Lock, Stock, and One Infinite Wheel of Suffering feat. Adam Becker

Summary

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TRASHFUTURE Episode: Lock, Stock, and One Infinite Wheel of Suffering feat. Adam Becker

Date: October 14, 2025
Guest: Adam Becker (author, astrophysicist, journalist)

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Episode Overview

This episode weaves together nihilistic humor, acute economic critique, and sci-fi dystopianism, as the TRASHFUTURE crew welcomes astrophysicist and author Adam Becker. The discussion revolves around techno-utopian ideologies driving Silicon Valley—especially the cultish belief in AI, immortality, and infinite economic growth—and the psychic torment these beliefs inflict on society. Expect biting satire, absurdist riffs on philosophy, and a forensic examination of how "TestReal" thinking shapes our increasingly digital, disassociated world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Buddhism, Sisyphus, and the Psychic Trauma of Capitalism

• Buddhism as Absurdist Coping: Nova likens escaping capitalism's cycle to escaping samsara—a Buddhist term for endless suffering and rebirth.

  • "[We] accidentally invented Giza Buddhism... Guy Ritchie... is intimately familiar with the cycle of suffering." (00:36 - Hussein).

• Steven Seagal as Bodhisattva: Joking about Seagal's lack of worldly attachments tying into Buddhist themes (01:22 - Hussein).

2. The AI & Tech Bubble as Fragile Fantasy

• Economic Boom Since 2009—Or Not: The group highlights how much of the post-2009 economic “growth” is built on shaky premises:

  • "If you strip out building Data Centers, the US GDP grew by 0.1% this year." (04:55 - Nova).
  • "80% of the value growth in the S&P 500 is down to AI related stocks..." (04:55 - Nova).

• AI Frenzy Is Circular & Untethered:

  • "This is trillions of dollars of value being exchanged, but none of it connected to any labor and none of it connected to any kind of product consumed by anyone." (06:59 - Nova).

• Taylor Swift as Economic Engine:

  • "If we replace the AI with Taylor Swift, that's definitely a more sound basis for this economy." (05:47 - Adam Becker).

3. DCART xr & Absurd Startup Satire

• Satirical pitch of an app, "DCART xr," transforming reality with AI—leading into a riff about philosophical vapes (08:27 - Adam Becker, 08:37 - Nova).
• "Cartesian dualism is where you have one vape in each hand." (08:37 - Nova).
• "The Neoplatonic vape is just an NFT." (09:23 - Adam Becker).
• Memorable dig: "If you distribute that to every reform UK Voter, you can then tell them that the election is sometime other than when it actually is..." (14:32 - Adam Becker).

4. The TestReal Ideology—Adam Becker's Specialism

• Adam introduces TestReal:

  • "TestReal is an acronym for a set of bizarre, formerly fringe ideologies... Basically the idea here is these are people who want to go to space and live forever and think that that is a real viable thing that can actually be accomplished and would be desirable. And they really believe technology will save them." (15:44 - Adam Becker).

• Highlights its previously fringe nature but warns it's now deeply influential among tech industry elites (16:56 - Adam Becker).

• Mars Colony Fantasies:

  • "We're not going to Mars... Mars is an absolutely terrible place." (18:12 - Adam Becker, 19:45 - Adam Becker).

• Faith in Tech—A Critique:

  • "There is this persistent belief that if you just build a big enough and smart enough AI, it will just solve these problems... That's not how the world works." (21:14 - Adam Becker).

5. The Power Fantasy of Billionaires

• The AI hype exports the billionaire "sycophant" experience to ordinary people, artificially affirming delusions:

  • "The AI will just give you sort of the sycophant experience of being an ultra wealthy person without the wealth or power..." (23:38 - Adam Becker).

• On "Elon Musk’s Mars Plan":

  • "He'd be lucky to get a person on Mars and back safely by 2050. One person." (27:38 - Adam Becker).

• Why are these powerful people so obsessed with limits?

  • "A lot of it is a fear of limits... It's why they're obsessed with brain uploading." (43:15 - Nova).

6. Tesla's "Master Plan" & the Gospel of Infinite Growth

• Tesla’s latest master plan and infinite growth delusion:

  • "Growth is infinite." (41:36 - Nova reading Tesla’s “axioms”).
  • "The false promise of endless growth as a singular utopia shines undimmed by considerations of the fact that if we continue growing our energy use at the same rate as we have since the Industrial Revolution, we'll be using all the energy that the Milky Way galaxy generates in about 37 hours." (43:56 - Nova).
  • "I think it was more like all of the energy in the observable universe in 3,700 years. So it's even worse... Even if you let them break one of the most fundamental laws of physics, you still can't have unconstrained growth." (44:16 - Adam Becker).

• Billionaire Infantilism:

  • "Bezos's desires are those of maybe like a 7-year-old... With Musk, you’re looking at something like a two year old. Someone who wants things but is never satisfied with anything and can't articulate what it is that he actually [wants]." (42:18 - Adam Becker).

7. Techno-Utopianism as Protestantism

• Nova and Adam riff on Silicon Valley as Protestant "build God" cult, waiting for miracles from data centers and AI:

  • "These guys are such fucking Protestants, I swear to God." (48:28 - Nova).
  • "They are just trying to build God." (48:31 - Adam Becker).

• The religious roots of "immortality through tech":

  • "When I say they want to go to space and live forever, this is an idea that fundamentally goes back to, you know, like a kind of Christian millenarian vision." (48:52 - Adam Becker).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the AI bubble and economic fragility:

  • "If the AI bubble pops, there's just nothing holding this together at all." (03:43 - Nova)

• On the absurdity of Mars colonization:

  • "Mars is too awful. The amount of technical challenges that you would have to solve just to send anyone there and back..." (27:54 - Adam Becker)

• On the delusional infinite growth premise:

  • "There is no world in which that happens. There are limited resources. There are limits to everything. And the fact that they can't recognize that... it just... you were talking about Bezos is childlike. I think that in the same way that, you know, maybe Bezos really is more mature than the rest of the billionaires and that Bezos his desires are the desires of maybe like a 7 year old or maybe like a 12 year old. Whereas I feel like with musk, you're looking at something like a two year old." (42:18 - Adam Becker)

• On techno-utopianism as secularized Protestantism:

  • "They're trying to build God in the sense of like... like a claw machine where you just like put in wishes. Because only Protestants think of God is basically a genie. And this is how they're imagining AI." (48:38 - Nova)

• On ultimate limits:

  • "Even if you let them break one of the most fundamental laws of physics, you still can't have unconstrained growth. And they don't care." (44:16 - Adam Becker)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Description | |-----------|---------|-------------| | 00:15-01:55 | Opening riff | Giza Buddhism, Sisyphus, Guy Ritchie, psychic trauma analogies | | 03:08-07:07 | Economic Symptoms | Since 2009, GDP fragility, role of AI bubble | | 08:14-14:19 | DCART xr & Startup Satire | App joke, vape riffs, mockery of digital escapism | | 15:44-18:12 | "TestReal" Ideology | Adam explains the core of his book's subject | | 18:12-21:14 | Techno-Utopian Mars Myths | Debunking Mars colonization fantasies | | 23:38 | AI as Billionaire Sycophant | How AI mirrors/creates the experience of billionaire "yes-men" | | 27:38-32:36 | Elon Musk's Mars Delusions | "Getting one person to Mars and back is massive, let alone millions by 2050" | | 34:35-36:31 | Bezos & Energy Fantasies | Bezos's claims about Earth's energy use and space expansion | | 41:36-44:16 | Tesla's Master Plan | Infinite growth fallacies, resource/energy realities | | 48:28-49:10 | Silicon Valley as Protestant Build-God Cult | Religious parallels |

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Tone & Language

• Richly irreverent, heavily sarcastic, sharply satirical—TRASHFUTURE’s signature voice.
• Deeply skeptical, but never somber—humor and mockery carry the critique.
• Adam Becker speaks as an expert but with easygoing, exasperated warmth and wit.

