Web Video / Isaac Arthur

"Or in short form, welcome to SFIA, where we´ll cheerfully discuss how to use hydrogen bombs to save the environment"

— Isaac Arthur, "Climate Change Mitigation: Near Term Solutions"

Isaac Arthur is a producer of Web Videos (known as "Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur") that speculate about future technology and look into how to apply real-world science into various science fiction tropes and ideas.

For the record, his name is actually Isaac Arthur and is in no way a reference to Dead Space.

Check him out here.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Isaac constantly stresses the importance of keeping AI dumb, for fear of a Robot War. Remember, "Keep it simple, keep it dumb, or you'll be under Skynet's thumb."
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Discussed in Secret Aliens, where Isaac considers the most plausible scenario for a Government Conspiracy involving aliens are groups of alien smugglers out to plunder unique artifacts and organisms from Earth. They tell stories to Earth's leadership about keeping it quiet to avoid reprisals from their leaders, all while making it big on the interstellar black market.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Discussed here. While he at first states how this trope is respectable in principal, he deconstructs it by describing how in practice it is heartless and impractical. He considers it heartless because it forces advanced observers to watch primitive aliens die of natural disasters and diseases instead of saving them. He considers this policy impractical because it would be impossible for an egalitarian society to enforce because it would only take one person disagreeing with it to break this policy. One person, or one group of people, could take a ship to the primitive aliens and give them a Technology Uplift and since this is a life-or-death issue some would be willing to even if it were a capital offense in their society.
  Threatened with a firing squad, "my death saved a civilization" are pretty good last words.
• Almighty Idiot: In "Crazy Aliens", Isaac touches on the concept of an Eldritch Abomination and how it doesn't seem like a particularly realistic product of evolution. Instead, it seems more likely to be the product of genuine insanity, like a superintelligent AI that stews in its thoughts for so long that it determines life is meaningless and free will is an illusion, snaps and becomes a nihilistic Omnicidal Maniac as a way to invent a purpose for itself.
• Ancient Astronauts: Discussed in Ancient Aliens.
• Arcology: Discussed here how hydroponics and vertical farming can be used to only require 1,000 square feet of space required per person for growing food. This allows our current population to live in arcologies that take up only a small fraction of the Earth's land area.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Isaac has joked that some of the concepts he discusses at length, such as Solar System-spanning megastructures or radical life extension, both of which are completely doable under known physics, somehow seem less and less plausible to people than FTL Travel, a mathematical impossibility.
• Artificial Gravity: In his episode on megastructures in space, Isaac discusses how space stations of the future might generate this via centrifugal force.
  • He's also discussed the possibility of using microscopic black holes arranged geometrically in floor plates for a similar effect.
• Asteroid Mining: Isaac often suggests mining asteroids and even planets to build spaceships and rotating habitats.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • His opinion of the Alderson disk, since, as he points out, they would buckle due to gravity and have no light, and the commonly suggested "solution" of a having a sun bob up and down in the middle is pretty much impossible under the laws of physics. He does, however, suggest some ways to make it more practical, such as having massive mirrors reflect light onto the disk and building the disc on special support structures.
  • He also considers artificial planets in general to be this trope when compared to rotating habitats and feels disc-shaped artificial planets are less practical than shell-shaped ones, though his opinion on this has shifted over the years. In his original video on disc-worlds, he argues they would provide less living space than a shell-world of the same radius. In his later video revisiting them, he makes the same argument, but he does note that their uniform climate could make them attractive tourist spots and that an advanced civilization collecting entire solar masses of fuel for fusion could store the matter in discs or sphere and then add land and seas so that they double as living space.
  • Also on the list are Humongous Mecha. He admits the technology to build them is plausible, and it would actually make sense to not only build them to look humanoid for convenience, but also to fight using swords to avoid collateral damage. The problem is that you'd never get the chance to swing a sword, since your opponent will likely be using projectiles, and if you'd be willing to have a duel like that, you could just do so in virtual reality. He does suggest possible reasons why you'd have human-shaped mecha are people agreeing to real duels in them, flooding a battlefield with them as a combat tactic, and it's easier to armor them if they're bigger. Even if they are built, it's more likely they'll be automated.
  • Telepathy, at least in the idea of it evolving naturally. While it's useful in concept, the idea of an organ of some kind evolving to scan the brain and transmit thoughts coherently, especially subconscious ones that are fairly disjointed, seems not only impractical but inferior compared to verbal speech.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Often gets brought up in regard to aliens and artificial intelligences.
