March 20, 2020 • 68 mins
While the human species is inarguably successful (for now), hundreds of millions of people struggle under daily threats of starvation, physical danger, lack of shelter and disease. And, perhaps more troubling, the numbers indicate it's possible to feed and shelter virtually every single person on the planet -- or is it? Is there enough for everyone, and, if so, why isn't humanity transforming this potential into a reality? Join the guys as they explore the answers to this question, along with its disturbing implications.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brading. Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our friend Noel is on Adventures,
but we'll be returning in the future. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission controlled decand most importantly, you are you. You are
here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
to know. Matt, This is a this This is a
(00:47):
wide ranging episode for us today, isn't it It is?
But it brings in topics that we've been covering over
the past seven years at least seven I think almost
seven in this or we will become seven. But yeah,
we we've hit on a lot of the topics that
we're going to kind of pull in here. So hopefully
you've listened to many of the episodes. Uh, if not,
(01:10):
maybe go back, you know, check out check out some
of the ones that you can kind of infer that
we're gonna be talking about with this topic as you've
read in the title, and then come back to this
episode because we are gonna be pulling in a lot
of stuff, and we we're not gonna have time to
hit everything in complete detail. And this, uh, this wide
ranging episode is also by its nature collaborative, as we
(01:33):
of course hope all of our episodes are, because we
need your help, we want your involvement, as we often
say you specifically, you are the most important part of
this show. Those are not empty words. As as a
matter of fact, to prove that these are not empty words,
(01:53):
to put our money where our mouths are or where
your ears are as you listen to this. Uh, you know, Matt,
I I checked on our Twitter at conspiracy stuff on Twitter.
I checked on our Twitter feed, and I had no
idea that we we have more people befriending us on
Twitter than I thought. Not not not a big number. Um,
(02:16):
it's a big number in absolute terms, but it was
bigger than I thought it was for for us, it's
a big number. UM. I give me to say what
it is exactly where we are according to the mobile version,
we have nine thousand, two hundred something followers. Holy smokes, Well,
we don't consider you followers by the way. Yeah, that's right,
(02:38):
that's an awful word. You are fellow conspiracy realists. You
are fellow listeners, so we thought we would give some
of you a quick shout out at the top of
the show. And we hope that the people will shout
out are listening, but we want to share what they
said with you, especially for those of us who are
not on Twitter. So unless everybody hates this, we're gonna
(03:00):
make this a regular thing. Here we go. We'll just
we'll just read a few shout out to shoot one
Stewart hop for over there on Twitter, who's responding to
our recent coronavirus episode. We do have an update coming.
And Stewart, you said, I listened to this episode and
there's something you should have mentioned. Aside from wearing a
(03:21):
mask to not get sick or catching something, they have
also been worn for those who have not done their makeup,
which really which I thought was interesting. Yeah, so maybe
you're in a hurry and uh you feel like you
should have, as they say, put on your face, but
you didn't have time, so you say, I'll just I'll
slap on the mask. I'm just running to the store.
(03:42):
Yeah it's interesting. Huh, it really is. I never would
have thought about that, And so, uh, here's here's a
another one. Uh. Patrick Lee six six six nine was
responding to our earlier tangent about ridiculous d C villains
and he hipped us to, uh, this fantastic Batman villain,
(04:06):
ten eyed Man. Patrick just said, look him up, ten
eyed man. Yeah, he's got his thing is that his
only superpower is that he wears a headband over where
the rest of us normals would have eyes. And his eyes,
the ten eyed Man's eyes are on the tips of
(04:26):
his fingertips. What what they're on his Yeah, not tips
of his fingertips is is redundant, but they're on his fingertips.
Oh so we're talking about Philip Reardon. Okay, I've seen
the costume that has eyes going down his chest. Yeah,
those are decorative though. His real power finger tips. Oh man,
(04:49):
this is really cool. He's in the bat the bat verse.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he's up there with the Joker
I assumes as the most power full of Batman's villains. Uh.
And last one for today, last Twitter shout out for
today is our in Gen three eleven says have you
(05:12):
all heard of and watch the documentary Active Measures on Hulu?
My tim foil hat is on and conspiracies are are afoot.
Check it out if you get a chance. Folks, let
us know if you've seen active measures I have not.
Let let us know if it's if it's worthwhile for
your fellow listeners, and thanks to you guys, Thanks to
(05:32):
everyone who has befriended us on Twitter and joined the
ranks of the conspiracy Realist. Again, we are at conspiracy stuff.
If you ever want to just shoot off a quick
tweet to us while you're while you're hearing something. This
episode may may get a little personal for people. I
know it's it's full confession, a little bit personal for me,
(05:53):
uh Matt. As you pointed out earlier, today's episode is
a gestalt you know, it's q milative. It's going to
trend a bit towards the philosophical, but we've based it
on uh pretty hard and that times sobering science. As
you said, in the past, we've explored specific concrete examples
of things like resource extraction. That's where that's where a
(06:18):
state actor or a corporation or state sponsor corporation goes
into usually a developing country and purposefully keeps the people
broke while taking things like their lithium or their cobalt
or their sugar or their you know, their coca beam production. Yeah.
And the the more recent modern version of that is
(06:42):
exactly what you said up top there. The minerals, the
things that are needed to produce technologies, right, the rare
earth elements, right, the rare earth metals. So we've also
looked at global health crises such as, uh, the the
idea of a superbug. Right. Yeah, shout out to you
livestock industry, thanks for making antibiotics useless. And also shout
(07:07):
out to Seattle right now, who recently had to close
down schools because of the COVID nineteen to get in
front of it. And here where we are in Atlanta,
Fulton County is experiencing the beginnings of an outbreak. Yeah, yeah,
I mean the outbreak is already happening, yes, but we're
we're actually seeing it, right, We're actually seeing, uh, the
(07:28):
numbers beginning to rise as they do in a in
a localized area, right exactly. It's starting to hit home
and we're seeing actions being taken. We've also looked at
unethical corporate or state behavior tail as old as time.
I've looked at overpopulation, is it alarmism? Are we being
too are we being too sedate in our response to
(07:53):
the threats? We're certainly using too much stuff. We're certainly
using too much stuff. That's right. Today, we are combining
all of these previous investigations to answer a single, uh
damning question and so question that people have racked their
brains over for millennion and is this Is there enough
(08:14):
for everyone? And in other words, can this planet support
the current human population? And we don't mean just like
keep them alive matrix style, but we mean give them
lives they consider worth living. And this is this is
an enormous and profound question. I mean, after all, for
billions of people, this world is a brutal, dangerous place.
(08:38):
Life is hard, it is painful, it is often terrifying.
And there's only one cold comfort for a lot of
people suffering, and that's that the folks on the receiving
end of the majority of life's terrors often tend not
to live long. Wow, that's not bleak. That's not bleak
at all, the super bleak. So is there enough for everyone?
(09:03):
Here are the facts? Matt. What do we mean when
we say everyone right now? Well, right now as of Friday,
March six, at eleven twenty one a m Eastern time.
There are seven billion, seven hundred and sixty nine million,
sixty four thousand, seven hundred and forty four people. It
(09:27):
just changed, keeps changing, It keeps changing, and the clock
keeps running up. That's so many people we cannot Science
proves that it's very difficult for our brains to grock
the concept of one billion. Yeah, I can't crock one billion. No, No,
I can't. I have a tough time with that too.
(09:50):
And this is this is a new development, right, the
number of your laughing because I said rock. That's a word, right,
I've never used it, but I joy it very much.
I might be in the wrong timeline again, but uh,
this is a relatively new development. The number of quote
unquote modern human beings on Earth has been pretty small
(10:13):
until very very very very recently. Yeah, just ten thousand
years ago. Think about that. Ten thousand years ago, there
might have been no more than a few million people
wandering around on the planet. And those populations are going
to be pretty far spread. And the one billion mark
wasn't passed until the eighteen hundreds, very early in the
eighteen hundreds. The two billion mark wasn't passed until the
(10:36):
nineteen twenties. So we have just just exponentially exploded here
and all of us walking around just because of where
we live, because of the cultures in which we live.
We want a whole bunch of stuff, just stuff that
we use. A lot of times. We throw it away.
Sometimes we keep it around for a couple of years
until it breaks and throw it away. Maybe we can
(10:57):
recycle it, maybe we can reuse it in a way,
but jen really it ends up in the trash. Here's
the thing. We all have different ideas of what that
stuff should be, like we said, because of that culture,
but we only need a few basic things. We only
need a few basic things, right right. It's a it's
a conversation that a lot of parents in the crowd
(11:18):
have had with their children. A lot of us have
had this conversation with our own parents, where wherein the
adult explains the difference between what you need and what
you want. It's never a super fun conversation for the kid,
and it's probably not a super fun conversation for the adult.
But it's true, Matt, we only need a few basic things.
(11:39):
Let's look at that. Here's a here's a question. How
much food does one person need, not want, but need.
Turns out people don't actually need a ton of calories
to survive every day. According to the US Department of Health,
adult males generally require somewhere between two thousand to three
(12:01):
thousand calories per day, so every twenty four hours to
maintain their weight, and adult females need around sixteen hundred
to two hundred. Of course, those numbers are super loose,
and and the concept of gender, you know, is somewhat problematic.
But but what we're saying is that's that's the ballpark,
(12:23):
somewhere between sixteen hundred to three thousand, not to gain
muscle mass and hulk out and not to shed a
bunch of weight and get felt enough to where you know,
your old bell bottoms or something. Yeah, And it's all
the calorie is a measurement of energy, right, right, So
it all depends on the output that you're having as
(12:46):
well how much energy you're using. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you,
for instance, have a relatively sedentary existence, you're going to
be on the lower end of the caloric scale. And
if you have a very physically active existence, then you're
going to need more fuel for the fire of course,
you know, our species is nothing if not durable. People
(13:08):
can and do survive long, often harrowing periods deprived of
proper nutrition, and you know you can bounce back from that,
but after a certain point you will also experience lifelong
medical consequences of that. Furthermore, epigenetics proves that the medical
consequences of long periods of privation will carry on after
(13:33):
you die. They'll carry on in your genetic code and
the way it expresses in your offspring. And there is
also the concept here that occurs in this country and
many other places across the world, where you are hitting
or exceeding those calories that you need, but the nutrition
of those calories is not what you need, right, You're
(13:53):
not actually getting the things within the food you're consuming
to make a healthy body. Yeah, exactly. Now we've got
that number. So they're almost seven point eight billion people.
They need somewhere between six hundred and three thousand calories
every twenty four hours, just four things to be status quo.
(14:15):
How much does the world eat? This is interesting, there's
a related question. Yeah, globally, every sixty seconds, we eat
eleven point five million pounds of food. As that's everybody
that's our collective tab at the buffet of the world
one minute, eleven million. So to put that in terms
(14:36):
we understand, I think you and I were talking about
this on a previous episode. How people in the US
will do will make up any kind of measurement to
avoid using the metric system. Okay, so we'll put that
in terms we can understand. That's about twenty million big
max every uh every sixty seconds. Wow. So if you
(14:57):
love big Max, that's that's the metric for you. If
you hate them, well, that'll just make the rest of
the bad news. We're gonna get to even more harrowing.
So here's the catch. While we actually eat that eleven
point five million pounds of food in one minute, we
also waste two thousand, four hundred and seventy two tons. Dude,
(15:23):
I'm looking at the world food clock right now that
has all of this how much is produced, consumed, and wasted,
and it's the food clock counts up every second of
of those three metrics. I'm like, I hate it. I'm terrified.
I'm just I'm staring at it while you're telling me
these facts, men, and my brain is exploding a little bit.
