The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2525 - Nick Bostrom

00:00:02.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:09.000 It's great to see you again.

00:00:14.000 Yeah, good to see you.

00:00:16.000 So, since the last time we talked, we spent a lot of time where you were trying to explain to me simulation theory and why the probability of simulation theory is more likely than it not being a simulation.

00:00:32.000 Yeah, it was what, five years ago or something?

00:00:35.000 I think it was six.

00:00:36.000 Six or six?

00:00:37.000 I mean, a lot of things happened in the world since then.

00:00:40.000 Yes, yes, a lot of things.

00:00:42.000 I mean, for example, back then, I think we did we even talk about AI?

00:00:47.000 It probably came up a bit, but it's not like it wasn't this thing looming over civilization, which is really kind of fascinating when you think about the fact that it's only been six years.

00:00:59.000 And in six years, like, what a massive jump in some new technology in our life.

00:01:06.000 Sort of like the internet, where it crept up on us.

00:01:09.000 We just accepted that it's a thing, but that this thing has gotten massively entangled in every aspect of society and every aspect of people's lives in a very short period of time.

00:01:23.000 Yeah, I mean, things are like so much is happening now that it's kind of a full time job just to monitor the situation.

00:01:30.000 Yeah.

00:01:31.000 And one of the things that you're talking about is the positive aspects of it, right?

00:01:38.000 Like that, this is probably going to be a net good for humanity.

00:01:43.000 Hopefully.

00:01:43.000 I mean, I think I take both cases seriously the sort of the risk side and the big unlock if we get things right.

00:01:54.000 I feel like we have the potential, like we're on a whitewater raft.

00:01:59.000 We have the potential to get to our destination, but we also have the potential to flip over and try to figure out how to get to shore and freeze in cold water and sort of rebuild.

00:02:10.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:11.000 That seems about right.

00:02:13.000 Yeah.

00:02:13.000 And it seems like it's kind of speeding up a bit as well, right?

00:02:18.000 If you're sort of in this field, there's like every few weeks there's a new model being released or something.

00:02:24.000 Yes.

00:02:25.000 I guess it's like if you imagine, I guess, commentating some fight, right?

00:02:29.000 That's been recorded and you're supposed to do the voiceover.

00:02:32.000 And the first round is like normal speed.

00:02:35.000 And then the second round is 2x.

00:02:36.000 And then the third round is 4x.

00:02:38.000 And it's just like a whir of legs and arms.

00:02:41.000 That's a great way to describe it.

00:02:44.000 Yeah.

00:02:44.000 It's.

00:02:45.000 It's just so strange how quickly it snuck up on us, and that there's two narratives that we hear.

00:02:52.000 The one narrative is we're in real trouble, and that this thing is going to take over every aspect of society, and it's essentially going to be a superior life force, a superior intellect that exists amongst us that we created, and we don't think that's wise.

00:03:07.000 And then there's the other side that is saying things like what Elon says, where he's saying we're going to have universal high income.

00:03:15.000 It's going to be so much prosperity that no one's ever going to have to toil again. 0.93

00:03:19.000 There'll be no more third world countries.

00:03:21.000 There'll be no more poverty.

00:03:23.000 We can eradicate poverty with the resources that we have on earth, and we can change what it means to have to work just to provide yourself with food and housing.

00:03:34.000 That's all going to be easy and free.

00:03:36.000 And then everything else is going to be you have to find a purpose in your life.

00:03:40.000 My problem is, and I love Elon, but the people who have that perspective are all making money off AI.

00:03:46.000 Off AI.

00:03:49.000 They are all invested heavily.

00:03:51.000 Mark Andreessen, all these people that have this rosy view of it, they're all invested heavily into it.

00:03:59.000 So, when someone like you, who's not necessarily in that camp, that is more of a true objective analyst of what's going on, when you have a positive aspect or a positive viewpoint of it, I get a little more excited.

00:04:14.000 Yeah, well, I mean, the truth is we don't know how it will pan out.

00:04:19.000 So, I mean, I think there are these scenarios where we unlock this enormous boost, both to economic productivity, but then across medicine, entertainment, environment, travel, all kinds of things.

00:04:35.000 And like a tsunami of wealth just kind of flows through and lifts all boats.

00:04:41.000 And then the idea of human work becomes an anachronism, and where you have machines that can do everything that we can do physically and mentally and do it much better and cheaper.

00:04:54.000 And so I think in those scenarios where this really works, the transformation is a lot deeper.

00:05:00.000 I mean, so that kind of layers to the onion.

00:05:03.000 So, like, the most superficial level is, well, they automate their jobs.

00:05:06.000 So, what are people going to do for workers?

00:05:09.000 What are they going to do for workers?

00:05:10.000 Well, that comes a little bit deeper.

00:05:11.000 First, like, the most superficial level is people just wonder, where will I get a job if the robot replaces me?

00:05:17.000 And then the superficial level of that conversation, I think, is, well, you need to retrain workers so they can work in other fields.

00:05:23.000 And maybe there needs to be, I don't know, employment insurance whilst they are being retrained or something like that.

00:05:29.000 But once you think through where this ultimately leads, you think it's not just a few jobs, I think, but it's really everything that humans can do to a good approximation.

00:05:40.000 With maybe the exception being where the consumer has a direct preference that a particular product or service be done by a human, like priest, prostitute, and politician. 0.99

00:05:54.000 The three P's. 1.00

00:05:56.000 Those might survive. 0.98

00:05:57.000 Well, politician, hopefully not.

00:05:59.000 Hopefully, AI can handle that all without any corruption.

00:06:02.000 Yeah, but somebody's got to take credit for it.

00:06:05.000 This is true and code it.

00:06:07.000 Yeah.

00:06:08.000 It's.

00:06:11.000 And so then you get to these more profound questions, I think, about meaning and purpose and what does a human life look like at technological maturity.

00:06:21.000 Right.

00:06:22.000 Also, what is experience?

00:06:24.000 Does experience have to be measurable?

00:06:28.000 Do you have to touch it?

00:06:29.000 Do you have to measure it and weigh it?

00:06:32.000 Is virtual experience still experience?

00:06:36.000 Like, if you have a very full and enjoyable and fulfilling virtual life, is that enough?

00:06:42.000 You know what I mean?

00:06:43.000 Like, do you have to do everything in the material world, or can you find happiness in a virtual world that doesn't currently exist, but we could clearly see the technology if it expands?

00:07:02.000 The possibility of experiencing a matrix type reality.

00:07:07.000 Yeah, I think I see where you're going.

00:07:09.000 Yeah.

00:07:10.000 But yeah, and I mean, I think like different strokes for different folks.

00:07:13.000 If you imagine a world where presumably these virtual worlds will be very rich and deep and fascinating, but some people might just like the idea of, you know, climbing the real Mount Everest rather than, you know, being in it.

00:07:26.000 Most certainly.

00:07:27.000 But however, there could come a time where people are locked out of regular reality.

00:07:35.000 Like this is worst case scenario with AI.

00:07:38.000 Is that you have your needs taken care of, but there is no purpose.

00:07:43.000 There's nothing to do.

00:07:45.000 There's nothing to do because AI is taking care of all aspects of society.

00:07:48.000 Other than recreation, there's nothing to do.

00:07:51.000 And then this one recreation comes along that's not reality, but it's way more fulfilling and exciting than any other aspect of reality.

00:07:59.000 And, you know, an example of that would just be in a very minor way your phone provides you with that sort of an escape, and it's not even that thrilling, and yet it's massively addicting.

00:08:12.000 Your phone, people are on their phone six hours a day.

00:08:15.000 If we come up with A virtual reality that's way more exciting than regular reality, everyone's going to hop on in.

00:08:24.000 Yeah.

00:08:24.000 I mean, I think to some extent, this will maybe be the case whether you go the virtual path or the physical path.

00:08:32.000 I mean, you could imagine a future where there are like resorts and people are sort of lying in beach chairs, sipping drinks all day long.

00:08:38.000 And like that's also a kind of checking out, right?

00:08:41.000 Yeah.

00:08:42.000 Well, that's not fulfilling.

00:08:45.000 You know, the thing about a virtual reality is.

00:08:48.000 You don't have to even live within our physics.

00:08:52.000 I mean, you can fly, you can do anything.

00:08:54.000 It's a larger space of possibilities.

00:08:55.000 But either way, it could be like a passive existence in physical reality where you're like launching at the beach.

00:09:01.000 Or it can be like a video game.

00:09:02.000 Or in video games, like you could have like a really intense, every straining, every fiber to try to succeed in this virtual environment.

00:09:08.000 Or like one where you're just kind of floating on some cloud in a drug like state.

00:09:13.000 But I don't think people are going to be interested in that because just the way the human mind works, like what kind of video games are people attracted to?

00:09:20.000 It's because a video game is essentially a proximity.

00:09:23.000 It's an approximation of that.

00:09:25.000 You're just watching it on a screen, but you're sort of forgetting the fact that you're watching it on a screen.

00:09:29.000 You're just concentrating on this 3D reality that you're running through with a machine gun or whatever you're doing, right?

00:09:35.000 That's what people are interested in.

00:09:37.000 They're not interested in these games where you just like float over the earth and like fly and just eat bananas.

00:09:44.000 No, they're interested in thrilling things.

00:09:47.000 And if that gets provided in a virtual way, the amount of people that are going to just say, this is better.

00:09:54.000 Than regular boring life where we're a slave to a computer.

00:09:59.000 Yeah, I mean, there are both kinds.

00:10:01.000 Okay, we're back.

00:10:03.000 Where were we?

00:10:04.000 Oh, yeah, I was just saying that there are also these computer games that provide a more passive experience.

00:10:10.000 Yeah.

00:10:11.000 You're not really doing much and it's more kind of zoning out.

00:10:14.000 But most people aren't interested in those.

00:10:16.000 Most people are interested in Call of Duty, they're interested in these wild first person shooters where you're running down hallways and everything's exciting and thrilling.

00:10:24.000 Or some sci fi game, or, you know.

00:10:27.000 Half life, something like that.

00:10:29.000 That's what people are interested in.

00:10:30.000 Well, I mean, I think there are like some personality differences in what path you would take there.

00:10:30.000 Yeah.

00:10:37.000 But either way, I think a lot of the choices that people would make currently depend on what they are sort of designed to respond to by feeling good about it.

00:10:47.000 So, like, if you enjoy one thing, you choose that.

00:10:50.000 If you enjoy another, that.

00:10:51.000 In this condition of technological maturity, if we imagine sort of a future civilization that has developed all possible technologies to their maximum.

00:11:01.000 Yeah.

00:11:03.000 Then, amongst the affordances, amongst the things they could do is like they wouldn't just have control over the external environment, things around them, but also their own biology and brains.

00:11:15.000 So, if you were one of these people, and like maybe right now the only way you get enjoyment is by, you know, getting like crazy drunk or doing sort of things you don't really approve of, maybe, but that's actually what sort of lights your fire.

00:11:31.000 Imagine redesigning yourself to take the same kind of pleasure, but in some kind of contemplating the beauty of the universe or like appreciating the goodness in the heart of others or like some more sort of noble aspiration, like solving abstract mathematics rather than, you know, playing first person shooters.

00:11:50.000 You would have a choice, like whether you would get your thrills from one kind of activity or the other.

00:11:57.000 Yeah, which brings us to the question like, what does it mean to be human?

00:12:00.000 Like, for people finding.

00:12:02.000 Beauty and joy in interesting and fascinating things, and how to be a better person, and all the different aspects of human life that we think about when we think about people and we think about noble aspects of humanity.

00:12:19.000 But doesn't that have to exist in conjunction with the worst aspects of society for us to appreciate it?

00:12:27.000 It seems like this is a part of the human condition we have to have crime so that we can appreciate peace.

00:12:35.000 War, so we could appreciate peace.

00:12:37.000 We have to have hate, so we could appreciate love.

00:12:40.000 We're never without one or the other.

00:12:42.000 They're always both together in constant conflict, and we're always nobly hoping that the good wins out over the bad.

00:12:50.000 This is part of the struggle of being a human being.

00:12:53.000 If we just completely eliminate that struggle, we're going to have to be a different thing because what we are is this very strange territorial primate who's Endlessly curious.

00:13:09.000 This territorial primate is moving in a certain direction, and that direction seems to be a better society, seems to be over time.

00:13:19.000 If you look at statistics from thousands of years ago to today, there's less violence, there's better medicine, there's better education.

00:13:26.000 It's moving in a better and better and better direction.

00:13:29.000 But it's in a struggle.

00:13:30.000 That's part of why it moves.

00:13:33.000 If all of a sudden there's no struggle and everyone is this wonderful, enlightened being, like what?

00:13:38.000 Are we?

00:13:38.000 Because we're going to be a different thing than what we are right now.

00:13:42.000 And if you love music and if you love art and if you love novels and all these different things that come out of the human condition, well, those things come out of struggle.

00:13:53.000 Those things come out of confusion and pain and heartbreak and love and joy and all that stuff all piled up together.

00:14:01.000 Without that, like, what are we?

00:14:03.000 And so if we are moving in this direction technologically and we're not moving, Is fast biologically, do we merge?

00:14:14.000 Because that seems to be what I think.

00:14:16.000 I think that if this thing goes the way it continues to go, the bottleneck is going to be human biology.

00:14:24.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:24.000 There is a kind of paradox embedded in our efforts to make progress.

00:14:31.000 So, like, there are all these kind of scientists and people working to develop better technologies, and throughout the economy, you know, in some company, maybe you try to figure out how to make some process a little bit more efficient so you can serve customers better, and all of this is.

00:14:44.000 Designed to solve problems, right?

00:14:46.000 Like, if you sort of extrapolate that to its logical endpoint, right, you would imagine we would have perfect technology that can do everything, solve all the problems, like presumably with AI and automation.

00:14:59.000 Right.

00:15:00.000 But then you end up in this condition where there is kind of nothing left for us to do, you might think.

00:15:06.000 And so, although it looks like we have these strong reasons to push forward in this direction, if you actually look at the endpoint, if we succeeded, To many people, it will look kind of unpalatable and like this kind of future where, you know, all the problems are solved.

00:15:21.000 And nevertheless, that does seem to be, you know, the direction that we are headed in, probably the direction that we should be headed in.

00:15:29.000 Yeah.

00:15:30.000 Wouldn't that be a better goal if there was zero murder, zero violence, zero crime, zero lying, zero corruption, and human beings all worked in coordination with each other, just like in a sense of unique sinking and harmony?

00:15:48.000 Right.

00:15:48.000 That would be way better.

00:15:50.000 I think so.

00:15:51.000 But it does, like, if you actually stare at that situation, it does have these slightly unpalatable qualities.

00:15:59.000 Because you might think it looks kind of bland then, right?

00:16:02.000 Not necessarily, though.

00:16:04.000 It's just, it looks bland if you think about what we're experiencing now like all the excitement and the weirdness of uncertainty and of not knowing, you know, and also the negative aspects of our life in conjunction with the positive aspects of our life. 0.99

00:16:19.000 So we contrast the two of them and you really appreciate good people after you're around a bunch of fucking assholes. 0.98

00:16:25.000 You know, if that doesn't, but it doesn't have to be that way. 1.00

00:16:28.000 This is just what we are dealing with.

00:16:30.000 This is my position on work, too.

00:16:32.000 Because everybody in their head is like, what happens when AI takes all the jobs? 0.99

00:16:39.000 And I'm like, do you have to have a fucking job? 0.99

00:16:41.000 Isn't that a human invention? 0.99

00:16:44.000 Like, why do you have to have a job?

00:16:46.000 It seems crazy that our main focus is on housing and food.

00:16:51.000 And like, most people are basically just working for that.

00:16:56.000 Most people that are struggling, check to check, basically, housing and food is their daily labor.

00:17:02.000 If that's removed, wouldn't enough people figure out what to do with their time?

00:17:09.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:17:11.000 There will be some transition and discomfort in changing.

00:17:15.000 But ultimately, I think it's like so slavery is really bad, right?

00:17:20.000 But wage labor is a sort of slavery light in a sense.

00:17:24.000 You have to sell a third of your working day just to get money to pay for necessities.

