Dostoyevsky said, āThe mystery of human
existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.ā So our purpose today is, well, purpose. Purpose is a pretty tricky topic for Futurism
because one of the major purposes of technology is to make life a lot easier, and the basic
purpose of humanity is to survive, and help the tribe survive. Thatās wired into us by Evolution, and in
truth almost all our day to day motivations can be traced to have some connection to it. So when technology comes by and grants near
universal prosperity, our purposes from day to day survival should decline if not outright
disappear. Should that happen, we must ask what will
fill the void? It is entirely possible a lot of folks might
simply pursue happiness and pleasure as their main purpose, hedonism, and while thatās
not for me and I take a dim view of that mindset nowadays, itās hard to condemn when the
individuals arenāt causing other folks any problems. Nor is personal happiness a bad objective,
but most of us feel a life devoted only to the pursuit of maximum happiness and pleasure
is a hollow one. Imagine for the moment our default post-scarcity
civilization from the perspective of an individual living in it. And I donāt mean the blatant Utopias, or
those that seem to be, but hide some terrible problems down underneath with the Morlocks. I mean the kind implied by a lot of the tech
we discuss here. Itās the year 2300 and you are living on
Earth. Youāve been doing it for a very long time,
since I do mean you and I, not our descendants. As weāve discussed before, there is a decent
chance we, personally, will still be alive and kicking in centuries to come. You are a cyborg. You probably donāt look like it, but your
body is flooded with tiny little machines that fix damage and youāve probably got
millions of tiny bits of circuitry woven around your body and brain. You can probably remember watching this episode
quite clearly, though of course could easily pull it back up again if not. You do not have to exercise, your body just
stays in shape. You can eat as much as you want of whatever
you want, and whenever you want it. You can have that slice of cheesecake without
thinking of calories, and then go run a marathon and, even though youāre not that great at
it, you would have broken every Olympic record set back in your youth. The concept of āyouthā is also fairly
arbitrary to you, since you can pretty much look like whatever age you choose. You donāt really think of yourself as particularly
impressive, weighed against your friends and neighbors, but if we dropped you in the past
you could beat up a whole platoon of elite soldiers while speed reading an entire book. You learn fast, and you never forget what
you learned or observed unless you want to. You never get sick or old unless you want
to. While youāre not really any smarter, stronger,
healthier, or wealthier than the average, you live in a mansion and can buy pretty much
anything you could ever have reasonably wanted in your youth, so long as it isnāt ridiculously
over the top, unique, or requiring another person, and you can get most of the more ridiculous
things in virtual reality anyway. Plus there are really good psychologists you
can visit if youāve developed some addiction to collecting or hoarding. Theyāre good too, they could sit down with
someone with nicotine addiction from the twentieth century and that person would walk out without
ever having so much as a craving again. Your civilization presumably has some way
of keeping excessive things reined in, be it simple cost draining your bank account
or social scolding from the town council that has to approve more over-the-top acquisitions
like when your neighbor decided he wanted a solid gold house and they said no. You are not a lazy, stupid two-legged cattle
enjoying some paradise, all but vacant of mind and ability. Youāre more like Bruce Wayne, rich, athletic,
and smart, only you are not the Batman because thereās no crazed villains going around
and everyone you know is more or less on your level. Most folks you know are carrying around knowledge
equivalent to Ph.D.s in many fields, because they learn easier, teaching technology has
vastly improved, and they are often centuries old. Youāre a superhero, but with no one to save. There is no global hunger to fix, no homeless
folks to build houses for, no vast injustices to deal with anymore. You can certainly spend a lot of time kicking
around your palace having fun, but you wonāt really loll around the place because you donāt
really get tired. You might not even need to sleep, but if you
do, you wake up full of energy and you donāt have days where you are under the weather
or your allergies are bugging you or youāve got cramps or a migraine or any other minorly
annoying ailment. You will die someday, but mostly likely at
a time of your choosing, or by some pathway of intentional risk. You might remove the various safeguards that
keep you alive, and start doing risky things until you either die or change your mind and
restore those safeguards. Hunting lions with nerf bats was a popular
activity for a while, until people complained it was upsetting the lions and banned it. Youāve heard that jumping off the Orbital
Ring without a parachute into shark infested sections of the ocean has become popular as
a replacement. You basically have anything you could ever
