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Speaker 2: Oohways, your old uncle who's pretty dubious of that fat
Speaker 2: free salad dressing ally ward back with another episode of ologies.
Speaker 2: So before you think, wait, did I hear this one already?
Speaker 2: Is this just a revisiting of lepidopterology with butterfly expert Filedrus,
Speaker 2: who also professionally plays with baby dogs on his new
Speaker 2: CW television show Ready Set Pet. Nope, it's a different episode,
Speaker 2: different Filedrus. It's a different Filmorus.
Speaker 1: Boy.
Speaker 2: Howdy, you know in the sixty plus episodes that we
Speaker 2: have journeyed through together, friends, we have gone face first
Speaker 2: into death and tumors and misogyny, pet euthanasia, dabbled into
Speaker 2: crow funerals. But I gotta say this one. Wow, this
Speaker 2: one's gonna have you just staring into the mirror at
Speaker 2: one am, asking the fuck ward. Maybe more than any
Speaker 2: of them. This one is the apocalypse? Are you ready? No? Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna stall for one second before the existential upheople.
Speaker 2: Just a quick thanks to everyone supporting via Patreon dot com,
Speaker 2: slash ologies, anyone who has put merch on your bod
Speaker 2: from ologiesmerch dot com, and all the folks who, for
Speaker 2: zero dollars rate make the commitment to hit subscribe, who
Speaker 2: leave a review which I creep with joy and I
Speaker 2: highlight one each week this week, you know what I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do too. Once quick shout out to Tara and Maine,
Speaker 2: who is a self proclaimed former podcast hater and now
Speaker 2: an ologite. Come be one with us, and also thank
Speaker 2: you for the timely aes Hell review from Seattle Me
Speaker 2: two two seven, who says I especially love the takes
Speaker 2: on dark topics like death and fear so refreshing. I'm
Speaker 2: an instant fan. Well, wow, Seattle Me two two seven,
Speaker 2: buckle up, we're talking about doomsday. So Eschatology comes from
Speaker 2: the Greek for last, meaning it's the study of the end,
Speaker 2: the end of the world. So, as this ologist explains,
Speaker 2: this term is no longer bound to just religious contexts,
Speaker 2: but also scientific study. So he is a neuroscientist, philosophy scholar,
Speaker 2: and author of three books, including The End, What Science
Speaker 2: and Religion tell Us About the Apocalypse and his latest release,
Speaker 2: Morality Foresight and Human Flourishing and Introduction to Existential Risks.
Speaker 2: As you'll hear, the Apocalypse and this episode were both
Speaker 2: a long time in the making, and I coerced this
Speaker 2: ologist to drive a few hours and meet me in
Speaker 2: an airport hotel in Philly, and he was so generous
Speaker 2: with his time. He pretty much spent the evening being
Speaker 2: lobbed questions, just barraged like asteroids, one after the other.
Speaker 2: And you'll hear about his background that led him to
Speaker 2: this branch of philosophy and where we're at on the
Speaker 2: old doomsday clock, whether or not any of us should
Speaker 2: have babies, if we should bother recycling, why voting matters,
Speaker 2: looking at you, America and some pop cultural anti Christ's
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence simulations, black mirror technology as friend or foe.
Speaker 2: And now he's just a pretty chill guy anyway, So
Speaker 2: pack up your bug out bag and put a down
Speaker 2: payment on a bunker while you enjoy the brilliant brain
Speaker 2: of eschatologist Phil torrest glasses.
Speaker 3: It's just.
Speaker 2: You don't even need an apocalypse. You're your own nightmare.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is yours. Okay, So let's start
Speaker 2: off number one by saying that I have been twitter
Speaker 2: stalking you for a year no response from you, and
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, that felt tors guy. Pretty busy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: pretty important guy, It's pretty important. So many times I
Speaker 2: was like, hey, I'd love for you to be on them. No, okay,
Speaker 2: I don't know who nails you. Also, no, I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to put you on blast. I'm just saying that
Speaker 2: you're this is a very big get for me. This
Speaker 2: is of no fault of your own. I was just
Speaker 2: very eagerly like, Hi, it's me again.
Speaker 3: Well thank you. And when I finally saw the tweet
Speaker 3: that I responded to, I responded to it very eagerly.
Speaker 2: I was like, these apocalypse people are very aloof The
Speaker 2: apocalypse scene is like the most aloof of all of them.
Speaker 2: Little did I know, Oh, you are eager. And also
Speaker 2: you are the second filters I've had on the podcast.
Speaker 2: How often do you someone who studies theories about the
Speaker 2: end of the world. Get confused with someone who studies
Speaker 2: butterflies and has a show about puppies.
Speaker 3: I'm more I feel kind of bad for the emails
Speaker 3: that he might receive, you know, because he studies butterflies,
Speaker 3: and you know, that's pretty awesome and pretty fun, and
Speaker 3: there's a lightheartedness to it, whereas there's a darkness and
Speaker 3: a heaviness, oh God, to thinking about say, runaway climate
Speaker 3: change or value misaligned superintelligence.
Speaker 2: So, okay, let's dive into what your ology is. It's eschatology. Eschatology,
Speaker 2: how do we say it.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. There's actually a debate right now, Okay,
Speaker 3: whether the idea of secular apocalyptic scenarios should constitute its
Speaker 3: own yield, or or rather whether it to just be
Speaker 3: a topic that is discussed by people experts in their
Speaker 3: various uh uh, you know, areas of expertise. So that so,
Speaker 3: in other words, the term the semiska, the term have
Speaker 3: evolved over time, and at this point, like, yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a sense in which it's kind of the topic that
Speaker 3: I'm interested in is kind of scientific eschatology. Yeah, thinking
Speaker 3: about the the end of the world from once again
Speaker 3: like a in evidence based you know, uh, empirical perspective.
Speaker 2: As opposed to a proof you did, which would be
Speaker 2: more like being smoked by Zeus or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which we in this in this way we are
Speaker 2: our own angry God. Yeah kind of yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean there are you know, myths uh of uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Greek myths of humans who gain too much
Speaker 3: power and uh, you know it didn't turn out so well.
Speaker 3: I mean, the central concept is that of existential risk,
Speaker 3: and that is cheerfully defined as any event that would
Speaker 3: either cause human extinction or result in irreversible decline of
Speaker 3: our potential for desirable future development.
Speaker 2: So in this case, the end of the planet as
Speaker 2: we know it, or the end of our species the
Speaker 2: Great Ruby. Also, this subject matter is so so dark
Speaker 2: and surreal that I just could not stop laughing at
Speaker 2: the absurd awfulness of it. I'm so sorry. I don't
Speaker 2: know why. This is so far the most hilarious episode.
Speaker 2: It's just so terrible. It's like kind of funny.
Speaker 3: I was at a conference a while back and with
Speaker 3: a bunch of people who publish on this topic, and
Speaker 3: we had a really good time. It was a lot
Speaker 3: of fun. There was a lot of laughter and joyousness,
Speaker 3: and at some point we sort of conjectured that there
Speaker 3: must be self selection process, you know, if you're if
Speaker 3: you are like lugubrious by disposition a certain amount.
Speaker 2: Ps The word lugubrious means sad and mournful, and I'm
Speaker 2: not too proud to admit that I just had to
Speaker 2: look it up.
Speaker 3: Then you just don't end up, you know, living, you know,
Speaker 3: in breathing these issues all the time.
Speaker 2: We need balance, because how can we appreciate a butterfly
Speaker 2: if we don't appreciate the fact that the butterfly could
Speaker 2: maybe just combust spontaneously into fire, along with every one
Speaker 2: that you love.
Speaker 3: In fact, I've sometimes mentioned, you know, a kind of
Speaker 3: paradox of the field, which is that I think it
Speaker 3: is among the most important topics that anybody could be
Speaker 3: talking about or thinking about, researching, publishing on.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole crux of what you do is
Speaker 2: how can we appreciate our existence if we don't examine
Speaker 2: the possibility of it ending? Right?
