Name: Is There a Limit to Technological Innovation?
Uploaded: 2022-02-21T18:43:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is There a Limit to Technological Innovation?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is There a Limit to Technological Innovation?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-21. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- I do think there's a limit to the amount
of technological progress that we will make.
- Yeah.
- Like, I don't think it'll keep going forever,
or that, I guess, what I'm saying is,
I feel like I encounter a lot of people
that are sort of techno-utopians.
Like, we'll be able to figure out
anything we can think of now, we will eventually make.
- It's possible, though.
- But I think there will be a limit.
There'll be stuff we can think of
that we'll never be able to do.
- Like what?
- I don't know what.
I just think that if you assume that humans are not
the most intelligent possible beings
that could physically exist,
compatible with the laws of physics of the universe,
which I think is true, like, we're not--
- Sure, of course.
- The most intelligent.
And, like, it would stand to reason
that there are things it's possible to do.
There are things the laws of physics don't rule out
that we simply aren't intelligent enough to do,
that, like, we aren't intelligent enough to ever figure out.
- I think that's assuming that we're not gonna merge
with technology in a symbiotic way
that advances our cognitive ability.
And I think that's inevitable.
- But what if merging with technology
is already something we're unable to figure out,
because we can't conceptually understand consciousness readily enough?
- Well, consciousness, whether we understand it or not,
we could still manipulate it.
And the thing about technology and the symbiotic sort of future
of humans and technology,
when you talk to--
have you ever talked to Elon?
- No.
- Talked to Elon about it.
He's developing Neuralink.
And Neuralink is essentially going to be some sort of an implant
that they cut a hole in your fuckin' head.
And they put wires inside your brain
and change the way you interface with information.
And he was explaining it to me,
and he goes, "You're gonna be able to talk without words."
And when he says you're gonna be able to talk without words,
it's not like one of my stoner buddies,
"Bro, you're gonna be able to fuckin' talk without words."
I'm like, "Yeah, maybe, someday."
- But there's a way--
- But when he says it, he's got a fuckin' plan.
And he's gonna start with people that have problems
with neurological issues,
people that have nerve damage,
people that have spinal cord injuries,
they're going to replace the ability to move
and use some sort of computer-controlled technology
that replaces the function of the spinal column.
Then from there,
they're going to move to human beings
advancing their cognitive function.
They're gonna move to changing the way they interface with data.
- I'm skeptical they'll get there.
- Why?
- So,
last year, I got a cough.
It wasn't COVID.
- Were you sad?
- Was I sad that it wasn't COVID?
- Yeah.
- A little bit, yeah.
I was like, "Damn."
- Everybody is.
Everybody hopes it's COVID.
- I just have a fuckin' cough.
- Yeah.
- And I went to the doctor.
It just wasn't going away.
You know, and I'm a podcaster.
I'm a rapper.
I'm a musician.
I need my voice.
It wasn't going away.
- You still have a little cough now?
- I do a little bit.
- Is that the same cough?
- No, it's not the same cough.
This cough is from Omicron,
which I had like six weeks ago.
- Really?
- Yeah, but it had it for four weeks, lingered,
went away for two weeks.
So, it's a me thing.
It's not COVID.
It's me.
- All right.
- My coughs tend to linger
a little bit for a long time.
Anyway, I went to the doctor,
and the doctor was very kind.
He did an x-ray of my chest for free,
just kind of to be nice.
I was like, "Listen, I really need
to fucking get rid of this cough.
It's been a month.
I have no idea what to do."
And he said, "You know,
it's probably just mild bronchitis."
After he saw the x-ray,
"Do you want me to prescribe you anything?"
And I was like, "Why are you asking?
You're the doctor.
Don't, that's why I'm coming here,
is because you're supposed to say the things,
tell me the things."
And he's like, "I don't know, man.
We can give you some stuff.
It's probably not going to do anything."
And I was like, "Yeah, just give me everything."
He's like, "All right.
Antibacterial, steroids, this other thing,
took everything, did nothing."
Robitussin, over-the-counter cough medicine.
You know, it turns out the
shit does not work for everyone.
It did nothing for me.
And then I looked up the meta-analysis studies of Robitussin.
In meta-analysis versus a placebo,
has almost no effect.
Do you know that?
Really?
Yes.
There are meta-analysis compiling studies of Robitussin versus placebo
that find tiny effect sizes.
Well, NyQuil used to get you high as fuck.
Did they change it?
I think they did.
Oh, for sure.
