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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Josh here Um. We wanted to include a

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Speaker 1: note before this episode, which is about existential risks um

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Speaker 1: threats that are big enough to actually wipe humanity out

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Speaker 1: of existence. Well, we recorded this episode just before the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: which explains the weird lack of mention of COVID when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about viruses, and when this pandemic came along,

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Speaker 1: we thought perhaps a wait and sea approach might be

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Speaker 1: best before just willy nilly releasing an episode about the

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Speaker 1: end of the world. So we decided to release this now,

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Speaker 1: still in the thick of things, not just because the

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Speaker 1: world hasn't ended, but because one of the few good

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Speaker 1: things that's come out of this terrible time is the

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Speaker 1: way that we've all kind of come together and given

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Speaker 1: a lot of thought about how we can look out

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Speaker 1: for each other. And that's exactly what thinking about existential

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Speaker 1: risks is all about. So we thought there would be

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Speaker 1: no better time than right now to talk about them.

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Speaker 1: We hope this explains things, uh and that you realize

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Speaker 1: we're not releasing the glibly in anyway. Instead, we hope

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Speaker 1: that it makes you reflective about what it means to

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Speaker 1: be human and why humanity is worth fighting for. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff. You should know a production of My Heart

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Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there,

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Speaker 1: and there's guest producer Dave c sitting in yet again,

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Speaker 1: at least the second time. I believe he's already picked

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Speaker 1: up that he knows not to speak. He's nodding the

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Speaker 1: custom established by Jerry Um. But yeah, he did not,

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Speaker 1: didn't he? So yeah, I guess it is twice that

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Speaker 1: Dave's been sitting in. What if he just heard two

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Speaker 1: times from the other side of the room, You're like,

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Speaker 1: didn't have the heart to tell him not to do that? Right?

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Speaker 1: I think he would be Um, he would catch the

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Speaker 1: drift from like the record scratching that just like materialized

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Speaker 1: out of nowhere. Many people know that we have someone

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Speaker 1: on permanent stand by by a record player just in

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Speaker 1: case we do something like that, and that person is

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Speaker 1: Tommy Chong. Hi, Tommy, do I smell bong water man?

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Speaker 1: Betty breaks of it? Yeah? Probably, so, I mean, hats

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Speaker 1: off to him for sticking to his bit. You know.

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Speaker 1: Cheech was like, hey, hey, I want a good long

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Speaker 1: spot on Nash Bridges, So alls, whatever you want me

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Speaker 1: to about, Like, I'm just into gummies now, Tommy Chong

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Speaker 1: like tripled down. Yeah, and least he sold the bongs,

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Speaker 1: didn't he that? Uh? Pe test Beaters test beat Okay,

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Speaker 1: suddenly think of how to say something like that away

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Speaker 1: to um defeat urine test. Oh well, listen to you, fancy,

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Speaker 1: I would say, I don't know. I know that a

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Speaker 1: street guys call it pe Test Beaters, but Pete Test

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Speaker 1: Beaters is a a band name about as good as say,

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Speaker 1: like die your Planet. Actually I think diarrhea Planet's got

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Speaker 1: it beat. But still all right, so chuck, um, we're

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Speaker 1: talking today about a topic that is near and dear

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Speaker 1: to my heart. Existential risks, that's right, which I don't

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Speaker 1: know if you if you've gathered that or not, but

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Speaker 1: I really really am into this, this topic all all around. Um.

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Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I did a temporart series

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Speaker 1: on it called The End of the World with Josh Clark,

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Speaker 1: available everywhere you get podcasts right now. Um, I managed

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Speaker 1: to smash that down. That's kind of what this is.

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Speaker 1: It's a condensed version and forever, like I wanted to

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Speaker 1: just s y s k if I the topic of

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Speaker 1: existential risks like do do it with you? I wanted

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Speaker 1: to do it with you. This is going to be

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Speaker 1: a live show at one point it was, Um, I

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Speaker 1: think even before that, I was like, Hey, you want

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Speaker 1: to do an episode on this. You're like, this is

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Speaker 1: pretty dark stuff. We're doing it now now. I The

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Speaker 1: only time I said that was when you actually sent

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Speaker 1: me the document for the live show and I went,

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Speaker 1: I don't know about a live version of this, So

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Speaker 1: I guess I guess that must have been before the

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Speaker 1: end of the world. Then, huh, this was like eight

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Speaker 1: years ago. Well, I'm glad you turned down the live

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Speaker 1: show because it may have lived and died there. So Um,

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Speaker 1: one of the have made all those into the world

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Speaker 1: big bucks right exactly, Man, I'm rolling in it. My

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Speaker 1: mattress is stuffed with him. Um. So uh. And you know,

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Speaker 1: bucks aren't always just the only way of qualifying or

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Speaker 1: quantifying the success of something. You know, there's also Academy awards, right, oscars,

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Speaker 1: and that's it, peabodies, big money or public awards ceremonies. Okay, granted, Um,

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Speaker 1: the other reason I wanted to do this episode is

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Speaker 1: because one of the people who was a participant in

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Speaker 1: Interviewee in the End of the World with Josh Clark,

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Speaker 1: a guy named Dr Toby ord Um recently published a

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Speaker 1: book called The Precipice and it is like a really

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Speaker 1: in depth look at existential risks and the ones we

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Speaker 1: face and you know what's coming down the pike and

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Speaker 1: what we can do about him and why right exactly,

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Speaker 1: cheers and jeers right exactly. Um. And it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a really good book and it's written just for like

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Speaker 1: the average person to pick up and be like, I

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Speaker 1: hadn't heard about this and then reached the end of

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Speaker 1: it and say, I'm terrified, but I'm also hopeful. And

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Speaker 1: that one reason I wanted to do this episode to

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Speaker 1: let everybody know about Dr Ord's book or Toby's book.

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Speaker 1: It's impossible to call him dr or he's just a

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Speaker 1: really likable guy. Um is because he actually turned the

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Speaker 1: tone of the End of the World around almost single handedly.

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Speaker 1: It was really grim, remember before I interviewed him, really

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Speaker 1: and and also you remember I started like listening to

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Speaker 1: The Cure a lot. Um just got real dark there

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Speaker 1: for a little while. Which is funny that The Cure

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Speaker 1: is my conception of like really dark anyway, um, death

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Speaker 1: metal guys out there laughing, right, so he but talking

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Speaker 1: to him, he just kind of just steered the ship

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Speaker 1: a little bit, and by the end of it, because

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Speaker 1: of his influence, the End of the the World actually is

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Speaker 1: a pretty hopeful well series. So my hat's off to

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Speaker 1: the guy for for doing that, but also for writing

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Speaker 1: this book the precipice. Hat's off, sir. So, um, we

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Speaker 1: should probably kind of describe what existential risks are. Um.

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Speaker 1: I know that you know in this document is described

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Speaker 1: many many times. But the reasons described many many times

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Speaker 1: is because there's like a lot of nuance to it.

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Speaker 1: And the reason there's a lot of nuance to it

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Speaker 1: is because we kind of tend to walk around thinking

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Speaker 1: that we understand existential risks based on our experience with

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Speaker 1: previous risks. But the problem with existential risks are they're

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Speaker 1: actually new to us and they're not like other risks

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Speaker 1: because they're just so big and if something happens one

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Speaker 1: of these existential catastrophes but follows us, that's it. There's

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Speaker 1: no second chance, there's no do over, and we're not

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Speaker 1: used to risks like that. That's right. Uh, nobody is

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Speaker 1: because we are all people, right, and the thought of

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Speaker 1: all of human beings being gone um or at least uh,

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Speaker 1: not being able to live as regular humans live and

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Speaker 1: enjoy life like and not live as matrix batteries because

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Speaker 1: you know, technically the matrix those are people. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: that's that's no way to live. The people in the pods, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. I wouldn't want to live that way.

