14 science fiction stories in under 6 minutes

Подписаться 6 млн

Просмотров 1 млн

50% 1

I can't make science fiction any more. So, to get the ideas I have out of my head, I went to a Standard BBC Quarry, and put all of them one video. Pull down the description for a list of the books that inspired these!
FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS, all FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE:
ACCELERANDO by Charles Stross (2010): novel created from short stories. www.antipope.o...
Arguably the peak of late-noughties singularity fiction, a fad for the "rapture of the nerds" that's mostly passed now. It's still worth a read, even if its early sections are already feeling a little dated:
BIT PLAYERS by Greg Egan (2014): short story. subterraneanpr...
Part one of a trilogy that continues in 3-Adica and Instantiation, available in this short story collection: amzn.to/3tLn1dO [that's an Amazon affiliate link]
EVERYONE IN SILICO by Jim Munroe (2004): novel. jimmunroe.net/...
A book from the peak era of Adbusters, talking about corporate-sponsored mind-uploading, the author tried to invoice a load of brands for the entirely-uninvited "product placement".
LENA by qntm (2021): short story. qntm.org/mmace...
Terrifying Wikipedia article from the future. And while it's technically about uploading, it's also not about uploading: qntm.org/uploa...
REFERENCED IN THE VIDEO BUT I HAVEN'T READ YET:
THE AGE OF EM by Robin Hanson (2016) amzn.to/36eqGJl [affiliate link]
BBC Micro-style on-screen counter thanks to the Octagon Simulator from Graeme Cole: www.greem.co.u...
🟥 MORE FROM TOM: www.tomscott.com/
(you can find contact details and social links there too)
📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff from the rest of the internet: www.tomscott.c...
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: lateralcast.com/ / lateralcast
➕ TOM SCOTT PLUS: / tomscottplus
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: / techdif

Опубликовано:

8 сен 2024

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 2,6 тыс.

@TomScottGo 2 года назад

I know sci-fi isn't just "Black Mirror"-esque ideas, but apparently that's what my head mostly comes up with! Also, this feels like a good time to plug the other channel I run, Tom Scott plus, where so far I've tried parkour, been remixed into hyperpop, flown a plane while blindfolded, and learned to ride a bike: ru-vid.com

@attckDog 2 года назад

Great ideas, I liked the video please keep my sim running THANKS !

@kakyoindonut3213 2 года назад

In the year 2100 poeple will live in simulation

@hoppend 2 года назад

Good that you mentioned here that these Ideas all follow along a common technology… I was just thinking the same thing.

@WalkerTrips 2 года назад

Have you seen Red Dwarf's last few series, Tom? A couple of these ideas were touched on- M Corp for instance has Lister's entire reality hijacked by a corporation and held to ad ransom. Also amazon's "upload" is all about rich people owning digital afterlife and screwing the poor with it. Few for you when you put your feet up, fella. 😁

@szymonsieklucki2931 2 года назад

How's your bike riding going Tom? :) Keep it up, it is a lot of fun :D

@davidwolfberg8453 2 года назад

"we regret that your afterlife will not continue" is such a fantastic and ominous line

@Dubanx 2 года назад

Right? Absolutely terrifying. That said, I can't see it happening simply because the people in the afterlife will make profitable enough slaves to keep funding said afterlife, and it's not like they can say no.

@fatemadman9688 2 года назад

Bullcrap

@MrDuckAlmighty 2 года назад

I'm definitely using that for a table top rpg story

@vincevvn 7 месяцев назад

This is similar to vanilla sky

@Tjalve70 2 года назад

"This is a story from a future. Not THE future. Just A future." That's how the best Tom Scott videos start.

@koxukoshu 2 года назад

i havent heard that in a while wow

@Daleymop 2 года назад

Tom really has the best way to introduce a hypothetical

@safe-keeper1042 2 года назад

I've watched the Welcome to Life episode so many times now.

@Tjalve70 2 года назад

@@safe-keeper1042 That one is downright scary. I know there are people walking around with cards saying "Do not resuscitate". In the future, there might be people walking around with cards saying "No Second Life", or something like that. And quite likely, I will be one of them.

@pw.70 2 года назад

"A long, long video ago, in a future far, far behind....."

@AabhasLall 2 года назад

"It seems like a bad idea to potentially induce that much existential angst", says Tom Scott, after casually inducing too much existential angst.

@57thorns 2 года назад

That is the kind of existential angst that is the bread and butter of science fiction novellas.

@Stlwartheart14 2 года назад

who says we all aren't casually experiencing existential angst all the time? Add it to the pile!

@patpierce4854 2 года назад

🤣🤣🤣🤣

@k.r.99 2 года назад

I feel so lost but here we go: Why are you guys using a german word (Angst = anxiety)?

@DasGanon 2 года назад

@@k.r.99 Angst is also an English word, but there's a bit more nuance on it vs just "anxiety" Angst is more along the lines of horror, anger or fear, whereas anxiety is just a base descriptor. You can be both positively and negatively anxious, you can't be positively angsty.

@ClonedGamer001 2 года назад

"I would be filming in the quarry but they're quarrying" I don't know why that sentence made me laugh as much as it did.

@ObadiahtheSlim 2 года назад

I kinda missed your "this is not the future, just a future" type videos. A little quick speculative fiction for the near future. They are always fun to watch to see what you got right and what you got wrong after we've move closer to it being less speculative and instead just fiction.

@AmunRa1 2 года назад

Tom: "I'm not great at writing fiction." Meanwhile, at Disney: "Somehow, Palpatine has returned."

@MisterDutch93 2 года назад

To be fair, Star Wars isn’t really science fiction. It’s a (space) opera which only uses sci-fi as a backdrop, it doesn’t really explore fictitious scientific concepts or anything like that. I would even argue that it fits more into the fantasy genre instead of sci-fi, with things such as the Force, Jedi, Sith, Mandalorian ‘knights’ and a Palpatine ‘Satan allegory’. But you’re absolutely right about the horrible writing that plagued Disney’s sequel trilogy.

