Speaker 1: This is not a hoax, This is not a joke.
Speaker 1: It is becoming clear that we hold in our hands
Speaker 1: the fate of the entire human race. Those of us
Speaker 1: alive today are part of a very small group, including
Speaker 1: us and perhaps a few generations to follow, who are
Speaker 1: responsible for the future of humanity. And if it turns
Speaker 1: out that we are alone in the universe, then even
Speaker 1: the fate of intelligent life may hang in the balance.
Speaker 1: No other humans have ever been in the unenviable position
Speaker 1: that we are. No humans who lived before were actually
Speaker 1: capable of wiping the human race from existence. No other
Speaker 1: humans were capable of screwing things up so badly and permanently.
Speaker 1: And those future humans to come won't be in this
Speaker 1: position either. If we fail and the worst happens, there
Speaker 1: won't be any future humans. And if we succeed and
Speaker 1: deliver the human race to a safe future, those future
Speaker 1: humans will have arrived at a place where they can
Speaker 1: easily deal with any risks that may come. We will
Speaker 1: have made existential risks extinct. Taking all of this together,
Speaker 1: everything seems to point to the coming century or two
Speaker 1: as the most dangerous period in human history. It's an
Speaker 1: extremely odd thing to say but together, you, me, and
Speaker 1: everyone we know appear to be the most vitally important
Speaker 1: humans who have ever lived, and as much as is
Speaker 1: riding on us, we have a lot going against us.
Speaker 1: We are our own worst enemies when it comes to
Speaker 1: existential risks. We come preloaded with a lot of biases
Speaker 1: that keep us from thinking rationally. We prefer not to
Speaker 1: think about unpleasant things like the sudden extinction of our species.
Speaker 1: Our brains aren't wired think ahead to the degree that
Speaker 1: existential risks require us too, And really, very little of
Speaker 1: our hundred thousand years or so of accumulated human experience
Speaker 1: has prepared us to take on the challenge that we
Speaker 1: are coming to face, and a lot of the experience
Speaker 1: that we do have can actually steer us wrong. It's
Speaker 1: almost like we were dropped into a point in history
Speaker 1: we hadn't yet become equipped to deal with. Yet, despite
Speaker 1: how utterly unbelievable the position that we find ourselves in is,
Speaker 1: the evidence points to this as our reality. The cosmic
Speaker 1: silence that creates the family paradox tells us that we
Speaker 1: are either alone and always have been where that we
Speaker 1: are alone because no other civilization has managed to survive
Speaker 1: if the latter is true. If the Gray Filter has
Speaker 1: killed off every other civilization in the universe before they
Speaker 1: could spread out from their home planets, then we will
Speaker 1: face the same impossible step that everyone else has before
Speaker 1: as we attempt to move off of Earth. And if
Speaker 1: the Great Filter is real, then it appears to be
Speaker 1: coming our way in the form of the powerful technology
Speaker 1: that we are beginning to create right now. But even
Speaker 1: granting that the Great Filter hypothesis may be faulty, that
Speaker 1: we aren't alone, that there really is intelligent life elsewhere,
Speaker 1: we still find ourselves in the same position. We are
Speaker 1: in grave danger of wiping ourselves out. There doesn't appear
Speaker 1: to be anyone coming to guide us through the treacherous
Speaker 1: times ahead. Whether we're alone in the universe or not,
Speaker 1: we appear to be on our own in facing our
Speaker 1: existential risks, all of our shortcomings and flaws. Notwithstanding, there
Speaker 1: is hope. We humans are smart, widely ingenious creatures, and
Speaker 1: as much as we like to think of ourselves as
Speaker 1: something higher than animals, those hundreds of millions of years
Speaker 1: of animal evolution is still very much in our nature.
Speaker 1: And when we're backed into a corner that animal ancestry
Speaker 1: comes rising to the surface. We fight, We rail against
Speaker 1: our demise. We survive. If we can manage to join
Speaker 1: that creature habit to the intelligence we've evolved that really
Speaker 1: does make us different from other animals, then we have
Speaker 1: a chance of making it through the existential risks that
Speaker 1: lie waiting ahead. If we can do that, we will
Speaker 1: deliver the entire human race to a safe place where
Speaker 1: it can thrive and flourish for billions of years. It's
Speaker 1: in our ability to do this. We can do this.
Speaker 1: Some of us are already trying, and we've already shown
Speaker 1: that we can face down existential risks. We've done it before.
Speaker 1: We encountered the first potential human made existential risk we've
Speaker 1: ever faced, in New Mexico, of all places. On July six,
Speaker 1: at just before am, the desert outside of Alama Gordo
Speaker 1: was the site of the first detonation of a nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb in human history. They called it the Trinity Test.
