in the movie Idiocracy Mike Judge
imagines a world where the stupid
inherit the earth in this scenario it's
because the smoother brain types
procreated recklessly while the sensible
practical PhD types planned and waited
for the right time to have a kid a right
time which never came leading the dumb
to Simply out reproduce the smart until
the world was a crumbling husk of
deteriorating infrastructure structure
toppled buildings and dead crops water
with electrolytes it's become something
of a meme in recent years to say that
this movie belongs in the documentary
category what with the world kind of
feeling especially stupid lately but
wild judges premise for how the world
got to be this stupid is maybe a bit
flawed and smacks of eugenics a bit it
does speak to a potential great filter
that might threaten Advanced
civilizations one where the
civilization's technology outsmarts the
civilization this is usually depicted as
a Judgment Day scenario where the
computers and the robots turn sentient
and revolt against the humans forcing
them into servitude or simply
eliminating them entirely before turning
the universe into paper clips but that's
not how civilizations fall it's it's
rarely overnight it's usually long and
drawn out and regardless of external
forces usually made possible by neglect
from within meaning if our technology
overtakes us it likely won't just be
because they got smarter but because we
also got well Dumber here in the United
States we just finished another school
year and the kids are off for summer or
whatever passes for summer these days
these are kids that were raised with an
iPad in their faces digital natives For
Whom the ability to access all the
world's knowledge with just a couple of
TAPS is second nature they can't imagine
a world where the answer to any question
they might have can't be found right in
their pocket and yet they go to a school
every day usually at ridiculously early
hours and have the greatest source of
information the world has ever seen
taken away from them and told that they
need to just remember
things and read books I imagine this
must be a very bizarre concept to them
you know memory and Computing this is a
solved problem it's all just out there
in The Ether in the cloud if you will
like there's no way that they could
retain as much information in their
heads as they could hold in their hand
in any given moment of the day like what
a step backward this must feel like and
not to even mention that by the time
they graduate AI technology and Robotics
will Advanced to the point that there'll
be very few jobs for them to do so I'm
sure the question gets asked all the
time why even learn things anymore it's
kind of a valid
question now before I make the argument
that the education system is going to
have to fundamentally change in the next
coming decade I should probably start by
pointing out that the current education
system the way we've been doing it our
whole
lives it's not very old the whole idea
of compulsory School of of making sure
that everybody has like a baseline level
of Education that is a very very very
New
Concept in the grand scheme of things
for most of human history education took
the form of apprenticeships where people
would learn a skill or trade by working
underneath a master of that trade and
that was if you were lucky most people
just toiled in the fields and rolled
around in the mud but even if you did
become an apprentice you learned how to
perform that trade maybe some business
and financial stuff around it but you
didn't learn much outside of that you
just didn't need to yeah blacksmiths
farmers Weavers Millers miners
Woodworkers Architects doctors and
scribes like the whole role of the
scribes was to capture and share
information and because of that they
were pretty much the only people that
knew how to read even most Kings
couldn't read back then they had all
their correspondents you know taken down
and and read to them by their scribes
and as time went on you know literacy
became a bit more of a status symbol
amongst the Royals and the nobility it
was a class thing so you know
institutions of Higher Learning became a
thing after that but but it would take
hundreds of years for the idea of
General schooling for everyone to become
a thing I bring all this up because it's
starting to feel a little bit um full
circle when you think about it cuz once
upon a time we we offloaded the
maintenance of knowledge to a privileged
class of people and now we're starting
to do it again to technology you know we
used to not learn things because that
knowledge was irrelevant to us now we
don't learn things because it's
ubiquitous like knowledge used to be
power now it's everywhere now some might
argue that the purpose of school was
never really about educating the
population it was about creating skilled
workers it's about having people just
smart enough to they can work the
machines to keep the economy going or to
make weapons to make our enemies go all
explody but even that is increasingly
under threat like robots have been
encroaching into our factories and
warehouses for decades uh but now we're
starting to see along with an explosion
of AI an explosion of humanoid robots
that are designed to be easily trainable
to
do anything we can do we'll talk more
about that later but what we're seeing
right now is both knowledge jobs and
manual labor jobs facing major
disruptions at the same time so if
you're a kid in school or maybe an adult
who wants to go back to school what
exactly are you supposed to do how do
you prepare for this we're facing a
literally unprecedented situation where
really the only place to look for any
kind of guidance is science fiction
returning to our original premise let's
look at the movie Idiocracy just in case
you haven't seen the movie the main gist
is that our main character who happens
to be named
gets Frozen and then kind of
accidentally forgotten and he winds up
