#2525 - Nick Bostrom

[00:00] the job again experience during my day joe rogan podcast by night all day great to see you again yeah good to see you so um since the last time we talked we spent a lot of time where you were trying to explain to me simulation theory and why the probability of simulation theory [00:27] is more likely than it not being a simulation. [00:31] Yeah, it was what five years ago something? I think it was six. Five or six. I mean a lot of things happened in the world since then.

Yes, yes, a lot of things. I mean, [00:43] For example, back then, I think we – did we even talk about AI? It probably came up a bit, but it feels like it was an era. It wasn't this thing looming over civilization, which is really kind of fascinating when you think about the fact that it's only been six years. And in six years, like what a massive jump in some new technology in our life. [01:06] Just sort of like the internet where it like crept up on us. We just accepted that it's a thing, but that this thing has gotten massively entangled in every aspect of society and every aspect of people's lives.

[01:22] in a very short period of time. Yeah, I mean [01:25] Things are like so much is happening now that is kind of a full time job just to monitor the situation. Yeah. And you're one of the things that you're talking about is the positive aspects of it. Right. You're talking about. [01:40] Like that this is probably going to be a net good for humanity. Hopefully. I mean, I think I take both cases seriously, the sort of the risk side and and the big unlock if we get things right. I feel like we have the potential like we're on a whitewater raft.

We have the potential to get to our destination. [02:03] But we also have the potential to flip over and try to figure out how to get to shore and freezing cold water and sort of rebuild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems about right. Yeah. And it seems like it's kind of speeding up a bit as well, right? If you're sort of in this field, there's like every few weeks there's a new model being released or something. Yes. I guess it's like if you imagine, I guess, commentating some fight, right? [02:33] First round is like normal speed.

And then the second round is 2X. And then the third round 4X. And it's just like a whir of legs and arms. [02:42] That's a great way to describe it. Yeah. It's... [02:46] It's just so strange how quickly it snuck up on us in that there's two narratives that we hear. The one narrative is we're in real trouble and that this thing is going to take over every aspect of society and it's essentially going to be a superior life force, a superior intellect that exists amongst us that we created, and we don't think that's wise.

[03:16] It's going to be so much prosperity that no one is ever going to have to toil again. There will be no more third world countries. There will be no more poverty. Like we can eradicate poverty with the resources that we have on earth and we can change what it means to have to work. [03:33] provide yourself with food and housing. That's all going to be easy and free. And then everything else is going to be, you have to find a purpose in your life. My problem is, and I love Elon, but the people who have that perspective are all making money off AI.

They are all invested like heavily, Mark Andreessen, all these people that have this rosy view of it. They're all invested [04:03] that is more of a true objective analyst of what's going on. When you have a positive aspect or a positive viewpoint of it, I get a little more excited. - Yeah, well, I mean, the truth is we don't know, right? How it will pan out. - Right, of course. [04:19] I mean I think there are these scenarios where we unlock this you know, enormous boost both to economic productivity but then, you know, across medicine entertainment, environment travel, all kinds of things and like a tsunami of wealth just kind of flows through and lifts all boats and then the idea of human work becomes an anachronism and where you have machines that can

[04:49] Do everything that we can do physically and mentally and do it much better and cheaper? And so I think in those scenarios where this really works it is [04:58] the transformation is a lot deeper. I mean, so that kind of layers to the onion. So like the most superficial level is, well, they automate your job. So what? [05:06] people are going to work. Well, that comes a little bit deeper. First, like the most superficial level is people just wonder where will I get the job if the robot replaces me.

And then the superficial level of that conversation, I think is, well, you need to retrain workers so they can work in other fields. And maybe there needs to be, I don't know, employment insurance whilst they are being retrained or something like that. But once you think through where this ultimately leads, [05:36] to a good approximation. [05:39] with maybe the exception being where... [05:42] The consumer has a direct preference that the particular product or service be done by a human, like a priest, prostitute, and politician. [05:54] The three Ps. Those might survive.

Well, politician, hopefully not. Hopefully AI can handle that all without any corruption. Yeah, but somebody's got to take credit for it. This is true. And code it. Yeah. [06:09] It's... [06:10] And so then you get to these like more profound questions, I think, about meaning and purpose and like what does a human life look like at technological maturity? Right. Also, what is experience? Does experience have to be measurable? Like do you have to touch it? Do you have to measure it and weigh it? [06:31] is virtual experience still experience. [06:35] Like if you have a very full and enjoyable and fulfilling virtual life.

[06:41] Is that enough? You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, do you have to do everything in the material world, or can you – [06:50] find happiness in a virtual world that doesn't currently exist, but we could clearly see the technology, if it expands, it's going to, there's going to be the possibility of experiencing a matrix type reality. Yeah, I think I see where you're going. Yeah. But yeah, and I mean, I think like different strokes for different folks, if you imagine a world where presumably these virtual [07:20] fascinating, but some people might just like the idea of, you know, Klein being the real Mount Everest rather than, you know, being most certainly, but however there could come a time where people are locked out of regular reality, like this is worst case scenario with AI, is that [07:38] You have your needs taken care of, but there is no purpose.