Speaker 1: At the moment the bomb detonated, the pre dawned sky
Speaker 1: lit up brighter than the sun, and the landscape was
Speaker 1: eerie and beautiful in gold and gray and violet, purple
Speaker 1: and blue. The explosion was so bright that one of
Speaker 1: the bomb's designers went blind for nearly half a minute
Speaker 1: from looking directly at it. By the blast sight, the
Speaker 1: sandy ground instantly turned into a green glass of a
Speaker 1: type that had never existed on Earth before that moment.
Speaker 1: They called it trinotite to mark the occasion, and then
Speaker 1: they buried it so no one would find it on
Speaker 1: this day. At this moment, the world was brought into
Speaker 1: the atomic age, an age of paranoia among everyday people
Speaker 1: that the world could end at any moment. In less
Speaker 1: than a month, America would explode an atomic bomb over
Speaker 1: Hiroshima in Japan, and sixty five thousand people would die
Speaker 1: in an instant. Another fifty five thousand people would die
Speaker 1: from the bomb's effects over the next year, and three
Speaker 1: days after Hiroshima, America would drop a second bomb over
Speaker 1: Nagasaki and another fifty thousand people would die. But even
Speaker 1: before all of the death and destruction that America reaked
Speaker 1: on Japan in August of even before the trinity tests
Speaker 1: that day in July, nuclear weapons became our first potential
Speaker 1: human made existential threat when the scientists building the bomb
Speaker 1: wondered if it might accidentally ignite the atmosphere. Edward Teller
Speaker 1: was one of the leading physicists working on the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 1: the secret program to build America's first nuclear weapons. By chance,
Speaker 1: Teller was also one of the physicists that Enrico Fermi
Speaker 1: was having lunch with when Faremi asked where is everybody,
Speaker 1: and the Faremi paradox was born. Teller was also pivotal
Speaker 1: in the nuclear arms race that characterized the Cold War
Speaker 1: by pushing for America to create a massive nuclear arsenal
Speaker 1: in three years before the Trinity Test, Edward Teller raised
Speaker 1: the concern that perhaps the sudden release of energy that
Speaker 1: the bomb would dump into the air might also set
Speaker 1: off a chain reaction among the nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: spreading the explosion from its source in New Mexico across
Speaker 1: the entirety of Earth. A catastrophe like that would burn
Speaker 1: the atmosphere completely off of our plan, and that would
Speaker 1: of course lead to these sudden and immediate extinction of
Speaker 1: virtually all life, humans included. Almost immediately, a disagreement over
Speaker 1: whether such a thing was even physically possible grew among
Speaker 1: the physicists on the project. Some like Enrico Fermi, were
Speaker 1: positive that it was not possible, but others, like Teller
Speaker 1: in the future head of the project, J. Robert Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: weren't so sure. Eventually, Oppenheimer mentioned the idea to Arthur H. Compton,
Speaker 1: who was the physicist that was the head of the
Speaker 1: project at the time. Compton found the idea grave enough
Speaker 1: to assign Teller and a few others to figure out
Speaker 1: just how serious the threat of accidentally burning off the
Speaker 1: atmosphere really was. The group that worked on the calculations
Speaker 1: wrote a paper on the possibility that the bomb could
Speaker 1: set off a nuclear chain reaction in Earth's atmosphere, igniting it.
Speaker 1: Even using assumptions of energy that far exceeded what they
Speaker 1: expected their tests to produce, the group found that it
Speaker 1: was highly unlikely that the bomb would ignite the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Two years later, when the bomb was ready, they detonated
Speaker 1: it the morning of the Trinity test. Enrico Fermi took
Speaker 1: bets on whether the atmosphere would ignite after all. It
Speaker 1: is to his credit that Arthur Compton took the possibility
Speaker 1: of the nuclear test igniting the atmosphere seriously. The scientists
Speaker 1: and military people working on the secret atomic bomb project
Speaker 1: had every incentive to keep pushing forward at any cost.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was widely believed that Hitler and
Speaker 1: the Third Reich were closing in on creating an atomic
Speaker 1: bomb of their own, and when they completed it, they
Speaker 1: would surely savagely unlea should across Europe, Africa, the Pacific,
Speaker 1: and eventually the United States. In two when the idea
Speaker 1: of the bomb might ignite the atmosphere was first raised,
Speaker 1: it was far from clear who would be left standing
Speaker 1: when the Second World War was over. And yet Compton
Speaker 1: decided that the potential existential threat the nuclear test may
Speaker 1: pose would be the worst of any possible outcomes. He
Speaker 1: didn't call it an existential threat, but he knew one
Speaker 1: when he saw one, even the first one. Better to
Speaker 1: accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run the
Speaker 1: chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind, Compton said
Speaker 1: in an interview with the writer Pearl Buck years after
Speaker 1: the test in nineteen fifty nine. And so it would
Speaker 1: appear that the first human made existential risk we ever
Speaker 1: faced was handled just about perfectly. But there's still a
Speaker 1: lot left to unpack here. Buck reported that Compton had
Speaker 1: drawn a line in the sand, as it were, He
Speaker 1: established a threshold of acceptable risk. He told the physicists
Speaker 1: working under him that if there was a greater than
Speaker 1: a three in a million chance the bomb would ignite
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere, they wouldn't go through with testing it.