Speaker 3: That is sort of that is an impla. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: the stuff that I do in particular is mostly trying
Speaker 3: to understand the nature of the biggest global scale kind
Speaker 3: of disaster scenarios facing humanity this century for the express
Speaker 3: purpose of identifying ways to mitigate those risks and make
Speaker 3: sure that they never happen.
Speaker 2: Right, let's go back in time to baby Philterrus. Okay,
Speaker 2: at what point did your family realize you were more contemplative,
Speaker 2: perhaps than other children?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're talking about me en. That's okay, Okay, got it.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting. I mean my interest now I can
Speaker 3: there's a kind of genealogy I can trace all the
Speaker 3: way back to the childhood because I grew up in
Speaker 3: a pretty religious household. Oh and what flavor Baptists to
Speaker 3: use the more esoteric term the broader view was dispensationalist.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: So that's when you hear about the rapture. Oh, you
Speaker 3: can think spensatialism.
Speaker 2: Okay, that is the poof I'm gone. Are my clothes
Speaker 2: and shoes still here, but my body and soul is gone.
Speaker 2: That's the rapture. Yeah, okay, if.
Speaker 3: You actually look carefully the chronology of the narrative, it's stunning,
Speaker 3: like the rapture supposed to happen and your your soul
Speaker 3: is separated from your body, and then there's a seven
Speaker 3: year tribulation where the Anti Christ gains power in the
Speaker 3: UN or EU or something like that, and then signs
Speaker 3: of peace treaty initially begin a tribulation with Israel, okay,
Speaker 3: and then halfway through invades Israel, and then God reigns
Speaker 3: down all of this horrible punishment, and then there's the
Speaker 3: Second Coming and that's when Armageddon happens, and then there's
Speaker 3: there There, and then there are various other things that
Speaker 3: continue to happen.
Speaker 2: In the You grew up with these yes, sorry, I
Speaker 2: did with these beliefs.
Speaker 3: I did it. You know it. I have to say
Speaker 3: it fueled some some pretty freaky termames never you know,
Speaker 3: for an eight year old. And I do actually have
Speaker 3: this vivid memory of being in the basement of my
Speaker 3: house when Bill Clinton on election night, when Bill Clinton won,
Speaker 3: and it was widely agreed upon in my community that
Speaker 3: he was the Antichrist, and so I just remember being
Speaker 3: overcome with terror, and you know, like, this is really happening,
Speaker 3: and you know the.
Speaker 2: I love that the Anti Christ plays a saxophone, like
Speaker 2: because they're going to be smooth and they're gonna charm you.
Speaker 3: Totally. It's part of the charm. Yeah, it's part of
Speaker 3: the Yeah, the charisma and.
Speaker 2: An early nineties sax solo and everyone's like, well, damn,
Speaker 2: here he is. He has arrived. Is your family still
Speaker 2: pretty religious?
Speaker 3: Half of it is?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, half the thing is quite quite religious and the
Speaker 3: other half isn't so much along with me. Is kind
Speaker 3: of drifted away from, you know, the dogmatism and the
Speaker 3: various belief commitments that half the family has. But I
Speaker 3: do think it planted seeds of interest with respect to
Speaker 3: Christian eschatology. There was a sense of like, well, what's
Speaker 3: what's a grander topic then thinking about not just the
Speaker 3: death of individuals but the species. And of course the
Speaker 3: vast majority of species that have ever lived on the
Speaker 3: planets have gone extinct.
Speaker 2: And there's something like ninety nine point nine percent of
Speaker 2: all species that have ever lived are extinct.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like fate has our number.
Speaker 3: I mean, the odds are not favorable.
Speaker 2: No, maybe odds be ever in your favor, Okay, but
Speaker 2: can humans skirt extinction like perhaps some ferns and weird
Speaker 2: birds and old timey dead salamanders and the other five
Speaker 2: billion extinct species she couldn't.
Speaker 3: We are unique in that, I mean, for obvious reasons.
Speaker 3: We're we have a very high encephalization quotient, you know,
Speaker 3: big brain, big brains, and have the capacity to to
Speaker 3: modify our environment in various ways. You know. It's been
Speaker 3: said that the dinosaurs died out because they didn't have
Speaker 3: a space program, you know, And so we maybe can
Speaker 3: use technology to actually significantly reduce the probability of all
Speaker 3: sorts of catastrophes. But unfortunately, most of the risk these
Speaker 3: days comes from technology itself and large scale human activity,
Speaker 3: you know, and climate change and global biodiversity loss. So yeah,
Speaker 3: technology is Janus faced, and you know, kind of a
Speaker 3: double edged shorts. Who was Janus?
Speaker 2: Well, first off, let's call him the Roman god formerly
Speaker 2: pronounced Janus by me because I never knew it was Janus.
Speaker 2: But anyway, he's the god of beginnings and transitions, and
Speaker 2: he looks to both the past and the future at
Speaker 2: the same time, hence January named after this bro. But
Speaker 2: Janus faced means that you can have characteristics that contrast
Speaker 2: or be deceitful. So it's like the scholarly way of
Speaker 2: saying this, someone is a two face pitch. So phil
Speaker 2: is saying technology is a two face bitch, Well, what
Speaker 2: at what point did you have to decide upon this
Speaker 2: as a major So this is a this is a
Speaker 2: sect of theology and philosophy of sorts.
Speaker 4: Correct, not correct, I would not say theology. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's I mean it's naturalistic, you know. So that actually
Speaker 4: gets at a really interesting point. For most of human history,
Speaker 4: contemplations about the end of the world were deeply intertwined
Speaker 4: with religious beliefs, and so there was there was a
Speaker 4: sense in which people kind of thought took seriously sort
Speaker 4: of the long term future of humanity. But that was
Speaker 4: within the a theological framework according to which you know,
Speaker 4: we have immortal souls, and.
Speaker 3: You know, at the end of the world there's there's
Speaker 3: to be a series of supernatural events. And only recently
Speaker 3: have humans started to think about the end from a secular,
Speaker 3: from a naturalistic perspective. The concept itself is really quite recent.
Speaker 3: There just isn't much that was said about human extinction.
Speaker 3: Even after the end of World War Two, which of course,
Speaker 3: you know, coincided with the inauguration of the atomic age,
Speaker 3: there's still I don't know, there wasn't that much thought
Speaker 3: about you know what happens if our evolutionary lineage terminates,
Speaker 3: maybe as a result of our own actions.
Speaker 2: But like, we just invented soap, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like we just figured out how babies were made. You know,
Speaker 2: we're such idiots. I mean, God bless us. But like
Speaker 2: the idea of being like and when shall the specure
Speaker 2: be mortal? Is like we have so much else to
Speaker 2: figure out, you know. Yeah, I mean honestly, contraception is
Speaker 2: like thirty years old. It's crazy. Yeah, so we didn't
Speaker 2: even begin curbing the population really until recently. So okay,
Speaker 2: getting back to school, though, at what point are you saying, philters,
Speaker 2: I am a philosophy major. This is my subset. Did
Speaker 2: you find a mentor in it? Or how do you
Speaker 2: do how do you become one of you? How do
Speaker 2: you do your life?
Speaker 3: If that's what you want?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: For some reason, well, yeah, philosophy was my main subject.
Speaker 3: And then I got a master's in neuroscience, which is
Speaker 3: somewhat related to there's some it's also baller.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, masters in neuroscience.
Speaker 3: It is it sounds way more impressive than it actually is.
Speaker 3: I'll just to be candidate.
Speaker 2: So Phil got his bachelor's in philosophy and his masters
Speaker 2: in neuroscience, and at some point he encountered a paper
Speaker 2: by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom entitled Existential Risks Analyzing Human
Speaker 2: Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards. Now, the term existential risk
Speaker 2: means the apocalypse, just doomsday, the end. And I looked
Speaker 2: up this paper just to have a little look sie,
Speaker 2: just to do a little perusing, And I'm just going
Speaker 2: to read you the first sentence quote, it's dangerous to
Speaker 2: be alive and risks are everywhere. I was like, wow, man, okay,
Speaker 2: straight out of the gate. Okay, I like that. But
Speaker 2: the next sentence was a little cheerier, saying, luckily, not
Speaker 2: all risks are equally serious. So I started skimming this
Speaker 2: paper and I came to a header just titled bangs,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, man, dude, I have cut bangs,
Speaker 2: And yes, it did feel like the end of the world.
