billions

24:16

of people who don't have any real access

24:18

to modern health care and

24:22

are making less than ten dollars a

24:24

day, and you know, and we

24:27

look at that. Is that success?

24:30

Like I you

24:32

could argue that it is radically

24:34

successful for some of us, Like if

24:37

you happen to have a good job in a developed

24:39

country, you're doing great, but

24:42

you're like five percent

24:44

of the planet or something. So it's working

24:47

great for five percent of the planet and

24:49

it's working less and less great for

24:52

the other Is

24:54

that success? But

24:57

aren't those people that are successful in

24:59

our economics system the one that would be more likely

25:01

to want to escape and live in a utopian,

25:04

you know, society and kind of own everything

25:06

well after everything's been built. That's

25:09

kind of what I'm hearing, Like, let's let's send the

25:12

poor people there to build everything radiation

25:15

poisoning, right, and then like you know, we go and live

25:17

on our Martian villas. I don't know that's

25:19

maybe being negative,

25:22

but that's one

25:24

thing I'd like to One thing I'd like to

25:27

examine here, Marshall, is um

25:29

I think there's a really strong point to

25:31

the book's approach, where it is

25:34

grounding the thought experiment

25:36

in current statistics from international

25:39

institutions to current

25:41

socio economic practices. Noel,

25:43

I'm really interested in what you brought up

25:46

about the idea of Marxism

25:48

as we as we know, international economists

25:51

and people who study international affairs

25:53

have routinely given backhanded,

25:57

uh like backhanded compliments

25:59

to the American system. They've called

26:01

it the least worst of all disasters.

26:05

But I mean, and uh,

26:09

the thing that you said, like, why

26:11

what where would something like this succeed

26:14

rather than fail? First,

26:16

it seems like there's a smaller sample size

26:18

if it's a million people and they're

26:20

going to be pre selected to some

26:22

sort of rubric or through some sort of rubric.

26:25

But the question I would ask you, Marshall, is how

26:28

would you see a I interacting

26:31

in this or and to what degree? If

26:33

so? So, if we're gonna design

26:35

a society from scratch, we

26:39

would be silly not to take

26:41

AI into account in designing

26:44

that whole system. So the

26:47

problem we're facing in America right

26:49

now, or a problem economically,

26:51

is that when AI comes along,

26:54

it is increasingly displacing

26:57

people from their jobs and then those people

27:00

really don't have anywhere to go. And

27:03

and a great example of that that's that's

27:05

coming in the near term is

27:07

is truck drivers. Like we can

27:10

pretty much say that in X

27:13

years, where X might be ten

27:15

or it might be twenty, but it probably isn't

27:18

more than twenty. In X years, all

27:21

the truck drivers are going to get bounced

27:23

out of their jobs by AI,

27:26

by self driving trucks. And that's

27:28

one point six million jobs

27:31

just for truck drivers of

27:33

eighteen wheeler kind of trucks. That

27:35

doesn't count all the FedEx trucks and the

27:37

UPS trucks and all the taxis

27:40

and all the other jobs. Just the

27:42

big rig truck drivers is one point six

27:44

million people. They're gonna get bounced out of their jobs

27:48

and then they're gonna do what like

27:51

that. That is the problem our

27:53

economy has with AI is that it

27:55

displaces people from jobs and then

27:58

their destitute like the it's

28:00

gonna be very hard for them to find new jobs.

28:02

And that's going to get worse and worse and worse

28:04

as AI accelerate. So why don't we design

28:06

an economy where that where

28:09

AI is a good thing rather

28:11

than a bad thing, And why don't we apply

28:13

it everywhere we can,

28:16

from healthcare to education to

28:19

truck driving, to apply it everywhere,

28:22

and then as it

28:24

frees up more and more people,

28:27

we take advantage of that and spread

28:30

all that automation,

28:32

all the advantages and wealth from it out

28:35

to everyone, rather than letting it concentrate

28:38

as it is right now in

28:40

an increasingly small slice

28:43

of humanity. Like they're

28:45

sometimes called the one percent, they're sometimes

28:47

called the elite, whatever you want to

28:50

call the the percent

28:52

of humanity that's taking

28:54

all these gains right now, why don't we design

28:56

an economy that spreads it out to everybody

28:59

instead of concentrating it. And that

29:02

that's a big part of the

29:04

underpinning of the book's thought process

29:06

is how do we make this

29:08

planet, this new planet, how do we make

29:11

it benefit everyone instead of

29:13

having most of the people

29:16

being destitute and then some being okay,

29:18

in this tiny group being you

29:20

know, ultra wealthy, which is what the

29:23

Earth is. Like, Yeah, we know we we have

29:25

in our society benevolent billionaires.

29:28

They do exist, But you wouldn't

29:31

it require that, wouldn't it require wealthy

29:33

people to be willing to

29:35

spread that out? And like participate

29:38

in a system where everyone is

29:40

benefited equally, as opposed to being

29:42

in the position they're used to being in, which is kind of at the top

29:44

of the mountain. I

29:47

think we have to create an economy

29:49

that automatically you like,

29:52

that is structurally designed

29:55

so that everyone benefits from the economy,

29:58

instead of an economy

30:00

that is what we're experiencing

30:03

right now, which is a

30:05

very small number of winners takes

30:07

pretty much everything. Was this really

30:10

weird statistic that came out at the beginning

30:12

of the year where eight human

30:14

beings on Earth own as much wealth

30:17

as the whole bottom half of

30:19

humanity, So eight own as much

30:22

wealth as three point

30:24

seven billion people. And

30:27

that is happening because that's how

30:29

today's economy on Earth is structured,

30:32

that's how the rules are written, that's

30:34

how it's all designed to work that way.

30:37

Well, what if you do it on

30:39

Mars in a completely different way, Like

30:41

why not make a different set of rules

30:43

that have much much better outcomes?

30:46

And the advantage of Mars is that gives you

30:48

a blank slate. You don't have to force

30:51

existing billionaires out of the way to make

30:53

it happen. You just make it happen.

