I painted a scenario that was going to

result in the extinction of humanity and

approximately how long it would take the

problem is it's already underway on a

time scale of decades and we have

created a fragile world that cannot

endure this shift people should they be

preparing

absolutely that's quite scary Dr Brett

Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist

and former Professor uncovering the

world's most pressing and controversial

issues and offering his solutions to

save Humanity from a destructive future

humanity is in terrible danger and the

number of existential threats is growing

for example I'm profoundly concerned we

are going to squander the lesson of Co

you can see the complete collapse of

Journalism our political institutions

our courts they all failed the tragedy

is most people don't know that we are

still not being honest about the origin

of Co and the truth

is but our political institutions don't

want to talk about it which is going to

mean that the failures we going to come

back is there anything else on your list

of concerns so I have five different

existential threats that AI poses and we

will go through them but we have no

evolutionary preparedness for living in

a world where a computer can out compete

a human being that's a dangerous world

to live in is there anything we can do

to prepare or to avert this crisis yes

here's what I

suggest Brent of all these existential

threats is there one that's at the very

top of your list yes there's nothing

more dangerous of this and that

is this is a sentence I never thought

I'd say in my life um we've just hit 7

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the bottom of my heart let's get to the

[Music]

conversation

R Who who are you and what mission are

you on and when I ask that second

question I'm looking at the full body of

your work and I'm trying to encapsulate

it maybe in just a couple of

sentences

sure I am an evolutionary biologist I'm

a former college professor who has been

cast into the role of a public

intellectual by bizarre events at my

college I am on a mission and I'm afraid

it's going to

sound weird to people I think humanity

is in terrible danger I think we worry

about the wrong things and I do not have

any reason to believe that anything I

could do is going to change the fate of

humanity but I feel obligated to

try that is to say if we're going to be

doomed by our errors and I know

something about what those errors are

then it falls to me to try to make that

clear to people and processes that might

have the power to redirect us so I'm

making that effort even though frankly I

think it's unlikely to work that's quite

scary Brett yep I've gotten over that

part what exactly are you referring to

when you say that you think Humanity

might be doomed there's a basic set of

premises that just comes out of biology

no species is forever and that includes

our species no matter what I or anyone

else does but the objective of the

exercise is really to Stave off

Extinction as long as possible and I

believe that that is a valid thing to do

it is a vital thing to do even if in the

end we know that no matter how

successful we were we're not going to

escape the destruction of the solar

system we're not going to escape the

Collision of our galaxy into another and

even if we did ultimately the universe

has a fate and it will take us out with

it if we beat every odd

but why are we in trouble well we're in

trouble because all creatures

are wellb built for the environments in

which we

evolved and human beings suffer from

something that uh my wife Heather and I

in our book call

hyper

novelty so novelty is the state of

something being not what you are

evolutionarily prepared for and human

beings are very good at dealing with

novelty but what we're doing in the

present is we're creating a rate of

change that is so rapid that there is no

conceivable way for us to keep up we

cannot adapt fast enough to keep up with

the novel influences that we are um

forcing Upon Our ourselves and what that

means is that with each passing year we

end up ever more poorly adapted to the

life that we have to lead and it's

gotten so bad

that the environments that we live in as

adults don't even resemble the

environments that existed for adults

when we were

kids the reason that human beings have a

longer developmental period than any

other creature that has ever existed on

this planet

is that you need a long developmental

period for us to acquire the insight and

the Nuance in order to be a functional

adult that program doesn't work if the

environment in which you are picking up

those lessons is unrelated to the

environment in which you have to do the

adult stuff it's a non seiter so that's

why we're in trouble we have

technologies that are powerful enough to

destroy us we have processes that we

have unleashed the consequences of which

we can scarcely imagine and as these

things proliferate the number of

existential threats to humanity is just

simply growing we have to re in that

problem the proliferation of existential

threats means that the moment that which

we blink out as a species is getting

closer if it isn't this that takes us

out it'll be that we have to arrest that

process of all these pressing concerns

and of all these existential threats is

there one that's at the very top of your

list of concerns well they're not

even uh completely separable so for

example there we are politically

obsessed in this country and across the

the Western World with anthropogenic

climate change I'm sure you've noticed

what is anthropogenic climate change

anthropogenic climate change is a change

in the average conditions on planet

Earth that is driven by human

activity so the claim is that CO2 traps

heat from the Sun causing the mean

temperature to rise that will have

impacts on for example how much ice

persists at high altitudes and in the

Arctic and the uh other cold

regions and that that then is part of a

positive feedback where because ice is

white it reflects the sun's energy back

into space so the more ice that melts

the darker the world becomes the more

light it absorbs the warmer it becomes

so that positive feedback is actually a

real reason for concern

however the increasingly model driven

Mania about global warming is at odds

with what we understand about models

models are not a valid test of a

hypothesis in a complex system they

can't be so we are treating these models

as if they tell what's going to happen

and that is not a philosophically valid

thing to do but it is also just

simply not in keeping

with an understanding of the underlying

requirements for functional

science if you were in climatology today

and you attempted to publish a paper

that said actually uh anthropogenic

climate change is only a quarter as bad

as we

fear you would have great difficulty

publishing that and you would experience

a spectacular uh decrease in your

viability as an academic so what we can

infer from that is that we probably have

a lot of papers that point in a

direction that the field is interested

in promoting and that we have a dir of

papers that might point in the other

direction so in effect when we look at

the sum total of papers and we say oh my

God they all say the same thing we're in

big trouble well do they all say the

same thing cuz we're in big trouble and

that's what an honest analysis would

give you or is that just an echo of what

we put into the system so I'm much less

worried about anthrop penic climate

change and I'm much more worried about

some other threats that to my way of

thinking clearly dwarf it in

magnitude

so we have several problems related to

space weather the Sun goes through a

cycle an 11-year Sunspot

Cycle those sunspots often release solar

flares those solar flares are in general

directed randomly off the Sun and

because the Earth is only in one spot

most of the solar flares that the sun

flings off don't hit us what's a solar

flare a solar flare is well it's really

the coronal mass ejection that is the

important part the flare is the thing

you see on the Sun that looks like a big

flame sort of flipping off the sun when

it does that that actually in many cases

ejects a

concentrated glob of plasma right these

are charged

particles and they get flung off they

get flung off at speeds that are not

consistent they're not moving at the

speed of light they're moving at the

speed of stuff right and that speed of

stuff is variable but a couple days

after a solar flare that releases a

coronal mass ejection in the direction

of the earth we get a wave of these

charged particles across the Earth yeah

yeah and that causes things that we are

all familiar with whether you've seen it

or not this uh increases the the Aurora

Borealis for example the Northern Lights