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Concluding Segment

• Book plug:
  • "You can find More Everything Forever wherever fine books are sold. But indie bookstores or bookshop.org. Or I suppose if you must, you can get it from Amazon." (54:47 - Adam Becker)
• Closing quip:
  • "Just kidding. [Don't buy from Amazon.]" (55:05 - Nova)

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TL;DR

TRASHFUTURE eviscerates the cultish faith in AI and techno-immortality coursing through Silicon Valley—exposing it as a billionaire fear response to human limits and death. Astrophysicist Adam Becker brings both expertise and biting humor, arguing there are, in fact, hard limits to energy, physics, and planetary habitation—no matter what the high priests of VC hype decree.

“These fucking people want more everything forever. They believe in infinite growth. And there is no world in which that happens...”
— Adam Becker (42:18)

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Transcript

[Nova]

This in sunshine van to escape a cycle of Samsara inside of five minutes. And I'm gonna be reincarnated not as a lot as fucking flower, but as your fucking worst nightmare.

[Riley]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Oh, listen mate, you sunshine must fucking imagine Sisyphus happy. All right.

[Hussein]

Well, before we were recording, we accidentally invented Giza Buddhism. And then Riley suggested that we introduce Guy Ritchie to the concept of Buddhism. And I had to explain that Guy Ritchie was married to Madonna and therefore, you know, Buddhism's greatest deep cover agent. And therefore, I would say is intimately familiar with the cycle of suffering.

[Nova]

We can do it. We can get Guy Ritchie. I think my opinion, I think Guy Ritchie could be made to. Instead of making movies. You know, it is not even instead of. We could say Guy Ritchie, go ahead, promote your hundred thousand pound barbecue company like you did in the whole framing narrative of the movie. The gentlemen, promote your like pub that you own in like Notting Hill or whatever. But, but, but we need a better Buddhist action hero than Steven Seagal.

[Hussein]

I. I don't know. I think Steven Seagal might be a bodhisattva and I'm not. That's gonna sound like a fat joke. It isn't it? Because he remains seated a lot, which is key to relaxation, and because I genuinely believe he has no worldly attachments. Steven Seagal has no idea how he ended up in Russia. It is something of absolute meaninglessness to him. He has no import because he has no attachment. Right. And so that's why we have to get Steven Seagal in lock, stock and one infinite wheel of suffering.

[Adam Becker]

No.

[Nova]

Or better yet, syringe full of Steven Seagal's blood. Shoot Guy Ritchie with it and then bamboo. He's ready to. He's ready to make the kind of movie we want to see. Oh, wait. Hello, Hello. Hello, everybody.

[Hussein]

Oh, wait, we're recording a podcast.

[Nova]

Oh yeah. With a guest who has not been on before.

[Adam Becker]

No.

[Nova]

Hello, everybody. Welcome to a recorded slightly in advance episode of TF We Are Today. It's Nova, it's Riley, it's Hussein. We are talking with Adam Becker, the author of More Everything Forever, which is basically a book kind of about the tesreal ideology. It's one we've discussed numerous times in the show, but never by this name. Adam is also a PhD, astrophysicist, freelance journalist. And Adam, welcome to the Cycle of Samsara.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, thanks. It's inescapable.

[Hussein]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Yeah. Don't like it. There's no door. No door at all.

[Adam Becker]

Don't like Exit, if you will.

[Hussein]

You have to, like, free yourself from even the concept of a door. Ideally.

[Nova]

We'Re going to talk a little bit about some of the concepts, Adam, that you bring up in your book, More Everything Forever, which is about the, I would say, impossible dreams of the people who are currently in charge of conservatively 80% of the economic growth that's currently happening in the United States and broader Western world.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, sounds about right.

[Nova]

Hell yes.

[Hussein]

I really hope that that growth isn't in any way, like, fantasmic.

[Nova]

Oh, do you want to know something really funny? Something really fucking funny is. I have noticed. I've noticed this more and more every day. It just look for the, like, everyone doing this, everyone I'm talking to, everyone who's listening. Train your mind to play a little chime whenever you see the words since 2009.

[Adam Becker]

Hmm.

[Hussein]

Yeah, because we're hitting a lot of landmarks for economic symptoms not seen since 2009, aren't we?

[Nova]

Yeah, consumer confidence, subprime auto loan defaults, credit card debt, retail hiring in the hall for the holiday season, Taylor Swift album releases since 2009. Which is pretty cool. So, yeah, you can just look out for that. Especially now that the Fed is now saying, yeah, if the AI bubble pops, there's just nothing holding this together at all.

[Hussein]

Do not press the wings fall off button.

[Riley]

I think the XX are also coming back this year. So that's also something that hasn't been seen since 2009.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, no, I mean that bubble seems like it's going to pop at some point. It's just a question of when.

[Hussein]

The most important thing to remember is shore this up now to make sure you can keep doing it through potentially infinity years of economic lapse. Keep your podcast subscriptions going. I cannot stress enough how vitally important it is that that cannot be an expense that you feel like you have to cut when the economy collapses.

[Riley]

You have.

[Hussein]

You make that central to your economic planning for your household.

[Nova]

Yeah, this is. Look, you need a hearth to gather round. And that's what this is digitally.

The I saw a stat today that if you strip out building Data Centers, the US GDP grew by 0.1% this year. With the UK it's even worse that 80% of the value growth in the S&P 500 is down to AI related stocks. So without this, there's nothing. The entire US economy into an extension. British economy, not so much. Continental European is one big leveraged bet on building digital God pretty soon.

[Adam Becker]

Yep. And it's definitely not happening.

[Nova]

Oh, God.

[Riley]

And it also requires like so much Money to kind of keep it going. Right. Like as like Ed Zitron kind of keeps pointing out the other, I mean the other source of like economic growth. I can imagine, and this would be like an interesting backup plan, are like continual Taylor Swift tours.

[Hussein]

Yeah. If 80% of the economy is Taylor Swift.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Adam Becker]

No, if we replace, if we replace the AI with Taylor Swift, that's definitely a more sound basis for this economy. I mean, because the AI, it's just a bullshit mach.

[Hussein]

Yeah. Taylor Swift arguably exists.

[Nova]

If Taylor Swift did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her.

Or my other favorite essay by Baudrillard, the ERAS tour did not take place.

[Hussein]

My favorite part of the ERAS tour was when you could see the missile go down the air vent and kill Charlie xcx.