00:17:31.000 And the people that are trying to make the most money make the conditions for their employees as shitty as possible because it costs.

00:17:37.000 The least amount.

00:17:39.000 They don't think about it like, listen, maybe we make less money, but we have an awesome experience for everybody that works there.

00:17:46.000 Nobody thinks like that.

00:17:47.000 They all think like we have to make the most money because we have shareholders and we have a responsibility, and these people need to make more money every quarter.

00:17:53.000 Yeah, although sometimes you do this, you compete for talent.

00:17:56.000 That's true, too.

00:17:58.000 But only the top talent. 0.99

00:17:59.000 That's why the CEOs get all the bread and all the people on the assembly line get fucked. 0.92

00:18:03.000 That's why employees get treated well, right? 0.95

00:18:04.000 What would you say?

00:18:06.000 Jamie is a different kind of employee.

00:18:07.000 Jamie is literally the co- I mean, he's the co person on the show.

00:18:13.000 That's different.

00:18:13.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:14.000 But some dude who's out there stocking boxes for Amazon, that's different than being the CEO.

00:18:21.000 Yeah.

00:18:22.000 I think ultimately that would be a huge liberation and kind of restore dignity.

00:18:27.000 You should be in control of your own time.

00:18:29.000 It's kind of almost the most, aside from your own body, your own time, your own attention.

00:18:34.000 We have to teach people discipline.

00:18:36.000 That's the thing if you give people the opportunity to just do nothing, we.

00:18:41.000 We're primates.

00:18:41.000 We do.

00:18:43.000 We'll find a way to.

00:18:45.000 We're genetically sort of designed to conserve resources. 0.99

00:18:48.000 You don't want to overuse resources for no reason, do a bunch of shit because you won't survive. 0.99

00:18:53.000 You don't have enough food. 0.99

00:18:54.000 So we're sort of designed to know how to be lazy.

00:18:57.000 And so we're going to have to find things that give us purpose or we'll get depressed.

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00:19:58.000 Yeah.

00:19:59.000 I mean, so it used to be the traditional idea, like a British aristocracy, like that you wouldn't have to work for a living.

00:20:05.000 It was kind of an unfortunate necessity for many people that they had to work for their daily bread, right?

00:20:11.000 But the ideal way of being human was that you just had money and then you spent your time doing other things.

00:20:17.000 Like, you know, maybe you were involved in politics or maybe you had like an art collection or you did your gardening or entertained friends.

00:20:24.000 That's the best aspect of it. 0.97

00:20:26.000 But when you think about British aristocracy, don't you think about fuck ups? 0.99

00:20:30.000 I do. 0.99

00:20:31.000 I think about guys that are just drunk.

00:20:33.000 They drive their Ferrari into a lake and they accidentally drown their friend and then they pay off the cops and they get away with it.

00:20:40.000 That's what I think of.

00:20:41.000 Yeah, there's that.

00:20:42.000 But there were also these kind of, I don't know, amateur scientists or eccentrics who had their weird thing and it kind of added to.

00:20:48.000 So I guess it brings out like the more freedoms of what it has, the more they can reveal their true nature.

00:20:54.000 Well, it also depends on how they're raised.

00:20:56.000 Right.

00:20:57.000 Who are their parents?

00:20:59.000 What values did they.

00:21:01.000 Instill in them when they were young?

00:21:02.000 Did they explain the value of hard work that it's actually good for you?

00:21:06.000 And that if you just find something you really want to do and you concentrate on it and really work hard at it, it's actually very fulfilling.

00:21:13.000 Yeah, so you could imagine, for example, the education system in this world where we no longer need to work.

00:21:18.000 Like, presumably it would need to be redesigned from scratch, basically, because right now it's a kind of machine, right?

00:21:26.000 So you take children coming in kind of on a conveyor belt and then some processing is done.

00:21:32.000 Sit at your desk.

00:21:32.000 Here is this assignment.

00:21:34.000 Here's your grid.

00:21:34.000 And then they come out with a quality label attached.

00:21:37.000 Yeah.

00:21:37.000 Right.

00:21:38.000 And then they are meant to be productive workers that you could put in an office and they will.

00:21:43.000 So, this kind of is an unfortunate fact about the current condition that I mean, the world needs a lot of these office workers that can do all these tasks in the economy.

00:21:52.000 So, like, it's we have to have until it doesn't.

00:21:55.000 Until it doesn't.

00:21:55.000 And at that point, it would be absurd to keep doing this.

00:21:58.000 Then you could imagine changing education so that it would be much more about, like, how can you.

00:21:58.000 Right.

00:22:06.000 Learn to live well a life of leisure.

00:22:10.000 Like, imagine cultivating the art of conversation, appreciation for art and music, hobbies, physical wellness, like nature, the ability to set your own goals and take your own initiatives to develop true friendships with people.

00:22:30.000 These are things that are not taught in school, but you could imagine that being the curriculum, like spirituality, like all kinds of things that would then equip people to sort of.

00:22:40.000 Use their freedom, their wealth, their free time for some kind of actually meaningful and beautiful activities.

00:22:50.000 For sure.

00:22:51.000 Preemptively, we should be kind of teaching people like that now.

00:22:54.000 If young people are coming up now, the world that they're.

00:22:58.000 If you're in first grade right now, 12 years from now, when you're graduating from high school, the world is a totally different place.

00:23:06.000 This idea that being a productive worker who could sit still for eight hours a day is the best way we should teach kids.

00:23:13.000 That seems crazy if we're really like seeing the world that you're describing and that most people seem to think is oncoming.

00:23:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:22.000 I guess that the timeline is a little bit uncertain.

00:23:25.000 So, you don't want to end up in a situation, right?

00:23:27.000 Where you sort of now you find yourself, you're 20 years old, it's time to go out in the world.

00:23:31.000 You have no skills.

00:23:33.000 The AI revolution hasn't yet quite happened.

00:23:35.000 It's kind of.

00:23:35.000 Well, isn't that a liberal arts degree anyway?

00:23:37.000 Yeah.

00:23:38.000 And how is that going to happen? 0.93

00:23:39.000 There's a lot of silly degrees that people get right now that are useless anyway. 0.74

00:23:43.000 And they spend a tremendous amount of time working on getting it. 0.94

00:23:48.000 And then when they get it out, there's no jobs for that degree.

00:23:51.000 Yeah.

00:23:52.000 So, they were a little bit too early maybe in hopping on this.

00:23:54.000 Maybe.

00:23:56.000 Or, you know, there's also traps.

00:23:59.000 There's things that you can get really excited about and do.

00:24:02.000 Like if you want to play professional bowling, you want to bowl professionally.

00:24:05.000 Well, the amount of money you're going to make is very limited because the best bowler in the world.

00:24:10.000 Like, what does the best professional bowler in the world make?

00:24:14.000 Let's guess.

00:24:16.000 I say $100,000.

00:24:18.000 Yes, the professional bowler.

00:24:20.000 We used to know a guy.

00:24:22.000 Ari's friends with a guy, Tommy.

00:24:24.000 God, I can't remember his last name.

00:24:26.000 Do you remember his last name, Jamie?

00:24:28.000 He was a professional bowler, but he used to come to the comedy store and hang out.

00:24:30.000 Really nice guy and love comedy.

00:24:33.000 I don't know.

00:24:33.000 Maybe the very best one makes a pretty decent living.

00:24:36.000 And then the third best, it's just.

00:24:38.000 I bet barely.

00:24:39.000 I bet the best guy probably makes maybe 100 grand or 200 grand at the most. 0.99

00:24:44.000 And that means the 30th guy in the world is fucked. 0.98

00:24:48.000 Yeah, you have to have another job to pursue that. 0.99

00:24:51.000 Yeah, well, but then in this.

00:24:53.000 What does he make?

00:24:54.000 Oh, 200K.

00:24:55.000 Oh, 400K in big season, 450, including prize money and sponsorships.

00:25:01.000 But then, like, what does.

00:25:02.000 EJ Tuckett made 430. 0.99

00:25:04.000 Fuck yeah, EJ. 0.62

00:25:05.000 EJ Tackett made $437,540 for the 2025 season, with several others between $190K and $270K in prize money alone. 0.98

00:25:17.000 Top tier.

00:25:18.000 So the top tier guys make a good living.

00:25:21.000 But how many guys are there?

00:25:23.000 You know what I'm saying?

00:25:24.000 It's probably like a very thin sort of peak.

00:25:26.000 So if you choose to go into bowling, it's not like choosing to go into, you know, there's a lot of other jobs.

00:25:32.000 Like even if you're going to be a basketball player, they're making a lot of money.

00:25:36.000 You know, if you're a really good basketball player and you pursue that, like you could get very, very rich.

00:25:41.000 But how many of them get rich?

00:25:42.000 Most don't.

00:25:43.000 But then, like, so maybe the money factor would kind of drop out of the picture.

00:25:43.000 Yeah.

00:25:47.000 Yes.

00:25:48.000 And it would just be what you're interested in.

00:25:50.000 And then maybe even it would, I mean, the opportunities are endless.

00:25:54.000 And what other people are interested in to some extent.

00:25:56.000 Because, like, I think part of what people are competing for is also prestige and status.

00:26:00.000 Yes.

00:26:01.000 That would be a thing, right?

00:26:02.000 Like, status would be more important.

00:26:04.000 It's like, who's the best at this thing?

00:26:06.000 Like a bunch of friends who play golf, like Jamie plays golf all the time.

00:26:10.000 Golfers are all like comparing each other's scores and they're all, they're playing, they're competing in this game.

00:26:16.000 And that, they think about that more than they think about work. 0.99

00:26:19.000 Like people who love golf, they fucking hate work. 0.98

00:26:21.000 Like I used to say that about comedy back when I first started. 0.98

00:26:25.000 One of the things that I noticed is the guys who really got into golf, their careers kind of stalled because they were more excited about playing golf than they were about writing jokes and going on the road.

00:26:36.000 Okay.

00:26:37.000 So if the average person doesn't need food and housing anymore from labor, if that's gone and now you just get it, and so now you could just go do things, we just have to teach people to be excited about stuff.

00:26:50.000 We have to teach people the value of curiosity and finding things that are interesting to you, and then the value of just education for the sake of learning things because it's interesting.

00:27:02.000 Just pure satisfaction of curiosity, which is a beautiful thing.

00:27:06.000 Like that would be great for everybody.

00:27:08.000 If we instead of Learning things because your teacher tells you you have to learn it.

00:27:13.000 Well, there's always going to be people that just naturally gravitate towards mathematics and they're really fascinated by mathematics.

00:27:19.000 And there's always going to be people that are just naturally gravitating towards history.

00:27:23.000 They're like, how did we get here?

00:27:24.000 What is this?

00:27:24.000 How did it start?

00:27:25.000 Who wrote that?

00:27:26.000 Who's the first guy to figure that out?

00:27:28.000 And that's, you're going to naturally go towards that and just be educated for the sake of satisfying your curiosity.

00:27:36.000 And maybe we'll have a more balanced society because people will actually be able to just pursue their interests.

00:27:42.000 But we have to teach them to do it.

00:27:44.000 That's what I think is going to be really important about young people in the future.

00:27:48.000 Teach them to actually pursue their curiosity rather than just squash any desires they have for novelty and for interesting things.

00:27:58.000 And just be able to work all day doing something you hate because that's what it means to be an adult.

00:28:04.000 Yeah, I think cultivating that would be the way forward in this case.

00:28:10.000 And it seems very possible.

00:28:11.000 It's doable.

00:28:12.000 We know curious people.

00:28:14.000 Yeah.

00:28:15.000 At least to some extent.

00:28:16.000 I think there's probably also some differences in how different folks are wired.

00:28:20.000 Some people get bored very easily, others find everything fascinating.

00:28:23.000 Some people are just naturally depressed or have low mood, others are sort of evolving.

00:28:28.000 They were coached at a very early age the value of exercise.

00:28:35.000 And if they started running, if they started doing yoga, and they started feeling much better, and they weren't naturally depressed anymore.

00:28:41.000 And then you change their diet, and you start adding in vitamins and nutrients, and stop giving them processed foods, and all of a sudden they feel better.

00:28:48.000 Because the concept, even of depression, like what does that mean?

00:28:53.000 Well, it varies so wildly.

00:28:55.000 And when you're talking about people that aren't taking care of their bodies, and that's not thought of as a primary factor.

00:29:01.000 In why depression exists in the first place.

00:29:04.000 Well, this is a very unscientific approach, then, because we know that it has a profound impact on human beings.

00:29:10.000 So we're pretending that there's like this one size fit all.

00:29:13.000 No, I think that should be also a part of teaching people how to be a human being.

00:29:18.000 Chase your curiosities, but also, this is why you're not feeling well.

00:29:22.000 And that if you just develop this ability to get some momentum going and just show up at that yoga class every day, you'll feel way better and you don't have to take a pill.

00:29:32.000 Yeah, and I think, yeah.

00:29:34.000 Many could be a lot improved if they were taught to sort of take care of their basic physiology.

00:29:40.000 Everyone can be improved.

00:29:42.000 100% of them can be improved.

00:29:44.000 It's a part of being a human being.

00:29:46.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:29:46.000 I mean, I don't know.

00:29:47.000 I think there is also some people who might just have some imbalance of some neurotransmitter because of some genetic.

00:29:53.000 100%.

00:29:54.000 Or maybe they don't even have the energy to engage in these activities that would make them feel better.

00:29:59.000 But then I think there would be much better medicines for helping the gut overall.

00:30:04.000 That's where Adderall comes in.

00:30:05.000 Let's go.

00:30:05.000 Give them some Adderall.

00:30:07.000 Get them fired up.

00:30:09.000 Get them to start running.

00:30:11.000 But what we're saying is all doable.

00:30:11.000 I'm kidding.

00:30:15.000 We're not asking people to breathe underwater, right?

00:30:17.000 We're saying that there are people on earth that live like that.

00:30:23.000 And this idea that living just for a paycheck so that you can cover your food and your housing, which we've always thought of as being just an undeniable part of being a person, an adult.

00:30:36.000 This is what you have to do.

00:30:38.000 You have to pay for your food, pay for your housing.

00:30:39.000 But if we do get to a point where the structure of society is now run by hyper intelligent artificial intelligence, you wouldn't need most jobs that people have to do that suck.

00:30:53.000 In order to get our society to this point, if you wanted an iPhone, you needed some people that were in a factory somewhere putting it all together.

00:31:03.000 You needed someone who's designing it, you needed someone who's sitting there in the office trying to figure out how to market it, you needed all those jobs.

00:31:11.000 But when we don't need all those jobs anymore, then things are going to be very interesting.

00:31:14.000 And that's what I'm saying we need to become a different thing.

00:31:18.000 It's kind of true and kind of not.

00:31:21.000 Kind of not.

00:31:22.000 You can be a human being and live in that world, but we're going to have to re educate people how to be a human being.

00:31:32.000 Our education system, specifically in this country, is just designed to make factory workers.

00:31:37.000 Specifically, there's a real history of it.

00:31:41.000 We know why they made it this way.

00:31:43.000 They made it this way and they got people in really early so they could get people set up for jobs.

00:31:48.000 They just want people to work.

00:31:51.000 Currently ill suited for really thriving in an environment of abundance and for enjoying life.

00:31:59.000 Because, I mean, both at deep biological time scales and during the lifespan of a single individual, there are all these pressures, necessities that kind of force us to become a certain type.

00:32:11.000 So, I mean, we talked about the education system, training people to be the kinds who can sit at the desk all day long and perform tasks.

00:32:18.000 Biologically, we've.

00:32:21.000 Evolved drives to be lazy, to conserve energy, to eat as much as we can.

00:32:26.000 And now, in the modern environment where there are fridges everywhere, it causes problems metabolically.

00:32:34.000 And in terms of enjoying life for many people, there is this hedonic treadmill, right?

00:32:39.000 So you achieve something, some improvement, there's a spike of happiness, and then you sort of go back to baseline very quickly.

00:32:47.000 You start to take for granted all the blessings of life, which makes it very difficult to actually achieve a state of.

00:32:55.000 Permanent happiness and felicity.