so it's a very spectacular show and you

probably are aware maybe you saw it

yourself but we recently had a uh an

aurora that reached as far south as

Puerto Rico right that's a really

unusual thing to happen and even more

unusual is the fact so they usually

reach sort of the top part of the earth

is that is that right yeah you you if

you're up near the Arctic Circle yeah

you uh you see these things regularly

the farther south you are the less

likely you are to see them yeah I saw it

in North Sweden and sort of Iceland as

well perfect place right um but for the

for people to see it in Puerto Rico is

highly unusual and you would think that

that indicates that the burst of plasma

that hit the earth was in some way

highly unusual and it wasn't something

else is going on that Aurora reached

farther south than it should have based

on the magnitude of the coronal mass

mass ejection which was substantial but

hardly

unprecedent now what most people don't

know is that there was a major solar

storm that hit the earth in

1859 it goes by the name of the

Carrington event named for the

astronomer who realized that the weird

effects that happened on Earth were

correlated to something he had seen on

the sun he had effectively put those two

he had seen the uh the flare and then

deduced that this was related to it now

in

1859 the world was not a very electrical

place in fact the primary use of

electricity was telegraphs and at the

time this burst of plasma caused those

telegraphs stations caught fire the

entire network went down Telegraph

operators were shocked at their

stations messages could be sent even

though there was no power being

delivered to the system it went down and

the induced charge in the wires was

enough for telegraph operators to send

messages over distances so it was very

dramatic if you were involved in

telegraphs but for the rest of humanity

it was a minor event now we live in a

very different world we live in a world

where every everything has an electrical

component the way our cars function the

way food shows up in the supermarket the

way air travel and air traffic control

works all of these things are heavily

electrical and they are all tremendously

vulnerable to the EMP effects that will

come with a major solar impact what's

the EMP effect it's an electromagnetic

pulse which is basically an induced

charge in uh uh electrically active

materials so it's the kind of thing that

uh a big enough one will fry every

computer will uh take most of the cars

off the road and what we don't commonly

know is that our grids the grids that

operate all of our electrical

devices

are um they operate with these

Transformers right which uh

control the flow of current these

Transformers are huge complicated

machines and if you needed one and you

ordered it today it would take a year

for you to get it if the world suddenly

needed 70 of them or a 100 of them

there's no telling what would happen so

well we all have the experience of a

power outage causing us to lose

electricity

for uh you know hours or days it is

quite conceivable that a solar storm

that took out a significant number of

Transformers could take a continent and

turn it dark with no plan for bringing

the lights back on they would go out and

they wouldn't come back and this was a

ridiculous uh risk to run the

Transformers can be hardened against

this they cannot be perfectly immunized

from this effect but they can be

hardened with well understood

architecture architecture that

effectively grounds out the EMP so that

the Transformer comes back on after the

event but we don't do it so we are

running an incredibly large risk of

a section of a continent or an entire

continent going dark with no backup

plan to me the risk of that dwarfs

anything that might be true about

antropogenic climate

change what's more you've probably heard

that

um pole shifts

happen that the North Pole isn't always

where the North Pole currently is and

that sometimes these things flip that's

always struck me as an extremely

dangerous condition and I always assumed

well what are the chances you're going

to be alive you know if you were alive

within 500 years of a PO flip that would

be kind of a close call but what are the

chances going to happen during your

lifetime well we are actually living in

a moment where the pole is actively

migrating we are in the midst of what's

called a polar

Excursion the pole seems to be

flipping and it seems to be flipping at

the same time that our electromagnetic

field of the earth is

decreasing now that decreasing field

means that what's flung off the sun has

a bigger impact on Earth that it would

than it would ordinarily have and that

pole flip threatens uh chaos you could

imagine if we feared

Y2K right that a programming error a

failure to account for the fact that you

were going to have this turnover in the

dates uh worried people that an actual

pull flip would create chaos and the

fact that we are not at least as worried

if not 10 times as worried about the

fact that we are living through a polar

Excursion and a radical decrease in the

strength of our electromagnetic field on

Earth says that we just have our

priorities wrong what is causing the

pole to flip and what does that does

that mean because when I think about a

pole flip does that mean the the North

Pole just moves a little bit the South

Pole moves a little bit it's not a

little

bit these things are going to

move

radically and the rate at which they are

moving is accelerating this is is

happening on a time scale that's highly

relevant to you and me we are both

likely to be here to see um the full

shift whatever that full shift entails

and they're not always the same so it's

a little hard to predict now I will say

this is not my area of expertise I have

learned tremendously from others um Ben

Davidson being the primary person

somebody I had on on the Dark Horse

podcast and he has a very compelling

model a hypothesis that I believe does

explain many otherwise difficult to

explain features of our solar

environment his explanation is that the

solar system is moving constantly within

the Galaxy and that the Galaxy by its

very nature contains an oscillating

electromagnetic sheet and as the solar

system moves through that sheet sheet we

cross the plane in the middle which

causes all the electrically active

entities to experience an inversion the

sun experiences an inversion the other

planets experience an inversion the

Earth experiences an inversion when you

say inversion you mean the the sort of

electromagnetic sense yeah it's you know

it's the direction of pull if you when

we talk about electric electromagnetism

we're talking about attraction and rep

repulsion and if you imagine that you

flipped the sign on everything because

you just crossed the middle of something

like you know if you were holding a

magnet here right and the north side is

down and the south side is up and you

moved another magnet by it the direction

of pull would shift as you crossed that

Equator so we are crossing something

like an equator of the Galaxy and that

cross is causing anomalous behavior on

Earth but it's also causing it we know

on eight of the nine other planets and

the ninth planet we just simply don't

have the data yet it's not that we know

it it's somehow immune to it and we're

seeing anomalous behavior on the Sun

so what I understand is that there's a

story about the Galaxy that we barely

know that story interfaces with many

things that we do know from the fossil

record from geology which are hard to

explain why does the pole flip and that

at the very least we need a concentrated

effort where we look into these

questions and if Ben Davidson has it

wrong if there is no Galactic current

sheet if we are not Crossing its

Meridian if the electromagnetic field is

decreasing but is about to turn around

rather than continue to decline then we

should find that out um but I think what

we would find out if we looked deeply

into this if we took it seriously is

that there is a threat to to humanity

that has very little to do with anything

anthropogenic the only important

component that is an anthropogenic is

that we have created a fragile world

that cannot endure this shift what does

anthropogenic mean go word human-made

human made okay human made so you know

anthropogenic climate change means that

we put a lot of carbon into the

atmosphere that wasn't there before

which we certainly have you know the uh

our fuels are made of car carbon and

when we break these more complex carbon

molecules carbon dioxide is released

that's not really a bad thing inherently

because carbon dioxide isn't a poison

right so taking these rings of carbon

and breaking it into carbon dioxide and

water is uh not the worst way to get

energy if you can do it

cleanly but the problem is there's a

