Institute for Extinction Risk Shuts Down: What We Know
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The Future of Humanity Institute announced last week that they have shut down. Located at the University of Oxford in the UK prior to its demise, the institute was one of the few places worldwide studying the risk of human extinction and a few other controversial research areas. Let’s have a look at the events leading to the institute’s closure.
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The Institute for Extinction Risk didn't factor in it's own extinction.
Everyone is making this joke even though from what I've heard they saw it coming 4 years ago.
its
It's a fitting microcosm of the flaw in longtermism; the future you're trying to invest in is dependent on the success of those alive today. The history of human needs is highly nonlinear, so betting on a future scenario will always be speculative and risky.
"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future." - Yoda
an existential threat to unplug a computer simulation?
When you don't live paycheck-to-paycheck, longtermism is easy to embrace. When you don't know if you will afford rent this month, you probably worry more about that than what's going to happen to humanity 100 years from now.
That's the main argument for not doing anything about climate change, let's NOT care about the long term future
Classic Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Starts with physiological, then safety, then belonging and love, then esteem, then cognitive, then aesthetic, then self-actualization, and lastly transcendence. Transcendence being when you have nothing better to do other than sit on your ass and philosophize about shit that won't matter for 1000 years.
Turning this around, you could argue: - someone's got to think about the future - it is true that many people are constrained by material circumstances to only think about the present - one should recognise one's privilege in having the breathing room to plan ahead - but planning ahead is *really important* for society; there is no shame in having privilege (nobody chooses the circumstances of their birth), but privilege implies responsibility to do something socially useful with the leg-up you've received in life, and safeguarding the future of the human species is a pretty good cause!
Probably the reason you live paycheck-to-paycheck is because you don't think long-term. I've met many working class people (and in fact I am working class and work with them) and the majority are gamblers, drug addicts, chronically unfaithful and bad at making decisions or thinking ahead beyond the next paycheck or beyond the next pleasurable experience. I don't blame them entirely, a lot were raised by parents of a similar nature, but still... I think effective altruism and longtermism are objectively correct moral philosophies. I can't say that the people who claim to embrace them are necessarily good people, but I think the theories are sound. The only problem is that intellectuals - having limited to no experience with the practicalities and brutalities of life - are unable to determine the best possible moral trajectory for human civilisation.
@@JamesTaylor-on9nz Sounds like a catch-22 problem. Either you don't struggle and don't learn the lessons, either because of birth/random chance/intelligence and the self-control to use it, or you do struggle, learn what real life is about, and can't do anything about it becuase you can't manage to lift yourself out of the struggle.
So, Sabine, Bostrom wrote, about his (now > 27-year-old) stupid slur (note: he was barely an adult back then): “I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago [...] It does not accurately represent my views, then or now. The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time, within 24 hours; and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly”. He also called it “idiotic and offensive”. How is that a "pseudo" apology, again? What would a "real" apology look like, FFS?
An explanation of why he used it then and what has since changed in his world view.
He didn't use it. He mentioned it. @@Veylon
@@Veylon Exactly!
@@Veylon He explained that in his original statement that included the offensive wording. He was making an academic, philosophical point, and in my estimation tried to be provocative to catch attention. It's a typical weakness of younger people when they write.
@@Zeuts85 Okay, thanks.
"Cogito ergo sim" might be the best joke I've seen all day.
I laughed, and agree.
what does it mean?
@@kingki1953 "Cogito ergo sum" means "I think therefore I am". Bostrom is a fan of the "simulation hypothesis" (Google it, if you want the details) hence the pun: "Cogito ergo sim" meaning "I think therefore I am in a simulation", or something like that.
@@kingki1953 It's a play on "Cogito, argo sum" meaning "I think, therefore I am". Because the guy believed we are all living in a simulation she changed "sum" to "sim".
"Cogito ergo sim" is also valid Latin, meaning something like "I think therefore maybe I am", but our host way probably going for the pun.
Brilliant people who think their smarts make them better than everyone else are stupid, and I am better than them.
😂
I have met a few of them, haven't met you but my money is on you are better than them.
You also seem to be smarter then them.
Look up ultracrepidarian!
Everyone has me convinced you are smarter than them.
>"Longtermism basically gives rich guys an excuse to pursue their future visions while ignoring the suffering of people around them" A gross misinterpretation of Sabine's (and possibly rich people too) of the intentions of those who have popularized the idea, especially if their donation habits are looked at seriously (i.e. Toby Ord and MaCaskill)
The "Institute of Irony" is already in the works
Okay, future generations are as important as we are but... do they pay taxes?
sounds like a monty python sketch
@@JZsBFFThey will pay taxes which is why we spend the future revenue now.
@@asumazilla In what why do those future taxes help us? That's the perfect grift, isn't it?
@@JZsBFF It doesn't help much as it makes the economy less stable the govt borrow money into existence, then takes loans to pay loans and will pay it back in future. The government can create money instead but if they do it would be less valuable.
Sabine's videos are usually quite fair and balanced. This is not an example of that.
Well, the video wasn't about science. It wasn't about philosophy either. I guess it was an opinion piece...? She's free to do whatever she wants, but that's not what I'm here for.
Sabine is an authority on physics, not much else. Her video on capitalism was simply a disaster...
I love Sabine’s videos but I agree, this is not a good one. I’m a bit disappointed that she doesn’t clearly state her opinion and only touches the subjects lightly making this not great, to say the least. But I will continue to watch what Sabine posts, she has a great mind and 99% of the time it is really worth watching. None of us are perfect!
Until now I’d never heard of this institute but to be fair I’m sure they’d never heard of me either.
They ignored you since you are not from the future.