want in life, and access everything else through virtual reality, and have eons to enjoy them,
all guilt and shame free, since everyone else has that same access, and no one is less fortunate. So what do you do with your time? What, exactly, is your purpose? I encourage you to think of yourself in this
context, not some hypothetical person, as it helps to circumvent the assumption everyone
would turn lazy and useless. We tend to have a higher opinion of ourselves
and we generally know our own motives and goals better than others. I tried to think of what I would do. That one was easy enough in some respects,
Iād probably keep doing some variation of the stuff I do now. I like my work and while I love having a larger
audience these days, I was quite happy when the channel had hundreds of subscribers, not
hundreds of thousands. External validation is nice, and useful too
as it helps you keep on track and refine and improve what you do, but itās rarely our
main motivation for our hobbies. Hobbies, assuming you can make a living at
it, also make for great jobs and the general point of a post-scarcity civilization is that
you can do something you want without needing to worry about where you next meal is coming
from. A thing that gets missed a lot in conversations
about robots replacing workers to increase production at lower costs is that motivation
begins to trail away when nobody much cares about cost anymore. I tend to suspect you get a tipping point
where improved automation shifts away from cost efficiency toward trying to eliminate
positions where the supply of folks wanting to do it is way less than the demand. That might help a little with folks trying
to find purpose in existence. Particularly on things such as creativity
or scholarship, vitally important but not part of our core production for survival,
we already tend to view that as something for humans, not automation. Partially because such things are harder to
automate, but I also suspect because we feel those are our tasks and perhaps should remain
so even if they could be automated. And thatās the key point of course. A future high-tech civilization might turn
into one where nobody works or learns or ever stirs themselves from the couch because they
donāt have to and donāt want to, but I donāt think that scenario is too likely. More likely is that most people want to be
doing something, have a megaton of skills and talents, and have problems finding anything
to do, so end up sitting on the couch, same as some second-string player on a championship
team waiting for the coach to call them off the bench. That might be a rough existence, regardless
of what luxuries life affords you, if you always feel like a backup being held in reserve. We should also consider the effects of post-scarcity
on our current perception of what qualifies as āpurposeā. Humanity has been focused on immediate survival
and resource acquisition for as long as weāve existed. It seems fair to assume that no longer having
to worry about such things would probably change our psychology to some degree. Given the chance to do and be whatever we
please without having to worry about the minutiae of everyday tasks, weād likely find our
society beginning to change its core views and ideals. Without having to worry about keeping the
factory running, food on the shelves, or staying in ideal health, humanity might begin thinking
on scales which seemed previously out of bounds due to considerations of the logistics and
manpower involved. With these no longer at issue, humanity might
just start moving toward ever larger endeavours. What tasks can occupy the mind of an immortal? This, in many ways, is why itās so easy
for me to imagine us building all those megastructures we discuss and colonizing the galaxy. This is also why I suggest thinking of yourself
in these conditions, not other people. Itās easier for us to assume other folks
will turn selfish or lazy than ourselves, and that outcome is possible, but I think
it far more likely the citizens of such a civilization would be rather impressive in
terms of things like knowledge and experience and motivation. And it could be us too. Any time in the next few decades some laboratory
somewhere might announce they managed to make a tiny little robot that was able to follow
very simple orders, one of which included making a copy of itself from materials on
hand. A few years after that itās over, because
thatās a universal assembler and if you have those youāre instantly post-scarcity
and instantly biologically immortal. Such a technology is not guaranteed, see the
Drexler-Smalley debate for the potential hurdles and how they might be insurmountable, but
thatās not the only path to either of those, just one that definitely does both. Given something like that, we, you and I,
might be sitting down a few centuries from now chuckling about this topic. I canāt see myself or most of my friends
going to seed. While I can see a lot of them saying they
would, since many are older than me, those who either talk of retiring or have even done
so are back doing stuff a couple months later. Theyāre not doing it full time, they travel,
spend time with the grandkids, putter about with their hobbies, etc. Many get up an hour later and sit about in
their pajamas, but many also do not, waking up and getting at it just as early as before,
