Robin Hanson: Alien Civilizations, UFOs, and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #292

1. 0:00 – 1:52

   Introduction

   1. RHRobin Hanson0:00

      We can actually figure out where are the aliens out there in space time by being clever about the few things we can see, one of which is our current date. And so now that you have this living cosmology, we can tell the story that the universe starts out empty, and then at some point, things like us appear, very primitive, and then some of those, uh, stop being quiet and expand. And then for a few billion years they expand and then they meet each other, and then for the next 100 billion years, they commune with each other. (laughs) That is, the usual models of cosmology say that in roughly a 100, 150 billion years, the expansion of the universe will happen so much that all you'll have, uh, left is some galaxy clusters and they... that are sort of disconnected from each other. But before then, they will interact. There will be this community of all the grabby alien civilizations, and each one of them will hear about and even meet thousands of others. And we might hope to join them someday and become part of that community.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:59

      The following is a conversation with Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, and one of the most fascinating, wild, fearless, and fun minds I've ever gotten to accompany for a time in exploring questions of human nature, human civilization, and alien life out there in our impossibly big universe. He is the co-author of a book titled The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, and a fascinating recent paper I recommend on, quote, "Grabby Aliens," titled, "If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens are also Rare." This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Robin Hanson.

2. 1:52 – 39:36

   Grabby aliens

   1. LFLex Fridman1:52

      You are working on a book about, quote, "grabby aliens." This is a technical term, like the Big Bang. Uh-

   2. RHRobin Hanson1:59

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:59

      ... so what are grabby aliens?

   4. RHRobin Hanson2:02

      Grabby aliens expand fast into the universe and they change stuff. (laughs) That's the key concept. So if they are out there, we would notice. That's the key idea. (laughs) So the question is, where are the grabby aliens? So Fermi's question is, where are the aliens? And we could vary that in two terms, right? Where are the quiet, hard-to-see aliens and where are the big, loud, grabby aliens?

   5. LFLex Fridman2:29

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RHRobin Hanson2:30

      So it's actually hard to say where all the quiet ones are, right? (laughs) There could be a lot of them out there, uh, 'cause they're not doing much, they're not making a big difference in the world. But the grabby aliens, by definition, are the ones you would see. We don't know exactly what they do with where they went, but the idea is they're in some sort of competitive world where each part of them is trying to, uh, grab more stuff- (laughs)

   7. LFLex Fridman2:54

      Mm.

   8. RHRobin Hanson2:54

      ... and do something with it. And, you know, almost surely whatever is the most competitive thing to do with all the stuff they grab isn't to leave it alone the way it started, right? So we humans, when we go around the earth and, and use stuff, we change it. We, we turn a forest into a farmland, turn a harbor into a city. So the idea is aliens would do something with it, and so we're not sh- exactly sure what it would look like, but it would look different. So somewhere in the sky, we would see big spheres of different activity where things had been changed because they had been there.

   9. LFLex Fridman3:29

      Expanding spheres.

   10. RHRobin Hanson3:30

       Right.

   11. LFLex Fridman3:30

       So as you expand, you aggressively interact and change the environment. And so the word grabby versus loud, you're using them sometimes synonymously, sometimes not. Grabby to me is a little bit more aggressive. What does it mean to be loud? What does it mean to be grabby? What's the difference? And loud in what way? Is it visual? Is it sound? Is it some other physical phenomena like gravitational waves? What... Are you using this kind of in a broad, philosophical sense, or there's a specific thing that it means to be loud in this universe of ours?

   12. RHRobin Hanson4:07

       My co-authors and I put together a paper with a particular mathematical model, and so we used the term grabby aliens to describe that more particular model, and the idea is it's a more particular model of the general concept of loud. So loud would just be the general idea that they would be really obvious.

   13. LFLex Fridman4:25

       Yeah. So grabby is the technical term. Is it in the title of the paper?

   14. RHRobin Hanson4:29

       It's in the body. (laughs)

   15. LFLex Fridman4:30

       (laughs)

   16. RHRobin Hanson4:30

       The title is actually about loud-

   17. LFLex Fridman4:32

       Okay.

