Will the Future Happen Like Science Fiction Predicts?

Are you concerned about the future, like maybe you're not sure what's going to happen?

Are we just going to destroy this earth and then have to go somewhere else like Mars if

that's even hospitable, or are we just going to destroy the whole entire earth or just

blow each other to smithereens, or is something better coming like Star Wars or Star Trek or

any of these?

We have it.

We have a conglomerate that controls everything and they're evil.

And you have to have some like little guys come out and fight them and stuff and whatnot

yeah.

Exactly.

You're in luck because today's episode we're going to talk about will the future

turn out like science fiction predicts?

This is the existential stone podcast.

I'm Randy.

That's Danny.

What's going on Danny?

What's that Randy?

And I should just start with disclosing.

We can't actually see into the future.

This is just speculation.

Pure speculation.

Although, you know, on a side note, it is funny though, because if you look at early science

fiction, a lot of what the things they imagined did come true, like submarines ended up

becoming true, right?

If you look at 20,000, these are great examples, you know, spaceships, like rockets, the ability

to get to the moon became a reality.

So a lot of science fiction does try to base itself in science.

And I think there is like, you know, it's people just imagining how far we could take

this thing.

So there is some, there is some, you know, I'm not saying it's all true, don't give

me wrong or that it all will come to be, but that there is some foundation for it, which

is interesting.

I've always found that really fascinating.

Like the movie Idiocracy.

That was.

That was totally predictive of the future.

Yeah.

Like people just got dumber and dumber and then, yeah, we're just keeping going.

But so I've been, I've been really enjoying the, what do they call it, the soap, not the

soap opera.

The, what do you mean?

Space opera?

The Expans.

Space opera.

That's the space opera.

The Expans.

And it's, I mean, it's nine books.

They're all pretty darn thick.

But they're, it's really, really entertaining.

And I just love getting caught up in that because it reminds me like how vast space is.

Oh, yeah.

That's the thing I love about it too, because like, dude, space opera, the family's not familiar

with the idea.

It's usually stories that take place across space, like stars and stuff.

So there's like ability to travel very easily between things and all people all over aliens,

but not.

It's very fun.

But there's always things like, it reminds you of how vast it is, but I like it because

they also play into the unknowns that like because it's so vast and because we know

so little about it that there's this possibility of discovering things that you would never even

think of or have no idea what they are, whether they're other intelligence or just random

natural events that are crazy or what, right?

And it's kind of crazy.

And it's, and it's like nuts how, you know, space is huge, but it's just as vacuum.

And so we can create these little environments inside of it that are essentially like self-sustaining

but outside of that, you're just dead.

And so like, you know, they, they enact justice by just airlock, putting people out the airlock.

And just like, yeah.

It's like the old, old days where you walk, like, except way worse in some sense, I guess,

you way less, like, it's nuts because you go into a vacuum and you're blood boils.

Yeah.

Which is weird.

Yes.

Totally.

You think you just freeze instantly, right?

But like, yeah, that's not the case.

It's very strange.

Yeah.

It's, you know, it's trying to imagine, while reading, I was trying to imagine what it would

be like stepping into a vacuum, but I couldn't.

Yeah.

I hope I can.

You know, it's funny, because you read it, when you read it, it's books are rewatch, like,

you know, watch movies like Star Wars or like, you know, even Dune or whatever, right?

It's funny because there's always this, this ability to travel, you know, and usually

faster, obviously than we do now, otherwise they would never get anywhere and people would

just die all the time.

Some stories actually do account for that, but like, could you imagine it, like, really

though, like, because the ships are usually pretty big, but I don't care how big it is.

At some point, you know you're on a ship that you can't exit, like, you are stuck with

these people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to come back to that in a second.

I should also add, we are looking for episode ideas.

So if you are a listener, let us know if you have any questions philosophical life, otherwise,

you can either comment on a YouTube video or in the show notes.

There's an email address, you can send us an email and we will likely make an episode

about it.

Yeah.

Could be pure speculation.

I enjoy that also.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like, the being stuck on a ship, so I was imagining that in the expanse, they have

that big one goliath that ship, I forget the name of it, the behemoth or whatever.