For sure, right?
Yeah, that's what RoboTrippin, they had to stop that.
There was, like, a coating in it, I think.
Dude, I had NyQuil once.
I had NyQuil once in the '90s.
I'll never forget it.
Yeah.
I was sick, and I took NyQuil, and I was laying in my bed,
and I was as happy as I've ever been in my life.
I was like, "I feel so loved."
I just feel so, like, one with everything.
Oh, boy.
I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm so high."
That's opiate.
Yeah.
I was like this, like, "Ahhh."
Yeah.
And I remember thinking, "Well, this is why people like NyQuil."
I don't think before that time, and I was, like, in my 20s at the time,
I was like, "I don't think I've ever really had NyQuil."
Right.
Like, really had it, and especially not as an adult,
where I could, like, recognize what's going on.
I was like, "I'm so high."
Yeah.
I mean, NyQuil even now kind of feels good.
What is it?
It used to be codeine, right?
Yeah, that's what I was just looking up.
Dextromethorphan.
Yeah.
Right.
What was NyQuil in the 90s?
Was it codeine?
It was fucking strong, though.
I mean, bring it back.
How come I can't have it now?
Assholes.
Anyway, my point about bringing up the cough story
was there are certain problems,
like, okay, let me put it this way.
We have intuitions about which are the hard problems
and which are the easy problems, right?
And sometimes those intuitions are just way off.
So it turns out putting a man on the moon was easier
than curing the common cough reliably.
I wouldn't have guessed that if I were, like, a human in, like, 1890.
I would have been like, they'll probably cure the cough before they put a guy
safely in space.
It turns out we haven't done that, and my guess is that the Neuralink stuff is
going to be more like a common cough type of problem where it's like we think
we're making progress, but it turns out to be so much more difficult than we
can even realize that, you know, it's like 500 years from now and we still
haven't gotten it.
That's possible.
That's possible.
It's also possible that they do it and then they keep expanding on it and they
keep innovating and then the competition starts kicking in and other people
start developing new sorts of human brain interfaces.
And it gets extremely valuable to the point where you cannot compete without it,
and it becomes a thing where everybody has, just like everybody has a cell
phone now.
You know, if they can figure out a way to get people to interface with
technology where you can literally share data and information back and forth
without talking, that's an invaluable skill or ability.
Whether or not that actually is implemented, I don't know, but Elon has a
fucking plan, and that's the smartest guy I've ever talked to.
And when he talks about explaining how it's going to work, he's not like, it's
not pie in the sky shit.
No, but I think, so this goes back to my point about intelligence is often not
why people get things wrong.
It's not that they're not intelligent.
It's that sometimes when you're in an industry and you have that hammer,
everything looks like a nail.
So it's like the people in tech are going to be the ones to overestimate what
tech can do precisely because they're in tech.
Just like the surgeon, the surgeon isn't going to think you can solve
everything with surgery because he's a fucking surgeon.
Right.
Right?
And so it's not that they're unintelligent.
It's that sometimes, you know, people tend to overestimate the importance of
their industry or the ability of their industry to solve everything.
It's a systematic bias I think people have across the board.
So often people on the inside are sometimes the worst judges of the limits of
their own enterprise.
That does make sense.
However, technological innovation seems to be one of the main consistent
factors in human civilization.
And the explosion of technological innovation that's taken place over the last
30 years and particularly over the last, you know, whatever it has been since
the internet was really fully implemented into everyone's household.
It's been mind boggling and I don't see it slowing down.
And I think that the next logical step is to go from something you carry around
to something that's a part of your body.
And I think they'll do it first for people with injuries and then once they,
and they've already have that.
They already have things where they allow people to move a mouse around with
their brain.
They already have things where people with previously paralyzed hands can now
use them.
They have those things.
The logical sort of technological innovation, if you extrapolate from where we
are now to where we're going, whether it takes 10 years or 50 years or 100
years, I think the symbiotic connection between humans and technology is
probably the only way we beat out artificial intelligence.
I think the big fear is that someone creates artificial intelligence and that
thing becomes sentient and then that thing creates better artificial
intelligence, far superior to ours, and does it very quickly.
They find all the flaws that we have and they come up with a new version of us
and that we're not going to be able to compete and that this sort of silicon-based
life form will be far more advanced than us.
But without emotions, without all the biological problems that we have, without
the desire for breed and ego and all, it won't be programmed with any of those
problems.
So we'll just seek advancement and technological innovation for whatever
fucking reason.
I don't know why.
