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Speaker 1: Ill conceived physics experiments, reckless experiments with viruses, unfriendly superintelligent AI.

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Speaker 1: Dealing with each one of these will be a quagmire

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Speaker 1: onto itself. But remember, existential risks are like nothing we've

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Speaker 1: ever encountered before. We humans haven't been prepared by millennia

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Speaker 1: of evolution like we have for other disasters. We're not

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Speaker 1: equipped out of the box to deal with the existential

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Speaker 1: risks that loom ahead in our near future. In fact,

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Speaker 1: it's almost as if we're wired not to be able

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Speaker 1: to deal with them properly. And the more we look

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Speaker 1: into it, it turns out the question of whether we'll

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Speaker 1: be able to navigate our existential risks to a safe

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Speaker 1: future is actually the same question as whether we'll be

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Speaker 1: able to overcome ourselves. But for the moment, let's leave

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Speaker 1: all that and go inside your body instead. You have

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Speaker 1: tiny invisible robots moving through your blood stream. I should

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Speaker 1: say we're in the future. Let's say it's for the

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Speaker 1: sake of keeping numbers nice and round, and pretty much

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Speaker 1: everyone has tiny invisible robots moving through their blood stream.

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Speaker 1: It's a good thing, actually, because these tiny robots act

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Speaker 1: as a human design backup force for your immune system.

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Speaker 1: You took them in a pill back in and the

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Speaker 1: moment you pop that capsule into your mouth, your healthy

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Speaker 1: life expectancy increased by a hundred years. As the enzymes

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Speaker 1: in your gut began to dissolve the capsule, your digestive

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Speaker 1: fluids poured into it, and the sudden change in temperature

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Speaker 1: and pH activated the first generation of nanobots inside. They

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Speaker 1: came online, connected to their shared WiFi network, activated their

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Speaker 1: propulsion systems, and passed through your gut wall into your

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Speaker 1: blood stream, fanning out through your body. Over the years,

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Speaker 1: each of those first gen nanobots assemble copies of itself,

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Speaker 1: and those copies make copies, and now three years on,

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Speaker 1: you have a stable colony of tiny, invisible robots living

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Speaker 1: inside of you. They search for pathogens to destroy. They

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Speaker 1: prune cells that show signs of growing into tumors and

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Speaker 1: repair the DNA inside to make sure they won't turn

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Speaker 1: cancerous again. The clear plaque from the interiors of your

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Speaker 1: blood vessel. They assist insulin in removing sugars, fats, and

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Speaker 1: proteins from your blood stream after you eat for storage.

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Speaker 1: Later on, they assist in clearing neurotransmitters from your synapses

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Speaker 1: after you've had a thought. They target fats to burn

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Speaker 1: in areas of your body that you select through their

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Speaker 1: app Everything your body did before, or should have done

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Speaker 1: to keep itself in harmony, it does remarkably better now

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Speaker 1: since you took that capsule back in. The nanoscale is

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Speaker 1: the scale of atoms. It's the smallest scale that we're

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Speaker 1: able to manipulate, and we've only recently become able to

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Speaker 1: do that. I should say we're back in the present

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Speaker 1: time now. Depending on the species, a female mosquito will

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Speaker 1: drink about five micro leaders of your blood five millions

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Speaker 1: of a leader before flying off. Inside those five micro

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Speaker 1: leaders slashing around to that mosquito's tiny stomach are around

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Speaker 1: twenty five million red blood cells. Just one of those

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Speaker 1: red blood cells is made up of around one and

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Speaker 1: twenty trillion atoms, and just one single hydrogen atom is

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Speaker 1: a tenth of a nanometer in size. That's the scale

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Speaker 1: of the world where nanobots will dwell. On this tiny level,

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Speaker 1: nanobots are expected to eventually be able to do amazing things,

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Speaker 1: magical things in the Arthur C. Clark sense of the term.

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Speaker 1: There are so many promises with nanotechnology that perhaps no

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Speaker 1: other emerging field has such a wide scope of applications

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Speaker 1: ready and waiting to be applied. Because they are the

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Speaker 1: size of atoms, nanobots will be able to rearrange atoms,

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Speaker 1: and so the materials they make will be manufactured to

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Speaker 1: atomic precision. To us up here on the human scale,

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Speaker 1: the things nanobots make will be flawless, since virtually any

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Speaker 1: material could be turned into any other material. Anything will

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Speaker 1: qualify as raw material for anything else, which means that

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Speaker 1: our current global waste problem will vanish, a happy byproduct

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Speaker 1: of the global increase in material wealth that nanobots will provide.

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Speaker 1: This will also mean the end of scarcity, since anyone

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Speaker 1: with the nano factory at home, which will eventually be

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Speaker 1: everyone as the technology spreads, will be able to make

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Speaker 1: whatever they like. But despite all of the golden promises,

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Speaker 1: nanotechnology potentially holds in store, as we saw in the

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Speaker 1: chapter on artificial intelligence, it poses an existential threat to

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Speaker 1: us as well. Like every other technology that poses an

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Speaker 1: existential threat, it is dual use. It can be used

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Speaker 1: to create both positive and negative outcomes for us, and

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Speaker 1: really you can make the same case for basically any

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Speaker 1: technology we humans have ever come up with Just to

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Speaker 1: take one example, you can use paper towels as a

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Speaker 1: handy way to clean up a spill or to start

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Speaker 1: a house fire. But as with all other existential risks,

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Speaker 1: the potential negative outcomes associated with nanotechnology have a vastly

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Speaker 1: wider scope than a house fire started with the roll

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Speaker 1: of paper towels. There is, of course, that unpleasant outcome

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Speaker 1: where in the way of our arch enemy, the paper

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Speaker 1: clip maximizer, they disassemble us for use in some other form.

