The guest
Neal Stephenson: Legendary science fiction author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Seveneves and Termination Shock. He was Blue Origin's first employee and served as Chief Futurist at the AR company Magic Leap.
What this episode covers
Neal Stephenson and Lex Fridman range across the future of humanity, from why leaving the solar system likely needs a religious (not business) motive to why chemical rockets are an accident of WWII history. Stephenson explains the solar geoengineering premise of his novel Termination Shock and argues such interventions will come from a rogue individual or government, not Western democracies. He discusses augmented vs virtual reality from his Magic Leap years, the evolution of cryptocurrency since Cryptonomicon, and the rise of memes and Dogecoin as cultural forces. The conversation closes on storytelling as an evolutionary advantage, his habit of handwriting novels, his love of Emacs and CAD tools, and reflections on truth, consciousness and the meaning of life.
Recommended on this episode
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Moby Dick
Herman Melville
“i circle back to moby dick a lot”
“i circle back to moby dick a lot um because we read it in a uh a really great english class i had in high school”— guest
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The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch
“one of the reasons i like david deutsch in particular his book the beginning of infinity”
“one of the reasons i like david deutsch in particular his book the beginning of infinity um is that he talks about the power of explanations”— guest
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The Road to Reality
Roger Penrose
“incredibly deep ... it's an amazing amazing book”
“the road to reality by roger penrose which is just incredibly deep it starts with like two plus two equals four ... it's an amazing amazing book”— guest
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Have Space Suit—Will Travel
Robert A. Heinlein
“i was always a big fan of has have space suit will travel ... it's just a fun good read”
“i was always a big fan of has have space suit will travel which is a heinlein young adult book it's just uh it's just a fun good read”— guest
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The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
“it's easily the the lord of the rings”
“if we do include it then it's easily the the lord of the rings”— guest
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The Expanse
James S. A. Corey
“one of the things i like about the expanse”
“one of the things i like about the expanse is the fact that the people who are trying to build the starship ... are doing it for religious reasons”— guest
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Dr. Grordbort's Invaders
Magic Leap
“realized the potential of ar gaming in a way that i don't think anything else has before or since”
“a great team in wellington new zealand that that made a game uh called uh dr groybrot's uh invaders that um realized the potential of ar gaming”— guest
ProductRecommended
Fusion 360
Autodesk
“i can spend hours in that trying to create imagine and create the things i want to create”
“i've had to learn how to get good at using a cad program ... i use one called fusion 360. and i can spend hours in that”— guest
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Mathematica
Wolfram Research
“another app i spend a lot of time in is mathematica”
“another app i spend a lot of time in is mathematica okay and when i do a mathematica notebook if i'm trying to figure something out”— guest
The guest's own work
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
“you write both historical fiction like world war ii in kryptonomicon and science fiction looking both into the past and the future”— Lex Fridman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
“exploring ideas in mathematics science cryptography money linguistics philosophy and virtual reality from his early book snow crash to his new one”— Lex Fridman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Termination Shock
Neal Stephenson
“from his early book snow crash to his new one called termination shock he doesn't just write novels”— Lex Fridman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson
“this is the theme of a book i wrote called the diamond age which you know talks about a book that essentially does that”— guest
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
“i did some some reading of husserole when i was writing anathem um and he's a you know 20th century phenomenologist”— guest
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Reamde
Neal Stephenson
“if you like sort of techno thrillers that are set in a modern day setting but aren't science fictiony per se then uh reem d”— guest
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
“maybe seven eaves because it's got big themes um it's you know it's about heavy heavy things happening to the human race”— guest
BookBy the guestISBN verified
The Baroque Cycle
Neal Stephenson
“you've been handwriting your work for the past 20 years since writing the baroque cycle what are the pros and cons”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
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The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“i read a good chunk of the gulag archipelago when i was a teenager um because my my grandfather had it in his house”— guest
BookReferencedISBN verified
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
“you have like a man search for meaning which is the stories of uh the story of a man in a concentration camp basically finding beauty in life”— Lex Fridman
BookReferencedISBN verified
Gravitation
Misner, Thorne and Wheeler
“you could just spend your whole life with a single textbook there's enough in that textbook ... measner thorne and wheeler gravitation”— guest
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
“so i read a lot of that stuff uh for sure the annotated sherlock holmes”— guest
MediaReferenced
Star Trek
Gene Roddenberry
“when in star trek in classic star trek you had to to really suspend your disbelief to to think that um spock was half vulcan and half human”— guest
MediaReferenced
Ex Machina
Alex Garland
“alex garland director who did who wrote directed ex machina i think about ai movies and the more care you take in making it accurate the more compelling”— Lex Fridman
ProductReferenced
Magic Leap
Magic Leap
“there's still a belief ... that the magic leap never shipped anything but ... you can go to their website and buy one of these devices”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- Stephenson argues chemical rockets are merely an accident of history, born from Hitler's V2 program and the coincidental WWII development of nuclear weapons that needed delivery vehicles.
- He flatly states there is no business model for colonizing Mars or building generation ships; interstellar travel would only happen for spiritual or religious reasons.
- Reveals that at Blue Origin they studied exotic propulsion including Project Orion (atomic-bomb pulse), laser-and-ice systems, tall towers, and giant bullwhips.
- Predicts solar geoengineering will never come from Western democracies but from a single individual or a unilateral government once climate damage gets bad enough.
- On UFOs, he doubts they are aliens, joking that if they were they'd be a 'really dumb drone' or a teenager's science fair experiment that got lost.
- Discloses Magic Leap pivoted from consumer entertainment to industrial/commercial applications in April 2020, which he found heartbreaking as a futurist.
- Admits he has handwritten all his novels for ~20 years with fountain pens because it slows him down and produces higher first-draft quality.
Worth remembering
- An Apollo program veteran once told him the moon landings were 'communism's greatest achievement.'
- Scientists first confirmed volcanic sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere when an Australian scientist licked an aircraft windscreen and found it 'painfully acid.'
- Stephenson is obsessed with tiling a globe with hexagons but you always need exactly 12 pentagons, an intractable constraint Uber later solved in code.
- His theory: storytelling is an evolutionary development letting cave-dwellers transmit survival knowledge by building a 'virtual reality' in listeners' heads.
- He praises YouTube tutorials because the instructor never rolls their eyes no matter how many times you hit pause and rewind.
- Grew up in Ames, Iowa near wrestling legend Dan Gable, who reportedly stayed up all night doing pull-ups when jailed for a minor offense.
- Notes Cryptonomicon's crypto schemes had an 'underpants gnomes' quality, build the system then make money somehow, with the middle step left out.
- Cites David Brin's idea that the only way to settle political arguments is to force people to wager real money on their claims.
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