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How Existential Risks Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Josh here Um. We wanted to include a
0:03
Speaker 1: note before this episode, which is about existential risks um
0:08
Speaker 1: threats that are big enough to actually wipe humanity out
0:11
Speaker 1: of existence. Well, we recorded this episode just before the pandemic,
0:15
Speaker 1: which explains the weird lack of mention of COVID when
0:18
Speaker 1: we're talking about viruses, and when this pandemic came along,
0:22
Speaker 1: we thought perhaps a wait and sea approach might be
0:25
Speaker 1: best before just willy nilly releasing an episode about the
0:29
Speaker 1: end of the world. So we decided to release this now,
0:32
Speaker 1: still in the thick of things, not just because the
0:35
Speaker 1: world hasn't ended, but because one of the few good
0:38
Speaker 1: things that's come out of this terrible time is the
0:40
Speaker 1: way that we've all kind of come together and given
0:43
Speaker 1: a lot of thought about how we can look out
0:46
Speaker 1: for each other. And that's exactly what thinking about existential
0:50
Speaker 1: risks is all about. So we thought there would be
0:52
Speaker 1: no better time than right now to talk about them.
0:56
Speaker 1: We hope this explains things, uh and that you realize
0:59
Speaker 1: we're not releasing the glibly in anyway. Instead, we hope
1:03
Speaker 1: that it makes you reflective about what it means to
1:06
Speaker 1: be human and why humanity is worth fighting for. Welcome
1:12
Speaker 1: to Stuff. You should know a production of My Heart
1:14
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to the podcast.
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there,
1:26
Speaker 1: and there's guest producer Dave c sitting in yet again,
1:30
Speaker 1: at least the second time. I believe he's already picked
1:33
Speaker 1: up that he knows not to speak. He's nodding the
1:36
Speaker 1: custom established by Jerry Um. But yeah, he did not,
1:40
Speaker 1: didn't he? So yeah, I guess it is twice that
1:42
Speaker 1: Dave's been sitting in. What if he just heard two
1:45
Speaker 1: times from the other side of the room, You're like,
1:49
Speaker 1: didn't have the heart to tell him not to do that? Right?
1:52
Speaker 1: I think he would be Um, he would catch the
1:54
Speaker 1: drift from like the record scratching that just like materialized
1:58
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. Many people know that we have someone
2:02
Speaker 1: on permanent stand by by a record player just in
2:04
Speaker 1: case we do something like that, and that person is
2:07
Speaker 1: Tommy Chong. Hi, Tommy, do I smell bong water man?
2:12
Speaker 1: Betty breaks of it? Yeah? Probably, so, I mean, hats
2:16
Speaker 1: off to him for sticking to his bit. You know.
2:18
Speaker 1: Cheech was like, hey, hey, I want a good long
2:20
Speaker 1: spot on Nash Bridges, So alls, whatever you want me
2:23
Speaker 1: to about, Like, I'm just into gummies now, Tommy Chong
2:27
Speaker 1: like tripled down. Yeah, and least he sold the bongs,
2:32
Speaker 1: didn't he that? Uh? Pe test Beaters test beat Okay,
2:38
Speaker 1: suddenly think of how to say something like that away
2:42
Speaker 1: to um defeat urine test. Oh well, listen to you, fancy,
2:47
Speaker 1: I would say, I don't know. I know that a
2:49
Speaker 1: street guys call it pe Test Beaters, but Pete Test
2:54
Speaker 1: Beaters is a a band name about as good as say,
2:57
Speaker 1: like die your Planet. Actually I think diarrhea Planet's got
3:02
Speaker 1: it beat. But still all right, so chuck, um, we're
3:06
Speaker 1: talking today about a topic that is near and dear
3:10
Speaker 1: to my heart. Existential risks, that's right, which I don't
3:14
Speaker 1: know if you if you've gathered that or not, but
3:16
Speaker 1: I really really am into this, this topic all all around. Um.
3:21
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I did a temporart series
3:24
Speaker 1: on it called The End of the World with Josh Clark,
3:26
Speaker 1: available everywhere you get podcasts right now. Um, I managed
3:30
Speaker 1: to smash that down. That's kind of what this is.
3:32
Speaker 1: It's a condensed version and forever, like I wanted to
3:36
Speaker 1: just s y s k if I the topic of
3:40
Speaker 1: existential risks like do do it with you? I wanted
3:43
Speaker 1: to do it with you. This is going to be
3:45
Speaker 1: a live show at one point it was, Um, I
3:48
Speaker 1: think even before that, I was like, Hey, you want
3:50
Speaker 1: to do an episode on this. You're like, this is
3:51
Speaker 1: pretty dark stuff. We're doing it now now. I The
3:56
Speaker 1: only time I said that was when you actually sent
3:58
Speaker 1: me the document for the live show and I went,
4:00
Speaker 1: I don't know about a live version of this, So
4:02
Speaker 1: I guess I guess that must have been before the
4:04
Speaker 1: end of the world. Then, huh, this was like eight
4:06
Speaker 1: years ago. Well, I'm glad you turned down the live
4:08
Speaker 1: show because it may have lived and died there. So Um,
4:12
Speaker 1: one of the have made all those into the world
4:15
Speaker 1: big bucks right exactly, Man, I'm rolling in it. My
4:18
Speaker 1: mattress is stuffed with him. Um. So uh. And you know,
4:23
Speaker 1: bucks aren't always just the only way of qualifying or
4:27
Speaker 1: quantifying the success of something. You know, there's also Academy awards, right, oscars,
4:33
Speaker 1: and that's it, peabodies, big money or public awards ceremonies. Okay, granted, Um,
4:39
Speaker 1: the other reason I wanted to do this episode is
4:40
Speaker 1: because one of the people who was a participant in
4:43
Speaker 1: Interviewee in the End of the World with Josh Clark,
4:46
Speaker 1: a guy named Dr Toby ord Um recently published a
4:50
Speaker 1: book called The Precipice and it is like a really
4:53
Speaker 1: in depth look at existential risks and the ones we
4:56
Speaker 1: face and you know what's coming down the pike and
4:59
Speaker 1: what we can do about him and why right exactly,
5:03
Speaker 1: cheers and jeers right exactly. Um. And it's a it's
5:07
Speaker 1: a really good book and it's written just for like
5:09
Speaker 1: the average person to pick up and be like, I
5:11
Speaker 1: hadn't heard about this and then reached the end of
5:13
Speaker 1: it and say, I'm terrified, but I'm also hopeful. And
5:15
Speaker 1: that one reason I wanted to do this episode to
5:17
Speaker 1: let everybody know about Dr Ord's book or Toby's book.
5:20
Speaker 1: It's impossible to call him dr or he's just a
5:22
Speaker 1: really likable guy. Um is because he actually turned the
5:27
Speaker 1: tone of the End of the World around almost single handedly.
5:31
Speaker 1: It was really grim, remember before I interviewed him, really
5:36
Speaker 1: and and also you remember I started like listening to
5:39
Speaker 1: The Cure a lot. Um just got real dark there
5:42
Speaker 1: for a little while. Which is funny that The Cure
5:45
Speaker 1: is my conception of like really dark anyway, um, death
5:48
Speaker 1: metal guys out there laughing, right, so he but talking
5:52
Speaker 1: to him, he just kind of just steered the ship
5:55
Speaker 1: a little bit, and by the end of it, because
5:57
Speaker 1: of his influence, the End of the the World actually is
5:59
Speaker 1: a pretty hopeful well series. So my hat's off to
6:02
Speaker 1: the guy for for doing that, but also for writing
6:04
Speaker 1: this book the precipice. Hat's off, sir. So, um, we
6:09
Speaker 1: should probably kind of describe what existential risks are. Um.
6:13
Speaker 1: I know that you know in this document is described
6:16
Speaker 1: many many times. But the reasons described many many times
6:19
Speaker 1: is because there's like a lot of nuance to it.
6:21
Speaker 1: And the reason there's a lot of nuance to it
6:23
Speaker 1: is because we kind of tend to walk around thinking
6:26
Speaker 1: that we understand existential risks based on our experience with
6:31
Speaker 1: previous risks. But the problem with existential risks are they're
6:34
Speaker 1: actually new to us and they're not like other risks
6:38
Speaker 1: because they're just so big and if something happens one
6:42
Speaker 1: of these existential catastrophes but follows us, that's it. There's
6:46
Speaker 1: no second chance, there's no do over, and we're not
6:48
Speaker 1: used to risks like that. That's right. Uh, nobody is
6:52
Speaker 1: because we are all people, right, and the thought of
6:56
Speaker 1: all of human beings being gone um or at least uh,
7:00
Speaker 1: not being able to live as regular humans live and
7:03
Speaker 1: enjoy life like and not live as matrix batteries because
7:08
Speaker 1: you know, technically the matrix those are people. Yeah, but
7:12
Speaker 1: that's that's no way to live. The people in the pods, Yeah,
7:15
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. I wouldn't want to live that way.