Speaker 2: And then I realized that it was just one of
Speaker 2: four categories of big death in various levels of suddenness
Speaker 2: like bangs, crunches, shrieks, and whimpers. So this boss from
Speaker 2: paper includes topics such as nuclear holocaust, asteroid impact killed
Speaker 2: by extraterrestrial civilization, and a whole category titled quote, we're
Speaker 2: living in a simulation and it gets shut down, so
Speaker 2: just a casual bebop down hazard street, which wasn't in
Speaker 2: op to Phil Taurus, because you know what, someone's got
Speaker 2: to do these jobs, right, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's in his original paper, Bostrom notes that the
Speaker 3: number of papers published about dung beetles in scholarly journals
Speaker 3: far exceeds the number about like human extinction or you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's starting to change a little bit. Maybe this
Speaker 3: this brings us right back to the two phil tours is.
Speaker 2: I know, so speaking of like a double signed coin
Speaker 2: bridging this entomology and eschatology divide. Though one published paper
Speaker 2: titled the Role of dung Beetles in reducing greenhouse gas
Speaker 2: emissions from cattle farming. So dung beetles, they're out there
Speaker 2: making the most of an objectively shitty situation, and they're
Speaker 2: helping us survive along the way.
Speaker 3: Climate change is a phenomenon we've never encountered before, at
Speaker 3: least not this type of you know, anthropogenic climate change,
Speaker 3: which is very rapid. There's also global biodiverse loss, which
Speaker 3: is truly extraordinary. It's widely considered that we're in this
Speaker 3: early stage of the six mass extinction event right now.
Speaker 3: Oh good, And just to give listeners a sense of
Speaker 3: how dire the situation is with respect to the global
Speaker 3: global ecosystems and the biosphere more generally, there was a
Speaker 3: report from twenty fourteen called the Living Planet Report, and
Speaker 3: they found that between I don't know, I'm chuckling, but
Speaker 3: it's just, oh god, I don't know what is between
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy and twenty twelve, the global population of wild
Speaker 3: vertebrates declined by fifty eight percent.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a lot.
Speaker 3: It's a huge amount.
Speaker 2: It's what.
Speaker 3: It's deeply unsettling. I mean, it's not difficult to extrapolate
Speaker 3: that into the future. Right, So this is happening, it's urgent.
Speaker 2: This is like the part and a party where shit
Speaker 2: starts going wrong, like someone barfs, someone breaks the coffee table,
Speaker 2: it's get late, the neighbors call the police, and it's
Speaker 2: just like, oh, this party is done, this party is done.
Speaker 2: You got we got to get out of here. Have
Speaker 2: you considered writing a book just called We're All Fucked?
Speaker 2: You would move so many copies just haven't be called
Speaker 2: we're fucked. I mean, that's kind of that. That's kind
Speaker 2: of the reality, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, well no, I do think there's hope.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, let's run down. Let's say you're at a
Speaker 2: dinner party and someone's like, oh, what do you do?
Speaker 2: And you tell them and they're like, what, how's the
Speaker 2: world going to end? Give me a quick menu if
Speaker 2: we if we had sat down at a restaurant and
Speaker 2: we're like, here are the options for apocalypse? What are
Speaker 2: we looking at?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I would I sort of identify three main classes
Speaker 3: of phenomena. So the first class, I think is environmental degradation. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know if we, you know, Elon Musk and Jeff
Speaker 3: Bezos want to you know, to set up colonies on Mars,
Speaker 3: which is I think misguided, and all that money would
Speaker 3: be a lot better spent trying to ensure that this
Speaker 3: spaceship that we're on it remains habitable. So yeah, there
Speaker 3: are all sorts of statistics that could be mentioned here
Speaker 3: that are very unsettling, okay and very worrisome.
Speaker 2: Give me some By the way, I'm with you on
Speaker 2: the way, why are we going to go to Mars?
Speaker 2: When we have a planet that we're not done ruining yet. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: we have a whole planet here. We could just not
Speaker 2: mess this up. Yeah, so give me some unsettling statistics.
Speaker 2: I'm ready for them.
Speaker 3: I'm also very skeptical of space conversation just generally. And
Speaker 3: there's a really fantastic book that's forthcoming by a guy
Speaker 3: named Daniel Dudney who's a political scientist at Johns Hopkins
Speaker 3: called Dark Skies, which offers a really detailed case for
Speaker 3: why venturing into the Solar System and then into the
Speaker 3: galaxy could actually have quite ruinous consequences, evolutionary trajectories that
Speaker 3: we will likely followers, and all sorts of technologies that
Speaker 3: could we could use to alter our phenotypes.
Speaker 2: You got to just splice us together with a tartar grade,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, half human, half tartar grade.
Speaker 2: My head on a tartar grade body, but the size
Speaker 2: of a dog. I mean, that's what we're looking at.
Speaker 2: We stand dehydration for ten years, it'd be great. Can
Speaker 2: you imagine I'm going to photoshop that?
Speaker 3: So sorry to veer off in that direction, but space
Speaker 3: conversation is I mean, that's another issue that is you know, right, now.
Speaker 3: I mean it could be the next ten years that
Speaker 3: we have some colonies on Mars. So like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it's it's a timely issue. Yeah, okay, So getting
Speaker 3: back to the main potential causes of our annihilation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sucks. I love, it sucks so bad we're
Speaker 2: all gonna die. Okay, So we got environmental degradation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is exactly the moment when we need environmental wisdom,
Speaker 3: you know, and we clearly don't have it. So the
Speaker 3: other issue, I think it has to do with emerging
Speaker 3: technologies that are dual use in nature, can be used
Speaker 3: for both harmful or beneficial ends. There are various domains
Speaker 3: of technology right now that are developing extremely rapidly at
Speaker 3: exponential pace or like super exponential pace, and they hold
Speaker 3: immense promises to cure disease, to reverse aging, to maybe
Speaker 3: even restore the environment in some way. I mean, de
Speaker 3: extinction is like a new thing.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that was even a word.
Speaker 3: That's a word. Yep.
Speaker 2: Very optimistic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, George Church at Harvard is right now working on
Speaker 3: a project to bring back the wooly mammoth and some
Speaker 3: other species.
Speaker 2: So so a good idea.
Speaker 3: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
Speaker 3: could they didn't stop to think they should. I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe not, but I think there's a very good conversation
Speaker 3: to be had about that.
Speaker 2: The conversations being is it ethical to edit Asian elephant
Speaker 2: genes and add in willly mammoth traits? And does this
Speaker 2: lead the way to careless extinctions? Because now we know
Speaker 2: we have these genetic backups on ice? And also, was
Speaker 2: Mistress Nophlebigus the ones selectively seen and then fully acknowledged
Speaker 2: mammoth like puppet of Sesame Street? Was he an agent
Speaker 2: of existential foreshadowing in this life simulation we call Earth?
Speaker 2: Also is technology evil?
Speaker 3: Technology could enable us to do all sorts of I
Speaker 3: think genuinely marvelous things. But also these same technologies could
Speaker 3: enable us to synthesize designer pathogens that you know are
Speaker 3: really unnaturally dangerous. They could have long incubation periods, so
Speaker 3: you don't you know, they could spread around the globe
Speaker 3: without people exhibiting symptoms, super lethal and making matters worse.
Speaker 3: It's not only the case that theechnology it is becoming
Speaker 3: more powerful, but it's becoming much more accessible too, So
Speaker 3: it's not just that like a large group of scientists
Speaker 3: like the Manhattan you know Manhattan Project size group of
Speaker 3: experts are able to create a pathogen that is, you know,
Speaker 3: exceptionally lethal. But you know, small groups, little small terrorist groups,
Speaker 3: maybe even single individuals.