I mean, maybe it would have no motivation to do anything.
It would just stop dead in its tracks because it would realize that the
existence is futile.
But I think the way to stop that is we become symbiotic and we integrate with
technology.
And that technology advances our capability.
And as Elon says, it advances our bandwidth for accessing information.
Yeah, I mean, I can't justify this with much more than a gut feeling.
Gut feelings are great.
Yeah, I mean, gut feelings come from somewhere.
They come from, hopefully, from years of learning about the world and guessing
and being wrong and being right.
That's where intuitions come from.
But my intuition tells me that this is going to be one of those problems that
we underestimate the difficulty of by orders of magnitude.
It's like, how close are we to understanding the brain anywhere close enough?
How many neurons are there in the brain again?
That's a good question.
It's like so many more than you think.
Billions, probably trillions, I believe.
Yeah.
Trillions.
I think it's trillions.
Is it trillions?
I think it is.
How close are we to truly...
Let's guess.
Truly to like...
Take a guess.
Okay.
Oh, God.
I'm going to say three trillion.
No.
I'm going to say two trillion, 999.
No, it's 86 billion.
Oh, okay.
A close to average between 86.
Oh, it's not that many.
That's Earth when we have optimal population density.
How close are we to understanding the brain?
It's 86 billion neurons.
Not totally close.
The question is...
That's an understatement of the century.
We're not even like...
Yeah.
We're not.
We're like dipping our toe in to like the Pacific Ocean.
It's like the Pacific Ocean and we like kind of are starting to understand like
maybe what water is.
Yes.
I don't know.
It's like we're at the beginning.
And I guess my point is an understanding complete enough to integrate with
technology.
It's not at all obvious to me that we will ever get there.
You know, like we could make progress forever, but it can be like asymptotic
progress.
Like there's an asymptote here.
And it's...
What's that word?
It's like, well, you know, like in math, like how a graph can like approach the
limit of a thing without ever touching it and get infinitely closer to a line
without ever touching it and go on forever.
Like this.
So it's like if you imagine we make asymptotic progress, there's this line that
because of our intelligence, you know, and the fundamental fact that we're not
wired by evolution to understand the world perfectly.
We're wired to evolve and reproduce basically on the African savannah, right?
And just like every other animal in the world, there's a limit to the things we
are able to understand, right?
That limit for humans is way further than for any other animal.
But fundamentally, it's not infinite.
And again, it would stand to reason there are problems in the world that we may
not even be able to understand the problems, much less the solutions.
I would say probably consciousness so far is looking like one.
But the point is, it's possible we could keep making progress technologically
forever, but it's asymptotic progress in the sense that there's a line here
that we keep approaching and it keeps looking like we're making progress
because we are.
But, you know, there is a line we're never going to hit.
So it can be true at the same time that we keep making progress forever and
that there is a limit to that progress that's asymptotic and certain things are
just beyond that line.
And my intuition tells me that merging with understanding the brain and
understanding, you know, silicon well enough to merge them is probably beyond
that line.

Is There a Limit to Technological Innovation?

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- I do think there's a limit to the amount
of technological progress that we will make.
- Yeah.
- Like, I don't think it'll keep going forever,
or that, I guess, what I'm saying is,
I feel like I encounter a lot of people
that are sort of techno-utopians.
Like, we'll be able to figure out
anything we can think of now, we will eventually make.
- It's possible, though.
- But I think there will be a limit.
There'll be stuff we can think of
that we'll never be able to do.
- Like what?
- I don't know what.
I just think that if you assume that humans are not
the most intelligent possible beings
that could physically exist,
compatible with the laws of physics of the universe,
which I think is true, like, we're not--
- Sure, of course.
- The most intelligent.
And, like, it would stand to reason
that there are things it's possible to do.
There are things the laws of physics don't rule out
that we simply aren't intelligent enough to do,
that, like, we aren't intelligent enough to ever figure out.
- I think that's assuming that we're not gonna merge
with technology in a symbiotic way
that advances our cognitive ability.
And I think that's inevitable.
- But what if merging with technology
is already something we're unable to figure out,
because we can't conceptually understand consciousness readily enough?
- Well, consciousness, whether we understand it or not,
we could still manipulate it.
And the thing about technology and the symbiotic sort of future
of humans and technology,
when you talk to--
have you ever talked to Elon?
- No.
- Talked to Elon about it.
He's developing Neuralink.
And Neuralink is essentially going to be some sort of an implant
that they cut a hole in your fuckin' head.
