The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a huge patch of plastic floating around the Pacific Ocean, causing a massive amount of pollution. In order to clean it up, we need to catch and remove it from the ocean, and the biggest problem is that it's spread out over a vast area of the ocean and it's hard to catch it all at once. What if we could create a system that could catch all the plastic floating on the surface of the oceans, and then dump it in one giant pile? Well, that's exactly what we've been working on for the past 5 years, and finally it's finally up and running. In this episode of the CleanTech Talk podcast, we catch up with the man in charge of the project and find out what it's been like getting it into the wild, and how it's going so far! We also hear from the team behind the first ever ocean catch net and how they plan to catch even more in the future. This is a must listen for anyone who wants to clean up the Great Pacific garbage patch, or wants to know if they can catch all of the plastic in the ocean. Listen in to find out if they've got what it takes to catch all that amount of plastic that's out there. Have a question or would like to suggest a solution to the problem? hl=en We'd love to hear your responses in the comments below! Timestamps: 0:00: What's your favourite piece of plastic catching machine? 5:00 - What do you like about it? 6:30 - What are you looking forward to catching? 7:30:00 8:00- What's the next step? 9: What s your biggest challenge? 11:30- What is your biggest piece of equipment? 12:00s - How do you think you'd like to catch more? 13:30s - Is there a better solution? 15:00+ - What would you like to see me catch? 16:00? 17:15 - How big? 18:40 - How would you catch more of it in the wild? 19:40s - What kind of problem do you're looking for? 21:00 +16: What are your biggest goal? 22:00e: What do I need? 23:00a: How do I catch it in five years? 26:00 | What s the biggest thing you're working on?
00:00:28.000So we launched our first ocean system from San Francisco in September of last year, and we took it out, and roughly two months later, we figured that, first of all, it wasn't catching plastic,
00:00:44.000so What we saw was that the system was moving at roughly the same speed as the plastic.
00:00:48.000So maybe just take one step back the idea and how it works.
00:00:52.000So, of course, we have this Great Pacific garbage patch between here and Hawaii, twice the size of Texas, 100 million kilos of plastic, doesn't go away by itself.
00:01:02.000And the idea was to have this artificial coastline that is driven by the forces of the ocean.
00:01:08.000We put it in there and the plastic naturally accumulates against it and kind of stays in there so we can then periodically get it out.
00:01:15.000Because the big challenge is that although there's a lot of plastic, it's spread out over this vast area.
00:01:22.000So we first have to concentrate it before we can take it out because if you were to simply troll the ocean for plastic with boats and nets, it would just take...
00:02:42.000Yeah, so basically after five years, launching it and seeing it break into two, that wasn't the best start of the year I could have imagined.
00:02:50.000But then, yeah, we went to the drawing board, and the team really took it well, and we...
00:02:57.000We took those lessons into account, adjusted the design and relaunched really just a few months later, so in June.
00:03:03.000And this time we made the system a bit more modular so we could try different things to try and adjust the speed, make it go faster, make it go slower.
00:03:13.000And then what we figured was, well, the system isn't going fast enough.
00:03:15.000What if we actually turn the problem into a solution?
00:03:18.000What if we turn it around and actually slow it down so that it goes slower than the plastic?
00:03:23.000And then we figured that that actually works.
00:03:27.000And in October, we announced that we're actually catching plastic.
00:03:30.000And really just last week, the first two shipping containers full of plastic were landed in port.
00:03:36.000Wow, so it's really recently up and running the way you expected it.
00:03:41.000Now, how long does it take to accumulate two shipping containers full?
00:03:44.000So that was roughly a month, month and a half.
00:03:47.000And how big are these shipping containers?
00:03:48.00020 foot, so probably two of these rooms.
00:03:51.000So the only thing that's really stopping it from getting more is the actual size of the net itself.
00:03:58.000So now that we went from zero to one, we have the basic principle of catching plastic confirmed.
00:04:05.000We're going to have to make it bigger before we can build a whole fleet of them because we reckon we need maybe 50 or 100 of them to really clean up half this patch in five years.
00:05:02.000Do you anticipate that it ever gets to a point where the amount of money that you can generate from the actual resource of physical plastic can actually pay for the whole experiment?
00:05:48.000It's still under development, so I think in September we should be ready to launch the first one.
00:05:53.000But I think it's going to be things that are durable, that don't end up in ways that will retain their value, so can last for a very, very long time, and that you actually want, and ideally carry around so you can talk about it with other people.
00:06:10.000Actually now, so just last week, with that first plastic on shore, we said, okay, now we welcome our supporters to actually make, well, I shouldn't call it a reservation, but kind of make a down payment so that you can be first in line.
00:06:26.000So if people go to our website, they can actually put in the 50 bucks and get the right for the first ever products made from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
00:06:35.000So you're just trying to figure out what products will have the most sustainability, what products people will keep for the longest?
00:06:41.000Yeah, and things that people want, right?
00:06:43.000You don't want some kind of gimmick that's just going to be this paperweight.
00:06:47.000Flip-flops seem like an easy one, right?
00:07:52.000If you have your own company drop-off points in cities where when they're done with their stuff, if it's broken down or it's old, you could throw it into this bin and you will ensure that it gets converted back into raw materials and utilized again.
