#930 - Will MacAskill

[0] We've got to figure out a way to make it, so we just have a one button thing, where everything sinks up with one button.

[1] Is that possible one day?

[2] Maybe.

[3] We're live.

[4] We're live.

[5] We're live, live.

[6] Cool.

[7] How are you, sir?

[8] Yeah, I'm not too bad.

[9] Welcome.

[10] Thanks for coming, man. Appreciate it.

[11] Yeah, no way.

[12] Thanks so much for having me. Sam Harris is going to be with us, but he flaked out last minute.

[13] He's a busy man. Yeah, he's a busy man. So I'm interested to talk to you about a bunch of things, but one of the big ones is this idea of, this idea of, effective altruism and this is something that you really promote to the point where I don't know if this is true but I read this about you that everything that you make over $36 ,000 a year you donate yeah that's right so wow yeah so everything above technically it's everything above 20 ,000 pounds from 2009 Oxford so in just inflation cost of living changes and stuff but that's about $36 ,000 so you've just sort of decided that which is by the way the 1 % for the whole world yeah Not quite.

[14] About 2%.

[15] Yeah.

[16] I'll be in the top.

[17] Still be in the top 2%.

[18] Even despite...

[19] I thought it was 34 ,000.

[20] I think 34 ,000 puts you in the top 1%.

[21] I think it's $55 ,000.

[22] Oh, is it's a...

[23] Maybe since Trump's been in office.

[24] It's bumped up.

[25] Yeah, that's right.

[26] But it's a, it's, you know, what you're doing is, if that's really the case, that's a very charitable thing.

[27] Yeah.

[28] And it's also, I mean, it's most of my income over the course of my life, like especially as an academic, you're not going to earn tons.

[29] though since effective altism blew up, you end up getting things like speaking fees and, you know, and I give all that away as well.

[30] So it's going to end up probably being like the large majority of income over the course of my life.

[31] Do you ever, like, want to buy something and be like, shit, if I wasn't so goddamn generous, I'd be able to get this.

[32] You know, I never do.

[33] Really?

[34] I basically never think that, yeah.

[35] I think, like, this, like, I feel like in contemporary society, we just get bombarded with marketing stuff all the time saying like, oh, you'll really, need this thing if you're going to have a good life.

[36] And I think like an almost every case that's just not through.

[37] I think the psychological evidence just shows that once you're above a certain level of income, additional money just has a very small impact on your happiness.

[38] And in my own case, like, the things that make me happy are like being surrounded by friends.

[39] That's for the gym membership.

[40] That's like $40 a month or something.

[41] It's not fairly much.

[42] I can afford that.

[43] Being able to work and, you know, what I really am passionate about and I already have that so my life is just so good in so many ways and I feel like there's so much of a focus on money and how money is the key to happiness and it's just I think it's just all bullshit basically what's definitely some bullshit in it and I see that a lot in my neighborhood because I live where white people go to breed and they they go to breed and they sit down and they just talk about things they talk about range rovers and certain watches and certain purses and shoes and it becomes this constant.

[44] The amazing thing is just how you adapt.

[45] So it's called the hedonic treadmill.

[46] The richer you are, the richer you need to be.

[47] Oh, yeah.

[48] So I was once part of a conversation, I was going to give a talk, and I was going to like a family, and I was on a private jet, in fact.

[49] And the conversation was discussion of different private jets and which private jets are better than so on.

[50] This other person has this really nice private jet.

[51] And it just means that, like, at no stage, Do you ever lose the like, oh, I could just have this nicer thing?

[52] No, because you can get to the point where you want a jumbo jet, like one of those Qantas Airbuses and decked out like a house.

[53] Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that one of those Richard Branson type characters probably has something like that.

[54] Yeah, that's totally right.

[55] Well, it seems to get to this, you hit this critical mass stage where you, you know, like these billionaire characters, where they start buying $100 million yachts and $400 million dollar yachts and what is the most expensive yacht i believe it's a half a billion dollars or more that's incredible yeah yeah and you need to have a staff to take care of it the whole time and if it ever the thing is i think if i had a yacht that would make my life worse because now i'd be stressing about this yacht like if it gets damaged like i feel bad that i'm not using it yeah yeah i would imagine and less well i guess not though because if you kind of look at this oh jesus christ it's a billion billion dollars on a yacht the streets of monaco is what it's called and it is one billion dollars go to that thing oh that's it's it's a it's a neighborhood I think it's a floating neighborhood I think on all of these things you should replace the cost with how many bed nets you could buy for children in subzaharan Africa oh well that's just ridiculous hold on go up one did one say 1 .2 billion scroll up yes estimated estimated price oh my god the clips oh 450 million to 1 .2 billion that's like when you go to get it made and you go like how much is it going to cost me like between 450 million and 1 .2 billion you're like ah you know normal money yeah yeah normal shit pocket change that is fucking insane look at that goddamn thing i mean that it's the oh it's a replica of the monaco grand prix track oh my god that's insane So you can drive around on your yacht at a ridiculous rate of speed.

[56] So this guy probably has like a Ferrari.

[57] They go, blah, blah, all over the surface of his crazy yacht.

[58] Okay, but it's got a fake beach.

[59] But it hasn't been sold yet.

[60] Oh, it hasn't actually owned yet, I don't think.

[61] Oh, okay.

[62] It's going to be interesting who buys that.

[63] They're going to get a lot of attention.

[64] Well, there are enough people.

[65] There's a bunch of those people.

[66] Yeah.

[67] I mean, I don't know how many.

[68] $1 .2 billion.

[69] That's probably, there's only a couple of thousand people in the world who are worth that much.

[70] Really?

[71] Yeah.

[72] Even if you're willing to sink their whole fortune.

[73] How many billionaires do you think there are worldwide?

[74] Let's guess.

[75] Three and a half thousand billionaires.

[76] Three and a half thousand?

[77] You sound very confident.

[78] I think it's about that, yeah.

[79] Oh, that's a large number.

[80] That is kind of crazy.

[81] Three and a half thousand people that have more than $1 ,000 million.

[82] Yeah.

[83] And here's all Will McCaskill.

[84] I know.

[85] 35 ,000 cuts it off.

[86] Yeah.

[87] But then half that.

[88] 1800.

[89] 1 ,800 people?

[90] Billionaires?

[91] Oh, you're happy.

[92] Glad we've got...

[93] Well, no, I'm just happy we've got a fact check on there.

[94] Correct all my false statistics.

[95] Well, that's a lot of money, man. But it is one of those weird things where I do not think that money equates to happen.

[96] One of the things that money does do is it alleviates the stress of bills.

[97] But a lot of those stress of bills can be alleviated by not buying as many things, right?

[98] It's like a lot of the stress of bills that people have is sort of self -imposed stress.

[99] Like you get a mortgage for a very large house.

[100] You have car payments, you have all these different things that you're paying for.

[101] So that kind of money stress that some people put themselves under is actually not really necessary, right?

[102] Yeah, absolutely.

[103] So if you broke it down to what do you actually need, just need a nice place to live where it's not crime -ridden and it's safe.

[104] You need a bed.

[105] What else do you need?

[106] Food?

[107] Yeah, you need food, exercise, obviously.

[108] Are you one of those no TV dudes?

[109] Do you have a TV?

[110] Well, I watch Netflix, HBO.

[111] Oh, okay, all right.

[112] Just finished Veep, which I love.

[113] Is it good?

[114] Yeah, it gets better.

[115] The first seasons aren't so good, but then it gets really good.

[116] I don't have that kind of patience for not so good seasons.

[117] Oh, yeah, I just get addicted.

[118] Even if I watch something and I think it's awful, I still just, I will get addicted.

[119] Right away?

[120] I have to watch all of it.

[121] Yeah, I have like the most compulsive personality.

[122] Have you seen House of Cards?

[123] I've not seen, deliberately not started House of Cards for that reason.

[124] That's a good show.

[125] I'm deep into that.

[126] Yeah, like, Game of Thrones makes my life worse.

[127] I like hate it.

[128] Really?

[129] I think it's amazing television, but I find it just so disdressing.

[130] Because it's so good?

[131] I still have to watch it all the time.

[132] Why do you find it distressing?

[133] Just like, you know...

[134] The violence?

[135] Yeah, the violence.

[136] People's getting their heads popped and stuff.

[137] Oh, that one with the mountain?

[138] Yeah, that's the one that really stays with me. That's rough, yeah.

[139] It gives me a lot of anxiety because I know there's only two seasons left.

[140] And the next season, this one coming up is only seven episodes, and the final season is only six.

[141] I'm so happy about that.

[142] It's like...

[143] It's not making me happy, Will.

[144] I'm not very happy about that at all.

[145] It's like someone saying they're going to stop selling Heatherwin or something.

[146] And then you're like...

[147] be free.

[148] I'm going to have to get a hooked on OxyContin's then.

[149] That's what I feel.

[150] I'm just, I'm going to have to watch the whole season all over again or the whole series.

[151] So you have a television.

[152] You have a computer, I'm sure.

[153] Yeah, of course.

[154] Have a computer.

[155] Yeah.

[156] Yeah.

[157] I like move around a ton.

[158] So I normally, like I don't have a house, but it wouldn't be convenient to have a house because I'm traveling so much.

[159] So you rent an apartment or something?

[160] Yeah, I live in England.

[161] I live in Oxford most of the time.

[162] I spend a quite a chunk of my time out in the Bay Area.

[163] like significant part of our staff and the non -profits out there and I've got lots of contacts, I still organizations, about that.

[164] So most of your time, it seems like you're spending working for charitable organizations.

[165] Yeah, so I'm either, I have kind of three hats.

[166] So one is an academic, so I'm Professor at Oxford.

[167] Second is this kind of more public figure where I'm talking about these ideas through books or on this podcast and so on.