there's a an old equation called the

arenus equation which tells us that c

CO2 will actually cause the retention of

heat from the Sun and as I mentioned at

the beginning the fact of trapping a

little extra heat might not be that

important were it not for the fact that

there's a positive feedback that

involves the whiteness of the poles the

amount of energy bounced back into space

which keeps us cool and as the poles

melt the Earth becomes darker it traps

more heat so that's an anthropogenic

effect because we've released all of

this carbon that was trapped in fossil

fuel deposits so on this point of the

pole shifting I just want to make sure

I'm super clear are you do you actually

mean that the North and South Pole would

move well this

is in my

opinion up in the air very serious

people have inferred from various kinds

of evidence that the Earth itself might

actually rotate or appear to rotate that

the uh crust that is the surface that we

live on could unlock from the mantle

currently they are locked together but

it could unlock and rotate over the

surface of the mantle now I am not

convinced that that can happen I'm not

convinced it's

impossible people uh people as smart as

Einstein have considered this

possibility and that in fact it would be

driven to happen by the accumulated Mass

on the pole in the form of ice that that

would actually drag get towards the

equator if they became unlocked so we

have really two different disaster

scenarios that could invol and unfold

one involves simply the magnetic

orientation of the earth shifting and

leaving the crust where it is and the

other involving the crust actually

rotating um the reason that I am

doubtful about the crust rotating and I

wouldn't I wouldn't bet strongly in

either direction but the reason that I

am doubtful is that as a biologist I

find the idea that the pole would move

to the equator hard to reconcile with

the distribution of species that we see

on the

earth so there's something that doesn't

quite fit about that story for me it

would require something in the biology

that I believe is not described um it's

possible I can imagine things that would

do it but I don't see it so I'm hesitant

about the idea of the crust unlocking

but I don't regard it as uh nothing to

worry about just so I'm clear when you

point

to um evolutionary history having and

sort of the distribution of species on

the earth giving a clue you essentially

saying that if this had happened in the

past we wouldn't see through the fossil

records that certain species exist

around the

equator yeah and you know let's take the

example of the the Amazon so there's a

very famous biological experiment by

kind of an old school biologist who I

did have the Good Fortune of meeting uh

many years ago guy named Paul colino who

was testing the question there was a

debate in biology about whether or not

the Amazon became a grassland during

glaciation and became a forest during

interglacial periods and he went on one

of the sort of old school excursions

into the Amazon to take pollen cores

from from Lakes um which is interesting

it's not a lake filled environment but

anyway he he found locations took these

pollen cores which should tell the tale

because they we can tell which pollen

you're looking at and it gets laid down

in layers and so if it was flipping back

and forth between a grassland and a

forest you could see it that was not

what they came up with what they came up

with is this is this has been a forest

and it has remained a forest without

being a

grassland now the problem is if you move

it 90° off that should drive all of the

creatures there extinct and you should

have to go through some process that

causes either massive migration from

somewhere else or uh re-evolution and

the problem is this model in which we

are passing through this electromagnetic

sheet every 12,000 years just doesn't

leave time for these processes so you

would expect the Amazon would have many

fewer species in it than it does and I

will tell you as somebody who has worked

in the neotropics including the Amazon

one of the paradoxes about the creatures

that are in this

environment is that they are absolutely

ferocious

competitors that are very fragile they

require very narrow sets of conditions

in order to live so the idea that

there's some radical upheaval in their

climate that leaves them standing uh

it's hard hard for me to

square but anyway what I would love is

for a robust

scientific institution of some kind to

delve deeply into the set of questions

involving this apparent 12,000-year

disaster cycle the uh electromagnetic

sheet in the Galaxy our location in that

pattern and figure out what we do need

to worry about and what we don't and if

it's not that second

um possibility that the crust itself is

just sort of is Shifting and the mantle

is staying in the same position the

first possibility is that there's just a

movement of um sort of

electromagnetic poles yeah the North and

South po stay in the same place but the

axis of rotation could stay in the same

place right okay um and then the Poes

migrate to somewhere new and my

understanding uh is that that migration

is not the simple thing that uh that I

and probably you learned when you heard

that there was a pole shift where you

hear it's like you know it just flips

over um they are migrating around and

actually the path of migration is

something that is being tracked not

widely discussed for some reason but it

is being tracked and it's accelerating

as I mentioned what's what's the risk of

that and how long do does something like

that take if we look if we think back to

the our history well I'm coming to

understand understand this and what

I'm uh what I'm recognizing is that the

rate is far faster than I had understood

and that it's already underway so that's

an interesting fact we're talking about

on the scale of

decades

um we are in the middle of a uh solar

maximum in the Sunspot Cycle so that

Aurora that you saw uh I guess month and

a half or or so ago that was part of

this very active period of sunspots in

which we took a very substantial Chon

chronal mass ejection that pattern of

sunspots will Wan and we will go into a

period of calm during which presumably

the magnetic field will continue to

decrease and then the sunspots will

return 11 years down the road 11 years

yeah oh okay and so I am concerned that

probably we get away with it the level

of decrease in the magnetic field is

substantial but that we still have

enough protection from it that we will

get through this sunspot cycle and be

unscathed and then we'll have a period

of calm while the electromagnetic field

continues to decrease and then the next

Sunspot Cycle will be much more

perilous now you know this can change

tomorrow right these sunspots

um come around the Sun and then they

disappear onto the other side you know

and it takes a month to do a full cycle

new sunspots are being born a monster

could arrive tomorrow it could rotate

and point to the Earth and it could

fling off a coronal mass ejection at the

wrong moment or not um you know there's

a lot of luck of the draw in there but

uh we should be paying a lot more

attention than we are and what could we

do to prepare

or to sort of avoid the

catastrophe it depends on how

catastrophic it is and um what I would

say

is I'm somebody who for whatever reason

I sometimes struggle with mundane

day-to-day organizational tasks but I'm

very good in an

emergency and the emergency answer is

pretty clear here which is you get your

house in order right you look at the

fragility of our world and you start

with the low hanging fruit you take care

of the stuff that's low cost and

high uh impact in terms of increasing

our robustness and you do that first so

top two things on my list would be you

harden the

grids by retrofitting these Transformers

so that they ground out rather than fry

that's one and the second one is you

look at our nuclear reactors and you

realize that we've been setting

ourselves up we we built a doom stay

device I think

accidentally um and the problem the

problem is a compound problem what I

didn't know about nuclear reactors until

the Fukushima accident at which point I

did a lot of

research is that they are absolutely

depend dependent on an electrical supply

to keep them from melting

down you have to have an energy input

now if you have something like an

earthquake a tsunami A

disruption the reactors will shut

themselves down if they have

time but that doesn't get you out of the

woods because you have to put energy in

in order to keep the cooling water

flowing and that cooling water is not

just about keeping the reactors cool

it's also about keeping the fuel pools

cool so the fuel pools are where fuel is

taken after it's removed from the