30:56

Organically by designing it that way

30:58

from the start. Yeah. In chapter

31:01

fifteen of the of the book,

31:04

Uh, you examine the

31:06

political system or possibilities

31:08

for a Martian political

31:11

system, and one of the

31:13

one of the first when the first

31:15

proposals that you explore is

31:17

the concept of the direct vote.

31:20

You know, and just for all our listeners

31:22

who are outside of the

31:24

US, the way the system would

31:27

work here in the US is that the

31:29

average voter votes for a

31:31

representative. Still at this point human

31:33

who or you know,

31:36

but yeah,

31:39

yeah, I mean it's a great point. But you

31:41

know, the big difference here is that, um,

31:44

the average voter votes for a representative

31:47

who then in theory,

31:49

pursues the interest of

31:51

the forces they represent,

31:54

which you know, the big criticism is that

31:56

in practice the forces they represent

31:58

tend not to be the voters who elected

32:00

them. Yes, that is one

32:03

big problem. And we know this.

32:05

That the folks get

32:07

elected, they go to Washington,

32:10

then they start receiving large amounts of

32:13

money from rich people in a wide

32:15

variety of ways, and then

32:17

they start doing what the

32:19

rich people want them to do. So

32:22

the voice of the people

32:24

basically is meaningless now, uh,

32:27

except in those rare cases where the

32:29

voices of people happens to intersect

32:32

with what the rich want to happen. And

32:35

you know, if we want to make this topical

32:37

to today's news, we

32:39

kind of see this with the whole healthcare

32:41

thing that's coming down, where

32:45

tens of millions of people are gonna lose

32:47

access to healthcare coverage. Like,

32:50

I don't think normal rank

32:52

and file folk, which

32:55

is us most everybody else,

32:58

would want that to happen in But

33:01

for whatever reason, the wealthy people

33:03

want that to happen. And since they are

33:05

pulling the strings there,

33:07

they're ramming that through the

33:10

House and then the Senate. Uh.

33:13

And the president who we elected, who

33:15

said he would never do this, like

33:18

he would never modify Medicare

33:20

or Medicaid and abandon all

33:22

these working class people, has

33:25

totally flipped and is

33:27

now on the side of really

33:30

really hurting working

33:33

class people. So he promised

33:35

one thing to get elected,

33:38

and he's not delivering on that promise

33:40

at all. That is that is the problem

33:43

with electing human beings to

33:45

political positions.

33:47

It really uh

33:50

forces you to think about how

33:52

to get humans out of politics,

33:55

representative humans, like like we're

33:57

experiencing in the United States right now. I

34:00

feel like we're really getting to the point we've been beating around

34:02

this whole time, is what's the government

34:04

going to be on Mars. Who's gonna be running it? Well,

34:06

I just have to introduct really one of the

34:08

things, Marshal, that you propose uh

34:11

in here, which isn't necessarily the government,

34:13

but I can or what would be a government,

34:15

but I can see it functioning somewhat

34:17

in that way. I think we're talking about the same. It's

34:20

the software that you talk about

34:22

that will be constantly monitoring all of the

34:24

inhabitants of the colony, all the colonists, and

34:27

it's it will distribute work based

34:29

on the needs of the colony to these

34:31

colonists. And it seems

34:33

like this really highly entirely government,

34:36

right. Well, in a way, yeah, in a way, it is

34:38

right. But at the same time, it's also

34:41

resource allocation because it's looking

34:43

at what the colony needs and here's

34:45

all of the work I need to get that done at its

34:47

best though, isn't that what the government's kind of supposed to

34:49

do? Kind of? But so

34:51

so, ultimately, Marshall, I just want to talk to you about

34:54

the way you would see that functioning, and mostly

34:56

the problems that you see arising

34:58

from that system.

35:01

So if

35:03

you think about how

35:06

this Mars colony could be structured

35:08

and how it could be organized, and how

35:10

you could uh

35:13

spread the benefits

35:16

of the economy around everyone.

35:19

Uh. In the book, it starts

35:21

with the premise of food, like

35:24

how could the colony produce

35:26

its own food? And the way

35:28

we do that in

35:30

America today is a real hodgepodge.

35:34

Like a person randomly

35:37

seemingly decides that he or

35:39

she wants to be a farmer and

35:42

grows some food, and then it goes

35:44

into this very odd

35:47

commodity marketplace where prices

35:49

can fluctuate wildly depending

35:52

on this thing we call supply and demand.

35:55

And then it goes into a

35:57

you know, a whole giant corps

36:00

apparatus that distributes you

36:02

know, that turns raw food products

36:05

into manufactured food products

36:07

a lot of the times, and then it gets distributed

36:09

through these other things and

36:11

and it's all hodgepodge. It's all uh,

36:15

completely random. There's a hundred,

36:18

like a million places for people

36:20

to extract money out of that system and

36:23

concentrate it. And

36:26

and so then you think, well, what is

36:29

government supposed

36:31

to do? Like how

36:34

how is government supposed to behave

36:36

in that system or in a better system.

36:39

And if you think

36:41

about food down

36:44

at the bottom, you you need

36:46

people to do certain

36:48

tasks to make the

36:51

food available so that we can consume

36:53

it. And fifty

36:56

years from now that will all be done with robots.

36:59

But right now we don't have robots

37:01

to do certain parts of the problem,

37:05

so we use human beings to do those parts.

37:08

And the system that's proposed in the book is we

37:10

just let you know, a

37:12

piece of software help

37:15

people to find the things that need to get

37:17

done based on their preferences

37:20

of what they would prefer to be doing, and

37:24

it manages the whole

37:26

allocation of those tasks and the production

37:29

of all the things that the colony needs.

37:32

That is not unlike the

37:34

system that you might use

37:38

on well,

37:40

like on the International Space Station right

37:42

now at a tiny scale, or on an

37:44

aircraft carrier at a bigger scale,

37:46

or on a you know, a like

37:48

an Antarctic base or anything else.

37:51

Like, we're just taking it up to the million

37:53

person level so that everybody

37:56

gets the benefits of

37:59

the work that they input into the system.