[Nova]

So this is just something to look out for, which is that it seems like, like Deutsche bank said, the AI bubble is the only thing keep US economy together. Bloomberg said without data centers, GDP growth is 0.1% in the first half of 2025. And like without this there's nothing. And even all the guys have said guys in charge me like, oh yeah, this is all. None of this investment is worth anything if we don't build. God. And there was again, I think a lot of people have seen this chart recently showing the circular sort of vendor financing between OpenAI, Microsoft, AMD, Nvidia and stuff. And it's like this is trillions of dollars of value being exchanged, but none of it connected to any labor and none of it connected to any kind of product consumed by anyone. There's no economic output, it's just self referential.

[Adam Becker]

Right. But to them, they see that as a good thing. Right? Yeah, like the, the venture capital ecosystem in Silicon Valley runs on hype, Right. It needs hype like oxygen to breathe. And so the idea that you can create a sort of human centipede like, or human Ouroboro, like infinite money printing machine where it just like eats its own excrement. And as long as, you know, nobody points out that nothing of value is being created, then you can just keep the party going. I think they see that as a feature, not a bug. And the fact that it's also leading to, you know, the erosion of labor rights and lots of people being laid off from jobs, those are definitely things that they actually want to happen. They want to use this to break the power of labor.

[Nova]

And we're actually going to get into a little bit of that with some choice morsels that I've clipped in the last couple of months. Of the tech gods that we've spoken about a little less recently. It's been very Altman, it's been very Jensen on this show. We haven't really talked musk recently because he's been a bit utre. But we are going to be doing that. But first I have a little mini startup for us to talk about and then we're gonna get into it. This isn't so much a startup as it's an application as an app.

[Adam Becker]

Okay.

[Hussein]

It's not a question so much as a comment.

[Nova]

Yeah, it is. The dcart xr. The DCART xr. You can transform your reality.

[Hussein]

Sounds like a vape cartridge.

[Adam Becker]

The Descartes X. It's like I think therefore I vape.

[Hussein]

I got the special edition Descartes vape.

[Nova]

Cartesian dualism is where you have one vape in each hand.

[Hussein]

I think if we had a brand of like this is the real TF merch thing, if we wanted to get really unethical with it is like philosophical school affiliated vapes. So obviously like we have the Marxist vape comes first but then you know, we've got to talk about the sort of like other Hegelian vapes more generally.

[Adam Becker]

But you can only use the Marxist vape to smoke the opiate of the mouth.

[Nova]

Yeah, of course. How about this? Check this out. You've got an Alexandra Koheve vape and it's just thrown at you. Or you have, you've got a Hegelian vape and it's just someone coming up to you and saying vape.

[Hussein]

Yeah. Why doesn't the Bautriard vape emit any vape cloud?

[Nova]

Yeah, well quite. You have the platonic vape. It's a shadow. It only casts shadows.

[Adam Becker]

The Neoplatonic vape is just an nft.

[Nova]

You of course have the Judeo Christian vape which just has written on it something completely unprintable and unrepeatable.

[Hussein]

It's the vape that makes you feel guilty for vaping it. Yeah.

[Nova]

So we're going to number one. That's just going to be something that hopefully we make when we become a vape shop like every other business in Britain.

[Hussein]

Oh yeah, that's going to be good. That's going to be so ethical for us to do is look into getting some custom vapes mate.

[Nova]

No, we're going to market them to students, but university students, philosophy students.

[Hussein]

It's just of all the lawsuits I expected to take down Trash Future, I wasn't expecting it to be like popcorn lung class action because because we're using.

[Nova]

Just like the worst industrial runoff ever. We invested all the money in the.

[Adam Becker]

Theme also as a marketing scheme targeting philosophy graduates.

[Hussein]

Yeah, go with the money.

[Adam Becker]

That's what I've got. That's it. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

[Nova]

So to the DCART xr. Transform reality with AI Live inside any style.

[Adam Becker]

I'm sorry, are you reading something like. Are you reading real copy that exists somewhere?

[Nova]

Yep, I sure am. It's off of the Meta Quest app store.

[Hussein]

Live inside any style makes me feel like. Like it's some kind of like AR glasses thing where like if I want to redecorate my apartment, I just get AI to do it. Nothing changes. I live in the kind of like rising dunge apartment, but like I believe in my own head that it's like very kind of beautifully decorated.

[Nova]

So I will give you an example. They say turn your world into a living canvas with Mirage LSD for the Meta Quest 3, point your headset's camera at any scene and watch as advanced AI transforms it in real time into stunning visual styles. Cyberpunk cities, anime worlds, medieval castles or anything else you can imagine.

[Hussein]

Don't, don't, don't call it Mirage lsd. You fucking try hards. Do real drugs.

[Nova]

Simply speak your desired transformation, such as make this look like a Studio Ghibli movie or turn this into a neon lit cyberpunk street.

[Hussein]

Unfortunately, the fact that she looks like a Studio Ghibli character does not make me feel any better about the fact that my girlfriend is leaving me.

[Nova]

So our cutting edge AI video to video AI processes your live camera feed, creating an immersive experience where you literally live inside an AI generated a piece of art. They invented it.

[Hussein]

The situations, the real life situations that this is going to get used on are so grim. I'm thinking about the cyberpunk custody hearing which is not going in your favor because of the like RoboCop judge who apparently believes in like feminism or something.

[Riley]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Or alternately, it can just be. You can instantly gentrify a neighborhood by being like, please turn these homeless people into mailboxes.

[Hussein]

Yeah, for real?

[Nova]

Why not?

[Hussein]

Why is this mailbox yelling at me?

[Nova]

Yeah, I also figured, you know what this is? This is the ultimate answer to the long tale of the British right wing project. Because you can live in a drawing. You can literally live in a drawing.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, that's true.

[Nova]

If you wanted to.

[Hussein]

That is true.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah. Just ask it to show you a world where there's no such thing as society.

[Nova]

Yeah. Hey, that like person who's not White. Can you just, can you flip that guy into being a vicar on a bike?

[Hussein]

You know, this might be better actually. Can we, can we. I've flipped my opinion completely on this. Can we make this a kind of court ordered thing where if you're right wing enough, you can just. You get put in the hug box, we put you in the matrix, right? And you just get to. You get to play with your wojack dolls. You get to kind of like inflict all of that on your own consciousness and you're just kind of walking around bumping into lampposts and stuff and not bothering real people who still have sentience.

[Nova]

Yeah, you're bumping into lampposts that were. Still have like, look like they're being lit by gas rather than woke electricity.

[Hussein]

Oh, sorry.

[Nova]

It's just tens of thousands of it's gone wrong.

[Hussein]

It just turn everything into Vickers. Like, you know how like early, early AI image stuff used to turn everything into like weird bubbly eyes? Just that, but Vickers, basically.

[Nova]

Yeah, that's the idea. What if you could just further retreat from reality?

[Hussein]

What if I told you that Vicker World wasn't real?

[Nova]

It's the world that's been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

[Hussein]

We gotta start using right wingers as like human batteries. Like it's the only way we're gonna do any carbon capture.

[Nova]

I'm sorry, just looking at the tablet.

[Hussein]

As you're kind of working in the carbon capture facility, it's just like. This is fucking weird. This one's just. It just. It's all Vickers in here. I don't know what this guy's up to.

