Transcription
Most of the inventions of civilization are really life extension technologies. You know, hunting and agriculture.
I've done enormous amounts of technology-assisted meditation, and I've had near-death experiences a couple of times, and I actually don't have any fear I can detect, but dying. The ancient quest for human immortality has collided with ultramodern developments in biology and AI. But philosopher and writer Steven Cave, whose research interests at Cambridge University in Britain include artificial intelligence, says life extension technology is fraught with ethical problems. I think accepting mortality is important for living well. When you're 179 and things are going well, you might regret having signed up to 180, but don't die. It's not going to happen. Even if we cured all aging and disease, then we were to still be susceptible to accidents.
You talk about immortality narratives, the big stories we tell ourselves to escape death. What are they and how do they shape our society? You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey.
Stephen, you've studied life and death. Would you choose to live to 200 years or more if you could?
Right now, I would take a gamble on 200. I think more than that might be pushing it, but uh, you know, I'm a quarter of the way there. And so far, so good.
Is that because it's all you think is possible or is it something about your relationship with time and meaning and sense of self, or some deeper thing?
I think there are some profound challenges that would come from living a lot longer. What we don't know is when they really kick in, but there are challenges like boredom and meaninglessness and procrastination. And those are just the individual challenges, not even to mention the challenges for society. Um, but at the same time, life is precious. I'm enjoying mine. That makes me very lucky. And so, I'd be willing to gamble on 200.
What would make you bored?
Yesterday, I was standing in a queue for most of the day to get a visa. Um, I'm lucky I have the kind of interests, you know, intellectual interests, reading and writing and so on, that you can fill, you know, many, many, many centuries with, and you know, I like being with people and playing games and doing sport and so on. So those are all things that um I think I could enjoy for a very long time if I have access to them, of course, uh, you know, if you lock me up in a cell by myself, then I would go mad very, very quickly. So, I do have happy visions of living for a long time, but they do require access to the right kind of resources and people.
Are you afraid of going mad?
Yes, I think I probably am a bit. I mean, I don't feel like it's imminent. Um, but under certain circumstances, um, I think, you know, we as humans, our mental states are pretty fragile. Um, mine, too.
If you were to go mad, would you know?
I think so. Um, yeah. I don't think most people, I mean mad, you know, it's a very vague term. You know, most people if they go mad, it doesn't mean they suddenly think they're Napoleon or, you know, or a cow or something, you know, and mental health, you know, being mentally well is about not being depressed and having a sense of meaning and purpose. And I think, you know, lacking those things is something we feel as a real pain, a real lack.
I have this beautiful book from the 1950s called *The Three Christs of Ypsilanti*. And it's about a psychiatrist who took three people who believed they were Jesus and put them in a room together and had them hang out for a few weeks and watched what they did.
What would you predict happened?
Um, I would predict that they found each individually that their views were not challenged by the presence of the other Jesuses, but they kept believing individually that they were Jesus in the face of evidence to the contrary.
That's true. They actually all worked out a story where they could all be Jesus so that none of them would have to pierce the other one's uh belief system, which is remarkable and it shows a lot about human beliefs. They're a little bit more malleable than we might think.
Right. Is the quest for immortality about enlightenment or is it just hidden ego?
I, I'm inclined to think more the latter. Um, of course, there are versions of the story that focus on enlightenment. Um, but is enlightenment the precondition for immortality? A certain kind of reward? Is it necessary for immortality? Do you need to be enlightened in order to avoid boredom and meaninglessness and the problems of procrastination?
Do you know, I, I, there's a story to tell around that about how only if we give up worldly desires and their transients could we actually have a happy immortality. But I think most people who want to live forever, either they want more of the good times that they've got now, which, you know, and why not, or they're afraid of death.
The Buddhist teachers I've studied with universally teach that boredom and procrastination are simply manifestations of the ego.
Do you agree?
Well, certainly there are practices that you can find in a number of wisdom traditions, if you like Buddhism and stoicism, I think is very similar, you know, coming from a different part of the world, that teach you both to be less focused on yourself and your own ego and thereby to cope better with challenges like boredom and frustration and anger and all of the other kind of tribulations of um everyday life. So certainly I think if we if we desired less, if we cared less about, you know, what we have and our reputation and such like, focused more on inner peace, then we would be able to withstand um even queuing for a visa for a lot longer.
Sometimes I hope that with the power of compound interest uh that at a certain point you can hire someone to wait in line for you.
Yeah, I know. One day.
Yeah. What if death is actually the thing that makes civilization improve?
Yeah. Well, death plays an important role. I mean, it doesn't, you know, we focus on life, what the living do, their their deeds. Okay. We might see that sometimes people are motivated by um their legacy or by devising ways of staying alive longer. I mean, think of, you know, most of the inventions of civilization are really life extension technologies, you know, hunting and agriculture, like they give us food um and food storage systems, walls to keep out attackers and and so on. So you know, not to mention medicine and science and technology. So um there's the desire to postpone death as much as possible is certainly motivating civilization. Um, but at the same time, an awareness of death and the fact that time is limited also drives people to make the most of life and do great things.
Your take that pretty much all technology is life extension. It makes me just profoundly happy.