And they put wires inside your brain
and change the way you interface with information.
And he was explaining it to me,
and he goes, "You're gonna be able to talk without words."
And when he says you're gonna be able to talk without words,
it's not like one of my stoner buddies,
"Bro, you're gonna be able to fuckin' talk without words."
I'm like, "Yeah, maybe, someday."
- But there's a way--
- But when he says it, he's got a fuckin' plan.
And he's gonna start with people that have problems
with neurological issues,
people that have nerve damage,
people that have spinal cord injuries,
they're going to replace the ability to move
and use some sort of computer-controlled technology
that replaces the function of the spinal column.
Then from there,
they're going to move to human beings
advancing their cognitive function.
They're gonna move to changing the way they interface with data.
- I'm skeptical they'll get there.
- Why?
- So,
last year, I got a cough.
It wasn't COVID.
- Were you sad?
- Was I sad that it wasn't COVID?
- Yeah.
- A little bit, yeah.
I was like, "Damn."
- Everybody is.
Everybody hopes it's COVID.
- I just have a fuckin' cough.
- Yeah.
- And I went to the doctor.
It just wasn't going away.
You know, and I'm a podcaster.
I'm a rapper.
I'm a musician.
I need my voice.
It wasn't going away.
- You still have a little cough now?
- I do a little bit.
- Is that the same cough?
- No, it's not the same cough.
This cough is from Omicron,
which I had like six weeks ago.
- Really?
- Yeah, but it had it for four weeks, lingered,
went away for two weeks.
So, it's a me thing.
It's not COVID.
It's me.
- All right.
- My coughs tend to linger
a little bit for a long time.
Anyway, I went to the doctor,
and the doctor was very kind.
He did an x-ray of my chest for free,
just kind of to be nice.
I was like, "Listen, I really need
to fucking get rid of this cough.
It's been a month.
I have no idea what to do."
And he said, "You know,
it's probably just mild bronchitis."
After he saw the x-ray,
"Do you want me to prescribe you anything?"
And I was like, "Why are you asking?
You're the doctor.
Don't, that's why I'm coming here,
is because you're supposed to say the things,
tell me the things."
And he's like, "I don't know, man.
We can give you some stuff.
It's probably not going to do anything."
And I was like, "Yeah, just give me everything."
He's like, "All right.
Antibacterial, steroids, this other thing,
took everything, did nothing."
Robitussin, over-the-counter cough medicine.
You know, it turns out the
shit does not work for everyone.
It did nothing for me.
And then I looked up the meta-analysis studies of Robitussin.
In meta-analysis versus a placebo,
has almost no effect.
Do you know that?
Really?
Yes.
There are meta-analysis compiling studies of Robitussin versus placebo
that find tiny effect sizes.
Well, NyQuil used to get you high as fuck.
Did they change it?
I think they did.
Oh, for sure.
For sure, right?
Yeah, that's what RoboTrippin, they had to stop that.
There was, like, a coating in it, I think.
Dude, I had NyQuil once.
I had NyQuil once in the '90s.
I'll never forget it.
Yeah.
I was sick, and I took NyQuil, and I was laying in my bed,
and I was as happy as I've ever been in my life.
I was like, "I feel so loved."
I just feel so, like, one with everything.
Oh, boy.
I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm so high."
That's opiate.
Yeah.
I was like this, like, "Ahhh."
Yeah.
And I remember thinking, "Well, this is why people like NyQuil."
I don't think before that time, and I was, like, in my 20s at the time,
I was like, "I don't think I've ever really had NyQuil."
Right.
Like, really had it, and especially not as an adult,
where I could, like, recognize what's going on.
I was like, "I'm so high."
Yeah.
I mean, NyQuil even now kind of feels good.
What is it?
It used to be codeine, right?
Yeah, that's what I was just looking up.
Dextromethorphan.
Yeah.
Right.
What was NyQuil in the 90s?
Was it codeine?
It was fucking strong, though.
I mean, bring it back.
How come I can't have it now?
Assholes.
Anyway, my point about bringing up the cough story
was there are certain problems,
like, okay, let me put it this way.
We have intuitions about which are the hard problems
and which are the easy problems, right?
And sometimes those intuitions are just way off.
So it turns out putting a man on the moon was easier
than curing the common cough reliably.
I wouldn't have guessed that if I were, like, a human in, like, 1890.
I would have been like, they'll probably cure the cough before they put a guy
safely in space.