Speaker 1: It's not entirely clear what Compton based that threshold on.
Speaker 1: It's not even clear if the threshold was a three
Speaker 1: and a million chance or a one in a million,
Speaker 1: and some of the Manhattan Project physicists later protested that
Speaker 1: there wasn't any chance that either Compton had misspoken or
Speaker 1: Buck had misunderstood. Regardless, the group that wrote the safety
Speaker 1: paper found that there was a non zero possibility that
Speaker 1: the test could ignite the atmosphere, meaning there was a chance,
Speaker 1: however slight, that it could. It was possible for such
Speaker 1: a chain reaction to occur. After all, the atmosphere is
Speaker 1: made of energetic vibrations that we call particles, and those
Speaker 1: particles do transfer energy among themselves, but the energies involved
Speaker 1: in the nuclear bomb should be far too small. The
Speaker 1: paper writers concluded it would take perhaps a million times
Speaker 1: more energy than their plutonium core was expected to release.
Speaker 1: For some of the scientists, the chance was so small
Speaker 1: that it became transmuted in their minds to an impossibility.
Speaker 1: They rounded that figure down for convenience's sake. The chance
Speaker 1: was so small that to them there might as well
Speaker 1: have been no chance at all. But as we've learned
Speaker 1: in previous episodes, deciding what level of risk is an
Speaker 1: acceptable level of risk is subjective. There are lots of
Speaker 1: things that have much less of a chance of happening
Speaker 1: than three in a million odds of accidentally igniting the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: If you live in America, you have a little less
Speaker 1: than a one in a million chance of being struck
Speaker 1: by lightning. This year. You have a roughly one and
Speaker 1: two hundred and ninety million chance of winning the Powerball.
Speaker 1: Each person living around the world has something like a
Speaker 1: one and twenty seven million chance of dying from a
Speaker 1: charchitect during their lifetime. Depending on your perspective, a three
Speaker 1: and a million chance of bringing about these sudden demise
Speaker 1: of life on Earth from a nuclear test isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: a small chance at all, especially considering the stakes. And
Speaker 1: yet it was up to Compton to decide for the
Speaker 1: rest of us that the test was worth the risk.
Speaker 1: Arthur Holly kh Upton, aged sixty, living in Chicago, Illinois,
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize winning physicist, father of two and tennis enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: was put in a position to decide for the rest
Speaker 1: of the two point three billion humans alive at the
Speaker 1: time that three chances in a million their project might
Speaker 1: blow up the atmosphere was an acceptable level of risk.
Speaker 1: The idea that a single person can make a decision
Speaker 1: that affects the entire world is a hallmark of existential risks.
Speaker 1: Not only the existential risk poses a threat, but the
Speaker 1: very fact that a single human being is making the decision,
Speaker 1: with all of their biases and flaws and stresses, puts
Speaker 1: us all at risk as well. There were a number
Speaker 1: of different pressure points that the people involved in the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project would have felt pushing them towards the decision
Speaker 1: to carry out the test. There were the Nazis, for one,
Speaker 1: and the pressure from the U. S. Miller terry to
Speaker 1: save the world from the Nazis. Their careers and reputations
Speaker 1: were at stake. There was also the allure of a
Speaker 1: scientific challenge. No one had ever done what the people
Speaker 1: working on the Manhattan Project did up to the moment
Speaker 1: of the trinity test. No one was entirely sure that
Speaker 1: a nuclear explosion was even possible. Consciously or not, these
Speaker 1: things influenced the decisions of the people working on the project.
Speaker 1: This is not to say that there was any cavalier
Speaker 1: disregard for the safety of humanity. They took the time
Speaker 1: to study the issue rather than just brushing it off
Speaker 1: as impossible after all. But the point is that just
Speaker 1: a handful of people working in secret were responsible for
Speaker 1: making that momentous decision, and those people were only human.
Speaker 1: It's also worth pointing out that a lot of the
Speaker 1: science that the safety paper writers used was very new
Speaker 1: at the time. The nuclear theory they were working off
Speaker 1: of is less than forty years old, the data they
Speaker 1: had on fission reactions was less than twenty years old,
Speaker 1: and the first sustained nuclear fission reaction wasn't carried out
Speaker 1: until when Fairmi held the first test on that squash
Speaker 1: court at the University of Chicago. And don't forget there
Speaker 1: had never been a nuclear explosion on Earth before. All
Speaker 1: of that newness, by the way, showed up during the
Speaker 1: Trinity test, when the bomb produced an explosive force about
Speaker 1: four times larger than what the project scientists had expected.