I agree with you by the way. The question though is why do people have no problem with taking a car instead of walking? But if you talk about extending life, a lot of people get really triggered by that. Say you can't do that. And even some people who call themselves longevity doctors say it's impossible to extend life, but I'm a longevity doctor. Like what is the what is the human resistance to life extension?
I think we have a strong sense of what is natural. Now, ironically, our sense of what is natural is very socially conditioned. But uh, all societies have a strong conception of life stages, and a lot of meaning and rituals um place and purpose and life connections are based on those life stages. So you know um you go to school, you get your education uh you you start work, you become a family man or woman um at some point you retire and so on. And you know there's a path life is expected to take and we build meaning around that. Um meaning that makes the difficult bits of that okay, like kind of degeneration that comes with age and you know lots of traditions value the wisdom that comes with age or see it as a spiritual time of physical decline but spiritual growth and so on. So all of these stories help us to cope with the reality of uh life uh the shape of life as it is now. And so it becomes very challenging I think for people to imagine throwing all that out and you know certain people doing something completely different and instead they may be living much longer.
The Eriksonian stages of adult development are are pretty well defined with the stages of life and they appear to be relatively constant across cultures. So there's something that happens with normal aging, but even in the last 30 years, we've extended the average lifespan in the US by 6 and a half years, which it's kind of funny when people say you can't do it. Like we already did.
Do you think that each of the stages gets lengthened or do we go through the stages and just add more to the last one when we're our wise elders?
We definitely have seen lengthening of uh the first stage of education if you like of childhood. Older people complain that you know at the age of 30 kids these days still seem to be children. Um, but of course, education, I mean, you know, education as as in the school system is a fairly recent invention, and the age at which people are expected to stay in school has increased from like you know single digits to to teens and now many people going to college and uh and so on. So we are extending the period of education. Um and uh the period, I mean, work is more complicated because we invented this thing of retirement and having pensions and so on that allows people to think about the latter stages of life very differently. So working life hasn't increased as much as it might have proportionally. But um but fortunately a lot of people are staying fitter for longer. So it's not just that the period of decrepitude if you like is is getting longer.
You talk about four immortality narratives, the big stories we tell ourselves to escape death. What are they and how do they shape our society?
So yes, I think across cultures, across history, you can see that every society has told itself immortality stories, like ways in which we can deal with death. And there are some very clear themes I think in in and and basically four kinds of um immortality story. The first one is the most straightforward is staying alive in this body on this world. You know, life as we know it but extended, and you know, it might sound implausible in the face of inevitable decline and aging and and so on. And yet almost every culture has some story of an elixir of life or something like that that can keep people going indefinitely. You know, the oldest work of literature that we have, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is many, many, many thousands of years old um was already thousands of years old when the Egyptians were you know building their pyramids, is about an elixir of life and and so on. And today here we are you know hoping that science and technology will provide one for us. So this is a very widespread story, but of course, everyone knows it's very unreliable. You know, lots of people have pursued an elixir of life. What they all have in common is they're all six foot under pushing up daisies right now. You know, no one's found it. So, um, we need backup plans. And the most obvious, so the second main kind of immortality story is resurrection. So accepting you have to physically die, but hoping you can physically come back to life. And again, that might sound implausible. We don't tend to see humans just like springing up from the earth. But we do see natural cycles of death and rebirth and life. Of course, you know, if you live in the northern hemisphere like I do, you see very strong seasonal changes in in winter everything dies back and spring right now is Easter. This weekend for me here um as we're recording um things burst back into life, and Easter is of course a literal uh celebration if you're a Christian of coming back to life of physical resurrection and actually it's part of uh orthodox Judaism, Christianity and Islam that we are physically resurrected, so it's still a common story, but at the same time it has profound um philosophical challenges um what makes this sort of recreated person that reemerges the same one as the one who died. So you know in early Christianity when it was um before it became the official religion of the Roman Empire and Romans would torment the Christians and they would torment them especially around this belief around resurrection and they would like throw Christians to be eaten by lions and then burn the remains and eat the lions and uh scatter anything that was left on the river and say resurrect that. Right? And and of course, you know, you can say, "Oh, well, God can do anything." But but what makes that recreated entity um uh the same the same one. Um so, uh a lot of people think, well, okay, bodies are just too unreliable. This isn't going to work. What we need is something immaterial, something non uh bodily that isn't subject to aging and disease. And and that's the soul. And of course, it's also a very ancient belief. So, this is the third kind of immortality story. It's a very ancient belief. And also intuitive but in a different way but we you know we find it easy to imagine that we can you know close our eyes and drift away from our body and we seem to do it in dreams and mystical experiences. So it's a very common view around the world and and this view as an immortality story says the soul is indestructible. It's not material and so it's not subject to the kind of decay and dissolution of material things. Um so it can it can live on indefinitely because we so that view was incorporated into Christianity and Islam complementing the resurrection story but can also be found in Hinduism and certain you know to an extent in Buddhism it's a bit more complicated um anyway but you know the soul also has its problems right the evidence of science is that what's important to us in terms of our mind our personality our consciousness isn't immaterial but actually is dependent upon something very material our brain and So uh again people seek an alternative kind of immortality story. And the fourth kind of immortality story is surviving through some kind of legacy. So that might be a cultural legacy like you know a great work or or you know Achilles uh in the Iliad. He stands at the beach of Troy and has to decide whether to go home and live a long life as a minor king of a nice little kingdom or to die in Troy. And it's prophesied by by his mom who happens to be a goddess that he'll if he stays at Troy he'll die but he'll become the most famous warrior ever to have lived and and he chooses that. So or we might of course other kinds of legacy, biological legacy of course living on through our children and the Ginghan method or maybe the method these days.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Exactly. So those are the four fundamental stories that you can find all around the world.