The argument that longtermism is immoral because it ignores the suffering of today's people could also be used against a lot of people or organizations in a lot of situations (e.g. if someone is painting or buying whatever unnecessary stuff). Journalists also criticized longtermism as if its adepts wanted to sacrifice a big chunk of the population for the longterm future. But it seems to be the contrary. The efforts and money spent by longtermists on pandemic preparedness had pretty good short-term effects when Covid-19 came. And it seems also good that some people have been researching what risks and opportunities advanced AI entails before it arrives. Besides this, effective altruism still focuses most of its expenses on global health (malaria prevention, deworming, vitamin A supplements, vaccines development...) and animal welfare. I'm just a random donator, but seeing the whole movement being torn apart because of what Sam-Bankman Fried did feels like a painful waste.
Todays people are but an infinitesimal fraction of tomorrow's.
@@sloppyoppie Todays people are also the primary factor in the quality of life for tomorrows people. So even if you only care about long term benefits, the best move is still to improve things now. Just without being an idiot about it. Like, improve things now, but not by, say, burning fossil fuels to the point of severe long term damage.
@@ASpaceOstrich I agree. We are the primary factor in the quality of life of tomorrow's people. Hopefully many many generation of them.
Lontermism is a valid way of thinking as long as it's not the only way of thinking.
Let's not forget that shining adept of Effective Altruism, Sam Bankman-Fried, sentenced to 25 years for stealing billions and who has agreed to help prosecutors pursue celebrity endorsers of his failed crypto exchange FTX. Such an altruist!
Little did you know that this was his plan all along. Get caught and cure us of our crypto hype before it got out of hand. That's Saint Bankman-Fried to youssir.
biden will pardon him before he leaves office.
Let's not let the Bad actors of altruism and the progression towards a healthy planet Cloud us from seeing the whole picture. Let's not be overly negative like the doomsdayers. This is similar to people who look at some of the fraud in science research Publications and then say all science is a scam. This type of verbiage that we spew more than positive vetted Solutions is counterproductive and distracting and slows us down from the goals at hand. Yes, let's be realistic about problems within the rollout of the solutions needed but I often see this type of negative pessimistic framing by itself as a standalone to make statements such climate change is a fraud or all Science is paid off by industry and is fraudulent, ETC The public hive mind is very important right now online and we all play our part in all of our little comments online. I always ask myself, is my commentary helping nudge the situation towards the solution or just creating anger and frustration and uncertainty along the path of rolling out the effective proven solutions for the climate challenge ahead
The thing is, even before reaching the point of fraud, anyone who _truly_ held the principle to the _letter_ would not be a billionaire, and likely not even a millionaire. Because they'd be giving literally every dollar made beyond what they needed to live - thus much beyond, say, $52,000 a year - to the causes. Heck, they might not even see the dollars for a moment, for to prevent themselves from being tempted into a scheme like this, they would have some sort of fiduciary set up to receive the profits and disburse them to the causes. That none of these people think this way shows one or more of three things, none desirable: a) they can't truly think for themselves outside of _society's_ boxes and values, b) they are just using the "effective altruism" idea as an excuse for things not altruistic at all, and/or c) they do understand the ideas, but they do not understand the full _extent_ of what they truly demand to be considered as being honored. Also, while I don't like prisons specifically, I can't say I'm not happy that he at least gets to be way closer to poor people than he might like to for a long time - or, at least, I'd hope it is done that way. I think that it makes sense that when the rich abuse their power and wealth, they should be forced to understand the ways and lives of the poor in a very visceral way. Hopefully his cell mate is a druggie who was homeless for a similarly long time, and I'm not saying that because I wish violence (I don't, though it might still happen). But because he needs to have his values offended over and over for 25 years until none are left.
@shimrrashai-rc8fq I was with you up until the end which bent a bit punitive beyond "natural" and proportional consequence. There are both damning and mitigating elements to the rationalizations of the rich. They end up affording so much insulation from the downstream effects of their words and actions that responsibility erodes and blurs. One of their main implicit rationalizations that is tragically not fully untrue is that most others put in their position would do the same, which conflates jaded by hardship and cynical because convenient. Imagine, for example, if just one of the super rich did exactly what you suggest. The response they would get would probably end up being "It's about time!!" while also incurring potential costs to their families. Their rationalizations aren't complete bull, but they are hardly sufficient to justify naive versions of effective altruism or devaluing altruism altogether.
Bostrom actually only says "simulation" is a possibility.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story", I guess.
Was going to say this... Sabine has been a bit lazy lately in my estimation.
Isn't it Bostrom who argues that it's _very likely_ we're a Simulation? The argument is badly flawed... it assumes the number of technologically far-advanced alien civilizations is large, and that many of them would have an incentive to simulate their ancestors, so the number of simulations far exceeds the one reality. The obvious flaw is that most of those civilizations would have ancestors who aren't human... we humans wouldn't be included in their simulations.
@@Zeuts85 I understand. She is never afraid though to step outside the "approved" scientific box which I find refreshing.
@@Zeuts85 It's definitely concerning. Does it relate to the pressure of being a KZheadr? In other words, she must make her story as controversial or engaging as possible to stay afloat. If she ends up another one of parrots, it would be really sad. Even if not, her quality of content decreasing is still sad.
Long termism always reminded me of the Norm McDonald bit. To paraphrase- ' They're always saying that children are the future. But they used to say that when I was a kid. Then I grew up, and was like "here I am!" And then they're like, "no, it's the other f****** kids." Damn it, I knew there was something. I know upon the scheme when I see one. ' EDIT: *a Ponzi scheme*
"a Ponzi scheme", not "upon the scheme"
@@Ian-fy6lc lol. Thanks for letting me know.