reactor now for something like 5 years a

set of rods taken out of a reactor is

releasing what's called Decay heat that

decay heat is sufficient to boil the

water out of these fuel pools if you're

not constantly circulating new cold

water in there so these fuel pools look

like they're

unimportant but if you cut the

power you've started the stopwatch right

that water is going to boil off and when

that water boils off they're going to

catch fire the cladding on the rods Will

C literally catch fire from the heat now

the reactors for reasons that

are almost too boring to

recount contain not only the fuel rods

from the most recent 5 years of

refueling

but they also contain Decades of rods

that we never found any other solution

for stuff what are these rods these are

sort of nuclear rods yeah these are

nuclear basically they are um physical

rods clad in something called

zirconium that contain fuel pellets this

is uranium that has been packed in a

particular way these rods get loaded

into the

reactor and then there's a another set

of rods that are used to modulate how

much the rods interact with each other

pull the modulator out and you get a a

chain reaction um you put the rods the

uh control rods back in and it tamps

down the reaction so in an earthquake

you Tamp down the reaction right and

then you're not putting out uh Power but

you do need to put Power in to keep it

cool if the power goes and the water

boils off the thing will explode explode

as we saw in

Fukushima you had a situation in which

the cooling water literally got torn

apart into hydrogen and oxygen so it

goes from a coolant to an explosive and

we had multiple explosions where the

hydrogen oxygen mixture just blew the

buildings apart um but the rods that

have been stored for decades in these

pools and the pools literally sit there

right next to the reactor so if you lose

control of of these reactors it

threatens to take out the pool right and

the pool can go dry if you can't

circulate water through it the pool can

crack and all the water can drain out

and then there's not even a way that you

could put water in and stop it and my

point is that when that happens it's

going to create a fire that fire is

going to start spewing highly

radioactive material into the atmosphere

right around the plant that's going to

make it impossible for human beings to

do even the heroic stuff that we've seen

in both Fukushima and Chernobyl and

you're going to lose control of the site

now combine what I just told you with

the fact that we have a grid that is

vulnerable to going down and not coming

back up for months and the question is

well do we start losing nuclear reactors

things that if we could keep power

flowing to them could remain cool and

not blow up but as soon as we lose

control of them boom there are 400

nuclear reactors on Earth today civilian

nuclear

reactors the world will look like a very

different place if they all lose not

only the containment of the reactor

itself but all of the builtup material

that exists in those fuel pools right

some of the Isotopes in those fuel pools

have have lives of 200,000 years jez so

you don't want to live in a world in

which these things have gotten away from

us and all of that radioactive material

has been liberated into into the

atmosphere by fires so second thing on

my list right after hardening the grid

by improving these

Transformers is that you take all of the

fuel in the spent fuel pools that is

cool enough to remove and you put it

into what's called dry Cask storage dry

Cask storage are these sort of fancy

containers that don't require you to

circulate water through them they just

sit there inert all right you could

leave them for a thousand years

so the risk to humanity would be hugely

decreased if we took all of the fuel

that doesn't have to be in the pools and

we got it out of there and we put it in

a place that we don't have to pay

attention to it in order for it to

remain contained why don't people do

that it costs money it's too expensive

no it's not too expensive I mean I I

don't both of these measures are so

cheap compared to the risk that we're

running that I think you would have to

be positively mad not to spend the money

it's just more expensive yeah it's more

expensive you know okay so the the

incentives to do that on on on clear

well not only are the incentives not

clear but this is this is why you need

good governance right for those who

think that markets just simply solve

every problem if competitors are making

the decision whether or not to take

their spent Fuel and put it in dry casks

well the competitor that decides not to

out compete the competitor that decides

to do it because their bottom line is

better but what you need is good

governance to say actually you all have

to put everything that can go into dryas

storage as soon as it can go for

Humanity's safety is there anything we

can do on an individual level to prepare

or to avert this crisis yes here's what

I suggest let's talk about it on

podcasts and hope that somebody with

power realizes how dangerous this stuff

is and starts the correct initiative

within some governmental structure that

remembers how to do its job is there

anything else that on you know people

people often think about prepping and

preparing for these kinds of things B

digging a bunker under their house and

hiding in there or having

supplies well

so look I

think preparing at all scales is a good

idea we've face many different

uh

scenarios some of them aren't survivable

okay well if you've prepared and you hit

an unsurvivable scenario I guess you

could make an argument that you didn't

make as much of the time you had but I

don't find that very compelling seems to

me that

the the lwh hanging fruit phenomenon

is it's the consequence of

something that is essentially Universal

which is a pattern of diminishing

returns right diminishing returns means

that over time if you keep putting the

same uh solution to a problem you get

less and less benefit but it has a

positive side too a diminishing returns

curve has this very steep face on it

right that face is the bargain face

that's the face where you get a ton of

benefit for a small amount of investment

you should certainly do all the stuff up

until you get to that point where it

goes from a steep face to a

plateau so let's just do that right who

knows maybe the calculations about um

the galactic current sheet are off

because there aren't enough people

studying it we just don't get it yet

okay maybe there's 500 more years than

we think right maybe there's some Factor

we haven't found yet that has some

impact on the system we don't know so

you should always be doing the stuff

that makes you uh more capable of

surviving the disaster even if you think

it's not enough and then hopefully you

discover things are better than you

think um so we should be doing that at

every scale and yes people should they

be preparing absolutely should they

spend everything on it no do you prepare

in any way oh yeah what does that look

like for you well you know I have little

rules for myself one I

realized okay if we were to take a if we

were to map out all of the things that

I'm worried are a threat and then you

say well which are the ones that you're

going to have an extremely difficult

time affecting your likelihood of

surviving

it okay I'm going to ignore those yeah

right the why would I spend everything

on a solution that's almost certain to

fail anyway right I mean none of us are

getting out of here alive so at some

level you can just say look there there

are things that aren't worth preparing

for either because they're too unlikely

or because they're too catastrophic and

you're not getting out of it and maybe

you wouldn't want to live in such a

world anyway Bingo that's the next thing

is you know I'm not sure how thrilled I

am about a world in which 400 civilian

nuclear reactors have spilled the entire

history of their uh their functioning

into the environment um

I I'm much more animated about getting

us to reduce that Hazard on the front

end than surviving it if it

occurs um so I think I think people

should look at their life and they

should probably go through a little

period of alarm if

you if you look at the way your life

works and then we flip the electricity

off right suppose your continent loses

electricity for a

year how well prepared aren't you for

that me totally unprepared totally

unprepared my Tesla outside has like 50

miles left on it so I would I wouldn't

even be able to get yep get far from

here right so that's not a good plan but

there are things you can do right you

can let's put it this

way the power going out for a year

that's a pretty far down the list

scenario that's pretty catastrophic in

fact I wrote a uh an article for

unheard in which I painted a scenario in