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Speaker 1: But even now, in the air before nanobots, we've already

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Speaker 1: identified hazards from the current nanotechnology we have today. Because

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Speaker 1: of their minute size, nanoparticles can irritate the lung tissue

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Speaker 1: of humans who breathe them in much the same way

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Speaker 1: that asbestos and silica can, possibly leading to cancer if

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Speaker 1: the scar tissue that results isn't repaired in the body properly.

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Speaker 1: Today's nanoparticles are also concerning because they are inorganic and

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Speaker 1: there's no mechanism for them to degrade, which means they

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Speaker 1: may persist in the environment forever as far as we

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Speaker 1: can tell right now. Ironically, both of these current problems

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Speaker 1: with nanoparticles, they're potentially cause cancer and the possibility they

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Speaker 1: persist forever can be solved by the nanobots of the future.

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Speaker 1: There are other speculative ways that nanotechnology could turn out poorly.

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Speaker 1: The most famous of the mall it was called the

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Speaker 1: gray goo hypothesis, which was first put into words back

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Speaker 1: in x by m I T Engineering professor and Future

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Speaker 1: of Humanity Institute member Eric Drexler in his book Engines

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Speaker 1: of Creation. Gray Goo, as Drexler's pointed out, is a

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Speaker 1: possible outcome from a poorly considered nanotech design where nanobots

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Speaker 1: capable of replicating themselves and able to sustain themselves using

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Speaker 1: energy harvested from the environment, say from plant material, would

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Speaker 1: be able to exist outside of our control. At a

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Speaker 1: certain point, they might enter a runaway exponential population explosion

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Speaker 1: where their numbers grow so massive that they collectively become

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Speaker 1: visible to us. Is what would seem like a fluid,

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Speaker 1: gooey substance actually made up of untold numbers of nanobots,

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Speaker 1: all feeding on our environment, eventually overwhelming Earth and ruining

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Speaker 1: the global biosphere, not to mention resulting in the eventual

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Speaker 1: extinction of humanity. Ye Drexler has since publicly denounced his

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Speaker 1: gray goog hypothesis, pointing out that it could only arise

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Speaker 1: from an obvious and foreseeable flaw and design, not some

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Speaker 1: sort of trait that's inherent in nanobox. Drexler believes his

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Speaker 1: hypothesis planted a seed in the media, which grew into

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Speaker 1: a sensational thicket of vines covering the real work of

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Speaker 1: nanotechnologists and choking the life from the field of research

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Speaker 1: that he helped establish. A future event like gray goo

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Speaker 1: eating the world from around us would qualify as what

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Speaker 1: existential risk. Philosopher Nick Bostrom calls subsequent ruination. Things start

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Speaker 1: out for us just fine with the technology that we've

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Speaker 1: built and mastered, but it somehow takes an unexpected left turn,

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Speaker 1: and things ultimately end up broughten for us because of it,

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Speaker 1: resulting in our eventual extinction. Bostrom wasn't the first philosopher

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Speaker 1: to think about existential risks, but he innovated how we

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Speaker 1: see them. Here's Bostrom's colleague, philosopher Toby Ord. Thinking about

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Speaker 1: existential risks really started in the twentieth century with the

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Speaker 1: advent of nuclear weapons and the threat of major nuclear war.

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Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, Bertrand Russell wrote about the threat

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Speaker 1: of human extinction due to nuclear weapons, and in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties there are a few people, almost simultaneously who

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Speaker 1: really got the bigger picture about extinction. Those people were

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Shall, Carl Sagan, and Derek Parfit. Then in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, John Leslie wrote a fantastic book on extinction

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Speaker 1: called The End of the World Um. And then in

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Speaker 1: the two thousands, Nick Bostrom, my colleague, he really made

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Speaker 1: a large number of major breakthroughs on this area. He

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Speaker 1: was the one who expanded it out from ext action

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Speaker 1: to existential risk, including a large number of other possibilities.

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Speaker 1: All of what they will have in common is that

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Speaker 1: they would be the permanent loss of humanity's potential. Nick

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Speaker 1: Bostrom realized that there are other possible outcomes of existential

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Speaker 1: catastrophes beyond just the extinction of our species. There are,

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Speaker 1: he realized, some fates for humanity that are even worse

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Speaker 1: than death. There is of course, subsequent ruination like grey Goo,

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Speaker 1: where our technology takes a bad turn and extinction follows later.

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Speaker 1: But Bostrom also realized that we humans don't actually need

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Speaker 1: to go extinct to undergo an existential catastrophe. There are

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Speaker 1: some scenarios where we could be broken as a species,

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Speaker 1: left to limp along and definitely without the possibility of

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Speaker 1: ever regaining the place in history where we fell from.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps a virus killed most of humanity, and the genetic

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Speaker 1: bottleneck that resulted lead to humans who were no longer

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Speaker 1: capable of solving extremely complex problems, or who lost the

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Speaker 1: ability to coordinate with one another in large groups. Our

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Speaker 1: species would be alive, sure, but our existence would be

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Speaker 1: a shadow of what it was before, and the potential

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Speaker 1: sunny future that may have been in store for humanity

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Speaker 1: would be lost forever. Eventually, this loss of potential would

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Speaker 1: be made permanent when a natural existential risk like an

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Speaker 1: asteroid or supervolcano came along tens or hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of years down the road and drove us to extinction

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Speaker 1: once and for all. Bostrom calls this kind of scenario

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Speaker 1: permanent stagnation, where the existential catastrophe comes long before extinction.