00:08:34.000Unfortunately, there isn't really any useful recycling infrastructure in the US. So we set up this infrastructure in Europe to be able to first sort it, and then shred it, and then recycle it.
00:08:47.000And then make those first products out of them.
00:08:50.000So hopefully, and hopefully with that, then generate the cash needed to continue running the cleanup.
00:08:58.000And of course, now it's still small scale.
00:09:00.000Eventually, we should have those number of shipping containers every day, probably.
00:09:06.000So do you have a group of people that's trying to come up with ideas of what to make out of the plastic?
00:09:09.000Yeah, it's a little team inside the O2 cleanup working on that.
00:09:15.000I think they say that by September they should be ready to launch the first product.
00:09:23.000The whole idea behind it is beautiful.
00:09:25.000You have a river system too as well, right?
00:09:28.000Yes, so that's the other thing, right?
00:09:31.000So on one hand, we need to clean up what's running in the ocean, doesn't go away by itself, and basically the only way to deal with that is to just go out there and clean it up.
00:09:45.000But of course, then there's this other side of the equation, which is there's still huge, huge amounts of plastic flowing into the ocean every day, mostly from countries in Central America, Southeast Asia, where people are kind of at this stage of development or countries are at a stage of development where the people are wealthy enough to consume a lot of things that are wrapped in plastic,
00:10:10.000yet there isn't any waste infrastructure yet to take care of it.
00:10:14.000You literally see people on scooters just drive to a bridge to dump their municipal waste into the river because that's simply the easiest way to get rid of it.
00:10:26.000To your point, what's easiest people will do?
00:10:29.000And so it's not really that people don't care there or that they are less civilized or something, but it's really a combination.
00:10:38.000There's a lot of people and there is no infrastructure that they can make use of.
00:10:45.000Back in 2015, we were like, okay, maybe at some point in time this ocean thing will work out.
00:10:52.000But then we're stuck with this problem that there's still so much plastic flowing in that we would just have to keep going forever.
00:10:59.000That would just be not very motivating and we want to be this project with a beginning and an end.
00:11:06.000So we're like, okay, so where's the plastic coming from?
00:11:08.000And then we figured, you know, probably rivers.
00:11:10.000Rivers are like these archeries that carry the trash from land to sea, because when it rains, plastic washes from streets to creek to river to ocean.
00:11:21.000But then we found out that there is 100,000 rivers in the world.
00:11:26.000So that's kind of a big amount if you want to do something about it.
00:11:30.000So we started doing measurements in rivers.
00:11:33.000And then what we found was that just 1% of rivers are responsible for 80% of the pollution.
00:11:40.000So really just a very tiny amount of rivers, if you were to tackle those, could really address the majority of the plastic going into the ocean.
00:11:50.000And it's mostly like these relatively small rivers in capital cities like Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur.
00:12:09.000So since 2015, we've been kind of as a secret side project, been working on seeing, well, can we actually develop something to intercept the plastic in those rivers?
00:12:49.000For people that are just listening, we're looking at this thing pull enormous amounts of plastic out of this river, and it's also doing so, and they're stacking it into these bags.
00:12:58.000It's a large physical quantity of stuff.
00:13:01.000Oh yeah, and then maybe you can actually pull up the video of Interceptor 2 in Malaysia.
00:13:06.000So we already have two of them in real life as we speak.
00:13:10.000How does it avoid doing anything with fish?
00:13:13.000How do you avoid capturing accidentally?
00:13:41.000Yeah, so we now have four interceptors.
00:13:46.000Two of them have already been deployed.
00:13:48.000Here's the one going to this Klang River.
00:13:53.000And we kind of wanted to make it look like a spaceship, just so people would like it.
00:14:00.000And so it has this barrier that concentrates the plastic to the mouth of the interceptor where you have a conveyor belt that then scoops it out of the water.
00:14:07.000Again, fully solar and battery powered, and then deposits it onto this moving shuttle conveyor, which then distributes it across these big dumpsters, can hold roughly 50 cubic meters of trash, and it just works by itself,
00:16:25.000Yeah, just 9am to usually 9pm in the office.
00:16:32.000It's been busy, but I think it was worth it, looking where we were at the beginning of the year to where we're now.
00:16:40.000Well, now that you've actually pulled these cargo containers filled with plastic out of the ocean, that must give you an extreme feeling of satisfaction, right?
00:16:53.000So I was kind of hoping for that feeling, but then when you get to that point, you're like, okay, but you can really only see the amount of work that's still ahead of you.
00:17:02.000So it's actually really hard to enjoy successes in a way.
00:17:54.000And it keeps getting bigger and bigger, right?
00:17:56.000Yeah, it's actually quite a good story.
00:17:57.000This is a sailor called Charles Moore who was participating in a sail race between Hawaii and California.
00:18:05.000And while others would go further north, he thought, well, let's try and cut off this piece.
00:18:12.000And then he was looking at the water and he just saw all that trash.
00:18:17.000Then he went back, he was so shocked about it, and then he decided to take some measurements, publish the results, and that kind of popularized that whole concept of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
00:18:30.000It's a weird thing to see when you see drones flying over it, and you see the footage of it.
00:18:35.000And it's also, a lot of it is a lot smaller than people think of it, because it's broken down by the ocean, right?
00:18:41.000Yeah, so that's what happens over time, is that these larger objects basically enter the ocean due to the working of the waves as well as the sun breaks down into these smaller and smaller pieces, which is actually not really a good thing because these smaller pieces are then easier to ingest for fish and other wildlife.