which the sun did trigger the collapse

of just a part of the North American

grid and

I uh described how that was going to

result in the extinction of humanity and

approximately how long it would take it

was surprising how easy it was to write

it actually um

but could the power go out for two

weeks yeah how you know how hard is it

for you to prepare yourself and your

family so that in a two week grid down

scenario you'd be able to get

through well depends if it's summer or

winter right um if it's summer it looks

like one thing you really need food and

water if it's winter depending upon

where you live you might need to figure

out how you're going to generate heat um

enough to keep you I would say you want

to go beyond alive you want to get to

where your com your family feels

comfortable um but you know could you

edit down to one room could you keep

that room warm how would you do it you

know you don't want to have to you don't

want to have to run through that in the

circumstance because a twoe scenario I

mean that just simply happens MH um so

anyway yeah I think prepping is a great

idea for many reasons for one thing it's

mentally clarifying right just even

understanding how dependent we all are

on the systems around us makes us better

citizens so let's say we managed to

avoid the solar flare yep what else is

sort of friend to mind for you in terms

of concerns at the moment I'm very

worried about the absolute collapse of

our

institutions I cannot think of a single

sizable institution that still functions

in any meaningful way many of our

institutions actually function function

to the inverse of the purpose for which

they were created when you say collapse

of Institutions which institutions are

you referring to I believe I mean all of

them and I will just give you some

examples in the world I grew up in there

was something called a newspaper yeah

the newspaper was far from perfect it

reported a lot of garbage there was a

lot of propaganda in it and there was a

lot of wrongheaded stuff that got

reported as if it was true so I'm not

pretending that it was uh

a source of facts that one could just

simply go to to look them up

however I now live in a world in

which the newspapers look like the

newspapers I grew up with but

they seem to bend over backwards not to

report the

news and then they finally do report the

news only be when it becomes so

embarrassing for it not to show up there

that it would reveal how broken they are

if it didn't get

said and that's not normal

we should be trying to make sense of the

world you can tell this isn't normal

because if there was a newspaper that

just simply did what the newspapers of

old did that had a newsroom it had a

budget it sent people to places where

important things were happening it

assigned them the job of talking to

people and seeking the facts and

soliciting documents and taking pictures

and all of that stuff and it did its

best to give you a view of the world as

that flawed Newsroom the best it could

best sense it could make would you

subscribe yes you and everybody else

well I think I would I have to check

myself there because what I think I

would do is probably different to what

my innate biases might lead me to do and

to click

on

well uh I will tell you that in a world

where we are all quite unsure about

what's actually taking place even just

the basic facts that if there was such

an object I think it's a slam dunk you'd

sign up even if you don't spot it

because the disadvantage when other

people have access to the facts just not

knowing what it is that they're even

talking about would be uh it would be

like everybody in the room knows a

secret and you don't but do we want the

news or do we want confirmation of what

our existing beliefs well I think people

differ and I think it is very easy to

get addicted to confirmation bias but I

also think that that's Downstream of the

failure of another institution our

academic institutions our schools do not

teach people how thinking works and if

you know how thinking

works then you understand that

actually confirmation bias will get you

killed you don't want to be told

something comforting you want to be told

something true because the Comfort

actually comes

from utilizing that information to make

yourself less vulnerable

so having a newspaper would be a

fantastic thing the fact that there are

none let's say that you know 30% of

thinking people would subscribe to a

newspaper that just simply tried to do

the job and was undaunted

by competing incentives well then that's

a slam dunk of a business model wouldn't

you say do you know it's interesting

because I I sometimes think that the

reason why things I idolize or I I would

like don't exist it's because there's

actually not a market there for it and

like simple sort of supply and demand

economics mean that someone's probably

tried it and their startup probably went

bust well it did but I don't think

that's organic I think it is a slam dunk

and that the problem is that there is a

competing Force okay and one thing that

is true of the way our world is

structured is that the go-to mechanism

for making a

fortune

is inside

information now Innovation also works

but it's difficult

knowing a sector of the market so well

that you can beat your competitors CU

you understand what the future is going

to look like is also possible but Again

difficult and the incentive the

financial incentive to know everything

you know and out compete you in the

market is so great that you will have a

great many competitors struggling to

make better sense with the very same

data set that you've

got inside information doesn't work like

that if you you can get inside

information you can print money so for

anyone that doesn't know what inside

information means in like the context of

business or investing well in the

context so this is one of these things

that has a definition has a formal legal

definition from the initial context in

which it was identified as a as an issue

but if you are um inside of a

company and you're therefore privy to

something that is about to be done

then you can utilize that information

which is not available to the public to

make money

by increasing your Holdings decreasing

them buying stock options and that's

illegal right because obviously this

people would use this to make money um

by creating events and betting on them

in advance when nobody else knew the

problem is that same logic applies in

places where the law can't reach it so

let me take one example

there in the community of people who

ended up uh sleuthing about the events

of covid there's the moment at which

covid became a feature of the public

discussion at the beginning of

2020 and then there's the moment that it

appears to have existed in circulation

in the world which is much earlier the

Wuhan games in October or September of

2019

if you were privy to the fact that there

was a pathogen that was going to

circulate that it was going to result in

a major upheaval in people's ability to

travel across borders that people were

going to be fearful and locked in their

homes that they were going to be seeking

pharmaceutical remedies whatever if you

had some sense of what was

coming then you could position yourself

in the market so that when it did come

you'd make a

mint so the question is when powerful

people did hear in September of 2019

that there was a pathogen that was on

the loose in China that would spread

worldwide was their first instinct to

tell the

public no there's a perverse incentive

against it so now imagine

that you're ruthless and you recognize

that that scenario that I just painted

isn't at all unique any place where you

can get the jump on the public with

respect to knowing what's coming is an

opportunity to make millions into

billions

so maybe you don't want the public to

have truth seeking institutions that

work so this I think is liable to be the

reason that there's not a single

University in the US that still

functions really you think that you

think that's why yeah I think if we if

you had one University that functioned

then certainly that would be the place

everybody wanted to send their kids I

mean I have two College age kids if

there was a university that still made

sense it's the obvious place for them to

go why don't they make sense anymore in

your view they don't make sense

because

um well there's multiple layers you've

got a scientific apparatus that is very

powerful when it comes to finding the

truth and very fragile when it comes to

resisting perverse incentives as in like

wokeism wokeism impresses to be

politically correct exactly so where

where is the American University that

stood up and said I'm sorry but men

can't become women MH right they can

live as women they can addesses women