[07:43] there's nothing to do. There's nothing to do because AI is taking care of all aspects of society. Other than recreation, there's nothing to do. And then this one recreation comes along that's not reality, but it's way more fulfilling and exciting than any other aspect of reality. And – [07:59] You know, an example that would just be in a very minor way. [08:04] Your phone provides you with that sort of an escape, and it's not even that thrilling, and yet it's massively addictive. [08:11] People are on their phones six hours a day.

If we come up with a virtual reality that's way more exciting than regular reality, [08:21] everyone's going to hop on in. [08:23] Yeah, I mean, I think to some extent this will... [08:28] maybe be the case whether you go the virtual path or the physical path. I mean, you could imagine a future where there are like resorts and people are sort of lying in beach chairs, sleeping drinks all day long. And like that's also a kind of checking out, right? Yeah, well, that, yeah. [08:43] That's not fulfilling. The thing about a virtual reality is – [08:48] You don't have to even live within our physics.

I mean, you can fly. You can do anything. It's a larger space of possibilities. But either way, it could be like a passive existence in physical reality where you're like launching at the beach. Or it could be like a video game. Or in video games, like you could have like a really intense, every straining, every fiber to try to succeed in this virtual environment. Or like one where you're just kind of floating on some cloud in a drug-like state. But I don't think people are going to be interested in that.

[09:18] Like what kind of video games are people attracted to? Because a video game is essentially – it's an approximation of that. You're just watching it on a screen, but you're sort of forgetting the fact that you're watching it on a screen. You're just concentrating on this 3D reality that you're running through with a machine gun or whatever you're doing, right? That's what people are interested in. They're not interested in these games where you just like float over the earth and like fly and just eat bananas. No, they're interested in thrilling things.

[09:48] in a virtual way, the amount of people that are going to just say this is better – [09:54] than regular boring life or we're a slave to a computer. Yeah, I mean there are both kinds. [10:01] This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. We all like to find ways to save ourselves some time, like ordering out for dinner or meal prepping so you don't have to cook during the week. If you're a business owner looking to hire, a great time-saving hack is ZipRecruiter. Its newest feature lets you meet the most interested, qualified candidates first.

Try it out free at com slash Rogan. And it doesn't just let you meet candidates faster. [10:31] why they're interested in their own words. Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at com slash Rogan. That's com slash Rogan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Okay, we're back. Where were we? [10:56] Oh, yeah, I was just saying that there are also these computer games that, like... [11:01] provide a more passive experience.

Yeah. You're like not really doing much and it's more kind of zoning out. But most people aren't interested in those. Most people are interested in Call of Duty. They're interested in these wild first-person shooters where you're running down hallways and everything's exciting and thrilling, some sci-fi game or, you know... [11:20] Half-Life, something like that. That's what people are interested in. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there are some personality differences in what path you would take there. But either way, I think a lot of the choices that people would make currently – [11:34] depend on what they are sort of designed to respond to by feeling good about it.

So like if you enjoy one thing, you choose that. If you enjoy another, now in this conversation, [11:45] a condition of technological maturity. If we imagine sort of a future civilization that has developed all possible technologies to their maximum. - Yeah. [11:56] Then amongst the affordances, amongst the things they could do is like they wouldn't just have control over the external environment, things around them, but also their own. [12:06] biology and brains. So if you were one of these people, and like maybe right now, the only way you get enjoyment is by getting like crazy drunk or doing sort of things you don't really approve of maybe, but that's actually what sort of lights your fire.

Like you could... [12:24] You might not redesign yourself to take the same kind of pleasure, but in some kind of contemplating the beauty of the universe or like appreciating the goodness in the heart of others or like some more sort of noble aspiration. Like solving abstract mathematics rather than, you know, playing first person shooters. You would have a choice, like whether you would get your thrills from... [12:47] from one kind of activity or the other. Yeah, which brings us to the question, like, what does it mean to be human? Like, for people finding...

[12:55] beauty and joy in, you know, interesting and fascinating things and, you know, how to be a better person and all the different aspects of life. [13:06] human life that we think about when we think about people we think about noble aspects of humanity but Doesn't that have to exist? [13:15] in conjunction with the worst aspects of society for us to appreciate it? It seems like this is a part of the human condition, is that we have to have crime so that we can appreciate peace. We have to have war so we can appreciate peace.

We have to have hate so we can appreciate love. And we're never without one or the other. They're always both together in constant conflict, and we're always nobly hoping that the good wins out over the bad. And this is part of the struggle of being a human being. [13:45] And if we just completely eliminate that struggle, we're going to have to find some – we're going to have to be a different thing because what we are is this very strange territorial primate who's endlessly curious. And this territorial primate is moving in a certain direction, and that direction seems to be a better society.