38:02

That's the basic idea. Okay, yes,

38:04

so would this be a situation then

38:06

where where for instance,

38:10

Matt or Noel as Mars

38:12

colonists have a

38:15

profile of some sort a

38:17

database just about them that

38:19

list their their skills, their

38:21

expertise, UM, there are

38:23

other concurrent projects or past

38:26

experience, and then based on the

38:28

needs of the of the overall

38:31

system, uh, they're they're

38:33

assigned a particular role

38:35

that would be fluid depending on the

38:37

state of those needs. Well,

38:40

there's a lot of different aspects to it.

38:42

So what the stuff you're talking

38:44

about that's important. Then there's

38:47

like how do you guys prefer

38:49

to work. Do you prefer to work

38:52

at night? Do you prefer to work a

38:55

little bit every day? Or would you prefer

38:57

to work for a month and then have a month off?

39:00

You know, there's like

39:02

what kind of conditions do you prefer working

39:04

in? There's what are you really good

39:07

at? Um and what

39:10

really brings you joy when you do

39:12

it? Like like let's say you have a

39:14

system and you can talk to it, and

39:17

you could say, well, you know, I

39:19

like doing podcasts, but I

39:21

also I don't know, pick

39:24

something I also like preparing

39:26

engines or you pick something

39:29

so I would say farming repairing engines.

39:32

Okay, So you

39:35

know, if if we had a system

39:37

that that understood all

39:39

of that, it could

39:42

customize a set of tasks for you

39:44

that might be much better than

39:47

the mix of tasks you're having right now.

39:50

And if you're one of the classic millennials

39:52

who went to college but then couldn't find

39:54

a job and now you're working in a coffee

39:56

shop and that seems

39:58

like a totally uh

40:01

useless way to use your time, the

40:04

system can prevent

40:07

that kind of just amazing

40:10

waste from happening, because,

40:13

you know, the the problem that a

40:16

lot of millennials have right now is either they don't

40:18

have a job Millennial unemployment is

40:20

way higher than average

40:23

unemployment, or if they do have

40:25

a job, it is a job they have

40:27

no desire to be doing

40:29

because it's unrelated to anything they've been

40:31

trained for. So again, and

40:35

we look at the American system and we think,

40:37

well, this is okay, But as soon

40:39

as you look at it with any kind of

40:42

uh, you know, critical thinking, it

40:45

really isn't good at all.

40:48

For probably a majority of the people

40:50

they're in. They're in positions

40:54

that they would never choose to be doing

40:56

strictly because they have to do something to

40:58

make money, or they're

41:00

unemployed. So

41:02

the system can just ring all of that

41:05

inefficiency out and

41:07

and give everybody a much better mix

41:10

of tasks that are matched to their

41:12

skills and their preferences and their

41:14

dreams, their passions whatever.

41:18

Yeah, and this is this point

41:20

is perhaps one of the points that would be

41:23

uh controversial for some audience

41:25

members. It reminds me of the

41:28

arguments people used to make about

41:30

autonomous vehicles, which you know candidly

41:33

are going to be the rule rather than

41:35

the exception within our lifetimes

41:37

in many parts of the world. And and

41:39

that argument that some critics would

41:41

make is they would say, well,

41:44

this is removing my own

41:46

autonomy or my own personal

41:48

freedom. And I really appreciate

41:51

how, you know, how you took steps to

41:53

emphasize that this would be

41:55

not a soulless uh

41:58

putting a person into a lot or a

42:00

box for a given amount of time, but it

42:02

would it would engage with their preferences

42:04

too. So I guess for our members of

42:06

the audience who would say, you know,

42:09

well that I

42:11

am making my own human decisions.

42:13

Uh, you know, I'm not gonna let a piece

42:15

of software tell me what to do, how

42:17

would you respond to, uh to those

42:20

members of the audience, Well, the

42:22

flip it responses, don't go

42:24

to Mars. You

42:26

don't want to live that way.

42:29

Uh. You know, in

42:32

anything, no matter what we create,

42:35

there's gonna be people who don't like it, and

42:39

they're going to complain at

42:41

whatever volume they choose

42:43

to complain at. The nice thing about Mars.

42:46

Uh, you know, if we went back ten minutes, someone

42:48

mentioned this is that there's

42:51

a very strong filter possible

42:54

on who gets to go to be in the Martian

42:56

colony. And you know, a selection

42:59

process, us, training, vetting,

43:02

whatever you want to call it, and

43:04

everyone gets housing and food

43:06

and clothing and healthcare, then

43:10

off you go. And if you're not down

43:12

with that, like if you think that half

43:14

the people on Mars shouldn't get healthcare, chances

43:18

are we don't want you on Mars. Like, why would

43:20

we want to create a society where half the people

43:22

don't get healthcare? That's that's insanity

43:25

really, But there are a lot of people who

43:27

believe that. So, I

43:30

mean most of the

43:32

Senate that's a representative

43:34

seems to believe it right now. As

43:36

crazy as that is, So we

43:39

just choose people who are aligned

43:42

with this way of thinking. Uh,

43:45

As we select the people who go to

43:47

to the Mars colony. Okay, so

43:49

this brings us to the most

43:52

important, in my opinion, question

43:54

that you pose in this entire thought experiment,

43:57

Marshal, and that is what

43:59

do we with all the assholes on Mars?

44:02

And we're going to get to that right after a

44:04

quick word from our sponsor. Welcome

44:16

back to the show everyone. We are still here with

44:19

Marshall brain talking about colonizing

44:22

Mars, right, and Matt

44:24

raised a very interesting question at the end of

44:27

the break, what do we do with

44:29

all the assholes on Mars

44:31

um and which which leads me to something I was thinking

44:34

about bringing up before the break, but I think

44:36

it works perfectly here. Marshall,

44:38

we're talking about this sort of software

44:41

AI kind of task master

44:44

governing system. I guess,

44:46

for lack of a better term, that that then needs to be an

44:48

acronym. By the way, it's an efficiency system.