00:32:59.000 And it's kind of been necessary because there needed to be this motivation to keep striving for the next thing.

00:33:07.000 Now, once you've actually achieved all the things, though, then maybe that becomes kind of dysfunctional, right?

00:33:13.000 Like, why keep wanting to strive for the next thing if all the things have already been achieved, at least in a certain domain?

00:33:20.000 And so I think as we move deeper into this hypothesized future, like, Where we get all these magical technologies, then at some point, probably some transformation of human nature would have to go along with that.

00:33:36.000 First, maybe cultural changes to sort of equip people for a life of leisure.

00:33:40.000 Yeah.

00:33:41.000 And then ultimately, maybe more profound changes to our very biology.

00:33:45.000 And so that, imagine if you solve aging and you can now live for thousands of years, right?

00:33:51.000 Like maybe the way our memory works is not really set up for them.

00:33:53.000 Maybe we would just go stale after 200 years with our current brains.

00:33:57.000 Like we just get stuck in a rot.

00:34:00.000 We don't know because we haven't lived for 200 years, but that could easily turn out to be the case with a human.

00:34:04.000 So, then maybe at that point, you would need to sort of do something to sort of add more cognitive resources, more flexibility, some sort of psychedelic reset or something to sort of keep the flexibility going for longer periods of time.

00:34:20.000 I'm glad you said a psychedelic reset because it would be very funny if the main tools that we have for navigating this are all illegal.

00:34:28.000 Because I think they might be.

00:34:30.000 And specifically with psilocybin and DMT and probably Ibogaine as well.

00:34:36.000 Like, if we wanted chemical tools to navigate a new reality, those are probably the best ones that we have available, and they're all illegal.

00:34:45.000 And I think you're right.

00:34:47.000 I think if we're going to be able to navigate this correctly, we have to kind of change the way we interact with each other, what it means to be a person.

00:34:56.000 But I wonder how much of the conflict that we have is a direct result of this inherent struggle that so many people have.

00:35:04.000 I mean, there's a direct correlation between extreme poverty and extreme crime, you know, specifically in this country.

00:35:10.000 If you look at the areas of extreme poverty in this country, they're also the areas with extreme crime.

00:35:17.000 I wonder how much of that would be completely alleviated with a complete lack of poverty.

00:35:22.000 We've always assumed that if you're going to have a functioning society, you're going to have slums.

00:35:32.000 Why?

00:35:33.000 Why?

00:35:35.000 They don't serve any function.

00:35:36.000 It's not a good thing.

00:35:37.000 Well, it's because some people are always going to be making bad decisions and some people are always going to be going down the wrong road and crime and this and that.

00:35:46.000 Right.

00:35:46.000 They're still just humans, and some humans don't do that.

00:35:49.000 So, wouldn't it be better to figure out a way to not have humans ever do that anymore?

00:35:54.000 And that seems like a way to do that.

00:35:56.000 It's again, not asking people to breathe underwater.

00:35:58.000 We're just trying to figure out why some people never engage in crime?

00:36:03.000 Why do some people live these really fulfilling and interesting lives?

00:36:07.000 Probably because they were exposed to it when they were really young.

00:36:10.000 Probably because they weren't exposed to very bad environments and very bad crime and very bad poverty.

00:36:16.000 And how much of that would change if there was no more poverty?

00:36:20.000 It sounds like such a little fairy tale, childlike, oh, one day we'll have no poverty, but that's doable.

00:36:28.000 If everyone is alive, right, okay, that's alive right now is not starving to death, that means we figured out a way to at least, the very least, get you resources so you could feed yourself, right?

00:36:40.000 No matter how dysfunctional things are, all that has to do is you get ramped up a few steps.

00:36:45.000 I am.

00:36:46.000 And now you have no one ever worried about being fed, no one ever worrying about not having a place to sleep.

00:36:52.000 And then you have to find purpose.

00:36:54.000 But it seems like there's a lot of people that find purpose without having a financial price tag attached to it, just by what we're talking about with golf.

00:37:03.000 Or you could be really into writing books.

00:37:07.000 You could write books all day long, and people are always going to want human created fiction.

00:37:12.000 People are always going to be interested in the way other people think about things.

00:37:15.000 You'll find there's plenty of things to do, there's plenty of games to play, and plenty of skills to learn.

00:37:22.000 The idea that the only reason why we work is to eat and to not get rained on seems nuts.

00:37:30.000 Yeah, it is, I guess, to some extent an open question to what extent people will always want to read human fiction or to prefer the human generated outputs.

00:37:43.000 It might be just because current AI generated writing is kind of lacking in various ways.

00:37:50.000 It's often slop and boring.

00:37:52.000 But if it became really good, then maybe it would just be much more fun to.

00:38:00.000 Like, if a movie made by an AI might just be so much better and richer, and the lighting is perfect, and the dialogue is sharp, and it's more funny and deep.

00:38:08.000 Certainly, people have touches it.

00:38:09.000 Then you go and watch this human produced thing, and it's going like most people don't go and watch sort of film school students' productions.

00:38:18.000 Right, but then there's that movie obsession.

00:38:20.000 Wasn't that movie made very inexpensively?

00:38:24.000 And it's a huge hit, right?

00:38:26.000 And that's part of the thrill of it, is that this guy who was like a YouTuber, right, who created this film.

00:38:32.000 And now this movie's a giant hit, and everybody's like super excited about it.

00:38:36.000 Now, if that same movie was made by AI, I wonder if it would have that impact because it doesn't have the human connection.

00:38:43.000 So, that's possible that we keep getting interested in these things because we sort of are really entangled with the human world much more than we are with the world of AIs.

00:38:56.000 And I mean, for the same reason, you might be more interested in if like your brother or friend did something. 0.99

00:39:02.000 You might think, oh, this is interesting.

00:39:03.000 I want to check that out.

00:39:04.000 Of course.

00:39:04.000 Or is it with some random dude who made something slightly better?

00:39:07.000 It's like, doesn't mean.

00:39:09.000 When you go to see your nephew play baseball, you wouldn't really go see little kids baseball.

00:39:09.000 Right.

00:39:14.000 Just randomly, right?

00:39:15.000 When your nephew gets on first base, like, way to go, Bobby!

00:39:19.000 So I think these kind of social entanglements that we have will be a big part of what gives structure to lives in this condition where the external constraints are removed.

00:39:33.000 I think that there is a great value for the human mind, for whatever reason, in getting better at things and learning things.

00:39:41.000 And I think that if we could instill that in people at a young age, I think.

00:39:46.000 It would be fairly easy to get people to pursue that path.

00:39:50.000 But we have to completely revamp our education system, which should have been done a long time ago anyway.

00:39:56.000 The idea of having unenthusiastic, underpaid people being any percentage of what children encounter for most of the day when they're in their most formative period is insane.

00:40:08.000 It should be a rich, exciting, enthusiastic journey in how to be a better person and how it's exciting to learn things.

00:40:17.000 And I was excited to get better at things and about how anybody can get better at things.

00:40:21.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:40:22.000 I mean, I hated every day of school.

00:40:24.000 Yeah.

00:40:24.000 I hated it.

00:40:25.000 I didn't even know that I was interested in learning anything until I got out of school.

00:40:25.000 Hated it.

00:40:30.000 I mean, I only discovered, like, I also hated books and everything like that for my first 15 years of life because I associated that with school.

00:40:30.000 The same for me.

00:40:38.000 That was the kind of school thing.

00:40:39.000 So it's only then randomly one day I happened to walk into the local library for no reason and pulled out a book here and there and then.

00:40:49.000 I discovered that there was this whole world of science and idea and literature and all of that, like very, very different from what we were doing in school.

00:40:55.000 And then that kind of opened the gates for me to this.

00:40:58.000 Imagine what a head start you would have had if you had like a different kind of education with super enthusiastic people who really love teaching children and are really good at it and that we reward them and that it becomes a very prestigious position to be in rather than what it is now. 0.98

00:41:16.000 If you talk to some guy and he goes, Oh, I'm a high school teacher, you're like, Oh, poor bastard. 0.90

00:41:19.000 How does he feed himself? 0.99

00:41:21.000 That's immediately what I think.

00:41:23.000 Like, good for you that you're doing that, but also I guarantee you could probably be making a lot more money and be happier doing another job.

00:41:31.000 And so that's a terrible way to start life off.

00:41:34.000 And if we just revamp that, then you have a bunch of people that are interacting with life in a very different way.

00:41:40.000 And instead of being thought, I have to get a job someday, I have to get a job after school anyway to help my mom pay the bills because we're struggling.

00:41:49.000 So I got to contribute to the household even though I'm 16 and I can't hang out with friends.

00:41:53.000 If all that stuff's out the window.

00:41:55.000 And now it's like, no, what we need to find out is what is exciting for you.

00:42:00.000 Like, what excites your mind, your specific personality?

00:42:04.000 What is it about life that's interesting?

00:42:06.000 And let's expose you to a bunch of different things that are exciting and interesting that other people find value in.

00:42:13.000 And let's find out which way you gravitate.

00:42:15.000 Because maybe you gravitate towards chess, or maybe you gravitate towards something completely different.

00:42:20.000 Maybe you're just really in a painting.

00:42:21.000 Maybe painting just lights you up.

00:42:23.000 And you, like, look at a canvas and you just start. 0.97

00:42:25.000 Fucking around with it, and that's your thing. 0.97

00:42:27.000 There's a lot of people in this world that find that. 0.99

00:42:30.000 It's just they have to find it themselves, unfortunately.

00:42:33.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:42:35.000 I think that's kind of inspiring, but I think the train doesn't stop there.

00:42:41.000 So if we think even more further into this kind of condition of technological maturity, I think in addition to sort of freeing up people, you know, like making it easy to produce the food and the houses and like cars that go.

00:42:56.000 Faster and don't pollute and all of this stuff.

00:42:59.000 Like, if you think through what maybe a technologically mature civilization could do, like, so a lot of these, like, learning, for example, is something that gives people purpose, but maybe you would have the ability to sort of download knowledge at the click of a button.

00:43:15.000 So rather than, like, if you want to learn advanced mathematics, now you have to study for years, right?

00:43:20.000 Do like books with exercises and apply yourself, and then eventually you sort of unlock.

00:43:26.000 Yeah.

00:43:27.000 But like, maybe at technological maturity, there would be like, okay, understand mathematics.

00:43:32.000 Okay, I'm going to press that button.

00:43:33.000 Now, like the matrix.

00:43:33.000 Boom.

00:43:35.000 I know Kung Fu, remember?

00:43:36.000 Yeah, so if you had, like, you know, maybe some kind of nanobots that could infiltrate your brain and then change the synapses in just such a way that you're not the same as you were before, except you have these concepts from abstract mathematics.

00:43:50.000 Yes.

00:43:51.000 You know, after 20 minutes or something like that, some superintelligence works out how to change your synapses to this new condition.

00:43:59.000 And if you were inclined to do various things because they give you joy and pleasure, like, you could also think, well, I could do those things and get the joy and pleasure, or I could just push this button that activates the same joy and pleasure.

00:44:13.000 So there would be these shortcuts to everything.

00:44:16.000 And it looks like you would have a post instrumental condition where there would, at least at first sight, seem to be no reason to do anything for the sake of achieving something else because there would always be this shorter path to that other thing, pressing the button.

00:44:33.000 And so that's a kind of deeper form of redundancy.

00:44:35.000 It seems that all forms of human instrumental effort.

00:44:39.000 Would become unmotivated.

00:44:41.000 You could still go to the gym every day and sweat for an hour, or you could just take the pill that induces exactly the same physiological effects and the mental effects, like the calm or whatever you feel after.

00:44:58.000 Or maybe even better, genetically engineer something.

00:45:00.000 Or more genetically.

00:45:01.000 So you don't have to take a pill.

00:45:02.000 Yeah.

00:45:05.000 And so then I think you're getting more into these fundamental questions of value, philosophical questions, but what ultimately is it that.

00:45:13.000 Makes a life good.

00:45:14.000 And what makes a life good for a primate, because that's what we are, or a primitive version of primates?

00:45:21.000 I think we're going to become something different.

00:45:23.000 If we do it through technologically induced evolution or biologically induced evolution, we're still moving in a general direction. 0.95

00:45:31.000 Just biologically, if you look at ancient hominids and look at us, we're clearly very different. 0.97

00:45:36.000 So we're moving in a general direction anyway. 1.00

00:45:39.000 When you look at the grays, like these prototypical aliens that everybody sees, the big heads and the skinny bodies, what do they look like? 1.00

00:45:46.000 Well, they look like if we keep going, that's what we're going to look like. 1.00

00:45:50.000 We're going to be these genderless, sexless, muscleless little skinny things with giant heads that communicate telepathically, which is probably where we're moving.

00:45:58.000 And if we're moving that way, maybe we think of them as being an alien from another.

00:46:03.000 Maybe that's just the general direction that primates go once they figure out technology.

00:46:09.000 They eventually realize well, first of all, the idea of having to have a male and a female is kind of crazy, right?

00:46:17.000 Why?

00:46:18.000 Well, because we have to reproduce.

00:46:19.000 Well, what if we don't reproduce like that anymore?

00:46:22.000 What if all reproduction is done through engineering and there's no more sex, so there's no more lust, so there's no more jealousy, so there's no more ego, there's no more anything.

00:46:33.000 And then there's a hive mind because technology has advanced to the point where the reason why they have these big giant heads, they're essentially locked into everybody all around them all the time.

00:46:41.000 Yeah, well, is that what we would want though?

00:46:45.000 Not us, but I don't think we'll be us anymore. 0.99

00:46:48.000 I think this idea like if you went to chimps.

00:46:50.000 And you said, hey, dude, one day you're going to be on a plane eating peanuts, flying over the ocean. 1.00

00:46:55.000 They'd be like, fuck that. 1.00

00:46:56.000 I don't want to do that. 1.00

00:46:57.000 That.

00:46:58.000 I'll just stay here where the fruit is. 1.00

00:46:59.000 You guys are nuts. 0.99

00:47:00.000 Like, why do you want to do that? 1.00

00:47:02.000 And you'll be addicted to Kratom and you'll be watching YouTube all day long.

00:47:07.000 Like, no, I don't want to do that.

00:47:09.000 That doesn't sound fun.

00:47:11.000 We do have a lot of bananas, though.

00:47:13.000 Maybe. 1.00

00:47:14.000 Oh, you have to get killed by the other chimpanzees that want the bananas. 1.00

00:47:17.000 You know, they have chimp wars. 1.00

00:47:18.000 They come in and kill each other. 1.00

00:47:20.000 So I think we're going to be something different.

00:47:23.000 And I think that's inevitable anyway.

00:47:25.000 If you believe in evolution, it's inevitable anyway that we become something different.

00:47:29.000 We're not a finished product.

00:47:30.000 Yeah, no, I think that is true.

00:47:32.000 We are not the finished product.

00:47:34.000 Now, the question is the thing that we become or that becomes, is that a result of us choosing how we want to be, or is it just these kind of impersonal forces like evolution, selecting certain types that might end up leading to outcomes that we actually don't want?

00:47:56.000 And so, I guess the hope is that we would be able to develop along a path that preserves and develops.

00:48:04.000 The things that we actually value about being human, maybe amplifies them, then maybe adds other things.

00:48:11.000 So there are many different possible things you could develop in the future, but that we sort of select those that actually make us better rather than just randomly different, that we can sort of grow into our ideals.

00:48:24.000 But it's so funny how much value we put in human condition, how much value we put in meaning, because it is valuable to us.

00:48:34.000 When you think about what that means in terms of the amount of energy it produces, the amount of impact that it has versus the structure of the universe itself versus black holes and stellar nurseries and things that are just infinitely more spectacular than the human condition.

00:48:52.000 But to us, it's like, oh, what is meaning?

00:48:55.000 What is meaning?

00:48:56.000 What is meaning to me?

00:48:57.000 Like, well, what is meaning to you is you're a finite biological organism that has to find meaning because you're sort of. 0.88

00:49:05.000 Tromping around through this weird world where eventually you're going to die and you're going to leave your mark, and maybe reincarnation is real, maybe the afterlife is real, and nobody fucking knows.