It seems to be over time. [14:15] There's less violence. There's better medicine. There's better education. It's moving in a better and better and better direction. But it's in a struggle. That's part of why it moves. If all of a sudden there's no struggle and everyone is this wonderful, enlightened being, like what are we? Because we're going to be a different thing than what we are right now. And if you love music and if you love art and if you love novels and all these different things that come out of the human condition, those things come out of struggle.

[14:45] Those things come out of confusion and pain and heartbreak and love and joy and all that stuff all piled up together. Without that, like what are we? And so if we are moving in this direction technologically and we're not moving – [15:02] is fast biologically. [15:05] Do we merge? Because that seems to be what I think. I think that if this thing goes the way it continues to go, the bottleneck is going to be human biology. [15:19] embedded in [15:21] our efforts to make progress [15:24] So like there are all these kind of scientists and people working to develop better technologies and throughout the economy, you know, you're in some company, maybe you try to figure out how to make some process a little bit more efficient so you can serve customers better.

And all of this is designed to solve problems, right? Like if you sort of extrapolate that. [15:42] to its logical ears. [15:43] end point right you would imagine we would have [15:46] perfect technology that can do everything, solve all the problems, [15:50] like presumably with AI and automation. - Right. - But then you end up in this condition where there is kind of nothing left for us to do, you might think. And so although it looks like we have these strong reasons to push forward in this direction, [16:03] If you actually look at the end point, if we succeeded to many people, it will look kind of unpalatable and like this kind of future where all the problems are solved.

And nevertheless, that does seem to be the direction that we are headed in, probably the direction that we should be headed in. Yeah. Wouldn't that be a better goal if there was zero murder? [16:26] Zero violence, zero crime, zero lying, zero corruption. Huh, huh, huh. [16:32] And human beings all worked in coordination with each other. Right. [16:36] Just like in a sense of unique syncing and harmony. Right. That would be way better. I think so, but it does... [16:45] Like if you actually stare at that situation, it does have these slightly unpalatable qualities.

Because you might think it looks kind of bland then, right? Not necessarily though. It's just it looks bland if you think about what we're experiencing now. Like all the excitement and the weirdness of uncertainty and of not knowing and also the negative aspects of our life. [17:10] in conjunction with the positive aspects of our lives. We contrast the two of them, and you really appreciate good people after you're around a bunch of fucking assholes. You know, if – [17:19] But it doesn't have to be that way. This is just what we are dealing with.

This is my position on work too because everybody in their head is like, what happens when AI takes all the jobs? [17:31] And I'm like, do you have to have a fucking job? [17:34] Isn't that a human invention? [17:36] Like, why do you have to have a job? It seems crazy that our main focus is on housing and food, right? [17:44] And like most people are basically just working for that. Most people that are most people that are struggling check to check, basically housing and food is their daily labor. Right.

[17:55] If that's removed, wouldn't enough people figure out what to do with their time? Yeah, I think so. Like, yeah, there will be some transition and discomfort in change. But this is made up. But ultimately that is like, yeah. I mean, I think it's like – so slavery is really bad, right? Like wage slavery is a sort of slavery light in a sense. You have to sell a third of your waking day just to get money to pay for necessities. [18:25] most money make the conditions for their employees as shitty as possible because it costs the least amount.

[18:32] They don't think about it like, listen, maybe we make less money, but we have an awesome experience for everybody that works there. Nobody thinks like that. They all think like we have to make the most money because we have shareholders and we have a responsibility and these people need to make more money every quarter. Yeah, although sometimes you do need to compete for talent. That's true too, but only the top talent. [18:55] Some employees get treated well, right? What would you say? Jamie is a different kind of employee. Jamie is literally the co-person on the show.

That's different. But some dude who's out there stocking boxes for Amazon, that's different than being the CEO. Yes. I mean I think ultimately that would be a huge liberation and kind of restore dignity. Like you should be in control of your own time. It's kind of almost the most – aside from your own body. [19:25] Like you're on time, you're on attention. We have to teach people discipline. They have to – that's the thing. It's like if you give people the opportunity to just do nothing, we do. We're primates. We'll find a way to – we're genetically sort of designed to conserve resources.

You don't want to overuse resources for no reason, do a bunch of shit because you won't survive. You don't have enough food. So we're sort of designed to like know how to be lazy. And so we're going to have to find things that give us purpose or we'll get depressed. [19:55] This episode is brought to you by Visible. It's officially summer, folks, and boy, what a summer we are having. It feels like one of those good old-fashioned summers where you just want to enjoy every moment and keep up with the action.

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[20:55] that you wouldn't have to work for a living. It was kind of an unfortunate necessity for many people that they had to work for their daily bread, right? But the ideal way of being human was that you just had money. And then you spent your time doing other things. Maybe you were involved in politics or maybe you had an art collection or you did your gardening or entertained friends. That's the best aspect of it. But when you think about British aristocracy, don't you think about fuck-ups? I do. [21:25] drunk, they drive their Ferrari into a lake and they accidentally drown their friend and then they pay off the cops and they get away with it.