[168] And then third is I run a non -profit called the Center for Effective Altruism, which is more about like finding the best charities, the ones that are doing the most good, is going to help other people the most, and try to promote them and try and get people to give more and to give more effectively.

[169] Yeah, we've gone over ineffective charities, or I shouldn't say ineffective, but charities that are, the way they're structured, when you look at how much money is actually going towards the charity itself and how much is going towards the structure of the organization, it's kind of crazy.

[170] Yeah, I mean, I think, so that's normally the focus of, ineffective charities is on like yeah how much is spent on overheads right but I actually think that's not the most important thing the most important thing is what's the charity actually doing like what's the actual program so one charity for example that I'm sure like you'll find funny is a charity called homeopaths without borders and it goes to Haiti in particular and distributes like homeopathic remedies um you know which don't work they don't provide any health benefit and even if it had a zero percent overhead cost So, like, spent nothing, everyone was volunteers.

[171] It would still be bad charity.

[172] You still shouldn't be giving to that charity.

[173] Right.

[174] That's a hilarious one.

[175] I didn't know that that one existed.

[176] Yeah, yeah.

[177] It's kind of small, but...

[178] I would imagine.

[179] Yeah, well, thankfully.

[180] Homeopaths without borders.

[181] Jeez.

[182] God.

[183] But then there's some super effective charities like, you know, a program that's, you know, saving a life with every $3 ,500, like the Against Malaria Foundation, even if they were spending a bunch on, you know, investigating what the best area is to focus on or like paying their staff more if what you should just care about is how much money you're putting in and what you're getting as an outcome right well I think it's impossible for everyone to it's impossible for you to give $10 and all $10 is going to go directly to the charity because there's got to be overhead there's got to be infrastructure there's got to be a bunch of people working there rent it's there's costs but the question is like at what point does it become kind of a scam Because there are most certainly some organizations that appear to be charitable organizations, but are really kind of a scam.

[184] Yeah, there's definitely some.

[185] So like the Kids Wish Network, for example, kind of like the Maker Wish Foundation, similar idea.

[186] And they spent 99 % of their budget on fundraising.

[187] So they were just like this kind of charitable Ponzi scheme, basically.

[188] So they spent all their money on fundraising itself.

[189] Yeah, to then invest in more fundraising.

[190] And one percent somehow or another gets out there.

[191] Yeah, well, like, maybe it's not as high as 99%, but it was above 90%.

[192] Something crazy.

[193] So what does that money get to?

[194] Like, what do they do with the actual money itself?

[195] And then the idea behind that was granting wishes for sick children.

[196] So do you remember the San Francisco thing with Bat Kid?

[197] It was like a big, like there was a big event, lots of publicity around it.

[198] Is Bat Kid a child that had some strange disorder?

[199] Yeah, so the child, I did.

[200] don't know the details.

[201] I think the child had leukemia.

[202] Their wish was that they wanted to be Batman for the day.

[203] Oh, okay.

[204] This is a different thing.

[205] Yeah, okay, cool.

[206] So they, like, the Make a Wish Foundation set up this, you know, amazing story where they got to kind of drive in a Batmobile and, like, have this a fantastic day where they're basically Batman for the day.

[207] Kids wish network is doing basically the same thing.

[208] They find seriously sick kids, often terminally ill kids, and say, what one thing would you want and we'll make it happen?

[209] But I think the, but there is a lot of focus.

[210] on particularly bad charities, you know, the ones that just really come up to completely dysfunctional.

[211] But I think that's not actually the most important message.

[212] What's most important is just even among the charities that are kind of good, even the ones that are making a difference, there's still a vast difference in the impact you have, difference of hundreds or thousands of times between the charities that are merely good and the ones that are really the very best.

[213] And that's primarily dependent on what program are they focusing on.

[214] Hmm So what is there any charity that people should avoid spending their money on?

[215] Like are there are there charities that you feel like are just so Ridiculously ineffective like yeah I mean like the ones we mentioned of kids wish net Right A homoopaths without borders um The homopaths without borders is ridiculous It's like voodoo on parade just stop Yeah I mean there's another one I can't remember it but does um astrology without limits No, it does dolphin therapy for autistic children, which has no evidence of working, but does actually just have some, like, risk of the children drowning.

[216] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[217] Yeah, so you can, like, cherry pick these examples.

[218] But the thing is that these are just, like, not really representative.

[219] In general, I think charity's doing good.

[220] But the question is just, like, in the same way as if you're buying a product for yourself, you don't just want to get, like, you know, a laptop as long as it's work.

[221] You want to find, like, what's the best laptop I can get with my money?

[222] Right.

[223] Or if you're investing, you want to not just get, like, an OK return.

[224] You want to see, well, what's the best return I can get?

[225] Right.

[226] So in that sense, I think, like, the number of charities that you think are just, yeah, this is really competing for being the most effective charity in the world.

[227] That's actually very small.

[228] So Givewell, for example, evaluator looks at all sorts of different global health and global development charities.

[229] And its list of charities that's like, yeah, this is just super good.

[230] You should really be donating to them.

[231] It's only seven charities long at the moment.

[232] Wow.

[233] And that's up for them last year when it was only four charities long.

[234] Wow.

[235] Seven charities out of how, I mean, what is the overall total of active charities?

[236] It's got to be into the thousands.

[237] Hundreds of thousands, yeah, I'm sure.

[238] What got you involved in this?

[239] You're a young guy.

[240] You seem like you should be playing video games and skateboarding or something?

[241] I spent a lot of my teenage years playing video games.

[242] Yeah?

[243] Yeah, it was, again, compulsive personality.

[244] Yeah.

[245] I need to ban myself from doing it.

[246] So you're compulsive?

[247] the personality is now going towards good things.

[248] It went, yeah, I managed, the key was managing my life so that the things I get really focused on addicted, addicted to were good things, love and bad.

[249] So, yeah, it all started back in, so I was back in high school, kind of undergraduate, of being very convinced by the arguments of this philosopher, Peter Singer.

[250] Oh, I know Peter Singer.

[251] He's like a radical animal rights activists as well, right?

[252] Yeah, he has a few things.

[253] and he had this argument which is that you know the way I tell the story is imagine someone walks is walking past a shallow pond and they see a child drowning in that shallow pond and they could run in and they could save the child but they're wearing a really nice suit a suit that costs like $3 ,000 and so they say no I'm not going to save that child I'm just going to walk by and let it down because I don't want to lose the cost of this suit I normally say, look, in moral philosophy, we have a technical term for people like that.

[254] They're called assholes.

[255] And this is how I convey it in my seminars.

[256] And obviously we all agree, like, yeah, come on.

[257] If it's just you could clearly save this child that's right in front of you, you ought to do that.

[258] The cost of $3 ,000 does not count.

[259] But then what Peter Singer's insight is, he says, well, what's the difference between that child that's right there in front of you?

[260] and that child that's in sub -Zaharan Africa, who you could save, you'll never meet them for sure.

[261] But you could still save their life with just a few thousand dollars if you donate it to a really effective non -profit.

[262] And he considers all the different ways in which these cases might be disanalogous, but decides ultimately, like, no, there's actually just no morally relevant difference.

[263] And so, yeah, we do just have an obligation to give away at least a very significant proportion of our income.

[264] And I was really convinced by this kind of on an intellectual.

[265] level for many years.

[266] But I never really did anything about it.

[267] And not until I went to Oxford to do a postgraduate degree in philosophy.

[268] And in the summer, between then, I needed some money.

[269] I worked as a fundraiser for CARE International, a global development charity.

[270] So I was one of those annoying people in the street who would kind of pest, like, trying get in your way and then ask you to donate $10 a month.

[271] And it meant that all day, every day I was talking about, like, look, this is the conditions of people next to the poverty.

[272] We can do so much to help people at such little cost to ourselves, you know, why are we not doing this?

[273] And I was just over and over again, kind of getting these apathetic responses.

[274] And I was just getting so frustrated because I just thought, look, these people are just not living up to their own values.

[275] People clearly do care, but there's some sort of block going on.

[276] And then I thought, well, I'm going to do philosophy.

[277] And at the time, I was planning to do like philosophy of language, logic, very esoteric stuff.

[278] And so I thought, well, I'm not living up to my own values.

[279] I should really try and make a change.

[280] And so I went to Oxford, and I started asking a whole bunch of different kind of academics, well, what's the impact of your work?

[281] What kind of a difference have you made?

[282] And normally they were like, I'm not really in it to make an impact.

[283] I just kind of interested in these ideas.

[284] And that was pretty disheartening.

[285] But I kept persisting until I met another postgraduate student called Toby Ord. And he just blew me away, because he had also been convinced by these ideas, but he'd gone one step further.

[286] And he'd said, yep, I've made a commitment to give away almost all of my income over the course of my life, about a million pounds.

[287] At the time, he was living on 9 ,000 pounds, saving 2 ,000 pounds and donating 2 ,000 pounds.

[288] So he was like really hardcore.

[289] But the thing, as well as like actually taking these ideas and putting into practice, what really blew me away was just how positive he was.

[290] And it was not that he was kind of wearing his hair shirt, flagellating.

[291] Instead, he was saying, look, this is an amazing way to live.

[292] We have this amazing opportunity to do a huge amount of goods to help so many other people, thousands of people, what's actually a very low cost to ourselves.

[293] And me having that one person who also kind of shared my worldview, shared my ambitions, just meant, kind of gave that little psychological block was lifted and it meant that I was like, okay, cool, I'm on board.

[294] First I'm going to commit a 10%, then I was like, no, actually I think I can do this further pledge.

[295] And then that meant I had question of, well, I'm planning to give away, like, million pounds over the course of my life.

[296] Where should that money go?

[297] You know, I want to make sure it has as big an impact as possible.

[298] And that meant I started digging into, well, how can we compare between different charities?

