5 Technologies To End All Wars - That Didn't

fix that. I mean, Lauren, who was my former co host, is still on Forward Thinking, and so is Joe, and so am I, and we talk about future stuff. They just want to hear Lauren. You need to that's they can still They can still hear her by going to Forward Thinking. So but Joe, you had this idea that was kind of milling around for a blog post, but it just never quite fit anywhere, right, Yeah, but I

finally wanted to talk about it with you. And it's about ways that technology could, or at least people thought could end war as we know it, so about world peace.

You've got a lot like people who are are real innovators, really uh, forward thinkers, for lack of a better word, often get kind of idealistic and optimistic, sometimes perhaps unrealistically so right, And so we have some examples here of people who very confidently at the time proclaimed that the technology either they invented or that they were an advocate for would be the end of war for one reason or another. And they fall into different kinds of categories.

So we're gonna talk about all of them. Yeah, So there are several different ways I guess you could imagine that war between humans could end, and me, on one hand, it's kind of hard to imagine that because it's just such a fundamental part of human nature and human history, and obviously it would be a fantastic thing for us to not violently kill each other in great numbers at intervals of time. But there are a few ways you

could look at how this might happen. So one would be to sort of make war too risky so that it's just not in your self interest to pursue it, gotcha. So the idea of being that even if you feel you have an advanced military that to wage war of any type would would encourage such losses as to nullify any positive effect that that war might have, so it just cannot be of a net advantage to you. The

only way to win is not to play. I guess another way, though, this is kind of harder to imagine how it would be done, would be to say that you would make war completely impracticable or physically impossible. So it's just you somehow create a technology that makes it so that people cannot actually do it. You want to shoot somebody, but your gun doesn't work. It's just filled

with crayons. Yeah, that would be a more difficult kind of technology to imagine, but some people have sort of gone down that road and it will blur together with the category I just mentioned. Um. Another way would probably be to sort of make war irrelevant, like to eliminate the motivations that would drive people to war. So you imagine that you might come up with a list of different reasons people would declare war on one another, and if you can eliminate all of those reasons for people

wanting to go, hypothetically they won't go. Gotcha. So this would be kind of the Star Trek future where you have created a world where where you've eliminated need. Therefore war is a thing of the past. Yeah. Got The other one would be to sort of change us, to to change our outlook or to change our nature or at least give us some kind of perspective that would make war ridiculous to where we just realize it's no

good and we don't want to do it. And we've got some some actual examples that fall into these various categories in more than one well, and they're One of the funny things is you don't have to go digging into the annals of crank history to find people who thought world peace would come about by one of one of these methods. In fact, you can find really smart, famous, powerful, influential people who thought technology could get us down one

of these roads to world peace. And I think the first one we should talk about is a guy who's very Internet famous these days, Nicola Tesla. Although you did say, you know you don't have to look at cranks, Well, oh, you're you're getting on your anti Tesla. Look, I just electrical Horse. The episode that just published was a rerun about our episode on Tesla where I talked about advocating

for Tesla and the Tesla versus Edison debate. Well, I mean, it's it's not that I'm against Tesla, but it's pretty true that he had some mental health issues. But at any rate, let's talk about this idea, this idea of a of an invention that negates war. Right, Tesla thought that you could build something that would make war impossible. What was that thing, Well, it's Tesla's famous death ray, which immediately, as soon as you hear the name, you think, yeah,

that that sounds peaceful. I don't know if he actually called it death ray. I don't think those were The New York Times called it a death ray. Yeah. So we've got a quote from Nikola Tesla. This is from an article from nineteen thirty seven called a Machine to End War, which featured an extended interview with Nikola Tesla, where he gives the following quote. We cannot abolish war by outlawing it. We cannot end it by disarming the strong.

War can be stopped not by making the strong week, but by making every nation week or strong able to defend itself. Hitherto, all devices that could be used for defense could also be utilized to serve for aggression. This nullified the value of the improvement for purposes of peace. But I was fortunate enough to evolve a new idea and too perfect means which can be used chiefly for defense. If it is adopted, it will revolutionize the relations between nations.