Which one do you ascribe to?
Well, uh, I guess as a philosopher, I'm skeptical about resurrection. I'm skeptical about the soul. I want to stick around in this body. Well, as we mentioned, a couple hundred years would be good. At the same time, I don't think I'm going to do so forever. You know, even if all of our medical interventions work, at some point the earth's just going to get eaten up by the sun. So, um, stick around for as long as we can. But also, I guess I, you know, I am a writer. I I enjoy writing books. I enjoy having an impact on the world that I think will outlast me and I hope my children will. It's very meaningful to me too. So, so I guess I'm interested in one and four, but at the same time, I don't want to be sucked too much into them. I I I I think that we do also need to face the reality of death.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and studied many different lineages and and direct experience of things and I decided that the rational half of my uh being can believe one thing um because it makes sense and it matches what the mystical half of me also experiences. And the rational side says that the only um worldview that makes sense to believe in is uh reincarnation. And the reason for that is that if I'm wrong, I won't know. But believing in it makes me less fearful and therefore I have more joy and a better experience in the life that I have. If I'm right, great. Then I have some kind of attainment and all that sort of stuff. And the mystical side of me that has had direct experience of things I cannot explain in any other way than past lives and teachers who see them and other people where when people feel safe to talk about it even people who have you know a faith where it's not supposed to be possible to do that they're saying well yeah I kind of experienced that but I don't know what to do in the context of the beliefs I've been taught so I'm like I'm just going to pick that one and I think I'll keep my body alive to at least 180, reserving the right to die at a time and by a method of my choosing and it's very different than the you know the dying is the worst thing ever die I that doesn't feel right to me.
Why is the difference between never dying and living as long as you choose, why do they feel so different?
Yeah, never dying, well as a belief, there are two aspects. One I think is it it is unrealistic right it's the idea like the don't die movement I mean you know Aubrey de Grey's book on longevity and I'm I'm the 180 guy and he's the you know don't do it at any cost. So
Right. Exactly. So you know I'm a big fan of Aubrey too and I love what he's trying to do and you know promoting healthy living and the work he's doing for um expanding our ideas of what's possible. But um but don't die is not going to happen. Um the you know even if we cured all aging and disease then we were to still be susceptible to accidents. Um so you know one research has predicted that in the US you'd live to about 5,000 um before but that's an obviously about sort of an average and some people would you know get hit by a bus at the age of 10 and some people live to 10,000 but but um that even that assumes civilization will continue in something like its current form which is incredibly unlikely. That's not what the lesson of history teaches us and then of course you know we've got the whole death of the solar system and then of the universe. So, so don't I, you know, it's a it's a it's a powerful slogan, but it isn't realistic.
Well, does that matter?
I think in a way it does because I think accepting mortality is important for living well. So, and that's why I think there's a difference between the 180 and the no, I don't want to die ever. I mean, ex, you know, when Dave, you're 179 and things are going well, you might regret having signed up to 180. Um, but still it suggests that you know fundamentally you accept at some point you have to move on. It's inevitable, whether of a time of your choosing or not, it's going to happen and maybe that's also a passing on of the baton to you know another generation and so on. It's funny I always say at least 180 to reserve the right to extend it just in case I decide that that would be more fun. But uh ultimately I as it is I've done enormous amounts of technology-assisted meditation and I've had near-death experiences a couple of times and I actually don't have any fear I can detect of dying. I'd rather not experience pain. I'd rather not die now. But I've gotten to that point which is unusual and maybe pathological. I don't really know. Uh, but I'm I'm immensely curious about it and I've come to look at death and birth as things that always happen. So, you know, do do what you can, but just not to worry so I don't spend energy on it.
And along the way, the the New York Times once wrote this beautiful complimentary article called "Inside the Cult of Bulletproof Coffee". Kind of said, you know, I'm a positive cult leader. And I don't run Bulletproof anymore, but um it's was part of the the formation of the biohacking movement. And more recently, uh Brian Johnson said, "My only competition is Jesus." So, is it possible that biohackers are today's new high priests?
Well, they are prophets of a of a movement of a certain kind. Absolutely. And they're inspiring a lot of people. Um, and I think like any high priest, we should be asking ourselves um, are they inspiring them for the good, for for for the
Good of those people? I think, you know, obviously in any kind of movement there can be charlatans, but probably most high priests in most religions right now believe they're good people doing the right thing. And I think that's true in the biohacking and and longevity market. Of course, you know, there's a lot of cynicism and people like Brian and others get a lot of criticism and I think it's unfair. Uh, you know, lots of trolls. Lots of trolls.