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Speaker 1: It's a kind of catastrophe from which we could not

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Speaker 1: recover possible end to the human story. Some way to

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Speaker 1: permanently lock ourselves into some radically suboptimal state. There's also

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Speaker 1: flawed realization an algorithm we create growing super intelligent beyond

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Speaker 1: our expectations, and running a muck is an example of that.

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Speaker 1: It's akin to subsequent ruination, but without giving us even

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Speaker 1: the brief period where we get to enjoy the full

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Speaker 1: benefits of the technology before things go badly for us

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Speaker 1: because of it. As much as Eric Drexler wishes that

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Speaker 1: he had never written the words gray goo, he may

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Speaker 1: have very well saved the world when he did, for

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Speaker 1: better or worse. For the people currently working in the

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Speaker 1: field of nanotechnology, he identified a potential catastrophic outcome that

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Speaker 1: we can plan to design against. One of the great

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Speaker 1: benefits of thinking about the existential risk nanotechnology poses is

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Speaker 1: that it's still in its infancy as a field and

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Speaker 1: can be guided in safe ways, so that when we

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Speaker 1: do live in a world of nanobots, we can be

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Speaker 1: assured that they won't pose a threat then or down

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Speaker 1: the road. But how we get there? How do we

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Speaker 1: plan for a technology that doesn't actually exist yet in

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Speaker 1: a field of research that only a minute fraction of

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Speaker 1: humans actually understand and feel qualified to talk about. How

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Speaker 1: do we manage the media's understanding of the issues surrounding

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Speaker 1: the field so that it doesn't cause unjustified panic among

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Speaker 1: the public, which could turn against it and choke the

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Speaker 1: life from it once and for all. And just as important,

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Speaker 1: how do we ensure that the corporate and academic labs

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Speaker 1: working on nanotechnology don't pursue dangerous lines of research and design.

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Speaker 1: If you've been asking yourself questions like these about the

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Speaker 1: other existential risks I've talked about so far in this series,

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Speaker 1: then you may have already hit upon the idea that

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Speaker 1: we might need a singleton to guide us through the

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Speaker 1: coming years to technological maturity. A singleton, in the sense

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Speaker 1: that Nick Bostrom has applied it to existential risks, is

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Speaker 1: a body capable of making the final decision for everyone

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Speaker 1: on the plan in it. I'll let him explain it

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Speaker 1: has singled on. Is uh just a world order? We're

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Speaker 1: at the highest level of decision making. There is only

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Speaker 1: one decision making process. So, in other words, our world

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Speaker 1: is where global coordination problems are. At least the most

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Speaker 1: varitable coordination problems have been solved, So no more wars

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Speaker 1: or arms races or technology races. Our pollution and destruction

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Speaker 1: of the global commons one of the biggest challenges we

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Speaker 1: will face in the coming decades and centuries. Is coordinating

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Speaker 1: on a global level, In other words, getting everyone to

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Speaker 1: agree on the best way to move forward and addressing

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Speaker 1: existential risks. We will need to study the issues, funnel

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Speaker 1: some of the world's brightest minds towards identifying future existential risks,

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Speaker 1: throw lots and lots of money at the problems, and

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Speaker 1: figure out the best, safest way forward towards technological maturity.

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Speaker 1: But all the study, bright ideas, intricately mapped ways forward

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Speaker 1: don't amount to anything if one person can undermine everything

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Speaker 1: with a single accident. So we will need every single

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Speaker 1: country on Earth to buy into this process right now.

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Speaker 1: The geopolitical arrangement on Earth is based on the sovereignty

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Speaker 1: of nations. Each country has its own borders and citizenry,

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Speaker 1: and it's up to the country's government to make its

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Speaker 1: own decisions. There are lots of exceptions to this. Some

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Speaker 1: governments make agreements that stitch their nations together to some degree,

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Speaker 1: as seen in the European Union or the North American

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Speaker 1: Free Trade Agreement, and sometimes one nation will invade another nation,

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Speaker 1: resorting to force to influence the other government's decisions. For

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Speaker 1: the most part, though the nations of the world leave

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Speaker 1: it to the other nations of the world to make

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Speaker 1: their own choices about how they function, this won't really

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Speaker 1: work in tackling a essential risks. We will need to

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Speaker 1: all agree to abide by whatever we decide is the

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Speaker 1: best way to proceed. But getting to this level of

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Speaker 1: consensus can be messy, and you could see just how

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Speaker 1: it could get that way with existential risks by taking

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Speaker 1: a look at how humans have dealt with climate change.

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Speaker 1: The Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change the i p

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Speaker 1: c C is an offshoot of the United Nations that

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Speaker 1: was set up back to study climate change and provide

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Speaker 1: the world's governments with the best science about the issue

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Speaker 1: and how to tackle it. An issue like climate change

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Speaker 1: requires international cooperation because climate change effects everyone. It crosses

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Speaker 1: the borders of the world, and so not only does

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Speaker 1: it affect everyone, it also requires action from everyone. To

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Speaker 1: combat climate change, we need the cooperation of all nations

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Speaker 1: for the collective public good, and it's exactly the same

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Speaker 1: with existential risks. The i p c C was chartered

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Speaker 1: during a time when global geopolitics respects the sovereignty of nations,

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Speaker 1: and that has proven a problem for it to take

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Speaker 1: one example, Back in two thousand seven, when the i

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Speaker 1: p c C issued its fourth Assessment on Global Climate Change,

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Speaker 1: the body's reports on the current cutting edge scientific understanding

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Speaker 1: of the issue. Words spread to media that the report

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Speaker 1: had been watered down by diplomacy. Saudi Arabia, one of

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Speaker 1: the world's leading producers of fossil fuels, and China in

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Speaker 1: the United States, two of the world's leading producers of

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Speaker 1: emissions from burning those fossil fuels, use their influence to

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Speaker 1: temper the report's findings on how fossil fuel use contributes

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Speaker 1: to climate change, to make fossil fuel's role seem less

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Speaker 1: scientifically certain. As a result, the public was presented with

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Speaker 1: findings that seemed much more doubtful about the role of

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Speaker 1: fossil fuel emissions and climate change, a out that's still

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Speaker 1: alive today. This could not be allowed to happen with

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Speaker 1: existential risks. Climate change is one of the most important

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Speaker 1: issues facing humanity today. Existential risks are the most important.