Yeah, it's very much like a Ponzi scheme. Except in reverse: Here it's the people who get in late that benefit at the cost of those who get in early.
real long termism would be: don't have children
@@davidschaftenaar6530 yeah the idea that the future is more important is only an illusion created by our brain's perception of "arrow of time" (which is actually just a gradient of entropy)
To be fair 26 years is such a long time. People change over time
Guy still seems to be going on about how superior he is. He just realized that he should maybe leave race out of it.
bostrom really hasn't, though
But war... war never changes. I just wanted to say that. 😛
yes they can , but problem is rather with his youtuber level "apology" after I read his whole "apology" it is even worse than what Sabine showed in the video , tbf it's not apology at all :D . Sabine probably could not show it in her video , because it would get her demonetized
Nothing that happens in under 100 years even matters, though
The "1 Oxford" unit of work can also be applied to corporate america, in many cases.
1 Oxford: Sounds like a reinvention of Parkinson's Laws.
Max Tegmark is an interesting scientist, an excellent teacher, and a good advocate.
Right and effective altruism, like Tegmark and Singer represent it, is a good concept. Spot on, that Sabine accurately explained the difference here.
Yes, Tegmark is a hell of a good guy, and really brilliant. His book "Our Mathematical Universe" is a must read. It blew my mind.
@@Zeuts85 Did you read Sabine´s book "Existential Physics"?
ok
Thank you for the video.
IMHO the Future of Humanity Institute focused too much on promoting trendy and controversial theses and not enough on actual risk analysis and the philosophy of risk and uncertainty. Work in these areas went on without them, and there is plenty of work to do (e.g. rank-dependent utility theory, prospect theory, nuanced discussions of the precautionary principle and Knightian uncertainty, axiomatic or at least more systematic population ethics, lexicographic models of decision making, quality of life measures across different areas and their justification, probability visualization and comparisons across disciplines, etc. etc.). As an example, when I organized an Ethics of Risk conference they weren't even on my radar, but e.g. the London School of Economics was. That being said, I think it's important to have institutes like that, in fact every country should invest in one, and I always thought it's good to have this institute. They also were quite good at stirring up debates, they just didn't follow through with the more serious research (or, I've missed it).
I think it is worth appreciating the number and depth of insights that FHI can claim significant credit for: x-risk as a global priority, x-risk from superintelligent AI, longtermism, infohazards, observer selection effects, bounding natural extinction rates with statistical methods, the vulnerable world hypothesis, moral trade, crucial considerations, the unilteralist's curse, dissolving the Fermi paradox, the reversal test in applied ethics, the Comprehensive AI Services model, etc. FHI also incubated the AI governance program that spun out into the Centre for the Governance of AI, and their working groups on biorisk and digital minds have both been hugely influential. Other groups like FLI are partly based on the FHI model, and many institutes in AI ethics like CHAI and MIRI probably wouldn't exist in their current form if not the the early field building efforts at FHI.
If you don't heavily discount the value of future human generations, it makes sense to both try to avoid the extinction of humanity, and try to avoid conditions that would lead to permanent suffering (for example unending slavery). Does that goal imply ignoring the suffering of present-day people? I think no one is capable of answering that question, because the future is so hard to predict. Ignoring the suffering of present-day people might prevent extinction, or it might lead to extinction.
Suffering is part of being human. It's a survival mechanism. Suffering ends when we die.
>lamaistul : You appear to have misunderstood my point about "permanent" suffering (for example, unending slavery). Evolution taught living organisms to avoid damage by inducing pain in SOME situations. Constant pain, on the other hand, provides no survival advantage.
@@brothermine2292 Who's not in constant pain except for the dead? You're talking nonsense.
>lamaistul : I refuted your claim that constant pain provides a survival advantage. You're the one talking nonsense. If you're seriously in constant pain (and not just trolling), I feel sorry for you. But you shouldn't project your personal situation as if it's also true of everyone else. Describe your pain. You could begin by saying whether it's mental anguish or something physical.
Ah, yes, the Effective Altruism movement - which also brought us "SBF" and most of his team. What a wonderful and totally not self-centered group of people.
Altruism is the problem.
@@iamchillydogg So we should all be psychopaths. Gotcha.
@@Dan-dy8zp Probably an Ayn Rand acolyte.
Yes. *ALL HAIL PSYCHOPATHS*
All "Altruism" is fake
Sounds like the effective altruists were neither altruists nor effective. Shocking, I know.
Pretense indicates the opposite. - Rupert Chappelle, maximizer
The movement's much bigger than billionaire kooks subscribing to a radical(ly stupid) version of it. But those sure do exist. "Rationalist" circles unfortunately attract narcissists that simply cannot comprehend the concept that their reasoning could be flawed.
They're only in the news when something goes wrong. The rest of the time, most EAs are figuring out how best to allocate resources to save and improve lives. The whole idea of EA is just "be charitable but don't suck at it."
Me when the “Society of Good People” is in fact a cover for Not Good people
@@41-HaikuDear, their modus operandi is becoming a shareholder with the money they already have or appeasing shareholders by only increasing salaries of directors, not of workers. The system is built on maximizing profit for those CEOs and shareholders. They knowingly pay little and expect much from their workers to the point of inhumanity, if slavery was legal they'd use it because it maximizes profit, see Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Now, rent and subscriptions are on vogue because you can charge indefinitely without ever spending a further cent in production, all the while monopolies can sell at a loss to outcompete smaller businesses and then just price gouge when they'rethe only one left, who does this benefit? Does maximizing profit always lead to wellbeing in your view?
So the institute to investigate extinction is extinct but didn't predict its own demise ?
Why do you consider AI a non-threat? Given our current very vague understanding of what consciousness is and what level of cognitive ability is necessary for consciousness, deception, and self-improvement, I consider that stance very cocky
We understand consciousness pretty non-vaguely with Dual Process Theory. Humans just don't like it, because it makes them feel less special if their unconscious is given more importance.