Exactly. You know, um, and and I think and I think it's unjustified because these are people who are doing what they think is right in advocating for longevity. But like any high priest, we should interrogate is that the right thing for society? And I think the answer is um, partly yes. That, you know, it's great to show people ways of living healthier and longer and more optimistically. And you know there are also challenges that we'll need to overcome to make that go well. Uh that was very Britishly politely put. Thank you.
Are we rejecting nature when we try to transcend the body? I don't worry about that. No, I don't think I mean nature is not a fixed thing, right? Nature is a process of constant change and um we are part of nature. We're products of nature. We need to we need to you know accept that um and work with it and you know any biohacking will be accepting that and working with it in in its own way. So of of all of the complaints and criticisms that might be leveled. That's not one that would keep me awake at night. It always makes me laugh. It's profoundly egoic to think that what humans create isn't a part of nature. We just do a bad job of creating it. Right? Like hefty trash bags are a part of nature. They're just one that is formed to not break down and it doesn't help the rest of the system, but it was made by meat. Uh just like, you know, bees make wax or whatever. So, I think it's an artificial distinction because somehow humans are not a part of nature and whatever.
Yeah. Do you think immortality is just a status game? It doesn't need to be. I think um certain immortality systems are though we mentioned Achilles already. He wanted to be the greatest warrior who had ever lived and so have statues built of him. Well, we can't all be the greatest warrior who's ever lived. So, immortality in homeriic uh Greece was very much a status game. And you know, there are parallels with celebrity culture today. It's different. You know, you don't need to be the greatest party ever lived. You just need to have a cute kitten or you know, something something similar. Um so but you know if you're if you're competing for likes or or whatever it might be to to to give you that sense of immortal fame then that's a status game. But then when Christianity came along, you know, Christianity came in order to flourished at a time when these Greco Roman views around heroism and the cult of the individual of, you know, the ruler as god of the great hero and so on and and and and Christianity came along and said, "No, no, even the meek can be uh immortal. Even even the slave and the downtrodden can live forever." So that was very much reversing the status game and saying, "No, no, immortality can be for everyone." So I think it really varies depending on the stories being told.
If you could upload yourself to the internet, would it still be you? No, I think we can be clear about that. I think I mean, you know, I love the stories that are told that around this that are very compelling. It's very easy to tell a story that makes makes this sound convincing, right? So Dave, I'm going to put you on the slab and I'm going to make you immortal by replacing every one of your neurons one at a time with some, you know, digital silicon equivalent. I don't want to do that, right? And you know, something that makes it and I promise at no point will you lose consciousness and you know 24 hours from now you'll be this digital being and you can roam the internet and it sort of sounds like a plausible story until you start poking. But I mean the main the clearest reputation of of um the idea that uploading preserves identity personal identity is duplication that if if we reduce you to data then I can create as many vers maybe I already have maybe I've created all these Dave an old factory of Daves in Australia somewhere in a bunker in Norway and like and and if I said to you I've done this but now I'm going to have to kill you. I'm sorry. Then um would you find that reassuring? I don't know. Like there'd be someone should keep going with the podcast, but like it wouldn't feel like personal survival. I would want to take two copies of me and put them in a digital room together just like the crisis of plenty and have them argue about which one was the real one. And yeah, it it's absurd. Um that said, I would love to have a digital copy of me to do stuff that I don't want to do.
Yeah, but he wouldn't want to do it either. I know, right? All right. Our bodies don't really exist. Every cell in your body will be replaced over the next seven years. So, you're really more like an eddy in a stream of matter than you are a piece of meat walking around. So, what's to stop me from replacing some neurons with fiber optic circuits and still being me? Yeah, I I mean it's a good question and we don't really know what the limit is in terms of being able to maintain an organism. So I think you're you know you're right organisms of course they're made of stuff but fundamentally they're also made of processes and and um those are more important than the stuff. the stuff gets replaced as you say. But at the same time, organisms have fairly what makes them different to other kinds of things like rocks or cardboard boxes is that they're self-regulating and they have a distinction between self and other. You know, we have a a membrane like a skin and what's going on inside is being managed actively in a way that combats entropy and what's outside isn't.
Can we introduce silicon or digital, you know, artificial components that are more resilient, but part of that homeostatic system? I think this is an open question how far we can push that. I mean, my dad has two artificial hips. I got a screw in my knee. Um, and there are people walking around like Rumsfeld had a heart that didn't beat. Maybe that explains some of his behaviors. But uh you know it was actually it's a a continuous pump and we think they're conscious and alive. So I I've seen examples and I I have no desire to put some sort of technology inside my brain unless I have ultimate control of the source code because you know that malware and spam are the next step. That would be terrible.
Yeah. Would you at any point introduce some tech inside your brain? I would wait to see how it goes with the first million customers. I think before I'd be willing to give it a go. I I think you might be on the right track on that.
Are you a transhumanist? No. No, I I'm not. I'm sympathetic with the, you know, broad aims of improving the lot of humanity through technology. Obviously, it's gone well in many ways. Um, doubling human life expectancy over the last couple hundred years, that kind of thing. But I wouldn't identify as a transhumanist. In the first decade of transhumanism, it the movement emerged in the 90s when the cyberpunk movement emerged and I was a computer hacker back then. I thought this transhumanism stuff is the coolest thing ever. And then I saw some of the things I helped to create uh in the early days of the the web and e-commerce and I watched all of them get perverted to become surveillance systems and uh basically tools of control. like, oh, you can build great tech and there will always be a bad person to misuse it. And so, I I would say I'm not a hardware transhumanist, but I do believe in maxing out the hardware that I already have. I'm just not that interested in replacing it yet. Which means if you were to divide transhumanism into two movements, there's the the wetware side of things and then there's the hardware side of things. And I am profoundly on the wetware side because we barely know what our current hardware can do.