and the ones who do just go about it at their own pace. They are certainly no drain on society, either
ethically or in terms of resources, and the latter is fairly irrelevant in a post-scarcity
setup. Of course most of those folks also have some
sort of cause, usually several, that keep them motivated. And we certainly have no end of good causes
for folks to jump on board these days, we have a lot of work to do before we have a
society where peoplesā only concern is finding something to do with life. When those go away, we do have a problem. Now mind you, not every purpose has to be
grand and noble. Indeed, those doing them donāt even have
to believe they are grand and noble but often feel that way even when itās probably not
that important objectively. If someoneās purpose is designing the very
most fashionable clothing for dogs, and they feel thatās very vital to civilization,
Iām not going to pretend I think it is, but I wonāt knock it either. āWhatever keeps you goingā is a phrase
I use with a lot of my friends these days, and I donāt think most catch what I mean
by that, which is that I donāt really care what they do so long as it keeps them happy,
and isnāt destructive to them or others, but itās a sentiment I suspect will get
a bit more common as time goes on and technology progresses. In the grand view, and in the long term, they
probably donāt matter too much, but then again, Iām not so sure anything else does
either. I usually find the best way to deal with Existential
Dread about the purpose of oneās existence or the meaning of life is just to pick something
that feels right and roll with it, and cheerfully ignore such contemplations. I suspect that is also a sentiment that will
get more popular in time. We have things a lot better off in almost
every respect than our ancestors did, but at least most of them didnāt have to worry
about problems of that sort much. Admittedly itās kinda hard to worry about
whether or not existence matters or free will truly exists when youāre engaging in hard
manual labor all day hoping to avoid disease or injury long enough to see half your kids
survive to adulthood. I donāt think I need to sell the point too
hard that people need a sense of purpose to life, or that any community or culture needs
to have some mutual goals and aims in order to stay bound together. Weāll list that one down as a self-evident
truth, indeed in our original discussion of post-scarcity civilizations a couple years
back, we actually made a sense of purpose one of the six criteria you had to meet to
be considered one. The question is what those are. Again they donāt necessarily have to be
grand and sweeping, or even be perceived as such, a coach of kids sports team certainly
can point to that as a good purpose serving a lot of good ends but I donāt think most
would call it world-changing. Youāve got skills and you put them toward
some good end, and it makes you feel like there is a point to getting out of bed in
the morning. The problem is, again, in a post-scarcity
civilization thereās a lot less of these, even of the mundane kind. Thereās no soup kitchen to go donate money
or time to, because nobody needs that, and you probably canāt even go feed animals
because someone will have already taken that in hand. Donāt put it past us to decide to tweak
nature so every lion on the planet just thinks it ran down and ate an antelope, and every
cat got its mouse, even though the mouse is just fine and isnāt over-breeding because
we released some virus or nanobot system to lower their reproductive rates. Same thing goes for building great big megastructures
or launching colony ships, our topic for two weeks for now. I get asked why I always aim for very big
colony ships with lots of people, or even manned ones at all when some self-replicating
robot could probably get there faster and terraform the place, and quite probably even
populate it with vat-grown kids it raised and taught itself. Personally I donāt think weād do that
much, because I tend to assume weāll actively sabotage things which eliminate purpose. A concern for high-tech civilizations is that
an AI might come into existence, get very smart very quickly, and wipe out its creators. Thatās a valid concern, but another is that
even if itās very friendly toward people and benevolent, it might basically turn us
all into its pets. Weāve talked about that before and Iāve
suggested that it would be smart enough to see that problem and probably start making
up important stuff for us to do that it couldnāt. A common hand wave in science fiction is to
have tasks that for some reason only people can do, not computers, to ensure that thereās
a reason to have crews on board ships. Tons of examples, in Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda
for instance they had method of space travel called a Quantum Slipstream that had to be
navigated and for some reason an Artificial Intelligence had only a 50/50 chance of getting
it right whereas an organic person could do it right 99.7% of the time by āBiological
Intuitionā. Thatās obviously a bit of handwaving nonsense
by the writers to justify a crew in the show, but I could easily imagine an AI making something
like that up to make folks feel needed. Indeed thatās my preferred theory for the
Matrix Trilogy. The idea presented, that the machines keep
people around as batteries, is dumb. So is the alternate one where they used us