It will make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack. My invention requires a large plant, but once it is established, it will be possible to destroy anything men or machines approaching within a radius of two hundred miles. It will, so to speak, provide a wall of power, offering an insuperable obstacle against any effective aggression. So when he says plant, he of course means power plant. He does not a venus flag rout, not yet, not

an enormous redwood or something. So this death ray, as as was referred to in the article I was never actually fleshed out as far as we know. Tesla, first of all, was famous for not writing a lot of stuff down. He or at least that's why he claimed. He claimed he could envision inventions completely fully formed in his head, and even take them apart virtually in his head and examine them to see how they worked, and then eventually build the things, and they worked exactly the

way they were supposed to. Uh, that's part of the Tesla story. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, But at any rate, we don't have any evidence that Tesla had anything remotely resembling a death ray or what

the actual mechanism would have been. Well, and he says, my apparatus projects particles which may be relatively large or of microscopic dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions of times more energy than it's possible with rays of any kind, which doesn't really sound like it means anything, but at any rate, UH. During this time of Tesla's life, he was in his seven these and this was when he was really kind

of mentally, it appeared he was breaking down. He had already shown some signs of obsessive compulsive behaviors, possibly even some paranoid schizophrenia, because it was around this time also when he claimed that he had received transmissions from people, either from Venus or Mars, so you know, it's things were a little rough for Tesla. He was also in the process of moving from one hotel to the other because he would get evicted due to incurring enormous debts.

But because he had such a rock star status as a physicist and UH an electrical engineer, he would be invited to go live in another hotel until he had run up the debts there. So he may very well have just been trying to earn as much money as he possibly could selling this idea. Uh. And you know, not necessarily. I don't mean that he didn't think it was real. He may very well believe that he could in fact produce this advice, but he didn't. So uh.

But this definitely falls into the realm of let's make war impossible to happen by creating something that would prevent the very act of aggression from reaching the intended target. Once another country knows that you have this capability to stop any incoming attack, there's no reason they would ever attack you because it wouldn't work, right, of course, I mean that's the that's the logic behind it, and the

idea actually. Now, whether you're talking about array or a thing that he doesn't want to call array but is instead projecting particles or whatever it is, this idea has not necessarily died the basic idea of creating a technological infrastructure that would repel automatically all incoming attacks and make them pointless. How about the Star Wars initiative, Yeah, the Strategic Defense initiative in the nineteen eighties, often referred to

as the Star Wars program derisively. Yeah, I've really wanted to do a full episode about this, to really explain what the concept was, what the motivations were, because this is this ends up being a very political, uh, a very political story, not just a technology story. In fact,

it's more political than technological in many ways. The whole strategic defense initiative was fueled by the Cold War between the United States and the then Soviet Union, and the idea was that if you have a system in place that can block any incoming missile attack, then your country is going to be at an advantage and be safe from aggression. Uh. This was during an era that we'll talk about very shortly, the whole idea of mutually assured destruction, but we'll get to that in a little bit. So

very similar idea. Yeah. There's another idea that's a lot like this, which is actually in use today, Israel's Iron Dome system. Have you read about this has been in the news lately. Yeah, it went into effect in two thousand leven. This is an anti rocket defense system, so it's meant to intercept rockets that are fired from outside of Israel. Into Israel, and it does this by firing off interceptor missiles. They're called tamire surface to air missiles.

And you've got a radar system that first to texts an incoming rocket, and then you have computers running predictive software that will look at the pathway of the rocket, predict which way it's going, and then send an interceptor missile to destroy that rocket before it reaches its intended target. It's even supposed to only focus on rockets that are aimed at populated areas, So if a rocket were to be aimed at an open area where there's not likely

anyone to be harmed, it won't target that rocket. The reason being that interceptor missiles are expensive. We're talking like, sure, just shy of a hundred thousand dollars a pop. So also I'm imagining that this is him at large must just be incredibly expensive and complicated, because if it's actually able to calculate the trajectory of an incoming rocket to figure out whether it needs to intercept or not, I mean wow. And there's been some criticism of the system.

One is based on just a skepticism that it's really effective. The idea being that it's possible that in a display of its effectiveness when because just recently there was a news story where the system was able to shoot down fifteen different incoming rockets that were fired simultaneously. Uh, and

that that's really impressive. But there's some critics who suggest it's kind of in a conspiracy theory way, that it could just be the is the Israeli government firing off the interceptor missiles and then having them detonate because you can't see these rockets with the naked eye when they're flying through the air. They're they're too small for you to notice, and they fly too high for you to notice.