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Speaker 1: But that's another version of existential risk. Is not necessarily

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Speaker 1: that everyone's dead, but you could become just a matrix

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Speaker 1: battery and not flourish or move forward as a people,

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Speaker 1: right exactly, so um. But but with existential risks in general,

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Speaker 1: like that, the general idea of them is that like

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Speaker 1: if you are walking along and you suddenly get hit

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Speaker 1: by a car, like you no longer exist, but the

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Speaker 1: rest of humanity continues on existing, uh. Correct. With existential risks,

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Speaker 1: it's like the car that comes along and hits not

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Speaker 1: a human but all humans. So it's a risk to

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Speaker 1: humanity itself. And that's just kind of different because all

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Speaker 1: of the other risks that we've ever run across, um

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Speaker 1: either give us the luxury of time or proximity, meaning

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Speaker 1: that we have enough time to adapt our our behavior

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Speaker 1: to it, to survive it and continue on as a species.

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Speaker 1: Or there's not enough of us in one place to

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Speaker 1: be affected by this this UM risk that took out

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Speaker 1: say one person or a billion people, Like if all

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Speaker 1: of Europe went away, that is not an ex risk. No,

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Speaker 1: and so people might say, um, it would be really sad,

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Speaker 1: and I mean up to you know, the people alive

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Speaker 1: on Earth, if they all died somehow, it would still

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Speaker 1: possibly not be an existential risk because that one percent

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Speaker 1: living could conceivably rebuild civilization. That's right. We're talking about

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Speaker 1: giving the world back to mother Nature and just seeing

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Speaker 1: what happens. Do you remember that UM series. I think

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Speaker 1: it was a book to start the Earth without us

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Speaker 1: m oh so, I think I know that there was

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Speaker 1: a big deal when it came out, and then they

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Speaker 1: made like a maybe a Science channel or that GEO

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Speaker 1: series about it where this guy describes like how our

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Speaker 1: infrastructure will start to crumble, like if humans just vanished tomorrow,

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Speaker 1: how the Earth would reclaim, Nature would reclaim everything we've

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Speaker 1: done and undo you know, after after a month, after

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Speaker 1: a year, after ten years. I've heard of that it's

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Speaker 1: really cool stuff. Yeah, there's a Bonnie Prince. Billy my

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Speaker 1: idol has a song called It's Far from Over, and

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Speaker 1: that's sort of a Bonnie principally look at the fact that, hey,

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Speaker 1: even if all humans leave, it's not over. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: new animals are gonna new creatures are going to be born,

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Speaker 1: the earth continues. Yeah. Uh. And he also has a

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Speaker 1: line though about like you, but you better teacher kids

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Speaker 1: a swim. That's a great line. Yeah, it's good stuff.

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Speaker 1: They ever tell you. I saw that guy do karaoke

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Speaker 1: with his wife once. Oh really, you know our friend

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Speaker 1: Toby his wedding. Yeah, I would have not been able

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Speaker 1: to be at that wedding because you would have just

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Speaker 1: been such a fanboy. I don't know what I would do.

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Speaker 1: I would, I would. It would have ruined my time,

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Speaker 1: They really would, because I would second guess everything I

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Speaker 1: did about talk. I mean I even talked to the

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Speaker 1: guy once backstage, and that ruined my day. It really did,

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Speaker 1: because you spent the rest of the time just thinking

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Speaker 1: about how stuff. It was actually fine. He was a

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Speaker 1: very very very nice guy, and we talked about athens

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Speaker 1: and stuff. But that's who I just went to see

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Speaker 1: in d C Philly in New York. Nice when a

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Speaker 1: little follow him around the tour for a few days,

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Speaker 1: did he sing that song about the world going on

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Speaker 1: on or life going on? He did so. Um, so

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Speaker 1: let's just cover a couple of things that we like

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Speaker 1: people might think our existential risk that actually aren't. Okay. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I think a lot of people might think, um, sure,

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Speaker 1: some global pandemic that could wipe out humanity. There could

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Speaker 1: very well be a global pandemic that could kill a

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Speaker 1: lot of people, but it's probably not going to kill

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Speaker 1: every living human, right. It would be a catastrophe, sure,

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Speaker 1: but not an next risk. Yeah, I mean, because humans

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Speaker 1: have anybodies that we develop, and so people who survive

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Speaker 1: that flu have anybodies that they pass on the next generation,

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Speaker 1: and so that that disease kind of dies out before

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Speaker 1: it kills everybody off, and the preppers at the very

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Speaker 1: least they'll be fine, would be safe. Um, what about

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Speaker 1: calamities like a mud slide or something like that. You

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Speaker 1: can't mud slide the earth. You can't. And that's a

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Speaker 1: really good point. This is what I figured out in

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Speaker 1: researching this, after doing the End of the World, after

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Speaker 1: talking all these people. It took researching this article for

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Speaker 1: me to figure this out. That it's time and proximity

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Speaker 1: that are the two things that we used to survive,

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Speaker 1: and that if you take away time and proximity, we're

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Speaker 1: in trouble. And so mud slides are a really good

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Speaker 1: example of proximity, where a mudslide can come down a

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Speaker 1: mountain and take out an entire village of people. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and it's really sad and really scary to think of.

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Speaker 1: I mean we saw it with our own eyes. We

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Speaker 1: stood in a field that was now what like eight

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Speaker 1: or nine feet higher than it used to be. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you could see the trek. This is in Guatemala.

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Speaker 1: When we went down to visit our friends at co

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Speaker 1: ed Um, there was like the trees were much sparser,

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Speaker 1: you could see the track of the mundon. They were like,

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Speaker 1: the people are still down there. This is It was

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Speaker 1: a horrible tragedy and it happened in a matter of seconds.

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Speaker 1: It just wiped out a village. But we all don't

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Speaker 1: live under one mountain, and so if a bunch of

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Speaker 1: people are taken out, the rest of us still go on.

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Speaker 1: So there's the time and there's a proximity yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of people in the eighties might have thought,

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Speaker 1: because of movies like war games and movies like The

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Speaker 1: Day after that global thermon nuclear war would be an

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Speaker 1: ex risk and as bad as that would be, it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't kill every single human being. Uh no, No, they

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Speaker 1: don't think so they started out thinking this. Like, as

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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, nuclear war was the first one

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Speaker 1: of the first things that we identify as a possible

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Speaker 1: existential risk. And if you kind of talk about the

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Speaker 1: history of the field for the first like several decades,

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Speaker 1: that was like the focus, the entire focus of existential risks.

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Speaker 1: Like Bertrand Russell and Einstein wrote a manifesto about how

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Speaker 1: we really need to be careful with these nukes because

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Speaker 1: we're gonna wipe ourselves out. Carl Sagan, you remember our

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Speaker 1: amazing Nuclear Winner episode that was from you know, studying

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Speaker 1: existential risks. And then in the nineties a guy named

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Speaker 1: John Leslie came along and said, Hey, there's way more

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Speaker 1: than just nuclear war that we could wipe ourselves out with.

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Speaker 1: And some of it is taking the form of this

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Speaker 1: technology that's coming down the pike. And that was taken

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Speaker 1: up by one of my personal hero is a guy

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Speaker 1: named Nick Bostrom. Yeah, he's a philosopher out of Oxford,

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Speaker 1: and he is one of the founders of this field.