44:50

Big fan of acronyms. But if

44:53

it knows all of this stuff about us, it

44:55

assigns us these tasks, it knows our strengths,

44:57

it knows our weaknesses, does it not

44:59

also record black marks

45:01

against us and potentially

45:04

mark us as undesirable elements over

45:06

time? As we interact and engage,

45:09

you know, with this new society if

45:11

you know, to the point of what happens to all

45:13

the jerks is that the machine that filters

45:15

them out and sends them to work in the minds

45:18

like what are we talking here? So I don't

45:20

know about you, but I personally,

45:23

I'm great with living with people

45:25

who are nice, and I'm great with

45:27

people who are neutrals.

45:29

That is, they're just trying to get on with their lives

45:32

and and make things happen. But

45:35

then there's this group of people who actively

45:37

works to make other people miserable.

45:40

Those I've I've just applied

45:42

the colloquial word assholes

45:45

to them. And I think society

45:48

is much much better if we can

45:51

control, preferably

45:54

eliminate asshole behavior,

45:56

because it does make everybody

45:59

miserable. And and we could sit here

46:01

and we could list off a bunch of asshole

46:04

things that we experience pretty regularly

46:06

today that we would like to

46:08

eradicate. On Mars, I'll

46:10

just pick one simple one, like racism.

46:13

What is the

46:15

point of that? Why?

46:18

So, why would we want to have a group

46:20

of people who were actively trying

46:22

to oppose or to make

46:25

other people miserable?

46:27

Like why what benefit does

46:30

that have for the society

46:33

for you know, all the people living in that

46:35

society when they're actively working to

46:37

make the lives of others miserable. I

46:40

think a big part of the Mars colony of

46:43

any kind of perfected human

46:45

society would be to recognize

46:47

those behaviors that make people miserable

46:49

and then do everything

46:52

possible to eradicate them.

46:54

That's one of my questions, just to jump in here,

46:57

that I would I think a lot of people would

46:59

have on their mind. Is is there a

47:01

degree of uh, to

47:03

put to a coin of phrase, is there a degree

47:06

of assholary here? You know? Because

47:08

there are people who are an inconvenience

47:11

or in considerate in daily life. Uh,

47:13

And then there are people who are clear

47:16

and present dangers, perhaps like a

47:18

chronic a

47:20

chronic drug abuser who

47:22

operates heavy machinery. You know what

47:24

I mean. Uh? So, what's what's

47:26

the scale here? I guess is the question?

47:29

Man? Who gets to make the list? Oh?

47:31

Right? Both good questions.

47:34

So there is a spectrum

47:36

of assholary you want to

47:38

say it that way, right? And

47:41

you you mentioned one like people

47:43

who are intoxicated who are operating

47:45

heavy machinery and are are endangering

47:48

people's lives. We can throw murderers

47:51

and robbers

47:53

and rapists. You know, they're

47:55

at one end of the scale. We all

47:58

get that they're a

48:00

problem, and we already have systems

48:04

that try to contain and deal with that

48:06

end of the spectrum. That's the police force,

48:08

the court, the prison

48:11

system. You know that all. Uh,

48:14

it's pretty well understood. Then there's stuff

48:16

in the middle. Uh.

48:18

And then there's the really lightweight

48:21

stuff at the other end

48:23

of the spectrum. So if

48:25

someone gets into the line at

48:27

the grocery store that clearly says ten

48:30

items are less and they

48:32

dropped fifty items on the conveyor

48:34

belt. Yo, that

48:37

is a level of asshol Arry.

48:39

It's far different from murdering someone.

48:42

But it this

48:44

is yaw, we

48:53

are getting very dangerously into

48:55

like, Larry, But I'm

48:58

learning a lot about you right out. Okay,

49:01

Look, sometimes I do twelve. I try. Sometimes

49:04

I look at my basket and like, visually,

49:07

visually it looks like ten. But then

49:09

as I'm placing them, oh, man, but

49:11

you know what, they don't care. They don't care. Yeah,

49:13

well someone should the scientist ten. I'm

49:16

sorry. I could see I could see

49:19

even in the microcosm of our own society.

49:22

How this is already how how

49:24

there are points of contention, And I think

49:26

that's an excellent point um

49:28

that that you're making here, Marshall, is

49:30

that whether or not their

49:33

degrees of um

49:35

conflicts creating behaviors or

49:38

or or misery causing

49:40

behaviors, they they

49:42

still have an appreciable impact

49:44

over time. So this is the this

49:46

is the very light example, but humorously

49:49

egregious. Someone goes into

49:52

they go to the local Mars

49:54

safe way and they get, uh, they

49:57

see the science as ten things and then let's

49:59

say they get uh, fifty noodle

50:01

packs and they argue that it's one thing because

50:03

they're all the same noodles.

50:06

Whatever. What if they rubber banded together at a giant

50:08

bundle and then nuts, I mean if it's one

50:10

upc anyway, Yeah,

50:12

yeah, sorry, we don't mean to derail. So

50:14

so what happens in that situation. Well,

50:17

so one thing that's proposed, uh

50:20

in the book is that

50:24

everybody in the society has

50:26

the ability to report

50:29

what they believe to be asshole

50:31

behaviors. So the

50:34

book goes so far as to suggest, like what

50:36

if everybody wore a body camera and

50:39

now we have this record

50:42

of stuff that's happening in society

50:44

all the time. And let's

50:47

pick something a slightly less trivial

50:49

than the ten items. Let's um,

50:52

let's you know, one of the videos

50:54

I linked to in the book is the one

50:56

where the woman walks around New York City.

51:00

She's just walking around, living her life.