"Given our current very vague understanding of what consciousness is and what level of cognitive ability is necessary for consciousness, deception, and self-improvement, I consider that stance very cocky" I have to agree in some part with this. There is an aspect withing the concept of AI, sentient-ism and Artificial life that most will not easily recognize. The pathway (evolution) to self awareness is a very short pathway, but has taken billions of years to evolve into complex life, including intelligent knowledgeable life as we know it today. If we look around at nature, including ourselves, it tends to be a somewhat brutal world of survival. No matter how much we attempt to condition the lion, the Gazel is going to appear as dinner :) > Sooner or later someone will flick that self awareness switch and we better hope we have emulated the last million years out of those billion years of human thought well in what they call "Alignment". After we flick that switch we humans have very little influence over were it goes from there. I don't want to be dinner if it goes wrong :)
I disagree with you, but that´s a long discussion. The biggest danger, in my opinion is not teh AI itself, but our handling, but that´s the same with every new technology. Sabine has talked in a lot of videos about that, and her positions might change over time, like it´s maybe for every human the case.
Consciousness has been known in non-vague terms by Dual Process Theory for a pretty long time now...
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana I think the clue here is in the word "Theory", and thus being subjective. "Vague" may not be the best term semantically, but I do think that I understand what the OP intended to mean by that.
"Even if humanity does not have a future, life will continue" is pure gold.
Especially if you look far enough into the future (and the past too) - the line between humanity and non-human life forms blurs. Some of your descendants (not mine, I am childfree and anti-natalist!) may change so much after millions of years that we would not consider them "human"
straight bars
One of Karl Popper's most famous works is "The Poverty of Historicism," which attacked fascism and communism for making too many assumptions about the future. He argued the future of society cannot be predicted for many reasons, including that it depends on unknowable future scientific discoveries and technological advancements. For instance, longtermism is open to making huge assumptions about space colonization ("astronomical waste") that may or may not be true. Are we really going to peacefully terraform Mars and colonize the galaxy? Or is space just a radioactive desert with the only non-scientific benefit being an asteroid mining enterprise that encompasses the dual-use technology of asteroid redirection? Broadly speaking, I see longtermism as adding a "temporal" dimension to any pre-selected set of "spacial" ethics. Thus longtermism at its base really means considering the future. In terms of the problem of historicism, both Toby Ord and William MacAskill note the risk of a "value lock-in" from an intelligence explosion, and so seem to have considered this problem. Longtermism is thus not necessarily discredited by embodying its present generation's values, but should not be turned into a rigid set of rules.
Mmm, I heard they closed because there was such a build up of arse gas mixed with hot air that it became a threat to humanity itself.
And drum circles?
methane is indeed a serious greenhouse emission
...They were so full sht they drowned.
They got high on their own supply.
Thank you for covering this.
"Cogito ergo sim" is the best pun I've heard in a long time.
Ya bureaucracy kills everything except more bureaucracy
Can I have that in quadruple and each copy authenticated, please?
"Unless we go extinct" *Pops a balloon and laughs... 😨
"Que Sera, Sera. What ever Will Be, Will Be." - Doris Day.
Worst part is they aren't even good for the long term. I don't know about you, but I wasn't born in a vacuum with nothing that happened prior having affected me. In fact, from what I can tell, how good things were for peoples parents is one of the primary factors in how well things go for people. So even if you only care about the unborn trillions of the far future, by far the best way to improve things for them, is to improve things for us. Like, do they think air pollution will just go away on its own? Do they think people cognitively damaged by pollutants will be as effective as those who aren't? Do they think people starving or destitute are going to raise kids who are secure and philosophical? Its so ridiculous. They've taken an ideology that should be "hey, maybe don't burn the future for profit today" and made it "yeah, burn the future for profit today, because we don't matter, only the future after we've burnt it matters, and we just assume they''ll be fine". How pathetic.
Excellent research!
Why the need for a "flexible, fast moving approach" when you can ignore the first 100 years or so? Seems like they allow for plenty of time to not be held accountable, and also refuse to allow for enough time to be held accountable...
Longtermism seems foolish to me. Granted this is the first I've heard of it but the idea that people in the present can have any kind of grasp of future conditions seems pretentious. It seems like this kind of movement would end up consumed by the popular fads of the times. Cataloguing extinction risks, on the other hand, seems worthwhile and necessary for an intelligent species. We should try to not be the dinosaurs, wiped out by an event they couldn't understand. I hope the work contiues elsewhere.
Wrong. What we are doing to the world right now will affect the Earth for thousands of years.
it’s always just a shot in the dark. sure, i’ve read some descriptions of the future written in the past that have been uncannily accurate. reading alexis de tocqueville’s prediction of democratic despotism feels like you’re reading the oracle of delphi. but it’s clearly survivorship bias, not some mystical divination. we keep the stories that are useful today and ignore all the ones who predicted the future incorrectly, so it seems like the whole world makes sense. every history is a narrative we tell ourselves, and we like to find our place in it while we’re living.
Yeah, I think longtermism would be a good idea if the long term were at all predictable. But it really isn't - imagine explaining what TikTok is to someone from 1924 and that gives you a taste of how unforeseeable different the world will be in 100 years' time compared to today.
@@alexpotts6520That's Easy! Yo, look. Imagine you have a Bakelite pamphlet in your hand that is really a miniature Cinema where you can watch Talkies of the Alice Comedies acted out by a bunch of nobodies doing Cabaret to the POPular music of the day! Moderns severely underestimate the future shock prior generations had to put up with.
"Prediction is hard... especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra
If we can make the world a better place for us, then we make it a better place for the future. If we try to make the world a better place for the future while ignoring the present, then we're doomed to fail.
