WEBVTT - X Risks 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:04.320 You are a human being, and one day you will die. 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:08.039 But when you die, you can take comfort in the 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:11.840 knowledge that you're part of something larger than yourself. You're 0:00:11.880 --> 0:00:15.400 a member of the human race, and as long as 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:18.759 the human race continues, in some ways, you do too. 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:24.279 All of us, every living thing, are individual members in 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.920 a cycle of life and death that began four billion 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:32.280 years ago when that first single living cell divided into two. 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:36.920 Two billion years after that, along came sex, and birth 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:39.959 led to more sex, led to more birth, And as 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.199 long as that cycle continues in a species, death can 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:47.360 happen in the background. It must happen. Really. It may 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:50.080 sound a little cruel, but in the bigger picture, the 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.120 death of one thing is kind of meaningless so long 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:57.480 as the species continues. Humans tend to divide life along 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.120 the borders between species, and for good reason. It's not 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:04.600 an arbitrary dividing line. A species is what makes the 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:09.880 difference between eating a meal and engaging and cannibalism. Across 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.560 the animal kingdom, individuals routinely do things that risk their 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.800 own life to save members of their species. You almost 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.440 never see that kind of behavior between different species. True, 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.400 there are plenty of examples of species where eating one's 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.440 own kind is an everyday act, and there are examples 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:30.560 of adorable dogs adopting motherless lambs, But the chances are 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.600 better than not that an animal will show preferential treatment 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:38.440 towards a member of its species over others. Most importantly, though, 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.200 any member of a species can combine their genes with 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:44.360 another member and come up with new and fascinating ways 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.120 to push the species further along the evolutionary path where 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.800 it's better able to grow and flourish. Homo sapiens, the 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.320 species that you, me and every human alive are members of, 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.760 means in Latin wise human, and it's a bit of 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:02.639 flattery since it is the name that we human beings 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.240 gave to ourselves. But here today, so far removed from 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:09.359 our ancient origins, it's easy to forget that the name 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.120 is meant to distinguish us from other types of humans. 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.720 As recently as fifty thousand years ago, we shared this 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:19.160 planet with no less than three other human species. In 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:21.240 the same way you might walk about the Earth today 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.320 and come upon a lion, one species of cat, and 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:28.239 tabby an entirely different species of cat. In the very 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:30.679 recent geological past, you would have been able to meet 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:34.160 with a Neanderthal in a French cave and a Denisovan 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.559 in Siberia, and had you wandered on down to Indonesia, 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.000 you would have been able to meet a tiny variety 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:45.360 of human called Homo floresiensis, who stood four ft talls. Today, 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.480 though there is only the one species of human us, 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.320 Homo sapiens. We can't say for certain, but we strongly 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.200 suspect that the ultimate reason why we are the only 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.680 ones left is because of our intelligence. Perhaps the planet 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.120 was presented with a series of tricky environmental challenges and 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:07.239 we were the only ones intelligent enough to successfully negotiate them. 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.480 Maybe it was the universally devastating step in the great filter, 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.560 or maybe that's not right at all. We've only recently 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:19.720 discovered that denis Ovans and Floresiensis existed, but we've known 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.239 about Neanderthals for some two hundred years now, and over 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:25.639 time we've come to realize that they weren't the dim 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.000 wits we initially took them for. We now know that 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.840 they used tools like us, and they may have mastered 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:35.080 fire as well, and Neanderthals might have been the earliest 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:38.560 humans to bury their dead, which shows the capacity to 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.720 think about abstractions like an afterlife. Whether or not we 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.120 were the only human species with the capacity for abstract thought, 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:48.960 The one thing we can say for certain is that we, 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.760 Homo sapiens, are the only ones left on Earth. To 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:55.240 wonder at the immense responsibility we have to simply carry 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.280 on is the one single remaining species of our kind. 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.840 That responsibility to survive and thrive is big enough just 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:06.920 being the only human species left on Earth, but it 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:10.760 grows to overwhelming proportions when you consider the idea that 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.400 we could be the only intelligent life and the whole 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.960 endless universe. The precariousness of our situation begins to sink. 