00:49:13.000 So you got to have meaning.

00:49:15.000 But the universe itself, like a human only lives 100 years.

00:49:18.000 How much meaning can you have in 100 years?

00:49:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:21.000 I think we kind of die prematurely.

00:49:23.000 I mean, we think of us as like first you become stronger and more capable for 15, 20 years, right?

00:49:32.000 Then biologically you stagnate, and then Maybe you keep accumulating sort of knowledge and skills for another few decades, but just as you have started to acquire a modicum of wisdom, your brain starts to rot.

00:49:45.000 And then everything is erased either by Alzheimer's or death.

00:49:45.000 Yep.

00:49:50.000 And that's all gone, the whole lifetime of experience.

00:49:53.000 There's your meaning.

00:49:54.000 All the memories and the hard earned lessons.

00:49:58.000 So that seems kind of sad and probably not the best way for things to be.

00:50:02.000 I think we would want to extend.

00:50:05.000 The human lifespan, so you could continue to grow up, not just kind of reach 20 and then plateau there for the rest of your life.

00:50:12.000 But what if we could continue to develop so that, like, at 80, you were as much stronger and, like, be able to understand more and move better and, like, just have the same capacity increase as you had, like, between zero and 20 and you just kept going?

00:50:28.000 Well, these life extension scientists that are working on these things, guys like David Sinclair, like, they believe that that's not just a possibility, but an inevitability.

00:50:37.000 Yeah, well, so that's more like, I guess, preserving, preventing or delaying that decay.

00:50:42.000 Sure.

00:50:42.000 Which is already very good.

00:50:44.000 Not reversing.

00:50:45.000 They're talking about reversing.

00:50:45.000 Yeah, yeah, but then you would go back to being 20, right?

00:50:48.000 In terms of the time span.

00:50:49.000 Biologically, yeah.

00:50:51.000 But then you have engineering.

00:50:52.000 If you have very long time spans, though, then you might at some point want to continue to grow.

00:50:56.000 Like you might not want to.

00:50:56.000 Yeah.

00:50:57.000 Just be stuck at a 20 year old human for 10,000 years.

00:51:01.000 Maybe eventually you would want to become slightly bigger in terms of your ability to engage with the world.

00:51:11.000 Of course.

00:51:12.000 And if they can figure out how to make people, well, there's already genetic engineering that's being done in terms of increasing potential intelligence and IQ.

00:51:20.000 They're already doing that.

00:51:22.000 I'm sure you know about that thing that happened in China where this one doctor got in trouble.

00:51:30.000 Because he had genetically engineered some babies to be inoculated to HIV, but it also, at the same time, gave them a far increased potential IQ.

00:51:44.000 It remains to be seen whether or not it actually works as these guys become like 20 and 30 and we start putting them in chess tournaments and see if it really did make them smarter.

00:51:54.000 But if the possibility of that is already being studied, they already understand the differences between what.

00:52:04.000 What's possible, what we understand, and that increases every day.

00:52:08.000 They understand more every day, more is possible every day.

00:52:12.000 If that just keeps going, well, you have a different version of what the human consciousness is.

00:52:16.000 You have a different version of the human mind.

00:52:18.000 Yeah.

00:52:19.000 I think the way AI is going, I think that's the train that's going to reach the destination faster.

00:52:26.000 Oh, yeah.

00:52:27.000 And then once you do have superintelligence in machine substrate, then that can unlock all kinds of technologies.

00:52:35.000 Including these biological technologies or nanotechnology or a host of other things that could then sort of bring us up if that's how we decide to go.

00:52:45.000 Yeah.

00:52:46.000 And uplift us into different, like either biologically enhancing us or like uploading us into.

00:52:52.000 But again, it's that white water river raft.

00:52:55.000 It's like we're going down this white water and we might make it out of this or it might crash.

00:53:01.000 You know, one of the weird things about, I'm very fascinated with, Ancient civilizations.

00:53:09.000 One of the weirdest things about ancient civilizations is when you go really, really far back, a bunch of them have these depictions of kings that ruled for thousands of years.

00:53:20.000 It's very strange stuff because the Egyptians and ancient Sumerians, there's a bunch of different depictions of these kings that lived lives that were way longer than biological humans lived.

00:53:36.000 Then there's the flood myth.

00:53:39.000 Or the flood story, and then after the flood, biological life decreases pretty radically, and it seems to get back to like a normal version of what we assume now, which is like 100 years.

00:53:50.000 And one of the weird questions that these alternative ancient historians have is are we missing the possibility that there was a hyper advanced civilization that existed tens of thousands of years ago, and that what we're seeing now is not a linear progression from caveman to human being with an iPhone in 2026.

00:54:12.000 That along the way, there might have been a very high level of sophistication.

00:54:18.000 The evidence of that might be the pyramids and some of these other ancient structures that are mind boggling.

00:54:23.000 As much as you try to explain them away, when you're dealing with 2,300,000 stones, some of them are cut from a quarry 500 miles away, 80 ton stones that are in the ceiling, perfectly cut granite where it looks like they have diamond drill holes in them, it seems like there's some lost technology.

00:54:42.000 Every society has this flood myth, and every society that has this flood myth.

00:54:47.000 Especially these ones that were very advanced somehow or another, like ancient Egypt, they have these depictions of people that lived way longer than people live today.

00:54:58.000 And I wonder if human beings one day will realize, like, oh, if you keep going long enough, 100 years is silly.

00:55:06.000 Like, people can, they'll just figure out what it is that makes people age and die, fix that, and you'll live an insanely long time.

00:55:14.000 And then if people live an insanely long time and their capacity for reason and logic increases, Their capacity for intelligence increases.

00:55:21.000 Then you have these insane technologies that were required to do things like build the pyramids.

00:55:27.000 And that might be what happens.

00:55:30.000 That might be a natural course of progression.

00:55:32.000 The first thing we realize is 100 years is not enough. 0.99

00:55:35.000 Because I'm 58 and I'm a moron still. 0.97

00:55:38.000 Why am I learning every day? 0.99

00:55:40.000 How come I'm getting better at being a person every day?

00:55:42.000 I should have figured this out already.

00:55:44.000 But you don't ever have time to figure it out.

00:55:45.000 You don't have time.

00:55:46.000 There's not enough time.

00:55:47.000 And you only get one run.

00:55:49.000 You'd want a trial run first on life.

00:55:52.000 And like, okay, now I kind of know a little bit how it works.

00:55:52.000 Right.

00:55:55.000 Now let's do it for real.

00:55:56.000 Well, that's the concept of the future.

00:55:57.000 It's kind of scary.

00:55:58.000 I mean, it's a bit crazy that each of us is put in charge of a whole human life.

00:56:02.000 Right.

00:56:03.000 Like, are we really like reached the level of, like, if you want to run an airplane, you have to go through these certifications and stuff, right?

00:56:11.000 And then maybe you can be a pilot.

00:56:12.000 But like, for a human life, it's like every single person, like, okay, you have 100% dictatorial control of this person.

00:56:19.000 Like, they're completely hostage your whims.

00:56:22.000 Yeah.

00:56:22.000 And then that's like us.

00:56:24.000 But that's the way it is.

00:56:25.000 But yeah, having the ability to kind of try different things and maybe do like have a kind of opportunity to do a do over.

00:56:38.000 If the life turned out to be like every 50 years or something, you have a chance to kind of do a do over, but it's the same life.

00:56:47.000 But you can do whatever you want, and you don't have to be constrained to this idea that you only have a certain amount of time and you want to retire by your 65.

00:56:55.000 We might look at that as being like one of the first completely archaic notions and the reason why people got it all wrong.

00:57:01.000 Like, well, society will be better because people are going to live way longer.

00:57:05.000 And if you think about how much smarter, how old are you?

00:57:08.000 53.

00:57:09.000 Okay.

00:57:09.000 Now, the way you said that was sad.

00:57:13.000 I'm older than you, dog.

00:57:14.000 Don't worry about it.

00:57:15.000 But if you think about how much smarter you are at 53 than you were at 13, you know, now imagine how much smarter you'll be at 353 or 1,000 and 53.

00:57:26.000 And if that actually becomes possible, If a person can live to be 100 years, why can't they live to be 4,000 years?

00:57:33.000 If they can figure out what makes people age, if we really can genetically engineer human beings, that's not, again, that's not breathing underwater.

00:57:41.000 That's just extending life. 0.77

00:57:43.000 And if you extend life and extend intellectual capacity and your ability to learn and grow, holy shit, you're dealing with a 2,000 year old person. 0.95

00:57:52.000 That's a completely different kind of thing. 0.91

00:57:55.000 And that could be real someday.

00:57:56.000 And that might be also one of the things that comes along with.

00:58:01.000 This new understanding of just life in general with super intelligent AI.

00:58:08.000 Yeah, no, for sure.

00:58:10.000 Fixing aging and reversing it would be amongst the things that a technologically mature civilization would be able to do.

00:58:16.000 We just have to get people out of the idea that it's vain.

00:58:19.000 Why do you want to live forever?

00:58:21.000 That's what they say now, right?

00:58:21.000 Come on.

00:58:23.000 But when somebody actually has the therapy, and you could, like, I'll hear, you could either continue to get worse kidneys and.

00:58:31.000 More painful knees and wrinkles, and you start forgetting things.

00:58:34.000 Or you can take this rejuvenation serum that everybody else is using, and they are like full of energy and running around and doing stuff.

00:58:41.000 Like, do you still think it's vain?

00:58:43.000 So, I think a lot of this is Stockholm Syndrome, that you are kind of faced with the inevitability of aging and decay and have been for thousands of years.

00:58:53.000 So, you develop a kind of romantic scaffold that reconciles you to the inevitable.

00:58:59.000 I like it, Stockholm Syndrome.

00:59:01.000 Which is maybe adaptive, but only up until the point where there actually might be something you could do to escape.

00:59:08.000 Then, if you're too stuck in this mindset, it might sort of prevent you from taking advantage to regain your freedom.

00:59:15.000 Right.

00:59:15.000 And I think we are now at that stage.

00:59:17.000 We don't yet have the therapies, but there are certainly like investments and research and stuff we could do that would hasten the arrival.

00:59:24.000 And I think, in fact, we should have started on a big sort of, you know, Manhattan product to defeat aging like decades ago.

00:59:33.000 And maybe we would have better therapies by now then.

00:59:36.000 But for a long time, aging was not seen as a problem, only the specific diseases that are the result of the aging.

00:59:42.000 Yeah.

00:59:43.000 They got all this funding, right?

00:59:44.000 Like, so you have like huge research products for Alzheimer's and for heart disease and for cancer.

00:59:49.000 But if you look at the main common cause of most human disease, it's senescence.

00:59:54.000 Like, you're much more likely to get any of these when you're 80 than when you're 20 because your cells gradually decay and gunk builds up.

01:00:02.000 Arteries clog up.

01:00:02.000 Yeah.

01:00:04.000 You know, your DNA mutates.

01:00:06.000 Your methylation pattern gets scrambled.

01:00:08.000 Your brain traps.

01:00:09.000 So, rather than just trying to put out the fires one by one after they occur, like, at some point you just need to sort of try to prevent, like, maybe you need a bit of rain to sort of.

01:00:19.000 Prevent the.

01:00:20.000 It's kind of amazing how much we've accomplished as a society, as civilization, when you think about the fact that people only live to be 100.

01:00:28.000 Kind of incredible.

01:00:29.000 Kind of incredible.

01:00:29.000 Yeah.

01:00:32.000 Got rockets and satellites and cell phones, and people only live.

01:00:36.000 So it's like everybody has to build on everybody else's intelligence and everybody else's understanding of the world and develop new things, and everybody has to learn those new things.

01:00:45.000 And each brain is so small that it can only learn a small little specialty, right?

01:00:48.000 And you need millions of them too.

01:00:50.000 Yeah.

01:00:50.000 Although it's not entirely clear with.

01:00:53.000 With humans, if we had been much more long lived, like the way we currently are configured, maybe we would just have gotten too stuck in our ways and sort of stagnated into some sort of ultra conservative society where nobody's allowed to do anything different. 0.86

01:01:08.000 Or the old geezers that have their way of doing things just remain forever in charge. 0.96

01:01:13.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:01:15.000 So, I mean, we just don't know, right?

01:01:18.000 Like, whether that would have slowed progress or accelerated it.

01:01:25.000 But it is, yeah, it is still.

01:01:27.000 It is still amazing.

01:01:28.000 It's a long path from running around in the forest to these.

01:01:33.000 Look at these advanced chip technologies and the whole global supply chain, where thousands of people are working to develop just one little tool that then feeds into the ability to make another tool that eventually makes these leading edge AI chips.

01:01:49.000 Where they're layering things four atoms deep.

01:01:54.000 It's remarkable.

01:01:55.000 It's incredible.

01:01:56.000 And humans only live to be 100.

01:01:58.000 Imagine what we could accomplish if we lived to be 3,000.

01:02:03.000 Or if we were just a little bit better at these things. 0.99

01:02:06.000 Because I think we are sort of the stupidest possible species that are capable of developing advanced technology. 0.98

01:02:14.000 Because as soon as we evolved to reach that level, we started developing it, right? 1.00

01:02:18.000 So that's where we are, like the dumbest possible that just barely can do this. 0.94

01:02:21.000 Right, barely can do this while we're blowing each other up. 0.99

01:02:23.000 Yeah.

01:02:24.000 At the same time, all over the world, blowing up people. 1.00

01:02:29.000 Yeah, but maybe a lot of that frantic, stupid, Illogical behavior is because we're so finite. 0.98

01:02:38.000 Like we're in a rush that, you know, we realize we only have a certain amount of time to get things done. 0.96

01:02:43.000 And so, this sort of accentuates the desire to control resources and to cement your immortality and to do these things that people love to do put their name on buildings.

01:02:54.000 There's a thing that people like to do that's almost like cementing their immortality.

01:02:59.000 Maybe there'll be less of a desire to do that if people lived way longer. 0.99

01:03:03.000 And then you would have to assume if you can engineer humans to live longer, you could probably engineer a lot of stupidity out of us. 0.98

01:03:12.000 They could just find out why people behave like, what if you could just eliminate lying? 0.99

01:03:17.000 What if there's like a genetic solution to lying?

01:03:23.000 Well, I guess they're a really good lie detector.

01:03:26.000 Yeah, but I mean, what if you can genetically engineer out the desire to lie?

01:03:32.000 Well, I mean, if you had a perfect lie detector, there would be no point in lying because people would just see it immediately, right?

01:03:40.000 Or if you could read each other's minds, it'd be fruitless.

01:03:44.000 Yeah, and so that might be closer.

01:03:45.000 I mean, who knows what you could do if you sort of had like.

01:03:48.000 A powerful AI system trained to detect micro expression.

01:03:50.000 We just all have to get the big gray heads with the black eyes like the aliens have. 0.64

01:03:55.000 Then they need to read each other's minds.

01:03:58.000 You want one of those?

01:03:59.000 Well, one of the weirder things that Bob Lazar said again, I don't know if you're into this UFO stuff, but he was one of the guys that was a whistleblower that said he back engineered crafts for the United States government in the 1980s.

01:04:11.000 They don't have any controls in these crafts, supposedly, and that they're all powered by the minds.

01:04:17.000 Of the beings that are running it, and that they have it's almost like these crafts are alive and they have some sort of a syncing with the thing.

01:04:24.000 That instead of like pressing buttons and working a joystick, they just sync with this creation and then they can propel it with their minds.

01:04:34.000 Yeah, the minds become the computer that moves this thing around.

01:04:39.000 I'm a bit skeptical, I haven't looked into that.

01:04:41.000 You should be, sounds crazy.

01:04:43.000 Yeah, how could you not be?

01:04:45.000 And anybody who's not skeptical sounds crazy, but if you think about where we are now and where we're going to be.

01:04:51.000 The possibility of that being our future is pretty likely.

01:04:55.000 Right.

01:04:55.000 So I think that the kind of possibility of engineering something like that with sufficiently advanced technology would be there, like all kinds of stuff.

01:05:04.000 Yeah.