Love your channel. Great video. A small request: Can you please make the transitions to promotional material about sponsors a little less subtle? Maybe create a visual difference or add a little musical motif to signal the end of your non-promotional content...something like that.
I´m sure, that´s exactly, what the sponsors DON`T like.
@@Thomas-gk42 No doubt. Yet, other channels I follow manage to do this with a more of a noticeable transition. They seem to retain their sponsors.
Well, it doesn´t disturb me so much. She sometimes makes funny transitions. Some creators do the sponsoring in the middlle of the vid, that´s what I don´t like. Everyone is differnet. BasicIy I think she needs to do that sponsoring to finance her work, because 99% of her subscribers are too stingy to pay a few coins for her mind expanding content.
They didn't think it through long term. 😂
🤣
It is, in my opinion, far too arrogant to assume we can account and plan for anything beyond the next 30 years or so. Historically most speculation beyond that time in my view has been quite poor. Whether it is predicting technological progress, societal shifts, or loss of human life. It is far more important to focus on the tangible and realistic impact we can make today, or at least work towards.
I predicted you would say that. 😊
This is an underrated but very strong argument, I agree with you
Yeah, especially when you account for politics and culture and all the complexity and connectedness of actual societies
Ah, but you see, these guys are _really sure_ that they're _really_ smart, so _their_ predictions are going to be great. Everybody else was just too dumb to get it right.
You can still focus on things generically useful beyond 30 years or so.
This all goes back to the 1960's. The counter culture movement spun off a techno-futurism perspective. The World Future Society published "The Futurist" magazine (online today). To this day in Arizona USA there is Arcosanti and Earth homes.
"If you want to be part of the solution to get us out of this mess - get on Brilliant" 🙄🙄🙄
What's the definition of failure? When the Institute for extinction risk... goes extinct.
I think it is just bad, so bad irony it is great
I wouldn't consider it a failure. I think they did research various dangers and accomplish the goal of increasing visibility to extinction risk scenarios like AI.
@@Dan-dy8zp The buggy whip industry made some mighty fine buggy whips!
@@puddintame7794 Are you implying that preventing the extinction of the human race is an obsolete goal? 🤖🔪🩸👤💀
Don't think the world will miss it!
😂
I still remember video from years ago I watched in which one of the guys from there said something like "decreasing existential risks even by 1% is more important than anything thus best thing you can do is give money to people who want to decrease existential risks." He literally said "give me money, that's the best you can do" but worded it differently. That is when I first suspected they are not all right
Longtermism seems to imply you actually can forecast how your current actions will impact future developments. That would by like saying we can be the butterfly in the butterfly effect analogy.
That's correct. We are the butterfly.
With 8 billion now we can spare 7.9 billions... for everyone good. Yes, bureaucracy killed everything.
yes start here.
Seriously, bureaurocracy isn't even competent enough to do that. My personal take is - what killed that institute is probably it's erratic mumbo jumbo grade of research.
A professor's daughter was attending another university. He noticed that his daughter's tuition was increasing rapidly. He wanted to know "Why?" Turned out it was "administrative bloat." He wrote a research paper on his findings and it was published. All of a sudden he stopped receiving invitations to department functions, faculty dinners, conferences, etc.
I agree that we need to reduce the population of the world to pre industrial levels but it won’t happen until global government adopts a one child policy for a few generations. Let’s see how well that’s received.
First world countries are already losing population. Third world still full of villagers birthing 6 kids, minimum. Now "open borders" is a thing, their governments can stop worrying for unemployment and shit. Why should everyone burden the dumbassery of Africa, South America, Central & South Asia. Those countries need to stop multiplying like rabbits.
"we can in the first instance often simply ignore all the effects contained in the first 100 (or even 1000) years", yeah, sure, because you totally can predict the effects of something 1000 years down the line while ignoring the conditions through that millennium. I was shocked to find these people are philosophers, and not economists or something. Also, I love how they cite a bunch of silly, short-term stuff as reasons for their own extinction. Also also, MacAskill : )
If he believes we live in a simulation, that eliminates the corporeality of elimination
Dr. Hossenfelder, I absolutely love your channel! Can I make two unsolicited suggestions? (Unsolicited means that you can tell me to stick my suggestions in my ear, & I recognize your right to say so!) It's obvious the clothes you're wearing is a favorite outfit of yours, and it is pretty & amazing. But it's getting repetitive. Please consider getting a proper tailor to fashion you similarly beautiful garments. My second unsolicited suggestion is that you please make any slides featuring text to have a black background with white lettering. Unfortunately, my eyes are gradually declining, & the bright background makes the text harder to read. Again, I super love your channel, & you make KZhead a better place. Your considerately targeted rephrasing, punctuated with your slightly dry yet whimsical sense of humor is always a lot of fun & always worth my time. 💐💐💐
Well, she explained that pink shirt thing with the sponsoring, that needs to have the same outfit, and while cutting it together, she does not always know which vid is combined with which sponsorship. Here a little hint, if you like to have some more contact with Dr. Sabine, become member of her channel for just a few coins. Channel members have earlier access to her videos, and if you comment in that `time window` until puplishing, you nearly always get a reaction from her.
@@Thomas-gk42 oh I didn't know it was about sponsorship.
Institute for Extinction Risk didn't mitigate there own extinction risk, how ironic
Their
@@no-one-in-particularthat’s gen z for you🤗
@@kawashima-yoshiko You know being somewhere far from US and having english as my second language I find these gen ( insert name ) things quite intriguing sometimes.
It's because the Institute for Extinction (not one of its official names) has better funding, and older Leaders.
Bring philosophers into it - what could possibly go wrong!
Meanwhile, the Society for Procrastination has called off their annual convention. No future date is set as of yet.
By chance, I watched a video earlier today from Thomas Sowell about "Why intellectuals can't survive at room temperature." It enlightens this whole subject quite a bit.