That's what I think of. Well, yeah, there's that. But there were also these kind of, I don't know, amateur scientists or eccentrics that have their weird thing and it can't have it. So I guess it brings out like the more freedoms of what it has, the more they can reveal their true nature. Well, it also depends on how they're raised, right? Who are their parents? What values did they instill in them when they were young? [21:55] Did they explain the value of hard work, that it's actually good for you? And that if you just find something you really want to do and you concentrate on it and really work hard at it, it's actually very fulfilling.

Yeah. So you could imagine, for example, the education system in this world where we no longer need to work. Right. Presumably it would need to be redesigned from scratch basically because right now it's a kind of machine, right? So you take children coming in kind of on a conveyor belt. Yeah. [22:25] here's this assignment, here's your grid. And then they come out with a quality label attached. Yeah. And then they are meant to be productive workers that you could put in an office and they will... [22:35] So this kind of is an unfortunate fact about the current condition that the world needs a lot of these office workers that can do all these tasks in the economy.

So like it's we have to have until it doesn't until it doesn't. And at that point, it would be absurd to keep. [22:51] doing this, right? - Right. - Then you could imagine changing education so that it would be much more about like, how can you [22:58] Learn to... [23:00] live well a life of leisure. Like you met and... You're right. Stay stimulated. Cultivating the art of conversation, appreciation for art and music, hobbies, physical wellness, like nature, the ability to [23:16] set your own goals and take your own initiatives to, you know, to develop true friendships with people.

Like these are things are not taught in school, but you could imagine that being the curriculum, like spirituality, like all kinds of things that would then equip people to sort of use their freedom, their wealth, their free time for, you know, some kind of, [23:39] you know, actually meaningful and beautiful activities. For sure, preemptively, we should be kind of teaching people like that now. Like if young people are coming up now, the world that they're, if you're in first grade right now, 12 years from now, when you're graduating from high school, like the world is a totally different place.

And this idea that being a productive worker who could sit still for eight hours a day is, that's the best way we should teach kids. That seems crazy. [24:09] like seeing the world that you're describing and that most people seem to think is oncoming. [24:17] The timeline is a little bit uncertain. So you don't want to end up in a situation, right, where you sort of now you find yourself, you're 20 years old. It's time to go out in the world. You have no skills. The AI revolution hasn't yet quite happened.

It's kind of 50 years old. Well, isn't that a liberal arts degree anyway? Yeah. How is that going? There's a lot of silly degrees that people get right now that are useless anyway, and they – [24:37] spend a tremendous amount of time working on getting it. And then when they get it out, there's no jobs for that degree. Yeah. So they were a little bit too early maybe in hopping on this. Maybe. Or, you know, there's also... [24:50] traps, there's things that you can get really excited about and do. Like if you want to play professional bowling, you're [24:57] You want to bowl professionally.

Well, the amount of money you're going to make is very limited because the best bowler in the world – like what does the best professional bowler in the world make? [25:07] Let's guess. [25:08] I say $100,000. Yes, they're professional bowlers. We used to know a guy, Ari's friends with a guy, Tommy. God, I can't remember his last name. Do you remember his last name, Jamie? Jamie. [25:20] He was a professional bowler, but he used to come to the comedy store and hang out. Really nice guy and just loved comedy. I don't know.

Maybe the very best one makes a... [25:28] pretty decent living and then like the third best like it's just i bet barely barely i bet the best guy probably makes maybe 100 grand or 200 grand at the most and that means like the 30th guy in the world is fucked yeah there you have to have another job to pursue that well but then in in this what does he make [25:47] Oh, $200,000. Oh, $400,000 in big season, $450,000, including prize money and sponsorships. [25:54] J. Tackett made $437,540 for the 2025 season, with several others between $190,000 and $270,000 in prize money alone.

Top tier. [26:11] So the top tier guys make a good living. [26:14] But how many guys are there? [26:15] You know what I'm saying? It's probably like a very thin sort of peak. So if you choose to go into bowling, it's not like choosing to go into – there's a lot of other jobs. Like even if you don't want to be a basketball player, they're making a lot of money. If you're a really good basketball player and you pursue that, like you could get very, very rich. But how many of them get rich?

Most don't. Yeah. But then like – so maybe the money factor would kind of drop out of the picture. Yes. And it would just be what you're interested in. And then maybe even it would – [26:45] I mean, the opportunities are endless. And what other people are interested in to some extent because I think part of what people are competing for is also prestige and status. Yes. That would be a thing, right? Like status would be more important. It's like who's the best at this thing? Like a bunch of friends who play golf.

