Our Greatest Delusion - Veritasium's Derek Muller Strokes His Chin & Ponders The Human Race

When you're young and the world is yours you think you're pretty much immortal. That's especially true when you're really young and you pretty much have no fear when it comes to doing things that any adult would balk at.

But somewhere inside our minds this sense of immortality stays with us. Or, at least, this is what Derek Muller, from YouTube science channel Veritasium begins to ponder after a trip to Chernobyl gets him thinking about his own mortality. Suddenly we are presented with a vision of the world from a very nihilistic point of view. Scary.

And that sets him off to thinking about how we all think we're in some way eternal, that we will be remembered, and our cities and the world around us, including ourselves, will somehow live forever.

He makes some very interesting references to rocks and mountains, how they seem to us as something that is unchanging and unwavering, that future generations will see the same as we do today. Which, he summarizes, is why we carve famous people and heroes out of stone.

Which in turn leads him into thinking that, because we always think we have tomorrow, we put off doing things today. Always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower? Don't go this year, there's always next. Dreamed of starting your own food truck business? Got plenty of time to do it, so might as well plod along doing the 9 to 5 for now.

What he's essentially saying is carpe diem, seize the day. Seize impermanence. Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today, and all that. Oh, and make sure you go and look at some rocks.