Speaker 2: So you could diy Crisp or the plague.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't say it's so loudly though.
Speaker 2: Never mind, don't do that. Also, I hope our phones
Speaker 2: are eavesdropping, it's a fact.
Speaker 3: And researching books and papers that I have an Internet history.
Speaker 2: Oh, I bet you're on so many watch lists.
Speaker 3: Looking up some really really frightening pathogens.
Speaker 2: I mean I google a lot about like whale dicks
Speaker 2: and stuff for this podcast, But yours are history is
Speaker 2: way it's going to be way more suspicious than you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 2: So we're looking at at essentially we're we're screwing up
Speaker 2: the planet itself. And I mean a lot of species
Speaker 2: are going extinct. Technology is moving so fast it can
Speaker 2: be used probably more for bad than for good, or
Speaker 2: at least they could outpace one could outpace the other.
Speaker 3: As some as two philosophers Julian Sephlescun and ingmar Person,
Speaker 3: who have written a bunch of papers together have pointed
Speaker 3: out it tends to be a fact that it's just
Speaker 3: easier to do harm than to do good.
Speaker 2: You know what, settle in right now, get cozy for
Speaker 2: something that will haunt the rest of your waking hours.
Speaker 3: It's easier, it's easier to harm a hundred people than
Speaker 3: to you know, benefit them to the same degree. So
Speaker 3: I think technology is just kind of a big magnifying
Speaker 3: glass and is just you know, it isn't it isn't
Speaker 3: genuinely like a qualitatively new situation when like a single
Speaker 3: individual has the has the power to wreak you know,
Speaker 3: civilizational havoc. These technologies are seem to be empowering individuals
Speaker 3: much more than the state. You know, there's a book
Speaker 3: about this exact issue called The Future of Violence, and
Speaker 3: they talk about they conjecture that there may be an
Speaker 3: impending dissolution of the social contract and with a kind
Speaker 3: of return to hobbesy and anarchy where there's just no
Speaker 3: secure you know, the state is no longer able to
Speaker 3: provide security because single individuals can harm huge numbers of
Speaker 3: people in ways that are really difficult to detect and
Speaker 3: also are difficult to prevent.
Speaker 2: Ps. Thomas Hobbes was a philosopher from the sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and he held the core belief human beings are selfish creatures.
Speaker 3: That's the idea behind the at least the Hobbsyan version
Speaker 3: of social contract.
Speaker 2: Is this also the logic behind doomsday bunkers, where you
Speaker 2: just like, you get a bunch of d hydrate of
Speaker 2: potatoes and you just like hitt at the underground pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're just like a piece. You all fight
Speaker 2: it out up there. I'm gonna live in this bunker.
Speaker 3: I haven't gotten to that point yet myself, okay, but
Speaker 3: I haven't tempted at times just to stash a couple
Speaker 3: extra bottles of wine or something, just in.
Speaker 2: Case some swords maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is like, if you have one million pretty
Speaker 2: chill people, you just need one who will off the
Speaker 2: other million. Is that kind of what we're talking about?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or you could look at from a
Speaker 3: different perspective and say, imagine you have out of a
Speaker 3: population of seven point six billion, you've got one million
Speaker 3: malicious agents who have omni sidle tendencies and would actually
Speaker 3: like to destroy humanity if they could. Is, by the way,
Speaker 3: a topic I've also written about and there are those
Speaker 3: people out there. For sure.
Speaker 2: I've never heard the word omni sidle, but.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, it's a lovely term.
Speaker 2: Like this is my personal brand. I'm really into omnoside.
Speaker 2: It's a fun fact. Omnicidal means kill everything and everyone
Speaker 2: until the extinction of our species. It's very ott, very
Speaker 2: over the top, very extra, very diva, very drama. Needs
Speaker 2: to just not.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine like one million, uh genuinely malicious
Speaker 3: agents and set and then ask like, what is the
Speaker 3: probability that any one of them will gain access to
Speaker 3: the relevant technology, which increasingly that's possible, you know, is
Speaker 3: to set up a biohacker lab. You know, you only
Speaker 3: need a few in her bucks.
Speaker 2: Oh part in my despair grunting.
Speaker 3: John Soto's even even hypothesizes that the this distribution of
Speaker 3: unprecedented destructive capabilities could constitute the great a great filter
Speaker 3: that explains, uh, you know, some probability bottleneck that all
Speaker 3: civilizations have to go through and almost none of them
Speaker 3: make it out. Well, that's why we don't observe aliens
Speaker 3: wandering through the U niverse. The universe seems to be
Speaker 3: vacant in terms of with respect to life, so they
Speaker 3: all use that.
Speaker 2: They all have like teenage gamers trying to kill each
Speaker 2: other and they're on their own planet and they're like
Speaker 2: and then they all die.
Speaker 4: Also, oh god, you you really should have co authored
Speaker 4: because that would have been a nice flare at some.
Speaker 2: Point, just alien in cells with twelve dicks being like,
Speaker 2: I can't even get laid at all. I'm gonna kill everyone,
Speaker 2: Holy smokes.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, so the last one. Sorry for delaying.
Speaker 2: I have too many questions. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no, it's fine. The last one I mentioned
Speaker 3: before that is a bit more speculative, but I would
Speaker 3: say it's machine super intelligence.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, we're talking ais AI. Okay, oh yeah, we
Speaker 2: got some artificial intelligence. It's gonna kill us all. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So one of the biggest myths is that the AI
Speaker 3: system that is dangerous is one that has some kind
Speaker 3: of malicious, malevolent, malign intentions. And while it's possible that
Speaker 3: a super intelligent machine could be designed in such a
Speaker 3: way or could for some reason acquire like you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of must kill humans value system.
Speaker 2: I love by the way, that if there's a malicious AI,
Speaker 2: it can kill us all, but it can't make a
Speaker 2: complete sentence. Do you know what I'm meaning? Like, it
Speaker 2: can't great to make your acquaintance, I must kill all
Speaker 2: of the humans in existence. It can only use an
Speaker 2: economy of words. That's like, yeah, very simple, but it's
Speaker 2: very sophisticated that it could kill us all. You can't
Speaker 2: just can't. I can't learn, can't learn the language, so
Speaker 2: must kill humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and the voice too, the better synthesized voices
Speaker 3: by the time. So actually the real danger is that
Speaker 3: it exceeds us It exceeds the best possible that any
Speaker 3: member of our species could possibly achieve, and also that
Speaker 3: it's its value system is not sufficiently well lined with ours.
Speaker 3: It makes for a much less compelling movie, you know, storyline.
Speaker 3: But this is actually the real substantive concern that people have.
Speaker 3: You know, computers tend to process information way faster than humans,
Speaker 3: a million plus times as fast. Basically the outside world
Speaker 3: to it looks frozen.
Speaker 2: And that's not even without that's even without quantum computing.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm just talking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're just talking about what we got, which, compared
Speaker 2: to quantum computing, is so slow. Yeah, oh boy. Quantum computing,
Speaker 2: by the bye, relies on an atoms superposition of being
Speaker 2: essentially two things at once instead of our current computers,
Speaker 2: which rely on transistors to make bits that represent ones
Speaker 2: and zeros. Anyway, that's as nutshell as it gets and
Speaker 2: probably a little bit wrong. But how much faster is
Speaker 2: quantum computing? Some say one hundred million times faster than
Speaker 2: your laptop.
Speaker 3: It's a lot, And so I like ran the numbers
Speaker 3: that I think the average PhD program in the US
Speaker 3: is like something like eight point two years. And that
Speaker 3: you know, if a computer's process information million times faster,
Speaker 3: that means that you know, a super intelligent machine or
Speaker 3: just just a generally artificially general artificial general intelligence could
Speaker 3: earn a PhD in something like four point three minutes
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: So so much cheaper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's on the one hand. Second, there's something
Speaker 3: called the instrumental convergence thesis, and this is just the
Speaker 3: idea that for a wide range of final goals, there
Speaker 3: are some very predictable intermediary goals that the system is
Speaker 3: going to pursue.