Uh, so what do you think of that division of transhumanism into like an evolutionary biology versus um or maybe directed evolutionary biology versus biology replacement? I think you know the the aim of making the most of what we've got and pushing the limits of technology I mean this is great and it's exciting. um it it will lead to progress that you know hopefully as is often the way a broad range of people have access to. So I I think you know there are aspects of a transhumanist agenda that are natural extensions of what we want science and technology for. They're just at the cutting edge and um and that's great. I think my my worry around certain kinds of technoutopianism and transhumanism is that all of the emphasis is on the tech and not enough on the values and the social and political context. OB there's a lot to say about that about the importance of social justice but and and so on and the environment and all of that but uh and it was a was a strand of technutotopism that just waves it away sort of you know let's create super powerful AI and it will solve all our problems for us including all these messy things around justice and the environment and all that stuff um but even when it comes to personal happiness the evidence suggests that material improvement makes very little difference to personal happiness now that needs to be nuanced of course material want is bad and being at the poorer end in a wealthy society is bad. But otherwise, happiness does not increase in anything like what we'd expect in proportion to um prosperity. And of course, most of our prosperity comes from technology. So this is why I'm linking the two. You know, we can we can sort of create this magical cornucopian world through technology. But will it make us happier? The answer is well only if we get a whole lot of other stuff right around personal relations uh equality makes a huge difference to how happy a population is and um uh environment we live in makes and so on. So, you know, but transhumanists might say, "Oh, yeah, but I like all of that. I like equality and I like the environment." It's a fair enough, but it's just a question of focus. What are we giving our attention to? And I think keeping our attention broadly on a broad range of issues and context is important.
Yeah. I used to think I'll be happy when I I'm rich. And when I was 26, I made $6 million. And I I looked at a friend and I said, I'll be happy when I have 10 million. And yes, I was a total for that. Um, and like it just doesn't work. And I think a lot of transhumanist minded people say, "I'll be happy when, you know, I have robot arms." The only reality I've come to is I'll be happy when I'm happy. Like, there's nothing else I can find. Is there something I'm missing? Well, there is evidence about what leads to happiness. Of course, it's all averages. So, you know, it's difficult to say how it translates to a particular individual, but um uh you know, social connections and personal relations and a sense of purpose. Um you know, for a lot of people in the transhumanist movement in using technology to improve the human condition gives them a sense of purpose and that's that's fine and if that's working for them, that's great and it might well also, you know, benefit society more more broadly. Um but for, you know, for a lot of people it might mean something completely different. uh you know rescuing puppies or um what's your purpose? I like um looking after my children and writing books and uh though I aim with those books to say something about how we can make these incredibly exciting technological transformations that we're living through go well and but I sort of can tell myself I'm doing some good so happens I also enjoy it. Um, yes. Same true of hanging out with my kids.
Got it. So, you're on the the the live through your children or immortality through your children path as well. Yeah. I mean, I guess with children and books, I'm investing in my legacy. But I feel like, you know, if if the world ended today and my books are my children with it, I would still feel feel like I'd spent my time. Well, that that's a gift. And many people have asked me, "What do you want your legacy to be?" And I'm like, 500 years from now, no one will know my name. It doesn't matter how wellknown I am today. It maybe some of the ideas I've helped to seed will exist in some evolved form, but my name won't be on them, right? And that's okay. Like, I I just don't care. And sometimes that's that's the the things the media trainers will tell you to to say. And I'm just trying to think, why would I care about my legacy? I'd love it if my kids said, you know, he was a good dad. Uh, whenever I pass away, they may, they may not. I've done all I can for that, but it's also up to them and whatever they go through. So, I I just find profound boredom in legacy. I I I wish I could say I was as enlightened as you, Dave, because I must admit I do. It's odd. I Yeah.
Well, it's realistic. Um, uh, you know, I've written lots about how, uh, fruitless the pursuit of legacy is, but I still kind of hope people will read my books once I'm gone. Yeah. I I you you look back, we talk about Achilles and Caesar and Genghaskhan, but it's probably 20 or 100 people who are historical figures. You know, Admiral Nelson, maybe Napoleon, but like and if you're in a different culture, there's a different list, but there just aren't that many. And you know, winning the lottery is more likely than being one of those. Yeah, absolutely. And if you believe in reincarnation, it's probably the same people coming back over and over on that list anyway, which isn't really fair. So, like, we're all screwed. Uh, so I'm just like, I'm not going to do that. And I having had a couple near-death experiences, I don't talk about those that much on the show. People are are probably wondering, what's he talking about? Um I once um in a very elegant thing I uh got food poisoning. I passed out throwing up. I hit my head on the floor face down in it. And had my emergency doctor um mother of my children former wife not heard my head hit the floor um I would have done so she had to come in and you give me CPR and stuff. Uh and another time after a biohacking procedure gone bad in the back of an Uber. Um, so those may be flavor things for me, but I want to know from your perspective studying it, what does it look like when you confront your own mortality?
