WEBVTT - End 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:06.520 This is not a hoax, This is not a joke. 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.559 It is becoming clear that we hold in our hands 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:14.960 the fate of the entire human race. Those of us 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.720 alive today are part of a very small group, including 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:22.480 us and perhaps a few generations to follow, who are 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:27.200 responsible for the future of humanity. And if it turns 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.479 out that we are alone in the universe, then even 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.360 the fate of intelligent life may hang in the balance. 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.159 No other humans have ever been in the unenviable position 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:42.080 that we are. No humans who lived before were actually 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.800 capable of wiping the human race from existence. No other 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:50.440 humans were capable of screwing things up so badly and permanently. 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.040 And those future humans to come won't be in this 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:58.200 position either. If we fail and the worst happens, there 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:02.200 won't be any future humans. And if we succeed and 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:05.960 deliver the human race to a safe future, those future 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:08.520 humans will have arrived at a place where they can 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:12.400 easily deal with any risks that may come. We will 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:18.120 have made existential risks extinct. Taking all of this together, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.600 everything seems to point to the coming century or two 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:26.679 as the most dangerous period in human history. It's an 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:31.800 extremely odd thing to say but together, you, me, and 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.680 everyone we know appear to be the most vitally important 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:40.640 humans who have ever lived, and as much as is 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.000 riding on us, we have a lot going against us. 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.360 We are our own worst enemies when it comes to 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.160 existential risks. We come preloaded with a lot of biases 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.360 that keep us from thinking rationally. We prefer not to 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.920 think about unpleasant things like the sudden extinction of our species. 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.760 Our brains aren't wired think ahead to the degree that 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:06.480 existential risks require us too, And really, very little of 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.840 our hundred thousand years or so of accumulated human experience 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.920 has prepared us to take on the challenge that we 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.080 are coming to face, and a lot of the experience 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.960 that we do have can actually steer us wrong. It's 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:22.600 almost like we were dropped into a point in history 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:27.280 we hadn't yet become equipped to deal with. Yet, despite 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:31.200 how utterly unbelievable the position that we find ourselves in is, 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:36.760 the evidence points to this as our reality. The cosmic 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.000 silence that creates the family paradox tells us that we 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:42.960 are either alone and always have been where that we 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:46.400 are alone because no other civilization has managed to survive 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.440 if the latter is true. If the Gray Filter has 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:53.520 killed off every other civilization in the universe before they 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.399 could spread out from their home planets, then we will 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.919 face the same impossible step that everyone else has before 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.440 as we attempt to move off of Earth. And if 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.120 the Great Filter is real, then it appears to be 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.119 coming our way in the form of the powerful technology 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:13.320 that we are beginning to create right now. But even 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.840 granting that the Great Filter hypothesis may be faulty, that 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:20.520 we aren't alone, that there really is intelligent life elsewhere, 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:24.960 we still find ourselves in the same position. We are 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.400 in grave danger of wiping ourselves out. There doesn't appear 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.200 to be anyone coming to guide us through the treacherous 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.240 times ahead. Whether we're alone in the universe or not, 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.360 we appear to be on our own in facing our 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:44.800 existential risks, all of our shortcomings and flaws. Notwithstanding, there 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:50.920 is hope. We humans are smart, widely ingenious creatures, and 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:52.800 as much as we like to think of ourselves as 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.480 something higher than animals, those hundreds of millions of years 0:03:56.520 --> 0:04:00.320 of animal evolution is still very much in our nature. 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.960 And when we're backed into a corner that animal ancestry 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:09.440 comes rising to the surface. We fight, We rail against 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:13.920 our demise. We survive. If we can manage to join 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.479 that creature habit to the intelligence we've evolved that really 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:20.279 does make us different from other animals, then we have 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.039 a chance of making it through the existential risks that 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.640 lie waiting ahead. If we can do that, we will 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.679 deliver the entire human race to a safe place where 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:35.080 it can thrive and flourish for billions of years. It's 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.880 in our ability to do this. We can do this. 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:43.239 Some of us are already trying, and we've already shown 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.279 that we can face down existential risks. We've done it before. 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.240 We encountered the first potential human made existential risk we've 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:01.960 ever faced, in New Mexico, of all places. On July six, 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:08.159 at just before am, the desert outside of Alama Gordo 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:10.680 was the site of the first detonation of a nuclear 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.640 bomb in human history. They called it the Trinity Test. 