00:19:02.000So the smaller it gets, in a way, the more harmful it gets as well.
00:19:08.000Fortunately, what we see is that still 92% of the plastic is still non-microplastic, so big stuff.
00:19:16.000But of course, if we don't clean it up over the next few decades, all of that big stuff will also become microplastics, and then we're in a much worse state.
00:19:23.000Is the cleanup of those microplastics possible, or is it just something that needs to be sort of rethought out?
00:19:30.000Well, so that was actually one of the positive surprises that we had this year, is that the cleanup system in the patch wasn't just catching plastic, not just the big stuff.
00:19:40.000It was also catching most of the microplastics.
00:19:48.000We're not exactly sure how it was able to do that, but we just saw huge amounts of those microplastics in the system.
00:19:56.000It probably has to do something with the radiation of the waves, so you have that big pipe that keeps the system together.
00:20:03.000And because waves are kind of crashing against it, it reflects waves as well.
00:20:08.000And almost like a lens, it was concentrating those microplastics into one patch in the middle of the system, which was kind of just holding on into the system.
00:20:20.000So that was really, we weren't expecting to collect microplastics, but there we were.
00:20:28.000So now, where are you at in terms of trying to expand it to a point where you could, you know, really get this goal of half of the plastic of the ocean in five years?
00:20:39.000Yeah, so it would probably be easier if we had one goal, but we now set two goals for ourselves.
00:20:45.000One is the 50% of five years for the patch, but the other one is that we want to Have interceptors into the 1,000 most polluting rivers, the ones that do the 80%, in the next five years.
00:21:53.000So really when I started and when I look back at when I started, I really didn't have a bloody clue what I was doing.
00:22:00.000And I suppose that was a good thing because if I would have known how complicated and how big it would have to become in order to actually...
00:23:35.000I think it is too, according to you and what you're saying, but to call it a starter problem is hilarious.
00:23:41.000Yeah, and I think the exciting thing for me is that I picked this problem as the first one because I believed it would not just be solvable, it's solvable by a relatively small group of passionate people.
00:23:57.000Yeah, so of course what I hope is that with the OceanClean we can kind of create this blueprint of how you solve a problem and how you make civilization a bit more sustainable so that hopefully with that blueprint we can not only solve more other problems in the future but also inspire others to do the same thing.
00:24:29.000There's definitely not going to be a shortage of ideas.
00:24:34.000So I keep this little booklet that's kind of overflowing, but...
00:24:39.000What I realized is to be successful with the cleanup, I really need razor sharp focus and I can only do one thing at the same time.
00:24:52.000Ideas are like viruses and when they enter your mind it kind of expands and evolves and it's really quite dangerous actually to have new ideas.
00:25:04.000I forgot who said that, but somebody recently I heard saying, the best thing you can do is having one great idea and then never having any other ideas in the rest of your life.
00:25:25.000What do you think, though, about what I was going to get at was, do you ever conceive a possibility of coming up with something that removes carbon from the atmosphere?
00:25:38.000So, definitely, I believe negative emissions, I think you referred to them, will be required to make the goals to kind of keep the warming in check.
00:25:55.000However, it's a much more difficult problem because if you think of the ocean, it's basically a two-dimensional problem.
00:26:03.000It's plastic on the surface and fortunately it's not even the whole ocean.
00:26:08.000It's kind of concentrating in these accumulation zones.
00:26:54.000Wasn't there something, Jamie, that we had talked about where they had figured out a way to make these building-sized, essentially vacuum cleaners they were going to put in the center of certain cities?
00:27:03.000I believe it was in Asia, maybe perhaps China.
00:28:24.000Like if you drive over or fly over Manhattan rather and see the density of the structures and how many buildings are in there, you know that people can make some pretty insane shit.
00:30:11.000So they form as carbon atoms under a high temperature and pressure.
00:30:15.000They bond together to start growing crystals.
00:30:17.000That's why a diamond is such a hard material because you have each carbon atom participating in four of these very strong covalent bonds that form between carbon atoms.
00:30:48.000That would be a good thing, too, because they would put a dent in the actual diamond market, which is this weird lockdown fucking strange market.
00:30:55.000Because diamonds aren't nearly as valuable.
00:31:08.000Diamonds used to be far more rare than they are now.
00:31:11.000But with the innovation in mining technology and their ability to get to diamonds they couldn't get to before, they have a lot of diamonds.
00:31:19.000It's not as valuable as it appears when you go to buy one.
00:32:16.000Recreated salty diamond deposits in a high-pressure, high-temperature experiment suggesting that many of Earth's diamonds form when the mantle crushes ancient seabed minerals.
00:33:16.000Because of course plastic pollution, climate change, overfishing, I think it's all part of one big problem to make civilization sustainable.
00:33:26.000The way I look at it is that, of course, over the past 200 years, humanity has made tremendous progress.
00:33:34.000So, of course, since agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, humanity has been kind of stagnant, no progress, just very, very slow progress, number of people, lifespan, it was all kind of flat,
00:33:52.000Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when we learned how to utilize science and our knowledge, collective knowledge, to turn that into progress, basically every possible metric for humanity has improved tremendously.
00:34:11.000If you think of wealth, health, violence, education, Writes, all these things.