Speaker 2: So essentially, if you have goals, there are some basic
Speaker 2: things that you have to do to achieve them, Like
Speaker 2: if you wanted to be a musician, Phil says, you
Speaker 2: would have to get good at, say, shredding on guitar.
Speaker 2: You would have to obtain the guitar. And if your
Speaker 2: stepdad tried to kill your dreams, you would resist him
Speaker 2: and tell him fuck you, Doug, no one likes your
Speaker 2: coleslaw or your mustache, and then you'd keep practicing those
Speaker 2: hot licks. Same with AI.
Speaker 3: It's going to first of all, might look around and think,
Speaker 3: you know, these humans they could turn, could try to
Speaker 3: shut me down, so it's maybe in my interest to
Speaker 3: eliminate them.
Speaker 2: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me,
Speaker 2: and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Speaker 3: Another thing is, you know humans are made out of
Speaker 3: conveniently located atoms. So it's, as one researcher famously put it,
Speaker 3: eliezer Cawska. You know, it's not to paraphrase him, it's
Speaker 3: not that the a I hastes you or loves you.
Speaker 3: It just notices that you're made out of material that
Speaker 3: it can use for something else. So kind of the
Speaker 3: the analogy here, this is another kind of uh, it's
Speaker 3: becoming a cliche. A bit is you know when humans go,
Speaker 3: you know, raise forests to build a suburban neighborhood. You know,
Speaker 3: the result is sometimes like a you know, pretty devastating
Speaker 3: ant genocide. And it's not that the It's not that
Speaker 3: we have any ill will towards it's not like the
Speaker 3: it's not that we're malevolent towards the ants. It's simply
Speaker 3: that we're much smarter and therefore can manipulate the world
Speaker 3: in ways that the ant can't even conceive. And also,
Speaker 3: we just have different values. Our value systems are not
Speaker 3: properly aligned. So if you think about this analogy, you know,
Speaker 3: with us as the ants going about our business, we
Speaker 3: have our own values. We want to build these little
Speaker 3: colonies underground, and then the super intelligent system that we
Speaker 3: create ends up having values that don't perfectly align with
Speaker 3: our colony building values. Then you know, it may just
Speaker 3: raise the forest and in pursuit of its own you know,
Speaker 3: particular aims with the with the consequence being that we
Speaker 3: all perish.
Speaker 2: And the next thing, you know, we fucked once again.
Speaker 2: Come to the conclusion end of the flow chart, We're fucked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that reminds me a lot of there was a
Speaker 3: I think I probably gonna forget the guy's name but
Speaker 3: there was a geophysicist, oh, Brad Werner I think his name.
Speaker 3: He presented, gave a presentation that was titled is Earth Fucked?
Speaker 3: And he got he got a fair amount of press
Speaker 3: for it. And as he explained to someone I think
Speaker 3: from Lake his moto or something that he his answer
Speaker 3: is more or less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a shrug. Yeah, so a single slide.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: You're like, wow, that was a forty five second presentation.
Speaker 2: He's done, He's like, and there's CRSAL in the lobby,
Speaker 2: so bye bye. Now, how do you think the world
Speaker 2: is going to end? If you had to put your
Speaker 2: money on it? Not that money matters when the apocalypse
Speaker 2: is not. But if someone's like, mister trus yeah, put
Speaker 2: your money on the end, what is it?
Speaker 3: I think it would be imprudent to specify one particular scenario.
Speaker 2: You're like all of them.
Speaker 3: I have yet to discover a particularly good counter argument
Speaker 3: to the issue that we're talking about before.
Speaker 2: So in regard to the democratization of destructive technology, that little.
Speaker 3: Thing if there is a technology, you know, as some
Speaker 3: people have said, if everybody around the world had an
Speaker 3: app on their phone that where they could open it
Speaker 3: up and push a button that would destroy the world.
Speaker 3: Who thinks the world would last for more than two seconds?
Speaker 2: Oh, it would be over. There would be someone who
Speaker 2: got rejected for a date. We'd be smoked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's implausible to think we would last for
Speaker 3: a minute, and it would.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry that it would. One million percent be a
Speaker 2: dude between the ages of like sixteen and twenty three
Speaker 2: that did it, like one hundred percent, someone's prom date,
Speaker 2: someone's girlfriend left them for someone who does more CrossFit,
Speaker 2: and then the world is over.
Speaker 3: This is another topic that has been discussed among the
Speaker 3: relevant scholars. Basically, the argument is that you know, a
Speaker 3: a milieu in which there are extremely powerful technologies and
Speaker 3: then there are there's this segment of humanity that is
Speaker 3: suffering from testosterone poisoning and uh, you know that's I've
Speaker 3: written about this as well. I'm very worried about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's what.
Speaker 2: Can we do for the What can we do for
Speaker 2: the dudes? Like if the dude were a stray animal,
Speaker 2: say a wounded raccoon, are a neglected rabbit dog, what
Speaker 2: could we do to help fix them so they don't
Speaker 2: kill us in the face.
Speaker 3: I you know, I don't have a good answer. I
Speaker 3: mentioned before the Philosopher's Julians have leskud In more person
Speaker 3: who wrote a really interesting book from twenty twelve called
Speaker 3: to Unfit for the Future where they talked about they
Speaker 3: go into immense detail about the possibility of using moral
Speaker 3: bio enhancements.
Speaker 2: Moral bio enhancements these are a thing. I feel like
Speaker 2: coffee is already kind of one of them.
Speaker 3: These would be biomedical interventions that would aim to enhance
Speaker 3: our empathy, sympathetic concern. And it's really controversial. It's person
Speaker 3: engineering type stuff. So they argue on the one hand
Speaker 3: that if we remain as we are moving into the future, uh,
Speaker 3: we're the outcome is going to be bad. So so
Speaker 3: we're fucked. So that is what that is what warrants
Speaker 3: I believe they would would say they're considering a possibility
Speaker 3: that's really quite radical. Anyways, The point is that you know,
Speaker 3: statistically speaking, women tend to do better than men with
Speaker 3: respect to empathy and sympathy and and you know moral
Speaker 3: characteristics like that. So they have this really great line
Speaker 3: where they say, you know what may need to happen
Speaker 3: is that we make men more like women, or rather
Speaker 3: men more like men who are like women. There are
Speaker 3: definitely people in this field who takes seriously the potentially
Speaker 3: quite combustible mixture of you know, just toxic masculinity and
Speaker 3: dual use technologies.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's such a that's a that's like a toddler
Speaker 2: with a machine gun kind of I don't.
Speaker 3: Know what to say. Maybe maybe put the men on
Speaker 3: Mars or something. You just sequester them over there and
Speaker 3: then oxytocin supplements. Maybe oxytocin is one of the main
Speaker 3: the possibilities that Sevelescu and Person discuss. But unfortunately oxytocin
Speaker 3: the the effects are limited to racial in groups according
Speaker 3: to a whole bunch of studies, So you do get
Speaker 3: more empathetic to other humans, but it doesn't cope beyond
Speaker 3: your race, at least in the studies.
Speaker 2: So the hugest problem we have pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they do mention at some point that this is,
Speaker 3: let's say, not a trivial problem with you know, because
Speaker 3: I mean, we have fluoride in the in the public
Speaker 3: drinking water for healthier I dentician as, we vaccinate, vaccinate,
Speaker 3: and yeah, so there's a kind of perspective where I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe It's not totally crazy that you'd put
Speaker 3: some oxytocin in the the public drinking.
Speaker 2: Water, the mountain dew. Just put it in the monster
Speaker 2: energy because I'd be like, those are the people who
Speaker 2: need it.
Speaker 3: I really like the more targeted approach. That's much more clever.
Speaker 2: How often do you think about the apocalypse? Is it
Speaker 2: only when you're working or is it when you're driving
Speaker 2: around when a new Mariah Carey single drops when you
Speaker 2: are I don't know, Okay, a girl can dream. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think of the good things in life as
Speaker 2: faint and I guess the subconscious effect that a good
Speaker 2: publicist would have. Mariah Carey does have a new album
Speaker 2: coming out. It drops November sixteenth, people, and fittingly for
Speaker 2: this episode, it's titled Caution. Also does Phil ever get bummed?