[299] I found there was a ton of work from health and development economics that could help us to answer this.

[300] And what began as this kind of side project between these two, you know, ivory tower of academics, me and Toby, we found that loads of people just were really taken by this idea, both of giving more, but in particular of giving more effectively.

[301] And over time, this kind of global movement called effective altruism start to form around these ideas and started to broaden in a couple of ways.

[302] So one is that it broadened away from just charitable donations to also thinking about, well, what should I think about with respect to my personal consumption?

[303] What should I think about with respect to my career?

[304] If I'm really aiming to do as much good as possible, what should I do?

[305] And then secondly, also starting to think about cause areas other than just global poverty as well.

[306] And it tends to be the case that within the community at the moment, the cause areas that people think are the very most pressing are global health and development still for sure, but then also factory farming, where, again, there's just such a vast amount of suffering, which is completely unnecessary.

[307] And then also preservation of the long -run future of humanity and worrying about risks of, you know, global catastrophe, things that may be fairly unlikely, but would be very, very bad if they did happen, especially relating to new technology like, you know, novel pathogens, sort of viruses you could design in a lab and so on.

[308] Well, you were also very concerned with AI as well, right?

[309] Artificial intelligence.

[310] Yeah, that's exactly right.

[311] And that's, I think, in this category of if you look at the history of, human progress, technological change just creates these huge step changes and just how humanity progresses.

[312] So it was only 12 years in 1933 to then 1945 between Leo Zillard first coming up with the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

[313] And that was just a purely conceptual idea on a bit of paper.

[314] 12 years from that to then the deployment of the first nuclear bomb.

[315] And think how radical a change that is, having suddenly being in the nuclear age, that was only 12 years.

[316] Yeah, we went over the invention of the airplane to dropping an atomic bomb out of the airplane.

[317] And I believe it was 50 years, right?

[318] Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 years?

[319] Yeah, isn't that?

[320] Take a few?

[321] Yeah, so technological progress can suddenly go in these huge leaps that we're not prepared for.

[322] That we're often very not prepared for.

[323] And I think artificial intelligence is in this category where we're really making radical progress in AI, especially over the last five years, it's really one of the fastest developing technologies, I think, and yet has huge potential in so many different ways.

[324] And as with any new technology, huge positive potential.

[325] Really, if you get AI right, you can solve almost any other problem, but also potential risks as well, where there's risk that might be more familiar, you know, worries about automation, unemployment, worries about autonomous weapons, which I think should be taken seriously.

[326] And then also just worries about, well, what if we really do manage to make human -level artificial intelligence, very good arguments that would then quickly move to superhuman -level artificial intelligence.

[327] And what then?

[328] Are we now in a situation like the Neanderthals versus Homo sapiens where we've suddenly created this intelligence that is greater than our own?

[329] are we able to control that?

[330] Are we able to ensure that that transition is positive rather negative?

[331] Have you ever considered the possibility when you look at all the impoverished people in the world, all the cruelty, all the people that are so just concerned with material possessions and shallow thinking and war and just the evil that men do?

[332] Is it possible that we're sort of an outdated concept, that what we are as these biological organisms that are still slaves to the whole Darwinian evolutionary survival of the fittest natural selection sort of paradigm that we've operated under for all these many thousands and hundreds of thousands of years as humans is it possible that we're giving birth to the next thing that just like we don't long for the days when we used to be monkeys throwing shit at each other from the trees one day we will be something different, whether it would be a combination of us in these machines or whether we're going to augment our own intelligence with some sort of artificial, whether it's some sort of an exo brain or something that's going to take us to that.

[333] Or it's going to be simply that we create artificial intelligence.

[334] Artificial intelligence no longer has use for us because we're illogical.

[335] And then that becomes the new life form.

[336] And then we're, we're, we're hard.

[337] hide in the cave somewhere, hoping the Terminators don't get us.

[338] Yeah, I mean, I think, like, over the long term, I mean, with all of these things, the question of kind of timelines is very hard.

[339] And sometimes people want to reject this sort of discussion because, oh, this is so far in the future.

[340] Whereas I think, like, if something's sufficiently important, we should be talking about it even if maybe it's, you know, decades of generations hence.

[341] It might not be, right?

[342] I mean, it might not be that far away.

[343] But who knows?

[344] Like with the atomic bomb, that was hugely fast program.

[345] just, you know, 12 years.

[346] So we want to be prepared.

[347] But then as for, like, yeah, is it going to be homo sapiens around for the next, you know, in a thousand years' time?

[348] I think that would just be extremely unlikely.

[349] That will be around?

[350] You think we're not going to be around anymore?

[351] Yeah, I mean, I think if intelligent creatures are still around, it's going to be something, in a thousand years' time, it's going to be something that's not homo sapiens, like you said, there's kind of free.

[352] or it's like not what we would consider kind of typical humans now.

[353] Well, we're obviously severely flawed, right?

[354] I mean, if we like if you ask people, if you ask the average person, do you think that in your lifetime you can imagine a world without war?

[355] Most people say no. Like the vast majority of people say no. A world without crime, a world without violence, a world without theft.

[356] Most people say no. That just shows you how inherently flawed most people have viewed.

[357] the human species.

[358] You know, we know that we can do it in small groups.

[359] You know, like if the three of us were on an island, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be stealing from each other and murdering each other, right?

[360] Just a few of us.

[361] But when you get to large scale humanity, it comes very easy to disassociate or create this diffusion of responsibility where there's, you know, enough people so you don't really value them as much and you're allowed to get away with some pretty heinous stuff, especially when you consider drone warfare, things that we're able to do long distance where we're not seeing the person that we're having the effect on.

[362] Yeah, absolutely.

[363] It's a very flawed thing, the human species.

[364] Wouldn't it be better if something better came along?

[365] I mean, I think there's, yeah.

[366] Sort of.

[367] Yeah, I think there's a...

[368] Not good for you and I, though.

[369] Well...

[370] We'd be obsolete.

[371] Yeah, I mean, well, we're going to be obsolete in a hundred years anyway.

[372] I mean, as in we'll be dead.

[373] Right.

[374] So, the question is just will are kind of, you know, Hence, well, you know, it's not the question is not really about us.

[375] It's about our grand children.

[376] Well, it really forces the idea to be considered, like, what is valuable about life?

[377] Like, is it the experience?

[378] Is it happiness?

[379] Is it shared fun?

[380] Is it love?

[381] Like, what is what's valuable about being a person?

[382] Yeah.

[383] And how much of that is going to change if we're made out of something that people have created or, or maybe we're made out of.

[384] something artificial intelligence has created because we've created something that's far superior to us so yeah i mean i have a view on this as you might expect where i mean in my view um the thing that's valuable and the only thing that's valuable ultimately is conscious experience um so that's good positive like good conscious experiences happy happiness joy and so on that's positive that's good for the world um negative conscious experiences suffering pain distress those are bad for the world and so that's why You know, it's a good thing for me to do some service to you, to benefit you, but I can't do anything good to benefit this bottle of water.

[385] Right.

[386] And so then the key question in terms of what should we think about, supposing it is the case that, you know, a thousand years time, it's now synthetic life, it's artificial intelligence or something that's, like, that are in charge and they're no longer any humans.

[387] Would this be good or bad?

[388] The question for me is, you know, are they having conscious experience?

[389] experiences and are those conscious experiences good about?

[390] So that's it, just conscious experience?

[391] Yeah, so it's a controversial.

[392] It's a controversial view.

[393] There's a thought experiment which is often used to challenge this view.

[394] Do you want to hear it?

[395] Yes.

[396] So it's called the experience machine.

[397] And the idea is supposing that tomorrow you could plug into this machine.

[398] It's like the most amazing VR you could ever have.

[399] And in this machine, you will live.

[400] let's say you'll live for 200 years and you'll be in the most amazing bliss.

[401] You'll have the most amazing experiences of, you know, and your experiences will involve incredible relationships, incredible creative achievement and so on.

[402] And it'll just be like the perfect life that you could live experientially for the next 200 years.

[403] And the question is insofar as you are self -interested.

[404] So put aside considerations you might have about wanting to make the world a better place, but just insofar as you care about yourself, would you plug into this thing?

[405] Bearing in mind that in a certain sense, all of these experiences are going to be fake.

[406] You're going to have experiences of having amazing friendships, great works of art and so on.

[407] But they're not going to be real.

[408] It's just sensory inputs provided by a computer.

[409] So the question is, would you or ought you insofar as yourself interested, plug into this machine?

[410] what would you what would you answer that's a very good question I might already be plugged into it right I mean you oh so this is this is a great question right and I think it's a good argument against is the question well supposing you were already plugged in would you unplug supposing I told you that actually you're a banker than Monaco and fuck Monaco I just I'm not interested in that no I want to stay right here yeah so can I stay plugged in please do I have to pay more what I have to do you would have to do nothing but It's interesting then if people think, so most people, and it seemed like maybe yourself, would intuitively, you'd say, no, I wouldn't plug into this machine.

[411] I don't know if I would say that.

[412] I would have to really deeply consider it because right now it's just so, it's so abstract, this idea that that could be possible.

[413] It's so, it's fantasy.

[414] We're having fun.

[415] But when you talk to the leading minds when it comes to virtual reality or, you're, you're, you're, you're having fun.

[416] artificial reality or simulation theory, you know, when they start talking about what will be possible one day, they're going to, without a doubt, within a hundred years or 500 years or whatever the number is, they're going to be able to create an artificial reality that's indiscernible from this reality.

[417] You're going to be able to feel things.

[418] There's going to be emotions that come to you.

[419] They're going to be able to recreate every single aspect of an everyday life.

[420] It's just a matter of time.

[421] I mean, they're really close now, and not really close in terms of, like, They don't give you emotions and they don't give you feeling.