00:34:19.000He's much more knowledgeable on that topic than I am.
00:34:24.000Yet, so truly, at this point in time, it has never been a better time to be alive for humans than today.
00:34:33.000Not saying that it can't get better, but we have made tremendous progress.
00:34:38.000By one hand, I'm imagining things that don't exist yet, so inventing technologies and also inventing institutions.
00:34:47.000And on the other hand, our human ability to collaborate effectively in large numbers, which includes the corporation, which is a very effective way for people to work together.
00:35:00.000Now, all that progress has also had its negative side effects, which are most pronounced, of course, in the area of the environment, where we put things into an environment that shouldn't belong there, and we take too much out of it, then nature can replenish,
00:35:17.000which includes the fish, and on the other hand, you have the plastic going into the environment, etc., So, then the question is, well, how do we solve that?
00:35:27.000And, of course, one hand is to say, okay, it's kind of the...
00:35:30.000Maybe the luditis may be a bit of a negative way to phrase it, but the reactionary approach of saying, okay, we should...
00:35:45.000We should all get rid of all those things.
00:35:48.000And I think the modern environmental movement, which is really kind of this romantic movement, has this image of back in the day, everything was great and we lived in harmony with nature.
00:35:59.000So let's get rid of all this modernity and try and return to that pure original state.
00:36:06.000What I, however, believe is that, first of all, I don't think it's a very realistic thing.
00:36:11.000People want to keep their iPhones and their cars and people want to move forward.
00:36:17.000And at the same time, I don't think it's really the most effective way to solve these problems because it would be like fighting a leper tank with bow and arrow.
00:36:27.000Technology is nothing more than an enabler of human capabilities.
00:36:34.000Why not use that power to also try and solve these problems as well?
00:36:39.000Rather than try and reject business, reject technology, I truly believe that we should embrace those forces that make us human and has created this amazing world to also try and solve these negative side effects as well.
00:36:55.000That's why I believe The overconsumption of fish is not going to end by people all becoming vegan, but rather through fake meat.
00:37:06.000I think that the transport emissions are not going to be solved by people not flying anymore or not going anywhere anymore.
00:37:15.000Realistically, people are going to fly more, so we better invent technologies that allow people to do that without harming the environment.
00:37:24.000The same thing, I think, would be the case for plastic and really other energy uses as well.
00:37:31.000No, I think that's a very wise way of looking at it, and it's a hopeful way of looking at it.
00:37:39.000Today, even though you're dealing with statistics and factual information, like the fact that it's safer to live today, there's less violent crime, it's easier to get by this more technology, more innovation, medical technologies improve radically,
00:37:54.000all these things are true, but you still have to say, it's not where we want it to be.
00:38:00.000I'm not saying that the world's perfect.
00:38:38.000I think there's just a lot of people looking for every single opportunity to complain, even to someone like you who has objectively done nothing but good.
00:38:49.000I mean, Steven Pinker took a ton of heat for saying that.
00:38:53.000And even though he's talking about actual scientific statistics, he's not saying the world's perfect and everyone should shut up.
00:39:00.000What he's saying is we should look at this from a bird's eye view, look down and understand that although there's much work to be done, we're in a great place in comparison to the rest of human history.
00:39:11.000And it's hopeful to realize that progress is possible.
00:39:15.000Just imagine that there's something that feels intuitively right, as if every step forward would also have to equal a step backward elsewhere.
00:39:29.000There's plenty of things that you can invent that are not that.
00:39:35.000And we see it, for example, with carbon right now that there's countries where, like Sweden, GDP has grown a lot past 20 years, carbon emissions has gone down.
00:39:49.000And I think what's really the main challenge in this century is to Decouple human progress from those negative side effects.
00:40:00.000I think the way to do that is not reactionary.
00:40:03.000It's really, again, through innovation and through collaboration.
00:40:10.000I agree with you, and I think that a lot of times people just assume that these are the consequences of innovation, that there's a pro and a con to everything, because there has been so many things.
00:40:20.000There have been so many things that are inventions that there are a pro and a con to it.
00:40:25.000But that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be that way.
00:40:28.000No, and even if things have a pro and a con, it doesn't mean the pro is as big as the con.
00:40:35.000And if that would be the case, all the technology, every technology would be neutral, and it wouldn't matter what you event, but it would mean that an atomic bomb is...
00:41:32.000So what that means is that as long as we consistently develop net positive technologies...
00:41:40.000Eventually, the world does get better and better.
00:41:44.000If, say, a technology is 60% good and maybe has 40% downside, okay, but then we can invent a solution for that 40%, and maybe that's, again, net positive, and you kind of get this cascade of ever-improving world.
00:42:02.000No, I think what you're saying sounds beautiful.
00:42:04.000And if more people thought the way you're thinking, I think the world would be a better place.
00:42:34.000Rather than, you know, protesting against the things that I don't agree with, and there's certainly things that I don't agree with, but again, I don't think it's very helpful.
00:42:44.000Rather than doing that, I'd much rather build towards the future that I do agree with.
00:42:49.000Listen, man, I think what you're saying is very, very logical.
00:43:10.000Do you think that, I mean, when you're looking at this possibility of getting 50% of the ocean's garbage out in five years, do you think that's realistic in terms of, like, the resources that you have, the funding that you have and all that stuff?
00:44:16.000So definitely so far has been enough to keep the development going.