7:18
Speaker 1: But that's another version of existential risk. Is not necessarily
7:20
Speaker 1: that everyone's dead, but you could become just a matrix
7:23
Speaker 1: battery and not flourish or move forward as a people,
7:26
Speaker 1: right exactly, so um. But but with existential risks in general,
7:31
Speaker 1: like that, the general idea of them is that like
7:34
Speaker 1: if you are walking along and you suddenly get hit
7:36
Speaker 1: by a car, like you no longer exist, but the
7:40
Speaker 1: rest of humanity continues on existing, uh. Correct. With existential risks,
7:45
Speaker 1: it's like the car that comes along and hits not
7:49
Speaker 1: a human but all humans. So it's a risk to
7:53
Speaker 1: humanity itself. And that's just kind of different because all
7:57
Speaker 1: of the other risks that we've ever run across, um
8:01
Speaker 1: either give us the luxury of time or proximity, meaning
8:07
Speaker 1: that we have enough time to adapt our our behavior
8:11
Speaker 1: to it, to survive it and continue on as a species.
8:15
Speaker 1: Or there's not enough of us in one place to
8:17
Speaker 1: be affected by this this UM risk that took out
8:20
Speaker 1: say one person or a billion people, Like if all
8:23
Speaker 1: of Europe went away, that is not an ex risk. No,
8:28
Speaker 1: and so people might say, um, it would be really sad,
8:32
Speaker 1: and I mean up to you know, the people alive
8:37
Speaker 1: on Earth, if they all died somehow, it would still
8:40
Speaker 1: possibly not be an existential risk because that one percent
8:44
Speaker 1: living could conceivably rebuild civilization. That's right. We're talking about
8:49
Speaker 1: giving the world back to mother Nature and just seeing
8:53
Speaker 1: what happens. Do you remember that UM series. I think
8:57
Speaker 1: it was a book to start the Earth without us
9:00
Speaker 1: m oh so, I think I know that there was
9:03
Speaker 1: a big deal when it came out, and then they
9:04
Speaker 1: made like a maybe a Science channel or that GEO
9:07
Speaker 1: series about it where this guy describes like how our
9:10
Speaker 1: infrastructure will start to crumble, like if humans just vanished tomorrow,
9:15
Speaker 1: how the Earth would reclaim, Nature would reclaim everything we've
9:18
Speaker 1: done and undo you know, after after a month, after
9:21
Speaker 1: a year, after ten years. I've heard of that it's
9:24
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. Yeah, there's a Bonnie Prince. Billy my
9:28
Speaker 1: idol has a song called It's Far from Over, and
9:32
Speaker 1: that's sort of a Bonnie principally look at the fact that, hey,
9:36
Speaker 1: even if all humans leave, it's not over. Yeah, like
9:40
Speaker 1: new animals are gonna new creatures are going to be born,
9:42
Speaker 1: the earth continues. Yeah. Uh. And he also has a
9:45
Speaker 1: line though about like you, but you better teacher kids
9:47
Speaker 1: a swim. That's a great line. Yeah, it's good stuff.
9:50
Speaker 1: They ever tell you. I saw that guy do karaoke
9:52
Speaker 1: with his wife once. Oh really, you know our friend
9:55
Speaker 1: Toby his wedding. Yeah, I would have not been able
10:00
Speaker 1: to be at that wedding because you would have just
10:02
Speaker 1: been such a fanboy. I don't know what I would do.
10:05
Speaker 1: I would, I would. It would have ruined my time,
10:08
Speaker 1: They really would, because I would second guess everything I
10:10
Speaker 1: did about talk. I mean I even talked to the
10:13
Speaker 1: guy once backstage, and that ruined my day. It really did,
10:17
Speaker 1: because you spent the rest of the time just thinking
10:19
Speaker 1: about how stuff. It was actually fine. He was a
10:22
Speaker 1: very very very nice guy, and we talked about athens
10:25
Speaker 1: and stuff. But that's who I just went to see
10:27
Speaker 1: in d C Philly in New York. Nice when a
10:30
Speaker 1: little follow him around the tour for a few days,
10:33
Speaker 1: did he sing that song about the world going on
10:35
Speaker 1: on or life going on? He did so. Um, so
10:39
Speaker 1: let's just cover a couple of things that we like
10:42
Speaker 1: people might think our existential risk that actually aren't. Okay. Yeah,
10:45
Speaker 1: I mean I think a lot of people might think, um, sure,
10:48
Speaker 1: some global pandemic that could wipe out humanity. There could
10:54
Speaker 1: very well be a global pandemic that could kill a
10:57
Speaker 1: lot of people, but it's probably not going to kill
11:00
Speaker 1: every living human, right. It would be a catastrophe, sure,
11:03
Speaker 1: but not an next risk. Yeah, I mean, because humans
11:05
Speaker 1: have anybodies that we develop, and so people who survive
11:09
Speaker 1: that flu have anybodies that they pass on the next generation,
11:12
Speaker 1: and so that that disease kind of dies out before
11:15
Speaker 1: it kills everybody off, and the preppers at the very
11:17
Speaker 1: least they'll be fine, would be safe. Um, what about
11:22
Speaker 1: calamities like a mud slide or something like that. You
11:25
Speaker 1: can't mud slide the earth. You can't. And that's a
11:27
Speaker 1: really good point. This is what I figured out in
11:29
Speaker 1: researching this, after doing the End of the World, after
11:32
Speaker 1: talking all these people. It took researching this article for
11:37
Speaker 1: me to figure this out. That it's time and proximity
11:40
Speaker 1: that are the two things that we used to survive,
11:42
Speaker 1: and that if you take away time and proximity, we're
11:45
Speaker 1: in trouble. And so mud slides are a really good
11:48
Speaker 1: example of proximity, where a mudslide can come down a
11:51
Speaker 1: mountain and take out an entire village of people. Yes,
11:55
Speaker 1: and it's really sad and really scary to think of.
11:57
Speaker 1: I mean we saw it with our own eyes. We
12:00
Speaker 1: stood in a field that was now what like eight
12:02
Speaker 1: or nine feet higher than it used to be. Yeah,
12:04
Speaker 1: and you could see the trek. This is in Guatemala.
12:06
Speaker 1: When we went down to visit our friends at co
12:08
Speaker 1: ed Um, there was like the trees were much sparser,
12:12
Speaker 1: you could see the track of the mundon. They were like,
12:14
Speaker 1: the people are still down there. This is It was
12:17
Speaker 1: a horrible tragedy and it happened in a matter of seconds.
12:21
Speaker 1: It just wiped out a village. But we all don't
12:23
Speaker 1: live under one mountain, and so if a bunch of
12:26
Speaker 1: people are taken out, the rest of us still go on.
12:28
Speaker 1: So there's the time and there's a proximity yeah, I
12:31
Speaker 1: think a lot of people in the eighties might have thought,
12:34
Speaker 1: because of movies like war games and movies like The
12:37
Speaker 1: Day after that global thermon nuclear war would be an
12:40
Speaker 1: ex risk and as bad as that would be, it
12:43
Speaker 1: wouldn't kill every single human being. Uh no, No, they
12:47
Speaker 1: don't think so they started out thinking this. Like, as
12:49
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, nuclear war was the first one
12:53
Speaker 1: of the first things that we identify as a possible
12:56
Speaker 1: existential risk. And if you kind of talk about the
12:59
Speaker 1: history of the field for the first like several decades,
13:02
Speaker 1: that was like the focus, the entire focus of existential risks.
13:06
Speaker 1: Like Bertrand Russell and Einstein wrote a manifesto about how
13:10
Speaker 1: we really need to be careful with these nukes because
13:12
Speaker 1: we're gonna wipe ourselves out. Carl Sagan, you remember our
13:16
Speaker 1: amazing Nuclear Winner episode that was from you know, studying
13:21
Speaker 1: existential risks. And then in the nineties a guy named
13:24
Speaker 1: John Leslie came along and said, Hey, there's way more
13:28
Speaker 1: than just nuclear war that we could wipe ourselves out with.