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Speaker 1: So how do we create a body that's immune to

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Speaker 1: diplomatic and economic pressures of countries as strong as the

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Speaker 1: U S, Saudi Arabia, and China. Answer is a singleton

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Speaker 1: Our hypothetical singleton could arise from an international body organized

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Speaker 1: to study and deal with existential risks. Let's call it

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Speaker 1: our Existential Risks Commission. Just out of necessity, as the

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Speaker 1: world wakes up to the real scope and severity of

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Speaker 1: these risks, we may give that commission an enormous amount

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Speaker 1: of power to override any nation's opposition to its findings

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Speaker 1: and guidelines, which would mean an enormous change for global geopolitics,

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Speaker 1: but one we would likely feel was nest necessary. Our

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Speaker 1: Existential Risks Commission would need to have teeth. One way

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Speaker 1: it might ensure compliance among all nations is through a

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Speaker 1: global surveillance network. We would need to keep tabs on

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Speaker 1: all the scientists who work in fields that pose an

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Speaker 1: existential threat, to make sure that they weren't secretly working

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Speaker 1: on designs or experiments the Commission deemed too risky to pursue.

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Speaker 1: The same goes for corporations that make products that use

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Speaker 1: risky technology. Our Commission would need to keep tabs on

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Speaker 1: everyone really to monitor for signs of a black market

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Speaker 1: developing and banned technology. So each government would be required

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Speaker 1: to set up a surveillance network within its own borders

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Speaker 1: and the existential risks, Commission would have access and ultimate

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Speaker 1: control over all of them. It should probably also monitor

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Speaker 1: each nation's government as well, and we would probably also

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Speaker 1: need to grant our Commission with some sort of military

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Speaker 1: or policing power as a last resort, with a force

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Speaker 1: that is capable of overwhelming any nations in the world.

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Speaker 1: Or perhaps to make it easier, we would just allow

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Speaker 1: the Commission to disband the world's militaries and maintain its

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Speaker 1: own small force it could use to invade and easily

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Speaker 1: occupy any non complying nation. With a single decision making

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Speaker 1: body in charge of determining the best way forward towards

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Speaker 1: technological maturity, one equipped with unchecked authority, able to monitor

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Speaker 1: every person alive on the planet, and to use the

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Speaker 1: threat of violence to ensure that we all stay in

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Speaker 1: line on our march toward a safe future. We may

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Speaker 1: just make it through the next century or two and

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Speaker 1: arrive at a point where the future of humanity is assured.

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Speaker 1: But as you may have noticed as I was describing it,

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Speaker 1: a singleton can also pose an existential threat itself. That

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Speaker 1: same global body we create to manage our existential risks

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Speaker 1: could easily become totalitarian forming a permanent global dictatorship that

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Speaker 1: no future generation could possibly overthrow m And it's about

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Speaker 1: here that you might start to feel like, no matter

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Speaker 1: what we do, humanity is doomed. In the early nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: the world started thinking about the environment. Everything we think

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Speaker 1: of as normal today, recycling not throwing your trash out

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Speaker 1: of your car window, using less energy, generally considering ourselves

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Speaker 1: as stewards of the global biosphere. All of that finds

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Speaker 1: its origin in the early seventies, and it's largely because

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Speaker 1: of two books that came out around then. In Stanford University,

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Speaker 1: entomology professor Paul Arelick and his wife Anne published a

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Speaker 1: book they co wrote called The Population Bomb. It was

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Speaker 1: the culmination of years of Airlic's thoughts about the sustainability

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Speaker 1: of the massive increase in population of humans and our

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Speaker 1: effects on the Earth's finite resources. He decided that the

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Speaker 1: outlook was not good. Aerlic prophesies that by the middle

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Speaker 1: of the seventies the world would begin to see massive

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Speaker 1: die offs of humans from starvation as we surpassed agricultures

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Speaker 1: carrying capacity. People didn't pay attention to the Airlocks books

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Speaker 1: until Dr Erlic appeared on Late Night with Johnny Carson

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and spoke about the coming horror for

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Speaker 1: an hour. Then they really began to pay attention. Around

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Speaker 1: the time Paul Erlic was on Late Night, a handful

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Speaker 1: of scientists from around the world have been assembled into

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Speaker 1: a group by a wealthy Italian industrialist. They were called

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Speaker 1: the Club of Rome. The scientists had devised computer models

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Speaker 1: to build forecasts of humanity's future based on trends like

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Speaker 1: resource use, pollution, and population growth. They saw pretty much

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Speaker 1: the same doom in their crystal ball that Aerlic did,

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Speaker 1: mass starvation, collapsing society, widespread pollution, and the attendant negative

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Speaker 1: impacts on health that carries. The only silver lining to

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Speaker 1: the Club of Rome's report, which they called The Limits

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Speaker 1: to Growth, was that we had perhaps until before we

