How many alien civilizations are out there? | Yuval Noah Harari and Lex Fridman

Full podcast episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mde2q7GFCrw Lex Fridman podcast channel: youtube.com/lexfridman Guest bio: Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and Unstoppable Us.

Lex - “How many aliens” Harari - “You don’t have relationship with the bacon.”

"The people for whom it wasn't okay are just not here" That hits hard

Intelligence is destructive without consciousness. So well explained.

This guy is one of the main advisors of Klaus Schwab.

"Intelligence tends to be self-destructive, maybe intelligent life form out there dont' survive for long. " That's such an interesting argument. This clip has so much interesting view points and ideas, worth listening to multiple times. Great conversation.

Our violence stems from the primal side of our existence, not the intelligent side. The intelligent side of our existence makes our violence more efficient and scaled. So I respectfully disagree to Yuval's assessment that intelligence is overrated. A false equivalency.

Lex works for the WEF and Klaus Schwab, got it

His explanation of projecting consciousness onto things that you have relationship with reminds me of the movie/book "Being There". People projected all sorts of meaning into his simple gardener/nature statements based on who they were and what they wanted to hear. People are not used to communicating with somebody that doesn't have their own (usually selfish) thing going on. It makes it hard to get the cues we usually do from face-to-face communication. Now, imagine you don't have a face!

Yes we have evidence

I think there are 3 elements at play : 1- Intelligence (as defined by Harari as the capacity to solve problems) 2- Consciousness (as defined by Harari as the capacity to have feelings) 3- Self awareness (as defined as the capacity of humans and some primates to recognise their own reflection in a mirror) The organic world seems to suggest that you can't have self awareness without conscious feelings and intelligence, but that you can have conscious feelings without self awareness and intelligence. (Touch a snail's tentacles, see ants recoil from fire etc) The question therefore that obsesses me is could AI turn this rule on its head by having intelligence AND self awareness WITHOUT conscious feelings ? If so, would this "numb self-awareness" still result in self-interest, or would its incapacity to experience even elementary sensations of pain and pleasure leave it forever indifferent to its fate ? As long as AI has no agency, it's still fundamentally just a tool made for and by humans. Like any other tool, the risks associated with it resides not in the tool itself, but in our potential to misuse it. In this respect, the dangers of AI are no different to the dangers of any other technology invented since the iron age. If AI were to become the game-changer, it would not be because of its intelligence per se, but because of its (as yet unascertained) potential for agency.

Yuval Harari. Chief Witch Doctor of the WEF.

Is Klaus Schwab next Lex?seems you made a lot of cool friends lately...

Lex: “How many alien civilizations are out there?” Me: “I don’t know … I just got here.”

We want to be listened to, but more than that we want to feel that someone understands us.

Incredibly well spoken

Humans operate within a narrow band of frequency of perception. There could be something that exists that is slightly out of tune with our perception, a shadow biosphere or organism on the earth.

This conversation on the evolution of intelligence is pretty cool. Despite our existence amongst the vastness, that continues to be discovered with all that we know and are to know, one will always chase the meaning of life. To catch a butterfly.

Thank you for this perspective😊

how are plants not conscious? they interact with their environment and even interact with each other thru their roots. They are far more connected than we assume.