   18. RHRobin Hanson4:32

       ... and quiet. (laughs)

   19. LFLex Fridman4:33

       Right. Well, I like grabby.

   20. RHRobin Hanson4:33

       And so the idea is there's, there's... You know, y- you wanna distinguish your particular model of things from the general category of things everybody else might talk about, so that's how we distinguished.

   21. LFLex Fridman4:41

       The paper title is "If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens are also Rare." "If life on Earth..." God, that's such a good abstract. "If life on Earth had to achieve-"

   22. RHRobin Hanson4:53

       N hard steps-

   23. LFLex Fridman4:54

       "... N hard steps to reach humanity's level, then the chance of this event rose as time to the Nth power." So we'll talk about power, we'll talk about linear increase. So what is the technical definition of grabby? W- How do you envision grabbiness, and why are, uh, in contrast with humans, why aren't humans grabby? So, like, where's that line? Is it well definable? What is grabby, and what is non-grabby?

   24. RHRobin Hanson5:23

       We have a mathematical model of the distribution of advanced civilizations, i.e. aliens, in space and time. That model has three parameters, and we can set each one of those parameters from data, and therefore we claim this is actually what we know about where they are in space time. (laughs) So the key idea is they appear at some point in space time, and then after some short delay, they start expanding, and they expand at some speed, and the speed is one of those parameters. That's one of the three. (laughs) And the other two parameters are about how they appear in time, that is they appear at random places.... and they appear in time according to a power law, and that power law has two parameters, and we can fit each of those parameters to data. And so then we can say, "Now we know."

   25. LFLex Fridman6:12

       Mm-hmm.

   26. RHRobin Hanson6:13

       We know the distribution of advanced civilizations in space and time. So, we are right now, a new civilization, and we have not yet started to expand. But plausibly, we would start to do that within say 10 million years of the mo- current moment.

   27. LFLex Fridman6:26

       (laughs)

   28. RHRobin Hanson6:26

       That's plenty of time. And 10 million years is a really short duration in the history of the universe. So, we are at the moment a sort of random sample of the kind of times at which an advanced civilization might appear, because we may or may not become grabby, but if we do, we'll do it soon. And so our current date is a sample, and that gives us one of the other parameters. (laughs) The second parameter is the constant in front of the power law, and that's arrived from our current date.

   29. LFLex Fridman6:52

       Mm-hmm. And so power law, what is the N in the, in the power law?

   30. RHRobin Hanson6:59

       So that's the more-
3. 39:36 – 45:10

   War and competition

   1. LFLex Fridman39:36

      Is the universe of alien civilizations defined by war as much or more than, uh, war defined human history?

   2. RHRobin Hanson39:49

      I would say it's defined by competition, and then the question is how much competition implies war. So, uh, up until recently, competition defined life on earth. (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman40:03

      Yes.

   4. RHRobin Hanson40:04

      Um, competition between species and organisms and among humans, competitions among individuals and communities, and that competition often took the form of war in the last 10,000 years. Um, many people now are hoping or even expecting to sort of suppress and end competition in human affairs. Uh, they regulate business competition, they prevent military competition, and that's a future I think a lot of people will like to continue and strengthen. People will like to have something close to world government or world governance, or at least a world community, and they will like to suppress war and any forms of business and personal competition over the coming centuries. And they may like that so much that they prevent interstellar colonization, which would become the end of that era. That is, inter- interstellar colonization would just return severe competition to human or our descendant affairs. And many civilizations may prefer that, and ours may prefer that. But if they choose to allow interstellar colonization, they will have chosen to allow competition to return with great force. That is, there's really not much of a way to centrally govern a rapidly expanding sphere of civilization. And so I think the, one of the most, you know, solid things we can predict about grabby aliens is they have accepted competition, and they have internal competition, and therefore, they have the potential for competition when they meet each other at the borders. But whether that's military competition is more of an open question.

   5. LFLex Fridman41:38

      So military meaning destr- physically destructive.