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Speaker 1: And he's the one that said, are one of the

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Speaker 1: ones that said, you know, there's a lot of potential

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Speaker 1: existential existential risks and nuclear wars peanuts bring it on.

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Speaker 1: But and I know, I don't know of boss from

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Speaker 1: specifically believes they probably does that that there we would

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Speaker 1: be able to recover from a nuclear war. That's the idea,

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Speaker 1: as you rebuild as a society after whatever zombie apocalypse,

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Speaker 1: ri clear war happened. Yeah, and again say it killed

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Speaker 1: off people. To us, that would seem like an unimaginable

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Speaker 1: tragedy because we lived through it. But if you zoom

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Speaker 1: back out and look at the lifespan of humanity, not

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Speaker 1: just the humans life today, but all of humanity, like

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Speaker 1: it would be a very horrible period in human history,

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Speaker 1: but one we could rebuild from oversay ten thousand years

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Speaker 1: to get back to the point where we were before

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Speaker 1: the nuclear war. And so ultimately it's probably not an

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Speaker 1: existential risk. Yeah, it's tough. This is a tough topic

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Speaker 1: for people because I think people have a hard time

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Speaker 1: with that long of a view of things. And then

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Speaker 1: whenever you hear uh the big Matt comparisons of you know,

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Speaker 1: how long people have been around and how old the

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Speaker 1: earth is and that stuff, it kind of hits home.

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Speaker 1: But it's stuff for people living that live you eighty

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Speaker 1: years to think about, Well, ten thousand years will be fine,

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Speaker 1: and even like, um, you mean, when I was researching this,

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Speaker 1: she brought this up a lot, like where do we

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Speaker 1: stop caring about people that our descendants? You know, we

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Speaker 1: care about our children or our grandchildren. That's about I

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Speaker 1: just care about my daughter, That's about it. That's where

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Speaker 1: it is with the grandchildren. You have grandchildren yet? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but wait till they come along. Everything I've ever heard

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Speaker 1: is that being a grandparents even better than being a parent.

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Speaker 1: And I know some grandparents. Okay, let's say I'm not

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Speaker 1: dead before my daughter eventually has a kid, if she

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Speaker 1: wants to, I would care about that grandchild. But after that,

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Speaker 1: forget it. Yeah, my kids, kids, kids, who cares granded

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Speaker 1: that's about That's about where it would like, I care

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Speaker 1: about people in humanity as a whole. I think that's

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Speaker 1: what you gotta do. You can't think about like your

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Speaker 1: your eventual ancestors think you just got to think about people, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's really help people you don't know. Now, it's kind

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Speaker 1: of requisite to start caring about existential risks, to start

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Speaker 1: thinking about people, not just well let's talk about it.

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Speaker 1: So Toby Ord made a really good point in his

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Speaker 1: book The Precipice, right that you care about people on

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Speaker 1: the other side of the world that you've never met. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying, Like that happens every day, right,

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Speaker 1: So what's the difference between people who live on the

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Speaker 1: other side of the world that you will never meet

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Speaker 1: and people who live in a different time that you

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Speaker 1: will never meet. Why would you care any less about

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Speaker 1: these people human beings that you'll never meet, whether they

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Speaker 1: live on the other side of the world at some

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Speaker 1: time or in the same place you do, but at

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Speaker 1: a different time. I think a few I mean I'm

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Speaker 1: not speaking for me, but I think if I were

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Speaker 1: to step inside the brain of someone who thinks that,

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Speaker 1: they would think like a it's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a self Um, it's a bit of an ego thing

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Speaker 1: because you know, like, oh, I'm helping someone else, so

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Speaker 1: that does something for you in the moment, Like someone

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Speaker 1: right now on the other side of the world that

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Speaker 1: maybe I've sponsored is doing good because of me. And

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Speaker 1: I had a little kick out of it from Sally Struthers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah that does something. It helps he help with food

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Speaker 1: on her plate. She still with us, I think so.

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Speaker 1: I think so too. But I feel really bad if

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Speaker 1: I certainly haven't heard any news of her death, people

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Speaker 1: would talk about that and the record scratch would have

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Speaker 1: just happened. Uh. So I think that is something too.

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Speaker 1: And I think there are also sort of a certain

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Speaker 1: amount of people that are just um that just believe

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Speaker 1: you're worm dirt. There is no benefit to the afterlife

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Speaker 1: as far as good deeds and things, so like once

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Speaker 1: you're gone, it's just who cares because it doesn't matter.

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Speaker 1: There's no consciousness. Yeah, well that's I mean, if you

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Speaker 1: if you were at all like piqued by that stuff,

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Speaker 1: I would say, definitely read the precipice because like one

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Speaker 1: of the best things that Toby does, and he does

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff really well, is describe why it matters,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, that's a philosopher after all. Um, so

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Speaker 1: he says like this is why it matters, Like not

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Speaker 1: only does it matter because you're you're keeping things going

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Speaker 1: for the future generation, you're also continuing on with the

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Speaker 1: previous generation built like who who are you to just

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Speaker 1: be like, oh, were you just gonna drop the ball? No?

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Speaker 1: I agree that's a very self centered way to look

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Speaker 1: at things totally. But I think you're right. I think

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who look at it

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Speaker 1: that way. So you want to take a break, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we can take a break now, and maybe we can

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Speaker 1: dive into Mr Bostrom's or doctor I imagine Bostroms U

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Speaker 1: Five different types? Are there? Five? No, there's just a few. Okay,

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Speaker 1: a few different types of existential we can make up

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Speaker 1: a couple of the addam net. Let's not stop, all right, Chuck. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: one of the things you said earlier is that existential risk,

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Speaker 1: the way we think of them typically is um that

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Speaker 1: something happens and humanity has wiped out and we all

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Speaker 1: die and there's no more humans forever and ever. That's

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Speaker 1: an existential risk. That's one kind, really, and that's the

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Speaker 1: easiest one to grasp with, which is extinction. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: that kind of speaks for itself. Just like dinosaurs are

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Speaker 1: no longer here, that would be us, Yes, and I

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Speaker 1: think that's one of those other things too. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of like how people walk around like, yeah, I know

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Speaker 1: I'm going to die someday. But if you sat them

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Speaker 1: down and you were like, do you really understand that

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Speaker 1: you're going to die someday? That they might start to

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Speaker 1: panic a little bit, you know, and they realize I

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Speaker 1: haven't actually confronted that, I just know that I'm going

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Speaker 1: to die. Or if you knew the date, that'd be weird.

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Speaker 1: It would be like a Justin Timberlake movie. Would that

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Speaker 1: make things better? Or we're for humanity? I would say better? Probably, right.