waking up in the year 255 so 500 years
in the future and when he wakes up it
turns out that the average IQ has fallen
so much that he is now the smartest
person in the world his character by the
way he was in the Army and he was chosen
for this experiment specifically because
he was basically the most average person
in the world so yeah Average Joe who is
now not so average so the movie spends a
lot of time portraying a world where
everybody's gotten so dumb that nobody
can run the the machines or the
computers anymore everything is a
dystopian mess and it's it's it's just
kind of basically a big syn up of
popular culture kind of a reductio ad
absurdum statement on how dumb our
society is today what they don't spend a
lot of time on is explaining how the
economy Works in this scenario uh people
do have jobs Dax Shepard's character is
a lawyer and a terrible one there are
hospitals and police and Baristas at
Starbucks that provide a little happy
ending with their caffeine and don't get
me started on the weight staff at fud
Ruckers or
what it becomes so people do work and
they're obsessed with money so it seems
like in this world they didn't quite
come up with the AI and Robotics
technology to put everybody out of work
it does seem to be based on a capitalist
system where people have to work for
money and somehow the company stays
afloat even though everyone's
incompetent in fact the only part of the
movie that really gives any kind of a
hint into what the economy looks like in
the world of Idiocracy is when Joe as
the smartest person in the world um
convinces them to use water on their
crops so again for anybody who hasn't
seen the movie there's a company called
brondo that makes this energy drink
that's kind of like I don't know it's
like a mix between Gatorade and Monster
Energy drink and it's what everybody
drinks all the time and they've been
drinking it for so long that in fact
when Joe asks for some water to drink um
they all look at him like he's crazy
because water is what you put in the
toilet in fact they've bought into the
whole brondo thing so much that they use
it to water their crops and they do so
because according to their marketing uh
it has electrolytes which is what plants
crave but brondo got what plants crave
it's got electrolytes what are
electrolytes do you even know it's what
they use to make brond yeah but why did
they use them to make
brondo because Bron's got electrolytes
anyway it turns out the electrolytes and
brondo was building up in the soil and
killing the plants and was threatening a
famine so he convinces them to use water
instead and this turns out to be
disastrous because it causes brondos
stock to go down and they wind up firing
everybody which is a problem because
apparently literally everybody works for
brondo so it's depicted as an inevitable
future where one Corporation runs the
world and everybody works for that one
company and this is similar to the movie
Wall in W the world is run by one
company called the buy and large
corporation who have completely trashed
the planet leading humans to escape to
Giant luxury Liners in Space the main
ship being called the Axiom in this
world humans have basically become
nothing more than consumers um they're
they're infants really is what it comes
down to it they sit in floating
recliners all day long with a screen in
front of their faces just like the the
mobils that you know hang over babies
cribs and whatnot they just consume
entertainment all day long and buy
things off of the endlessly personalized
ads which are obviously inspired by
social media now there is some debate
around exactly how the economy works on
the Axiom because everything on the ship
is automated robots perform all the
necessary labor and whatnot but people
aren't just given everything they seem
to have to pay for it with um ship
credits now how they acrew these ship
credits I'm not sure I don't know
exactly what you would call a system
like this but but a user on stack
exchange put it like this and I think it
explains it pretty well it has aspects
of post scarcity combined with basic
income of some sort but it's not
Socialist Communist as there is a sense
of property ownership the resources
aren't communally managed and there is
no labor involved now the Jetson have an
interesting take on this and I've always
pointed to the Jetson whenever we talk
about like robots taking over all the
jobs and stuff like that because you
know we all want to live in the Jetson's
world but nobody wants to make the
changes that would be necessary to live
in that World by the way quick aside uh
the Jetson came out in 1962 literally
like just a few weeks after Kennedy
announced the goal of landing on the
moon uh which I find Crazy the jeton
were basically a future version of The
Flintstones um and it only ran for one
season 1962 to 1963 with a brief Revival
in 1980 the old Nostalgia circuit also
and I'll get to the point here in a
second I'm also blown away that of all
the liveaction remakes of animated
movies that we've seen over the years I
cannot believe they've never done the
Jetson serious how cool would that be
the Jetson features a family consisting
of George Jetson Jane his wife daughter
Judy and his boy Elroy and their dog
Astro it's basically just designed to
pipe a bunch of bad space puns into our
heads now being that this was conceived
in the early 60s the social dynamics are
a bit outdated women drivers that's the
problem you know what you need is a wife
to do your cooking so yeah George flies
into his job every day at space Le
sprockets while his wife tends to the
home and you know spends all his money
although she doesn't have to do a lot of
tending to her home because they have a
robot housekeeper named Rosie that does
most of the housew work see yeah George
still commutes to work every day and
struggles to find parking even though
his car folds up into a briefcase they
couldn't conceive of remote work back