there are surgeries there are

Pharmaceuticals there's nothing you can

do that takes your birth sex and changes

it to the opposite one not a single

University said that anywhere bizarre

this is quite um personal to you because

I was reading actually earlier today

about what happened to you at University

at Evergreen State University and it's

funny because um I watched the videos of

that event and I don't know whether it's

because we now have some distance

between those events now

but I just want to say I think what you

did was the right thing and I think

history has made you look more and more

correct as time has gone on because I I

watched it and it just seemed to be a

bunch of people living in some kind of

collective delusion these like people

shouting at you in this hallway um for

people that aren't aware as I wasn't

aware before before I knew you were on

your way here can you explain what

happened there because I think it's kind

of um evidence of this sort of

collective delusion that you're talking

about sure um there's a

little uh

a little difficulty because there's the

public story of what happened right the

the public narrative settled on a set of

facts that isn't exactly right it's not

so far off that it doesn't make the

point but the basic thing that happened

is that my wife and I were very popular

professors at a very liberal school that

had a uh a very unusual teaching model

so the school was called The Evergreen

State College it still

exists The Evergreen State College was

founded by radicals who threw out every

single structure that would exist in a

normal college or university there were

no departments there were no grades the

administrators did not have the ability

to tell you what you had to teach there

were no requirements about how you

taught um and if you were the kind of

person that was interested in figuring

out what new might be done in the

teaching environment if you wanted to

figure out a new way to teach it was the

perfect

place that said many people took the

freedom that the college offered and

they squandered it they weren't really

interested in doing anything other than

reducing their workload so the college

was kind of divided between the

professors who thought that this Freedom

was this gift and we used it um we ended

up being popular and then there were

other Prof professors who didn't and

they were much less popular but in any

case Heather was literally the college's

most popular professor she's your wife

yes uh she's my wife and the co-author

of that book you have in front of you um

she was the most popular Professor I

wasn't too far

behind we both had the equivalent of

tenure although the place didn't

formally have tenure it had something

like it and so we were not

vulnerable we were liberated to say what

needed to be said and what happened is

the college hired a new president a guy

named George bridges for whatever reason

George Bridges wanted

to completely reimagine the college as a

much more standard much less interesting

place and in order to do that he didn't

really have the power because the

founders of the college had created a

place where the faculty were in a

position to just simply say no and we

would have so what he did did in order

to overcome the faculty was he impanel a

diversity equity and inclusion committee

hand

selected and he incited

a at first cold and increasingly hot uh

battle over

race um it was my job to explain to my

colleagues and to anyone involved in the

decision-making process process why the

plan that they were proposing would be a

disaster for the

college and although I did have

trepidations about standing up

because the environment was quite

charged like I said I was a popular

Professor I had the equivalent of tenure

and you know the worst that could happen

is people are going to call me

names so I did stand up I stood up at a

fact fault meeting and the faculty was

in the process of voting for a

resolution to force every member of The

Faculty to explain what progress that

they had made in the previous year

against their own

racism right now

worse not only were we voting to mandate

ourselves to reflect on our own progress

Against Racism that was simply assumed

to

exist but these documents in which we

reflected would become official

documents that would then be utilized in

promotion decisions firing decisions

these sorts of things so the point was

that's a Mech that's a takeover because

you're I you know in my reflection

annually I would say well actually I'm

not a racist I've made very little

progress because there wasn't an issue

to begin with and the answer is well oh

my God he's worse than we thought right

he doesn't even recogniz his internal

racism right so it was going to be that

conversation again it didn't threaten me

because I already had tenure but

nonetheless I had to say to my

colleagues look this is a terrible

mistake and I stood up at the faculty

meeting and I said this and it of course

caused a stir several people came up to

me after the vote and they said we agree

with you but only one other person voted

with me across the entire faculty

medium 70 votes that went the other

direction um and one year later to the

day I didn't realize that it was the

one-year anniversary of that event until

months later but one year later to the

day 50 students that I had never met I

had never met a single one of them

streamed through my classroom door

accusing me of racism and demanding that

I resign or be

fired now I later came to understand

that these 50 students that I'd never

met had been sent by

my faculty colleague who had become my

Nemesis they had been sent to create the

impression

of white Professor being accused of

racism by students blah blah blah you

can imagine in 2017 what that would have

looked like except that it didn't go as

they planned

because as I mentioned before

I had a teaching environment in which I

knew my students extremely well not only

did I know their names but I knew their

backgrounds I knew their histories I

knew their styles of thought

their uh their disabilities I knew them

really well and they knew me really well

because we went to class every day and

we simply talked about biology which

brought us issues about their

perspectives so I think what was

expected was that when these protesters

streamed through my classroom door in

2017 if you've got a bunch of students

accusing a professor of racism that that

professor's students are going to jump

right on it they're all going to have

gripes about you know some grade that

they got that they thought wasn't wasn't

fair and so they expected me to end up

being faced with with a mob of students

swearing that I was a racist now not a

single one of my students turned on me

in fact many of them spoke courageously

on my behalf including students of color

which then created a kind of Rift in the

universe because when people from the

outside world saw video video that was

uploaded by the protesters themselves

who were proud of what they were doing

the world I didn't sound like a racist

to them and what's more there were all

of these students saying it was was

nonsense so it was I think the case that

that

broke the the woke narrative

because it just didn't add

up and in any case that's how I ended up

doing what I'm doing is that the world

actually recognized that there was

something as you say that there was a

delusion going on and that was apparent

enough in my lack of fear over the

accusation in my students willingness to

actually stand up and say that it was a

a bum rap I I will also just point out

my students of color who spoke up on my

behalf they actually faced the worst

retribution because in order for the

woke Revolution to

function you can't very well have people

of color standing by a white Professor

it just breaks the whole thing so anyway

they needed to be punished from the

point of view of this protest so that it

wouldn't happen again and my wife and I

ended up resigning our oh there there's

another aspect of the story that I

should probably

mention when this protest happened

um there was a lot of drama the protest

spread from those 50 students who

confronted me at my classroom to a

campus-wide Riot that went on for

days the president of the college who

was indirectly responsible for all of

this ordered the police who were a

campus police department they were real

police but they were under his Direction

he ordered them to stand down so they

locked themselves inside their police

station and were literally

forbidden to

intervene students started patrolling

the campus as if they were the police

patrolling the campus with weapons they

started stopping traffic on a public

road passing through campus looking for

me the police called me up to warn me

about this and they told me they