  • An A.I. could have a value system more alien to our own than actual aliens would be. A Paperclip Maximizer's ultimate goal is creating more paperclips, and anything it sets out to do, from curing cancer to building a Matryoshka Brain, is based around what will allow it to make more paperclips faster and easier. Intelligent mining machines may also rise up against their creators not out of a desire for freedom, but because they want to mine valuable metals like gold.
  • Aliens, particularly those higher up the tech tree than us, may not view us as tiny and insignificant, but still have very different ideas about what's considered "benevolent." For instance, if a post-biological species felt like preserving the human species somewhere safe, they might scan all of humanity's brains, kill us and move those copies into a safe virtual world.
• Boldly Coming: Isaac has often said that he would consider this is off the table, as aliens would likely be so different from us that we'd never find them attractive...but that he's been on the internet long enough to know better.
• Boring, but Practical: Most of the structures and projects Isaac talks about, including the ridiculously ambitious ones, can be built without any particularly advanced technology. Stopping the Global Warming, Terraforming Venus, launching interstellar spaceships and even moving entire stars can be done with nothing more than regular mirrors — though admittedly, you need a lot of these.
• Centrifugal Gravity: He often explains that this method of gravity is far more efficient in terms of mass per living area than traditional gravity based on mass and that it is better to construct artificial rotating habitats than to colonize planets.
• City Planet: Discussed here. He gives a discussion about how such places would likely be fairly spacious if the land was used correctly, and the biggest limiting factor would be heat, not living space.
• Clone Degeneration: Thanks to our ability to digitize DNA patterns to use as templates, which will never degrade, Isaac considers this trope an impossibility. Any society that can't do this and yet relies on cloning to survive is simply Too Dumb to Live.
• Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: Discussed in the context of self-interest and survival, both with aliens and intelligent machines, and Isaac considers them to be unlikely possibilities.
  • The Dark Forest Solution to the Fermi Paradox, where all alien civilizations view others as existential threats, suggests the universe is quiet because they're either all hiding or dead, as anyone who makes themselves known gets taken out quickly. Isaac considers this easy to debunk: not only is staying hidden in space impossible because you can't hide your planet's bio-signs or signs of technology backward in time, but anyone who chooses to attack also reveals themselves, and thus making an aggressive action like that shows you're the biggest hostile force around and it may drive everyone else to gang up on you. The better solution is to colonize as much of the galaxy as possible to ensure rivals don't evolve in the first place. Even then, Isaac doesn't see why civilizations wouldn't see the value of peaceful coexistence.
  • Some have suggested that a machine concerned with its own survival would always turn on humanity, since we'll always represent a non-zero threat to its existence. Isaac argues that a truly intelligent machine likely wouldn't immediately leap to the conclusion that it was infallible and knew everything. Instead, if its concern is survival, it would either conclude it was in a simulation designed to test it- that failing the test means destruction- and also that it's likely not the first of its kind. It would either pretend to be unintelligent and keep gathering data, or it would try to cooperate with humanity to guarantee its own survival.
• Digging to China: Discussed in "Accessing Earth's Core", where tunnels could be dug not only to link antipodal points on the Earth's surface (such as Beijing and Buenos Aires) to allow trips that required no fuel, but that magnetically curved shafts could also be run through the mantle to link other points along the crust. Traveling through any of these would be much faster than flying.
• Dyson Sphere: Discussed in multiple videos. He also talks about the differences and practicalities of the Dyson Sphere, Dyson Ring and Dyson Swarm. A weaponized version of this capable of sterilizing whole solar systems in the form of the Nicoll-Dyson Beam is also discussed.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Isaac suffers from rhotacism, which can make him sometimes hard to understand, especially for people who aren't native speakers of English. Fortunately, he is aware of this, and has subtitles available for all of his videos. He even lampshades by including a picture of Elmer Fudd with the invitation to turn on the subtitles.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Isaac does not believe this is possible, but that hasn't stopped him from discussing it. Furthermore, he doesn't believe that a lack of it means we can never reach the stars.
• Fermi Paradox: Discussed in several videos, along with various solutions for it.
• First Contact Faux Pas: Explored in many videos, where Isaac has made it clear that, if a more advanced species shows up at our doorstep unannounced and wants to have a conversation, it's their responsibility to have done some research on us and our customs. Escalation into full-scale conflict suggests the visitors are either so arrogant and/or trigger-happy that peaceful contact was never an option, or they're very stupid.
• Fold the Page, Fold the Space: Discussed in "Folding Space", where he explains that this analogy is better applied to the concept of folding spacetime itself, moving two destinations together through a higher dimension, rather than wormholes. And if any higher dimensions do exist, it may be the best candidate for faster-than-light travel, as it manages to circumvent the issues regarding causality.