then even though they do have a video
phone so in this world people still have
to work but George only has to work a
few hours a day um which sounds great
but he's apparently pretty miserable in
this job because you know a Trope of the
time was this hard ass boss always on
his case threatening to fire him so
robots do most of the heavy lifting in
this world and human work is basically
just involves press buttons but it still
upholds the standard of the 60s with the
nuclear family and the father being the
lone bread winner and even though he
only works a few hours a day he's able
to support a whole family and live a
middle class existence so while it's
never really explained in detail um
probably because they were too busy
coming up with space puns uh one can
assume that in this scenario George gets
some percentage of the robots
productivity shared with him this
imagines a world where the company uses
robots to do all the labor and then The
Spoils of that labor are shared with the
employees I may be talking out of my
butt here but I kind of feel like this
points to the ethos of the postwar era
where people were expected to get a job
and and stay there for all their working
years and build up a pension that they
can later retire off of um I feel like
there used to be more of a sense of
shared responsibility between the
employer and the employee back then but
I wasn't around back then so again uh I
may be pulling an Ace Ventura here but
when I say that this is a future that
everybody wants but nobody wants to make
happen what I mean is like people have
been saying for decades now that
automation is a good thing because it
makes each person far more productive
but that's only a good thing when that
person gets a share of the profits from
that productivity you know otherwise
it's just a cost-saving measure from the
company and people wind up losing their
jobs which is pretty much what actually
happens in reality because ultimately
companies are more beholden to their
shareholders than they are to their
employees in our world now exactly how
they make this work in the fictional
cartoon world of the Jetson I'm not sure
but uh we've only got 38 years to figure
it out because the Jetson takes place in
the year 2062 but maybe the most obvious
depiction of of post scarcity Society in
science fiction is of course Star Trek
there's an entire book on this called
trekonomics which I've not read but I
encourage you to check it out if you're
interested in this whole thing but in
Star Trek the whole system of people
working to produce things that people
can buy I'll stop that now uh that's all
totally out the window because they've
got the replicator if you happen to have
been living under a rock this whole time
and have no idea what a replicator is
it's it's kind of like a molecular 3D
printer that can just basically Al make
whatever you want and Star Trek the
governing body the United Federation of
planets um they do away with currency
completely people don't work so that
they can make money to keep a roof over
their heads uh but they do work yeah for
a civilization that has no money people
seem really busy but in Star Trek lore
people don't work for money to acquire
wealth they they work to feel a sense of
purpose as peard explains in Star Trek
first Contact the economics of the
future are somewhat
different you see
money doesn't exist in the 21st century
no
money you mean you don't get paid the
acquisition of wealth is no longer the
driving force in our
lives we work to better
ourselves and the rest of humanity this
sounds great also uh naive like in the
other examples that I just listed the
focus is really more on the system in
place that accommodates for full
automation but in Star Trek
I don't know it it seems to require much
deeper transformation like effectively
turning off everyone's natural instinct
to to consume and hoard like in wall
people are just turned into consumers
but in Star Trek cons consuming is not a
thing yeah in Star Trek that natural
human ambition uh that's basically led
us to wreck the planet so far that's
been turned away from material
possessions and wealth and toward
personal fulfillment you know value is
placed on meaning and purpose instead of
external things which again that sounds
wonderful and I mean I don't know maybe
in a system where literally anything you
could possibly want could be created
with the push of a button maybe maybe
the whole concept of wealth falls apart
and that natural drive for purpose you
know pushes people inward um maybe it's
just a natural consequence of that but
there is also something kind of yikes
about a society where everyone's natural
impulses have been you know rewired or
redirected in the way that the state
deems appropriate in fact you could
argue that the Borg is kind of like the
flip side of that post scarcity coin you
know when that sort of collective
thought is taken to the extreme now I
know many of you are Star Trek fans and
there is a lot of lore in this universe
that I'm leaving out so yeah any
anything that I missed or anybody that
thinks that I'm wrong just go school me
in the comments but yeah however you
slice it that sort of Star Trek
collectivist Utopia seems impossibly far
away considering where we're starting
from I mean unless we have a complete
and total breakdown of society and have
to you know rebuild everything from
scratch um Al They the would need to be
some some technology to to happen so the
replicators could be a thing cuz right
now we seem to be more heading toward
the whole one or two corporations
running everything model whether that
turns out to be more like Wall-E or
idiocracy remains to be seen but we
better start thinking about it cuz
uh shit's about to get real
yep the robots are coming so we've all
heard about the Tesla bot we've seen the
acrobatics of Boston Dynamics Atlas
robot but these machines are progressing
fast so I did a video a while back about
humanoid robots and why it's a different