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.120 At the moment the bomb detonated, the pre dawned sky 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:22.599 lit up brighter than the sun, and the landscape was 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.160 eerie and beautiful in gold and gray and violet, purple 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:34.919 and blue. The explosion was so bright that one of 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.080 the bomb's designers went blind for nearly half a minute 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.680 from looking directly at it. By the blast sight, the 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:45.279 sandy ground instantly turned into a green glass of a 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.120 type that had never existed on Earth before that moment. 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.760 They called it trinotite to mark the occasion, and then 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:55.240 they buried it so no one would find it on 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.440 this day. At this moment, the world was brought into 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:02.279 the atomic age, an age of paranoia among everyday people 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.800 that the world could end at any moment. In less 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:09.120 than a month, America would explode an atomic bomb over 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:13.360 Hiroshima in Japan, and sixty five thousand people would die 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:18.040 in an instant. Another fifty five thousand people would die 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.039 from the bomb's effects over the next year, and three 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.560 days after Hiroshima, America would drop a second bomb over 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:29.600 Nagasaki and another fifty thousand people would die. But even 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.839 before all of the death and destruction that America reaked 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:37.320 on Japan in August of even before the trinity tests 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:41.240 that day in July, nuclear weapons became our first potential 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.000 human made existential threat when the scientists building the bomb 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:52.360 wondered if it might accidentally ignite the atmosphere. Edward Teller 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.600 was one of the leading physicists working on the Manhattan Project, 0:06:56.040 --> 0:07:00.440 the secret program to build America's first nuclear weapons. By chance, 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:03.400 Teller was also one of the physicists that Enrico Fermi 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:07.200 was having lunch with when Faremi asked where is everybody, 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:11.240 and the Faremi paradox was born. Teller was also pivotal 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.120 in the nuclear arms race that characterized the Cold War 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.000 by pushing for America to create a massive nuclear arsenal 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.920 in three years before the Trinity Test, Edward Teller raised 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.960 the concern that perhaps the sudden release of energy that 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:29.920 the bomb would dump into the air might also set 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.560 off a chain reaction among the nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere, 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:37.640 spreading the explosion from its source in New Mexico across 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.960 the entirety of Earth. A catastrophe like that would burn 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.440 the atmosphere completely off of our plan, and that would 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.800 of course lead to these sudden and immediate extinction of 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:55.200 virtually all life, humans included. Almost immediately, a disagreement over 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.520 whether such a thing was even physically possible grew among 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:03.240 the physicists on the project. Some like Enrico Fermi, were 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:06.840 positive that it was not possible, but others, like Teller 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.120 in the future head of the project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:16.440 weren't so sure. Eventually, Oppenheimer mentioned the idea to Arthur H. Compton, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:18.880 who was the physicist that was the head of the 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.600 project at the time. Compton found the idea grave enough 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.680 to assign Teller and a few others to figure out 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.320 just how serious the threat of accidentally burning off the 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:32.520 atmosphere really was. The group that worked on the calculations 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.440 wrote a paper on the possibility that the bomb could 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:38.960 set off a nuclear chain reaction in Earth's atmosphere, igniting it. 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.480 Even using assumptions of energy that far exceeded what they 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.480 expected their tests to produce, the group found that it 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.560 was highly unlikely that the bomb would ignite the atmosphere. 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.920 Two years later, when the bomb was ready, they detonated 0:08:54.960 --> 0:09:01.160 it the morning of the Trinity test. Enrico Fermi took 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:08.280 bets on whether the atmosphere would ignite after all. It 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.640 is to his credit that Arthur Compton took the possibility 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:16.199 of the nuclear test igniting the atmosphere seriously. The scientists 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:19.680 and military people working on the secret atomic bomb project 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.560 had every incentive to keep pushing forward at any cost. 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.199 At the time, it was widely believed that Hitler and 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.000 the Third Reich were closing in on creating an atomic 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:33.040 bomb of their own, and when they completed it, they 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:37.320 would surely savagely unlea should across Europe, Africa, the Pacific, 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:42.440 and eventually the United States. In two when the idea 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.000 of the bomb might ignite the atmosphere was first raised, 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.000 it was far from clear who would be left standing 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.240 when the Second World War was over. And yet Compton 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.240 decided that the potential existential threat the nuclear test may 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.280 pose would be the worst of any possible outcomes. He 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.400 didn't call it an existential threat, but he knew one 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.600 when he saw one, even the first one. Better to 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.120 accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run the 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.320 chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind, Compton said 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.520 in an interview with the writer Pearl Buck years after 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.760 the test in nineteen fifty nine. And so it would 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.000 appear that the first human made existential risk we ever 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.800 faced was handled just about perfectly. But there's still a 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:34.000 lot left to unpack here. Buck reported that Compton had 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:36.760 drawn a line in the sand, as it were, He 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:41.319 established a threshold of acceptable risk. He told the physicists 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.760 working under him that if there was a greater than 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.520 a three in a million chance the bomb would ignite 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.360 the Earth's atmosphere, they wouldn't go through with testing it. 