51:02

And the number of people who can't

51:04

call her or to reach out to

51:06

her a toucher, or who follow

51:09

one ft behind her and

51:12

you know, stalking her, and just the

51:14

amount of harassment she receives

51:17

just walking around as a normal human being

51:19

in New York. It's on camera,

51:21

and it's easy to see that it's asshole

51:23

behavior. And if all of that stuff

51:26

can be picked up, documented, and then

51:28

everybody who's doing it gets

51:31

sanctioned for it, in the book, it proposes

51:33

that we call him out and

51:35

retrain them in you

51:37

know, in that case, in uh,

51:40

you know, some kind of literacy

51:42

about social etiquette. Then

51:45

all of that behavior is

51:47

gone, and she and every other woman

51:50

can walk around New York City without that happening

51:52

anymore. You know. That's the kind

51:54

of thing that the book

51:57

is proposing, is that we just create a

51:59

system so that this

52:02

crap that happens to normal people

52:04

as they're living their lives gets documented

52:07

and the people who are doing it gets

52:10

shut down and and we eliminate

52:12

this huge amount of

52:16

you know, societal junk and misery

52:19

from the Mars colony. So this

52:21

brings us to anonymity

52:24

is we have discussed on this show on

52:26

several occasions about how personal

52:28

privacy is increasingly

52:31

becoming a thing of the past or a privilege,

52:34

you know, for the elite, a new currency

52:36

if you will. Yes, Ben has the best

52:38

ideas on this, and I'm that don't mean to jump

52:40

on those, but um,

52:43

in the thought experiment, it goes into

52:45

this same AI, which is

52:47

keeping track of the work you're doing and that you need

52:49

to do, is also tracking where you are at

52:51

all times, and coupled with the

52:54

proposed body cameras, anything

52:56

that goes wrong can be proven

52:58

immediately. This is where person A

53:01

is and where person B is. Person

53:03

A stopped breathing, person B is

53:05

at fault to that that kind of scenario. But

53:08

I know that thought of being

53:10

constantly tracked and being

53:13

constantly watched or watching UH

53:16

is terrifying to a lot of people listening and

53:18

is not something they would want to be a part

53:21

of Why could it be a a

53:24

really good thing? I'll take it even not a less diplomatic

53:26

route. I mean to me, when I first read some of this

53:28

stuff, it struck me as like the plot of like

53:31

every dystopian sci fi

53:33

book I read in high school. I mean, it has

53:36

that sense. But I'm wondering, like, how is

53:38

this better? How is this not that? And how would

53:40

it not be abused? Right? So,

53:44

I think one thing to understand

53:46

is that we're going down this path already.

53:49

You know, if we went back to

53:51

the seventeen hundreds, we

53:54

had an aonymity and

53:57

there was no way for anybody

54:00

really to get rid of it. But

54:02

today we're well past

54:05

the halfway point. You know, like

54:07

every everything I charge on my credit

54:10

card is tracked, every camera I walk

54:12

past looks at me, my

54:15

cell phone tracks every step I

54:17

take. Already, you know, like

54:19

all this stuff is happening, and it's

54:21

just happening in degrees. So

54:23

why don't we just fast forward and

54:26

take it to its limit? You

54:28

know where it's going to end up anyway,

54:31

And then ask, and now that

54:33

everyone has no anonymity,

54:36

what are the advantages of that? And

54:38

the advantage is that

54:40

you can radically reduce

54:43

crime, and any crime that does

54:45

occur, you can instantly know

54:47

who did it. There's no more of this detective

54:50

that has to go around. And you know,

54:52

it takes a whole hour for the show to figure

54:54

out what the the

54:56

murderer's identity was. You know, we watched

54:58

these cops shows on television. It

55:01

takes days weeks

55:03

to solve these crimes. Well, you down know the perpetrator

55:06

instantly, and you can get all

55:08

those criminals out of society

55:11

so that again, the rest

55:14

of us can live our lives without the misery

55:16

that they're causing. I don't

55:20

I don't think any of us has

55:22

anonymity anymore. There's

55:25

a patina that makes us think, you

55:28

know, and there are places where we can gain it,

55:31

but like, why

55:33

not just embrace it and take

55:35

advantage of every benefit

55:37

that it has to offer if we remove anonymity

55:40

from the equation. I think that's

55:42

a really I think that's a really fascinating

55:45

point because you

55:47

know, we're we're almost looking at

55:49

two different paths

55:52

for um, you know, the removal

55:54

of privacy currently

55:57

in the in the system we've mentioned

55:59

the terrest real system. Uh, we

56:01

have the removal of privacy, largely

56:04

for uh corporate interest

56:07

and largely for state

56:09

control. There's not very much

56:12

compelling evidence that uh

56:14

illegal wire tapping activities

56:17

have actually stopped, for instance,

56:19

the great boogeyman of our time terrorism.

56:22

But there's pretty compelling evidence rather

56:24

that this information has been sold

56:27

at a profit right and the people generating

56:29

the information don't profit from it. Um.

56:31

I I would like that just add

56:33

on, uh, just the dovetail what you

56:35

said marshall. Um. We have to

56:38

remember as well that this is not

56:41

Earth. People can't walk

56:43

outside and live off the land

56:45

by a coast somewhere, you know. Uh.

56:48

So so anonymity I think UH

56:51

could be disadvantageous

56:54

in a situation where disasters

56:56

are much more likely. And if

56:58

one thing goes wrong with this very delicate

57:00

mobile ecosystem, UH

57:03

and we don't know where people are,

57:05

then we would just have to assume they

57:08

have died. Like so

57:10

is it? Does anonymity

57:12

also provide um we

57:15

talked about crime for um

57:18

or excuse me? Does the lack of anonymity? Does

57:20

constant surveillance also provide

57:22

benefits beyond just

57:24

personal person crime? Right?

57:28

It has you know

57:30

a lot of advantages. And the other thing about Mars

57:32

is that we will know every single person

57:35

who's there. You know, they all cost

57:37

a million dollars each to get there or something,

57:40

So it's not like, uh,

57:43

you know, the United States has this weird problem

57:45

right now where ten or eleven million people

57:47

are here illegally,

57:50

like technically they don't exist

57:53

in our society because they aren't uh,

57:56

you know, registered citizens

57:58

of the society. That can't happen

58:01

on Mars. That's sort of the ultimate

58:03

anonymity. If you think about it, you just walk

58:05

over a border and you're in the United

58:07

States. Is this kind of ghost doing

58:11

things that you

58:13

know that are completely untracked.

58:17

That's you know, that's not

58:19

a good situation for society to be

58:21

in either. So on Mars, you know

58:23

every single person who's there.