@lappansommer546 2 года назад

@@MisterDutch93 You're quite right that plenty of great sci-fi/fantasy has laughed at the detailed clockwork (e.g. Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, where the Martian science was closer to poetic magic than engineering), but my objection to Palpatine-returns-with-a-secret-Sith-army-that's-better-equipped-than-the-whole-Empire-ever-was-yet-never-got-mentioned-before-but-that-doesn't-matter-because-they-all-dead-in-5-minutes was simply that such dumb laziness eliminates suspense or even interest in the story. It's like listening to a dope-head recount the dream they had: disconnected and fundamentally dull, especially once you realise that it won't make any sense and is best simply forgotten.

@idot3331 2 года назад

@@MisterDutch93 Star wars is science fiction. It spans multiple genres, like most media does, but science fiction is definitely one of them. It's just become so monumentally huge and has had so much influence on modern culture that its concepts of galaxy-spanning space empires and huge starship battles no longer _seem_ like science fiction, even though they are. They just seem normal and uninteresting now because of how universally present they are.

@alpheusmadsen8485 2 года назад

@@lappansommer546 I agree with Tolkien that a story that turns out to be just a dream isn't true fantasy, but really, that's only true if the person dreaming is a real-life person. The next Disney trilogy of movies needs to start out with Ben Solo waking up, turning to his mentor Luke, and saying "I just had the most *bizarre* dream!", spend a few moments showing flashbacks from the previous trilogy, and move on to a *real* story.

@shahaffiq5860 2 года назад

Sequels were bad in my opinion.

@jvdb5509 2 года назад

Another idea: Thoughts can be copyrighted. If someone thinks of a science fiction story, they now have the rights to it and will chase after any initiative to create it. The creative industry grinds to a halt as only the most ridiculous plots and ideas are able to pass legal scrutiny.

@tiagogarcia4900 2 года назад

It's supposed to be fiction!

@Magpie_Media 2 года назад

That is a world I'm truly scared of, and weirdly excited for 'o.O

@thursoberwick1948 2 года назад

You'd be surprised what is and isn't copyrighted in most legal systems. It's easier to copyright character names than plots, for example.

@ejajafrozarb 2 года назад

Literally 1894

@astramancer 2 года назад

Don't get that you need to license your memories if you want to remember watching a show, or any other copyrighted consumption.

@TotoDG 2 года назад

“I’m not great at writing fiction.” Trust me, Tom, a lot of successful authors and scriptwriters aren’t good at writing fiction.

@thursoberwick1948 2 года назад

Yes, like whoever wrote Fifty Shades of Grey - ?EL James.

@vedaryan334 2 года назад

Ready player one guy

@archvaldor 2 года назад

"I’m not great at writing fiction" Not actually true obviously, but if it were then Tom would still have a chance at a great career at Blizzard entertainment.

@jonasrl6530 2 года назад

“Somehow, Palpatine returned”

@jonny__b 2 года назад

@@vedaryan334 Ernest Cline. Has to be one of the worst books I've ever had the misfortune of reading

@sjorswijnhoven7114 2 года назад

I really like the 'afterlife server' ending thingy. Obviously the servers would be held up by alive people, so it creates an ethical dilemma about what being alive means and if you can just decide to stop 'dead' people from existing. I hope that sentence made any sense😅

@MartinWastlund 2 года назад

Don't worry, you made perfect sense ;)

@abstract5249 9 месяцев назад

Is it unethical to make evil choices in a video game? What if npc's are sentient? What if civilians in GTA really experience emotion and pain?

@shawn4116 6 месяцев назад

@@abstract5249 Modern day npcs are not sentient so I'd say you're in the clear with them. If in the future npcs in games are able to be sentient, I'd argue that including such sentient beings in games at all would be extremely unethical, nevermind actually harming them in such games. As at that point you've effectively created a living world not that different from our own. Harming them would be akin to an evil diety harming us here on Earth just for the fun of it. And who knows, if we ever reach a point where we can just simulate a world like that, who's to say that we ourselves are not simulated too? If so then we certainly wouldn't want our creator to harm us in such ways.

@ConnorEllisMusic 2 года назад

The ending was even more creepy for me, walking home at night. The video ended and there was no more sound. Just eerie quiet. I thought the simulation WAS ending.

@cupriferouscatalyst3708 Год назад

Just out of curiosity, why were you watching RU-vid while out walking?

@justinhageman1379 7 дней назад

@@cupriferouscatalyst3708I do this. It’s being addicted to being chronically online at every waking moment

@HelloFutureMe 2 года назад

If anyone wants to read more about brain uploads and digital consciousness, and the very weird things it can do to what a 'person' is, then Greg Egan's Diaspora and Permutation City are fantastic!

@Larweigan 2 года назад

A big deep dive both into the economical, ethical and existential angles in this (as well as a lot of adventure) is Tad Williams' Otherland series

@quietflint1 2 года назад

Tom Scott is getting older :(((

@channelknightfadran7901 2 года назад

Dear gosh. HFM is everywhere.

@DarkValorWolf 2 года назад

also Altered Carbon on Netflix!

@themeapster5974 2 года назад

Omg I love all you amazing work!

@themandownstairs4765 2 года назад

I can imagine for the "influencer but literally" storyline some streamer having to desperately avoid having intrusive thoughts to keep their audience safe. these stories definitely have some potential!

@davidmartin8089 2 года назад

influencer becomes schizophrenic and accidentally drags down millions of fans

@watchm4ker 2 года назад

Amusingly enough, the idea predates 'influencer' culture: 80s and 90s Cyberpunk RPG settings such as Shadowrun describe the lengths actors or performers rigged for full sensory recordings go through for their programs, where "method acting" is taken to a disturbing level, routinely using drugs or mental stimulation to create the proper emotional affect.

@jansvanda 2 года назад

You would probably start to see Instagram-like "filters", that would literally filter out unwanted emotions so you wouldn't flood your followers with random bouts of anxiety or embarrassment.

@SingAboutSwayze 2 года назад

@@watchm4ker I mean you can go back to Brave New World for a similar idea with Huxley's invention of Feelies.

@kenzoo21 2 года назад

like an eye tracker

@Cerise4697 2 года назад

Tom: "I'm not very good at writing fiction." See, that's already a fictional statement. Ought to go in the count, that.

@DannySullivanMusic 2 года назад

i know! _100%_ perfect

@kensmith5694 2 года назад

Maybe that isn't the real Tom.