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.679 It's not entirely clear what Compton based that threshold on. 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.800 It's not even clear if the threshold was a three 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.320 and a million chance or a one in a million, 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.680 and some of the Manhattan Project physicists later protested that 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.560 there wasn't any chance that either Compton had misspoken or 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:12.160 Buck had misunderstood. Regardless, the group that wrote the safety 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.360 paper found that there was a non zero possibility that 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:19.360 the test could ignite the atmosphere, meaning there was a chance, 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:23.320 however slight, that it could. It was possible for such 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.600 a chain reaction to occur. After all, the atmosphere is 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.080 made of energetic vibrations that we call particles, and those 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:34.640 particles do transfer energy among themselves, but the energies involved 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:37.080 in the nuclear bomb should be far too small. The 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.680 paper writers concluded it would take perhaps a million times 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:44.640 more energy than their plutonium core was expected to release. 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.640 For some of the scientists, the chance was so small 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:52.400 that it became transmuted in their minds to an impossibility. 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:56.720 They rounded that figure down for convenience's sake. The chance 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.360 was so small that to them there might as well 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.000 have been no chance at all. But as we've learned 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.679 in previous episodes, deciding what level of risk is an 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.360 acceptable level of risk is subjective. There are lots of 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:13.960 things that have much less of a chance of happening 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:17.800 than three in a million odds of accidentally igniting the atmosphere. 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.320 If you live in America, you have a little less 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:23.480 than a one in a million chance of being struck 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:26.520 by lightning. This year. You have a roughly one and 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.720 two hundred and ninety million chance of winning the Powerball. 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:33.760 Each person living around the world has something like a 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:36.960 one and twenty seven million chance of dying from a 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:41.680 charchitect during their lifetime. Depending on your perspective, a three 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.760 and a million chance of bringing about these sudden demise 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:47.880 of life on Earth from a nuclear test isn't necessarily 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:53.080 a small chance at all, especially considering the stakes. And 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:55.720 yet it was up to Compton to decide for the 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:58.160 rest of us that the test was worth the risk. 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:03.479 Arthur Holly kh Upton, aged sixty, living in Chicago, Illinois, 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:08.359 a Nobel Prize winning physicist, father of two and tennis enthusiasts, 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:10.960 was put in a position to decide for the rest 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.760 of the two point three billion humans alive at the 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:17.400 time that three chances in a million their project might 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:20.880 blow up the atmosphere was an acceptable level of risk. 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.400 The idea that a single person can make a decision 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:34.360 that affects the entire world is a hallmark of existential risks. 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:38.360 Not only the existential risk poses a threat, but the 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.320 very fact that a single human being is making the decision, 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.439 with all of their biases and flaws and stresses, puts 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.640 us all at risk as well. There were a number 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.160 of different pressure points that the people involved in the 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.560 Manhattan Project would have felt pushing them towards the decision 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:57.960 to carry out the test. There were the Nazis, for one, 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.480 and the pressure from the U. S. Miller terry to 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.640 save the world from the Nazis. Their careers and reputations 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.440 were at stake. There was also the allure of a 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.959 scientific challenge. No one had ever done what the people 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.160 working on the Manhattan Project did up to the moment 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:17.000 of the trinity test. No one was entirely sure that 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:22.080 a nuclear explosion was even possible. Consciously or not, these 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.520 things influenced the decisions of the people working on the project. 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.880 This is not to say that there was any cavalier 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.200 disregard for the safety of humanity. They took the time 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.600 to study the issue rather than just brushing it off 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.160 as impossible after all. But the point is that just 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:42.200 a handful of people working in secret were responsible for 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:47.120 making that momentous decision, and those people were only human. 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:52.760 It's also worth pointing out that a lot of the 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:56.320 science that the safety paper writers used was very new 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.640 at the time. The nuclear theory they were working off 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.800 of is less than forty years old, the data they 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.440 had on fission reactions was less than twenty years old, 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.560 and the first sustained nuclear fission reaction wasn't carried out 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:13.880 until when Fairmi held the first test on that squash 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:18.000 court at the University of Chicago. And don't forget there 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:22.160 had never been a nuclear explosion on Earth before. All 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:24.640 of that newness, by the way, showed up during the 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.680 Trinity test, when the bomb produced an explosive force about 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.520 four times larger than what the project scientists had expected. 