01:05:05.000 Basically, everything that doesn't violate some law of physics to a first approximation, you would be able to reconstruct.

01:05:11.000 Even when we say that, it's like our current understanding of physics.

01:05:14.000 It's not the understanding of physics of a society that's a million years older than ours.

01:05:19.000 Yeah.

01:05:19.000 Because that's, I mean, that's a blink in the eye of the time that it took to create a What we are at right now from the Big Bang.

01:05:29.000 Like a million years is nothing.

01:05:31.000 Yeah, but even with our current understanding of what physics permits, that's still an enormous space of designs and types of life and being that you could imagine instantiating.

01:05:46.000 You could have, you know, like a Dyson sphere.

01:05:50.000 You've heard of this concept, right?

01:05:51.000 It's basically like using the output of the sun for energy generation.

01:05:55.000 And you could have, like, you surround the sun by solar panels that then powers.

01:06:00.000 A civilization infrastructure, maybe like a computer.

01:06:03.000 Already we have AI compute growing at 240% per year or something, right?

01:06:11.000 And then imagine the kind of mind that could run on that sized computer.

01:06:17.000 So people are wondering whether machines could be conscious and discussing that right now.

01:06:27.000 I think maybe the more pertinent question is are we really conscious?

01:06:30.000 I think barely.

01:06:32.000 So you're driving on the road for two and a half hours of motorists, right?

01:06:40.000 And like driving past thousands of people and homes and like mothers with their strollers.

01:06:40.000 A motorist, right?

01:06:47.000 And then after, does he remember any of that?

01:06:51.000 Like, was he even really aware of any of this while he was driving?

01:06:55.000 It's like a little diffuse sense of body and some murky perceptions floating through, maybe some confused abstract idea that we don't really understand.

01:07:05.000 That's kind of the consciousness that can fit into this coconut sized biological organ that we think.

01:07:10.000 And we think, wow, we are so conscious.

01:07:12.000 But Like, imagine this Dyson sphere consciousness, or like a mind that maybe spans a galaxy.

01:07:19.000 I think the difference between the sort of awareness that it could have and our awareness might be like bigger than the difference between our awareness and like whatever a flea has or something like that, way bigger.

01:07:32.000 So it could be this like transition where we develop super intelligent minds that for the first time is really life waking up and becoming truly aware.

01:07:42.000 Yeah.

01:07:44.000 And that we are a little bit sort of overpride, proud in our own specialness when we think that we have achieved something close to the maximum level of that we are the standard by which consciousness should be measured.

01:07:59.000 And we are this kind of feeble, confused, murky glimmer that is barely sentient at all.

01:08:08.000 So that's like, I think, maybe the big challenge for our era, like giving birth.

01:08:15.000 To superintelligence and then hopefully shaping and nurturing it and steering it so that it becomes a positive thing, both for us ourselves and also for it itself, and also for whatever other, if there are other super beings somewhere in the world or in the cosmos, that it sort of is able to get along with us and contribute positively at the cosmic scale.

01:08:42.000 And that's a very multifaceted challenge, but I think that's kind of seems to be what's going on.

01:08:49.000 Yeah.

01:08:50.000 It's hard for people to think that far ahead.

01:08:53.000 You just think of intelligence being something superior to what we currently experience.

01:08:57.000 But when you're talking about a computer or a being, a conscious being, that is infinitely more powerful than anything we can imagine, that seems to be what.

01:09:13.000 If everything keeps going in the same general direction and AI increases its power and we figure out new ways to power it.

01:09:21.000 And then, because one of the things that AI needs that's so interesting is it needs enormous amounts of power.

01:09:27.000 And so, just these AI centers that they're developing now, like Google's doing one where they're developing their own nuclear power.

01:09:35.000 Do you want some coffee?

01:09:37.000 Yeah, right here.

01:09:37.000 Yes, sir.

01:09:38.000 I saw you reaching for your cup.

01:09:40.000 You shouldn't be drinking out of paper cups anyway, man.

01:09:42.000 I don't usually do that.

01:09:44.000 I know, I don't either, but occasionally I do, but they're so bad for you.

01:09:47.000 I know.

01:09:48.000 I'm usually quite conscientious with coming a little bit upset.

01:09:51.000 Even when I go on the road, I've started taking a little Yeti.

01:09:55.000 Coffee cup with me so I could buy coffee and just have them put it in that.

01:10:01.000 The inside of those things is just lined with plastic.

01:10:04.000 You're pouring hot water into plastic and then the plastic leaches into your coffee.

01:10:08.000 I don't do that normally, but I figured for having a chat with you on the Jorgen show, it would be worth, I guess, some hundred microplastics.

01:10:19.000 Well, thank you.

01:10:21.000 I think what we're talking about is inevitable if human beings don't blow ourselves up.

01:10:27.000 If we don't get hit with an asteroid, blow ourselves up, or a super volcano doesn't eradicate civilization, all this stuff is inevitable.

01:10:36.000 It's just how much time does it take?

01:10:39.000 And how much does it grow exponentially in power?

01:10:42.000 Because we're talking about computers, and then they start bringing up quantum computing and quantum computers' ability to do calculations, and it doesn't even make sense.

01:10:53.000 And so you think, well, this is just one version of that.

01:10:57.000 What is quantum computing going to look like 500 years from now?

01:11:01.000 What is computing power, which is connected to AI?

01:11:05.000 What is that going to look like 500 years from now?

01:11:07.000 It's impossible to even guess.

01:11:10.000 Well, we can sort of see lower bounds on what's possible, like thinking already of just the designs we can conceive of that we see in principle you could make.

01:11:20.000 Maybe it'll take a long, a lot of grind to get there, but at least that establishes like a lower bound of what a technologically mature civilization could do.

01:11:28.000 And then maybe they have additional ideas beyond that, but already that is enough to really unlock.

01:11:35.000 So if you think of a space of possible modes of being, where like a mode of being is a way of experiencing, living, interacting, I think.

01:11:45.000 You look around humanity and all people who have existed in the past, a lot of different characters, right? 0.88

01:11:52.000 Men, women, like mean people, nasty people, crazy people.

01:11:57.000 But I think all of that diversity of human experience is like a tiny little corner in this space of possible modes of being. 0.95

01:12:06.000 Like it's a huge cathedral, and we've been kind of basically sitting in the janitor's closet.

01:12:11.000 That's like the exploration we've done.

01:12:14.000 And the kinds of Modes of being, the kinds of ways of experiencing and relating to each other or thinking and doing stuff that are ultimately possible is just this enormous space that we haven't been able to explore.

01:12:29.000 Because ultimately, what we can currently conceive of and imagine and experience and feel is limited to our biological substrate, the human brain.

01:12:38.000 And just as your early human ancestors from a few million years ago that you were talking about before, they wouldn't really have been able to conceive of the modern human condition. 0.89

01:12:50.000 Not just because I didn't think of it, but because the ape brain can't really, they don't, even if you try to describe it to them somehow, like what is music, what is humor, what is romantic love, what is science, what is all of these things, what's literature, it just doesn't fit into. 0.98

01:13:12.000 Right. 0.99

01:13:12.000 And so, presumably, I mean, you could think right now we've achieved the right brain size where all possible values and interesting ideas are accessible to us. 0.99

01:13:21.000 That seems kind of implausible.

01:13:23.000 It seems much more likely that just as the chimpanzees are necessarily blind to a lot of what can give life meaning and value and significance, that probably are we too.

01:13:35.000 Yeah, they don't even have the capacity for it, which is interesting.

01:13:38.000 They can't even conceal it.

01:13:39.000 Yeah, we think of them as being so intelligent, and they are in comparison to a lot of other animals.

01:13:43.000 But I think one of the things that they were puzzled by when they started teaching primates sign language was that they never asked questions.

01:13:53.000 Like, they don't seem to have questions about stuff.

01:13:57.000 So, they just exist in an intelligent way.

01:14:00.000 They can figure things out.

01:14:02.000 They can do things.

01:14:03.000 They know when the door's left unlocked.

01:14:06.000 They understand fairness, which is really weird.

01:14:08.000 Like, chimps get very upset if they're treated unfairly.

01:14:12.000 Like, if one chimp gets something and they get super violent, but they don't have a lot of questions.

01:14:19.000 You know, and we're filled with questions. 1.00

01:14:21.000 So, what are we missing?

01:14:24.000 That the next stage of being a human will have that we're not even considering now because it's not a part of our experience.

01:14:31.000 Like, what's the asking question type of thing that we are not able to imagine?

01:14:37.000 And there might be many of those types of things.

01:14:39.000 Yeah.

01:14:39.000 And the possibilities are literally endless.

01:14:42.000 We just don't conceive of them because we're trapped in this territorial primate mindset.

01:14:48.000 Yeah.

01:14:49.000 Yeah.

01:14:49.000 I think that's likely.

01:14:52.000 Yeah.

01:14:52.000 I think so too.

01:14:54.000 I think the possibilities are endless.

01:14:54.000 I think so too.

01:14:57.000 And I think it's going to be really, really weird if that happens inside of our lifetime.

01:15:03.000 Like, as you and I were, you know, close to the same age.

01:15:06.000 So we grew up.

01:15:08.000 With answering machines.

01:15:09.000 You probably remember the first cell phones.

01:15:11.000 You probably got online and probably the.

01:15:13.000 When'd you get online?

01:15:14.000 Like the early.

01:15:15.000 96.

01:15:16.000 Yeah, there you go.

01:15:17.000 Yeah, see?

01:15:18.000 I think for me it was 94.

01:15:22.000 So we got to see all this happen.

01:15:26.000 If we get to see the new version of humans in our lifetime, that would be like literally bonkers.

01:15:34.000 What an amazing time to be alive if you really think about it.

01:15:37.000 We're so fortunate.

01:15:38.000 Because if you grew up between like. 0.98

01:15:41.000 1700 and 1800, how much did shit change? 0.95

01:15:44.000 1600 to 1700, what, you make a better boat? 0.98

01:15:47.000 Like, what's different?

01:15:49.000 Not a lot of different, man.

01:15:51.000 Everybody kind of is the same for a hundred years.

01:15:54.000 And inside of our lifetime, from the late 1960s for me to the early 70s for you, like in the amount of time that we've been alive, things have radically changed.

01:16:06.000 Like, really, really radically to the point where it's probably the biggest shift.

01:16:11.000 In human ingenuity and innovation that the world's ever seen.

01:16:16.000 And we're just in the middle of it.

01:16:18.000 And we might be in the middle of the next one, which literally allows us to see what the world looks like a thousand years from now because you're going to be alive.

01:16:28.000 Yeah, I mean, that's why it is now this full time job just to monitor the situation.

01:16:34.000 How do you do that?

01:16:35.000 Well, you don't really.

01:16:38.000 But if you try to sort of.

01:16:41.000 So I think the opportunity.

01:16:43.000 So it used to be.

01:16:45.000 Um, like at least in my sphere of fact, if you're doing philosophy or something like it, um, most people would think you have a kind of unlimited time horizon, and people have been working on philosophical questions for thousands of years, and um, that doesn't seem to be any huge urgency.

01:17:03.000 Uh, if if if they have been unsolved for thousands of years, maybe if it takes another 500 or so, but I i always thought of philosophy as having a deadline, um, meaning that at some point.

01:17:16.000 We would develop smarter than human forms of intelligence, presumably AI, that could then do the philosophy much better than us.

01:17:24.000 And so there was a limited period of time during which any advances I could contribute to would be meaningful.

01:17:32.000 And that it would then make sense on focusing on that subset of philosophical questions or general questions that we really need the answer to now, as opposed to like, you know, 10, 20 years in the future when somebody else can do them better, like the machine minds.

01:17:47.000 So, that's kind of been a lens through which I have selected the things to work on.

01:17:51.000 And now, of course, that deadline is moving closer.

01:17:54.000 So, there's less time remaining.

01:17:57.000 And so, my focus is increasingly drifting towards questions where it might be relevant to have the answer to now rather than a year or two from now.

01:18:08.000 You're almost like a cultural navigator, like a guy with a sextant at the helm of a ship looking at the constellations and going, I think we're in the right direction.

01:18:19.000 Yeah, but now we're sort of moving maybe into close to harbor, and you need to pay more attention to exactly how deep the rocks are.

01:18:29.000 The rocks are and look, scan around you.

01:18:33.000 When you think about a timeline for radical change, in your mind, what do you think that looks like?

01:18:42.000 Well, I mean, I take short timelines seriously with AI.

01:18:46.000 I mean, for what we know, it could be like a year or two or three or four, and probably a bit longer.

01:18:54.000 But we're no longer at a point where we can be confident that we won't have super intelligence in just a few years.

01:19:01.000 Like, it could happen.

01:19:03.000 What is that?

01:19:04.000 When you say that for the uninitiated, what do you mean by super intelligence?

01:19:08.000 Well, I guess we first have AGI, artificial general intelligence, AI that can do all the stuff that we can do.

01:19:21.000 And then super intelligence would just be that, but can do it way better than any human can do.

01:19:28.000 So, all technical, intellectual, common sense tasks.

01:19:32.000 And then we'd have robotics as well that can do all the physical stuff, not much later.

01:19:40.000 And so, this, yeah, so the timeline remains uncertain, but I think it's not impossible that this could happen very soon.

01:19:49.000 And then, once you have super intelligence, then I think from there on, it might be like a sort of sprint to something approximating technological maturity.

01:19:58.000 Because what you have super intelligence that then designs even more smart AIs, right?

01:20:02.000 Using its kind of super intelligent AI research capability and designing better chips and all of that.

01:20:09.000 So, you might then have this like intelligence explosion where you go from something slightly greater than human level to some radical super intelligence that can then sort of invent whatever the remaining technologies are.

01:20:22.000 Maybe there needs to be some trial and error and experiments in the physical world that slows things down a bit, but some smallish number, like a single digit number of years from super intelligence, I think you might have something that unlocks all of these like sci fi level capabilities that we've talked about.

01:20:40.000 At least that seems relatively plausible to me.

01:20:44.000 It seems inevitable.

01:20:48.000 And my question is how does it announce itself?

01:20:52.000 Does it send a mass text message to the whole world?

01:20:54.000 Everybody's phone just starts like, you know, when you have those amber alerts and your phone starts vibrating, or when there's some sort of a storm warning, all of a sudden your phone goes off and then it alerts you to the fact that it's taken over.

01:21:08.000 Well, so here we don't really know.

01:21:11.000 It's like this is very confusing, and we've never done this.

01:21:14.000 Before.

01:21:14.000 And so it's like very hard to figure out how this is going to unfold.

01:21:18.000 And maybe it's not even fixed yet.

01:21:20.000 Maybe it depends a little bit on what we do and the extent to which different actors get their stuff together.

01:21:27.000 Yeah.

01:21:29.000 But like one, I guess, one possible type of scenario is where like things are just like accelerating.

01:21:39.000 There are more and more of these advances, model releases.

01:21:43.000 Increasingly, there is automation of the research process in AI labs.

01:21:49.000 Already, you have coding assistants that are really useful to people in AI labs.

01:21:54.000 They're using them to write a lot of their software.

01:21:56.000 Right now, you still need humans for the research taste and judgment.

01:22:01.000 Sometimes things get stuck, and you need a human to redirect them.

01:22:06.000 But more and more of that makes it automated.

01:22:10.000 Then you have new iterations of models being trained at a faster and faster clip.

01:22:19.000 They can do more and more stuff.

01:22:24.000 They start to automate increasing chunks of the economy.

01:22:30.000 So, right now, a lot of coding is automated, but like other areas as well.

01:22:35.000 Maybe they become drop in virtual workers that can do everything like a human could do with a remote connection initially.

01:22:44.000 And then, like, you have people working on robotics.

01:22:46.000 So, then that would start to kick in.

01:22:48.000 And then eventually, just more and more of the action is run by these AI systems, one or more.

01:22:54.000 And they're kind of doing it at their time scale, which is speeding up.

01:23:01.000 Then from that point, it would depend a lot on whether we have successfully aligned these systems so that they actually do what the people created them intended, or whether they have somehow gone off the rails.

01:23:17.000 There's also the fear that America doesn't come up with it first.

01:23:23.000 This is our fear.

