Neil deGrasse Tyson Responds to Stephen Hawking's Take on Aliens (from Joe Rogan Experience #919)

Hello, freak bitches. Stephen Hawking was talking about the possibility of alien life discovering us. And that it would be a terrible, terrible thing if it did happen. If you look at what has happened to other primitive life forms and we discovered them, primitive cultures, and we've discovered them. Do you share that same opinion? That if something did, find us? I don't have a strong opinion on that question, but I have an analysis of his comment. He is worried about the possibility of aliens enslaving us based on the reality that we've done that to ourselves. Just think about that. His fear of aliens derives not from actual knowledge of aliens, but from actual knowledge of ourselves. Any time a more advanced civilization has come upon a less technologically advanced civilization, it did not bode well for the less advanced civilization. And that happened in North America, South America, North America with Europeans, South America, the Spanish, Australia with the Brits, never boded well for the less technologically advanced civilization. His factual knowledge of that leads him to suspect that aliens would be exactly the same. And I'm not that skeptical. I don't think all life forms in the universe have the basal, primal, violent attitudes that we do as a species. I've not been given reason to think so. But don't you believe that things advance because of competition and competition forces things to be fairly ruthless? It has been argued that if you colonize, if you are civilization that colonizes the galaxy, that it's a self-limiting exercise. Why? Because here you go. You ready? We start here on Earth. It's you and me, boy. All right. And you take that planet. I take this planet. And now we both have offspring that are just like us. And we want more planets. We reach a point where expansion is not possible because we are warring with ourselves to gain the territory that each other has obtained. So it has been argued sociologically that the very act of wanting to colonize is self-limiting against successful colonization of the galaxy. Because to colonize a galaxy has to be done in an organized way. All right. You take this sector. I take this sector. But if I want territory and I want it now and my kids want it now, I want that territory, not this other one. In fact, I want it all. That kind of attitude breeds violence. It breeds war, intragalactic war. So it may be that the very kind of civilization that could peacefully colonize a galaxy is not the kind of civilization that would colonize the galaxy at all. That's heavy. Very heavy. What about the idea that any advanced- That's my first comment about Stephen Hawking. He made another comment about we should be a multi-planet species to protect ourselves against an asteroid rendering one extinct. It makes a good headline and it sounds like it makes sense, but I'm not there with it. Yeah, of course I want it to back up. Of course. Let's be a multi-planet species. Fine. But I would do it for different reasons. I would do it because it's cool. Not because we want to protect human species from extinction. No, that wouldn't be the reason to do it. Can I tell you why? List every reason why you think we go extinct. One we trash Earth. And we can't live off of it anymore. But asteroid is coming. There's some natto bot gone astray. Okay? Pandemic. A virus pandemic. So it seems to me that if we want to be a multi-planet species, Mars would be the one because it's a 24-hour day. It's got seasons. We would have to terraform it first, but then we all move there. We'd just ship a billion people there. Here's my point. Whatever it takes to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there, it's got to be easier to deflect the asteroid. Whatever it takes to terraform Mars to turn it into Earth, if you had the power of geoengineering to do that, then you have the power of geoengineering to turn Earth back into Earth. But there occasionally are things that we miss, right? Because of the way that... So you say, okay, whatever it takes to geoengineer Mars and ship a billion people there, it's got to be easier to create a perfect viral serum that makes us immune to all possible disease. That's got to be easier. Whatever that takes. But isn't it possible that there's some asteroids that we just will not see until it's too late? Then you put up whatever that takes. That's what I'm saying. I mean, whatever. But they're talking about being able... To terraform Mars and ship a billion people there. A billion. Why? Of course, why wouldn't it be? What, you can put 10 people there? That's not good. You want to split your species. And if an asteroid is coming that you can't deflect, which would surprise me if you could ship a billion people to Mars, you just let them all die? Is that what you plan to... You're going to let all the Earth people die and the Mars people survive just so you can save this people. Don't save everybody. I'm not buying into the premise, this cable carology premise that you have to save one to not save the other and you know, you know, cable carology. I see what you're saying. The cable car, you know, someone's in the tracks. You let them go. You let them go. You steer it out of the way, but then you actively kill two people instead of passively killing one person. What do you do? I'm not buying into that premise for this question. I'm simply saying that whatever it takes, it's got to be easier to put up some kind of net that finds any asteroid that could possibly harm us and zaps them out of the sky. That's got to be easier. This is the last question. Is it possible that the reason why we are never visited by extraterrestrials is because the way civilization advance? Because of the space debris. One, two... Is it because the way civilizations... They have visited. They visited during Comic Con. Nobody noticed. They don't like cosplay. Three. We're out of here. The costumes weren't as good as ours. Three. Three. Three. They've observed us and judged there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. Okay, but is there another possibility that civilizations don't ever get to travel like that? Because what happens is as they advance and as their technology advances, they become, instead of a biological entity seeking to spread its genetics throughout the universe, they become some sort of symbiotic artificial life. That as they create, as they advance their technology and as they continue to innovate, they reach a limitation in biology and then eventually create artificial life that sees no desire whatsoever to travel. Oh, interesting. So I would say... That's a great philosophical question. I would say that the day we create AI, if the AI is everything we are except more... Not emotional. Then it would have been urged to explore. Maybe. Otherwise then it's not us. But wouldn't it create those doors like in Monsters, Inc. and start going dimension to dimension instead of fucking around with jets and one key in. Right, right, right, right, right. They figure out the fourth dimension. Yeah, wouldn't that be the best way to do things? And then they figure it out and then they would figure out a way to travel better than any way we could. But the fact that we want to travel and we're creating versions of ourselves called AI, I don't see why. Would it be a version of AI? I don't see why AI wouldn't want to travel. But why would it be curious if AI... If it is us, this is my point. If it's not biological? If then it's not... Well, if we create every neurosynaptic map of our brain into silicon, into a computer, and recreate our consciousness as humans, the human brain. But wouldn't that be just one version of AI? Sure. Would there be like an infinite version of AI that AI could create itself? It could. And why would it limit itself to all of our emotions and sexual desires and jealousy and all the ridiculous things that are holding us back? It could. Sure. Sure. Now, I'm not as fearsome of AI as others are. We're not going to make an AI-looking human being because the human form is not the best or ideal form for anything. Did you see Ex Machina? Yes, I did. Did you love it? It was good. It was good. You didn't love it? Good moments. You didn't love it? No, it was good. I loved it. I want to marry it. You want to marry it? Oh, okay. Well, that's the first thing you... Yeah, it's the sex bot. No, it's not even that. That's where the money will be for sure. For sure. Yeah, for sure. It's one of my favorite movies. I want to marry the movie. It was just an awesome movie. So then marriage would no longer be about sex or just be about reproduction because you just go to your room with your sex bot. I'm hoping that that's one of the first things that people figure out they shouldn't do anymore. Unless they get smart enough to symbiotically attach themselves to artificial intelligence. I was watching... What was it? Family Feud? One of the questions was, if you're... We asked 100 married women, if you could have a second husband for only one purpose, what would it be? Only like 70% of the way it said, just for sex. Whoa. Damn. A second husband for only one purpose. Just for getting stuffed. Just a second. That's a rough... Just a second. That's a fucking wake up call for a lot of dudes out there. A lot of guys. Let's end on that. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.