[422] But if you put on an HTC vibe and go through some of those virtual reality games, I mean, it's bizarre how real it feels.

[423] Yeah, yeah.

[424] And when you go back to like playing Pong, did you ever play Pong?

[425] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[426] Popp, pop, pop, pop, you know, it's such a weird thing that that happened inside of our, when I was a kid, Pong came along, and we were blown away.

[427] We couldn't believe that we could actually do something on the television.

[428] and you could see it move.

[429] It was so fantastic.

[430] And if you gave that to one of my kids, they'd spit on it.

[431] They'd be like, what kind of piece of shit video game is this?

[432] They would think it's just so ridiculous.

[433] But to me, at the time, it was amazing.

[434] You go from that to one of these HTC Vive games, which is all taking place within my lifetime.

[435] And you go, well, a lifetime from now, if you follow the exponential increase in the ability, the technological innovation, it's going to be spectacular.

[436] It's going to be.

[437] Absolutely.

[438] So when that does happen, how will you be able to know, if it's indiscernible, how will you know if you're in it?

[439] And how do you know if you're not in it right now?

[440] That's the real question, right?

[441] Yeah, I mean, there are actually some arguments for thinking, you know, this is Nick Boston, a colleague of mine, his simulation argument, for thinking we are in a simulation right now.

[442] In fact, it's very likely that we should be.

[443] Yeah.

[444] Do you buy that?

[445] I actually, I'm kind of agnostic.

[446] I think you should take the hypothesis seriously.

[447] But I think the argument doesn't quite go through for what's attractive and what's not attractive about that theory to you, his version of it.

[448] Yeah, so the argument is that...

[449] Framing it if you could, like his version of it.

[450] Yeah, yeah.

[451] So his argument is that in the future, supposing we believe that the human race doesn't go extinct or post -humans don't go extinct over the next few thousand years.

[452] And secondly, that the people in the future have an interest in...

[453] recreating their past just for kind of historical interest or for learning that they're going to be interested in running because they're now going to have huge amazing computer power they're going to be able to create simulations for the past that they're going to have some interest in running simulations of the past well the number of if that is true then the number of simulations that these future people are going to be running will vastly outnumber the number of actual timelines the kind of base universe, as it were.

[454] So for the one real universe where history kind of unfolds, there's also, let's call it, you know, 10 ,000 simulations of that universe.

[455] And if that's true, then it's the case that, well, given that I'm just, you know, these things really are indiscernible for the people who are inside them, it's overwhelmingly likely just in the base rate that I'm going to be in a simulation rather than, um, in the real world.

[456] And what Nick Bostham says, actually, is not that we definitely are in a simulation, but he just points out the conflict between these three kind of beliefs that we would seem to hold.

[457] One is that we're not going to go extinct in the near future.

[458] Two is that, you know, people in the future will have some interest in simulating the past.

[459] And thirdly, that we're not living in a simulation.

[460] And he himself gives, you know, a reasonable degree of belief.

[461] Maybe he thinks it's like 10 % likely, 15 % likely that we're, in a simulation.

[462] Other people who understand the argument vary a bit more, but I think you know, it's something you should at least be taking seriously.

[463] The reason I object it is kind of even weirder, I think, or it's somewhat technical.

[464] But the basic thought is just that according to, like, the best guesses from cosmologists, we're actually in an infinite universe, the universe is infinitely big.

[465] Now, we can't affect an infinitely big universe.

[466] We're restricted by the speed of light to what we can affect and to what we can see.

[467] But the best idea, according to the best theory we have, universe just kind of keeps on going.

[468] But if so, then there's already like an infinite number of observers of people kind of in that bottom universe.

[469] And that means that you've now got kind of an infinite number of people kind of experiencing things and then you've got the simulations and you've got like 10 ,000 simulations but you can't say there's 10 ,000 times as many simulated beings as there are real beings because there's already an infinite number of real beings you're looking so constant no no go ahead keep going but that means if you've got so the key of the um of boston's argument was that you've got 10 ,000 times as many simulated beings as you have real, like, non -simulated beings.

[470] But the problem is, is an infinite number of real beings because the universe is infinite.

[471] Yeah, that's right.

[472] And so if you've already got an infinite number of real beings, the fact that you've got 10 ,000 times infinite, that's still infinite.

[473] And you can't, it's kind of a case where, like, our best methods of assigning degrees of belief to things kind of run out.

[474] If you think it's, you know, there's an infinite number of simulated beings, an infinite number of real beings, then what's the chance of you being one or the other?

[475] I mean, like, we don't actually have the, like, tools to be able to answer that.

[476] Neil deGrasse Tyson was trying to explain this to me a couple of weeks ago.

[477] Yeah.

[478] There are infinities that are bigger than other infinities.

[479] Yeah, so that's also the case.

[480] But, yeah, that was like, broke my brain again.

[481] Yeah.

[482] So the number, but the key, we're all talking about the lowest, what's called cardinality, the smallest infinity, which is the size of the infinity of all the integers, one, two, three, four, or counting numbers.

[483] And if you take that size of infinity and multiply it by 10 ,000, let's say, you just get the same number, which is infinity.

[484] Right.

[485] And then what Neil was saying was, yeah, there are these even bigger levels of infinity.

[486] So if you look at not just all the counting numbers, but all of the numbers you can make fractions out of, a half, a quarter, an eighth, and so on, that's a bigger, that's just more numbers than the infinity of the counting numbers.

[487] I've spent a lot of time trying to understand why human beings are so obsessed with innovation, why human beings are so obsessed with technological progress.

[488] And one of the things that I continue to come to is that we think of everything in this world as being natural.

[489] behavior of butterflies and wolves and the way rivers run down from the mountain, but we don't think of ourselves and our own behavior as natural.

[490] We don't think of our own thirst for conquest and innovation and the, even materialism.

[491] I think materialism is probably a very natural reaction to our need to somehow or another fuel innovation, and that one of the ways to ensure that innovation is constantly fueled is that people are constantly obsessed with buying new things, constantly obsessed with the latest and greatest, which fuels innovation.

[492] And when you look at the universe itself, and you look at all the various things that we know to be natural processes in the universe, like in order to make a human being, a star has to explode.

[493] When you literally are made out of stardust, when you run that by people for the first time, they go, wait, what?

[494] Like, in order for you to have carbon -based life form, that has to be created inside a burning, dying star.

[495] And that's the only way you make this thing, like what you are right now.

[496] And then that thing makes artificial reality.

[497] And then that thing makes perhaps even crazier.

[498] I mean, if you follow the ideas of technological progress, if something gets to a point where it's indiscernible from reality, how do you know it's not a new reality?

[499] How do you know it's not a new kind of reality?

[500] Like, Jamie sent me hip to these artificial worlds that people have created online where they're essentially infinite, and they're constantly changing and morphing and growing.

[501] And the games are terrible.

[502] People don't like them because you go to places and there's fucking nothing there.

[503] And you can go to an infinite number of these places and there's nothing there.

[504] These adventures are non -existent.

[505] So you're in these gigantic fake worlds where you're traveling from place to place.

[506] but right now we're looking at it in a very two -dimensional way.

[507] You're looking at it on a flat screen.

[508] One day it's not going to be two -dimensional.

[509] One day it's going to be something that you are interfacing with.

[510] Your consciousness is interfacing with it.

[511] Is it only real if we can take it and drop it on something?

[512] If we can hit it with a hammer, if we could put it on a scale, if we can use a measuring stick and measuring it, is it only real there?

[513] Or is it real if it follows it?

[514] every single check, like if you check off, every single item on the list of conscious reality and conscious experience.

[515] Yeah, I think that's a great question, because I think the dichotomy that a lot of people think in terms of natural and non -natural, I think it's just meaningless.

[516] I mean, people firstly think this is natural and this is not.

[517] I mean, in a sense, everything we're doing is natural because we're like, and we're sapiens are part of a natural process.

[518] and in another maybe in another sense everything we're doing is not natural but then why does that matter what's the model relevance of something being natural versus not natural lots of stuff that happens in the natural world is just really awful huge amounts of cannibalism like murder suffering so it's not clear why we would care about something being natural rather non -natural but then the second question is yeah let's consider this virtual reality again, this experience machine that you could plug yourself into.

[519] And as part of the description, I said, oh, none of this would be real.

[520] You'd have all of these interactions with people that you think are friends and so on, but that wouldn't be real.

[521] And I think you could very well push back on that and say, why should something be physically instantiated, like in order for it to count as a real experience?

[522] Right.

[523] Why is it not the case that in this virtual reality, you're interacting with algorithms, but that's just as much, at least it's possible for that to be just as much friendship as if you're interacting with people who are, you know, flesh and blood?

[524] And I think it's hard to explain kind of what the difference would be.

[525] Because, you know, if you think about Star Trek, Jean -Luc Picard can be friends with data and android.

[526] He's not kind of biological, but, you know, we think that.

[527] you can still have kind of model worth and friendships and so on with creatures that are not made of kind of human biology, in which case, why does it the fact that something merely lives on silicone?

[528] Why wouldn't that, or as kind of seemingly merely software?

[529] Why does that mean you couldn't have kind of a genuine friendship with that thing, if it acts in a sufficiently sophisticated way, perhaps?

[530] Isn't there also an issue with our incredibly limited ability to view reality itself?

[531] we're only viewing the dimensions that are relevant to us in this current state of carbon -based life form, this talking monkey clinging to the spaceship flying through the universe, right?

[532] This is what's important to us.

[533] But when you pay attention to those, the dudes who write on yellow legal pads and they get into quantum physics and they have all those crazy equations that nobody but them understands, maybe you do.

[534] I look at that shit, I go, what the fuck are they writing?

[535] But they believe, I mean, what is the current model?

[536] They believe there's at least 11 dimensions, there perhaps could be more.

