What Happens If Robots Automate The World? - John Danaher | Modern Wisdom Podcast 291

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Do we try to…

   1. JDJohn Danaher0:00

      Do we try to fight back against the machines and reclaim our dominance of the cognitive niche, or do we try and retreat from the cognitive niche and, you know, let the, kind of, machines watch over us and look after our economic well-being, our m- needs, our, kind of, needs for abundance and affluence and so forth, and do something else?

   2. CWChris Williamson0:19

      (wind blows) Before we get started, there is a very famous Brazilian jiu-jitsu teacher who shares your name. Did you know this?

   3. JDJohn Danaher0:28

      I, I am all too aware of this fact, yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:30

      Yeah. So (laughs) I, I posted a big list of upcoming guests (laughs) on my Instagram, and they were like, "Mate, I didn't know that you were interested in Brazilian jiu-jitsu." And I'm thinking, "Does a guy who talks about, like, automation and robots also do Brazilian jiu-jitsu training?" But it turns out that it's just, it's just two different interesting people.

   5. JDJohn Danaher0:52

      Yeah. Your, um, g- your fans probably got very excited when they thought it was the other John Denner. He's, he's got a much higher profile than me .

   6. CWChris Williamson0:59

      Li- little do they know that they actually wanted to learn about robots. So what, what are we going to be talking about today? What's the, what's the topic of our discussion?

   7. JDJohn Danaher1:07

      Yeah, so we're gonna talk about this, uh, book that I wrote a couple of years ago on automation and utopia, which is kind of a very, you know, abstract, (laughs) philosophical look at the meaning of life in a post-work world. If, if robots take all our jobs away, what are we going to do with our time, and will we be able to find meaning and flourish?

   8. CWChris Williamson1:28

      These sorts of questions are very common at the moment, I think. You know, it, it seems like every other week someone is referring to, like, when the robots take our jobs in a news article.

   9. JDJohn Danaher1:38

      Yeah, I mean, it's been a fairly persistent theme in popular media and, kind of, academic discussions as well for the past decade or so. I'd say it really kind of took off after the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent recession. Uh, y- ironically, it was probably starting to ebb away a little bit more recently due to the uptick in the economy in the past couple of years, but I think COVID-19 has really kickstarted the discussion once more, yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson2:03

       An interesting thing I heard today on Ben Shapiro's show was concerns about Joe Biden raising the US minimum wage to $15, uh, encouraging many employers to replace workers with automation precisely for that reason, that if it costs X thousand, ten thousand, hundreds of thousands of pounds to install the robot system, the more that you raise the minimum wage, the more and more that becomes competitive.

   11. JDJohn Danaher2:34

       Yeah, I mean, so I think, like, Economics 101 would tell you if you raise the price of anything, if you raise the price of labor, you're going to make it less attractive for employers. Uh, there, I mean, I, I don't know exactly whether the rise in the minimal wage in the US to $15 would, uh, would kickstart a w- a wave of automation or whether we're in fact in the midst of a wave anyway, that, you know, this is just a, kind of a minor nudge along the path. Uh, there was an interesting World Economic Forum report a couple of months ago about the impact of COVID-19 on automation, which had a survey of business leaders around the world and the percentage of them that were looking to, um, automate their workforces. I think it was about 41% of employers are looking to increase the amount of automation at the moment, and then I believe it's, again, somewhere in the 40 percentage range w- of people who want to increase the amount of outsourcing of labor that they do, and there was, was only a handful of, of employers that were actually looking to expand the workforce in, in the wake of COVID-19.

   12. CWChris Williamson3:32

       Is human obsolescence imminent?

   13. JDJohn Danaher3:37

       Yeah. S- I mean, that's the sentence that I used to open the, the book, and it's, uh, a little bit of hyperbole. That's what I've said to everybody that's interviewed me on this. It's a little bit of rhetorical hyperbole. I think that obsolescence is, you know, becoming less useful in certain endeavors or, or growing out of fashion or something like that, you know, the same way, like, your phone obsolesces over time. It becomes taken over by better technology. So the, the idea that I start the book with is this sense that maybe humans are obsolescing in more and more, more and more domains of activity, and we've seen this historically happen in agriculture and manufacturing industries, being the, the classic examples of obsolescence due to technology, and now I think we're starting to see it in a range of other professions, from, you know, finance to l- the law profession, even into branches of government where there is increased use of automated technologies like, you know, algorithmic prediction tools or robotics to replace human workers or human decision-makers.

   14. CWChris Williamson4:44

       How about rolling that forward? There's a lot of talk about while, yeah, robots might have been able to replace weavers and, and, and plowers and stuff like that, but they're, they're not going to be able to replace more complex things.

   15. JDJohn Danaher4:59

       Yeah, I mean, there's a famous, um, paradox. It was invented by a guy called Hans Moravec back in the late '80s called Moravec's paradox, which is about the fact that, um, a lot of what we, what we historically have called kind of abstract thought, um, kind of, high-level thinking is actually relatively easy to automate because it's h- you know, it's very simple. It involves routines and rule-following behavior, so it's relatively easy, although it was pretty hard to create a chess-playing computer that could beat the best human players. It's much more difficult, it turns out, to create things that are capable of doing very, kind of, fine-ranged dextrous physical movements in a, a changing en- environment. Um, so Moravec said this was a paradox, that what we think of as very complex work is actually relatively easy to automate, but, um, things that we think are straightforward and easy, like walking from across a bumpy field, turns out to be pretty difficult to automate.

   16. CWChris Williamson5:57

       (laughs) Yeah, but not dancing or doing backflips based on what Boston Dynamics are doing.

   17. JDJohn Danaher6:03

       Yeah, I mean, Boston Dynamics are, are showing that even Moravec's paradox is now becoming, you know, less, less salient. Um, you know, there's a lot of dispute about those videos that they released, as to, uh, you know, how carefully curated they are and to what extent the- these robots are really engaging in those behaviors autonomously without a lot of, kind of, training in advance and a lot of control of the environments that they're in. But I, I'm certainly impressed by the, what they've been able to achieve in the past few years. It looks like they are really kinda pushing the boat out on, on that level of automation. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, just kind of to go, go back to your point, uh, kind of lost the track a little bit there, uh, I think we are seeing the automation of a lot of knowledge work nowadays, particularly where that knowledge work is somehow, you know, re- relatively routine, um, searching through information, spotting patterns in information. So you're seeing that to some extent in the medical profession with the use of automation in diagnostic techniques. You're seeing it in the legal profession. So I, you know, I teach law, I teach at a law school, so this is the background that I come from. So you're seeing an increased automation of certain tasks that lawyers do now, such as searching through documents or even basic forms of legal research and developing legal argumentation are now being automated.

   18. CWChris Williamson7:22

       Is there anything that you think won't become automated? Is there a, a last bastion or some final stands?