Speaker 1: All of this is to say that the data and
Speaker 1: understanding of what they were attempting with the trinity test
Speaker 1: was still young enough that they could have gotten it wrong,
Speaker 1: and we find ourselves in that same situation today. We
Speaker 1: see it in the types of experiments that are carried
Speaker 1: out in particle colliders and bio safety labs around the world.
Speaker 1: We see it in the endless release of self improving
Speaker 1: neural nets. Our understanding of the unprecedented risks these things
Speaker 1: pose is lacking to a dangerous degree. Depending on how
Speaker 1: the chances of a risk changes, the threat it poses
Speaker 1: can get larger or smaller, but really the reality of
Speaker 1: the threat stays the same. It's our awareness of it
Speaker 1: that changes. Awareness is the way we will survive becoming
Speaker 1: existential threats m M. There are two ways of looking
Speaker 1: at our prospects for making it to a state of
Speaker 1: technological maturity for humanity where we have safely mastered our
Speaker 1: technology and can survive beyond the next century or two.
Speaker 1: Gloom and doom and optimism. The gloom and doom camp
Speaker 1: makes a pretty good case for why humans won't make
Speaker 1: it through this pastly the greatest challenge our species will
Speaker 1: ever face. There's the issue of global coordination, the kind
Speaker 1: of like mindedness that will have to create among every
Speaker 1: country in the world to successfully navigate the coming risks.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about in the last episode, we will
Speaker 1: almost certainly run into problems with global coordination. Some nations
Speaker 1: may decide that they'd be better off going it alone
Speaker 1: and continuing to pursue research and development that the rest
Speaker 1: of the world has deemed too risky. This raises all
Speaker 1: sorts of prickly questions that we may not have the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to address. Does the rest of the world agree
Speaker 1: that we should invade non complying countries and take over
Speaker 1: their government? In a strictly rational sense, that's the most
Speaker 1: logical thing to do. Rationally speaking, Toppling a single government,
Speaker 1: even a democratically elected one, is a small price to
Speaker 1: pay to prevent an existential risk that can drive humanity
Speaker 1: as a whole to permanent extinction. But we humans aren't
Speaker 1: strictly rational, and something is dire as Invading a country
Speaker 1: and toppling its government comes with major costs, like the
Speaker 1: deaths of the people who live in that country and
Speaker 1: widespread disruptions to their social structures. If the chips are down,
Speaker 1: would we go to such an extreme to prevent our extinction.
Speaker 1: There's also the issue of money. Money itself is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the problem. It is what fund scientific endeavors. It's
Speaker 1: what scientists are paid with. Money is what we will
Speaker 1: pay the future researchers who will steer us away from
Speaker 1: existential risks. The Future of Humanity Institute is funded by money.
Speaker 1: The problem money poses where existential risks are concerned is
Speaker 1: that humanity has shown that we are willing to sell
Speaker 1: out our own best interests and the interests of others
Speaker 1: for money and market share, or more commonly, that we're
Speaker 1: willing to stand by and let others do it, and
Speaker 1: with existential risks, greed would be a fatal flaw. Everything
Speaker 1: from the tobacco industry to the fossil fuel industry, the
Speaker 1: anti freeze industry, to the infant formula industry, all of
Speaker 1: them have a history of avarice, of frequently and consistently
Speaker 1: putting money before well being and on a massive and
Speaker 1: global scale. How can we expect change when money is
Speaker 1: just as tied to the experiments and technology that carry
Speaker 1: an existential risk. Also stacked against us is the bare
Speaker 1: fact that thinking about existential risks is really really hard.
Speaker 1: Analyzing existential threats demands that we trace all of the
Speaker 1: possible outcomes that thread from any action we might take,
Speaker 1: and look for unconsidered dangerous lurking there. They require us
Speaker 1: to think about technology that hasn't even been invented yet,
Speaker 1: to look a few more moves ahead on the cosmic
Speaker 1: chessboard than we're typically capable of seeing. To put it mildly,
Speaker 1: we're not really equipped to easily think about existential risks
Speaker 1: at this point. We also have a history of overreliance
Speaker 1: on techno optimism, that idea that technology can save us
Speaker 1: from any crisis that comes our way. Perhaps even thinking
Speaker 1: that reaching the point of technological maturity will protect us
Speaker 1: from existential risks is nothing more than an example of
Speaker 1: techno optimism, And as we add more existential risks to
Speaker 1: our world, the chances increase that one of them may
Speaker 1: bring about our extinction. It's easy to forget since it's
Speaker 1: a new way of living for us, But the technology
Speaker 1: we're developing is powerful enough and the world is connected
Speaker 1: enough that all it will take is one single existential
Speaker 1: catastrophe to permanently end humanity. If you take the accumulated
Speaker 1: risk from all of the biological experiments in the unknown
Speaker 1: number of containment labs around the globe, and you add
Speaker 1: it to the accumulated risks from all of the runs
Speaker 1: and particle colliders online today and to come, and you
Speaker 1: add the risks from the vast number of neural nets
Speaker 1: capable of recursive self improvement that we create and deploy
Speaker 1: every day. When you take into account emerging technologies I
Speaker 1: haven't quite made it to reality yet, like nanobots and
Speaker 1: geoengineering projects, and the many more technologies that will pose
Speaker 1: a risk that we haven't even thought of yet. When
Speaker 1: you add all of those things together, it becomes clear
Speaker 1: what a precarious spot humanity is truly in. So you
Speaker 1: can understand how a person might look at just how
Speaker 1: intractable the problem seems and decide that our doom is complete.