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Speaker 1: I think it'd be a mixed bag. I think some

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Speaker 1: people would be able to do nothing but focus on

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Speaker 1: that and think about all the time they're wasting, and

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Speaker 1: other people would be like, I'm gonna make the absolute

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Speaker 1: most out of this. Well, I guess there are a

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Speaker 1: couple of ways you can go, and it probably depends

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Speaker 1: on when your data is. If if you found out

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Speaker 1: your date was a ripe old age, you might be like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm just going to try and lead the best life

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Speaker 1: I can. That's great. If you find out you live

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Speaker 1: fast and die hard at seven die harder, uh, you

377
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Speaker 1: might die harder. You might be like screw it, or

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Speaker 1: you might really ramp up your good works. It depends

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Speaker 1: what kind of person you are. Probably and more and

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Speaker 1: more I'm realizing is it depends on how you were

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Speaker 1: raised to. You know, like we we definitely are responsible

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Speaker 1: for carrying on ourselves as adults. Like you can't just say, well,

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Speaker 1: I wasn't raised very well or I was raised this way,

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Speaker 1: so whatever, Like you have a responsibility for yourself and

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Speaker 1: who you are as an adult. Sure, but I really

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Speaker 1: feel like the way that you're raised to really sets

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Speaker 1: the stage and put you on a path that's that

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Speaker 1: can be difficult to get off of because it's so

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Speaker 1: hard to see for sure, you know, because that's just

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Speaker 1: normal to you because that's what your family was. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a good point. So anyway, extinction is just one

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Speaker 1: of the ways one of the types of existential risks

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Speaker 1: that we face, a bad one. Permanent stagnation is another one,

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Speaker 1: and that's the one we kind of mentioned. Um dance

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Speaker 1: around a little bit, and that's like some people are around.

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Speaker 1: Not every human died and whatever happened, but um, whatever

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Speaker 1: is left is not enough to either repopulate the world

398
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Speaker 1: or to progress humanity in any meaningful way to rebuild

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Speaker 1: civilization back to where it was, and it would be

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Speaker 1: that way permanently, which is kind of in itself tough

401
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Speaker 1: to imagine too, just like the genuine extinction of humanity

402
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Speaker 1: is tough to imagine the idea of, well, there's still

403
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Speaker 1: plenty of humans running around, how are we never going

404
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Speaker 1: to get back to that place? And there's that may

405
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Speaker 1: be the most depressing one, I think. I think the

406
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Speaker 1: next one is the most depressing. But that's pretty depressing.

407
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Speaker 1: But one one example it's been given for that is like,

408
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Speaker 1: let's say we say, um, all right, this climate change,

409
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Speaker 1: we need to do something about that. So we undertake

410
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Speaker 1: a geo engineering project that isn't fully thought out, and

411
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Speaker 1: we end up causing like a runaway greenhouse gas effect

412
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Speaker 1: and there's just nothing we can do to reverse course,

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Speaker 1: and so we ultimately wreck the earth. That would be

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Speaker 1: a good example of permanent stagnation. That's right, This is

415
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Speaker 1: this next one. So yes, agreed, permanent stagnation is pretty bad.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to live under that, But at least

417
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Speaker 1: you can run around and like, um, do what you want.

418
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Speaker 1: I think the total lack of personal liberty and the

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Speaker 1: flawed realization one is what gets me. Yeah, they all

420
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Speaker 1: get me. Uh. Flawed realization is the next one, and

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Speaker 1: that's Um, that's sort of like the matrix example, which

422
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Speaker 1: is that there's technology that we invented that eventually makes

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Speaker 1: us their little batteries and pods right basically, or there's

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Speaker 1: just um, some someone is in charge, whether it's a

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Speaker 1: group or some some individual or something like that. It's

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Speaker 1: basically a permanent dictatorship that we will never be able

427
00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:26,120
Speaker 1: to get out from under because this technology we've developed, yeah,

428
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 1: is being used against us, and it's so good at

429
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,919
Speaker 1: keeping tabs on everybody and squashing descent before it grows.

430
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,199
Speaker 1: There's just nothing anybody could ever do to overthrow it.

431
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: And so it's a permanent dictatorship where um, we're not

432
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:45,680
Speaker 1: doing anything productive, we're not advancing, we're say, um, say,

433
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 1: it's like a religious dictatorship or something like that. Oh,

434
00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 1: anybody does is go to church and support the church

435
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: or whatever, and that's that. And so what Dr Bostrom

436
00:23:55,840 --> 00:24:00,160
Speaker 1: figured out is that there are there are fatest as

437
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 1: bad as death. There are possible outcomes for the human

438
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 1: race that aren't are as bad as extinction that still

439
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: live people alive even like in kind of a futuristic

440
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:13,680
Speaker 1: kind of thing, like the flawed realization Wine goes um,

441
00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:16,359
Speaker 1: but that you wouldn't want to live the lives that

442
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 1: those humans live, and so humanity has lost its chance

443
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:24,399
Speaker 1: of ever achieving it's true, its true potential. That's right,

444
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:28,440
Speaker 1: And that that those qualifies existential risks as well, that's right.

445
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:30,960
Speaker 1: They want to live in the matrix no at all,

446
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 1: or in a post apocalyptic um altered Earth. Yeah, the

447
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: matrix basically like thunder of the Barbarian that's what I

448
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 1: imagine with with the permanent stagnation. So, uh, there are

449
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: a couple of big categories for existential risks, and they

450
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 1: are either nature made or man made um. The nature

451
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: ones we've uh you know there there's always been the

452
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: threat that big enough um object hitting planet Earth could

453
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 1: do it, right, Like that's always been around. It's not

454
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 1: like that's some sort of new realization, but it's just

455
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:12,160
Speaker 1: a pretty rare It's so rare that it's not likely. Right,

456
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:15,200
Speaker 1: All of the natural ones are pretty pretty rare compared

457
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:17,360
Speaker 1: to the human made ones. Yeah, Like I don't think

458
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 1: science wakes up every day and worries about a comet

459
00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: or an asteroid or a meteor. No, and it's definitely

460
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:28,680
Speaker 1: worth saying that the better we get at scanning the heavens,

461
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: the safer we are eventually when we can do something

462
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 1: about it. If we see this coming, what do we do?

463
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 1: Just hit the gas and move the Earth over a bit?

464
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: Since the right, Um, and there was nothing we can

465
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: do about any of these anyway, So maybe that's also

466
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 1: why science doesn't wake up worrying, right. Yeah, so you've

467
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 1: got near earth objects, you've got celestial stuff like collapsing

468
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,240
Speaker 1: stars that produce gamma ray births. And then even back

469
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: here on Earth, like a supervolcanic eruption could conceivably put

470
00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:01,159
Speaker 1: out enough soot that it blocks photosynthesis and showing that, yeah,

471
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: sends us into essentially a nuclear winner too. That would

472
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:07,160
Speaker 1: be bad. But like you're saying, there's these are very

473
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: rare and there's not a lot we can do about

474
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: them now. Instead, the focus of people who think about

475
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: existential risks, um, And there are like a pretty decent

476
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: handful of people who are dedicated to this now. Um,

477
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: they say that the anthropogenic or the human made ones,

478
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,640
Speaker 1: these are the ones we really need to mitigate because

479
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: they're human made, so they're under our control and um,

480
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: they they they that means we can do something about

481
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 1: them more than say a comment. Yeah. Yeah, but that's

482
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:40,960
Speaker 1: a it's a bit of a um double edged sword

483
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:43,960
Speaker 1: because you think, oh, well, it's since we could stop

484
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:49,199
Speaker 1: this stuff, that's really comforting to know. But we're not. Right, Like,

485
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 1: we're headed down a bad path in some of these

486
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: areas for sure. So because we are creating these risks

487
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: and not thinking about these things, in a lot of cases,

488
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: they're actually worse even though we could possibly control them.

489
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: It definitely makes it more ironic too, right. So, um,

490
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: there are a few that have been identified, and there's

491
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 1: probably more that we haven't figured out yet or haven't

492
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 1: been invented yet. But one of the big ones, just um,

493
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: I think almost across the board, the one that existential

494
00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 1: risk analysts worry about the most is AI artificial intelligence. Yeah,

495
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: and this is the most frustrating one because it seems

496
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:31,719
Speaker 1: like it would be the easiest one to uh not

497
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: stopping its tracks, but to divert along a safer path. Um.