   19. JDJohn Danaher7:29

       Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm really not sure. I think in principle I would say that there's nothing that can't be automated, and that, that kind of comes from a deep philosophical assumption that I have is that, in a sense, humans are just complex machines, complex biological machines. I don't think there's anything, you know, special or magical about humans. There's no supernatural essence or soul to them. That's, that's the perspective that I come at this from. So, in principle, we could create similarly complex machines. It's been done once. Uh, nature did it through evolution, so it seems possible that we could do it ourselves through kind of our own intelligence or with assistance from machines themselves in designing more complex machines. Uh, but, I mean, at, at the moment, it seems that there's lots of things that aren't going, uh, under a, kind of an immediate threat of being automated. Um, at least, you know, we're not going to have human equivalents for certain kinds of tasks. But, uh, you don't always have to have human equivalents for something to be replaced. You can, you can have a, a cheaper, more efficient robot that isn't necessarily better at a task. Might still be more attractive to, uh, an employer or a business owner. So, uh, you've got to think about it in those terms.

   20. CWChris Williamson8:45

       Why would technological unemployment be desirable for us?

   21. JDJohn Danaher8:50

       Well, I mean, so th- that kind of comes from a combination of two things, I suppose. Um, one is that, uh, one of the arguments that I make in the book, in a chapter that's, you know, somewhat, um, I guess, provocatively titled, called Why You Should Hate Your Job, is that I think that a lot of, a lot of work in the modern world is pretty unpleasant, it has a number of negative features to it, and i- it's being made worse oftentimes by technology. Um, even, even when machines don't completely replace humans, humans have to work alongside machines in such a way that actually disimproves the, the quality of, of th- of their work. Um, and then I think it would be desirable to maybe kind of hasten the automation of work, because there are alternatives to working for a living that would be better. But I mean, I, I will say that that argument kind of hinges on, uh, you know, how you define work and a kind of deeper discussion about what it means for humans to, to flourish and live better lives-

   22. CWChris Williamson9:54

       Yeah, precise-

   23. JDJohn Danaher9:55

       ... which we don't have to go into, but ...

   24. CWChris Williamson9:56

       Yeah, that was, that was one thing I thought about. Like, I quite like this job. I, I actually can't believe that I've just referred to it as a job. I enjoy having these conversations. I don't want some shiny robot bastard to come and take this microphone off me.

   25. JDJohn Danaher10:10

       Yeah, and I mean, so th- this is the thing that, the observation that I start that chapter of the book with, is that I quite like my job as well. I mean, one of the reasons that I, I like my job is that for the most part, it doesn't feel like a job either. I am an academic, and I get to spend most of my time sitting in my office at home, even pre-COVID times, that's what I did.

   26. CWChris Williamson10:30

       (laughs) Yeah.

   27. JDJohn Danaher10:31

       Read books and write about things that interest me, and nobody's telling me what to do. And, um, I find that quite, well, um, self-actualizing and meaningful. I think I'm probably one of the lucky ones, and I think you're probably one of the lucky ones too. Um, you know, you've, you've managed to kind of craft this space for yourself. There's kind of ... I don't know, should preface all this by saying I don't know exactly e- everything that you do apart from this podcast. But l- if I assume that this podcast is your major, like, form of work, then it seems like, you, you know, you've kind of crafted a, a space for yourself, an audience for yourself that, um, you kind of get to dictate the terms of your own life in a way that a lot of people would find enviable. I suppose my observation in the book is that most of us, or most people in the world don't have that kind of luxury, and that I'm relatively privileged in my kind of job and what I get to do, and, uh, you are also relative pr- relatively privileged. There's lots of people who have started podcasts who aren't successful and, uh, haven't managed to turn it into a way of life. You know, you're one of the superstars out there that's, uh, managed to do that, um ...

   28. CWChris Williamson11:41

       Don't people find, like, mastery and community and status and other stuff in work, they might not love it, but it gives them a sense of meaning. I remember seeing a bunch of different studies about people who retire earlier, just how much sooner they die.

   29. JDJohn Danaher11:55

       Yeah, I mean, I think work is certainly a source of good things for people. It's, it's a, a source of, um, as you say, mastery, you can master a skill set, gain this sense of pride and achievement from the work that you do. It's also, for many people, it's their main source of community. It's, it's-... you would have to work every day for a certain number of hours, and so that they have to associate with certain people that they work with, and that they c- h- can build meaningful relationships in that way. Um, it's also a source, uh, a source of social status. We live in societies, for the most part, that really valorize work, and that think, you know, having a job is having a s- a stable income, being able to provide for people. That's, um, kind of the, the be-all and end-all of life. I suppose, like, what I would say about that is that e- e- I'm, I'm certainly willing to accept that work is a source of good things for many people. I guess the question is whether we can find those things in other outlets outside of work, and whether there's a sense in which work is a source of those things for many people because they have no other option. You know, work, they have to work. You know, it's a matter of economic n- necessity for them to work. They're not gonna be able to survive without it, and so they have to find those things in work. There's no oth- no other forum for them to do so. And I would also say that, uh, uh, even though people make those claims about work being a, you know, a source of community, providing a sense of mastery, and so forth, um, I think it's also true for a lot of people that it's not a source of those things, and that, actually, what they do outside of work, with their hobbies, with their friends, with their families, is, uh, been more of a source of meaning than work for a lot of people. It's kind of a means to an end and a form of, of drudgery. I mean, I do cite this example in, in the book, um, and I- I'm certainly not claiming that this is the only evidence for this proposition or idea, or the best evidence, but the polling firm Gallup have, have frequently done these kind of state of the global workforce surveys every few years. And one of ... Certainly for the past decade and a half, one of their consistent findings in those surveys is that most people are not actively engaged by their work. In fact, I think within, you know, Europe, the European Union area, the average is about 10% of people are actively engaged at work. In the US it's a little bit higher, it's something like 30%. But in nowhere in the world does it crack through, like, 40, 50% of people being actively engaged, enthused by their work. Most people seem to find it, kind of mundane, a little bit monotonous, um, and not, kind of, their main source of, of pride or, um, mastery.

   30. CWChris Williamson14:35

       And when you think that that's something you're spending 40,000 hours of your life doing, ish, even if you don't necessarily have a job for life, if you kind of vacillate from all right job to slightly less shit job to whatever it might be, yeah, I, I, I think a lot of the stuff, upon reading your book, you really need (laughs) , you need to remove

2. 15:00 – 30:00

   And if it wasn't…

   1. CWChris Williamson15:00

      the visceral response that you have to some of the things that come up. So for instance, talking about the fact that, "Well, don't people find community at work?" And you're like, "Well, yeah, I mean, they find community at work, but would you be friends with those people if it wasn't for the fact that you're at work?" Like, would you-

   2. JDJohn Danaher15:18

      And if it wasn't for the fact that you have to look up to them maybe to-

   3. CWChris Williamson15:21

      ... well, yeah, and i- it's-

   4. JDJohn Danaher15:22

      ... succeed or

   5. NANarrator15:23

      Something like this, isn't it?

   6. CWChris Williamson15:23

      ... we're all in this together, it's part of this sort of common cause that we've got. Like, if the only thing that you and somebody else have bonded over is the way that you acquire resources through somebody else who is taking on all of the risk, (sighs) you know, y- I'm sure that you can find soulmates, both sort of romantically and in terms of friendships, in jobs, but I, I don't think that we should kid ourselves that we're bonding over the job. We are in a job with someone else, and we have managed to find common ground between us outside of the job. And the same thing goes for, like, everything else. Like, like you said, status. Like, what does it mean to be a carpenter, farmer, hair, hairdresser, you know, what, pick whatever it might be. Like, yeah, that gives you status, but is that the best status that you could give you? Like, is that the highest form of your actualization that you could have got to? And sadly, we never get to split test our own lives, which I've always thought would be a fantastic idea. Like, if whoever's running the simulation could allow us to do that, and just allow me to A/B split test a bunch of different decisions, that'd be phenomenal, but we never get to do that. And you don't know if the fact that you chose to be a hairdresser instead of a masseuse, or a PT instead of an accountant, or whatever it might be, you don't ever know that, i- what degree of flourishing you've actually managed to get yourself to.