Like Jamie plays golf all the time. Golfers are all like comparing each other's scores and they're playing. They're competing in this game. And they think about that more than they think about work. Like people who love golf, they fucking hate work. [27:15] I'll say that about comedy. Back when I first started, one of the things that I noticed is the guys who really got into golf, their careers kind of stalled because they were more excited about playing golf than they were about writing jokes and going on the road. I was like – [27:29] Okay.

So if the average person doesn't need food and housing anymore from labor, if that's gone and now you just get it, and so now you could just go do things. [27:40] We just have to teach people to be excited about stuff. We have to teach people the value of curiosity and finding things that are interesting to you. And then the value of just education for the sake of learning things because it's interesting. Just pure satisfaction of curiosity, which is a beautiful thing. Like that would be great for everybody. If we – instead of learning things because your teacher tells you you have to learn it, well, there's always going to be people that just naturally gravitate towards mathematics.

[28:10] fascinated by mathematics. And there's always going to be people that are just naturally gravitating towards history. They're like, how did we get here? What is this? How did it start? Who wrote that? Who's the first guy to figure that out? And that that's you're going to naturally go towards that and just be educated for the sake of satisfying your curiosity. And maybe we'll have a more balanced society because people will actually be able to just pursue their interests. We have to teach them to do it. That's what I think is going to be really important about young [28:40] Teach them to actually pursue their curiosity rather than just squash any desires they have for novelty and for interesting things and just be able to work all day doing something you hate because that's what it means to be an adult.

Yeah, I think cultivating that would be the way forward in this case. And it seems very possible. It's doable. We know curious people. Yeah, at least to some extent. [29:10] probably also some differences in how different folks are wired like some people get bored very easily others find everything fascinating yes people are like just naturally depressed or have low mood others are sort of yeah but those people that are naturally depressed how much would their life change if they were coached at a very early age the value of exercise and if they started running if they started doing yoga and they started feeling much better and they weren't naturally depressed anymore and then you change their diet and you start adding in vitamins and

[29:40] foods and all of a sudden they feel better because the concept even of depression, like what does that mean? Well, it varies so wildly. And when you're talking about people that aren't taking care of their bodies and that's not thought of as a primary factor in why depression exists in the first place, well, this is a very unscientific approach then because we know that it has a profound impact on human beings. So we're pretending that there's like this one size fit all. [30:10] to be a human being. Chase your curiosities, but also, this is why you're not feeling well, and that if you just develop this ability to get some momentum going and just show up at that yoga class every day, you'll feel way better, and you don't have to take a pill.

I think, yeah, [30:28] many could be a lot improved if they were taught to sort of take care of their basic physiology. Everyone can be improved. 100% of them can be improved. It's a part of being a human being. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. I think there is also some people who might just have some... [30:44] imbalance of some neurotransmitter because of some genetic... 100%. That's possible too. Or maybe they don't even have the energy to engage in these activities that would make them feel better. But then I think that would be much better medicines for helping...

That's where Adderall comes in. Let's go. Give them some Adderall. Get them fired up. Get them to start running. [31:05] I'm kidding. [31:07] But what we're saying is all doable. We're not asking people to breathe underwater, right? What we're saying is that there are people on earth that live like that. And this idea that living just for a paycheck so that you can cover your food and your housing, which we've always thought of as being – [31:27] Just... [31:28] an undeniable part of being a person, an adult. This is what you have to do.

You have to pay for your food, pay for your housing. But if we do get to a point where – [31:36] The structure of society is now run by hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence. You wouldn't need most jobs that people have to do that suck. [31:47] And in order to get our society to this point, if you wanted an iPhone, you needed some people that were in a factory somewhere putting it all together. You needed someone who's designing it. You needed someone who's sitting there in the office trying to figure out how to market it.

You needed all those jobs. But when we don't need all those jobs anymore, then things are going to be very interesting. And that's – [32:09] What I'm saying, we need to become a different thing. [32:13] It's kind of true and kind of not. Like you can be a human being and live in that world. But we're going to have to re-educate people how to be a human being. It's going to – this – [32:24] Our education system specifically in this country is just designed to make factory workers specifically. Like there's a real history of it.

Like we know why they made it this way. They made it this way and they got people in really early so they could get people set up for jobs. They just want people to work. [32:44] ill-suited for really thriving in an environment of abundance and for enjoying life. [32:53] Both at deep biological timescales and [32:56] during the lifespan of a single individual, there are all these pressures, necessities, that kind of force us to become a certain type. So I mean, we talked about the education system, training people to be the kinds who can sit at the desk all day long and perform tasks.

- Yeah. - Biologically, we've, [33:14] evolved drives to be lazy, to conserve energy, to eat as much as we can. And now in the modern environment where there are fridges everywhere, like it causes problems metabolically. And [33:28] in terms of enjoying life for many people, there is this hedonic treadmill, right? Like, so you achieve something [33:34] some improvement, there's a spike of happiness, and then you sort of... [33:38] go back to baseline very quickly. You start to take for granted all the blessings of life, which makes it very difficult to actually achieve a state of, um, [33:48] permanent happiness and felicity.