So it's possible that you could detonate in receptor missiles then uh, and then say, oh, that's a successful interception. I'm not going to go so far as to say that that conspiracy theory holds merit. I more inclined to believe that this is in fact an actual demonstration of

it working. Um. But there are also critics who say it gives any system that's like this, whether it's the Strategic Defense Initiative or the Iron Dome initiative, it can create an unhealthy political environment, meaning that if you have this kind of technology at your disposal, you may feel that you are to some degree invulnerable. It's weird to say to some degree, but at any rate that you are largely invulnerable to incoming attack, which some argue means

that you have less of of an incentive to pursue peace. Well, yeah, if we want to transition to the next item on our list here, some people might say that it's very important that we all feel vulnerable in order to maintain peace. Yeah. Yeah, this is where we get into the idea of mutually

assured destruction. So this is, uh, it doesn't have a very friendly name, but believe it or not, for the past century, there have been a lot of people who thought that this was one of the best technological routes to world peace. Yeah, and in fact, this is this is kind of piggybacked onto Tesla's idea, right, the idea that if you are in possession of enough firepower of whatever sort, that that's enough to to deter people or

other countries from attacking you. This ends up being repeated over and over again up and up through the Cold War and before the Cold War or the Cold War. Really yeah, Hiron Maxim, who invented the machine gun, said this device is going to end all war because it's so dangerous that no one would dare attack. Yeah, and that ended up being very much wrong, especially in the whole story of World War One and World War Two. Certainly proves that Orville right believe that the airplane would

end war. The airplane would be such an incredibly superior are your vehicle that there'd be no reason to ever declare war for fear of what would rain down upon you. Obviously, that became a very important tool in war. In fact, I think there are some people who would look at those two examples you just cited and say that those might have been some of the leading causes of World War One obvious at least the leading tools. Well, I mean causes in the sense that obviously there was a

lot of international political tension. I mean, does anybody really know what caused World War One? I think it's a lot of confusion, But uh, certainly an opinion that I've heard before, and I don't know enough to dismiss it out of hand, is to say that a major factor in what led to World War One was the acquiring of new warmaking technology and people building up their military stockpiles and basically looking for a way to test this

new stuff out. Well, that's part of it. I mean, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you had all these different countries in Europe, including Germany, which had just formed as an actual country tree I mean odd people forget that Germany as a unified country didn't really exist until the mid nineteenth century. Uh, you know it, since it had previously been part of of various empires.

These different countries were all trying to make sure they cemented their stability, that they made sure they were safe from other nations, which meant investing in militaries. For Germany and for the United Kingdom that was largely naval, they were investing heavily in their navies. Um. But what it what it also meant was that you had these these incredibly powerful armies around Europe that were ready to go

at any moment with no particular opponent. But you also have these incredibly complex treaties between countries, so when there would be a precipitating event, it wasn't in at least in hindsight, it wasn't a huge surprise to see it. Kind of escalate into the major conflict that Kane. Well, just that historical onion headline about World War One. I think it's something like war declared by all. It's a

that's fairly accurate. I mean, it certainly didn't all happen simultaneously, but it it's again, in hindsight, you can totally see how it happened. But at the time, I'm sure people just thought it was it was unimaginable, but that that philosophy continued beyond World War One. Yeah. Well, so it's quite obvious that machine guns and airplanes have not made war obsoletely, but there's a more questionable proposal, which is

that maybe nuclear weapons have. Yeah. Alright, so you've heard of the The scientist Edward Teller is born in Hungary and uh immigrated to the United States, and he had this to say about scientists in general, which was, the scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find doubt how these laws operate. Is the scientist's job to find the ways in which

these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used or how it should be used. Now, the reason he said that was that he worked on the Manhattan Project, all right, he was one of the science In fact, he was one of the three scientists who convinced Albert Einstein that he should tell the President about the powers of nuclear fission,

which then of the United States. The President United States Yes, in order to precipitate the development of the atomic bomb. And then there became another discussion within the same group of the Manhattan Project about the development of what they were calling a superbomb, a thermonuclear weapon, and Teller was very much on the side of we should make this thing.