   7. JDJohn Danaher16:48

      Yeah, I mean, I, I guess p- part of me thinks that maybe that's (laughs) one of the tragedies of human life is that we, we don't get to run the experiment again. Um, I, I guess, you know, it's more true nowadays that people have the opportunity to experiment a little bit with their profession, and as you said earlier, vacillate about from job to job and try different things out, and that's more tolerated. A lot of people don't really, you know, settle down in a kind of meaningful sense until they're into their, their 30s, probably, in, in most kind of developed e- economies. Whereas, I guess, you know, my, my parents' generation, you entered your job when you were 18, when you left school, and you stayed in that job for the next 40 years. I mean, my, my father, that's literally what happened. I mean, he, he entered the bank (laughs) when he was 18 years old and he stayed there until he retired, you know?

   8. CWChris Williamson17:32

      (laughs) Left, left when he was 65, yeah (laughs) .

   9. JDJohn Danaher17:35

      Uh, so he'd, he definitely didn't get to split test his life. He, he had kind of one pa- one path through life, and that was the norm a generation ago. So I think we're in a, a little bit of a better position when it comes to that. But, uh, y- your general argument or idea, I thi- is right, that, um, we s- I, I think there's a, a probably a lot of, you know, post-hoc rationalization on this.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:56

       Massively. Massively so.

   11. JDJohn Danaher17:57

       You know, it's, "Well, I'm in, I'm in this job, I'm working with these people, I have to get along with them, and I'm, you know, actually, they have some good features, and, yeah, I'll go for a couple of drinks with them," and suddenly they're my, my friends f- for life, and then my work is my, my source of, of meaning and status 'cause it's the c-... thing that kind of occupies my attention all day long. And so we don't, we don't get to consider those alternative options and see whether there are other ways in which we could flourish. And, you know, there's a lot of sunk costs involved for a lot of people as well, and this isn't actually something that I, I really got into in the book, but it's something I, I talk about a lot because I, it's a thing I teach on, on finance and the world of banking. And one of the courses I teach is just the level of indebtedness in the modern world and how, you know, people have kind of less disposable income and, um, kind of less options, uh, as a result of this. And I, I think this kind of leads to this sunk-cost fallacy in life that, "Well, I'm, I'm kind of stuck in this rut, and I can't afford to run the alternative experiment." And it's only probably when people really hit rock bottom or they're forced out of the position that they've been in that they do get to run that split test on their life, so to speak.

   12. CWChris Williamson19:09

       Yeah. What, in your opinion, is the good life? How do people find meaning and flourishing while we're alive?

   13. JDJohn Danaher19:18

       Yeah. Well, look, I mean this is a, a topic that could fill a thousand podcasts and, uh, in a sense, many of your podcasts have dealt with this theme in, in the past, based on what I've seen. Um, I don't have any, like, you know, radical new answers to, to that question, apart from re- repeating what, you know, philosophers and psychologists have been, been saying for, for centuries. Uh, I mean, at a very abstract level, the way in which people think about the, the good life is probably a combination of your subjective satisfaction with your life, your, you know, the, the amount of pleasure you have, the desires that you fulfill, the goals that you achieve in life. Those, those are markers of having a good life. And then combined with that, the objective value of your, the things that you're doing in life, what you produce for the world, what you achieve in the world, whether those are good things. So, uh, the, I guess, the philosophical view is that you could spend your entire life counting the blades of grass in your back garden, and may- like, maybe you're really happy doing that and satisfied. Maybe some, you know, AI has planted a little chip in your brain and say that this is, you know, a real source of pleasure. It's like the equivalent of crack cocaine for you or something. But that doesn't look like a good life in, in a philosophical sense because you're not doing anything that has, you know, objective value or, or meaning. So one, one of the accounts that I look at in the book is, uh, an account of the good life from a philosopher called Susan Wolf, where she talks about the so-called fitting fulfillment theory of, of the good life or the meaningful life, that it's one where you're doing something that is objectively worthwhile, that is fitting, and you are fulfilled by doing that thing. And I think you probably need that, the combination of those two things. In, in terms of like wha- what kinds of things have objective value, well, again, there, there are kind of standard answers to that. There's, you know, doing good things for the world, for other people, you know, making their lives morally better, alleviating their suffering, um, there's achieving kind of break- breakthroughs in, in knowledge, producing knowledge or information or goods that are valuable to others in, in the world, and I guess there's also, like, art and aesthetic, um, production and appreciation as part of the good life. The, the philosophical slogan that sums this up is that things that are worthwhile in life are the good, the true, and the beautiful. That's the triumvirate of meaning in life.

   14. CWChris Williamson21:47

       I'm just about to finish The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, and he finishes the book, um, by contesting the happiness comes from within, uh, Buddhist claim, and he talks about something similar, which is happiness comes from within and without. Um, and he's talking about this, this two-way street, um, and I th- I wonder how much of that is part of a, uh, i- i- is jaded by a society that's a meritocracy, that's one where you are what you can do, w- very much about creation and, and, um, tacitly th- things being there, you know? We make things happen, we do stuff as a society right now, um, and I wonder whether we do that because we know that we can. We push people to try and create things and try and add objective value to the world because we know that that's an option for them, whereas if you're a, a serf in Romania in, like, the 1400s, I don't even know if they had serfs in Romania in the four- you know what I mean, someone hoeing the fields and stuff like that, like, would, would it be as, uh, forefront of the way that philosophy looks at, looks at this stuff if people didn't have the option to do it?

   15. JDJohn Danaher23:02

       Yeah, I mean, thi- this is a, a good question. I mea- I, I think that in the modern era, we probably are too wedded to this maybe objectivist and productivist view of what provides meaning in life, that it's, it's all about producing good things, and that a- actually oftentimes prod- uh, doing that, for many people, isn't a source of, of fulfillment. I, I guess the, you know, classical Stoic view is that, um, you know, the only thing that you get to control is your own kind of perception o- of reality and how you interpret events and, and, um, how you understand them, and that you can't rely too much on external phenomena or even d- producing good things in the world because it's subject to so many contingencies and, and luck. And it, it's a mistake to attach your happiness to things that aren't completely within your control. And of course, you know, that idea, of c- is a feature of m- a lot of modern psychotherapy too. You know, cognitive behavioral therapy is essentially premised on that ancient Stoic ideal (laughs) , right, of controlling your perception of events, that y- you shouldn't be too attached to the approval of others or attached to achievement as, as a source of kind of meaning and happiness in, in life. Um, so I mean, uh, there's certainly part of me that is attracted to the kind of classic Stoic view that-... you've got to focus on your perception of events and the things that are within your control. I do-

   16. CWChris Williamson24:25

       Okay.