13:30
Speaker 1: And some of it is taking the form of this
13:32
Speaker 1: technology that's coming down the pike. And that was taken
13:35
Speaker 1: up by one of my personal hero is a guy
13:37
Speaker 1: named Nick Bostrom. Yeah, he's a philosopher out of Oxford,
13:42
Speaker 1: and he is one of the founders of this field.
13:45
Speaker 1: And he's the one that said, are one of the
13:48
Speaker 1: ones that said, you know, there's a lot of potential
13:51
Speaker 1: existential existential risks and nuclear wars peanuts bring it on.
13:58
Speaker 1: But and I know, I don't know of boss from
14:01
Speaker 1: specifically believes they probably does that that there we would
14:04
Speaker 1: be able to recover from a nuclear war. That's the idea,
14:07
Speaker 1: as you rebuild as a society after whatever zombie apocalypse,
14:11
Speaker 1: ri clear war happened. Yeah, and again say it killed
14:13
Speaker 1: off people. To us, that would seem like an unimaginable
14:17
Speaker 1: tragedy because we lived through it. But if you zoom
14:20
Speaker 1: back out and look at the lifespan of humanity, not
14:23
Speaker 1: just the humans life today, but all of humanity, like
14:26
Speaker 1: it would be a very horrible period in human history,
14:29
Speaker 1: but one we could rebuild from oversay ten thousand years
14:34
Speaker 1: to get back to the point where we were before
14:36
Speaker 1: the nuclear war. And so ultimately it's probably not an
14:40
Speaker 1: existential risk. Yeah, it's tough. This is a tough topic
14:43
Speaker 1: for people because I think people have a hard time
14:45
Speaker 1: with that long of a view of things. And then
14:48
Speaker 1: whenever you hear uh the big Matt comparisons of you know,
14:53
Speaker 1: how long people have been around and how old the
14:55
Speaker 1: earth is and that stuff, it kind of hits home.
14:57
Speaker 1: But it's stuff for people living that live you eighty
15:00
Speaker 1: years to think about, Well, ten thousand years will be fine,
15:05
Speaker 1: and even like, um, you mean, when I was researching this,
15:08
Speaker 1: she brought this up a lot, like where do we
15:10
Speaker 1: stop caring about people that our descendants? You know, we
15:13
Speaker 1: care about our children or our grandchildren. That's about I
15:16
Speaker 1: just care about my daughter, That's about it. That's where
15:18
Speaker 1: it is with the grandchildren. You have grandchildren yet? Yeah,
15:22
Speaker 1: but wait till they come along. Everything I've ever heard
15:24
Speaker 1: is that being a grandparents even better than being a parent.
15:28
Speaker 1: And I know some grandparents. Okay, let's say I'm not
15:32
Speaker 1: dead before my daughter eventually has a kid, if she
15:35
Speaker 1: wants to, I would care about that grandchild. But after that,
15:40
Speaker 1: forget it. Yeah, my kids, kids, kids, who cares granded
15:44
Speaker 1: that's about That's about where it would like, I care
15:47
Speaker 1: about people in humanity as a whole. I think that's
15:49
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. You can't think about like your
15:52
Speaker 1: your eventual ancestors think you just got to think about people, right, Yeah,
15:58
Speaker 1: that's really help people you don't know. Now, it's kind
16:00
Speaker 1: of requisite to start caring about existential risks, to start
16:04
Speaker 1: thinking about people, not just well let's talk about it.
16:07
Speaker 1: So Toby Ord made a really good point in his
16:10
Speaker 1: book The Precipice, right that you care about people on
16:13
Speaker 1: the other side of the world that you've never met. Yeah,
16:16
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying, Like that happens every day, right,
16:19
Speaker 1: So what's the difference between people who live on the
16:22
Speaker 1: other side of the world that you will never meet
16:24
Speaker 1: and people who live in a different time that you
16:26
Speaker 1: will never meet. Why would you care any less about
16:29
Speaker 1: these people human beings that you'll never meet, whether they
16:32
Speaker 1: live on the other side of the world at some
16:34
Speaker 1: time or in the same place you do, but at
16:36
Speaker 1: a different time. I think a few I mean I'm
16:38
Speaker 1: not speaking for me, but I think if I were
16:40
Speaker 1: to step inside the brain of someone who thinks that,
16:43
Speaker 1: they would think like a it's a little bit of
16:47
Speaker 1: a self Um, it's a bit of an ego thing
16:51
Speaker 1: because you know, like, oh, I'm helping someone else, so
16:54
Speaker 1: that does something for you in the moment, Like someone
16:57
Speaker 1: right now on the other side of the world that
16:58
Speaker 1: maybe I've sponsored is doing good because of me. And
17:02
Speaker 1: I had a little kick out of it from Sally Struthers.
17:05
Speaker 1: Yeah that does something. It helps he help with food
17:09
Speaker 1: on her plate. She still with us, I think so.
17:13
Speaker 1: I think so too. But I feel really bad if
17:15
Speaker 1: I certainly haven't heard any news of her death, people
17:18
Speaker 1: would talk about that and the record scratch would have
17:20
Speaker 1: just happened. Uh. So I think that is something too.
17:24
Speaker 1: And I think there are also sort of a certain
17:27
Speaker 1: amount of people that are just um that just believe
17:31
Speaker 1: you're worm dirt. There is no benefit to the afterlife
17:36
Speaker 1: as far as good deeds and things, so like once
17:39
Speaker 1: you're gone, it's just who cares because it doesn't matter.
17:42
Speaker 1: There's no consciousness. Yeah, well that's I mean, if you
17:45
Speaker 1: if you were at all like piqued by that stuff,
17:47
Speaker 1: I would say, definitely read the precipice because like one
17:50
Speaker 1: of the best things that Toby does, and he does
17:52
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff really well, is describe why it matters,
17:56
Speaker 1: because I mean, that's a philosopher after all. Um, so
17:59
Speaker 1: he says like this is why it matters, Like not
18:01
Speaker 1: only does it matter because you're you're keeping things going
18:04
Speaker 1: for the future generation, you're also continuing on with the
18:08
Speaker 1: previous generation built like who who are you to just
18:11
Speaker 1: be like, oh, were you just gonna drop the ball? No?
18:13
Speaker 1: I agree that's a very self centered way to look
18:15
Speaker 1: at things totally. But I think you're right. I think
18:17
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who look at it
18:19
Speaker 1: that way. So you want to take a break, Yeah,
18:21
Speaker 1: we can take a break now, and maybe we can
18:23
Speaker 1: dive into Mr Bostrom's or doctor I imagine Bostroms U
18:28
Speaker 1: Five different types? Are there? Five? No, there's just a few. Okay,
18:32
Speaker 1: a few different types of existential we can make up
18:35
Speaker 1: a couple of the addam net. Let's not stop, all right, Chuck. So, uh,
19:07
Speaker 1: one of the things you said earlier is that existential risk,
19:11
Speaker 1: the way we think of them typically is um that
19:15
Speaker 1: something happens and humanity has wiped out and we all
19:18
Speaker 1: die and there's no more humans forever and ever. That's
19:21
Speaker 1: an existential risk. That's one kind, really, and that's the
19:24
Speaker 1: easiest one to grasp with, which is extinction. Yeah, and
19:28
Speaker 1: that kind of speaks for itself. Just like dinosaurs are
19:31
Speaker 1: no longer here, that would be us, Yes, and I
19:35
Speaker 1: think that's one of those other things too. It's kind
19:37
Speaker 1: of like how people walk around like, yeah, I know
19:39
Speaker 1: I'm going to die someday. But if you sat them
19:42
Speaker 1: down and you were like, do you really understand that
19:45
Speaker 1: you're going to die someday? That they might start to
19:48
Speaker 1: panic a little bit, you know, and they realize I
19:51
Speaker 1: haven't actually confronted that, I just know that I'm going
19:53
Speaker 1: to die. Or if you knew the date, that'd be weird.
19:56
Speaker 1: It would be like a Justin Timberlake movie. Would that
19:58
Speaker 1: make things better? Or we're for humanity? I would say better? Probably, right.