Well, it it's usually very very powerful for people and how they interpret it of course varies depending on their broader religious and philosophical framework. For some people it's proof of an afterlife because of what they see. Um, but I think even if you're skeptical about that, then it's still a profoundly meaningful experience, a lot of people when in any way reminded of their mortality just become much more grateful for every day. Um, you know, the uh in the Psalms, I think in the in the Bible, in the Old Testament, it talks about and teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. We are really bad at this. We live like we're immortal so often, you know, even even though when reminded of death, we might be afraid of it or want to delay it, whatever. Um, but we don't live every day as if it might be our last or as if it's something to truly be treasured. And and I think when people have a near-death experience, they're reminded of just what a gift each moment is. So maybe believing you're going to double your lifespan just fuels procrastination. Procrastination is a real risk. And uh it's a it's a risk already. You know, for for many people, 80 years is already longer than they can get their heads around in a way that allows them to get on and do what they want to do. And more time will only make that problem worse. Um you know, the the kid who wants to go to medical school and be a doctor and help people and all of that, but actually likes playing video games, they found a kind of local equilibrium, if you like. They're happy playing video games, and you know, maybe their parents keep them in pizza. Um, and they need to get over a big hump to go to medical school and study instead. And if they know time is short, I mean, it has to be long enough for them to bother studying for however many years, but you know, 70, 80 years, maybe they'd be more likely to do it than if they think they've got all the time in the world. I suppose one way of putting it is from an economic point of view, the scarcity of a thing tends to be related to the value of a thing. And so with infinite time, time becomes worthless. uh with more time it seems to have less value. Now you know we might think that would be the wrong way to look at it but I think it would be hard it would be work we have to constantly remind ourselves like the stoics and you know other wisdom traditions that help to remind ourselves of just how precious time is. I think we'd need to do that even more if we had more time.
The philosophers and quantum physicists who explain the world the best as far as I can tell are the bioentrists. And you can prove with math that time is entirely an illusion made up by humans. Why does that make time valuable? Yeah. I mean you know there is a philosophical and a scientific tradition indeed that says ah time like everything is present all at once and you can go backwards and forwards and none makes any difference etc. Well, when you say you can do that, what do you mean? Because I can't. Um, you practical people, you know, I can't just go back and change what I did yesterday or um, you know, so I mean, there might be ways in which this is true and that might also correspond to certain kind of mystical experiences of the fundamental nature of reality, but the lived reality for most people most of the time is not like that. Time is very much perceivable when you're in a meat body and it very much doesn't exist when you use science. And that's one of those things where it just it throws me for a loop. But I've I've decided that uh I'm basically hallucinating time all the time and I'm okay with that cuz it's a useful hallucination.
There are studies that show in hospice if you give people psilocybin of psychedelic mushrooms even one time their fear of death dramatically reduces. Why? Yeah. Well, I I'm I'm not an expert on this, but I do find it very interesting, and I think it fits well, it induces certain kinds of experiences that some people might describe as mystical, but certainly seem to suggest a different way of perceiving the universe, reality, and one's place in it. But it's very different to being stuck in time, as we were just talking about, and the kind of having the kind of egocentric concerns that we do. um and seems to open up a different way of seeing that suggests we are more one with the rest of the universe which in a sense we are of course like we're all you know made of stardust as as the saying goes we're all made of the same stuff as universe we come from it we'll return to it there is a plausible way of describing us much as you did earlier Dave that we are eddies you know you know we're waves on the sea we're just as and I think those kind of psychedelic experiences like meditation is certain you know other ways of accessing what we sometimes call mystical experiences can help to reduce that sense of ego and of self and then we're less worried about the end of that self that is death because we identify with this you know broader vision.
How likely is it that at some point in the the future probably the near future AI will become a god for humans? Yeah, I'm not a betting man. Um but uh those who are are more inclined to bet on that now than they were 5 years ago. Um I mean we're seeing incredibly rapid progress of course and um the story some people tell
Around that of an intelligence explosion is that, well, you know, we're now starting to use AI to code for us. We're using AI in scientific discovery and technological, um, prototyping and other kinds of, you know, progress. And once AI starts to get better at lots of aspects of that than we are, then we'll see, you know, it will take over that for us; it will build even smarter AI and so on. And so we see this intelligence explosion, and so very rapidly we see AI so powerful that it is effectively like a god to us. So that's a story; it's um, it's it's a it's a plausible story. And you know, people in the know are thinking this could happen in the in the next decade, so it's worth taking seriously. But what kind of gods they'll be and how we relate to them is a very open question. I hope Mo Godat, who's been on the show, is right, and he says that if we treat them with kindness, they'll learn to treat us with kindness. So my number one advice for people on that front is: don't be mean to AI, because you don't want it to be mean to you later.