[537] What if there is a dimension that you can plug into that it's purely consciousness driven, meaning there's no physical experience, there's no touching the ground, there's no gravity, but you exist in a conscious state and it's perpetual.

[538] Like if you take a rocket ship and it gets past our gravity and shoots off into distant space and you have a clear shot of 14 billion years back to the beginning of the universe itself, with nothing in the way, you're just going to keep going for 14 billion light years.

[539] You're just going to keep going.

[540] Like, what if there is a place that your consciousness can go to like that?

[541] It's no longer burdened by biology, by the timeline of birth to death, by the limitations of the flesh.

[542] But consciousness itself can exist in some bizarre dimension that we just have an access to.

[543] So, yeah, I mean, I think consciousness is probably just ultimately a physical process.

[544] Why do you think that?

[545] Ultimately because of conservation of energy, the reason being so, you know, there's this age -old philosophical debate between the monists and dualists, people who think, is consciousness just ultimately some sort of physical process, or is it something special?

[546] So Descartes thought there was this pineal gland, this little bit of your brain and your conscious kind of soul.

[547] was just kind of steering your, like, monkey body through this pineal gland.

[548] But the question is just for why, I think the strongest argument about why that couldn't be right is it seems to be, like, it would have to be creating energy out of nowhere.

[549] And we've never, it seems to be just fixed law of the universe that that just can't happen.

[550] Because in order for, you know, this conscious mind to, if it's not merely a physical process, if it's not just the brain, in order for it to be able to affect what this physical entity is doing, it would have to use energy to be able to do that.

[551] So the energy would have to be coming from somewhere, and if it's not coming from just the physical realm, then suddenly we've got this counted examples to all the rest of science.

[552] Sort of, but are you aware of the theories of human neurotransmitters being pathways to other dimensions, like dimethylptamine?

[553] Do you know about all that?

[554] I mean, I know about DMT.

[555] Do you know it's produced in the pineal gland, where Descartes thought that all that stuff was going on, the seed of the soul with the Egyptians called the Eye of Horace, and the reason why the Catholics and so many ancient religions were so focused on pine cones in their art and their imagery, that's the pineal gland, that's the image of it.

[556] That's what it's supposed to represent.

[557] And for people who have had these intense, transformative psychedelic experiences by consuming exogenous dimethyptamine, which is produced by the brain, that you, have these insane transformative experiences where you feel like you are traveling to other dimensions.

[558] So I think, I mean, I do want to say like...

[559] Have you done any of that?

[560] I've never done DMT.

[561] Oh, you son of a bitch.

[562] Why not?

[563] What are you doing?

[564] Waste your time.

[565] I know.

[566] I'm such a good boy.

[567] But it's something that's in the brain.

[568] I mean, it's a natural product of human biology.

[569] I mean, whether it's natural or not, isn't the question.

[570] Just, you know, if I'm going to have a career based on my brain, I want to be very careful to not break it.

[571] To not break it, yeah.

[572] Yeah, but it's one of the most transient drugs ever observed in the body.

[573] Your body brings it back to baseline in like 15 minutes.

[574] Hmm.

[575] Okay, because, I mean, there's a lot of, I do think there's like tons of people very often greatly overestimate the risks of non -legal drugs like MDMA is like super safe and so on.

[576] Very overestimate the list, the risks, is that we're saying?

[577] Yeah, that's like that.

[578] Yeah, MDMA is weird, right?

[579] That's a weird one.

[580] It's not a natural drug.

[581] Dimethylotryptamine I think the real concern would be psychological because what you face is so bizarre Terrence McKenna had the best quote about it I think he said that you would risk death by astonishment Yeah Okay it's so bizarre That it's almost a sin For a guy as smart as you to not experience it But you just come right back and you're Even when you're there you're there It's you It's not like your consciousness dissolves into some bizarre quasi -living state and then you have to like work your way back to being you again no you're you're will mccaskel in the dimension whatever the fuck it is but what's crazy about it is that this is produced in the very area where descartes was believing the seat of the soul is and so many different eastern religions and all this psychological like all these different all these different religions and all these different cultures, they were all convinced that that one gland had some massive significance in terms of the spirit and the soul, whatever that means, whatever the spirit means.

[582] So yeah, so then the question is just in these experiences, is it the case that you're like genuinely seeing into another dimension?

[583] Right.

[584] Or is it the case that you just have a new kind of perspective on consciousness?

[585] So one thing I do think is that in terms of conscious experience, there's the sort of conscious experiences that humans have access to.

[586] And I think that must just be 0 .001 % out of the entire landscape of possible conscious experiences.

[587] So if you think, imagine if you're a bat and you could echo locate, that's just a radically different conscious experience.

[588] I don't think that maps onto any sort of conscious experience that humans could have.

[589] Have you seen people do that?

[590] You've seen blind people?

[591] Some blind people can do that.

[592] It's pretty amazing.

[593] That is amazing.

[594] Very effectively, too.

[595] It's like shockingly effectively.

[596] Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

[597] I mean, but there's also experiences, human experiences that are available without drugs that some people have achieved through radical states of meditation and Kundalini Yoga where they could achieve natural psychedelic states.

[598] Holotropic breathing, people that have done that have experienced like really radical psychological transformations and incredible psychedelic experiences from that as well.

[599] Yeah.

[600] And so I think, like, these sorts of experiences are very important, very interesting.

[601] And what they're, you know, I said that maybe we experience is 0 .01 % of all possible conscious experiences.

[602] And that just allows you to do, like, see a little bit more of this potential vast landscape.

[603] Whereas I think, but I think there's nothing unmagical about saying, ultimately, that's all explained in terms of physics, in terms of different sorts of neurons firing and different sorts of, transmitters and so on.

[604] We don't need to say, oh, and it's also this other thing which breaks all the known laws of physics that you're seeing into some other dimension in order for that to be an incredibly important thing.

[605] And nor is it unscientific to say, we know almost nothing about consciousness.

[606] In terms of the areas of scientific inquiry, we have no understanding at all about the relationship between conscious experiences and, you know, what we would think of as physical processes.

[607] We really have no idea about, you know, if you take, give me any sufficiently complicated physical processes, which are conscious and which are not, all we can go on is really this, well, I'm conscious.

[608] And so I know that things that kind of like me are probably conscious too.

[609] And that's the best we've got, really.

[610] And this is known as a hard problem of consciousness.

[611] And philosophers often say, like, they've solved it with something.

[612] And I think it's always begging the question.

[613] I think we should be very open to the fact that.

[614] But just as in 3 ,000 BC, people had no idea about the laws of physics.

[615] This was just completely unexplored territory.

[616] We should think contemporary science, this is just a big black gap in our scientific understanding.

[617] And perhaps it's something maybe 21st century science, maybe 22nd century science can really get to grips with.

[618] It does seem like the ultimate question.

[619] Like, what is it for?

[620] Why is it here?

[621] What controls it?

[622] Is it in the mind?

[623] Is it external?

[624] Is the brain just an antenna that tunes into consciousness?

[625] The dimethylptamine question is so bizarre because it's the most potent psychedelic drug known to man and your brain makes it.

[626] Yeah.

[627] Like, what's it in there for?

[628] I don't know if this is a myth, but I've heard it's what gets made when you die.

[629] Yeah.

[630] They believe that during high rates of stress where your body believes you're going to do.

[631] die.

[632] And when you're dreaming, when you're in heavy REM sleep, your body produces larger amounts of it than baseline.

[633] But they don't know.

[634] It's really difficult.

[635] They've only just now within the last few years, the Cottonwood Research Foundation, which Dr. Rick Strassman has a big part of it.

[636] He's the guy who wrote the book DMT, the spirit molecule.

[637] He did a bunch of the first FDA -approved drug trials with civilians where they took people and they gave them a Schedule 1 drug, dimethyltropamine, which is so crazy that it's a Schedule 1 drug that your body produces.

[638] But they gave it to people intravenously over the course of several months and they documented all the different trips and all the different commonalities that these people had in their experiences and he's working very closely with the Cottonwood Research Foundation and one of the things that they found is that they've recently discovered for it was just anecdotal evidence that it was produced by the pineal gland we knew the DMT was produced by the liver and the lungs but now they know for sure because they've isolated it in rats so in living rats they know that they produce DMT with the pineal gland so that that explains a lot of you know ancient eastern mysticism and all the symbology this all these symbols that people had to represent this gland.

[639] Now they know, okay, well, this gland definitely does produce this incredibly potent psychedelic drug.

[640] But now the question is, at what levels during what periods of stress, like, do you have to bring someone to the point of death before they experience this?

[641] And if that is the case, is it possible that consciousness itself is something that we, you know, since we haven't really figured out what exactly it is, is it possible that consciousness can travel through this chemical pathway that maybe these intense dimethythotryptamine experiences are in fact a gateway to what people have assumed exists from the beginning of time like an afterlife or a sea of souls or something some some stage of existence other than this physical existence that we all experience right now yeah so i mean i feel like i'd be sounds like crazy talk right it sounds like dude.

[642] I mean, I'd just be surprised if consciousness was just this one chemical.

[643] I think it's much more likely that something is this emergent phenomenon from this incredibly complex system of, you know, billions of different neurons firing in a certain way.

[644] And when you have a certain process that's sufficiently complex in the right way, somehow, and this is just this big black box that we've got no idea about, somehow subjective experience comes out of that.

[645] But it would seem, I mean, otherwise the issue is you could have just DMT traveling and just a test tube or something and Petri dish.

[646] And it would seem like, oh, is this Petri dish conscious?

[647] That would seem really strange.

[648] Why would that be the case if you're breathing air and the air keeps you alive, like you're breathing in and bringing out?

[649] You don't think that air carries the life with it to another place, right?

[650] Air is just a component of life.

[651] It's something that your body requires.

[652] Yeah.