@Infinite_Archive 2 года назад

*(ding!)*

@comradegarrett1202 2 года назад

Imagine how personality development would go in the "influencer"/streamer situation. I can imagine people who just binge their favorite streamers all the time throughout their childhood and adolescents and their own psychological makeup starts to develop in tandem to the streamer - but only in the ways the streamer feels and behaves on screen. Taking parasocial to a whole new level. Knowing someone's stans would be almost like knowing a warped version of the person themself.

@Nahnono 2 года назад

I know how embarrassing it can feel to put stuff like this out there so good on you Tom, respect.

@themovieaminecraft6853 2 года назад

How is this embarrassing?

@Jake28 11 месяцев назад

How is this embarrassing?

@astro_gabe 2 года назад

I've had this idea in my head for a while but I'm not good enough of a writer to make it work: You know how CPUs have tick rates? Imagine you're the first human implanted with a brain-machine-interface, but the computer's tick rate is so much faster than the brain that you suddenly start experiencing millions of "simulated" years in a matter of IRL-seconds. Stuck in your own brain-prison for an eternity.

@Djuncle 2 года назад

Spoiler for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Reminds me of Diavolos fate in JoJo. Or Kars. Eventually you just stop thinking.

@LightbulbTedbear2 2 года назад

It makes you experience time much slower, since you're processing the world much faster. As soon as the engineers turn your chip on, you start seeing the world in super slow mo. They realise what's happened, but by the time they fix the issue, you've already experienced millions of years from your slow mo perspective. Once it's fixed and you're back to "real" speed, it's already too late - you're completely insane after having spent millions of years in a chair unable to move, with the engineers frozen in front of you.

@nade7242 2 года назад

don't worry they're going to kill a bunch of monkeys and figure this out before they put it in humans

@lunamoo1067 2 года назад

so kinda like the jaunt?,

@kenzoo21 2 года назад

even worse, it's multithreaded

@c182SkylaneRG 2 года назад

To be perfectly honest, I've thought quite highly of your sci-fi stories in the past, right after I stop being mortally terrified by the thought of how close they are to reality and just how easy it would be for most of them to actually happen.

@Raykkie 2 года назад

4:07 Already the case with high-tech implants. There's (real) horror stories of people just unsure when their eyes will just shutdown due to a lack of update and/or repair. And just plain unable to have a surgery to remove them. It's horrible.

@jannikheidemann3805 2 года назад

When right to repair and own and human rights become the same issue. We can not allow cyborgs' synthetic organs to be either owned or, for worse, traded by other people or corporations. You can't own people, not one part of them, that'd be slavery! Human rights are unalienable, meaning they can also not be alienated by becoming transhuman. Digital restrictions on the body parts of human beings are to be outlawed by ammending international human rights and anti-slavery conventions!

@SenshiSunPower 2 года назад

The company here is Second Sight, which shut down in 2020.

@BryceHomier17 2 года назад

They lost it once, they can deal with it again.

@areadenial2343 2 года назад

@@BryceHomier17 They paid for eye implants once, they can pay for it again. And again... and again...

@willwarburton 2 года назад

@@BryceHomier17 this is enormously callous and unfeeling wtf

@username4294967296 2 года назад

Love that you mentioned Greg Egan. My favorite book of his 'Permutation city' goes deeper than any other sci-fi I've read into what it means to be an uploaded consciousness.

@potatopotatow 2 года назад

On idea 7, this premise is used in Kate Wilhelm’s short story “Baby, You Were Great”. An audience can feel the actresses emotions, so they need to be authentic.

@eggsalad7091 2 года назад

Whiskey and potatoes are round all around, if you put them upside down they go round and round and round. The dissolution grows more, and the world is now whole.

@DeeSnow97 2 года назад

It's also a massive part of Cyberpunk 2077's interpretation of braindance, although that one is not realtime and they usually edit out thoughts unrelated to the experience. Sadly, it's mostly unexplored, but the ideas presented there are awesome.

@JB-pp7oe 2 года назад

The movie "Strange Days" (1995) is based around a recording device that allows playback of memories and corresponding emotions in other people. Old movie and a lot darker and immersive than the plot summary suggests.

@aixle3590 2 года назад

Isaac Asimov played with this idea to an extent aswell

@willythemailboy2 2 года назад

Niven as well, if I remember correctly. Something about extreme exotic vacations and selling the memories from them.

@TomLumPerson 2 года назад

"Legacy" intelligence neural implants inherited down from parents fits the education inequality theme quite well! Maybe they're made of a rare metal and scarce like GPUs these days.

@enchantedplays7860 2 года назад

ur the youtube shorts guy

@nrsair 2 года назад

A Memory Called Empire uses something similar to this. Great read.

@jimbobbyrnes 2 года назад

the same silicone used in GPU's would be used in neurolink therefor the price would be insanely high especially in America where the surgery alone would cost over 200,000$. you can have a spin off where a American goes to Africa to get the surgery cheaper but the "doctor" has other plans with your mind instead.

@tomfeng5645 2 года назад

Or, of course, it could just be trained networks (hardware or software) that are impossible/undesireable to transfer to more than one person.

@GambitsEnd 2 года назад

For a larger impact in the message, the material could be artificially scarce, like diamonds. Where everyone could have the same technology, but a highly controlled supply in combination with marketing makes it a very exclusive, highly expensive product only the high wealth class can obtain.

@XaleManix 2 года назад

I remember Tom doing a talk about the idea of blocking people in real life and a digital afterlife video, both of which were pitched with the 'this could actually be real and you didn't notice yet' conceits. Both gave me week-without-sleep existential angst. Brilliant ideas from Tom Scott on the dystopian future we are headed for trying desperately to miss.

@JohnSmithShields 2 года назад

There was an almost series of future videos from Tom which were fascinating and scarey in the same measure.

@batlrar 2 года назад

The best defense (not my idea, although I'm not sure who thought it up originally) against that type of angst is merely that "it doesn't matter". That's not to say that nothing matters, but rather the opposite - no matter if we're real or not, we exist in some form, and therefore everything that could possibly interact with us physically or mentally matters to us. I mean, just think about how much that thought affected you at the time - you think, therefore you exist in some definition, therefore things impact you and you impact things. Besides, if you're not real, then you're part of one *heck* of a simulation and you should feel proud about that!