58:27

We already know the location of everybody

58:29

from their cell phones. So we simply take

58:31

advantage of that when crimes occur and

58:36

and know who is where

58:38

when the crime happened, and

58:40

suddenly every crime, just

58:42

about every crime is solvable in

58:45

that kind of scenario, which has

58:47

an incredible reductive

58:51

force on the on the crime

58:53

that's going to happen. And

58:56

this since we're talking about pop

59:00

relation. I have a I have a couple of

59:02

different questions I wanted to explore,

59:05

um, and I'm gonna save one for

59:07

the end, if that's okay with everybody.

59:10

Uh, but right now, while let's

59:12

stay on society. So one of the one

59:15

of the things that I think is implied,

59:18

and it's it's explicitly stated in

59:20

the book. I think it's implied in the

59:22

proposition of people living on Mars

59:25

is that the way as society

59:28

grows and the way generation cycle

59:31

will have to be radically

59:34

different. Right. Um, so what

59:36

would what would

59:39

change about, say,

59:41

reproduction on Mars or

59:43

you know? Um,

59:46

it reminds me of Okay, this is kind

59:48

of a deep cut for for sci fi nerds

59:50

in the crowd. Um, but do you all remember

59:53

Logan's Run? Do

59:55

you do you remember that one? Marshall, I

59:58

have not seen that movie. Illiterate

1:00:01

when Logan's Uh.

1:00:04

In Logan's Run, there is a there

1:00:07

there is Uh. It's like an

1:00:10

post apocalyptic thing where in

1:00:13

a lot of the members of a society

1:00:15

are given a specific

1:00:18

amount of time during

1:00:20

which they live, you know,

1:00:22

and after that timeline expires, they

1:00:25

are um, they

1:00:28

you know, they are eliminated.

1:00:30

Uh. One thing that's interesting about

1:00:33

that is it focuses on the end of human

1:00:35

life. But in

1:00:38

in your book, in your exploration

1:00:40

here we talk a little bit about

1:00:43

reproduction, about the beginning of

1:00:45

human life, which is pretty much um.

1:00:48

You know, nowadays, nobody would have to pass

1:00:50

the test to have a

1:00:52

child. Nobody would have to And

1:00:54

when I say tests, you know you know, I mean like no one

1:00:57

would have to pass some sort of socioeconomic

1:01:00

at mistest, like can you afford a child?

1:01:02

Uh, do you have any health

1:01:05

problems? Etcetera? Would

1:01:07

this change on Mars? Well,

1:01:10

first of all, I haven't written this chapter yet,

1:01:12

although it's coming. Of all,

1:01:15

it is a great question because in

1:01:18

the United States anyway,

1:01:20

once someone becomes

1:01:23

fertile, they can

1:01:25

have a child. And in

1:01:28

addition, anybody who's fertile

1:01:31

can have as many children as she wants.

1:01:34

And a she

1:01:36

can do that with absolutely no training

1:01:39

of any kind. Notes you

1:01:42

know, training or you

1:01:44

mentioned background checks or uh,

1:01:48

you know she strung out on heroin. You

1:01:51

know, nothing stops someone

1:01:53

from having a child in today's

1:01:55

society. And the

1:01:58

question you would ask about Mars,

1:02:00

is that an appropriate

1:02:03

way to be raising children? And

1:02:05

should it be rethought. The

1:02:07

the cool thing about the thought experiment

1:02:09

of Mars is that it is this blank sheet of paper.

1:02:12

So would you rethink how parenthood

1:02:15

would work in

1:02:18

a situation like Mars where

1:02:20

everybody's living under a bubble and

1:02:23

you can't necessarily just have

1:02:25

the population explode without

1:02:27

some forethought and some adjustment.

1:02:31

And the other thing that's happening is

1:02:34

that human lifespan is

1:02:36

is stretching out right now. So

1:02:40

there's a number of different large

1:02:42

organizations working on making people immortal,

1:02:45

and a lot of speculation that our lifespans

1:02:48

are about to get much much longer

1:02:50

in the near term future. So

1:02:53

in in all you think about

1:02:55

all those things. And

1:02:58

and the question for the Mars colony is

1:03:00

can anybody just have a kid

1:03:02

whenever they feel like it? And

1:03:05

if not, how do you how

1:03:08

do you organize the system

1:03:10

that's going to to make reproduction

1:03:13

more rational in the Mars

1:03:15

environment? And it's like

1:03:18

a lot of these questions. It really

1:03:20

makes you think, like deeply

1:03:23

about how we run our society today.

1:03:26

Why should anybody, you know, like

1:03:28

I have four kids, I had

1:03:30

no training when I had four children, Like

1:03:33

why not what a

1:03:35

barber, for example, in these of

1:03:38

training just to cut a person's hair, Like, how

1:03:40

is it possible that I'm a parent without any

1:03:43

training at all. It's it's weird,

1:03:46

Marshall, is

1:03:49

that when it's my

1:03:52

kids might have some interesting perspectives

1:03:54

on this, I'm not going to let them near the phone. So the

1:03:58

you know, it's it's very odd

1:04:00

to run something as important as

1:04:03

reproduction as as

1:04:06

loosely as we do

1:04:09

on planet Earth. And if you look over at Africa

1:04:11

and what's happening over there with reproduction

1:04:13

right now, that's

1:04:16

a whole another dimension of it. But that is

1:04:18

a very sticky issue,

1:04:20

very controversial when you start trying

1:04:22

to intervene in people's reproductive

1:04:26

systems the way they use their bodies. People

1:04:28

are repelled by that in general, can

1:04:32

be but the

1:04:34

flip side of that should have should

1:04:38

an untrained human be able to

1:04:40

create and then mold a

1:04:43

new human life? You know, both

1:04:46

sides of it are fascinating to

1:04:48

look at and to think about. Uh,

1:04:51

and I it's something we should

1:04:53

talk about as a society, like it should be

1:04:55

out there and getting discussed

1:04:58

because the idea

1:05:01

that a fifteen year old can have a

1:05:03

kid with no training is

1:05:05

weird that you know, we wouldn't

1:05:08

let someone drive a car with no training,

1:05:10

and we wouldn't let you

1:05:12

know, thousands of other activities occur

1:05:15

in our society without training, but bringing

1:05:18

up a whole new human life, uh,

1:05:23

and the ramifications of that are

1:05:26

just startling to think about. And

1:05:29

and I think the Mars Colony is a great

1:05:31

place to explore the different options.