(15:44):
It's crazy. Oh, and just to get us into more
of an Apple's two apples comparison, there eleven point five
million pounds. That's like five thousand, one d thirty three tons,
and that doesn't count the two thousand, four and seven
two tons that are just straight in the garbage can.
So logically, then if we were more efficient, this means
(16:09):
that we could feed everyone. We we could feed everyone
every day. We just don't. There's no and there's other
stuff to get into. There were talking about later, yes,
about why currently can't or won't, Yes, but why why
it's not happening even though it's possible. Yeah, So let's
(16:31):
I want to brack it to the side. The problem
with water, With potable or drinkable water, it's a different case. Unfortunately,
it's when we're gonna have to tackle in an episode
all its own because spoiler alert. While the news about
food does have a happy ending, the news about water doesn't.
(16:52):
Yet it doesn't. Really, more than two billion people of
the seven point eight billion people here on Earth lack
clean drinking water at home, available on demand. Meaning of
the seven point eight billion, more than two billion don't
have a faucet they can go to in their house
that just turns on and give them water that won't
(17:15):
kill them. A major U n report from back in
two thousand eighteen in June shows that the world is
way off track. The U ninety Nations had a goal
which was to bring safe water and sanitation to everyone
on the planet. By we're not going to make that happen.
It's the the pigeon of potable water has flown the
(17:38):
coop by fifty In fact, half of the world's population
just might not have safe water. And here's the well, currently,
here's the deal. There only really two ways to change
these numbers, and that is to reduce the number of
people that need to have clean drinking water, or is
(18:00):
to somehow revolutionize the purification technology, or get some this
is the third option, get some kind of angel, billionaire,
trillionaire investor or group of investors to just put the
money into make it happen, right, right, to get some
of that billionaire blessing for purification technology. Or if we
(18:23):
want to get really space age, we could look into
somehow getting non terrestrial sources of water, right to farm
a comet or something. Yeah, I know totally. I'm just
trying to imagine the cost difference between farming from a comet,
you know, just cleaning some water, making a plant in
(18:45):
places where there there aren't those plants. Yeah, it's it's
the equivalent of let's go out and buy water and
someone say, no, we have water at home, just clean it, right.
So we also, I like the brought up money because
we want to we need to just touch on that
the average income. So we have all the we have
(19:06):
these billions of people. What what does the average person
take home? This is a tricky question and there's no
way to really contextualize it and do justice to the
reality on the ground because we have to remember there
are vast amounts of income inequality. But if we total
up all of the available information, then we find the
(19:30):
average global household income is something like nine thousand, seven
hundred seventy three dollars per year, so a little under
ten grand per household per year. A lot of people
listening in the West already make more than that on
their own and a lot of people do not. And
(19:52):
then of course we have to remember that number of
factors in people like Jeff Bezos Amazon, so that guy
is busting the curve forever one and then a lot
of almost or very close to zero, right right, A
ton of that, yes, and those results come from uh
some gallop research between two thousand and six and two thousand,
(20:13):
twelve and thirty one populations. Here's how here's how screwed
up that metric is income in the top ten wealthiest
populations in the world are more than fifty times that
of those in the ten porous populations. And all of
the temporis populations are currently located in Sub Saharan Africa.
(20:34):
So we hit money, we hit water, we hit food,
and now we have to confront the big, big, the
big elephant team grim reaper in the room, which is mortality.
And we'll do that after a word from our sponsor.
(20:56):
All right, so we have all of these people, we
have all of these needs. By the way, we also
need love and that's really all you need. Um. But
let's look at how we are exiting this this planet,
(21:17):
exiting this uh experience that we call life. In sen
As of officially three years ago, fifty six million people
died that year and the top three causes were cardiovascular disease.
There were seventeen point six five million deaths due to
(21:38):
cardiovascular disease. That represents thirty two point to six percent
of all the deaths, and then cancers came in second.
There were eight point nine three million deaths that were
caused by cancer or at least in some way associated
with cancer, and the sheaf of death there is sixteen
point three two And then next up is respiratory disease
(22:00):
is coming in at three point five four million deaths,
and that is six point four eight percent of all
of the deaths. So health issues here, major health issues
with our bodies and how they function. Yeah, and we
have to note those top three causes of death or
umbrella terms. Cardiovascular disease encompasses several different conditions. Not all
(22:24):
cancers are created equally, of course, and so on and
so on, and equitable access to medical care would vastly
reduce these numbers, as would preventative measures like tighter pollution
controls and and and the like. When we look at
shelter and clothing, we know that, you know, one man's
(22:47):
one man's shack is another man's castle. However you wanna,
you want to trot out that old cliche, there's clearly
enough h there's clearly enough around given that given that
shelter can be built out of so many things. There's
clearly enough enough there to create housing for people. I
(23:08):
mean in a lot of developed countries, even there's still
a huge homeless problem, and there are a lot of
empty buildings, but the homeless population is not allowed to
take shelter in there because of course concerns for crime. Right. Yeah,
I was going to say, when you when you're speaking
about shelter, it can be defined. It really is anything
(23:29):
that's going to protect a person from the elements as
well as impending danger from some kind of outside force. Right,
And we've had a high look at the numbers. Then, right,
we've covered some of the basics. These numbers are not perfect,
but we see some commonalities. We see that outside of water,
(23:52):
outside of clean drinking water, which is a huge necessity,
the trend seems to indicate that there, uh there, there
is potential for people not to go hungry, there's potential
for people not to be homeless, right, to maybe even
collectively have a better quality of life. So with that,
(24:14):
let's get to the question is there enough for everyone?
Here's where it gets crazy. The answer is actually yes.
And this this should not necessarily make anybody happy. This
should be troubling that the answer is yes. It should
(24:34):
be very troubling because yeah, because that answer is yes,
then our next media question is, well, what gives why
isn't this happening. Let's look at food. So you've heard
stuff about food scarcy shout out to people like Norman
Borlog and the Green Revolution. The fact of the matter
is that right now the world already produces enough to eat.
(24:58):
We actually produce a surpl us. This world creates more
than one point five times enough food to feed literally everyone.
That's enough to feed ten billion people, and ten billion
people just for a bookmark is where experts expect the
population to peak around. So not that not that far away.
(25:21):
If you're listening to this podcast, the odds are in
your favor of being alive when they're ten ten billion
people around, or when they're at ten Who knows, we'll
roll the dice. We're never gonna make it that far.
So there's a problem though, because that food, when we
say just food in general, it's an umbrella term. And
(25:44):
as we as we had discussed earlier that that term
encompasses a lot of grain, the staple of the global diet,
and the bulk of the grain produced by agribusiness, bulk
of industrial who produced grain goes to feeding livestock and
confined feed lots and goes to biofuels rather than going
(26:07):
uh to the one billion starving or food insecure people
on the planet. So again, it's not that we can't
feed everyone, it's more that we can't feed everyone the
kind of food everyone wants and well, and we also
(26:29):
destroy a lot of those grains that are created in
order to control the price of said grains, which means,
like it if you could just decide instead of destroying
it or throwing it away or you know, getting rid
of it in that way, and you just used it
to feed people for no cost. Well, when it's oh god,
(26:51):
we're gonna get this later. When I say no cost,
I just mean you're not actually selling it or anything.
You're literally donating it. But in order then to get
that rains to the places to the needy people that
would would want it, then it costs a lot of money,
right right, and shout out to a previous recent episode
on farm subsidies. It is true that a lot of
(27:13):
governments pay farmers to not grow food, even when you know,
for their tons of concerns listen to that episode for
more information. But think about it this way. Let's take
it to an individual level. If you knew with certitude
that none of those one billion people would ever need
(27:35):
to starve again, but it meant that you and everyone
else you knew would have to change your diet. You
could realistically maybe eat meat once a month or once
a year or never again. Would you be able to
make that trade off? The problem there is that if
(27:55):
we're being realistic, we would we would not have a
way to know everyone else was playing by the rules.
Can you mention the the black meat market? H Man, Yeah,
I've seen there. There are things about that in sci fi.
You know, when like when lab grown protein or lab
grown meat becomes the normal, then how much will people
(28:18):
pay for a real steak? And then the concentric circle
around the black meat market and the red meat market
become troubling? Right right? For many of us, this already
sounds like a losing proposition, and it's hard to fault
people for that. It's something called the tragedy of the commons,
which we mentioned before in this show. The tragedy of
(28:42):
the commons essentially is this, it's the idea that there
is something a public resource that everybody uses. Like if
we didn't have agribusiness, and you just foraged from everybody
in the village foraged from the same field or whatever,
and just grew naturally, but you had to take steps
(29:03):
to make sure that that food grew next year. But
why would you. It's not yours. It's just a place
you go to and grab food, right, and then everybody
grabs food and then it's gone, and then you just
you go through this increasing um, this increasing crescendo of
passing the blame, you know what I mean, Like I
just a what I wanted. It's the problems, never me,
(29:25):
it's all all these other schmucks. So it's understandable that
this would look like, uh, an unnecessary cost for us
to put on ourselves. Why should I have to punish
myself to help a billion people that I will never meet, right?
And why should I have to punish myself or hold
myself to standards that I cannot prove other people are meeting.
(29:48):
You know? So if we look at UH, this is
by the way, this is not taking in medicine. We're
just we're putting that this side because the medical care
stuff like water is almost its own episode. Yeah, and
again bringing in costs, the time it takes to train
(30:10):
people and medications that would be affordable to save lives. Alright,
So next question, So we can do this stuff technically potentially,
we're not. So why not? Why are we not giving
every other human being what they need to survive? Essentially,
(30:31):
it's because doing so, even if everybody wanted to, doing
so would necessitate a massive transfer of resources and wealth,
something on something that like, on the level that it is,
never occurred in human history. It boggles the mind. And
part of it is because of we're talking about inequality
(30:53):
up there with mortality. That's the other elephant in the room.
And when we talk about inequality, we often tend to
think in these uh, these extremes, you know, because extremes
are easy cognitive shortcuts. We think of the billionaires, for example,
on one end of a scale and the hopelessly deprived
on the other end of the curve. But honestly, we
(31:17):
have to give ourselves perspective. If you own a device
that allows you to listen to a podcast, for example,
then you are globally speaking, much more likely to be
one of those has rather than one of those have
not a lot of people considered poor in a developed country,
for instance, may still have a better quality of life
(31:39):
overall than a relatively well off person in the least
developed country. You know what I mean. Well, then the
question becomes, what do we do about that again without
having you know, even if everybody's on board except for
the trillionaires, the billionaires, Like, how do you get those people,
(32:01):
those corporations to decide that it's a better thing for
everyone if we raise all ships. Right? That leads us
to another question. You know, what's the solution? Can technology
save us? Something will tackle after a word from our sponsor,
(32:26):
and we're back. All right, here's one for the budding
technocrats in the audience, the people who are very forward
to the future. Right, another another question after an ad break,
Can technology save us? The answer is yes? Maybe, let's
say the answer is yes, but probably not. Yeah. See,
(32:50):
for most of human history, we just didn't have the
organization necessary to handle the logistics involved. You might have
people in one part of the world who had surplus
of grain because the weather was favorable, and people in
a different region, you know, maybe they were combating droughts
or floods and as a result, their harvest didn't come
(33:10):
through and they starved. And let's say that the people
with the surplus of grain heard about this distant land
that needed help. Even if the people with that surplus
wanted to feed their fellow humans, even if they tried
very hard, for most of human history, they just wouldn't
have the means to get the food or medicine or
(33:32):
resources to those folks in time to make a difference. Now,
for the first time ever, that has changed. We can
ship almost anything almost anywhere. But it costs money, and
it costs money because of fuel, because of the existing
(33:53):
technology that can travel. It costs money because you have
to have uh the logistics in place to figure out
what is going where. And that's you know, a bunch
of people employed a lot of times huge facilities and
all that stuff happen. All money is is a representation
(34:15):
of labor over time. Right. So so we're we would
have to to ship stuff, we essentially have to give people,
uh these placeholders for time that was spent earlier, right,
and we do that in the form of currency. So
we have to we have to help these people justify
their labor their time, right, and that that is a huge, huge, hurdle,
(34:41):
But if there was some other thing. I'm not saying
that we have an answer, and I'm not not even
saying there should be some other thing. But if if
there was quote unquote no cost, then we could literally
feed every single hungry person on the planet. We're not, Yeah,
So so what can we do? Can emerging technology and
(35:05):
energy improvements and a lot of these things that are
out there that are happening, we know are coming. It's
just when will they get here? Will those things move
the needle enough to help everyone's ship rise a little bit?