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Speaker 1: saw the worst of it. Both books and the media's

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Speaker 1: coverage of them got the world's attention, but this was

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Speaker 1: not a new idea. The Club of Rome and Paul

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Speaker 1: Alick followed in the tradition of Thomas Malthus, the eighteenth

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Speaker 1: century clergyman and demographer who was the first to write

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Speaker 1: about the limits of agriculture. Malthus pointed out that while

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Speaker 1: humans can multiply exponentially the resources we get from the Earth,

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Speaker 1: what we call natural capital, do not, which means that

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Speaker 1: because of our propensity to place an emphasis on growing

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Speaker 1: our species, we humans are essentially doomed to outstrip Earth's

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Speaker 1: resources at some point, including, as Malthus pointed out, our

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Speaker 1: food supply. In the mid sixties, before Airlick's book was published,

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Speaker 1: there was widespread famine in India, and during the seventies

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Speaker 1: and eighties there were additional widespread payments in the Horn

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Speaker 1: of Africa. But if anything, the Population Bomb is the

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Speaker 1: story of a global catastrophe that was averted. As bad

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Speaker 1: as the famines around the world have been, things could

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Speaker 1: have been much much worse. Unbeknownst to most of the world.

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Speaker 1: Thirty years before The Population Bomb and The Limits to

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Speaker 1: Growth were published, a few groups, like the Rockefeller Foundation

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Speaker 1: began working to figure out how to expand the carrying

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Speaker 1: capacity of agriculture, and they were successful, thanks in large

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Speaker 1: part to a man raised on a farm in Iowa

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Speaker 1: named Norman Borlog. Borlog had been hired by the Rockefeller

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Speaker 1: Foundation to oversee their research station in Mexico, which was

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Speaker 1: established with the Mexican government to find ways to improve wheat.

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Speaker 1: It's difficult to think of any kind of work that

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Speaker 1: sounds more boring than improving wheat, but Borlog managed to

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Speaker 1: do just that. He improved wheat, and today he is

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Speaker 1: widely and frequently credited with saving the lives of a

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Speaker 1: billion people who would have otherwise starved to death without it.

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Speaker 1: Brologs high yield wheat and an improved type of rice

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Speaker 1: that was developed at the same time at another research

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Speaker 1: station in the Philippines could triple the amount of grain

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Speaker 1: a single plant could produce, which means that farmers could

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Speaker 1: suddenly get three times more grain from the same amount

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Speaker 1: of land. So both the food supply and the income

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Speaker 1: of much of the world's global poor increased dramatically in

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Speaker 1: a very short time, which means that the world was saved.

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Speaker 1: Between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy five, the amount of

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Speaker 1: rice produced in Asia grew by on it doubled in

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Speaker 1: just a few years. The needle on Earth's caring capacity

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Speaker 1: for agriculture moved from quivering worryingly at the red line

390
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Speaker 1: along the end of the dial to somewhere comfortably back

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Speaker 1: around the halfway mark. Norman Borlog rightly or in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy Nobel Peace Prize for his work Ever the

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Speaker 1: White Knight. He used the attention to stress that he

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Speaker 1: only bought the world some breathing room while it figured

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Speaker 1: out how to deal with its population monster, as he

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Speaker 1: called it. The story of how Norman Borlog defused Paul

397
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: Alick's population bomb pretty well gets across the idea of

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Speaker 1: what's called techno optimism. Techno optimism is the full faith

399
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:38,359
Speaker 1: some people play some technology to get us out of

400
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 1: any jam. Really, it's faith in human ingenuity. One proposal

401
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:47,240
Speaker 1: for dealing with global warming brought on by climate change

402
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: is to add air assaults that reflects solar radiation into

403
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. We would in effect be bolstering the atmosphere's

404
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 1: ability to already do this, lending a very important natural

405
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:03,160
Speaker 1: process a technological hand. This would actually be a comparatively

406
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: easy task. We could do it with current technology, and

407
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 1: so a techno optimist would say, we probably don't need

408
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 1: to worry much about global temperatures from climate change, since

409
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: we already have a way of inventing a solution. But

410
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: what if a hundred years from now we find that

411
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: those aerosols we've added are working too well. Global temperatures

412
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,920
Speaker 1: are actually starting to drop, and our crops are in

413
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Speaker 1: danger of failing worldwide. No problem. A hundred years from now,

414
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:34,359
Speaker 1: we will almost certainly have mastered nanotechnology. We can just

415
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 1: deploy them into the atmosphere to deal with the issue.

416
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 1: We could probably program them so they not only disintegrate

417
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: the aerosols, they could also rearrange them into a different

418
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: type of aerosol, like black soot or sulfates that absorb sunlight,

419
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: which would heat the glow back up more quickly, so

420
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 1: we could avoid those widespread crop failures back on Earth.

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00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,439
Speaker 1: In fact, now that we think of it, we might

422
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: as well just leave the nanobots up there to keep

423
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: tabs on global tempera tures and adjust the atmosphere is

424
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 1: ability to absorb or reflect solar radiation at any given moment,

425
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: kind of like how they'll eventually keep our bodies humming

426
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 1: along in an optimal state. But what if our nanobots

427
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: turn out to not have been designed perfectly and they

428
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: end up entering a runaway replication scenario like the gray

429
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 1: goo hypothesis or something worse. At this point, most techno

430
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: optimists would pinch the bridge of their nose and try

431
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: to muster more patients gray goo, they might answer, is

432
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 1: almost certainly not going to happen, and even if it did,

433
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: it would be so far off in the future that

434
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 1: you can rest assured we would find a way to

435
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:41,480
Speaker 1: use some other type of technology we haven't even thought

436
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: of yet to handle it. The more you drill into

437
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: any given problem, the more it seems like technology can

438
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 1: get us out of it. It has so far, and

439
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: it probably can continue to in the future. But the

440
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: fatal flaw of techno optimism is that it tends to

441
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: discourage planning foresight, which I'm hoping that by now in

442
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: the series you've come to realize is of vital importance.