1:05:34

So there's uh,

1:05:37

there's another thing here that that occurs

1:05:39

to us when we talk about options.

1:05:41

M one thing that

1:05:44

we we haven't addressed yet is

1:05:47

the interaction between

1:05:49

what would be too radically

1:05:52

different systems

1:05:54

or you know, in the case of Earth and

1:05:57

Mars, one radically different system

1:05:59

being the Mars Colney, and then this pastiche

1:06:01

of these other systems. To

1:06:05

what degree, given the distance

1:06:08

and the chasm of space there, to what degree

1:06:10

would the

1:06:12

Martian colony and

1:06:14

the people of Earth interact?

1:06:18

That's a great question. And like

1:06:21

there there are ten different forms

1:06:23

of interaction that we might think

1:06:25

about. So do they

1:06:28

like just a phone call between the two

1:06:30

places That doesn't

1:06:33

work. But you can't have a phone call

1:06:35

from Mars to Earth because of the time

1:06:37

delay. It's as short as six minutes,

1:06:40

it gets as long as forty

1:06:42

minutes. I think I'm doing that off memory.

1:06:44

But you know, you you just can't have a

1:06:46

phone call. So now that's

1:06:49

gone. That means video

1:06:51

call or gone. You can do email.

1:06:53

They can interact that way. They can interact

1:06:56

economically, like through trade,

1:06:59

but that's hard to imagine because of the cost

1:07:01

of moving freight around. Then

1:07:03

there's trade of intellectual property. Uh.

1:07:06

You could develop things on Mars, you

1:07:09

know, books, movies, digital

1:07:11

products. You can move those back and

1:07:13

forth and communicate that way with Earth.

1:07:16

Then there's travel like moving actual

1:07:19

physical bodies around. That's

1:07:21

possible, but really hard

1:07:23

and really expensive, so unlikely

1:07:26

to occur very many times. Uh.

1:07:29

And so you look at all those different forms

1:07:32

of of communication, the

1:07:36

it's quite likely that Mars,

1:07:39

the people on Mars would spin

1:07:41

up their own way of

1:07:43

doing things. Because of the isolation

1:07:46

that the distance is gonna uh

1:07:49

force onto the two societies.

1:07:52

It seems more plausible that

1:07:54

they would inevitably begin to drift apart

1:07:57

than it does that they would maintaining

1:08:01

very very close relations

1:08:03

um. You know, most one

1:08:06

thing we know about a lot of colonies

1:08:08

in human history, just on the planet

1:08:11

is that they end up doing their own thing eventually.

1:08:13

And I'm gonna go super rabbit hole with this. Over

1:08:15

a long enough timeline, would they

1:08:17

evolve differently? Oh

1:08:21

well, I think that's almost certain. Yeah,

1:08:24

over even a relatively

1:08:27

short timeline. Because of there's

1:08:29

so many uh

1:08:32

weird things about Mars, from

1:08:34

the gravity to the radiation and the

1:08:37

places and ways they're going to live

1:08:39

and so on. It it's going to impose

1:08:41

a lot of uh

1:08:44

new pressures on the human genome

1:08:46

that will cause them to diverge. I

1:08:49

would expect sooner rather than

1:08:51

later. So really fast, Marshal,

1:08:54

the timeline for this that

1:08:56

Elon Musk played out, can you just tell

1:08:58

us about that really fast? Well,

1:09:00

it moves around a little bit, but the thought

1:09:04

was that it could start in the twenties,

1:09:07

and I think his architecture

1:09:09

moves a hundred people at a time, so

1:09:13

that would probably

1:09:15

take decades, you know, a couple

1:09:17

of decades, three four to move

1:09:20

a million people across. But

1:09:23

as soon as you move any people there, they're

1:09:25

probably going to start reproducing in some form,

1:09:28

so you don't necessarily have to import all

1:09:30

one million folks uh

1:09:33

into the colony. But in

1:09:36

his vision, it's starting

1:09:38

in the twenties, and it maybe

1:09:40

is is taking to three or

1:09:43

four decades for the colony to ramp

1:09:45

up to its full million person scale. I'm

1:09:47

just as I was reading through, I was

1:09:49

trying to imagine the

1:09:51

innovations that will be occurring

1:09:54

with our current technology by the time the

1:09:56

first you know, series of ships leaves,

1:09:59

and then what Earth, what

1:10:02

planet Earth is going to look like from

1:10:04

maybe just a climate perspective at

1:10:06

that time, and uh,

1:10:08

I don't know. It just started making me a

1:10:11

bit nervous for the future, but

1:10:13

also you know, hopeful in a way

1:10:15

that we are sending these flow tillas out

1:10:18

to Mars. So overall,

1:10:22

I think the economic system that you

1:10:24

have outlined here and you you've kind

1:10:26

of proposed in all the different situations,

1:10:28

it does seem like it would at least

1:10:31

lift or it would be possible to

1:10:34

lift everyone up to footing

1:10:36

that is somewhat equal from

1:10:38

a socioeconomic standpoint, yes,

1:10:42

agreed, less unequal, and

1:10:44

would provide him with all the food that they need,

1:10:46

um and you know, clothes

1:10:49

and everything they need for a healthy and happy life.

1:10:52

But in trying to apply that

1:10:55

to the Earth currently

1:10:57

or maybe even in that time frame in the

1:11:00

twenties and the forties,

1:11:02

um, it seems like that won't be possible

1:11:05

because of all the powerful forces that currently

1:11:07

control our system. There

1:11:09

would have to be some kind of very

1:11:12

big and elaborate conflict

1:11:14

for that to occur. Right. Well,

1:11:18

Chapter seventeen came out

1:11:20

yesterday, so this

1:11:23

is a serialized book. I had a chapter every

1:11:25

week, and Chapter seventeen

1:11:28

looks at this one interesting

1:11:31

problem, which is the Syrian refugee

1:11:33

problem. So we have pick

1:11:36

a number, you know, a couple of million Syrian

1:11:39

refugees living in pretty

1:11:41

much absolute squalor in

1:11:43

refugee camps, and

1:11:46

there's no good solution

1:11:48

to that problem on the table. So

1:11:51

one of the things proposed in chapter seventeen

1:11:53

is, well, let's take these people and

1:11:56

let's apply the

1:11:58

theory of the Mars Colony

1:12:01

to them today on Earth

1:12:04

in order to improve their situation. They're

1:12:07

so bad off that anything we do

1:12:09

is an improvement. And the other thing is

1:12:11

they're already costing money.