Because you know, there really is interesting stuff out there happening.
And one of the big things would be if we
could because it would change everything if we could get
(35:27):
more efficient and larger amounts of power of energy, because
that would reduce the costs of things like shipping, um,
they would reduce the cost of things like packaging and
in all of these other things we would need. So
we were just looking at a couple of different emerging
technologies and we won't spend too much time on this.
(35:47):
UM twenty nineteen, according to a lot of the the
news that has been coming out about energy improvements, was
a year that wasn't too exciting about brand new developments,
but there was really cool stuff in there happening that's
more of a minor improvement that you can kind of
(36:08):
see the tail for right. You can see kind of
where it's headed. That we found something called floating solar,
which is really interesting to me and I hope you
find it to be fascinating to uh. The idea is
taking a solar array that you've probably seen pictures of
somewhere online that generally it's in a desert or somewhere
or a more arid climate where you've just got solar
(36:32):
panels in a huge circle or a different arrangement that's
just out there aiming at the sun at all times,
trying to generate electricity. Well, floating solar uses a body
of water that that isn't usually used for a specific
human purpose. So imagine a hydroelectric dam's reservoir, So like
the water that's above a hydroelectric dam that then that
(36:54):
water flows down through the damn system and generates electricity
through turbines. This floating solar array would sit on top
of that reservoir and it would look kind of like
the other solar rays you've seen before. It's just they're
floating on the surface of the water that isn't going
to be used anyway, the surface isn't um then you
can generate a bunch of power there. And the cool
(37:15):
thing about this is that because in this case, at least,
if it's really close in proximity to a power generation
plant already with that hydroelectric dam, it's really easy to
transfer the power generated on that floating array to the
grid itself, which, as we're gonna keep talking about here,
that becomes one of the major problems with new energy
(37:37):
technologies out there that might give us a bit of
a step up when it comes to helping everyone. So
another one, another technology that you can think about is
offshore wind farms. So wind farms that are you know,
relatively far out into the ocean or offshore and the
(38:00):
wind out there can generate energy really effectively. The problem is,
if you're far enough away, it becomes extremely difficult to
get that power generated because it's so far away from
the grid to the grid. So um, there are new
technologies coming out about the types of cables and how
those cables would function to actually bring more power to
(38:21):
the global grid. Um that seems like a cool thing
there's new nuclear technologies that are emerging, like we talked
about with Chris Cogswell. There there's stuff in there about
molten salt reactors which seem to be a little bit
safer than the fission reactors that we you know, that
are so common right now on the planet. But there's
(38:44):
also that concept of fusion that we talked at length
with Chris about that really does seem to be happening. Yeah, weird. Yeah,
I was so skeptical and we were initially talking about it,
but since then, like smaller fusion and reactors are a
real thing that seemed to be happening. So that could
(39:05):
really change the game as far as being able to
get UM either to produce the food that is needed
and to clean the water efficiently UM and put power
plants in places that we normally wouldn't even consider doing
it if you're a large corporation. Yeah, and now all
of the problem is all those technologies that we've named
(39:28):
have some major drawbacks. Major drawbacks they have, you know,
including stuff like, uh, the overhead or the initial costs,
safety or environmental concerns, and then problems of scale. Yeah,
oh yeah, I mean none of that, none of these
things we're talking about are going to change the game
(39:48):
really in the way we're imagining here. But except for fusion,
fusion could they could? I think fusion could. Yeah, I
I would love for it to be. I. I would
love for that to be the case, like for for
any of those things we just named UH solar or
hydroelectric or fusion. To make it off of the drawing
(40:10):
boarder off of the to move from the column of
potential solutions to practical or implemented solutions. We're not there yet.
We're not there yet. And then how on earth do
you bring the cost down to something like fusion enough
to make it extremely helpful? There's there's another. Whenever we
talk about technology and it's possible role in improving the
(40:31):
lives of the of the people who are members of
the species, one big thing must be addressed, and that
is the concept of what is often called AI or
artificial intelligence or you know, increasingly academics prefer the term
machine consciousness because they say, you know, a consciousness is
a consciousness. How is a machine's consciousness any different theoretically
(40:55):
from UH, meatheads consciousness? You know, what makes an artificial
and whatnot? Right, it's the meat. It's the meat that's
gonna be. That's gonna be our advertisement for premium organic
brains in the in the black meat market. It's the meat.
I wish you guys could see the expression man, it was.
(41:17):
It's perfect. I nominate us spokesman. All right. So, uh
so before we talk about AI, let me let me
pitch you a little bit on why why people are
excited about having a non human consciousness or collective handle
these logistical problems, these distribution problems, which is really that
(41:41):
that's what a lot of this is. Well, first, no
matter what our our lovely little primate brains can make
technology wise, outside of AI, we may not have the
tools mentally who take advantage of this. Our brains, you see,
(42:04):
are one of the most important pieces of early human
technology how we got where we are. Our brains, make
no mistake. Are there are the reason for all the
good stuff the human species has done. They're also the
reason for all the bad stuff we've done. Uh It's
it's kind of like Promethean fire, right. So the problem
(42:29):
is that our brains, like any other computer have have,
you know, they've they've got code, and they've got limits
to their capabilities. Our brains naturally bulk at the idea
of deliberately lowering our individual standards to help some abstract
collective thousands of other brain billions of other brain computers
(42:52):
that we will never ever, ever ever meet. Sorry, the
odds against you meeting all the people on the planet
right now are are astronomical because so many you're dying
every minute, and so many more are being born. You're
just you just don't have time for it in your schedule.
And even if you're lowering your individual standard of living
(43:18):
to to something that's survivable, something it's not that bad,
something it's not terrible, but just isn't as awesome as
you would want, you'll you'll never really see the impact
of that on the planet, you know, not not in
your lifetime. And our brains already knew this way before
(43:38):
we did, which brings us to one of the chilling
theories that that is. I don't know about you, Matt,
but it's sort of changed the way I look at
the world. It's something called Dunbar's number, yeah, with which
we've mentioned before. It's named after a British anthropologist named
Robin Dunbar. Long story short, Dunbar is convinced through his
(44:03):
research that there is a ratio a correlation between brain
size in primates and the amount of people like given
primate can consider other people or other primates, living, thinking,
feeling beings with their own motivations, their own goals. That
(44:25):
number for human beings, according to Dunbar, is a hundred
and fifty people ballpark. That means then that once you
get to like one and fifty two people, two of
those are in people. They're they're just sort of functions
they happen, you know what I mean? Bots? Yeah, right there,
(44:49):
there um their verbs, their mechanisms, their processes that you
see it, you see moving around you, but you don't
think of them as people. I'm imagining it as social
media thing. Let's just say, let's use Facebook. You've got
a hundred and fifty Facebook friends, and you know all
of them, right, you really truly know all those people,
(45:12):
And then that that number starts to grow and grow
and grow and grow and grow, and now it's just
kind of a picture of a representation of a human
with each of those profiles. Yeah, and you do that
obnoxious thing people do on social media where you where
you don't really care at someone's birthday, but you get
a notification, so your papa hb d over there, because
(45:33):
God knows you don't have time to write all to
both of those words out right. Uh So the problem
then is if Dunbar's theory is correct, the problem is
less one of material goods or resource availability, and it
is more one of our inherent neurological wiring, our hardwired
(45:58):
inability to think that humanity as we understand it exists,
really exists past a certain threshold of about a d
and fifty people. But in your experiment here, Ben, we're
talking about allowing some extremely sophisticated computer system to decide
(46:18):
who's gonna get fed when and with what. Wait, wait,
I wanna. I just want to hit this though. From
what I was saying, if Dumbar's theory is true, then
that means all other things aside, including the most popular
ideology of this age or the most popular religion, which
would be economy, money, currency, things like that. Uh. That
(46:42):
means that we are the biggest obstacle to our own success.
The problem. The problem isn't how much food is being grown.
The problem is us. You know what I mean? And yes,
I see where you're going where it gets a perfect setup.
Do we then issue our individual and um species wide responsibility?
(47:06):
Do we do we build a better brain and just
trust it some kind of sky net, some kind of
uh technological god made of ones and zeros that will
tell us where the cantelope is supposed to go every harvest.
For many people, that is a troubling thing because then
(47:26):
we're coast. We're consigning our entire species existence to be
the the children of something else that we've created, you
know what I mean. And then we have to also
say we would blindly trust this thing, and we would
(47:47):
no matter like, no matter how what kind of system
we put in place to watch the watchmen as it were, uh,
we would have we would have very little recourse. You know,
once once you hop on that wagon, once you'll hop
on that train, there's not really an easy way to
get off because of the power you would have to
(48:08):
give that sort of mind. Yeah, well I'm on board.
You're on board. Yeah, let's call it Manna. It'll be
the Manna system on the Gaya grid and h it'll
it'll just send all the food and water resources necessary
to the entire globe that needs them, no matter where
they're produced, and at what time it will calculate like
(48:30):
when when foods will spoil and how far they can
actually travel. Oh, it's going to be incredible NEGA algorithmic
network assignment. I don't know. That's pretty good. No, I
mean it's good for the nineteen sixties short story. But yeah,
there maybe an automation in there or or uh, what's
(48:53):
another really good A and not an android um assistant?
No oh yeah, yeah yeah, uh, massive artificial neural algorithm.
That's pretty good. I don't know. I was just thinking
more the symbolism of the just you know, drops from
(49:14):
the drones. The name clear about that. I am on board.
I think MANNA is the way to go because we
want something that sounds non threatening, right, But of course,
you know, you can see how people wouldn't trust that
because for many people, the existence of something like that
would not be a positive addition to their immediate lives. Sure,
(49:39):
it would probably mean that within five or six generations
your descendants would have would live in a world that
was environmentally better off, right, And it means that overall,
within several generations, people in general would be okay. But
for you, buddy, as soon when the manner. Start it's falling. Uh,
(50:01):
that's gonna mean that your quality of life takes a
definite and observable hit, and you're just gonna have to trust, like, oh,
there's something bigger than me and bigger than manna, and
it is this, this tremendous, tremendously controversial fad called human
human existence. And you know what we'd end up doing
(50:23):
if we did actually get that system in place, we
would increase that world population clock we it would go
up well a lot faster because that's would happen at
a much smaller rate if everybody had what they needed.
And then over population actually truly for real becomes a problem. Yeah,
and all the Malthusians are able to resurrect their old beliefs.
(50:47):
And then furthermore, of course, you know, we're ascribing benevolence
to something like this, some kind of creation like this.