Speaker 1: It just hasn't happened yet. I think we can be
Speaker 1: a bit more optimistic than that. This is Toby Ord again,
Speaker 1: one of the earliest members of the Future of Humanity Institute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that this is actually a clear and obvious
Speaker 1: enough idea that people will wake up to it and
Speaker 1: embrace it. Uh much more slowly than we should. But
Speaker 1: I think that uh we will realize that this is
Speaker 1: a central moral issue of our time and rise to
Speaker 1: the challenge. But to begin to rise to the challenge,
Speaker 1: we need to talk about existential risks seriously. The way
Speaker 1: that anything changes, the way an idea or an issue
Speaker 1: comes to be debated and its merits examined, is that
Speaker 1: people start talking about it. If this series has had
Speaker 1: any impact on you, and if you have, like I have,
Speaker 1: come to believe that humanity is facing threats to our
Speaker 1: existence that are unprecedented, with consequences that, on the whole
Speaker 1: we are dangerously ignorant of, then it is imperative that
Speaker 1: we start talking about those things. You can start reading
Speaker 1: the articles and papers that are already being written about them,
Speaker 1: start following people on social media who are already talking
Speaker 1: about existential risks, like David Pierce and Elie as A
Speaker 1: Yukowski and Sebastian Farquhar. Started asking questions about existential risks
Speaker 1: from the people we elect to represent us. I think
Speaker 1: we often feel that the powers that be must already
Speaker 1: have these things in hand. But when I've talked with
Speaker 1: government about existential risk, even a major national government like
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom, they tend to think that these issues
Speaker 1: saving civilization and humanity itself are above their pay grade. Uh,
Speaker 1: and not really something they can deal with in a
Speaker 1: five year election cycle. Um. But then it turns out
Speaker 1: there's no one else above them dealing with them either.
Speaker 1: So I think that there's more of a threat from
Speaker 1: complacency in thinking that someone must have this managed. In
Speaker 1: a rational world, someone would. It's up to the rest
Speaker 1: of us, then, to start a movement. The idea of
Speaker 1: a movement to get humanity to pay attention to existential
Speaker 1: risks sounds amorphous and far off, but we've founded movements
Speaker 1: on far off ideas before. If enough people start talking,
Speaker 1: others will listen. Just a handful of books got the
Speaker 1: environmental movement started, like the ones written by the Club
Speaker 1: of Rome and Paul Airlick, but especially Rachel Carson's nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two book Silent Spring, which warned of the widespread
Speaker 1: ecological destruction from the pesticide d d T. Carson's book
Speaker 1: is credited with showing the public how fragile the ecosystems
Speaker 1: of the natural world can be and how much of
Speaker 1: an effect we humans have on them. Awareness of things
Speaker 1: like fertilizer runoff, deforestation, indicator species concepts that you can
Speaker 1: find being taught in middle schools today. We're unheard of.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the nineteen sixties, most people just
Speaker 1: didn't think about things like that. But when the environmental
Speaker 1: movement began to gain steam, awareness of environmental issues started
Speaker 1: to spread. Within a decade of silent springs release, nations
Speaker 1: around the world started opening government agencies that were responsible
Speaker 1: for defending the environment. The world went from ignorance about
Speaker 1: environmental issues to establishing policy agencies in less than ten years.
Speaker 1: And I think that that we could do some of that,
Speaker 1: and it really shows that it is possible to take
Speaker 1: something which is not really part of common sense morality,
Speaker 1: and then within a generation, uh children are being raised
Speaker 1: everywhere with this as part of just a background of
Speaker 1: beliefs about ethics that that they live with. So I
Speaker 1: really think that we could achieve them. There is much
Speaker 1: work to be done with environmental policy that is definitely
Speaker 1: grant but we are working on it. Nations around the
Speaker 1: world on their own and together are spending money to
Speaker 1: pay scientists and researchers to study environmental issues, come up
Speaker 1: with an up to the moment understanding of them, and
Speaker 1: established best practices how to protect Earth from ourselves. The
Speaker 1: trouble comes when we decide not to listen to the
Speaker 1: scientists that we've asked to study these problems. Existential risks
Speaker 1: call for this same kind of initiative. We have to
Speaker 1: establish a foundation, provide a beginning that others to follow
Speaker 1: can build upon. Just like Eric Drexler posed the rather
Speaker 1: unpopular gray goose scenario regarding nanobot design, just like Eliezer
Speaker 1: Yukowski and Nick Bostrom identified the AI should have friendliness
Speaker 1: designed into it. Just like others have raised the alarm
Speaker 1: about risks from biotech and physics, if we examine the
Speaker 1: problems we face, we can understand the risks that they pose.