Speaker 2: But like, do you think about it on a daily basis? Like,
Speaker 2: maybe I shouldn't sweat this because we're about to annally
Speaker 2: annihilate the planet.
Speaker 3: So if you take seriously some of the probability estimates
Speaker 3: that scholars have proposed, Bostrom has has a few Toby ords,
Speaker 3: you know, has suggested that we maybe have a one
Speaker 3: and six chance of surviving the century.
Speaker 2: One in six chance of surviving the next eighty two years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: are you gonna have kids? You have kids? No, Okay,
Speaker 2: are you gonna have kids? Do you think or is
Speaker 2: that because you're like, we're all gonna die anyway? Because
Speaker 2: I've often thought that, I'm like, never when there's too
Speaker 2: many of us, we're growing exponentially. No one needs more
Speaker 2: of me. One of me is plenty, and also one
Speaker 2: of me is enough for the world, and then they're
Speaker 2: just gonna die. But how do you what do you
Speaker 2: how do you approach those kind of like decisions.
Speaker 3: There's a philosophical component and then like a kind of
Speaker 3: empirical component. Empirically, I think I could imagine a version
Speaker 3: of the world that is worth living in, you know where,
Speaker 3: like you, people take science seriously. You know, it could
Speaker 3: be the case that climate change is right now not
Speaker 3: a concern at all because people listen to scientists back
Speaker 3: in the nineties, et cetera, and then took actions just
Speaker 3: like we did with the with the ozone hole. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a sense in which the world could be significantly
Speaker 3: more livable than it is. Unfortunately, we're in a world
Speaker 3: you know where I mean, I don't I can only
Speaker 3: assume what your personal politics are. But you know, Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is got elected even after the Trump tape, and
Speaker 3: you know, et cetera. I mean, that's an unfortunate world.
Speaker 3: To put it crudely, it's a shitty world. So I'm
Speaker 3: dis And maybe another way to put this is I
Speaker 3: have I'm deeply disappointed in my species forgot doing better.
Speaker 3: And so then there's a philosophical issue and this gets
Speaker 3: to uh an idea referred to as anti natalism.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Oh there's a word for it.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: I thought it was just spinsterism. It was an old
Speaker 2: weird aunt with no kids. Is I don't know there
Speaker 2: was an anti natalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a it's a pretty fascinating view. Uh.
Speaker 3: It's it's like Arthur Schopenhower is kind of famously an
Speaker 3: anti natalist who believe and his argument was that life
Speaker 3: is just terrible.
Speaker 2: You know, life is duca, So duka translates from the
Speaker 2: Sanskrit and it means suffering pain or stress. So life
Speaker 2: is duka is a Buddhist phrase that means that life
Speaker 2: is kind of unsatisfactory and painful. Life just kind of sucks. Now,
Speaker 2: in all transparency, when phil said life is duka. I
Speaker 2: thought he meant douchie, which is a casual term for pooh.
Speaker 2: But he also said that some argue that the most
Speaker 2: compassionate thing you can do is not bring a child
Speaker 2: into the world because it's hard. It's just hard to live,
Speaker 2: it's hard to be a person. But a lot of
Speaker 2: this probably depends on your own outlook on life and
Speaker 2: how much you enjoy it. I do not enjoy most
Speaker 2: Italian food, to a lot of people's shock and disgust
Speaker 2: of me. But Ergo I would never bring someone to
Speaker 2: buka tobebbo as a treat. However, some people love it.
Speaker 2: They would definitely invite others to a spaghetti fest. Now,
Speaker 2: from an evolutionary standpoint, some scientists think it's better for
Speaker 2: a species not to fully grasp the pain of existence.
Speaker 3: Thomas Metzinger and another philosopher has talked about how, you know,
Speaker 3: evolutionarily speaking, we probably would not have been selected tendencies
Speaker 3: to recognize the extent of harm in our life. Those
Speaker 3: tendencies would be selected against because that's not really good.
Speaker 2: For right, for it on right, You're like, this is terrible,
Speaker 2: that's macwormous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, so, he says it's always a harm to
Speaker 3: bring a human into the world because, yeah, because you're
Speaker 3: all that human's sure they're gonna have some good experiences,
Speaker 3: they're also going to have bad experiences, whereas a person
Speaker 3: who doesn't exist isn't going to miss those good experiences.
Speaker 3: But is you know, it is good that that individual
Speaker 3: is not experiencing the bad stuff.
Speaker 2: If you had a time frame that you thought the
Speaker 2: apocalypse maybe were to visit us kind of like a
Speaker 2: doom fairy, when do you think that might happen. I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to figure out, like, do I buy the
Speaker 2: extra protection plan with the electronics? How much do I
Speaker 2: invest in my retirement.
Speaker 3: This is a general issue that we've returned to several times.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, No, no, it's fine. I just don't
Speaker 3: have a good sense objectively. I mean, you can you know,
Speaker 3: we know that, you know, a huge asteroid that could
Speaker 3: kill our species strikes Earth every four hundred million years
Speaker 3: or something, or four hundred thousand years. Maybe a super
Speaker 3: volcanic or a super volcano erupts every fifty thousand or so.
Speaker 3: The last one, well two super volcanic co ruptions ago
Speaker 3: was the Toba catastrophe. That might have resulted in the
Speaker 3: population bottleneck of maybe a thousand humans, So we almost
Speaker 3: went extinct to oh, we're.
Speaker 2: So close with those one thousand. Must have been so horny.
Speaker 2: Oh they must have been like you guys, we got
Speaker 2: work to do. So, I mean we could have a
Speaker 2: we could have Yellowstone could just pop off, and then
Speaker 2: there could be twelve of us left.
Speaker 3: That is a freighting possibility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So the Toba catastrophe theory just looked it up.
Speaker 2: It holds that seventy five thousand years ago in Indonesia,
Speaker 2: there was a volcano so wicked that it led to
Speaker 2: a volcanic winter that lasted six to ten years and
Speaker 2: maybe a thousand year long cooling episode for the Earth,
Speaker 2: and we all almost died. Now for more on volcano doom.
Speaker 2: If you're like, wow, didn't know I was so horny
Speaker 2: for a volcano facts, see episode one with Jess Phoenix.
Speaker 2: You will lava it.
Speaker 3: Boston puts the probability at least twenty percent based on
Speaker 3: objective and subjective considerations, that is, before twenty one hundred.
Speaker 3: Martin Reese suggests that there's a fifty to fifty chance
Speaker 3: of civilization will collapse. This century. If you take seriously
Speaker 3: some of these estimates and you compare them to the
Speaker 3: likelihood of dying, for example, in a car accident or
Speaker 3: a plane accident or something of that sort, it turns
Speaker 3: out you're much more likely to encounter some kind of
Speaker 3: human extinction event that really like thousands of times more likely. Wow,
Speaker 3: I should add quickly, you're also much more likely to
Speaker 3: die in a huge asteroid strike then gets struck by
Speaker 3: lightning or something. And that's just because in asteroids is
Speaker 3: going to harm so many people that if you if
Speaker 3: you consider the probability over you know, millennia, then that's
Speaker 3: how you get the probability that you're more likely to
Speaker 3: die that way.
Speaker 2: Oh, but it's still numbers or numbers, I'll take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you live your life differently thinking about the apocalypse
Speaker 2: or do you give advice to anyone like we should
Speaker 2: still be recycling.
Speaker 3: Right we should? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, we should still be helping fellow humans.
Speaker 3: Oh very much so, right, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Trying not to squash any endangered species. Vote for people
Speaker 2: who give at least one shit about the future, right yeah,
Speaker 2: And don't develop ai that could use human atoms as fuel.
Speaker 2: Have you ever watched Black Mirror. Yes, how do you
Speaker 2: feel about it?