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.880 In The family paradox appears to show that the entire 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.560 future of intelligent life in the universe rests on the 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:31.919 likelihood of us staying alive. The entire population of Homo 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:36.080 floresiensis the species of tiny humans lived on a single 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:40.720 island called Flores in modern day Indonesia. They lived there 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.680 for almost a hundred and fifty thousand years, and then 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:48.039 suddenly they disappeared. One current theory for their extinction is 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.159 that a volcano erupted and killed them all off, which 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.440 would have been relatively easy, since the entire species dweled 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:58.360 only on that one island. We humans alive today call 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:02.040 our island Earth, and we have to wonder what our 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:17.200 volcano will be. Right now, there are about seven and 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:20.440 a half billion of us humans alive. Seven and a 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:23.320 half billion is an enormous number, to be sure, but 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.880 it's a small fraction, tiny fraction of all the Homo 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:29.800 sapiens who have ever lived. In the fifty thousand years 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:33.800 since we emerged as modern humans early on and continuing 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.840 for most of our species history, we had an extremely 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:41.159 short average life expectancy, somewhere around ten to twelve years. 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.679 That doesn't mean that the average person died at age eleven. 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:46.839 It means that if you take all the people who 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.920 lived into old age and all the children who died 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.360 in infancy or at birth, so many people died young 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.240 that the average age of death was dragged down all 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.680 the way into the tweens. Plenty of people lived into 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.720 what we would consider old age. It's just that many, 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:06.120 many more didn't survive childhood. And this is how it 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:10.279 was for most of human history. That extremely high childhood 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.600 mortality rate was eventually overcome. Through the use of our 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.640 clever sapiens brains, we figured out things like germ theory 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:22.000 and anatomy and nutrition, and all of them converged to 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:24.520 create a world that a child could be born into 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.080 where they had a very good chance of surviving into adulthood. 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:31.800 We humans used our brains to help our species be 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.720 better able to survive, and as a result, our population 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.760 began to boom. Around two thousand years ago, there were 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:43.640 probably three hundred million people alive on Earth. About three 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:46.520 hundred and fifty years ago, the human population had grown 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.440 to five million. Thirty years from now we will hit 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:53.760 the ten billion mark, So in just three hundred and 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.200 fifty years we will have grown by nine billion, five 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:02.360 hundred million people. All told, you can count yourself as 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.200 one of the hundred and eight billion modern humans who 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.640 have ever lived. An astronomical number, to be sure, But 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.560 the number of humans who have ever lived, as immense 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:14.440 as it is, is a drop in the bucket of 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.280 the number of humans who haven't lived yet. This is 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:22.880 philosopher Toby ord Our. Species Homo sapiens is about two 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:25.960 hundred thousand years old UM, so that's about two thousand 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:29.040 centuries that we've been around. If we could survive that 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.640 long again, uh, you know, we'd see two thousand centuries 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.920 of civilization. That's about twenty times longer than civilization has 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.440 been around so far, with just wondrous things being created 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.840 throughout that whole time that we can barely imagine. And 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:48.640 that's even with relatively little in the way of fancy 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:52.880 science fiction technological progress that we might imagine. Remember back 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:55.440 when we talked about the possibility that we don't see 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.119 alien life in the universe because they opted to stay 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.560 home instead, Let's say that we humans have that same 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.520 type of home body nous in our far future, sticking 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.480 around on Earth rather than spreading out into the rest 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.600 of the galaxy. So Earth remains the only planet where 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.160 you can find a human population. And let's say that 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:16.760 over the course of a billion years our population gradually 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.920 lowers and stabilizes, that one billion people alive on the 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.600 planet at any given time, And if our lifespans stick 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.400 around where it is today, then by a billion years 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:30.120 from now, an additional ten to the sixteenth power humans 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.680 will have been born. That's ten with fifteen zeros after it, 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:41.200 ten quadrillion, a million, trillion future human lives hundred and 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:45.120 eight billion doesn't seem quite so big now. That ten 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:48.319 quadrillion number is a low end estimate. If we do 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.280 nothing but continue to plot along as a species for 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:53.960 the next billion years, we could expect to reach it, 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.360 But we might also increase the number of future human 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.960 lives dramatically if we humans in a a as a species. 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.480 One of the ways that most futurists expect we will 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.959 innovate is by leaving our bodies behind and entering into 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:12.079 a digital world, becoming what's called a post biological species. 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.200 Imagine that we learned how to free the human mind 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:18.679 from its bonds to the neurons and dendrites and axons 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.520 that make up the functioning human brain. No real reason 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.880 that the human mind should require our selves to think 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.880 and to experience. What if the human brain is just 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.840 one of many ways to produce what we call consciousness. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:33.760 What if there are other ways that could produce the 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:39.120 same thoughts, the same experiences, but with hardware instead of squishy, soft, 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:48.600 extremely fragile material we call the brain. To understand how 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.560 we could create consciousness inside a machine rather than a 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:54.080 human brain, you should know a little bit about the 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:59.160 hard problem. First, Back in The Philosopher of the Mind, 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.400 David chaw Mers published a paper where he divided our 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:06.360 attempts to understand consciousness into the hard problem and the 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:11.440 easy problem. The easy problem of consciousness is how it arises. How, 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:14.319 for example, light can enter the eye and be carried 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.280 along as an electrical impulse to the brain, where it's 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.280 analyzed and sorted into the image of a house plant. 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.920 We generally understand how the various parts involved in this 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.280 process work. We pretty much understand how the sights and 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.960 sounds of the external world are perceived by us. There's 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.920 no mystery to it. So although we haven't worked out 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.120 every last detail of how consciousness arises from our brains, 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.160 in Chalmer's view, we were well enough along that we 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.920 basically had the easy problem licked already by the time 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.000 he wrote his essay. The hard problem is how we 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:52.000 subjectively experienced those sights and sounds. How all of those experiences, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:55.120 moment to moment combine and create what we think of 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.000 as the experience of being human. Why is it that 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.320 rather than simply observing the house plant and deeming it 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.000 neither a threat nor food and simply disregard it, instead 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:08.840 you might be reminded of your dear sweet mother who 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:12.040 loved house plants, and maybe you'll also think about how 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:14.640 perhaps a house plant might brighten up your own apartment 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.199 and maybe put you in a better mood because you've 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:20.880 been a little bit down lately. In other words, why 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.560 should we experience the inner life that we think of 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.360 as ourselves? More to the point, where does this conscious 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.960 experience come from? We can point to the language processing 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.600 parts of the brain to show how we humans understand 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:36.200 what the other person is saying when someone tells us 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.920 they love us, But we can't point to the part 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.400 of the brain that creates the incredibly rich experience those 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.880 words can arouse in us. That is the hard problem 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:50.040 of consciousness. To some people, we will never figure out. 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.240 The answer to the hard problem. Human conscious experience is 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.400 too ethereal to ever understand. To those on the other side, 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.680 we've already solved the hard problem. It's the same answer 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:03.800 is the easy problem. All of those neurons and dendrites 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:07.240 and axons that are responsible for communicating and sorting and 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.320 storing the sensory input in our brains are also the 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.960 same parts that are responsible for creating our conscious experience. 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.240 We just haven't figured out how they do it quite yet. 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:21.000 If that's true, and the hard problem really isn't a 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.960 hard problem at all, there's a big implication in there. 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:28.319 If consciousness is just an emergent property of neural complexity, 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.480 like how tens of thousands of individual bees form a 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.040 high mind that is larger than the sum of its parts, 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:38.000 then we should be able to simulate consciousness by simulating 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:43.040 neural complexity. Maybe not today, maybe not anytime soon, but 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.520 the point is it would be theoretically possible, and given 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.320 enough time in technological development, it's a pretty safe bet 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:52.839 that we will figure out how to do it. If 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.880 there is an organizing principle of life that takes hold 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:59.600 once molecules begin to take an organic form, then perhaps 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.760 the bio logical form. It's just one phase of evolution. 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:08.120 Perhaps post biology is just another stage. If or when 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.640 we become capable of uploading human minds on the computers, 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:17.080 the number of future human lives will increase exponentially, and 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.319 those lives can be expected to be exponentially better than 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:23.319 the average life of those of us alive today. If 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:25.959 we are the only intelligent life in the universe and 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:28.800 That means that should we become capable of spreading out 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.319 in our galaxy and then eventually throughout the rest of 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.400 the universe, it will all be there for our taking. 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:38.040 Though farther out we look in more detail, and the 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:41.520 more clearly we see there's nothing at all alive anywhere 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.760 in the universe, then it says we are really quite special. 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:47.640 Not only that we are special for having, you know, 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.000 created cars and televisions, we are just special for being 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.280 on a planet that has life at all. Ah and 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.559 the universe will remain dead until the life on our 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:03.720 planet spreads. That was great filter theorist Robin Hanson. Once 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.080 we spread beyond Earth, we will reach one of the 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.360 largest milestones in the history of our species, in the 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.760 history of life. Really, we will no longer be earth bound. 