Unsurprisingly given our psychology’s origin in evolution, humans spend most of their time thinking about everyday concerns: how to get food, stay clean, find friends, get laid, etc. Most of our thinking and talking about far away issues we don’t have much control over is just for signalling nice things about ourselves. There is little reason to direct those efforts towards the things which really matter most as our views change nothing; instead it’s safest to go along with the idealistic fashions of our social group at any point in time.
Unless you’re really smart. In that case, you can go out and show just how brilliantly smart you are by forwarding strange positions no mediocre wit would feel smart enough to defend. Nick Bostrum, busy signalling his superior smarts with an unusual but consistent worldview, swims against the current of his day and proposes these fairly unusual answers to the most serious problems humanity faces: Death, Existential Risk, Suffering and Mediocre Experiences. If you knew you were going to (have the chance to) be born again in the year 3000, I think these are just the issues you would want us to start dealing with seriously now, not most of the nonsense we ostensibly do to help the future. Or you could just save some money (PPT) for them instead, if you care.
Lucky we have some really smart people: to show us how smart they are, sometimes they go out and say really outlandish but important things.
Tagged: death, existential risk, Nick Bostrum, the future, transhumanism, videos