[Nova]

No, it's. You've got the, the goggles on. You're living in the Britain of the 1960s or 50s or whatever you're nostalgic for, and you believe you're the vicar on the bike, but actually you're just pedaling a bike that's powering a carbon capture facility. You're like, well, another day of riding around, you know, fucking like the Cotswold. Okay, all right, all right. So that's, that's a little one because it's just a little app, but my God, is it fucking hilarious.

[Hussein]

Nice, nice little lamuse bouche.

[Riley]

Let's.

[Hussein]

Let's reconfigure our entire society around this place.

[Adam Becker]

I'm still hung up on Mirage lsd.

[Nova]

Can we just give. Can we just quickly distribute that to every reform UK voter, you know, and then everyone's happy.

[Adam Becker]

Well, if, if you distribute that to every reform UK Voter, you can then tell them that the election is sometime other than when it. Actually that's true.

[Nova]

How about this? There are no elections. You got your wish.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

There are none. You guys in charge. They look at the TV and it's just, you know, Nigel Farage announces new type of gay it's illegal to be. And they'll be like, oh, yes, wonderful.

[Hussein]

Yeah, very good handsexual today. I wasn't expecting that one.

[Nova]

You know. You know, Nigel Farage goes on TV according to you, and announces an official policy of BI erasure.

No longer. The UK no longer recognizes bi people. And then all those reform people are like, yeah, we had very good.

[Hussein]

Apparently it does now.

[Nova]

And yeah, that's. This is where we're going anyway. Anyway, look, look, I want to. I want to move on. I want to talk. Talk about the.

[Adam Becker]

We.

[Nova]

We've bothered a very educated, multi. Multi published author to be here with us today and we're bugging him about nonsense. We did Buddhist Steven Seagal, brain the fucking goggles. Let's talk about Test Grill. Sure. Because this is an ideology that we've talked about on the show quite a bit, but not really by that name. So just for anyone listening who might not know what is Test Reel and how is it the subject of. Of your book More Everything forever? So.

[Adam Becker]

So TestReal is an acronym for a set of bizarre, formerly fringe ideologies that I'm not actually going to bother going through what every single letter in the acronym stands for. Because while I think testreal is like a thing that it is good to identify, I don't actually love the name because it's just this acronym that's filled with jargon like transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, all that stuff. Basically the idea here is these are people who want to go to space and live forever and think that that is a real viable thing that can actually be accomplished and would be desirable. And they really believe that technology will save them. And I don't just mean like save in the sense of like fix problems. I mean, in some cases literally save like a computer file. Like technology will enable them to like upload their mind, save themselves into the cloud where they will live forever with an AI God and you know, colonize the universe.

[Hussein]

Your kind of Nick Bostrom stuff of like death, real bad. Death is bad. Don't want to do it. What if there was an app?

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, exactly. Nick Bostrom is very, very big in this community.

He's very influential. And the thing is, like these ideas, the idea that like an AI God is coming and is going to allow us all to live forever in space. Used to be sort of a fringe philosophy, but now it is very, very, very influential in the tech industry. And the leaders of the tech industry have become some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the world who are propping up the entire economy on delusions that an AI God is coming and that they are saving the world by, you know, building a machine God and then using it to go to space. Both of those are very bad ideas and neither one is happening. And it's all going to come crashing down at some point.

[Nova]

Point.

[Hussein]

I assume you're just saying this is a cultural critic, Right. And you don't have any expertise in like, space travel or anything like that. Right.

[Nova]

You don't, for example, you don't, in your book even, I believe, say this. You don't look at the kind of energy that will be required in order to do this and then map that against the Kardashev scale, for example. Yeah, let's just say.

[Adam Becker]

No. I mean, look, I think that that one of the problems, one of the reasons why this ideology of technological salvation has sort of hung out for as long as it has on the fringes and has been able to gain more followers is that the usual response to it over the years from people who don't buy in has been just sort of bemused dismissal. Right. Because it just sounds stupid on the face of it. And I think it is pretty awful and it is kind of stupid on the face of it. But at this point, with so many powerful and influential people buying into these ideas, we can't just dismiss them out of hand. We have to say, no, no, no, no, here's why this doesn't work. So, yeah, you know, when it was just, you know, a bunch of science fiction nerds, and I say that as a science fiction nerd, but when it was just a bunch of science fiction nerds who were saying like, oh, we need to go colonize Mars, then, you know, maybe it's not that big of a problem that they want to do something that you just can't do. Colonizing Mars is not going to happen. But when you have someone like Elon Musk sort of taking that cultural narrative of Mars as the future and using it to portray himself as the savior of humanity by colonizing Mars, that's a serious problem and it's not happening. We're not going to Mars. We're not going to have a million people living there by 2050 the way that Musk says that we have to and are going to, it is not happening because Mars is an absolutely terrible place.

[Nova]

Now, I thought that all it would take is some domes. I was reliably informed that domes were the answer. A sufficient number of domes and then oxygen and an artificially intelligent computer God would square those circles and kind of all the stuff that seems impossible. It will figure it out somehow. Yeah, no.

[Riley]

Damn.

[Hussein]

I was really banking on the Mars thing.

[Riley]

Shit.

[Nova]

Okay. All right. I need to make some calls.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, no, one of the things that these, these, that these guys believe in, and they are basically all guys, they believe that the AI is going to solve every problem. That, you know, the fact that Mars is an absolutely horrible place, that it is worse than Earth on, you know, the worst day in Earth's history, Right. You know, you could have a giant asteroid hit Earth. You could set off every nuclear weapon. You could do both of those at the same time, and Earth would still be a nicer place to live than Mars. But, you know, that fact or, you know, other things like, you know, global warming. There is this persistent belief that if you just build a big enough and smart enough AI, it will just solve these problems. And there's, you know, this is just not how the world works. Right. They think, oh, it'll discover new laws of physics and that will, you know, remove the limitations that we currently have. That is not how physics works. That is not how the history of science works. The history of science has often been about discovering new limitations that were previously unsuspected. There is, you know, no guarantee.

[Hussein]

But I don't like that. That sounds hard. Like, I got into science. We choose to go to Mars and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.

[Adam Becker]

I think you're doing that in the wrong accent. Right. You know, we choose.

[Riley]

Yeah. I mean, have you considered, like, a theory? I've been working on this theory, actually, while you've been talking. I'm just going to read it out now.

[Adam Becker]

Bible physics, right?

[Riley]

Men go to Mars to get more stars and girls go to Jupiter to get more stupider.

[Hussein]

Yeah, that's true.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, sure.

[Hussein]

I am going to do that. I am going to do that. That's affirming to me.

[Riley]

Yeah, exactly.

I think, yeah, the sort of like, AI will solve the problems. It reminds me a lot of this New York Times article that came out a few months ago where. And it was like one of those articles that was like, kind of talking about. It was like they interviewed people who had basically Lost their minds kind of like. Or they became very convinced that chatgpt was their friend and they got alienated from their families. And quite often these are just like very regular people. There's a guy who's just like, he's like a single father of two and he wanted to help kid out with their math homework. And chatgpt basically convinced him that he had invented a new kind of maths. And he was so insistent that he had invented this new way of doing a square root that he fell out with his kids, he fell out with his ex wife, he fell out with the school board, he fell out with everyone. He fell out with colleagues of his who were just blue collar workers who for them were just like, can you please just stop talking about the math you've invented and just do your job?