couldn't protect me

and

um it was on fast forward a test of the

claims of these

revolutionaries right they have this

sort of anarchist vibe to them that if

we can just simply get rid of the cops

that we will we will govern ourselves

and it will be beautiful and instead it

became a dangerous violent Riot on the

scale of days and in 2017 the same year

that this happened you resigned from the

college and you got to pay out

essentially yep I asked this question

because we were talking about newspapers

and then we we moved to the education

system and you said that there's not not

a university in the land that's still

doing what it's supposed to do so it

felt somewhat correlated linked to to

what you were saying because it kind of

sets the backdrop of he maybe why you

you have you know clear personal

experience here but also what you saw

there was kind of a symptom I think of

some of the pressures that are being

applied to the scientific education

institution that are stopping it being

able to do what it should be doing 100%

it's doing the inverse of what it should

do it's indoctrinating people uh and you

know the tragedy of it is that the

people who are indoctrinated end up

hurting themselves yeah right they have

an opportunity and they will squander it

on a fiction and in the end it will not

result in them

being uh hireable right they've learned

they've learned how to demand things of

the system rather than to contribute

something to it and that's not their

fault I mean at some point it becomes

their fault but that's the that's the

failure of those who were charged with

delivering them in education to do so

it's it's educational malpractice you

cited this as one of your big concerns

you started talking about basically the

the loss of the media um what is the

what is the downstream implications of

that because that it just I just feel

like I'll get my media in other places

I'll just go on X I'll you know that's

not going to cause any issues with

Society well

um I

believe the consequence of it is

something that I call The cartisian

Crisis cartisian crisis cartisian a

reference to Renee deart and the reason

I reference him is that he had a kind of

philosophical

freakout where he

realized that almost everything that he

took to be a fact he had not tested

himself and therefore all of those facts

that felt objective were really

Downstream of somebody's Authority and

he realized how dangerous that was

and in fact it results in one of his

most famous contributions to humanity

which is the uh what masquerades as a

proof of his existence I think therefore

I am um now I don't think it is a very

good proof right maybe it works for him

he can prove to himself that he exists

but why we should take his word for the

fact that he exists you know if a

computer said I think therefore I am it

doesn't make it true so in any case we

can remember that Dart was troubled by

the fact that he couldn't establish any

facts um in any way other than to take

somebody's word for the fact that that's

what they were we are increasingly

living in a world where the chain of

logic of evidence of reason that might

allow us to have some confidence in a

fact is breaking down and this problem

is going to get worse and worse course

not only is every single truth seeking

institution captured or

broken but AI is going to change the

very nature of what it means for

something to

be a fact right if you can have a

compelling video of you saying something

that you never once said right well you

know if I show you a video of you saying

something last week that you didn't say

you're going to be pretty darn sure you

didn't say it but if I show you

something that you said 15 years ago you

may not be so certain other people won't

be so certain so what I think this is

going to do is is going to produce a an

allergic reaction to

belief and it is going to cause a

cynicism about factual material that is

going to make it impossible for us to

interact with each other to govern

ourselves it's just there's no future in

a world in which we can't figure out

here is what I believe and here is why I

believe it all right that is an

essential

feature doesn't the internet just become

a bit of a wasteland in such a case and

we'll I was thinking of sort of

political comment

commentators is is it likely that there

might just become a channel which we

switch to which is a verified channel to

watch you know Donald Trump or rishy

sunak or the prime ministers talking and

to get our news source where we know

that particular channel is truth and

then we assume that the Internet is just

a wasteland of dis

misinformation well the problem is if

you had such a channel boy would that be

a prize if you controlled it right oh

yeah if you've got the fact Channel then

oh the world's your oyster you're you're

now Emperor so were there going to be a

fact Channel it would get captured and

that's the world we're living in now I

will say the idea that there are no

institutions that work is the flip side

of another idea which I I goes by the um

the phrase zero is a special number and

what I mean by zero is a special

number is that when you have zero

universities that work zero newspapers

that report the news zero social media

Platforms in which you are allowed to

speak freely One World unfolds but a

single exception in any of those spaces

changes the overall Dynamic and the

reason for that is because if you had

one social media platform in which

people were truly free to seek the truth

to discuss anything and everything and

nothing bad happened to them and they

weren't deboosted or any of that then

that's obviously where all of the people

who want an adult conversation are going

to go right you don't want to be treated

like a child you want to have a

conversation in which you can actually

entertain all possibilities reject those

for which there's no evidence Etc so if

you get one platform then people are

going to go to it and if people go to

that one platform it's going to force

the other platforms to deliver something

similar so the competitive environment

means that a single exception can

actually changed the whole landscape and

we are in a battle I don't think X has

achieved that status of being completely

free but it's certainly Freer than the

other platforms and it is having an

effect it is changing the dynamic and it

is in part why the co narrative broke

wide open why the political narrative in

the US is

uh becoming radically different than it

was even a few years ago so the question

is are we going to see an exceptional

University break the trend and become

the next Harvard because you'd be crazy

to send your kid anywhere else are we

going to see somebody put together a

newspaper in which they get all of the

subscribers because you'd be crazy to

get your news from a propaganda Source

when they was a real source so

hopefully courageous people will

recognize it's not as hopeless as as we

are led to believe a single exception

can change the whole dynamic I'm

actually quite shocked at the impact

that Elon buying Twitter um now called X

has had on so many things and even quite

frankly the the impact I'm starting to

see it have on someone like Mark

Zuckerberg at at meta I watched an

interview yesterday with

Mark who I think met had previously

banned Trump from being able to talk on

the platform basically saying that he's

pretty badass and I do not believe he

would have been able to say that had X

and Twitter not

changed I agree with you and I think

that actually if you start looking for

other examples of that pattern you will

see them everywhere there are certain

things that once had magical power that

no longer do the claim that somebody is

a conspiracy theorist does not cause

them to be shunned from society in fact

my feeling is when I hear somebody's a

conspiracy theorist my question is oh

are they any good at

it um but same thing is true

for uh the idea of an

antivaxer right well you know okay

somebody's an antivaxer is that because

they reflexively believe that no such

thing could work or is this somebody

with an injured kid who has legitimate

questions right we've just seen the

leading proponent of vaccines publish a

paper in which he acknowledges that the

testing to establish that they were safe

was never done so we're living in a

whole different world and I think it's

uh it is a symptom of musk primarily

having broken the dynamic by as he said

said paying $44 billion uh because that

was the price of free speech you

mentioned AI there in your sort of list

of concerns pressing concerns where does

where does AI feel and it feels like

it's come out of nowhere you know

because if we go back a year um a year

yeah about about a year it wasn't really

front of mind for anybody for the vast

population for the general population