But the big question is, Uh, if it's solving the
problem the most logical way, then the easiest, most efficient
answer to making life better for the existing population would
(51:10):
be to reduce the size of the existing population, and
then the survivors would not have to take a huge
hit on their quality of life, and the survivors would
actually tend to have a better quality of life depending
on the size of the population you left over if
you were a manna. Oh, it's just you know the
(51:32):
old artificial intelligence culling that we've been waiting for. Yeah, right,
I checked the world clock every day. Well that numbers
a lot lower than it should be. Yeah. Yeah, you know,
I have these, uh, these feverish moments where I think,
one day I'll check the world clock and I'll find
out that something terrible has happened because it starts going down. Yeah.
(51:57):
But of course I wouldn't really work because it's based
on these estimates that are based on studies that were
conducted years in the past. Have you seen I think
we've talked about it before. You've seen that movie that
was available on Netflix a little while ago called Mother, Yes, yes,
I have yeah or I Am Mother? Know what what
was it called? It was one about them, not not
(52:20):
the Aronofsky one, right, but it's the one about the
It's one about the machine consciousness that is raising a
daughter who is human. Yes, oh, man, you could it's
a man at work. There, it is man at work.
It very much is. Well, there we have it. It
turns out there is enough food and potential shelter for
(52:44):
every single human being living on this planet. Water is
a different thing. We still see people dying from starvation,
poor diet, disease, lack of shelter, and more and more
and more. Why because there's several problems. First, the insting
systems that we came up with over thousands and thousands
of years, they were just not built to accommodate a
(53:07):
population of this size. You know what I mean, like
a it's it's kind of like a like a lemonade
stand is not meant to be an industrial lemonade factory.
As a matter of fact, most kids who start eliminade
stand never think this should be something. This should be
(53:28):
an operation where I can feed, you know, or give
ten times the amount of people the lemonade that I
was making for maybe twenty people a day. That's that's
just the facts. Now we can we can make better
systems maybe. But second, related to this problem, we have
just now begun. This is an exciting time to be alive.
(53:48):
We have just now begun to create global supply systems
capable of addressing the labyrinthine logistics needed to feed and
house everyone and that's not even counting how to keep
those people from getting sick. That's just making sure they
have somewhere to sleep and enough to eat. And third,
forget all the fancy agricultural improvements, all the hypothetical stuff
(54:12):
that we're talking about today. Our brains themselves are old technology.
Our brains are arguably obsolete, and we still don't fully
understand them. We literally do not have the physiological capacity
to understand the size of the human population, nor do
we have the ability to think of this population in
(54:32):
terms of individuals. We we have a limit hardwired to
our empathy and cognition. So after about a hundred and
fifty or so people, you, I mean everyone you know,
cannot conceive of others as actual, feeling, thinking human beings.
Do you feel pity for a maple tree growing somewhere
(54:56):
in Missouri and a specific coordinate? No? Why would you?
You know the idea of a maple tree, but you
don't know that one? Yeah? And why Like, so, how
is a human being by that maple tree any different
from the tree? You know it's not a human being,
do you. Yeah? I don't know about the stone bar guy.
(55:19):
Now you think he's poisoning the well a bit. It
feels like a very pessimistic view of our brains and
our capacity for empathy. Technically still a theory, I know,
I think, I think inside of us there is more
capacity for but I understand the concept. Well, well, okay,
think about this then, in more concrete terms and more
(55:42):
micro cosmic terms. Happiness, as we understand it, it's kind
of relative. You might ask yourself, how can a person
making twelve dollars an hour be happier than so we're
making fifty dollars an hour, for example. Well, first off,
happiness is not entirely based on finance. We understand that.
But if we look at that example, we find that
(56:02):
if someone is making twelve dollars an hour, they'll tend
to be happier with their income so long as they
know all their colleagues are making less, all the other
people work with them, even if it's just a little less.
If you make twelve dollars an hour and you work
somewhere where you know for a fact everybody else makes
eleven dollars and fifty cents an hour, just that fifty
(56:22):
cents will tend to make you happier. However, let's go
to our person making fifty bucks an hour. They'll be irritated,
they'll be p oed, they'll be unhappy if they make
fifty dollars an hour and they know their colleagues are
making just a little more, you know, it's like fifty
five dollars an hour, they'll be they'll be in sense
(56:44):
there's no justice in this bleak and uncaring, godless universe.
It feels very relative, but I guess it is. That's
a kind of a point here, and then they and
they will completely not they will tend to not really
identify with the person making twelve dollars an hour in
the office across town. So it seems that a fine,
(57:04):
a refined appreciation of inequality, then is inherent to our
our existence and probably back in our just out of
the trees running around the savannah days, that was very
beneficial to our species. So for some reason, we humans
tend to think of success less in terms of having
quote unquote enough, and more in terms of having more
(57:28):
than other people, or like, I am successful because other
people have less than me, or if we want to
do it a half full way, I am successful because
it could be worse. I am better off than I
could be, and shifting away from this concept, make no mistake,
would be a fundamental change. Were we do this is
the question bothers me, man, Were we to overcome this hurdle,
(57:50):
would we still be human beings? Would we still be
the same species if we were no longer jealous of
each other's finances? If finances yet? But you know more?
Or yeah? Interesting? Yeah? I I think so if we
were capable of if we were capable of describing success
(58:13):
and happiness in just terms of how am I doing?
Am I okay? Do I have enough? Instead of how
am I doing? Am I doing better than other people?
I don't know? Yeah, I don't know. I am I
think that exists in a lot of people right now,
(58:35):
especially people who don't have much. I believe so. Um,
I think that. I think what we're talking about here
is really describing. It's more describing the person that's making
fifty hour um, who's already experienced that a little bit
of knowing what having a lot is. That to me,
(58:56):
that's what I'm here. But I don't know if that's true.
That's interesting because we didn't talk about that yet. Maybe
it's a story for another day. But studies also show
that people who have want to keep it. In the
realm of finance, people who have lower incomes or lower
on the socioeconomic scale tend to contribute to charities. Uh,
(59:17):
they tend to contribute a larger proportion of their income.
Then the quote unquote has Yeah, we did the whole
episode on how wealth makes you a bad person, which
I still went back and re listened to it, and
I was hoping things would have changed. They haven't. They have.
I think we nailed it. It's the conclusion of that
one spoiler which still holds up and is worth listening to. Uh,
(59:39):
is that are like personal opinions aside because science doesn't
care about those. Multiple studies prove that people tend to
behave quote unquote worse the higher they go up a
certain financial scale. And again we're not saying that automatically
(01:00:03):
makes you bad any of that stuff. We're just saying
multiple studies prove ten people tend to behave in a
less cool man. There you go. It's a good way
to put it. Oh my gosh. Okay, So I guess
the question now is like how like Okay, it's a
(01:00:26):
personal question, it's and it's aimed at at you. How
much would you give up if you if you knew
that by giving up something of yours, others would be
better off and would be safe and would survive and
would have more happiness, how much would you be willing
(01:00:47):
to give up? And that's a tough question to answer
because I think to you know, every single person here
thinks or knows rather that they have responsibilities in their life.
They have you know, maybe a family, maybe a friend group,
or a community that they are supporting, um, that they're
(01:01:09):
doing their best to do that, and then imagining giving
up more um, it's probably a difficult thing to pose
to somebody to think about, even especially if you, especially
for instance, you have no way of proving that that
effort would be reciprocated, which is the case and just
fundamentally the case. And then furthermore, you know, we're not
(01:01:30):
talking about we're not talking about people giving up stuff
that was just given to them. People have worked hard,
they have put in blood, sweat, tears and time. You know,
now we're saying, hey, give it up for someone you
don't know and then just trust us, says Manna, It'll
all work out. Or in the case of manna, it
(01:01:50):
would just be a mandated thing. But yeah, we want
to know is some sort of benevolent machine consciousness Our
only hope can can human get the bands back together
and U and put out a more successful album in
this in our long discography of existence. Boy, that was
a terrible So I don't know. Man, we're working live,
(01:02:14):
but but let us know. We want to hear from you.
As we said at the top of the show, you
can tell us your opinion on this on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
were conspiracy stuff on Twitter. We love to recommend our
Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. I am
(01:02:34):
going to say again that there is a huge chasm
between what is possible and what is plausible. So it
is possible to improve the lives of people on the planet,
of everyone in the planet, is it plausible? I don't
think so. I don't think we're there yet. I think
we will be there, but it's going to take a
(01:02:56):
global catastrophe and then that'll get us to that kind
of stuff our track post scarcity, where there is a
threat to these species at large, and there kind of
is one. Guys, it's called global climate change. Oh but
you want I mean, but you're talking about something more
Hollywood friendly, Right, I am talking Hollywood friendly. I'm talking
(01:03:17):
a little bit of blue beam. But it doesn't necessarily
mean blue bean. I just mean if there is enough
of a threat to the species at large, I think
preserving each and every individual will become paramount, and then
these kinds of changes will occur, right, because they'll have to,
and the size of the problem will be smaller too. Yeah,
(01:03:39):
So let global pandemic, maybe pandemic occurring right now. Yeah,
But again to earlier conversation, I feel like the I
feel like it's a battle of semantics with pandemic, you
know what I mean, The official definition is not going
to change the way an infection ravages a body. Maybe maybe,
(01:04:01):
I don't know, how about numerous very troubling outbreaks occurring
across the planet. Yeah, maybe that'll Maybe that'll be what
it takes. Maybe that'll be the big kickstart we need.
It'll be zombies, the zombies, I would say. Yeah, a
huge natural disaster, non terrestrial disaster. Well, Matt, it happened.
(01:04:25):
We once again started talking about the end of the
world and stuff is bleak. Well, hey, here's a question
that's probably on everybody's mind. Is as we reach the
end of today's show. Uh, what how can they tell
us their take on whether there's enough for everyone? If I,
like I have an opinion about this, for instance, but
(01:04:48):
I hate using social media, how do I get in
contact with you guys? You can call us. Our number
is one eight three three st d w y t K.
Give us a call. Tell us what you think you
might end up on an episode. But one way or another,
we're going to hear what you were saying, and UH,
that is either a good thing or a bad thing
(01:05:09):
for you. But we're excited to hear your opinions, your jokes,
your ideas for episodes. Whatever you want to tell us,
give us a call. You can call in, just like
this person did last night. Hi. There this Jade from Spokane, Washington. Uh.
I was just reflecting on your guys recent episode about
(01:05:34):
the coronavirus. And I live in Spokane, obviously, and I
live about a quarter mile away from a hospital where
they have taken I think five maybe more patients, uh,
that have been infected with the coronavirus and are holding
them at that hospital because it's one of ten in
(01:05:57):
the US. But ever since that was announced, I have
seen at least two helicopters a day, come in and out,
and it'll be at random times at night. And yeah,
I'm I'm not so sure that's uh, those are legit helicopters.
(01:06:25):
I'm not sure what you mean. They're interesting interesting? Yeah,
who is controleum? Like? What is the company basically and
what is their purpose? Yeah, it's thank you first off
for calling in with this on the ground news. We
need primary sources. As we know our coronavirus episode, we
(01:06:47):
went back and forth. We felt it was important to
make this episode, and we knew that because we were
in the nascent stages of the development of the infection,
we would have to come and do an update. So
we need your help with this, especially if you have
on the ground experience. The sad truth of the matter
(01:07:08):
here in the dangerous truth of the matter, is that
given the way the US is currently handled COVID nineteen,
there are easily thousands of undiagnosed cases around you know, uh,
And I would I would not be surprised at all
(01:07:28):
if the official messaging we're getting does not match the
actual activities that governments or states are taking to stave
off the infection. Yes, I know, I I do. I
agree with that. It is one of those things that
is still making me nervous. My news feed is just
(01:07:49):
filled with updates about new clusters of infections and yeah,
it's given me nightmares. But thank you for calling in
with information from a specific area. Uh. Feel free to
call back again with any kind of update you in particular,
I believe Jade is what you said, and anyone else
(01:08:09):
please call in, leave a message, and if you don't
want to do that, please send us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.