498
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: The problem with that is that people who have dedicated

499
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 1: themselves to figuring out how to make that safer path,

500
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: are coming back and saying this is way harder than

501
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: we thought it was going to be to make the

502
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: safer path. Yeah really yeah. And so at the same time,

503
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 1: while people recognize that there needs to be a safe

504
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: path for AI to follow, this other our path that

505
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: it's on now, which is known as the unsafe path,

506
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: that's the one that's making people money. So everybody's just

507
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 1: going down the unsafe these other people are trying to

508
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 1: figure out the safer one because the UM the computer

509
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:17,439
Speaker 1: and war games would say, maybe the best option is

510
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: to not play the game, and that's if there is

511
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: no safe option, then maybe a I should not happen

512
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: or we need to And this is almost heresy to

513
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: say we need to put the brakes on AI development

514
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:35,640
Speaker 1: so that we can figure out the safer way and

515
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: then move forward. But we should probably explain what we're

516
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 1: talking about was safe in the in the first place, right, Yeah,

517
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about creating super intelligent AI that

518
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: basically is is so smart that it starts to self

519
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: learn UM and is beyond our control and it's not thinking, Ah,

520
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 1: wait a minute, one of the one of the things

521
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: I'm programmed to do is make sure we take care

522
00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:02,680
Speaker 1: of humans. And it doesn't necessarily mean that some AI

523
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,280
Speaker 1: is going to become super intelligent and say I want

524
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 1: to destroy all humans. That's actually probably not going to

525
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: be the case. It will be that this super intelligent

526
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: AI is carrying out whatever it was programmed to do,

527
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: would disregard humans exactly. And so if our goal of

528
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 1: staying alive and thriving UM comes in conflict with the

529
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: goal of whatever this AI's goal is, whatever it was

530
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: designed to do, we would lose that because it's smarter

531
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: than us. By definition, it's smarter than us. It's out

532
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 1: of it, it's out of our control. And probably one

533
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 1: of the first things it would do when it became

534
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: super intelligent is figure out how to prevent us from

535
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: turning it off. Well, yeah, that's the fail safe, is

536
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: the all important failsafe that the AI could just disable

537
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: exactly right. You can just like sneak up behind it

538
00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:50,720
Speaker 1: with a screwdriver or something like that, and then you

539
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 1: can get shot the robots like in a robot voice.

540
00:29:56,280 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 1: So that's called UM designing friendly or aligned a I

541
00:30:00,560 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: and people I have are like some of the smartest

542
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: people in the field of AI research. Have have stopped

543
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: figuring out how to build AI and have started to

544
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: figure out how to build friendly AI. Yeah. Aligned is

545
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 1: in aligned with our goals and needs and desires. And

546
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: Nick Bostrom actually has a really great um thought experiment

547
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: about is called the paper clip problem. Yeah. Um, and

548
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: it's it's you can hear it on the end of

549
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 1: the world. Nice. I like that driving listeners. The next

550
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 1: one is nanotech. Um. And nanotech is I mean, it's

551
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: something that's very much within the realm of possibility, as

552
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 1: is AI. Actually it's not. That's not super far fetched

553
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: either by super intelligent AI. Yeah, it's definitely possible. Yeah,

554
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: and that's the same with nanotechnology we're talking about. And

555
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: I've seen this everywhere, from um, little tiny robots that

556
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: will just be dispersed and clean your house, um, to

557
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: like the atomic level where they can like reprogram our

558
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: body from the inside, the little tiny robots that can

559
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,520
Speaker 1: clean your car. Yeah. Those are those are the three.

560
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: Those are three things, so um, two of them are cool.

561
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: One of the one of the things about these nanobots

562
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: is that because they're so small, they'll be able to

563
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:24,959
Speaker 1: manipulate matter on like the atomic level, which is like

564
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: the usefulness of that is mind bottling to send them

565
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: in and they're gonna be networked, so we'll be able

566
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: to program to do whatever and control them. Right. Um.

567
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: The problem is is if they're networked in there under

568
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: our control, if they fall under the control of somebody

569
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: else or say a super intelligent AI, then we would

570
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,960
Speaker 1: have a problem because they can rearrange matter on the

571
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 1: atomic level, so who knows what they would start rearranging

572
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't want them to rearrange. It's like that

573
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: Gene Simmons sci fi movie in the eighties. Uh, I

574
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:01,840
Speaker 1: won't say it was Looker. No. I always confuse those two,

575
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 1: the other one this is Runaway, Runaway. I think one

576
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: inevitably followed the other on HBO. They had to have

577
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 1: been a double feature because they could not be more linked.

578
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: In my mind. Same here, you know. I remember Albert

579
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: Finney was in one. I think he was in Looker

580
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: he was, and Gene Simmons was in Runaway as the

581
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: bad guy, of course, but it did a great job,

582
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 1: and Tom Selleck was the good guy. Tom Selleck. Yeah,

583
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: but the idea in that movie was not nanobots. They were,

584
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: but they were a little um insect like robots that

585
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: they just weren't nano sized, right, And so the reason

586
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: that these could be so dangerous is because not their size.

587
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: But there's just so many of them. And while they're

588
00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: not big and they can't like punch you in the

589
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: face or stick you in the neck with a needle

590
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 1: or something like the runaway robots, they can do all

591
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff to you molecularly, and you would not

592
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 1: want that to happen. Yeah, this is pretty bad. There's

593
00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: an engineer out of m my Tea named Eric Drexler.

594
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: He is a big, big name in molecular nanotech. He

595
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: if he's listening right now. Right up to when you

596
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: said his name, he was just sitting there saying, please

597
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: don't mention me, no, because he's tried to back off

598
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 1: from his gray goo hypothesis. So, yeah, this is the idea.

599
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 1: What there are so many of these nano bots that

600
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:22,880
Speaker 1: they can harvest their own energy, that can self replicate

601
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: like a little bunny rabbits, and that there would be

602
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: a point where there was runaway growth such that the

603
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: entire world would look like gray goo because it's covered

604
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: with nanobots. Yeah, and since they can harvest energy from

605
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 1: the environment, they would eat the world, they'd wreck the world. Basically,

606
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: this is that's a that's scary, you're right. So he

607
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: took so much flak for saying this, even because apparently

608
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: it's scared people enough back in the eighties that nanotechnology

609
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: was like kind of frozen for a little bit. Yeah,

610
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 1: and so everybody went drux lure. And so he's backed

611
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: off from it, saying like, this would be a design flaw,

612
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 1: this would just naturally happen with nanobots. You'd have to

613
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: design them to harvest energy themselves and to self replicate,

614
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:09,919
Speaker 1: and so just don't do that. And so the thing

615
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:11,719
Speaker 1: is like, yes, he took a lot of flak for it,

616
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: but he also like it was a contribution to the world.

617
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:16,799
Speaker 1: He pointed out two big flaws that could happen that

618
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:19,520
Speaker 1: now we're just like a sci fi trope. But when

619
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 1: he when he thought about them, they weren't self evident

620
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: or obvious. Yeah. I mean, I feel bad we even

621
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 1: said his name, but it's worth saying. Clyde Drexler, right, Glad,

622
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 1: that's right. Biotechnology is another pretty scary field. Um. There

623
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: are great people doing great research with infectious disease. UM.