Speaker 3: Very good?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 4: Yeah, why I mean, sorry, I'm screaming. Let me, let me,
Speaker 4: let me change my answer to it. I think the
Speaker 4: show is fantastic. I think a lot of the topics
Speaker 4: that they that the show explores are really fascinating. And
Speaker 4: it's a lot of these issues are kind of right
Speaker 4: around the corner. So it's it's uh, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: giving us a.
Speaker 3: Sneak peek in certain respects, at least of kind of
Speaker 3: near term, you know, issues with social media, with you know,
Speaker 3: possibly things like mind uploading. I mean that might be
Speaker 3: you know, in the next you know, several decades. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really quite good, and it's I think it's helpful
Speaker 3: to explore the more dystopian possibilities because again, you know,
Speaker 3: these technologies are dual use. They don't just have destructive capabilities,
Speaker 3: but also, on the other hand, they could really ameliorate
Speaker 3: the human condition in all sorts of amazing ways. I
Speaker 3: certainly would be elated if we could cure all disease,
Speaker 3: you know, as hell and cancer, Alzheimer's. But the you know,
Speaker 3: and focusing on the peril, I think doesn't make one
Speaker 3: a pessimist. This is an issue that I've had with
Speaker 3: a lot of Stephen Pinker's work, because he seems to
Speaker 3: think that people who talk about existential risks are are pessimistic. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, I tend to be fairly optimistic in my
Speaker 3: personal life by my nature, but there are some facts
Speaker 3: about the world that make me pessimistic. Anyways, The point is,
Speaker 3: in order to increase the chance that there is actually
Speaker 3: a really good outcome, it's critical to focus on the
Speaker 3: worst case scenarios on how things could go wrong, where
Speaker 3: you say, okay, let's fix this outcome. In fact, Pinker
Speaker 3: has accused some existential risk scholars of just kind of
Speaker 3: sitting around trying to invent new doomsday scenarios. Well, kind of, yes,
Speaker 3: because because we certainly don't want to be blindsided.
Speaker 2: We got these big old noggins, we gotta use some
Speaker 2: your thing ahead. I'd like to rely on the theory
Speaker 2: that this is all a simulation possibilities, that that's true,
Speaker 2: it's possible, Okay, Like, can you just say that it's
Speaker 2: possible if it were a simulation. If someone were like, hey,
Speaker 2: got news, would you do anything differently in your life?
Speaker 3: Probably not.
Speaker 2: But some scholars He says, like Max Tech Mark have
Speaker 2: simulation theories, maybe a little tongue in cheek that maybe
Speaker 2: the more strife and jerks and power and religious wars
Speaker 2: we have, the more entertaining we are to the folks
Speaker 2: running the simulation. Kind of like an ant farm with
Speaker 2: a lot of battles and activities only were people. And
Speaker 2: it feels real and it hurts and we want to
Speaker 2: sleep all the time to escape the pain. Can I
Speaker 2: ask you some Patreon questions about make it quick? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna lob a couple questions that you at random. Okay,
Speaker 2: so on Patreon. Patreon patrons get to some questions and
Speaker 2: I'm just going to ask you a few. At total randoms,
Speaker 2: a lot of people all were like, how are we
Speaker 2: going out? That's like everyone's would to be self induced
Speaker 2: our extraterrestrial. Everyone's like, how are we going out? Everyone
Speaker 2: wants to know. But before we take questions from you,
Speaker 2: our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 2: for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know
Speaker 2: what they do? They help us give money to different
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Speaker 2: Okay your questions. Kira Liechtenfeld asked do you put any
Speaker 2: stock into the doomsday clock? She also notes that was
Speaker 2: an accidental rhyme and ps. The doomsday clock is a
Speaker 2: symbol that the bulletin of atomic scientists, first employed in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven. It represents how close we are to
Speaker 2: a man made global catastrophe. Now, should I change man
Speaker 2: made to person made? Or should I just leave it
Speaker 2: man made?
Speaker 1: Leave it?
Speaker 2: Also how close we are to climate change or a
Speaker 2: global nuclear war. Now, doomsday is represented by midnight, and
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven it was set to seven. It's
Speaker 2: to the hour. Now it's been set backwards and forwards
Speaker 2: twenty three times since then, and it reached a placid
Speaker 2: seventeen minutes to the hour in nineteen ninety one. But
Speaker 2: it has changed recently.
Speaker 3: That Donald Trump, I'm sure you know this or listeners
Speaker 3: know this, but he more or less single handedly pushed
Speaker 3: the doomsday clock, the minute hand of the doomsday clock forward.
Speaker 3: That happened in twenty seventeen. They announced must January or something,
Speaker 3: and then that was the clock went from three minutes
Speaker 3: before midnight, which represents doom, to two and a half minutes.
Speaker 3: And then last earlier this year, I should say it
Speaker 3: was pushed forward another thirty seconds, almost entirely because of
Speaker 3: Trump's actions and you know, climate denialism and background you know,
Speaker 3: also like withdrawing from the Paris climate Agreement and the
Speaker 3: Iraan nuclear Deal, both of which the bulletin the Atomic Scientists,
Speaker 3: which runs the Doomsday o'clock identified previously as as they
Speaker 3: put it, two bright spots in front of a canopy
Speaker 3: of bleakness, or they had some kind of something somewhat
Speaker 3: dark and dismally poetic. And yeah, so Donald, there is
Speaker 3: at exactly the moment in human history. You know, we've
Speaker 3: been around for two hundred thousand years and recorded history
Speaker 3: started maybe four thousand years ago, six thousand years ago,
Speaker 3: I guess, And as Stephen Hawking said be in an
Speaker 3: Guardian op ed in twenty sixteen, I think there's a
Speaker 3: very good reason for thinking this is the most dangerous
Speaker 3: moment in all of human history. So that this critical
Speaker 3: juncture in our career as a species exactly the moment
Speaker 3: when we need someone who is deeply sagacious and wise
Speaker 3: and thoughtful and understands our evolving exsidential predicament. We have
Speaker 3: someone who is I mean, I know, I'm not this
Speaker 3: isn't a bold original thesis that I'm proposing here, but
Speaker 3: someone who is just profoundly ignorant and just revels in
Speaker 3: ignorance and foolishness in myopia.
Speaker 2: Aaron Stbrooks wants to know, are we better off heading
Speaker 2: for water or going underground?
Speaker 3: Are those the only two options?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think she's assuming that we want
Speaker 2: to survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just dark. Well, yeah, some scholars have advocated for
Speaker 3: bunkers that are continually occupied.
Speaker 2: If you're cruising Redfin for an apocalypse, Pia de terre.
Speaker 2: There's a former missile silo near Topeka for sale just
Speaker 2: over three million dollars thirty four acres solar panels, comes
Speaker 2: with a lawnmower and eleven thousand square feet of hunker
Speaker 2: down fun time space below the earth. Perhaps you can
Speaker 2: invite Michael Stipe for a slumber party.
Speaker 3: So that's one option. Water. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: actually submarines could serve the exact same purpose as bunkers.
Speaker 3: You know, there could be some global catastrophe, just some
Speaker 3: scenarios it actually wouldn't be effective, of course, like a
Speaker 3: runway greenhouse effect. Or you know, there could be a
Speaker 3: physics disaster that results in black hole or strange lit
Speaker 3: or a vacuum bubble as it's called, that could actually
Speaker 3: destroy the entire universe. That seems unlikely, but also possible.
Speaker 3: I mean maybe, I mean, Mars sounds as appealing as
Speaker 3: underground or underwater to me, and Mars doesn't sound too appealing.
Speaker 2: It does not sound very appealing. It seems very dry there.
Speaker 2: Jessica Vitter really wants to know where humans so obsessed
Speaker 2: with being judged at the end of their life. Is
Speaker 2: it something learned or just part of our makeup.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question. Surely some of it is learned.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is outside my area of expertise, so
Speaker 3: I would just you know, I'm just guessing. Yeah, no
Speaker 3: doubt some of it's learned. But also I don't know.