00:44:22.000So it hasn't really been the limiting factor.
00:44:26.000But of course, if we want to scale, we're going to need a lot more resources.
00:44:30.000So definitely a lot of help will be required there in the coming years.
00:44:34.000It's amazing that this is taking you so long and that you've been working on it so hard that you have all this energy to be able to pursue something like this.
00:44:43.000I mean, was there ever a time while you're doing this to be like, Jesus Christ, I don't know how long I'm going to be able to do this?
00:45:05.000So, I usually feel that with a lot of my, that's probably the case for everyone, that a lot of my strengths are at the same time also my weaknesses.
00:45:17.000So, I think I'm pretty creative, so it's good.
00:45:20.000But at the same time, it means that, you know, I really have to force myself to not be distracted by new ideas.
00:46:18.000Though, I think one sign to make is that, you know, with everything that I've ever done in my life, I've always been very obsessed about it.
00:46:27.000And I think when, you know, it's something that you cannot really stop thinking about it, it never really feels like work either.
00:47:42.000And I do believe that people often have a lot more potential than what they turn out to be doing if they were to realize how valuable that time is.
00:47:58.000And sort of the classic model also for...
00:48:02.000More wealthy people is to work very hard and then to kind of donate here and there.
00:48:09.000But probably you could be a lot more effective if you were to just use your brain, use your time directly on, you know, working something that matters.
00:48:20.000Well, I think what you just said is legitimate inspiration talk.
00:48:25.000You know, there's a lot of people that...
00:48:30.000Well, I mean, just a video, I think, is good enough.
00:48:32.000Just a video of you explaining your philosophy.
00:48:34.000I mean, you have accomplished so much, and your idea that you're doing is so noble and actually effective.
00:48:41.000There's something that people need to hear sometimes about...
00:48:44.000Different people's philosophies on how to spend their time and their energy.
00:48:47.000And your perception of instead of wasting in on other things, just concentrate on something that you think is going to make an impact, something that you're drawn to, something that...
00:48:56.000And yeah, when you do that, then you have a cause.
00:48:59.000Then you have a thing that you're working towards.
00:49:00.000It's not just simply showing up and doing something that someone's paying you to do that you don't necessarily want to do, which is a trap.
00:49:07.000A lot of people find themselves in that trap.
00:49:50.000Pollution drifting downriver, when you see that stuff, does that feel almost like impossible to capture all of it or pointless because people keep throwing it in there?
00:50:18.000So a few weeks ago, I was in Indonesia and Malaysia to see the machines and talk with government people there.
00:50:24.000And I was standing on the interceptor and you see this constant, literally, torrent of plastic going into the interceptor and I was looking upstream and I realized, well, there's more than 5 million people living in the catchment area of this river and they have limited infrastructure,
00:50:46.000they consume so much and just trying to imagine All that plastic not ending up in the river with such a diffuse source, 5 million people,
00:51:04.000And of course, that's where we have to go to.
00:51:07.000But realistically speaking, it's just going to take a while.
00:51:13.000It's going to take maybe two decades, three decades, something like that.
00:51:18.000So, I think rather than kind of staring at kind of the perfect solution and really just working on that, which of course is very important, I think we also need to be a bit more pragmatic and also realize,
00:51:35.000well, okay, it may take 20-30 years, let's at least make sure that during those 20-30 years we don't have 10 million kilos of plastic flowing out of this river.
00:51:46.000You'd have to have some sort of cooperation with the people that are doing that and chucking that plastic into the river.
00:51:52.000Someone's got to figure out a way to get to them.
00:51:54.000I do hope that the interceptors can have a positive influence upstream as well.
00:52:00.000Or people say, I don't have to worry about it.
00:52:18.000It's a phrase from economics wherein the insurance industry is kind of a thing where people make more damage once they're insured because they're less worried.
00:52:30.000I don't buy it that much as an argument for the plastic problem because it's not like it's a conscious cost-benefit analysis whether you're going to throw something on the street or not.
00:53:12.000And then there's this other effect called the broken window effect, which I think it was back in the 60s in New York, what they found is that in streets and neighborhoods where you have buildings that show obvious sign of decay,
00:53:27.000like broken windows or litter, that actually would incentivize other unlawful activities.
00:53:37.000The similar effect has been observed with a park.
00:53:41.000If a park doesn't have any litter, people litter less than when there is litter on the ground.
00:53:47.000If you truly believe that the ocean is going to be polluted forever and it doesn't really matter, it's already dirty, that's not really a strong motivation to not litter.
00:54:01.000But if you say, okay, well, the ocean is clean now, They love effort for that.
00:54:07.000And once it's clean, I think that would actually be a motivation to not litter.
00:54:15.000I think some of those videos where you see shorelines that are so thick, I don't know what part of the world it is, but that are so thick with plastic you can't even get into the water.
00:54:41.000If you could see like a time-lapse video of these oceans from like, go back to like 1900 to 2019, and then go back before 1900, it was relatively unchanged for thousands of years, right?
00:54:53.000And then all of a sudden this massive change very quickly with the Industrial Age.
00:55:14.000I hope this worry that we all have will translate into improvement and progress.
00:55:22.000And I always say the same thing, that we're in some sort of adolescent stage.