   6. RHRobin Hanson41:41

      Right. Um, hmm. So there, there's a lot to say there. So one i- idea that you kind of proposed is progress might be maximized through competition, through some kind of healthy competition, some definition of healthy. So like constructive, not destructive competition. So like we would likely... Grabby alien civilizations would be likely defined by competition because they can expand faster because they, competition allows innovation and sort of the battle of ideas with them. So the way I would take the logic is to say, you know, competition just happens if you can't coordinate to stop it. And you probably can't coordinate to stop it in an expanding interstellar wave.

   7. LFLex Fridman42:32

      So, so competition is a f- is a fundamental force in the universe?

   8. RHRobin Hanson42:37

      It has been so far, and it would be within an expanding grabby alien civilization, but we today have the chance, many people think and hope, of greatly controlling and limiting competition within our civilization for a while. And that's an interesting choice. (laughs) ... whether to allow competition to re- to sort of regain its full force, or whether to suppress and manage it.

   9. LFLex Fridman43:04

      Well, one of the open questions that has been raised in the past, um, less than 100 years is whether our desire to lessen the destructive nature of competition, or the destructive kind of competition, will be outpaced by the destructive power of our weapons. Sort of, uh, if nuclear weapons and weapons of that kind, um, become more destructive than our desire for peace, then it all- all it takes is one asshole at the party to ruin the party.

   10. RHRobin Hanson43:45

       It takes one asshole to make a delay, but not that much of a delay on the cosmological scales we're talking about.

   11. LFLex Fridman43:52

       I see.

   12. RHRobin Hanson43:52

       So even at vast-

   13. LFLex Fridman43:53

       You could still party on. (laughs)

   14. RHRobin Hanson43:54

       Even a vast nuclear war, if it happened here right now on earth-

   15. LFLex Fridman43:58

       Oh, that's dark. Yeah.

   16. RHRobin Hanson43:59

       ... it would not kill all humans.

   17. LFLex Fridman44:02

       Yes.

   18. RHRobin Hanson44:03

       It certainly wouldn't kill all life. And so human civilization would ret- turn within 100,000 years.

   19. LFLex Fridman44:10

       So all the history of atrocities, and, um, if you look at, uh, uh, the, the Black Plague-

   20. RHRobin Hanson44:22

       Right.

   21. LFLex Fridman44:23

       ... which is not human-caused atrocities or whatever.

   22. RHRobin Hanson44:26

       There are a lot of military-

   23. LFLex Fridman44:28

       Military.

   24. RHRobin Hanson44:28

       ... atrocities in history, absolutely.

   25. LFLex Fridman44:29

       In the 20th century. Those are, um, those challenge us to think about human nature but the cosmic scale of time and space, they do not stop the human spirit, essentially. The hu- humanity goes on. Through all the atrocities-

   26. RHRobin Hanson44:48

       Right.

   27. LFLex Fridman44:48

       ... it goes on. Life goes on.

   28. RHRobin Hanson44:49

       Most likely. So even a nuclear war isn't enough to destroy us or to stop our potential from expanding. But we could institute a- a s- regime of global governance that limited competition, including military and business competition, of sorts, and that could prevent our expansion.

   29. LFLex Fridman45:09

       Of course,

4. 45:10 – 58:01

   Global government

   1. LFLex Fridman45:10

      to play devil's advocate, um, global governance is centralized power, and power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. One of the aspects of competition that's been very productive is not letting any one person, any one country, any one center of power become absolutely powerful. Because that's another lesson is it seems to corrupt. There's something about ego in the human mind that seems to be corrupted by power. So when you say global governance, that terrifies me more than the possibility of war, because it's, uh, it ter-

   2. RHRobin Hanson45:57

      I- I think people will be less terrified than you are right now, and let me try to paint the picture from their point of view. This isn't my point of view-

   3. LFLex Fridman46:05

      Yes.

   4. RHRobin Hanson46:05

      ... but I think it's going to be a widely shared point of view.

   5. LFLex Fridman46:08

      Yes. This is two devil's advocates arguing, two devils.