for certain specialized processing. However, the idea that the whole thing, including
the so-called real world in its post-apocalyptic dystopian glory, was just a simulation by
an AI programmed to make folks feel happy, fits better. That the world outside the Matrix is just
another layer meant for folks with a rebellious streak. Thing is, you donāt have to be an AI to
come up with this plan. You could have the powers that be, regular
old humans, just conspire to come up with stuff like that to make citizens feel useful,
and indeed, they and their minions get a nice sense of purpose engaging in a struggle to
keep the masquerade going. Itās not too hard for me to imagine that
happening. Not just that some folks might think thereās
a need for it and contemplate doing it, or try to do it, but that by and large people
will turn a blind eye to it. Even if it was something that seems patently
absurd, like the government coming out and telling everyone there was an unknown threat
they didnāt dare disclose, and the only way to combat it was to make widgets, ones
that had to be crafted or at least tested by actual humans, I think that might actually
work. Amusingly those folks running the show could
cheerfully sit down for polygraph tests because theyād think it was true, the unknown threat
was just purposelessness, and anyone who saw behind the curtain is probably a good convert
to help run the show. But I donāt think, ultimately, that it would
be necessary. You can find stuff for people to do that probably
does matter, and no one really has much motive to peek behind the curtain or believe folks
who have and shout out about what they saw. Not because theyāre dumb or gullible, but
because we all know we need a purpose and donāt see any advantage to ripping apart
ours or anyone elseās. A few weeks back we were talking about whether
or not aliens would find us boring and never visit Earth for that reason. We poked some holes in that, and one of those
was the notion that super-intelligent entities are better at multitasking. Talking to a single normal human might be
very boring to them, the capacity to simultaneously talk with hundreds or even quintillions of
them probably changes that. That episode hasnāt aired yet at the time
Iām writing this one, but I would guess someone will object on the grounds theyād
have more interesting things to do. I might be able to keep track of a dozen mice
at once, but Iād still rather play a video game or chat with a human friend, and presumably
the same might apply to an advanced intelligence. I canāt actually argue that point, but Iād
note two things. First of all, that very argument is predicated
on the assumption there are more interesting things to do, which presumably means a lack
of purpose isnāt an issue for them and thus also presumably means it wouldnāt be for
a post-scarcity civilization. But secondly, Iād ask what exactly that
is? What do they do? Folks talking about this will often suggest,
half-jokingly, that maybe the megabrain super intelligence spends its time trying to find
the last digit of Pi. But they wouldnāt, they know there isnāt
one and if theyāre that smart they would also know thereās no intrinsic value to
that. You donāt even need the first 40 digits
of Pi to have a value accurate enough to calculate the volume of the Observable Universe down
to Atomic precision, and we had that back in the 1600s, and the mathematical proof it
was an irrational number, one which has infinite digits, in the 1700s. Donāt go digging for some purpose to efforts
to calculate it, the only one Iāve ever heard is that itās a handy way to test supercomputers
or generate random numbers. Neither of those is limited to Pi and both
imply another useful purpose rather than those digits themselves. Obviously some folks find it interesting,
but I think itās mostly just about setting a new record. Again, whatever keeps you going, but I canāt
really see a supermind finding it anymore fascinating than I do. And for the most part I tend to be more interested
in what cool things science can do for us rather than the specific rules themselves
and for their own sake. I think you either have a limit, at which
point you have actually figured out all the laws of the Universe, or maybe it is one of
those endless things with another box inside a box every time you open a new layer. If the former, you have to find something
else to do with your time, and if the latter, thereās presumably a point where, like calculating
digits of Pi, you decide it is a box in a box in a box and also stop seeing any tangible
return on your investment of time and decide to call it. If itās just endless rules, than it becomes
like the rulebooks for a role-playing game, where you initially are glad at all the new
options each additional supplementary rulebook offers but eventually get irritated they keep
adding to it as it offers no new substance. In regard to the Fermi Paradox, I consider
that a decent rebuttal to the idea aliens just all have some great purpose they share
that keeps them too busy and interested to ever say hi to primitive neighbors. In regard to our topic, I just point it out
as an option for folks who are bored with their fellow man or need some purpose to throw
themselves at for eternity. I just donāt see it as particularly more
compelling than many of the other options on the table or particularly more noble a