01:23:24.000 Yeah, that's mostly a fear in America.

01:23:26.000 Like in China, for example, it's.

01:23:28.000 Yeah, America comes up with it first.

01:23:30.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:23:31.000 I mean, it's really just America and China that are at the forefront of this race, right? 0.56

01:23:35.000 Russia a little bit, but not on the same level.

01:23:35.000 Yeah.

01:23:38.000 Not Russia.

01:23:39.000 Not Russia?

01:23:39.000 No?

01:23:40.000 Who else is it?

01:23:40.000 No.

01:23:41.000 Did you see this last week?

01:23:43.000 Ford hiring 350 engineers after AI failed shows human value in AI era.

01:23:50.000 What does that mean?

01:23:51.000 I tried to find the only one that didn't, and I just did it.

01:23:54.000 They rehired a bunch of engineers they fired after their AI wasn't matching the quality they needed.

01:24:01.000 And this is Ford.

01:24:01.000 Oh, yeah.

01:24:02.000 That's interesting.

01:24:03.000 They probably jumped the gun.

01:24:07.000 They probably fired them too quickly.

01:24:09.000 And now these people that they rehire, these people are going to like, oh, how much time do we have left?

01:24:13.000 Six months?

01:24:14.000 For AI figures out how to do this just as well.

01:24:17.000 I mean, it's also possible that timelines could extend.

01:24:26.000 One way that could happen is the progress we've seen in the last 10 years.

01:24:32.000 Which has been remarkable, right?

01:24:33.000 It's to a substantial extent driven by the advances, the increase in compute that is being used to train and run these systems.

01:24:42.000 Like it used to be that you had a cutting edge AI system if you were some academic, like running on your PC in your office.

01:24:49.000 Like that was kind of the amount of computing power that was applied to doing AI stuff.

01:24:55.000 And now, of course, you have these kind of tens of billions of dollar data centers, like hundreds of megawatts.

01:25:02.000 Right.

01:25:03.000 Like just massive funding.

01:25:04.000 So the chips have gotten better, but also just the amount of funding.

01:25:07.000 Like you're just building many more of these chips.

01:25:09.000 And so as you apply more and more compute, like performance improves.

01:25:13.000 And that's like has been a big driver.

01:25:16.000 Now, at some point, like you might not be able to keep increasing the amount of money you spend on it.

01:25:23.000 Because like you can go from like a thousand dollar PC to like a million dollars quite easily.

01:25:29.000 And you can go from a million dollar to a billion dollars.

01:25:33.000 And now, Maybe you're spending on the order of a trillion dollars across the world to build data centers per year.

01:25:40.000 But you can't really do like three orders of magnitude very easily there.

01:25:43.000 There's like not a thousand trillion dollars to spend on it.

01:25:46.000 So at some point, just expenditure has to kind of slow down.

01:25:50.000 So if we haven't achieved superintelligence by then, then maybe that would mean progress gets slower if the main driver is the scale up of compute.

01:25:58.000 Now, it is also true that some of the progress is driven by algorithmic advances, like just kind of clever algorithms.

01:26:05.000 So that might continue.

01:26:06.000 But if one driver, Stalls out, then that could result in faster progress.

01:26:12.000 And then, of course, there's a possibility that the people who want to pause or regulate AI gain enough traction to kind of get regulatory inhibitions.

01:26:24.000 How would they do that, though, if there really is some sort of a Manhattan Project style race between the United States and China?

01:26:30.000 And what other countries are developing AI right now that are close?

01:26:33.000 Well, I mean, those are the two big ones.

01:26:37.000 Is it possible that someone could sneak up on us and develop super intelligent AI first?

01:26:42.000 Yeah, I mean, it's possible if there were like some big algorithmic.

01:26:45.000 Breakthrough, for example, that made it a lot more efficient to run a similar level of capability with less sort of AI data center infrastructure.

01:26:56.000 And many other countries are also trying, it's just that they are not as advanced.

01:27:01.000 And out of US and China, I'd say US currently has the edge.

01:27:06.000 What would happen if China got there first?

01:27:08.000 Well, I mean, part would depend on whether they had successfully aligned their AI.

01:27:16.000 It's unaligned, and I guess the same thing happens as if US AI is unaligned.

01:27:20.000 That is, the future gets shaped according to whatever values this AI had ended up with.

01:27:27.000 If the alignment problem is solved, then it might make a difference because then the values would then depend on sort of the people who owned and controlled or governed it would ask it to pursue.

01:27:42.000 So then, in that scenario, maybe it makes some difference who initiates it.

01:27:50.000 So, right now, the big players are, you know, there's Google and there's OpenAI, there's all these different companies.

01:27:57.000 When you say aligned, do they have to all be kind of on the same page?

01:28:02.000 Or like when aligned, we're not going to be aligned if there's a bunch of corporations that are competing to come up with this first.

01:28:08.000 So, they have to be aligned in terms of the way they're programmed, that they're valuing human life and that they're valuing society.

01:28:17.000 Like, what do you mean by aligned?

01:28:18.000 Well, so I mean just the technical challenge of if you're building an AI system.

01:28:23.000 And you have certain things you want it to do and certain things you don't want it to do.

01:28:26.000 Right.

01:28:27.000 Are you technically able to get the AI to behave that way?

01:28:30.000 That you, as the person.

01:28:31.000 The person gets to decide how.

01:28:33.000 Well, that's a separate question, which is equally important, maybe, but different, because that's not the technical.

01:28:38.000 Like, you can't just go to the whiteboard and write down some formula.

01:28:41.000 And now you have.

01:28:42.000 That's like a political question, ultimately, right?

01:28:44.000 The question of governance.

01:28:46.000 Yes.

01:28:47.000 So, there you need, you know, political organization, appeals to the best in human nature, dialogues, like.

01:28:55.000 Checks and balances, whatever stuff that might work in the political arena to hope that the governance of this, that the values to which it is aligned are sort of benign values that hopefully incorporate a wide set of stakeholders.

01:29:09.000 Right.

01:29:10.000 But that's a little isn't that a little naive?

01:29:12.000 Because whenever there's any sort of a situation where something has massive amounts of power above others, one of the first things they think of is what's the most money you can generate doing it and what is the best way to generate the most amount of money?

01:29:27.000 They're going to think that way.

01:29:29.000 They're not going to think, like, what's the best for the human race?

01:29:31.000 Like, no one ever thinks that way.

01:29:32.000 They think, what is the best way in terms of, like, destroying the competition?

01:29:36.000 What is the best way in terms of extracting the most resources out of this?

01:29:40.000 Making it work for me.

01:29:43.000 That's what people think of immediately.

01:29:45.000 And what's the best way to stop other people from competing with us?

01:29:49.000 Yeah.

01:29:49.000 Right.

01:29:50.000 Well, so that would be, I think, a lot of pressures and strains on whatever governance mechanism exists at the time when superintelligence exists.

01:30:02.000 Is developed.

01:30:03.000 Right.

01:30:05.000 So is this something that the technology is so far ahead, the potential for it to be so far ahead of our understanding of what it's going to be able to do that, like, making laws for that now, it's going to be very difficult to even explain to people.

01:30:20.000 We need these laws and we need these guardrails in place now because here's what could happen.

01:30:28.000 And that conversation is not really happening right now.

01:30:30.000 It is happening.

01:30:31.000 But is it happening politically?

01:30:32.000 It's starting to happen, yeah.

01:30:34.000 It's been happening.

01:30:36.000 To an increasing extent politically, and there have been various actions.

01:30:40.000 Okay, like what actions?

01:30:41.000 Well, so a few years ago, for example, there was the whole export regime imposed by the US on chips, the most advanced chips, where like China was cut out from being able to access the most advanced NVIDIA chips and so forth.

01:30:58.000 And that's kind of been modified, but that was motivated to a significant extent by trying to preserve.

01:31:06.000 AI edge that the US has.

01:31:09.000 Right, but that's like internationally.

01:31:10.000 I mean, in terms of like being able to stop corporations from having the kind of power that this could provide them.

01:31:19.000 So then there have been various efforts that was like a proposition in California where there were various things.

01:31:25.000 More recently, you saw the whole thing.

01:31:29.000 I don't know if you followed it with the Mythos and Fable 5, the anthropic models that.

01:31:35.000 So, Mythos has not been released.

01:31:40.000 This is the most powerful model because it seems to have significant cyber offense capabilities.

01:31:46.000 It can easily detect vulnerabilities in software.

01:31:50.000 And so, Anthropic figured that rather than immediately making it available to everybody, maybe it would be better to first try to make it available to providers of critical software infrastructure, like big banks, and so that they can patch up their systems.

01:32:09.000 And then Fable 5 was a kind of restricted version of the Mythos model, like the same underlying model, but with extra safeguards.

01:32:21.000 It basically refused anything that remotely seemed like cyber hacking, programming, biological stuff, because maybe that would be bio.

01:32:33.000 So it sort of drew a wide circle around anything that even remotely looked possibly dangerous, and it just refuses that.

01:32:39.000 So that was released.

01:32:41.000 But then after like a week or so, The administration imposed a kind of export restriction that prevented any non US citizen from using it.

01:32:55.000 And that meant Anthropic had to cut it off for everybody because they didn't have a way in real time to verify who is a US citizen and not.

01:33:04.000 So then it was unavailable for several weeks and intense negotiations behind the scenes and working to try to figure out because allegedly it was possible to jailbreak it so that it sometimes gave some little assistance with some cyber.

01:33:04.000 Oh, wow.

01:33:19.000 Like finding vulnerabilities in code.

01:33:21.000 And now, recently, it just became available again because they had reached some understanding with the government where it was deemed sufficiently safeguarded to be released.

01:33:33.000 And now, there are efforts underway to try to work out the framework because, in the future, you wouldn't want to do this on an ad hoc basis.

01:33:41.000 Like, somebody just decides this particular model for some unspecified reason.

01:33:44.000 Like, you want to have clear standards, ideally, right?

01:33:47.000 That applies to everybody, every company.

01:33:49.000 So, there's now some industry wide effort to try to work with the government to.

01:33:53.000 Anyway, so there's like a lot of this stuff happening.

01:33:56.000 I expect much more of this going forward.

01:33:59.000 This going forward, it just has recently become like a serious issue.

01:34:05.000 People until recently were kind of ignoring the whole AI thing for the most part.

01:34:10.000 And then there is a second wave coming, I think.

01:34:14.000 So far, we haven't really seen any big impact on the labor market from AI.

01:34:20.000 But once that starts to hit, and you get maybe high levels of unemployment amongst white collar workers, and imagine if you have millions and millions of people with.

01:34:32.000 That have their university diplomas, right? 0.53

01:34:34.000 They feel a sense of superiority and entitlement.

01:34:36.000 They've gone through the whole process.

01:34:38.000 They got their degree and now they expect a well paying job.

01:34:43.000 And then there is no job for them.

01:34:45.000 They've got nothing to do all day long but complain about AI.

01:34:50.000 So you're going to have all these well educated people who feel resentful and are going to say every possible bad thing about AI that could be said all day long and mobilize.

01:34:58.000 They're a very powerful political constituency that will emerge from that.

01:35:03.000 That's not even yet happened, but that will kind of add to all of these other.

01:35:08.000 Grievances that people point to with AI.

01:35:11.000 So I think there's going to be kind of significant political pressures for doing something about AI.

01:35:19.000 Isn't the key getting ahead of it though?

01:35:21.000 So, how can people find, how can we see the vulnerabilities in advance and recognize like when this is going to, like if there is going to be a tipping point and a bunch of white collar workers are going to be out of work and there's going to get to a point where we realize like this is coming.

01:35:39.000 This is like three weeks from now.

01:35:40.000 What do we do?

01:35:41.000 Like, what do they do?

01:35:42.000 Like, what?

01:35:43.000 Yeah, so that's not clear to me, at least.

01:35:45.000 I mean, a lot of people think they have different views about what should be done, of course, but it's like very hard to have an.

01:35:54.000 It's such a complex strategy.

01:35:56.000 I mean, I've been thinking about this for like three decades, maybe, and I still feel extremely unsure even which direction is kind of up and which is down.

01:36:05.000 Yeah.

01:36:07.000 I don't think it would be possible right now to sort of figure out a detailed strategy.

01:36:12.000 You know, perfect regulatory scheme or system of laws.

01:36:15.000 There's so many unknowns.

01:36:17.000 I think we need to sort of watch this closely as it happens and be ready to react quickly to issues that come up.

01:36:26.000 And hope that relevant people are like highly competent and well motivated and are trying their best.

01:36:32.000 And then on the margin, maybe we can do things that kind of are constructive and increase the chances that it will be for the good.

01:36:44.000 If and when I have some clear insight as to some overall big directional push, I will let you know.

01:36:54.000 But even basic questions, like, for example, do we want more government involvement or less government involvement?

01:37:01.000 Do we want faster progress in AI or slower progress in AI?

01:37:09.000 I don't know.

01:37:11.000 It's not completely obvious to me.

01:37:15.000 Well, I think it's eventually going to get.

01:37:17.000 To wherever it's going to get, either way.

01:37:20.000 Having it slower, I don't know if that's really going to help us.

01:37:24.000 I think almost like we have to crash and then we have to figure out how to rebuild and pick up the pieces.

01:37:30.000 I don't think we're going to be intelligent or have enough foresight to recognize where all these flaws and where all these problems are going to ultimately be.

01:37:40.000 I think they're just going to have to happen and then people are going to have to adjust.

01:37:44.000 That's what I think.

01:37:45.000 Yeah.

01:37:46.000 So I'm not advocating an AI pause by contrast to a lot of.

01:37:50.000 Some of my colleagues and friends and stuff.

01:37:54.000 I could see some scenario in which it would be helpful at some point to have a temporary slowdown of a few months, maybe or half a year or a year.

01:38:04.000 If you imagine there are different companies, countries maybe racing to get there first.

01:38:10.000 And then eventually somebody figures out they basically have the system in place.

01:38:14.000 They just need to amp up, run it for longer.

01:38:17.000 They can see that it will become super intelligent.

01:38:20.000 They hope it's aligned.

01:38:22.000 It might be very helpful in that situation to have a few extra months just to sort of double check all your safeguards.

01:38:29.000 And rather than immediately cranking all the knobs up to 11, like maybe sort of do it a little bit incrementally, watch what happens, study it, then crank it up a little bit more.

01:38:39.000 I just think you might gain some extra safety if you have a few extra months there.

01:38:42.000 Like the pressures on these people in the lab.

01:38:46.000 That makes sense.

01:38:46.000 If it's all going to happen over a week, like it's just going to be, this is the first time we ever do this hugely complex thing.

01:38:51.000 It has to be right.

01:38:52.000 We never get a second chance.

01:38:53.000 Just being able to.

01:38:55.000 Like, even just being able to sleep properly for like between your work sessions and like having, you know, a weekend to mull things over, like just that kind of human, humans don't really operate on, on, well, on, in, in these like super short timelines.

01:39:11.000 So, I think a short, if you could be sure that the pause would, in fact, be limited and short and then it would be lifted, I think that could be quite useful to have at, if it could also be timed to be, At the right moment and well implemented.

01:39:26.000 But wouldn't the problem be espionage, first of all?

01:39:29.000 That's one issue with it.

01:39:31.000 Yeah, if somebody realized, hey, they're about three days away from this, and then China bribes a bunch of people, and people take off and move to.

01:39:42.000 Yeah, there are various downsides to passing.

01:39:47.000 So one is that, and there are competitors who just even without espionage are catching up.

01:39:55.000 Another is it's not as if the world is.

01:39:58.000 Safe without AI.

01:40:01.000 Right.

01:40:01.000 Good point.

01:40:02.000 There are other, like, whether the natural hazards, I think they are very small, like super volcanoes and stuff like that on the relevant time scales.

01:40:09.000 Until they're not.

01:40:10.000 Well, I mean, we've survived for hundreds of thousands of years, right?

01:40:14.000 And we're almost wiped out entirely 70,000 years ago.

01:40:17.000 Yeah, well, that's a long time ago.

01:40:18.000 Is it, though?

01:40:19.000 Well, not if it happens tomorrow.