   6. RHRobin Hanson46:11

      Okay? So for the last half century and into the continuing future, we actually have had a strong elite global community that shares a lot of values and beliefs and has created a lot of convergence in global policy. So if you look at electromagnetic spectrum or, uh, medical experiments or pandemic policy or nuclear power energy or regulating airplanes or just in a wide range of area, in fact the world has very similar regulations and rules everywhere. And it's not a coincidence because they are part of a world community where people get together at places like Davos, et cetera, where world elites want to be respected by other world elites, and they have a, you know, convergence of opinion, and that produces something like global governance, but without a global center. And this is sort of what human mobs or communities have done for a long time. That is, humans can coordinate together on shared behavior without a center by having gossip and reputation within a community of elites. And that is what we have been doing and are likely to do a lot more of. So for example, you know, one of the things that's happening, say, with the war in Ukraine is that this world community of elites has decided that they disapprove of the Russian invasion, and they are coordinating to pull resources together from all around the world in order to oppose it. And they are proud of that, (laughs) sharing that opinion, and they're- and they are, feel that they are morally justified in their stance there. And, um, that's this kind of event that actually brings world elite communities together, where they- they come together and they push a particular policy and p- position that they share and that they achieve successes. And the same sort of passion animates global elites with respect to, say, global warming or global poverty and other sorts of things. And they are in fact making progress on those sorts of things through shared global community of elites. And in some sense, they are slowly walking toward global governance, slowly strengthening various world institutions of governance, but cautiously, carefully watching out for the possibility of a single power that might corrupt it. I think a lot of people over the coming centuries will look at that history and like it. (laughs)

   7. LFLex Fridman48:38

      It's a interesting thought, and thank you for playing that devil's advocate there, but I think the elites too easily lose touch of-

   8. RHRobin Hanson48:51

      Of course.

   9. LFLex Fridman48:51

      ... of the morals that, uh, the best of human nature and power corrupts-

   10. RHRobin Hanson48:57

       Sure, but th-

   11. LFLex Fridman48:57

       ... and everything you just said.

   12. RHRobin Hanson48:58

       ... if their view is the one that determines what happens, their view may still end up there even if-... you or I might criticize it from that point of view, so.

   13. LFLex Fridman49:07

       From a perspective of minimizing human suffering, elites can use topics of the war in Ukraine, and climate change, and all of those things to sell an idea to the world. And, uh, with disregard to the amount of suffering it causes, their actual actions. So like-

   14. RHRobin Hanson49:32

       Right.

   15. LFLex Fridman49:32

       ... you can tell all kinds of narratives. That's the way propaganda works.

   16. RHRobin Hanson49:36

       Right.

   17. LFLex Fridman49:36

       Hitler, uh, really sold the idea that everything Germany is doing is either it's the victim, it's defending itself against the cruelty of the world, and it's actually trying to bring out a- about a better world. So, every power center thinks they're doing good. And so th- this is-

   18. RHRobin Hanson49:55

       Yeah.

   19. LFLex Fridman49:57

       ... uh, this is the positive of competition of not, of having multiple power centers. This kind of gathering of elites makes me very, very, very nervous. The dinners, the- the meetings in the closed rooms. I don't know. I, another-

   20. RHRobin Hanson50:17

       But remember we talked about separating our cold analysis of what's likely or possible from what we prefer, and so that's, this isn't exactly enough time for that. We might say, "I would recommend we don't go this route of a world, strong world governance." And, um, because I would say it'll preclude this possibility of becoming grabby aliens, of filling the next mi- nearest million galaxies for the next billion years with vast amounts of activity and interest and, and value of, of life out there. That's the thing we would lose by deciding that we wouldn't expand. That we would stay here and keep our comfortable shared governance.

   21. LFLex Fridman50:56

       So you, wait, you think that global governance, um, is l- makes it more likely or less likely that we expand out into the universe?

   22. RHRobin Hanson51:08

       Less.

   23. LFLex Fridman51:10

       Okay.

   24. RHRobin Hanson51:10

       So this is the key, this is the key point.

   25. LFLex Fridman51:12

       Right.

   26. RHRobin Hanson51:13

       (laughs)

   27. LFLex Fridman51:13

       Right. So screw the elites. (laughs)

   28. RHRobin Hanson51:16

       Right.

   29. LFLex Fridman51:16

       So first we want to expa- wait, do we want to expand?