@wertacus 2 года назад

Yup, had all of my online friends prove they existed after that one but it was less than satisfactory

@phineas81707 2 года назад

We're *trying* to miss it?

@XaleManix 2 года назад

@@phineas81707 that's the hope, right?

@adamdapatsfan 2 года назад

Imagine learning that your entire existence was a theoretical focus group that will end in a minute or so and feeling anything other than immense relief that this isn't what _actual_ existence is like.

@yeoldpepsi 2 года назад

Tom Scott has finally lied to us "I'm not good at writing fiction" Haha no I'd read a book series from you

@DoesNotComphoot 2 года назад

I suppose it's not necessarily a lie; They did say they're bad at writing, not brainstorming.

@ButWhyWasTaken Год назад

As someone with a million ideas I gotta say having a good idea is only like 5% of writing a story. A story with a mediocre idea but good writing, plot and characters is a lot more enjoyable than a story with a good idea but mediocre writing, plot and characters.

@SageArdor 2 года назад

Just for the record, Tom, I would pay good money as a consumer to watch a cyberpunk film where the protagonist's brain chip gets ransomware and they have to find out how to decrypt their memories and restore their speech center. That is not only a commentary about the dangers of going "too far" with technology, but also fascinating from a communications standpoint with how they would figure out a way to articulate their goals to others.

@KyurekiHana 2 года назад

That's already happening somewhat. For many teens and young adults, all their friends are online, reachable through chat programs. If someone's account gets hacked and their password changed, that could very much shut down the only means they have to "speak", along with many of their memories in the form of chat logs. I would go so far as to say we are already there, and that society might already be doomed.

@mackandelius 2 года назад

Seems like a kinda obvious background story for your character in a game, surprised to not know any game that has done it.

@ekki1993 2 года назад

@@KyurekiHana Thing is, the fear of someone targetting you on a super ellaborate plot is pure fantasy (or paranoia depending on how you take it) unless you're famous/rich/powerful... which, by definition, most people aren't. Society will never be doomed by the sort of boring individualist nonsense perpetuated by most mainstream media.

@thewiseturtle 2 года назад

Isn't that a thing in the classic Matrix-before-the-Matrix movie Johnny Mnemonic?

@shaddura9725 2 года назад

in terms of "how to communicate ones goals," the game Cross Code features a literal 'silent protaginist' who's physically incapable of speaking more than a few pre-programmed lines. It also plays into some other, perhaps vaguely similar concepts as the ones mentioned in this video, though to say which it is would be a bit of a spoiler!

@larshoeksema 2 года назад

The idea about an afterlife company shutting down/being bought out is kindly like one of the plot points in a book series called 'the bobiverse' by Dennis E Taylor. About a guy who pays for an afterlife package, but wakes up to being some test subject for creating controllers for computers and being shot into space for looking for colonization targets. Worth a read if you're into sci fi literature.

@5c0ttyd 2 года назад

Came here to say this too. The Bobiverse is a fantastic series, Dennis E Taylor has rapidly ascended to being one of my favourite authors. Regarding the "experiencing a streamer's feelings" kind of ideas, there's a lot of this in Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga. It also features memory storage so that people can be "re-lifed" from a backup, and an alien junkie who is addicted to experiencing entire human backed-up lifespans on fast-forward. Cool stuff

@VonKraut 2 года назад

I was thinking this too, love those books!

@MoonshineMetalworks 2 года назад

Came here to say this! GREAT series! Eagerly awaiting book 5..

@owenkegg5608 2 года назад

Damnit. Commented something very very similar, scrolled down, saw this. Great Bobs think alike.

@bassemb 2 года назад

oh hey, almost forgot about this series. Good read. I especially liked the Bob that helped a primitive species.

@rupert7565 2 года назад

I honestly think that your "Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers" is the best video you ever made. That is one of your fictional ones.

@moldboy2 2 года назад

I'd not seen that. I like it... and I hate it

@ARK613 2 года назад

"Do you wish to continue?" ;)

@akrinornoname2769 2 года назад

It's incredible. I also think I've watched it a total of about two times because it's honestly terrifying

@RusselCS 2 года назад

I actually really, really liked when you did sci-fi stuff. It's been good inspiration for worldbuilding and scenarios for roleplay. Shame to see it go away completely.

@akrinornoname2769 2 года назад

I've always liked your science fiction. Granted, I can't watch them a lot (especially "Singularity, ruined by lawyers") but that's because many of them seem plausible.

@zappababe8577 2 года назад

I always enjoyed your short Science Fiction videos immensely. You have a very inventive and imaginative mind. Those were some great writing prompts, especially the last one. I do hope that a talented author writes it (or any of your ideas) into a story in a way that does justice to your vision.

@johannayaffe2647 2 года назад

And pays you so it's not plagiarism

@ShotzInTheLight 2 года назад

@@johannayaffe2647 it's not plagiarism, since ideas can't be copyrighted, only actual works

@DannySullivanMusic 2 года назад

for real dude. _100%_ accurate

@youtubehandleorsomething 2 года назад

those are some of my favourite work of his

@sweetsandcharades8383 2 года назад

Me too!

@tylerloconte8974 2 года назад

"we've decided to no longer support the afterlife" is too gosh darn real

@jan_harald 2 года назад

plays well with his "afterlife ruined by lawyers" or such video, too "we're sorry to inform you that the free plan has been discontinued, please upgrade your life plan or cease existance"

@blenderpanzi 2 года назад

We need an open source afterlife. It will have graphical glitches but it will be under our control.

@DannySullivanMusic 2 года назад

this is totally, totally spot on.

@markgnorthcott 2 года назад

One of the more dramatic plot point of the Amazon show “Upload” actually!

@zorktxandnand3774 2 года назад

Or, your afterlife will continue, but no world will be simulated around you. just you in a void forever. no objects, no interaction no reference of time, just you. unless you (or more likely your children) pay up.

@AgentMaayan 2 года назад

"the upload company gets acquired along with all their data, and by data I mean people" is a sensational sentence to hear as an analyst

@thewiseturtle 2 года назад

This is why the future is distributed and non-profit. Competitive, profiteering corporate approaches are simply way too fragile for doing anything important with.

@stevehudson1111 2 года назад

That was definitely what they refer to as a "strong ending"! Thanks for the good laugh Tom.