quest than someone spending a century building a new sandcastle every day to be swept away
by the tide. If they enjoy it, and it keeps them going,
and theyāve nothing more important to occupy their time, have fun. Even if you did feel you had no great purpose
and felt you needed one, you could trick yourself into having one, even without using a high-tech
path like visiting a brainwashing center to have yourself convinced manufacturing paperclips
was your calling in life and the most noble goal. Thatās another point back to AI of course,
and one advantage of researching them, by trying to figure out how to give artificial
minds a purpose that keeps them safe and sane, we also can figure out better how to do that
for ourselves. Weāll talk more about brainwashing later
in the year. Fundamentally though I just donāt see us
running out of purposes, and of course we talk about a lot of those on the channel. Colonizing Space, Mega-engineering, and projects
closer to home like geoengineering and ecological repair. And those will be common topics in our schedule,
which weāll get to in a moment, for the next few months, and later this fall weāll
look at some truly staggering projects we can do right here on Earth like Colonizing
the Oceans or turning desert or tundra into rich ecosystems. But Ecological Repair, like reforestation,
isnāt something that has to wait till the distant future or requires vast national efforts. Thereās a lot of groups working on that
right now and one of them is our new partner Ecosia, theyāre a group that raises funds
by having a search engine where the ad revenue it generates is used to plant trees. Something just that simple and theyāve already
planted about 30 million and are adding a new one every second. Good search engine too, they donāt sell
or give out anyoneās data, on the other hand, they do make their fundraising and expenses
very visible and transparent, so you can see how effective they are. If youād like to help them out, you can
just take the link in the video description, ecosia.co/isaacarthur, install it for free,
use it for free, and every time you use it youāll help plant a new tree. All right, as mentioned weāll be looking
at colonizing space for the next few weeks and weāll start by visiting Ceres, the largest
of our asteroids or the smallest of our dwarf planets, and discuss ways to colonize that
and talk about colonizing the asteroid belt in general. The week after that, weāll take a first
look at Generation Ships, mighty arks in space for transplanting civilizations to distant
stars, something weāll spend a few episodes examining, how we make these ships for settling
the galaxy. And then the week after that weāll join
up with John Michael Godier to discuss some of the implications for a galaxy thatās
been settled by us, if we never encounter any other civilizations in it. For alerts when those and other episodes come
out, make sure to subscribe to the channel, and if you enjoyed this episode, hit the like
button and share it with others. If youād like to discuss this topic more,
you can leave a comment below, or join in the discussion on our Facebook or Reddit Groups,
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur, or our new Discord Server, all of which are linked
below in the video description. Until next time, this is Isaac Arthur saying thanks for watching, and weāll see you next week!
we should realize that it is already a problem, and it is a problem for at least a hundred years. and many philosophers tackled the issue already, and came up with great answers. kirkegaard and nietzsche comes to mind. in a nutshell:
tenet #1: nothing have a purpose or meaning in the physical world
tenet #2: human beings are happiest and function the best if they have purpose
conclusion: in order to have a full and fulfilling life, you need to find a purpose for yourself. but this purpose is not arbitrary. in order for it to function, it has to be bold and important. the greater it is the better. it has to inspire pride.
the other way is escapism. do drugs, be hedonist, pursue mundane goals, watch television, cheer for a sports team. the inevitable result is vanity and depression.
today, most people are occupied with chores 80% of the time, which makes the problem less important. as spare time grows, the problem intensifies. probably that's why there is a considerable resistance to reducing work hours and getting rid of mundane tasks. people fear spare time.
The purpose of life is to spread the existence of life.
Thank you Issac, I do appreciate the effort you put into your videos :)
When I ask your question of myself: What would be my purpose, my answer is: I honestly don't know.
In that post scarcity society, what would I do? Currently in my job, I was surprised that I got a lot of joy when I had the chance to teach new people about our way of doing things.
It felt very fulfilling. But it doesn't appear I can do that in the future, because as you pointed out, learning would be easy.
How about growing food for people? I do enjoy that right now but again, it would be unnecessary with post-scarcity.
Thinking about it has brought on an existential crisis !
Perhaps I better get some housework done :)
Can someone help me figure out why I never stopped feeling like I had already heard this episode before? Down to the nerf bat hunting and clothing line for dogs anecdotes.