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:16.920 We will have become a spacefaring species with an entire 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.160 universe to explore and use for whatever we want. All 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:24.520 of the resources material and energy in the universe that 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.560 we can reach before it inflates beyond our grasp is 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:31.480 there for our use in ours alone. This is what 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:36.320 an Oxford University philosopher named Nick Bostrom calls humanity's cosmic 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:39.080 endowment and The key thing about it is that it 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:43.960 looks like it's astronomically large. Every less scrap of accomplishment 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.640 that we humans have managed to achieve in our relatively 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.280 short time here on Earth has been created with extremely 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.960 limited resources compared to what will be available to us 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.160 when we begin to spread out around the universe. If 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.120 things are the way they look that what we have 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.360 been able to play our hands on so far is 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.800 a period of time maybe a thousand, ten thousand years 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.640 of human history and some hundred thousand years of prehistory. 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.080 That's kind of our species tenure so far, and we've 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:19.880 been confined to the surface of planet Earth, which is 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:24.160 this little crumb floating around in a huge style of 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:29.640 material and energy and resources. So it's one planet in 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.440 one solar system out of a hundred billion solar systems 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.200 in this galaxy, which is it's so one of maybe 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.640 a hundred building galaxies that could be reached from our 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.520 starting point and then used for billions of years. So 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.720 if you add all of those orders of magnitude together, 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:51.520 you find that by some very large number, it dominates 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:56.240 what exists today or has existed through human history. What 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.440 will we do with all that stuff? I don't know, 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:03.120 but it at least seems to me that protecting a 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:07.200 chance to do that is critically important. If, as a 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.480 great many philosophers throughout history have believed the point of 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:13.640 life is finding happiness, then we could use it to 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.720 pursue happiness on a massive scale. If you, for example, 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.160 I think that happy people are our minds experiencing pleasure 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:24.800 or beauty or doing interesting things have value, then that 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.360 could just be a lot more like a lot more 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.680 of those in the future, a lot more like a 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:34.920 quadrillion more, and that number could grow exponentially higher if 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:39.760 or when we reach that point of post biology, like 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.000 any post biological civilization, we would place a pretty high 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.840 value on converting all of that into computing power. The 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.480 science fiction author Ray Bradberry once estimated that the energy 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.120 captured from a star could power tend to the forty 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.800 second computer operations per second. So Nick Bostrom took that 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.520 figure and he applied it to a post biological society 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:03.880 with access to all of the stars that we can 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.840 reach in the universe until they inflate forever out of 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:10.280 our grasp. If the human brain makes in the neighborhood 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.200 of ten to the seventeenth operations per second to produce 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.280 our conscious experience, then it's a pretty fair bet that's 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.480 about how many computations per second we would require to 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:23.960 experience consciousness and digital form as well. So, considering those 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:28.359 numbers and more, Bostro included some other complex astronomical figures 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.720 as well, he arrived at the low end estimate, the 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:36.200 low end of ten to the fifty second power future 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:40.800 human lives waiting to be lived expressed an American English 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.600 that is ten sex Deicilian lives. That's a real word. 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.040 A number is so astoundingly large it might be tried 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:51.520 to even mention that it is. And you could make 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:55.119 the case that in many ways, okay, essentially every way, 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.200 those humans in the far future will live better lives 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:02.959 than those of us alive today, because natural selection and 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:07.480 didn't design us to be happy, discontent other things. Being 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:12.920 equal is adaptive and fitness enhancing. And there's a transhumanist 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.240 I very much hope that we're going to be able 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:21.160 to design a civilization based on to use a slogan, 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:27.200 a triple ess, a civilization based on super intelligence, super happiness, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:32.160 and super longevity. This is transhumanist philosopher David Pierce, who 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.600 is among the number of people who believe that humans 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:38.080 have a long and potentially bright future ahead of us. 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.200 Humans might use all of that power to simulate amazing 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.320 new experiences for ourselves that we haven't considered yet and 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.679 that would be utterly impossible in our physical reality. We 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.640 would be able to expand and edit our consciousness, our faculties, 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:57.120 our ability to empathize with others, for capability to experience emotion. 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.400 What we alive today might consider the high a state 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:04.200 of happiness, maybe the baseline happiness for all new humans 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.159 born into a digital world, and so the humans of 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.680 the future would be blissed out all the time. Here's 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.639 an example one sees today the effects of a drug 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:18.080 like m d M A ecstasy or hug drug, in 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:25.919 which essentially people become loving, bonabo like warm, empathetic, jealousy, 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:32.320 resentment evaporate UH. For evolutionary reasons, people aren't like that 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:38.199 all the time. But with the use of UH some 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:43.840 genetic tweaking, it would be possible to create people trans humans, 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:48.359 post humans who who love each other in the way 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.159 that people fleetingly do today on the m d M A. 