This this is something we should invest in. Uh. And then there were other scientists like Oppenheimer, who said this is a bad idea, we should not do this thing. And there was a lot of disagreement, which led to some pretty controversial stuff down the line. But at any rate, you had Teller advocating for this. Now, why did he had the cap for this? Well, he grew up in Europe during a very tumultuous time and developed a distinct

dislike for fascism and communism before leaving to come to America. Yeah, he saw Europe being torn apart. I mean it was already uh, it had already gone through World War One and was entering World War two, or was about to enter World War two by the time he was leaving, and things just got worse from there. So in his mind, one of the worst things in the world was the

formation of the Soviet Union. He saw communism as being probably the greatest danger to the human race, and his argument was that if we don't pursue this sort of weapons program, this arms race, the Soviet Union certainly will. So if we don't do it, we're gonna be left

behind and we'll be vulnerable. The only way to ensure that we're safe is to also engage in an arms race, to develop these incredibly destructive weapons and thus be a big enough threat where the Soviet Union would never attack us. I mean, we would surely never attack anyone else unprovoked. So this is just for us to make sure that they don't attack us. That was the That was the

general philosophy. So build up your arms to the point where you would be such a destructive force that it would be crazy to attack you, which is again very similar to what we've already talked about right. So now we have gigantic nuclear stockpiles on Earth, yes, as a result of this doctrine. But this is this is interesting because I feel like, while on one hand, it's not a very friendly sounding doctrine, some people might still argue for the wisdom of mad Well, it's there. I mean,

there would be a lot of people. I think it is completely wrong to say that it would make war obsolete. I mean, there have been tons of wars since nuclear weapons were invented, you know, involving nuclear powers. But it's some people I think might still say that, well, maybe the presence of all these nuclear weapons did prevent all out war between say the United States and the Soviet Union. We just have to keep in mind that there have been tons of proxy wars throughout the years, fought by

these powers sort of through other countries. And sure so, so essentially what you're saying is the existence of thermonuclear weapons has prevented a thermonuclear war. That without the existence of these thermonuclear weapons in one or other of the parties, the possibility of thermonuclear war rises. But because you have this this balance where you have people, you know, who realized what the implications of starting such a war would

be it hasn't happened. Yeah, even if you were to agree with this idea, you might not necessarily think it's good for the world as a whole. It might be better for the people living in the United States and the Soviet Union and not so much for their allies. Uh. But I'm not even saying I agree with this. I just wanted to say, well, this is one that we can't put it in the totally ridiculous camp because I think there are still people who think that mutually assured

destruction had some kind of effectiveness. Now, this has also led to the very popular trope of creating a doomsday device that is so dangerous that that's what protects you from attack, right right. The idea of a fail deadly device as depicted in the movie Doctor Strangelove, which how how would something like a fail deadly device work? Well, Doctor strange Love. The way it works is that it's a device that, once initiated, cannot be canceled and and

and Dr Strangelove. It's it's the Soviet Union that has built a device that will automatically activate if any sort of oncoming attack, bombing attack were to target the Soviet Union and wants it detects such an attack, it then initiates this device, which is you can't turn it off, and it's designed to kill essentially everything. It's automatic. Yeah, and because you can't turn it off, then the ideas that's the perfect deterrent, because you just tell everyone, hey,

if you attack us, this thing goes on. It kills everybody, and we can't stop it. We even if we want to, we cannot stop this thing. And uh, the the main character or the title character of the movie, Dr Strangelove, he's not the main character, but he is the title character, points out that this particular kind of device is only useful if the world knows about it, if it's secret,

as it is in the movie. But then it turns out like the Russian and the Russian Inveastador was like, well, we're going to have a big event next week, unfortunately forgotten type of thing. And uh, supposedly Dr Strangelove himself was based off of Teller. Yeah, that's the that's the rumor. Although whether or not that's true, I do not know, but it's um, it's certainly interesting that, uh, you know this this kind of idea has filtered into the fiction

as well as into reality. This is also what fed into that Star Wars program we talked about earlier, the idea that, well, if the Soviet Union also has these major, massive weapons and we have these massive weapons, do we really feel comfortable that just the presence of those weapons is enough to deter a thermonuclear war? What if we could end up creating a system that would shoot down enemy weapons so that we remained safe. And that was

