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Michael Stevens is the creator of Vsauce, one of the most popular educational YouTube channel in the world, with over 15 million subscribers and over 1.7 billion views. His videos often ask and answer questions that are both profound and entertaining, spanning topics from physics to psychology. As part of his channel he created 3 seasons of Mind Field, a series that explored human behavior.

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So a quick and impossibly deep question, last question, about mortality.

You've spoken about death as an interesting topic.

So what do you think is the meaning of life that mortality makes very explicit?

What, you know, what does mortality in the context of the whole universe make you realize about yourself?

Well, it makes me realize that I am destined to become a notion.

I'm destined to become a memory and we can extend life.

I think there's really exciting things being done to extend life, but we still don't know how to like, you know, protect you from some accident that could happen, you know, some unforeseen thing.

Maybe we could like save my connect dome and like recreate my consciousness digitally, but even that could be lost if it's stored on a physical medium or something.

So basically, I just think that embracing and realizing how cool it is that someday I will just be an idea.

And there won't be a Michael anymore that can be like, no, that's not what I meant.

It'll just be what people like, they have to guess what I meant.

And they'll remember me and how I live on as that memory will maybe not even be who I want it to be.

But there's something powerful about that and there's something powerful about letting future people run the show themselves.

I think I'm glad to get out of their way at some point and say, all right, it's your world now.

So you, the physical entity, Michael, has have ripple effects in the space of ideas that far outlives you in ways that you can't control, but it's nevertheless fascinating to think, I mean, especially with you, you can imagine an alien species when they finally arrive and destroy all of us would watch your videos to try to figure out what were the questions that these

people- But even if they didn't, I still think that there will be ripples.

When I say memory, I don't specifically mean people remember my name and my birth date and there's a photo of me on Wikipedia.

All that can be lost, but I still would hope that people ask questions and teach concepts in some of the ways that I have found useful and satisfying.

Even if they don't know that I was the 1 who tried to popularize it, that's fine.

But if Earth was completely destroyed, like burnt to a crisp, everything on it today, what would

So we do however have the power to launch things into space to try to extend how long our memory exists.

And what I mean by that is, you know, we are recording things about the world and we're learning things and writing stories and all of this.

And preserving that is truly what I think is the essence of being a human.

We are autobiographers of the universe and we're really good at it.

We collect much more detailed memories of what's happening, much better data.

And I hope that that's kind of mine too, in terms of people remembering something or me having some kind of effect.

But even if I don't, you can't not have an effect.

thing, this is not me feeling like I hope that I have this powerful legacy.

It's like no matter who you are, you will.

But you also have to embrace the fact that that impact might look really small and that's okay.

1 of my favorite quotes is from Tessa de Derberville's and it's along the lines of the measure of your life depends on not your external displacement but your subjective experience.

If I am happy and those that I love are happy, can that be enough?


Speaker 0: So a quick and impossibly deep question, last question, about mortality. You've spoken about death as an interesting topic. Do you think about your own mortality? Yeah, every day. It's really scary.

So what do you think is the meaning of life that mortality makes very explicit? So why are you here on earth, Michael? What's the point of this whole thing? What, you know, what does mortality in the context of the whole universe make you realize about yourself? Just you, Michael Stevens.

Speaker 1: Well, it makes me realize that I am destined to become a notion. I'm destined to become a memory and we can extend life. I think there's really exciting things being done to extend life, but we still don't know how to like, you know, protect you from some accident that could happen, you know, some unforeseen thing. Maybe we could like save my connect dome and like recreate my consciousness digitally, but even that could be lost if it's stored on a physical medium or something. So basically, I just think that embracing and realizing how cool it is that someday I will just be an idea.

And there won't be a Michael anymore that can be like, no, that's not what I meant. It'll just be what people like, they have to guess what I meant. And they'll remember me and how I live on as that memory will maybe not even be who I want it to be. But there's something powerful about that and there's something powerful about letting future people run the show themselves. I think I'm glad to get out of their way at some point and say, all right, it's your world now.

Speaker 0: So you, the physical entity, Michael, has have ripple effects in the space of ideas that far outlives you in ways that you can't control, but it's nevertheless fascinating to think, I mean, especially with you, you can imagine an alien species when they finally arrive and destroy all of us would watch your videos to try to figure out what were the questions that these

Speaker 1: people- But even if they didn't, I still think that there will be ripples. When I say memory, I don't specifically mean people remember my name and my birth date and there's a photo of me on Wikipedia. All that can be lost, but I still would hope that people ask questions and teach concepts in some of the ways that I have found useful and satisfying. Even if they don't know that I was the 1 who tried to popularize it, that's fine. But if Earth was completely destroyed, like burnt to a crisp, everything on it today, what would

Speaker 0: –

Speaker 1: the universe wouldn't care. Like Jupiter is not gonna go, oh no. And that could happen. That could happen. So we do however have the power to launch things into space to try to extend how long our memory exists.

And what I mean by that is, you know, we are recording things about the world and we're learning things and writing stories and all of this. And preserving that is truly what I think is the essence of being a human. We are autobiographers of the universe and we're really good at it. We're better than fossils. We're better than light spectrum.

We're better than any of that. We collect much more detailed memories of what's happening, much better data. And so that should be our legacy. And I hope that that's kind of mine too, in terms of people remembering something or me having some kind of effect. But even if I don't, you can't not have an effect.

Speaker 0: That's the

Speaker 1: thing, this is not me feeling like I hope that I have this powerful legacy. It's like no matter who you are, you will. But you also have to embrace the fact that that impact might look really small and that's okay. 1 of my favorite quotes is from Tessa de Derberville's and it's along the lines of the measure of your life depends on not your external displacement but your subjective experience. If I am happy and those that I love are happy, can that be enough?

Because if so, excellent.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Vsauce: Mortality and the Meaning of Life | AI Podcast Clip with Michael Stevens