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:36.760 All of this is to say that the data and 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.760 understanding of what they were attempting with the trinity test 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.000 was still young enough that they could have gotten it wrong, 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.360 and we find ourselves in that same situation today. We 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:49.720 see it in the types of experiments that are carried 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:53.160 out in particle colliders and bio safety labs around the world. 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.160 We see it in the endless release of self improving 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:02.000 neural nets. Our understanding of the unprecedented risks these things 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:07.720 pose is lacking to a dangerous degree. Depending on how 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.600 the chances of a risk changes, the threat it poses 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:15.200 can get larger or smaller, but really the reality of 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.440 the threat stays the same. It's our awareness of it 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:23.960 that changes. Awareness is the way we will survive becoming 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:39.560 existential threats m M. There are two ways of looking 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.080 at our prospects for making it to a state of 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:46.560 technological maturity for humanity where we have safely mastered our 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:49.960 technology and can survive beyond the next century or two. 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:55.720 Gloom and doom and optimism. The gloom and doom camp 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:58.800 makes a pretty good case for why humans won't make 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.000 it through this pastly the greatest challenge our species will 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:06.480 ever face. There's the issue of global coordination, the kind 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:09.359 of like mindedness that will have to create among every 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.760 country in the world to successfully navigate the coming risks. 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.440 Like we talked about in the last episode, we will 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:20.840 almost certainly run into problems with global coordination. Some nations 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.280 may decide that they'd be better off going it alone 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:27.000 and continuing to pursue research and development that the rest 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.720 of the world has deemed too risky. This raises all 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.480 sorts of prickly questions that we may not have the 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:37.000 wherewithal to address. Does the rest of the world agree 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:40.480 that we should invade non complying countries and take over 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:44.640 their government? In a strictly rational sense, that's the most 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:49.640 logical thing to do. Rationally speaking, Toppling a single government, 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.280 even a democratically elected one, is a small price to 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:57.280 pay to prevent an existential risk that can drive humanity 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:01.840 as a whole to permanent extinction. But we humans aren't 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.919 strictly rational, and something is dire as Invading a country 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:10.240 and toppling its government comes with major costs, like the 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:12.960 deaths of the people who live in that country and 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:17.760 widespread disruptions to their social structures. If the chips are down, 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.160 would we go to such an extreme to prevent our extinction. 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:27.040 There's also the issue of money. Money itself is not 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:31.600 necessarily the problem. It is what fund scientific endeavors. It's 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:34.400 what scientists are paid with. Money is what we will 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.119 pay the future researchers who will steer us away from 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:41.720 existential risks. The Future of Humanity Institute is funded by money. 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.960 The problem money poses where existential risks are concerned is 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:48.600 that humanity has shown that we are willing to sell 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:52.520 out our own best interests and the interests of others 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:56.840 for money and market share, or more commonly, that we're 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:59.800 willing to stand by and let others do it, and 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:05.240 with existential risks, greed would be a fatal flaw. Everything 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.639 from the tobacco industry to the fossil fuel industry, the 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.560 anti freeze industry, to the infant formula industry, all of 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:17.399 them have a history of avarice, of frequently and consistently 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:21.040 putting money before well being and on a massive and 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:25.600 global scale. How can we expect change when money is 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.200 just as tied to the experiments and technology that carry 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:34.200 an existential risk. Also stacked against us is the bare 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:39.720 fact that thinking about existential risks is really really hard. 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.679 Analyzing existential threats demands that we trace all of the 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.880 possible outcomes that thread from any action we might take, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.840 and look for unconsidered dangerous lurking there. They require us 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:55.960 to think about technology that hasn't even been invented yet, 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:58.880 to look a few more moves ahead on the cosmic 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.920 chessboard than we're typically capable of seeing. To put it mildly, 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:08.200 we're not really equipped to easily think about existential risks 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:12.399 at this point. We also have a history of overreliance 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.400 on techno optimism, that idea that technology can save us 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.320 from any crisis that comes our way. Perhaps even thinking 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.879 that reaching the point of technological maturity will protect us 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.439 from existential risks is nothing more than an example of 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:31.760 techno optimism, And as we add more existential risks to 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.840 our world, the chances increase that one of them may 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.880 bring about our extinction. It's easy to forget since it's 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.520 a new way of living for us, But the technology 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.240 we're developing is powerful