01:40:21.000 Well, but like, if something hasn't done us in that long a time, probably it's not going to do us in within the next 10 years.

01:40:28.000 Well, you're more optimistic than me.

01:40:30.000 Well, it's just based on the actual.

01:40:32.000 Empirics of these natural catastrophes.

01:40:34.000 By contrast, I would say there are other hazards that are not low.

01:40:39.000 I mean, we have rapid advances in synthetic biology, some of them driven or enabled maybe even by already AI progress that has already taken place, like that can start to assist with this, and more just happening independently.

01:40:56.000 So you get increasing risks from synthetic biology.

01:40:59.000 We still have the nuclear arsenals, right, kind of existing.

01:41:03.000 Um, we, I think, have gotten a little bit complacent about the risks of nuclear war, um, and various other things as well.

01:41:15.000 So, I think there's like a background level of existential risk that humanity faces in the absence of superintelligence that probably is growing as well.

01:41:24.000 So, you don't want to wait so long that you don't even get the chance to roll the dice with AI because you destroyed yourself before you even got an AI.

01:41:32.000 We kind of be sad, um.

01:41:35.000 And then also, I mean, I think there is like some risk if you set up a pause infrastructure that what's initially meant to be a temporary thing becomes permanent.

01:41:47.000 Like they say, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.

01:41:51.000 So, if you set up the infrastructure to actually control this, ideally at a global scale, right, it's meant to be for six months.

01:41:56.000 Like, what happens after six months?

01:41:59.000 Nobody can still prove that the AI will be safe.

01:42:01.000 So, you have all these people now whose job it is to regulate it.

01:42:06.000 And maybe they.

01:42:07.000 So, it could become kind of frozen in and become permanent.

01:42:12.000 And then also, the delay benefits.

01:42:18.000 So, if you think, what, like 65 million people die every year, that's a lot of human lives.

01:42:29.000 That's like one 9 11 every 25 minutes, just kind of boom.

01:42:35.000 That's a way to look at it.

01:42:37.000 And so, there is a certain urgency.

01:42:39.000 If there is something that somehow could have a chance to fix this, like all the suffering that is happening in the world, aside from the people dying, like all the people who are bereaved, right?

01:42:52.000 Their loved one, and then all the disease that led up to that dying.

01:42:57.000 Right.

01:42:57.000 And then all the non disease related, all the horrible poverty and like the suicidal depression and the animals in the animal factories that they're like spending.

01:43:07.000 There's just like this, I think, moral urgency that if there is a hope that getting AI right could fix this, then you don't want to wait unnecessarily long because every day is just this massive horror.

01:43:19.000 Right.

01:43:21.000 So I think there are many reasons for why you wouldn't want unnecessary or excessive.

01:43:26.000 Delays in developing AI.

01:43:28.000 But there is a trade off because if we can make more progress on AI safety and alignment and get our act together a little bit before we take the plunge, that's also worth quite a lot.

01:43:41.000 It's certainly exciting because the possibilities are right in front of us and they're kind of endless.

01:43:49.000 And it seems like they're right in front of us.

01:43:50.000 It seems like, in my mind, it seems like we're like 24 months away from something really insane.

01:43:56.000 I think it could be, could be, could be 48 months.

01:43:59.000 It could be, and we don't, we don't, yeah, right, it could be, yeah, who knows.

01:44:03.000 But there's something happening really quickly.

01:44:04.000 I, you know, I talked to Elon about Grok.

01:44:08.000 He said it's, uh, it shocks us like every couple weeks that we're like, how is it doing this?

01:44:14.000 How is it so fast?

01:44:15.000 How is it advancing so quickly?

01:44:18.000 And, um, one day, cat's going to be out of the bag, and there's not going to be any way to stop it.

01:44:24.000 Like, if the power went out right now, if there was some sort of a massive solar flare that.

01:44:29.000 Killed our power grids and all computer hard drives got fried, and we had a restart from now.

01:44:38.000 We would have to rebuild society, right?

01:44:40.000 But if we get to the point where this thing understands what would cause that, how to prevent that, how to make sure that never happens, much better power supply, much better allocation of resources, much better batteries, much better redundant data systems where you never have to worry about.

01:45:01.000 Hard drives crashing, and you never have to worry about any of these problems.

01:45:05.000 Like, any information you have now will be secure, and then understanding of natural disasters will actually get drilled into this volcano and it never goes off.

01:45:14.000 Like, there's going to be a few things that they're going to figure out through AI that's going to prevent a lot of the things that have probably wiped out enormous swaths of people.

01:45:21.000 I mean, imagine if we could just actually see asteroids coming, all of them, and know how to divert them instantaneously.

01:45:29.000 We have a bunch of ideas right now on how to do it, right?

01:45:31.000 Like, coding them.

01:45:33.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:45:34.000 With something that changes the aerodynamics of them.

01:45:37.000 I think that one would be relatively easy.

01:45:39.000 Maybe we could figure out how to do that.

01:45:42.000 And there's also detonating them.

01:45:43.000 There's a bunch of different crazy ideas, but imagine if AI is like, actually, you could just do this.

01:45:49.000 And then you put a shield over the Earth and you never have to worry about it ever.

01:45:53.000 The shield's powered by the sun, so you have ultimate power and you never have to worry about being hit by a Manhattan sized asteroid.

01:46:01.000 I think the trickier ones might be ones that are more internal to civilization.

01:46:07.000 If you have some process that's either like a worldwide process with different humans and corporations and governments or like an internal process, Process in the AI.

01:46:19.000 On the one hand, you want to be able to continue to develop new ideas, new ways of doing things.

01:46:26.000 So you need to experiment and try new things.

01:46:28.000 But then there's also the risk of just keep trying new ideas, like that, eventually you get stuck on some idea that actually proves really harmful or dangerous to you.

01:46:40.000 And that you then sort of derail internally through your own memetic or internal evolutionary development.

01:46:49.000 How to sort of grow up safely in this world where you have unlocked all kinds of new technological capabilities.

01:46:58.000 Even if you're easily able to protect yourself against external threats like volcanoes and asteroids and stuff, right?

01:47:04.000 There might still be processes arising from within this global civilization.

01:47:10.000 Just as we might invent new technologies that are dangerous, we might invent new drugs that are super addictive.

01:47:17.000 Once you invent them, you try them and then you're addicted.

01:47:19.000 You never want to.

01:47:21.000 Yeah.

01:47:22.000 There could be other, like some crazy ideology that once it takes hold, it's a massage.

01:47:27.000 I'm glad you brought that up.

01:47:28.000 Because that's one of the major fears that a lot of people have is that human beings will develop ideologies based around AI, that there'll be like an AI god that someone develops.

01:47:41.000 And I mean, I think that's, in fact, I would add that to the list of, I mentioned nuclear and bio terrorist risk as like background existential risks.

01:47:41.000 Yeah.

01:47:52.000 Another is like some form of insanity, like collective insanity.

01:47:56.000 I feel our civilizational sanity already is kind of a little bit precarious.

01:48:04.000 I think we're just kind of maybe barely holding ourselves together.

01:48:08.000 And it's amazing how well the world functions despite how crazy people are and how much they loathe their opponents and so forth.

01:48:16.000 And we still manage to somehow get it to work.

01:48:18.000 There's also manipulation of the zeitgeist that's clearly being done by bots.

01:48:24.000 So, you've got a bunch of people online that are having arguments on Twitter, and they're not even talking to people.

01:48:30.000 There's a bunch of ideas that are being pushed out on Twitter and a lot of these social media platforms.

01:48:36.000 It's not even human beings tweeting about it.

01:48:38.000 It's not.

01:48:40.000 There's algorithms, there's AI, there's people that are hired to do it, there's people that are working for certain organizations that are hired to muddy up the waters, gaslight people, create problems, have people argue with each other.

01:48:55.000 If AI recognizes how easy it is to manipulate people, do whatever it wants, that's a fear as well.

01:49:03.000 Yeah.

01:49:04.000 So, whenever you change the basic parameters of sort of the social, cultural, political discourse, new dynamics will emerge.

01:49:18.000 And we don't have the kind of social science that is able to predict what happens if you change some of these knobs.

01:49:23.000 So, we've seen in the past, like you invent, let's go all the way back, like somebody invents writing.

01:49:29.000 Okay, so that turns out to have had a huge effect, not just on people writing literature and stuff, but on political systems.

01:49:37.000 You could now have states that could keep tax records, right?

01:49:41.000 So, you could have larger political units with writing, and then they can hire standing armies.

01:49:47.000 And now you have large scale war, you have social stratification, you could have the ruler of a large area have enormous wealth, and you could have a soldier caste that protects against internal and external.

01:50:00.000 So, just the way that human societies are politically organized changes as a result of this change in the rules of communication when you can have written texts.

01:50:10.000 And then you have the printing press again, with like 100 years.

01:50:14.000 Of religious wars in Europe, like Reformation and all of this stuff, is possibly.

01:50:19.000 And then, like, forms of democracy later on, also coming out of this, and the scientific revolution.

01:50:27.000 Then you have, like, mass media in the last century with, like, radio and stuff, and you have kind of demagogues that take advantage of being able to simultaneously talk to millions of people, because that was never possible before, right?

01:50:38.000 You could have some charismatic kind of guy who's, like, rallies up the whole nation, and then new ideologies become.

01:50:38.000 Right.

01:50:45.000 Mimetically fit in that situation that might never have, if it were people writing kind of letters to the editor, like it's kind of a different type of idea that works there than if you're giving a kind of stump speech that goes out to millions simultaneously.

01:50:59.000 And now with social media, of course, we have another one of these, and you do see that starting to change culture in different ways.

01:51:07.000 And now with AI being the next wave of this, that will also change.

01:51:10.000 You have like bots, you have new ways of finding information, you have maybe AIs that can themselves be super persuaders.

01:51:17.000 That will also change.

01:51:18.000 Presumably, in some unknown, unknowable way, the way that social discourse pans out.

01:51:25.000 And for any one of these, I guess it could turn out to be a lot better.

01:51:28.000 We could become more informed having AI advisors.

01:51:30.000 I think that's a fairly likely scenario, but it's also possible somehow the dynamics shape out in a different way and we kind of go collectively insane in some way.

01:51:39.000 Back to the white water raft.

01:51:42.000 White to backwater raft, yes.

01:51:43.000 And it all becomes kind of totalitarian or we sort of fragment into like political warring tribes or.

01:51:51.000 We become kind of completely unhinged.

01:51:53.000 Every one of us becomes convinced of their own little nutty theory that they then, like their AI feed, just serves them more material to kind of fuel their conviction.

01:52:02.000 There are different ways in which this could go badly.

01:52:07.000 But don't you think even if that happens, ultimately the progress of AI won't stop?

01:52:13.000 And so, again, I keep going back to this thing, but I think this is really what it is we have to change.

01:52:21.000 Like what it means to be a person.

01:52:23.000 All those things are only problems if people stay what we are now, which is territorial primates with desire to possess material goods for some strange reason, even though we're a finite life form.

01:52:36.000 If all that changes, if we change what it means to be a person, which seems inevitable, then it won't matter.

01:52:48.000 If we could figure out a way to literally engineer out.

01:52:53.000 All of the issues that humans have with greed and violence and all the different things that trouble society, if the desire for that is no longer a part of being a person, which is that's doable.

01:53:06.000 That seems like if we're going to continue to evolve past, you know, Australia Pithecus to Homo sapien 2026, if we continue the same amount of time in the future, we probably won't be like that anymore.

01:53:20.000 The best versions of people aren't people that want to steal your house and steal your land and shoot you and take your resources.

01:53:27.000 The best people are the people that contribute and they're interesting and they make you excited to be around them and you like it.

01:53:34.000 If that keeps going on and if that is aided by technology, if we recognize that there's actual patterns of human thinking and behavior that can be changed, and that if we all agree to subscribe to this algorithm, to connect to this computer program, connect to this external device or maybe not even external, maybe it's internal that allows us to communicate with each other telepathically.

01:54:01.000 Like all that changes, and then it doesn't matter.

01:54:06.000 It doesn't matter if there's any guardrails for AI or not because we're not the same thing anymore.

01:54:10.000 Like all the problem, the worry that we have about AI, the worry we have about power and manipulation and the ability to influence people, all that kind of goes away if people don't behave the way they behave currently.

01:54:25.000 Well, I guess here's one difference with your like white water rafting metaphor.

01:54:32.000 So, in that metaphor, it's kind of.

01:54:36.000 Like, there's a risk we could smash ourselves on the rock, but if we don't do that, then there's kind of one way we end up, right?

01:54:36.000 We need to hang on.

01:54:42.000 Downstream.

01:54:42.000 We get up in a nice lake.

01:54:44.000 But I think in reality, what might also be the case is that in addition to trying to not smash ourselves on the rock, there might be places where the choices we make affect the ultimate destination.

01:54:44.000 Yeah.

01:54:58.000 Right.

01:54:59.000 Go left or go right.

01:55:00.000 Yeah.

01:55:01.000 Which stream do you want to go?

01:55:02.000 Maybe a more.

01:55:03.000 Yeah.

01:55:04.000 And where, like, If you steer in one direction, you might end up in one place ultimately, in some sort of strange post human world, and maybe it's really beautiful and people have the chance to grow into their true self and we love each other and are creative and take initiatives and go a different way.

01:55:21.000 Maybe you have a paperclip maximizing AI area, maybe that just everything is paperclip.

01:55:26.000 So going a third way, maybe you have like a totalitarian system with like a small elite on top and everybody else.

01:55:34.000 Yeah.

01:55:35.000 Sci fi movie.

01:55:36.000 Yeah.

01:55:37.000 And there are many more possibilities and maybe some that.

01:55:39.000 Kind of, we would think would look kind of good if we chose now, but then in reality, they have some hidden flaw that we didn't think of.

01:55:48.000 So, if we chose those, it would sort of be a mistake.

01:55:50.000 And then maybe others that don't look that appealing to us now, if you just presented them in a brochure to you, like, but then actually, if you thought hard about it, maybe you would realize that actually would be a really nice place to live.

01:56:02.000 Because, like, in the current world, there are places that are nice to visit that are interesting, but then those are not necessarily the same places we would want to live and raise.

01:56:10.000 A kid, right?

01:56:11.000 So there are like novels and movies that are really fun to watch, but you wouldn't want to live in those worlds.

01:56:17.000 So there's a difference between the kind of what makes for the good, interesting story and the place we actually want to spend the rest of your life.

01:56:23.000 And so I think there would be possibly a lot of opportunities to make foolish choices or unwise choices or conflicts that sort of thwart the process and make us end up not just that we go extinct before we reach there, but that the deer that we reach might depend on.

01:56:40.000 The level of wisdom and kindness that we have during the process.

01:56:44.000 And there's always unintended consequences with every solution that we try to find for any problem that we have.

01:56:50.000 There's always some new thing that comes up.

01:56:51.000 We're like, oh, we didn't see that coming.

01:56:53.000 I mean, certainly whenever we're dealing with nature, like whenever they've brought in invasive species to handle other invasive species, it's always a giant disaster, you know?

01:57:05.000 Yeah.

01:57:06.000 Always.

01:57:07.000 There's always unintended consequences like, oh, now you have 100 billion.

01:57:11.000 Frogs.

01:57:11.000 Who was telling us about that?

01:57:13.000 Was it Ali Sadiq that was telling us about the frogs? 0.98

01:57:18.000 About they brought in.

01:57:20.000 What did they bring in?

01:57:21.000 I forget what the invasive species was.

01:57:24.000 They brought in this one species to kill another species, and the problem they didn't realize that that species had been controlled.

01:57:32.000 It was like coyotes, or I forget what it was.

01:57:35.000 It was Guam.

01:57:36.000 What did they get rid of?

01:57:40.000 Whatever it was, they got rid of this thing that had been killing the frogs.

01:57:44.000 So then they had toads, right?

01:57:47.000 Was it toads?

01:57:48.000 So they had millions of these things that were like all over the highway.

01:57:51.000 So you drive on them, you just squash them.

01:57:53.000 Everywhere you go, because there was nothing controlling the population, these things anymore.