443
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: Rather than taking steps to head off the problem today,

444
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: like reducing carbon emissions, we can instead keep a fairly

445
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: sunny outlook that we will eventually handle it with aerosols,

446
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: then nanobots, then something else we haven't even thought of yet.

447
00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: The problem, though, is that if any link in that

448
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: chain breaks down, if the innovation doesn't work or it

449
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 1: comes too late, then we've missed our chance to avoid

450
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: the crisis. And there's another issue with techno optimism. Sometimes

451
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: our solutions to the problem actually make things worse. You

452
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: would be hard pressed to find a person alive that

453
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: faulted Norman Borlog for his work. But the green revolution,

454
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: the expansion of agriculture's care and capacity that he midwifed,

455
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 1: requires farmers to use enormous amounts of fertilizer and irrigation,

456
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: which tends to cause runoff to waterways that absorb the

457
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: nutrients themselves, harming the aquatic ecosystems. This intensive farming also

458
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: depletes the nutrients in the soil, which means that today,

459
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 1: decades after Borlogs wheat made its debut, farmers put in

460
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: more fertilizer than ever before, while the amount of food

461
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: they harvest has plateaued. To put the icing on the cake,

462
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: the fertilizer requires large inputs of energy to produce, which

463
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven amounted to emissions of about

464
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: six billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from the world's

465
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:31,959
Speaker 1: farm were about of the global total. Rather than taking

466
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 1: the breathing room Borlog gave us to deal with the

467
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: underlying issues we have. The collective techno optimism it brought

468
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: on encouraged us to just kick the can down the road.

469
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: Well we've come upon the can again. Hopefully we'll figure

470
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: out a way to kick it. Those unwanted knock on

471
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 1: effects of the green revolution of techno optimism, even the

472
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: hypothetical singleton I talked about earlier, they formed the basis

473
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 1: of an argument against taking steps to mating existential risks.

474
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:05,880
Speaker 1: Doing something could possibly make things even worse. You could

475
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 1: call this the Gilligan effect. Helpfulness results in calamity. It is,

476
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 1: perhaps unsurprisingly, not the only argument people make against taking

477
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: existential risks we face seriously. It is to our great

478
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: misfortune that we are being presented with the responsibility of

479
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: dealing with existential risks at this point in human history.

480
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: It was only perhaps fifty to a hundred thousand years

481
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 1: ago that humans started being born with the full package

482
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: of behaviors and intelligence that make us uniquely human. Our

483
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: ability to reason and think abstractly, to imagine different futures,

484
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: our ability to organize. Imagine if we had had another

485
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years to continue to evolve before the existential

486
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:11,440
Speaker 1: risks will have to address appeared on our horizon. But

487
00:32:11,560 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: that's not how the chips have fallen. Instead, it has

488
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 1: come upon us while we are in what Carl Sagan

489
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: called our technological adolescence the most dangerous phase on the

490
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: way to technological maturity. It is up to those of

491
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,680
Speaker 1: us alive in the twenty one century. We bear responsibility

492
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: for saving the future of the human race, and we

493
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: have come up with plenty of reasons why we shouldn't, or,

494
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: more to the point, why we won't. Probably first among

495
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: them is that the chance of one of these risks

496
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 1: befalling us is so small, so utterly remote, they're not

497
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: even worth considering. It is true that the chance of

498
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: an existential catastrophe like an altered pathogen escaping a lab

499
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 1: and creating a pandemic, is extremely remote, But as more

500
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 1: labs conduct more risk experiments around the world, the probability

501
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 1: of that remote risk begins to compound. And the same

502
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: is true in other fields. As new particle colliders run

503
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 1: higher energy experiments, as more companies deploying more self improving

504
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: algorithms on the global networks, what was once a mere

505
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 1: remote possibility of existential catastrophe becomes decidedly less remote. I

506
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: think there are various forms of arguments against dealing with existentialies,

507
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: some of them much better than others. So I think

508
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: the heads in the sound ob the action, Oh, it

509
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: won't happen or it hasn't ever happened before. That is

510
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 1: a really bad one, But it's of course psychologically rabbi

511
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 1: common because it fits with the cognitive biases. That was

512
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 1: Ander Sandberg, philosopher from the Future of Humanity Institute. In

513
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: addition to all of the advanced behaviors that we humans

514
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 1: have evolved that had served us so well, we also

515
00:33:55,760 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: operate using some extremely ancient techniques too, short cuts that

516
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: allow us to deal with everyday life, but can break

517
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 1: down when we're faced with things that are out of

518
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 1: the ordinary. What results are called biases. Take, for example,

519
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: being presented with the fork in the road, given that

520
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: both paths look equally inviting, we might have trouble choosing.

521
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 1: But say we've been presented with the same decision elsewhere,

522
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 1: with other forks and other roads before, and we've usually

523
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: taken the left path. Since nothing bad happened to us

524
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: all those other times we've chosen to go left, we

525
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: would feel pretty sure nothing will this time either, So

526
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: we head down the left path this time too, whistling

527
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: without a care in the world, totally unaware of the

528
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: family of hungry bears ahead. Our cognitive biases can make

529
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:52,280
Speaker 1: us overconfident, suspicious of new things, optimistic, pessimistic, frozen within decision.