(01:08:38):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our friend Noel is on Adventures,
but we'll be returning in the future. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission controlled decand most importantly, you are you. You are
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(00:47):
wide ranging episode for us today, isn't it It is?
But it brings in topics that we've been covering over
the past seven years at least seven I think almost
seven in this or we will become seven. But yeah,
we we've hit on a lot of the topics that
we're going to kind of pull in here. So hopefully
you've listened to many of the episodes. Uh, if not,
(01:10):
maybe go back, you know, check out check out some
of the ones that you can kind of infer that
we're gonna be talking about with this topic as you've
read in the title, and then come back to this
episode because we are gonna be pulling in a lot
of stuff, and we we're not gonna have time to
hit everything in complete detail. And this, uh, this wide
ranging episode is also by its nature collaborative, as we
(01:33):
of course hope all of our episodes are, because we
need your help, we want your involvement, as we often
say you specifically, you are the most important part of
this show. Those are not empty words. As as a
matter of fact, to prove that these are not empty words,
(01:53):
to put our money where our mouths are or where
your ears are as you listen to this. Uh, you know, Matt,
I I checked on our Twitter at conspiracy stuff on Twitter.
I checked on our Twitter feed, and I had no
idea that we we have more people befriending us on
Twitter than I thought. Not not not a big number. Um,
(02:16):
it's a big number in absolute terms, but it was
bigger than I thought it was for for us, it's
a big number. UM. I give me to say what
it is exactly where we are according to the mobile version,
we have nine thousand, two hundred something followers. Holy smokes, Well,
we don't consider you followers by the way. Yeah, that's right,
(02:38):
that's an awful word. You are fellow conspiracy realists. You
are fellow listeners, so we thought we would give some
of you a quick shout out at the top of
the show. And we hope that the people will shout
out are listening, but we want to share what they
said with you, especially for those of us who are
not on Twitter. So unless everybody hates this, we're gonna
(03:00):
make this a regular thing. Here we go. We'll just
we'll just read a few shout out to shoot one
Stewart hop for over there on Twitter, who's responding to
our recent coronavirus episode. We do have an update coming.
And Stewart, you said, I listened to this episode and
there's something you should have mentioned. Aside from wearing a
(03:21):
mask to not get sick or catching something, they have
also been worn for those who have not done their makeup,
which really which I thought was interesting. Yeah, so maybe
you're in a hurry and uh you feel like you
should have, as they say, put on your face, but
you didn't have time, so you say, I'll just I'll
slap on the mask. I'm just running to the store.
(03:42):
Yeah it's interesting. Huh, it really is. I never would
have thought about that, And so, uh, here's here's a
another one. Uh. Patrick Lee six six six nine was
responding to our earlier tangent about ridiculous d C villains
and he hipped us to, uh, this fantastic Batman villain,
(04:06):
ten eyed Man. Patrick just said, look him up, ten
eyed man. Yeah, he's got his thing is that his
only superpower is that he wears a headband over where
the rest of us normals would have eyes. And his eyes,
the ten eyed Man's eyes are on the tips of
(04:26):
his fingertips. What what they're on his Yeah, not tips
of his fingertips is is redundant, but they're on his fingertips.
Oh so we're talking about Philip Reardon. Okay, I've seen
the costume that has eyes going down his chest. Yeah,
those are decorative though. His real power finger tips. Oh man,
(04:49):
this is really cool. He's in the bat the bat verse.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he's up there with the Joker
I assumes as the most power full of Batman's villains. Uh.
And last one for today, last Twitter shout out for
today is our in Gen three eleven says have you
(05:12):
all heard of and watch the documentary Active Measures on Hulu?
My tim foil hat is on and conspiracies are are afoot.
Check it out if you get a chance. Folks, let
us know if you've seen active measures I have not.
Let let us know if it's if it's worthwhile for
your fellow listeners, and thanks to you guys, Thanks to
(05:32):
everyone who has befriended us on Twitter and joined the
ranks of the conspiracy Realist. Again, we are at conspiracy stuff.
If you ever want to just shoot off a quick
tweet to us while you're while you're hearing something. This
episode may may get a little personal for people. I
know it's it's full confession, a little bit personal for me,
(05:53):
uh Matt. As you pointed out earlier, today's episode is
a gestalt you know, it's q milative. It's going to
trend a bit towards the philosophical, but we've based it
on uh pretty hard and that times sobering science. As
you said, in the past, we've explored specific concrete examples
of things like resource extraction. That's where that's where a
(06:18):
state actor or a corporation or state sponsor corporation goes
into usually a developing country and purposefully keeps the people
broke while taking things like their lithium or their cobalt
or their sugar or their you know, their coca beam production. Yeah.
And the the more recent modern version of that is
(06:42):
exactly what you said up top there. The minerals, the
things that are needed to produce technologies, right, the rare
earth elements, right, the rare earth metals. So we've also
looked at global health crises such as, uh, the the
idea of a superbug. Right. Yeah, shout out to you
livestock industry, thanks for making antibiotics useless. And also shout
(07:07):
out to Seattle right now, who recently had to close
down schools because of the COVID nineteen to get in
front of it. And here where we are in Atlanta,
Fulton County is experiencing the beginnings of an outbreak. Yeah, yeah,
I mean the outbreak is already happening, yes, but we're
we're actually seeing it, right, We're actually seeing, uh, the
(07:28):
numbers beginning to rise as they do in a in
a localized area, right exactly. It's starting to hit home
and we're seeing actions being taken. We've also looked at
unethical corporate or state behavior tail as old as time.
I've looked at overpopulation, is it alarmism? Are we being
too are we being too sedate in our response to
(07:53):
the threats? We're certainly using too much stuff. We're certainly
using too much stuff. That's right. Today, we are combining
all of these previous investigations to answer a single, uh
damning question and so question that people have racked their
brains over for millennion and is this Is there enough
(08:14):
for everyone? And in other words, can this planet support
the current human population? And we don't mean just like
keep them alive matrix style, but we mean give them
lives they consider worth living. And this is this is
an enormous and profound question. I mean, after all, for
billions of people, this world is a brutal, dangerous place.
(08:38):
Life is hard, it is painful, it is often terrifying.
And there's only one cold comfort for a lot of
people suffering, and that's that the folks on the receiving
end of the majority of life's terrors often tend not
to live long. Wow, that's not bleak. That's not bleak
at all, the super bleak. So is there enough for everyone?
(09:03):
Here are the facts? Matt. What do we mean when
we say everyone right now? Well, right now as of Friday,
March six, at eleven twenty one a m Eastern time.
There are seven billion, seven hundred and sixty nine million,
sixty four thousand, seven hundred and forty four people. It
(09:27):
just changed, keeps changing, It keeps changing, and the clock
keeps running up. That's so many people we cannot Science
proves that it's very difficult for our brains to grock
the concept of one billion. Yeah, I can't crock one billion. No, No,
I can't. I have a tough time with that too.
(09:50):
And this is this is a new development, right, the
number of your laughing because I said rock. That's a word, right,
I've never used it, but I joy it very much.
I might be in the wrong timeline again, but uh,
this is a relatively new development. The number of quote
unquote modern human beings on Earth has been pretty small
(10:13):
until very very very very recently. Yeah, just ten thousand
years ago. Think about that. Ten thousand years ago, there
might have been no more than a few million people
wandering around on the planet. And those populations are going
to be pretty far spread. And the one billion mark
wasn't passed until the eighteen hundreds, very early in the
eighteen hundreds. The two billion mark wasn't passed until the
(10:36):
nineteen twenties. So we have just just exponentially exploded here
and all of us walking around just because of where
we live, because of the cultures in which we live.
We want a whole bunch of stuff, just stuff that
we use. A lot of times. We throw it away.
Sometimes we keep it around for a couple of years
until it breaks and throw it away. Maybe we can
(10:57):
recycle it, maybe we can reuse it in a way,
but jen really it ends up in the trash. Here's
the thing. We all have different ideas of what that
stuff should be, like we said, because of that culture,
but we only need a few basic things. We only
need a few basic things, right right. It's a it's
a conversation that a lot of parents in the crowd
(11:18):
have had with their children. A lot of us have
had this conversation with our own parents, where wherein the
adult explains the difference between what you need and what
you want. It's never a super fun conversation for the kid,
and it's probably not a super fun conversation for the adult.
But it's true, Matt, we only need a few basic things.
(11:39):
Let's look at that. Here's a here's a question. How
much food does one person need, not want, but need.
Turns out people don't actually need a ton of calories
to survive every day. According to the US Department of Health,
adult males generally require somewhere between two thousand to three
(12:01):
thousand calories per day, so every twenty four hours to
maintain their weight, and adult females need around sixteen hundred
to two hundred. Of course, those numbers are super loose,
and and the concept of gender, you know, is somewhat problematic.
But but what we're saying is that's that's the ballpark,
(12:23):
somewhere between sixteen hundred to three thousand, not to gain
muscle mass and hulk out and not to shed a
bunch of weight and get felt enough to where you know,
your old bell bottoms or something. Yeah, And it's all
the calorie is a measurement of energy, right, right, So
it all depends on the output that you're having as
(12:46):
well how much energy you're using. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you,
for instance, have a relatively sedentary existence, you're going to
be on the lower end of the caloric scale. And
if you have a very physically active existence, then you're
going to need more fuel for the fire of course,
you know, our species is nothing if not durable. People
(13:08):
can and do survive long, often harrowing periods deprived of
proper nutrition, and you know you can bounce back from that,
but after a certain point you will also experience lifelong
medical consequences of that. Furthermore, epigenetics proves that the medical
consequences of long periods of privation will carry on after
(13:33):
you die. They'll carry on in your genetic code and
the way it expresses in your offspring. And there is
also the concept here that occurs in this country and
many other places across the world, where you are hitting
or exceeding those calories that you need, but the nutrition
of those calories is not what you need, right, You're
(13:53):
not actually getting the things within the food you're consuming
to make a healthy body. Yeah, exactly. Now we've got
that number. So they're almost seven point eight billion people.
They need somewhere between six hundred and three thousand calories
every twenty four hours, just four things to be status quo.
(14:15):
How much does the world eat? This is interesting, there's
a related question. Yeah, globally, every sixty seconds, we eat
eleven point five million pounds of food. As that's everybody
that's our collective tab at the buffet of the world
one minute, eleven million. So to put that in terms
(14:36):
we understand, I think you and I were talking about
this on a previous episode. How people in the US
will do will make up any kind of measurement to
avoid using the metric system. Okay, so we'll put that
in terms we can understand. That's about twenty million big
max every uh every sixty seconds. Wow. So if you
(14:57):
love big Max, that's that's the metric for you. If
you hate them, well, that'll just make the rest of
the bad news. We're gonna get to even more harrowing.
So here's the catch. While we actually eat that eleven
point five million pounds of food in one minute, we
also waste two thousand, four hundred and seventy two tons. Dude,
(15:23):
I'm looking at the world food clock right now that
has all of this how much is produced, consumed, and wasted,
and it's the food clock counts up every second of
of those three metrics. I'm like, I hate it. I'm terrified.
I'm just I'm staring at it while you're telling me
these facts, men, and my brain is exploding a little bit.
(15:44):
It's crazy. Oh, and just to get us into more
of an Apple's two apples comparison, there eleven point five
million pounds. That's like five thousand, one d thirty three tons,
and that doesn't count the two thousand, four and seven
two tons that are just straight in the garbage can.