Speaker 1: And if we understand the risks that they pose, then
Speaker 1: we can make an informed decision about whether they're worth pursuing.
Speaker 1: The scientists working on the Manhattan Project did the same
Speaker 1: thing when they took the possibility seriously that they might
Speaker 1: accidentally ignite the atmosphere, so they investigated the problem to
Speaker 1: see if they would. We don't at this point have
Speaker 1: a clue as to what the possible outcomes for our
Speaker 1: future technology. Maybe, and trying to guess at something like
Speaker 1: that today would be like guessing back in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties about what affects clear cutting old growth forests and
Speaker 1: the Amazon Basin would have on global cloud formation. It's
Speaker 1: just too our kane a question for a time when
Speaker 1: we don't have enough of the information we need to
Speaker 1: respond in any kind of informed way. We don't even
Speaker 1: know all of the questions to ask at this point,
Speaker 1: but it's up to us alive now to start figuring
Speaker 1: out what those questions are. Working on space flight is
Speaker 1: another good example of where we can start. Among people
Speaker 1: who study existential risks, it is largely agreed on that
Speaker 1: we should begin working on a project to get humanity
Speaker 1: off of Earth and into space as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Working on space colonization does a couple of things that
Speaker 1: benefit humanity. First, it gets a few of our eggs
Speaker 1: out of the single basket of Earth, so should an
Speaker 1: existential risk befall our planet, there will still be humans
Speaker 1: living elsewhere to carry on. And Second, the sooner we
Speaker 1: get ourselves into space, the larger our cosmic endowment will be.
Speaker 1: One of the things we found from studying the universe
Speaker 1: is that it appears to be expanding outward and apart
Speaker 1: over deep time scales, the kind of time scales we
Speaker 1: humans will hopefully live for. That could be an issue
Speaker 1: because eventually all of the matter in the universe will
Speaker 1: spread out of our reach forever. So the sooner we
Speaker 1: get off Earth and out into the universe, the more
Speaker 1: of that material we will have for our use to
Speaker 1: do with whatever we can dream up. We are not
Speaker 1: going to call anized space tomorrow. It may take us
Speaker 1: hundreds of years of effort, maybe longer, but that's exactly
Speaker 1: the point. A project that is so vital to our
Speaker 1: future shouldn't be put off because it seems far off.
Speaker 1: The best time to begin working on a space colonization
Speaker 1: program was twenty years ago. The second best time is today.
Speaker 1: We are working on getting to space. True, but there's
Speaker 1: a world of difference between the piecemeal efforts going on
Speaker 1: across Earth now and the kind of project we could
Speaker 1: come up with if we decided to put a coordinated
Speaker 1: global human effort behind spreading out into space. Imagine what
Speaker 1: we could achieve if humanity work together on what would
Speaker 1: probably be our greatest human project. Imagine the effect that
Speaker 1: it would have on people across the globe. If we
Speaker 1: work together to get not a nation, not a hemisphere,
Speaker 1: but the human race itself into space. The same holds
Speaker 1: true with virtually every project for taking on existential risks.
Speaker 1: We should begin working on them as soon as possible
Speaker 1: to build a foundation for the future, and we should
Speaker 1: make tackling them a global effort. I hope by now
Speaker 1: I've made it abundantly clear that subverting scientific progress won't
Speaker 1: protect us from existential threats. The opposite is true. We
Speaker 1: need a scientific understanding of the coming existential threats we
Speaker 1: face to get past them. The trick is making sure
Speaker 1: that science is done with the best interests of the
Speaker 1: human race in mind. It's not something we commonly think
Speaker 1: of ourselves as, but you and I and everyone else
Speaker 1: in the world is a stakeholder in science. And this
Speaker 1: is truer than ever before with the rise of existential threats,
Speaker 1: since the whole world can be affected by a single experiment. Now.
Speaker 1: In the article in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, physicist H. C.
Speaker 1: Dudley criticized Arthur Compton and the Manhattan Project for their
Speaker 1: decision that a three and a million chance was an
Speaker 1: acceptable risk for detonating the first nuclear bomb. They were
Speaker 1: all rolling dice for high stakes, and the rest of
Speaker 1: us did not even know we were sitting in the game.
