Max Tegmark

And we are stewards of this one spark of advanced consciousness, which if we nurture it, then...

help it grow, eventually life can spread from here out into much of our universe and we can have this just amazing future.

Whereas if we instead are reckless with the technology we build and just snuff it out due to stupidity or infighting, then maybe the rest of cosmic history in our universe is just gonna be a play for empty benches.

But I do think that we are actually very likely to get visited by aliens

alien intelligence quite soon.

But I think we are gonna be building that alien intelligence.

Yeah, and it's going to be much more alien than a cat or even the most exotic animal on the planet right now, because it will not have been created through the usual Darwinian competition where it necessarily cares about self-preservation, is afraid of death, any of those things.

The space of alien minds that you can build is just so much vaster than what evolution will give you.

And with that also comes a great responsibility for us to make sure that the kind of minds we create are the kind of minds that it's good to create, minds that will share our values and be good for humanity and life, and also create minds that don't suffer.

I try, but I would say I fail.

I mean, it's very difficult for a human mind to...

really grapple with something so completely alien.

I mean, even for us, right?

If we just try to imagine, how would it feel if we were completely indifferent towards death or individuality?

Even if you just imagine that, for example, you could just copy my knowledge of how to speak Swedish.

Boom, now you can speak Swedish.

And you could copy any of my cool experiences, and then you could delete the ones you didn't like in your own life, just like that.

It would already change quite a lot about how you feel as a human being, right?

You probably spend less effort studying things if you just copy them.

And you might be less afraid of death because if the plane you're on starts to crash, you'd just be like, oh, shucks.