[Nova]

Yeah, ok. But then he made the best man. He made Hustle and Flow, Iron man, other Terrence Howard movies.

[Riley]

Hey, hey, look, look, I'm setting up. The Terrence Howard Defense League has arrived. Terrence Howard invented his version of math without the AI and he's like very like, he has actually sort of like said that very vociferously, like recently where he's just been like, I invented this new kind of math and I didn't need the AI to help me. And he's been trying to get the AI to prove terriology, but it's very different to what happened to the guy who was quoted in the New York Times article. The point being, number one, this guy clearly is going sort of solve the Mars problem. But I think on a more serious note, it is very kind of, I don't know, I mean, we sort of go through this every time we do an episode these days, but it is just like, oh, okay, the sort of AI will do it has kind of made it very easy to just not have to do any of the work, right? And still get paid for it.

[Adam Becker]

And so what they're doing is they're basically taking the billionaire experience and exporting it to the masses. Right? Because you know, who else says that they've created a completely new way of understanding the world and it makes no goddamn sense and they have no expertise. But you know, everyone around them just constantly says yes. I mean, that's ultra wealthy people, right? And so the AI will just give you sort of the sycophant experience of being an ultra wealthy person without the wealth or power. And so, you know, without the wealth and power, if you just actually listen to the sycophant constantly whispering in your ear, you'll go crazy or lose everything that matters to you in your life because you don't have to have billions of dollars that allows you to, like, you know, warp the people around you into indulging your bullshit.

[Hussein]

I knew I was going wrong somewhere. And for a long time I'd suspected that it was not having billions of dollars. But to have it confirmed for me, to have it kind of like professionally diagnosed, is very reassuring.

[Nova]

Well, so basically, Tesla, some weeks ago released its fourth master plan, sandwiched between immigration, panic, transphobia, and the usual stuff. And it is one of the most written by AI Things ever.

Elon Musk has, like, cooked his. He has pan fried his brain and bladder with ketamine. Yeah, but I think it's like. It's a good. It's another good lens into looking at this. And the first thing I'm going to talk. It's not from the plan, but it's related. He was speaking recently about SpaceX.

[Hussein]

Like, stage one, do a bunch more ketamine. Stage two, question mark. Stage three, Mars.

[Nova]

Yeah, no, it's stage one, do a bunch more Ketamine. Stage two, question mark dot stage three, quick floor nap. Quick floor nap. Stage four, quick floor nap.

[Hussein]

Really loosen up all those bladder muscles, you know? Yeah, I like to think of it as the billionaire's indulgence.

[Nova]

Look, you can piss in the spacesuit, okay? You can have a loose bladder.

[Riley]

It's fine.

[Hussein]

My God. That's why he wants to go to space, is he can just be pissing himself all the time there.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah, no, I don't have to wear this catheter in space. If I'm in the spacesuit, I can do as much ketamine as I want.

[Hussein]

Okay, so thing that destroys the podcast is now 5050 between, like, Vape cut, cadmium popcorn, lung lawsuit, and Elon Musk, ketamine piss boy lawsuit.

[Nova]

He says. He says, regarding going to Mars, I think it can be done in 30 years, provided there's an exponential. Oh, sorry, sorry. Excuse me. Adam, it's.

[Hussein]

It's so good when you. When you have a specific claim and then you have an expert who is able to react in the moment with barked laughter.

[Nova]

So I think it can be done in 30 years, provided. So here's the thing, Adam. You barked that laughter before he gave his provider.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, yeah. No, no.

[Hussein]

Let's do it. Hit me, hit me.

[Adam Becker]

I think I know what he's gonna say. I just. I'm so excited.

[Nova]

Provided there's an exponential increase in the tonnage to Mars with each successive Mars transfer Window. Yeah, and he said this.

[Hussein]

Send more stuff every time. What are you stupid?

[Nova]

Yeah, the problem is the stuff, idiot.

[Hussein]

Have you heard of this thing called the benevolence of the rocket equation that says that it's actually easy to send more stuff into space?

[Nova]

Yeah, the more stuff you send, the easier it is because there's less stuff on Earth. Gravity is less strong because there's less stuff on it, you fucking moron.

[Adam Becker]

God. So Jesus fucking Christ.

[Nova]

The punchline is when he, you know where he made these remarks? He made these remarks at an event called the All In Summit, organized by the all in podcast.

[Adam Becker]

Of course. Of fucking course.

[Nova]

He made this at a, at a basically shamath spac trade show is like, yeah, we can get to Mars. We just need to be invent a way to send everything there immediately.

[Hussein]

Step one, don't siege Mars, take it immediately.

[Nova]

And to be truly self sufficient, Musk said it will need to have all the ingredients of civilization. Such as those will enable settlers to grow food, generate fuel from the atmosphere, build microchips, computers, rockets, and many other things, which again, if you just move infinite stuff, sounds pretty easy, right?

[Adam Becker]

I just. He'd be lucky to get a person on Mars and back safely by 2050. One person.

[Nova]

One person, I assume. And the ingredients of an entire civilization.

[Hussein]

Yeah, I mean, some assembly required.

[Adam Becker]

Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe let's say two or three people, right? A very small mission, get it there, land, come back by 2055. I will be a bit surprised if it can be done in that time window. The technical challenges that remain just to do that, that are massive. There is zero chance it is not happening that you get a million people on Mars by 2055. It is just not in the realm of possibility. Mars is too awful. The amount of technical challenges that you would have to solve just to send anyone there and back, just, just to have someone in space outside of Earth's orbit, orbit for that long, and then bring them back safely that far away from any possibility of help, any possibility of real time communication with Earth. Just getting them there and back without even landing, like doing a weird Mars flyby. That's still something like, you know, the shortest possible Mars mission is something like a year because of the launch window issues. Because, you know, the Earth and Mars don't orbit each other and so they both orbit the sun, they're separate orbits. And so there's only certain times that you can launch to go to Mars. Right.

[Nova]

Okay, just go through the sun. Yeah, it's made of gas.

[Adam Becker]

I mean, okay, so you're joking when you say that. But there is a possible Mars return path that gets, you know, goes through like the inner solar system, goes closer to the sun than the Earth is like, I think it goes within the orbit of Venus or something like that. It's really terrifying just because of the radiation exposure.

[Nova]

And that's good. Yeah, I assume that's good. That's good for you.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, this is just about radiation exposure and like life support systems in like you know, a mission to Mars through space, like much less living on Mars, landing on Mars, getting back off the surface, actually living there. No, no, there's no way. And also a million people, even if you could do it, is not enough to be self sufficient.

[Hussein]

I mean, listen, you make all of these points, right? However, I have and I've just checked this one. 1053.2 hours in Kerbal space program. Let me just say that I've seen season one of For All Mankind. Let me just say this. Let me try it.

Give me the controller. Let me try it.

[Adam Becker]

Look, I think that it should be illegal to be a billionaire. But if Musk wants to use his money to send himself to Mars, and I realize this is not an original joke, but like I am fine with him going to Mars. I think that that would go very well. He even said once, you know, back when he deign allow people to like write lines for him as opposed to thinking that he, you know, had the heart of a poster and was a comedic genius. He once said, you know, it would be cool to die on Mars, just not an impact. And my feeling about it is, you know, why be so picky, man?