20:04
Speaker 1: I think it'd be a mixed bag. I think some
20:05
Speaker 1: people would be able to do nothing but focus on
20:08
Speaker 1: that and think about all the time they're wasting, and
20:11
Speaker 1: other people would be like, I'm gonna make the absolute
20:13
Speaker 1: most out of this. Well, I guess there are a
20:15
Speaker 1: couple of ways you can go, and it probably depends
20:17
Speaker 1: on when your data is. If if you found out
20:19
Speaker 1: your date was a ripe old age, you might be like, well,
20:23
Speaker 1: I'm just going to try and lead the best life
20:24
Speaker 1: I can. That's great. If you find out you live
20:27
Speaker 1: fast and die hard at seven die harder, uh, you
20:32
Speaker 1: might die harder. You might be like screw it, or
20:34
Speaker 1: you might really ramp up your good works. It depends
20:38
Speaker 1: what kind of person you are. Probably and more and
20:40
Speaker 1: more I'm realizing is it depends on how you were
20:42
Speaker 1: raised to. You know, like we we definitely are responsible
20:47
Speaker 1: for carrying on ourselves as adults. Like you can't just say, well,
20:53
Speaker 1: I wasn't raised very well or I was raised this way,
20:55
Speaker 1: so whatever, Like you have a responsibility for yourself and
20:57
Speaker 1: who you are as an adult. Sure, but I really
20:59
Speaker 1: feel like the way that you're raised to really sets
21:02
Speaker 1: the stage and put you on a path that's that
21:05
Speaker 1: can be difficult to get off of because it's so
21:07
Speaker 1: hard to see for sure, you know, because that's just
21:10
Speaker 1: normal to you because that's what your family was. Yeah,
21:12
Speaker 1: that's a good point. So anyway, extinction is just one
21:16
Speaker 1: of the ways one of the types of existential risks
21:19
Speaker 1: that we face, a bad one. Permanent stagnation is another one,
21:23
Speaker 1: and that's the one we kind of mentioned. Um dance
21:26
Speaker 1: around a little bit, and that's like some people are around.
21:29
Speaker 1: Not every human died and whatever happened, but um, whatever
21:34
Speaker 1: is left is not enough to either repopulate the world
21:39
Speaker 1: or to progress humanity in any meaningful way to rebuild
21:43
Speaker 1: civilization back to where it was, and it would be
21:45
Speaker 1: that way permanently, which is kind of in itself tough
21:49
Speaker 1: to imagine too, just like the genuine extinction of humanity
21:53
Speaker 1: is tough to imagine the idea of, well, there's still
21:56
Speaker 1: plenty of humans running around, how are we never going
21:58
Speaker 1: to get back to that place? And there's that may
22:01
Speaker 1: be the most depressing one, I think. I think the
22:04
Speaker 1: next one is the most depressing. But that's pretty depressing.
22:06
Speaker 1: But one one example it's been given for that is like,
22:09
Speaker 1: let's say we say, um, all right, this climate change,
22:12
Speaker 1: we need to do something about that. So we undertake
22:15
Speaker 1: a geo engineering project that isn't fully thought out, and
22:19
Speaker 1: we end up causing like a runaway greenhouse gas effect
22:23
Speaker 1: and there's just nothing we can do to reverse course,
22:26
Speaker 1: and so we ultimately wreck the earth. That would be
22:29
Speaker 1: a good example of permanent stagnation. That's right, This is
22:34
Speaker 1: this next one. So yes, agreed, permanent stagnation is pretty bad.
22:37
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to live under that, But at least
22:39
Speaker 1: you can run around and like, um, do what you want.
22:43
Speaker 1: I think the total lack of personal liberty and the
22:46
Speaker 1: flawed realization one is what gets me. Yeah, they all
22:51
Speaker 1: get me. Uh. Flawed realization is the next one, and
22:55
Speaker 1: that's Um, that's sort of like the matrix example, which
22:59
Speaker 1: is that there's technology that we invented that eventually makes
23:03
Speaker 1: us their little batteries and pods right basically, or there's
23:10
Speaker 1: just um, some someone is in charge, whether it's a
23:16
Speaker 1: group or some some individual or something like that. It's
23:19
Speaker 1: basically a permanent dictatorship that we will never be able
23:22
Speaker 1: to get out from under because this technology we've developed, yeah,
23:26
Speaker 1: is being used against us, and it's so good at
23:30
Speaker 1: keeping tabs on everybody and squashing descent before it grows.
23:34
Speaker 1: There's just nothing anybody could ever do to overthrow it.
23:37
Speaker 1: And so it's a permanent dictatorship where um, we're not
23:41
Speaker 1: doing anything productive, we're not advancing, we're say, um, say,
23:45
Speaker 1: it's like a religious dictatorship or something like that. Oh,
23:49
Speaker 1: anybody does is go to church and support the church
23:51
Speaker 1: or whatever, and that's that. And so what Dr Bostrom
23:55
Speaker 1: figured out is that there are there are fatest as
24:00
Speaker 1: bad as death. There are possible outcomes for the human
24:03
Speaker 1: race that aren't are as bad as extinction that still
24:07
Speaker 1: live people alive even like in kind of a futuristic
24:10
Speaker 1: kind of thing, like the flawed realization Wine goes um,
24:13
Speaker 1: but that you wouldn't want to live the lives that
24:16
Speaker 1: those humans live, and so humanity has lost its chance
24:21
Speaker 1: of ever achieving it's true, its true potential. That's right,
24:24
Speaker 1: And that that those qualifies existential risks as well, that's right.
24:28
Speaker 1: They want to live in the matrix no at all,
24:31
Speaker 1: or in a post apocalyptic um altered Earth. Yeah, the
24:36
Speaker 1: matrix basically like thunder of the Barbarian that's what I
24:39
Speaker 1: imagine with with the permanent stagnation. So, uh, there are
24:45
Speaker 1: a couple of big categories for existential risks, and they
24:48
Speaker 1: are either nature made or man made um. The nature
24:53
Speaker 1: ones we've uh you know there there's always been the
24:56
Speaker 1: threat that big enough um object hitting planet Earth could
25:02
Speaker 1: do it, right, Like that's always been around. It's not
25:04
Speaker 1: like that's some sort of new realization, but it's just
25:07
Speaker 1: a pretty rare It's so rare that it's not likely. Right,
25:12
Speaker 1: All of the natural ones are pretty pretty rare compared
25:15
Speaker 1: to the human made ones. Yeah, Like I don't think
25:17
Speaker 1: science wakes up every day and worries about a comet
25:21
Speaker 1: or an asteroid or a meteor. No, and it's definitely
25:25
Speaker 1: worth saying that the better we get at scanning the heavens,
25:29
Speaker 1: the safer we are eventually when we can do something
25:33
Speaker 1: about it. If we see this coming, what do we do?
25:35
Speaker 1: Just hit the gas and move the Earth over a bit?
25:37
Speaker 1: Since the right, Um, and there was nothing we can
25:41
Speaker 1: do about any of these anyway, So maybe that's also
25:43
Speaker 1: why science doesn't wake up worrying, right. Yeah, so you've
25:46
Speaker 1: got near earth objects, you've got celestial stuff like collapsing
25:50
Speaker 1: stars that produce gamma ray births. And then even back
25:53
Speaker 1: here on Earth, like a supervolcanic eruption could conceivably put
25:56
Speaker 1: out enough soot that it blocks photosynthesis and showing that, yeah,
26:01
Speaker 1: sends us into essentially a nuclear winner too. That would
26:04
Speaker 1: be bad. But like you're saying, there's these are very
26:07
Speaker 1: rare and there's not a lot we can do about
26:09
Speaker 1: them now. Instead, the focus of people who think about
26:12
Speaker 1: existential risks, um, And there are like a pretty decent
26:16
Speaker 1: handful of people who are dedicated to this now. Um,
26:19
Speaker 1: they say that the anthropogenic or the human made ones,
26:23
Speaker 1: these are the ones we really need to mitigate because
26:25
Speaker 1: they're human made, so they're under our control and um,
26:30
Speaker 1: they they they that means we can do something about
26:33
Speaker 1: them more than say a comment. Yeah. Yeah, but that's
26:37
Speaker 1: a it's a bit of a um double edged sword
26:41
Speaker 1: because you think, oh, well, it's since we could stop
26:44
Speaker 1: this stuff, that's really comforting to know. But we're not. Right, Like,
26:49
Speaker 1: we're headed down a bad path in some of these
26:51
Speaker 1: areas for sure. So because we are creating these risks
26:56
Speaker 1: and not thinking about these things, in a lot of cases,
26:58
Speaker 1: they're actually worse even though we could possibly control them.
27:03
Speaker 1: It definitely makes it more ironic too, right. So, um,
27:08
Speaker 1: there are a few that have been identified, and there's
27:09
Speaker 1: probably more that we haven't figured out yet or haven't
27:12
Speaker 1: been invented yet. But one of the big ones, just um,
27:16
Speaker 1: I think almost across the board, the one that existential
27:19
Speaker 1: risk analysts worry about the most is AI artificial intelligence. Yeah,
27:23
Speaker 1: and this is the most frustrating one because it seems
27:27
Speaker 1: like it would be the easiest one to uh not
27:31
Speaker 1: stopping its tracks, but to divert along a safer path. Um.