And yeah, because that one's like, they planned on it being like a generation ship where,

you know, they would live on it for a long time.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

They're really just everything like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And it has grass and trees and everything like that.

I mean, essentially, when you, when you take, essentially, the earth is a big space.

That's all it is.

Right?

Moving through the vacuum of space.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Which is funny though, because you ever read out, there's a, there's a series, there's

a book called, I think it's called like, it's like Rama, something Rama and it's about

this, basically, this alien vessel just happens to come into our, our solar system.

And like, and the whole book's interesting, because it's just about people trying to get

to it, explore it, understand what it is, right?

And it's the same kind of thing where like the ship has like, has like environments inside

so it has gravity because it's got the spinning thing, it's got water, all this stuff really

cool.

And like, it's interesting because that's all the earth is.

But then you read other stuff like the expanse, like the ship, those guys run around

and most of the time it's small.

It is not a big ship.

And I don't care how fast they're going, those journeys are going to take a long, long

time.

Long, long time.

Yeah.

Because they would talk about going places and it would be like months, they're just stuck

on a ship for months.

Like, could you, I mean, think about it during COVID where you were stuck in your house

pretty much for months or a year or whatever.

And it's like, it's pretty much that, like, gosh, that would be boring.

Which is the, I mean, that's the International Space Station, right?

They talk about a little time with astronauts, like they have to, when NASA sends astronauts

up there, they have schedules like drill down to like the 10 minute intervals.

And part of that is because they don't want them to get bored or have those problems

of like, you know, nothing to do.

So they just break down the whole thing.

And I think the longest they did, I know they did a study with somebody up there for a

year.

But the International Space Station, dude, is tiny.

Have you ever seen the inside thing?

It is like literally, if you, if you go and look it up, it's like little, it's tiny.

There's not a lot of room there.

Okay.

So like, there's this dude that I met who is a deep sea underwater welder.

So like, yeah, so he basically, he's a down in like the Gulf where they have, not

the, in like the, the Middle East Gulf, where they have all these giant oil platformers

and everything there.

It goes down in this vessel that like him and a handful of other people go down, they

have to go down slowly, they have to come back up slowly.

But like, they stayed down there for three weeks or something like that.

But it's essentially like a little, teeny little space.

And you know, in the center, there's a hole where you can jump out into the water and

it's pitch black and everything like that.

But it's like, it's crazy to imagine like being stuck there with a handful of people.

Because I've been a scuba diving for a while and scuba divers are just like obnoxious.

And they all think that they're the best diver ever and all they ever want to do is talk

about how all of their equipment is better than everybody else.

And I'm just like, I can barely go on a dive boat with people for like an afternoon.

And it's like, imagine being stuck underwater with them.

There's literally no way out like the emergency protocol to come back to the surface takes

three days.

Yeah, because you can't just rush up, you die, you get sick.

Yeah.

Part of the reason why they stay down there for three weeks or two is it just be impractical

to go down for each shift.

You would never, I mean, it takes three days to get down it.

You're never getting done, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I know those, they usually have like, I, from what I read about them before, they

usually have like game rooms and stuff.

They have stuff for them to do, obviously.

So they don't lose their minds because they don't work 24 seven.

But yeah, I mean, you have to remember that like that's what traveling would be like, right?

You're stuck in a thing where you can't go anywhere else.

And because literally you'll die or like at least the earth is big enough that you can

go all their places and it tends to get away from people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about time travel?

Because that's in some science fiction stuff.

A lot of science.

A lot of science fiction stuff.

Yeah, you could travel through time, you can travel through space.

How about, okay, so like on the one hand, we're like, what happened?

How would you feel?

If they figured out what time travel was, but it turns out they can't like transport your

actual cells and everything throughout time and space, they have to just have this like

other like cell matter that they transport your consciousness to.

And then after they've confirmed that you've been transported there, they just kill you.

And so your consciousness is over there, but it's not your, like you hope there's no

mistakes.

Yeah, right?

Well, you know, I think it's funny, you mentioned that because that was a, there was,

I remember reading one book camera, what is it time I heard it right now, but they, the

idea was they had like teleportation, so not time travel, but they, to get to please

instantaneously, but they couldn't send matter.