   30. RHRobin Hanson51:19

       So again, I want to separate my neutral analysis-
5. 58:01 – 1:08:02

   Humanity's future

   1. RHRobin Hanson58:01

   2. LFLex Fridman58:02

      So, yeah, let's linger on the space of possible minds for a moment just to sort of humble ourselves of how peculiar our peculiarities are, like the fact that we like a particular kind of sex, and the fact that we eat food through one hole and poop through another hole. And that seems to be a fundamental aspect of life, v- is very important to us, (laughs) uh, and that life is finite in a certain kinda way with a meat vehicle, so death is very important to us. I wonder which aspects are fundamental or would be common throughout human history and also throughout th-, sorry, throughout history of life on Earth, and throughout other kinds of lives. Like, what is really useful? You mentioned competition-

   3. RHRobin Hanson58:56

      Right.

   4. LFLex Fridman58:56

      ...seems to be a one fundamental thing.

   5. RHRobin Hanson58:57

      So I've tried to do analysis of where our distant descendants might go in terms of what are robust features we could predict about our descendants.

   6. LFLex Fridman59:05

      Yes, yes.

   7. RHRobin Hanson59:05

      Is that... So, again, I have this analysis of sort of the next generation aft-, th- so the next era after ours, that if you think of human history as having three eras so far, right? There was the forager era, the farmer era, and the industry era, then my attempt in Age of Em is to analyze the next era after that. And, and it's very different, but, of course, there could be (laughs) more and more eras after that. So, you know, analyzing a particular scenario and thinking it through is one way to try to see how different the future could be, but that doesn't give you some sort of, like, sense of what's typical. Um, but I have tried to analyze what's typical, and so I, I have two predictions I think I, I can make pretty solidly. One thing is that we know at the moment that humans discount the future rapidly. So, uh, we discount the future in terms of caring about consequences roughly a factor of two per generation, and there's a solid evolutionary analysis why sexual creatures would do that, 'cause basically your, your descendants only share half of your genes, and your descendants are a generation away. So-

   8. LFLex Fridman1:00:05

      So we only care about our gr- grandchildren.

   9. RHRobin Hanson1:00:08

      Oh, you know, basically that a factor of four, (laughs) later-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:00:11

       Yeah.

   11. RHRobin Hanson1:00:12

       ...uh, because, you know, it's later. So this actually explains typical interest rates in the economy. That is, interest rates are greatly influenced by our discount rates, and, uh, we basically discount the future by a factor of two per generation. Um, but that's a side effect of the way our preferences evolved as sexually selected creatures. We should expect that in the longer run, creatures will evolve who don't discount the future. They will care about the long run, and they will therefore not neglect the long run. So, for example, for things like global warming or things like, you know, that, at the moment, many co- commenters, y- are sad that basically ordinary people don't seem to care much, market prices don't seem to care much, and ordinary people, it doesn't really impact them much because humans don't care much about the long-term future. (laughs) But, uh, and futurists find it hard to motivate people and to engage people about the long-term future because they just don't care that much. But that's a side effect of this particular way that our...... you know, preferences evolved about the future. And so, in the future, they will neglect the future less (laughs) . And that's an interesting thing that we'll, that we can predict robustly. Eventually, you know, maybe a few centuries, maybe longer, eventually our descendants will care about the future.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:01:25

       Can you, uh, speak to the intuition behind that? Is it, is it useful to think more about the future?

   13. RHRobin Hanson1:01:32

       Right. If, if evolution rewards creatures for having many descendants, then, uh, if you have decisions that influence how many descendants you have, then that would be good if you made those decisions. But in order to do that, you'll have to care about them, you'll have to care about that future, that is-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:01:47

       So, to push back, if, that's if you're trying to maximize the number of descendants. But, the nice thing about not caring too much about the long-term future is you're more likely to take big risks, or you're more, you're less risk averse. And it's possible that the evo- both evolution and just life in this, in, in the universe is rewarded, rewards the risk-takers.