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:58.000 Just how likely this scenario is. I don't know, but 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.359 in the long run it's so be feasible because we 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:04.840 live in a world where we must compete with one 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.199 another and other life on our planet for resources. What 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.879 the future might be like in a world where scarcity 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:15.760 doesn't exist is largely inconceivable to us. Suffice it to 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:18.479 say that life can be better than it is today 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.880 should we make it there. We can't forget the possibility 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.240 that between us and all of those countless future lives. 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:37.600 Since the Great Filter. Back in the summer of a 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.120 space probe launched by NASA called Viking one flew over 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.920 Mars if photographed the planet's surface for the first time 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:49.040 in human history, and prior to landing on July, Viking 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.880 one flew over the Sidonia region, a bumpy transition zone 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.679 between the planets, cratered north in the flat plains of 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.119 the South. Within those images that it's sent back to 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:02.320 its controllers at the Jet Propulsion Lab on Earth was 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:06.280 a particularly striking one. It showed what looked to be 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:11.480 a massive stone face wearing a ceremonial headdress. It looked 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.080 a lot like an ancient monument on the surface of Mars. 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.040 Is what it looked like It became one of the 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.639 more famous images in the world, the Face on Mars, 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.040 and it stirred the imagination of earth bound humans about 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.359 a potential Martian pass where a great civilization once lived 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:30.040 and thrived. But when the Mars Global Surveyor flew over 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:33.439 the site with a far better camera than the Viking 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.960 one had on board, it was clear the Face on 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:40.240 Mars was just another mesa, shaped not by ancient Martian hands, 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:44.080 but by Martian wind and erosion. But what if that 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.959 image had confirmed the wildest speculations and we had mounted 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:53.160 an expedition to Mars to investigate the governments of Canada, Japan, 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.960 and the United States, the three countries leading the International 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:00.520 Mars Expedition received a bundle of despat just from the 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:06.000 astronauts investigating the Mars anomaly. Today, newly discovered structures that 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:10.399 appear to be ceremonial halls and temples built from a 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:14.760 yet unidentified metal, further confirmed the one time presence of 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:19.320 an advanced civilization on the red planet. President Clinton was 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:22.199 in New York today to news like this would not 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:24.720 bode well for those of us living here on Earth. 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:28.199 As Nick Bostrom points out in an article, that ran 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.160 in Technology Review in two thousand and eight. If we 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:34.440 were to find evidence of other intelligent life elsewhere in 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:38.480 the universe, it would strongly suggest that the Great Filter 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:42.440 lies waiting ahead of us. News like that would tell 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:45.280 us that it's not so tough after all to get 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.400 past all the steps that led to us. Other life 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:52.000 managed it too. We would learn that we are not 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:55.840 special and unique, and so the likelihood would be that 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:59.320 the Great Filter is not somewhere in our past, which 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:03.520 means that it must be somewhere in our future. Everything 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:06.800 we've ever imagined that could go wrong is a candidate 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:10.600 for a future filter. Uh. So, you know, take out 0:23:10.640 --> 0:23:15.440 all of your favorite um disaster stories and fears and 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:17.920 add them all up, and it might be in there. 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:20.600 It might be something we haven't imagined. If it is 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:23.200 the case that the Great filters in our future, then 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:25.240 the reason that there is no intelligent life in the 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:28.000 universe other than us is because none of those who 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:30.320 came before us were able to make it through the 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:34.359 step that lies ahead. The more you learn about the 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:36.840 kind of risks we humans are beginning to take on, 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:39.520 the kind of make up the worst of those disaster 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:43.760 scenarios Robin Hanson mentioned the more convincing the idea that 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:53.240 we are now entering the great filter becomes m It's 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.439 probably about here that you should meet Nick Bostrom, he 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:58.800 chimed in earlier, but what I mean to say is 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:01.280 that you should know more about him, as his work 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:05.840 forms a lot of the basis of this series. In Oxford, England, 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:09.440 there is a university among the world's oldest, where people 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.639 have been teaching since at least ten nine, nearly a 0:24:12.680 --> 0:24:16.200 thousand years, and housed in a three story tan brick 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:19.760 administration building called Little gate House is the Future of 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:24.480 Humanity Institute. The FHI was founded by Nick Bostrom, who, 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:26.960 as I said, is a philosopher, and it is a 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:29.720 center where people from a wide array of disciplines come 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:33.320 together to consider the ways that humanity could accidentally wipe 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:35.919