what really led to this, that strategic defense initiative. And tell her was a major opponent for that. He he really wanted to see this enacted. Uh. Ultimately, that technology did not prove to be very reliable and it didn't really seem like it would actually do what it was supposed to do. Um at the time. We probably could develop much better technology now, but it's a very different

world now because the Cold War is over. Sure, So even if we accept that, Okay, what if we believe that mutually shared destruction prevented all out nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, it still didn't prevent all kinds of other smaller wars during that time period. And we can't say that it will necessarily always work

in the future. I mean, it's something that depends on everybody being sort of rational and self interested, and on your technology being reliable and not breaking and not just There are a lot of contingencies that go into this being a good strategy for avoiding major warfare, right, Not mistaking a flock of geese for incoming missile attack that

kind right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you could argue that saying mutually assured destruction is the reason we haven't had a nuclear war is equivalent to saying, hey, I've got this magic rock that keeps tigers away. Do you see any tigers here that proves it works? Right? I meant, yeah, So we don't want to just be doom and gloom here. I mean, that's so let's stop talking about weapons and look at other ways technology could in fact prevent all war in the future and lead to a happy, peaceful

flower time. Yeah. This is more of the idealistic version of people who came up with technologies and and the their reasoning behind why they thought the technology they had either developed or advocated for would end war. And one of them goes back to uh a fellow named Mark Coni. You know, he didn't just play the momba. No, he did not listen to the radio. UD listen to the radio. He made the radio make noise. Uh so Marconi often credited as the inventor of the radio. Can you pronounce

his first name? Can I? I could try Googli Elmo, Googli, Googli Elmo. Yeah, I would say, but my my, sorry, I imagine Elmo from Sesame Street, but with googly eyes. My my. Italian is worse than any of the other foreign languages I don't speak. It's probably the worst out of all of them. Well, Greek is maybe worse. Please enjoy our ignorance at any rate. Yeah, so Marconi, who is credited as the inventor of the radio. I know the Tesla fans out there are up in arms, and

I agree. Marconi used a lot of Tesla's patents, according to Tesla's like, he's a good fellow. He's using seventeen of my patents. But but he is the first person to transmit a an encoded letter in Morse code across the Atlantic, and that's why he is often referred to as the inventor of the radio. So he's into wireless

very much. So. He believed that we were going to enter a wireless age where we wouldn't just have wireless communication, we'd have wire a less power, which goes back to what Tesla believed to He was very much an advocate for that as well. But he also thought we'd have wireless commerce and wireless fertilization. I don't know what that means, but yeah. There was an article where a reporter had

interviewed Marconi's in a Technical World magazine in October nineteen twelve. Yeah, so this way back in nineteen twelve, and and Marconi was kind of just thinking out loud about the possibilities of the future. I mean, think about this. This is an era where we just had really mastered the the harnessing of electromagnetic radiation for the purposes of communication. It seemed to at this point like anything could potentially be possible. Well, and let's go right ahead and say it. I believe

radio certainly did change the world absolutely. I mean it changed the world even you would say changed the world almost definitely for the better in lots and lots of ways. But when he says, quote, the coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous. Yeah,

it turned out a little bit wrong. Now, I greatly admire the reason behind what he said, you know, because it now grant it assumes that people will try to comport themselves with compassion and rationality and also let go of things that are culturally ingrained for generations, sometimes millennia in some areas, and that is a lot to ask for.

But his idea was that this wireless era would result in a world where we are able to understand one another and communicate with one another so freely that we would end up resolving disagreements before it would ever get to a point where warfare would even be a consideration. I mean, I don't want to say this about someone who's obviously a brilliant man, much smarter than me. But that's so naive, it is, it's but it's so sweet you want it to be true. Yeah, the the idea that, well,

maybe we're just having lack of communication. Yeah, we're not getting through to each other. But if we have wireless radio going from every country to every other country, we can just talk it out. Now. The truly ironic part of this is that radio would play an instrumental role in warfare. Everything from communication to radar and all sorts of other applications. I mean, not to mention just stoking anger around the world with talk radio hosts. Yeah, well,