Speaker 1: Dudley wrote, the same is true today in making assumptions
Speaker 1: about whether cosmic rays make an acceptable model for proton
Speaker 1: collisions in the Large Hadron collider, or that forcing a
Speaker 1: mutation that makes an extremely deadly virus easier to pass
Speaker 1: among humans is a good way forward in virology. Those
Speaker 1: scientists are making decisions that have consequences that may affect
Speaker 1: all of us, So we should have a say in
Speaker 1: how science is done. Science is meant to further human
Speaker 1: understanding and to improve the human condition, not to further
Speaker 1: the prestige of a particular scientist's career. When those two conflict,
Speaker 1: humanity should come first. But to say that the public
Speaker 1: has and how science is done has to be an
Speaker 1: informed say, no pitchforks and torches. This is why a
Speaker 1: movement that takes existential risks seriously requires trustworthy, skilled, trained
Speaker 1: scientists to make our say an informed one. We rely
Speaker 1: on them for that. Science isn't the enemy. If we
Speaker 1: abandon science, we are doomed. If we continue to take
Speaker 1: the dangers of science casually, we are doomed. The only
Speaker 1: route through the near future is to do science right,
Speaker 1: and scientists aren't the enemy either. They have often been
Speaker 1: the ones who have sounded the alarm when science was
Speaker 1: being done recklessly or when a threat emerged that had
Speaker 1: been overlooked. Those physicists who decided that three and a
Speaker 1: million was an acceptable chance of burning off Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 1: were the same ones who figured out that there was
Speaker 1: something to be concerned with in the first place. It
Speaker 1: was microbiologists who called for a moratorium and gain a
Speaker 1: function research after the H five and one experiments. It
Speaker 1: was particle physicists who wrote papers questioning the safety of
Speaker 1: the large hadron collider. If you're a scientist, start looking
Speaker 1: seriously at the consequences of your field, and if work
Speaker 1: within it poses an existential risk, start writing papers about it.
Speaker 1: Start analyzing how it can be made safe. Take custody
Speaker 1: of the consequences of your work. The people who are
Speaker 1: dedicated to thinking about existential risks are waiting for you
Speaker 1: to do that. This is Sebastian Farquhar. To a certain extent,
Speaker 1: organizations like the FHI, the Future of Humanity Institute UM
Speaker 1: their job is just to poke the rest of the
Speaker 1: community and sort of say by the way this this
Speaker 1: is a thing, and then for AI researchers or biology
Speaker 1: researchers to take that on and to make it their
Speaker 1: own projects. Um and the sooner and the more FHI
Speaker 1: can step out of that game and leave it to
Speaker 1: those communities, the better. Many of these solutions are already
Speaker 1: being worked on. Scientists around the world are researching large
Speaker 1: problems and raising alarms. But since we have a limited
Speaker 1: amount of time, since we're racing the clock, we have
Speaker 1: to make sure that we don't waste time working on
Speaker 1: risks that seem big but don't qualify as genuine existential threats,
Speaker 1: and we can't tell one type from the other until
Speaker 1: we start studying them. The biggest sea change, though, has
Speaker 1: to come from society in general. We have to come
Speaker 1: together like we never have before. We have to put
Speaker 1: scientists in a position to understand existential risks, and we
Speaker 1: have to listen to what they come back and tell us.
Speaker 1: It is astoundingly coincidental that at the moment in our
Speaker 1: history when we become aware just how brief our time
Speaker 1: here has been and just how long it could last,
Speaker 1: we also realize that our history could come to an
Speaker 1: early permanent end, very soon. At the beginning of the series,
Speaker 1: I said that if we go extinct in the near future,
Speaker 1: it would be particularly tragic, and that is true. Human
Speaker 1: civilization has been around only ten thousand years. And remember
Speaker 1: that a lot of people who think humanity could have
Speaker 1: a long future ahead of us believe that there could
Speaker 1: be at least a billion years left in the lifetime
Speaker 1: of our species. If we've created almost every bit of
Speaker 1: our shared human culture over just the last ten thousand
Speaker 1: years or so, developed everything it means to be a
Speaker 1: human alive today in that short time span, think about
Speaker 1: what we could become and what we could do with
Speaker 1: another nine and ninety thousand years. It is not our
Speaker 1: time to go, yet, there is something we have to consider.
Speaker 1: The great filter has to this point been total. It
Speaker 1: is possible that even if we come together, even if
Speaker 1: humanity takes our existential risks head on, that it won't
Speaker 1: be enough. That there will be something we miss, some
Speaker 1: detail we hadn't considered, some new thing that grabs us
Speaker 1: by our ankle just as we are making it through
Speaker 1: and plux us right out of existence. If we go,
Speaker 1: then so many unique and valuable things go with us.
Speaker 1: The whole beautiful pageant of humanity will come to an end.
Speaker 1: There will be no one to sing songs anymore, no
Speaker 1: one to write books and no one to read them.