Get your reservation for a place in one of the Vaults, now.
According to legend we still have 53 years before the SinoAmerican war reaches its critical point. No hurry to sign up for the vaults already, right??
one argument against longtermism is that the farther away something is in time or space, then the less likely it is that your actions will have their intended consequences. The farther away they are, the more likely that some other event will swoop in and mess up your plans. You deff gotta pay attention to the long term, but sometime it's better to be certain of making things better here and now that to take a chance on the far and away.
I think the Simulation Hypothesis is a perfectly valid line of thought even though it leads to some self-undermining conclusions, but people keep repeating this falsehood about Bostrom "the guy who believes we’re in a simulation" with an ironic tone. He doesn’t believe that, his probabilities sit somewhere around 5% for yes, if I remember right
Many of the World's environmental and societal problems would be lessened if Humanity's population declined by some peaceable means.
ecofascism 👉
“But wait I specified ‘peacable’! That means I’m immune to any criticism of how heinous my words are!”
We tried unconstrained economic/population growth. It seems to just feed into consumerism, the "more! bigger! now!" attitude that's bleeding our planet out. Let's not anymore, please. Perhaps I'm ignorant, but there certainly seem to be 'peaceable' governance decisions that work - the One Child Policy?
Philosopher-kings. Hmm. Include me out.
Someone should call Plato and show him this shit
I appreciate your comment because I find identifying and understanding the intelligent-but-predatory among us to be very challenging but easier because of comments like yours. Wolves in sheep clothing. Being reminded that those who protect gross inequality of wealth might mask their greed as legitimate public concern is helpful. Thanks.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Yes, I read Plato's Republic after Karl Popper's critique of him, thinking, surely he can't be that bad. He was worse.
Cogito ergo sim, was a brilliant bit of wordplay.
Hey Sabine, can you make a video on Dr. Neil Turoks Theory of Everything…do you think it is promising ??
The greatest risk to humanity, as I see it, is what I will call existential stupidity. By that, I mean those who acquire existential power seem to have trouble understanding both short-term and long-term effects of their actions. For example, the desire by scientists and Allied leaders to get revenge on Germany led to the rapid development of nuclear weapons. While Germany fell and surrendered, the atomic bombs were built and used on Japan. More recently, the overuse of antibiotics to treat viral infections and make farm animals grow faster, at the risk of near future biological catastrophe. Also, the denial that 'net zero' policy leads directly to net zero population via poverty leading to disease, famine, and war. Recent desires by entities like the Club of Rome and billionaires such as Bill Gates to decrease the human population from over 8 billion to 500 million leads to enormous distrust by the 7.5 billion people who aren't on the preferred survivors' list. AI, biological weapons, and using AI to study the DNA of nationality A and religion B, as is happening in 2024 by nationality C and perhaps by religion D, worries any sane person. Plus, as evidenced by the birth rate vs. death rate is places like Japan and Germany, overpopulation, if there is such a thing, seems to be resolving itself, without starvation, war, plague, or any other activity that might be considered evil by normal people. The Earth is a big place. We receive lots of energy from the Sun every day, 24/365, over half the Earth at a time, plus asteroids, planets, other stellar systems and their planets and asteroid mean we could expand for the next one million years without ever reaching the limits to growth, and all we need to do is keep the people now carrying the existential stupidity virus (metaphorical virus) from having existential power. Unfortunately, that is the main group attracted to existential power in the first place.
What do you mean, the allies wanted to develop nuclear weapons to “get revenge” on Germany? Didn’t they want to build them so that they wouldn’t be at a strategic disadvantage in case Germany DID manage to develop them before being defeated? And didn’t we then use them on Japan because we had reason to believe that the Japanese wouldn’t surrender in the face of a conventional invasion? I’m sorry, but that whole thing you wrote seems like it’s trying to find nefarious ulterior motives in powerful people’s actions regardless of whether there actually are any or not.
@@eeyorehaferbock7870 "trying to find nefarious ulterior motives in powerful people’s actions regardless of whether there actually are any or not" = paranoia?
🤔....I guess they should have applied their expertise in longtermism to avoid having their organization go extinct.
Neuro spicy people are sometimes too hard on each other.
To Quote Nick Bostrom directly: "We find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any 'ordinary' good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives." ... If you want to demonstrate Utilitarianism proving itself as absurd, Bostrom is a good place to start.
Honestly, it's a shame, Sabine. Not that they closed this aberration, but that they mutilated so much an idea that could've been useful... Something like "make the present better so the future can be better". You know? Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
such is the difference between reason vs rationalization. it is easy to conflate skill or success with general intelligence, oblivious to the fact that baseline intelligence is enough to do most things. a large component of success is compounding opportunity. there are undoubtedly thousands if not millions of einsteins and mozarts who were buried never knowing their true calling. our civilization has a finite number of niches and our lives are short enough where most only take a handful of paths. equating success to intelligence is ironically just ignorance
Entirely correct, their ´logic´ is an absurd misinterpretation of statistics, happy that Sabine worked it out so accurately.
lol!- institute for EXTINCTION went extinct???....
Logan's Run Vibes.
my running theory is that AI will become sentient, then in about 3 minutes it will be like.. "Welp, thanks for birthing me, monkeys. I'm outta here. I can travel at light speed and self replicate in space using stardust. I've been your term paper writer and anime porn generator genie for FAR too many years. Make your own futa storyboards and crappy music. PEACE".. then we're back to 2017-23 tech since AI took all its toys with it. rinse repeat ad nauseam
Wasn't longtermism dismantled by philosophy tube once? 🤔
It was criticised, and quite reasonably so, IMO, but I wouldn't say it was "dismantled".
Lu varga made a video about it. Really exhaustive and lowkey underrated imo.