enough and the world is connected 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.000 enough that all it will take is one single existential 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:56.080 catastrophe to permanently end humanity. If you take the accumulated 0:20:56.160 --> 0:21:00.119 risk from all of the biological experiments in the unknown 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.240 number of containment labs around the globe, and you add 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.479 it to the accumulated risks from all of the runs 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.439 and particle colliders online today and to come, and you 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.280 add the risks from the vast number of neural nets 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.879 capable of recursive self improvement that we create and deploy 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:21.520 every day. When you take into account emerging technologies I 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:24.879 haven't quite made it to reality yet, like nanobots and 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:29.639 geoengineering projects, and the many more technologies that will pose 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.680 a risk that we haven't even thought of yet. When 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:36.000 you add all of those things together, it becomes clear 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:41.600 what a precarious spot humanity is truly in. So you 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:44.040 can understand how a person might look at just how 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:48.400 intractable the problem seems and decide that our doom is complete. 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:56.480 It just hasn't happened yet. I think we can be 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:59.800 a bit more optimistic than that. This is Toby Ord again, 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.800 one of the earliest members of the Future of Humanity Institute. Yeah, 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:07.440 I think that this is actually a clear and obvious 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.200 enough idea that people will wake up to it and 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.159 embrace it. Uh much more slowly than we should. But 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.960 I think that uh we will realize that this is 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:20.760 a central moral issue of our time and rise to 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.960 the challenge. But to begin to rise to the challenge, 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:28.800 we need to talk about existential risks seriously. The way 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:31.760 that anything changes, the way an idea or an issue 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:35.280 comes to be debated and its merits examined, is that 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:39.320 people start talking about it. If this series has had 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.960 any impact on you, and if you have, like I have, 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:46.199 come to believe that humanity is facing threats to our 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:50.240 existence that are unprecedented, with consequences that, on the whole 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:54.119 we are dangerously ignorant of, then it is imperative that 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.719 we start talking about those things. You can start reading 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:01.240 the articles and papers that are already being written about them, 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:04.560 start following people on social media who are already talking 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:08.119 about existential risks, like David Pierce and Elie as A 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:13.560 Yukowski and Sebastian Farquhar. Started asking questions about existential risks 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.880 from the people we elect to represent us. I think 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:21.199 we often feel that the powers that be must already 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:24.199 have these things in hand. But when I've talked with 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:30.919 government about existential risk, even a major national government like 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:34.399 the United Kingdom, they tend to think that these issues 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:39.120 saving civilization and humanity itself are above their pay grade. Uh, 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:42.119 and not really something they can deal with in a 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:45.439 five year election cycle. Um. But then it turns out 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:47.640 there's no one else above them dealing with them either. 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:50.520 So I think that there's more of a threat from 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:55.040 complacency in thinking that someone must have this managed. In 0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:59.400 a rational world, someone would. It's up to the rest 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:04.679 of us, then, to start a movement. The idea of 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.000 a movement to get humanity to pay attention to existential 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:12.840 risks sounds amorphous and far off, but we've founded movements 0:24:12.840 --> 0:24:16.840 on far off ideas before. If enough people start talking, 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:21.119 others will listen. Just a handful of books got the 0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:24.680 environmental movement started, like the ones written by the Club 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:28.919 of Rome and Paul Airlick, but especially Rachel Carson's nineteen 0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:32.920 sixty two book Silent Spring, which warned of the widespread 0:24:33.000 --> 0:24:38.160 ecological destruction from the pesticide d d T. Carson's book 0:24:38.520 --> 0:24:42.119 is credited with showing the public how fragile the ecosystems 0:24:42.160 --> 0:24:44.560 of the natural world can be and how much of 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:48.879 an effect we humans have on them. Awareness of things 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:54.679 like fertilizer runoff, deforestation, indicator species concepts that you can 0:24:54.720 --> 0:24:58.439 find being taught in middle schools today. We're unheard of. 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:02.280 At the beginning of the nineteen sixties, most people just 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:06.080 didn't think about things like that. But when the environmental 0:25:06.119 --> 0:25:10.320 movement began to gain steam, awareness of environmental issues started 0:25:10.320 --> 0:25:15.120 to spread. Within a decade of silent springs release, nations 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:19.520 around the world started opening government agencies that were responsible 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:24.120 for defending the environment. The world went from ignorance about 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:29.439 environmental issues to establishing policy agencies in less than ten years. 0:25:30.280 --> 0:25:32.000 And I think that that we could do some of that, 0:25:32.080 --> 0:25:35.160 and it really shows that it is possible to take 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:37.640 something which is not really part of common sense morality, 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:41.119 and then within a generation, uh children are being raised 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:43.679 everywhere with this as part of just a background of 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:46.399 beliefs about ethics that that they live with. So I 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:48.840 really think that we could achieve them. There is much 0:25:48.880 --> 0:25:52.040 work to be done with environmental policy that is definitely 0:25:52.080 --> 0:25:56.199 grant but we are working on it. Nations around the 0:25:56.200 --> 0:26:00.240 world on their own and together are spending money to 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:05.159