530
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:58,720
Speaker 1: We are, you could say, a little hamstrung by them.

531
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:01,879
Speaker 1: But even when we managed overcome our biases or set

532
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 1: them aside, which we will need to when we're dealing

533
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: with existential risks, there are still plenty of other reasons

534
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 1: we can come up with to avoid addressing them. For one,

535
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,879
Speaker 1: even discussing this type of risk can be dangerous. Such

536
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 1: talk can have a chilling effect on a field that's

537
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,840
Speaker 1: struggling to establish itself, as Eric Drexler found when he

538
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: let the gray Goo genie out of the bottle and

539
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 1: engines of creation, talking about things like AI becoming super

540
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 1: intelligent and taking control of our world can really go

541
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 1: a long way to turning the public off from the

542
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: idea of scientists working on building self improving thinking machines. Besides,

543
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 1: as most machine intelligence researchers will point out, at this

544
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: stage in its development, the field is capable of producing

545
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: a machine that's perhaps as smart as a three year old,

546
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: or even if it is advanced, it's advanced at just

547
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 1: one thing like finding patterns and medical charts or identifying

548
00:35:56,880 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: cap pictures, we don't need to worry about a. In

549
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 1: other words, this argument seems shortsighted. If it is the

550
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: case that we're at a point where we can still

551
00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:11,359
Speaker 1: fully control our artificial intelligence, then now is the best

552
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: time to plan for the potential future outcomes they might bring,

553
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 1: so that we can ensure as best as we can

554
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: that they will continue to remain under our control. It's

555
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: probably not the best idea to wait until tomorrow simply

556
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: because they don't pose a threat today. Here is Oxford

557
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 1: philosopher Sebastian Farquhar. If we had started working on really

558
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: small nuclear explosives in the eighties and thought that we

559
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:45,279
Speaker 1: could sort of maybe c OA to scale it up

560
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:49,239
Speaker 1: to weapons with vastly more explosive power than we'd ever

561
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: imagined before, but it wasn't quite clear that it was

562
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:56,359
Speaker 1: going to work or not. Um, I think it would

563
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: have been irresponsible at that point not to invest at

564
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:03,720
Speaker 1: least some thought and what would happen if nuclear weapons

565
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: did reach the stage that they reached the forties. And

566
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 1: so that's sort of where I see us now, is not,

567
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 1: you know, not confidently saying super intelligent a g I

568
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: is around the corner, but rather saying, you know, this

569
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 1: might be it might be a turning point for um

570
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: intelligence on this planet, and if that turning point is

571
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:27,720
Speaker 1: around the corner, it would be useful for some people

572
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:30,760
Speaker 1: to start laying the groundwork for making that turning point safe.

573
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:34,240
Speaker 1: But it's difficult to fault people who work in fields

574
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: like AI and others. The very same people who witness

575
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: firsthand the extremely slow and frustrating progress in the state

576
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:44,839
Speaker 1: of the technology that we on the outside don't see,

577
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: not to mention it's their careers that are on the

578
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,760
Speaker 1: line off the public turns cold to their field. People

579
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: who work in AI, nanotechnology, particle physics, and other fields

580
00:37:56,280 --> 00:38:00,399
Speaker 1: that will eventually emerge have dedicated and will dedicate their

581
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,799
Speaker 1: adult lives to this research. Currently, we rely on these

582
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: same people who are working on the science and technology

583
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: that may pose an existential risk to tell us whether

584
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: they're safe or not, which puts the whole world in

585
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 1: a very difficult position. Here's Eric Johnson, the law professor

586
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 1: who investigated the potential risks posed by particle colliders. I

587
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: don't think there's any particle physicists out there who are

588
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: mad scientists bent on destroying the earth. They're they're good people,

589
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 1: and there's there's none of them who are you know,

590
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: as sociopaths who would uh knowingly put the earth at

591
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: a at a big risk of being destroyed. But there's

592
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: a question about when you're when you're making these subjective

593
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 1: judgments about how to build this model. If you are

594
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 1: self interested, if if your employer, if all of your friends,

595
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:52,239
Speaker 1: if your whole professional life is built around this community,

596
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: this project, are you likely to go a little easier

597
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 1: on the risk assessment than someone else might be. And

598
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:02,839
Speaker 1: I think that that's an open question. I think it's

599
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: a fair question. In addition to careers, there's also money

600
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:10,799
Speaker 1: at stake, not just public funding for research projects at universities,

601
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:16,200
Speaker 1: but perhaps most intractable of all corporate profits. Scaring the

602
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: public can cause these funds and these profits to dry up,

603
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,399
Speaker 1: which has a real world effect like people losing their

604
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: jobs and fields of research freezing over. It's happened before.

605
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: In October, the US Congress effectively shuttered the American physics

606
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:38,840
Speaker 1: community when it cut off funding for the super Conducting

607
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 1: super Collider, a particle accelerator outside of Dallas. It would

608
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 1: have had a track almost four times the circumference of

609
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider and would have been capable of

610
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: achieving particle collisions at three times the energy of the LHC.

611
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 1: It would have been a landmark particle collider, one with

612
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 1: power that we still haven't reached today would have been

613
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: but it never had the chance to because Congress decided

614
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:08,440
Speaker 1: that the project was too expensive and too difficult to understand.