   17. JDJohn Danaher24:25

       ... think that the, the productivist ideal of, of what the good life is, is dangerous insofar as a lot of those objective goods, like, you know, doing good things for the world, making the world a morally better place, or achieving some kind of great insight and some truth, or producing something of value for the world, they, those tend to be r- relatively elitist goods. Like, there's, there's probably only a handful of people that really get to achieve those objectively good things for the world. And I'm, you know, I'm not saying that I don't ... it's impossible for me to do good things for my friends and family, but the actual ... the scope of my influence is relatively minimal. Um, so I th- I do think it would be wise to kinda reign in this attachment to producing good things as a, as a source of meaning. Uh, like, in one sense, you could read the book that I've written as a, as a way of arguing that, arguing for that hypothesis, or for that idea, even though it, it's probably not something I brought explicitly to the forefront of the book. But now that we're talking about it, it's something that i- kind of occurs to me and ...

   18. CWChris Williamson25:29

       I think it aligns as well. Okay, so let's say that it is a good, uh, or that, uh, someone's proposing automation should occur. What are the strongest criticisms against letting it happen?

   19. JDJohn Danaher25:42

       I mean, uh, the automation, um, kind of letting it run rampant in, in human life. Well, I mean, the, the most obvious criticism of it is, and this unfortunately is not something I engage with in the book, is, what, what does it actually do to people's lives from an economic perspective? Because at the, at the moment work is, uh, an economic necessity for people. It's how they gain access to an income, and they need an income in order to survive and thrive. Y- and you can lament that fact or regret that fact, but that's just, uh, a reality in the modern world. And, you know, it's more true in some countries than others. In some countries where you have fairly robust safety nets and welfare that kind of protect people from the harsh realities of losing their job. I guess one of the interesting features of the COVID-19 pandemic is how a lot of governments have stepped in to provide even more supports for people who've lost their jobs. Um, somewhat, um, reasonably generous supports in comparison to what was, uh, previously there. Although that's always been on the assumption that it's a, it's a temporary stopgap measure, and that keeps

   20. CWChris Williamson26:51

       That keeps already getting extended.

   21. JDJohn Danaher26:53

       ... very clearly. Keeps getting extended and you're kind of wondering, like, how much longer can it be extended for. Um, but yeah, I mean, so losing your income is gonna be the main (laughs) kind of objection to automation. So un- unless there's something done to correct for this loss of income-

   22. CWChris Williamson27:09

       Bring that, bring that floor up, yeah.

   23. JDJohn Danaher27:11

       ... it's gonna be pretty ... Yeah, it's gonna be a pretty bad thing for a lot of people, and you can kind of see that happening to some extent already. Um, and I mean, more generally I think there are objections to the impact that automation is having on human wellbeing. Uh, kind of not just in a purely economic sense. Uh, I discuss kind of five problems in the book that I think are already apparent, but are likely to get worse the more automation there is. Uh, one problem is kind of linked back to the conversation we were just having about, you know, what it takes to live a good life in the sense that you need both subjective satisfaction and some kind of connection to the world around you to be doing things that are good for the world around you. Um, look, a very obvious point is that the whole purpose of automation is to sever that link between human effort and production in the, in the world, so that, you know, uh, humans aren't needed for producing that good. And that's happening, like, not just in jobs, it's also happening in other spheres of life. I mean, one example that I look at i- in the book is in scientific inquiry. Now, like, these are very kind of preliminary, um, tech- uh, preliminary forms of technology, but there's a group of researchers in, in Aberystwyth in Wales actually who've produced these robot scientists who are able to review the scientific literature, generate their own hypothesis, and test it. Um, the, the two, I think the two robot scientists that they've created that I remember reading about were Adam and Eve, they're both called ... have different names, and yeah, they were doing a fairly, you could say, basic research on testing different kinds of, uh, creating t- new kinds of yeast and, uh, different kind of drug treatments. But it's a, it's an interesting proof of concept that you could actually have scientists, like, not just assisting in the process of scientific inquiry, but actually autonomously generating their own hypotheses and testing them. And, you know, there, there's sometimes this notion that if we don't work, we'll just kind of swan around and have more time for, um, scientific inquiry and intellectual endeavor, a lot of people look back on-

   24. CWChris Williamson29:21

       All of those, all of those things that people are just moonlighting on in evening time as they're, they're taking up the-

   25. JDJohn Danaher29:26

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson29:26

       ... violin and they're doing some Picasso in the garage, and some DNA CRISPR editing in the, on the way to work, and all this.

   27. JDJohn Danaher29:36

       Yeah. And I mean, I, I guess the reality is that, well, number one, a lot of people don't do that and don't have the capa- capacity to do it or the means to do it. But also, um, it, it could be the case that automating technologies obviate the need for them to do that in the first place. Like, one of the things I talk about in the book, and I, I'd, I'm happy to admit that it's a ... it might seem to many people like a, a satirical example, but you know, the movie

3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah, I mean, think…

   1. JDJohn Danaher30:00

      WALL-E, which is, you know, one of my, one of my favorite Pixar movies has this depiction of an automated future where you have lots of robots doing, you know, basic tasks around the world. And what do the humans do in that world? You know, the humans are all incredibly obese, they're sitting on floating couches in this interstellar-... cruise ship, trying to transport them to a better world because they've completely environmentally destroyed the, uh, destroyed the earth, and they're watching, you know, light entertainment and being fed a diet of, of fast food. So they're the kind of almost these passive slug-like beings because technology has made their life kinda too convenient and too easy, and they don't ha- really have the motivation to do anything. And then, you know, I'm sure that's, that's satire obviously in one sense, and people have ridiculed this, referring to it, uh, it as this kind of vision of the future as the sofalarity as opposed to the, the singularity where we all just end up on our sofas. But, uh, part of me thinks there's something true to it, right? Uh, that humans have... Although, you know, engaging in difficult tasks and difficult forms of, you know, physical labor or cognition can be very rewarding and fulfilling, they're also very difficult to do and you need to be very kind of motivated to do them. And if a- if technology means that we don't have to do these things anymore, I think there's a danger for a lot of people that they'll just kinda fall back into a very passive form of existence. Uh, and I think all the problems that I discuss in the book, the five problems that I discuss, are all kind of linked to that basic idea, this theme of, of passivity as a result of automation.

   2. CWChris Williamson31:42

      Yeah, I mean, think about the rise in stoicism, like why that's happening or why people are enjoying doing Ironman triathlons or Brazilian jiu-jitsu or cold showers. Cold shower's perfect example. And why do people want to do it? Like, it sucks. (laughs) You don't... nobody enjoys the cold shower. They, uh-

   3. JDJohn Danaher32:01

      They wanna feel alive.