27:37
Speaker 1: The problem with that is that people who have dedicated
27:43
Speaker 1: themselves to figuring out how to make that safer path,
27:46
Speaker 1: are coming back and saying this is way harder than
27:49
Speaker 1: we thought it was going to be to make the
27:51
Speaker 1: safer path. Yeah really yeah. And so at the same time,
27:54
Speaker 1: while people recognize that there needs to be a safe
27:57
Speaker 1: path for AI to follow, this other our path that
28:00
Speaker 1: it's on now, which is known as the unsafe path,
28:04
Speaker 1: that's the one that's making people money. So everybody's just
28:07
Speaker 1: going down the unsafe these other people are trying to
28:10
Speaker 1: figure out the safer one because the UM the computer
28:15
Speaker 1: and war games would say, maybe the best option is
28:17
Speaker 1: to not play the game, and that's if there is
28:21
Speaker 1: no safe option, then maybe a I should not happen
28:24
Speaker 1: or we need to And this is almost heresy to
28:28
Speaker 1: say we need to put the brakes on AI development
28:32
Speaker 1: so that we can figure out the safer way and
28:35
Speaker 1: then move forward. But we should probably explain what we're
28:38
Speaker 1: talking about was safe in the in the first place, right, Yeah,
28:41
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about creating super intelligent AI that
28:45
Speaker 1: basically is is so smart that it starts to self
28:48
Speaker 1: learn UM and is beyond our control and it's not thinking, Ah,
28:54
Speaker 1: wait a minute, one of the one of the things
28:56
Speaker 1: I'm programmed to do is make sure we take care
28:58
Speaker 1: of humans. And it doesn't necessarily mean that some AI
29:02
Speaker 1: is going to become super intelligent and say I want
29:05
Speaker 1: to destroy all humans. That's actually probably not going to
29:09
Speaker 1: be the case. It will be that this super intelligent
29:12
Speaker 1: AI is carrying out whatever it was programmed to do,
29:15
Speaker 1: would disregard humans exactly. And so if our goal of
29:19
Speaker 1: staying alive and thriving UM comes in conflict with the
29:24
Speaker 1: goal of whatever this AI's goal is, whatever it was
29:26
Speaker 1: designed to do, we would lose that because it's smarter
29:29
Speaker 1: than us. By definition, it's smarter than us. It's out
29:32
Speaker 1: of it, it's out of our control. And probably one
29:34
Speaker 1: of the first things it would do when it became
29:37
Speaker 1: super intelligent is figure out how to prevent us from
29:39
Speaker 1: turning it off. Well, yeah, that's the fail safe, is
29:43
Speaker 1: the all important failsafe that the AI could just disable
29:46
Speaker 1: exactly right. You can just like sneak up behind it
29:48
Speaker 1: with a screwdriver or something like that, and then you
29:50
Speaker 1: can get shot the robots like in a robot voice.
29:56
Speaker 1: So that's called UM designing friendly or aligned a I
30:00
Speaker 1: and people I have are like some of the smartest
30:03
Speaker 1: people in the field of AI research. Have have stopped
30:06
Speaker 1: figuring out how to build AI and have started to
30:09
Speaker 1: figure out how to build friendly AI. Yeah. Aligned is
30:11
Speaker 1: in aligned with our goals and needs and desires. And
30:16
Speaker 1: Nick Bostrom actually has a really great um thought experiment
30:20
Speaker 1: about is called the paper clip problem. Yeah. Um, and
30:24
Speaker 1: it's it's you can hear it on the end of
30:26
Speaker 1: the world. Nice. I like that driving listeners. The next
30:31
Speaker 1: one is nanotech. Um. And nanotech is I mean, it's
30:36
Speaker 1: something that's very much within the realm of possibility, as
30:40
Speaker 1: is AI. Actually it's not. That's not super far fetched
30:42
Speaker 1: either by super intelligent AI. Yeah, it's definitely possible. Yeah,
30:47
Speaker 1: and that's the same with nanotechnology we're talking about. And
30:51
Speaker 1: I've seen this everywhere, from um, little tiny robots that
30:54
Speaker 1: will just be dispersed and clean your house, um, to
30:58
Speaker 1: like the atomic level where they can like reprogram our
31:02
Speaker 1: body from the inside, the little tiny robots that can
31:06
Speaker 1: clean your car. Yeah. Those are those are the three.
31:11
Speaker 1: Those are three things, so um, two of them are cool.
31:14
Speaker 1: One of the one of the things about these nanobots
31:18
Speaker 1: is that because they're so small, they'll be able to
31:20
Speaker 1: manipulate matter on like the atomic level, which is like
31:25
Speaker 1: the usefulness of that is mind bottling to send them
31:27
Speaker 1: in and they're gonna be networked, so we'll be able
31:30
Speaker 1: to program to do whatever and control them. Right. Um.
31:33
Speaker 1: The problem is is if they're networked in there under
31:35
Speaker 1: our control, if they fall under the control of somebody
31:39
Speaker 1: else or say a super intelligent AI, then we would
31:43
Speaker 1: have a problem because they can rearrange matter on the
31:45
Speaker 1: atomic level, so who knows what they would start rearranging
31:50
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't want them to rearrange. It's like that
31:53
Speaker 1: Gene Simmons sci fi movie in the eighties. Uh, I
31:57
Speaker 1: won't say it was Looker. No. I always confuse those two,
32:02
Speaker 1: the other one this is Runaway, Runaway. I think one
32:06
Speaker 1: inevitably followed the other on HBO. They had to have
32:10
Speaker 1: been a double feature because they could not be more linked.
32:12
Speaker 1: In my mind. Same here, you know. I remember Albert
32:15
Speaker 1: Finney was in one. I think he was in Looker
32:17
Speaker 1: he was, and Gene Simmons was in Runaway as the
32:20
Speaker 1: bad guy, of course, but it did a great job,
32:22
Speaker 1: and Tom Selleck was the good guy. Tom Selleck. Yeah,
32:26
Speaker 1: but the idea in that movie was not nanobots. They were,
32:30
Speaker 1: but they were a little um insect like robots that
32:33
Speaker 1: they just weren't nano sized, right, And so the reason
32:37
Speaker 1: that these could be so dangerous is because not their size.
32:41
Speaker 1: But there's just so many of them. And while they're
32:44
Speaker 1: not big and they can't like punch you in the
32:45
Speaker 1: face or stick you in the neck with a needle
32:48
Speaker 1: or something like the runaway robots, they can do all
32:51
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff to you molecularly, and you would not
32:54
Speaker 1: want that to happen. Yeah, this is pretty bad. There's
32:56
Speaker 1: an engineer out of m my Tea named Eric Drexler.
33:00
Speaker 1: He is a big, big name in molecular nanotech. He
33:05
Speaker 1: if he's listening right now. Right up to when you
33:08
Speaker 1: said his name, he was just sitting there saying, please
33:10
Speaker 1: don't mention me, no, because he's tried to back off
33:13
Speaker 1: from his gray goo hypothesis. So, yeah, this is the idea.
33:17
Speaker 1: What there are so many of these nano bots that
33:20
Speaker 1: they can harvest their own energy, that can self replicate
33:23
Speaker 1: like a little bunny rabbits, and that there would be
33:25
Speaker 1: a point where there was runaway growth such that the
33:29
Speaker 1: entire world would look like gray goo because it's covered
33:32
Speaker 1: with nanobots. Yeah, and since they can harvest energy from
33:35
Speaker 1: the environment, they would eat the world, they'd wreck the world. Basically,
33:40
Speaker 1: this is that's a that's scary, you're right. So he
33:42
Speaker 1: took so much flak for saying this, even because apparently
33:45
Speaker 1: it's scared people enough back in the eighties that nanotechnology
33:49
Speaker 1: was like kind of frozen for a little bit. Yeah,
33:51
Speaker 1: and so everybody went drux lure. And so he's backed
33:55
Speaker 1: off from it, saying like, this would be a design flaw,
33:59
Speaker 1: this would just naturally happen with nanobots. You'd have to
34:02
Speaker 1: design them to harvest energy themselves and to self replicate,
34:07
Speaker 1: and so just don't do that. And so the thing
34:10
Speaker 1: is like, yes, he took a lot of flak for it,
34:11
Speaker 1: but he also like it was a contribution to the world.