propaganda is a huge part of it. I mean, and in fact, propaganda, you could argue, would be the opposite of what Marconi was envisioning, instead of it being this kind of nationalistic approach where you know, it's it's a very simple US versus them story where you make us as as noble as possible and them as evil and wicked as possible in your in your narrative. I mean, that's hell, that's that's probably. It seems to me exactly the opposite of what Marconi's idealistic vision of the future

would have been. He also thought with this wireless age that we would probably have more access to resources than we do now, which would help alleviate the reasons for going to war in the first place, not just communication but resources. Well, he's not the only person in history. In fact, he's not the only famous, brilliant person in history to have predicted that changes in access to resources

would be able to obviate the need for war. I mean, there is an idea that Okay, at least a large number of the struggles that we experience in our lives are over resources. We need food, we need water, we need space and shelter, and so we are I mean, life is a struggle. We are competing for things that we need. I wonder how much you can really chalk war up to this. But let's take a look at

somebody who thought that you basically could. So you're talking about the chemist Pierre Yogene Mascelen Bertel Yeah, Bertolo say important chemist, very important chemist, brilliant man, absolutely brilliant man. And uh he had some pretty pretty amazing things, some amazing predictions that he made. He was also interviewed for a magazine article. This was in McClure's magazine in September eight and the article was titled Foods in the year

two thousand Professor Bernelow's theory that chemistry will displace agriculture. Now, some of his predictions in here, while they haven't exactly come true, are kind of perceptive of some of the food innovations we might see coming down the road. I mean, obviously not by the year two thousand, but still on the way, and not not not solely through chemistry, which was his his vision. He was we now have lab grown beef. Absolutely yes. So he was looking at the

world through the eyes of a chemist. And this is right of the era where synthesizing chemicals was starting to really become, uh, you know, an amazing industry. And he foresaw an era where we be able to synthesize organic compounds as easily as anything else, to the point where we could synthesize in the lab anything. We could synthesize meat, we could synthesize vegetables, we could synthesize alcohol and tobacco.

And his idea was that once we get to this world, which he thought would be around the year two thousand. I've got more of his quote in a second that um will will really kind of pull in his idea of why this would change the world. He was sure that this kind of development would mean that one you would end up eliminating a lot of the problems of the world because you would have a surplus of resources, no longer scarcity, which would be a good thing on

its own, of course. And keep in mind this is late nineteenth century Europe, a time when there were some serious famines going on around Europe that were leading to lots of of strife, and so hunger was definitely one of the big motivators. And he thought, well, if you can eliminate hunger, you've eliminated a large reason why countries

go to war. Take care of that resources problem. He also thought that we would develop food that is so delicious and nutritious and edifying that it would improve the moral nature of mankind itself. So in other words, you would eat this food and you would become a better person, and that would also help lead to the end divorce. So not only would we have a surplus of resources, but we'd be better people, and therefore we would not go to war because we would have compassion for our

fellow men, which is again an interesting concept. Uh, the idea that you know, make sure you get your your fruits and vegim otherwise you'll go to war with Spain. I mean, that's kind of well, there were a lot of weird ideas floating around at the time about how nutrition like created the personality of a nation and stuff like that. Yeah, they thought weird stuff in Europe in the nineteenth century. This is true. Here is one of

his longer quotes, and I think it's absolutely charming. Again, you probably would have to chalk this up as being naive, but still very charming. Man should grow in sweetness and nobility because he will have done with war, with existence based upon the slaughter of beasts. Perhaps this is only a dream. Remember, synthetic chemistry, or something that we might call spiritual chemistry, will develop means to as profoundly alter man's moral nature as material chemistry will change the conditions

of his environment. There is no fear that art, beauty, and the charm of human existence are destined to just appear. If the surface of the earth ceases to be divided and i may say disfigured by the geometrical devices of agriculture, it will regain its natural verdure of woods and flowers. Man becoming familiar with the principles and responsibilities of self

government will be more easily governed. The favored portions of the earth will become vast gardens in which the human race will dwell amid a peace, a luxury, and an abundance, recalling the golden age of legendary lore. These are dreams, of course, but science may surely be permitted to dreams. Sometimes if it were not for our dreams, where would it be our impulse to progress, which I think is a beautiful thought. Yeah, sure, I I wish it had turned out that way. Yeah. Well, I mean this is

like Tesla's case. This is one where we haven't actually achieved the technological advance that he says is required to bring about this future. So unlike mutually assured destruction or unlike wireless radio, it's not one we can look at and say, well, the technology is here, and your prediction

fell flat. The technology is just not here yet, and maybe it never will be so well yeah, and even if it does get here, and even if we get to a point where it's incredibly nutritious, I think this, this moral improvement is probably based upon more nineteenth century philosophy than than our current understanding. Also, you know, unless you just take it off the menu, you're not gonna stop me from eating some of the horrible, horrible food