   4. CWChris Williamson32:02

      ... they enjoy the satisfaction, they enjoy the state change. Yes, precisely. They n- There's not many things that we do now, unless you skid on the ice outside in your car, there's not many things that we do that make us feel alive, you know, that give us that sort of... There's a, uh, a dominatrix who, um, Paul Bloom interviewed for one of his upcoming books, and she said, "Nothing captures attention like a whip." And she means that when you slap someone in the face as hard as you can, they're not thinking about anything for five seconds after you've hit them. They're just thinking, "Did I just get fucking slapped? Did she just slap me?" That's, that's what they're thinking. And I think that, uh, again, N- Naval Ravikant talks about we don't want peace of mind, we want peace from mind, and this desperate desire to kind of just get ourselves into a lower stimulus state in a significantly higher stimulus world is just a, a, a, a constant battle. But again, if we were to be able to have some beautifully omnipotent, omnisc- omniscient being, a, a AGI, it could solve all of those problems in any case. So anything that we can think of, any of these issues that we can postulate, it can come up with the correct combination of drug cocktail, the correct virtual environment for us to be in, the perfect robot soulmate sex friend that we need to make us feel fulfilled.

   5. JDJohn Danaher33:26

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:26

      That solution should be found if you had a, a, an, an AGI that was sufficiently advanced with, uh, enough resources to be able to do it. Um, so, okay, so let's say that we managed to replace work with automation in an effort to get to a utopia. Like, what, what does it even mean to get it right? Like, what, what is a utopia by your definition?

   7. JDJohn Danaher33:47

      Yeah, I mean, th- this is another kind of whole, um, (laughs) whole other discussion in, in many ways. But, uh, I guess one... like, one of the things I do in the book is I contrast two ideas of what a utopia is. There's kind of the, the traditional popular conception of what a utopia is or, or what you find in so-called utopian literature, which is w- what I call the blueprint m- or blueprint model of utopia. Um, you, you find this in, you know, Plato's Republic, you know, what is the ideal city? And he has this very rigid, hierarchical society. Everyone knows their place. There are very set rules about what people are supposed to be doing. Uh, you get it in, you know, Thomas More's classic work on utopia, first coinage of, of the term actually in, in modern English where he, uh, depicts this hypothetical society which is kind of a neo-feudalist society where everyone is divided into these castes and they have certain roles in society. And, and arguably th- though this is, you know, this is less true in the sense that communist, um, theory w- was probably struck by the fact that the, um, the communist utopia was never very precisely specified. But those kinds of societies that, that did arise that espoused a, a communist, um, philosophy ou- often had this kind of rigid authoritarian structure, this... So, so it's, uh, implementing this blueprint. So the idea is that we have this model of what the ideal world is and we just need to kind of match the actual reality to that blueprint. And if that means that some people have to be, you know, sacrificed along the way for the good of the revolution, for the good of achieving this blueprint, then so be it. And I think that's why utopianism, in many people's minds, has a very kind of negative set of connotations, that it's, it's associated with a lot of failed movements like, like communism, critiqued as being utopianist movement. And then, um, it's also associated with a lot of kind of violence and cruelty on the pathway to achieving utopia.

   8. CWChris Williamson35:47

      Ruthless, isn't it? It seems... Oddly, utopia is seen as a very ruthless sort of thing where people are just going to be left behind. So it ma- makes me think a lot about, um, epigenetic, uh, not epigenetic. What was the thing that-

   9. JDJohn Danaher36:00

      Yeah, eugenics.

   10. CWChris Williamson36:01

       Eugenics, that's it, like eugenics and stuff like selective breeding, like that's what a utopia... But I mean, I'm massively jaded obviously by precisely the sort of old literature and the new sci-fi that I insist on reading to make me fall asleep on the nighttime.

   11. JDJohn Danaher36:17

       Yeah, I, I mean, and the famous kind of philosopher of science, Karl Popper, some of you might have heard of, he, he wrote these influential critiques of utopianism saying that they kind of necessarily lead to violence because anyone who's part of a utopian movement will just think it's...... the ends justify the means, so if you ha- you have to break some eggs to make the omelette, and if that means, you know, cracking heads and putting people in prison camps, uh, so be it. Now, that's definitely not the model of utopianism that I (laughs) favor in- in the book. I contrast that with what- what I call a horizonal, or you could almost call it, like, a frontier model of utopia, that, um, the ideal society is one that is open and dynamic, right? That actually doesn't have a fixed destination or fixed, kind- kinda map for what the ideal society is, but that is, uh, focused on not becoming static, uh, not becoming limited, that e- explores different horizons of possibility for humanity, both in terms of, uh, kind of activities, in terms of how we embody ourselves, how we relate to other people, uh, how we explore our environment. It's this sense that there's always more possibilities, that the future can always be better, and maintaining that open horizon in the future is the key to having a utopian society. So it's maybe a slightly paradoxical idea, in the sense that a utopian society from me is not one that has a particular fixed model or- or blueprint, but is something that is, uh, open-ended and dynamic.

   12. CWChris Williamson37:52

       Got you. What's a cyborg utopia? You kind of break it into- into two different types. What's a cyborg one?

   13. JDJohn Danaher37:59

       Yeah. Well, I sup- uh, the last part of the book, I- I look at two different models of utopia, the cyborg utopia and what I call the virtual utopia. I pr- I want to kind of take a step back before I talk about it, just to explain why I had those two possible futures, because some people might think it's, "Well, why did you pick those two, and why is it so- so binary?" So- so where I arrive at the end of the first half of the book is this notion that humanity is at a- at a crossroads, that- that what's happening... And I- I use this idea from evolutionary anthropology, is that humans evolved to fill what I call the cognitive niche, right? We... What- what sets us apart from other animals is that we use our brains, both individually and collectively, to solve problems, uh, and we kind of generate our- our own ecological niche. We're not as dependent on the physical world. We're not so, uh, susceptible to the whims of the natural world as other animals because we've managed to carve out this niche for ourselves using our brain power. What's happening now is that we're creating technologies that are gradually replacing us, that they're kind of shunting us out of the cognitive niche, pushing us out gradually, and so we- we face a- a dilemma. The question is, you know, do we, do we try to fight back against the machines and reclaim our dominance of the cognitive niche, or do we try and retreat from the cognitive niche and, you know, let the kind of machines watch over us and look after our economic well-being, our- our needs, our... kind of needs for abundance and affluence and so forth, and do something else? And so I associate those kind of two options with two different models of utopia: the cyborg utopia, which is where we basically try to become like the machines that are gradually replacing us; and the virtual utopia, which is where we essentially retreat from the cognitive niche and do something else.

   14. CWChris Williamson39:51

       What I think's really interesting about that is it- it makes me think about the status conversation that we were having before, about your job sort of gives you your sense of who you are, and it's the label you give yourself. And that cognitive niche is kind of like a species-wide status that we've given ourselves, right? Like, we are the cognitive kings of the jungle, you know? There isn't anything else, uh, that we know in the universe that's smarter than us, that c- has the powers of abstraction and planning and mindfulness, uh, a- all of the creativity, everything that we value for the big meatloaf inside of our heads. Pretty soon, unless the, um... u- unless AGI continues to remain narrow and go deeper as opposed to actually being able to broaden out, and it does seem like there is a bit of debate about whether or not that's gonna happen, um, but if it is able to get to proper Nick Bostrom shit-your-pants stuff, then we're no longer going to be top of the tree. We are, we are literally going to be, in a- in a best-case scenario, friends with a god that we have managed to constrict into... constrict or convince to align its goals and ours together. But we are no longer going to be top of the tree, and I wonder what that does to a civilization when that happens. Like, what does it mean to be a human? What does it mean to be supposedly the rulers of a planet when you're no longer the smartest individual on it?