[653] So, I mean, it's possible maybe it's the case.

[654] Though again, I feel I'd be surprised if it was like this chemical is necessary for consciousness in some way.

[655] I'm not saying it's necessary.

[656] But I am curious as to how consciousness varies.

[657] You know, consciousness and the actual feeling of being alive varies depending upon your health, depending upon stress levels, depending upon love and happiness, and all these different factors change the way you view the world, which is really interesting because, in effect, that changes consciousness.

[658] And you can be more, you know, you can be more elevated, like you can, I've guaranteed.

[659] you all this effect of altruism that you're concentrating on is somehow another elevating your consciousness because you're putting out so much love and so much happiness and you're helping so many people there's so many positive benefits to your very existence i've got to manage i've got to believe rather that somehow another that manages to come back to you i mean it definitely comes back to me in kind of how i feel about my life i mean when we're talking about how money is just not the key to a happy life, the question is, well, what is?

[660] And the answers are having a great community, having a greater purpose in life, feeling like you're making a difference.

[661] So all of these reasons are why, so we've built up this kind of community around effective altruism.

[662] You know, people all around the world who are making a significant change.

[663] So, for example, donating 10 % of their income to the charities they think are most effective or pursuing a career that we think is really effective.

[664] And one thing I wasn't surprising from the outset, but I'm so happy happened, is that this strong community has formed.

[665] It's kind of like a little global village or something.

[666] And people have found that actually far from being a sacrifice, as you might have expected, is actually incredibly rewarding because you've now got this community of people who have shared aims to you and you're all working towards this greater goal.

[667] And that's something that I think is very lacking in the world today.

[668] low so many people just they work nine to five and you know they have a nice time on the weekend but they're like where there's all of this going and at the end of my life i'm really going to think yeah i made the most of this whereas if you think at the end of your life like yep i dedicated my life to helping others and i had this transformative impact on thousands of people you're not going to think at the end of your life gee i really wasted that right it's just something i don't think you can really look at that if you go deep though down the philosophy philosophical rabbit hole and you really consider that life is this temporary experience and even benefiting someone through this temporary experience is still a temporary experience.

[669] It's like you are helping some, you gave them a pillow for the ride, and it's a temporary ride, the ride comes to an end, and then what?

[670] And then what is the point of all this?

[671] Like, what is the point of effective altruism if you're just helping people during this temporary ride that doesn't seem to mean anything?

[672] Yeah.

[673] So I think there's two things.

[674] I like your eye blow I can't help myself I can do that too just raise up I just go what the fuck is this freak myself out well we do get freaked out at this you know when you think of existential answer yeah the angst of existence so I think there's two I think there's two answers here okay the first is that the ride is the like goal right ultimately again if you think the purpose of life is to increase the amount of happiness and reduce the amount of suffering, the final goal is good experiences and the kind of anti -goal is bad experiences.

[675] So when we're sitting here talking, having a great time, this is us kind of achieving.

[676] This is us getting points on the win counter.

[677] Because we're having a good time.

[678] That's right, yeah.

[679] If we were really hating this, then we'd be losing.

[680] Well, even more so, because we're broadcasting this live and millions of people are going to hear it.

[681] Yeah, and hopefully they're having, hopefully they're enjoying it.

[682] Hopefully.

[683] And maybe if they're not, at least there's a little strong, stress relief.

[684] Like maybe they're at the gym and they go, these fucking idiots.

[685] And they're doing squats and they're getting angry.

[686] Yeah.

[687] So I think that's the first thing.

[688] But then the second thing is relates to this idea of cosmic significance where what often motivate, so you say, oh, well, we're just along for the ride.

[689] We're all going to get eaten up by the sun eventually and so on.

[690] What's the kind of greater purpose of life?

[691] But I actually think that are some ways that our actions now can have much greater cosmic significance.

[692] And that's because, I think, if you think that the human race survives for the next few centuries, it seems kind of inevitable that we're going to spread to the stars.

[693] And I think that would be good.

[694] Again, from this perspective, we can go into more arguments if you want, of just saying what we want to do is promote happiness and reduce suffering.

[695] If that means we can live on other planet, as well and have kind of thriving civilizations there, not only whether people are having great lives, but also making scientific, artistic contributions, and so on.

[696] Then that's a good thing to do as well.

[697] Well, there's no technological reason for thinking that we won't be able to do that in the future, given current rates of technological progress, unless something really bad happens along the way.

[698] And this kind of gets back to one of the things we talked about.

[699] Right of the start was one of the focus areas of the effect of altruism and community is on kind of reduce risks of human extinction of global catastrophic risks.

[700] These are the sorts of things that could imperil the human journey, as it were.

[701] And I think that if you're working to mitigate some of these things, then you're increasing the chance that we do get to the sort of level where humanity can have a thriving future, not just on this planet, but on other planets as well.

[702] And that actually means your actions really do have this huge cosmic significance.

[703] So the conscious effort to be a kind person, a generous person, and effective altruism spreads and it impacts people.

[704] There's this ripple effect.

[705] And your good deeds could perhaps fuel enough people with this thought and with effect of altruism.

[706] And more people might act on that to the point where we reduce the amount of suffering to the point where we extend the lifespan of human beings.

[707] We extend the areas where we have no war.

[708] We reduce the amount of violence to the point where we can successfully innovate to the point where we can get off this planet.

[709] And then start from scratch with a new dictator on Mars.

[710] Donald Trump on Mars.

[711] How about that?

[712] Yeah.

[713] I mean, so I think that...

[714] Putin on Mars.

[715] Well, if he could become president of Mars, I'd be pretty happy with that.

[716] It'd be fascinating.

[717] We'd have to go to war with Mars.

[718] Yeah.

[719] Do you think, though, I mean, I've wondered about this many, many times.

[720] I wonder if it's an outdated idea, this idea of traveling to the stars.

[721] And again, I go back to this whole interdimensional thing, that I wonder if that's the reason why we have never been visited by other planets, by species from another planet.

[722] Maybe that's not what happens.

[723] Maybe they develop artificial realities.

[724] Maybe, like, what Jamie was talking about to me with these artificial computer realities, like, if someone develops some sort of matrix like, world where you can plug into it and experience an infinite number of things and an infinite number of artificially created dimensions that are indistinguishable from this why would you want to like risk a six -month trip and a metal tube to another planet maybe maybe that's really retro maybe that's a really ancient way of looking at things maybe it's like zeppelins like big flying balloons instead of you know so yeah the question you've raised is called the fermi paradox right um which is just given there's so much of 100 billion stars in our galaxy, 8 billion galaxies in the affectable universe, 100 billion in the observable universe.

[725] The universe is also pretty old, 15 billion years old.

[726] So if it was the case that life is very common, that it's very easy for us to life to then develop a level of advanced technological ability, we should expect to see evidence of aliens all over the place.

[727] but yet we see absolutely none.

[728] And that means that from somewhere from a habitable planet, somewhere along the path from habitable planet to kind of space -faring civilization, there must be some big filter.

[729] There must be some step that's just incredibly hard for that, or incredibly unlikely that civilization moves them or life moves from that step to another.

[730] And one hypothesis is this, yeah, like, people just, civilization, gets to a sufficiently advanced level, and they just chill out.

[731] They just start.

[732] Or they go internally.

[733] Yeah, they go internal.

[734] The issue with that explanation, I think, is it's just not strong enough.

[735] Because, you know, you'd have to think that that's, for this kind of filter to work, it has to be a really strong filter.

[736] Filter.

[737] Yeah, as in, like, because there's just so many stars, so many Earth, so many seemingly habitable planets.

[738] Right.

[739] It has to be the case that it's exceptionally unlikely at some stage or other.

[740] Like, and not just really unlikely, as in, like, you know, one in a trillion unlikely to, on this path from habitable planet to space -faring civilization.

[741] And so you'd have to think, like, of a trillion civilizations that get to this level of technological ability, they all choose to turn inward.

[742] And that seems just very unlikely.

[743] It seems like, well, at least one would really try and spread out.

[744] And if so, then we'd see evidence of that.

[745] because cosmically speaking, the time from getting to the level of technological capability where you can spread to the stars and the level where we'd be able to get to see real evidence of that is kind of small.

[746] So I actually think that the reason that we can't see aliens is because the very first stages of life are incredibly unlikely.

[747] The move from nothing to kind of basic replication.

[748] and then secondly, the move from single -celled organisms to multi -celled organisms.

[749] And the reason for thinking this is very unlikely is it took an incredibly long time on Earth, billions of years before this happened.

[750] And in particular, in the move from single -celled to multi -celled life, that's only ever happened once.

[751] And so given that we don't see any aliens, we should think some part of this is really hard.

[752] Our best guess is that that move from single -celled.

[753] cell to multi -celled and perhaps from the creation of the first cells as well, that was incredibly difficult.

[754] And that means that we're just exceptionally lucky to be alive, as it were.

[755] But if the universe is infinite, that means that this has happened an infinite number of times.

[756] That's right.

[757] Though it might, though very far away, like sufficiently far away that we are not connectable to each, like we can't contact each other or observe each other.

[758] But there's an infinite number of those infinitely far places.

[759] Yes.

[760] So there would be some like clusters of the universe.

[761] And again, the idea of the universe is in for that.

[762] It's only a hypothesis.

[763] And I'm just deferring to other people who say it's the leading hypothesis.

[764] Well, the most puzzling hypothesis to me was the evidence of supermassive black holes being at the center of every galaxy.

[765] And that the hypothesis was that the supermassive black holes are exactly one half of one percent of the mass of the entire galaxy and then if you go through those supermassive black holes you may in fact go into a completely new universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies each with supermassive black holes at the center of those galaxies which will take you to hundreds of billions of galaxies in another universe and that it's in never ending and that's what the real infinity is it's not just the mass of all the things that we can observe in the 14 plus billion light years that we know of from the Big Bang to today.