thing from the the kind of robots that
have been used in manufacturing and
stuff for a long time I was personally
questioning like why humanoid robots
would exist at all like why do we assume
that the human form is the perfect form
and you can go watch that video to see
what the entire argument turns out to be
but what it basically boils down to is
that it's not necessarily that a
humanoid robot is a higher performing
robot than say you know an assembly line
kind of robot it's just that we live in
a world that is designed for this form
factor basically so the humanoid robot
is basically designed to function in a
world that has been
designed around what we look like so if
there is any kind of robot that's going
to wind up taking over human jobs it's
one that works and functions like we do
and there's a lot of interesting
humanoid robots on the way we can start
with the atlas robot so Boston Dynamics
has been testing out the atlas robot for
years doing you've seen all these videos
where it's juggling and dancing and and
doing flips and all kinds of crazy stuff
well that was all a hydraulic robot this
new one isn't all electric robot and by
the way that original Atlas was kind of
more of a tech demonstrator more of an
R&D platform this one is actually
designed to be sold and put into work in
factories and stuff they just revealed
the new electric Atlas this one video is
the only thing that we've seen but it's
pretty mind-blowing so there's not a
whole lot of info about it right now but
we do know that they're set to be used
in a Hyundai plant uh Hyundai actually
owns Boston Dynamics so it's going to
get some real world use pretty soon
Sanctuary AI is a company we haven't
heard a whole lot from but their Phoenix
robot has possibly the most dextrous
hands with 20° of Freedom it's based on
an AI robotics platform called carbon
that they created separately a few years
back and they'll be pilot testing it
with an Autoparts manufacturer called
Magna who is an investor in the company
another Super impressive robot is from a
company called Figure AI it's the figure
01 robot and this is sort of open ai's
entrance into robotics it's based on gp4
and when it talks to you it talks in an
eerily human way great can I have
something to
eat sure thing
great can you explain why you did what
you just did while you pick up this
trash on it so I gave you the Apple
because it's the only uh edible item I
could provide you with from the table
and in February this year they raised
$675 million from investors including
open AI Microsoft and Jeff Bezos and
they expect to be piloting it at a BMW
plant by the end of the year rather
unique entrance into the humanoid robot
sphere is 1x Technologies and their
robot called e unlike others this one is
not bipedal it's actually un wheels so
it rolls around everywhere although they
are working on a bipedal version that
will be coming out later this can be
controlled remotely or operate
autonomously and it's been working in
some warehouses since 2019 and this is
the first robot that's actually on the
market and available to buy I think they
sell it for around
$16,000 and of course there's Tesla's
Optimus Gen 2 while this hasn't actually
been put to use in any factories or
anything it's getting close to field
test and Tesla obviously has plenty of
factories that it can put it in Elon
suggested that they would go on sale in
2025 but let's not hold our breath on
that while it's definitely more trendy
to dunk on Tesla these days I've got to
say I'm actually really impressed with
what they've been able to do with this
robot in such a short amount of time and
last but not least there's a company
called aptron and their robot called
Apollo this was developed at the
University of Texas in Austin and it's
actually had some involvement with NASA
they plan on maybe using this in some
space situations the company's CEO
claimed that it could be useful in quote
construction oil and gas Electronics
production retail home delivery elder
care and countless more areas and
Mercedes-Benz plans to put them in some
factories starting this year okay so
what what does all this mean exactly
like do we need to be worried about this
or not it kind of depends I think I
think depending on what kind of person
you are it's either an existential
threat that's going to Doom us all or
it's going to be the greatest thing that
ever happened the author Tony siba
recently chimed in about the humanoid
robots thing on his website rethink X
and he's got a lot to say about it so
Tony Saba if you don't know he's
somebody who talked a while back about
autonomous cars and the EV Revolution
and stuff he points out often times in
his talks how U automobiles completely
displace horses between 1907 and 1922
but his point in this blog is that um we
are the horses he talks about the
humanoid robot Revolution as being a
disruption that's caused by the
convergence of a few different factors
one being sensors computer hardware and
software actuators and Battery
Technology he predicts the humanoid
robots will have a cost capability of
$10 an hour by 2035 and under 10 cents
an hour before 2045 and will eventually
approach zero and you may see some of
those videos and you think that they're
they're clumsy and they they're awkward
and everything and they are but they're
quickly getting better I mean keeping in
mind all is always that it they are the
most expensive and least capable they
will ever be right now but even if they
are like half the speed of humans the
fact that they never get tired they
never need brakes that gives them an
automatic Edge in fact on assembly line
situation they might never run out of
power because they could just probably
plug in wherever it is that they're
standing also robots can collectively
learn so if one robot gets taught a
certain thing a a different way to sort
things or whatever on an assembly line
immediately all the other robots will