   15. JDJohn Danaher41:40

       Yeah, I mean, tha- that's a really interesting way of kind of framing it or- or putting it, uh, that, you know, the... our- our brain power is the status that we've given ourselves as a species. I guess, you know, evolutionists hate this notion that we are part of some chain of being and we... we're... it's a hierarchy and we sa- you know, sit at the top of it, and they- they would argue that, you know, the whole point of evolutionary thinking, of the Darwinian revolution, is to rid us of that notion that we are somehow at the center of the evolutionary universe, that, um, it's just this kind of big, uh, kind of ma- massive, sprawling branch, uh, uh, branching tree of- of different organisms. Uh, but it... Yeah, I- I think the reality is that m- many human civilizations and many humans probably do think of themselves as, in some sense, superior to the rest of the world, and this notion that we're gonna lose that status, um, is- is problematic, and- and, uh, I think it does kind of pose a major... existential threat to us. Not, not in the Bostromian sense of, like, the machines are going to turn us into paperclips, but in the sense that, what are we here for? What's the purpose in, of it all?

   16. CWChris Williamson42:45

       Oh, yeah. So not only could we be paperclips, but mentally we could think of ourselves as paperclips. So there's two different ways that we could be, we could be (laughs) displaced. Both spiritually and physically, we could get displaced by the machines. Uh, okay, so-

   17. JDJohn Danaher42:59

       Yeah. No, 100%.

   18. CWChris Williamson42:59

       ... s- cyborg, cyborg utopia. Give us a ... what's, what's that look like?

   19. JDJohn Danaher43:04

       Yeah. I mean, there's a number of different ideas or pathways to a cyborg utopia out there. Um, you know, for people who aren't aware – and I ... most people are aware of this nowadays – that, you know, a cyborg is a cybernetic organism. And actually, the, the concept or idea comes from a paper written by a couple of, uh, scientists who have very suspiciously similar surnames, but they're spelled differently. So, uh, I don't actually remember their first names ever, but it's Clines and Klein, is their ... two ... the names of people who wrote this paper, um, on, on the cyborg. And they were actually writing as part of the space race. Like, they were talking about, you know, how can we get humans into space? And they were commenting on the fact that, well, you know, humans aren't very well adapted to space. (laughs) Uh, if you, you put us outside a spaceship for a couple of seconds, we're gonna, you know, not, not, not be thriving and, and flourishing, to, to put it mildly. So, how can we improve things? Well, we could, we could turn humans into machines or we could integrate human biological systems with machines so that we're better adapted to the environment of space. And that's the ... that's where the term cyborg came from, from their paper that they wrote about this idea. Uh, and obviously, it's been taken on a whole other life since in, in pop- popular culture. Uh, but I mean, that's basically wh- what I'm talking about when I look at, at the cyborg utopia, is that w- we kind of fight back against the machines by trying to become machines ourselves, by, by integrating ourselves more and more with machines, so that who we are is part and parcel of, like, what a, what our automating technology is as well. So our fates are, are bound together, not just in a kind of loose sense, but in the sense that we are the same thing and that our iden- identity is the same as them. Now, you know, there's two perfectly different pathways to achieving cyborg status. You could achieve it by actually physically integrating yourself with technology. Uh, one of the examples I discuss in the

4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Interesting. Interesting. …

   1. JDJohn Danaher45:00

      book is this, um, artist, Neil Harbisson. I don't know if you've ever interviewed him. You should probably try and interview him, actually. He's an interesting guy. Um, he, he's a founder of the Cyborg Society and more recently the, the Transpecies Society. He's advocating for the rights of people who don't ascribe to a human identity, so I th- I think that's might be something that, uh-

   2. CWChris Williamson45:21

      Interesting. Interesting.

   3. JDJohn Danaher45:21

      ... is intriguing to you, a post-human identity. Um, so he has this, uh, antenna at the back of his head, and he was born color-blind. And what this antenna does is it converts light rays into sound, so it allows him to, to hear in color. All right? So it, it's a bit of technology that ... I guess you could call it a technology, a technologically induced form of synesthesia. He's kind of combining two senses, and, um, he, uh, he talks about this a lot and, uh, how it changes his kind of sensory perception and engagement with the world. So what he's doing there, literally, is he's using a piece of technology to change how h- he experiences reality. He's integrating himself with the technology. And in interviews that he's conducted, he, he refers to himself as a bit of technology. He says, "You know, I'm not ... it's, it's not that I use technology to engage with the world, I am kind of an extended piece of technology. My identity with this antenna that I've drilled into my skull is, u- um, it's, it's part of me." And, like, he's won the right to kind of wear it in, um, identity photographs and all that kind of thing, so-

   4. CWChris Williamson46:30

      Wow.

   5. JDJohn Danaher46:30

      ... he's an interesting character. I would ... Like, it's a very primitive form of cyborg technology. He- he's just kind of adding a new sensory modality, but it's, I think, a, a proof of concept of how we can integrate ourselves with machines. And there are lots of other people doing similar experiments or developing similar cyborg technologies, you know, brain computer interfaces that allow people to have, like, robotic arms that are directly attached into their nervous system, usually for people who've suffered from some kind of, um, amputation or loss of limb function. Or you have these exoskeletons that people are creating that allow you to kind of lift heavier objects or move faster. And these are all examples of kind of technical integration between our biological systems and either a, a computer or, or robotic system in some way. So that's one form of cyborgization. There's another form as well, it's kind of a looser form, that some people say that we are kind of cyborgs already. There's a, a Scottish philosopher called Andy Clark who says that y- you know, we're natural born cyborgs. That again, kind of going back to this idea of the cognitive niche, you know, how did we succeed, how did we thrive within the cognitive niche? It was because we built technologies that we have tied our fate to, that humans have always been a technological species, uh, have used technology to, to survive, and we're just doing more and more of that nowadays, and we've become kind of highly interdependent with, um, our technologies. It, you know, it's, it's a trite example, but the notion that, like, how close you are to your phone and how often you look at your phone, and how reliant you are on your phone for memory, for navigation, uh, for financial management, whatever it might be, that's an example of kind of cyborgization. But that's a, I think, a looser metaphorical sense of what it means to become a cyborg, and I'm kind of more interested in the technical form of cyborgization.

   6. CWChris Williamson48:22

      It's an interesting thought experiment that I've just been going through in my head there. Thinking about ... I don't think that I'm a cyborg, even if the phone, the phone's outside of me, it's not me. Right, okay, so let's say-... that everybody within the next 300 years gets a robotic set of hips because hips are a nightmare and we don't want... okay, like, no, no, no, 'cause that's just, that's just the robot. And then you just slippery slope your way all the way down, and you go, "Okay, so now I've got robotic legs. Okay, so now, now 80% of me all the way up to the nips or all the way up to the neck, like, that's, that's all robotic." We've just dispensed with our bodies, but our heads are still there. Or reverse it and say, "Okay, uh, maybe we've realized that actually, we can replace certain areas of the brain. Like, we can get rid of fear, fear and anxiety response by getting rid of, like, the way the amygdala works, and we can put a, a chip in in place of that, and it's kind of the same size and the same shape." And slippery slope your way all the way down through that as well, and you go, "Right, okay, now the hippocampus is gone. Now, like, the prefrontal cortex is gone. Now this is gone." You actually get to a point where you can remove all parts of you and replace them with a machine and yet somehow still consider that you're not a machine. Um, just, I think, because we hold onto our sense of I am me, and it's very difficult to abstract ourselves into what would it be like for my consciousness to be placed in something else? You know, we understand what happens when we see someone in a wheelchair. They are not the wheelchair, but at what point does replacing the parts of you that you consider to be you... and this is a broader question that Sam Harris asks a lot, which is he says, like, where are you? You consider-

   7. JDJohn Danaher49:56

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson49:56

      ... that you're somewhere in your head behind your eyes, but really, like, what, what are we talking about here? Um, and I suppose this is a, this is a much deeper sort of philosophical question, but certainly when you talk about cyborgs, it does- it certainly seems that from some sort of objective metric, it would be quite feasible to think of a situation in which we were cybernetic organisms.