What do you think of that advice? Certainly, I think we obviously we were the ones building it. So, to an extent, it's going to be in our image. I mean, of course, that's true at the moment of, you know, the most widely used AI systems currently—large language models—are literally just trained on, you know, the stuff humans put into the internet. So they're very much reflections of ourselves, and that's going to continue to be the case. Now, there might come a point—of course, they're still very alien-like; they're not like humans—but they are nonetheless reflections of us and our values in in many ways. That's likely to be continue, and I think that's true of our fears. You know, people who fear, um, you know, the Terminator-type, uh, you know, machine demon rather than machine god—the one that wakes up and immediately turns on us—well, why do we fear that? Well, because that's what we were doing to each other, you know, and, you know, 100 years ago.
Well, if you read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, for example, wonderful, um, evergreen book, um, 125 years old now, um, he's very explicit that he's sort of satirizing, if you like, the fact that some people claiming to be more intelligent than others use that intelligence and their technological advantage to decimate other people, uh, on the planet because they considered them inferior. And he's very explicit that this is, you know, his story of aliens who were more intelligent—technology doing that to us—is a fable of what, well, in that, you know, he said in England, of what the English did to other other people. And so, of course, you know, we have this long history. And so we project, and we think AI, if it's more intelligent than us, surely it it'll regard us as inferior; it will try to exterminate us just like we did to all those other people, you know. Um, but of course, there are different visions; it doesn't need to be like that. There are different visions of what intelligence is—is more closely associated with wisdom and enlightenment. You know, we build an AI that's super powerful; the first thing it does is sit under a banyan tree and meditate for eternity. Well, you know, why why should we think it would do these very humanlike things? Um, but, uh, but broadly speaking, yes, we do need to be very careful about the kind of values we're instilling in these machines. It's a risk and an opportunity. I'm I'm 100% with you there.
You said that you're not a betting man, yet you're a philosopher, and you choose to write a book about a topic versus another topic. How can you not be a betting man? Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question. I think, um, well, one interesting movement, um, has grown in the last few decades is, uh, around thinking about relatively low probability but very high impact events.
The black swan, black swan events. Exactly. And so team members in my institute in Cambridge that, um, think about existential risk, they worry about the end of civilization, and, um, their argument for worrying about things that other people don't worry about is: well, it might seem pretty unlikely, but it's not impossible, and the consequences would be so terrible that it's worth having a few people thinking about it. And, uh, that's how I think about, say, working on ethics and impact of life extension. We don't know that there'll be a breakthrough. Um, lots of civilizations in the past have thought they were on the edge of a breakthrough—on on the verge of a breakthrough—and they were wrong. But, you know, now I think there's reason to take the prospect seriously because, you know, we've had clear breakthroughs in our understanding of biology, you know, decoding the genome, and not to mention we can significantly extend the lives of other organisms in the lab. So that's about as clear proof as one could hope for. So it's worth taking it seriously and thinking about how to make that go well. Like, you know, if I'm thinking about the ethics and impact, it's not because I'm against it; it's not because I'm a pessimist; it's because I want it to go well. So I guess in a that's a that's a little bit of a bet there. I'm betting that the chances are high enough for it to be worth investing some thought.
I always wonder about that because, uh, you know, some people will will say, "I would never gamble," but I think we're all probability machines at some part of our consciousness because you had to go left or right, so you bet on left being the right way to go, like, and we do it unconsciously. Uh, so I just wanted to get your your philosopher's take on that, and thanks for thanks for being flexible with it.
If we can defer death, what kind of psychological or spiritual crisis that's new would emerge to replace death?
H, interesting. To replace death, well, new crises might emerge like we have our middle-age crisis where you have people go out and get a sports car, whatever. Is there sort of like a, you know, end of normal, uh, primitive man life at around 100? You know, you you get two sports cars, or you shave your head and join a convent. I dude, I don't know, like, like what, like where your philosophers at—your you've thought about this more than I have.
Okay. No, no, it's a good question. Uh, but I think it does depend very much on the scenario. So I think if we were made immortal, like if the if the genie comes and and says, "Dave, I've made you immune to death," like literally, you can't die; it doesn't matter what happens, then I think your crisis would be, "Oh my god, what happens when everyone else is dead and I'm still floating by myself through the universe?" Um, so I think the prospect of the genuine prospect of immortality, if it if if that's what we were talking about, would could easily engender a crisis. But if it wasn't genuine immortality, if it was, um, say, instead we defeated aging and disease, or we gave give you a kind of elixir of life, and you can stay, you know, your current, um, state of health indefinitely, um, then your chance of dying would would be about the chance of accident, which would introduce a kind of radical uncertainty and I think would very much shift your attitude to risk. So, you know, the crisis would be every time you go out of the door, is it is it worth it? And and how do you think rationally about a life that might be ended by a bus tomorrow but might last for a million? Well, you know, a thousand years or something like it becomes very hard to think clearly, I think, about, um, the uncertainty about what a normal life would look like under those conditions.
When you came up with that scenario of, you know, living forever because a genie said that, I like to think that I have fully gotten over my oppositional defiant disorder. But if someone told me, "You are now cursed with never dying," my immediate response would be to start researching how to die anyway. Just because having the option is valuable at some deep level of unconsciousness, I didn't even know until you said that.
Yeah. So it it it may be just a reflection of the—well, you tell me I'm going to die, well then I'll do it on my own terms, and you tell me I'm going to live, well then I'll do it on my own terms. Do you think there's some part of humans intimately tied to doing it on our own terms that's necessary for all this death to even matter?