34:14
Speaker 1: He pointed out two big flaws that could happen that
34:16
Speaker 1: now we're just like a sci fi trope. But when
34:19
Speaker 1: he when he thought about them, they weren't self evident
34:23
Speaker 1: or obvious. Yeah. I mean, I feel bad we even
34:26
Speaker 1: said his name, but it's worth saying. Clyde Drexler, right, Glad,
34:32
Speaker 1: that's right. Biotechnology is another pretty scary field. Um. There
34:38
Speaker 1: are great people doing great research with infectious disease. UM.
34:42
Speaker 1: Part of that, though, involves developing new bacteria and new viruses,
34:47
Speaker 1: new strains that are even worse than the pre existing
34:50
Speaker 1: ones as part of the research. And that is, uh,
34:55
Speaker 1: that can be a little scary too, because I mean
34:57
Speaker 1: it's not just stuff of movies. There are acts, events
35:00
Speaker 1: that happen, protocols that aren't followed, and this stuff can
35:05
Speaker 1: or could get out of a lab. Yeah, and it's
35:07
Speaker 1: not one of those like could get out of a lab.
35:10
Speaker 1: Even things that has gotten out of it happens, I
35:13
Speaker 1: don't want to say routinely. Dis happened so many times
35:16
Speaker 1: that when you look at the track record of the
35:18
Speaker 1: biotech industry, it's just like, how are we not all
35:22
Speaker 1: dead right now? It's crazy lost broken arrows, lost nuclear
35:25
Speaker 1: warhead exactly, but with little, tiny, horrible viruses. And then
35:28
Speaker 1: when you factor in that terrible track record with them
35:31
Speaker 1: actually altering viruses in bacteria to make them more deadly,
35:36
Speaker 1: to do those two things to reduce the time that
35:39
Speaker 1: we have to get over them right, so they make
35:42
Speaker 1: them more deadly, um, and then to reduce proximity to
35:46
Speaker 1: make them more easily spread, more contagious, so they spread
35:49
Speaker 1: more quickly. And kill more more quickly as well. Then
35:53
Speaker 1: you have potentially an existential risk on your hand. For sure.
35:57
Speaker 1: We've talked in here a lot about the Large Haydrin Collider.
36:00
Speaker 1: We're talking about physics experiments as the I guess this
36:04
Speaker 1: is the last example that we're going to talk about. Yeah,
36:06
Speaker 1: and I should point out that this is not physics experiments.
36:09
Speaker 1: Does not show up anywhere in Toby Ord's precipist book. Okay,
36:13
Speaker 1: this one is kind of my pet. Yeah. I mean,
36:16
Speaker 1: there's plenty of people who agree that this is a possibility,
36:20
Speaker 1: but a lot of existential risks. Theorists are like, I
36:24
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, you'll explain it better than me. But
36:27
Speaker 1: the idea is that we're doing all these experiments, uh
36:30
Speaker 1: like the large Adreing Collider to try and figure stuff
36:33
Speaker 1: out we don't understand and which is great, but we
36:37
Speaker 1: don't exactly know where that all could lead. Yeah, because
36:41
Speaker 1: we don't understand it enough, you can't say this is
36:44
Speaker 1: totally safe. And so if you read some physics papers
36:49
Speaker 1: and this isn't like Rupert Sheldrake Morphick Fields kind of
36:52
Speaker 1: like right, it's it's actual physicists have said, well, actually
36:58
Speaker 1: using this version of string. Are it's possible that this
37:01
Speaker 1: could be created in a large hadron collider or more
37:04
Speaker 1: likely a more powerful collider that's going to be built
37:08
Speaker 1: in the next fifty years or something like that. Super large. Sure,
37:12
Speaker 1: the Duper, I think it's the nickname for it. Oh man,
37:16
Speaker 1: I hope that doesn't end up being the nickname the Duper, right, Yeah,
37:21
Speaker 1: I guess so. But it also has a little kind
37:23
Speaker 1: of you know, I don't know, I like it all right,
37:26
Speaker 1: So um, they're saying that a few things could be
37:29
Speaker 1: created accidentally within one of these colliders when they smashed
37:32
Speaker 1: the particles together. Microscopic black hole. Uh, my favorite, the
37:37
Speaker 1: low energy vacuum bubble, which is it's a little tiny
37:41
Speaker 1: version of our universe that's more stable, like a more
37:45
Speaker 1: stable version, a lower energy version, and so if it
37:49
Speaker 1: were allowed to grow, it would grow at the speed
37:51
Speaker 1: of light. It would overwhelm our universe and be the
37:55
Speaker 1: new version of the universe. Yeah. That's like when you
37:57
Speaker 1: buy the baby alligator or the baby constrictor python. You
38:01
Speaker 1: think is so cute, right, and then it grows up
38:03
Speaker 1: and eats the universe screwed. The problem is, is this
38:07
Speaker 1: new version of the universe is set up in a
38:10
Speaker 1: way that's different than our version, and so all the matter,
38:13
Speaker 1: including us, that's arranged just so for this this version
38:17
Speaker 1: of the universe would be disintegrated in this new version.
38:20
Speaker 1: So it's like the snap. But can you imagine if
38:23
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, just a new universe grew out
38:27
Speaker 1: a large hadron clider accidentally and at the speed of
38:29
Speaker 1: light just ruined this universe forever, If it was we
38:33
Speaker 1: just accidentally did this with a physics experiment. I find
38:36
Speaker 1: that endlessly fascinating and also hilarious, just the idea I
38:42
Speaker 1: think the world will end ironically somehow. It's it's entirely possible. So, uh,
38:48
Speaker 1: maybe before we take a break, let's talk a little
38:51
Speaker 1: bit about climate change, because a lot of people might
38:55
Speaker 1: think climate change is an existential threat. Uh, you know,
39:00
Speaker 1: it's terrible and we need to do all we can,
39:03
Speaker 1: but even the worst case models probably don't mean an
39:06
Speaker 1: end the humanity as a as a whole. Like it
39:10
Speaker 1: means we're living much further inland than we thought we
39:13
Speaker 1: ever would, and we maybe are much tighter quarters than
39:16
Speaker 1: we ever thought we might be in a lot of
39:18
Speaker 1: people might be gone, but it's probably not going to
39:20
Speaker 1: wipe out every human being. Yeah, it'll probably end up
39:24
Speaker 1: being akin to that same that same line of thinking,
39:27
Speaker 1: the same path of Um, A catastrophic nuclear war, which
39:32
Speaker 1: I guess you could just say nuclear war catastrophic is
39:35
Speaker 1: kind of built into the idea, but we would be
39:37
Speaker 1: able to adapt and rebuild. Um, it's possible that our
39:41
Speaker 1: worst case scenarios are actually better than what will actually happen.
39:46
Speaker 1: So it's just like with a total nuclear war, it's
39:50
Speaker 1: possible that it could be bad enough that it could
39:53
Speaker 1: be an existential risk. It's possible climate change could end
39:57
Speaker 1: up being bad enough that it's an existential voice. But
39:59
Speaker 1: from current understanding, they're probably not existential risks, right, all right,
40:04
Speaker 1: Well that's a hopeful place to leave for another break,
40:07
Speaker 1: and we're gonna come back and finish up with why
40:10
Speaker 1: all of this is important. It should be pretty obvious,
40:13
Speaker 1: but we'll summarize it. Stop you know, stop, stop, you know, stop,
40:42
Speaker 1: you know, okay, chuck um. One thing about existential risks
40:46
Speaker 1: that people like to say is well, let's just not
40:48
Speaker 1: let's just not do anything. And it turns out from
40:51
Speaker 1: people like Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord and other people
40:55
Speaker 1: around the world who are thinking about this kind of stuff.
40:58
Speaker 1: If we don't do anything, we probably are going to
41:01
Speaker 1: accidentally wipe ourselves out. Like doing nothing is not a
41:06
Speaker 1: safe option. Yeah, But um Bostrom is one who has
41:09
Speaker 1: developed a concept that's hypothetical called technological maturity Um, which
41:15
Speaker 1: is it would be great and that is sometime in
41:17
Speaker 1: the future where we have invented all these things, but
41:22
Speaker 1: we have done so safely and we have complete mastery
41:24
Speaker 1: over it all, there won't be those accidents, there won't
41:27
Speaker 1: be the gray goo, there won't be the AI that's
41:29
Speaker 1: not aligned. Yeah, because we'll know how to use all
41:32
Speaker 1: this stuff. Says right, like you said, right, we're not
41:35
Speaker 1: mature in that way right now. No, Actually, we're at
41:37
Speaker 1: a place that Carl Sagan called their technological adolescence, where
41:41
Speaker 1: we're becoming powerful, but we're also not wise. At the
41:46
Speaker 1: point where we're right now technological adolescence where we're starting
41:50
Speaker 1: to invent the stuff that actually can wipe humanity out
41:53
Speaker 1: of existence. But before we reach technological maturity, where we
41:58
Speaker 1: have safely master and have that kind of wisdom to
42:01
Speaker 1: use all this stuff, that's probably the most dangerous period
42:05
Speaker 1: in the history of humanity. And we're entering it right now.