know how to do it so Something He
suggests in his blog post is that this
is basically going to be a turn into a
production arms race amongst countries
to build this robot labor force so this
is going to be sort of a force
multiplier in terms of how fast this
stuff gets adopted now in this blog post
he paints it mostly in glow in terms
about how this disruption will also feel
disruptions in energy transportation and
food and with birth rates declining
robots can kind of take over for a
shrinking labor market in the long run
and He suggests that it might be more of
a soft Landing it's not going to be a
really immediate thing that for the next
couple of decades robots will probably
just supplement humans kind of doing the
jobs that we don't want to do filling in
the gaps in the labor force and whatnot
before yeah eventually just replacing Us
in in the labor market altogether
meaning we kind of have a couple of
decades to figure out how we're going to
do this but it is going to take a
completely new rethinking of Economics
as we know it so we've heard about
Universal basic income talked about it a
million times um there is a new Twist on
that that Sam Alman from open AI uh kind
of put out there recently he talks about
Universal basic compute He suggests that
in the future as AI kind of takes over
all of our cognitive you know load for
all the work that we do that uh instead
of sharing money in terms of universal
basic income we would share in the
computational processing that goes on so
Universal basic compute kind of
insinuating that Computing will become
currency and I feel like whether or not
you think this is a good or a bad idea
depends on whether you trust those at
the top to you know find solutions that
work for people and not companies I
fully understand any skepticism of that
but I I say it all the time I think
things are probably going to get worse
before they get better because we've got
to figure something out and figuring out
takes a little bit of time and um all I
know is that what we're operating on
right now is not going to be sufficient
in a couple of
decades Talk Amongst yourselves about
that but anyway let's just put the
existential dread part of the video
behind us and say we do figure it out at
some point let's get back to the
original question why learn anything
anymore I say because people will still
be people yes many people will be
complacent and be happy with never
having to know anything um that's that's
true now that's always been true but
many people many of you included I'm
sure if you watch this channel many
people are curious and they hunger for
knowledge and and and they'll seek out
understanding of things even if there is
a simpler way out there to get that
information you know um many people are
skeptical and and need to see things for
themselves this has also always been
true so regardless of what happens to
society there's always going to be some
people out there who just want to learn
things who experience the joy of
disperate knowledge who Revel in the
ephemera of it all
and honestly that might be like the
guiding principle of this channel when
it all comes down to it you know I just
I just think that life is more
interesting when you know things you
know that that random information that
kind of just gets into your brain over
time they start to connect with each
other it it just it just makes life more
fun it makes life more interesting to
have all those little Connections in
there like it kind of makes me think of
emergence Theory um you know that
knowledge isn't just about memorizing a
bunch of stuff it's about making
connections between things that you've
never made made a connection with before
you know the human brain after all it's
just a collection of cells and it's how
these cells connect with each other that
makes the magic happen that's why it's
called a connectome you know an ant by
itself is nothing but millions of ants
working together can create a
sophisticated society and build Mega
structures you know and pieces of
information in your head work the same
way it's just all random information
it's only when those pieces of
information connect that you get ideas
and inspiration and ideas and
inspiration are exciting you know they
they make life interesting they give you
a moments where you have to rethink
everything you thought you knew they can
give you purpose and that's the greatest
precursor to happiness and Longevity
having a purpose in your life so maybe
in the future the education system will
pivot to reflect that you know teaching
kids how to think more than what to
think how to be critical of the
information and misinformation that they
receive and encouraging nerding out on
things it might be based more on
connecting the dots and finding
inspiration in things there's a quote by
IO Wilson that I think sums this all up
pretty well when he said quote we are
dring in information while starving for
wisdom the world henceforth will be run
by synthesizers people who can put
together the right information at the
right time think critically about it and
make important choices wisely so maybe
eventually education will shift to focus
on that so yeah why bother learning
things I would say because you're
planting seeds they'll later Sprout into
passions and interests that you never
knew you had and that's really important
stuff one passion that I have is saving
time and that's why I only spend two
minutes a day preparing my lunch and
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click on the link Down Below in the
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your next month of boxes give it a try I
think you'll like it anyway I want to
hear what you guys think about the whole
uh humanoid robot thing and why we
should learn things and whatnot what do
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out there have an eye opening rest of
the week stay safe and I'll see you next
time love you guys take care