[Hussein]

Yeah, beggars can't be choosers. You want to be specific and make it a Runway, huh? I mean, yeah, I think thinking about Elon Musk going to Mars, thinking about the things he would have them load in for that journey. Just being like, why? Why is the amount of ketamine that we're loading in measured in units this large? But also kind of. I think it'll be a fascinating scientific experiment, right? Because I don't just want to keep coming back to the ketamine joke. Because his body's fucked up in other ways, right? And we know that in space, astronauts very, very healthy people already by design have to be kind of exercising constantly. And even then it takes a huge toll on their bodies. I don't know what space does to the kind of flabbiest we weirdest torso shaped wind tunnel looking I've ever seen in my life. I Don't know. And I kind of want to find out. I guarantee five minutes outside the Carmen line, that motherfucker is looking like Mr. House.

[Nova]

What if it makes him hot? You never thought about that?

[Hussein]

Interesting question. What if that's kind of like a the Martian situation going on?

[Adam Becker]

I think I can tell him it would make him hot. He would go, right. You know, I mean, like, not to give credit to any billionaire for anything ever, but, you know, Jeff Bezos at least went up on one of his.

[Nova]

Rockets and he got hot.

[Hussein]

Yes, surprisingly fuckable now.

[Adam Becker]

But Elon Musk doesn't have the guts. He doesn't have the balls to do it.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Adam Becker]

You know, and. And, you know, maybe that's a smart call because his rockets keep exploding, but.

[Nova]

You know, this goes back to, I think, a thesis that Nova developed a long time ago, which is one that I always come back to, which is, of all of the mega billionaires, Jeff Bez is the only one that seems to be even vaguely enjoying it.

[Hussein]

Yes. I mean, he's enjoying it in the kind of way of like. Like he has the mind of a child. Right. Like, and that's terrifying in the same way that being able to wish someone into the cornfield is terrifying. But there is enough kind of like, spark of kind of like human vitality in there that he's like, yeah, I want a wife with, like, big tits and a lot of plastic surgery. Yeah, sure. You know what? He wants something. Elon Musk doesn't want anything. I mean, he thinks that he wants the Fourth Reich, but that wouldn't satisf.

[Adam Becker]

Hold on a second. There is something that Elon Musk wants desperately. Elon Musk wants our approval. He wants us to like him. The problem. The problem is that he picked something that you can't buy with money. Jeff Bezos is enjoying himself because the things that he wants are things that you can buy with money that can be exchanged for goods and services. Having people like you is not a good or a service.

[Hussein]

Just bringing out my big kind of like, solar system diagram and showing you the relative distance and possibility of intercept windows for woman with big tits and Mars, and showing you the kind of, like, order of magnitude difference between those things. Yeah.

[Adam Becker]

If he went to Mars, he wouldn't be happy.

[Hussein]

Firing myself into a transfer window to the nearest woman and just hoping for the best.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

As opposed to just buy Venice for a day, get married in it, wear a cowboy hat to space, start a movie studio as a loss leader for your sex life. Like, that's. He's at least enjoying it. Oh, no, I'm not making that up. That was a quoted Amazon executive who said that's what Amazon Studios was.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, God.

[Nova]

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so this is. That's a tangent.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah. But I will say Jeff Bezos, going back to your question about, you know, energy. Jeff Bezos has, like, insane ideas about human energy usage that are just. He thinks that it's important that we go out into space because otherwise we're going to have to limit our energy usage here on Earth. Because he says, you know, the amount of energy that we're using has been going up exponentially for, like, a couple hundred years. And he says if that trend continues, then in another, like, 300 years, we'll be using all of the energy available here on Earth and we'll have to go out into space.

[Nova]

Adam.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Quick question.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Does it necessarily follow that that trend would continue absent the need to build a digital God?

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, you know, there's no good argument that that trend would, should, or could continue.

[Nova]

It's almost as though industrialization was a historically unique process. Yeah, maybe.

[Adam Becker]

Maybe, Maybe, sure. You know, but that sounds crazy, right? And also, you're probably a communist if you're talking like that.

[Nova]

And you need to know history to know that you can't just be thrown into the world, look around and be like, okay, I guess everything. I guess it's an eternal present. I'm just going to take whatever the two points at the beginning of the day and the end of the day are and extrapolate them into infinite vastness of time in both directions.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, but history is something that you study over in, you know, like, arts and sciences and humanities. Right. It's not. It's not engineering. And that means it's basically underwater basket weaving. These people study engineering until they drop out and start their companies. Right. Like, they don't want to think about history. They don't think that history matters. Right. Anthony Levandowski, the guy who started Waymo, said that, you know, history doesn't matter in technology. All that matters is tomorrow. And as for Bezos, either he is ignorant of history or he doesn't care. Because, I mean, this is a guy who repeatedly quotes and idolizes Wernher von Braun, a Nazi.

[Hussein]

Yeah, I learned that from watching season one of For All Mankind.

[Adam Becker]

I mean, look, season one of For All Mankind is actually pretty good.

[Hussein]

Yeah, it is.

Riley, you'll enjoy this. The guy playing him and. And that is the Bond Cop and Bad Cop. Bond Cop.

[Nova]

No Cole Feor, Canada's favorite son.

[Hussein]

They made him Canadian. I never knew this, but it turns out Wernher von Braun was Canadian the whole time.

[Nova]

Yeah, well, hey, you know what? Like I say, Canadians, we get everywhere. Right? All your favorite Hollywood actors, much like.

[Hussein]

Former members of the Waffen ss. Yeah, Told you.

[Nova]

We get everywhere.

Look, so I want to actually talk about the master plan.

[Adam Becker]

Ok.

[Nova]

The new master plan, certainly. Yeah.

So it's. So this master plan also contains one of my favorite lines of writing in anything ever or AI generated slop, which is, quote, the hallmark of meritocracy is creating opportunities that enable each person to use their skills to accomplish whatever they imagine. That's the hallmark of meritocracy right there.

[Adam Becker]

It's classic. Okay, okay, so first of all, this is. This is from the Tesla master plan.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah. Because the first one, the first one made kind of, you might disagree with it, but it made sense. Which is create a high end car. Use that to popularize electric cars, then.

[Hussein]

Create a consumer model. It was a business plan in that sense. Whereas this is not exactly.

[Adam Becker]

Also, they didn't follow that plan. They created high end cars and never created the. But anyway, any moment now, they're gonna.

[Nova]

Create that $20,000 electric car.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, yeah, sure. Sure they are.

[Nova]

I suppose. Yeah. They're the only ones that could do it. And I'm just like, BYD is just like out of my field of vision.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, God, the cybertruck is just such an ugly P piece of shit.

[Hussein]

Anyway.

Eventually they were going to have to do the model T, but Elon got distracted by making the model name spell sexy with a three in there.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Hussein]

And if they did it now, it would be a sexy T, which he's opposed to those, I guess.

[Adam Becker]

Nice. But here's the thing. Like, again, that sexy thing, that's Musk. Desperately wanting people to like him. That's what he thinks is funny. Or rather what he thinks everyone else will think is funny. He desperately wants to be seen as witty and funny and clever. Right. This is why he carried a fucking sink into Twitter headquarters. So he could say, let that sink in. Right. Which is not a good joke.