[766] It's all of those things being portals to incredibly different, totally new universes.

[767] Okay, yes, it's turtles all the way down.

[768] Turtles all the way down.

[769] So the real question to me, and this, I proposed this to Brian Cox, I didn't get a sufficient answer.

[770] It's why would we assume that there's someone more advanced than us.

[771] Like, it is possible that someone, some species, some thing is the tip of the spear, that something is the first, that something is the most advanced life form in the universe.

[772] Why would we assume that someone would be more advanced than us if we are the most advanced thing that we can find?

[773] The only logic that I could point to was that we are relatively young in terms of the history and the age of the universe itself, the universe itself being roughly 14 billion years old, we are 4 .6, what is the age of the earth?

[774] Yeah, but somewhere in there.

[775] Somewhere in the neighborhood, right?

[776] Relatively young, when you consider that 10 billion years of life, give or take, happen or existence, happened before we came along.

[777] But why would we assume that there's anything out there that's more advanced?

[778] And why would we assume that this isn't as far as anybody's ever gotten?

[779] I mean, in terms of infinity, right?

[780] 14 billion years seems like a long time.

[781] But in terms of infinity, it's a blink.

[782] So I think we should believe that in the, and again, let's now just ditch the infinity and just think about the observable universe, which is finite.

[783] Because people pulled over sweating in their car right now.

[784] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[785] Infinity, have you ever heard of Graham's number?

[786] This is now a total degradation of Graham's number.

[787] I don't believe so.

[788] It got known as the largest number ever seriously used in the mathematical proof.

[789] And Tim Rubin of Wait But Why has this amazing post trying to explain just how big Graham's number is.

[790] And you have to use a special notation in order to be able to explain it.

[791] And numbers just get really big.

[792] And once you really start to think this through, you're just like, you're left just kind of walking back and forth.

[793] Yeah, not like just totally freaked out For our little monkey minds Because you think like trillion is so big Trillion is just a speck of dust Right, right Even a trillion years is a speck of dust When you consider the possibility of the universe itself Being infinite Or the possibility that is a continuous cycle Of big bangs to expansion to contraction Back to an infinitely small point Back to another big bang Which is a plausible possibility Yeah, I mean I think, yeah, I'm also, I'm very worried, you know, I'm not, I'm not Neil DeGrasse Tyson, which I'm butchering tons of the science.

[794] I think my understanding at the moment is that we currently think that the universe is just expanding and it just keeps expanding.

[795] Right.

[796] I know it's definitely a leading theory that it was going to expand and slow and then kind of crunch.

[797] Yes.

[798] But you mentioned humans being the most advanced kind of creature.

[799] I think that probably is correct in the observable.

[800] or certainly our galaxy, let's say.

[801] Well, we know it is in our solar system, right?

[802] Yeah, that's right.

[803] But I think we know it is in our galaxy as well.

[804] You think so?

[805] And again, the reason...

[806] It's so far.

[807] But the thing is that it's far as in, it's like 100 ,000 light years.

[808] Oh, nothing.

[809] But when you're thinking about 15 billion years of the age of the universe, that's actually just a very short period of time.

[810] Right, but why would you assume that 100 ,000 light years from now there's not something exactly like us.

[811] So it's possible, but the thing is that if it was somewhat easy or if it was just not incredibly difficult for intelligent life to evolve, then it would have happened in the past already and we would see evidence of it.

[812] And the fact that we don't see any evidence at all of intelligent life and other solar systems or at all suggests that it's incredibly difficult for that to happen.

[813] But isn't that like being in the woods and unzipping your tent, and sticking your head out and saying, I don't see anything, this must be empty woods.

[814] It's more like, I mean...

[815] You're talking about a very small area that you've observed and we've taken account of.

[816] So I think it's more like, because I think if an alien civilization or us in the future goes to kind of start, yeah, spurning to the stars, In the course of, you know, just a few seconds, a million years, let's say, that will be really significant evidence.

[817] You'd see Dyson spheres being constructed around suns, you know, to harness the sun's energy.

[818] You'd see some evidence of like galactic engineering projects and so on.

[819] It would be like a really big impact.

[820] Do you think you'd see that with hundreds of thousands of light years between us and the observable objects?

[821] But again, 100 ,000 light years is just not very long.

[822] compared to the kind of 15 billion.

[823] So it would just be this amazing coincidence if it's the case that a life that's as advanced or more advanced than us has evolved at just the same time as us where 100 ,000 years give or take is basically just the same time.

[824] But hasn't evolved in the past, hasn't involved more than a million years ago where we would start to see kind of major impact of that life.

[825] So if something within the observable universe, but we've observed so little, We don't even have really adequate photographs of anything outside of our solar system.

[826] I mean, everything is just radio spectrum, you know, the analysis is that they're getting off of light waves of what the components of the atmosphere is.

[827] So using your analogy, what I'm suggesting is that if it was the case that alien life was like not, intelligent life was not that hard to come by, you'd stick your head out of the tent and you'd look like Tokyo, rather than looking like the woods.

[828] But why does it have to look like Tokyo?

[829] Why can't it look like Kansas?

[830] Why can't it be like really spread out in very little life?

[831] Because I think if life is spreading out, then it's just going to want to, what does life do?

[832] It just tries to harness resources and tries to grow more of itself.

[833] Maybe it reaches a point where it realizes that's futile.

[834] It just concentrates on effective altruism at home.

[835] So that's the turning inward suggestion again.

[836] And so maybe it's the case that like, yeah.

[837] Like, is it more important to get your shit together at home or to go all over the world with the same bullshit ideas, right?

[838] And if that's the case, would not be the same thing that you could turn towards interstellar travel.

[839] Like, wouldn't it be more important for these communities to concentrate on taking care of their planet and figuring out a way to work in some sort of harmonious fashion with the very nature of the planet itself rather than travel to the state?

[840] stars.

[841] I mean, possibly, but now imagine there's, so on this alien planet, there's 10 billion aliens, and they're like, let's say there are a thousand years more advanced than humans are at the moment.

[842] In order for this argument to work, it'd have to be the case that every single one of them makes that decision to just turn inwards and focus on.

[843] Why would that be the case?

[844] Because not all those people would be the ones that would innovate in the first place.

[845] It wouldn't have to be everyone that makes a decision, would have to be everyone of a high enough consciousness to figure out how to make these interstellar machines decides not to harness this nuclear power and jet off into space.

[846] But I think over time, that would just be everyone.

[847] Really?

[848] Well, yeah, I mean, just technological progress, just keeps going and eventually, like, I mean, obviously we're doing this, like, weird thought experiment.

[849] Speculating on, like, economics and sociology of a hypothetical alien world.

[850] But, I mean, just at some point, as a civilization progresses, then there's going to at least be many, many actors with sufficient power to the capability to spread to the stars.

[851] And you need to say that every single one of them decides to turn inwards.

[852] So it's sort of like technology becomes very rare and then ultimately over time becomes very common, like the cell phone.

[853] Like the cell phone.

[854] Right.

[855] So when the cell phone was first invented, it was extremely rare and very expensive.

[856] Now everyone has one.

[857] and the capabilities of those cell phones have greatly, greatly improved.

[858] Yeah.

[859] And that this will happen with everything, including space travel.

[860] Yeah, I mean, but also it doesn't need to be the case that gets out to 10 billion people, even if it's just like 1 ,000 people or something.

[861] Again, it would just seem unlikely that, you know, in every civilization and every one just has, you know, even just a thousand people, everyone chooses not what single person thinks, hey, I would just want there to be more, like, I want to spread out.

[862] Now, that obviously is dependent.

[863] upon their being a more advanced civilization than human beings on the planet Earth.

[864] Because if there weren't, if there were a few years behind us, like if they're stuck in the 1950s, or maybe they're stuck in ancient Greece, or, you know, then obviously they don't have the capabilities yet.

[865] We might be the very most advanced.

[866] We might be the very tip of the spirit, right?

[867] Yeah.

[868] And I just think, yeah, because I think it would be unlikely that something more advanced happened just a little bit faster than that.

[869] us, but not say 100 million years ago, which is not very long ago.

[870] Right.

[871] In cosmic terms.

[872] But it's still possible.

[873] I mean, it's still possible that something happened 100 years quicker than us or that they haven't had the same setbacks that we've had in terms of like asteroid impacts and natural catastrophe, super volcanoes and the like.

[874] It's a real weird thought experiment because you start thinking and you start extrapolating, okay, well, where are we going to be?

[875] You know, where are we going to be?

[876] And why would we do that?

[877] Like that's one of the things that always gets me about this whole trip to Mars and I had a joke about it in my last comedy special where people were somebody actually said this to me like because it was before California had solved its drought or Mother Nature solved our drought for us rather or people like hey man we should really consider going to Mars because I mean look at our environment California is almost out of water and my joke was like we're right next to the fucking ocean like there's so much water you can't see the end of it we have a salt problem we don't have a water problem like what are you going to do you're going to bring water to Mars?

[878] Like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.

[879] Yeah, there's this weird, when people start talking about Mars, I mean, I think, so there's the project of going to Mars, saying foot on Mars, saying up a colony.

[880] Now, like, the aim of doing that because it's awesome.

[881] Totally on board with that.

[882] And the same way as like going to the moon.

[883] It's like, look what we can achieve.

[884] This is an exciting, like, global human project.

[885] Even just a space shuttle going into orbit.

[886] It's pretty badass, right?

[887] Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[888] But then there's talk of like, oh, well, we need this in order to be able to survive as a species.

[889] I'm like, look, if you want to have this, kind of refuge or colony in order to make the Earth more robust.

[890] Mars is just not a great place to pick.

[891] There's so many different ways that, I mean, Mars is like really inhospitable.

[892] And if you wanted to build a refuge, why not go under the sea?