42:08
Speaker 1: And if we don't figure out how to take on
42:11
Speaker 1: these existential risks, we probably won't survive from technological adolescents
42:16
Speaker 1: all the way to technological maturity. We will wipe ourselves
42:19
Speaker 1: out one way or another. Because this is really important
42:22
Speaker 1: to remember. All it takes is one one existential catastrophe,
42:27
Speaker 1: and not all of these have to take place. It
42:30
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be some combination, just one. Just one
42:33
Speaker 1: um bug with basically a percent mortality has to get
42:36
Speaker 1: out of a lab. Just one accidental physics experiment has
42:39
Speaker 1: to slip up um just one AI has to become
42:43
Speaker 1: super intelligent and take over the world like just one
42:46
Speaker 1: of those things happening, and then that's it. And again
42:49
Speaker 1: the problem with existential risks that makes them different is
42:53
Speaker 1: we don't get a second chance. One of them befalls us,
42:58
Speaker 1: and that's that. That's right. Uh, there depends on who
43:01
Speaker 1: you talked to about if you want to get in,
43:04
Speaker 1: maybe just a projection on our chances as a whole
43:07
Speaker 1: as humans. Uh Toby ord right now is uh what
43:11
Speaker 1: a one and six chance over the next hundred years. Yeah,
43:15
Speaker 1: he always follows that with Russian roulette, other people say
43:19
Speaker 1: about ten percent. Um. There's some different cosmologists. There's one
43:23
Speaker 1: name Lord Martin Rees who puts it att Yeah. He
43:27
Speaker 1: actually is a member of the Center for the Study
43:29
Speaker 1: of Existential Risk. And we didn't mention before. Bostrom founded
43:33
Speaker 1: something called the Future of Humanity Institute, which is pretty
43:36
Speaker 1: great f h I. And then there's another one more
43:41
Speaker 1: place that I gotta want to shout out. It's called
43:42
Speaker 1: the Future of Life Institute. It was founded by Max
43:45
Speaker 1: tag Mark and Yon Talling, co founder of I think Skype.
43:50
Speaker 1: Oh really, I think so all right, well you should
43:53
Speaker 1: probably also shut out the Church of Scientology. No, no, no,
43:57
Speaker 1: no genius. Yeah, that's the one that's one thinking about. Well,
44:01
Speaker 1: they get confused a lot. This is a pretty cool
44:04
Speaker 1: little um thing you did here with how long because
44:08
Speaker 1: I was kind of talking before about the long view
44:10
Speaker 1: of things and how long humans have been around. So
44:13
Speaker 1: I think your rope analogy is pretty spot on here.
44:15
Speaker 1: So that's J. L. Schellenberg's rope analogy. Well, I didn't
44:19
Speaker 1: think he wrote it. I wish it were admitting that
44:21
Speaker 1: you included it. So the what we were talking about,
44:23
Speaker 1: like you were saying, is like it's it's hard to
44:25
Speaker 1: take that long view. But if you if you step
44:28
Speaker 1: back and look at how long humans have been around.
44:30
Speaker 1: So Homo sapiens have been on Earth about two thousand years,
44:34
Speaker 1: it seems like a very long time. It does. And
44:36
Speaker 1: even modern humans um like us have been around for
44:39
Speaker 1: about fifty thousand years, it seems like a very long
44:41
Speaker 1: time as well. But if you think about how much
44:45
Speaker 1: longer the human race, humanity could continue on to exist
44:49
Speaker 1: as a species, UM, it's that's nothing. It's virtually insignificant um.
44:55
Speaker 1: And J. L. Schellenberg puts it like this, like, let's
44:57
Speaker 1: say humanity has a billion year lifespan, and you translate
45:02
Speaker 1: that billion years into a twenty foot rope. That's easy
45:06
Speaker 1: to show up with just the eighth of an inch
45:09
Speaker 1: mark on that twenty ft rope. You would have to
45:13
Speaker 1: our species would have to live another three hundred thousand
45:16
Speaker 1: years from the point where we've already lived. Yes, we
45:19
Speaker 1: would have to live five hundred thousand years just to
45:22
Speaker 1: show up as an eighth of an inch that first
45:24
Speaker 1: eighth of an inch on that twenty ft long rope.
45:28
Speaker 1: That's how long humanity might have ahead of us. And
45:30
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of a conservative estimate. Some people say,
45:33
Speaker 1: once we reach technological maturity, we're we're fine, We're not
45:37
Speaker 1: going to go extinct because we'll be able to use
45:40
Speaker 1: all that technology like having a I track all those
45:43
Speaker 1: new Earth objects and say, well, this one is a
45:46
Speaker 1: little close for comfort, I'm gonna send some nanobouts out
45:48
Speaker 1: to disassembl it. We will remove ourselves from the risk
45:51
Speaker 1: of ever going extinct when we hit technological maturity. So
45:54
Speaker 1: a billion years is definitely doable for us. Yeah, and
45:58
Speaker 1: it's uh, why we care about it is because it's
46:01
Speaker 1: happening right now. I mean, there is already a I
46:04
Speaker 1: that is unaligned. Um, we are, We've already talked about
46:08
Speaker 1: the biotech in labs. Accidents have already happened, have been
46:12
Speaker 1: all the time, and there are experiments going on with
46:17
Speaker 1: physics that we we think we know what we're doing,
46:20
Speaker 1: but accidents happen, and an accident that you can't recover from,
46:24
Speaker 1: you know, there's no whoops is let me try that again,
46:28
Speaker 1: right exactly because we're all toasts. So this is why
46:31
Speaker 1: you have to care about it. And luckily, um, I
46:33
Speaker 1: wish there were more people that care about it. Well,
46:35
Speaker 1: it's becoming more of a thing and if you talk
46:37
Speaker 1: to Toby Ord, he's like, so, just like say, the
46:41
Speaker 1: environmental movement was, you know, the the moral push, and
46:46
Speaker 1: we're starting to see some some stuff some results from
46:48
Speaker 1: that now, but stay starting making the sixties and seventies,
46:51
Speaker 1: nobody had ever heard of that. Yeah, I mean it
46:53
Speaker 1: took decades. He's saying, like, we're about that's what we're
46:56
Speaker 1: doing now with existential Chris. People are going to start
46:59
Speaker 1: to realize like, oh man, this is for real, and
47:02
Speaker 1: we do something about it because we could live a
47:05
Speaker 1: billion years if we managed to survive the next hundred,
47:08
Speaker 1: which makes you and me chucking, like all of us
47:11
Speaker 1: alive right now in one of the most unique positions
47:15
Speaker 1: any humans ever been at. We have the entire future
47:18
Speaker 1: of the human race basically resting in our hands because
47:21
Speaker 1: we're the ones who happened to be alive when humanity
47:24
Speaker 1: entered its technological adolescence. Yeah, and it's a it's a
47:27
Speaker 1: tougher one then save the planet, because it's such a
47:30
Speaker 1: tangible thing when you talk about pollution, and it's very
47:34
Speaker 1: easy to put on a TV screen or in a classroom. Um,
47:39
Speaker 1: and it's not so easily dismissed because you can see
47:42
Speaker 1: it in front of your eyeballs and understand it. This
47:44
Speaker 1: is a lot tougher education wise, because, um people, here's
47:50
Speaker 1: something about nanobots and gray goo or ai and just think,
47:54
Speaker 1: come on, man, that's the stuff of movies. Yeah, And
47:57
Speaker 1: I mean that's it's sad that like we couldn't dig
48:00
Speaker 1: into it further, because when you really do start to
48:03
Speaker 1: break it all down and understand it, it's like, no,
48:06
Speaker 1: this totally is for real and it makes sense, like
48:09
Speaker 1: this is entirely possible and maybe even likely. Yeah, and
48:13
Speaker 1: not the hardest thing to understand. It's not like you
48:15
Speaker 1: have to understand nanotechnology to understand its threat, right exactly.