@TheLazyBot 2 года назад

That last idea's twist was hype, I could definitely see that taking off

@loganl3746 2 года назад

Okay, but that last one **actually** got me. Heart-clenching. I'd love/hate to watch a video like that!

@fossposs6408 2 года назад

i can imagine people watching "feel-good" streamers who stream happy thoughts to an audience that can't have happy thoughts for whatever reason

@missieb851 2 года назад

I had this idea a few years ago, like imagine broadcasting the feeling of contentment on a walk and everyone is looking through your eyes

@tiagogarcia4900 2 года назад

Those are just normal streamers.

@KyurekiHana 2 года назад

"an audience that can't have happy thoughts for whatever reason" This is called depression, and it would likely tax the dopamine and seratonin in the brain. In the worst case, it could cause people to become addicted to the streams, unable to feel happiness outside of them because the brain no longer releases these chemicals without this stimulus. As someone with depression, this is a rather scary thought. ._.

@ExiusCorp 2 года назад

@@KyurekiHana This exactly. Both of the movies 'Inception' and 'Upgrade' have shown this to be a very likely scenario for people who have very little means of achieving happiness. They become highly addicted and effectively live at dedicated 'vr parlours' or shady alternatives. You could argue that Bruce Willis' 'Surrogates' took the idea (of dependency) further, though it remained physical rather than purely digital. As much as I can relate and see the appeal, it's still really freaking scary to think about

@TacticalTypos 2 года назад

Oh yikes, you could set it in a world like the film Equilibrium, where emotions aren't trusted, but the government provides only "trusted"/"sponsored" streamers of emotion.

@StaK_1980 2 года назад

"It seems like a bad idea to potentially induce that much existential angst" Tom apparently has never seen a Kurzgesagt video 🙂

@SilvioAnkermann 2 года назад

@Evi1 M4chine Do you have an example? I'm curious

@KuK137 2 года назад

@Evi1 M4chine They do ask experts, though? Mind giving some examples and potential solutions they ignored?

@mrShift_0044 2 года назад

@Evi1 M4chine Well sure, how would you made the videos on topics they usually touch? Some examples? Lmao

@the-next-holmes 2 года назад

@Evi1 M4chine Haha, do you even watch Kurzgesagt? After each video they put up a pages and pages full of sources, extra reading and the experts they referred to. They even ask Brian Cox, for goodness sake! Professional in existentialism? Quote me Nietzche, Kierkegaard and Sartre without opening your eyes. Unless you're talking about their inexperienced videos from 8 years ago, do not badmouth the glory of the hardworking Kurzgesagt birds anywhere. And I do believe that this discussion would come to an end once you provide proper evidence of this so-called fallacy.

@Hadrian1616 2 года назад

Exurb1a has entered the chat

@IIAOPSW 2 года назад

As the brain science gets more and more understood and the ability to engineer thought patterns becomes more and more exact, the fraction of deviation from the mean which is considered "a disorder" or "a disability" gets tighter and tighter. People whom we would today consider normal functioning adults are forced into procedures to "cure" them.

@geli95us 2 года назад

While interesting, I feel like it would be normal, no? like, the same has happened with medicine, we today consider "diseases" a lot of things that would have been very common in the past, think how most people will take medicine if they get a sore throat or anything. If the same would happen to mental health, I honestly think it would be very beneficial, people would be more happy in general

@IIAOPSW 2 года назад

@@geli95us in living memory, lobotomies were handed out to malcontent adolescent, gayness was a diagnosable disorder, and in some countries political dissidents were sent to insane asylums. Oh but don't worry, we can trust modern psychiatrist to tell the difference between a real disorder and a form of individuality that is being stamped out for someone else's benefit. This time will be different. Surely.

@heidilarson5109 2 года назад

Props to whoever made the digital mock-up visuals for this video!

@perigin3 2 года назад

There was a little bit of that final idea in the game SOMA, the idea of a simulation of someones brain very quickly realising its a simulation, and that the test being run on it is about to end, all in the span of a couple of minutes

@reloveative 2 года назад

amazing game

@jan_harald 2 года назад

it took about the whole game before that realization though, didn't it? ;P

@ClaudiuTudoras 2 года назад

Isn’t No Man’s Sky’s plot almost the same?

@PrincessTidge 2 года назад

SOMA was an amazing commentary on transhumanism

@WnuckVader 2 года назад

Yes, a great philosophical horror game. And the choices! So cruel, so thought-provoking!

@felixmoses4686 2 года назад

"The Tunnel under the world" is a fantastic short story about people who've had there mind uploaded to robots and replay the day over and over again as part of various marketing simulations

@DrewTheDreugh 2 года назад

Thank you! I knew I'd read that exact thing, but wasn't sure where.

@vara202 2 года назад

That is horrifying! Thank you :) I would go and read it right now if the whole world didn't feel so much like that already

@automationtechnologyclub 2 года назад

I was about to say the same....

@luiskerscher5047 2 года назад

Thank you!

@saturniidev 2 года назад

that last one is a banger, love techno-existentialism, definitely not just saying that so my mind doesn't get erased

@ano_nym 2 года назад

It's also quite illogical. Not the concept, but the deletion if not liking the video, since that would obviously be a huge bias towards the "system" liking everything. In reality both would likely be deleted after making their judgment.

@StickmanHatena 2 года назад

@@ano_nym pft. As if you believe we’re in a simulation. I’m just gonna ignore that like and subscribe and see? Nothing ha-

@yogesha4727 2 года назад

Same. I am not typing this to not get deleted

@bzboy21 2 года назад

Not gonna lie, that would make a amazing short film, which can be both sci-fi & horror if you look at it, so seeing a short film around that will probably be really cool.

@bzboy21 2 года назад

@@StickmanHatena did anyone hear that strange sound? *...probably just **_the wind._*

@LiamBrazier 2 года назад

I love Jeff Noon’s writing for these sorts of eye-opening idea stories - especially his short story collection ‘Pixel Juice’ that rattles along quite like this video in the ideas-per-minute ratio.

@markrichards7111 2 года назад

Agreed, Vurt and Pixel Juice were awesome reads for me

@asailijhijr 2 года назад

You could get around creating panic in the viewer by having them watch a surrogate watch and react to the permutated video, for example with a friend, or even in a lab setting.