1:12:14

The U N and NGOs and

1:12:16

the international community are

1:12:18

spending some amount of

1:12:20

money, billions of dollars every

1:12:22

year on this pretty

1:12:24

much intractable problem.

1:12:27

So I understand

1:12:29

what you're saying about. You know, it's

1:12:31

hard to imagine this happening on Earth, but

1:12:33

I think a situation like

1:12:35

the Syrian refugee situation, which

1:12:38

is at

1:12:40

a lot of people living in abject

1:12:43

poverty and misery.

1:12:46

They're already consuming resources, but it's

1:12:48

never going to get them out of that misery. If

1:12:50

we do it the way we're doing it now, it

1:12:53

gives us a chance to think about trying

1:12:56

something different with them. And and

1:12:58

that's what chapter seven and is about. Could we

1:13:01

take these principles and bring

1:13:03

them to life on planet Earth, you

1:13:05

know, starting six months, use

1:13:08

the money that's being used to support them

1:13:10

already but re allocated

1:13:13

so that they get to build themselves

1:13:16

a modern city to live in that

1:13:18

is really a great place to

1:13:21

live, as opposed to a

1:13:24

miserable, almost prison like existence

1:13:26

that they're having now. Yes,

1:13:29

I think this is This is a great point for anybody

1:13:32

who hasn't read UH chapter

1:13:34

seventeen. As as Marshall

1:13:36

has said, this is a serialized

1:13:38

and ongoing work.

1:13:42

Marshall, as we as we wrap

1:13:45

up the episode today, we want to thank

1:13:47

you so much for your time, and most

1:13:49

importantly, we want to know if

1:13:52

you have any closing statements

1:13:55

or thoughts that we have an addressed

1:13:57

yet in the podcast. That would be um

1:14:00

of particular interest

1:14:02

or use to our audience.

1:14:04

Well, the first thing I would say is

1:14:07

I would love to get feedback,

1:14:09

positive and negative feedback on

1:14:13

on the book as it's developing,

1:14:15

and I already get uh

1:14:18

a lot of really interesting

1:14:20

thoughts. Like you guys brought up a lot of really

1:14:22

interesting thoughts, and they

1:14:25

uh, they truly helped with the

1:14:27

development of the book. So my email address

1:14:30

UH is online and publicly

1:14:32

visible. It's easy to find me on the internet,

1:14:34

so you can look at the book and send

1:14:37

me email. The other

1:14:39

thing is, UH,

1:14:43

you know, I I left how stuff works

1:14:46

and one of the things I

1:14:49

want to do with my life is solved

1:14:51

some of the big problems on Earth. And

1:14:54

this Mars Colony thought

1:14:57

experiment is a way of exploring

1:15:00

ring the poverty problem and the concentration

1:15:02

of wealth problem, and the inequality problem.

1:15:05

And that has

1:15:07

been a really interesting, uh

1:15:11

experience and interesting exploration

1:15:14

to try to think of a new economic

1:15:16

system that would radically

1:15:19

improve the lives of billions of people

1:15:21

on the planet. So the more

1:15:23

people who know about it and are thinking about

1:15:26

it and are discussing ways to improve society

1:15:28

for everyone, I think the better. What

1:15:30

what is the website? That

1:15:33

you do all that work for Marshall. It's

1:15:35

called Marshall Brain dot com if

1:15:38

you come there. UH. The

1:15:40

Mars Colony book is at

1:15:44

Mars dot htm on Marshall brain dot

1:15:46

com or you'll see links to it on the homepage.

1:15:48

It's a free book. It's uh

1:15:51

available to anyone. Lots of people reading

1:15:53

it right now. So UH

1:15:56

feedback is welcome

1:15:58

and encouraged, and we also welcome

1:16:00

our listeners to send us feedback

1:16:02

about the interview and any questions you have,

1:16:05

UM, any thoughts you have about all of this stuff. We

1:16:07

think it's super fascinating and we really appreciate

1:16:09

you talking with us about it today. Marshall

1:16:11

Brain. Thanks so much. Yeah, thank

1:16:14

you, thank you so much. Because

1:16:16

I do I do want to mention as we close that

1:16:19

this is only the

1:16:21

latest in a long line

1:16:24

of books that you have written,

1:16:26

Marshall, including How God Works, the Engineering

1:16:28

Book, multiple How

1:16:30

Stuff Works books, Manna

1:16:33

UH Teenager's Guide to the Real World.

1:16:36

You can you can find all of these

1:16:38

uh if you search online. And

1:16:40

as Nola Marshall said, UH,

1:16:43

this is this is ongoing. We want

1:16:45

your feedback in a very real

1:16:48

way. What we like to say here on the show

1:16:50

is that you, the audience, are the most

1:16:52

important part of this whole

1:16:54

of this whole crazy thing. Uh so

1:16:57

yes, Uh. Marshall Brain uh,

1:16:59

founder of How Stuff Works, the

1:17:01

author of the ongoing serialized

1:17:03

work imagining Ellen Musk, million

1:17:06

person Mars Colony. You

1:17:08

can check it out today at Marshall

1:17:10

Brain dot com. And that's

1:17:13

the end of this classic episode.

1:17:15

If you have any thoughts or questions

1:17:17

about this episode, you can get

1:17:20

into contact with us in a number of different

1:17:22

ways. One of the best is to give us a call.

1:17:24

Our number is one eight three three

1:17:26

st d w y t K. If

1:17:29

you don't want to do that, you can send us a good

1:17:31

old fashioned email. We are conspiracy

1:17:33

at i heart radio dot com.

1:17:36

Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production

1:17:38

of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

1:17:41

from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

1:17:43

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1:17:45

favorite shows.