What they did, it was they sent the information so they download your consciousness, send

the consciousness and then reconfigure it in a new body, like grow a new body, which

is always really cool and interesting.

So there'd be effectively two of you in this context, right?

Because you scan the person, send them, and then, you know, they keep the original version.

The original gets capped, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, some people lost their original story.

What happens if you make a copy of a copy and then you just have these weird little

like impressed people, like, oh, he's got an extra arm, don't worry.

We just missed a copy of a copy.

We missed a memory and all your copy, yeah, we got to be, yeah, it was interesting now,

but I think that's what I like about science fiction is like they take, especially like

hard times, they'll take the science now and just extend it to it's like, you know,

possible conclusions and just imagine what happens.

I think a lot of it probably will, if we make it long enough, I think a lot of it would

come to pass because, you know, we keep making progress on stuff.

Eventually we probably will get to like Mars and stuff and probably try to start something

there I imagine.

Well, the terraforming project, yeah, yeah, right?

Because that's one thing is we haven't found another planet with like the green that's

close to an atmosphere, not as close, yeah.

No, because like, I mean, even with what Mars take right now, like, it's nine months to

get to or something, like, it's not a short trip at all by any means, but you know, it's

funny.

Think about that.

Like, when they were talking, I think it was a, when they were, there was that a while

back there was that guy who was like going to do that expedition to Mars, the colonizing

you remember?

Some rich guy, it wasn't most of somebody else.

Bronson, Bronson, maybe.

Richard Branson, maybe it might have been him.

I can't remember who it was, but they literally had so many people signing up and I was like,

dude, are you insane?

Do you know what it'd be like to be the first people there?

You'd have like, you'd have a little inflatable thing that you have to live in and everything

would be hard as hell.

And then one asteroid shower punctures it and you guys are done.

Yeah.

It was a whole colony.

Yeah.

Dude, they showed there was an image, a NASA shared an image of, they called it a micro

media ray.

It was a flick of paint from some other thing, hit one of their satellites and it looked

like a bullet hole in a car literally and it was a flick of paint like it's crazy.

Yeah.

So you think about that, right?

You know, Mars has no real protection.

It has a very thin atmosphere.

You think it at all.

So yeah, anything could happen.

I don't think we think about that all either.

I think the expanded a good job with that with the asteroid belt where they're working.

You know, and painting it is a pretty horrible environment overall because they're far away.

Right.

It's like people don't care.

And like, yeah.

You know, oh, you know what, Siri, you know, that's seven eaves book.

That had something about asteroid showers hitting the, hitting the ships and that was

pretty cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's a sit there.

There's like so many violent things that happen and there's mostly emptiness.

And I think this is our biggest hurdle.

Like if we can't figure out how to do this, get there faster, there's no way we're going

anywhere.

Well, what happens if there's like life extension, which grit, I mean, I think we're getting

the, they speculate, can they find something in mice or something that make it work?

They've already done that.

Yeah.

So they've been doing, they've been able to basically clock back mice, mice is live so

that they extend her like, so like say that my, the mouse gets like three, they can bring

them back to like one and a half effectively and would, and just extend their lives that

way.

So like that's been done already.

Yeah.

So you take that.

You mix that with like propa fall or something and muggle Jackson juice that just like

makes you forget like the stuff they give you before surgery, just to consciousness.

And then essentially you can travel for however long you want just in a state where you're

sleeping.

That's true.

Actually, yeah.

Well, that's the other interesting thing is because like, you know, most of these for

a long term travel where they don't assume faster than light, but even quicker speed usually

have some kind of like hibernation, right?

And I've always wondered that too because we have examples of that of real animals that

do that.

There's worms and I know I think it's Alaska or maybe an Arctic or Alaska one of those

places where they basically freeze every year, but they have this anti freeze in their blood.

So that when it thaws, they just come back to light and over and eat your period, all

they do is try to eat these little plants for like eight years, then they become a

moth.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

There's plenty of examples of that.

So like, I mean, theoretically, right?

It's just a matter of where complex entities, it's a matter of figuring out how to adopt

it, but these things are possible.

And I think, you know, they've also, I think I'm curious to see because teleportation would

be one that would be awesome because that would be faster or like if we can increase our

travel time a lot, that would be good.