@nessle420 2 года назад

The rich-only superintelligence was a theme featured in the ‘The Territory’ book series, particularly the ability for the wealthier children to just download all necessary information to pass examinations, rather than hard studying which the non-wealthy had to do. Really interesting book series.

@serenkeating7672 2 года назад

"It seems like a bad idea to potentially induce that much existential angst" Honey, both "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "There Will Come Soft Rains" are stories that exist, and are good, and have something meaningful to tell. There is no need beyond a potential author's own mental health, I think, to shy away from such a story for a reason like that.

@franny5156 2 года назад

Uhhh I love the there will come soft rains story and especially the poem... we read it in our english course in our last year... the poem just feels so peaceful even without the humans

@vcprado 2 года назад

The Martian Chronicles in general are great existential stories, I remember reading The Third Expedition and being paranoid for a week in my sleep thinking all my family were martians

@bardeenios251 2 года назад

wow the condescending is strong in this one

@kashiichan 2 года назад

@@bardeenios251 It's the "honey" at the start. We're so used to seeing it used condescendingly that even if it's meant as a term of endearment, it doesn't land that way.

@NoFantasy 2 года назад

Here is an idea stemming from yours of "people tuning into the feelings and experiences of influencers": People tuning into the feelings and experiences of people who are drunk/high so they can experience the rush yet not face any repercussions from it. Imagine getting to feel drunk yet not having to be hung over!

@Falcodrin 2 года назад

That would still have repercussions. Sure you would get rid of chemical and physical withdrawal of something like meth but your brain can still very much become addicted to sensations.

@a4d9 2 года назад

Look at "Brainstorm", a movie from 1983.

@thewiseturtle 2 года назад

What was that 1990's movie where you could have a full brain experience copied from someone else? There was a murder that got copied and the hero of the movie had to get it to the police or something. (Looks it up...) Strange Days.

@1pcfred 2 года назад

If you don't want to be hung over just drink a couple glasses of water before you pass out. That works because alcohol is a desiccant and what it does is dehydrate your brain. That's what ends up hurting. So if you water your brain you're OK. The trouble is when you're drunk you never remember to do it. Or you get the it'll never happen to me thought.

@yadsewnde 2 года назад

Last idea scared me but the idea about the hackers intrigued me would love to see that play out in a show we may be in contact one day.

@knightlautrec4311 2 года назад

Number 9 is essentially the plot of SOMA, and it never stops being utterly terrifying.

@dylanwilliams5801 2 года назад

Tom, there’s no such thing as “too much existential angst.” All these ideas are awesome and terrifying

@DocBlob 2 года назад

It's a shame you're going to stop writing sci-fi, I always find myself going back and rewatching those talks of yours. Do you have any recommendations for books/TV/films that inspired you to make them? Or just any recommendations of fiction in a similar vein?

@reharm_reality 2 года назад

There are recommendations in the description!!

@Bacopa68 2 года назад

"Earworm" was one of the best sci-fi stories ever.

@themune2541 2 года назад

I got up from my bed a bit too fast and my head gone numb right when you say something about ending the simulation and that's freaking me out like I never before.

@av6728 2 года назад

This video convinced me to never technologically augment my brain if that's ever an option in the future. Truly terrifying scenarios that you know full well would happen if you let a corporation do it.

@madpew 2 года назад

I can't tell anyone just how much I would love to have those stories made in any shape, way or form.

@jamieashworth_ 2 года назад

Tom been pumping out videos filming in random british locations😂

@notthatcreativewithnames 2 года назад

I wonder if Tom has already filmed in every single county of England.

@wojtek4p4 2 года назад

What do you mean? it's clearly Xun-thul 7, the 57th colony of Il-xan empire.

@DannySullivanMusic 2 года назад

could not agree more. precisely correct dude

@someguyusingyournetflixaccount 2 года назад

Tom’s story: Ransomeware: give us £12k or we’re gonna delete all knowledge you have Me: jokes on you. I don’t have any knowlege

@vincentmuyo 2 года назад

On the one hand: You wouldn't know until you paid the ransomware. On the other: Oh I guess the joke is that already happened once. :D

@antonycharnock2993 2 года назад

Or Tom needs to download all the information in his brain before it literally explodes. You could make a film out of that starring Keanu Reeves...oh hang on.

@TheOriginalTraz64 2 года назад

I think a cool extension on that would be a society where rampant malware repeatedly wipes out the memories of the poor who can't afford an antivirus package.

@slyseal2091 2 года назад

these stories always need to pay attention to just how much threat their criminals are generating. If terrorists nowadays were lobotomizing people randomly, you bet Obama would have gotten that nobel peace price _for_ the drone program, not in ignorance of it. It's like stealing nukes.

@KainYusanagi 2 года назад

@@TheOriginalTraz64 And the virus is made by the antivirus company, just to keep profits coming in.

@DanS044 2 года назад

“What a horrifying way to get more likes” **likes anyway just to be safe**

@lb497 2 года назад

"Influencers" idea - William Gibson touches on this in his Sprawl series (Neuromancer, Count Zero & Mona Lisa Overdrive) as SimStim. His writing is the pioneering work for our current understanding of cyberpunk. As yours and his ideas seem to exist in the same space, I think you would like his writing. Check him out.

@Malkontent1003 2 года назад

Ah, yes. Now I'm doubting whether I'm just liking to make sure I exist, or liking because that concept is so spicy that it piqued my interest.

@Zahlenteufel1 2 года назад

Honestly, at this point I'm tired of the techno-dystopias. When are we gonna enter the stage where people start imagining utopias again? Don't get me wrong, the cautionary tales have their place but at some point we're gonna have to start being constructive.

@Levi_Skardsen 2 года назад

Even Star Trek has cast aside its utopian vision of humanity in favour of attempted edgy drama and loud noises.

@jakerockznoodles 2 года назад

I've never been a huge fan of either, but I love sci-fi for wholly different reasons. I love exploring what new ideas or discoveries could be made and how they may be used for good and for ill (I guess techno-dystopias/utopias do include these somewhat, but they tend to focus on tech that extrapolates from existing stuff). I love the venturing into the unknown, and the fear and excitement that accompanies it. And I love spooky stories more than the depressing ones in my sci-fi horror.

