#612: Will MacAskill of Effective Altruism Fame — The Value of Longtermism, Tools for Beating Stress and Overwhelm, AI Scenarios, High-Impact Books, and How to Save the World and Be an Agent of Change

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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So then I'll do this one question. No, it is. Cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscal. Yeah Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. My guest today is William McCaskill.

That's M-A-C-A-S-K-I-L. You can find him on Twitter at Will McCaskill. Will is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. A Forbes 30 under 30 social entrepreneur, he also co-founded the nonprofits Giving What We Can. The Center for Effective Altruism and the Y Combinator backed eighty thousand hours. Which together have moved. Over$200 million to effective charities. You can find my 2015 conversation with Will at Tim.blog slash Will. Just a quick side note, we probably won't spend too much time on this, but in that 2015 conversation, we talked about existential risk and the number one highlight was pathogens. Although we didn't use the word pandemic, certainly that was Perhaps a prescient discussion based on the type of research, the many types of research that Will does. His new book is What We Owe the Future. It is blurbed by several guests of this podcast, including neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, who wrote, quote, No living philosopher has had a greater impact upon my ethics than Will McCaskill.

Dot dot dot. This is an altogether thrilling and necessary book. And quote, you can find him online, WilliamMaccaskill dot com Will, nice to see you again. Thanks for making the time. Thanks for having me back on, it's delight. And I thought we would start with S

Say warm up questions to get people right into some details of how you think, the information you consume. and so on and so forth. So we're going to begin with a few questions I often reserve for the end of conversations. And we covered some of the other rapid fire questions in the last conversation for people who want a lot on your bio, how you ended up being the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world at the time of your appointment, and so on. They can listen to our first conversation. But we spoke about a few books last time, and I'd be curious What Is the book or what are the books?

That you have gives a gift. And Why or What are some books that have had a great influence on you? I know we talked already about practical ethics by Peter Singer, and then superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. Last time.

Come to mind when I ask that question. Yeah, so here are a couple. One is The Precipice by my colleague Toby Ord. You I co founded Giving What We Can With back in two thousand and nine. And it's on the topic of existential risks. So I see it as a

A compliment. To My book, What We Ore the Future. And it details in Quite beautiful clothes and also painstaking detail.

Some of the risks that we face as a civilization. From the familiar asteroids to the less familiar supervolcanoes. And to the truly terrifying, which I also discuss in the book and Discuss how we might try and handle.

Like artificial intelligence and Engineered pathogens and engineered pandemics. And it also just talks about What we can do about them as well. And so I think it's just like absolutely necessary as I beat.

We'll talk, I guess, a a bunch about some of those topics. As we get into the My work too. So I have like another kind of set of books. Which are quite different, but they've had

Some of the biggest impact on just the background of my thinking. over the last few years in very subtle ways, and that's Joe Heinlich's Books. The secret of our success and the weirdest people in the world. And

Joe Heinvik is uh Quantitative Anthropologists. Hat. Harvard.

And His first book is just Why Are Humans The most powerful and ecologically dominant species on the planet. And people often say, like, Oh, it's our big brains And he's like No

Se are several times the size of a chimpanzee's plane. But that's not the distinctive thing. The distinctive thing is that we work together, essentially. We're capable of cumulative cultural evolution. Where I can learn something and then my children will pick it up for me. Even if they don't really understand why I'm doing it.

And that means that The way humans function, it's not like a single plane that's three times the size of a chimpanzee. It's tens of thousands of things all working in concert. And now millions for brains. Over many generations.

And that's why there's such a big gap between Chimpanzee ability or intelligence and human intelligence. Where It's not a scale up of three X, it's a scale up of three hundred thousand. The hive mind of hominids.

Basically that's exactly right. So On this perspective, humans are Not just another species that are like Weird and not hairy. And particularly sweaty and good at long distance learning.

Arthur commented that. Humans of the rational animal and that's what made them distinct from other Animals. Whereas actually we're just very sweaty, and that's one of our most distinctive characteristics. And I like to think that I am therefore the most human of humans, because I'm the sweatiest person I've I've met. So here's this book, and that alone just You know, it really blew my mind. It really made a big difference to how I understand humans.

And he has this other book, The Weirdest People in the World, which is about The psychology in particular of Weird people. Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. Which are the subject of almost all

Psychology experiments. But they're Not representative at all of most cultures, and in fact they're very unusual among most cultures. Much more individualistic, much more willing to challenge authority. even perceive the world in slightly different ways. And the overall picture you get

From these two books. Is An understanding of kind of human behavior that's very different from the kind of economic understanding of human behavior that's that we're all these just like self interested agents

going around then I kinda maximise profit for ourselves. Whereas on this vision, it's like no, we're these cultural beings. We have like a vision for the world. And we go and like try and put that vision into the world. And that's what the kind of big fights are about. And I think it has a much better explanation of of history. When you said quantitative, I think you said quantitative anthropologists, am I

Hearing that correctly. And I can I can pretend like I understand what those mean together, but what does a quantitative anthropologist do? So you might know kind of evolutionary biology. has these formal models of how Gen evolve over time.

It's hard to make predictions within this field. But at least you have these like precise formal methods. that you like und can start to kind of understand what's going on in terms of how organisms evolve. Now it turns out you can do the same thing but applied to cultures. Dawkins made this word meme very famous.

And that kind of gets across the right idea, although it's not quite right because It's not like there's a single divisible unit of culture. But nonetheless, you can think of different cultures kind of like different species. And some are like more fit than others, so some are gonna win out over time. and you can apply the same sort of like formal methods

the evolutionary biologists use to study evolution of genetics. to the evolution of cultures as well. And Joe Henrick does that at least a little bit. Alright, well I'll have to I'll have to take a look now.

We were talking about But we Using the royal week. U we're talking about I suppose I mentioned in passing existential risks and threats. And I have a number of questions related to this, not surprisingly, but I want to touch upon first, perhaps an unexpected insertion.

I have in my notes here crime and punishment by Dostoevsky. As a book that was important to you. And uh

I would like to know why that is the case. That book is actually what got me into philosophy, originally. Back when I was about fifteen I read it. And I was at a time Variance in literature, I wanted to be a poet.

And an author. And It was via that that I learned about this word philosophy, and I realized that like, oh, actually you can just tackle the big ideas directly. You don't need to go via fiction. But I was also particularly interested in the time an existentialist. Philosophy.

And This is something that honestly like s I kinda still bear with me. I'm kind of A bit unusual in the I often think to myself Could I justify my life now to my fifteen year old self?

And if the answer is no. Then I'm gett a bit like, Oh, what are you doing? Are you not living up to What earlier Will would have wanted for pleasant will. And the key thing, I think, for fifteen year old Will, who was inspired by existentialism, was living an authentic life. And

I still find that Very liberating and empowering and inspiring. So some of the things I do. So for example, I've I give away most of my income, which is like a very unusual thing to do. And you might think, Oh, that's like a sacrifice that's making my life worse.

But actually I find it kind of empowering because it's like I am making an autonomous decision. I am not merely kind of following the dictates of what social convention is telling me to do, but I'm like reasoning about things.

From first principles and then making a decision that's Genuinely authentically mine. And that was something I hadn't particularly pegged it to kind of acting moderate when I was fifteen, although to some extent.

But that was something that really moved me then. And Honestly continues to move me today. How would you just I often say for the listeners out there who may not be familiar, but honest if I'm being honest with myself, I have not studied existentialism and I hear certain names associated with it, so I can kind of fake it until I make it and give it create the illusion. I'll be like uh Yeah, Kierkegaard, I think, maybe, uh this person, that person, but what what is existentialism as it is portrayed in Crime and Punishment?

Or conveyed. One of the things I liked c about Climate Punishment and Dostoevsky's work in particular At least is wrestling with existentialism. Where it can get used in various ways. But here's the thing.

One way of thinking about it is just The world as it is has no intrinsic meaning. And yet we are like placed into it and have to make decisions. And that's this like absurd position to be in. And

You can Create your own meaning out of that through Radically free acts, like authentic. Genuine acts. And

Dostoevsky in his work. Kind of vessels between Three possessions, I think. One is this like existentialist position. A second is just pure nihilism.

Which is just like actually literally If you take it seriously, like and there's no God. Then everything is permitted. There's no reason to do anything. Not even like reason created from yourself. And then third is this religious position, which I think he actually ultimately endorses.