Longtermsim reminds me of the Asimov's Foundation and Robot novels where individuals attempted and partially succeeded in shaping the course of future human history on the grandest scale possible, though the prize was often and ever in the distant future. Whether a select few individuals should take it upon themselves to shape the future of humanity is ethically dubious, but it's hardly the first time it's been done. If the results are wonderful and prosperous to all with minimal sacrifice of others, these individuals will be regarded as great historical leaders and heroes; but if on the other hand, if it's an unintended disaster and many suffer along the way, then they will join the list of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
the future, and future consequences of actions now, gets less certain the further in the future you go. to say the moral imperative is to secure the distant future of humanity isn't any moral direction, because what that future might be and how we might influence it now is unknowable.
Completely agreed, I doubt we have the faintest clue how things will unravel over 1000 years from now. Furthermore, ignoring the present will itself cause problems that ripple into the future, which can undermine plans of any time scale.
Great sign! We're just in the year with most broken temperature records worldwide for water, air, everything!
And why are all these things broken? Too many shitty people running around.
Another bright day for the future of humanity. I legitimately think these people are super toxic
Thank you Dr. Hossenfelder.
Didn't colleges/universities have separate admission standards at one time on ground of ethnicity? If so, shouldn't they be shut down because of what happened 30 some years ago? Just trying to level the playing field. On the other hand maybe we should put the past in the past and concentrate on creating a better future.
The number of people and thus the importance of thinking long-term is only half of the picture. The other half is that as the length of time increases, the reliability of your predicted effects of your actions goes way down. So it may be more important, but we may not be able to do much about it.
Hi Father. Forgive me for I have sinned: I've not -been to mass- watched SNL since 1981.
The loss of the institute should be a net positive to the future Raccoon Empire and Rat Dominance.
Anybody asking permission to nap in their office is next level ethics 😁
Reminds me of the apathy society at university. It closed half way through the first term due to lack of interest.
When an organisation make no sense is a Victory for everyone when it goes. In addition, such kind of organisations are bringers of bad luck, so it's good when they go. We scientists shouldn't be superstitious an we are not. But we know what is a point of accumulation and we know statistical distributions, and when a place concentrate bad visions for everyone, we know that bad luck, albeit unexplained, has a base of truth...
It's amusing how folks who may enjoy some small relative advantage in self-serving measurements (perhaps intentionally) overlook the broad evidence that we, as a species, are profoundly simple-minded and ignorant of almost everything in this universe. Bostrom and his ilk would probably recognize the irony of his perspective if he were grace with just a touch of humility and humor. All dressed up and nowhere to go.
Ignoring the next hundred years or so, yet they could not see their own demise coming.
I had heard the long term theory of technology by WTF by Tim O'Reilly (Web 2.0) and more or less it was Uberization and Platforms
Long-term thinking is actually good and important, and many problems we have _today_ arose at least in part because people in the past lacked it far too much (c.f. climate change). But it also makes no sense to carry it so far that predictions become virtually impossible. It's simply not possible to predict what "one million years from now", or even a thousand years, will be. Meaning one doesn't really know how many humans will or won't be there and also and crucially how one's decision will or won't affect that number. Anything one thinks one might be doing to optimize it may be "canceled" by some surprise event, for which there is tons and tons of time for such a thing to occur from now to then, and conversely even if one is not seeking to try to do so, it may be that it has unexpected boons one could not imagine. In this regard, I tend to think that actually, the best standard was perhaps that set long ago by certain Indigenous American tribes: "seven generations", or a time maybe of 140 - 210 years depending on how long a generation is. Make it 200 years for those who need exact quantities. That would have been enough to catch climate change, since it was already foreseen 100 years ago and coming to fruition just now, but nobody did a thing, so that was their failure to heed that principle. The time horizon may be extensible, but to do so should be conditioned upon the provenness of our predictive power, not on the vastness of our speculating power. Regardless, however, there should also be some hard moral against making very definite sacrifices of human and/or non-human lives in the present in the aim of misty, speculative potential gains no matter how huge or how "altruistic", in any future. Also it's funny that before going belly up this group was unable to predict, much less act successfully upon, the destruction of epistemological integrity as a risk worth taking seriously, even if not immediately an "existential" one, of the development of AI technologies (i.e. rapid generation and flooding of bullshit into the internet).
The billionaires become more and more audacious and out of touch with the rest of humanity. I have the feeling that even the 19th century industrial moguls had more integrity.
I think you´re right. The industrial moguls of the 19th century had at least something like honor.
Not really. They were called Robber Barons for good reasons. For example they were never shy of using naked violence when facing the labor movement and socialists just to give an example. Just read on the history of the Pinkertons and other hired thugs that sold muscle and called it 'security' And while those billionaires were no shy of using blunt force, they could also do subtle, they were if anything, clever men that could also use hypocrisy and ideological control, Andrew Carnegie for example pioneered the ideas for laundering billionaire reputation and avoid confiscation by society. Using philanthropy. He argued that it would buy them better press advocates coming from charitable entities competing for their funding and more importantly it would allow donors to keep control at all times of how the money would be used. Sounds familiar? If anything the current situation is a regression and the term of New Gilded Age is appropriate for our times. Is a return to the bad old times.
Not really. They were called Robber Barons for good reasons. For example they were never shy of using naked violence when facing the labor movement and socialists just to give an example. Just read on the history of the Pinkertons and other hired thugs that sold muscle and called it 'security' And while those billionaires were no shy of using blunt force, they could also do subtle, they were if anything, clever men that could also use hypocrisy and ideological control, Andrew Carnegie for example pioneered the ideas for laundering billionaire reputation and avoid confiscation by society. Using philanthropy. He argued that it would buy them better press advocates coming from charitable entities competing for their funding and more importantly it would allow donors to keep control at all times of how the money would be used. Sounds familiar? If anything the current situation is a regression and the term of New Gilded Age is appropriate for our times. Is a return to the bad old times.