So logically, then if we were more efficient, this means
(16:09):
that we could feed everyone. We we could feed everyone
every day. We just don't. There's no and there's other
stuff to get into. There were talking about later, yes,
about why currently can't or won't, Yes, but why why
it's not happening even though it's possible. Yeah, So let's
(16:31):
I want to brack it to the side. The problem
with water, With potable or drinkable water, it's a different case. Unfortunately,
it's when we're gonna have to tackle in an episode
all its own because spoiler alert. While the news about
food does have a happy ending, the news about water doesn't.
(16:52):
Yet it doesn't. Really, more than two billion people of
the seven point eight billion people here on Earth lack
clean drinking water at home, available on demand. Meaning of
the seven point eight billion, more than two billion don't
have a faucet they can go to in their house
that just turns on and give them water that won't
(17:15):
kill them. A major U n report from back in
two thousand eighteen in June shows that the world is
way off track. The U ninety Nations had a goal
which was to bring safe water and sanitation to everyone
on the planet. By we're not going to make that happen.
It's the the pigeon of potable water has flown the
(17:38):
coop by fifty In fact, half of the world's population
just might not have safe water. And here's the well, currently,
here's the deal. There only really two ways to change
these numbers, and that is to reduce the number of
people that need to have clean drinking water, or is
(18:00):
to somehow revolutionize the purification technology, or get some this
is the third option, get some kind of angel, billionaire,
trillionaire investor or group of investors to just put the
money into make it happen, right, right, to get some
of that billionaire blessing for purification technology. Or if we
(18:23):
want to get really space age, we could look into
somehow getting non terrestrial sources of water, right to farm
a comet or something. Yeah, I know totally. I'm just
trying to imagine the cost difference between farming from a comet,
you know, just cleaning some water, making a plant in
(18:45):
places where there there aren't those plants. Yeah, it's it's
the equivalent of let's go out and buy water and
someone say, no, we have water at home, just clean it, right.
So we also, I like the brought up money because
we want to we need to just touch on that
the average income. So we have all the we have
(19:06):
these billions of people. What what does the average person
take home? This is a tricky question and there's no
way to really contextualize it and do justice to the
reality on the ground because we have to remember there
are vast amounts of income inequality. But if we total
up all of the available information, then we find the
(19:30):
average global household income is something like nine thousand, seven
hundred seventy three dollars per year, so a little under
ten grand per household per year. A lot of people
listening in the West already make more than that on
their own and a lot of people do not. And
(19:52):
then of course we have to remember that number of
factors in people like Jeff Bezos Amazon, so that guy
is busting the curve forever one and then a lot
of almost or very close to zero, right right, A
ton of that, yes, and those results come from uh
some gallop research between two thousand and six and two thousand,
(20:13):
twelve and thirty one populations. Here's how here's how screwed
up that metric is income in the top ten wealthiest
populations in the world are more than fifty times that
of those in the ten porous populations. And all of
the temporis populations are currently located in Sub Saharan Africa.
(20:34):
So we hit money, we hit water, we hit food,
and now we have to confront the big, big, the
big elephant team grim reaper in the room, which is mortality.
And we'll do that after a word from our sponsor.
(20:56):
All right, so we have all of these people, we
have all of these needs. By the way, we also
need love and that's really all you need. Um. But
let's look at how we are exiting this this planet,
(21:17):
exiting this uh experience that we call life. In sen
As of officially three years ago, fifty six million people
died that year and the top three causes were cardiovascular disease.
There were seventeen point six five million deaths due to
(21:38):
cardiovascular disease. That represents thirty two point to six percent
of all the deaths, and then cancers came in second.
There were eight point nine three million deaths that were
caused by cancer or at least in some way associated
with cancer, and the sheaf of death there is sixteen
point three two And then next up is respiratory disease
(22:00):
is coming in at three point five four million deaths,
and that is six point four eight percent of all
of the deaths. So health issues here, major health issues
with our bodies and how they function. Yeah, and we
have to note those top three causes of death or
umbrella terms. Cardiovascular disease encompasses several different conditions. Not all
(22:24):
cancers are created equally, of course, and so on and
so on, and equitable access to medical care would vastly
reduce these numbers, as would preventative measures like tighter pollution
controls and and and the like. When we look at
shelter and clothing, we know that, you know, one man's
(22:47):
one man's shack is another man's castle. However you wanna,
you want to trot out that old cliche, there's clearly
enough h there's clearly enough around given that given that
shelter can be built out of so many things. There's
clearly enough enough there to create housing for people. I
(23:08):
mean in a lot of developed countries, even there's still
a huge homeless problem, and there are a lot of
empty buildings, but the homeless population is not allowed to
take shelter in there because of course concerns for crime. Right. Yeah,
I was going to say, when you when you're speaking
about shelter, it can be defined. It really is anything
(23:29):
that's going to protect a person from the elements as
well as impending danger from some kind of outside force. Right,
And we've had a high look at the numbers. Then, right,
we've covered some of the basics. These numbers are not perfect,
but we see some commonalities. We see that outside of water,
(23:52):
outside of clean drinking water, which is a huge necessity,
the trend seems to indicate that there, uh there, there
is potential for people not to go hungry, there's potential
for people not to be homeless, right, to maybe even
collectively have a better quality of life. So with that,
(24:14):
let's get to the question is there enough for everyone?
Here's where it gets crazy. The answer is actually yes.
And this this should not necessarily make anybody happy. This
should be troubling that the answer is yes. It should
(24:34):
be very troubling because yeah, because that answer is yes,
then our next media question is, well, what gives why
isn't this happening. Let's look at food. So you've heard
stuff about food scarcy shout out to people like Norman
Borlog and the Green Revolution. The fact of the matter
is that right now the world already produces enough to eat.
(24:58):
We actually produce a surpl us. This world creates more
than one point five times enough food to feed literally everyone.
That's enough to feed ten billion people, and ten billion
people just for a bookmark is where experts expect the
population to peak around. So not that not that far away.
(25:21):
If you're listening to this podcast, the odds are in
your favor of being alive when they're ten ten billion
people around, or when they're at ten Who knows, we'll
roll the dice. We're never gonna make it that far.
So there's a problem though, because that food, when we
say just food in general, it's an umbrella term. And
(25:44):
as we as we had discussed earlier that that term
encompasses a lot of grain, the staple of the global diet,
and the bulk of the grain produced by agribusiness, bulk
of industrial who produced grain goes to feeding livestock and
confined feed lots and goes to biofuels rather than going
(26:07):
uh to the one billion starving or food insecure people
on the planet. So again, it's not that we can't
feed everyone, it's more that we can't feed everyone the
kind of food everyone wants and well, and we also
(26:29):
destroy a lot of those grains that are created in
order to control the price of said grains, which means,
like it if you could just decide instead of destroying
it or throwing it away or you know, getting rid
of it in that way, and you just used it
to feed people for no cost. Well, when it's oh god,
(26:51):
we're gonna get this later. When I say no cost,
I just mean you're not actually selling it or anything.
You're literally donating it. But in order then to get
that rains to the places to the needy people that
would would want it, then it costs a lot of money,
right right, and shout out to a previous recent episode
on farm subsidies. It is true that a lot of
(27:13):
governments pay farmers to not grow food, even when you know,
for their tons of concerns listen to that episode for
more information. But think about it this way. Let's take
it to an individual level. If you knew with certitude
that none of those one billion people would ever need
(27:35):
to starve again, but it meant that you and everyone
else you knew would have to change your diet. You
could realistically maybe eat meat once a month or once
a year or never again. Would you be able to
make that trade off? The problem there is that if
(27:55):
we're being realistic, we would we would not have a
way to know everyone else was playing by the rules.
Can you mention the the black meat market? H Man, Yeah,
I've seen there. There are things about that in sci fi.
You know, when like when lab grown protein or lab
grown meat becomes the normal, then how much will people
(28:18):
pay for a real steak? And then the concentric circle
around the black meat market and the red meat market
become troubling? Right right? For many of us, this already
sounds like a losing proposition, and it's hard to fault
people for that. It's something called the tragedy of the commons,
which we mentioned before in this show. The tragedy of
(28:42):
the commons essentially is this, it's the idea that there
is something a public resource that everybody uses. Like if
we didn't have agribusiness, and you just foraged from everybody
in the village foraged from the same field or whatever,
and just grew naturally, but you had to take steps
(29:03):
to make sure that that food grew next year. But
why would you. It's not yours. It's just a place
you go to and grab food, right, and then everybody
grabs food and then it's gone, and then you just
you go through this increasing um, this increasing crescendo of
passing the blame, you know what I mean, Like I
just a what I wanted. It's the problems, never me,
(29:25):
it's all all these other schmucks. So it's understandable that
this would look like, uh, an unnecessary cost for us
to put on ourselves. Why should I have to punish
myself to help a billion people that I will never meet, right?
And why should I have to punish myself or hold
myself to standards that I cannot prove other people are meeting.
(29:48):
You know? So if we look at UH, this is
by the way, this is not taking in medicine. We're
just we're putting that this side because the medical care
stuff like water is almost its own episode. Yeah, and
again bringing in costs, the time it takes to train
(30:10):
people and medications that would be affordable to save lives. Alright,
So next question, So we can do this stuff technically potentially,
we're not. So why not? Why are we not giving
every other human being what they need to survive? Essentially,
(30:31):
it's because doing so, even if everybody wanted to, doing
so would necessitate a massive transfer of resources and wealth,
something on something that like, on the level that it is,
never occurred in human history. It boggles the mind. And
part of it is because of we're talking about inequality
(30:53):
up there with mortality. That's the other elephant in the room.
And when we talk about inequality, we often tend to
think in these uh, these extremes, you know, because extremes
are easy cognitive shortcuts. We think of the billionaires, for example,
on one end of a scale and the hopelessly deprived
on the other end of the curve. But honestly, we
(31:17):
have to give ourselves perspective. If you own a device
that allows you to listen to a podcast, for example,
then you are globally speaking, much more likely to be
one of those has rather than one of those have
not a lot of people considered poor in a developed country,
for instance, may still have a better quality of life
(31:39):
overall than a relatively well off person in the least
developed country. You know what I mean. Well, then the
question becomes, what do we do about that again without
having you know, even if everybody's on board except for
the trillionaires, the billionaires, Like, how do you get those people,
(32:01):
those corporations to decide that it's a better thing for
everyone if we raise all ships. Right? That leads us
to another question. You know, what's the solution? Can technology
save us? Something will tackle after a word from our sponsor,
(32:26):
and we're back. All right, here's one for the budding
technocrats in the audience, the people who are very forward
to the future. Right, another another question after an ad break,
Can technology save us? The answer is yes? Maybe, let's
say the answer is yes, but probably not. Yeah. See,
(32:50):
for most of human history, we just didn't have the
organization necessary to handle the logistics involved. You might have
people in one part of the world who had surplus
of grain because the weather was favorable, and people in
a different region, you know, maybe they were combating droughts
or floods and as a result, their harvest didn't come
(33:10):
through and they starved. And let's say that the people
with the surplus of grain heard about this distant land
that needed help. Even if the people with that surplus
wanted to feed their fellow humans, even if they tried
very hard, for most of human history, they just wouldn't
have the means to get the food or medicine or
(33:32):
resources to those folks in time to make a difference. Now,
for the first time ever, that has changed. We can
ship almost anything almost anywhere. But it costs money, and
it costs money because of fuel, because of the existing
(33:53):
technology that can travel. It costs money because you have
to have uh the logistics in place to figure out
what is going where. And that's you know, a bunch
of people employed a lot of times huge facilities and
all that stuff happen. All money is is a representation
(34:15):
of labor over time. Right. So so we're we would
have to to ship stuff, we essentially have to give people,
uh these placeholders for time that was spent earlier, right,
and we do that in the form of currency. So
we have to we have to help these people justify
their labor their time, right, and that that is a huge, huge, hurdle,
(34:41):
But if there was some other thing. I'm not saying
that we have an answer, and I'm not not even
saying there should be some other thing. But if if
there was quote unquote no cost, then we could literally
feed every single hungry person on the planet. We're not, Yeah,
So so what can we do? Can emerging technology and
(35:05):
energy improvements and a lot of these things that are
out there that are happening, we know are coming. It's
just when will they get here? Will those things move
the needle enough to help everyone's ship rise a little bit?