00:55:26.000Of society and evolution, that we're in this weird sort of state where we're aware of how much we can change our environment, but also still contributing to the detriment of our environment in a non-sustainable way, and then eventually it's going to have to come to a head.
00:55:40.000You know, when you see people screaming about climate change and all these different things, I mean, this is people realizing that there's a lot going on that maybe not everyone is completely and totally aware of, but I'm with you.
00:57:03.000So for me, yes, of course, really since the beginning of 2013, there have been people, a relatively small group of people, but there have been people that have been opposing it.
00:57:17.000And most of them, ironically enough, are people that care about the ocean because they don't feel it's the right way to tackle the issue.
00:57:27.000But the way I deal with it is, at least what I used to do in the beginning, now unfortunately there aren't many new arguments anymore, but just basically write them out, every single argument, rationally analyze them, no emotions, emotions only model your thinking in that way.
00:57:46.000And make a distinction, okay, is this something where this person has a point?
00:57:50.000If so, great, because I'd rather have somebody else pointing it out to me than us having to learn it in the field and having an unnecessary failure.
00:58:00.000And if the person doesn't have a point and if it's just an assumption or unfounded or whatever, then it's very easy for me to just ignore it and And then the question is, well, what motivates people to be negative?
00:58:14.000And I think there's probably four reasons.
00:58:16.000First of all, it's genuine skepticism whether it can be done.
00:58:40.000Human risk perception, which sometimes I think is a cause of some opposition where it's very easy for people to ignore the baseline when they look at risks.
00:58:57.000So, you know, you can, for example, say, okay, nuclear power, super risky, we shouldn't do that.
00:59:05.000But then if you compare it to the baseline of other sources of energy, that's actually probably the least risky source of energy there is.
00:59:15.000Even solar energy causes more deaths per megawatt hour than nuclear power because people fall off roofs.
00:59:26.000So if you ignore the baseline and if you say, okay, doing this cleanup, we shouldn't do it because there's all these potential risks, right?
00:59:38.000Potentially, there's some sea life that may be caught.
00:59:41.000Potentially, there are these moral hazards.
00:59:46.000And basically, the best thing to do is not do it.
00:59:50.000What people then are ignoring is sort of the certain hazard of this hundreds of millions of kilos of plastic that's already in the ocean.
00:59:59.000And if you were to kind of pose the opposite question and say, okay, so if I were to go to the ocean right now and just dump the equivalent amount of plastic that we were to take out, we'd dump it into the ocean.
01:00:15.000And then, well, probably the answer is no.
01:00:18.000So I think there's a bit of this, you know, of course what we're doing, it's new, there are risks involved, but as long as we map them well, we take things step by step, I think they're manageable.
01:00:33.000And there are definitely reasons to not do it because, of course, the baseline is that there is already a lot of harm being done by the status quo.
01:00:43.000So I think that's one argument behind people's opposition.
01:00:48.000There's also a bit of what I call zero-sum game bias where people are saying, well, you shouldn't do this because the resources would be better spent elsewhere.
01:00:57.000I saw an op-ed in Wired a few weeks ago where people were saying, well, or just one person actually was writing where this person said, You shouldn't worry about the plastic pollution issue.
01:01:11.000You shouldn't do anything about it because climate change is the biggest issue and all our attention should go there.
01:01:17.000Plastic pollution is just a distraction.
01:01:22.000Well, yeah, I think, you know, there's seven and a half billion people in the world, and we can do more than one thing at the same time, I think.
01:01:29.000Yeah, I mean, should you not wash your dishes because your carpet is dirty?
01:02:05.000They don't write articles to state an objective, well-thought-out perspective always.
01:02:10.000Sometimes people do, but a lot of times people make some click-baity bullshit and they kind of twist a story and twist an idea of who you are, twist it to sort of make their narrative be more compelling and sell more or click more and get more ad sales.
01:03:06.000If you're into fucking getting mad about the border and getting mad about the climate and getting mad about abortion and getting mad about whatever the fuck it is, that's what it'll show you because that's what you're interested in.
01:03:16.000You know, my YouTube feed is mostly muscle cars and fights.
01:03:40.000I think the issue is, human nature, we are compelled to get upset about things, and I think a lot of it is people that feel disempowered in their own existence.
01:03:49.000The people that you were talking about that are stuck in cubicles and that are staring at that clock, waiting for the buzzer to ring so they can go home.
01:04:28.000It's a natural part of human nature to get upset about stuff.
01:04:32.000Even someone who's doing something as beautiful as your perspective or your idea, instead of just saying, this guy is doing something amazing, we need someone like this who's just as innovative and just as inspired to try to tackle this climate issue.
01:07:44.000Again, I think we're in this transitionary phase.
01:07:47.000And I also think technology is going to make a lot of what we're concentrating on obsolete.
01:07:56.000I think we are really, really close to some crazy breakthroughs in terms of distribution of information that's going to make it obsolete.
01:08:04.000And people aren't going to care as much about clickbaity things because, you know, you're going to be able to feel things from digitally created media.
01:08:13.000I think we're very, very close to augmented reality becoming an essential part of people's lives.
01:08:19.000You know, the same way your phone has become an essential part of your life.
01:08:22.000Twenty years ago, no one carried a phone around.
01:09:24.000And probably this is one step in this ever-increasing trend of us getting further and further immersed in technology.
01:09:34.000And augmented reality will lead to some sort of impossible-to-determined virtual reality, where it's indistinguishable from regular reality.