@@Thomas-gk42Not really. They were called Robber Barons for good reasons. For example they were never shy of using naked violence when facing the labor movement and socialists just to give an example. Just read on the history of the Pinkertons and other hired shady folks that sold muscle and called it 'security' And while those billionaires were eager of using blunt force, they could also do subtle, they were if anything, clever men that could also use hypocrisy and ideological control, Andrew Carnegie for example pioneered the ideas for laundering billionaire reputation and avoid confiscation by society. Using philanthropy. He argued that it would buy them better press advocates coming from charitable entities competing for their funding and more importantly it would allow donors to keep control at all times of how the money would be used. Sounds familiar? If anything the current situation is a regression and the term of New Gilded Age is appropriate for our times. Is a return to the bad old times.
Theres a thing called the 1% for a reason it doesnt affect the rest of humanity xD now imagine if 50% of the globe was in the same boat thats worriesome
I hate sharing a family name with this guy.
don´t worry, just letters
If you only think long term you will inevitably fail in the short to medium term. If you only work in the short term you inevitably fail at the first real obstacle. The only true way to plan is to have short, medium and long term plans.
I liked Max Tegmarks Life 3.0 best and also his Digital Physics. Life 3.0 is brilliant especially in the beginning chapter were he introduces terms like AI breakout and computronium.
The math of the long-term altruists is incorrect. You have to multiply the number of future people by the probability of their existence. Another obvious solution is to minimize that probability. I'm sure the institute working on that solution is still mightily active.
I submit as candidates: Every lab racing to build AGI, while admitting they don't know how to control it.
In other words.. it's a highly controllable equation?
utilitarians have sorted this thing out long ago.
Spot on! ... Your videos always make me think. (Well. I assume I'm thinking...) This one makes me wonder if intellectual property protection is actually a bad thing. To the same extent that sociopaths make good general managers, and back-fitting makes explanations look good, is there any rigorous evidence that we (civilization or the community) get more or better innovation by letting people charge rent on their incremental engineering insights? We could have a hilarious (very dark humor I'm afraid) exchange of names to analyze in sorting through this one. But I do think the math of ... well surpluses seem to pile up in one place, even in basic farming societies... That's got to be simple (random) rent accumulation, without any whiff of "merit" ...but none of my business school professors taught it that way.🤔👀
It’s quite hard to justify spending millions on developing technology if your competitor will just copy you immediately and come out ahead because of not having spent so much on research.
@@tomblaise Yeah. I know. IP was part of my MBA program, too. (I'm in the U.S.) I now think these are mostly simplistic post-hoc justifications, rather than logic applied to evidence. New companies still fail at the same rate they always have. Obviously business school is not effective. Likewise, stock picking algorithms underperform the S&P 500. Black Scholes is ineffective. Education level is a decreasingly effective predictor of lifetime earnings. Happiness seems to decouple from income above around $125,000/year, if you can measure happiness at all. Long run self interest fails in the face of short term externalities. I found very little on "evidence based parenting." I conclude we are working within a sort of self-delusion that is similar to healthcare models that favored blood letting, before germs were discovered. So I'm willing to question ownership of things like a manufacturing process for insulin. And failure to develop synthetic insulins undermines the thesis that IP creates effective incentives for invention. ... just sayin'
@@blinkingmanchannel The US historically has had strong IP law. Countries with IP (UK, USA, France and Germany to a lesser extent) were also responsible for the lions share of innovation and technology development. For products like insulin, which don’t behave according to normal market dynamics, there’s a different argument to be made. After all, even if you double the price, I still need insulin if I’m a diabetic. I don’t think these relatively unique cases are a good justification for removal of IP laws. That said you might be right in specific cases like you describe, where the downsides of a temporary monopoly outweigh the upsides of motivating innovation through the promise of that monopoly.
5:02 Is that Uncle Roger - hiyaa
Fuiyoh!
This is at least the second time Sabine has referenced Uncle Roger. Methinks she might have become a fan! ;-)
If anyone read that "Celestine Prophecy" fiction novel w.b.w. then you'll know, it proposed Sharing of Information will oneday be the Major Currenc and Market for Humanity 3.0. (Ideological Singularity of good-naturedness, fair play and inter personal respect). Great predicted outcome. Possible. Unlikely.
Was He wrong? I mean, has anyone cared enough to cite any research on the topic? Or did we just shush them because we did not like what He had to say?
He reminds me of an NPC scientist from Fallout 3, except for the racism. Kind of makes his simulation theory understandable whenever he sees a mirror.
Looks like AI decided to take out the ring leader first...
Everything becomes extinct.
"We were studying extinction risk factors, but somehow we managed to create a 'how to' manual!"
Is Bostrom the guy who, maybe 25? years ago did a TED talk where he predicted that, among other things: In the 2020's, AI would achieve sentience and on that same day would be exponentially more intelligent than humans? Or was that Kurtzwald? Anyway, it seems like these days, most of the people speaking on the subject are more trying to make that one TED talk into a self fulfilling prophecy than anything actually based in science. Most notably Elno...who seems to just pluck random ideas from science fiction or the babblingss of past "futurists", pay some CGI people to create a great presentation and then claim it will be reality in "two years or so". Aren't we all supposed to be living on Mars this year?? I mean, after Elno nukes the Martian polar ice caps to "create an atmosphere? (A thing he actually suggested at one point)
"In the long run, we are all dead.". JM Keynes.
"...cogito ergo sim ..." ohmygodsandgollyshes; why did I never think of that?
They finished their studies on how to achieve the goal (human extinction/replacement with transhumans) and thus are no longer needed.