Because you know, there really is interesting stuff out there happening.
And one of the big things would be if we
could because it would change everything if we could get
(35:27):
more efficient and larger amounts of power of energy, because
that would reduce the costs of things like shipping, um,
they would reduce the cost of things like packaging and
in all of these other things we would need. So
we were just looking at a couple of different emerging
technologies and we won't spend too much time on this.
(35:47):
UM twenty nineteen, according to a lot of the the
news that has been coming out about energy improvements, was
a year that wasn't too exciting about brand new developments,
but there was really cool stuff in there happening that's
more of a minor improvement that you can kind of
(36:08):
see the tail for right. You can see kind of
where it's headed. That we found something called floating solar,
which is really interesting to me and I hope you
find it to be fascinating to uh. The idea is
taking a solar array that you've probably seen pictures of
somewhere online that generally it's in a desert or somewhere
or a more arid climate where you've just got solar
(36:32):
panels in a huge circle or a different arrangement that's
just out there aiming at the sun at all times,
trying to generate electricity. Well, floating solar uses a body
of water that that isn't usually used for a specific
human purpose. So imagine a hydroelectric dam's reservoir, So like
the water that's above a hydroelectric dam that then that
(36:54):
water flows down through the damn system and generates electricity
through turbines. This floating solar array would sit on top
of that reservoir and it would look kind of like
the other solar rays you've seen before. It's just they're
floating on the surface of the water that isn't going
to be used anyway, the surface isn't um then you
can generate a bunch of power there. And the cool
(37:15):
thing about this is that because in this case, at least,
if it's really close in proximity to a power generation
plant already with that hydroelectric dam, it's really easy to
transfer the power generated on that floating array to the
grid itself, which, as we're gonna keep talking about here,
that becomes one of the major problems with new energy
(37:37):
technologies out there that might give us a bit of
a step up when it comes to helping everyone. So
another one, another technology that you can think about is
offshore wind farms. So wind farms that are you know,
relatively far out into the ocean or offshore and the
(38:00):
wind out there can generate energy really effectively. The problem is,
if you're far enough away, it becomes extremely difficult to
get that power generated because it's so far away from
the grid to the grid. So um, there are new
technologies coming out about the types of cables and how
those cables would function to actually bring more power to
(38:21):
the global grid. Um that seems like a cool thing
there's new nuclear technologies that are emerging, like we talked
about with Chris Cogswell. There there's stuff in there about
molten salt reactors which seem to be a little bit
safer than the fission reactors that we you know, that
are so common right now on the planet. But there's
(38:44):
also that concept of fusion that we talked at length
with Chris about that really does seem to be happening. Yeah, weird. Yeah,
I was so skeptical and we were initially talking about it,
but since then, like smaller fusion and reactors are a
real thing that seemed to be happening. So that could
(39:05):
really change the game as far as being able to
get UM either to produce the food that is needed
and to clean the water efficiently UM and put power
plants in places that we normally wouldn't even consider doing
it if you're a large corporation. Yeah, and now all
of the problem is all those technologies that we've named
(39:28):
have some major drawbacks. Major drawbacks they have, you know,
including stuff like, uh, the overhead or the initial costs,
safety or environmental concerns, and then problems of scale. Yeah,
oh yeah, I mean none of that, none of these
things we're talking about are going to change the game
(39:48):
really in the way we're imagining here. But except for fusion,
fusion could they could? I think fusion could. Yeah, I
I would love for it to be. I. I would
love for that to be the case, like for for
any of those things we just named UH solar or
hydroelectric or fusion. To make it off of the drawing
(40:10):
boarder off of the to move from the column of
potential solutions to practical or implemented solutions. We're not there yet.
We're not there yet. And then how on earth do
you bring the cost down to something like fusion enough
to make it extremely helpful? There's there's another. Whenever we
talk about technology and it's possible role in improving the
(40:31):
lives of the of the people who are members of
the species, one big thing must be addressed, and that
is the concept of what is often called AI or
artificial intelligence or you know, increasingly academics prefer the term
machine consciousness because they say, you know, a consciousness is
a consciousness. How is a machine's consciousness any different theoretically
(40:55):
from UH, meatheads consciousness? You know, what makes an artificial
and whatnot? Right, it's the meat. It's the meat that's
gonna be. That's gonna be our advertisement for premium organic
brains in the in the black meat market. It's the meat.
I wish you guys could see the expression man, it was.
(41:17):
It's perfect. I nominate us spokesman. All right. So, uh
so before we talk about AI, let me let me
pitch you a little bit on why why people are
excited about having a non human consciousness or collective handle
these logistical problems, these distribution problems, which is really that
(41:41):
that's what a lot of this is. Well, first, no
matter what our our lovely little primate brains can make
technology wise, outside of AI, we may not have the
tools mentally who take advantage of this. Our brains, you see,
(42:04):
are one of the most important pieces of early human
technology how we got where we are. Our brains, make
no mistake. Are there are the reason for all the
good stuff the human species has done. They're also the
reason for all the bad stuff we've done. Uh It's
it's kind of like Promethean fire, right. So the problem
(42:29):
is that our brains, like any other computer have have,
you know, they've they've got code, and they've got limits
to their capabilities. Our brains naturally bulk at the idea
of deliberately lowering our individual standards to help some abstract
collective thousands of other brain billions of other brain computers
(42:52):
that we will never ever, ever ever meet. Sorry, the
odds against you meeting all the people on the planet
right now are are astronomical because so many you're dying
every minute, and so many more are being born. You're
just you just don't have time for it in your schedule.
And even if you're lowering your individual standard of living
(43:18):
to to something that's survivable, something it's not that bad,
something it's not terrible, but just isn't as awesome as
you would want, you'll you'll never really see the impact
of that on the planet, you know, not not in
your lifetime. And our brains already knew this way before
(43:38):
we did, which brings us to one of the chilling
theories that that is. I don't know about you, Matt,
but it's sort of changed the way I look at
the world. It's something called Dunbar's number, yeah, with which
we've mentioned before. It's named after a British anthropologist named
Robin Dunbar. Long story short, Dunbar is convinced through his
(44:03):
research that there is a ratio a correlation between brain
size in primates and the amount of people like given
primate can consider other people or other primates, living, thinking,
feeling beings with their own motivations, their own goals. That
(44:25):
number for human beings, according to Dunbar, is a hundred
and fifty people ballpark. That means then that once you
get to like one and fifty two people, two of
those are in people. They're they're just sort of functions
they happen, you know what I mean? Bots? Yeah, right there,
(44:49):
there um their verbs, their mechanisms, their processes that you
see it, you see moving around you, but you don't
think of them as people. I'm imagining it as social
media thing. Let's just say, let's use Facebook. You've got
a hundred and fifty Facebook friends, and you know all
of them, right, you really truly know all those people,
(45:12):
And then that that number starts to grow and grow
and grow and grow and grow, and now it's just
kind of a picture of a representation of a human
with each of those profiles. Yeah, and you do that
obnoxious thing people do on social media where you where
you don't really care at someone's birthday, but you get
a notification, so your papa hb d over there, because
(45:33):
God knows you don't have time to write all to
both of those words out right. Uh So the problem
then is if Dunbar's theory is correct, the problem is
less one of material goods or resource availability, and it
is more one of our inherent neurological wiring, our hardwired
(45:58):
inability to think that humanity as we understand it exists,
really exists past a certain threshold of about a d
and fifty people. But in your experiment here, Ben, we're
talking about allowing some extremely sophisticated computer system to decide
(46:18):
who's gonna get fed when and with what. Wait, wait,
I wanna. I just want to hit this though. From
what I was saying, if Dumbar's theory is true, then
that means all other things aside, including the most popular
ideology of this age or the most popular religion, which
would be economy, money, currency, things like that. Uh. That
(46:42):
means that we are the biggest obstacle to our own success.
The problem. The problem isn't how much food is being grown.
The problem is us. You know what I mean? And yes,
I see where you're going where it gets a perfect setup.
Do we then issue our individual and um species wide responsibility?
(47:06):
Do we do we build a better brain and just
trust it some kind of sky net, some kind of
uh technological god made of ones and zeros that will
tell us where the cantelope is supposed to go every harvest.
For many people, that is a troubling thing because then
(47:26):
we're coast. We're consigning our entire species existence to be
the the children of something else that we've created, you
know what I mean. And then we have to also
say we would blindly trust this thing, and we would
(47:47):
no matter like, no matter how what kind of system
we put in place to watch the watchmen as it were, uh,
we would have we would have very little recourse. You know,
once once you hop on that wagon, once you'll hop
on that train, there's not really an easy way to
get off because of the power you would have to
(48:08):
give that sort of mind. Yeah, well I'm on board.
You're on board. Yeah, let's call it Manna. It'll be
the Manna system on the Gaya grid and h it'll
it'll just send all the food and water resources necessary
to the entire globe that needs them, no matter where
they're produced, and at what time it will calculate like
(48:30):
when when foods will spoil and how far they can
actually travel. Oh, it's going to be incredible NEGA algorithmic
network assignment. I don't know. That's pretty good. No, I
mean it's good for the nineteen sixties short story. But yeah,
there maybe an automation in there or or uh, what's
(48:53):
another really good A and not an android um assistant?
No oh yeah, yeah yeah, uh, massive artificial neural algorithm.
That's pretty good. I don't know. I was just thinking
more the symbolism of the just you know, drops from
(49:14):
the drones. The name clear about that. I am on board.
I think MANNA is the way to go because we
want something that sounds non threatening, right, But of course,
you know, you can see how people wouldn't trust that
because for many people, the existence of something like that
would not be a positive addition to their immediate lives. Sure,
(49:39):
it would probably mean that within five or six generations
your descendants would have would live in a world that
was environmentally better off, right, And it means that overall,
within several generations, people in general would be okay. But
for you, buddy, as soon when the manner. Start it's falling. Uh,
(50:01):
that's gonna mean that your quality of life takes a
definite and observable hit, and you're just gonna have to trust, like, oh,
there's something bigger than me and bigger than manna, and
it is this, this tremendous, tremendously controversial fad called human
human existence. And you know what we'd end up doing
(50:23):
if we did actually get that system in place, we
would increase that world population clock we it would go
up well a lot faster because that's would happen at
a much smaller rate if everybody had what they needed.
And then over population actually truly for real becomes a problem. Yeah,
and all the Malthusians are able to resurrect their old beliefs.
(50:47):
And then furthermore, of course, you know, we're ascribing benevolence
to something like this, some kind of creation like this.
But the big question is, Uh, if it's solving the
problem the most logical way, then the easiest, most efficient
answer to making life better for the existing population would
(51:10):
be to reduce the size of the existing population, and
then the survivors would not have to take a huge
hit on their quality of life, and the survivors would
actually tend to have a better quality of life depending
on the size of the population you left over if
you were a manna. Oh, it's just you know the
(51:32):
old artificial intelligence culling that we've been waiting for. Yeah, right,
I checked the world clock every day. Well that numbers
a lot lower than it should be. Yeah. Yeah, you know,
I have these, uh, these feverish moments where I think,
one day I'll check the world clock and I'll find
out that something terrible has happened because it starts going down. Yeah.