624
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 1: Part of that, though, involves developing new bacteria and new viruses,

625
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: new strains that are even worse than the pre existing

626
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: ones as part of the research. And that is, uh,

627
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: that can be a little scary too, because I mean

628
00:34:57,880 --> 00:35:00,280
Speaker 1: it's not just stuff of movies. There are acts, events

629
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:04,919
Speaker 1: that happen, protocols that aren't followed, and this stuff can

630
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: or could get out of a lab. Yeah, and it's

631
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: not one of those like could get out of a lab.

632
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: Even things that has gotten out of it happens, I

633
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:16,280
Speaker 1: don't want to say routinely. Dis happened so many times

634
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:18,319
Speaker 1: that when you look at the track record of the

635
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 1: biotech industry, it's just like, how are we not all

636
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: dead right now? It's crazy lost broken arrows, lost nuclear

637
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:28,839
Speaker 1: warhead exactly, but with little, tiny, horrible viruses. And then

638
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: when you factor in that terrible track record with them

639
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:35,720
Speaker 1: actually altering viruses in bacteria to make them more deadly,

640
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: to do those two things to reduce the time that

641
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: we have to get over them right, so they make

642
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 1: them more deadly, um, and then to reduce proximity to

643
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: make them more easily spread, more contagious, so they spread

644
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 1: more quickly. And kill more more quickly as well. Then

645
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: you have potentially an existential risk on your hand. For sure.

646
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: We've talked in here a lot about the Large Haydrin Collider.

647
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: We're talking about physics experiments as the I guess this

648
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: is the last example that we're going to talk about. Yeah,

649
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: and I should point out that this is not physics experiments.

650
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:13,320
Speaker 1: Does not show up anywhere in Toby Ord's precipist book. Okay,

651
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: this one is kind of my pet. Yeah. I mean,

652
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 1: there's plenty of people who agree that this is a possibility,

653
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: but a lot of existential risks. Theorists are like, I

654
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, you'll explain it better than me. But

655
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 1: the idea is that we're doing all these experiments, uh

656
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: like the large Adreing Collider to try and figure stuff

657
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 1: out we don't understand and which is great, but we

658
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: don't exactly know where that all could lead. Yeah, because

659
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: we don't understand it enough, you can't say this is

660
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: totally safe. And so if you read some physics papers

661
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: and this isn't like Rupert Sheldrake Morphick Fields kind of

662
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 1: like right, it's it's actual physicists have said, well, actually

663
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: using this version of string. Are it's possible that this

664
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,839
Speaker 1: could be created in a large hadron collider or more

665
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 1: likely a more powerful collider that's going to be built

666
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:11,399
Speaker 1: in the next fifty years or something like that. Super large. Sure,

667
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: the Duper, I think it's the nickname for it. Oh man,

668
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 1: I hope that doesn't end up being the nickname the Duper, right, Yeah,

669
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: I guess so. But it also has a little kind

670
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: of you know, I don't know, I like it all right,

671
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 1: So um, they're saying that a few things could be

672
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,840
Speaker 1: created accidentally within one of these colliders when they smashed

673
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: the particles together. Microscopic black hole. Uh, my favorite, the

674
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: low energy vacuum bubble, which is it's a little tiny

675
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 1: version of our universe that's more stable, like a more

676
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 1: stable version, a lower energy version, and so if it

677
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 1: were allowed to grow, it would grow at the speed

678
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:55,400
Speaker 1: of light. It would overwhelm our universe and be the

679
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: new version of the universe. Yeah. That's like when you

680
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: buy the baby alligator or the baby constrictor python. You

681
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: think is so cute, right, and then it grows up

682
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: and eats the universe screwed. The problem is, is this

683
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 1: new version of the universe is set up in a

684
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,240
Speaker 1: way that's different than our version, and so all the matter,

685
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:17,200
Speaker 1: including us, that's arranged just so for this this version

686
00:38:17,239 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: of the universe would be disintegrated in this new version.

687
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,839
Speaker 1: So it's like the snap. But can you imagine if

688
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, just a new universe grew out

689
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 1: a large hadron clider accidentally and at the speed of

690
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:33,319
Speaker 1: light just ruined this universe forever, If it was we

691
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:36,919
Speaker 1: just accidentally did this with a physics experiment. I find

692
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: that endlessly fascinating and also hilarious, just the idea I

693
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 1: think the world will end ironically somehow. It's it's entirely possible. So, uh,

694
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:51,160
Speaker 1: maybe before we take a break, let's talk a little

695
00:38:51,160 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: bit about climate change, because a lot of people might

696
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: think climate change is an existential threat. Uh, you know,

697
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: it's terrible and we need to do all we can,

698
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: but even the worst case models probably don't mean an

699
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: end the humanity as a as a whole. Like it

700
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: means we're living much further inland than we thought we

701
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:16,840
Speaker 1: ever would, and we maybe are much tighter quarters than

702
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: we ever thought we might be in a lot of

703
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 1: people might be gone, but it's probably not going to

704
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: wipe out every human being. Yeah, it'll probably end up

705
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: being akin to that same that same line of thinking,

706
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: the same path of Um, A catastrophic nuclear war, which

707
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,320
Speaker 1: I guess you could just say nuclear war catastrophic is

708
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: kind of built into the idea, but we would be

709
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 1: able to adapt and rebuild. Um, it's possible that our

710
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 1: worst case scenarios are actually better than what will actually happen.

711
00:39:46,680 --> 00:39:50,399
Speaker 1: So it's just like with a total nuclear war, it's

712
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: possible that it could be bad enough that it could

713
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: be an existential risk. It's possible climate change could end

714
00:39:57,160 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: up being bad enough that it's an existential voice. But

715
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 1: from current understanding, they're probably not existential risks, right, all right,

716
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: Well that's a hopeful place to leave for another break,

717
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: and we're gonna come back and finish up with why

718
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 1: all of this is important. It should be pretty obvious,

719
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 1: but we'll summarize it. Stop you know, stop, stop, you know, stop,

720
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: you know, okay, chuck um. One thing about existential risks

721
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 1: that people like to say is well, let's just not

722
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,919
Speaker 1: let's just not do anything. And it turns out from

723
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: people like Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord and other people

724
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: around the world who are thinking about this kind of stuff.

725
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 1: If we don't do anything, we probably are going to

726
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: accidentally wipe ourselves out. Like doing nothing is not a

727
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: safe option. Yeah, But um Bostrom is one who has

728
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: developed a concept that's hypothetical called technological maturity Um, which

729
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 1: is it would be great and that is sometime in

730
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 1: the future where we have invented all these things, but

731
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 1: we have done so safely and we have complete mastery

732
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: over it all, there won't be those accidents, there won't

733
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:29,839
Speaker 1: be the gray goo, there won't be the AI that's

734
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 1: not aligned. Yeah, because we'll know how to use all

735
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: this stuff. Says right, like you said, right, we're not

736
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 1: mature in that way right now. No, Actually, we're at

737
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 1: a place that Carl Sagan called their technological adolescence, where

738
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: we're becoming powerful, but we're also not wise. At the

739
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 1: point where we're right now technological adolescence where we're starting

740
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: to invent the stuff that actually can wipe humanity out

741
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 1: of existence. But before we reach technological maturity, where we

742
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:01,360
Speaker 1: have safely master and have that kind of wisdom to

743
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: use all this stuff, that's probably the most dangerous period

744
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: in the history of humanity. And we're entering it right now.