[33:52] And it's kind of been necessary because there needed to be this [33:57] motivation to keep striving for the next thing. Now, once you've actually achieved all the things, then maybe that becomes kind of dysfunctional, right? Like why keep wanting to strive for the next thing if all the things have already been achieved, at least in a certain domain. And so I think as we move deeper into this [34:16] hypothesized future, right? [34:19] where we get all these magical technologies, then at some point, probably some transformation [34:25] of human nature would have to go along with that.

First, maybe cultural changes to sort of equip people for a life of leisure. Yeah. And then ultimately, maybe more profound changes to our very biology. And so that imagine if you solve aging and you can now live [34:42] for thousands of years, right? Like maybe the way our memory work is not really set up for them. Maybe we would just go stale. [34:48] after 200 years with our current brains like we just get stuck in a rot and [34:52] We don't know because we haven't lived for 200 years, but that could easily turn out to be the case with a human.

So then maybe at that point, you would need to sort of do something to sort of add more cognitive resources, more flexibility, do some sort of psychedelic reset or something to sort of keep the flexibility going for longer periods of time. [35:22] and specifically with psilocybin and DMT and probably ibogaine as well. Like if we wanted chemical tools to navigate a new reality, those are probably the best ones that we have available and they're all illegal. And I think you're right. I think if we're going to be able to navigate this correctly, we have to kind of change the way we interact with each other, what it means to be a person.

[35:48] But I wonder how much of the conflict that we have is a direct result of this inherent struggle that so many people have. [35:57] I mean there's a direct correlation between extreme poverty and extreme crime, specifically in this country. If you look at the areas of extreme poverty in this country, they're also the areas with extreme crime. And I wonder how much of that would be completely alleviated with a complete lack of poverty. [36:15] We've always assumed that – [36:17] If you're going to have – [36:21] a functioning society that you're going to have slums.

[36:24] Why? Like, why? They don't serve any function. It's not a good thing. Well, it's because some people are always going to be making bad decisions and some people are always going to be going down the wrong road and crime and this and that. Right. But they're still just humans and some humans don't do that. So wouldn't it be better to figure out a way to not have humans ever do that anymore? And it seems like a way to – there seems like a way to do that. [36:54] never engage in crime.

Why do some people live these really fulfilling and interesting lives? Probably because they were exposed to it when they were really young, probably because they weren't exposed to like very bad environments and very bad crime and very bad poverty. And how much of that would change if there was no more poverty? It sounds like such a little fairy tale childlike, oh, one day we'll have no poverty. But [37:19] That's doable. If everyone is alive, right, okay, that's alive right now is not starving to death. That means we figured out a way to at least – the very least get you resources so you can feed yourself, right?

No matter how – [37:33] dysfunctional things are. [37:35] All it has to do is get ramped up a few steps. I am. [37:39] And now you have no one ever worried about being fed, no one ever worrying about not having a place to sleep. And then you have to find purpose. [37:47] But it seems like there's a lot of people that find purpose without having a financial price tag attached to it just by what we're talking about with golf or – [37:57] You could be like really into writing books. You could write books all day long and people are always going to want human created fiction.

People are always going to be interested in the way other people think about things. [38:08] You'll find – there's plenty of things to do. There's plenty of games to play and plenty of skills to learn. The idea that the only reason why we work is to eat and to not get rained on seems nuts. Yeah, I – [38:24] It is, I guess, to some extent, an open question to what extent people will always want. [38:29] to read human fiction or to prefer the human generated outputs. It might be just because current AI generated writing is kind of lacking in various ways.

It's often slop and boring. But if it became really good, then it's not. [38:49] You know, maybe it would just be, like, much more fun to... [38:53] Like if a movie made by an AI might just be so much better and richer and the lighting is perfect and the dialogue is sharp and it's more funny and deep and it really touches it. Then you go and watch this human-produced thing and it's going like... [39:06] Like most people don't go and watch sort of film school students' productions. Right, but then there's that movie obsession.

Wasn't that movie made like very inexpensively? [39:16] And it's a huge hit, right? [39:18] And that's part of the thrill of it, is that this guy who was like a YouTuber, right? [39:23] who created this film, and now this movie is a giant hit, and everybody is super excited about it. Now, if that same movie was made by AI, I wonder if it would have that impact because it doesn't have the human connection. [39:35] So that's possible that we keep... [39:39] getting interested in these things because we sort of are really entangled with the human world much more than we are with the world of AIs.

And, I mean, for the same reason you might be more interested in if, like, your brother or friend did something, you might think, oh, this is interesting. I want to check that out. Of course. Whereas it was some random dude who made something slightly better. It's like doesn't mean – Right. When you go to see your nephew play baseball, you wouldn't really go see little kids baseball. No, no. Just randomly, right? [40:09] on first base, like, way to go, Bobby! So I think these kind of... [40:13] social entanglements that we have will be a big part of what gives...