[Nova]

It seems pretty structurally sound to me.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah. And structural soundness is what we look for in our humor. But speaking of structurally unsound things, that's sentence about meritocracy. Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's.

[Nova]

It's an example of something that is the opposite of structurally unsound.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, it. It makes me feel like I'm having a stroke.

[Nova]

So I. I Want to read a little bit of this? Since Tesla's founding, each iteration of our master plan is focused on our North Star to deliver unconstrained sustainability without compromise. Humans are tool makers at Tesla. We make physical products at scale and at a low cost with the goal of making life better for everyone.

Has there been something amusing? Has there been another well structured joke that I've missed?

[Hussein]

Yeah, I'm sorry, is there a joke in here that we're not familiar with?

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, unconstrained sustainability. Was that the phrase?

[Nova]

You know, how sustainability has to not.

[Hussein]

Have constraints because it's so often constrained? You know?

[Nova]

Yeah. Sustainability is all about being unconstrained.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah. What the fuck does that mean? Is this word cell? This is what I meant when I said it makes me feel like I'm having a stroke, right? Like it feels like sudden. Suddenly I have aphasia and I cannot understand what words mean anymore.

[Nova]

As the influence and impact of AI technology increases. No, it's not. Every single use of AI technology that is not either for writing a master plan or for having fun as a Toy is just 95% of AI pilots in workplaces fail.

[Adam Becker]

Right.

[Nova]

So I don't understand where that's coming from.

[Adam Becker]

Well, and also the people like there was that fascinating study that showed that. What was it? They gave a bunch of AI tools to open source software developers and asked them to estimate how much faster it made them. And they all said something like, you know, between 20% and, you know, 200% faster. And then it turned out it made them all 20% slower.

[Nova]

But yeah, that's the impact. That's unconstrained sustainability is. We're building less. That's degrowth.

[Adam Becker]

Yes.

[Hussein]

Thank you, Elon. Very cool.

[Nova]

Yeah, so it says the next chapter in Tesla's story will help create a world we've only just begun to imagine and will do so at a scale that we have yet to see. AI gener. We are building the products and services that bring AI into the physical world. We have been working tirelessly for nearly two decades to create the foundation for this technological renaissance to development of electric vehicles, energy products and humanoid robots. Now we are combining our manufacturing capabilities with our autonomous prowess to deliver new products and services that will accelerate global prosperity.

[Adam Becker]

Sorry, the autonomous prowess of full self driving is 18 months away for the last 10 years.

[Nova]

Yes, yes, that's the one.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, the one that, you know, kills children at crosswalk.

[Nova]

Yeah. Or the one where you have a tele operated Optimus robot scooping popcorn at the Tesla diner. That's playing Sha Na na from the 80s. Yeah. They got Bowser from Shanana controlling an autonomous robot. Their guiding principles are the following. The first one, growth is infinite.

[Hussein]

Assume a perfectly infinite growth.

[Nova]

Oh, God. Yeah. I gotta say, Nova, you mentioned this earlier, but I'm reiterating it. Reading this stuff with an astrophysicist on the call is very satisfying.

[Adam Becker]

I mean, look, there's a reason I titled the book More Everything Forever, right? Like it's meant to be sarcastic or ironic.

[Hussein]

Your book, the Terror Nexus.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, this sort of like secret title of my book, like the title of it in my heart is these Fucking People. And what these fucking people want is More Everything Forever. They believe in infinite growth. And there is no world in which that happens. There are limited resources. There are limits to everything. And the fact that they can't recognize that it just, you know, you were talking about Bezos, is childlike. I think that in the same way that, you know, maybe. Maybe Bezos really is more mature than the rest of the billionaires and that Bezos is desires of the desires of maybe like a 7 year old or maybe like a 12 year old. Whereas I feel like with musk, you're looking at something like a two year old. Right? Someone who wants things but is never satisfied with anything and can't articulate what it is that he actually.

[Nova]

Well, it's what, what he actually. I think a lot of it really is a fear of limits. Yeah, a lot of it is a fear of limits to things like growth or money or life. It's why they're obsessed with brain uploading.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, yeah, yeah. They. They can't possibly consider a world in which they can't have everything that they want. The idea of a limit means that they may not actually have the kind of control over the world that they fantasize having. Because they're afraid, right? You know, like, where does the kind of limitless need for money, power and adulation come from? It has to come from fear for these guys, right? They're afraid of something. And I think in most cases it's just death.

[Nova]

Well, so you're actually right. The false promise of endless growth as a singular utopia shines undimmed by considerations of the fact that if we continue growing our energy use at the same rate as we have since the Industrial Revolution, we'll be using all the energy that the Milky Way galaxy generates in about 37 hours. Which, considering the size of the galaxy. This is me editorializing. 3700 years is not that long.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, well, Actually, it's. I. I think it was more like all of the energy in the observable universe in 3,700 years. So it's even worse. And also that's if you spot them warp drive. Right. Because you can't actually get to the edge of the Milky Way, Much less the edge of the observable universe in 3700 years going at the speed of light. So, you know, even if you let them break one of the most fundamental laws of physics. You still can't have unconscious, constrained growth. And they don't care. You know, they think that if you just, you know, wish hard enough, you'll get what you want and find a way around things like, you know, the speed of light limit and the laws of thermodynamics. And that's not how anything works.

[Nova]

I'm very excited for a version of XAI to be released. That's a play on the name of Zefram Cochrane. That just like blankets all of Memphis, Tennessee in a cloud of toxic smoke.

[Hussein]

Fantastic.

[Adam Becker]

That is a deep Star Trek cut right there.

[Nova]

But just as with any group that has glimpsed paradise. Proponents of this type of future are primarily concerned with imagined fears. That could prevent their implausible visions from coming to pass. And the imagined fear, because it doesn't make any sense to be afraid of death, because it's inevitable. So if you are allowing a fear of death to structure everything that you. And not immediate death, but like death as a concept, to structure everything you do. That is essentially an imaginary fear. Because it's premised on the idea that you can avoid it in general.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah. I would say it's pretty reasonable to have some fear of death. Right. The place where I sort of depart the train is when they sort of use fear of death as like an organizing principle in their lives. Right. And say, oh, and of course, like.

[Hussein]

Buddhist Guy Ritchie would never do this, by the way.

[Adam Becker]

Just imagining, like Steven Seagal, like, sitting cross legged, like, levitating.

Anyway, so they are convinced that if they just want something enough, they can make it happen. And that there must be a way around the inevitability of death. And that's not going to happen. These people are going to die.

[Hussein]

God, I hope sooner rather than later.

[Adam Becker]

I mean, look, there is something, you know, I don't. What's the old line like, you know, I don't wish death on anybody. But, you know, there have been some obituaries I've read with great gusto.

Right. You know, it is. There is something darkly comic about the fact that like say, to pick another billionaire we haven't talked about yet. The only person who isn't sure that Peter Thiel is going to die someday is Peter Thiel. Right. That of all the things that could be surprising to someone, that death would be surprising. The single question that we already know the answer to for sure about everybody. That, that's the thing that is surprising to these guys, you know, and then we take them seriously when they talk about anything else. It's really, you know, they're. They're a clown show. The problem is that our society is structured in such a way that we've given this sociopathic clown show enormous amounts of power and money and influence.