[893] That's like going to be protected from, you know, viruses or asteroid impacts and so on.

[894] Not really, though.

[895] If one of those big things that slammed into the Yucatan slams into where your village is in the sea, I mean, if you had this underwater village with, you know, 10 years of food supplies and so on, then you could, like, come back.

[896] Because the impact from the asteroid wasn't just, like, shook everyone up.

[897] It's that the skies go.

[898] The skies get clouded over with ash.

[899] The Earth rang for a million years.

[900] Oh, what is that?

[901] From the impact.

[902] Like, d 'R.

[903] Yeah.

[904] That's so interesting.

[905] That's so insane.

[906] When you think about how big that thing was that killed the dinosaur 65 million years ago and that there's hundreds of thousands of those things.

[907] floating around space.

[908] So, yeah, I was asking some people at NASA just two days ago, actually, on how many of them we've managed to identify, because they're serious about kind of scanning the skies to find them all.

[909] And the answer, I thought we had it covered.

[910] I thought this was something that NASA was like, yeah, yeah, we know where all the Earth killers are.

[911] And their response was like, no, we've got no idea.

[912] We don't know how many of them are out there, and so we don't know how many of them are out there.

[913] many we've managed to track.

[914] There's a guy named Randall Carlson that I've had him on podcast a few times and he's obsessed with the idea that asteroid impacts were probably what ended the ice age 10 to 12 ,000 years ago and there's a significant amount of physical evidence that points to this both in evidence of impact in nuclear glass I think it's called Tritonite.

[915] I forget out the exact word but it appears all throughout Europe and Asia at around that same timeline around 10 ,000 and 12 ,000 years ago when they do core samples.

[916] And it points to this idea that there were significant impacts from asteroid objects all over Europe and all over Asia around that time.

[917] They think some of them slammed into the ice caps that were, you know, North America was covered in a giant chunk of it was covered in as much as two miles high of ice just 10 ,000 years ago.

[918] And he points to an incredible amount of physical change in the environment that looks like it took place over a very short period of time, like catastrophic change over an incredibly short amount of time that he believes points to these impacts, melting the ice caps, creating massive amount of flooding, killing off who knows how many people, resetting civilization in many different parts of the world.

[919] And this evidence of these, of the nuclear glass of these micro diamonds that also exist.

[920] They find them during nuclear test sites when they blow off bombs, and they also find them at asteroid impact sites.

[921] And, you know, when you know that we have been hit many times in the past, and they do have evidence of that, and then you see the moon and all the different impact craters on the moon, you know that this is just what he calls a cosmic shooting gallery, essentially.

[922] He's like, it's very likely that that was the cause of the end of the ice age.

[923] there's a lot of there's climate data that sort of seems to point to that as well so there's so this is now like really outside my idea of expertise I'll send you some links to some of his stuff because he's been obsessed with this for about 30 years fascinating guy the two things that would really surprise me about that are firstly just that there were so many ice ages and it just seemed to be this it comes on goes off oh sure yeah you know fairly you know fairly dynamic predictable process where there's asteroid impact super random.

[924] So you wouldn't expect to have this kind of back and forth dynamic if it was asteroids that was doing it.

[925] And then secondly, my understanding would be that asteroids would cool the planet because asteroid hits, ash just spreads out all over the sky.

[926] That just blocks out sunlight.

[927] So it would surprise me if it had this kind of warming effect.

[928] Well, I think the idea is that, first of all, when it hits, the impact is massive and it melts off just a huge chunk of the amount of water that is covering North America, right?

[929] And that's one of the things that causes this massive flooding and this massive changing of the topography.

[930] And as far as like what causes the natural, I don't know if it interrupts it temporarily and then it comes back and gets warmer.

[931] But yeah, that natural cycle of warming and cooling has been going on since they, I mean, from as far back as they can measure it.

[932] What he's talking about is significant quick changes.

[933] Also, the extinction event that killed somewhere around 65 % or more of all of the large mammals in North America really quickly, like woolly mammoths really quickly.

[934] So that was humans.

[935] They don't know about that.

[936] There's a lot of speculation back and forth about that because they would think that humans did it, but then they found these mass dead sites where they're not consumed.

[937] And what was the ones that he showed where these willy mammoths, they found them where they had their legs were broken and it looked like they just the impact of something had knocked them flat and they had found like thousands of them in these mass death sites interesting but I thought that the um so firstly it just seemed to me like the homo the idea that it was humans killing them all just seems like crazy oh no I thought it just like seems like such a good explanation but they didn't even have they had addaladdles oh but that was like the best weapon they had at the time they weren't even riding on horseback at the time but then with respect to the death sites I thought the mechanism for killing a willy mammoths is you've just got like, you know, 200 humans and you just chase the willy mammoth off a cliff.

[938] That does work if you can get them near a cliff.

[939] Yeah.

[940] But the idea of getting them all near cliffs and killing them all off by a bunch of people that hadn't figured out the wheel seems a little unlikely.

[941] It's just it's possible.

[942] Like over thousands of years.

[943] Because that's the thing.

[944] Like we often tell these stories about, you know, police civilization humans.

[945] It's like, oh, and then they migrated and made this great journey to Europe and so on.

[946] And often that's like, they moved a mile every year.

[947] Right.

[948] So it's like great journey is actually just this very gradual.

[949] Yes, very gradual.

[950] And similarly, if you've got this grave site and it's got, wow, hundreds of willy mammoths in this one place, that might be over thousands of years.

[951] I mean, again, this is just something.

[952] No, that's the thing.

[953] They're talking about carbon dating that it's all like within the same time period.

[954] You'd have to like really go over his stuff with a fine tooth comb and talk to him about it because I'm not the right guy.

[955] I just, I just listen to him and go, whoa, and then, you know, try to relay it as much as possible.

[956] there's a podcast that I actually retweeted today because somebody brought it up on YouTube it's available so I'll send you to it afterwards and see if you what do you think about it but but this is something yeah I've had if you know the book Sapiens one of no you're like the fifth person to talk about it I gotta get it everyone talks about sapiens is like the book yeah pull on up to that pull that a little closer to you because it makes a big difference in the sound but yeah one of the things that most blew my mind there was yeah how much megafauna there was in the early days of Homo sapiens, you know, roving across North America, there were two ton sloths, huge giant sloths.

[957] And these were one of just very, very many massive megafauna that we just don't have anymore.

[958] Yeah, the Blitzkrieg hypothesis is what they call the human animal killing off all of the other animals.

[959] It's a really troubling hypothesis because we don't want to think that we're capable of doing that.

[960] But obviously we do do that.

[961] I mean, we're doing it right now.

[962] We did it to the buffalo.

[963] I mean, we almost, we brought the bison.

[964] Dodo.

[965] We're doing it just.

[966] Tasmanian tiger.

[967] There's a lot of different animals that within our lifetime have gone extinct.

[968] I mean, we're actually, like, in terms of extinctions, I'm not sure if we'll get the number right, but it would be pretty accurate to describe this as the fourth.

[969] Extinction event, but mass extinction because it's just huge the number of species that have gone extinct to the result of human activity.

[970] And it's also one of those things where we don't think of it as being significant because it happens slowly over the course of many.

[971] years but if you look at it on a timeline you're like oh my god look everything's dying right now yeah yeah exactly so it's slow by human standards right very quick by nature logical standards yeah it's a fascinating subject the end of the ice age happening so quickly the animals dying off so quickly and so many large mammals dying off so quickly so when you you think about what we know people have done like when we almost killed off the bison we know why they did that we know how they did that and they did it with extraordinary weapons and they did it with high -powered rifles they could shoot things from a far distance they did it by shooting off trains i mean they did a lot of crazy shit back then so we we understand i mean and there's a lot of physical evidence you there's photographs of the actual piles of bones and all that crazy shit when you when you take away those physical capabilities the extraordinary physical capabilities like even riding on horseback there's a guy named Dan Flores, who's a fascinating guy, is a scholar, who believes that even without the Europeans coming over here and market hunting and killing off all the bison, he thinks just the firearm and the horse with the Native Americans, it's entirely possible that they were going to eradicate the bison on their own.

[972] I mean, again, it just depends about time scales.

[973] So even if you're just killing, like, slightly more of the species, like, killing just enough of the species that they're now below the, you know, two children for every two minutes.

[974] Right.

[975] Viability stage.

[976] Yeah, exactly.

[977] Then just over sufficient time.

[978] And remembering that Homo sapiens, between the hunter -gather age, was 190 ,000 years.

[979] Very long time spans.

[980] Again, very short geologically, but yeah, very long time span.

[981] So again, just a little, you don't have to be killing that many willy mammoth to drive them to extinction over the course.

[982] of several thousand years.

[983] What are your thoughts when it comes to like the ethical reintroduction of animals that have gone extinct?

[984] Like there are some people in Russia that are constantly, they're currently rather working on some form of a woolly mammoth.

[985] We're going to take woolly mammoth DNA from some of these frozen bodies that they've gotten.

[986] I mean, they've gotten some pretty intact woolly mammoths now and they're going to try to clone one.

[987] Yeah.

[988] So I don't know the details of how this will work.

[989] I guess they have to just date it in an elephant.

[990] But I mean, I think it's like scientifically interesting.

[991] I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

[992] But what have they reintroduced them?

[993] Like where you have woolly mammoths everywhere?

[994] Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't think there's any ethical imperative to do it.

[995] I think there's not an imperative not.

[996] Like I would think just if there's more willy mammoths, that's the same as they're just being more elephants.

[997] And it might be of scientific interest.

[998] I heard, while we're on, like, hypotheses that we heard and were like, oh, that's cool, but sound ridiculous.

[999] Yeah, I heard the idea was really introducing Willie Mammoth to, like, stomp down snow in order to prevent...

[1000] Yes.