[40:18] structure to lives in this condition where the external constraints are removed. I think that there is a great value for the human mind, for whatever reason, in getting better at things and learning things. And I think that if we could instill that in people at a young age, I think we're [40:39] It would be fairly easy to get people to pursue that path. But we have to completely revamp our education system, which should have been done a long time ago anyway. The idea of having unenthusiastic, underpaid people, being any percentage of what children encounter for most of the day when they're in their most formative period is insane.

[41:09] to learn things and that was exciting to get better at things and about how anybody can get better at things. I mean, I hated every day of school. I hated it. I hated it. I didn't even know that I was interested in learning anything until I got out of school. [41:22] The same for me. I mean, I only discovered – like I also hated books and everything like that for my first 15 years of life because I associated that with school. That was the kind of school thing. So it's only then randomly one day I happened to walk into the local library for no reason and pulled out a book here and there.

And then I discovered that there was this whole world of science and idea and literature and all of that, like very, very different from what we were doing in school. And then that kind of opened the gates for me to this. [41:52] you would have had if you had like... [41:54] a different kind of education. Yeah, I am. With super enthusiastic people who really love teaching children, are really good at it, and that we reward them, and that it becomes a very prestigious position to be in, rather than what it is now.

If you talk to some guy, and then he goes, oh, I'm a high school teacher, you're like, oh, poor bastard. How does he feed himself? That's immediately what I think. Like, good for you that you're doing that, but also, I guarantee you could probably be making a lot more money and be happier doing another job. Yeah. [42:24] And so that's a terrible way to start life off. And if we just revamp that, then you have a bunch of people that are interacting with life in a very different way. And instead of being thought, I have to get a job someday, I have to get a job after school anyway to help my mom pay the bills because we're struggling.

So I got to contribute to the household, even though I'm 16, I can't hang out with friends. If all that stuff's out the window. And now it's like, no, what we need to find out is what is exciting for you. Like what? [42:53] What excites your mind, your specific personality? What is it about life that's interesting? And let's expose you to a bunch of different things that are exciting and interesting that other people find value in. And let's find out which way you gravitate because maybe you gravitate towards chess or maybe you gravitate towards something completely different.

Maybe you're just really in a painting. Maybe painting just lights you up and you like look at a canvas and you just start fucking around with it and that's your thing. There's a lot of people in this world that find that. [43:23] They have to find it themselves, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. I don't... [43:27] I think that's kind of inspiring. But I think... [43:33] the train doesn't stop there. So if we think even more further into this kind of [43:38] Thank you. [43:39] condition of technological maturity i think in in addition to sort of freeing up people you know like making it easy to produce the food and the houses and like cars that go faster and don't pollute and all of this stuff like if you think through what maybe a technologically mature civilization could do like so a lot of these um like learning for example is something that gives people purpose but maybe you would have the ability to sort of download knowledge um at the [44:09] learn advanced mathematics now you have to study year like for years right do [44:13] - Right.

[44:14] like books with exercises and apply yourself and then eventually you sort of unlock things [44:19] Yeah. But like maybe at technological maturity, that would be like, okay, I understand mathematics. Okay, I'm going to press that button. Boom. Right. Like the matrix. I know Kung Fu. Remember? Yeah. So if you had like, you know, you may be some kind of nanobots that could infiltrate your brain. [44:36] change the synapses in just such a way that you're not the same as you were before, except you have these concepts from abstract mathematics, you know, after 20 minutes or something like that.

Some superintelligence works out how to change your synapses to this new condition. And if you were... [44:53] inclined to do various things because they give you joy and pleasure. You could also think, well, [44:59] I could do those things and get the joy and pleasure, or I could just push this button that activates the same joy and pleasure. So there would be these shortcuts to everything. [45:08] and it looks like you would have a post-instrumental condition where that would... [45:14] at least at first time, it seemed to be no reason to do anything for the sake of achieving something else because there would always be this like shorter pass to that other thing that [45:23] pressing the button.

Yeah. And so that's a kind of deeper form of redundancy. It seems that all forms of human instrumental effort. [45:31] would become unmotivated. [45:33] You could still... [45:36] you know, go to the gym every day and sweat for an hour. [45:41] Or you could just take the pill that induces exactly the same physiological effects and the mental effects like the calm or whatever you feel after. [45:51] Or maybe even better, genetically engineer someone. Or genetically, yeah. So they don't have to take a pill. Yeah, yeah. [45:56] um... [45:57] And so then I think you're getting more into these fundamental questions of value, philosophical questions about what ultimately is it that makes a life good?

Yeah. [46:08] And what makes life good for a primate? [46:10] because that's what we are, or a primitive version of primates. I think we're going to become something different. And if we do it through technologically-induced evolution or biologically-induced evolution, we're still moving in a general direction. Just biologically, if you look at ancient hominids and look at us, we're clearly very different. So we're moving in a general direction anyway. And when you look at the greys, like these prototypical aliens that everybody sees, the big heads and the skinny bodies, what do they look like?