01:10:34.000And I think that environment that shapes your behavior, it decides what kind of genes are expressed in And the interesting thing is that it's not just a natural environment,
01:10:50.000So probably, you know, when you think about people being born thousands of years ago, their genes were very, very similar to the people today.
01:11:10.000It's thanks to these inventions, not just physical inventions, but also cultural inventions and institutions that we created that shapes our behavior.
01:11:28.000Human behavior is very hard to change unless it actually benefits what we do.
01:11:36.000Look at smartphones, how fast that happened versus how long it takes for smoking to go away.
01:11:46.000One is incentivizing the continued use of it through addictive products, while with smartphones, again, it's something that you want to use.
01:12:00.000So I just wonder whether that interaction between humans and the technology that we create incentivizes inventors to become morally better and better, because Did you lose me already?
01:12:40.000It's more incentivized to do good things because of the environment that has been created rather than a thousand years ago.
01:12:47.000No, I think that's absolutely the case.
01:12:50.000And I hope that people's ability to express themselves through social media, although it's often negative and bitchy, sometimes also can give you a sense of the moral landscape of the culture.
01:13:01.000Like, not just the people on the far fringes that are the most angry and vehement about things, but people that have objective...
01:13:10.000Real rational thoughts like the fact that you were able to read that article and objectively assess whether or not someone has any good points or not.
01:13:20.000If we could all do that about everything, you know, if people had that sort of perspective instead of being so reactionary, instead of being so angry about things, just look at criticisms, look at possibilities, look at all these different things and then shape technology to fit within our ethical and moral boundaries.
01:13:39.000So there's – and also it's very profitable, right?
01:13:43.000Because if things don't feel – if you don't have like a guilty feeling about buying something – like every time I get a plastic straw now, I feel guilty, right?
01:13:51.000If there was something – That people, they innovate to the point where you don't feel guilty supporting products and you feel like this company has the same sort of ethics and ideas that you have.
01:14:02.000And I think we're moving more towards that.
01:14:04.000But again, we're dealing with a very short window of time where human beings have had to adapt to this incredible amount of change that takes place during a small period of time.
01:14:40.000And yet, that's not creating the world right now that we want to live in because the technosphere, the technology that is interfaced between the world, sort of nature and human nature,
01:15:00.000So you either have something that's compatible with human nature, so it's like a big car with a V8 engine, but that's not compatible with nature.
01:15:11.000Or you have something that's compatible with nature, which is probably walking, but it's not really compatible with human nature because we're lazy and greedy.
01:15:20.000It's cold outside and you've got to get somewhere in a snowstorm.
01:15:23.000So ideally what we do is rather than trying to change humans, which I don't think is a very futile activity because there is such a thing as human nature.
01:16:54.000Probably we can engineer social media and our information technology to incentivize people to do good things, but indeed now it's probably incentivizing the use of scrolling through timelines because you watch more ads.
01:17:12.000Also, I think it's our bodies and our minds and the way we view the world.
01:17:19.000We're not designed to live in this digital realm.
01:17:22.000This is a completely new thing for the species, and I think we don't really know how to handle the dopamine rush that we get.
01:17:29.000From clicking on Instagram and scrolling through your feeds and checking your DMs and reading your emails and constantly interacting with people and checking, did he text me back?
01:17:48.000And then you have very bright engineers somewhere in a big shiny building, A-B testing all day to see whether a red dot on a certain icon in the social media app makes people click more or less.
01:20:27.000If it's fair, it's like, hey, man, my credit card company told me they'd give me 10% off if I stick this, you know, this credit card chip under my skin somewhere.
01:20:38.000I suppose if you, again, incentivize it with selfish interests, maybe it will take off.
01:20:45.000There's that and there's also the big concern is what if these – I mean we're talking about income inequality in this world.
01:20:54.000A big one would be, what if there's a jump that you can make in enlightenment, in intelligence, access to information, number crunching, the ability to assess risk versus reward.
01:21:07.000This is all done computer-wise and it's done through some sort of additional piece of hardware.
01:21:14.000That they give you or put in your body, but it costs a lot of money.
01:21:18.000So the people that can afford it initially are the people that have money in the first place.
01:21:43.000Well, that's what people are worried about when it comes to longevity too, right?
01:21:46.000They're worried about technological innovations that are allowed people to, you know, nanobots and all sorts of different weird things are going to repair cells and allow people to live for extended periods of time.
01:21:57.000But then who are these people going to be?
01:22:01.000You know, are they going to be these super duper wealthy people of the future that are going to, you know, hold this over the poor folks who can't afford the technology?
01:22:11.000Yeah, so it truly seems like the technologies that we're developing, or at least are not too far away, our institutions aren't ready yet to really cope with those.
01:22:28.000Because definitely that would probably increase inequality quite a lot.
01:22:33.000Yes, that is one of the major concerns when it comes to this sort of rapid change that we're facing right now.
01:22:40.000You know, another one, of course, is artificial intelligence.
01:22:43.000There's people that I respect very, very much that have a very negative view of what the future of artificial technology is going to mean to the human race.
01:22:57.000Yeah, both of them scare the shit out of me every time I talk about it.
01:23:01.000Sam and I did an episode where he talked about artificial intelligence and the rise of it and the fact that once it's uncorked, it's really not going to be able to be put back in the bottle.