   9. JDJohn Danaher50:22

      Yeah, and then, look, a- as I say, there are, there are many people who argue that there are already humans that are cyborgs. Uh, you know, kind of neuroprosthetics, the use of retinal implants, cochlear implants. You know, they're not replacing parts of your cortex yet, but they are, uh, replacing parts of your kind of sensory peripheries. And it seems like a very g- good, clear proof of concept that you could d- do more kind of func- functional integration with technical systems. And, um, the more of that we do, the more technology-like we become, the more we become, uh, cyborgs. Um, and you know, th- th- there is an interesting philosophical question is that like if you replace every single neuron in your head gradually over time, do you actually maintain the same identity or is it... is there a certain point in time in which the lights switch off? And, you know, (laughs) there's some philosophers who think that maybe that will happen. Like, maybe as you're gradually replacing each neuron, you, you seem like you're still inside your skull or inside your body, but then at some point, suddenly it all disappears and you're gone.

   10. CWChris Williamson51:23

       Oh, like the... like a cybernetic zombie?

   11. JDJohn Danaher51:26

       Yeah, yeah, exactly. (laughs) I mean, yeah. There have been people who have argued this, that mi- that might be possible and that we'll never know.

   12. CWChris Williamson51:32

       And that's the problem because you never get to see.

   13. JDJohn Danaher51:34

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson51:34

       Well, I had, um, a bunch of conversations recently about consciousness. Philip Goff was on talking about consciousness, and, um, the, the... my favorite quote from that, uh, reminded me of something I'd read ages ago, which is, if it wasn't for the fact that we experience it, the universe would give us no indication that consciousness existed.

   15. JDJohn Danaher51:55

       Yeah, exactly. Right. (laughs) Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson51:57

       Um-

   17. JDJohn Danaher51:57

       So that's, that's the problem. You know-

   18. CWChris Williamson51:59

       (laughs)

   19. JDJohn Danaher51:59

       ... somebody could be walking around with a, you know, uh-

   20. CWChris Williamson52:02

       Making the noises, doing the movements, having the responses-

   21. JDJohn Danaher52:06

       ... we wouldn't know. Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson52:07

       Wouldn't know. Okay, so cyborg utopia sounds all right. A little bit of work to be done on it. What's virtual utopia?

   23. JDJohn Danaher52:14

       Right, uh, and so this is a much, a much more s- kind of slippery concept, I think, and something that's, that's difficult to wrap your, your head around. Uh, and partly that's because the, the, the concept, well, of what virtual reality is, is kind of inherently paradoxical and maybe not well understood. Uh, like one... so what... within the book, I contrast kind of two ideas of what a virtual reality is. Um, one is, I guess the, the technical sense of it, where, you know, you're literally putting on, like, a, a headset or something and going inside a computer simulated environment, uh, and living out a life like that. The idea depicted in, in lots of movies. I guess The Matrix is a famous variation on this idea of living in a virtual world through technology. And, uh, there, there are other examples that don't spring to mind all of a sudden. I, I suppose my favorite example is the Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash. I don't know if anyone's ever read that about the metaverse. Um-

   24. CWChris Williamson53:15

       I've tried... so here's, here's, here's the main question of this. I've started to try and get into that twice, and I've just kind of got stuck a few pages deep. It just hasn't grap- gripped me. Is it worth reading?

   25. JDJohn Danaher53:27

       Yeah, it is worth reading. It's, it's quite dated, and I guess, like, you, you'll be familiar with a lot of the concepts in it, but I think that's largely because he's been quite influential in, you know, tech culture and Silicon Valley culture, um...

   26. CWChris Williamson53:39

       You reckon I should give it a go?

   27. JDJohn Danaher53:41

       I reckon you should give it a go. I, I do have that problem with a lot of Neal Stephenson books, though, in that several of them are gathering dust on my shelves and, you know, they're, they're all like 1,000 pages long or-

   28. CWChris Williamson53:51

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   29. JDJohn Danaher53:52

       ... 2,000 page multi-volume books. And-

   30. CWChris Williamson53:54

       Did you, um, did you try Seveneves?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:14:10

   Yes, precisely. …

   1. JDJohn Danaher1:00:00

      influential i- in the US but, um, I, I kind of like him more as a, as a more general philosopher. Yeah, I think he has lots of interesting ideas and he has this famous thought experiment of the Experience Machine, which is basically what you're imagining. So, you know, imagine you could plug yourself into an artificial si- uh, simulation that was, you know, high fidelity, very realistic. You didn't r- you wouldn't remember your real world... your life in the real world. Um, you could kind of play out whatever simulation you want. Would you choose to plug into the Experience Machine? Um, and he argued that he wouldn't because he wants to live in the real world and the Experience Machine would be missing something that he desires, and, uh, he claimed to have kind of surveyed his students on this and that they all agreed with him. And a lot of people, I think when first presented with this thought experiment, agree with it. It turns out more recently there's a, uh, a bunch of experiments that have been done on this where people have asked kind of variations of the original Experience Machine thought experiment where they say, "Well, okay...What if instead of, um, plugging into a machine, you were asked to plug out of a machine? So y- y- you were told, well, e- ev- everything that you value in your life right now i- is a simulation, and y- you can plug out of that simulation and go into the real world ... basically, the thought experiment that's depicted in the movie The Matrix ... would you choose to do it? And some of these experimental studies and this suggest that actually people wouldn't choose to do it, or they're less likely to choose to do it, significantly less likely to choose to do it, if they are plugging out of the machine. And so some people have argued that, uh, Nozick's thought experiment was playing upon a kind of status quo bias that people have-

   2. CWChris Williamson1:01:29

      Yes, precisely.

   3. JDJohn Danaher1:01:30

      ... that people are attached to their current way of life, and they're afraid to kind of move out of it. And it's not really saying anything about whether living inside this virtual reality machine is actually valuable or meaningful or not.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:01:43

      This is like a, um, a virtual reality trolley problem, like an inverted virtual reality trolley problem. Uh, is there a case here ... I'm gonna guess that there will be. People will be pretty swayed by a naturalistic fallacy as well.