745
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 1: And if we don't figure out how to take on

746
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: these existential risks, we probably won't survive from technological adolescents

747
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: all the way to technological maturity. We will wipe ourselves

748
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 1: out one way or another. Because this is really important

749
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:27,760
Speaker 1: to remember. All it takes is one one existential catastrophe,

750
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: and not all of these have to take place. It

751
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be some combination, just one. Just one

752
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: um bug with basically a percent mortality has to get

753
00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:39,799
Speaker 1: out of a lab. Just one accidental physics experiment has

754
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:43,320
Speaker 1: to slip up um just one AI has to become

755
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,919
Speaker 1: super intelligent and take over the world like just one

756
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 1: of those things happening, and then that's it. And again

757
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: the problem with existential risks that makes them different is

758
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: we don't get a second chance. One of them befalls us,

759
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 1: and that's that. That's right. Uh, there depends on who

760
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: you talked to about if you want to get in,

761
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:07,879
Speaker 1: maybe just a projection on our chances as a whole

762
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,360
Speaker 1: as humans. Uh Toby ord right now is uh what

763
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: a one and six chance over the next hundred years. Yeah,

764
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: he always follows that with Russian roulette, other people say

765
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: about ten percent. Um. There's some different cosmologists. There's one

766
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 1: name Lord Martin Rees who puts it att Yeah. He

767
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,840
Speaker 1: actually is a member of the Center for the Study

768
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: of Existential Risk. And we didn't mention before. Bostrom founded

769
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:36,800
Speaker 1: something called the Future of Humanity Institute, which is pretty

770
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: great f h I. And then there's another one more

771
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 1: place that I gotta want to shout out. It's called

772
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:45,320
Speaker 1: the Future of Life Institute. It was founded by Max

773
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 1: tag Mark and Yon Talling, co founder of I think Skype.

774
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: Oh really, I think so all right, well you should

775
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:57,359
Speaker 1: probably also shut out the Church of Scientology. No, no, no,

776
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 1: no genius. Yeah, that's the one that's one thinking about. Well,

777
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 1: they get confused a lot. This is a pretty cool

778
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: little um thing you did here with how long because

779
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 1: I was kind of talking before about the long view

780
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 1: of things and how long humans have been around. So

781
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:15,759
Speaker 1: I think your rope analogy is pretty spot on here.

782
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: So that's J. L. Schellenberg's rope analogy. Well, I didn't

783
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: think he wrote it. I wish it were admitting that

784
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:23,919
Speaker 1: you included it. So the what we were talking about,

785
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: like you were saying, is like it's it's hard to

786
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: take that long view. But if you if you step

787
00:44:28,239 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: back and look at how long humans have been around.

788
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:33,880
Speaker 1: So Homo sapiens have been on Earth about two thousand years,

789
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 1: it seems like a very long time. It does. And

790
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: even modern humans um like us have been around for

791
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 1: about fifty thousand years, it seems like a very long

792
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,280
Speaker 1: time as well. But if you think about how much

793
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 1: longer the human race, humanity could continue on to exist

794
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 1: as a species, UM, it's that's nothing. It's virtually insignificant um.

795
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:57,919
Speaker 1: And J. L. Schellenberg puts it like this, like, let's

796
00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:02,719
Speaker 1: say humanity has a billion year lifespan, and you translate

797
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:05,479
Speaker 1: that billion years into a twenty foot rope. That's easy

798
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: to show up with just the eighth of an inch

799
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: mark on that twenty ft rope. You would have to

800
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 1: our species would have to live another three hundred thousand

801
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 1: years from the point where we've already lived. Yes, we

802
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 1: would have to live five hundred thousand years just to

803
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,720
Speaker 1: show up as an eighth of an inch that first

804
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: eighth of an inch on that twenty ft long rope.

805
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: That's how long humanity might have ahead of us. And

806
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,879
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of a conservative estimate. Some people say,

807
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: once we reach technological maturity, we're we're fine, We're not

808
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 1: going to go extinct because we'll be able to use

809
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: all that technology like having a I track all those

810
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,080
Speaker 1: new Earth objects and say, well, this one is a

811
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:48,480
Speaker 1: little close for comfort, I'm gonna send some nanobouts out

812
00:45:48,520 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: to disassembl it. We will remove ourselves from the risk

813
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:54,360
Speaker 1: of ever going extinct when we hit technological maturity. So

814
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:57,920
Speaker 1: a billion years is definitely doable for us. Yeah, and

815
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: it's uh, why we care about it is because it's

816
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: happening right now. I mean, there is already a I

817
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: that is unaligned. Um, we are, We've already talked about

818
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 1: the biotech in labs. Accidents have already happened, have been

819
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 1: all the time, and there are experiments going on with

820
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: physics that we we think we know what we're doing,

821
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:24,240
Speaker 1: but accidents happen, and an accident that you can't recover from,

822
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: you know, there's no whoops is let me try that again,

823
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: right exactly because we're all toasts. So this is why

824
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: you have to care about it. And luckily, um, I

825
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:35,920
Speaker 1: wish there were more people that care about it. Well,

826
00:46:35,960 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 1: it's becoming more of a thing and if you talk

827
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: to Toby Ord, he's like, so, just like say, the

828
00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: environmental movement was, you know, the the moral push, and

829
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 1: we're starting to see some some stuff some results from

830
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: that now, but stay starting making the sixties and seventies,

831
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: nobody had ever heard of that. Yeah, I mean it

832
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 1: took decades. He's saying, like, we're about that's what we're

833
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: doing now with existential Chris. People are going to start

834
00:46:59,160 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 1: to realize like, oh man, this is for real, and

835
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 1: we do something about it because we could live a

836
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:08,280
Speaker 1: billion years if we managed to survive the next hundred,

837
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 1: which makes you and me chucking, like all of us

838
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: alive right now in one of the most unique positions

839
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: any humans ever been at. We have the entire future

840
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: of the human race basically resting in our hands because

841
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:24,080
Speaker 1: we're the ones who happened to be alive when humanity

842
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 1: entered its technological adolescence. Yeah, and it's a it's a

843
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 1: tougher one then save the planet, because it's such a

844
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,359
Speaker 1: tangible thing when you talk about pollution, and it's very

845
00:47:34,400 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: easy to put on a TV screen or in a classroom. Um,

846
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: and it's not so easily dismissed because you can see

847
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: it in front of your eyeballs and understand it. This

848
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:50,280
Speaker 1: is a lot tougher education wise, because, um people, here's

849
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:54,439
Speaker 1: something about nanobots and gray goo or ai and just think,

850
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: come on, man, that's the stuff of movies. Yeah, And

851
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: I mean that's it's sad that like we couldn't dig

852
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 1: into it further, because when you really do start to

853
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 1: break it all down and understand it, it's like, no,

854
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: this totally is for real and it makes sense, like

855
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: this is entirely possible and maybe even likely. Yeah, and

856
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: not the hardest thing to understand. It's not like you

857
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: have to understand nanotechnology to understand its threat, right exactly.

858
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: That's well put. The other thing about all this is

859
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: that not everybody is on board with this, even people,

860
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: even people who hear about this kind of stuff are like, no,

861
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:30,960
Speaker 1: you know, this is pie in the sky. It's overblown

862
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: or the opposite of the sky. It's a cake in

863
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: the ground. Is that the opposite dark sky territory? It's

864
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: a turkey drumstick in the earth. Okay, that's kind of

865
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: the opposite of the of a pie. Okay. I think

866
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: I may have just come up with a coloaquialism I

867
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 1: think so. Um, So, some people aren't convinced. Some people say, no,

868
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: AI is nowhere near being even close to human level intelligent,

869
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:01,399
Speaker 1: let alone super intelligent. It like, why spend money because

870
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: it's expensive, right, Well, and other people are like, yeah,

871
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: if you start diverting, you know, research into figuring out

872
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: make AI friendly, I can tell you China and India

873
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: aren't going to do that, and so they're going to

874
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:14,400
Speaker 1: leap frog ahead of us and we're going to be

875
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:18,959
Speaker 1: toast competitively. So there's a cost to an opportunity cost,

876
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:22,160
Speaker 1: there's an actual cost um So there's a lot of people.