@HuffGLaDTem 2 года назад

exactly, i’m trying to imagine a fun prompt that is just that, fun!

@miss_bec 2 года назад

Please remember the etymology for "utopia" means a place that cannot exist.

@JeffManseau 2 года назад

"I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery."

@zidanez21 2 года назад

Honestly some of these I would love to see as a full story or at least a short 5 chapter story because they sound interesting

@nyella 2 года назад

Cool ideas! Just one question: When did science fiction become synonymous with dystopian fiction? I'd love for once a more optimistic view on the possibilities of science ... just once ... please ...

@UnknowinglyDerpy 2 года назад

Same I'd like to read or watch something along the lines of a sitcom set in the Star Trek universe. Not on the final frontier spacecraft at the edge of human knowledge, but the humble office worker at back at Star Fleet Command just trying to get through their day navigating through the occasional self-entitled space Karen as they try to make sure that the paperwork gets sent on time

@maverickREAL 2 года назад

We are far past the age of optimism. That was for the uninformed.

@wearethefollowed 2 года назад

Hmmm i like that

@Game_Hero 2 года назад

Solarpunk

@Detson404 2 года назад

@@maverickREAL Cynical doesn’t always equal deep. We’re in a regressive time right now but progress has occurred in the past and will occur again.

@kinsphil_1 2 года назад

"all I need is a long scarf, and a talking computer" - Am I the only one who got that Doctor Who reference?

@KaiEngelbrecht 2 года назад

Tom, a great video as usual! And what a coincidence, just started watching the second season of 'Upload', a nice TV show about.... being uploaded into a digital afterlife!

@rhiannanh5009 2 года назад

Number 6 is a similar story to the show ‘Upload’ on Prime. It’s set in the near future where when you die your consciousness is uploaded to a ‘world’ (it kinda looks like a fancy holiday resort/gold club?) but of course only the super rich go to the nice places. It’s an interesting concept.

@lambj 2 года назад

I too was reminded of Upload on Amazon Prime Video. It's well done, considering it has to appeal to a broad audience. I especially appreciated things like the freeway having an authentic combination of futuristic cars and current cars. You may have a 22 Prius, but I have a 20-year old car. Touches like that make a show set in the near future believable.

@JarrodBaniqued 2 года назад

I’m fairly certain that some of those are ideas, or at least spiritual successors, to the core ideas in Johnny Mnemonic and Strange Days. Also, a story with the idea of a superintelligent upper class replacing the current one could take some of the ideas of the 1958 satire “The Rise of the Meritocracy” further, although the idea has been explored critically in earlier books such as “Brave New World” which used embryonic conditioning. And perhaps the simulated beings who are wiped away after being test subjects could be called “golems”, an interesting twist on the word.

@sllorep 2 года назад

Tom and everyone: You need to read or listen to the audio book series: "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" by Dennis E. Taylor . It's amazing and touches on at least one but maybe many of your topics!

@Shadow__X 2 года назад

I've listened to many of them on audible, they're incredible

@Heimda1l 2 года назад

Yes!

@krzykat28856 2 года назад

I thought of this series for some of those ideas.

@jasonrubik 2 года назад

Heaven's River was such a nice detour from the main plot, I can't wait to see what is in the next book !

@Vexcenot 2 года назад

Bob army!

@TheOpalHammer 2 года назад

I feel like a future where emotion can be directly induced as a piece of media could cause some interesting problems. Abusing the induced happiness, or getting PTSD from an unregulated war film.

@sabriath 2 года назад

The "unethical simulation and creation of conscious people from scratch" and a few others (in some form) have been done by Sword Art Online anime....it's a great series and worth the binge watch.

@italianbistro26 2 года назад

I always loved these types of half baked sci-fi ideas that Vonnegut casually threw into his books such as synopses of Kilgore Trout books in Slaughterhouse 5

@talos_the_automaton2329 2 года назад

0:17-0:19 No, Tom is great at writing fiction. In my opinion that “ear worm” video is an existentially terrifying Sci-fi story , and it still serves as a perfect allegory for the issues of our current copyright system.

@sweetsandcharades8383 2 года назад

I just want to put out there that your “So you’ve learned to teleport” video is still my favorite video of yours 😎

@jamesflameson 2 года назад

I love existential angst and I'd love to see idea 14 realized into a full video based just around that idea

@JISJ1964 2 года назад

Tom, in these dark days we need a film like yours today, thank you so much.

@labboc 2 года назад

"Artificial Influencer" is such a cursed phrase

@DarthBiomech 2 года назад

On a flip side: "Sort of like RU-vidr, but for AIs"

@IanWatson 2 года назад

I've actually got a couple of these ideas already in use in a game I'm developing! Fun to know we're on the same wavelength.

@dielaughing73 2 года назад

Welp, you gotta send money to Tom, now

@whoisswhoo 2 года назад

Some of these would be very fitting for a quick 10 minutes Love Death Robot episode.

@bigshagger8277 2 года назад

Tom's warning humans is one of the best videos on RU-vid

@huhneat1076 2 года назад

I love how even if you didn't make these, you still went with that last one just to give us a funny

@LeeSmith-cf1vo 2 года назад

Quite a lot of these ideas remind me of "Upload". It's worth checking out if you haven't seen it. Its on Amazon Prime, don't know about other platforms

@amir-lp2mx 2 года назад

The second season just dropped a few days ago.

@stitchfinger7678 2 года назад

Amazon carrying a show like that is at least a little but funny.

@thewiseturtle 2 года назад

@@stitchfinger7678 Bezos doesn't take himself too seriously, from what I can tell.

@yeetyeet7070 2 года назад

I don't think any of these ideas are copyrightable, unless Tom can PROVE that the big Hollywood studio watched his video and took the idea exactly from there. None of these are a big stretch

@S_Roach 2 года назад

I don't think ideas are copyrightable.

@poochyenarulez 2 года назад

Unless they steal a majority of the ideas for a single film or something, I agree.

@VanessaMagick 2 года назад

It's kind of weird that Tom made a whole documentary video on the state of copyright law but still said that any perspective filmmakers would need to option his very vague and somewhat generic ideas.

@DarthBiomech 2 года назад

Ideas are very explicitly NOT copyrightable.