48:19
Speaker 1: That's well put. The other thing about all this is
48:22
Speaker 1: that not everybody is on board with this, even people,
48:25
Speaker 1: even people who hear about this kind of stuff are like, no,
48:27
Speaker 1: you know, this is pie in the sky. It's overblown
48:31
Speaker 1: or the opposite of the sky. It's a cake in
48:34
Speaker 1: the ground. Is that the opposite dark sky territory? It's
48:39
Speaker 1: a turkey drumstick in the earth. Okay, that's kind of
48:42
Speaker 1: the opposite of the of a pie. Okay. I think
48:47
Speaker 1: I may have just come up with a coloaquialism I
48:49
Speaker 1: think so. Um, So, some people aren't convinced. Some people say, no,
48:53
Speaker 1: AI is nowhere near being even close to human level intelligent,
48:58
Speaker 1: let alone super intelligent. It like, why spend money because
49:01
Speaker 1: it's expensive, right, Well, and other people are like, yeah,
49:04
Speaker 1: if you start diverting, you know, research into figuring out
49:07
Speaker 1: make AI friendly, I can tell you China and India
49:10
Speaker 1: aren't going to do that, and so they're going to
49:12
Speaker 1: leap frog ahead of us and we're going to be
49:14
Speaker 1: toast competitively. So there's a cost to an opportunity cost,
49:19
Speaker 1: there's an actual cost um So there's a lot of people.
49:22
Speaker 1: It's basically the same arguments for people who argue against
49:25
Speaker 1: mitigating climate change. Yeah, same same thing kind of. So
49:29
Speaker 1: the answer is, uh, terraforming, terraforming, Well, that's that's not
49:36
Speaker 1: the answer. The answer is one of those right, study
49:38
Speaker 1: terraforming is right. The answer is to study this stuff
49:43
Speaker 1: figure out what to do about it. But it wouldn't
49:45
Speaker 1: hurt to learn how to live on Mars, right or
49:47
Speaker 1: just off of Earth because in the exact same way,
49:50
Speaker 1: like um that, like a whole village is at risk
49:53
Speaker 1: when it's under a mud slide or a mountain and
49:55
Speaker 1: a mud slide comes down. If we all live on Earth.
49:59
Speaker 1: If something happens to life on Earth, that's it for humanity.
50:03
Speaker 1: But if they're like a thriving population of humans who
50:06
Speaker 1: don't live on Earth, who live off of Earth, if
50:08
Speaker 1: something happens on Earth, humanity continues on. So learning to
50:12
Speaker 1: live off of Earth is a good step in the
50:14
Speaker 1: right direction. That's plan A DOT one. Sure it's tied
50:23
Speaker 1: for first, like it's something we should be doing at
50:25
Speaker 1: the same time as studying and learning to mitigate existent tourists. Yeah,
50:28
Speaker 1: and I think it's got to be multi pronged, because
50:31
Speaker 1: the threats are multi pronged. Absolutely. And there's one other
50:35
Speaker 1: thing that I really think you've got to get across.
50:38
Speaker 1: Like we said that, if if say the US starts
50:41
Speaker 1: to invest all of its resources into figuring out how
50:45
Speaker 1: to make friendly AI, but India and China continue on
50:48
Speaker 1: like the path, it's not gonna work. And the same
50:52
Speaker 1: goes with if every country in the world said, no,
50:56
Speaker 1: we're going to figure out friendly AI, but just one
50:59
Speaker 1: dedicate it itself to continuing on this path, the ninety
51:03
Speaker 1: not the rest of the countries in the world. Progress
51:06
Speaker 1: would be totally negated by that one yeah, so we
51:08
Speaker 1: gotta get the It's got to be a global effort.
51:10
Speaker 1: It has to be a species wide effort, not just
51:13
Speaker 1: with AI, but with all these understanding all of them
51:15
Speaker 1: and mitigating them together. Yeah, that could be a problem. So, um,
51:19
Speaker 1: thank you for very much for doing this episode with me.
51:24
Speaker 1: I'll though you talking to Dave. No, well, Dave too.
51:26
Speaker 1: We appreciate you to Dave, but but big ups to
51:29
Speaker 1: you Charles, because Jerry was like, I'm not sitting in
51:31
Speaker 1: that room. It's like, I'm not listening to Clark blather
51:34
Speaker 1: on about existential risk for an hour. Um, so one
51:37
Speaker 1: more time. Toby Ord's The Precipice is available everywhere you
51:41
Speaker 1: buy books. You can get The End of the World
51:44
Speaker 1: with Josh Clark wherever you get podcasts. If this kind
51:47
Speaker 1: of thing floated your boat, check out the Future of
51:50
Speaker 1: Humanity Institute the Future of Life Institute UM and they
51:54
Speaker 1: have a podcast hosted by Aerial Kahn and UM. She
51:59
Speaker 1: had me on back in December of two eighteen as
52:02
Speaker 1: part of a group that was talking about existential hope.
52:05
Speaker 1: So you can go listen to that too. If you're
52:07
Speaker 1: like this is a downer, I want to think about
52:09
Speaker 1: the bright side, there's that whole Future of Life Institute podcast.
52:14
Speaker 1: So what about you? Are you like convinced of this
52:17
Speaker 1: whole thing like that this is an actual like thing
52:20
Speaker 1: we need to be worrying about and thinking of. Really, No,
52:23
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, sure there are people that
52:28
Speaker 1: should be thinking about this stuff, and that's great as
52:31
Speaker 1: far as like me, what can I do well? And
52:35
Speaker 1: then I ran into that like, there's not a great
52:38
Speaker 1: answer for that. It's more like, start telling other people
52:41
Speaker 1: is the best thing that the average person can do. Hey, man,
52:44
Speaker 1: we just did that in a big way. We did,
52:46
Speaker 1: didn't We Like? It's people. Now we can go to sleep. Okay,
52:50
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
52:54
Speaker 1: then since Chuck said he's got nothing else, that's time
52:57
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Uh yeah, this is the opposite of
53:03
Speaker 1: all the smart stuff we just talked about. I just realized, Hey, guys,
53:07
Speaker 1: I love you, love stuff you should know. On a
53:10
Speaker 1: recent airplane flight, I listened to and really enjoyed the
53:12
Speaker 1: Coyote episode wherein Chuck mentioned aften wolf bait as a
53:16
Speaker 1: euphemism for farts. Coincidentally, on that same flight, Uh, we're
53:22
Speaker 1: Bill Ny the Science Guy and Anthony Michael Hall, the actor.
53:28
Speaker 1: What is this star studded airplane flight? He said, so Naturally,
53:33
Speaker 1: when I arrived at my home, I felt compelled to
53:34
Speaker 1: watch rewatch the film Weird Science, in which Anthony Michael
53:40
Speaker 1: Hall stars in that movie, and I remember this now
53:43
Speaker 1: that he mentions it. In that movie, Anthony Michael Hall
53:46
Speaker 1: uses the term wolf bait as a euphemism for pooping
53:50
Speaker 1: dropping a wolf bait, which makes sense now that it
53:52
Speaker 1: would be actual poop and not a fart. Did you
53:55
Speaker 1: say his name before? Who wrote this? No? Your friend
53:58
Speaker 1: who used the word wolf bait? Eddie at sure? Okay?
54:01
Speaker 1: So is Eddie like a big Weird Science fan or
54:03
Speaker 1: Anthony Michael Hall. I think he just Kelly Lebroc fan. Yeah,
54:08
Speaker 1: that must be it. Uh. It has been a full
54:10
Speaker 1: circle day for me and one that I hope you
54:13
Speaker 1: will appreciate hearing about. And that is Jake Man. Can
54:16
Speaker 1: you imagine being on a flight with Bill Night and
54:19
Speaker 1: Anthony Michael Hall. Who do you talk to? Who do
54:21
Speaker 1: you hang with? I don't. I'd just be worried that
54:23
Speaker 1: somebody was gonna like take over control of the plane
54:26
Speaker 1: and fly it somewhere to hold us all hostage and
54:29
Speaker 1: make those two like perform or what if Bill Knight
54:33
Speaker 1: and Anthony Michael Holler Inca hoots maybe and they take
54:36
Speaker 1: the plane hostage. Yeah, it would be very suspicious if
54:39
Speaker 1: they didn't talk to one another, you know what I mean?
54:41
Speaker 1: I think so? Who is that? That was Jake? Thanks Jake,
54:44
Speaker 1: that was a great email and thank you for joining us.
54:48
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, like
54:49
Speaker 1: Jake did, you can go onto stuff you Should Know
54:52
Speaker 1: dot com and get lost in the amazing nous of it.
54:56
Speaker 1: And you can also just send us an email to
54:58
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you
55:05
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55:07
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55:12
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