   5. JDJohn Danaher1:01:59

      Yeah. I mean, I, I ... yeah. I think that you can see that in kind of some aspects of the, the modern environmentalist movement. Uh, not, not ... I'm not going to denigrate all, uh, forms of environmentalism by any stretch of the imagination. And I think we are facing into some major environmental catastrophes in, in the future, though, uh, I'm not sure that we can actually go anything about them, or whether we have the collective will, or the institutions that can do anything about it, but I think there are serious problems.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:02:25

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JDJohn Danaher1:02:26

      But, that said, you know, it ... within the environmental movement, you can find kind of pockets that are very much attached to some kind of golden age that was in the past, or a kind of primitivist life, or, or more in touch with nature. I think a lot of that is kind of mythical and an, an overstatement and an over-idealization of the past, which has always been a feature of human ... in life. I mean, there, there is an argument as to why that happened. You know, the kind of Garden of Eden myth that you find ... One of the standard, uh, historical explanations of that is that this was people who had undergone the agricultural revolution, wishing that they were hunter-gatherers again. Because it turns out if you, you know, if you study hunter-gatherer tribes, um, nowadays, and if you look at some historical records of them, it seems that they had much kind of more, uh, more leisure-filled lives than we do, and seem to have been maybe happier than we were. There's this guy called Marshall Sahlins, wrote this famous paper back in the '60s, called The Original ... was it? The Or- The Original Affluent Society or The Original Leisure Society, in which he said that the, uh, hunter-gatherers were at the original leisure society, because if you look at them, what they do is they spend maybe two hours a day working, instead of looking for food, and then the rest of the time is spent kind of playing, hanging around with their families, and not doing much else.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:03:43

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JDJohn Danaher1:03:44

      Um, so, like, it could be that people are appealing to that kind of mythical ideal, but I think there's lots of unpleasant features of that form of life, too, in terms of, you know, disease-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:53

       The dysentery, the disease, (laughs) the teeth falling out.

   11. JDJohn Danaher1:03:55

       Inter-tribal warfare. That kind of thing, yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:03:57

       (laughs) Yeah. Yeah, the rampant rape. Yeah. I, um, I had David Pearce on the show. Transhumanist guy?

   13. JDJohn Danaher1:04:03

       Sure. Yeah, yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:04:04

       Yeah. So I had David on the show, must be years ago now. It must be a couple o' years ago, and, um, p- prior to ... Prior to speaking to him, I think I had a very different sort of view around us moving forward. But in the way that ideas oddly do s- tend to infect you, because I spoke to him so long ago, and because I've reflected on the stuff that he does f- for quite a while, that status quo bias, like my Overton window of what I consider to be a mental projection of where we could end up as a civilization, has just, it's just sort of expanded and expanded and expanded, and now I'm like, "Well, I mean, you know, if there was a way of virtually essentially making me feel like I're on MDMA all the time and never come down from it, and just, uh, e- exist at degrees of human enjoyment that have hitherto never been discovered," I'm like, "Mm, is the ... " It becomes a quest- it becomes an ethical question. It, it's, it simply comes down to that, as far as I can see.

   15. JDJohn Danaher1:05:11

       Yeah. I mean, look, I think David's work is, um, kind of groundbreaking and definitely kind of perspective-shifting work, uh, his book, The, s- The Hedonistic Imperative, which I believe you can access the entire text of it on- online. It was written back in the '90s, I believe, so it's ... It might seem a little bit dated in some aspects, but it's, it's still, I think, a very provocative and current work, and will really kind of reshape your thinking about s- the ... I guess the big idea within it is the notion that some people can not have a lower hedonistic baseline than everyone else, and that means they're kind of disadvantaged, and they live a more impoverished life, and that we can, we should do something to kind of up the hedonistic ante for them to kind of live more flourishing, blissful lives. And so he has a, I would say, an alternative model of the utopia to me, but, uh, it's not entirely dissimilar. And, you know, David is a, a transhumanist, and I guess what I talk about when I talk about the cyborg utopia is a kind of transhumanist future. You know, David reduces transhumanism to the, the so-called Three Supers, that the goal is superlongevity, you know, ending death, and, a- or maybe not ending death, rather, but having extra-long lives, uh, superintelligence, you know, creating more and more intelligence and improving human intelligence, and then superhappiness, which is this idea of the hedonistic imperative and making people more blissful and, uh, happy.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:06:36

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JDJohn Danaher1:06:37

       Um, and I think, I think that kind of chimes with what I view as the cyborg utopia. I'm a little bit more dismissive of that idea in the book, but, uh, I'm in favor of the virtual utopia, but I, I'm not completely down on the cyborg utopia. I think it has merits as well. I- what I'm skeptical about is its technological feasibility in the kind of medium term.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:06:59

       What is going to happen next, do you think, in the space of, not the science side, but in terms of philosophy, what do you think people are going to spend the next sort of five to 10 years thinking about with regards to this space? Do you have any inclination of that?

   19. JDJohn Danaher1:07:14

       (sighs) Well, I mean, I, I guess, like, a lot of my day job is, is focusing on the ethical implications, legal implications of artificial intelligence and robotics. Um, I hate to call myself an AI ethicist or anything like that, because I think that term is, is loaded, and a lot of the work that these people, uh, these people, that AI ethicists do is not very similar to what, to what I do. But I think the, the main debates there are, unfortunately, I think, your very traditional debates about political power, like who, who controls technology and who controls access to technology. You're seeing these, th- these things play out. Uh, the, the effect of artificial intelligence on political polarization and debate, the effect that it has on economic polarization, in- inequality, um, issues of, like, bias in technology and biased decision-making. I, I, I know I've been talking about the previous book that I did, but I actually w- I'm a co-author on a, a new book which looks at a lot of these themes. It's called, um ... I actually have it here. This wasn't intentional, but I just have it next to me. I, um ... It's called The, A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence, which looks at-

   20. CWChris Williamson1:08:30

       When's that out? Is that out now?

   21. JDJohn Danaher1:08:32

       It's out at the end of February. I, so I'm, I'm not the lead author on it, but it might be a good idea to get the, the lead author on, a guy called John Zirili, to talk about it on the book-

   22. CWChris Williamson1:08:40

       Yeah, I'll, uh, we'll-

   23. JDJohn Danaher1:08:41

       ... on your podcast. Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:08:41

       I'll link, um, I'll link to that in the show notes below. I've got Christian on next week.

   25. JDJohn Danaher1:08:46

       Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. The Alignment Problem, um, book, yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:08:49

       Yeah.

   27. JDJohn Danaher1:08:50

       I, I just, I just purchased that. I haven't read it yet. Should be good.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:08:52

       (laughs) Is it, it'll be gathering dust next to Seveneves. Um, yeah, man. I mean, I, I, I know that the audience do enjoy this, um, but it's, they, they'd better continue enjoying it, because I find discussions about the ethics to do with artificial intelligence and automation and robots and all that sort of stuff, I find them endlessly fascinating. I find them fascinating in a way that I don't think classical philosophy has ... It- it's not a replacement, but it's a, a fantastic side dish. Um, and it, it satisfies me-

   29. JDJohn Danaher1:09:28

       Yeah, well, it's probably getting a lot of the debates in classical philosophy within kind of AI and robotics related philosophy. It's just, it might seem more kind of current and interesting, um, but it, like-

   30. CWChris Williamson1:09:38

       So that, that, that new book is where you think the, a lot of the direction will be going?

Episode duration: 1:14:10