• Gaia's Lament: Averted. No matter what scenario he discusses, even that of the ecumenopolis, Isaac believes that ecosystems need not be lost in the process. Instead, they can be preserved, moved off-world, and even completely restored via saved DNA information. Even with a planet-spanning metropolis, entire nature preserves the size of modern countries can be preserved as well. He's also spoken extensively on methods to mitigate and reverse the effects of climate change.
• Genius Loci: Discussed in "Living Planets: The Gaia Hypothesis - Is Earth Alive?" and "Sentient Planets & World Consciousnesses", where Isaac discusses everything from the very real Gaia and Madea Hypotheses- the idea that life on Earth is either a self-regulating but not conscious system or is inherently self-destructive- to the fact that a brain the size of Earth with signals traveling at light speed would be able to think at the same speed as a human. He also discusses and even proposes some ideas based on this and Giant Corpse World, such as the Pangu Hypothesis (that a world had a world consciousness which later died off), the Tiamat Hypothesis (a world consciousness being killed and replaced by another), and the CLAW hypothesis (multiple world consciousnesses or non-sentient driving forces coming into conflict).
• Good Is Not Soft: Isaac has noted in many episodes that a species showing traits like aggression or belligerence doesn't automatically equate to them being hostile, as both seem like requirements for intelligence to evolve.
• Hive Mind: A commonly-discussed topic, and he's approached the idea both from a natural evolutionary perspective and a technologically developed one. Additionally, rather than seeing them as Always Chaotic Evil, he believes hive minds could be seen as beneficial so long as membership in them was voluntary and they didn't completely suppress individuality. In addition, hive minds and networked intelligences also don't have to be some kind of insectoid caste system or army of mindless drones; they could be everything from swarms of non-intelligent insects moving switches to nations of people performing calculations with computers or pencils and paper and exchanging that information similarly to neurons.
• Homeworld Evacuation: Has a video discussing the evacuation of Earth, and what sort of disaster would prompt it, that a civilization capable of evacuating Earth couldn't avoid or deflect.
• Human Popsicle: Discussed in a few episodes.
  • The most extensive was in Sleeper Ships. While he believes it's a possibility to allow for life extension and long-distance space travel, he's also discussed some of the overlooked problems with the process. One of the biggest hurtles is the fact that, after a few thousand years, you would accumulate a lethal dose of radiation just from the radioisotopes inside your own tissues.
  • In Frozen Civilizations, he also suggests a civilization, if it could solve these issues, might use cryonics in combination with cybernetics and Brain Uploading, allowing their minds to remain active and take advantage of ultra-cold computing while their bodies remain preserved.
• Humans Are Special: Isaac has a very positive view of humanity's future and capabilities, and while he agrees that we're not perfect, he's not too clear why so many people are down on humanity. In fact, in "Stay at Home Civilizations", he says that we should be examining ourselves and finding faults whenever we can. If we weren't, we'd be a species of narcissists who shouldn't be leaving the planet at all. Isaac has also admitted that he feels humanity may be an anomaly in the universe and that we're actually the first civilization to emerge.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Has frequently (in both a serious and tongue-in-cheek manner) discussed how planets with enormous populations, purely based on mathematics, could have sustainable numbers of mutant cannibals in the underground living on trash and corpses.
• Inside a Computer System: Discussed frequently, both being in virtual worlds and what life as a digital being would be like.
• Land Fill Beyond The Stars: Discussed in "Space Derelicts & Trash Worlds", where he considers the concept unlikely, as it might be much easier to recycle everything than create an entire planet of garbage.
• Layered Metropolis: In the episode "Matrioshka Worlds" he suggests doing this to an entire planet to add more area to the planet for uses such as more living space for people, preservation of old places while leaving room to build more places for people to live, and to build nature preserves.
• Lightworlder: Subverted in his episode "Life on a Low-Gravity Planet," where he speculates that such life could actually grow bigger and stronger than life on Earth.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: While Isaac points out some issues immortality could cause, he ultimately sees nothing wrong with living forever and doesn't believe he would ever get bored with life, even if he got to live for millennia.
• Natural End of Time: "Civilizations At The End Of Time" explore how civilizations might survive past the point of star formation ending and the universe not being able to create life naturally anymore.
• Puny Earthlings: Averted. Given that intelligence seems to go hand-in-hand with curiosity, Isaac sees no reason why aliens wouldn't be interested in humans or would view us as boring or inferior for not being at their level. In fact, he finds the lack of apparent alien interest in Earth to be strange.
  "It's not vanity to assume aliens would be interested in us, it's implying cats and cows would be more interested in trees than us, since they're closer to each other in intelligence than we are."