I love. The other thing I would say about this is, obviously, at the ground level, the struggle over resources does matter very much. But we're talking about war here, and we're talking about nations mobilizing vast organized forces and superior weaponry. I mean, at that level, how many wars are started by people who aren't getting enough to eat? Yeah, a lot of those. A lot of reasons for war are

outside of resources. Resources often play a very important part, Oh sure, sure, but there they might be resources beyond what we need to survive and be healthy, you know, we might. I can see a world where everybody has complete access to nutritious pills that are delicious and fill you with happiness and butterflies and all that, and and

that would be a great thing in itself. But I still can see in that world people going to war over other things, over boundaries of national territory, over ideologies certainly whether religious or or over ethnic division, and just hatred.

I mean, there are lots of reasons that people do the horrible thing we call war, and not all of them have to do with competing for resources, right, There are a lot of other fundamental issues that would have to be addressed, and this particular approach would not necessarily address us. So how do we get to a point where we're able to get a different perspective, be able to to expand our minds and and see what's really important? I mean, what does it take? Maybe once we colonized space,

Does this sidmire civilization? Is that what we're doing now? No, No, I want to tap into one more idea here. And this isn't so much a specific prediction of one person, but there's a general idea that's been propagated by several people, including some former astronauts, known as the overview effect. Now, that was coined by Frank White, right, that particular term. Yeah,

that's right. Uh So. The idea is when astronauts go up into say the International Space Station, or to a space capsule, or orbiting the Earth and traveling to the moon, whatever it is, and they look back down on the Earth. It's striking that many astronauts have independently report did this feeling of euphoria and connectedness and togetherness with all of humanity, where national boundaries seem to fade away and the idea of human strife suddenly seems very ridiculous and points because

we're all in it together, right. I mean, it's when you're from that distance and you see that everybody, every single human being that is alive, with the exception of less than a dozen people, are in your field of view, right then, because they're all on that planet. It's hard to say that, you know, why are why are their divisions? I mean, why aren't they're more? Why isn't there more of a connectiveness? Were clearly all in the same place.

We're all on this one planet. This is also where you get this idea that a lot of astronauts report feeling that the world is is ultimately a acentual place. It's this tiny blue spec the tiny blue dot that you know, you heard Carl Sagan talk about another phrase you often here, hanging in space. I mean it is it.

It's it's floating out there, just vulnerable to the universe, and this is where we all have to live, and that this results in this cognitive shift, that that is a phrase that's come up, cognitive shift because it's not just reported as a sort of momentary feeling of euphoria revelation, but something that stays with astronauts after they return to Earth.

And so if it really does happen to to everybody. Now, obviously not all astronauts have talked about this, but not all astronauts have been asked about it, So it may very well be that this is a universal or near universal experience. But some have chosen to talk about and

some may not have right now. Sure, yeah, so we don't know yet, but the fact that so many of them experience this does make someone wonder, well, if we become a space faring species and everybody can have that profound moment of looking back at the Earth and realizing the togetherness that we really must feel in the face of the vast universe that wants to kill us all, then maybe it would become widespread enough in humanity that

war just couldn't happen anymore. Yeah. That's a tough solution, right, getting a lot of people, I mean we're talking. I like the idea of it. I mean, if you if you narrow it down to say, let's get the people who would be the ones responsible for waging war in the first place, like the ones who would be the ones to initiate war, take all the executives in generals and everybody up into space, then maybe that's a little

more mageable than say everybody. Um. Yeah, this is one of those things where I don't doubt that there is a really profound moment that a person experiences when they are able to look back on the Earth and see it as this hanging globe in space. I don't doubt it at all. I wish I could experience it. It's one of those things that I think would really mean