(51:57):
But of course I wouldn't really work because it's based
on these estimates that are based on studies that were
conducted years in the past. Have you seen I think
we've talked about it before. You've seen that movie that
was available on Netflix a little while ago called Mother, Yes, yes,
I have yeah or I Am Mother? Know what what
was it called? It was one about them, not not
(52:20):
the Aronofsky one, right, but it's the one about the
It's one about the machine consciousness that is raising a
daughter who is human. Yes, oh, man, you could it's
a man at work. There, it is man at work.
It very much is. Well, there we have it. It
turns out there is enough food and potential shelter for
(52:44):
every single human being living on this planet. Water is
a different thing. We still see people dying from starvation,
poor diet, disease, lack of shelter, and more and more
and more. Why because there's several problems. First, the insting
systems that we came up with over thousands and thousands
of years, they were just not built to accommodate a
(53:07):
population of this size. You know what I mean, like
a it's it's kind of like a like a lemonade
stand is not meant to be an industrial lemonade factory.
As a matter of fact, most kids who start eliminade
stand never think this should be something. This should be
(53:28):
an operation where I can feed, you know, or give
ten times the amount of people the lemonade that I
was making for maybe twenty people a day. That's that's
just the facts. Now we can we can make better
systems maybe. But second, related to this problem, we have
just now begun. This is an exciting time to be alive.
(53:48):
We have just now begun to create global supply systems
capable of addressing the labyrinthine logistics needed to feed and
house everyone and that's not even counting how to keep
those people from getting sick. That's just making sure they
have somewhere to sleep and enough to eat. And third,
forget all the fancy agricultural improvements, all the hypothetical stuff
(54:12):
that we're talking about today. Our brains themselves are old technology.
Our brains are arguably obsolete, and we still don't fully
understand them. We literally do not have the physiological capacity
to understand the size of the human population, nor do
we have the ability to think of this population in
(54:32):
terms of individuals. We we have a limit hardwired to
our empathy and cognition. So after about a hundred and
fifty or so people, you, I mean everyone you know,
cannot conceive of others as actual, feeling, thinking human beings.
Do you feel pity for a maple tree growing somewhere
(54:56):
in Missouri and a specific coordinate? No? Why would you?
You know the idea of a maple tree, but you
don't know that one? Yeah? And why Like, so, how
is a human being by that maple tree any different
from the tree? You know it's not a human being,
do you. Yeah? I don't know about the stone bar guy.
(55:19):
Now you think he's poisoning the well a bit. It
feels like a very pessimistic view of our brains and
our capacity for empathy. Technically still a theory, I know,
I think, I think inside of us there is more
capacity for but I understand the concept. Well, well, okay,
think about this then, in more concrete terms and more
(55:42):
micro cosmic terms. Happiness, as we understand it, it's kind
of relative. You might ask yourself, how can a person
making twelve dollars an hour be happier than so we're
making fifty dollars an hour, for example. Well, first off,
happiness is not entirely based on finance. We understand that.
But if we look at that example, we find that
(56:02):
if someone is making twelve dollars an hour, they'll tend
to be happier with their income so long as they
know all their colleagues are making less, all the other
people work with them, even if it's just a little less.
If you make twelve dollars an hour and you work
somewhere where you know for a fact everybody else makes
eleven dollars and fifty cents an hour, just that fifty
(56:22):
cents will tend to make you happier. However, let's go
to our person making fifty bucks an hour. They'll be irritated,
they'll be p oed, they'll be unhappy if they make
fifty dollars an hour and they know their colleagues are
making just a little more, you know, it's like fifty
five dollars an hour, they'll be they'll be in sense
(56:44):
there's no justice in this bleak and uncaring, godless universe.
It feels very relative, but I guess it is. That's
a kind of a point here, and then they and
they will completely not they will tend to not really
identify with the person making twelve dollars an hour in
the office across town. So it seems that a fine,
(57:04):
a refined appreciation of inequality, then is inherent to our
our existence and probably back in our just out of
the trees running around the savannah days, that was very
beneficial to our species. So for some reason, we humans
tend to think of success less in terms of having
quote unquote enough, and more in terms of having more
(57:28):
than other people, or like, I am successful because other
people have less than me, or if we want to
do it a half full way, I am successful because
it could be worse. I am better off than I
could be, and shifting away from this concept, make no mistake,
would be a fundamental change. Were we do this is
the question bothers me, man, Were we to overcome this hurdle,
(57:50):
would we still be human beings? Would we still be
the same species if we were no longer jealous of
each other's finances? If finances yet? But you know more?
Or yeah? Interesting? Yeah? I I think so if we
were capable of if we were capable of describing success
(58:13):
and happiness in just terms of how am I doing?
Am I okay? Do I have enough? Instead of how
am I doing? Am I doing better than other people?
I don't know? Yeah, I don't know. I am I
think that exists in a lot of people right now,
(58:35):
especially people who don't have much. I believe so. Um,
I think that. I think what we're talking about here
is really describing. It's more describing the person that's making
fifty hour um, who's already experienced that a little bit
of knowing what having a lot is. That to me,
(58:56):
that's what I'm here. But I don't know if that's true.
That's interesting because we didn't talk about that yet. Maybe
it's a story for another day. But studies also show
that people who have want to keep it. In the
realm of finance, people who have lower incomes or lower
on the socioeconomic scale tend to contribute to charities. Uh,
(59:17):
they tend to contribute a larger proportion of their income.
Then the quote unquote has Yeah, we did the whole
episode on how wealth makes you a bad person, which
I still went back and re listened to it, and
I was hoping things would have changed. They haven't. They have.
I think we nailed it. It's the conclusion of that
one spoiler which still holds up and is worth listening to. Uh,
(59:39):
is that are like personal opinions aside because science doesn't
care about those. Multiple studies prove that people tend to
behave quote unquote worse the higher they go up a
certain financial scale. And again we're not saying that automatically
(01:00:03):
makes you bad any of that stuff. We're just saying
multiple studies prove ten people tend to behave in a
less cool man. There you go. It's a good way
to put it. Oh my gosh. Okay, So I guess
the question now is like how like Okay, it's a
(01:00:26):
personal question, it's and it's aimed at at you. How
much would you give up if you if you knew
that by giving up something of yours, others would be
better off and would be safe and would survive and
would have more happiness, how much would you be willing
(01:00:47):
to give up? And that's a tough question to answer
because I think to you know, every single person here
thinks or knows rather that they have responsibilities in their life.
They have you know, maybe a family, maybe a friend group,
or a community that they are supporting, um, that they're
(01:01:09):
doing their best to do that, and then imagining giving
up more um, it's probably a difficult thing to pose
to somebody to think about, even especially if you, especially
for instance, you have no way of proving that that
effort would be reciprocated, which is the case and just
fundamentally the case. And then furthermore, you know, we're not
(01:01:30):
talking about we're not talking about people giving up stuff
that was just given to them. People have worked hard,
they have put in blood, sweat, tears and time. You know,
now we're saying, hey, give it up for someone you
don't know and then just trust us, says Manna, It'll
all work out. Or in the case of manna, it
(01:01:50):
would just be a mandated thing. But yeah, we want
to know is some sort of benevolent machine consciousness Our
only hope can can human get the bands back together
and U and put out a more successful album in
this in our long discography of existence. Boy, that was
a terrible So I don't know. Man, we're working live,
(01:02:14):
but but let us know. We want to hear from you.
As we said at the top of the show, you
can tell us your opinion on this on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
were conspiracy stuff on Twitter. We love to recommend our
Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. I am
(01:02:34):
going to say again that there is a huge chasm
between what is possible and what is plausible. So it
is possible to improve the lives of people on the planet,
of everyone in the planet, is it plausible? I don't
think so. I don't think we're there yet. I think
we will be there, but it's going to take a
(01:02:56):
global catastrophe and then that'll get us to that kind
of stuff our track post scarcity, where there is a
threat to these species at large, and there kind of
is one. Guys, it's called global climate change. Oh but
you want I mean, but you're talking about something more
Hollywood friendly, Right, I am talking Hollywood friendly. I'm talking
(01:03:17):
a little bit of blue beam. But it doesn't necessarily
mean blue bean. I just mean if there is enough
of a threat to the species at large, I think
preserving each and every individual will become paramount, and then
these kinds of changes will occur, right, because they'll have to,
and the size of the problem will be smaller too. Yeah,
(01:03:39):
So let global pandemic, maybe pandemic occurring right now. Yeah,
But again to earlier conversation, I feel like the I
feel like it's a battle of semantics with pandemic, you
know what I mean, The official definition is not going
to change the way an infection ravages a body. Maybe maybe,
(01:04:01):
I don't know, how about numerous very troubling outbreaks occurring
across the planet. Yeah, maybe that'll Maybe that'll be what
it takes. Maybe that'll be the big kickstart we need.
It'll be zombies, the zombies, I would say. Yeah, a
huge natural disaster, non terrestrial disaster. Well, Matt, it happened.
(01:04:25):
We once again started talking about the end of the
world and stuff is bleak. Well, hey, here's a question
that's probably on everybody's mind. Is as we reach the
end of today's show. Uh, what how can they tell
us their take on whether there's enough for everyone? If I,
like I have an opinion about this, for instance, but
(01:04:48):
I hate using social media, how do I get in
contact with you guys? You can call us. Our number
is one eight three three st d w y t K.
Give us a call. Tell us what you think you
might end up on an episode. But one way or another,
we're going to hear what you were saying, and UH,
that is either a good thing or a bad thing
(01:05:09):
for you. But we're excited to hear your opinions, your jokes,
your ideas for episodes. Whatever you want to tell us,
give us a call. You can call in, just like
this person did last night. Hi. There this Jade from Spokane, Washington. Uh.
I was just reflecting on your guys recent episode about
(01:05:34):
the coronavirus. And I live in Spokane, obviously, and I
live about a quarter mile away from a hospital where
they have taken I think five maybe more patients, uh,
that have been infected with the coronavirus and are holding
them at that hospital because it's one of ten in
(01:05:57):
the US. But ever since that was announced, I have
seen at least two helicopters a day, come in and out,
and it'll be at random times at night. And yeah,
I'm I'm not so sure that's uh, those are legit helicopters.
(01:06:25):
I'm not sure what you mean. They're interesting interesting? Yeah,
who is controleum? Like? What is the company basically and
what is their purpose? Yeah, it's thank you first off
for calling in with this on the ground news. We
need primary sources. As we know our coronavirus episode, we
(01:06:47):
went back and forth. We felt it was important to
make this episode, and we knew that because we were
in the nascent stages of the development of the infection,
we would have to come and do an update. So
we need your help with this, especially if you have
on the ground experience. The sad truth of the matter
(01:07:08):
here in the dangerous truth of the matter, is that
given the way the US is currently handled COVID nineteen,
there are easily thousands of undiagnosed cases around you know, uh,
And I would I would not be surprised at all
(01:07:28):
if the official messaging we're getting does not match the
actual activities that governments or states are taking to stave
off the infection. Yes, I know, I I do. I
agree with that. It is one of those things that
is still making me nervous. My news feed is just
(01:07:49):
filled with updates about new clusters of infections and yeah,
it's given me nightmares. But thank you for calling in
with information from a specific area. Uh. Feel free to
call back again with any kind of update you in particular,
I believe Jade is what you said, and anyone else
(01:08:09):
please call in, leave a message, and if you don't
want to do that, please send us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.
(01:08:38):
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