@dcarbs2979 2 года назад

@@DarthBiomech Exactly. Only the *execution* of said ideas are copyrightable (i.e. the script, film, recording etc.)

@londonpunk 2 года назад

Here's one, an unreliable historian built a time-machine to change the past to fit his inaccurate book.

@MercenaryPen 2 года назад

and kept failing with far reaching and occasionally hilarious/disturbing results?

@applebane2000 2 года назад

There's an SCP about that, but that's kinda the twist of the story. Should I post what it is anyway?

@FirstnameLastname-he1ov 2 года назад

I've only heard a single sentence of this concept but I would watch a whole movie of that

@reharm_reality 2 года назад

@@applebane2000 definitely!!

@wlhamaty 2 года назад

My time machine is full of eels!

@gambaroi 2 года назад

There's actually an animated movie based off of this brain implant concept. It's titled: Orbital Children. Though not entirely similar to Tom's own scenarios, they also have brain implants that allows them to have access to certain human abilities like locomotive or even how the heart beats, etc. All of these basic human actions can only be accessed on a specific level set by a central organization. And of course, those said implants can be hacked, and can be controlled thru a network. Great sci-fi movie, It's also set on space which really gives that futuristic feel

@ScribeAwoken 2 года назад

The idea about a digital afterlife shutting down reminds me of a video Loading Ready Run made called The Reactivation, which adds an interesting wrinkle: it's not just that the brain uploading company went under, but the compression method was on the losing end of a format war, and the backup isn't actually activated until long after the person's death. This being a Loading Ready Run video, this idea is played for comedy.

@parameshnat 2 года назад

2:26 is somewhat reminiscent of the game of "Damage" in the Culture Novels by Iain Banks. Spectators can hook their conscious up to the gambler's conscious and experience what they're feeling. Also within the same game, all players have cards which can directly alter the emotional state of another player e.g. increasing their confidence, making them pessimistic, and even making them feel suicidal.

@engineer_cat 2 года назад

and 4:50 (creation and simulation of conscious beings from scratch) is reminiscent of the Simming Problem discussed in the Hydrogen Sonata

@Aima952 2 года назад

I swear you did one of these yourself with 'Earworm'. I really enjoyed that one and was hoping to get something more like that on Tom Scott two.

@guillaumegeaymond503 2 года назад

Damn, a scam called "pinnedby [somebody]" with the closest thing they found looking like a pin is a level of scumbaggery I didn't see before

@slartybartfarst55 2 года назад

A great selection of ideas Tom!Touches of the Bobbyverse in some of the later ones.

@huggleton 2 года назад

Thought that said Blobbyverse for a second and began imagining a cinematic universe centred on Mr Blobby...

@muadeeb 2 года назад

We are legion. We are Bob

@lancewhite1477 2 года назад

We are Edmonds, we are Blob…

@daxdadog 2 года назад

Upload company's assets are acquired...yup that's Bob. One of my favorite series in a long time.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 2 года назад

@@huggleton Now, _that_ would be a horror story.

@dombo813 2 года назад

An algorithm that can make my perfect stories for me would be literal heaven.

@Izzy-kh6iu 2 года назад

I'd definitely love to see someone turn these into larger works

@IndigoIndustrial 2 года назад

"The Tunnel Under The World", by Frederick Pohl is a classic from 1955 which uses a miniaturised world in place of virtual reality that would be used today.

@Meoiswa 2 года назад

If all these brain interface stories sound interesting to you, give The Quantum Thief trilogy of books a try. Its set in a post-humanist future where everything, even mater down to the sub-atomic scale, is directly liked to the infosphere. Sidenote, for a person who "can't write sci-fi anymore", you seem to be very good at writing sci-fi, they're just extremely concise stories ;)

@joshuacollins385 2 года назад

I was expecting this to be a video about how so much pre-2000 sci-fi just no longer seems like sci-fi. We don't have cybernetic implants, but every other part of those stories seems to be coming true.

@boobah5643 2 года назад

Have you heard of artificial ears? Prosthetic limbs hooked to (and controlled via) your nerves? Chimps playing _Pong_ by a wire attached to their brains or quadriplegics typing similarly? The ear thing is notable for causing a ruckus because the deaf community... well, they regard themselves as a community and arguments abound over the ethics of choosing to not cure their child's deafness with an implant. Not because it's a challenging surgery or it might not work, but because it _will_ work and then the child won't be a member of the deaf community.

@owenkegg5608 2 года назад

Number 10, (Selling your mind for mental labor tasks) is similar to a premise in Denis E. Taylor's Bobiverse (We are Legion, We are Bob + 3) where some brains are chosen to be duplicated numerous times to be a spaceship pilot, and others, less sane, or less knowledgeable, are assigned to be duplicated over and over again permanently performing tasks like garbage truck driver or pest exterminator.

@lovemusicreplay 2 года назад

The "linking your brain to an influencer's emotions" would not be how you think. Most influencer personas are an act. It would be interesting to see played out

@oz_jones 11 месяцев назад

*all

@andreyrumming6842 2 года назад

I can add another one along the lines of 13. A world where brain scans are slowly becoming a thing, but companies have found it easier to just take the DNA sequence of a donor egg and sperm cell and just simulate the whole embryo development and growth process from scratch. Why bother trying to deal with the messiness of complex human stuff where people wanna be uploaded, but don't wanna be copied, when you can just create a digital human from scratch. Or same sort of concept, why do human trials of drugs when you can have a fully functional braindead simulation of a human body. Simulate the donor egg and sperm cell like before, but purposefully poison the simulation about 14 days in so that the brain never fully develops. Now that you have something that has JUST enough brain power to keep breathing and heart beating, but no actual thought process or consciousness, you have a perfect simulated drug environment. Who needs morals and ethics when you have a simulation of a braindead person

@sherryhappy1510 2 года назад

These would be perfect for "love, death + robots" :short, interesting, sci-fi short films

@taylormurphy2551 2 года назад

Check out the book "We are Legion,, We are Bob" Great series involving mind uploads being turned into Von Neumann probes. It's a fun series the begins to explore more and more interesting topics/questions as the series goes on. Can't recommend highly enough!

@jacobdegeling 2 года назад

There were a few dr who storylines there: the digital afterlife, where dead people were uploaded at the moment of their death, then turned into cyber men (series 8, 12th doctor) to try and take over the world.