Speaker 1: There will be no one to cry, no one to
Speaker 1: hug them when they do. There will be no one
Speaker 1: to tell jokes and no one to laugh. There will
Speaker 1: be no friends to share evenings with, and no quiet
Speaker 1: moments alone at sunrise, good or bad. Everything we've ever
Speaker 1: done will die with us. There will be no one
Speaker 1: to build new things, and the things that we have
Speaker 1: built will eventually crumble into dust. Those energetic vibrations that
Speaker 1: make up us and everything we've ever made will disentangle
Speaker 1: and go their separate ways along their quantum fields, to
Speaker 1: be taken up into new forms down the line, in
Speaker 1: a universe where humans no longer exist. If we go,
Speaker 1: it seems that intelligence dies with us, there will be
Speaker 1: nothing left to wonder at the profound vastness of existence
Speaker 1: and appreciate the extraordinary gift that life is. There will
Speaker 1: be no one with the curiosity to seek out answers
Speaker 1: to the mysteries of the universe, no one to even
Speaker 1: know that the mysteries exist. There will be no one
Speaker 1: to reciprocate when the universe looks in on itself, there
Speaker 1: will be nothing looking back at it. But as genuinely
Speaker 1: sad as the idea of humanity going extinct forever is,
Speaker 1: we can still take some comfort in the future for
Speaker 1: the universe. We can take heart that if we die,
Speaker 1: life will almost certainly continue on without us. Remember, life
Speaker 1: is resilient. Over the course of its tenure on Earth,
Speaker 1: life has managed to survive at least five mass extinctions
Speaker 1: that killed off the vast majority of the creatures alive
Speaker 1: on Earth at the time. The life on Earth today
Speaker 1: is descended from just that fraction of a fraction of
Speaker 1: a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of life
Speaker 1: that managed to hang on through each of the times
Speaker 1: Death visited Earth, and every time after Death left, life
Speaker 1: poked its head back, came back up to the surface,
Speaker 1: and began to flourish again. If we humans called death
Speaker 1: back to our planet, life will retreat to its burrows
Speaker 1: and to the bottom of the sea to hide until
Speaker 1: it's safe to re emerge. And perhaps when it does
Speaker 1: emerge again, one of the members of that community of
Speaker 1: life that survives us will rise to take our place,
Speaker 1: to fill the void that we've left behind, just like
Speaker 1: we filled the void left after the last mass extinction.
Speaker 1: Perhaps some other animal we share the Earth with now
Speaker 1: will evolve to become the only intelligent life in the
Speaker 1: universe and take their chance and making it through the
Speaker 1: Great Filter. Perhaps someday they will build their own ships
Speaker 1: that will break their bonds to Earth and take them
Speaker 1: into space in search of new worlds to explore, just
Speaker 1: like we humans tried so long before. M M. The
Speaker 1: End of the World with Josh Clark is a production
Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works and I Heart Media. It was
Speaker 1: written and presented by Me Josh Clark. The original score
Speaker 1: was composed, produced and recorded by Point Lobo. The head
Speaker 1: sound designer and audio engineer was Kevin Senzaki. Additional sound
Speaker 1: designed by Paul Funera. The supervising producer was Paul Deckan.
Speaker 1: A very special thanks to you, Me Clark for her
Speaker 1: assistance and support throughout the series production and to MOMO
Speaker 1: to thank you to everyone at the Future of Humanity Institute,
Speaker 1: and thanks to everyone at How Stuff Works for their
Speaker 1: support and especially Sherry Larson, Jerry Rowland, Connal Burne, Pam Peacock,
Speaker 1: Nathan Natoski, Tary Harrison, Ben Bolden, Tamika Campbell, Noel Brown,
Speaker 1: Jenny Powers, Chuck Bryant, Christopher Hastosis, Eve's, Jeff Cote, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: Tom Boutera, Chris Blake, Lyle Sweet, Ben Juster, John go Forth,
Speaker 1: Mark fresh Hour, Britney Bernardo and Keith Goldstein. Thank you
Speaker 1: to the interviewees, research assistants and vocal contributors Dana Backman,
Speaker 1: Stephen Barr, Nick Bostrom, Donald Brownlee, Philip Butler, Coral Clark,
Speaker 1: Sebastian Farquhar, Toby Halbrook, Robin Hansen, Eric Johnson, Don Lincoln,
Speaker 1: michel Angelo Mangano, David Madison, Matt McTaggart, Ian O'Neill, Toby Ord, Casey, Pegrham,
Speaker 1: Ander Sandberg, Kyle Scott, Ben Schlayer, Seth Shostack, Tanya Singh,
Speaker 1: Ignacio Taboada, Beth Willis, Adam Wilson, cat Sebis, Michael Wilson,
Speaker 1: cat Sebas, and Brett Wood And thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: W