01:57:58.000 It's like unintended consequences of, you know, because we're very short sighted in even our ability to be contemplative about what the possibility of the future is when you're dealing with such an open ended thing like AI, super general intelligence that can maybe make better versions of itself.

01:58:18.000 Like, who the hell knows what that means?

01:58:21.000 Are we making a god?

01:58:23.000 Because it seems like if it keeps going and that, if it makes better versions of itself, what's ultimately going to get To the point where it could do anything, which is exactly what a god is.

01:58:30.000 It can make universes.

01:58:33.000 What if the ultimate end of this is a big bang button that some scientist invents?

01:58:40.000 Yeah.

01:58:41.000 So we are a little bit like, yeah, it's, I don't know, the different analogies one might reach for.

01:58:46.000 But I mean, I guess like, say you're on a plane and then the pilot has passed out or had a heart attack or something.

01:58:55.000 And now it's like we passengers somehow have to.

01:58:58.000 I don't know, figure out how to do the run the controls.

01:59:02.000 Yeah.

01:59:03.000 We're not really, I mean, you have to still try to make your best, right?

01:59:06.000 But then add to that that all the passengers are fighting amongst each other.

01:59:09.000 Each one thinks they are the guy who should control the, like, they're all convinced that they are the superior person to try to land the plane.

01:59:19.000 So, in addition to trying to figure out how the controls work, they are like actually having a big fist fight in the cockpit as well.

01:59:25.000 And somebody's like dragging somebody else away. 0.88

01:59:27.000 And there's like the kind of monk tribe that is the current state of the world here. 0.62

01:59:31.000 And we're trying to shepherd. 0.99

01:59:33.000 Like this ship of humanity into utopia.

01:59:39.000 It's an interesting.

01:59:43.000 It's Dr. Strangelove on steroids.

01:59:46.000 But that's it.

01:59:47.000 We might only have to get it so far.

01:59:51.000 At some point, we should be able to hand over the reins.

01:59:57.000 Once you have a sufficiently good AI, we maybe get assistance from that point on.

02:00:02.000 I think the first thing that it's going to take over is government, who's going to realize how.

02:00:08.000 Unbelievably inefficient the government is at doing almost everything, and how much of the money that gets allocated is fraud and waste.

02:00:18.000 If you allow AI to sort through that and develop much more efficient pathways to controlling and disseminating resources, some people would not want to see that particular thing happen.

02:00:29.000 Exactly.

02:00:29.000 That's going to be a problem.

02:00:30.000 But if we get to the point where there's some sort of a hive mind possibility, some sort of a I mean, one of the things that Elon said that I thought was really fascinating, he said, You're going to be able to talk without words.

02:00:45.000 Well, if we're able to talk without words, does that eventually get to the point where we could read minds?

02:00:51.000 Is thought and is communication no longer verbal?

02:00:58.000 It's no longer sounds.

02:00:59.000 So, right now, we associate sounds that I'm making where you know what words I'm using, what I'm referencing, and we get a certain understanding of what each other is trying to say.

02:01:09.000 Well, what if that's just clunky and that's silly? 0.99

02:01:12.000 Silly. 0.95

02:01:13.000 And what if instead of a scroll that you leave in a cave somewhere, now you have a movie that you can watch? 0.98

02:01:21.000 Like something much more engrossing and much more powerful.

02:01:26.000 And that this is what human communication becomes.

02:01:30.000 It doesn't, and maybe this is why the Greys don't have mouths.

02:01:33.000 We move away from sounds.

02:01:36.000 Because right now, what we figured out is sort of like duct tape.

02:01:41.000 We're communicating, we've kind of patched it up, we figured out something.

02:01:45.000 We're just going to use noises we make.

02:01:47.000 Well, we have different noises here than the people that live on this island.

02:01:50.000 They have totally different noises. 0.99

02:01:50.000 I don't know what the fuck they're saying. 0.99

02:01:52.000 And then you have people on the other side of the world, totally different noises. 0.99

02:01:55.000 So, Tower of Babel type situation, right?

02:01:58.000 Where we really can't communicate with each other unless we have translators.

02:02:01.000 But if we get to the point where that's not how humans communicate, we communicate purely through thought and intention and understanding, and that it's no longer based on language.

02:02:13.000 It's no longer based on this is a transistor, this is a coffee mug.

02:02:18.000 Instead, It's a complete understanding of each individual thing that we're discussing.

02:02:23.000 Everything, you know what it is.

02:02:25.000 You understand what it is without it having to have a noise associated with it.

02:02:30.000 Yeah.

02:02:31.000 I mean, I guess the cyber security implications are significant if you are giving direct access to other people to transmit signals to your brain in a high bandwidth way that is not just words kind of that it's almost like you heard them even though there's no sound in your ear, but if it's like actually directly kind of interfacing in a high bandwidth way with your.

02:02:53.000 Your network.

02:02:54.000 Also, encryption is out the window.

02:02:57.000 If we no longer have encryption, if we get to the point where.

02:03:01.000 Why is that out the window?

02:03:02.000 Because if computing gets to the point where the bottleneck is.

02:03:07.000 Like, think about money, right?

02:03:08.000 What is money right now?

02:03:10.000 Money's all ones and zeros somewhere, essentially, right?

02:03:13.000 It's all bank accounts.

02:03:14.000 It's like.

02:03:15.000 We're not on a gold standard anymore.

02:03:17.000 So, what if that bottleneck.

02:03:20.000 It's an information bottleneck.

02:03:21.000 Like, someone's preventing you from going into these.

02:03:26.000 Places and getting these ones and zeros and transferring it to your place.

02:03:30.000 But what if that is all, what if computing power gets to the point with AI gets to the point where those boundaries are nonsense now?

02:03:39.000 All encryption is instantaneously decoded.

02:03:42.000 I think probably cryptography is defense dominant in the limit.

02:03:50.000 I think, like if you imagine mature technology, I think it would be possible to encrypt.

02:03:56.000 I mean, if nothing else, you could use like a one time pad, which Would enable you to encrypt things in a way that is unbreakable.

02:04:04.000 Really?

02:04:05.000 I feel like that's going to be a bottleneck.

02:04:08.000 And I think once we start reading each other's minds, that might be the first thing to go.

02:04:12.000 It'll be like the ultimate socialist.

02:04:14.000 That's where you probably would want encryption, right?

02:04:16.000 If you're going to transmit thoughts to me through something, you don't want to have a. 0.99

02:04:21.000 Oh, you don't want some asshole constantly in your head, your next door neighbor, just poking you and prodding you. 0.98

02:04:27.000 But you would hope that along with this technology becomes like a general state of enlightenment. 0.99

02:04:33.000 That the human beings achieve, where that's no longer the kind of behavior that we indulge in.

02:04:40.000 Which behavior do we no longer indulge in?

02:04:42.000 Annoying each other, getting each other out, stealing each other's money, that kind of stuff.

02:04:45.000 Well, but then, yeah, I guess it goes back to this question of the utopian condition.

02:04:50.000 So, there are a lot of things that individually are bad, like lying, stealing, cheating, greed, excessive pride, all kinds of disease, stubbing your knees bad.

02:05:07.000 Yet, if you imagine removing all of those things, then that changes the human condition quite profoundly.

02:05:14.000 And to some people, it would feel kind of maybe or appear flavorless or sort of if there is.

02:05:22.000 No tension, no conflict, no bruised ego, no like.

02:05:27.000 But it might still be good, but it does force us to sort of.

02:05:31.000 I think it would be a rather fundamentally different thing that we would be metamorphosing into if we went all the way in that direction, which ultimately might be right.

02:05:38.000 But it would require us to kind of find new ways of realizing whatever values are imperfectly realized in the current world through conflict and competition and pain.

02:05:49.000 Like some people get the motivation from painful failure.

02:05:53.000 And so, if you get rid of the pain from failure, then you'd need some other motivation, like some other thing that drives you on, which there could be.

02:05:53.000 Yeah.

02:06:01.000 Like maybe it's just a love of achievement and you feel kind of neutral or just less happy when you fail.

02:06:06.000 But you would still need something that kind of preserves whatever structure it is that we think is valuable in the current human condition.

02:06:15.000 Unless you go all the way to sort of radical hedonism and think the future is best if we were all just kind of floating in some kind of drug induced euphoria as blobs that.

02:06:27.000 Experienced immense pleasure, but had no real texture in our experiences, didn't engage in activities and didn't interact with each other.

02:06:36.000 Like, there's a philosophical view where ultimately pleasure is the only thing that matters and the minimization of suffering.

02:06:42.000 So, if that's your axiology, then it's relatively easy to see how at technological maturity you would achieve a sort of optimal state.

02:06:50.000 But if you have a more complex value system where maybe pleasure is one good thing, maybe really important, But there are also other things like appreciating beauty, you know, true friendship, courage, achievement.

02:07:03.000 And ideally, you'd want a future that includes all of these things.

02:07:06.000 Then you need to do a little bit more sort of design work to figure out a way to combine them all in a meaningful way.

02:07:14.000 This all comes back to our idea of human meaning, what's important to humans, our finite 100 year lifespan adoption of this concept of meaning. 0.94

02:07:24.000 But the black hole doesn't give a shit about human meaning. 0.96

02:07:27.000 And it's going to be around a lot longer than us. 0.99

02:07:30.000 And it's.

02:07:31.000 Got a lot more power than us, and it's doing a lot more change than us.

02:07:35.000 And we want to think that we're more important than black holes.

02:07:39.000 Yeah, I mean, because we are us.

02:07:42.000 I mean, to us.

02:07:42.000 I think we are.

02:07:44.000 Yeah, to us.

02:07:45.000 But to the universe, is it?

02:07:46.000 Is human meaning that important to the universe, or is it just sort of a placeholder for what we'll ultimately become?

02:07:53.000 Does it motivate us to continue to progress?

02:07:58.000 Well, so I think, at technological maturity, there are certainly forms of purpose that you could have.

02:08:03.000 You could have artificial purpose.

02:08:06.000 So, this is when you basically set yourself a goal for the sake of having the goal and then doing the activity that.

02:08:13.000 So, maybe you set yourself the goal I'm going to get this little white ball into a sequence of 18 holes.

02:08:21.000 And not only that, but in order to achieve this goal, it's part of the goal that I'm only allowed to use this very inconvenient method.

02:08:29.000 I can hit the ball with a club, right?

02:08:31.000 I can't.

02:08:32.000 Much easier to just pick it up and put it in each hole successively.

02:08:36.000 That doesn't count as being successful.

02:08:39.000 So you could make up this goal pretty arbitrary.

02:08:43.000 Now, once you have that goal, then you now have a reason to try hard to concentrate, to perfect your swing, and you can play golf.

02:08:50.000 So, the goal enables you to do this activity of golf playing, which maybe you find fun or worthwhile or meaningful.

02:08:58.000 And the reason why you find it meaningful is because it's difficult to do.

02:09:02.000 Yeah.

02:09:05.000 And so, the future would consist, I think, if we succeed, in a lot of game playing.

02:09:11.000 And you could certainly have these artificial purposes that you set yourself, these goals that then give you a reason to engage in an activity.

02:09:17.000 Now we're back in the world of Half-Life.

02:09:20.000 Now we're back in a video game.

02:09:22.000 Now we're also in the simulation.

02:09:25.000 This is going to be your artificial goal.

02:09:27.000 And you could imagine, I think maybe we shouldn't think of video games here, but it could be much like games we can't even imagine.

02:09:34.000 It could be like society-wide games that last for 20 years that involve all kinds of multimodal things and little groups that work together to come up with new ways of creatively.

02:09:47.000 And so.

02:09:49.000 In that broad sense of kind of things we do for their own sake, I think game playing could be, and it's like a lot of what children do, they're kind of for curiosity and spend a lot of their time playing games, and we might all be like kids again.

02:10:00.000 What might be in shorter supply is sort of natural purpose, like purposes which we don't just arbitrarily make up in order to have a purpose, but that are sort of given to us.

02:10:14.000 So, right now in the world, you might say, you know, making a living.

02:10:20.000 It's not just an arbitrary purpose because there are real consequences if you fail.

02:10:24.000 Like maybe eventually you get kicked out from your flat and then it's really cold and you get rained on and horrible things happen.

02:10:33.000 So, similarly, if you don't brush your teeth, eventually you will have tooth decay and there will be real consequences.

02:10:40.000 So, there are various things that you have reason to do because there are real negative consequences if you fail to do them.

02:10:46.000 And a lot of our lives is structured by these natural purposes.

02:10:50.000 At a societal level, there's a whole bunch of things we need to do together, right?

02:10:55.000 In this future world, maybe there would be many fewer of those natural purposes, because for any one of them, you could just ask the AI to sort it out.

02:11:02.000 And so the artificial purposes would be a larger chunk.

02:11:04.000 It's interesting to think are there any natural purposes that would survive to technological maturity?

02:11:10.000 Like any things that we still have sort of instrumental reasons that we need to do ourselves?

02:11:17.000 And I think there might be a few, but they are more subtle.

02:11:20.000 They might not strike us currently as very.

02:11:23.000 Important, but it's one of those things where, like, you know, that during the day, if you're outside, you can't see the stars, right?

02:11:35.000 It's not because they're not there, like, it's because, like, there's so much light that they are sort of blotted out.

02:11:40.000 But at night, when the stronger light from the sun is absent, you can see these fainter lights.

02:11:47.000 I think similarly, in this future, there might be once this sort of urgent screaming moral values.

02:11:54.000 Of immediately pressing practical concern go away, you might be able to perceive a whole constellation of these more subtle values that we are blind to currently.

02:12:02.000 So, take the value of like, I don't know, like honoring your forebears.

02:12:09.000 So, right now, it doesn't seem, I mean, maybe it's nice sometimes to remember your past parents or some historical hero who did something good that benefited humanity, right?

02:12:21.000 But it's like not the main thing that you're like, maybe that would be a bigger thing if there was nothing else you needed to do.

02:12:26.000 Maybe you could actually spend serious time.

02:12:29.000 Or spiritual quests.

02:12:31.000 Like, even for people who are very religious, a lot of their actual waking hours are spent on random other things, doing their laundry, right?

02:12:39.000 Like driving to work, like all kinds of stuff.

02:12:41.000 Like, if all of that was automated, you could imagine spending more time on trying to align yourself, orient yourself to this higher being, and trying to be in communication with them.

02:12:53.000 Like, maybe aesthetic values.

02:12:56.000 Like, there may be some things that would just be kind of nice and cool if the world were like that.

02:13:01.000 We don't really have time to worry so much about them now, but if there was nothing else on the agenda, like coming together in a way that upholds some tradition in a beautiful, original way that's Still is true to the original spirit together with other people and enacting some ceremony.

02:13:17.000 Like maybe those things would start to fill more of our time in conjunction with this game playing.

02:13:25.000 And there might be many other of these kind of subtler values that would start to shape what people were doing.

02:13:33.000 Yeah.

02:13:34.000 And ultimately, who knows?

02:13:37.000 Yes.

02:13:40.000 It's very interesting and it's very open ended.

02:13:42.000 And we really don't know what's going to happen, but we're probably going to see it.

02:13:46.000 We're probably going to see the strangest thing that humans have ever had a possibility to experience.

02:13:53.000 Yeah.

02:13:54.000 And in the end, I guess it's trustful.

02:13:56.000 Yeah.

02:13:58.000 Well, I mean, these conversations are always fascinating.

02:14:02.000 And who knows?

02:14:03.000 Let's do another one in a few years and see how off we are.

02:14:07.000 Come back in four years.

02:14:09.000 All right.

02:14:10.000 If we have four years.

02:14:11.000 If we have four years.

02:14:12.000 If you can, if you're allowed to travel in four years, come back and let's see how wrong we were.

02:14:18.000 We can update.

02:14:19.000 Well, thank you very much.

02:14:20.000 I really appreciate you coming in here.

02:14:22.000 It's great to see you again.

02:14:23.000 It's always fun.

02:14:24.000 Okay.

02:14:24.000 All right.

02:14:26.000 Think about it, kids.

02:14:27.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 14, 2026

Joe Rogan Experience #2525 - Nick Bostrom

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