615
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 1: So after having spent already two billion dollars on the project,

616
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:16,920
Speaker 1: Congress withdrew any further support, and the super Conducting super

617
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,320
Speaker 1: Collider was never finished. Uh six months ago, the Congress

618
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 1: voted to terminate the super Conducting super Collider project. As

619
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: Eric Johnson explained in the previous chapter, the particle physics

620
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: community tends to be arranged around the most powerful collider

621
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: at any given time. So American physicists reeled from the

622
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:38,799
Speaker 1: loss of their collider and the subsequent funding cuts that

623
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:45,840
Speaker 1: followed in physics departments and universities across the country. In

624
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: the meantime, the LHC began to rise, and the seat

625
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 1: of physics moved through the Earth like a new trino,

626
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,320
Speaker 1: from beneath the plains of Texas to a hundred meters

627
00:40:55,320 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 1: below the countryside between Switzerland and France. This underscores an

628
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,759
Speaker 1: extremely important point. The ways to alleviate existential risks in

629
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: the future is to deal with them now. But dealing

630
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:16,240
Speaker 1: with them may mean that those of us living today

631
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: would be asked to sacrifice our jobs or careers, money, comfort, health,

632
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,439
Speaker 1: all for the sole benefit of people who we will

633
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:30,480
Speaker 1: never meet, people whose great great grandparents great grandparents haven't

634
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: even been born yet. To put it in other terms,

635
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: what have future humans ever done for us? You could

636
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 1: actually make a pretty good case that if they were

637
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: able to figure out a way to pay us to

638
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 1: alter our behavior so that their safe future was guaranteed,

639
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 1: future humans would almost certainly give us whatever we wanted.

640
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:53,919
Speaker 1: But they can't, So it's entirely up to our good

641
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: will to choose whether we will take steps to mitigate

642
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 1: the threats to the future of the human rights, which

643
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,399
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily bode well for the future of the human rights.

644
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,359
Speaker 1: Like we talked about before with climate change, there are

645
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 1: things that everyone around the world shares resources, air, water,

646
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: anything that everyone is affected by and benefits from. We

647
00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 1: call those things global commons. There's a widely held viewpoint

648
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: that commons of any type must be collectively managed because

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00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 1: we humans have a propensity to take as much as

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00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: we can from them. If everyone has equal access to

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00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: the commons, and the commons is some limited resource, then,

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00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:44,440
Speaker 1: speaking at a very basic level, every rational person has

653
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,280
Speaker 1: an incentive to take as much as they can before

654
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:51,720
Speaker 1: everyone else does. If this mentality is present among enough people,

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00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:56,960
Speaker 1: then we quickly deplete whatever common resources plentiful before. This

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Speaker 1: is what ecologists Garrett Harden called the tragedy of the

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00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: commons in a paper which he wrote among the same

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00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: climate of doom that the population bomb was published in.

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00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: It too follows the reasoning of Thomas Malthus. The commons

660
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,360
Speaker 1: works just fine until there are too many people taking

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00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 1: too much from it. Then it crosses a threshold and

662
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,719
Speaker 1: it becomes spoiled for everyone. Harden wrote that he used

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00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: the word tragedy not in the sense of unhappiness, but

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Speaker 1: rather the remorseless working of things. The tragedy of the

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00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:34,439
Speaker 1: commons is in inevitability, he reasoned. Now it is true

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00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: that at any moment, there are plenty of people who

667
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 1: will take no more than their fair share from the commons,

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00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: and in some cases even less, and some will act

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00:43:42,600 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: as stewards for the greater good. But the tragedy of

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00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: the commons does exist, and we see it in resistance

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00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: to things like caps on carbon dioxide emissions, which affect

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00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 1: the global commons of the atmosphere. We have a hard

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00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 1: enough time managing our current commons, but the future that

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00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:04,399
Speaker 1: we're being asked to protect is also a commons as well,

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00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: and one with an added twist. Not only is the

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00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: future of commons for those of us alive today, we

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00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:13,920
Speaker 1: also share it with those to come. If you think

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00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 1: about what existential risk mitigation is, it's a common squared

679
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:19,799
Speaker 1: as it were, in that not only is it a

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00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 1: global public good existential risk mitigation, but it's also of

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00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: transgenerational public good in that most of the benefits would

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00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: be bestowed to these titure generations that could come into existence.

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00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 1: They have no say whatsoever and what we are doing now. Unfortunately,

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00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 1: those people that come can't do anything to be good

685
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:42,799
Speaker 1: stewards of our shared comments. It's entirely up to us

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00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:46,840
Speaker 1: alive today to take whatever steps are necessary to protect

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00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:51,879
Speaker 1: the global pan generational commons that is the future, which

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00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 1: makes people who haven't been born yet what economists call

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00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 1: free riders. They reap the benefits of the sacrifices others

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00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:03,800
Speaker 1: make without contributing their fair share in this case, simply

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00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 1: because it's impossible for them too. But we humans tend

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00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: to resent all free riders, and not just us humans.

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00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:14,759
Speaker 1: We found behavior all over the animal kingdom that punishes

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00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:19,959
Speaker 1: free riders, which means that resentment is deeply ingrained. Free

695
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 1: riders violate a basic sense of fairness that we hold dear.

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00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 1: The trouble is when people sense free riders in their

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00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: midst they tend to cut off their contributions, so everyone loses.

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00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 1: We have a lot to overcome if we're going to

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00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:49,440
Speaker 1: take on our existential risks. On the next episode of

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Speaker 1: the End of the World with Josh Clark, it is

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00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:55,160
Speaker 1: possible to take something which is not really part of

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00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 1: common sense morality, and then within a generation, children are

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00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:01,560
Speaker 1: being raised everywhere with this as part of just a

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00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: background of beliefs about ethics that that they live with.

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Speaker 1: So I really think that we could achieve that there

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Speaker 1: is hope