01:23:14.000We talked about it for like an hour and a half.
01:23:17.000After it was over, the rest of the day I was bummed out.
01:23:26.000I suppose a very optimistic and pessimistic view of technology at the same time.
01:23:31.000I think on one hand it allows us to improve the world and that's what we've seen and it's gradual and it continues probably because people want to solve their own problems and with that inadvertently solve other people's problems.
01:23:47.000That's how progress happens I believe.
01:23:51.000But then at the same time, while the world is getting a lot better, it's also getting riskier.
01:23:56.000I mean, 2,000 years ago, or even 200 years ago, there was no way to wipe out humanity.
01:24:17.000The whole of humanity could be wiped out in a day.
01:24:20.000Yeah, and now it's fortunately just a few people.
01:24:23.000But imagine if that goes from a few people to quite a few corporations to maybe even everyone.
01:24:31.000I think there's this sort of brain teaser or mental experiment that Nick Bostrom came up with that says, well, what if you could have kind of this atomic bomb that you could just make yourself in your microwave?
01:24:48.000It's like, well, maybe at some point in time it would just not be economically feasible anymore to rebuild cities because it would just… So I don't know.
01:24:59.000On one hand, I think that's kind of the scary, risky aspect of it.
01:25:08.000At the same time, when you think of it, I would much rather trust or entrust an average person today with the button for a nuclear detonation device than somebody a thousand years ago.
01:25:46.000Yes, that's where it gets weird when you deal with the...
01:25:50.000The number of potential civilizations out there, the number of human beings, the amount of time that life has had a chance to evolve, not just here, but everywhere in the entire universe, where the possibilities that a simulation has occurred already, very high.
01:26:06.000With the possibilities that we're in a simulation right now, also pretty high.
01:26:10.000Simply because there's only one base layer of simulation, so, yeah.
01:26:59.000But right now, as we said, like, you know, according to Pinker, according to statistics, things are really better than they've been before.
01:27:06.000And my concern is that, my concern is one of the things that Elon said, we're the biological bootloader for artificial life.
01:28:24.000That iPhone 37 is already in production, bitch.
01:28:27.000It's going to be better and faster and it's going to wrap around your dick and keep you comfort at night.
01:28:31.000They're going to figure out better stuff no matter what forever.
01:28:35.000It's part of what makes people people.
01:28:37.000We have this unquenchable thirst for innovation.
01:28:40.000That's one of the weird things that freaks me out about this move towards technology is that materialism, which seems to be this like really standard behavior with a giant percentage of the population like people are really into things and this desire to have the newest greatest things is what propels innovation because there's a financial incentive because people are making money off of selling you these better watches that you don't really need or these better cars or these better computers
01:29:11.000and all these things just keep getting better and better and better and better and a lot of it is fueled by this weird desire that people have for stuff Which doesn't make any sense.
01:30:28.000So probably that's going to happen, but what does give me hope is that to my point of the nuclear detonator a thousand years ago versus now, it seems like we are getting more responsible and our ability to foresee the future allows us to invent things,
01:30:48.000but it also allows us to think about the risks and to try and mitigate the risks before they happen.
01:30:57.000I don't think there's nearly enough attention given to these existential risks.
01:31:03.000But the fact that some people are thinking about it is kind of hopeful.
01:31:13.000And I'm posing these things about this dystopian potential future just because...
01:31:18.000Really, it's probably something we should think about, but I am hopeful that as technology improves, our understanding of humans improves along with it.
01:31:28.000And also that perhaps some technology, like I'm not exactly sure what this neural link thing is with Elon that he's coming up with, but I think some of it has to do with a much more rapid access to information.
01:31:49.000Hopefully, that will become, I mean, you don't want to say hopefully some fucking wires they stick in your brain will become standard because that seems like we are merging.
01:32:47.0001964. Imagine if that guy called it in 64. So definitely, it's a broader point a lot of people make that we are, in a way, enslaved by our technology.
01:33:01.000I think in the book Sapiens by Harari, he makes the point about grain enslaving us because with the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, We didn't really become better,
01:33:20.000It was just a worse way of living than the hunter-gatherers did.
01:33:27.000But it was very good for the population of grain, and there was no way back for us.
01:33:33.000So I suppose that's the thing with all our inventions.
01:33:39.000There are these lock-in effects that can kind of lock us into an inferior position.
01:33:48.000Of course, the risk with artificial intelligence is that a similar thing happens, and that's not very benign.
01:33:59.000We didn't foresee those consequences that we will be locked in in the year 2065 or whatever it is.
01:34:06.000It's one of the more fascinating things about people, though, that we have the ability to contemplate the possibilities, that we have the ability to look at this and go, oh, okay, what are we doing here?
01:35:15.000And then another building outside of that.
01:35:17.000And then you have the ability to look in time 50 years from now.
01:35:22.000You see this spread where this weird wart of humanity starts moving across the globe.
01:35:28.000There's this cool feature in Google Maps where you can have, or Google Earth, where you can have time lapses from satellite photos for the past six years.
01:35:36.000And for example, if you look at Dubai, 30 years ago, nothing.
01:42:23.000I mean, he might be getting paid to still do it as, like, a stunt person for movies because he did one for a movie recently, but he has a video from this year recently that says, like, YouTube demonetized all his videos, and he's just been posting car stuff.