It turns out we haven't done that, and my guess is that the Neuralink stuff is
going to be more like a common cough type of problem where it's like we think
we're making progress, but it turns out to be so much more difficult than we
can even realize that, you know, it's like 500 years from now and we still
haven't gotten it.
That's possible.
That's possible.
It's also possible that they do it and then they keep expanding on it and they
keep innovating and then the competition starts kicking in and other people
start developing new sorts of human brain interfaces.
And it gets extremely valuable to the point where you cannot compete without it,
and it becomes a thing where everybody has, just like everybody has a cell
phone now.
You know, if they can figure out a way to get people to interface with
technology where you can literally share data and information back and forth
without talking, that's an invaluable skill or ability.
Whether or not that actually is implemented, I don't know, but Elon has a
fucking plan, and that's the smartest guy I've ever talked to.
And when he talks about explaining how it's going to work, he's not like, it's
not pie in the sky shit.
No, but I think, so this goes back to my point about intelligence is often not
why people get things wrong.
It's not that they're not intelligent.
It's that sometimes when you're in an industry and you have that hammer,
everything looks like a nail.
So it's like the people in tech are going to be the ones to overestimate what
tech can do precisely because they're in tech.
Just like the surgeon, the surgeon isn't going to think you can solve
everything with surgery because he's a fucking surgeon.
Right.
Right?
And so it's not that they're unintelligent.
It's that sometimes, you know, people tend to overestimate the importance of
their industry or the ability of their industry to solve everything.
It's a systematic bias I think people have across the board.
So often people on the inside are sometimes the worst judges of the limits of
their own enterprise.
That does make sense.
However, technological innovation seems to be one of the main consistent
factors in human civilization.
And the explosion of technological innovation that's taken place over the last
30 years and particularly over the last, you know, whatever it has been since
the internet was really fully implemented into everyone's household.
It's been mind boggling and I don't see it slowing down.
And I think that the next logical step is to go from something you carry around
to something that's a part of your body.
And I think they'll do it first for people with injuries and then once they,
and they've already have that.
They already have things where they allow people to move a mouse around with
their brain.
They already have things where people with previously paralyzed hands can now
use them.
They have those things.
The logical sort of technological innovation, if you extrapolate from where we
are now to where we're going, whether it takes 10 years or 50 years or 100
years, I think the symbiotic connection between humans and technology is
probably the only way we beat out artificial intelligence.
I think the big fear is that someone creates artificial intelligence and that
thing becomes sentient and then that thing creates better artificial
intelligence, far superior to ours, and does it very quickly.
They find all the flaws that we have and they come up with a new version of us
and that we're not going to be able to compete and that this sort of silicon-based
life form will be far more advanced than us.
But without emotions, without all the biological problems that we have, without
the desire for breed and ego and all, it won't be programmed with any of those
problems.
So we'll just seek advancement and technological innovation for whatever
fucking reason.
I don't know why.
I mean, maybe it would have no motivation to do anything.
It would just stop dead in its tracks because it would realize that the
existence is futile.
But I think the way to stop that is we become symbiotic and we integrate with
technology.
And that technology advances our capability.
And as Elon says, it advances our bandwidth for accessing information.
Yeah, I mean, I can't justify this with much more than a gut feeling.
Gut feelings are great.
Yeah, I mean, gut feelings come from somewhere.
They come from, hopefully, from years of learning about the world and guessing
and being wrong and being right.
That's where intuitions come from.
But my intuition tells me that this is going to be one of those problems that
we underestimate the difficulty of by orders of magnitude.
It's like, how close are we to understanding the brain anywhere close enough?
How many neurons are there in the brain again?
That's a good question.
It's like so many more than you think.
Billions, probably trillions, I believe.
Yeah.
Trillions.
I think it's trillions.
Is it trillions?
I think it is.
How close are we to truly...
Let's guess.
Truly to like...
Take a guess.
Okay.
Oh, God.
I'm going to say three trillion.
No.
I'm going to say two trillion, 999.
No, it's 86 billion.
Oh, okay.
A close to average between 86.
Oh, it's not that many.
That's Earth when we have optimal population density.
How close are we to understanding the brain?
It's 86 billion neurons.
Not totally close.
The question is...
That's an understatement of the century.
We're not even like...
Yeah.
We're not.
We're like dipping our toe in to like the Pacific Ocean.
It's like the Pacific Ocean and we like kind of are starting to understand like
maybe what water is.
Yes.
I don't know.
It's like we're at the beginning.
And I guess my point is an und