yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

It’s Mind Blowing That Our Minds Can’t Be Blown


2m read
·Nov 3, 2024

They're scientifically minded types; it's astonishing who say, "Perhaps we won't be able to understand the next set of laws of physics. Perhaps we won't be able to understand the aliens." It's nothing but the appeal to the supernatural. It's logically equivalent to saying, "God's out there, and you can't possibly understand what God is." God is this infinite, omniscient being that is beyond us.

You can believe that if you like. You can believe the simulation hypothesis; you can believe any one of these things. They're all metaphysical claims about a reality that we have no access to. Whether or not you want to introduce aliens, who will have ideas that we can't comprehend, it's all standing on the same footing. At least the god metaphysics you could say, "Okay, that's in a different universe that's outside of our laws of physics," but the aliens presumably would be under the same laws of physics. So, I don't even see what the basis for that is.

Any species that is smart enough to get off its home planet knows that the limiting factor is ideas. So, the thing that they should want the most from any other species they encounter is new ideas, and the trade that they should be making is the trade of ideas. There's this Malthusian philosophy in science fiction now called the Dark Forest Hypothesis, that every human species, like bacteria, is going to run out of room. No! The universe is infinite in size; it's expanding. The multiverse is even more infinite in size. We are at the beginning of infinity. We're not running out of resources.

Everybody's craving ideas. Smart alien civilizations trade ideas, and successful civilizations trade ideas because those ideas take things that were useless before and turn them into resources. Every alien civilization can trade ideas with every other civilization—ideas because they're all universal explainers. They're capable of maximal understanding. In fact, the mind-blowing thing here is that your mind cannot be blown. There's no idea out there that your mind cannot absorb, given the time and the effort.

So, if we encounter an alien species, we should probably rejoice. They probably don't want anything from our planet other than our ideas. The best way to trade ideas is to have a dynamic, abundant, thriving civilization. Because I grew up on road sci-fi, I used to be pessimistic about alien encounters. Oh yeah, if we encountered aliens, they'll just destroy us, like in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The Vogons thoughtlessly demolished the Earth to make room for a hyperspace bypass.

But the reality of it is that any species that finds us is going to immediately give us all the knowledge that they have, and they're going to be craving new knowledge that we have because they'll realize that that would allow them to light up the dark matter, the dark energy, the unused resources in the universe to have themselves thrive as well.

More Articles

View All
How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer
Funniest thing is this: one of the technical persons who does all the work is the one actually reading the analytics. They’re like, “Hey, like this, our launch bombed, what’s the plan?” And the reply is, “Don’t worry about it, this is like you need to be …
Watch this before learning Japanese | The common mistakes beginners do when learning Japanese)
Please don’t do these mistakes if you’re a beginner learning Japanese. Hi guys, it’s me Dy. If you’re new to this channel, I’m half Japanese and you know I grew up talking Japanese, and Japanese is my mother tongue. Today, we’re going to talk about the m…
Checks on the judicial branch | US government and civics | Khan Academy
In other videos, we have talked about how the other branches of government can limit Supreme Court powers. We’re going to continue that conversation in this video by discussing how the amendment process can also limit or overrule a Supreme Court decision.…
Analyzing related rates problems: equations (Pythagoras) | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
Two cars are driving towards an intersection from perpendicular directions. The first car’s velocity is 50 kilometers per hour, and the second car’s velocity is 90 kilometers per hour. At a certain instant ( t0 ), the first car is a distance ( X{t0} ) of …
The New Stock Market World Order Has Begun | Recession Warning
What’s up, guys? You here? And, uh, well, this escalated quickly. In the span of one month, mortgage rates have climbed to their highest level in a decade. Morgan Stanley warns that a bear market rally is setting the stage for a correction, with even more…
How do you make a Virtual Reality Glove? - Smarter Every Day 191
Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I want this video to be long, and I want it to get down into the weeds and just air out and let me get as technical as I want to. In the last episode of Smarter Every Day, you got to see me interact…