   15. RHRobin Hanson1:02:11

       Well, we actually have analysis of the ideal risk preferences (laughs) too. So there's, uh, literature on ideal preferences, uh, that evolutions to promote. And, for example, there's literature on competing investment funds and what the managers of those funds should care about in terms of risk, various kinds of risks-

   16. LFLex Fridman1:02:29

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RHRobin Hanson1:02:29

       ... and in terms of discounting. So, uh, managers of investment funds should basically have logarithmic risk, i.e., in collect- in shared risk, in correlated risk, but be very risk take, risk-neutral with respect to uncorrelated risks. So, um, that's a feature that's predicted to happen about individual pers- personal choices in biology, and also for investment funds. So that's other things, that's also something we can say about the long run.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:02:58

       What's correlated and uncorrelated risk?

   19. RHRobin Hanson1:03:02

       If there's something that would affect all of your descendants-

   20. LFLex Fridman1:03:04

       (laughs)

   21. RHRobin Hanson1:03:06

       ... then, uh, if you take that risk, you might have more descendants, but you might have zero (laughs) , and that's just really bad, to have zero descendants. But an uncorrelated risk would be a risk that some of your descendants would suffer but others wouldn't.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:03:19

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RHRobin Hanson1:03:19

       And then you have a portfolio of descendants, and so that portfolio insures you against problems with any one of them.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:03:26

       I like the idea of portfolio of descendants. And we'll talk about portfolios with, with your idea of, that you briefly mentioned, we'll return there with EM, E-M, The Age of E.M.: work, love, and life when robots rule the Earth. EM, by the way, is emulated minds. So this-

   25. RHRobin Hanson1:03:42

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:03:42

       ... one of the...

   27. RHRobin Hanson1:03:44

       EM is short for emulations.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:03:46

       EM is short for emulations, and it's kind of an idea of how we might create artificial minds, artificial copies of minds, or human-like intelligences.

   29. RHRobin Hanson1:03:57

       I have another dramatic prediction I can make about long-term preferences.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:04:00

       Let's go. Yes.
6. 1:08:02 – 1:35:06

   Hello aliens

   1. LFLex Fridman1:08:02

      there. But let me, in terms of, uh, aliens, let me go, let, let me analyze your Twitter like it's Shakespeare.

   2. RHRobin Hanson1:08:09

      (laughs) Okay.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:08:10

      There's a tweet that says, uh, "Define 'hello," in quotes, "alien civilizations as one that might, in the next million years, identify humans as intelligent and civilized, travel to Earth, and say hello by making their presence and advanced abilities known to us." The next 15 polls... This is a Twitter thread. The next 15 polls ask about such hello aliens, and what these polls ask is, uh, your Twitter followers, what they think those aliens would be like, certain particular qualities. So, uh, poll number one is, "What percent of hello aliens evolved from biological species with two main genders?" And, uh, you know, the, the popular vote is, uh, above 80%. So most of them have two genders. What do you think about that? I'll ask you about some of these 'cause they're so interesting. It's such an interesting question.

   4. RHRobin Hanson1:09:02

      Well, it, it is a fun set of questions.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:09:03

      Yes.

   6. RHRobin Hanson1:09:03

      I, I like that.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:09:04

      It's a fun set of questions. So the genders as we look through evolutionary history, uh, what's the usefulness of that as opposed to having just one or, like, millions?

   8. RHRobin Hanson1:09:13

      So there's a question in, in evolution to life on Earth, there are very few species that have more than two genders. There are some, but there are, they aren't very many. But there's an enormous number of species that do have two genders, much more than one. (laughs) And so there's a literature on why did multiple genders evolve, and then sort of what's the point of having males and females versus hermaphrodites. Um, so most plants are hermaphrodites. That is, they have, they're, they, they would mate male/female, but each plant can be either role. (laughs) And then most animals have chosen to split into males and females, uh, and then they're differentiating the two genders, and, you know, there's a interesting set of questions about why that happens.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:09:56

      'Cause you can do selection. You, you basically have, um, like, one gender competes for, for the affection of other, and there's sexual partnership that creates the offspring so there's sexual selection, and it's nice to have, uh, a, like a, uh, to a party, it's nice to have dance partners, and then-

   10. RHRobin Hanson1:10:14

       Right.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:10:14

       ... you g- they, each one get to choose based on certain characteristics, and that's an efficient mechanism for adapting to the environment, being successfully adaptive to the environment.