877
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:24,880
Speaker 1: It's basically the same arguments for people who argue against

878
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 1: mitigating climate change. Yeah, same same thing kind of. So

879
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 1: the answer is, uh, terraforming, terraforming, Well, that's that's not

880
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 1: the answer. The answer is one of those right, study

881
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: terraforming is right. The answer is to study this stuff

882
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,320
Speaker 1: figure out what to do about it. But it wouldn't

883
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,319
Speaker 1: hurt to learn how to live on Mars, right or

884
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:50,399
Speaker 1: just off of Earth because in the exact same way,

885
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,479
Speaker 1: like um that, like a whole village is at risk

886
00:49:53,520 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 1: when it's under a mud slide or a mountain and

887
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:58,720
Speaker 1: a mud slide comes down. If we all live on Earth.

888
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 1: If something happens to life on Earth, that's it for humanity.

889
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:06,839
Speaker 1: But if they're like a thriving population of humans who

890
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:08,799
Speaker 1: don't live on Earth, who live off of Earth, if

891
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:12,279
Speaker 1: something happens on Earth, humanity continues on. So learning to

892
00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 1: live off of Earth is a good step in the

893
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:23,359
Speaker 1: right direction. That's plan A DOT one. Sure it's tied

894
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 1: for first, like it's something we should be doing at

895
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,879
Speaker 1: the same time as studying and learning to mitigate existent tourists. Yeah,

896
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 1: and I think it's got to be multi pronged, because

897
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:35,279
Speaker 1: the threats are multi pronged. Absolutely. And there's one other

898
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:37,720
Speaker 1: thing that I really think you've got to get across.

899
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: Like we said that, if if say the US starts

900
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 1: to invest all of its resources into figuring out how

901
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: to make friendly AI, but India and China continue on

902
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: like the path, it's not gonna work. And the same

903
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: goes with if every country in the world said, no,

904
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: we're going to figure out friendly AI, but just one

905
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:03,360
Speaker 1: dedicate it itself to continuing on this path, the ninety

906
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 1: not the rest of the countries in the world. Progress

907
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 1: would be totally negated by that one yeah, so we

908
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: gotta get the It's got to be a global effort.

909
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 1: It has to be a species wide effort, not just

910
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: with AI, but with all these understanding all of them

911
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 1: and mitigating them together. Yeah, that could be a problem. So, um,

912
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 1: thank you for very much for doing this episode with me.

913
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:26,839
Speaker 1: I'll though you talking to Dave. No, well, Dave too.

914
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 1: We appreciate you to Dave, but but big ups to

915
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: you Charles, because Jerry was like, I'm not sitting in

916
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 1: that room. It's like, I'm not listening to Clark blather

917
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 1: on about existential risk for an hour. Um, so one

918
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 1: more time. Toby Ord's The Precipice is available everywhere you

919
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:44,280
Speaker 1: buy books. You can get The End of the World

920
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:47,960
Speaker 1: with Josh Clark wherever you get podcasts. If this kind

921
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:49,920
Speaker 1: of thing floated your boat, check out the Future of

922
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 1: Humanity Institute the Future of Life Institute UM and they

923
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 1: have a podcast hosted by Aerial Kahn and UM. She

924
00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:02,279
Speaker 1: had me on back in December of two eighteen as

925
00:52:02,360 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: part of a group that was talking about existential hope.

926
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: So you can go listen to that too. If you're

927
00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:09,279
Speaker 1: like this is a downer, I want to think about

928
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 1: the bright side, there's that whole Future of Life Institute podcast.

929
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 1: So what about you? Are you like convinced of this

930
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: whole thing like that this is an actual like thing

931
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 1: we need to be worrying about and thinking of. Really, No,

932
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, sure there are people that

933
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 1: should be thinking about this stuff, and that's great as

934
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: far as like me, what can I do well? And

935
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: then I ran into that like, there's not a great

936
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:41,360
Speaker 1: answer for that. It's more like, start telling other people

937
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:44,279
Speaker 1: is the best thing that the average person can do. Hey, man,

938
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: we just did that in a big way. We did,

939
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: didn't We Like? It's people. Now we can go to sleep. Okay,

940
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,

941
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:57,279
Speaker 1: then since Chuck said he's got nothing else, that's time

942
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Uh yeah, this is the opposite of

943
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:07,399
Speaker 1: all the smart stuff we just talked about. I just realized, Hey, guys,

944
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: I love you, love stuff you should know. On a

945
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: recent airplane flight, I listened to and really enjoyed the

946
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: Coyote episode wherein Chuck mentioned aften wolf bait as a

947
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: euphemism for farts. Coincidentally, on that same flight, Uh, we're

948
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 1: Bill Ny the Science Guy and Anthony Michael Hall, the actor.

949
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:33,160
Speaker 1: What is this star studded airplane flight? He said, so Naturally,

950
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: when I arrived at my home, I felt compelled to

951
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:40,400
Speaker 1: watch rewatch the film Weird Science, in which Anthony Michael

952
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 1: Hall stars in that movie, and I remember this now

953
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:45,919
Speaker 1: that he mentions it. In that movie, Anthony Michael Hall

954
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: uses the term wolf bait as a euphemism for pooping

955
00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:52,880
Speaker 1: dropping a wolf bait, which makes sense now that it

956
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: would be actual poop and not a fart. Did you

957
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: say his name before? Who wrote this? No? Your friend

958
00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: who used the word wolf bait? Eddie at sure? Okay?

959
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:03,320
Speaker 1: So is Eddie like a big Weird Science fan or

960
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: Anthony Michael Hall. I think he just Kelly Lebroc fan. Yeah,

961
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:10,879
Speaker 1: that must be it. Uh. It has been a full

962
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:13,160
Speaker 1: circle day for me and one that I hope you

963
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 1: will appreciate hearing about. And that is Jake Man. Can

964
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:19,680
Speaker 1: you imagine being on a flight with Bill Night and

965
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 1: Anthony Michael Hall. Who do you talk to? Who do

966
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:23,839
Speaker 1: you hang with? I don't. I'd just be worried that

967
00:54:23,920 --> 00:54:26,800
Speaker 1: somebody was gonna like take over control of the plane

968
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:29,759
Speaker 1: and fly it somewhere to hold us all hostage and

969
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:33,359
Speaker 1: make those two like perform or what if Bill Knight

970
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: and Anthony Michael Holler Inca hoots maybe and they take

971
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,480
Speaker 1: the plane hostage. Yeah, it would be very suspicious if

972
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:41,279
Speaker 1: they didn't talk to one another, you know what I mean?

973
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 1: I think so? Who is that? That was Jake? Thanks Jake,

974
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 1: that was a great email and thank you for joining us.

975
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:49,840
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, like

976
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:52,560
Speaker 1: Jake did, you can go onto stuff you Should Know

977
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 1: dot com and get lost in the amazing nous of it.

978
00:54:56,760 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 1: And you can also just send us an email to

979
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you

980
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.

981
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:10,240
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

982
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:12,799
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

983
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H