And it's almost like Nihilism as Like a floof. The rejection of nihilism, like therefore guarantees that you should be like religious. QED. God. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Life is meaningless unless God exists. You know. I'm now describing it slightly Pascalian terms, but like you may as well act as if As if there's a God that is giving meaning to life. We're not gonna spend a whole bunch of time on it now, but in our last conversation we talked about Pascal's wager, but also Pascal's mugging, if I remember correctly. Yeah, something something along those lines. So we won't take a side alley down into Pascal's mugging just now, but

I said I had two things I wanted to ask you about. The first was crime punishment, which I think we've covered The second before we jump into our longer conversation which will go all over the place and I I may ask still some of the shorter questions. When people hear existential

threats when they hear super volcanoes, AI Man made Pathogens, et cetera. I think that There will likely be an apprehension, perhaps a little

seizure of the breath for some people listening who might think to themselves, My God, this is just gonna be Audio Doom Scrolling. This is just gonna come away from this conversation with higher blood pressure, more cortisol and My impression of you in the time that we've spent together is that you are Not nihilistic, you are not apathetic. You are not pessimistic. You're quite the opposite of all of those things, in some respects.

How do you do that? Is that just will out of the box? And that's just how you became programmed? Is there more to it? And this is I think a crux question because I don't See in the people. say in my audience, including those who are very competent Effective action if they don't have some degree.

Of optimism. Or belief that they can exert change. So could you just speak to that because I know I also succumb to just getting waterboarded with bad news all day from around the world. I'm like, shh, I can't do I can't I cannot put a salve onto all of this for all of these people. And it can be overwhelming. So how would you respond to that?

I think there's two things that motivate this. One is just The desire to actually make the world better? And then second I'll call low standards. So Mm. On the first side, you know, age twenty one.

And I'm like, man, I'm about to s really start my life. I'm trying to look for like I wanted to act modelling and look for different causes. I bounce into a lot of The sorts of classic causes that you'd find on a social

for someone socially motivated on a college campus, like Vegetarian society, left wing politics, climate change stuff. I found there was very little in the way of action. There was an awful lot of like Gil and an awful lot talking about the problems. But not that much in terms of like, hey, here are the solutions, this is how you can actually make the world better and this is what we should do.

But if you actually care about what making wanting to make the world better, and that's the key motivation. The size of a problem and like really thinking about the suffering, I mean, it can be important, especially if it's motivating you. But the ultimate thing is just what do you do? Something could be the worst problem in the world, but if there's nothing you can do, then it's just not relevant for the purpose of action. And

That Therefore really makes me think in the first instance Always about Okay, well what's the difference we can make? Not like

How scary are things or how bad are things? But instead, like how much of a difference can we make? And there it's like very positive. So in the last podcast, we talked about a lot about global health and development. And what's the difference you can make there? Well If you're a middle class member of a rich country, it's on the order of Saving

Dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives over the course of your life, if you put your mind to it. That's huge. Now we're talking about existential risks and the long term future of humanity. What's the difference you can make? You can play a part.

In being pivotal in putting humanity onto a better trajectory. for not just centuries, but for thousands, millions, or even billions of years. The amount of good that you can do is like truly enormous. You can have like cosmic significance. And

That's kind of that's pretty inspiring. And so Yeah, when you think about the difference you can make, rather than just like focusing on the magnitude of the problems. I think there's every reason for optimism. And then the second aspect I've said was low standards.

Which is just What's a world that you should be sad about? What's a world you should be happy with? Well In my own case, I think. Look, if I came into the world

And when I leave it, the world is neither better nor worse. That's like zero. I should be new indifferent about that. If I can make it a bit better. In virtue of my existence

Hey, that's pretty good. The more good I can do on top of that, the better. And I think I have made it much better. I'm not zero, I'm like positive. And so all of the additional good that I potentially do feels like a bonus. And so similarly with humanity, when I look to the future

What's the level at which I'm like, ah, it's indifferent. That's where just like the amount of happiness and suffering in the future kind of cancel out. And relative to that, I think the future's gonna be amazing. Already I think the world today is like much better than if it didn't exist. And I think

It's gonna be a lot better in the future, like Even com just the progress we've made over the last few hundred years. People today have like far, far better lives. If you extrapolate that out just You know, a few hundred years more, let alone thousands of years.

Then There's at least a good chance that we could have a future where Everyone lives, not just As well as the best people off. Alive today.

But maybe tens, hundreds, thousands of times better. Yeah. I mean kings a few hundred years ago didn't have uh running water, right? No. Air conditioning. They didn't have it they didn't have anesthetic. Yeah, no antibiotics. Oops. If they were gay they had to keep it secret. They could barely travel. Yeah. Lots of things we easily take for granted, which We can come back to because it may be related, but Why don't we take the

Sixty to one hundred and twenty seconds just for you to explain effective altruism. Your name is often associated, just so we have a definition of terms and people have some idea of the scope. And meaning of effective altruism. Since you're considered Uh one of the creators or co creators of this entire movement. If you wouldn't mind just explaining that briefly and uh that way people will have at least that as a landmark as we go forward. Effective altruism is a philosophy and a community.

That's about trying to figure out How can we do as much good as possible with the time and money we have? And then taking action on that basis. So putting those ideas into practice to actually try to make the world better as effectively as possible.

Whether that's through our donations. With our clears. with how we vote, with our consumption decisions, just with our entire lives. What have been some of the Outcomes.

Of that. Over you know, I've been promoting these ideas along with others. For over twelve years now. We've raised well over or moved well over the billion dollars. to the most effective causes.

So that means If we take just one charity that we've raised money for, against Malaria Foundation. We've protected over four hundred million People, mainly children. From malaria?

And statistically that means we've saved about hundred thousand lives. Or maybe a little more. Which is, you know, the size of a small town, about the size of Oxford. And that's just one charity. There's several more within global health and development. I think

In terms of Other cause areas that we focus it on within animal health and welfare. Hundreds of millions of Pens are no longer than Cages.

Because of corporate cage fee campaigns that we've helped to fund. And then within the field of existential risks. There are It's not as easy to say, Oh we've Done this concrete thing, this thing would have killed us all, but we avoided it.

But we have helped make AI safety a much more mainstream field of the search. People taking The potential benefits, but also the risks from AI, like much more seriously than they were. We But also like

Have invested a lot in P certain pandemic preparedness measures. Again, it's kind of still early stages, but some of the technology there or things I think have Really promising. Potential to action at least. Making sure that Covet nineteen is the last pandemic we ever have.

One of the many things I appreciate about you and also Broadly speaking, many people in the effective altruism. Community slash movement. Is the taking of a systematic approach to

Not just defining but questioning assumptions and quantitatively looking at how you can do good, not just feel good. If that makes sense. And that seems obvious to anyone who's in the community, but the vast majority of Philanthropy.

or charity, broadly speaking, is done without that type of approach, from what I can tell. And it's really worth Taking a closer look for those people listening. Are there just a few URLs you'd like to mention for people who'd like to dig into that and then we can move into Some of the

More current questions. If you're interested in how to use your career to make the world better, Then eighty thousand hours dot org? is a terrific place to go. I'm a co founder of that organization, gives in depth care of advice. And one on one.

For the coaching as well. If you're interested in donating some of your money? Then giving what we can dot org. Encourages people to take a giving pledge. Typically ten percent of one's income or more.

It's a great way to live. If you're interested in Donating to effective charities. Then givewell dot org is the single best place for donating to global health and development charities. That's give well.org.

There's also the effective altruism funds, or EA funds. That allow you to donate within Animal welfare. And existential risks. And

Promotion of these ideas as well. All right. A few more calisthenics, then we're gonna go into the heavy lifting. The max squats of longtermism. All right. In the last say five years, you can pick the time frame, but recent history, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? I think the biggest one of all, and this

was really big during Writing the book. Which was this, you know, enormous challenge. It was like my main focus for two years over the course of the pandemic. was evening check ins. With

An employee of mine who also functioned a bit like a productivity coach. So every evening I would set deadlines for the next day. Both input and output. So input would be how many hours of tract writing I would do. Where going to the bathroom did not count. And a really big a really big day would be six hours. Sometimes very occasionally I'd kind of get more than that.

And it also output goals as well. So I'd say I will have drafted this section or these sections, or I will have done Such and such. I would also normally make some other commitments as well. Such as How much time do I spend looking at Reddit on my phone?

Ha ha ha. How much caffeine am I allowed to drink? Do I exercise? Things like this. And Lora Who was doing it. is wonderful and the nicest person ever. And she just never beat me up about this.

But I would beat myself up and it would make me it was incredibly effective at making sure I was just like actually doing things'cause I, like many others, find fighting It's like hard. It's like hard to get motivated. It's hard to keep going. And Sometimes, I don't know, I'd have gotten drunk the night before, let's say, and it was a Sunday.

And normally you just It would be a light off for the whole day. I think like oh no I'd just be so embarrassing. At seven PM to have to tell whether like, yeah, I didn't do any work'cause I got smashed. And so instead I would feel hungover and I would just keep typing away.

And that was just huge. I mean, I think it increased my productivity I don't know, it feels like twenty percent or twenty five percent or something. Just from these like ten minute check ins every day. So these were ten minute check ins seven days a week? Who's the kids? I was working six days a week, so yeah, if she was doing something else at the weekend we wouldn't check in.

Right. So the format would be F walk me through ten minutes would be the first five minutes. Here's how I measure it up to what I committed and here's what I'm doing next. Exactly. So you have a view of the day. Did I hit my input goal, my output goal? How much caffeine did I drink, did I exercise? And then also like was I getting any migraines or back pain, which are two kind of ongoing issues for my productivity.

And then Next would be a discussion of what I would try to do the following day. And interestingly, you might think of a productivity coach as someone who's like Really putting your like nose to the grindstone. Whereas with Lore that's kind of the opposite. Cause my problem is that I beat myself up too much.

And so we would have touring E T out of the closet with the Reese's pieces can't. Exactly. Yeah, so I would be like oh I got so little done today, so I'm gonna have to just have a twelve hour day tomorrow or something. Or like I'll work through the night or something like that. And she's like, That doesn't make any sense. We've tracked this before, and when you try and do this, maybe you get like an hour of extra work where you feel harvable for days afterwards. So she would be very good at like countering Bullshit that my brain would be. Saying, basically.

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Nearly forty million job seekers visit LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Tim. That's LinkedIn.com slash Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So a couple of things. Caffeine, what were your parameters on caffeine? Like what were the

limitations or minimums. I don't know how you said it on caffeine. And then how did you choose This employee specifically for this. And why? Caffeine, I think a big thing is just if I drink too much I'm likely to get a migraine.

So I set my limit at Three esbos worth, so about one hundred and eighty milligrams of caffeine. And I'm very sensitive, so it's like Hundred and eighty is legitimate for a sensitive person. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that's like the m that's kind of the max that I do.

Whereas double expressos, fine. But then it's like shading in between, I'll be like very cautious about. And then how did I choose this person? I think it's like a very subtle thing. The kind of the core or Personal fit you have with someone.

You can be a good coach. Way. She kind of knew me well enough that she knew the ways to like Push me around. Maybe I call it friendly pushiness or something was

It's like perfect. And it's you know, it could be very easy to f Go along on either side of that line. Sounds like I need an evening check in. Alright. Who is my who is my victim gonna be? All right.

Yeah. So I I'll give you Will. I know, I know, I know it's I know it's four in the morning, but to call you for my evening check-in. We're in different time zones for people who may not have picked up on the uh that is not a New Jersey accent that Will has. Okay. Comment Sidebar.

Uh Low back pain. I know this came up in our last conversation. Have you not found anything to help? And I may have some suggestions if you would like suggestions, but have you found anything to help? Actually, I've almost completely fixed it. So it was just I mean, I was working, you know, I was just sitting in a chair. Especially, you know, pandemic and like a book for

Eight hours a day. But there was actually only one period that I started getting lower back pain. I remember in our conversation you recommended me these boots that so they could hang upside down. And I did buy them and I confess I never used them, so failure. No, that that's a failure of my recommendation. If it's not gonna be used, it doesn't make any sense for me to recommend it. But What I did to

In the end, I just developed my own workout routine. Where I got advice from physios and so on. Um I talked to like loads of doctors. In general, people just aren't really engaging with what your problems are and like self experimentation, I think, was just better. And it's also like the other thing is just all of this takes loads of time and like if you're a time test individual

Firstly, the advice is often geared towards old people. So it's like very easy stretches or like movement that most people aren't doing. And then secondly it's like Man, you wanna do all of this? It's like two hours or something. How can you do this more efficiently?

So I developed my own routine, which involves the floor. Standing in a Bowsu bowl. So all in a bossable. I got two free weights. I do a squat. I'm sitting in like squat position as the resting position. That's very good because it stretches your hip flexors.

And for those people who can't see Willie's got his hands in front of his chest. Yeah, imagine looks kinda like a prairie dog, but really I think what that symbolizes is he has the dumbbells in front of his chest like a goblet squat, if people know what that is. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. With my leg yeah, legs wide, elbow in between your knees, so that your legs are kind of Slay out like that, and you'll feel a stretch on your hip flexors. So cultures that squat. To set.

actually experience lower rates of back pain. So that was the kind of inspiration there. And then from there standing up, squat. Do uh bicep curl up into a shoulder pass. Go down. Then

Deadlift going into an update low. That's all in a Bosey Bowl. And the thoughts here the strengthening your entire kind of anterior pelvic chain. So I think my hypothesis was like why was I getting this?

It's because I was one of an idiot young male who was like, Why would you work anything out apart from your beach muscles? What would be the point of that? And that majorly distorted my posture. And then I would do that so kind of one of them every twenty seconds.

In like two sets of ten minutes. And then that combined then also with core work, so Plank in particular. Really just, I think, sorted things out. Because it's all about Yeah, but had just bad pasture for

Twenty five years. Made worse by like. Very poor focus. At the gym. And so it's like this long process of reconfiguring your body, so

It makes more sense. And in particular, as we talked about, I had anterior pelvic tilt, so my My gut stuck out. Hell, this was too far forward. And so then it's like your glutes. Tailing that back.

And then Seting out your hip flexors. Oh, and I invented my own stretch as well. So um For the listeners who don't know, I actually

I was previously married and I took a different name. Took my wife's grandmother's maiden name. So my name wasn't always McCascal, it used to be Couch. And so I name this stretch the Will Clouch. In honor of my former self.

You stand up, you hook your foot. Into your two hands. And then fess out. Kind of extend your leg, but pushing against your two hands.

And that Stretches out. This Muscle. That is

Goes all the way from your kind of pelvis. Up your back. And I've not found any other stets that Slitches that particular muscle and that was the one that was really causing all the pain. So the muscle is the longissimus thoracic, yes. You do this standing. Uh yeah, it's standing. That's right, yeah. It's like a kid and play a dance move. Okay, so people may just I'll put my liability hat on, I'll just say maybe start on the ground to try this sort.

So you don't get your foot stuck and topple over like a you know, uh that an army figurine onto your head. But yes, I can see how that would work. Anyone would say that I'm not a professional. Um I can't I can't wait for the Will Crouch YouTube instructional fitness series. So I did take on this role in the early stages of the pandemic, the house I was in. I would go outside

Every lunch at one PM and put on my best Scottish accent. And they'd be like you pricks. Get on the floor and give me twenty! Very effective. Never made it to YouTube though.

Well, you know, it's never too late. So a couple of things real quick. Uh First is

These exercises did you do them every day in the morning? Did you do them midday How many days a week, at what time of day? So I almost always work out just after lunch. People always complain to me that's like, Oh, you'll get a sore stomach or something, I'm like I don't.

Never happens. Mm. But I deliberately time it because I have a real energy dip just after lunch. And so Doing something that's just not work makes a ton of sense.

Yeah. Yeah, plus After sitting for a few hours you can break up the Two marathons of sitting. And I'll make one one other recommendation for folks who may also

suffer from occasional or chronic Low back tightness, which has been an issue for me also, if I sit a lot. And it ends up affecting my sleep most significantly. And can cause that type of anterior pelvic tilt. And

Loridosis. So if your gut is sticking out and you look like you're fat or pregnant, even though you are not. Perhaps that means your pelvis is pouring forward. So if you think about your pelvis as a goblet or a cup full of water if you're pouring that water out the front.

you have anterior pelvic tilt. And Well the causes of that or contributing factors can be a really tight Iliopsoas or Iliacus that then in some fashion connects to the lower back, the lumbar. And so you get this incredible tightness slash pain. For me, it can cause tossing and turning at night and really affect my sleep. And the device that was recommended to me a few times before I finally bit the bullet and got it was something called the So Right P S O hyphen R I T E. It is the most expensive piece of plastic you'll ever buy.

But worth it at something like fifty to seventy dollars. for self release of the SOAS, which is Incredibly difficult to achieve, I find. Incredibly by yourself otherwise. And most uh a lot of Soft tissue therapists are not particularly good at helping with it. Nor is it practical really to necessarily have that type of work done every day, even if you could so the so right is helpful. All right.

So Let's move from personal longtermism. Making sure that that you're able to function and not be decrepit when you're forty five. into the broader sense and discussion of long termism. What is

Long termism and why did you write this book? Well, longtermism is about three things. It's about taking seriously the sheer scale. of the future that might be ahead of us and just how high the stakes are. In anything that could shape that future.

It's then about Trying to assess what are the events that might occur in our lifetimes. That really would have impacts not just for the present generation. But they could potentially shape the entire course. Of humanity's future.

And then third, then figure out like okay, how do we Ensure that that we can take actions to put humanity Onto the right path. And I think you're exactly right to talk about personal long termism and the analogy there, because In the book, in What We Are the Future, I talk about

The analogy between The pleasant world. And humanity. And an impludent teenager, like a reckless teenager where What are the really high stakes decisions that a teenager makes? It's like not what you do at a weekend.

Instead it's the decisions that would impact the entire course of your life. So in the book I you know tell a story where I was quite a reckless teenager and I nearly killed myself climbing up a building. That was one of the biggest decisions. Dumbest decisions like I ever made. Because if I had died then It would have been a little bit more.

Sixty, seventy years of life that I would have lost. In the same way, if humanity dies now. Yeah, if we cause our own extinction. Or the end of I think uncoverable end of civilization. Such as by a worst case pandemic.

Then we're losing Well Not just seventy years of life it's Thousands, millions, even billions of years of future civilization. And so similarly, if

I made decisions. as a teenager that affected the kind of whole course of my life. Like whether to become a poet. or philosophy or You know, I could have become a doctor.

And similarly I think in The coming Essentially in our lifetime. Humanity potentially makes decisions about How is future society structured? What are the values we live by?

Is society. A liberal democracy Around the world or Is it a totalitarian state? And

How do we handle technologies like AI that I think could impact the very, very long then? So I wanna read just a paragraph that you sent me. Which I found thought provoking because it's a framing that I had not heard before. And

Here it goes. Imagine the entire human story from the first Homo sapiens of East Africa to our eventual end, represented as a single life. Where in that life do we stand? We can't know for sure, but suppose humanity lasted only a tenth as long as the typical mammalian species. Even then more than ninety-nine percent of this life would lie ahead. On the scale of a typical life, humanity today would just be six months old. But we might well survive even longer for hundreds of millions of years until the earth is no longer habitable or far beyond. In that case, humanity is experiencing its first blinking moments. out of the womb.

And I appreciated this framing. Because My feeling at least with

my audience of listeners. is that there's a small percentage who are rushing headlong into battle with some vision of longtermism and feel committed. Yeah. And a non trivial percentage. Have decided it's too late.

Right, they've decided that the end is nigh. We are the frog. In the water, slowly heating, that will be boiling before we know it. And I find this at least

Whether we put aside for the second how people might find fault with it or pick at it, a useful counter frame, right? Just to even sit with. For A few minutes. Why do you think it's important to at least consider

that something like this is plausible. Maybe it's not ninety percent likely, but let's just say it's even Ten percent, twenty percent likely. Well, it's so important just because Future generations matter, future people matter. And whatever you value.

Whether that's, you know, well being or happiness or maybe it's accomplishment, maybe it's great works of art, maybe it's scientific discovery. Almost all of whatever you value. would be in the future rather than now. Because the future just could be vast indeed. Wh

If you look at like What has been accomplished. Since the dawn of humanity. Well, dawn of humanity was the end of a thousand years ago. Agriculture was twelve thousand years ago, industrial evolution was two hundred and fifty years ago. And yet

Even on the scale of a typical mammal species, we have seven hundred thousand years to go. Now, we're not a typical mammal species. We could last only a few centuries. We could last Ten years if we really Two ourselves in. In the short term.

But we could last much longer. And that just means that All of what we might achieve. All of the good things that humanity could produce. They're basically in the future, and that's really worth

Thinking about taking seriously. And Trying to protect and promote. No, one thing that you and I were Chatting a bit about I brought it up.

Before we start talking is The question of if it is possible To make Let's just call it altruism or in this case long termism. investing in a future we will not necessarily, most likely, see ourselves.

Can you make that? self-interested, or how do you position it such that it appeals to the greatest number of people possible, since our collective destiny depends on some critical mass of people taking it seriously, right? It can't probably isn't one person. We're not gonna get, say, nine billion people, so how many Do we

Hope. to embrace this philosophy. And is it possible to position it as self-interested? And this is gonna be a bit of a ramble, so I apologize in advance, but when you were talking about Dostoevsky. And

nihilism almost as a proof and him ultimately landing on God. Like, yeah, you kinda need to something resembling God to sort of make sense of this sea of uncertainty so that you can maybe stabilize and feel a sense of meaning. It brought to mind something I read very recently. And I apologize, this is again gonna be a bit of meander, but This is something that Russ Roberts included, so famous for Econ Talk podcast.

In an article he wrote called My Twelve Rules for Life. Now he is Not sure this is the best descriptor, but culturally and I would think religiously Jewish. So he has that as a sort of lattice work of sorts.

But number two in his twelve rules for life was find something healthy to worship. And I'm just gonna take a second to read this. He quoted David Foster Wallace, and I'm gonna Tie this into what I just said in a second. Because here's something else that's weird but true. In the day to day trenches of adult life, there's actually no such thing as atheism. There's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type of thing to worship, be it J C or Allah, be it Why H WH not sure what that is, or the Wiccan Mother Goddess or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles that is that pretty much everything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you'll never have enough.

Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you'll always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables, the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth upfront and daily. Consciousness. Yeah. Okay.

Uh and then dot dot dot. But the most important thing to remember is not to worship yourself. Not as easy as it sounds. So I'm wondering if Long termism. In a sense. doesn't need to Be spun.

to envelop self interest if it is basically Something to worship. But it gives you purpose when there is so much uncertainty. And Chaos and entropy.

Around us. Anyway, long TED Talk. Thank you for coming, but What are your thoughts on on any of that? And the overarching question is How do we make Long termism.

Catch. to have some critical mass of people who Who really embrace it. I think there's a really important insight there. Actually one made by

John Stuart Mill in a speech to Parliament at the end of the nineteenth century. And he asks this question like What should we do for posterity? After all, what has posterity ever done for us? And then actually he makes the argument like Perseverities done a lot of things for us because the projects we have only have meaning. In so far as

We think that they might. Contribute uh It's kind of real erase among the generations. So here's a thought experiment. Does this film Children of Men?

And in it people just unable to reproduce. And so it's not that anyone dies, there's no catastrophe that kills everybody, but there's no future of human civilization. You know, how would that change your life? And I think for many, many people. And many, many projects, it would just look of our those projects of meaning.

I certainly wouldn't be as nearly as interested in Intellectual pursuits. Or like trying to do good things or so on. Maybe I would to some extent, but For the lot of things it seems like, oh, they have meaning because

Take scientific inquiry. Is this semi built cathedral of knowledge? Has I have inherited from All of my ancestors. that has then been passed to us.

And it is incomplete. So we've got General relativity and we've got quantum theory and They're amazing. But we also know they're incomplete and like maybe we can work

Hard earn. See far earned. Build the cathedral a little. Higher. But If it's like, no, actually it'll just get torn up.

It's kinda like oh you're painting an artwork. And you can add to the painting a bit and like it's gonna just go in the schwer the day afterwards. You're not gonna be very motivated to do it. And so one thing I think that a lot of people find motivating Is

This thought that you're part of this grand project, much, much grander than yourself. Of thine build. A good and flushing. society. Over the course of

Not just centuries, but thousands of years. And that's one way in which our lives have meaning. What do you hope the effect will be on people who read what we owe the future. What are you hoping Some of the things will be that they take from that.

The number one thing is just A world view that's What my colleague Nick Boston calls Getting the big picture roughly right. So there are just so many problems that

the world faces today. So many things we could be focusing on and paying attention to. But there's this question just well what's most of the three. Im Boden. What should be taking most of our attention? And

The ideas in the book I hope give a partial answer, which is Well The things that are most important are those that really shape the long term future. Of The human project.

And that really narrows things down, I think. So that's kind of broad kind of worldview. More specifically, though, um, I would like it to be something that guides the decisions people make over the course of their lives. So I think the biggest decision people make Uh what could they early pursue?

So do you go and Become a management consultant or a financier and make money and Live in the suburbs. Or do you instead like pursue a life that's really trying to make the world better? And if so, then

What problems are you focusing on? Where It seems to me some of the bigger problems are the development of very advanced or the biggest i issues of events that'll occur in our lifetime. Uh the development of advanced artificial intelligence.

In particular artificial intelligence that's As smart as humans, or maybe considerably smarter? I think that has a good claim to being One of the most important technological discoveries of for all time, once we get to that point.

At that point. Very good chances in the coming decades. A second is the risk of Very catastrophic pandemics. Things that

But far worse than Covid nineteen. Which again, I think, are just on the horizon because of developments and our ability to create new viruses. And a third is a third world war. Which Again, if you look at history.

And look at Leading scholars underlying models of war. I think it's like a really pretty good chance we see a third world war in our lifetime. Something like one in three. And I think that could quite plausibly have just unparalleled

Destruction and Misery on the world. In the limit just being the End of Civilization.

Whether that's because of Nuclear warheads scaling up a hundredfold and Um being used in all that nuclear war. Or because of the use of bioweapons. So

These are all things that like Smart people who read this book could go and work on. I'm aware that that again kinda sounds like Leak. But uh perhaps the final thing is like

There is this positive vision. In the book too. Which is that if we avoid these Threats will like manage these technological transitions well. We really can just create a future that's truly amazing.

And This is pleasant kind of throughout the book. I did feel like I hadn't fully given it its due, so there's a little Easter egg in the book as well. In the final page QR code that sketches a little vision of a positive future.

Ha. In uh yeah. Short story form. But maybe that's the final thing of all in terms of this worldview is appreciating there's so much at stake. There are enormous risks that we face or threats that we face that we need to manage.

But if we do, then we can create a world that Is Flourishing and vibrant. And wonderful. For our grandkids, for their grandkids, for their grandkids.

What is value lock in? And could you give some historical examples? So value lock in is when A single ideology or value system. What kind of set of ideologies? Takes control of an area or in the limit the whole world.

And then persists for an extremely long time. And This is one thing that I think can have very, very long lasting effects. And we've already seen it throughout history. And so in the

And what we have a feature. I give a story of ancient China. So During this period that's known as the hundred schools of thought. The Zoo Dynasty had fallen.

And there was a like a lot of kind of Fragmentation. ideological fragmentation in China. And wandering philosophers would go from state to state. With a package of kind of philosophical ideas and

Mortal views and Political. Policy recommendations and try and convince political elites of their ideas. And there were four main schools. They were the Confucians that we're kind of most familiar with. The legalists, which are kinda like

Machiavellian. Political realists. Um just You know, how do you get power was the main focus of them. Taoists who are these kind of

No. Somewhat more spiritual, like acting in accordance with The way with nature like advocating spontaneity, honesty. And then finally the Moists. Which I read and I'm like, wow, they were kind of similar to the effect of altruists, except in ancient China where they were about promoting good outcomes

And good outcomes impartially considered. They forwent Much like fancy spending on luxury or ritual. So their funeral rites were very modest, they wore very modest clothes.

And they were just really concerned about trying to make the world better. And so they created a paramilitary group in order to defend cities that were under siege. The reasoning being that if Defensive technology and defensive strategy was so good. Then no one could ever wage a war'cause no one could ever win. And so there was this great diversity of thought.

But what happened? One state within China, the Chin. influenced by legalism took over. And try to essentially make it Legalism

State orthodoxy. And the Emperor Chen declared himself a ten thousand year emperor, wanted this ideology to persist indefinitely. It actually only lasted fourteen years because there was a kind of counter rebellion. And that was the start of the Han dynasty. And which then successfully did. Basically, over the course of

a while, quell kind of other ideological competition and instead implemented Confucianism as like this is the official state ideology, and that persisted for two thousand years. And That's kind of just one example among many. Over and over again you see What's the kind of ideology or belief set of a ruling power?

Whether that's Catholics or Protestants. Or is it the communism of the Khmer Luge of Stalin? Or national socialism of Hitler. Once that

ideology gets into power, or people with those ideology get into power, they quickly try and stomp out the competition. And the worry is that that could happen with the entire world. So again I spoke of a Viscov. Third World War. Well, what might happen as a result? One ideology could

Take power globally after winning such a war? Implement Wild Government or world state. Or at least dominant world ideology. Then we're in this situation where there's much less ideological competition.

And at least one reason why we've gotten model change and model progress over time is Which is in virtue of having a diversity of moral views that they're able to like Kind of fight it out and the In ideal circumstances. The best argument wins.

We would no longer have that. And so If there was a single kind of dominant ideology in the world, that could persist for an extremely long time, I think. And if it was wrong, which is quite likely to be wrong,'cause I think most of our model views are probably wrong. That would be like very bad indeed.

I mean, just to give you an idea, I mean this is not exactly ideological, but you mentioned the Han dynasty. And In a Mandarin Chinese, one way to say Mandarin Chinese is Hanu. Which is the language of the Han people. So these things can last a very long time indeed. Do you have any other examples of value Lock in that could be past tense, historical examples, or attempts that are being made to

currently that you think are worth Making mention of Could be either. I mean historically. One particularly salient example.

So like an example was when the Khmer Luge took power in Cambodia. Paul Potts. Just very systematically, like anyone who disagreed with the party ideology. generally would just be executed, so twenty five percent of the population were killed in Cambodia.

And he mean he again, it's like Very transparent what's happening. He has this. Quote. Purify the party, purify the army, purify the cadres.

So it's just very clear that's what going on is Almost like a Species or virus can take over and Other competitors get wiped out. This one ideology takes over, competitors are wiped out.

Similarly if we look at like British history with At different times, Catholics and Protestants taking power. There was one act. Past. Called

The act of uniformity. Which With Protestants saying like okay, Catholicism is now banned in this country. And again, it's like very boldly named. And in general, just if you have a particular model view, then

You are gonna want everyone else in the world to have that particular model of you as well. So of AI Pathogens. Let's just say bioweapons we can include in that.

World War Three. How would you rank those for you personally in terms of Let's call it

Ten years. Over the next ten years I'd be most concerned about AI. Over the next fifty years, let's say my lifetime I'd be Both most concerned about. Air and war.

Developments in AI. The reason I say that is Wars are most likely when Two countries are very similar kind of Military power.

And The kind of Historical rate of one major power than the world, like one of the big economies of the world going to war with another, when it kind of gets overtaken. Economically.

Militarily. It's pretty high. Some estimate some ways of modelling put to the size like fifty percent. For AI? But I think that's more likely to happen

Not kind of within the next ten years, though it's definitely possible. That there would be some kind of outbreak of war such as between the US and China. even though the risk of war between the US and Russia is definitely higher than it has been in the last I guess thirty years, potentially. I still think the odds are like

Quite low. Thankfully. With AI on the other hand I think The chance of very rapid and surprisingly rapid developments in AI

Within the next ten years are higher than Any tenure point after that? So as in twenty twenties is It's more likely there'll be some totally transformative development than twenty thirties or twenty forties, is my kind of view.

And that's For a couple of reasons. One is that If you look at like how much Computing power, different.

Brains use. And you compare that with how much computing power the kind of current language models use, or the biggest kind of AI Systems use. The biggest AI systems use Computing power of approximately the brain of a honey bee.

It's kind of hard to estimate exactly, but that's kind of where we are. Which is a lot smaller than you might think. It's much smaller than I thought. And you might think like, okay, it's the point in time where you've got AI systems that are about as powerful as human brains. That's like a really crucial moment in time. Because that's

You know, potentially the point in time at which AI systems just become more powerful than us. Or at least approximately then when we start to get overtaken. And that Again, it's like very uncertain.

But there's a decent pretty good chance that happens in something like ten years time. And now it's very hard to do technological prediction. I am not making any confident predictions about how things go down. But it's at least something we should be paying attention to. Just from a kind of outside perspective, if you think.

Oh yeah, and then we're at the point where we're like Playing these AI systems that are like Doing as much computing as the brain is. That's like Okay, well it means maybe they're gonna be just

Power than ability as human veins. And then that's really big. And that's kinda big for the few reasons, I think. One is because it could speed up dates of technological discovery.

So historically we've had like fairly steady technologically to live an economic growth. It's actually over the couple of hundred years. But that's because of two things happening. One is ideas get progressively harder to find.

But we throw more and more the searches. So we have like a bigger population, we throw a larger percentage of the population at them. If instead we can just create engineers and research scientists. The uh AI systems. Then we could rapidly increase.

the amount of R and D that's happening. And what's more, perhaps they'd be much, much better at doing the search than we are. Human brains are definitely not designed for doing science. But we could create machines that really are. And in the same way that

Go. The best. AI systems are far, far better than even the very best human systems now. The same can happen within science. And if you plug that into like

These standard economic models, you get the conclusion that Okay, suddenly things start really moving like really very fast. and you might get many centuries worth of technological progress. happening over the course of a few years or a decade. And that could be terrific. That's well of the

You know, in a sense I think both the kind of The optimists and the doomsayers are correct, where That could be amazing, if it gets handled very well. Then it could be radical abundance for everyone. We could solve all the other problems in the world. If it gets handled badly, well.

The course of that tech development could be dangerous pathogens. Or it could enable. Us to lose control to AI systems. Or it could be involved like misuse by Humans themselves.

There's a lot of things going on that could be extremely important from the long term perspective. Well, let's go into it more. I mean I as a simpleton assume that Pretty much any new technology is gonna be applied to porn and warfare first. And that those two would uh also sort of reciprocally drive forward a lot of new technology. I'm I'm actually only

Ten percent choking. Well, do you know Doll E two? I do, actually. Yes. I'm gonna be using it a bunch this week. Oh, fantastic. Well For listeners who don't know, it's a fairly recent

AI system. And you can tell it. to produce a certain image using text. So maybe that image is An astronaut riding a unicorn.

in space in the style of Andy Warhol. And it will create a near perfect. Bendition of that. And you can really say a lot of things. You can say, Oh, I want A hybrid of a dolphin and a horse.

riding on a unicycle and it will just create a picture of that. It's really like In a way that really makes it seem like it understands the words you're you're telling it. And at the moment It does faces well, it can create like

Faces of Imagine people. Almost picture perfect. Again, if you pay close attention, you can see like weird details. When you say imaginary people, what do you mean?

As in non so if you type in like A picture of Boris Johnson. Then it will not give you a picture of Boris Johnson. And I don't know this for sure, but my strong guess is that's because it's been deliberately restrained.

So that it does not do that. So it doesn't deep fake everything. Exactly, yeah. Cause um you were mentioning porn. With that technology You could well, fill in the blanks. I'll let you think of your own text pumps that you could put in involving

You know, Joe Biden or Tim Ferris or whoever you want to do. Jo Joe Biden and Tim Ferris. Uh oh. Brothers Johnson too, you're all in the flame. Who knew you were such good fans? The horror. The horror. Ha. So to my knowledge, that's not been used for porn yet, but I think the technology would make it.

Completable. And then is it gonna be used for warfare? Like absolutely. I mean There'll be a point in time when we can automate Weaponly. So

At the moment, part of the cost of going to war is that your people part of your population will die. That's also check on Dictatorial Leaders as well.

You need to at least keep the army on your side, otherwise there'll be a military coup. Now imagine if there's a world where the army is entirely automated. Well Dictators can be much more reassured because Their army can be entirely loyal to them.

It's just coded in. Also the costs of going to war much lower as well, because yeah, you're no longer sustaining casualties on your own side. And so that's just one way in which technological advances could be hugely disruptive. Right, yeah, right. And it's far from the biggest way, I think.

Let's take a Just a short Intermission from Skynet. And World War Three. Just for a second. We're gonna come back to exploring some of those, but

What Or Some actual long termist projects. Today that you are. Excited about it.

So one that I'm extremely excited about is investment. in and development of a technology called Far UVC lighting. So Fire UV C is just a very specific

And quite narrow spectrum of light. And with sufficient intensity. Just put into light bulbs, it seems like that just sterilizes a loop. We're not confident in this yet. We need More the search and its efficacy and the safety.

But If This was just installed. In all lighting, in every house. Around the world.

Basically in the same way that we do for fire evaculation. Every house at least in our Relatively well off currency, has to meet certain standards for fire safety. could also have to meet certain standards for disease safety. Like

having light bulbs with UV C Light as part of them. Then we could would make a very substantial progress to never having A pandemic again. As well as as a bonus, eradicating all of the spiritually disease.

And so this is like some extremely s exciting technology. There's a foundation that I've been spending a lot of time helping to set up of the last six months called Future Fund.

This is something that like, yeah, we're donating to and investing in. Because yeah, it just could make An absolute transformative difference. So that's one. Um other things that are very concrete within the Biotech space includes early detection of new pathogens.

So just constantly sampling wastewater or constantly testing healthcare workers? And doing like full spectrum diagnostics of like Just all the DNA in the sample excluding DNA. Is there anything there that we just Looks like a pathogen and but we don't understand.

So that we can kind of react to new pandemics fairly quickly. Also, more boringly, just like better PPE. Where You could just have, you know, you put on your super PPE hood. And you're now just completely protected from any sorts of

Pathogens. That could enable society to continue even if there was an outbreak of a really bad Pandemic. So that's very exciting within biotech. Within AI, there's a lot of work on technical AI safety.

Where the idea is just Using methods to Ensure that AI systems do what we want them to do. That means. Even if they're very powerful, not

Trying to seek power and disempower the people who uh Created them. Not being deceptive. No. causing harm.

And there are various things you can do there, including with these kind of, you know, not as sophisticated models that we're currently using. Like tests to see if they are. Acting deceptively, what are structures you can use to make th them not act deceptively. Can we Have better interpretability so that we actually understand what the hell is going on with these AI models. Because at the moment they're very non-transparent. We really don't know like

What's How do they get to a particular answer? It's just this huge computational process. The Where we've like trained it via learning. Over

In computer time is like extremely long time. So maybe it's like Tens of thousands or even millions of games of Go that's played. And now it's like very good at Go, but like what's the reasoning that's going on? We don't really know. And then yeah, we could keep going as well. It's just like Many, many things within technical AI safety.

And then on there's the governance side of things, both for AI, for other technologies, for the juicing risk of World War Three. Here I kind of admit it gets tough. It's like very hard to Measure and be confident that we're doing stuff that's Actively good.

And we have to hope a little bit more that just Having smart, thoughtful, competent people In positions of political influence where they're able to Understand the arguments on both sides and put in

policies and regulation in place. Such that like we more carefully navigate These big technological advances. Or such that we don't go to war. Um face some sort of race dynamic between different countries.

That is also just like extremely important to me, in my view. Okay. Pause. To jump back to Number the questions I have.

Next to me. When you feel Overwhelmed or unfocused. Or if you feel you've lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? Yeah, the questions you ask yourself, activities because I think it is easy.

Maybe I'll just speak for myself to feel like there's so much Potentially coming down the pike, that is An existential threat. Yeah, it's easiest just to curl up into a

uh the fetal position and just scroll through TikTok or Instagram and pretend like it is it it isn't coming. So Not saying that is where you end up, but when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused. Or under focused. What do you do? For me it's most often driven by Stop my mood.

Yeah. So I've had issues with Depression since forever basically. Although now it's just It's far, far better. Like I think.

I normally say I'm something like five to ten times happier than I was a decade ago. We were happy about that. And so I have a bit of Have you heard of the term of a trick of action plan?

Say that one more time. Not sure if this is the word or the Scottish accent. Trigger trigger. Craigger Action Plan. Oh my God, I've Shrek on the podcast. This is amazing. All right, go ahead. Yeah, trigger action plan. Go ahead. Uh no, I I don't know what that is. The idea is um

There's a trigger, like some event that you hit. That happens. And it's just like when that event happens, you immediately just put into place some action. So A fire alarm goes off. Then it's like everyone knows what to do. There's the fired veil.

You follow the fire deal, you like stand up, you walk outside, you leave your blogs. And it's like it's so that you don't have to think in complex situations. I do that, but for when I have like low mood. Where The thing that has been very bad in the past is when it's like, Oh, I've got low mood, so I'm not being as effective and or productive, so I'm gonna have to work even harder and therefore I beat myself up and it makes it even worse.

So instead what I do is I'm just like If I notice my mood is really slumping and therefore it's like harder to work. I just bump like fix my mood to like top of my To do list becomes like the most important priority.

Where the crucial thing is not to let it spiral. The number one thing I do is just uh go to the gym or go for the run. Because then I'm like look. I wanted to do this a certain amount. Of time per week anyway. It's something I enjoy. I find it like vaccation.

So Worst case I'm just moving time around. Similarly, I'll probably meditate as well. Then at the same time in terms of thing how I think I have again certain kind of cache thoughts that I found very helpful. So one is just thinking about how it's like, yep, this happens before and it's not the end of the world.

It's been okay. If I've Gone through this before, it's just I'll be able to get through it again, probably. Second is just

Thinking about no longer assessing like the individual day that I'm having. But instead some like larger chunk of time. Where it's easy to beat yourself up if you're like, look, I've had just the shittest day and I've done nothing.

Well lose a Whereas if you're like, Okay, well how have I done over the last three years? For ten years, or like my whole life. And At least assuming you feel kind of okay about that.

Which I do, then. That's very reassuring. It's like okay. I've had a shit day, but like If someone were to write a history of my last few years, they probably wouldn't talk about this day. They talk about the other things. And so it's kinda like I've got a little bit in the bank there.

So even if I just take the whole day off. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. That combined with like taking a bit of time away from whatever's Making me plunge. And then like exercise I just find has a mood boost as well.

But then also gives time for these thoughts to really percolate and sink in. Generally means that I can just then like come back a couple of hours later and be pretty overfashed. But the key thing is just like once this happens you just You just do the thing and you start thinking. It's like look This is what my plan is.

Can you say trigger action plan one more time in a heavy Scottish accent? Take an action plan. That's what you need power. I'm gonna put that right at the beginning of the podcast. Oh, so good. So good. Uh thank you. You know, if this long term is um

Effective altruism philosophy thing doesn't work out for you. I think you have a future in voice acting. So Effective authorism's about doing the most c can. Not be in a weak old clothes. I don't know why if you speak in Scot yeah, speak in this proper Scottish accent, suddenly you've gotta be Somewhat aggressive and like insulting someone. Otherwise it just doesn't quite work doesn't quite work. You can't whisper an aggressive Scottish accent. It's very hard.

Yeah, very very challenging. I'm not even gonna try that. It would be embarrassing, but Let's hop back. into AI for a moment. So you hang out with A lot of the smart, cool kids. and very technically who really understand this stuff.

When They talk about Robots gone bad. Or just the Plausible

Scenarios that would be very bad. What are they? Like what are the two or three things that they would see As a An event. Or a development.

And that would be sort of be the equivalent of the trigger action plan, right? Where it's like, oh This is Life before and life after. What are the say two or three or one to three scenarios? That

they've honed in on. I think the two From my perspective, two extremely winning scenarios. Um one is The AI

Systems get just much more powerful than human systems. And They have goals that are misaligned. With human goals. And

They Realize that human beings are standing away of them achieving their goals. And so they Take control.

And perhaps that means they just wipe everyone out? Perhaps they don't even need to. So an analogy is often Given between Like the lies of Homo sapiens from the perspective of the chimpanzees. Where

Homo sapiens were just smarter. They were able to work together, they just had these advantages. And that just means the chimpanzees just have very little say in how things go over the long term. Basically no say. Is not that we made them extinct. Although

In a sense, they're kind of lucky. We made many. In fact, I think we made most of Large animals extinct. Due to the rise of Homo sapiens? But that could happen with AI as well. We could be

to the AI systems what chimpanzees are to humans. Well perhaps it's actually more extreme because Once you've got Air systems that are smarter than you and they're building AI systems that are smarter again. Maybe it's more like We're like ants looking at humans.

When we're looking at advanced AI systems. Give me the second one and then I'm gonna come back to the first one with just a sci fi thought experiment. And then the second one is like okay, even assume That we Do manage to align.

Yeah, systems with human goals. So we can really get them to do whatever they want. None the less, this could be a very Scary thing. Where

If you do think that AI systems could lead to much faster rates of technological progress In particular by you know automating Technological discovery, including the Creation of better AI systems. So like we've got AI writing the code that builds the next generation of AI, that then writes even better codes to build the next generation of AI. Things could happen like very quickly.

Well Even if you manage to Have AI systems do exactly what you want them to do. Well that could concentrate power in A very small number of hands.

Could be uh Single country could be a company. Could be like an individual within a single country who wants to Instill a dictatorship. And then once you've got that power.

It's kind of similar to what happened during the industrial revolution and earlier, so Europe got more and more powerful technology. Over that period. And what did it do? It used it to Colonize and subjugate.

A very large faction of the world. In the same way it could happen, but even faster. get such power and use it to Essentially take over the world. And then once it's in power, well, once you've got AI systems

I think you're able to have Indefinite social control. In a way that's like very worrying. And this is value lock in again. Where at the limit, imagine you're kind of the dictator of a totalitarian state. Like nineteen eighty four, The Handmaid's Tale or something.

And the That's a global totalitarian state. And you really want your ideology. To persist for ever. Well, you can pass that ideology on to this

AI successor. Just says that, yep, you got all the world now. And the AI does not need to has no need to die. It's Like software can replicate itself indefinitely.

So Unlike dictators, which Will die off eventually. causing A certain amount of change to occur.

Well. This is not true for the AI. Could replicate itself indefinitely. And it could be like in every area of society. And so then when you've got that, it's like why would we expect moral change after that point? And it's like

Kinda hard to see. Yeah. So in general I think there can be these states where You get into a particular state of the world and you just kinda can't get out of it again. And this kind of Orwellian c perpetual

Like totalitarianism is actually one of the things I'm really worried about. Okay. Oh. Like again, this is a happy book. It's an a book. Ha ha

Uh So Within the context of our discussion of the happy book. You talked about I think it was the Moists, I can't remember the term you used, but you mentioned they were similar to effective altruism and they formed a paramilitary group. When are you forming

The effective altruism paramilitary group. Counter AI insurgency squad. Is that in the works? Well there is an analogy between

We haven't yet we haven't yet got our own army. Um probably probably that won't happen. I think things are going pretty weird if they have and I might need to Might need to intervene at that point. But there is an analogy where they built very powerful and created very good defensive technology. So is very powerful for attacking. You say Trabach? Trabach?

Fabichet, yeah, it's like a caterpillar. It's like a it's got a s it's got a sling on it, is that what it is? It's like a catapult with a sling. So you get the uh it's like a addladdle But for throwing much bigger things. Anyway. The physics involved are I think the same. Yeah. Yeah. Fish up.

But you know, also walls are defensive technology. If you had just really good walls, really good defenses But you said wolves for a second, I was like wow, I did not Did not see that coming. We're gonna have to resurrect the wolf if we wanna have any hope of defensive wolf technology. All right, walls. Yeah, continue. They are training eagles to attack drones. So it's not like it's not so insane. We have wolves to attack the robot overlords. I don't back the wolves, I've gotta say.

Um But we can think in the same terms of Look, there's certain deck to technology that has kind of offensive advantage. So the ability to design new pathogens. There's certain technology that's like has a defensive advantage. Like this far UVC radiation.

And so one of the things we're doing is really trying to develop and speed up kind of defensive technology. And so similarly, when you look at AI, there's some things that are just pure capabilities. It's just AI getting more and more powerful. And then there are some things that are helpful in making sure that AI is safe. Like Understanding what's under the hood of these models.

Um just means that like, okay, we know what's going on a bit better, we can like use it better, we can predict What sort of behavior they'll have? Let's talk about defensive capabilities. I'll just give another example of an asymmetric Offense defense situation, which would be drone warfare to the

the ability to create Weaponized Potentially lethal. Drones and swarms and so on is much lower than the cost to defend against them, generally speaking, right? I mean certainly that becomes true if you start to combine

targeted bioweapons with drones. Things get really expensive. to at best to defend against. But let's let's talk about My sci fi. Scenario. Sure. So

When You use the analogies of humans and chimps. Or the analogy of the industrial revolution and the technological gains in Western Europe predominantly, which then allowed the physical, and that's the word I'll underscore sort of subjugation and colonization. and dominance of a significant percentage of the world's population.

I suppose there's part of me that on a simplistic level is feels like e even though this would not be easy to do,'cause it would be sort of like a homicide suicide for a lot of folks, the more interdependent we become. But it's like all right, if AI is constrained to A Fizical infrastructure that is dependent upon power. would not part of the defensive

planning or preemptive planning go into trying to restrict AI to something that can be unplugged, to put it really simply. But How are people playing out this hypothetical scenario, right? So with the AI presumably if if it's as smart or smarter than we are, foresee this and then develop sort of solar powered

Extensions of itself. So It can do A, B, and C. I mean, how are people I'm sure this is part of the conversation. I've just never had it. So what are smarter people? exploring with respect to this type of stuff. I think actually your Nose is pointed in a good direction on this one.

And it's this sort of thing that makes me Among my peers on the more optimistic end of thinking that Advanced AI would not Kill everybody. Where

Yeah, you could have like air gapped computers, so they're not Can't access the internet now. That don't have other ways of kind of Controlling the world apart from kind of text output. And they have been trained to act as kind of articles.

So you just ask them a question and They give you Ideally like very justified kind of true answer. And perhaps you have many of these as well. You've got like a dozen of them. And they don't know that the others exist.

And then you just start asking them for help. So you're like, Okay, we're gonna start building these like incredibly powerful AI systems that are much, much smarter than more generally able than we are. Like what should we do? What should our plan be? And so that's a pathway where it's like You're using AI to help solve the problems.

That's We will face with even more powerful AI. And what's the response? I mean some people would say, Oh well If the AI systems are really that powerful.

They're like far better than humans. They will infect you. So and they will be able to do that just by outputting text and telling you like, Oh, do this thing or do this thing. And that will be this like long deceptive play. And I just think that's unlikely. That seems to be

Spected from me, I don't have like strong reasons to think that we would have that. The current AI systems we have are more like You know, they just output text. It's not like They're an agent that's like trying to do things in the world.

You just put in the text in input, it gives you a text output, at least for language models. And potentially we can scale that up. To the point where Yeah. Like these kind of sages and boxes. I think that's a significant pathway by which we make

even more powerful AI systems that are kind of Agentec. Ah, kind of acting. You know, have a model of the world and then do things in the world that we make them safe. But that's exactly a good example of

Yeah, again, kinda differential technological progress where An AI system that's just like this article in a box. Separated from the rest of the world. That seems very good from a defensive perspective. Whereas An AI system that's been trained on like war games.

And then it's just like the least into the open seems like potentially very bad. Ha ha Mm-hmm. Uh yes, indeed.

Robots gone wild. Are you gonna create a new sublet? I don't know if I'll create a subreddit. I mean I I'm I'm tempted to start digging spider holes in my backyard and learning how to Yeah. Hunt with bow and arrow. But you know, all things in due time. What are the most important actions people can take? No.

Well, what are some actions for people who are like, I want to be An agent of change. I want to feel some locus of If not control, at least free will. I don't wanna just Lay on my back.

And wait for The cyborg raptors to descend upon me. Or to become a house pet for some dictator in a foreign land who overtakes the US as a superpower, whatever it is, right? I want to actually do something. What what are some of the Most important

Or maybe impactful actions that that people can take. So I think there's kind of two pathways for such a person. One, you might be motivated to help, but you don't really want to Reject your whole life. Ideally, perhaps you just don't really want to have to think about this again, but you do want to be doing good.

Then I think the option of donations is just particularly good. So you could take the Given What We Can pledge, you make a ten percent donation. Every year. Of your income? And then you can give to somewhere like the long term future fund.

That's part of EA funds. And it'll get redistributed to What some Kind of domain experts think are the highest impact things to do in this space. That's the kind of like

Baseline response or something. And I think it's important to emphasize you can do an enormous amount of good there. Yeah, there's a lot of ways we could spend money to do good things in the world. Including from this. long term perspective.

The second is if you're like no actually I wanna Yeah, be more actively a kind of agent of change. Then I think the first thing to do is to learn more. You know, I've tried to pack as much as I can into a book, but I think there's a lot to engage with. I mean

The back is what we are the future. You know, it's talking about some big philosophical ideas, it's also just covering a lot of Broad ground of different disciplines, different issues like You know, we talked about AI and BioVisk and World War Three. There's plenty of other issues I didn't talk about. We haven't talked about nukes. We haven't talked about technological stagnation, which I think is particularly important as well. We also haven't talked even just about promoting better values as well, kind of or more broad ways of making the long term better.

So all of these things are things that I think we can learn. Therefore I would encourage reading The Precipice by Toby Ord, which I mentioned. And my recommended books. Also, eighty thousand hours dot org as well has enormous amounts of content.

Open philanthropy. The org. Also has just a lot of really interesting content. They're the foundation, but They've done some really deep research into some of these topics. Such as this issue which we didn't get a touch of when we should expect.

Human level intelligence to arise. With some arguments that We should really put a lot of probability mass, like maybe more than fifty percent, on it coming in the next few decades. And then following that, I think the most important single decision is How can you either use or leverage your career or switch career?

in order to work on some of these, you know, most important issues. And again, we've really tried to make this as easy as possible. by providing like endless online advice. And also like one on one coaching. Such that people can

Get advice. And then the final thing would be getting involved with the effective altruism community, where the stuff is hard. It can be intimidating. One of the big things that just is a fact when we start thinking about These more kind of civilizational scale issues compared to The kind of original C of EA which is

Funding these very well evidenced. Programs that Demonstrably improve health is like It can be very overwhelming. And

It can be hard to know exactly how to fit in. But we now have a community of thousands or tens of thousands of people. who are working together and really keen to help each other. And there are many conferences like Yeah, global

Um conferences at Places like London, DC, San Francisco. Or kind of independently organized. Conferences EA Global Xs. In many places, there'll be one in India, for example, in early January.

As well as like hundreds of local groups around the world where people get together and Can often like provide support and Help each other to then figure out like, okay, what is the most impactful thing you can do? So yeah, that would be my kind of launchy list of advice.

And With respect to say Ditching the news or at least going on a lower information diet with the most Manufactured. urgency that we get flooded with and instead spending time

Looking at Big picture trends. We're trying to get that big picture roughly right. as you put it, both from a historical perspective and a current perspective. Would you still recommend For podcasts in our time, hosted by Melvin Bragg.

I believe discusses history, philosophy, science with leading academics and the eighty thousand hours podcast. Would those be two you would still recommend? Yeah, I would still strongly recommend them. There's also another podcast here, this idea. By Finn Morehouse.

And look at the Getty. I also particularly like Rationally Speaking by Julia Galef as well. It's like very good. And then in terms of websites, if you want the like big picture Like beyond the websites of all these.

Said. To just have like the best big picture understanding of the world, I don't know of a single better source than our world in data. Which is just I mean it was very influential. Shooting the Covid pandemic. But it has

You know, if you want to learn about nuclear war or long line economic growth, or world population. It's articles that are presenting. Both data and like the best understanding of the data. In just this like Timeless evergreen way.

With exceptional vigour and exceptional depth. It's just amazing. I use it very heavily to like Audien myself for the book. So Will McCaskill People can find you on Twitter at Will McCaskill M A C A S K I L L

on the the web, William McCaskill dot com. The new book is What We Owe the Future. I recommend people check it out. Is there anything else you would like to Add any Requests of the audience, anything you'd like to point people to? Any Complaints or grievances with this podcast process that you would like to air publicly, uh anything at all that you'd like to add before we Wrap this conversation up.

The main thing to say is just as we've said. Over and over again. I think we face truly enormous challenges in our life. Many of these challenges are very scary. They can be overwhelming, they can be intimidating. But I really believe that each of us individually can make an enormous difference to these problems.

We really can Significantly help. As part of a wider community. To putting humanity onto a better path. And if we do then

The f future really could be Long and absolutely flourishing. And uh your great great grandkids will thank you. Ha ha ha. Well, thank you very much. Well, I always enjoy our conversations and I appreciate the time.

Thanks so much, Tim. Absolutely. And to everybody listening, I will link to all the resources and the books and websites and so on in the show notes as per usual at Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time, be just a little bit kinder than necessary, and thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes

articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Theragun. I have two Theraguns and they're worth their weight in gold. I've been using them every single day. Whether you're an elite athlete or just a regular person trying to get through your day, muscle pain and muscle tension are real things. That's why I use the Theragun.

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