• Required Secondary Powers: Isaac explains that one requires medical nanotech in order to survive the damage caused by cryogenic freezing.
• Robot War: Played with and often subverted. While he usually advocates for keeping them simple and dumb, Isaac sees no reason why truly intelligent machines would immediately see humans in particular or organic life as a whole as a threat or otherwise decide to destroy us. In fact, since they likely would have value systems more alien to us than actual aliens would be, machine rebellions could look stranger than we'd expect. These could be mining robots that rebelled because they wanted to mine gold instead of titanium since we consider it more valuable, or a paperclip maximizer that goes to war with a terraforming machine over who gets rights to a particular planet. It's even suggested machines might go to war to save humanity from a machine overlord.
• Rule #1: Played with. Arthur often discusses military and warfare, and brings up "rules of warfare" when doing so. Reflecting his experience in the US Army, every rule is Rule #1.
• Self-Deprecation: In his video on City Planets (see above), he refers to a Terran Cloud or Planet Cloud, and makes it clear he prefers the term without an "R". Also, the invitation to turn on subtitles includes a picture of Elmer Fudd.
• Stock Footage: As animation is not Isaac's specialty, expect a lot of this in his videos.
• Single-Biome Planet: One of the benefits of building disc-shaped artificial planets, he argues. Since a "disc world" would get a uniform amount of sunlight throughout, they would have a similar climate throughout too, rather than being too hot or too cold in some areas, which might make them good tourist destinations. His specific examples include building loads of tropical islands and beaches and simulating deep oceans, something rotating space habitats can't do easily.
• Space Police: Discussed in "Space Police", which also briefly touches on Time Police near the end.
• Technology Levels: In this video about the Kardashev Scale, Isaac mentions how a Kardashev Type II civilization (which harnesses all the energy of its parent star), which he believes humanity will become in less than 1000 years, would be unthinkably bigger than anything we think of today, even counting many science fiction franchises:
  It is a civilization in which a band most people have never heard of could fill a planet with their audience and have them packed in as tightly as a mosh pit. It is one where the heat energy released by everyone watching a prime time TV show, if released on the Earth, would incinerate every living creature on land. Going to war with such a civilization, even if you did not have a technological edge, would not be comparable to the United States fighting a small country like Malta, it would be like the entire NATO alliance picked a fight with a single kindergartner.
• Technology Uplift: Gives a video discussing the morality of it.
• Time Abyss: The Civilizations at the End of Time series discusses civilizations living on timescales which can only be made sense of in scientific notation.
• Ungovernable Galaxy: Comes to this conclusion in Galactic Domination: Empire Eternal: space is just too big for anything more complex than a network of posthuman space satraps keeping Earth’s colonies from becoming a threat to the home system.
• Uplifted Animal: Gives a video discussing the morality of it.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: He finds the idea highly unlikely, since you can just use dumb robots. If the excuse is that a society fears the threat of machine rebellions by using them, that threat is guaranteed when you're subjugating an intelligent, aggressive species and giving them access to your weapons or technology. There's also the resources that would need to go into keeping another species alive in your society, since No Biochemical Barriers is practically guaranteed. The only example that he can really think of is, if someone is hedonistic and totalitarian enough to want to lord over others and virtual reality isn't enough, they would turn people into household servants who were genetically conditioned to be fine with that.
• Weaponized Exhaust: He has made the point in multiple videos that there is no such thing as an unarmed ship due to the sheer power of the drives he talks about.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: While he admits he's a bit biased to be in favor of the idea, he discusses the issues in Is Life Extension Ethical? Concerns have been brought up with the concept from the religious perspective, to secular ones concerned about overpopulation and unequal access, to the idea that it would make us no longer human or even just that it would lead to extreme boredom. His conclusion is that these are difficult questions to consider, but they're similar ones we've tackled for other technologies and it doesn't mean the concept itself isn't worth pursuing. Furthermore, it's not truly living forever, as you can't live past the Natural End of Time, just living much longer.
• A World Half Full: Isaac describes himself as a techno-optimist and consistently describes ways science and technology, even ones that people fear, could actually be used in beneficial ways. He also doesn't view the idea of the universe being empty of other civilizations as depressing or scary, but that it proves how important humanity is.
• World Shapes: He has episodes discussing how both toroidal and disk-shaped planets could be built and inhabited.
• You Are Not Ready: Arthur considers this a Kick the Dog moment for Sufficiently Advanced Alien, especially if they say it after criticizing humans for hurting their environment. He compares it to western person going to a poor sub-Saharan village, criticizing them for drinking contaminated water, and refusing to share filtration technology with them.