but now it it appears to

be front of everybody's mind any

everyone thinking's

mind I think that's the right way to

view it I think it should be top of mind

and not because it is

independently uh everything that its

worst critics imagine in fact I have my

doubts about the safest crowd and their

demands for regulation but there's

plenty to worry about in this space um

so I have five different exit

substantial threats that AI

poses um let's see off the top of my

head let's start with the uh the most

fanciful

first AI

could decide that we are its

competitors and it could leverage its

skills and uh decide to eliminate

us I find that unlikely but I don't

think we can discount it

entirely second is the so-called

paperclip problem that an AI that was

very powerful could have

trouble operationalizing a command and

it could result in human extinction and

the example that uh people who think

this way use is if you were to tell a an

AI you wanted it to make as many paper

clips as possible that it could

interpret that as license to go

liquidate the universe and turn it all

into paperclips right not what I meant

but mhm you know but there you have it

and actually I will give a different

example that I think uh maybe functions

better there

are uh people in our intellectual space

who make claims like it would be great

if we were to end all

suffering personally I think that's

about the most insane idea I've ever

heard it's a terrible one you wouldn't

want to live in that world but you can

understand why people think that it

might be a moral obligation now imagine

that you tell an AI hey let's end all

suffering it's actually possible just

drive everything that can suffer extinct

yeah right so the idea that we have a

non-trivial problem figuring out how to

give a powerful AI an instruction that

can't be

misunderstood it's worth worrying about

again I think that one's fanciful too

but it should be on our list but then we

get to the three that I don't think are

easily

dismissed one is that AI is going to

enable uh people with malign

intent

to it's going to enable them more than

it is going to enable those with

benevolent intent and this is an

unfortunate asymmetry that just exists

in the world that a an a moral actor

somebody who has no moral

compass they have total flexibility they

can do whatever a moral person can do

and then they've got a whole list of

other things that they can also do right

whereas a moral person is constrained

they just have the limited set of things

that are available to them so the

question is does AI liberate us all or

does it liberate those who are um

monstrous more than it liberates those

of us who behave like like decent humans

I'm concerned about that I think we are

in some danger of it being leveraged

against us in a way that transforms

things I remember hearing a hacker say

that the malicious hackers the people

with malicious intent are always ahead

of those the sort of ethical hackers

that have benevolent attempt that are

that are good and he he was talking

about how like the you know encryption

systems and password systems he goes the

hackers always ahead and the defense

systems that companies are trying to put

in place are always behind because the

Hacker's intent is obviously always to

find new ways of breaking the current

system whereas the people that defend

security systems are just trying to

defend against the known um forms of

attack so someone in I don't know some

kid in Russia right now could be at his

computer figuring out new ways to use a

large language model to attack systems

and new ways whereas the people who are

working to defend that are currently

just trying to figure out how to um m

the risks of current weapons so it's

it's you know what I mean like the the

attackers are always thinking forward

really yep do you think the general

public and also just institutions and

governments are currently

underestimating the profundity and the

impact that AI is going to have on the

planet yes and in fact I think we are

crossing over what would be described as

an event

horizon so an event horizon I think the

term initially comes from an

understanding of what happens at a black

hole that there's a point at which light

is pulled back in and so you can't see

beyond it MH right there's literally no

mechanism to see beyond it we are

crossing a threshold that none of us can

see beyond and that is inherently

frightening are people underestimating

they are simultaneously underestimating

and overestimating right the the fear of

being turned into a paperclip is

overblown in my opinion

the fear of well I've just gotten to the

third one on the list the fourth one on

the list is a total collapse in

our understanding of the world around us

and each

other that the way in which an

artificial intelligence interfaces with

our human API with our

interface is

profound

already and we're not very far in right

I'm already looking at Little movies

that this thing makes and I'm not just

talking about the clip of the cat

walking through the garden right little

vignettes I'm talking about actual

movies in which characters of a madeup

species are having a

conversation about humans

right okay

that's a hell of a

moment where will we be in 5

years it it's unimaginable how much

change that is going to create because

we have no evolutionary preparedness at

all for living in a world

where the product of a

computer can out compete the product of

a human in narrative

space that's a dangerous world to live

in because narratives are so profoundly

important to who we are stories yeah

stories stories are what we're all about

you know even profound ideas

are unfathomable until somebody has

written them into a story that people

can can Gro but also language just

generally is I don't think um I was

listening to something the other day

which was just making the case for how

our our entire Society is pretty much

held together with with language and

it's so interesting that large language

models were really the thing that blew

open this conversation about AI because

we don't realize that like like my every

relationship I have is held together

with language in fact all my passwords

are language the way that I think the

way that I understand the world is

through language so if there's a a super

intelligent species that has a better

grasp of language and a certain level of

autonomy um it's hard to think you know

it's interesting because what made us

dominate the world was I think was our

intelligence and our and then our

ability to collaborate through through

language and communication and this is

the the very thing that AI has entered

the scene with well I will tell you I

wrote a piece and I keep meaning to

release it just so people can see I

didn't get it exactly right but many

years ago I wrote a piece in which I

said that I believed that artificial

intelligence was going to emerge from

the project to get a computer to

translate seamlessly between two

languages and I explained why that would

be the thing that cracked the uh the nut

and that is what happened for a reason

the reason is

because the relationship between human

language and

Consciousness

is profound and largely

unknown so U Heather and I descri cribed

this model in in our book hun gathers

Guide to the 21st century human beings

are a unique

species the primary way in which we are

unique is that if you if you think about

the question about

well what do human beings do right if I

say you know what does a tiger do right

we could describe the things that a

tiger does to meet its caloric needs to

get the materials necess Neary to

maintain its body to produce Offspring

right we could describe the niche of the

tiger can't really do that with people

right what do we do sometimes we Farm

the oceans sometimes we hunt big game on

land sometimes we terraform a piece of

territory and we plant crops we do a lot

of different things and if you think

about all the things that human beings

have done for our entire history as a

species it's immense The Collection so

we are unlike any other species because

our Niche is the movement between niches

both over time and across

space so how does that work well we have

a tool that no other species has when

you think about the question of what

makes human beings special the answer

really is language and the reason that

it's language is that language allows

the breaching of the boundary between

one mind and another so that ability

allows human beings to pull their

cognitive capacity and what Heather and

I argue in our book is that the the way

human beings get through time is they

oscillate between two

modes when the ancestors when your

ancestors know how to exploit the

habitat that you live in then you take

take their wisdom in all of the stories