Because you know, everything that's anything people don't realize too is like, it's so far

even to the closest star.

Like is I don't remember the exact timeline, but do you know how long it takes to the

closest one?

It's like, it's like, it's like four light years or something, which translates to a very

long time.

Like, considering we can't travel like a thousand years or even a fraction of the speed

of light.

So it's going to be way more years than that.

Here's another thing, is it the speed of light?

So like everybody takes that as a, like as a constant, yeah, that like number one, it's

a fixed constant.

Number two, you can't travel faster than it.

And like, maybe those are true, but what if they're not, yeah, we don't know.

That's a crazy part.

They could be.

It could be like totally false.

It could be just like the limit we're self-imposing because that's our understanding

of the universe.

And don't know a lot about anything, very little, especially throughout space.

It's interesting.

I mean, the fact that we've even been able to like, the fact that we've even been able

to like, develop these like telescopes and satellites that are sophisticated enough to

even like tell that there's other planets out there and what they might be composed of

is amazing, let alone like figuring out how to go faster because we don't have the technology

for that yet.

But that would be interesting.

I love books and I like like shows where like people do like jet around and like ships

like it's like a car, you know, and like it's like nothing.

I always do that.

And they make the noise like.

It'd be awesome.

It'd just be cool to be able to be like, all right, I'm going to that planet.

We're like, or in back to the future, the skateboard that Michael J. Fox had, that was

like, I haven't such a cool skateboard.

I wanted that so bad.

I don't think people.

I remember in like the ladies, people thought it was going to be like, hover,

cars and like, they thought by the year 2000, it was going to be here.

Yeah.

Not even.

What happened?

We gave up, I guess, on all of our ingenuity.

We got, we got social media instead.

Dude, we really did it.

People used to, people thought 2000 would be like insane.

They thought there was going to be like flying cars and all that's like, what are you?

What do you think is going to happen with social media in the future, the future of social

media?

Holy cow.

What are they going to get to the point where they recognize that, yeah, there's benefits,

but it is like in every study they do, it like destroys your life, you know, it makes

you more depressed.

It makes you more likely to commit suicide, it like, it makes you less likely to relate

to people.

And it's like, yeah, but that's how I stay on top of subjects and that's what I do when

I'm bored.

And if I didn't do that, I wouldn't know what was going on.

And it's just like, okay, yeah, there are benefits to like cocaine and alcohol.

They're fun, but still doing them all the time is not a good idea.

Right.

Well, there's benefits to that.

That's always the problem, right?

It's like, none of these things are inherently evil.

Nothing is.

It's just how we use it, right?

It's either going to be good or bad based on our usage.

So I think we forget too that we're like, we're at the very beginning of these things.

So hopefully in time, we've worked it out and figured it out, you know, and maybe like

one day in the future, like this double be used for like mostly for like really information,

like learning, like making learning accessible and like people like, you know, showing cool

things around.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Yeah.

I know.

Dude, with AI, like that's the end of education is AI.

I know.

Seriously.

If I was a kid in school, I would not ever do any homework ever because you could just

comp AI to do it.

Now, are you really learning just to do so much better?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know.

Crazy.

It's gotten bad.

Yeah.

Anything else you want to add about the future?

I think that I do think that if we go, if we do get to other planets, like if we really

do start exploration, like even just in our sources, like like Jupiter's moons and stuff,

the ideal thing will be developing some sort of robots to go first and small robots.

Because instead, because you know, think about it, you could send robots on a mission that

takes 100 years, who cares?

Because they're not going to have a problem.

You just turn them on when you get there.

And I think that would be the logical thing to me would be use technology for that purpose.

What happens if they develop consciousness out there and then they build a robot for

society?

Hey, good for that.

They'll start their own society and come and attack us.

That's happening many times.

That is right.

That is a premise to a lot of stories, you'll see.

All right.

Well, there you have it.

What the future will look like will be like science fiction.

Before we sign off, we are always looking for episode ideas.

So if you have any email us, emails in the show notes or comment on the YouTube videos.

And other than that, we'll catch you next time.

This is the Accenture Stoke podcast.

I'm Randy.

That's Danny.

I'll see you later, Danny.

Later, Randy.