Speaker 3: My immediate thought is like, maybe there's a component of
Speaker 3: morality that leads us to wish that when we're gone,
Speaker 3: you know that during our lives we would have had
Speaker 3: a positive impact and left some kind of some kind
Speaker 3: of trace that you know, benefited the world or just
Speaker 3: the people around us. You know.
Speaker 2: That's a kind nice answer.
Speaker 3: It's the best I could do.
Speaker 2: No, it's you managed it. Shelby Vonn wants to know
Speaker 2: how has studying neuroscience informed your philosophical work and what
Speaker 2: is your favorite weird end of the world potentiality. So
Speaker 2: neuroscience and philosophy. Yeah, and what's the best way to
Speaker 2: go out?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the reason I was interested in neuroscience to
Speaker 3: begin with was because I was focusing as an undergrad
Speaker 3: on philosophy of mind. And this was kind of shortly
Speaker 3: after Patricia Churchland published her book on neurophilosophy, and she
Speaker 3: holds a view about folks psychology, beliefs, desires.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is a philosophy. In a very very tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny thumbnail, Nutshell asserts that things we think we understand
Speaker 2: up of the mind, like that we believe in things
Speaker 2: or desire things not really real because they're poorly defined,
Speaker 2: and the behavior should just be judged on biological levels.
Speaker 3: So I was pretty intrigued by that, and I thought
Speaker 3: maybe it would be worth learning a bit more about
Speaker 3: the hardware, you know, and seeing how that might inform
Speaker 3: philosophizing about the wetwear, you know, the higher level of
Speaker 3: conscious experience or you know, just cognitive functions.
Speaker 2: And then what's your favorite apocalypse scenario?
Speaker 3: Okay, So there's this amazing polymathic scholar at Oxford University
Speaker 3: named Andrew Sandberg, and he recently responded to cora question,
Speaker 3: which was what would happen if the Earth suddenly turned
Speaker 3: into high density blueberries. Huh. And he took he took
Speaker 3: the question seriously and did the math and ended up
Speaker 3: responding with a paper that is up on archive and
Speaker 3: it's it's a really technical, really technical, fantastic sophisticated article
Speaker 3: that you know, I couldn't get through parts of it,
Speaker 3: but it was really quite entertaining. And so I think
Speaker 3: that's my most favorite fantastical eschatological scenario.
Speaker 2: I'm ready for the blueberry death.
Speaker 3: You're blowing up like a ball, like a blueberry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so ready for it. Lindsay Freshmouth wants to know.
Speaker 2: Number one, are you familiar with Harry Potter? Not really, Okay,
Speaker 2: she wanted to know if you're Slytherin, but something told
Speaker 2: her that you're a raven claw. They're different houses. Maybe
Speaker 2: could go take that, who knows. But my last two questions, Yeah,
Speaker 2: worst thing about your job? What sucks about studying the apocalypse?
Speaker 2: That's such a that's that could be either that's such
Speaker 2: a broad question. But what is the worst thing about
Speaker 2: studying the apocalypse?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's not the most soporific topic, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, soporific just means inducing drowsiness. So no, the end
Speaker 2: of the world not a sleepy business. Also, yes, I
Speaker 2: looked it up.
Speaker 3: I do enjoy. I mean it's it's meaningful, uh work
Speaker 3: for sure. I think that's what kind of enables me
Speaker 3: to spend days, you know, just you know, just really
Speaker 3: cogitating some particular you know, dark scenario.
Speaker 2: Cogitate to think about or meditate upon. Toss that in
Speaker 2: your little word tool box. It's a good one.
Speaker 3: I don't know. In terms of downsides, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: hard to get grants, you know, it's it's that's a
Speaker 3: bit of a struggle. I think that's the worst part
Speaker 3: getting grants. Yeah, getting grants.
Speaker 2: I love that you study heat, dead of the universe, starvation, extinction,
Speaker 2: And the worst is applying for grants. That's the darkest part,
Speaker 2: because do you ever just get a stamp back that's
Speaker 2: like big stamp, like boom, what's the point? Like I
Speaker 2: was like, you've convinced me and your grant that the
Speaker 2: apocalypse is coming. Ergo I will not fund it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I imagine there are some studies, some papers
Speaker 3: that could be written that you know, might present a
Speaker 3: really compelling case that that the end is imminent, and
Speaker 3: that would deter no doubt. Yeah, the garnering of further money.
Speaker 2: They're like, where did I take this money. We're gonna
Speaker 2: buy a yacht, We're gonna throw a party because it's
Speaker 2: all coming. What's the best thing about your job? What
Speaker 2: do you love the most about being an eschatologist?
Speaker 3: I think it's what I gestured out a moment ago.
Speaker 3: I find it really meaningful. And this gets back even
Speaker 3: to the uh to the the sort of to use
Speaker 3: the term a bit loosely, the kind of paradox of
Speaker 3: the field. How it's it's extremely important topic whose importance is,
Speaker 3: as I said before, is just very parasitic on the
Speaker 3: importance of all other things, you know, poetry and sports
Speaker 3: and literature and so on. It is it is meaningful.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's you know, this is work that aims
Speaker 3: to improve the lives of of the next generation and
Speaker 3: also to ensure that the great experiment called civilization continues
Speaker 3: and this multi generational project of science and philosophy and
Speaker 3: so on can perhaps reach some kind of you know,
Speaker 3: there will be good ending to the to the narrative
Speaker 3: of human existence. So yeah, that's I've that deeply satisfying.
Speaker 3: If you're a young person you happen to also care
Speaker 3: about human survival, then this is a good field to
Speaker 3: go into. It's a growth field. Also, as colleagues say,
Speaker 3: it's not going away anywhere anytime soon.
Speaker 2: There's never been a better time to be a doomstare awesome.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: To find more of the brilliant and delightful fil tors work,
Speaker 2: you can see the website Risk and Religion dot org.
Speaker 2: He is x Riskology on Twitter. I'll link those both
Speaker 2: in the show notes, and his books are The End
Speaker 2: What Science and Religion tells us about the Apocalypse and
Speaker 2: last year's release Morality Foresight and Human Flourishing and Introduction
Speaker 2: to Existential Risks. So do get your myths on those
Speaker 2: ologies is at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali
Speaker 2: Ward with one L on both, so do follow along.
Speaker 2: Ologies merch dot com has shirts that you can maybe
Speaker 2: use as a tourniquet during the chaos of an extraterrestrial
Speaker 2: alien invasion. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis and
Speaker 2: the Ologies podcast Facebook group is great, wonderful people, new
Speaker 2: friends you can meet before we all die. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Aaron Talbert and Handle Lippo for admining. Nick Thorburn wrote
Speaker 2: and performed the theme music for this. He's in a
Speaker 2: band called Islands. And this was edited by Life Saver
Speaker 2: Stephen Ray Morris, who also hosts the podcasts The per
Speaker 2: Cast and See Jurassic Right Now. If you stick around
Speaker 2: to the end, the end, the end, you know I
Speaker 2: tell you a secret every episode. So this week's secret
Speaker 2: is that right before I started recording these asides, I
Speaker 2: got a text from my dad on the family thread
Speaker 2: about how there were thirty nine earthquakes on the Santadres
Speaker 2: fault yesterday.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: Start with the so that's scary. But my first reaction
Speaker 2: to that was like, well, no one would expect you
Speaker 2: to return emails for a few days, so that'd be
Speaker 2: pretty sweet. And then also, it's not as bad as
Speaker 2: an asteroid, So maybe this apocalypse stuff is uplifting. Maybe
Speaker 2: we should laugh about it just a little more and
Speaker 2: live life in a way that's like, eh, fuck it,
Speaker 2: cut bangs, singing some karaoke, dance in a park, just
Speaker 2: do your thing. It's all gonna end, okay, Bye Bye. Pacodermatology,
Speaker 2: hobbiology or doo zoology, lithology, yeah, zechonology, meteorology, paratology, ethology, seriology, elinology.
Speaker 4: Class day is the syncre is now the class women
Speaker 4: Nish stay to make in.
Speaker 2: The number that is three time