I mean, certainly our autonomy is very important to us. I think, you know, we have evolved to have a great deal of freedom of will, of autonomy of a certain kind—like we're very good at generating options and exploring those and thinking about the right thing—and it seems really fundamental to our thinking process. I mean, it's more important for some than others, and you know, some are real explorers and innovators, and others just, you know, want to pursue a well-defined track, and and that's, you know, we need that variation, and so that's good. But I think there is something fundamental to being human that's around autonomy, and of course, we see that built into our political traditions, and you know, you know, why do we enjoy living in liberal democracies? Because we enjoy that, um, and I think because of that, death can seem like an outrage—like the ultimate an insult—because why can't we do something about it? Why can't we choose? But just as you say, if immortality was imposed upon us, that might seem equally outrageous.
Why do people lie about death? Oh, they passed away. They're in a better place, and all these other words instead of they died.
I think, well, you know, humans have a tendency to—to deny death. Uh, I think because we don't like to face up to our own mortality and, you know, the end of all of our projects and everything turning to nothing. But nor do we like to face up to the death of loved ones. Of course, it's extremely painful; it's a very, very, um, challenging and long process of adjustment to get used to a loved one not being around anymore. And so we, you know, build these elaborate, um, belief systems that that that tell stories that make that a lot easier. And they are often about, you know, passing to another realm and so on. Um, whereas the word death can—it seems brutal; it feels like the end of something, um, you know, both both for ourselves and and for our loved ones. And, um, that's that that's very challenging for a lot of people.
What's the most dangerous idea in the longevity movement right now?
I think the most deluded is mind uploading, for the reasons we mentioned. Well, but actually duplication is just one problem; it's the most obvious problem. So there's a film out now which I watched but I forgot the name of it—Nikki 17 possibly. But anyway, there's a film about something about mind uploading that involves duplication. It makes very clear what the duplication problem is. But the replication process is perfect—like they're both exactly the same, and they're both exactly like Mickey was. This is incredibly unlikely, right? When we start uploading, when we start experimenting with these kind of, uh, digital twins, these avatars, they're going to be rubbish; they they're going to, you know, be sort of just like you without a sense of humor or, you know, just like or or, you know, without, you know, whatever you—lots of things you think are important. So we're going to get it wrong in lots of ways, and in in a sense, all for naught because I don't think it is a kind of survival. So I think that's most deluded. The most dangerous—probably the most dangerous—now I've given myself a bit of time to think—is, um, accelerationism, in the sense of: we just need to throw everything into the tech, and any kind of ethical worry, any kind of regulation, any kind of thought about the impact, we just need to put to one side because we just need to build super powerful AI, etc., etc., because that will solve our problems for us—I think, you know, including all the longevity problems and everything else, you know, that would—AI will solve living forever. I think that's the most dangerous because, for reasons we talked about, we need to make sure these things have the right values.
Okay, speaking of values, if you could program one idea about death into every AI, what would it be?
Well, we've talked a bit about the importance of accepting our own mortality. I think that would be every bit as important for an AI. Ah, so there are lots of worries, of course, about AI that suddenly develops as a kind of instrumental goal—self-preservation. So, you know, you have a coffee-making AI; it works out that to make the perfect latte it—like it can't be turned off because it can't make a latte but it's turned off. So it sort of, you know, develops this urge to preserve itself, and you know, and this goes badly, and it ends up with the Terminator and what have you. So just like I think we need to accept our own finitude, so does the machine. We need a machine that is fairly indifferent about its own survival and generally—
Yeah. Yeah. I'll give it that. Wow. So you would teach AI to be ambivalent about its death, and that that's intriguing and probably a really good idea for keeping humans around. I I really like that. So all the AI peeps listening, that's cool.
I have one more question for you. I know it's late for you in Cambridge; I'm just here in Austin where it's still earlier. What would you say to a 25-year-old who thinks death is entirely optional?
I would say it's not—not yet. And you know, live healthily; don't do anything too stupid, 'cause you'll regret it, you know, when you're 50, 60, 70, whatever. But our time is limited, and it's hard to remember that when you're 25, um, and feeling immortal. But our time is limited. And it's only by reminding yourself that every day that you won't just play video games and eat cold pizza, but you will get up and do the things that really matter to you and will make a difference in the world.
It's profound advice. I had the unusual gift of being—having the diseases of aging, most of them in my 20s, uh, and having to consider things that maybe most 25-year-olds don't think about, and didn't look like a gift then, but it did make me a little bit more thoughtful about what I do with my life. So I think it's it's profoundly good advice, and it's actually part of why biohacking exists because I ran a longevity nonprofit group in the late '90s, and I couldn't get anyone under 50 to show up to the meetings, but they sure show up for biohacking meetings where the same tools that make old people young make people powerful and healthy. So there was alignment, but it needed a different message.
Stephen Cave, your work is deep and profound and ex—just exciting and fun to read and ponder. So thank you for spending all of the time thinking, pondering, philosophizing, and writing that you do. I think you're making a difference.
Thank you, Dave. It was great to chat with you. I really enjoyed it. See you next time on the Human Upgrade podcast.