[46:40] We keep going. That's what we're going to look like. We're going to be these genderless, sexless, muscleless, little skinny things with giant heads that communicate telepathically, which is probably where we're moving. And if we're moving that way, maybe we think of them as being an alien from another – [46:56] Maybe that's just the general direction that primates go once they figure out technology. They eventually realize, well, first of all, the idea of having to have a male and a female is kind of crazy. Why? [47:11] Well, because we have to reproduce.

Well, what if we don't reproduce like that anymore? What if all reproduction is done through engineering and there's no more sex, so there's no more lust, so there's no more jealousy, so there's no more ego? There's no more anything. And then there's a hive mind because technology has advanced to the point where the reason why they have these big giant heads, they're essentially locked into everybody all around them all the time. Yeah, well, is that what we would want though? Not us, but I don't think we'll be us anymore. [47:41] I think this – like if you went to chimps and you said, hey, dude, one day you're going to be on a plane eating peanuts, flying over the ocean.

They'd be like, fuck that. I don't want to do that. I'll just stay here where the fruit is. You guys are nuts. Like why do you want to do that? And you'll be addicted to Kratom and you'll be watching YouTube all day long. Like, no, I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound fun. We do have a lot of bananas, though. Maybe. Or you have to get killed by the other chimpanzees that want the bananas. They have chimp wars. [48:11] come in and kill each other. So I think [48:14] We're going to be something different, and I think that's inevitable anyway.

If you believe in evolution, it's inevitable anyway that we become something different. We're not a finished product. Yeah. [48:23] Yeah, no, I think that is true. We are not the finished product. Now, the question is the thing that we become or that. [48:30] becomes is that [48:33] Um... [48:34] a result of [48:36] us choosing how we want to be or is it just these kind of impersonal forces like evolution selecting certain types that might end up leading to outcomes that we actually don't want? And so I guess the hope is that we would be able to develop along a path that we [48:54] preserves and develops [48:56] the things that we actually value about being human, maybe amplifies them, then maybe adds other things.

So there are many different possible things you could develop in the future, but that we sort of select those that actually make us better rather than just randomly different. [49:13] that we can sort of grow into our ideals [49:16] But it's so funny how much value we put in human condition. [49:21] how much value we put in meaning because it is valuable to us. [49:26] When you think about like what that means in terms of the amount of energy it produces, the amount of impact that it has versus the structure of the universe itself versus black holes and stellar nurseries and things that are just infinitely more spectacular than the human condition.

But to us, it's like, oh, what is meaning? What is meaning? What is meaning to me? [49:56] sort of tromping around through this weird world where eventually you're going to die and you're going to leave your mark and maybe reincarnation's real, maybe the afterlife's real, nobody fucking knows. So you've got to have meaning. [50:07] But the universe itself, like a human only lives 100 years. How much meaning can you have in 100 years? Yeah, I think we kind of die prematurely. I mean, we think of us as like first you become stronger and more capable for 15, 20 years, right?

[50:24] And then biologically, you stagnate. And then maybe you keep accumulating sort of knowledge and skills for another few decades. But just as you have started to acquire like a modicum of wisdom, like your brain starts to rot. [50:37] And then everything is erased either by Alzheimer's or death. That's all gone, the whole lifetime of experience. There's your meaning. All the memories and the hard-earned lessons. So that seems kind of sad and probably not the best way for things to be. I think we would want to extend the human lifespan so you could continue to grow up.

Not just kind of reach 20 and then plateau there for the rest of your life. [51:07] Like at 80, you were as much stronger and like be able to understand more and move better and like just have the same capacity increase as you had like between like zero and 20 and you just kept going. Well, these life extension scientists that are working on these things, guys like David Sinclair, like they believe that that's not just a possibility but an inevitability. Yeah, well, so that's more like, I guess, preserving, preventing or delaying that decay.

[51:35] Sure. Which is already very good. Not reversing. They're talking about reversing. Yeah, yeah. But then you would go back to being 20, right? In terms of your physiognom. Biologically, yeah. But then you have engineering. If you have very long time spans, then you might at some point want to continue to grow. Yeah. Like you might not want to just be stuck at a 20-year-old human for 10,000 years. Of course. Like maybe eventually you would want to become… [51:58] So like slightly bigger in terms of your ability to engage with the world.

Of course. And if they can figure out how to make people – well, there's already genetic engineering that's being done in terms of increasing potential intelligence and IQ. They're already doing that. [52:28] inoculated to HIV, but it also... [52:32] at the same time gave them a far increased potential IQ. It remains to be seen whether or not it actually works as these guys, you know, become like 20 and 30 and we start putting them in chess tournaments and see if it really did make them smarter. But if the possibility of that is already being studied, they already understand the differences between like what