a lot to me personally. But because I seriously doubt that this is ever going to become something within the near future anyway that the average person or even the quote unquote important people would be able to do, it's it's one that I fear is moot in this discussion, at least for you know, the the near future, like the next twenty to fifty years. Um, maybe I'm wrong, which would be the best That would be the best mistake I ever made. I would love to be wrong

about that. Well. I mean, as with what we were just talking about with Berna Low having widespread nutritious food, this is something that would be good in its own right, and we can see reasons that it would be great to get lots of people into space for exploration and

scientific discovery, even if it didn't cause this. So I mean, if this is a side effect of something that would be good anyway, that that's a sort of double plus, unlike something like mutually issued destruction, where you're just hoping it works out and it's not a side effect of

something that's nice. Yeah, so Joe, what if, um, what if during this era of space exploration, the astronauts go up, they look back on Earth, they have this profound moment, they go to Mars and then declare war on each other because they're like, this is Mars. It's totally different. Well, and it's Mars, the planet of war. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a named Mars Mars. I think it was the Mars bar Candy Company if I'm not mistaken. You know, I have a need to renew their contract with NASA

or it's gonna expire and become the Snickers planet. Yeah. I haven't. I haven research that. I mean, I know Disney Disney name Pluto, so um yeah, I don't know. I have to they did not. Okay, look this is stopformation. This isn't stuff to blow your mind. I don't know science. No, no, obviously,

I'm I'm just having a little goofy fun here. But this is really like, on one hand, you could say we're kind of bumming everybody out because we're talking about these technologies that were meant to end war but have it and at least in a couple of cases, the jury could still be out. But I like to think of it as there's no reason why we can't truly examine the the concept of war and really work towards

eliminating it, whether technologically or otherwise. I think probably otherwise, because a lot of the technological solutions pretty much end up with, well, we won't have war because we'll wipe everybody out. Yeah, I mean, there are also plenty of

doomsday science fiction scenarios about that. Right, you create the perfect artificial intelligence that's super smart, it's super humanly smart, and you asked the computer, you say, I want you to end all war on Earth, and the computer then runs through all the various scenarios and says that the most realistic one is to wipe out all of humanity. Therefore you cannot have war anymore. And then the humans go, whoops,

that's not a great it's not a great outcome. So but you know, I am, I am a peaceful kind of person myself. I really hope that that we continue. I like the optimism and the idealism, even if it does border on the naive. It appeals to me that people who are really sincere in that and who really uh pursue that are also these folks who are far more intelligent than I am. I mean not one of these people is a dummy. No, they're all like absolutely brilliant.

I mean they're their discoveries, their contributions to science. You know, I talk about Teller and his he's often called the father the hydrogen bomb. He made so many different contributions to science that have nothing to do with war, but that's what he's known for. But all of these people had made amazing contributions to the world knowledge and too technology and science. And so I certainly hope that we see more idealistic innovators out there. Uh Like I feel

that that. Uh In some ways, Musk comes across as that he Elon Musk. He's certainly also an entrepreneur, but he does seem to genuinely believe in a lot of the idealistic things he talks. Well, he's one of those big thinkers, he is. He's certainly he's certainly more intelligent than I am as well. I have no problems. Don't mean like he has a big brain. I mean like he has big projects. He's he's willing to take on

things that might see ridiculous at first glance. And I think it's good to have people like that absolutely, because even when we say this on forward thinking all the time, even if you fail in your efforts, along the way, you learn and by learning probably going to be useful to somebody down. Yeah, and of course there are scientists who say you learn more by failing than you ever do by succeeding. If you succeed, all you do is confirm something you thought. If you fail, you realize you're

wrong and you have to learn something else. So that's kind of an interesting perspective as well. Well. Joe, thank you so much for joining me today and thank you for the amazing concept here. This was a lot of fun to talk about what it was much pleasure. I appreciate it, and I'll probably be asking you on again in the future. I'd love to be back. Meanwhile, you can hear us chatter about all sorts of futuristic stuff.

I'll run forward thinking, so definitely go do that. And for those of you who have any suggestions about future topics for tech stuff, make sure you let me know. Send me an email. My address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. We handle at all three is Tex stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot com