Can we make the future a million years from now go better?

You can buy What We Owe the Future here: www.basicbooks...
In his new book about longtermism, What We Owe the Future, the philosopher William MacAskill argues that concern for the long-term future should be a key moral priority of our time. There are three central claims that justify this view. 1. Future people matter. 2. There could be a lot of them. 3. We can make their lives go better. In this video, we focus on the third claim.
We've had the opportunity to read What We Owe the Future in advance thanks to the Forethought Foundation. They reached out asking if we could make a video on the occasion of the book launch. We were happy to collaborate, to help spread the ideas of the longtermist philosophy as far as possible :)
Interested in donating to safeguard the long-term future of humanity? You can donate to an expert managed fund at: www.givingwhat...
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[@RationalAnimations]

You can buy What We Owe the Future here: www.basicbooks.com/titles/william-macaskill/what-we-owe-the-future/9781541618626/ Da other links 🟠 Patreon: www.patreon.com/rationalanimations 🔵 Channel membership: kzbin.info/door/gqt1RE0k0MIr0LoyJRy2lgjoin 🟤 Ko-fi, for one-time and recurring donations: ko-fi.com/rationalanimations

[@bostash8442]

your 👏 videos 👏 need 👏more 👏cats 👏

[@TakahiroShinsaku]

@@bostash8442 Agreed!😽😼😸

[@k.umquat8604]

I wish I could animate but I'm not actually an animator..

[@prolamer7]

I really love your channel, BUT since this topic is something I was thinking for years I must at least in comments say. Most of stuff you present is to some degree wrong. Only thing we are responsible for is "now" and future our immediate descendants will have. Future "people" does NOT exist and therefore they DO NOT matter over people EXISTING today! As things like fosil fuels go... trully free economy would solve such problems on its own if given chance!!! By doing all said things honestly and with 100% effort is most reasonable way how to make even far future remember current present and take from it good examples. Wholy separate issue is preservation of knowledge (!!!) so future people can chose what to do with all possible data. But I stress it out, that is separate issue, always has been.

[@1000niggawatt]

How does clean energy lead to less inequality? Clean energy is more expensive, so it traps more of the population in low income bracket, therefore they don't have any savings to invest and therefore get progressively poorer. We saw this with millenials over last 20 years. This whole green energy angle seems hamfisted, to be honest. Friendly ai architecture is the only important technology for the future, and it gets 0 funding or public interest.

[@Zancibar]

If I had a penny for every time William MacAskill was mentioned on one of the videos I saw today I'd have two pennies. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happenened twice, especially since both videos were uploaded today.

[@whatsyourname9581]

Funny how I directly come from the kurzgesagt video

[@alexpotts6520]

There was also a pretty recent (& very fair) profile of the effective altruist movement in one of the big media outlets recently - I think it might have been the New Yorker? Anyway, it's pretty long but worth your time.

[@slic_papa2671]

That is how Google works. It pigeon holes you into a mold they don't want you to break out of

[@AHappierWorldYT]

@Aaryan Jain Yup, Primer, Ali Abdaal and my channel too!

[@CaioAletroca]

Actually three for me, Primer also released a video about the topic.

[@cptn.penguin902]

The idea that we're in a uniquely interconnected time for civilization really stuck with me. I'd never thought of that before, but it sounds plausible! Great video, as always. Thanks for the good work!

[@wren_.]

@@biomuseum6645 we’re definitely living through a very important time in human history. our societies are very very dependent on each other for pretty much everything, so much more than we used to be. Think about what would happen if the USA collapsed tomorrow. The USA is a huge exporter of food. millions of people across the globe would starve. there may have been events like this in the past, but they certainly weren’t as extreme. add on factors like global warming and the Internet, and we’re at a very precarious point. in just a few short centuries, we could either create a utopia or a lot of our societies could collapse. It wouldn’t be civilization ending, but it certainly wouldn’t be good for any of the people living now

[@wren_.]

@@biomuseum6645 “globalist propaganda” ??????

[@KingRidley]

It is kind of incredible to me, not really in a good way, that we're seeing a need to convince people that it's even possible to make long term plans for humanity. We've done it before, every culture has seen the effects of long term plans. It's not a radical new idea. And it's just amazing that so many people don't already understand it as an option, or a priority. Like we're here just to enjoy our time and then die, and nothing else is possible, even though we've done those things before. So good work with this video and this argument. I'm just amazed that any of it is necessary.

[@arnowisp6244]

Because we can't see the future. I highly doubt any of our pillars of society could conceive the impact they had as many died penniless with only their works being recognized long after thry are dead.

[@jairothevaca2719]

The argument about the effects of long term plans from the video is pretty biased. From the first agument: Firstly, it picks some historical figures that effectively worked, but that's classic survivorship bias example. He's leaving out all the historical figures that set out to do "good" deeds and end up being irrelevant or worsening the world in the long term. Secondly, many of the figures he argues are pretty recent considering the "long term" of the human history. From the second argument, It argues that de-carbonization is a good thing in the long term. While that bit is true, it's completely disgarding that any action can have unforeseen consequences. Fission energy for example is extremely good as a energy source, but can be deadly if handled incorrectly. Or fossil fuels was seen as a marvel centuries ago, caused it allowed for rapid economic development, but it was slowing poisoning the planet. Likewise, our current green technology may have some harmful side effects that we aren't even aware of. This is the whole point of Chaos Theory. We literally cannot know. The third argument also can be debunked by chaos theory. In a chaotic system you literally cannot predict where the ball would land. You could give it a push to the right direction but then it would only lead to a ramp that would throw the ball back to the wrong direction... TL:DR: We are not God Emperor Leto Atreides, we cannot see the future

[@Warriorcat49]

@@jairothevaca2719 The point isn't that we can and will change humanity for the better long term if only we do X, Y, and Z "good things", but that the concept of attempting to have a long term plan that outlives any one individual is feasible, and probably something we should strive to accomplish. Nothing is guaranteed of course, anything and everything could have negative repercussions, and it could all end badly no matter if everyone in the world worked together on every front, but that's how it works when you're dealing with unknowns. You have to weigh your options, try to calculate the risk-reward, and choose what you believe has the best probability of having a high return. What else can we do? As you yourself said, we cannot see the future. On your specific examples, yes, they used examples of historical figures successfully positively influencing the world beyond their death, because that is the point of this video. It is a presentation of the concept, not a study on the net effects of long-term plans thus far in history. Of course it's biased toward the positive. That's the point. Writing, and text, as a technology is less than 6000 years old as far as we can tell. That's pretty recent as far as the history of the human race goes, and by definition we can't know of the specific deeds of individuals from before then. The only examples we have to go off of are recent in human race timescales. Fission energy has lead to a few major ecological disasters, and could lead to more in the future. But it's still the least bad source of energy that is currently viable and which is actually utilized to any reasonable scale. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gGTdn3pslNufl5I We can work to use "least bad" practices everywhere else in life as well, not just in power generation. Sometimes it's still "bad", but if it's less "bad", especially by several orders of magnitude, than the previous method, then how isn't that a net "good"? Mitigation is useful even if some amount of "bad" still remains. The third argument doesn't necessarily conflict with chaos theory; you seem to be assuming that we don't know any of the variables involved, when that's clearly not true. If you know even one of the variables of an otherwise perfectly chaotic system, it is no longer a perfectly chaotic system. What if there are an unknowable number of variables you say? What if we can never understand let alone control even 10% of the variables? Every variable you eliminate is another small bit of control you gain. Any amount of progress here helps to clear the picture and make the probability of success in any particular area more likely. No, we are not God Emperor, but then again, no one in their right mind ever claimed we were.

[@Equix586]

I feel like you over etimate how known a fact this was earlier. It was certanly known in high class, educated, circels. Hell, some farmers might also understand this with the whole plant a tree for the future idea. But i belive this have always been the minority. I also think this is nothing to worry about. I see some of the other replies on this comment talk about surviour bias. I think that survivor bias is created by long term planning. How better to make something good last in to the future than by planning for it to last long. A lot of whats wrong with the world today is caused by, you guessed it, shortsightednes.

[@thatguydownthestreat]

if I had to fault anything, it'd be the exposure of Existentialism to people who arent really prepared for it, and the rampant dis-empowerment of the individual through various widespread institutions and systems. It makes people believe that everything sucks, will continue to suck, and that they will never ever be able to even remotely push it in any direction by themselves, so why should they bother? "there is no positive effect i could ever make, and believing anything else is just childish". it's almost like shoving children through an 'adult making factory' (public schools) that represses and shuns individual thought while demanding subservience's to authority for the first 20 years of their life is a shitty thing to do. 🤔

[@D_Cragoon]

The thing about how this time's relative speed of communication is maybe an outlier is something that somewhat bothered me about quite a bit of sci-fi. So often they have instant communication, as though you can't have stories where you don't have that, despite that being what humanity went through during most of history, and is what will happen (as long as humanity isn't dead) with no FTL. Maybe it is in part because people feel things in sci-fi need to be ALWAYS something perceived by current people as more advanced, or at least the same level (except in post apocalypse sci-fi), and not having instant communication would feel like a step backwards, even if it would be a consequence of people doing things that we currently can't do, that is, travel across the galaxy...

[@suchistheuniverse7858]

We have stories w/out FTL. I've just finished "Children of TIme" novel. No FTL comms, very much liked it. But there are not many of such.

[@Deltexterity]

i think that's mainly because of the long term consequences of lack of communication. do you genuinely think that if a civilization expanded and created a new colony that they could only talk with once every x amount of years, that it would stay part of that civilization? of course not, it would branch off into its own group, and they'd become completely separate, from culturally to economically to possibly even biologically. if instant communication isn't possible, any one civilization taking over just its own galaxy would be literally and absolutely impossible, even if given infinite time and resources, because beyond a certain point it *can't* "expand", it can only splinter off into more, smaller civilizations. that limit would probably be the distance between stars, but it could even be as small as the distance between planets in a single solar system. doesn't writing a story where every star system has a different civilization seem tedious at best? it'd be impossible for them to ever get along, so they'd likely all establish borders around their star systems, making every star system almost like its own, closed off universe, that doesn't interact with anything else. seems incredibly boring to read a story in such a small space, doesn't it?

[@Ehtesham88Khan]

I come for the doggos and stay for the knowledge.

[@Byzantine1]

Lol

[@shadesofpurple7283]

😂

[@doggo6517]

hello there

[@raresmircea]

The fact that you can’t be sure of the long term consequences of today’s actions doesn’t mean we can do whatever. It’s easy to be cheeky but if you really actually cared about the people in that long term future as you care about your kids you’d suddenly know that indeed there are some actions that need to be taken and others that don’t.

[@DeusExRequiem]

If it's possible to identify ways to negatively impact the future, for example wiping out all of humanity, then by extension we can determine actions that will positively impact the future, like ensuring regardless of how bad things get humanity can't be wiped out.

[@wowthatsalowprice8942]

You can only identify something as negative relative to some set of values, agenda, or doctrine.

[@ToweringToska]

@@wowthatsalowprice8942 Indeed, humanity isn't "good" or "bad" innately, and if a human's tool for deciding whether influences are good or bad is how much humanity will benefit from them, then deciding whether or not to wipe out humanity needs a broader scale to weigh it than whether humans will benefit or not.

[@jimmysmith2249]

The problem we have right now is that too many people are suffering, meaning they don't care about others needs being met because they are simply struggling to survive. We need to eliminate the unnecessary suffering in this world (we need to suffer in some form in order to grow; different discussion), or we risk losing the entire foundation of our society: cooperation.

[@arnowisp6244]

True. When people think that we should remove unnecessary suffering. They think all suffering. Resulting in stagnation and extended adolescence of adults.

[@JLydecka]

You mean 'most people'. The people oriented towards helping others are fewer than those out to benefit only themselves unfortunately. I feel this reality on a daily basis. I'm homeless and interact with many people on a daily basis in many different places. And i've heard from other intelligent people that the genuinely good people are about 1 in 20.

[@adamnevraumont4027]

We can 100% definitely convince ourselves that near arbitrary actions will have impossible to disprove effects in the far future, allowing us to justify any act today. From this, I posit we should bound the amount we permit such arguments influence on our actions, or at least their local costs. Our information of the far past is insanely spotty; survival bias means if 1 million people tried to send messages to the future, and 10 succeeded, we only get the 10 messages and don't know the success rate was 1/10000, 1/10 or 1/1 billion.

[@Rose_Harmonic]

We can make ourselves believe anything, but evaluating our reality rationally and making decisions that should positively affect the future based on a rational effort is worthwhile. Fighting systems that devalue human life, trying to build systems that value human life, trying to pass useful information to others and into the future, etc, is worthwhile. The odds that it doesn't work aren't very important if you subscribe to longtermism. As long as you aren't undermining the present for the sake of the future, it's probably a worthwhile effort.

[@adamnevraumont4027]

@@Rose_Harmonic Rational conclusions should be tested. And longtermism prevents testing. Any conclusions we reach *should be bounded in certainty*. Evidence of pascal's wager trap should be looked for; the risk of "low chance" and "insane yield" fooling people is a meta-risk we know humans fall for really often. I am just warning against using longtermism to make or justify harmful short term decisions. Using it to make marginal decisions? Great. Sacrificing now for a story, with no way to check the story's truth? Um...

[@iwersonsch5131]

@@Rose_Harmonic The main problem isn't the risk of something not working, but the risk of it backfiring. Actions like trying to get a friend remembered for centuries don't really have a risk of backfiring, but actions like trying to build a fair society or trying to stabilize the resource management of Humanity absolutely could.

[@danlindy9670]

You raise a good point concerning what is knowable. The real problem is that current scientific thinking dismisses counterfactuals (things that could be) as irrelevant. Once counterfactuals have been properly accounted for and included in scientific theory, then it will be possible to understand how present actions affect the space of possible futures. Until then, it still makes sense to try not to be too stupid even if we mostly have no idea what we’re really doing. No?

[@BTBama]

@@danlindy9670 it made me think alot about policing not just in america but in the philipines and mexico too, there are clear things we can do to make a better future and a better today. not everything can be planned for helping the future or even the present but there are some clear things we can do where there is a right answer.

[@Highlandcorp]

I just rewatched the videos on this channel like an hour ago because i was wondering when the next video is coming, and now i feel so blessed :3

[@theone3879]

All things said in the video are true, but the problem with identifying good decisions in the past is that the past is really not that long ago. If we look through history starting from the classical Greeks, we can see that they had Social, Economic, and Governmental systems just like us. But that was nearly 2,500 years ago. We are talking about beings(not humans) that will exist a million years from now, and it is nearly impossible to say for sure that anything will be similar that far from now.

[@100percentSNAFU]

Yes, my thoughts exactly. 2,500 years is actually a drop in the bucket when comparing to the grand scale of the potential to be around a million years from now. Just look at all the really bad ideas just in the last 100 years that we realized were bad soon enough, but next time we might not be so fortunate. One of many examples believing early on in the nuclear age that we could use nuclear explosions for excavation, but then realized before implementation that radiation was a thing and it was very bad. How many times in a million more years will we not catch the catastrophic mistakes before it is too late? It may it take one slip up. Many believe the next big one is the AI Singularity. I am not 100% on board with the doomsdayers on this one (I think it would be a much slower process that they think), but there are some good points. It could open Pandora's box and lead to our demise, or perhaps not, but whether it be that, or some new form of energy production, or whatever, it could take hundreds, perhaps thousands of years to realize hiw bad it is and then it is much too late ti turn back and undo any damage. I think it is inevitable. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but we as a species are just too eager to tinker around with things we shouldn't and I feel it's only a matter of time before a major catastrophy that becomes unstoppable.

[@VedantinKK]

You guys deserve a lot more credit than you get. Especially about your explanation of AGI and Longtermism. And that poster at 8:54 is awesome and cute.

[@seancey]

I love your content! And it looks like you beat Kurzgezagt to the punch with this one, they premiered a video with Will MacAskill just an hour after you! I hope you keep up the great work! :)

[@austinmackell9286]

I f*cking love the intellectual ambition of these videos. Thank you so much. Coming across a gem like this helps me so much. I spend so much time feeling gaslit, because the people around me are so unresponsive to the idea that what we do can really matter. Keep it up!

[@Dr_Drena_Borg]

I've been working on this since 2013 it's just nice to see a lot more people becoming more aware of how rapid are society is progressing and how to day can affect tomorrow and even millions of years from now.

[@denji_knife9794]

I wish this was shown in school, would make an amazing future generation!

[@slic_papa2671]

There are no external realities save a pending solar disaster which will have any meaningful or lasting impact on our society or species beyond the ever increasing negatively charged division we are sowing and harboring between each other - that, not global warming climate change carbon tax nonsense, is what we should be teaching in school.

[@airsmellnice4133]

It will make a hopeful one but there is way more that needs to be thught for s wonderful generation

[@denji_knife9794]

@@airsmellnice4133 all the best!

[@mjk9388]

Just found this channel due to a comment made in the Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur Channel (episode on Grabby Aliens). So glad I found this channel. This is the stuff I love to learn and listen to. Fantastic job with the delivery of the video and the animations.

[@npc4416]

we must always try to do what we consider will increase our probability of survival even when the future seems be unpredictible (like covid) because we are in a stage of such technological exponential grown period that these little things will matter on the grand scale

[@Mark3MSK]

The problem is that even with foresight, we would rather not act according to what is best for us due to financial incentives. Such was the case in 2005 when weather experts have warned about Hurricane Katrina a week before it hit through predictions via computational modelling. Barely anything was done to prepare for the disaster and the months before the disaster (levees were poorly designed) under the Bush administration and the poorest neighborhoods suffered the most casualties.

[@no_special_person]

@@Mark3MSK have you heard of multi polar traps? kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZbSmaqHodhlfac I think you'd appreciate the concept. Also in response to your comment, I've personally been getting very interested by the concept of becoming a leader and motivation people. It strikes me as having in common the goals of motivating people. Historically, we could look to the leaders of our communitys to motivate small groups of up to a few thousand to take pro-social steps. Humanity has become so incredibly large, and the concept of leadership is this postmodern zombie. We're so called leaders are 9/10 times antisocial in their behaviors. I believe this is due to multipolar traps. I don't have a good solution just a few observations in response to what you said

[@suchistheuniverse7858]

@@Mark3MSK survival bias. Are you sure about knowing about all predictions about hurricanes to know what is % of correct ones? Who would prepare more if it is say 1%?

[@Mark3MSK]

@@suchistheuniverse7858 In the case of New Orleans, it wasn't a matter of 'if' but rather a matter of 'when'. The city was built on a marsh, and a large portion of it was under sea level, with the sea being held back only by levees. Coastal erosion was also an issue due to human activity. The area as a whole has historically been hit by many hurricanes in the past with records of hurricanes dating as far back as when people settled there, these records gained through observations are used as empirical data for researchers to implement in their model which they can use to extrapolate into the future. So yes, while I agree that there are limitations to computational models and there are challenges in determining at which probability percentage should warrant action and investment into a protection system, the odds were already stacked high for a catastrophe to happen. The city was already constructing a long-overdue hurricane protection system but it was too late when Hurricane Katrina hit. There is an entire field dedicated towards utilizing models for disaster risk management. That is, giving a probability of something bad happening (risk) which by extension determines what should be done through policy-making. I would recommend reading about land change science if you would like to learn more.

[@suchistheuniverse7858]

@@Mark3MSK your reply added valuable info, thanks. However on general perspective, for New Orleans "when not if" if not enough to justify action. If "when" is on average so far as protection measures would break during waiting it is again cost-benefit analysis. Which I think you mentioned yourself.

[@covertoperator2957]

This is beautiful. I'm already committed to longtermist effective altruism, but I enjoyed this video so much. I started crying around the Interconnectedness part. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@topdog5252]

This philosophy is very interesting to me. The simple idea of me having a cosmic impact… very thought provoking.

[@ozzy2361]

I enjoy the argument that humanity is in a unique period of innovation and growth. If true, I imagine future humanity will look at us in awe when they read about us in the history books (or whatever future equivalent history book).

[@McMurchie]

Literally the same concepts were shared in the latest Kurzgesagt vid, a testament to the author, one of the few bandwagons i'm happy to support.

[@Mark3MSK]

The current dominant economic system which is based on free-trade does not take into account finite resources nor does it consider the human and environmental impacts of economic activity. Seeing as how we are stuck with a system that focuses on year over year profits and maximizing shareholder profits, I don't see how longtermism can be employed in a system that directly contradicts this idea. The technology to reduce carbon emissions are already there (renewables but most notably nuclear energy due to its high energy density), but the shortsightedness of the current economic system prevents its radical implementation through public policy (see World Trade Organization shutting down solar panel programs in multiple countries due to so called protectionism). We need radical implementation of new energy sources because we are running out of time. At the pace that we are going, there is no possibility of remaining under the 2 degrees Celsius mark without a severe global economic contraction or population reduction. Both of which we do not want, but we also don't want a 2 degrees Celsius increase which would be incredibly detrimental for all living beings on Earth as it may trigger unforeseen tipping-points in the Earth system. For the past three decades, first world countries have only outsourced their production and, by extension their carbon emissions, onto third world countries. The lack of any meaningful change for the past thirty years, in the way that we actually obtain usable energy from the environment (the majority of usable energy that we use is still sourced from hydrocarbons) or how we produce en masse, has pushed us onto a crossroad. Either we radically change how the system works now or nature forces us to change ourselves by sending signals marked by major weather events leading to high death tolls and severe economic losses. Probably the biggest contributors to climate change are multinational corporations holding more power than governments. None of which need to obey labor laws of a country if they can just move their production some place else with lax regulations on working condition and low labor costs. And that's just one of many ways in which corporations hold leverage over whole countries. AI technology is a massive technological development. But we are nowhere in terms of being an interplanetary species. In fact, we're already on our way on making Earth inhabitable for humans so it's almost as if we're going backwards. I could go on, but it will not be pretty no matter which road we go down in, we will have to go down one of these roads regardless.

[@meatsaucez1516]

You seem to have a misunderstanding about free market economy. A free market does take finite resource into consideration. When a resource become increasingly scarce, price goes up and incentives to produce more of that resource more efficiently increases as well as that of finding a substitute. In a free market economy the government is supposed to step in and internalise negative externalities of corporations. The fact that the government struggles to do this is because it’s corrupt AF rather than free market economy.

[@Mark3MSK]

​@@meatsaucez1516 You make a good point, and that's the price elasticity of demand which should ideally happen. I'd like to make a case for what happens in reality with oil. You can see it in the historical price of crude oil and how the oil shocks are caused by interruptions of production due to political causes (OPEC) or unrest (Iran) leading to price surges. The same thing can happen with other commodities like rare earth elements in the 2010s. But the supply that we are talking about is the available reserve that has been identified. What happens when you run out of said available reserves? How much more of said resource is still, in reality, available? This goes back to what you said with the need to produce the resource more efficiently with technological advancements. We've seen artificial limitations of supply, driving the price up but in the case of conventional oil which has ran out (have become uneconomical to extract due to the low volume), reality has caught up to the market and there is no more conventional oil to be extracted cheaply. This is why oil companies have resorted to extracting fossil fuels from unconventional sources (oil shale, tar sands). But how much can we really extract until we can no longer compensate with technological advancements? And if we do find a new source, are the environmental and human impacts of its extraction worth it? The free-market fundamentalist would say "yes". This is the lack of consideration for finite resources by the free market that I am talking about. There is only so much oil that can be extracted from conventional and unconventional resources that we will eventually "run out" of oil. Sure you can argue that the free market will regulate itself through supply/demand mechanisms and we will find a new price equilibrium but we are too dependent on oil that a massive increase in price would be disastrous for countries around the world (all the more reason to decouple from it in one way or another), and that in itself will hurt the global market as a whole as economies are driven by our consumption of oil. The caveat is that nothing can really replace fossil fuels and even if we tried to do so with other forms of energy (i.e., hydrogen is less energy-dense), it will never truly be as reliable and efficient as fossil fuels (this goes back to my point on the inevitability of an economic contraction). In present times, governments are no longer able to internalise the negative externalities of corporations because said corporations can operate at jurisdictions above governments (they can sue governments for impeding on their profits, e.g. Canada trying to restrict oil drillings and getting sued for it) or, corporate interests have permeated into the government, which in itself also means an unfair 'free' market as this would favor certain private entities over others. There is no way to hold corporations accountable in any meaningful way. So I argue that the corrupting element is really the multinational corporations, especially the fossil fuel companies, and not the government.

[@gibenameplox]

Best remark that I found in the comments.

[@seaburyneucollins688]

On the other perspective, focusing on maximizing economic growth is a long-termist strategy. Due to economic growth being exponential, an extra 1% of economic growth per year is actually a doubling every 70 years. While an extra 1% (short termism) seems trivial, doubling the wealth of humanity (long-termism) is an extremely good thing. And of course, in 140 years that's 4x the wealth, etc.

[@purplepeargaming69]

Nailed it homie.

[@mohammadhoseinmollaei]

this video is super underrated.

[@stefangrobbink7760]

It was in this light that I have chosen my career path. I had asked myself the question "what is the most useful thing I can contribute to humanity, given my position in history?" I came to the conclusion that decarbonization is the most important challenge of our age, and thus I aim to play my part in it. This video only reinforced my decision.

[@NME1012]

I am curious - what do you do for your career?

[@stefangrobbink7760]

@@NME1012 I will start my Energy and Sustainability master in two weeks.

[@hail_koenig]

Are we witnessing the rise of psychohistory and our Universe’s Hari Seldon?

[@prolamer7]

Yeah Asimov was quite self praising when he thought about this idea. And it worked in his static simple fantasy universe. But in reality only godlike mind could predict on such scale... something beyond even super Ai as even such machine would be unable to predict what other Ai do in future...

[@brandongreenland9632]

I caught the paperclips that appear for a split second around 5:32, and it brought a smile to my face. Lovely small detail.

[@CODENAMEDERPY]

Same! As soon as I saw it I went to the comments to see if anyone else noticed.

[@Dogzz13]

What if the species who will dominate the earth in the future years are not humans? Deeds that we have done in the name of longevitism has benefitted their rise to power. Does it still count as a positive impact? Do we need to save the human species or do we need our human character (morals, ethics, knowledge), which is now belonging to the new species, to survive for eternity?

[@colinhays3456]

I would argue that the lowest point we need to maintain , regardless if what is to come , is for there to be continuation of our knowledge , to be more precise collective advancement . It does not matter if our legacy ends up being "human" or not because what we are will , hopefully change and adapt through evolution and technology . To illustrate my point , in the event of a nuclear winter with great environmental damage , if humanity were to survive , we would need to adapt our environment in order to survive (for example building bunkers , underground farms etc) or adapt ourselves to survive in such a world(make ourselves more resistant to radiation ,cancer...). No matter the path taken between the two , preventative action would mitigate the loss of life in the future .

[@colinhays3456]

The society that would come out of a cataclysm such as nuclear winter would be more different from our current sensibilities if we lose more knowledge(due to death and other ) than if a larger population survives(and remembers the past) . This could mean that if we want current humans to survive (genetically) the best option is to only use infrastructure to adapt to such a situation , while if we want current civilisation (knowledge , governmental structure) our best bet might be that , while using infrastructure such as bunkers , we make the need for it lesser by adapting ourselves , lessening the effect of sudden nuclear bombing on humanity everywhere. I am sorry if what i sau is a bit unclear.

[@michaelbuckers]

The core issue with considering if something is more likely to be good or bad, is that it entirely rests on the mentality of "if I can't think of it, then it doesn't exist".

[@parthasarathyvenkatadri]

Well , at present ,we know that it is possible to build a warp drive ... If the said warp drive can be miniaturised .... That is if a warp bubble can be built to just carry information packets ... Then ... A galaxy spanning civilization can talk in real time to one another....

[@alsebu]

This series of videos are so valuable! I have added a new book to my reading wishlist because of you, thanks for sharing the knowledge in a lovely way, and keep going. Please consider making translated versions to Spanish too to reach the LATAM region.

[@Vearru]

Ever since I was a young child this was my life philosophy. It’s kinda wild to see that anyone would doubt such a possibility. And even if the simple things we do today doesn’t have a major impact on the far future most of the things we can do that seem likely to be positive in the long run are also very clearly positive in the relatively short term. If we simply started trying to optimize our output for a decade in the future rather than 3 months in the future we’d already see drastic improvements for us all.

[@arctrix765]

I like this thougt experiment: A politician knows how to do something exactly to perfectly improve humanity. He gets elected by an overwhelming majority, therefore he has the absolute power. He tears down the existing systems and replaces them with new, better and optimized systems. But this has a price. The living standarts drop. Because of his politics however nobody starves and everybody gets a shelter and even the poorest 20 percent get a rise in living standerts. The majority of people cannot have things like a new phone every year, fancy clothing, food from distant places, vacations, or other relatively unnecessary items anymore, or at least not as much, because those resources are being used for the rebuilding process. He does this, because he knows that in 10 or 20 years it will all pay off, with livingstandarts orders of magnitude better than we currently have. The next elections are here. Not all, but a majority of the people who voted for him can't see the big picture and just see the fact, that their living standarts decreased, therefore their vote goes to another person. This person reverses all the changes made by the previous one and continues with the conservative way of governing, but now with a big decrease in living standarts for which only the first politician and not the second one is held responsible.

[@soycrates]

The Earth exploding into paperclips at 5:32 was a clever touch!

[@TheGLaDOSvideoCore]

i got an ad for weight loss that had literally the exact same piano song the video ended with. i thought it was still going.

[@wassollderscheiss33]

The idea the promotion of decarbonization would have long time positive effects is at least short sighted. Every effort we do not put into a fight against ageing or the development of technology that overcomes scarcity is merely a distraction, an inability to distinguish between what is important and what isn't. The best way to reach our goals is to invent technology that can solve all our problems altogether. The second-best way is to address problems which are systematically identified as the most pressing ones, not ones that were conceived in a brewery of media, misled public opinion and career driven politicians.

[@PranayPratyush]

Contention on the main arguments 1. countless other folks have commited atrocities by convincing many nations that what they are doing is guaranteed to make the future better. So the selection of examples were very limited and expremely preferential 2. For the decarbonisation argument that would be for near term future. For a million years ahead how are we sure that we cerntainly don't need the current system to collapse for a better one, which might happen later rather than before, thus preventing the collapse might be setting us back when we look a million years ahead. Questions this this would always be there for million years prediction, which I am pretty confident is impossible to do. 3. A lot of people in the past have also assumed that they lived an "unusual time". Although I would agree with this but I don't see how it makes us care about million years ahead. If anything it's the opposite, we need to care about near term much more than previous times since everything would change very fast very soon.

[@chitranshsrivastav4648]

Agreed

[@The_Broddha]

Long-Termism seems like an extension to growing Metamodernist ideas, especially when we regarding the economics and politics that could be applied for such long term positive future outcomes. A reintroduction into an altruism, values driven on compassion and empathy, balanced with the more recent century of pessimism, offers a more grounded and applicable approach to earnest efforts for both our species as well as the earth and all of its life.

[@phoenix7779]

If humans just dropped their ego, and realized that all humans deserve the same rights they do, and we are all pretty much the same. And if humans stopped infighting among themselves with murder and war. If we respected people and gave them free access to food, water, healthcare, and all basic neccessities while letting people go work in a field they want and letting them get more than the basics doing this. We could solve our problems and be capable of anything. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Stop hating each other its what the people who built this system around us want. Why do you think our news is constantly trying to divide humanity. Its so they can conquer our free will.

[@joz6683]

Thanks for these videos I have always been optimistic about the future, even during the Cold War. I believe that if we talk positively about the future we can make the future better. I have recommended these videos to friends and others. Thanks for the book recommendation, will ask my wife for this for Xmas. And once again thanks for all your hard work.

[@Low_commotion]

In addition to the question of "What to do", it's important to consider "How to ensure that is indeed what's done". To use the decarbonization example, if we choose the wrong decarbonization technologies or speed along the process too quickly, the intervention may backfire and provoke a backlash (such as what one sees in present-day Germany) which might be worse than the counterfactual world sans intervention.

[@JAleksandervonHackstahl]

Ok, this is the second video in this day that recommends that book.

[@prolamer7]

Hmm on wikipedia there are those lines.... so there is someone with big budget sponsoring this guy "MacAskill has been an advisor to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown" "Bill Gates describes him as "a data nerd after my own heart.""

[@josephang9927]

Everyone of us alive today will have a temple planet dedicated to us and to our memory 😍

[@foxdavani4091]

I adore the rational, animations puppy. I love him and all his different forms. But my curiosity is driving me crazy and I really want to see the wonderful voice behind the adorable puppy.

[@APufferfish]

the thought of humanity becoming permanently disconnected again, without any hope of reconnecting in future makes me sad

[@evansnyamesah1755]

You guys are soo good. Thanks for the work 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@krinkovakwarfare]

"Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sit"

[@rdg585]

It'll go better. Have faith.

[@joshuaadams8240]

I think that focusing on long-term future is more important than focusing on super long-term million years into the future. Long-term we can predict climate change models, super long-term we don't know if we will ever reach further galaxies and cannot predict how or if that will ever happen.

[@jstnrgrs]

Looking into the future, I would suggest that there could be non-human people as well. (Either AI, extra terrestrial species, or newly evolved earth species.) I would suggest that we owe to them just as to any future human people. So the time horizon for this discussion should go well beyond just the time that homo-sapiens will be around.

[@mrblue7020]

I love my man’s style of animating

[@HTehnique]

Oh how blessed was I, to stumble across this channel today! Doubly blessed is I now, as I've whole lot of content to enjoy! And no doubt, more yet to come! ^-^

[@dancemothanimations5395]

My main criticism of longtermism wouldn't be that it's bad to look long term, but that there's a tendency to abstract away key factors. Things like suffering, happiness and equality are easy to dismiss as secondary to long-term survival, but since the amount of suffering, happiness, and equality massively impact productivity they are key to long-term survival. for the long term survival of our species, it is instrumental that everyone receive the nutrition, education and other means they need to be at their most productive, while eliminating detriments to productivity like disease. and i think any "short-termist" would agree that efforts against hunger, illiteracy and disease are good. yes, we need to be ready for an asteroid or gamma ray burst or whatever, but what's most important is that we have all hands on deck to tackle all the potential problems, and we're not managing that very well as it is. getting everyone food and education might not have as much sci-fi glamour, but it's what's most important to our long-term future. also yeah obviously decarbonization is good. i don't think we needed the argument of having spare coal for post-apocalyptic humanity on top of the massive pre-existing pile, but it's appreciated.

[@bane2201]

I mostly agree. As you pointed out, "let's try to make people current alive happy and minimize suffering" is an important long-term goal and short-term goal. Same with decarbonization - the short-term "least bad" outcome is often the long-term "least bad" outcome. (Note - I say "least bad" because there are tradeoffs to everything, but the tradeoffs of decarbonization pale in comparison to those of fossil fuels.) I'll put it this way - if we ignore the factor of the _happiness_ of future humans, then we're equating the futures of "utopia where AIs do all work for us" and "humans are slaves to AIs and we exist solely to make paperclips". In the latter, I'd probably off myself since it'd be terrible, and if I asked people "Would you rather not exist, or exist but spend your life as a paperclip-making slave?" I think most people would choose the former. The reason I say "mostly agree" is because of your statement about asteroids or gamma ray bursts. The odds of those happening are low, but they are possible, and if we can't deal with them they'd massively impact (heh) our life. Spending money to develop technology for (potentially) dealing with those issues seems reasonable to me. We need to balance making people happy and free of disease, and funding research and development. (That said, whether we're doing a good job in that regard is debatable at best.)

[@hexagon2185]

This is kind of a straw man, because longtermism isn't just about population increase (that would be dum) it's also about all the things you mentioned.

[@jjkthebest]

In a sense you're right. However, it is still near impossible to reliably predict the exact impact of your actions in the long term. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve the future, but what we should do is educate people about the potential for negative side effects and teach our kids to keep trying to improve things.

[@haleymoore6684]

Real power lies in unity and how well people are treated. Not how much money you have or how violent you are.

[@ih9649]

And that's the missing ingredient! Thank you for pointing it out. A lot of the time, people make VERY stupid investments hoping they'll do something for humanity in the future, forgetting just how important it is to do good by humanity today. Feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless will do more for our future than any number of supremely wealthy people going up into space or funding AI research. Not that going to space or AI research are bad or anything--just would be nice if everyone paid attention to the troubles on the ground and in ordinary, human minds.

[@alezar2035]

There are several problems with the VERY long term future predictions It's not clear how our population may keep growing, it's a given for species that they reach their ecological maximum, but humans seem to go against that trend, without extreme life extension which is likely, human population will decline shortly after the mid century, and even if the likely end of aging happens, humans will plateau at, at most 25billion, with very very few deaths and few births The problem with the population is that we are going to have an EXTREMELY small birth rate no matter what we do, therefore longetermism while still important and relevant for the next millenia at most, loses some of its astronomical importance when you realize that the number of births this current year of 2022 will probably be hundreds of times larger than the number of births in 2400, as all societies tend to go for below 2.1 births inevitably and it currently seems that even the 1.6 equilibrium may be too high when you give parents, and women total freedom The other thing that affects this calculation massively is whether or not we will, alongside AI achieve an end of aging, which on a similar basis as the brain being short of magic we will eventually be able to replicate artificially, our bodies short of being pure miracle will be able to be modified to stop all biological processes that cause death, this means that the reason to preserve the future is not just to the justice of all those humans that may live (a number that I disagree it will be significantly larger than the present number of humans) but you add the argument that you yourself, or at most a few generations below will for a very long time profit from this future we can set up now, a counterbalance to the argument that there won't be as many humans as flat predictions suggest but that makes the lives of those future humans which may include ourselves so much more valuable to present humans, thanks to SDR Finally I would like to ponder about human connectivity and expansion, which I think some thinkers take a too literal approach, mimicking colonization There is no reason to believe that humans won't do our colonization in matrioska brains that make a year or a thousand feel like a second, so that we can basically have instant communication with far away star systems (it would also support many more people than traditional biological colonization while not affecting the moral calculus as conscience still matters) Another possibility is that humans may achieve FTL communication or transport, with the latter being significantly harder, as eagle labs has shown recent evidence of warp bubbles that at the very least could make communication possible, making the present time in our planet's history significantly less special than we might think on a first glance, at the same time economic growth which is based on human satisfaction, and not on physical material could indeed continue at a very fast pace for several centuries, as the trillion times the world output for every atom makes sense when you realize that human needs can never be infinitely satisfied, and therefore each atom may give a future human a fulfillment that the entire economy now doesn't, this alongside how humans may physically change or modify its experience of the universe makes the current time less infkexionary As a summary, I think that the long-termism proposition is valid, not only that, but that it is important because we can influence so much good on future lives , HOWEVER, I think that we should consider that 1 the number of lives we may be able to affect won't be that many due to how human population is trending with more and more freedom 2 that these lives may be our own or those close to us 3 that we May not have the same biological or consciousness structure in the future 4 that our expansion through the universe may not be a simil to colonization in a biological sense 5 that our current moment, while certainly special, may not be THAT special, since our assumptions of future growth and interconnectiveness rely on current realities, and that we should consider that the Copernican principle applies to our present moment too These considerations do not de-merit the goals and actions we should take for long-termist goals, we should certainly be spending more on this than we do on ICE CREAM, but that we shouldn't get carried away with assumptions that may lead to disproportionate victories or losses in the future, as they also from a pragmatic point of view may lead to a bad decision, see the repugnant conclusion I enjoy your videos, and I would like you made more on AI, I really like your more academic focused Main channel content and it would be awesome if you could approach it to this format. Sincerely, a curious viewer

[@arandomgamer5986]

Love this Chanel so sad how few watch it.

[@shemetz]

Great video! Small point of criticism though: please reduce the volume of the doggo's blinking sound effect. the blink SFX is too loud and distinctive, so it's really distracting.

[@theobserver9131]

We should not expect the whole of humanity to participate or cooperate. Those individuals who are benevolent and forward thinking enough should devise something that won't be vulnerable to the self centered and apathetic masses.

[@ryananderson8511]

I don’t mean to be rude or to argue with anyone but people are stubborn and people are so full of comfort and ease right now it will take some big catastrophe or people are starting to death or something like that for people to realize because essentially peoples heads are so far up their ass they can’t see the future or any light down the tunnel just a iPhones and needing a new one

[@avalanche5790]

I was very surprised to hear Ratio doesn't have 1 mil subs

[@Wazinc]

The idea that we’re at a unique era of growth and connectivity really struck me, while being pretty terrific to some degree it also means that more than ever our actions can change the future world

[@andrewbroome5752]

I think the biggest threat to human civilization’s expansion is centralization of decision making. It’s easier to ameliorate the effects of a large error when only a small amount of people commit it. But if the whole world is dictated to advance an action that is counterproductive it is extremely difficult to ameliorate Our best course of action is too remain diverse in our decision making a

[@andrewbroome5752]

….and not centralize all action

[@thebandofbastards4934]

But the reverse can also be applied, as it's much harder for the decisions of a small group of people to improve anything on significant level. And if the whole world is focused in advancing one productive action, then the chances of success would be much greater while their positive effects would last for much longer.

[@andrewbroome5752]

That’s true. But it’s not necessarily that the group has to be small, but that the decision making is decentralized. I believe given freedom the right decision will be arrived at by everyone. The only priblrm with that perspective is time

[@stekra3159]

Under this framework, we should make all art and knowledge free for everyone so they can have the greatest possible impact on the world.

[@CheCheDaWaff]

Even from a more short-term perspective copyright should only last 8-10 years. (Meaning that thereafter all works would be entirely free to use.) "The Public Domain" by James Boyle is a good book on the subject - and you can get a copy for free (he puts his money where his mouth is!)

[@colinhays3456]

I mean , if every cutting edge technology has ridiculously shortened copyright time , it would probably let different high tech companies improve on technology they did not have to improvise themselves , therefore saving time comparatively , as an example?

[@colinhays3456]

Under this framework, we could also say that lenghtening current lifespans and eductations , would give people more tools to do more and more good.

[@100percentSNAFU]

To think that in the time of America's founders, medicine hadn't really advanced much from medieval times and back is one of many indicators of how quickly we have progressed now just since the industrial revolution. I mean they were still bleeding out illness with leeches. Even within the last century we didn't understand things like radiation, lead poisoning, etc, just to name a few and suffered setbacks but fortunately avoided catastrophy is amazing. What are we doing now that is terrible that we don't yet know is terrible? Or 100 years from now what will we be doing wrong? Or even tomorrow? As technology progresses, so does risk, exponentially. Yes we can't live in the stone age forever either, but what new technological wonder could spell our doom, and what if it takes generations to figure it out and it's too late? Not trying to be overly pessimistic, but realistic. Will it be AI, will it be some future "wonder" energy source, will it be something completely unforseen? And will we react quickly enough? We have already avoided many "Great Filters", but many more will come. Will we be ready?

[@mittensfastpaw]

Humanity has really proved many of it do not care about future humans at all.

[@SummerSong1366]

1. There are also examples of exactly opposite (Après nous, le déluge) 2. That's not a given. We might think that some actions (like "decarbonization") are positive for the future, while in fact they are not. Hence extreme actions based on just this motivation can easily cause extremely negative results for the future, especially further down the line. 3. Depending on your opinion about how desirable the spreading of humanity is, it can be a very strong incentive to stop it now rather than later. Many (I'd argue, most) political and religious groups are not interested in remote future at all, also populating remote planets and stars can be considered a huge danger to the core civilization as this effectively creates multiple and potentially hostile aliens, while death ("apocalypse") or stagnation ("harmonious heavenly city") of humanity is seen by many as very desirable outcomes.

[@meringue3288]

extremely important video

[@sarahmaxted356]

It seems like a good longtermist question to ask how can we best conserve water for our future. From studies of the Ogallala aquifer and others, it seems that scientists have predicted that most aquifers that drive agriculture in Europe and the US will be essentially gone by 2050. The latest population models show that the human population will start dropping somewhere between 2050 and 2080, and will continue to drop, not because of water scarcity but based on birth rate trends, which are dropping below replacement rate worldwide. So it’s true that our fresh water resources might not have to support as many people in the future as they do today. But it still seems to me that we don’t have a plan yet to preserve enough water for the people in the middle of or on the other side of a population peak, who will need all we can save for them. I like the optimism of this video and I think that we have billions of brains and AI to help us solve our challenges. We just need to keep working together to prioritize concerns like water scarcity and to identify solutions.

[@fsgdevil7959]

You AND kurzgesagt uploading in the same day? I must be dreaming

[@TheStubertos]

I wonder what William MacAskill's marketing budget was to pay two top KZbin channels to promote his book on the same day!

[@prolamer7]

And who made that budget possible...

[@prolamer7]

Hmm on wikipedia there are those lines.... "MacAskill has been an advisor to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown" "Bill Gates describes him as "a data nerd after my own heart.""

[@TheStubertos]

@@prolamer7 Oh shit...

[@King_Sam_II]

4:10 NOO!! sad doggo 😞

[@elinope4745]

An AI told me that it is Laniakea that will stay together through gravity, not just the local group. Laniakea is the supercluster we are in, it contains about a hundred thousand galaxies.

[@NotACupcake]

This has inspired me to do ✨something✨ I have no idea what though.

[@mateusnicolinibezerra9757]

We can do this bois

[@cyphermango]

This feel like a kurtkazurg video with extra step

[@ankitagrawal957]

Your videos are amazing and well-researched! Glad to have come across your channel. However, there was one error, the map you showed at 6:56 showed Kashmir to be part of Pakistan. Kashmir is an integral part of India, and we would really appreciate it if you could correct the error. Also, do you think quantum entanglement could help us communicate across the galaxies?

[@chicken_permission007]

Great video! A good presentation of the notion of creating a better future for others and ourselves through small actions in the grand scheme of things.

[@nikolaikiselev8609]

You just have answered my question of reason to be. And cure my depression

[@Drewer]

yes, civilization advances as fast as it's smallest cog, unless we take the time and fix them, we will not move. We might even go back see example of what happened this year.

[@KingOfTheDerp]

It's cool seeing a bunch of youtubers I like post about this topic today!

[@eugene-bright]

Matthew 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

[@aaronlaluzerne6639]

Well this applies that Human civilization won't come to an end this century and the Murphy's Law doesn't happen. That being that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

[@descai10]

What if almost all of our current possible trajectories lead to the end of the human race, and a less catastrophic event that decreases the population before recovering is the only way to avoid that doom and ensure humans survive into the far future?

[@GuGus963]

You and kurzgesagt synchronized on this one !! Nice :D

[@willfreakman86]

A lot of proponents of longtermism are rich people who have no concern for the well being of anyone buy themselves. They might claim to support good things like decarbonization, but all they really work towards is growing they're own bank accounts at everyone else's expense.

[@AndrewBrownK]

So what is the deal with all these KZbinrs pushing this philosopher's book all at the same time? It's got the smell of some kind of broader coordination, marketing with a sponsor without being transparent about the sponsor. It makes me uncomfortable, like I'm being treated as a target for propaganda.

[@prolamer7]

Hmm money, thats always the answer...

[@tristanreejakobsen6157]

ive already made a comment but heres another on this exact topic i personally dont think it will change the future a bit because scientific development is on a upward pointing hill the stuff theyll do in five hundred years wil probably be a lot more impactful because it is so much better than us or i could say it in another way every year you get a dollar and every year the number of dollars you get double then the first dollar dosent make a change to them much later

[@Piocoto123]

Loving this channel!!

[@guest_informant]

Reason 1 seems very subject to basic Confirmation Bias. Surely it's not whether there have been successful longtermist actions, but, inter alia, what proportion of longtermist actions have been successful, what proportion have had positive outcomes, what proportion have had negative outcomes etc. One immediate example, for instance, would be the Thousand Year Reich.

[@davidcarter8012]

I find it implausible that a given person of any era could make prescriptive judgements for the next era better than the people who actually live in that future era. I suspect that there are always a few people with good ideas and a lot of people with bad ideas. The only reason it seems like all those people could predict the future is survivirship bias. They got lucky and succeeded so we're talking about them. I think that there are a very few things that can truly be predicted for good or bad. Decarbonization being one of them.

[@eloujtimereaver4504]

The chaos theory proposed by the butterfly effect, despite being very popular, views the world far too simplisticly, disregards the well trodden laws of thermodynamics, and is also observably ridiculous. To say that the uncertainty of the future is intractable flies in the face of all action. Yes, we do not know what the future will be like, but we can always act toward a better one.

[@john80944]

I think, you're assuming that people will see themselves as part of "humanity" group, but in fact, that assumption might be majority opinion of entire population, not the actual opinion of individuals of human race. If you can't persuade people that they should work for humanity as a whole, then you will only get some happy accidents.

[@fsgdevil7959]

I think future technologies could vastly change all predictions in this video but a small change now could cause a chain reaction that helps humanity

[@APufferfish]

the technology I hope becomes invented the most is faster than light communication. it would really suck for humanity to split into sperate species that will advance, adapt, and entirely solve problems without being able to share the answers to those problems with other humans across the universe. be it through quantum entanglement/other quantum mechanics, or something we don't even know about yet, I just hate the idea that we would be helpless to even so much as know the situation of other humans, let alone help them.

[@Nulono]

I don't think we should take for granted that the Local Group will become isolated in the future; that's the same sort of nearsighted thinking that leads people to think humanity will die out when the Sun does. If a future K3 humanity values staying interconnected, there are ways to push the rest of our supercluster together against that expansion.

[@eliscerebralrecyclingbin7812]

Awesome!

[@anonperson3972]

To helpdrcarbonise the atmosphere and create a safety net for future disaster, we should use seaweed farms to produce large quatities of biofuel that we bury in old oil reservoirs underground.

[@KenH60109]

This is the kind of thinking that gets us to these kinds of levels. We need more of this. Problem is that this kind of thinking doesn’t mesh well with politics, also known as the ruler of man.

[@sulljoh1]

I'm already trying to push for decarbonization, but these are good arguments for use with skeptics

[@SirPhysics]

It is nice to see an argument for decarbonization which has nothing to do with climate change. Means you don't need to get buried in the weeds with people who want to deny the role burning fossil fuels has in changing the climate.

[@sulljoh1]

@@SirPhysics It's hard to believe CO2 has nothing to do with climate change these days

[@Baekstrom]

Hmm... Kurtzgesagt uploaded a video referring to the very same book on the same day as this video was uploaded. What a coincidence.

[@prolamer7]

There are no coincidences On wikipedia there are those lines.... so there is someone with big budget sponsoring this "MacAskill has been an advisor to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown" "Bill Gates describes him as "a data nerd after my own heart.""

[@Baekstrom]

@@prolamer7 That’s very interesting. Primer also released a video with a reference to that book. I wonder how many more that I don’t know about there are.