   12. RHRobin Hanson1:10:24

       It does look like there's an advantage in L- if you have males, then the males can take higher variance, and so there can be stronger selection among the males in terms of weeding out genetic mutations because the males have higher variance in their mating success.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:10:39

       Sure, okay.

   14. RHRobin Hanson1:10:40

       (laughs)

   15. LFLex Fridman1:10:40

       Uh, question number two, "What percent of hello aliens evolved from land animals as opposed to plants or ocean/air organisms?" By the way, I did, um, recently see that there's, uh, only 10% of species on Earth are on the ocean. So there's a lot more-

   16. RHRobin Hanson1:11:02

       Right.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:11:02

       ... variety on land.

   18. RHRobin Hanson1:11:04

       There is.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:11:05

       It's, it's interesting. So why is that? I don't even, I can't even intuit exactly why that would be. Maybe survival on land is harder, and so you get a lot more-

   20. RHRobin Hanson1:11:15

       So the story that I understand is it's about small niches. So speciation, uh, can be promoted by having multiple different species. So in the ocean, species are larger. That is, there are more creatures in each species because the ocean environments don't vary as much. So if you're good in one place, you're good in many other places. But, you know, on land and especially in rivers, rivers contain an enormous percentage of the kinds of species on land, you see, because they vary so much- (laughs)

   21. LFLex Fridman1:11:45

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RHRobin Hanson1:11:45

       ... uh, from place to place. And so s- a species can be good in one place, and then other species can't really compete because, uh, they came from a different place where things are different. So, um, it's, uh, a remarkable fact actually that, uh, speciation promotes evolution in the long run. That is, more evolution has happened on land because there have been more species on land because each species has been smaller. And that's actually a warning about something, or something called rot that I've, I've thought a lot about, which is one of the problems with a, even a world government, which is, large systems of software today just consistently rot (laughs) and decay with time, and have to be replaced, and that plausibly also is a problem for other large systems, including biological systems, legal systems, regulatory systems. And, um, it seems like large species actually don't evolve as effectively as small ones do, (laughs) and that's a important thing to notice about. And so, and that's actually indif- that's different from ordinary sort of, um, evolution in economies on Earth in the last few centuries, say. Um, you know, on Earth, ev- the more technical evolution and economic growth happens in larger integrated cities and nations, (laughs) but in biology, it's the other way around. More evolution happened in the fragmented species.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:12:59

       Yeah, it, it, it's such a nuanced discussion 'cause you can also push back in terms of nations and, and at least companies. It's like large companies seems to evolve less effectively. There is something that, you know, they have more resources, more, um-They don't even have better resilience in, when you look at the scale of decades and centuries. It seems like a lot of large companies die.

   24. RHRobin Hanson1:13:25

       But still large economies do better. Like large cities grow better than small cities. Lar- large integrated economies like the United States or the European Union do better than small fragmented ones. So-

   25. LFLex Fridman1:13:35

       Yeah.

   26. RHRobin Hanson1:13:36

       ... even...

   27. LFLex Fridman1:13:36

       Sure. It's, it's, that's a very interesting long discussion. But so most of the people, and obviously votes on Twitter, um, represent the absolute, uh, objective truth of things, so most-

   28. RHRobin Hanson1:13:49

       But an interesting question about oceans is that, okay, remember I told you about how most planets would last for trillions of years.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:13:54

       Yes.

   30. RHRobin Hanson1:13:55

       And, and be later, right? So people have tried to explain why life appeared on Earth by saying, "Oh, all those planets are gonna be unqualified for life because of various problems." That is, they're around smaller stars which last longer, and smaller stars have some things like more solar flares, maybe more tidal locking. But almost all these problems with longer to live planets aren't problems for ocean worlds. And there are a large fraction of planets out there are o- ocean worlds. So if life can appear on an ocean world, then, uh, that pretty much ensures that these, these planets that last a very long time could have advanced life because most, you know, there's a huge fraction of ocean worlds.

Episode duration: 4:13:30