[Nova]

Yeah. So some of the other things that the plan says, is it also. Or the axioms. I guess it's because it's not a plan, it's just a series of axioms. Growth in one area does not require a decline in another. Shortages and resources can be remedied by improved technology and new ideas.

[Adam Becker]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Nova]

Uh huh.

[Adam Becker]

Yes, that last sentence again.

[Nova]

Oh. Shortages in resources can be remedied by improved technology, more innovation and new ideas. Motivation and new ideas. That's the same thing. Costs.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, yeah, but also, but also a shortage in a resource can always be remedied by a new idea or a new invention.

[Nova]

Like God will come up with it. Yeah, don't worry.

[Adam Becker]

No, this is the thing. They think that the AI is a fucking genie. They think it's just going to be able to do anything regardless of what the actual physical limitations on the world are and regardless of the fact that nobody knows how to build that kind of AI anyway. And that the idea of it is just like fundamentally incoherent and ill defined God.

[Nova]

These guys are such fucking Protestants, I swear to God.

[Adam Becker]

No, I mean they are right. They are just trying to be build God.

[Nova]

But they're trying to build God in the sense of like. Like a claw machine where you just like put in wishes. Yeah, they're trying to. Because only Protestants think of God is basically a genie. And this is how they're imagining AI. God is Protestant God.

[Adam Becker]

Well, like, but this is the thing. When I say they want to go to space and live forever, this is an idea that fundamentally goes back to, you know, like a kind of Christian millenarian vision of going to heaven and living with God forever. Who will fulfill your every wish once the world to come arrives.

[Nova]

Yeah. And they just. The. And the world to come just happens to be covered in data centers.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, well, but that's how you make the God happen, right?

[Nova]

So he says. For centuries, humanity's primary mode of transportation was the horse. Then, over 50 plus years, cars, internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels became the standard. The idea that batteries could be produced affordably at a large scale to pivot transportation away from fossil fuels seemed a fool's errand until Tesla led the the way forward. Through continued innovation, we have overcome the technological constraints of battery development and built an industry powered on renewable resources.

[Adam Becker]

You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of like I get a lot of crackpot email, right? Because you know what you. Yeah, exactly.

[Nova]

Come on.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, so I get a lot of crackpot email and. And one of the things that shows up in those crackpot emails and also just in conversation with people like a fair amount is like, oh, but you know, how serious is the limit? You know, the speed of light limit anyway, Right. You know, we broke the sound barrier. Why can't we break light barrier? Like. Well, nobody ever really believed that the sound barrier was fundamentally impossible to break. There was no law of physics saying that you couldn't go faster than the speed of sound, or that nothing artificial could go faster than the speed of sound. We have had technology as humans that allowed us to propel something faster than the speed of sound artificially for thousands of years. Because that's what a whip crack is. It's the tip of the whip going a little bit faster than the speed of sound and having like a sonic boom. Right. So this is not something that is in principle impossible or ruled out by the laws of physics. Similarly, the battery technology stuff, nobody said, oh, it's impossible to build that kind of battery according to the fundamental laws of physics. And so what they're doing is taking their success in innovation in one area and saying, because we were able to do this thing, we're also able to do this literally impossible, completely unrelated thing.

[Nova]

Or just because, you know what is. They're taking the theme, which is speed of.

[Adam Becker]

Yes.

[Nova]

And then being. Okay, that's the same. That's the same thing. Because it's. Because it's speeds we experience. Sensori.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

So those have to be conceptually related.

[Hussein]

Would hate to get whipped by a whip whose tip was traveling at the speed of light.

If you did perfectly bisect me.

[Adam Becker]

No, no, it wouldn't. You want to know what would happen, please. It would be roughly like a nuclear weapon going off.

At your loc.

[Nova]

Oh, my God, these kink parties have gotten really out of control.

So the tools we make at Tesla help us build the products that advance human prosperity. How we develop and use autonomy and the new capabilities it makes available to us should be informed by its ability to enhance the human condition. Making daily life better and safer for all people through autonomous technology has always been and continues to be our focus. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Adam Becker]

Tesla said that autonomous technology making us safer has been a note and continues to be their focus. Tesla said this?

[Hussein]

Well, of course it sounds unlikely when you say it in a tone of obvious mockery.

[Adam Becker]

Look, I think it's technically true that it's their focus in the same way that, like, lung cancer is the focus of the tobacco industry.

[Nova]

Also, there's a quick interlude here which is like OpenAI is hiring aggressively in humanoid robotics as well as is like, as are these people. And the Morgan Stanley again tries to know this stuff concludes that again, in order to require any kind of useful autonomy in an unstructured environment, these robots will require algorithms that go fundamentally beyond a large language model's understanding of the physical world.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, that's because large language models have no understanding of the physical world.

[Nova]

Well, quite.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Right. So the. There is no sense of autonomy in the way that they're talking about it. Again, does not exist. And if it does exist, it would require such a step change in artificial intelligence as to basically be that digital God. The digital wish granting God that we've already talked about is fundamentally impossible.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, they. Look, I think that there's two things sort of like sitting underneath all of this, right? One of them is just like this. This propensity to believe that they can do whatever the fuck they want and that they can just have their wishes granted by this sort of AI God. But I also think that there's this idea that the future of technology is already written and it's just a question of getting there faster or slower. And that they feel that they know what the future of AI must be and what the future of space, space travel must be and all of these things. And the reason they think they know this is because they read it in a science fiction novel or a TV show or something. The same stuff that I was raised on and still consume very happily today. But the difference is I know that it's fiction. It's not a prediction of the future. Right? I mean, this is why we were talking about the Torment Nexus tweet earlier, right? Like they've confused cautionary tales and allegories for our present day with a roadmap for the future, and that's just not true. Right? Like there's no reason to think that just because a, you know, an AI God showed up in, in a science fiction story, that means you can definitely build one. That's not how the world works.

[Nova]

Yeah, but have you considered that they want it?

[Adam Becker]

Yeah, exactly.

[Nova]

Yeah, but they, they want it. They want it to be that way and they like it.

[Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Anyway, I actually think that's as good as place as any to end it for today. But, Adam, what a delight it's been to have you on the show. Thank you so much.

[Adam Becker]

Oh, thank you for having me. This has been great.

[Hussein]

It's been an absolute pleasure.

[Nova]

Where can people find your book More Everything Forever?

[Adam Becker]

Oh, you can find More Everything Forever wherever fine books are sold. But indie bookstores or bookshop.org.

Or I suppose if you must, you can get it from Amazon.

[Nova]

But yeah, support the one fun one. Yeah.

No, don't do that. Just. Hey, hey. Just kidding.

[Adam Becker]

All right.

[Nova]

Anyway, thank you very much, Adam. Thank you very much for listening. Don't forget, there is a Patreon. You can subscribe to it. It's $5 a month. And also, you can't get mad at us if, like, something big happened that you expected us to talk about in the last couple of days because we re recorded this towards the end of the previous week. So no getting mad at us. Not allowed. All right.

[Riley]

All right.

[Nova]

Bye, everybody.

[Riley]

Bye.

[Adam Becker]

Bye, Sam.